Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 2: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an.
Speaker 2: Amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal boy.
Speaker 3: Oh boy?
Speaker 4: A lot going on this week.
Speaker 1: We've got updates coming for you out of California, flooding, earthquake.
Speaker 1: No one saw any of that coming, so we will
Speaker 1: bring you the latest there. We also have a debate
Speaker 1: this week, debate without the Republican front. Trump he's officially
Speaker 1: said now he is not going to participate in any
Speaker 1: of the debates.
Speaker 4: We'll get to all of that.
Speaker 1: We've also got some updates now coming out of Hawaii,
Speaker 1: some backstory about some of the dramatic failures that led
Speaker 1: to the absolute catastrophe there, so we will break that
Speaker 1: down for you as well. It's some pretty fascinating polling
Speaker 1: coming out just this morning about how Republican voters are
Speaker 1: feeling about the primary field and how likely things are
Speaker 1: to change between now and the start of the Iowa Caucuses.
Speaker 1: We've also got some backstory now with regard to Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden and the Plea deal that fell apart, how that
Speaker 1: all happened, and a pretty dire prediction I guess from
Speaker 1: Michael Berry. He was one of the people who called
Speaker 1: the financial crisis in two thousand and eight correctly made
Speaker 1: a ton of money off of it. He has just
Speaker 1: placed a massive bet against the US economy, So break.
Speaker 4: That down for you.
Speaker 1: But before we get to any of that, you know,
Speaker 1: we really want to thank all of the Premium subscribers
Speaker 1: who make all of this happen. We were up late
Speaker 1: last night making sure we could track what's going on
Speaker 1: with this tropical storm Hillary in California. We've also got
Speaker 1: some special debate coverage plan for you guys this week.
Speaker 1: So all of that is made possible by your support.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. You know, we have to scramble or
Speaker 3: late night.
Speaker 2: I know we have a big audience out in California
Speaker 2: and we often find crystal that California is very neglected
Speaker 2: by the East Coast based medius, so.
Speaker 3: We want to do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's definitely a cohost biased.
Speaker 2: We would want to try and represent you guys all
Speaker 2: who are out there. I believe actually California out of here.
Speaker 2: I mean, it makes sense, biggest population, but in terms
Speaker 2: of people who watch and who listen to the show. Also,
Speaker 2: you know, as you said, for our debate coverage, we're
Speaker 2: going to have a debate special. It will drop early
Speaker 2: for premium subscribers and then it will premiere to the
Speaker 2: general public several hours later. So if you want to
Speaker 2: go ahead we want to get access to that stuff,
Speaker 2: you can go sign up Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: We love you guys. But let's get to the storm.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, so I'm taking a look at weather dot
Speaker 1: com this morning. Their headline is flooding and mudslides Strand,
Speaker 1: California residence. That is after what is now tropical storm
Speaker 1: Hillary made a landfall there yesterday afternoon. And right about
Speaker 1: the time that Hillary made landfall, we actually had an
Speaker 1: earthquake also in southern California. Go ahead and put this
Speaker 1: off on the screen. We've got a little bit of
Speaker 1: video here so you can see the shaking. This was
Speaker 1: a magnitude five point one that's considered a moderate earthquake,
Speaker 1: and there's no significant reported damage from that. But that
Speaker 1: was just the beginning of things that Hillary came ashore
Speaker 1: and really lashed that area with high winds and also
Speaker 1: in particular massive rainfall. We can put up on the
Speaker 1: screen some of the flooding. It seems like Palm Springs
Speaker 1: was particularly hard hit. I think these videos we are
Speaker 1: showing you are out of that area. You can see
Speaker 1: this is what they call a debris plug coming through
Speaker 1: one of the waterways here. And the rain continues into today.
Speaker 1: So there are concerns that, in addition to the significant
Speaker 1: flooding they see on the streets and places like La
Speaker 1: Palm Springs, even now moving into Las Vegas, Nevada, that
Speaker 1: as that rain continues, you could have additional flooding, especially
Speaker 1: as it sort of runs off down the mountains, fills
Speaker 1: up the waterways and continues. So that's what things look
Speaker 1: like in California, and we'll make sure to you know,
Speaker 1: continue to watch it forevery yeah.
Speaker 3: So everybody watch out.
Speaker 2: Flash flood warning still in all of southern California and
Speaker 2: continuing in Nevada with the heavy rainfall, I think, what
Speaker 2: was it. It's like the amount of rain that they
Speaker 2: will sometimes get in an entire year that fell in
Speaker 2: a single day, which yeah, crazy.
Speaker 1: So in Palm Springs in particular, which, like I said,
Speaker 1: I think was kind of hardest hit in terms of
Speaker 1: the US side. Baja Peninsula was also hit very hard.
Speaker 1: They got as much rain as they typically get in
Speaker 1: six months they got in one day.
Speaker 4: La. I'm looking at the numbers now.
Speaker 1: They picked up two point three eight inches of rain
Speaker 1: just yesterday. Typically in August they average zero inches of rain,
Speaker 1: so massive increase. And you know in the desert areas,
Speaker 1: they you know, aren't used to getting this kind of rainfall,
Speaker 1: and so it can lead to really significant flooding that
Speaker 1: causes a lot of problems for people. The other thing
Speaker 1: about this is just how remarkably unusual it is. This
Speaker 1: is the first time you've had a tropical storm make
Speaker 1: landfall and hit California in I think it's twenty six years,
Speaker 1: So highly unusual, you know, partly because my understanding is
Speaker 1: because the ocean is cooler, you're just less likely to
Speaker 1: get these type of formations out west than you are
Speaker 1: on the Atlantic coast. So By the way, there are
Speaker 1: also a lot of disturbances in the Atlantic right now
Speaker 1: that they're tracking that could be turning into tropical storms
Speaker 1: or hurricanes, so, you know, hurricane season just getting started here.
Speaker 1: So far, we haven't had any reports of deaths. We
Speaker 1: did have a number of rescues in and around San
Speaker 1: Diego people who were stranded in the in the water
Speaker 1: in flooded areas. So make sure if you guys are
Speaker 1: out west, stay home, don't go out driving.
Speaker 4: I saw some.
Speaker 1: Crazy videos of people driving in the stuff. I never
Speaker 1: water up to the you know, up to the engine
Speaker 1: level in the car. Not a great idea, but so far,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody seems to be maintaining pretty well.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Hopefully everybody stay safe out there. I know it's a
Speaker 2: big thing out there in California. We're thinking about you
Speaker 2: and we will continue to track it on your behalf.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get to the big story of
Speaker 1: the week, which is Wednesday night there will be hosted
Speaker 1: by Fox News the very first Republican primary debate.
