Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 8/14: Trump Investigation, Midterm Elections, Housing Market, CDC Overhaul, & More!

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the Trump FBI raid, an attack on the FBI, the cooperating witness, midterm elections, housing market, CDC overhaul, MSNBC primetime host, & 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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Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big new developments with regards to that FBI search on Mar-a-Lago, Trump's home. Some new details that give us a little bit more of the contours of what's going on, of also his shifting defenses. He's kind of all over the map about what he's saying about it. And there's also a little bit of political fallout now. We can see the Republicans a little bit more divided about exactly how to respond to this. We also see some poll numbers showing that this might not be good for Trump overall, but it seems to be very good for him with regards to the Republican base. We also want to give you the details of this attack on an FBI office in Cincinnati. The gunman was ultimately shot dead by law enforcement and

increased threats against the FBI in the wake of this raid. So we have all of that. Also, the attack on Salman Rushdie is reportedly now beginning to recover, but that road to recovery is very long. We'll tell you what we know about the attacker and a story we haven't talked about for a minute, but we have some new details about exactly what happened in that horrific onset tragedy with regards to Alec Baldwin, a new FBI report there. A lot of FBI in the show today. Yeah, that's right. I will tell you about that. We also have Alex Holder on. He is that documentarian who was subpoenaed by the January 6th committee, also subpoenaed down in the Georgia investigation of Trump. He had sort of, well, the film is called unprecedented. He really did have unprecedented access to Trump and to his family in the run up to the election. I actually

watched the whole thing last night and it was really weird reliving the whole election because there are so much happened that there were just pieces I completely memory hold. I forgot how close it was to Election Day when Trump got COVID. It was in the hospital on death's door right before the election. I sort of forgot how close to Election Day. Crazy. Anyway. Reliving it is fun. Yes, indeed. Okay, so the very latest developments, as you guys know, we had this raid on Mar-a-Lago. FBI goes in, shocking development, and there immediately were a lot of calls for increased transparency from the DOJ. Hey, we want to see what you're doing. We want to see what you took from here. Merrick Garland gave a press conference and said, OK, I'm authorizing the unsealing because the

president revealed the existence of this raid and some of the details. I'm going to go ahead and ask the court to unseal the search warrant and the inventory list of what was taken in that search. After some debate, I think internally, the Trump team agreed. They said, okay, we're okay with this. And so those documents became public. Here's some of what we learned there. Let's go ahead and put the Wall Street Journal up on the screen. They were among the first news outlets to actually get their hands on these documents. They recovered, the FBI, 11 sets of classified documents in the Trump search according to that list of inventory. And I'm going to show you the inventory list in a minute. It doesn't go into a lot of specific detail, but it does give you some sort of high-level categories that give us a

little bit of insight. And also on the search warrant, it indicates which criminal statutes they are actually, you know, that this investigation has to do with. So here's a little bit of the detail from this Wall Street Journal report. They say FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as top secret and meant to be only available in special government facilities. That is according to that search warrant and inventory list. The FBI agents took around 20 boxes of items, binders of photos. Some of the details here are sort of amusing. A handwritten note in the executive grant of clemency for Roger Stone. List of items removed from the property shows,

also including the list was information about the president of France. There were some additional reporting about some of the specifics of the documents that were removed. I believe it was the Washington Post who had the bombshell report that some sort of nuclear information was included in the documents that they were at least searching for. New York Times reporting that it included special access programs. That is some of the most highly sensitive information that the government has. Let's go ahead. That is some of the most highly sensitive information that the government has. Let's go ahead and put the image of the inventory list up on the screen just to give you a sense of the sort of high-level categories that they have on here. You know, they list sort of like general categories of documents, but they don't get into like

nuclear secrets or anything like that. They do indicate, though, that there is quite a bit of secret and top secret documents that were taken out of Mar-a-Lago, or at least they're marked secret and top secret. We'll get into some of the debate about classification, how all of that works, which we've been discussing on this show already. Next, let's put the New York Times up on the screen, which gets into some of the laws and criminal statutes that were listed in this search warrant. So there were three criminal statutes that were mentioned, one of which, which is the kind of most eye-catching in terms of its name, is a provision of the Espionage Act. It criminalizes the unauthorized retention or disclosure of information related to national defense that could be used to harm the U.S. or aid a foreign adversary.

Each offense can carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. Worth noting with regards to the Espionage Act, it doesn't actually require that you're like a spy. As I just indicated, it just requires that you had, as they say, unauthorized retention or disclosure of information related to national defense. So even just, you know, having it when you're not supposed to and it could be a risk could subject you to prosecution under the Espionage Act. Of course, also the Espionage Act was, in my opinion, abused by the Trump administration to go after Julian Assange. But that's another story for another day. They also have in here obstruction, which could be related to the fact that we now know the Trump administration had been in contact with the FBI and the DOJ and the National Archives. They've been asking for these documents. They've even been issued a subpoena previously for these documents, claimed they'd sent it over,

and clearly that wasn't the case. So that could be what's playing into the obstruction charge that's listed, not charge, but criminal statute that's listed here. He has not been indicted. There haven't been any charges filed. The third law criminalizes, it's called Section 2071, criminalizes the theft or destruction of government documents. It makes it a crime punishable in part by up to three years in prison per offense for anyone with custody of any record or document from federal court or public office to willfully and unlawfully conceal, remove, mutilate, falsify, or destroy it. One thing that is of note that we can talk about more when we get into some of Trump's defenses is that none of these criminal statutes technically require the documents involved to be classified. Now, the Espionage Act in particular, there haven't been cases in the past where the documents weren't classified and there was a charge here. So it would be unusual to have an Espionage Act charge and not have the documents

involved be classified. However, it doesn't specifically mention classification in the language. It's actually a law that predates our system of classification. And so if the classification markings are sort of considered an indicator that this could be a problem for our national defense, but not necessarily determinative. So that's the big picture. That's why I think it's actually probably worth stewing as much as possible on this, which is a lot of people looked at the actual inventory. There were four separate boxes, box 10A, 11A, 13A, and 14A, which were labeled as either miscellaneous secret documents,

miscellaneous top secret documents, or miscellaneous confidential documents. So the reason that all of that qualification and classification matters is it refers to the various levels of classification. You both have like a normal level of classification, secret, top secret, then there's special compartmentalized he speaks about classification and how his ability as president of the United States to declassify supersedes anything, it just bears the fact that all three of the laws that are cited specifically in the search warrant do not necessarily mean the information itself has to be classified. That being said, as you pointed out, these are very novel interpretations of the law, not even interpretation. They have never been tested yet in a court and especially not been tested against the former president of the United

