Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 8/7: FBI Raids Trump, Responses to Raid, Inflation Numbers, Taiwan Situation, & More!

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the FBI raiding Trump's compound, fallout from the raid, inflation numbers, Taiwan tensions, Ukraine war, Rachel Maddow, & 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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out.

There's a lot of stuff that happened in the last couple of days. Let's start with China. So the fallout from the Pelosi trip continues. We brought you guys the news that on Thursday, the military exercises by China, not around Taiwan, by shooting missiles into the water there. A pretty provocative move. In addition, missiles falling into the Japanese exclusive economic zone, causing a lot of consternation in Asia on the military front. But some of the fallout on the military side between the US and China is especially troubling. Let's go ahead and put this on the screen.

So beyond testing in the Taiwan defense zone, Beijing has now both sanctioned Nancy Pelosi, which that doesn't seem to matter as much, but more so is cutting off all talks between the US military and the Chinese military. Now, one of the most important lessons that we learned from the Cold War was to have that ability in order to speak directly, not only leader to leader, but to have military to military discussion at all times. In the military business, it's called deconfliction. So what we would have

is to avoid any military air collisions and just military notification. We would say, hey, just so you know, we will be having an exercise in X region, just so you're aware, your air force and more. If they choose to come around us at that time, that's on you, but it minimizes the chances of some sort of accidental confrontation. And so I mentioned this in our last show, but this only underscores why I think this is so important. Let's go and put this next one up there on the screen, which is that because of this trip, China is actually now expanding its military drills, both in the airspace, in the Taiwan defense zone, in the maritime version, in the missile tests, obviously, at this very same time that they go ahead and cut off

our military communications, which again are now reportedly at the highest level, go to the third one please, that the top of the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, tried to call the People's Liberation Army and was rebuffed, Crystal. His answer is call. Multiple calls were ignored at all levels of the chain of command by the People's Liberation Army while this was happening. I just want to remind everyone, this all happened right before 9-11. It was called the Hainan Island incident. I mentioned it a little bit in the last show. Got overshadowed by 9-11. Basically, we had an E, I forget exactly what it was, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft that was flying, I think it was in the South China Sea. And a Chinese aircraft, and he came, and he was being very aggressive.

Anyway, that, by the way, the facts are very disputed about China, but I'm just telling you the U.S. side. So the Chinese aircraft basically collides with this. It gets sawed in half. The pilot dies. The aircraft is very badly damaged. It's forced to land on Hainan Island, which is a Chinese military island. So they land there. Now, all of a sudden, we're in the middle of full-fledged diplomatic crisis. We have like 20 guys, pilots and more, who are sitting in China who are basically blaming us.

They say it's our fault for both spying on them and then for colliding with this aircraft. They said it was our fault, not their pilot's fault. We required a full-fledged diplomatic crisis by the Bush administration where actually we had to come to some sort of fake declaration where the soldiers were put on camera and had to sign a statement declaring that it was their fault just to get them the hell out of there. And once we eventually did, they were like, no, actually, we didn't do anything. Anyway, that was 2001. That was a very different China. That was at a unipolar moment of the United States. And they still were very aggressive and held our guys hostage, quasi hostage for a little while. Well, what has come out of that since the lesson is we need to have communication with the PLA to make sure that we don't have any of these mid-air collisions, mid-ship collisions, any sort of aggressive behavior in the China seas, because these

types of things can escalate to a much bigger military confrontation and diplomatic crisis. Think about Francis Gary Peters in the Soviet Union. We want to avoid these types of situations. Look at Brittany Griner right now. We want to avoid this stuff at all costs. And so for them to cut off military communication with us over this visit, it's dangerous. And look, I'm not a China appeaser. I think anybody who's watched me for years would know that. I have no problem, quote unquote, standing up appeaser. I think anybody who's watched me for years would know that. I have no problem, quote unquote, standing up to them. My problem with the Pelosi trip, as we repeated over and over again, there was no strategy behind it. She just simply decided to go without any of the advice of the – the military did not want her to go specifically for this reason.

The Biden administration didn't want her to go. President Biden ultimately didn't feel like he had what it took in order to basically just say, no, you can't go. And then she goes over there for no discernible reason and has now ignited not only a diplomatic crisis with China, but now having military ramifications. I mean, who knows when they're going to pick up the phone again? These are important. Another thing that we didn't actually cut here, but we had to cancel one of our nuclear missile tests in order to just say like, hey, don't worry about it. It's all good. You know, we had a scheduled Minuteman 2 nuclear missile test that was going

to take place out in California. And part of the reason that it was canceled was because the Pentagon chief literally can't get in touch with the PLA to try and tell them, hey, it's got nothing to do with you. So they just went ahead and canceled the test. So we have all kinds of downstream ramifications now that have happened as a result of this trip, and the only question is, like, okay, was it worth it? Like, what exactly was accomplished by this trip? What did you gain? Congratulations. Like, you showed that we're strong.

Like, it's so silly. It is really just, it was an absolutely reckless and foolish move on her part. And the fact that it was so broadly supported by both parties also tells you a lot about where the foreign policy consensus in the United States Congress is. And it's not just that they've ghosted our defense secretary and are not communicating directly military to military. They also have said they are going to stop cooperating in eight different key areas, some of them that supposedly Nancy Pelosi cares a lot about, including climate change. So a few of those are not only defense, but narcotics control, transnational crime, and climate change. So listen, the other power in these scenarios always has moves that they can make as well.

And I also think it's very illustrative of the way that the U.S. sort of approaches foreign policy in general. Because, yeah, ultimately, like, China is very responsible for how they decide to respond. And the fact that they're deciding to go, you know, over the top with these war games of the sort that we haven't seen since the 90s and that they're deciding to sort of sanction Taiwan in these specific ways. They also decided to directly sanction Nancy Pelosi. I'm not going to cry about that one. But and to, you know, decide not to cooperate in these eight key areas. Of course, they ultimately are the ones that made the decision. But we can't act like we're blameless here. Like this wasn't a predictable outcome from her deciding to go when they were very clear in saying this is not acceptable to us. Like this

is a red line. This is screwing up what you've said you're committed to over decades and decades and decades. We don't like it and we did it anyway. So one thing that I have become very concerned about in thinking about this, and there's actually a great interview with Lyle Goldstein, who's the director of Asia Engagement and Defense Priorities that's in Jacobin Magazine right now, is I really don't know that – well, I do know. The media is not doing a good job of laying out just how risky this ultimately is. And what a precarious moment we're in right now, locked in this proxy war with Russia. So we're already thumbing our nose at one great power in terms of Russia and directly saying we want to defeat them on the battlefield

and continuing to send billions of dollars in weapons shipments, adding countries to NATO, all of those things. So we're already doing that. And now we're basically picking a fight and sort of provoking another great power that is, you know, has way more at stake in Taiwan and cares way more about Taiwan than we ever will. What I like about what you're saying, too, is, you know, that both the hawks and the doves agree. They're like, this is a lot more dangerous. You know, we've had Bridge Colby on the show. He's a mega hawk on Taiwan. And what will he tell you? He's actually this is a lot more dangerous. You know, we've had Bridge Colby on our show. He's a mega hawk on Taiwan.

And what will he tell you? He's actually very against a lot of our Ukraine intervention, specifically for this reason. He's like, look, I am only concerned about what's happening in the Asia Pacific. I do not believe that our military is ready for it. The doves will tell you the same thing. There is like a horseshoe theory going on where everybody, I think, can at least agree. I mean, this is really my orientation, which is that I think that focusing all of our problems on the old world, while we basically ignore 50% of the world GDP out in the middle of Asia, when I see the cutoff of communication between us and China,

I've spoken about it with Russia, it's not even close to the same level of stakes. And that's why I just, the media does a terrible job of communicating what the closure of the Taiwan Strait would mean, what closure of the Straits of Malacca would mean, what the fall of Taiwan would mean for the United States. Like these are astronomical. Like you think it's bad to pay a dollar 50 more per gas a gallon? Like imagine not being able to buy any consumer electronics. Imagine having no more cars. Like imagine literally, I mean, also Russia is, you know, you call it a great power. I mean, it's one-tenth probably the military and economic strength of the Chinese. But like we're literally just casually risking nuclear confrontation with two countries, significant countries right now.