Speaker 4: However, we just got official word.
Speaker 1: Not that this will be that much of a surprise,
Speaker 1: but the front runner, the overwhelming front runner in that contest,
Speaker 1: will not be participating. Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: True social from former President Trump. He says new CBS
Speaker 1: poll just down has me leading the field by legendary
Speaker 1: in quotes numbers, Trump sixty two percent, forty six points
Speaker 1: above the sanctimonius.
Speaker 4: Who is crashing like an ailing bird.
Speaker 1: Ramaswami seven, Pence five, Scott three, Hailey two, sloppy, Chris
Speaker 1: Christy two, Ada Hutchinson one. The public knows who I
Speaker 1: am and what a successful presidency I had, with energy independent,
Speaker 1: strong borders of military, biggest ever at tax and regulation cuts,
Speaker 1: no inflation, strongest economy in history, and much more. I
Speaker 1: will therefore not be doing the debates. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of noteworthies. He's not just ruling out this debate. He's
Speaker 1: also like, I'm not going to do any of the
Speaker 1: debates now. Of course, this is a man who can
Speaker 1: very much change his minds.
Speaker 3: He could change his mind anytime he wants.
Speaker 2: We should say, though, that because he has said he
Speaker 2: won't sign the Loyalty Pledge, it does come down to like, well,
Speaker 2: will he because if he doesn't, then legally or not legally,
Speaker 2: according to the rules of the RNC then he won't
Speaker 2: be able to participate. And at the same time, Crystal,
Speaker 2: he's planning the counter programming, not only participating in the debate,
Speaker 2: but something that he often did while he was the president.
Speaker 2: People will recall Trump's feud, of course, with a White
Speaker 2: House Correspondence dinner, which he shunned his entirety of the time,
Speaker 2: and he would often plan rallies on the very same
Speaker 2: nights as the White House Correspondent dinner to particularly stick
Speaker 2: it to the press because it meant some people couldn't
Speaker 2: attend and they had to cover the rally instead. He's
Speaker 2: doing the same thing here. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. He's planning to skip
Speaker 2: the debate actually for an interview with Tucker Carlson, and
Speaker 2: that interview will air at the exact same time as
Speaker 2: the debate on x I Guess formerly known as Twitter.
Speaker 2: I hate that I have to say that now, but
Speaker 2: it is what it is. Clearly, it's a snub intended
Speaker 2: on Tucker's behalf at his former employer, and it's one
Speaker 2: of those where counterprogramming and truly, like you have to
Speaker 2: imagine that he's not an idiot, he's a showman. He's
Speaker 2: going to say something he knows is going to gain
Speaker 2: some like actual press attention, and any press attention that
Speaker 2: happens during the debate which is not debate related, that's
Speaker 2: bad for the debate, that's bad for ratings on Twitter,
Speaker 2: especially where all the political journalists are going to be.
Speaker 2: If he says something which is more newsworthy than what's
Speaker 2: going on in the debate, well we all know what's
Speaker 2: going to actually get the coverage the next day, split
Speaker 2: screen or even split headlines or any of that. That's
Speaker 2: exactly what Trump wants and it's probably what he's going
Speaker 2: to get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's a super fu to Fox News.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like not only because remember Fox News is
Speaker 1: hosting this debate, so not only are you not going
Speaker 1: to the debate that they begged him to go. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of reporting about the charm offensive,
Speaker 1: every executive under the sun flying out to wherever Trump
Speaker 1: was to try to cajole him into going. There's an
Speaker 1: anecdote about he was at dinner with one Fox personality.
Speaker 1: It gets a call from Behar and he's holding up
Speaker 1: his phone to all the other dinner people showing them
Speaker 1: that oh Brett bher is calling, And I mean I
Speaker 1: think he more or less decided a while ago that
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to do this. This is something we've
Speaker 1: been talking about for we haven't expected him to do
Speaker 1: it for months at this point. But you know, he
Speaker 1: liked to dangle the possibility to keep all of these
Speaker 1: people kissing the ring and begging him to come, because
Speaker 1: he enjoys, you know, he enjoys the suspense. He enjoys
Speaker 1: stringing people along like that. So that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1: But you know, in the end, basically he decided, I
Speaker 1: don't need to debate, and there's more risk for me
Speaker 1: to be on that stage.
Speaker 4: Especially in particular.
Speaker 1: I guess he was a little concerned about Chris Christy
Speaker 1: because he is an effective debater and you know, might
Speaker 1: be able to land some blows and it just creates
Speaker 1: risk that he didn't want to have to deal with now.
Speaker 1: So in terms of the strategy, I guess I understand it.
Speaker 1: In terms of democracy, obviously, that's horrific. I think that
Speaker 1: everyone should be required to debate, not just at the
Speaker 1: presidential level, but any you know, serious candidate in any
Speaker 1: race should have to go in front of the American
Speaker 1: people have their ideas tested, be challenged by their adversaries,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So the fact that we have, you know,
Speaker 1: in the Republican primary and on the Democratic primary, basically
Speaker 1: the two front runners just saying no, we're not going
Speaker 1: to participate is really quite sad and disgraceful. One thing
Speaker 1: I will say is, you know it is there does
Speaker 1: there is a risk created for Trump by not participating
Speaker 1: in these debates because listen, he's going to do an
Speaker 1: interview with Tucker Apparently he's already recorded the interview with
Speaker 1: Tucker Soccer and that's.
Speaker 4: Going to go up on X.
Speaker 1: Well, most Americans are not on trax formerly Twitter, and
Speaker 1: so how wide ranging is that going to be? Debates
Speaker 1: are new and interesting and dynamic in that you know,
Speaker 1: you've never had this group of people on stage before.
Speaker 1: You want to see what happens. There's controversy, there's conflict,
Speaker 1: and people are inherently interested in that sort of conflict.
Speaker 1: And so he's doing something that he normally really doesn't do,
Speaker 1: which is giving others the chance to grab the spotlight.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, it does create some risk for him.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I understand the strategy. It's probably the
Speaker 1: correct strategy, even though I find it kind of loathsome,
Speaker 1: but we shouldn't deny the fact that he does create
Speaker 1: a little bit of risk here for someone else to
Speaker 1: grab attention and have a little bit of a bunk
Speaker 1: coming out of this debate.
Speaker 3: No question about it. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Actually, that's the point that Fox newsmade whenever they're begging
Speaker 2: him to come on the debate.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: I just don't see Donald Trump sitting at home watching
Speaker 5: along with forty or fifty.
Speaker 6: Million other Americans when he sees Ron DeSantis in that
Speaker 6: Center Square.