States. For the Espionage Act, that's the case. For the other, obstruction and, you know, the one that's like criminalizing the theft or destruction of government documents, that one, you know, it's widely accepted that that doesn't have to be classified documents. And I think that they've been charged that way in the past. The Espionage Act 1, as I said, the idea is the fact that the documents are classified is an indication to the court that these are documents that are very serious from a national security perspective. But you can imagine the situation where, you know, he's doing his, oh, I waved my hand and said they're declassified. But it's information that is clearly extremely sensitive. I think there's some reporting also that some of the documents

had to do with our human assets, like intelligence assets overseas. And when they talk about special access programs, this is the type of information that literally no one can sort of take with them. You have to go and view it inside of one of these government skiffs that are designed for viewing this sort of sensitive information. So that's what we know about what was in the inventory list. That's what we know about what the criminal statutes are that they were able to take to a federal judge and at least convince that judge that they had a likelihood that they would find evidence of these crimes at Mar-a-Lago. So you've got Espionage Act, you've got obstruction, and then you've got, I think that last one, isn't that the one that Trump sort of beefed up because he wanted to own the libs with regards to Hillary? Yeah, that was section 207. Criminalizing the theft or destruction of government documents that makes it a crime punishable up to three years in

prison for anyone with custody of any record or document from federal court or public office I also do think it's worth reading this particular line from the warrant. Agents were authorized 20th, 2021, obviously the dates that Trump was actually president of the United States, as well as, quote, any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment of any government and or presidential records or any documents with classification markings. So they had a very, very wide, basically, authority to seize whatever the hell they wanted in between that period. And in terms of the rooms that they were allowed to search, it was basically anything that wasn't, you know, where the guests are staying in the sort of like, you know, private club part of it. But any place where Trump might have been storing documents, his office, the basement in particular,

they were authorized to go. And there was also reporting that's come out that they were actually, you know, because they have closed circuit TV, they were able to watch the search. Yes. The Trump people from, I think he was in New Jersey at Bedminster at that time. So interesting little detail there. Let's talk about the FBI. This is a very serious story. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Police went ahead and shot dead an armed man who tried to breach the Cincinnati, Ohio FBI building. This was all on Thursday, where an armed standoff ensued, where a man approached the FBI building in Cincinnati.

He was basically pushed back from the FBI building onto a nearby interstate in kind of an hours-long standoff, eventually culminated in a gun battle, and he was shot dead by police who were on the scene. Later, the suspect was identified as Ricky Schiffer. He's a 42-year-old man. Now, Mr. Schiffer, let's go ahead and put this next one up on the screen, actually was at the Capitol on January 6th, a diehard Trump supporter. And what has really come out since then is not just his presence at the Capitol on January 6th, but a series of tweets, Crystal, that he sent, not tweets, sorry, truths, that he sent before all of this began. His very last truth actually was this, quote, well, I thought I had a way through bulletproof glass. I didn't. If you didn't hear from me, it's true. I tried attacking

the FBI. It'll mean either I was taken off the internet, the FBI got me, or they sent the regular cops. Now, in previous truths, what he had said is, quote, it won't matter if we don't get violent. We see the courts are unfair and unconstitutional. All that is left is force. And he says, I'm having trouble getting information. He was citing previous YouTubers and others talking about people who are gathering outside of Mar-a-Lago. I mean, clearly Mr. Schiffer was like a diehard. He was all in. Kind of Trump supporter.

He was absolutely all in. He thought he was fighting a war. This is where things get dicey. I hope we have a lot of people of varying political stripes who watch this show. And I would just say that there is nothing, you know, regarding this situation, which is worth you laying down your life. So please don't do that. And unfortunately, we have seen, let's put this up there on the screen of Ken Klippenstein talking about the FBI and DHS issuing joint intelligence bullets to their entire staff warning of quote,

the potential for domestic violent extremists to carry out attacks in reaction to the FBI recent execution of a court-authorized search in Palm Beach. We've seen also some targeting of the actual FBI agents who were in charge of the raid itself and just some other crazy stuff happening here in Washington. I want to be clear at the top. We have no idea who this guy was who actually did what I'm about to tell you, but let's put this up there. Overnight, over the weekend, a man set his car on fire, drove into the barricade near the US Capitol, very close to where our studio is here right now, started shooting indiscriminately, and ultimately shot and killed himself. So went ahead, drove his car into the barricade, shot indiscriminately, and ultimately killed himself.

Was he a crazy person? Nobody knows. Ran himself into the barricade. Now, to be clear, it is not uncommon. We've had barricade incidents in the past. We had some Nation of Islam people, you know, like earlier this year. So it's not like it doesn't happen at least once or twice a year. But obviously the timing happening so close to what happened with the FBI, everybody's on very, very high alert. Yeah. I think that, you know, I just, again, like, look,

nothing is worth taking up arms and going to go shoot at least, you know, currently probably won't be there ever in our lifetime. More what I'm saying is that tensions are high. There's a lot of irresponsible rhetoric. And actually I want to call back to what you discussed in our earlier block, which is when Trump conveyed to the department of Justice, he was like, hey, there's a lot of people who are very upset. How can I, quote unquote, bring down the heat? I think this may be what he was referring to because also politically, what do we know? Which is that events like January 6th and more, I mean, it's not like it isn't ultimately used against many of the people for the cause that they were supposedly trying to do. It only justifies.

It could ignite more of a police state. It only justifies more of a police state. Right. Like, ultimately, if your end is to reduce the police state, that is not the impact you are going to have here. Yeah, this guy reportedly showed up at the FBI office with a nail gun and an assault rifle. I guess maybe he thought the nail gun was going to pierce the bulletproof glass. That's an interesting one. Yeah. And I do want to, I want to read a little bit more of what he posted because I think it's

kind of important. Just like, you know, we've dug into the manifesto of that white supremacist killer. And I think it's really important to understand the mindset. And especially when you have right-wing commentators who, listen, it's a free country. You can say what you say, but the rhetoric is wildly irresponsible. But, you know, Steven Crowder out there, like, tomorrow is war, sleep well. Charlie Kirk saying similar things. Really? He said that? Yes. That's terrible.

I mean, it's people, you may think it's all a game and that people aren't really taking you that seriously, but this asshole was taking you seriously. And so he was truthing the following. He said, people, this is it. I hope a call to arms comes from someone better qualified, but if not, this is your call to arms from me. He goes on, go to the army, navy store, et cetera, et cetera. They've been conditioning us to accept tyranny and think we can't do anything for two years. This time we must respond with force. If you know of any protests or attacks, please post here. Somebody replies and says, are you proposing terrorism? To which he said, very important question. No, I am proposing war.

Be ready to kill the enemy, not mass shootings where leftists go, not lighting buses on fire with transsexuals in them, not finding people with leftist signs in their yards and beating them up. Violence is not all terrorism. Kill the FBI on sight. Be ready to take down other active enemies of the people and those who try to prevent you from doing it. So all of this over-the-top rhetoric about this is a civil war and it's 1776 and sleep well tomorrow's all this stuff. This guy believed you. He believed you and committed an act of terrorism and violence. He sacrificed his own life. Tried to murder an FBI agents and, you know, and yeah, ultimately ended up dead himself. So again, I'm a major free speech

advocate. We both are. But if you have a platform, be responsible. Think about the people who are listening to you and who are taking actually literally seriously the words that are coming out of your mouth. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. Yeah, I mean, it is important that you read that. People need to understand like howanged. It's also just always remarkable to me how similar all radical rhetoric actually is. Yeah, you could replace that with Black Panthers in the 1970s. Yeah, right. It really, really, literally. Muslim extremists. Anyway, look, let's wait for the facts. Let's see what it is. I understand the tensions are high.

And if anybody's out there talking about war, shut your mouth. Because, first of all, you're probably not going to be the one actually doing anything. And it's actual people like this guy. I don't know this guy's story. But, you know, I don't want to see anybody die for no good reason. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.