That's insane. I mean, you just look at the fact that you're like, what in the world are you thinking doing this? And yes, Pelosi maybe decided to do this on her own, but it is a major failure and a huge humiliation, honestly, for Biden. If he didn't want her to go and he couldn't bother to get on the phone with her and say, do what he needed to do and say what he needed to say to get her to not go, this has completely scrambled their policy. To your point about the Cold War, listen, I have a million complaints about the way that we operated during the Cold War. But there was a strategy. There was thought.

There was a visceral understanding among the public and among our leaders of what the stakes were, what the risks were. There was intentional communication. There were intentional, ultimately, agreements that were come to try to avert the worst of the worst potential disasters. Now, I just feel like we're just sort of bumbling around this thing casually. You know, oh, I feel like going to Taiwan. Let me do that. It's the end of my career. Let me go there. There seems to be no intentional strategy or real understanding of what the stakes and what the risks are. And that scares the hell out of me.

It should scare you. It's actually, you know, Marshall and I are very divergent often. And we were talking about this recently on The Realignment. And he was like, you know, even, you know, from a more hawkish perspective, the biggest problem that we have both, you know, shared with the trip is around exactly what's happening here with the lack of strategy and Pelosi's just ad hoc going. Think about the days of the Soviet Union. Would Tip O'Neill ever defy Ronald Reagan

and just go to the Soviet? Never. It would never happen. Right, imagine that. Because what happened is that 1948 onward, George Kennan writes NSC 68, laying out the strategy of containment. This becomes the guiding foreign policy

of the United States up until 1991. Everybody had their varying degrees on containment. Obviously, Vietnam was a disaster. Then, you know, you had like detente. Then you had rollback, all of these different things. But they were within the same framework. We have no framework of prioritization, which actually leads us very well into our next segment. Yeah.

Talk about Russia, where we have the similar bleed over effect. So why don't we go ahead and get to this, the weapons segment. Yeah. This is a fascinating media story, policy story. The fact that it's actually not a bigger scandal really just tells you a lot exactly about how the U.S. media, who they respond to, and what criticism they have. So a couple of days ago, CBS News committed an act of journalism. They both went to Ukraine and researched, hey, these hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons that are flowing into Ukraine, tens of billions of it from the United States

alone, how's that going in Ukraine? Is it actually going to the front line where these weapons are needed? And here's what they found. Now, keep in mind, this video is no longer available on the CBS News website. And we had to go to kind of great lengths in order to just get a clip of it. But we think it's important because remember now they have since taken it down and say after criticism from the Ukrainian government that they need to do, quote, more research. Let's take a listen to the original segment that they aired. In the past two months, we've moved weapons and equipment to Ukraine at record speed. Drones, grenade launchers, machine guns. We're seeing this incredible, historic flow of weapons coming into Ukraine.

Do we have any sense as to where they're going? We don't know. There is really no information as to where they're going at all. You know, all this stuff goes to the border and then kind of like something happens. It kind of like 30 percent maybe we just find that destination. 30 percent. Are you concerned about weapons getting in the wrong hands? I don't care at all whether that happens. What sort of a unit do you command? Can't say. Okay.

You know, there are like power lords, oligarchs, political players. One of the biggest targets are convoys like this transporting weapons. Europeans had come to believe that that project of integration had effectively meant the banishment of armed force. All of a sudden, not far from the borders of the EU, was the most significant war since World War II. Interesting, right? I sure as hell am very interested. Yeah.

Well, CBS News since, though, let's put this up there on the screen, has now added an editor's note to their story. Here's what they say. Quote, This article has been updated to reflect changes since the CBS reports documentary was filmed. The documentary is being updated. James Oman says that the delivery has significantly improved since filming with CBS in late April. The government of Ukraine notes that the U.S. Defense Attaché Brigadier General arrived in Kiev in August 2022 for arms control and manufacturing or monitoring.

So what they point to is that they basically had significant pushback from the U.S. military and from the Ukrainian government at the airing of this story. So much so that they've gone ahead and deleted that segment. Now, here's the thing. Why did it need to be deleted at all? Whenever they say perhaps it would create a false impression, listen, if the fact that only 30% of the weapons were getting there in April, that's a good story too. Even if they have improved, there's no indication that

they have, by the way. I mean, you'll recall when the massive aid package passed through, Rand Paul said, hey guys, how about we add an amendment onto this so we have an inspector general to keep track of what's going on here, and this gets voted down in massive bipartisan fashion. So there is no actual indication that arms delivery has improved. In fact, if anything, there's the opposite. We talked about how the Europeans are raising red flags about these weapons getting onto the black market. But even if it has improved, the fact that it was going so poorly back in April, I mean, those weapons are all out there now.

So that is still an incredibly important story. When I was prepping for this segment yesterday, I went to actually watch the documentary because I was like, oh, this is really interesting. I want to make sure I have all the facts. I want to see what they say and have the full context, not just this clip. And when I clicked on it, it just went to like this page not found. And I was, I was, I was like, and the fact that I hadn't seen any commentary online about it either about like, oh, I can't believe they pulled this thing. It was like, what the hell is going on here? So that's when we

started digging. And sure enough, it looks like the Ukrainian government and the military freaked out and bullied them into pulling the whole damn thing. Now, listen, it is pretty common in media when you have a story that's provocative or contentious or disputed or whatever. Yeah, you add in maybe an editor's note. Maybe you put, you know, after the fact, we got comment, here's what they say, here's their side of the story. But to pull the whole thing entirely is quite extraordinary and definitely not something that they routinely do when it's, as long as the narrative fits like the sort of like liberal view of the world, it doesn't matter if it's blatantly wrong, they'll leave that shit up. Of course. And listen, like I said, it's of the world, it doesn't matter if it's blatantly wrong, they'll leave that shit up. Of course.

Listen, like I said, it's a good story, even if it's outdated. Just say, all right. This was the state of play in April. This was the state of play in April. By the way, that's actually very interesting to me because early April is when some of the craziest fighting was happening. Remember, that was Kiev, that was, like, the Russian military, the pincer movement, the fallback, you know, all the way down.

And that's when we were rushing shipments in like nobody, like literally we've never seen before. The most decisive moments in the military campaign. We're going to be studying that for decades in terms of what exactly happened. So, hey, if only 30% of the weapons were making it to the founder and CEO of an organization that was meeting with supplying frontline units, has now since estimated or re-estimated what exactly that is. But just so you know, he won't give you a number. So in April, he said 30 to 40 percent. Today, he says the situation has, quote, significantly improved. But he's not giving us-

What are we talking? We're talking about 45% now? We're talking about 50%, 75? What are we talking about here? Even if 25. I mean, 25 is kind of insane. Like, we're one-fourth of all these weapons just going. And also, I love how they're like,

the government of Ukraine now notes that the U.S. defense attache has arrived in Kiev in August 2022 for arms control and monitoring. I'm like, so? Okay. Is he doing anything? So he arrived. Okay. It's August 8th. So that means he wasn't there. attache has arrived in Kyiv in August 2022 for arms control and monitoring. I'm like, so? Okay, is he doing anything? So he arrived. Okay, it's August 8th. So that means he wasn't there until a week ago. So then what was going on in July and June and all these other billions of dollars of shipments? And lo and behold, let's go and throw this up there. Of course, we are now readying an additional $1 billion that is headed over to Ukraine, one of the largest so far. It's munitions for long-range weapons and armored vehicle, transport vehicles, exactly, by the way, what he was showing in that documentary.