Speaker 3: That would absolutely drive him crazy. Well, and don't you
Speaker 3: want him to do it?
Speaker 7: Because I really am angry at everything that he feels
Speaker 7: this administration of the Democrats the dj have.
Speaker 3: Put him through.
Speaker 7: But don't take it out on the Republicans, because Republicans
Speaker 7: want to see him up on stage, and don't take
Speaker 7: the voters for granted. Yes, he is ahead by a lot,
Speaker 7: but to see him up there on the stage would
Speaker 7: just be wonderful because we want to see how they interact,
Speaker 7: we want to hear their policies.
Speaker 2: That's how he became dom the time he made it entertaining,
Speaker 2: he made it entertaining. Look, obviously, you know that's not
Speaker 2: real and honest analysis, but that doesn't make it not true.
Speaker 2: It is true. I think what they're saying. I think
Speaker 2: you're right. But unfortunately, given his star power. We're going
Speaker 2: to talk about a poll later on which shows who
Speaker 2: Republicans trust plot twist Trump number one, well above conservative
Speaker 2: media and Fox News.
Speaker 3: He can get away with it. The man just has
Speaker 3: more leeway than anybody else.
Speaker 2: I don't think it should be this way, and in fact,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about it.
Speaker 2: Instead of a loyalty pledge, I think that once we
Speaker 2: are finally rid of Trump, both parties should change their
Speaker 2: bylaws such that you cannot be the nominee of the
Speaker 2: Democrats or the Republicans and refuse to participate in sanction debates.
Speaker 2: You have to participate in said debate if you want
Speaker 2: to eventually become the nominee of your party.
Speaker 3: And these debates are good.
Speaker 2: You know Obama, I think he debated Hillary almost nineteen times,
Speaker 2: even did debates against Hillary after he was the presumptive
Speaker 2: nominee and going on, and you know what, a lot
Speaker 2: of clips of him saying things he was going to
Speaker 2: do during those times it didn't end up being true.
Speaker 2: They were very valuable. Yeah, in holding into account. You're like,
Speaker 2: you said you're going to tear up NAFT on day one.
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 2: You said you're going to do X about Iran, you
Speaker 2: said you're going to do X about a rack, you
Speaker 2: said you're going to do X about Afghanistan. Why did
Speaker 2: you change your mind? That was very, very valuable to
Speaker 2: the public. These primary debates are not a joke. It's
Speaker 2: very unfortunate. I think they won't be doing it.
Speaker 1: They're valuable to activists too, because if you make a
Speaker 1: concrete pledge on that debate stage under pressure for old
Speaker 1: terrilinary opponents or from the moderators or whatever, that can
Speaker 1: be real leverage in terms of shaming a politician into
Speaker 1: doing the thing that they really startly pledge and promised
Speaker 1: that they would do.
Speaker 4: So one hundred percent, it's valuable.
Speaker 1: You never know in a live fire exercise like that,
Speaker 1: what is going to come out, what's going to be revealed,
Speaker 1: what sort of pledges are going to be made that
Speaker 1: you can hold people to, So it is incredibly important.
Speaker 1: I don't have any expectation that the parties will require
Speaker 1: that because that would sort of tie their hands. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly the Democratic Party has no interest in demand President
Speaker 1: Biden debate. The DNC explicitly didn't even set up debates
Speaker 1: for this time around, So, you know, to be clear
Speaker 1: about how much hope we have for all of this.
Speaker 1: But you know, the Fox and Friends clips really just
Speaker 1: shows all of the levels that the Murdoch Empire was,
Speaker 1: all of the firepower they were training on drum to
Speaker 1: try to cajole him into going to these debates, but
Speaker 1: he has no intention of doing it. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put this next piece up on the screen. From Trump
Speaker 1: going after Fox, He says, why doesn't Fox and Friend
Speaker 1: show all of the polls where I'm beating Biden by
Speaker 1: a lot?
Speaker 4: They just won't do it.
Speaker 1: Also, they purposely show the absolute worst pictures of me,
Speaker 1: especially the big orange one with my.
Speaker 4: Chin pulled way back.
Speaker 1: They think they are getting away with something they're not,
Speaker 1: just like twenty sixteen all over again, and then they
Speaker 1: want me to debate. So this is part of a
Speaker 1: sort of escalating war that has been going on between
Speaker 1: Trump and Fox News and the Murdoch Empire. Trump apparently
Speaker 1: privately expressing a lot of upset with Rupert Murdoch. Of course,
Speaker 1: that the head of that whole media conglomerate, and Murdoch
Speaker 1: has really been a little bit all over the place.
Speaker 1: I mean, he clearly wants to be rid of Trump.
Speaker 4: Number one.
Speaker 1: He initially had back to run DeSantis and explicitly told
Speaker 1: Dedasantis that he would and his empire would be behind him.
Speaker 1: They ran all kinds of glowing puff pieces, et cetera.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the base and the Fox News
Speaker 1: viewership still much of it very much in Trump's camp,
Speaker 1: so you still have a lot of funning Trump coverage
Speaker 1: on the network.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: The latest twist is with DeSantis falling off in the polls,
Speaker 1: as Trump put it, like an ailing bird. Apparently, Murdoch
Speaker 1: is shopping around the latest person that has caught the
Speaker 1: fancy of not only Rupert Murdoch, but a bunch of donors.
Speaker 1: Are living in this delusional world where Glenn Youngkin put
Speaker 1: us up on the screen, could be the Trump killer.
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch has apparently urged Youngkin to run for president
Speaker 1: against Trump. They say that he asked him to make
Speaker 1: a presidential run in at least two meetings several months.
Speaker 1: Ghost Or was a familiar with the matter, he told
Speaker 1: the Post. And there's other reporting about how sort of
Speaker 1: high level Republican donors who are upset with DeSantis and
Speaker 1: not impressed with his campaign they see young Kin as.
Speaker 4: Sort of like a lost ditch effort.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I don't see that.
Speaker 3: One working totally.
Speaker 2: Everyone will be happy to know the Governor of Virginia
Speaker 2: actually was in Nantucket yesterday on that island in Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: had a meet and greet with billionaires at the House
Speaker 2: of Putnam Investments, Bob Reynolds. The guests also included Steve
Speaker 2: Schwartzman of Blackstone fame, who has yet to commit to
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty four can just to give people a night,
Speaker 2: lovely c who is actually gathering around Glenn Youngen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know why these people have any delusion as
Speaker 2: to how their money matters at all right now in
Speaker 2: this race, Veak has plenty of money, Doug Bergham's got
Speaker 2: plenty of money. Desant has got more money than anybody else.