What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Sagar and I were discussing yesterday. It certainly seems like the news comes in waves, tidal waves at times. And it's definitely a feast, not a famine moment in terms of news. All kinds of new developments about the various inquiries that Trump and his allies are facing, including Rudy Giuliani being told that he is, in fact, the target of a probe. We also have interesting back and forth between Trump and the FBI about did they take his passports?

Do they still have his passports? What does it all mean? So we'll get into that. The Justice Department saying, arguing in court that they do not want the affidavit of giving all of the reasons why they wanted to conduct this search. They do not want that released to the public. So we have those details. Also, today is another primary day. A couple of interesting races on the ballot. I'm going to be taking a look at Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney.

We also have some new indications about some of the midterm races. Republicans continuing to struggle with fundraising in a way that is quite surprising. Major turnaround from how things were going for them previously. And maybe the most hilarious, unintentionally hilarious campaign video I've ever seen coming from Dr. Oz. No bueno, Dr. Oz. Yes, let's just say it involves the word crudité. It involves French, which is, you're already going on the wrong road. Also some interesting info about the housing market.

People expect a crash, but actually also a lot of people cheering for a crash who have not been able to buy a home and would like to be able to. And a New York Times endorsement that failed to disclose a major conflict of interest. We also have Jeff Stein on today to break down the Inflation Reduction Act, which has now passed the House and is going to be the law of the land. So dig into all of that. Now, as Crystal alluded to, when it rains, it pours. It certainly comes with this Trump raid in the FBI, the more details that we are learning. So as we had talked about previously, now we have the search warrant. We have the inventory list. We know it involves some sort of classified documents. We also know that in terms of the three laws that were cited by the

FBI in their search warrant, none of the documents necessarily even have to be classified. Simply having the classification markings may be enough in order to violate the Espionage Act. Furthermore, we are also aware by open reporting that the Trump lawyers themselves, at least one lawyer, had signed a message to the FBI in June claiming that all classified marking documents had been delivered back to the FBI, again opening themselves up for investigation, ultimately what led to the search warrant itself. As I said yesterday, part of the problem with the search warrant is we don't know a lot about the facts in the actual investigation that led to said search warrant actually being executed. And as I was saying, I was really hoping we get the affidavit. Well, news organizations, think like-mindedly, all are filing in requests in order for the Department of Justice to release the actual affidavit themselves.

And now we are learning from the Department of Justice in their protest of doing so a little bit more about their investigation. Let's throw this up there on the screen. In a new filing that came out late last night, in a response to organizations' request to unseal the affidavit. The Department of Justice says that it is objecting to the unsealing of that Trump search warrant. Throw the next one up there on the screen, please. Part of the reason why that they are objecting is because the FBI affidavit, and let's pay very close attention to this language, people, makes reference to, quote, cooperating witnesses. And the DOJ says that their identities need to remain protected.

Second, the Department of Justice confirms the investigation, quote, implicates highly classified materials. So why do those two things matter? Number one, in terms of the classification, obviously it upholds the general contours, but they're making it and saying that it is in such highly sensitive documents that even describing themselves, as we saw in the FBI inventory, it just said highly classified documents. It didn't say anything that in and of itself they say would threaten national security. But really what I think it is, is that they said and confirmed

that they have cooperating, well, they didn't confirm they have cooperating witnesses, but they said unsealing it would cause undue harm to any cooperating witnesses they may have. Gives a significant amount of credence to that theory that there is some sort of FBI mole, rat, whatever you want to describe it, in the operation. It could be a member of the Trump legal team. It could be a Secret Service agent. It could be any of the number of people who are around Donald Trump himself. And then finally, some language that they used in their objection to the unsealing, the third one, let's please put it up there, is that they said, disclosure of the warrant affidavit would irreparably harm the government's ongoing criminal investigation. Because there had been some speculation here, Crystal, on whether the search warrant was an end in and of itself

to just seize the documents, not part of an ongoing and active criminal investigation. So those are, I would say, the three main things that we have learned from this filing. Yeah. I mean, we're trying to read the tea leaves on all this stuff as best we can, the little bit of limited information. It would be so interesting to see all of the details of this affidavit. And certainly as someone who works in the news business, I would very much love for them to disclose this. Ultimately, it's not surprising though, because, you know, I think there's two considerations. One is they don't want to compromise their investigation. They don't want Trump and his allies to know exactly how they were able to glean all of this information. They certainly don't want them to know who the rat or multiple rats. What's like the, is it a warren of rats?

A den of rats? I don't actually, it's a den of rats, I believe. Anyway, they don't want them to know the identities of those people. And you mentioned it could be someone on his legal team. I mean, the more I think about that, the more I wonder if that actually makes a lot of sense. Because, you know, if you think about it, they're trying to help him work with it through this issue with the National Archives. He's maybe potentially telling them like, yeah, of course, I can't over everything. And if they discover that that's not the case, they could find themselves in potential legal jeopardy. So you may have

someone involved here who's trying to save their own ass by informing on Trump and giving the FBI the information that ultimately they put into this affidavit and helped to secure this search warrant. So those are the major revelations here. Now, it is theoretically possible that the judge could say, no, government, I don't agree. We're going to go ahead and unseal the affidavit. But that is highly, highly unlikely, especially with the government making the case that the affidavit should remain sealed. And as I said before, I'm not really sure that Trump would also want this to be unsealed because, you know, ultimately

then you end up with a situation where he's sort of being tried in the court of public opinion. An affidavit is not the same as a trial. There are things in there that could turn out to, you know, not pan out. It may be more suggestive than based on, you know, concrete, here's what we know happened. So anyway, not clear to me that he would really be in favor of this being released either. Yeah, affidavits aren't like statements of fact. It's like the government's case against somebody in a court in order to justify a search warrant. So like you said, it would include no pushback from the Trump legal team. It would simply be the FBI agents. Their side of the story.. Their side of the story.

Their entire side of the story. And actually, I have personally learned the hard way covering terrorism cases. I mean, think about it. If you read the Gretchen Whitmer just affidavit, you'd be like, oh my God, there's a horrific kidnapping plot going on. And you're like, oh, hold on a second here. And by the way, we should cover that trial soon in terms of some of the stuff that's coming out, even more so about FBI behavior. But what's remarkable to me about this is just the admission, both on the criminal investigation side and on the cooperating witness. I think the fact that, I think it was always expected that they would not release the affidavit, but by objecting to the affidavit and specifically

saying why they don't want to release it, that tells us a little bit about what's happening. Also probably confirms, honestly, I mean, at this point, Crystal, we don't know how much more is going to come out about this investigation. This kind of is it, at least for the next couple of months, barring leaks, of course. I'm talking at a very official level. Probably. There was one other piece of reporting I saw come out yesterday

from the Wall Street Journal that was in direct contradiction to remember that original Newsweek report that basically said this whole search was basically kind of a freelance operation from the Miami FBI office. And they were kind of in a bubble and didn't realize this would be so politically explosive. Well, the latest information reporting from the Wall Street Journal says, no, no, no. They weighed this very carefully. Merrick Garland weighed this for weeks before he decided to go in and, you know, really considered the costs and the benefits and the extraordinary measure that this was. So, you know, take from that what you will. But the very latest

indication, which I think is backed up by the fact that Merrick Garland did give that press conference saying, taking ownership and saying, no, I was the one who made this decision. I think it backs up that fact and really shows that they definitely thought long and hard before they went ahead and did this, whether you think it was ultimately the right call or not. Yeah, I think that that's right. So anyway, lots of deliberation, a confirmation about a so-called cooperating witness, the criminal investigation piece, obviously. To be clear, we don't actually know who the target of that criminal investigation is.