So, you know, in a way, I do applaud this guy, this journalist, for taking on this task. It takes an extraordinary amount of courage knowing how much pushback you're going to get in the current environment. But at the end of the day, I mean, they went ahead and folded. I think it's crazy because, as you said, there's no outrage around this at all. This is a legitimate act of journalism, which the government and our military and their military pushed back so hard that they had deleted, basically like disappeared the entire thing. I wonder if these news outlets pulled their like Ghost of Kiev stories that turned out to be total propaganda, you know? Great point.

Did the Ukrainian, and also remember, I mean, listen, it is very difficult to cover a war when, you know, you're kind of dependent on what the government's involved or telling you. In fact, we are more dependent for and understand the Ukrainian side on the Ukrainian government than we are on the Russian side because with the Russian side, we have intelligence assets. We have a well-developed program to figure out what is the discrepancy between what they're saying and what the reality is, you know, and put your deep state spin on that or whatever. On the Ukrainian side,

we didn't have any of those assets developed. So we're more dependent on just whatever the Ukrainian like official line is and the Times, the Post, whatever. They report this stuff often as if it is outright fact. That goes unchallenged. But the minute there's a narrative that, you know, challenges whether the Ukrainians are, whether this is, how this is all going, whether Ukrainians are as the government, as perfect and noble as they're sort of presented in the press and Zelensky the hero and all that stuff, then they come in and they completely, completely freak out. It is incredibly revealing. It's very upsetting. We're going to continue to try and track this. But look, at the end of the

day, the story was spot on in terms of we don't know what the hell is going on over there. And, you know, listen, I can say that the Ukrainian cause is far more just. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have some accountability. They would be nowhere. Their government would be gone and their country would be dead. We're literally without us. So don't we get some sort of a say about what happens with our weapons? And let's say this,

if it was the first time that something like this had happened, you could be forgiven, right? It's 1986, the Soviet Union is fighting. And you're like, hey, these guys, these Afghans, they're good guys. You know, they're just fighting the Soviets, anti-communism. We say, hey, all right, you know, we're going to show. And then, oh, it was any stinger missiles end up in the hands of some bad dudes and end up being used in the Civil War and the Taliban. And we lose all this military equipment. And it's 1990. And we're like, all right, you know what?

We're going to learn our lesson. That happened before I was born. Right. And we keep doing it the same thing over and over again. Afghanistan, then Syria. I mean, Iraq, obviously. You can't even forget that one. Afghanistan, Iraq, then Libya, then Syria, then now this.

It's like, when will we ever learn our lesson? As the Rand Paul thing, one inspector. Do you know how much we have learned from the Special Inspector General of Afghan Reconstruction? That guy, John Sopko, he's a hero. I mean, the amount of corruption in the U.S. and Afghan side that he exposed for decades. If you read those, you knew Kabul was going to fall. That's why it didn't surprise me at all whenever it happened. The Soviet-Afghan lesson is also instructive because part of the reason that we threw in with the groups that we did was because they were the most, they were the sort of most ruthless. So that made them the most effective in terms of our cause. We also trusted the

Pakistanis to tell us who we should be funneling weapons to. But, you know, I'm also interested in the part of the documentary that they tease there where they've got the guy saying he's not going to tell you what type of unit he's in charge of. You know, I want to know more about that guy. I want to know more about what's going on there and who exactly these weapons are going to. But it's pretty extraordinary that this got pulled and there was nary a peep about it. And this was a massive expenditure of resources from CBS News to put reporters on the ground and get all this footage. Very dangerous. I mean, journalists, I'm sure, put their lives at risk in order to get this footage. Very dangerous. I mean, journalists, I'm sure, put their lives at risk in order to get this footage. You could see it literally. It was in the line of fire. Anytime you have, you know, journalists on the ground in a war zone,

this is not just, you know, you're there on your own figuring it out. No, there's a whole team around you and fixers that are involved. It was a very elaborate, costly, dangerous process to gather this footage. and now it's disappeared. And I wonder, do you think they're going to update it and put it back up again now? I don't know. That it's just dead forever. I do think they're going to have to update it just because, well, now that we'll have done a segment on it, I'm just going to assume some others will possibly bring it.

Probably going to pick up on it. Yeah. But, yeah, look, it is certainly revealing. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? I can't even imagine.

I don't know. We really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to figure out what to talk about today. No, I mean, honestly, guys, we had a whole other show planned for you. Yes. And then, lo and behold, the FBI raids the former president's residence in Florida.

So rather than get into a big preamble here, let's just jump straight into it. So yesterday evening we got this news from the former president himself. Let's go ahead and put his statement up on the screen. And I'll read to you a good portion of this. We don't, I think, need to hear the whole thing, but we'll get a little flavor of it. He says, these are dark times for our nation as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this ever happened to a president of the United States before, that is true.

After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the justice system, and an attack by radical left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for president in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and conservatives in the upcoming midterm elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken third world countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those countries corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe. What is the difference between this and Watergate where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th president of the United States. So let me just say

at the top here that, listen, we still have precious few details about what they were looking for, what exactly this was all about, what this is going to lead to, what sort of information the Justice Department and presumably the federal judge who signed off on this, what they have access to that none of us knows. So we're just going to go through the facts as we know them right now in what is, I mean, he's right that this has never happened before in history. That's the one thing we can say for certain is this is an absolutely extraordinary turn of events. And I do think it's important to have the sort of overall context,

which is that the president is subject to investigation on any number of fronts. One over is, you know, there's a D.C. grand jury, two actually D.C. grand juries that are looking into his involvement on January 6th. There's Georgia prosecutors looking into the fake elector scheme there and potentially what Trump's involvement was with that scheme. There is a New York investigation into his business. And there is also an investigation into his handling of classified materials. And what we have learned, according to reporting through New York Times and other places, is that this FBI search of Mar-a-Lago had to do with that last piece, the handling of classified documents. Let's go ahead and put Maggie Haberman up on the screen here.

So she had this, I don't know if it was a scoop, if she was the first to get it, but she was one among several to have this piece of information that the search related to the 15 boxes of material Trump took to Mar-a-Lago last year per three different sources. According to multiple people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on that material that he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence when he left the White House. Those boxes contain many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents. We're going to get into a minute into all of the details of what we know about those documents. And let me just put this last piece up on the screen here from Jonathan Lemire, who kind of has all of the details that

we know at this point, that the focus was on mishandled classified government documents, that the raid took hours. Actually, the very first reporter to break this story was just this like random Florida reporter. According to their sources, they said the FBI had been at Mar-a-Lago all day since the morning. And they actually were like, I, to be honest with you, I'm not a strong enough reporter to chase this down, but I promise it's real. And of course it did turn out to be real. Trump was not at Mar-a-Lago. He could probably presume that that was intentional. He was in New York at the time. And the Biden White House apparently was not given a heads up. Top aides learned about it on Twitter and by news accounts, as we all did. The last piece they have

there is that potentially why this is happening right now at this time is because we are just about into 90 days before the election. Remember, at the beginning of the week, we were talking about 100 days till the election just recently. So typically 90 days out from an election, there's what's called a quiet period where they don't want to have any big actions like this that could impact the politics of the situation. So Sagar, that's basically what we-

Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's anything else to say except it's obviously an extraordinary event. We don't appear to know all that much. Currently, the focus appears to be on mishandled classified government documents. Of course, it's an extraordinary event for the Department of Justice to sign off on a search warrant of the former president of the United States in order to raid his compound. It's even more extraordinary because a judge apparently reviewed the evidence and found evidence not only that the search warrant would be aided to an investigation, but that they had reasonable suspicion that they would find something that would aid that investigation and push it even further. And of course, as you and I have been discussing, search warrants often turn up other materials or other things that could be in plain view or sight,

which could then be used in the investigation. We have had nothing yet from the FBI. And I went back and looked. Christopher Wray, who of course was selected by President Trump after he fired James Comey, actually testified before Congress and said that if he were to conduct an investigation into anybody's name, that he would do undue, he would take an extraordinary amount of course. Again, I'm just reiterating what he said at the time, was if I were to investigate somebody of political prominence, I would go out of my way and not to besmirch their character in the public sphere. At that time, he was rebuking James Comey

because remember, there was all kinds of crazy stuff that happened in the Comey investigation of Hillary Clinton. Extraordinary amounts of almost public transparency. Comey, of course, giving press conferences, which at the time was, you know, extraordinarily out of the norm. He was actually even rebuked by Loretta Lynch for doing so. Everybody hated the way he handled it. Everybody hated the way he handled it. It was horrific. And then beyond that, you know, of course, the political influence of Loretta Lynch at the time. So, of course, the Biden White House claims that

they did not know about this. Previous reporting does indicate, though, Crystal, that President Biden had been very frustrated and had made it known, not necessarily to Merrick Garland, but to other people around him and his coterie, that he was frustrated that Merrick Garland had not been investigating former President Trump. So that appears to be the case. I mean, as I was telling you this morning, having a lot of flashbacks to Loretta Lynch, the Obama administration, the Department of Justice, the tarmac meetings and more. So I think everybody should just buckle up and get ready to learn a hell of a lot about the Presidential Records Act, about the constitutional impact. We're going to start that education for you today. Yes, I've spent the last several hours reading about all of this for you.

I'm an expert. I mean, there is, look, there's so much to say about this. First of all, I do want to underscore some of the basic points here about what it takes to get this type of warrant to conduct a search of anyone's home. The idea is that you have to prove there is a probable cause of a crime and that it is likely you will turn up evidence of that crime in the search. Obviously, you know, the other option available is a subpoena. The reason that you do a search instead of or in conjunction with a subpoena, we don't know whether a subpoena was issued or not, is because you fear that those documents or whatever you're looking for might be hidden, might be taken away.

So the fact that, you know, you have the Department of Justice and, oh, I mean, it's 100% certain that Merrick Garland signed off on something of this sort of political significance, this would have gone all the way to the top. He signs off on it. Then you have a federal judge saying, yes, I think there's probable cause. And I think that you're likely to turn up evidence in this search. That is incredibly extraordinary. As you're pointing out, and just to underscore again, while the search, based on what we know, and I do think it's important to put the caveat in there of like

reporting changes, and these are very early facts, and the fact that we know it has to do with the records thing doesn't necessarily completely rule out that there are other things in the affidavit that's possible as well. But, you know, what Trump is saying is they really, they searched his private residence, they searched his office, they went into his safe. And anything that they turn up in that, even if it's not directly related to the classified records issue, could be potentially used in other investigations. So really important to underscore that even if the reporting is correct, that the issue at hand that allowed them to authorize this search had to do with classified materials, that does not mean that it won't potentially touch other the things that have come out in the media recently. There has been significant reporting that there seemed to be an escalation they were focused on versus his sort of incitement around January 6th. So that's important to keep in mind is you'll recall Merrick Garland, Attorney General Merrick Garland, recently gave a fairly rare interview to Lester Holt of NBC News, in which for the first time he said very clearly that, you know, he would follow the facts wherever they went and that no person was above the law, seeming to open the door for, look, we could be potentially, you know, looking at indicting former President Trump. And then the last piece that I'll add to that sort of overall context is, I don't know if you saw this, Sagar, but

former Attorney General Eric Holder had been interviewed recently, and he outright predicted that given what we know in the public sphere, and I assume that he's still pretty well connected in the Justice Department and other places, he outright predicted that the president would be indicted. Given how extraordinary it is to have, I mean, this has never happened before, the president's home being searched by the FBI, it's pretty hard to imagine at this point that they go to that length and don't ultimately end up with some sort of indictment of the former president. It's hard to read the set of facts otherwise. We will speak—well, also, and this is possibly the case, we'll be speaking with lawyer Bradley Moss. He's actually a national security lawyer who specializes in classified litigation.

So we'll be speaking with him about that. But actually, I was speaking with him earlier when we were booking him last night. And it's actually even possible that this isn't even about Trump necessarily, but it's also about the people around him. So we'll also get to the political ramifications, which is, I think just at the top, I'll state this. They better have the goods because if they don't, they have unleashed holy hell onto American politics. And that's probably a good segue into the Fox News reaction. Oh, man. Because they were very measured and nuanced.

No, they immediately were, you know, went all in on witch hunt, deep state. I think the news broke during while Jesse Waters was hosting. So here is his immediate react. Let's take a listen. We were told that the FBI wasn't going to get involved in any politically charged search warrants, investigations, announcements, indictments before an election. We were told that. I mean, remember what they did with the crooked situation with the server? They made all sorts of announcements then. They investigated the Trump campaign then. You saw what they did in October by covering up the laptop. And now they're going to send agents into Mar-a-Lago

before the midterm election. This is not what we were told the FBI was going to do, especially, Dana, on the heels of what we just did at the top of the show, when we just laid out how, you know, Paul Pelosi, senior, suspiciously involved in insider trading with the with the wife, Nancy. And then she takes her son to this Asian trip, tries to hide it while he's got lithium investments. He's got EV battery investments all over these Asian countries. They're trying to cover it up. And nothing gets done with Hunter. They're trying to push that off, make it a little just little tax thing, make that go away. Meanwhile, we have evidence that they were holding 10 for the big guy. Diamonds are being exchanged. There's like 150 flags from Treasury that there were suspicious wire transfers coming from all these countries,

China, Russia, Ukraine, into the Biden family bank accounts that were all co-mingled. And you're sending agents to Mar-a-Lago. Did they get the address wrong, Dana? Some fair points. Pelosi, 105, a diamonds exchange is there. Here's what I will say, again, about the rush to judgment here. If your position is that no president should ever face investigation, that they should just be completely above, which there are some people who hold that view, then you can, you know, then yes, you know how you feel about this,

right? You can say, I don't think that this is appropriate to do to any president. But of course, Jesse doesn't take that tact. It's that, you know, I do think presidents should be prosecuted. I'm just going to already absolve Trump of any sort of culpability and assume the person who should be investigated. Yeah, I think the absolution is the problem. Exactly. And that's the thing.

I mean, there is no disagreement, I think, on this show, Crystal, that Hunter should be fully investigated, I think, to the full extent of the law based on anything we've seen on the laptop, you know, et cetera. And if he doesn't. Based on any connections, corrupt connections to the way. Especially corrupt connections to the White House, foreign wire transfers and all that. His own personal life and degeneracy aside, like in terms of what actually had an impact. And look, I mean, it would be a problem if there's selective application of the law. And I'm almost certain

that that will probably be the main political controversy going forward. As you said, immediate rushes and denunciations thrown up there. Marjorie Taylor Greene putting a picture of the U.S. flag literally upside down. The Candace Owens reaction, let's go ahead and put that up there as well. The FBI must be legally informed and dissolved. What happened to Trump is positively stunning and mark of unchecked government power. I will no longer recognize the country I live in. We must all come together to fight this evil. I mean, you and I were talking. I could co-sign that very first sentence about the FBI. This is the part where I'm extraordinarily conflicted because now I say we're about to get to this, you know, talk about GOP reaction. Everybody's calling for an investigation, a church committee, a dissolution of the FBI at the top ranks.