Speaker 2: They backed up behind him, and you know, he only
Speaker 2: continues to go down overall in Pulse. It's not the
Speaker 2: Canada guys, or at least as Canada that you're backing
Speaker 2: it's the one who's at the top who you don't.
Speaker 1: Like, and the money ain't the problem getting you know,
Speaker 1: another name, and this race, Republican voters already have plenty
Speaker 1: of not Donald Trump options, and you could see who
Speaker 1: they're sticking with.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, they never seem to learn over there,
Speaker 2: but it is what it is. They can light their
Speaker 2: money on fire.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next one here about Hawaii and Maui.
Speaker 2: This is something we were tracking closely about the actual
Speaker 2: response to the disaster, and there's actually been a pretty
Speaker 2: major development after an outcry in Hawaii or a very
Speaker 2: controversial decision. Let's go and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. The head of Maui Emergency Services has resigned
Speaker 2: after facing criticism for not activating sirens during the fire.
Speaker 2: So I want to try and be fair to the guy.
Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about it in our last show.
Speaker 2: The reason why they said, Crystal that they had not
Speaker 2: sounded the sirens and instead tried to contact people via
Speaker 2: the emergency tech system was because they were saying the
Speaker 2: islanders had been taught to go and run towards the
Speaker 2: mountains in the event of tsunami, which is traditionally what
Speaker 2: the siren had been used for, and since that's where
Speaker 2: the fire was, they didn't want them to go in
Speaker 2: that direction now there though, at the same time, a
Speaker 2: lot of people were saying that because many of the
Speaker 2: other critical emergency systems failed, by failing to pull out
Speaker 2: all the stops, it shows that you were more concerned
Speaker 2: with not throwing everything possible at the problem to alert
Speaker 2: everyone that an imminent disaster was coming. That you basically
Speaker 2: did that, and now you're coming up with said explanation afterwards,
Speaker 2: the resignation following actually the resignation after that press conference,
Speaker 2: which was a very contentious press conference actually where the
Speaker 2: Emergency Service chief gave this announcement, I think does show
Speaker 2: you how much actual anger there is not in the
Speaker 2: rest of the country, but on the island itself. Currently,
Speaker 2: the Attorney General even says that they are going to
Speaker 2: conduct an independent review of the government response and an
Speaker 2: actual investigation as to how this entire disaster unfolded. But
Speaker 2: this has become a focal point of outcry of people like, well,
Speaker 2: at least you didn't even try, you know, to give
Speaker 2: people a heads up, and when we're talking about a
Speaker 2: death toll potentially in the hundreds. We still don't know
Speaker 2: yet what the actual death toll is, yeah, on the island,
Speaker 2: but you know it's a one hundred or so right now,
Speaker 2: but very very likely to be much higher than that,
Speaker 2: already one of the deadliest disasters. Well, in that situation,
Speaker 2: I think it's very very important in order to hold
Speaker 2: these people to account for what they did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And you know, anybody can look at a moment by
Speaker 1: moment decision and trying to figure out what the best
Speaker 1: course of action is, and perhaps the excuses given is reasonable.
Speaker 1: But in hindsight, given that you have so many residents
Speaker 1: who were saying, you know, I really had no idea
Speaker 1: how dire the circumstance was, and I really didn't have
Speaker 1: enough warning to figure out, you know, a plan and
Speaker 1: be able to really protect myself and my family, I
Speaker 1: think in hindsight you have to look and say, we
Speaker 1: probably made the wrong call given how devastating I mean,
Speaker 1: just to keep this in mind, guys, most devastating fire
Speaker 1: that we have had in over a century. So, you know,
Speaker 1: in one hundred years of preventative measures and understanding how
Speaker 1: to control wildfires and all of this development. You know,
Speaker 1: all of that seemed to go away in this situation
Speaker 1: where you had early warning system that wasn't sounded, you
Speaker 1: had inadequate water to fight the fire. And now there
Speaker 1: continued to be a lot of complaints from residents and
Speaker 1: increasing by the way mainstream reporting about how slow the
Speaker 1: government response has been at all levels. And that's why
Speaker 1: we still don't have anywhere close to an accurate death
Speaker 1: count from just this horrific, tragic situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even right now there's no scrutiny again on
Speaker 2: Hawaii Electric grid, which appears to be the source of
Speaker 2: the fire itself. Let's go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen, and this just gets you know, to
Speaker 2: even more of actual questions. Hawaiian Electric, the power utility
Speaker 2: in charge here, has been worn now for years that
Speaker 2: not only was extreme weather becoming a bigger problem, but
Speaker 2: that the company did not have enough equipment or emergency
Speaker 2: plans to prepare for sparking a wildfire. And the thing
Speaker 2: is is that the closest state, California, California public utilities
Speaker 2: have had to pay billions of dollars in fire damages
Speaker 2: to residents for things that their power lines down, power
Speaker 2: lines and failed safety maneuvers that they didn't look into
Speaker 2: that eventually went on to either kill people or to
Speaker 2: damage property.
Speaker 3: They were warned about it.
Speaker 2: They had an independent review in twenty eighteen which said
Speaker 2: this is a serious problem. They'd seen similar instances in
Speaker 2: the nearest state. They didn't do anything about it. Apparently
Speaker 2: they didn't have a highly reinforced system. There had been
Speaker 2: no hardening of their power lines that made them vulnerable
Speaker 2: to falling into sparking fires. Similarly, they were even aware
Speaker 2: Crystal about dried vegetation which was increasingly growing around said
Speaker 2: power lines, which is what made the wildfire spark so quickly.
Speaker 2: That all of this again comes back to everyone knew
Speaker 2: that this was going to be a problem. It's in
Speaker 2: retrospecting to be like there's warning, warning, warning, you have
Speaker 2: near you know, the near near state, same problem. But
Speaker 2: it's theseies like power utility monopolies, which are effectively accountable
Speaker 2: to no one. You know, let's not lie like these
Speaker 2: things are often rife with corruption and incompetence. You put
Speaker 2: those two things together and I have this horrible and
Speaker 2: deadly wildfire.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: No one wanted to pay for that grid yade is
Speaker 1: to be made, even though this exact scenario was envisioned
Speaker 1: and they were warning about it back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen. Okay, let me just read you this piece.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, the Maui County government warned of the
Speaker 1: potential that above ground power lines that fail short or
Speaker 1: our low hanging can cause fire ignition sparks that could
Speaker 1: start a wildfire, particularly in windy or stormy conditions. That
Speaker 1: appears to have been exactly exactly what happened here. There
Speaker 1: was one hundred and ninety million dollar proposal from Hawaiian
Speaker 1: Electric to improve their grid. It would have, among other things,
Speaker 1: replaced aging power poles with new ones, including eighty in Maui.