But anyway, take that. A little bit of a midterm update here for you. Interesting new details about some honestly quite surprising fundraising issues that the Republican Senate candidates are having in particular. Let's put this up on the screen. So they say the Senate GOP campaign arm slashes TV ad buys in three states in a sign that fundraising trouble is taking a serious toll. A key political committee cancels ad plans in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, they have cut now more than $5 million in Pennsylvania, including their reservations in the Philly media market. They've also slashed

reservations in Wisconsin in the Madison and Green Bay markets. Those have been curtailed by more than $2 million in Arizona. All reservations after September 30th have been cut in Phoenix and Tucson. That is the state's only two major media markets mounting to roughly $2 million more. So far, around $10 million has been canceled as of midday Monday, though more changes to the fall reservations were in progress. Now, in fairness, the response from the Republican Senatorial Committee was basically like, look, we're not canceling these, we're moving money around, we're reallocating, whatever. But if you look overall, it's pretty clear that they've pulled back from the amount that they are spending in these states and in these media markets. This comes on the heels of another report

that we had covered here as well that showed that the total amount of online donations to Republican candidates, direct candidates, so not to the senatorial committee, but directly to the candidates, has actually been falling. So it fell by more than 12% in the second quarter compared with the first quarter, according to an analysis of WinRed. That's the main online Republican fundraising platform. And that's very unusual. Usually, as you get closer to an election, online donations go up and up and up. So the fact that in the second quarter they saw them fall off was quite significant. Republicans said, well, it's inflation, it's a bad economy, so of course our people are getting hit. However, Democratic contributions at the same time surged, and Democrats are living in the same country with the same economy. Their

contributions on ActBlue jumped by more than 21%. So I suppose when you look at this entire picture, it seems pretty clear that they're having some fundraising struggles. And to tie it back, Sagar, to what we're talking about with Trump potentially announcing for president before the midterms, part of their issue is that he sucks up so much of the online fundraising. He's a total pig when it comes to like, you know, he's super greedy. He doesn't dole it out. Abusing, yeah, doesn't dole it out.

Really hitting those fundraising lists over and over and over again. And has so centered the party around the person of himself that, yeah, that's where the grassroots base is overwhelmingly giving. And you can only imagine that if he does announce for president

before the midterm election, that's only going to, you know, only going to exacerbate some of the fundraising issues that the rest of the party is having right now. Yeah. And actually Politico had a story out this morning where they say that the midterm election campaign and the NRSC's decision to cancel millions of dollars is actually also a commentary on the inability of states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina to raise enough money. So essentially what they're saying is that J.D. Vance, Doug Mastriano, and Dr. Oz, and also in North Carolina are not raising enough money on their

own. And so they need to be able to pull money away from other states and slash budgets so that they can bombard the airwaves. And this has never happened before. It's also the case that they shouldn't have had to spend money in Ohio. I mean, Ohio should have been a gimme. They shouldn't have had to worry about that state. They're having to worry about, you know, they're having to pour more resources into a place like Georgia that also, frankly, in a year like this should have been a gimme even with an incumbent Democrat in place right now. So the fact that, you know, their candidates have dramatically underperformed both in terms of their positioning with the electorate, but also in terms of their fundraising ability has put them in a bit of a squeeze.

I think also the fact that a number of these candidates have no electoral experience, so they haven't built out, they haven't done fundraising before. And just like anything else, political fundraising is a skill. It takes time to learn. It really sucks having, you know, being someone who dialed for dollars long ago, I can tell you it is no fun to do whatsoever. But it takes time to like build out those specific political donor networks. And so if you have all of this slate of brand new candidates who have never done this before, you know, there are other advantages to having outsiders who don't have a sort of like electoral track record in that baggage. But one of the downsides of going with

these sorts of candidates is they don't have established sort of networks and established abilities in fundraising. And I think that is a drag on them. That's a point Kyle Kondik made. I think it's an excellent point. At the same time, Democrats are washing cash, like a lot of cash in many of these specific states and are hitting Republicans where it hurts. Really interesting story here. Let's put this up there, which is that in all of the battleground states, Democrats are going all in on abortion in terms of their messaging, as basically we predicted here on the show. And given the results of what happened in Kansas and in many of the special elections that we have now seen, it seems like a good choice. And you'll see there this four different

screenshots from ads in Arizona, blanketing the ads space in Blake Masters, who had previously alluded to wanting a national ban on abortion. I think he's going to come to regret that one in terms of his messaging. Tudor Dixon, who is the so-called moderate nominee, she has said previously she doesn't want any exceptions for rape or incest in an abortion law. And they're, of course, putting that and highlighting that. Doug Mastriano, specifically saying in May, quote, my body, my choice is ridiculous nonsense. And they're calling him Doug Mastriano, make all abortion illegal. And even in Alaska, saying Alaskans should have a right to choose. Alaska being probably a much more kind of libertarian type state. you that across all of these states, all swings, all of them are immediately picking on abortion as their top issue, that they're spending money. Apparently, even with Michigan and Tudor Dixon, they're not talking about election conspiracy, nothing. It's just all abortion. Georgia,

they're doing the same thing. And Arizona and Pennsylvania, I think, are going to be the most significant. Arizona, of course, is a conservative state, but also went for Biden. But as I alluded to, you're going to have a little bit more of a libertarian ethos. Pennsylvania also, I mean, a true actual swing. And that is where a place like that to say actually no exceptions whatsoever, that's just, look, no matter how you feel, in terms of public opinion, that does not track with public opinion. Yeah, that is an issue with public opinion. Yeah. So, it's an issue. Extremely fringe view. Yeah.

And the case that they're making, the sort of like broader portrait they're trying to paint is like, you know, look, guys, you might not be thrilled with the Biden administration and how the economy is going right now. But these people are crazy. Like, they are out there. They are way too extreme. They are sort of ideologues and zealots. And so abortion is the entree to making that larger case that, you know, these candidates are way too out of the mainstream for you to ultimately elect. Just to give you some of the numbers on this, because I do think it's really interesting.

Democrats have spent nearly eight times as much as Republicans on ads talking about abortion. $31.9 million just this far spent on abortion ads compared with $4.2 million on the Republican side. And in the closest Senate and governors contest, Republicans have spent virtually nothing countering the Democrats' offensive. Now, I've seen Democrats make this mistake in the past where they're getting hit on an issue that they're taking on water. I think CRT is a good example of that. And they just try to like, let's not talk about it. It doesn't work. Like you have to respond. You have to give your side of the story. You have to lay out, no, here's what my actual views are. Here's why that's wrong.