I'm like, well, it wouldn't be such a bad thing. I wouldn't mind actually seeing all of these records just spilled forward. We've talked previously about all the sketchy things that have gone on in terms of wiretaps, in terms of, I mean, think about even the Carter Page FISA and the hijinks that that went to. And really, it wasn't even about Carter Page. That just revealed how sketchy the FISA process is for thousands, hundreds of thousands of Americans. We had this illusion of some, like, check and balance. Exactly. It was just a complete rubber stamp.

And we've spoken, I think, about the number of secret FBI informants and all of that. So perhaps if there is one good thing that comes from this, and Republicans do take power in the House of Representatives, that we will get like a wholesale transparency of everything. I mean, really what I learned more about from Russiagate was just how shoddy the top levels of the FBI operate at all times, not just with the Hillary investigation. I mean, the thing that was funny that I was pointing to is like you had Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens, and a lot more besides who were immediately like literally writing out defund the FBI. And you're like, you know what you said. Anyway, forget it.

Yes, we agree. Yeah, we're like, fine. Defund the FBI, do it. Go for it. I actually agree. Nice little horseshoe moment there. We're all for it. Apparently Bannon the FBI to do it? I take it. Go for it. I actually agree. Nice little horseshoe moment there. We're all for it. Apparently, Bannon's reaction to this we have as well.

He says, Mr. President, I've said this for months. Ride now and ride hard. We need to stop playing around and go full smash mouth. Announced for the presidency tomorrow at Mar-a-Lago. So we'll wait and see if he listens to that. It would probably be the most logical political conclusion for him to take, right? Well, this is, I mean, this is what a lot of people have been speculating for a while, is that part of his motivation, not only for announcing early, but actually for running for president again at all, is to try to avoid some of the legal

jeopardy that he is, you know, legitimately in, right? Again, not just on the presidential records thing, but fake electors in Georgia, the D.C. grand jury, New York also investigation into his business. All of those things seem to be sort of heating up where it seemed very quiet and very slow for a long time. We now have more and more reporting about, OK, there there seems to be, you know, a narrow time frame to reach an end, reach a conclusion and very possible, if not likely, that the president ends up indicted. So he's not just facing problems on this front, but he's facing problems on a number of fronts. were reportedly like really not happy about the idea that he might launch before the midterms because they don't want the midterm election to be a referendum on Trump. They want to keep the focus all on Joe Biden and inflation and the problems there. So I've also seen some sort of

galaxy brain takes that actually this is all good for Trump. Listen, if there's tremendous overreach here and there's bad, like, if we go down that path, then maybe. But in general, when the FBI raids your home, your office, you're safe and all the rest, it's as I think Josh Barrow said this online, it's generally a good rule of thumb. It's not good for you personally or politically. And I think trying to concoct this like, oh, this is actually all 4D chess thing is a bit of a stretch. Yeah, I think you're, I mean, look, there's two ways this goes. And I mean, look, given the handling of Russiagate and all that and the idiocy of the top levels of the DOJ, do we put it past that they dramatically overreached? I don't put that past for a second,

which would be the greatest political boon to Donald Trump that has ever existed. I mean, we should always remember, I'll never forget this, January of 2020, I believe I did a monologue, and you and I were discussing that at the height of impeachment, the height was also coinciding with the largest amount of GOP identification that we had seen in modern American history. And the reason why was that the Democrats were making it all about Russiagate, all about Mueller, and all about what was even impeachment one, like Ukrainegate and the perfect phone call, right? So at that time, people cared so little, and the economy, look, it had many structural problems, but let's be honest, it was not bad at the top,

at least for the middle class and for the upper class. People were basically saying, listen, the Dems are offering me only one alternative. I'm going to go and identify as GOP. Now, obviously, the coronavirus pandemic and threw everything into a wrench with that. But that is a very prescient lesson, which is that if you overreach to the American public, and Russiagate became one of those things, which was a household joke, I mean, outside of MSNBC circles, given ultimately what happened, if that is a repeat of what we see things, which was a household joke. I mean, outside of MSNBC circles, given ultimately what happened, if that is a repeat of what we see here, which we cannot put that out of the question. I mean, my God, like, I can't even believe that they will have inflicted that on us.

Now, it's also possible that they actually do have him dead to rights this time, that they have learned some of these lessons, and that politically things will go completely the other way, and that they will make it so that, you know, he legitimately has been, quote, caught red-handed, but I can't just help but think of the 2016 tweet, which we were laughing about this morning. It's like, how's old Donnie gonna wriggle his way out of this one?

He wriggles his way out. He wriggles his way out easily. Oh, well. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to have covered all of these various things, and seen the way they play out and not feel that way. Right. Not feel like this is another like, oh, the walls are closing in moment when the walls never actually end up closing in. But one thing that's different is not the president anymore.

Correct. So he doesn't have that legal shield. Yeah. And another thing that's different is, I mean, we never have had actual federal investigations on multiple fronts. We never have had an FBI raid of his home. So there are reasons to think that maybe there is something, this story will end differently. I also say, I mean, I think there's a couple of things here. Him not having his perch on Twitter and not having so much control of the media, I think, hobbles his attempt to really, you know, to really respond in the way that he did when he was president of the United States. And I also think that, you know, the January 6th committee hearings, all my, you know, issues with the focus on them and the things we've said on the show before, which you can go back and rewatch, I think they have been more impactful than I expected.

And even not that it has persuaded Republican voters that, oh, January 6th was really bad and Trump is evil and awful and whatever. But remember we played that Fox News montage, which was basically some like pro-DeSantis propaganda of voters in Arizona. But what they were saying was not like, oh, Donald Trump is bad and I can't stand him. They were basically like, listen, I like the guy, but the reality is he's just too divisive for the country. And I just, you know, it sucks, but I feel like we have to move on. So obviously that was very cherry picked piece of propaganda that Fox News put together, but it did signal to me that there is some sentiment within the GOP base of like sort of,

you know, I wish it was different and I wish that this guy wasn't such a like divisive, polarizing figure, but it is what it is. And so we need to look to somebody else. I could see how this would continue to fuel that sense of like, gosh, I wish it wasn't this way, but we need to move forward. Yeah. I mean, look, again, all possible. There is one other piece of the show. In addition to our monologues, our monologues also predated the, what did you call it? 100 megaton.

100 megaton event. Political event. Political event, which is there was for our media block, there was a deep interview with Rachel Maddow, who, of course, was and still is the megaton or megawatt star at MSNBC, who signed this gigantic new deal to basically not be on TV every night anymore. And this was her first big sit down with a writer for Vanity Fair who, you know, interviewed her, I think, over a number of days about how, what she thinks about the world and what she wants to do next and all of that. And, you know, I read through the whole thing. It's always just interesting to get into the mind of someone like

this. And she is an unusual figure because, first of all, she also is very not online, which makes her kind of unique among the cable news, punditry, and host class. She also had some very, like, favorable things to say about Tucker Carlson, which I think shocked a lot of people. But the part we wanted to focus on is that, and this does tie into, like, Trump and his various scandals and all of that, you know, and this does tie into like Trump and his various scandals and all of that, is she got pressed a bit on her handling of Russiagate and how far she went down the conspiracy rabbit hole. And this was done in a relatively like, you know, kid gloves friendly kind of a way, but still continued to be quite revealing. Let's go ahead and put the first piece up on the screen that we have here. This is what the Vanity Fair article looks like. It's a picture of Rachel in the woods, splitting wood

there. It says, exclusive Rachel Maddow gives her first interview as she steps back from the nightly grind and revs up for her next act. Let's go ahead and put the next piece up. Let's put the third, actually, element that we have up on the screen here. So this is where she was asked to reflect on her coverage of the Steele dossier. And no joke, she used the Dan Rather scandal over the, remember, this is really reaching back in the archives. There were fabricated documents that they ran with, that Dan Rather ran with to call into question George W. Bush's National Guard service and say that they were basically, it was falsified and that he didn't really serve and all this. This turned out to, they were unable to authenticate a gigantic scandal.