Speaker 1: Energy experts had many of the company's poles were probably
Speaker 1: not strong enough to withstand winds that hit Lahina. So
Speaker 1: you couple aging poles not ready for the strength of
Speaker 1: winds that were coming whipping through Lahina with this dried
Speaker 1: in vegetation around the electric lines, these invasive grasses. You
Speaker 1: had a long standing drought that created these dry conditions
Speaker 1: and it ended in a complete disaster. Another thing that
Speaker 1: they had that they had been warned about is they
Speaker 1: needed to establish a power shutof plan, which is something
Speaker 1: that they have implemented in California, so that when you
Speaker 1: have these incredibly dangerous situations that are known to cause
Speaker 1: potential wildfires, you can shut down the power and have
Speaker 1: a backup plan in place to run things that are essential,
Speaker 1: for example, the water pumps to make sure that they're
Speaker 1: still able to fight the fires, using the water generators
Speaker 1: to make sure that hospitals are going to be okay,
Speaker 1: and people who need the electricity literally to live are
Speaker 1: going to be all right. If you have a plan
Speaker 1: in place, then when those high winds went through that
Speaker 1: you know can cause these kinds of problems, you can
Speaker 1: be safe and shut these things down. They did not
Speaker 1: put that sort of plan into place, and so now
Speaker 1: we have disaster.
Speaker 4: I want to show you guys.
Speaker 1: Listen, this is early days in terms of investigating exactly
Speaker 1: what sparked these wildfires. But there's a video that's circulating
Speaker 1: and that news media have picked up on that may
Speaker 1: show exactly where this fire started. It's exactly what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, a down power line catching invasive dry
Speaker 1: grasses on fire, which then spread quickly. This is before guys,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at that video.
Speaker 8: Breaking power line just went down. Try them a little
Speaker 8: water holes, see them right dead. I saw power line
Speaker 8: that started started from up the road there and all
Speaker 8: of that. It's still Bernie speak.
Speaker 3: It heads up.
Speaker 4: The line is live down the ground right there.
Speaker 3: I send my family away ready, thank you. It's super crazy.
Speaker 8: And then on the other hand, it's like, maybe it'll
Speaker 8: be closure.
Speaker 4: So that video is recorded.
Speaker 1: It was later in the day that the wildfire really
Speaker 1: spread on a control so possibly possibly that way.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't look at the video and say
Speaker 2: it didn't say it. You know they didn't contribute. Contributed
Speaker 2: for real, you know who knows. We'll look into it
Speaker 2: obviously and will continue to follow. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: you saw that guy with his hoe is trying to
Speaker 2: protect his house. This has become another so as of condendtional,
Speaker 2: let's put this up there. A lot of scrutiny right
Speaker 2: now on Maui and on West Maui, in particular over
Speaker 2: their Emergency Management Department and the Department of Natural Resources,
Speaker 2: who refused to release water immediately requested by landowners who
Speaker 2: wanted to protect their property from the fires. There was
Speaker 2: a standoff. He said he needed to go and check
Speaker 2: with his bosses. There was like a whole procedure that
Speaker 2: he was trying to follow in terms of you got
Speaker 2: to talk to the people who were in charge of
Speaker 2: the farms and the people who were owning the company property. Eventually,
Speaker 2: Crystal the water was released to the landowners, but by
Speaker 2: the time it was fires were already basically rampant, and
Speaker 2: you know, the ability in order to immediately damp in
Speaker 2: the area around you. Many of the people are on
Speaker 2: the island are furious about the conflict on the water
Speaker 2: management because they say that they could have saved either
Speaker 2: their farms or their property should that have happened.
Speaker 3: It's not just about property.
Speaker 2: I mean people you know, died in this fire, and
Speaker 2: it's you know, people died, they lost their lives, and
Speaker 2: then we have hundreds of billions of dollars of damage here.
Speaker 2: And now there's a whole question of obviously what we're
Speaker 2: talking about in terms of.
Speaker 3: Land development use.
Speaker 2: The States says they're going to buy it, are they
Speaker 2: actually going to buy it for the residents?
Speaker 3: These snaking real estate developers are already moving in on this.
Speaker 2: So this whole thing, it's far away, and so you know,
Speaker 2: like we talked about earlier on our show The East Coast.
Speaker 2: They're aware of what's going on, but they're not tracking
Speaker 2: and following the developments closely as if it were to
Speaker 2: happen in Boston or Washington and New.
Speaker 3: York or something like this.
Speaker 2: But this is a real scandal, I think when you
Speaker 2: really look at the multi tiered response to this, the.
Speaker 1: Water piece is really complex and really like devastating. And
Speaker 1: because there have been long standing ideological divisions on Maui,
Speaker 1: as I mean, this is similar to the sort of
Speaker 1: disputes that you see in the western US about who
Speaker 1: has the right to the water and how is it distributed,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so the question here is did ideology
Speaker 1: get in the way of in these past power struggles
Speaker 1: over who owns the water and who has a right
Speaker 1: to it? Did that get in the way of an
Speaker 1: effective fire response? That is the allegation from a lot
Speaker 1: of people. And then the last thing to mention is
Speaker 1: that President Biden is actually taking break from his vacation
Speaker 1: to fly into Hawaii today to survey the damage. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure he's gonna if he gets any
Speaker 1: residents near him that have a chance to give him
Speaker 1: an earful about how they feel about the response so far.
Speaker 4: I'm sure he's going to hope quite.
Speaker 1: A bit about the lack of visible federal coverment response.
Speaker 2: Thank you, mister President, for taking a break from staying
Speaker 2: at billionaire Tom Sneyer's house, of which he claims he's
Speaker 2: renting for fair market value, which is great in Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 2: Thank you for taking a break during that second vacation
Speaker 2: actually this month in order to visit Hawaii after you
Speaker 2: originally said no comment. That's the American leadership that Americans
Speaker 2: have come to expect.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, shamed him into doing it, so glad
Speaker 1: that hope he there. All right, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what is going on in the Republican primary,
Speaker 1: because we have some really fascinating numbers out for you
Speaker 1: this morning.
Speaker 4: That give you a real state of the Republican base.