Or here's why I believe what I believe. Just sort of staying quiet on this and hoping it goes away, I don't think is going to be a good strategy here. And a lot of what they're doing in these campaigns is they're using these abortion ads as like the opening message. So to define these candidates out of the gates as like, these people are extreme. And then they move on to whatever the broader case is that they ultimately want to make. I thought it was interesting that I quote here from Anna Greenberg. She's a Democratic pollster, but the way she phrases it is, rarely has an issue been handed on a silver platter to Democrats that is so clear cut. It took an election that was going to be mostly about inflation and immigration and made it also about abortion. And the polling at this point is really clear that there was a shift after the Dobbs

decision. And this is a very different race than it was before the Dobbs decision. The generic ballot is basically tied. You have a much better chance of Democrats being able to hold on to the Senate. I still would maintain, given how the polls have been biased against Republicans and in favor of Democrats, that Republicans are still very much the favorite, that the landscape still very much favors them. But Democrats, in a rare act of political intelligence, have done a few things that have given them a long-shot chance to have a better midterm

than was previously expected. Yeah, I think that's right. So, although it doesn't take a genius to figure this one out, looking at polling data. But listen, that hasn't stopped them before. They have, you know, in the past gone out of their way to do the dumbest possible thing. So we'll give them, we'll damn them with big praise here. Okay.

And this is a little bit of a look at why the Republicans are having some issues here. Because I continue to maintain this election. When you look at it, like the further you step back and look at the macro, you know, oh, the economy, inflation, wrong track, right? Biden's approval numbers, the more you're like, oh, Republicans are going to just clean up. It's going to be a shellacking. And the closer you zoom in at the actual races and the actual candidates, the more you're like, oh, this is not going too well. All right, let's talk about housing. This is a hilarious study, Crystal, that you found. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that right now we're obviously in the middle of a

housing slowdown. And it turns out that a lot of people are actually pretty happy about that. So right now, 78% of Americans expect to have a housing market crash. This is according to the latest Consumer Affairs study, which is a major consumer information service that businesses buy in order to tell what consumer sentiment is. However, 63% of those people actually want to see a housing crash. And if you dig deeper, 75% of people say they have cash stored away to buy a house should the market crash. They actually have an actual crash savings account. Dig even deeper than that, and you find that the youngest generation of adults, Generation Z, is actually the most eager for the crash. 84% are hoping for a housing crash and actually have some money that is saved up specifically in order to try and take advantage should this all happen.

And look, perhaps they will get their wish. Let's put this up there. That U.S. homebuilder confidence right now is at the worst slump since 2007. As I actually have said before, that's a big problem because homebuilder confidence means that people who are, let's say, like halfway through a project may actually not finish their project. And if they don't finish their project, then we are going to continue to have a massive housing shortage across the nation. But I just think it's great. I mean, when is the last time that you've had a sizable chunk of Americans who are like, no, I want these markets to crash. And I think it's because of the disparate ownership, which is predominantly it's the wealth class and boomers

who hold property. Everybody else is frozen out of the market or frozen out far more so than they have been in previous generations. So they're like, yeah, screw you. I want this thing to crash so that I can buy in. And especially Gen Z. I mean, for Gen Z, they don't have a chance of buying a house. Realistically, on average, even if you live in a normal metropolitan area, it is just mostly unattainable without decades of savings. And if you have student debt or credit card debt, it's almost entirely out of the question. Yeah. I mean, this is becoming the real class dividing line is asset owners and not. And of course, the primary asset that most Americans own is a home. If you aren't able to get your foot in that door of home ownership, it becomes very difficult for you to sort of establish that, you know, a base of some

sort of net wealth, a base of financial middle class or working class stability. And so I have been wondering, as we've been covering the housing market a lot here, as you guys know, I've actually been wondering about these numbers of like, how many people are listening to this and hoping that the housing prices and the market crashes, because then that gives them some hope and possibility that they will be able to at some point in their life, also buy a home and have the stability that can come with that. And now we have the numbers to back it up. So I did think that was really interesting. I mean, the problem, of course, is that the reason that the housing market is falling off and you have this home builder sentiment at the lowest

level since the housing market collapsed in 2007 is because as the Fed hikes rates, the thing that is most sensitive to it is the mortgage rates. And as the mortgage rates go up, yeah, the top line number might be going down. But in terms of your monthly payment, that is going up and up. So it's really, you know, even if the market continues to go down and have problems and housing overall, the sales price becomes more affordable, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be easier for you to get your foot in the door. And then the other problem here, of course, is that, you know, the real issues we have in our economy are about supply, about a lack of supply. And that is certainly the case in the housing market where we have not built sufficient housing stock, especially post the last financial crash, to accommodate a large and growing population. When you have those

interest rates going up, you have a slump in home building. And that then, again, exacerbates the price and the shortage in the home supply market. So there's a lot of complicating factors here that make it unlikely that even if the market really does crash, unless you're in a position to just plunk down, you know, 500K in cash, that you're still going to be in a very difficult position when it comes to acquiring a home. And I think that is reflected in the concerns of renters as well. 91% of them fear that increased mortgage rates will price them out of the home buying market. True. I mean, almost certainly true. Yeah. I mean, that is definitely the case. Yeah. I mean, your caution is warranted, which is that, yeah, I mean, that is definitely the case.

Yeah. I mean, your caution is warranted, which is that, yeah, look, the price may come down, but like, how are you supposed to afford it if the price does go down? Do you have enough cash in order to make sure that you don't do that? Otherwise you end up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest. And just because you may have, you know, people said that average person has like 15 grand or some people who are saving for a house have something like 15 grand saved away. I mean, how are you supposed to make any sort of down payment with only $15,000 or even $29,000, which is that the on average for anybody who's not Gen Z. So look, it's a cluster basically all the way around because at the same time, I mean, you don't want retirees to see their main source of wealth just dwindle away, possibly what they were betting on in order to make sure that they didn't have to work anymore. So all the way, it's just not good.

The solution generally is actually probably lower rates and just a ton more housing. How you achieve that without also feeding the wealth gap, I genuinely just have no idea. Keep the rates low so mortgages are affordable. And then you need, in addition to the government help in terms of securing a mortgage, you also need some help with that initial down payment so that it's not just people who have rich parents who are fronting their down payment that can get a house. And then you need rules basically blocking permanent capital from buying up the existing available housing stock because that's the other problem. And as you said, you need to build a whole lot more housing. So I guess the bottom

line here is, you know, the same moral of the story that we have a lot of times when we talk about the Fed, which is that like the Fed messing around with interest rates is not going to fix the problems in the housing market. They don't have the tools at their disposal to, you know, create a lot more housing stock to help people get that initial down payment to block problems in the housing market. They don't have the tools at their disposal to, you know, create a lot more housing stock, to help people get that initial down payment, to block private equity and other permanent capital for buying up entire communities so that, you know, they're able to come in with all cash and basically muscle out every first-time home buyer from the market. Those are things that only legislators in Congress and, executive action can do. And since we have a more or less dysfunctional political system, that is not really on the table at this point.

Yeah. And so, you know, hilariously enough, literally as we're filming this, the U.S. housing start numbers came out in terms of the number of building permits and starts on single family housing. And it plunged 18.8 percent year over year just for this month, 9% in the last month. See, and this is the problem with the Fed increasing interest rates. Is it actually, it's not just that it's, you know, dealing with some of the wrong problems and causing a lot of pain for people and potentially triggering a recession. It actually is actively exacerbating the supply issues that led to inflation in some of these categories to start with. And I think that's a perfect example of that. Yeah, there we go. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed, we do. Lots of interesting stories that we are digging into this morning. So a major admission from the CDC about just how badly they screwed up coronavirus. They are also now screwing up monkeypox, so clearly they didn't really learn their lessons from the first time. But pretty interesting to dig into their own analysis of what went wrong and what needs to change. We'll break all of that down for you. Also, some new details about that search at Mar-a-Lago.