He lost his job. Other people lost his job. There's actually a documentary about the failings there. But let me read to you specifically what she says. She said, trying to turn the Russian scandal into just the Steele dossier or trying to turn the dossier into the Russian scandal is a revisionist history designed to intimidate people and of covering stories like that in the future and to try to obscure the seriousness of what Russia did and what the Trump campaign's relationship was with what Russia did. The reporter suggested that Maddow's coverage may have given viewers a false sense of hope that Trump was about to be taken down, not unlike how, say, viewers of Newsmax

may have been led to believe the 2020 election was about to be overturned. At this point in the conversation, that's when Maddow brings up the Dan Rather thing. And here's what she says. Do you remember what the Dan Rather scandal was about? There was a document that was involved. He was reporting on like, how did George W. Bush avoid going to Vietnam? How was his National Guard service arranged? Why did he get this coveted spot in this group that wasn't going to be fighting? The story of George W. Bush getting a sweet gig in the National Guard so he didn't have to go fight in Vietnam was true. Somebody giving Dan Rather a forged document so he had a screwed up news story about it is fascinating. It's an interesting thing about CBS News.

But it doesn't mean that the National Guard thing about George W. Bush was not true. It just, it neutralized it. Like, it made that go away. And the whole thing became a Dan Rather scandal. That's what's going on with the dossier. So she struggles to directly defend her reporting and how far out she went, how much she relied on the dossier, which ended up being completely collapsing and one of the main sources admits to lying and all of these things. She can't really directly defend it.

So she tries to do this roundabout defense of saying, well, focusing on the parts of this that were wrong is just a distraction from the parts that were correct. What I would say is she's actually not wrong that the fact that Dan Rather and CBS News ran with this fake document ended up distracting from what might have been a real story about George W. Bush, took reporters off of the path of digging into that more. But that's exactly part of the problem and why it was so irresponsible and counterproductive for you to go so far out here that, yes, you lose all credibility about any other parts of the story that may have been consequential, that may have been true. When you go beyond where the facts and the evidence lead and you never apologize and make it right and have accountability, then of course people aren't going to trust you about the rest of the story. That's actually exactly the problem here. Oh, yeah, that's correct, which is that you and Dan also have agency,

which is that your screw-ups are part of why that political circumstance and, you know, that circumstance happened in the first place. Yes, she did harm to her own cause. We have. That's the truth. Exactly, and we went ahead and polled. I think people need to remember how unhinged these people were. Let's take a listen. And that maybe is the most

important thing for our purposes as U.S. citizens here, right? We're all trying to figure out what's just happened to our country. You know, what's going on with this incredible national security scandal that looms over our new presidency? How are we going to get to the bottom of this thing? Right? What's most important to all of us about this is that if this guy did have a key role in that scheme, while he is in Moscow, he is out of reach of U.S. investigators. And who are the U.S. investigators? In terms of the investigation into what happened here, something really important happened today that is not heartening at all.

We all know the basic history of this dossier, right? Now, reportedly, it had circulated around Washington. It had circulated among some journalists late last year. I never saw it before it was published. I had heard rumors about some of the things in it, but I am not one of the people who saw it. And I don't know many people who say they did see it before BuzzFeed published it. But it was apparently out there. In early January, it was reported by CNN that the FBI briefed Donald Trump and briefed President Obama on a list of allegations against Donald Trump and his campaign concerning Russia. That initial report from CNN didn't exactly say what these allegations were. But within 24 hours, BuzzFeed News published the dossier,

this whole 35-page dossier. And there was a huge uproar at the time. Everybody, including BuzzFeed News published the dossier, this whole 35-page dossier. And there was a huge uproar at the time. Everybody, including BuzzFeed, admitted the dossier was all uncorroborated information. But you know what? It didn't end there. So there you go, Crystal. I mean, basically none of what she floated there to millions of people ended up being true at all. She never coped with that. She never told the truth to her audience. She effectively retired, and now she's doing some podcasts about World War II, which, you know, more power to you, I guess, getting paid $30 million a year to do so. But the Dan Rather thing actually is far more revealing whenever you consider that it wasn't just one report like Dan Rather. It was two straight years of this shit on TV every single night, and it was the sun and the moon of American politics.

You know, everything revolved around it thanks to them. They wasted so much of our time. Part of why she's getting that $30 million paycheck. Because, I mean, she had the top ratings. People tuned in night after night. I thought the report, even though it was done gently, raised a very good parallel of like, you know, you did a disservice to your viewers by stringing

them along to believe that the walls were closing in and they were going to, you know, do the raid on the White House at the time that, you know, now is actually happening at Mar-a-Lago. When in reality, you know, if you had stuck to what we knew and what the facts were, yeah, I think that people would have come away with this more accurate sense of, listen, there wasn't maybe this direct collusion and the pings between the servers and Trump wasn't a Russian asset since 1987. But were they uncomfortably willing to, you know, certainly solicit Russia's help if they had the ability to do so? Yeah. And that was a gross thing. And people should have known about that, and it should have been reported out. There's no doubt about it.

But because they went so far, then ultimately, when you get the Mueller report, and it's not nearly the spy novel level allegations that had been floated night after night, year after year, of course, people are going to say, you led us astray, because frankly, you really did. Yeah, I think you're right, Crystal. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed we do. We have some new details. Starting to understand a few more of the pieces of what led up to that raid down at Mar-a-Lago. What the sort of, whether there's a grand scheme or not. There appears not to be a grand scheme from the federal government. How they got the information, all that stuff. We're starting to get the reporting on it. So we will break all of that down for you.

And also some additional subpoenas, a cell phone seized of a member of Congress, some Pennsylvania fake elector types who also have received subpoenas. So get into all of those details and more. We also have new numbers on inflation, which are potentially good. But, of course, the White House had to take that and, like, completely gaslight and overplay their hand and all of that stuff. So we'll take you inside of these still mixed signals in terms of where the economy stands. We had some elections this week and very interesting tea leaves there. Yet another indication that the Democratic enthusiasm is definitely up. This is a very different ballgame and landscape than what we were looking at before the Dobbs decision. So we have those details for you, some new indications of exactly who the GOP is still with. Of course, they all bent the knee to Trump immediately. Every one of the supposed challengers, contenders, he was going to go up

against him. Nah, they all fell in line instantly. There's also some big developments out of Ukraine. And we have a new guest on the show to break down just how potentially dangerous this situation with China and Taiwan is for us and for the world and how Nancy Pelosi's visit really exacerbated all of that. Before we dive into the details of what is going on with that FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, though, live show in Atlanta. Reminder, let's put this up there on the screen. Live show, September 16th, we are coming to Atlanta. As I mentioned, so those large ticket purchases that are going through have begun, so there is going to be a very limited number of tickets that are left for the general public. Highly advise you to go in and buy those tickets so we can officially have our sellout date one month ahead of the schedule.

That's right. Which I'm very happy about that. Next week it's going to be exactly one month now. Exactly one month. So link is down in the description. We would love to see you guys there. We have a great show coming for all of you. Yeah, it's going to be really fun.