Speaker 1: Let's start with this CBS News poll and these are
Speaker 1: just the top line numbers. This is actually the poll
Speaker 1: that Trump was referencing and his truth about how he's
Speaker 1: not going to participate in any of the debates going
Speaker 1: and put the top line up on the screen. Here
Speaker 1: you can see Trump really running away from it, away
Speaker 1: with it in terms of the CBS News you Gov poll,
Speaker 1: he's at sixty two. Second way down the line is
Speaker 1: Rond de Santis sixteen percent. Next, you've got veg Gramaswami
Speaker 1: at seven, Pence at five, Scott at three, Haley two,
Speaker 1: Christy two, Doug burghm Ie, Asa Hutchinson not eight. Now
Speaker 1: I've had it in my head that his name is Ada.
Speaker 1: It is not Ada, it is Asa at one percent.
Speaker 1: But perhaps even more fascinating were some of the details
Speaker 1: contained within this poll. Put this next piece up on
Speaker 1: the screen. They asked what was actually a very interesting question,
Speaker 1: which of these individuals or institutions do you feel our
Speaker 1: telling you the truth? So feel what they tell you
Speaker 1: is true? Seventy one percent of Trump voters say they
Speaker 1: think that Trump is telling you the truth. Down the
Speaker 1: next highest level, so lower than Trump, sixty three percent
Speaker 1: said friends and family, only fifty six percent said conservative
Speaker 1: media figures. Maybe even the most wild here religious leaders
Speaker 1: only forty two percent. So again, this is among Trump voters,
Speaker 1: the person who they most feel is telling them the truth,
Speaker 1: above friends and family, above like conservative media hosts, Fox
Speaker 1: News whoever, and above their religious leaders. They think that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is telling them the truth soccer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a line from a book called The Loudist
Speaker 2: Voice in the Room. It's a biography of Roger Ayle's
Speaker 2: and there's a very famous one that I always think
Speaker 2: about in terms of the news business. And Ales apparently
Speaker 2: was they were debating something about being informed informing the audience,
Speaker 2: and Ales looked at everybody. He said, people don't want
Speaker 2: to be informed, they want to feel informed. And I think,
Speaker 2: wowout that every single time that I see stuff like.
Speaker 4: That sounds like Logan Roy.
Speaker 3: Well it was based.
Speaker 2: Reason Sales was in many ways is a much more
Speaker 2: interesting character, I think than Logan roy But you know,
Speaker 2: feeling like what they tell you is true. This is
Speaker 2: the story about the downstream destruction of norms and of
Speaker 2: faith in institutions. And I'm not going to blame their
Speaker 2: voters themselves. I think it is up because of the
Speaker 2: lack of trust in religious leaders and in conservative media figures.
Speaker 2: The fact that they are willing to place so much
Speaker 2: truth in emphasis inside of Trump shows you that they
Speaker 2: have no trust in the mainstream media, no trust in
Speaker 2: their government, even the friends and family number. They're willing
Speaker 2: to put so much of their faith, their interest and
Speaker 2: and look at the truthfulness of what Trump says because
Speaker 2: they literally have such low levels of social trust with
Speaker 2: the people around them and with overall society. Now, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of factors that go into that, but I'm
Speaker 2: not in the blaming people business. I'm you know, in
Speaker 2: the business of being like, how to the hell does
Speaker 2: something like this happen? It's multi generational that we've gotten
Speaker 2: to this point. It's taking you know, economics is a
Speaker 2: huge part of it. Culture has a big part of
Speaker 2: it as well, media, centralization, monopoly, and there's so much
Speaker 2: I think really that goes into this. But this result,
Speaker 2: like this is the central problem of our time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I don't think people.
Speaker 2: Democrats necessarily should feel all that much better. If you
Speaker 2: were to flip this around and be like MSNBC Friends
Speaker 2: and Family, then like government Trump or something like that,
Speaker 2: I guarantee you would have similar results. So it's bifurcated
Speaker 2: really in terms of like who you trust, who is
Speaker 2: telling you exactly what you want to hear.
Speaker 3: That's a big problem. Now. Luckily you and I.
Speaker 2: Have found success in not telling people necessarily what they
Speaker 2: want to hear.
Speaker 3: But you know, we're not under any.
Speaker 2: Illusion though that this is like a big, key, massive
Speaker 2: segment of the country. If anything, we are cutting very
Speaker 2: much against the grain. That's great that some people do
Speaker 2: want to feel challenge and all that, but the vast
Speaker 2: majority people don't. The vast majority of people want to
Speaker 2: feel comfortable and they want to hear exactly what they
Speaker 2: think being parroted right back to them.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think there's two things here.
Speaker 1: I think the factors that are ongoing multi decade that
Speaker 1: you know, justifiably broke a lot of trust and institutions,
Speaker 1: but also have really broken down social cohesion. That's how
Speaker 1: that friends and family number makes sense. Created an opening
Speaker 1: for an individual like Trump who steps in and you know,
Speaker 1: almost overtly says like I am the person who will
Speaker 1: tell you no one don't believe no one else right,
Speaker 1: and makes all of our politics, both on the Republican
Speaker 1: and the Democratic side, and independence really among everybody, makes
Speaker 1: all of our politics about how do you feel about
Speaker 1: this one individual? And you know, if you're a Trump supporter,
Speaker 1: if your friends and family aren't Trump supporters, then you know,
Speaker 1: whatever view of the world they have or whatever quote
Speaker 1: unquote facts they bring to the table, you are very
Speaker 1: likely to distrust he had. I don't think it's an
Speaker 1: accident that at a time when he is overtly at
Speaker 1: war with Fox News, which is the largest obviously conservative
Speaker 1: media outlet, that you would have some fading trust in
Speaker 1: that institution as well, because if they aren't backing up
Speaker 1: what Trump is saying, then they must not be telling
Speaker 1: the quote unquote truth.
Speaker 4: And same thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you've had a lot of religiously ers recently
Speaker 1: have come out against Trump who were trying to move
Speaker 1: people over to DeSantis or Tim Scott or whoever. That
Speaker 1: obviously is not working out either, But it really is
Speaker 1: a byproduct of someone who has whether this was like
Speaker 1: an avert tactical strategy or just you know, the outcome
Speaker 1: of him operating based on his id.
Speaker 4: He has made all of politics just about him, not.
Speaker 1: Policy, not the past, not history, not you know, any
Speaker 1: sort of like logical reasoning or facts, just.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about this individual?
Speaker 1: And so in that light of that context and the
Speaker 1: preparation over many decades to create that sort of opening
Speaker 1: for an individual come in and fill that void, I
Speaker 1: think that's how you make sense of these numbers.
Speaker 4: But yeah, is pretty wild.