Some reporting indicating that this has to do with Russiagate documents. It always does, doesn't it? It always comes back to Russiagate in the end, doesn't it? All things stem from there. So we'll talk to you about that reporting and everything that's going on there. Also, as we brought you yesterday, Liz Cheney was in fact defeated, really in quite a landslide in her state there of Wyoming. She is now floating a presidential run. And of course,

we had many cringe takes from the media that we have to bring you as well. So some updates for you there. Also, Jared Kushner has a new book coming out. I know you guys are all very excited. And it is already being panned in spectacular fashion, like across the spectrum, from the right to the New York Times. So we've got some details for you there as well. And Rachel Maddow's replacement, Alex Wagner, launched her show, official debut, had some teleprompter problems there at the front, and we have some updates for you in terms of the ratings.

Also very excited, bringing back a little panel action today. Ryan Grimm and Emily Jashinsky are going to join us remotely to break down some of the latest polls in the midterms, and we're going to check from them on everything that they are looking at and thinking about. Before we jump into the show, live show. Live show. Tickets on sale September 16th. I feel like I'm going to go mad selling these tickets. All right, Center Stage Theater, Atlanta, 16th of September, 7.30 p.m. Standard time. We will be there on Friday. It's going to be a fun time. Everybody can come out. We'll have a great time. We'll have a great show for everybody.

Go ahead and buy your tickets. Less than a month out. We are already planning travel and we're finalizing some of the plans there for the show. So go ahead and buy those tickets for the premium members. As we had discussed, we are going to be sending out those two things. Also, I'm aware of the fact that our email delivery system is not working as well as originally promised. We're working on that. Tell us today if it doesn't come faster. We're piloting a few different programs and we're going to figure it out. Always paying attention to you guys. But let's go ahead and start with the show and let's throw this up there on the screen from the CDC. So you guys might have

seen that the CDC reversed direction. But I actually think in the context of what was announced yesterday, we are seeing a monumental self-assessment happening at our nation's major public health agency, which is that the director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, saying that the botched pandemic response is calling for a full-scale reorganization. Now, personally, I don't think that even goes far enough, but the fact that the public health authorities, some 26 months or so into the pandemic,

are basically admitting that they dramatically screwed up both performance, messaging, so many different basic elements from the beginning all the way really up until today is remarkable. And they led an internal or a reorganization and assessment panel, Crystal, which was actually chaired by some people with the Department of Health and the CDC with interviews of over 120 people inside and outside of the agency. And it is remarkable what even these people, like the government is the most immune thing to self-criticism and self-assessment. Even they're like, yeah,

we screwed this one up pretty bad. And they're like, it's time for a major change to this agency. Some of the things that they point to is that they're going to have to undo many of their bureaucratic biases. But their second, and I think the most important, is they said, we need to have very clear messaging. I love also, though, that they kind of blame the American people when they say this. So they said, quote, this is Dr. David Dowdy. He's an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School. He says, messaging to the general public needs to be, quote, very clear, very simple, very straightforward. Culture is changing. We need it to change faster in terms of CDC. So he's basically blaming like pop culture and social media for, you know, not reacting to what the CDC said in a like a timely manner as if it wasn't the initial

CDC messages themselves were at fault. But I think at a very high basic level, to have the nation's top public health agency admit to the American people, we screwed this up dramatically. I mean, they themselves are calling for a full-scale reorganization of their own agency, and we should push very, very hard to make sure that we see the correct thing. But I mean, that is just, it took too long, but I mean, it's probably better than nothing. At least they admit it. I'm pretty surprised that they had this level of self-assessment. And I mean, she made some pretty, Dr. Walensky made some pretty direct comments. She told the agency, to be frank, we were responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes from testing to data to communications. And we're going to go through a little reminder trip down memory lane what some of those were.

But I think in the early days of the pandemic, they actually escaped a lot of scrutiny because Trump was screwing up so badly. And so there was a sense of like, oh, my God, if weies were also completely failing and in some really basic and very, very significant ways that threw off our response from the jump and also really diminished public trust. And that was as big of a problem as anything as we then moved into the vaccine phase and you had a large population say, we're just not really sure that your guidance is accurate after the things that we heard before. So the fact that they're acknowledging it, she speaks directly to unclear communication. She speaks to the fact that they at times would have data that would be useful for making decisions on things like booster shots that they were reluctant to release to the public. And the reason that they were reluctant to put it out there sooner was because the promotion system within the CDC was based much more on like how many academic papers you had published than on really protecting the public

and doing your job in terms of a public health official. So the incentives were all screwed up. So people wanted to hold on to the data until they got their little paper published so that they could get a gold star for that rather than really having as their number one priority getting critical information out to the public. And that's one of the things that she spoke to the most was that the orientation of the agency was more about sort of like academia and research. And that was how you were promoted, then it was directed at being super responsive, being super fast, and serving the public. But, you know, I think one of the things that we're going to talk about monkeypox in a little bit, but one of the biggest failures was on communications.

I mean, Dr. Walensky herself was criticized for her communication style and I think had to bring in a public speaking coach in media training. Which the government paid for. Right. So, you know, this reflects on her as well. But the fact that you had public health officials and continue to have public health officials who are uncomfortable just telling the public the truth because they're worried that the public can't handle the truth, that is a massive, massive issue. It's not your job to be managing the emotions and psychoanalyzing the American public. You have to trust that people can handle the unvarnished facts about what is going on,

what the risk factors are, what the risk vectors are, and how you should respond. You have to trust the public to be able to handle the basic facts. Otherwise, you're going to end up with exactly the metal that we had in coronavirus and that we also are seeing with monkeypox. Yeah, and we put together a list. And so, look, I know everybody's got their own pet peeves, but what we wanted to try and focus on was the very, very early failures, pre-vaccine. And the ones that are like totally indisputable. Indisputable, like beyond even the vaccination policies. I think first and foremost was we should all remember the very, very early days of the pandemic.

Whenever the coronavirus was ripping through China, Europe was having lockdowns, Italy, January of 2020. There was a lot of questions. It was like, what the hell is going on here? And one of the major ones on COVID was, does this spread via surfaces, via particles, aka leading to the whole wash your hands discussion, or is this an airborne transmitted virus? Now, the real questions surrounded that. And we will also remember that the Chinese lied to the WHO. Famous tweet, January of 2020, WHO says China data shows that this is not

an airborne transmissible virus. I mean, who says China data shows that this is not an airborne transmissible virus. I mean, who knows how many deaths that that led to in the early days and actually misguided public health messaging. We should remember it took until May of 2021, mid-vaccination campaign, let's throw this up there on the screen, for the CDC to finally acknowledge airborne transmission. It took them a year and a half almost in order for them to actually update their official guidance. And the reason that I chose this one to start is that that shows us, Crystal, a 16-month backlog as to when the data is clear as day, everybody knows it, to a final official guidance revisory. And imagine the level of bureaucratic mishap and more to acknowledge the most basic fact and truth

about a virus, and then to have it be known to the general public, to be known to the medical community, for hundreds of thousands of people, not only in this country, millions across the world, to be dead. For them to finally update their guidance. That was number one. That was one of the initial screw-ups. Number two was the masks. I mean, this one we can beat to death forever.