All right. Okay, so a pretty bombshell piece of reporting here. Very significant in terms of understanding this raid and what led up to it. A lot of details that I want to get into here. Let's go ahead and throw this Newsweek tear sheet up on the screen. So they have the scoop. Exclusive, an informer told the FBI what docs Trump was hiding and where. They say that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source,

one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding, and even the location of those documents to senior government officials told Newsweek. As we speculated and many others had speculated at the time, it was deliberately timed, according to this report, to occur when the former president was away. And this is the part that, I mean, I just almost can't believe it, except you should never underestimate the level of like bureaucratic incompetence and myopia and like bubble dwelling. They thought this wasn't going to be a big deal. They thought if they did it when Trump was away, that it'd be like,

well, it's just a low key raid of the president's residence. I'm sure this won't cause a massive, like, political media explosion. So what they say is FBI decision makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand or to attempt to thwart the raid would lower the profile of the event. One of the sources that they spoke to says they were seeking to avoid any media circus, so even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid in ignoring the fallout. I mean, I don't know how many people

with level three IQs thought that this would not be a big deal no matter how you went about it. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess relevant records in violation of federal law. And that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago, including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room. So this goes back to they had depended heavily on a confidential informant, must be someone who is fairly close to Trump. A lot of speculation in Trump world right now about who that could be. But down to the specific room, specific safe where they expected these documents to be held in violation. You know, it looks like Trump said, oh, we gave you everything and didn't really give them everything, was lying to the feds. There's now reported that he and his lawyers had met previously with the

FBI about these documents and they had apparently good reason to believe that he was still retaining and concealing additional documents that should be part of the presidential record. A few more pieces here in terms of who authorized the raid. They say that FBI Director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to conduct the raid. They say it's really a case of the Bureau misreading the impact. They also suggest in this piece that it may not have gone all the way to Merrick Garland. Now, that could be some sort of ass covering for Merrick Garland, trying to keep him separate from it. But, you know, what I really take from all of this is there was some theorizing, and I thought with good basis and good rationale, that the documents were kind of a pretext to go in and get what they were really interested in was like the January 6th stuff.

That does not appear to be the case. And I think there's a lot of because this happened, because, you know, Trump, we're going to get to Trump pleading the fifth on this other case. You have the tax returns thing happen. You have this congressman whose cell phone was seized all in the same week. There was once again this sense of like there's a grand scheme. Merrick Garland has this whole thing planned out. This is step one of this massive grand plan to ultimately indict and take down Trump. And that is not the case.

Or at least the current reporting doesn't indicate that, right? I'm fairly convinced. I mean, you should usually bet on the side of the people in Washington aren't some 5D chess players, you know, with the thinking 10 moves ahead. They were sort of focused on this one narrow issue where they felt very confident that there was, you know, wrongdoing. They thought this is the procedure we normally follow, so we're going to normally follow this procedure. We'll give him the grace of being out of town so we can do it while he's away and hopefully avoid a media circus. As silly as it is for them to have thought that that would be the case, it looks to me like this

truly was narrowly focused on these records. And to the extent, you know, there are other investigations going on, which we'll get into, but I do actually think that they're separate and this is not part of some grand federal government plan to take down Trump. Whenever you need to bet on master plans by the FBI or bureaucratic incompetence, I know which one I'm going to be betting on. That was my secret suspicion, but now we actually have a decent amount of reporting in order to indicate that. You also see in terms of the discussions from the Trump lawyers themselves, they say that they have held discussions with the Justice Department since the spring over these materials at Mar-a-Lago, that they had actually searched through two to three dozen boxes in the basement storage area, hunting for the documents. And also, they said that currently the DOJ had said, well, part of the problem is you're not securing these properly. So they actually went ahead and added, again, according to Trump's lawyer, they added a lock there, which was then breached by the FBI whenever they took it.

I mean, if the reporting here is true and there's no current, you know, there's not a lot of evidence in order to dispute it. Nobody's coming out and saying that this is some sort of master plan. It would certainly indicate exactly as you said. I would also refer people back to our interview with Bradley Moss. One of the things he highlighted is they have to prove a selective and willful want in order to this. This also could be a matter of incompetence, both on the Trump team side, and it could be a matter of incompetence on the FBI side. So they have ignited a massive political firestorm over what appears to be a fight over presidential records. And let's just be honest, like in terms of the political fallout, I don't, I don't think that was worth it, you know, whatsoever. By the way, I also have no idea what's in these documents, which ironically, we're almost certain to be learned.

We're going to learn the contours of this now that it's such a high-profile case, which would probably diminish the classification on it in itself. I'm not saying that the rage isn't justified on its own. But I'm saying obviously, of course, you have to consider it in the political ramifications. Yeah. I mean, I think the political piece to me is debatable, whether it's, quote, war-threatened or not. There is some reporting that the DOJ is like, like at the highest levels is like, what were you thinking? And I do think the fact that it was done apparently without really understanding how extraordinary this would be seen and what a nuclear bomb it

would set off in terms of like the media's focus on it and the way Republicans would seize on it and all of those things. Look, if you or I took classified documents and then met with the FBI and the FBI was like, you need to give this back. And we're like, totally. And we give you one of them and then continue to hide and conceal and lie about the other ones, they would be busting down our door and they would be doing it a lot sooner. And they would not give us the courtesy of like, let's do it when you're away and try to downplay it. So based on what we know and also just given what we know about the sloppiness and like

cavalier nature of Trump and his relationship to the law, I have no doubt that he is in violation of the law. I have no doubt that he is in violation of the law here. I think it's very unlikely that he totally was in the clear and followed the correct procedures and wasn't still retaining any documents and wouldn't blatantly lie to the FBI. There's also an irony here because of the Hillary Clinton email scandal, Trump himself signed into law making the Presidential Records Act and making this a much more stringent offense. He signed a law in 2018 that made it a felony to remove and retain classified documents. So there's a great irony here, too, that he's now, you know, in violation, it appears, of the very law that he strengthened in this partisan, like,

we're going to go after Hillary Clinton thing. The politics of it and whether it was, quote, unquote, worth it, I think it very much remains to be seen how this all plays out. You know, I do think that there's some who are very convinced this is going to inure to the Republicans' benefit because, you know, people are going to see it as an overreach. I am not as convinced of that case because I think if you're talking about the Republican base, yes, this solidifies his control on the GOP. If you're talking about normies who are sick of, like, his bullshit and, like, it always being some crisis and whatever, I don't know that it has the same impact. It's possible. It's just hard to say at this point. Yeah, I mean, I'm focusing a lot about this on my monologue. On its face,

I think you'd probably be right. But as we always know, there's going to be massive overreach. And this will not overreach just by the FBI. I'm saying also by the opponents, MSNBC, trying to cast this as another thing. And that actually generally moves to Trump's benefit. So I have no idea. On its face, the reporting does indicate that that's where they are. You also said this. Let's put this up there on the screen. Axios saying that Trump world's speculating that they do have a flipped aid after the FBI search, likely as a result of the warrant. And that is another thing which many people have been highlighting, not just me. Trump, I mean, look, this is in dispute. Eric Trump gave an interview

to Fox News where he claims that the warrant was never given to them by the FBI. That would be against standard procedure. We don't know if that's true. Again, the FBI has not actually said whether that's true or not. Standard procedure would say that Trump and his lawyers did receive a copy of that search warrant. And if that's true, they should release it. They can make it public. Yeah, and clear a lot of things up. Exactly. Release it. And they would be able to show us very specifically what the FBI was looking for. As you said and indicated in Newsweek, the specific areas would actually probably – it's possible that they're hiding it because it would only confirm that they do have a mole inside of their organization or somebody very close to the president. But as we had said, Trump could also just release this tomorrow as if he did actually receive the search warrant and we would learn a hell of a lot more about what actually happened. There's one other thing I want to say about the politics of this

and whether or not it was justified, whether it was a good idea, whether it was just, all of those things. It is obviously political. It has political implications, the decision to serve a search warrant and raid Mar-a-Lago, no doubt about it. But it also is a political decision to look at facts that clearly say there is a clear violation of the law. And if it was an ordinary citizen, we would treat it this way. But because it's

the president and because it's fraught, we're not going to. That is a less sort of media explosive political decision. But that's also a political decision. So there's sort of no avoiding making some sort of political decision here if, in fact, they were very persuaded, which they appear to have been, that he was in very clear and sort of like intentional violation of this law. So I think that's important to keep in mind. Of course. I mean, one of the things that always pissed me off about the Hillary case is I was like, look, any average citizen, you're going to jail for what Hillary did.