Speaker 2: To see absolutely and that's how it manifests in the
Speaker 2: polls like put this one up there that we just
Speaker 2: came out this morning. I mean, how GOP views of
Speaker 2: Biden are helping Trump in the Republican primary. You pointed
Speaker 2: this out crystal from there, which is that one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that they think about electability and they think
Speaker 2: Trump is so electable is they literally don't believe any
Speaker 2: of the polls that say that people don't like Trump,
Speaker 2: and they think Biden is such a bumbling old, you know,
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's laiden fool that anybody could beat him. So to them,
Speaker 2: it's not competitive, and you know, I mean, there's something
Speaker 2: to that. There is also, though, the truth that they
Speaker 2: don't want to hear that a lot of people in
Speaker 2: this country not only don't like Trump, a lot of
Speaker 2: them hate Trump. And if you combine those two together,
Speaker 2: that's a pretty besizable portion of the population at the
Speaker 2: same time. And I will always be the person to
Speaker 2: add that caveat. It doesn't mean that a thousand of
Speaker 2: people aren't going to vote for him. He had a
Speaker 2: thirty percent approval rating in twenty twenty, and he won
Speaker 2: seventy something million votes and came within thirty forty thousand
Speaker 2: of actually winning the presidency. So don't ever count on
Speaker 2: not liking somebody, for that doesn't mean that you can't
Speaker 2: win in our system. It absolutely means that you can win.
Speaker 2: So I always have to add that caveat. But the
Speaker 2: electability piece of it shows you you have to understand
Speaker 2: the mind of who these people are, not even the
Speaker 2: media that they're consuming, because clearly they don't even trust
Speaker 2: you know, their own conservative media figures as much as
Speaker 2: they trust Trump. Trump is the one who is telling
Speaker 2: them Joe Biden is such a fool, anybody could beat him,
Speaker 2: and that's why you should pick me.
Speaker 1: Well, not only that, I mean there's an irony here too,
Speaker 1: because Fox News, led by Ruper Bernock, also obviously really
Speaker 1: wanted to move on from Trump. Yes, but they also
Speaker 1: have been leaning into this, you know, painting Biden as
Speaker 1: so frail and so weak that anyone could beat it, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, as you said, yeah, there is.
Speaker 4: Something too that I'm not saying he's a strong candadate.
Speaker 1: You got a majority of Democrats who were, like, we
Speaker 1: really like to move on from this. Dude, is approval
Speaker 1: rating is underwater, et cetera, et cetera. But they painted
Speaker 1: a picture that was so dire that people feel like, Eh,
Speaker 1: even if Trump is like facing all these indictments and
Speaker 1: potentially facing prison time, we think that literally anyone could
Speaker 1: beat Joe Biden. And so the concerns about electability, which
Speaker 1: did exist in larger numbers right after Republicans kind of
Speaker 1: crashed and burned in the midterms, those have wildly subsided.
Speaker 4: And actually the.
Speaker 1: Majority of Republican voters do think that Trump is the
Speaker 1: most electable candidate anyway. But you've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: quotes that are pretty interesting from Republican voters, I believe
Speaker 1: all of them.
Speaker 4: In Iowa.
Speaker 1: In that New York Times Peace, you have a woman
Speaker 1: who was waiting in line for a photo with Trump
Speaker 1: who said, I mean, I would hope anybody could beat
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. At this point, you got another person who said,
Speaker 1: of Joe Biden, he's a train wreck. He was considering
Speaker 1: whether to vote for Trump or assant is that individual?
Speaker 1: Another person said, what strength as a candidate does he have?
Speaker 1: Any about Joe Biden? Another individual said, it's just one
Speaker 1: gaff after another. So it reminds me a little bit
Speaker 1: of during the Obama era. You know, there was such
Speaker 1: a caricaturish view of Obama that was put for on
Speaker 1: conservative media, that Republican base voters really thought, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a toaster could beat him, and he retained some strength.
Speaker 1: I think he was a much stronger politician than Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: and certainly much more in the prime of his life
Speaker 1: than Joe Biden is now. But you know, they really
Speaker 1: were shocked when he was able to win reelection, and
Speaker 1: there was sort of, you know, total shock and horror
Speaker 1: that night as the voting results were coming in. And
Speaker 1: the caricature is a little more accurate with Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: because he really does have you know, he really is aging,
Speaker 1: he really does have these stumbles.
Speaker 4: He really is weak in a lot of regards. He
Speaker 4: really is that that old, and there are a lot of.
Speaker 1: Justified concerns about whether he could even make it through
Speaker 1: another four year term. But in the same respect, you know,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't fool yourself about how difficult it is to
Speaker 1: be any incumbent president and how you know, he has
Speaker 1: some strengths as a political candidate. Otherwise he would never
Speaker 1: have made it to be president of the United States
Speaker 1: in the first place. I mean, he has already beaten
Speaker 1: Donald Trump one time, so people should keep that in mind.
Speaker 3: Yep, you're absolutely right, Crystal, all right.
Speaker 1: In the same At the same time, we've got some
Speaker 1: comments from Ron DeSantis that have gotten a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: The Trump side is painting this as sort of like
Speaker 1: his Hillary Clinton deplorables moment. The Dessanta side is saying
Speaker 1: that his comments were taken out of context. So we
Speaker 1: want to play for you his comments more or less
Speaker 1: in full. There's no cuts, I mean in the middle,
Speaker 1: so you can get a sense of exactly what he
Speaker 1: was saying in this piece, and then we'll talk about
Speaker 1: it on the other side.
Speaker 4: Take listen.
Speaker 10: Yet, I think that we have a strand in our
Speaker 10: in our party that views supporting Trump as whether you
Speaker 10: are a rhino or not. And so you could be
Speaker 10: the most conservative person since sliced bread, unless you're kissing
Speaker 10: his rear end they will somehow call you a rhino.
Speaker 10: So it's been totally detached from principle in what you
Speaker 10: actually believe and results, and it's more about you know,
Speaker 10: just what faction you happen to do. So there'll be
Speaker 10: people who are huge Trump supporters, like in Congress, who
Speaker 10: have like incredibly liberal left wing records that that's really
Speaker 10: just atrocious, and yet they're viewed as by some of
Speaker 10: these folks as like as like really really good. Then
Speaker 10: you have other people, you know, like a Congressman Chip
Speaker 10: Roy who's endorsed me, Congressman Thomas Massey. These guys have
Speaker 10: records of principle fighting the swamp that are second to none,
Speaker 10: and yet they will be attacked by some of these
Speaker 10: people and called rhinos. So it's just been totally detached
Speaker 10: from any type of substance. And ultimately, a movement can't
Speaker 10: be about the personality of one individual. The movement has
Speaker 10: got to be about what are you trying to achieve
Speaker 10: on behalf of the American people, And that's got to
Speaker 10: be based in principle, because if you're not rooted in principle,
Speaker 10: if all we are is listless vessels that's just supposed
Speaker 10: to follow, you know, whatever happens to come down the
Speaker 10: pike on truth social every morning, that that's not going
Speaker 10: to be a durable movement.