I think we have beat this one to death probably. Let's throw this up there. This is the timeline from the LA Times on mask guidance. We should remember the U.S. Surgeon General at the very beginning of the pandemic in February of 2020 urged the U.S. public in all caps, quote, stop buying masks. This was up until May. So two months, actually really almost three, of initial spread across this nation of coronavirus. You had the CDC and public health authorities all the way up to the top of the White House basically saying masks do not work. He said specifically, quote, masks are not effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients. It puts them and our community at risk. So hold on a second. If

it's not effective at stopping, but then why do healthcare providers need them? Well, we later find out through an admission from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the reason why that this message was concocted was basically to stop Americans from buying masks and from, in order to keep the stock for public health. Here's what, I've always said this, which is that if they had just been honest with the American people and been like, listen, we have a shortage. Please don't buy them. We need the N95s for our hospitals. I think people would have, I think people would have stood by that. And actually, I always point to myself, when that happened,

I was like, yeah, I don't believe you. And I bought a bunch of N95s on Amazon. If somebody had told me, don't buy an N95 because healthcare, I absolutely wouldn't have purchased it. But it was more out of distrust. I was like, I think this is bullshit. I mean, it didn't make sense.

I remember us talking about it this time. We're like, so why is it helpful in a public health setting, but it's not helpful in general? Like, this just really doesn't add up. And then I think why this one and why we do harp on this one so much is because it really demonstrates this problem of rather than just doing their job and saying, here are the facts, here are the science, here's the risks, here's the studies that back it up. They tried to massage the emotions of the American public, tried to engineer the outcomes that they wanted, and were fearful that the public could not deal with the actual facts as they exist. And so, you know, they have no, they

actually admitted that this is what they were doing, that they were lying to you because they were worried you would go out and hog up all the masks and then frontline healthcare workers who were in dire need of masks and who, you know, were screwed over by our supply chain issues and the stuff all came from China, that they would have what they need. So this is, to me, such a perfect crystallization of what they have continued to fail on. And even then, once we got the acknowledgement, okay, yeah, masks do work, and then we go in the other direction of, okay, you've got to have masks everywhere, inside, outside. Even if sometimes they don't work.

Schools, et cetera. Then there was a reluctance to acknowledge that certain masks are kind of useless and certain masks are better. I mean, there was always just a reluctance to be straight with the American people when there was a concern that it might lead to giving skeptics a talking point or it might lead to some outcome that the public health officials were fearful about. I understand it's a natural, I guess, human instinct to try to micromanage these things. But ultimately, that ain't your job. If society has a problem as a result of the accurate guidance that you give, we have to deal with that downstream. But up front, you have to trust this is a democracy.

Grownups are going to behave in an adult way and take this information in an accurate way. And I just, you know, I think back to that time saga and how scary it was for everybody. I think about how, you know, how much we were all just trying to figure out what the hell was going on and how to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. And the fact that we did not feel that we had a reliable entity here that was just giving us what they actually knew in real time made it so much more difficult to sort through what was fact and what was fiction. Absolutely. Tests is another one. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. You know, people really forget this, but we did not have reliable testing in this country for several months. And even then, you know, it took a while for PCR, government-provided tests,

and then there was a lot of controversy even around the PCR, around the level of cycles, and what exactly they were running for, whether they were too sensitive or not. And part of the reason why is, again, total bureaucratic screw-up. Essentially, what happened is that the CDC basically said, no, we're going to create our own tests versus buying existing tests. So while Europe and many other countries had far better testing, immediate testing that was available to their general public and was able to lead to more quarantines of the right people instead of having to quarantine or ask population-wide concerns, we didn't have that for several months. And that led to what? People just risked it. People basically didn't trust it

anymore. Eventually led to the fact that at one point there was U.S. companies making rapid tests for Europe, not for America. I harped on that so much at the time because it just shows you the bureaucratic nightmare of the FDA and the CDC not using their emergency authority in order to push these things through. So look, those are three egregious ones that we pointed to. And I know there are so many more. Lockdowns, the initial vax campaign. I could go on for the fact they covered up the obesity. It's so much of the risk factors more. But outside of the controversial realm, you cannot look at any of these three things, no matter where you fall on a spectrum of public

health, and not say, this is a colossal mistake. Colossal mistake. How long did it take us before the U.S. government was able to send Americans tests? A year and a half. Yeah. I mean, it didn't happen until under the Biden administration. I mean, it was forever. South Korea, which reported their first test within a day of us, a week later gave permission for their commercial labs to develop tests. Within two weeks, they were shipping thousands of test kits daily. And by mid-March, they were testing at a per capita rate 40 times higher than the U.S. And by the way, I mean, South Korea, I think, has been lauded for their early coronavirus response, much more effective than ours.

But there were countries around the world and not just developed nations. There were other poorer countries that were able to develop tests and get their tests to their population far faster than we were able to do. And of all the screw-ups, I mean, that may have been the most critical because that meant in those early days, we were flying blind. We had no idea how far it had spread, where it was, where the hot spots were. People were getting sick at that time, and they had no idea whether they had it or not, which, of course, was terrifying for them and also resulted in additional sickness and death. So, yeah, this was one of the most sort of critical screw-ups at the very beginning. So, listen, bottom line, good that they're doing this assessment now.

This came from an external group that came in and looked at what happened and tried to do an independent evaluation. Good that they're having some unvarnished talk about what needs to happen here and planning on a big reorganization and a big shakeup and moving it from this sort of, like, laid-back academic setting to more of a urgent, we got to get this done and it's in the interest of the public health and that's what we're focused on, posture. Now we got to see if they're actually able to pull it off. Unfortunately, we already know that's not the case with monkeypox. We're about to talk about that. And even the leading from behind strategy continues. Let's put this up there, which is that you guys might have noticed, which is exactly a week ago. The CDC actually revised all of its guidance around COVID, lifting requirements to quarantine if exposed to the virus, de-emphasize screening people with no symptoms, updating COVID-19

protocols in schools, the effective test-to-stay strategy, and saying, well, you know, COVID, it's here to stay. They say that I don't really think there's many state or local jurisdictions that are even feeling they're going to need to start making mandates. So they're abandoning a mandate strategy, abandoning the test to stay strategy and saying, look, we just know that COVID is here to stay and we need to learn to live with it. I mean, look, people have been doing that for over a year. Some people in the South have been doing it for a much longer than a year and they just come out. Well, the entire American people, this is why this is very bad, which is that states and localities had to make individual

decisions based upon unclear data and popular guidance before, months before, some cases years before, the CDC was like, yeah, this is reality now. You should have it the opposite. The CDC, I think I use this example on steak. The CDC is like, yeah, you should cook a steak well done. And people are like, okay, thank you. I'm just not going to do that. And it's like, thank you for telling me that. They have all kinds of guys like that. Runny eggs.

By the way, runny eggs are disgusting, in my opinion. Now, some people like it. Apparently, they even order them that way. I think it's gross. You like the yolk all completely hardened? A hundred percent. That is nasty, Roger. Almost burned on the pan.