It was obvious. Yes. It was just so clear. I'm like, if you did this and you're a normal person, we talked previously on our show about the Navy guy who took a picture of the nuclear submarine. It didn't mean anything by it Biden, he ended up in jail. And or their, I mean, reality winner. Look at what happened to her.

I mean, she literally just photocopied some documents and sent it over to the intercept. She was in jail for like years. So look, I'm generally in favor of equal application of the law. I'm only speaking in terms of how this is being politically coded and how the FBI ultimately came to this decision. If it is true, they didn't think it was going to have political ramifications. And they're just a bunch of idiots. And I think

that that is really, I think you could always bet on that. I talked to, you know, someone who's very in the know with this, who actually had some pieces of this report as well, but could only get a single source. And what he was saying to me is you really can't understand how much of a bubble these people operate in. Like they literally work inside of a skiff. Like they're literally in a bubble. And so they're just looking at here's the process that we follow. And the National Archives requests us to look into this. And we did it.

And we found this evidence. And we took it to a grand jury. And they said, yes, we believe it. And we took it to like just following the steps, chunk, chunk, chunk, and really not thinking about the political landscape. Now, that doesn't mean ultimately they made the wrong decision because, again, you know, I do believe in equal application law. I was very critical of Hillary on the email thing. So it's not like I'm being inconsistent here. And, you know, certainly people who were very concerned about the Hillary thing at the time, there are many of them who are now like records, who cares? No big deal. not step one of some grand plan to take down Trump. That doesn't mean Trump's not going to be indicted. It doesn't mean that there won't be charges out of Georgia or out of the D.C. grand jury with regards to January 6th. That is all still very much on the table.

And the next thing we're going to talk about is some of the steps that they've taken forward on that. But I am convinced at this point that this was kind of a one-off focused just on this specific issue that wasn't connected to some broader plan. Yeah. I mean, look, that's where all things currently lead. All right, let's go and talk about inflation, obviously, always enormously politically consequential. We got some fascinating new numbers yesterday on the month of July. Let's go and put that up there on the screen. Inflation actually dropped 8 8.5% in July, down from 9.1% in June. The biggest decline was in gas prices and in airfare. But grocery prices, rent, and electricity are continuing to rise. And I think that this underscores a lot of what is so difficult about talking about inflation generally, which is that that top line number, be it 8.5, be it 9.1,

it is so driven by a few specific categories. So we did see a 7% reduction in July on gas prices, similar to production in airfare, similarly due to jet fuel. But the problem there is that this is a single commodity, and it actually obscures the level of inflation people are still seeing on grocery prices rising, rent rising, electricity. It by no means means that people are out of the woods. And arguing over the top line figure can just be really foolish. That being said, the CPI number, let's go ahead and put this up there. You can see here that the overall one-month percent increase for all consumers seasonally adjusted, it's the first time that we've had zero in over

a year. Not a terrible thing. The problem, though, is, as you alluded to, politically saying, yeah, look, it is a good thing. Today, we officially got the news that the national average of gasoline has dropped below $4. It's $3.99. I think that's fantastic. I also think $3.99 is still way too high. I also think that the fact that grocery prices are up 18%, 20%, electricity continues to rise, natural gas is a commodity, is going to explode come wintertime. We still have all kinds of massive warning signs in the economy. Well, the Biden administration trying to embrace this as some sort of full-fledged victory and saying inflation itself is over, just like they've

said previously, like the best job market in World War II. Take a listen to how they reacted yesterday. About the news that came out today relative to the economy. Actually, I just want to say a number. Zero. Today, we received news that our economy had 0% inflation in the month of July. 0%. So yeah, I mean, technically correct at the urban consumer CPI, but doing victory laps like this on top line figures, which do not comport with the actual reality on the ground is just foolish. Because let's say it does go up next month, or even if it shrinks by 0.5, but electricity goes up by, I don't even know how high, or you still can't, okay, airfare may be down, but you still can't catch a flight. I mean, I was telling you about my experience. I flew to Portland over the weekend to Oregon, and more than half, more than half of the departure board at

Reagan was either delayed or canceled. And I was, to be fair, there were weather-related problems, but I was speaking with some of the crew and some of the air crew. What they were telling me is the real issue is, of course, weather is ever-present. But when you have all this chaotic mess and then you add weather, that's how you have mass cancellations that happen all across the board. Society is still not functioning at a very, very basic level. So nothing to celebrate, in my opinion, and everybody just exaggerates one way or the other. I think the bottom line is things are still not good. $3.99 gas is still not great. Gas is still $5 a gallon in California. Millions and millions of Americans still paying well over $4. And also, there's no sign that this is nothing but a temporary decrease,

post-Memorial Day demand. Once people have to start buying fuel oil, you know, middle distillates like diesel and more, natural gas in order to heat houses as things get colder, price is probably just going to go right back up. We'll see what's going to happen. I think politically, the messaging is, you know, it's very simple to see what you going to happen. I think politically the messaging is, you know, it's very simple to see what you want to say. Like, we're encouraged by this news, but we're not satisfied. We know that people are struggling. We want to do a lot more. Here's our plan.

Right. It's the same problem that Obama got himself into, like overly celebratory of a very anemic recovery that people just really weren't feeling. And as we've said in the past, if he had like an actually good candidate that he was up against rather than like the epitome of plutocracy, Mitt Romney,

he was very vulnerable to being defeated. You know, specifically because of that, people don't expect you to fix everything immediately, but they do expect you to sort of understand the problem, empathize with it, especially Joe Biden. One of the qualities people always loved the most about him was his empathy for blue collar and working class people. The big question for me, and I think what will be most significant for how things play out moving forward, is how the Fed interprets this status.

Yes, that's all that matters, right. You have a few contradictory things. You had a jobs report, which came in higher than expected, 528,000 jobs added. That number came out last week. Unemployment rate falls to 3.5%. And you had weirdos like Jason Furman, who was an Obama economist, being like, this is uncomfortably hot, as if it's a bad thing when we add jobs and the unemployment rate goes down.

But those are the sort of numbers that the Fed, thinking about this as they do in this sort of sociopathic way of we've got to make people pay and we've got to slow down the economy and we need to hike up the unemployment rate. Like Larry Summers said, we need to have 10 percent unemployment for a year, may look at that and say we've got to continue the course, the dose of tough medicine, hiking rates at this extraordinarily fast rate to get things under control because it's not working yet. You aren't suffering enough yet. So it's not working yet. Not to say you're not suffering, but you're not suffering, according to them, enough. Now you have this other, actually, two counter indicators came in. You also had a projection of what consumers think inflation is going to be that came in under expectations. So that was another thing arguing against the Fed continuing to hike rates at the pace that they've been doing. And then now you have this inflation

report, which also came in lower than expected and with the 0% increase for the past month. So my plea to the Fed is, guys, slow down. It know, it looks like inflation is headed in the right direction. Of course, it continues to be a mixed bag. But don't send us into a recession and make people pay even more. So not only do you have, you know, high grocery bills and high gas pump bills, but you also then lose your job. There's no need to do that. Slow your roll and let's see where things ultimately go, because at least these are some positive indications that things are headed in the

right direction and they could make things so much worse if they go too far too fast. This is an iHeart Podcast.