That's disgusting. I want to stick into the pan when I'm scraping it off. Look, I'm a weird guy. That is nasty, That is nasty. Cooked to it. Almost burned on the pan. I want to stick into the pan when I'm scraping it off. Look, I'm a weird guy. It is what it is. But more what I'm saying is,

I'm actually following CDC guidance on that, but I don't go after what is like Eggs Benedict, right, where you get the yolk. Oh, delicious. But every time

you eat Eggs Benedict, you are violating CDC guidance. Whatever. You know what is gross, though, is when the whites of the egg aren't cooked.

Now, that is nasty. But a runny yolk, yeah, is when the whites of the egg aren't cooked. Now, that is nasty. But a runny yolk, yeah, that's life. My point is they tell you not to do it. People say, I'm just going to do it. There's actually a lot of guidance for pregnant ladies that also is really outdated. And other countries are like, what? You can't eat certain types of cheese?

What are you talking about? Oh, really? I didn't know about that. Yeah, it's like soft cheeses. You're supposed to avoid deli meat. I mean, listen, there are, like, outside, outside, outside chances that this could be a problem for you. But I just want you guys to know I had three kids and I had all sorts of cheese and deli meat during that time. And it all worked out okay.

More is my point. Give the guidance. People can live their lives. It should be directional in the way that we see what it is. Okay, give the guidance. People can live their lives. It should be directional in the way that we see what it is. Okay, we understand that. And then we can live from there. Instead, people had to start living in all these disparate ways across the country. Some places have mask mandates. Some places don't have mask mandates. More based upon, frankly, the paranoia of their population than the actual science. And then the scientists take months in order to catch

up with the general public. It's just a complete and total failure. So I think this is a perfect way to end that CDC story, acknowledging the failure, but at the same time, continuing the bureaucratic failure. We have one last little update we wanted to bring to you here, which is, as we have been talking about, Rachel Maddow no longer hosting a regular nightly show, which is a really, and how do you feel about her, end of an era in terms of cable news. I really, you know, maintain there are basically two figures in cable news that have true loyal audiences. That would be Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow. They're in some ways, you know, two sides of the same coin. She even spoke very favorably of him in a recent interview. So,

I mean, it is very interesting. So, she stepped down and she's the only person at MSNBC that can really drive ratings. They put in her place Alex Wagner, who, interesting, I mean, she was there when I was there. She was fired when I was fired and like a massive, you know, they let go a bunch of people at that time. But Alex is very sort of well-connected and she went on to do Showtime Circus. She was over at, I don't know, CBS or something like that as well. Manages to get brought back in as a guest host and then kind of out of nowhere nowhere they hand her this most coveted slot on the in the entire lineup so she launched her show this week and they had a little bit of technical difficulties at the very beginning let's take a look at that so with that let's get started

tonight the fbi warrant used to search mar-a-lago is unsealed the three potential crimes laid out in that document we'll dive into what it means and what could happen with one of the Wall Street Journal reporters who was first to report on the contents of that warrant. Then we'll talk with. We're going to go right. We are actually going to go right to the top story tonight. So, I would make fun. I've been there. But I've been there.

It sucks. That's also why we don't do the show live, specifically for that reason. So that's really hard. But, yeah, I mean, I guess you would think that they would probably do a better job. They would have the teleprompter up and running. You would think that these places are like well-oiled machines. MSNBC is not a well-oiled machine, I can assure you. Wouldn't you think, though, for your very first show, for the top-rated program, that you would have everything ready to go?

Locked and loaded. Teleprompter locked and loaded. I mean, also, I mean, look, I don't want to criticize it too much, but it's also one of those things where you kind of do have to roll with it. We've had our teleprompter breakdown several times on Rising. And if it's a monologue, that's different kind of do have to roll with it. We've had our teleprompter break down several times on Rising. And if it's a monologue, that's different. You can't really go with it. But there's a certain level of ad lib. I've seen it happen before live in studio at Fox and others when the teleprompter goes down.

People are actually pretty good. I mean, part of the reason they'll just start reading off of their computer or try an ad lib throw to something. Some anchors will always keep their scripts in front of them. Yeah. So that if that, and they're like actually flipping through their script as the teleprompter is rolling just in case the teleprompter

breaks down that they have it there for them. That always seemed like too much trouble for me. I just figured I'd just live on the edge and see what happens. I'm a scientist.

But yeah, I mean, listen, I have been there. It is not an easy thing to manage, I'm sure, especially when it's your first night and you're probably a little nervous and jittery about how it's all going to go. The ratings are in for how it did go.

And let's put this up on the screen. I like the deadline kind of spins this in her favor. They say Alex Wagner draws solid 2 million viewers to debut of MSNBC primetime show Hannity Tops, the time slot. But if you dig into some of the details here, she was down. So Rachel did actually record an episode on Monday. And Alex's ratings were already down 27% from what Rachel did. So in her debut show, when you would think there would be some interest, excitement, or whatever, already you've got 27% of the audience that's like, nah, I'm good. And you also had, they always love to talk about the top line, like, oh, 2 million people watched. But inside the cable news industry,

no one cares about the total audience numbers. The only thing that matters is the demo, because the rest of the audience is actually literally worthless because you don't sell ads based on that total number. You sell ads based on who is watching in the key 25 to 54 demographic. And in that key demo, she had 183,000 viewers, which is a lot fewer than what we have. That's insane. Yeah, people need to really – so, okay, there are 2 million people who are watching it, but only 183,000 of them between the age of 25. It shows you how old these audiences are, too. And this is across the board. Fox, CNN, MSNBC, their audiences are so old.

Yeah, CNN was 176,000. Hannity, shockingly, is 400,000. But I guess he has so many more viewers that it probably is relatively proportional. That's a perfect example, right, of, listen, I mean, again, I don't want to dunk too much, but like here on Breaking Points, every single person who watches this show is in the key demo. And, you know, we'll often have single clips with 180,000 viewers. Like that, it's just so obvious to see that. If you start including the podcast numbers, which again, same demographic, like the disconnect in the people who consume media and the general biography is just insane whenever you really consider it. And look, it's a dying industry

in that way. The last people who are watching it won't be people who are, MSNBC is just going to turn into Fox where all of the where all of the ads are like, buy gold now! You know, buy insulin for this medication. It's all like pharmaceutical ads. So it's like 90% pharma, which is insane, too,

that it's even allowed, which actually tells you a lot about media, what's allowed. I think, what are we, one of the only two countries on Earth that even allows direct pharmaceutical advertising? Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

Anytime people from other countries are like, what the hell is this? Ask your doctor, what are you talking about? Yeah, we get used to it. We come to, you know, feel like it's natural, but it really is very disturbing, the sorts of pharmaceutical ads we're subjected to. So anyway, early indications of how that's all going to go. I think, you know, MSNBC really has a problem here, especially heading into whatever the next presidential era is going to be. Because now she, Rachel, is going to come back, I guess, for big events and debate nights and election nights and all that sort of stuff. But they just really didn't cultivate any sort of an internal bench. The fact that they had to sort of reach back and grab someone from a past era and slaughter in tells you a lot about what they have up and coming. Of course, they would never think of, hey, maybe in this new era, we should go for someone who,

you know, is an independent. He has some. No, they wouldn't. That's definitely off the table because those people might have a little bit of a mind of their own. Oh, yeah, exactly. This is an iHeart Podcast.