Speaker 1: All right, So let me get you the Trump campaign response,
Speaker 1: and then Sarum particularly interested in your reaction to those
Speaker 1: comments that have been construed as him referring to Trump
Speaker 1: supporters as listless vessels. I personally think the context makes
Speaker 1: it a little unclear, So please referring anyway. Put the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign response up on the screen. They say, Ron
Speaker 1: de Santis must immediately apologize. Hillary Clinton Trump supporters are
Speaker 1: deplorable to Rhonda Santis. They are listless vessels. The truth
Speaker 1: is Trump supporters are patriots. Ronda Santis is showing his
Speaker 1: true colors. Pressure pulling in third place is getting to DeSantis,
Speaker 1: and now he's lashing out of the very same voters
Speaker 1: who got him elected. Governor DeSantis must immediately apologize for
Speaker 1: his disgraceful insult. This is per a spokeswoman for Make
Speaker 1: America Great Again.
Speaker 3: Ink.
Speaker 4: So what did you think of Santa's comments?
Speaker 3: I thought he was totally right.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's anything wrong about what he said
Speaker 2: in terms of winning, though you probably shouldn't say that.
Speaker 2: So it's one of those where analytically he's obviously right.
Speaker 2: And I think it's probably a frustration born of you
Speaker 2: are running the camp on paper, You're tecking all the
Speaker 2: you're ticking all the boxes.
Speaker 3: That these people say they want there.
Speaker 2: We want to challenge corporate power, we want this, we
Speaker 2: want that we want to use the power of the
Speaker 2: day to enforce our ends. We want somebody who can win,
Speaker 2: you know, somebody who's not in world and hunt. But
Speaker 2: the truth is you don't actually want any of that.
Speaker 2: And I think he's calling them out for basically lying
Speaker 2: about what they want. And I think it's true. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: if the vast majority of the people who are like, oh,
Speaker 2: I sport Trump because of his policies, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe if you're a small business owner. The rest of you,
Speaker 2: it's like, you just love that he pisses off the
Speaker 2: people that you hate. You can claim otherwise that's fine,
Speaker 2: it's your prerogative. But you know, based on everything that
Speaker 2: we've seen, if you really do care about quote unquote policy,
Speaker 2: it's pretty clear you would pick DeSantis. But nobody votes
Speaker 2: like that. It's like the Elizabeth Warren campaign back in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: She's like, I'm the one who's got a plan for that.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, just not really what people care about.
Speaker 2: It's about do I feel as if you're actually talking
Speaker 2: to my concerns. Trump is a master of that. He's
Speaker 2: the master of you know, the Roger Ailes quote I
Speaker 2: talked about previously about making people feel informed, making people
Speaker 2: feel heard. That's all that actually matters. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of politics, So it's not wrong. I mean,
Speaker 2: and I've always I've said this now for years. You
Speaker 2: can go and watch old monologues. I'm like, all MAGA
Speaker 2: means is Trump and that's it, and he's the one.
Speaker 2: And by the way, who are we to say otherwise
Speaker 2: it's not us. He invented it, and these people continue
Speaker 2: to vote for him. Who am I to be like, No,
Speaker 2: that's not actually what America for. I see people will
Speaker 2: talk about this all the time. That's not the real
Speaker 2: America first policy. I'm like, yeah, you know what, though,
Speaker 2: like he invented it, he gets to define it. The
Speaker 2: rest of us get to decide whether we agree or not,
Speaker 2: you know, in something. And ideological consistency is literally long
Speaker 2: not been any part of the Trump brand. That's how Yeah,
Speaker 2: Jim Jordan, who is pro Trump, and you a guy
Speaker 2: like Mac Gates's pro Trump. They don't agree on almost anything,
Speaker 2: you know, but they agree on one thing, which is
Speaker 2: Trump is the leader, and that's all you actually have
Speaker 2: to do agree on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Trump very successfully made the Republican Party
Speaker 1: all about where do you stand via vi Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: And that's why at the beginning of this primary, when
Speaker 1: there was a lot of Rondosanta's hype, I was highly
Speaker 1: skeptical that even when he was pulling well and you
Speaker 1: just had these great election returns of Floria, et cetera,
Speaker 1: that this was going to work out for him, because
Speaker 1: the whole Republican Party is just about how do you
Speaker 1: feel about Donald Trump? All of his high minded, you know,
Speaker 1: in his mind ideas about how I'm going to put
Speaker 1: forward this policy agenda and people are going to see the.
Speaker 4: Results of what I'm doing here, etc.
Speaker 1: No, the Republican Party is about how do you feel
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump? And so until you break that hold
Speaker 1: that he has, it's just not going to work out.
Speaker 1: And so it's no, it is not a surprise that
Speaker 1: the person who has the most online energy and is
Speaker 1: you know, kind of rising up to be potentially second
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump is the guy who is hugging him
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, the most close to which
Speaker 1: is Vivike Ramaswami. He isn't trying to beat Trump. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the reality. Vivike is not trying to beat Trump.
Speaker 1: He's trying to be the second place candidate who if
Speaker 1: something happens unforeseen to Trump, he'll be there next in line,
Speaker 1: or might be in a Trump cabinet or whatever.
Speaker 3: He's not really.
Speaker 1: Running to win because there is no ability to directly
Speaker 1: displace Donald Trump. And that's what we're run de Santis
Speaker 1: here is found out now. I think his analysis is
Speaker 1: completely accurate. That you know, it's just the definition of
Speaker 1: a rhino is just basically whatever Donald Trump says it
Speaker 1: is and how reloyal you are to him or not.
Speaker 1: That's the whole of the entire entire thing. But I
Speaker 1: also want to say, you know, Ron DeSantis was happy
Speaker 1: to rise based on exactly that dynamic when it served
Speaker 1: his political interests when he was initially running for governor.
Speaker 1: I mean Trump, you know, very dramatically tells the story
Speaker 1: about how it came to him with tears in his
Speaker 1: eyes to beg for his endorsement. That part of his
Speaker 1: not accurate, but he was very heavily dependent on Trump's endorsement,
Speaker 1: did what he needed to do to try to get
Speaker 1: Trump's endorsement in the Republican primary that enables him to
Speaker 1: win that victory.
Speaker 4: He ran all.
Speaker 1: Of these just like shamelessly sycophantic ads, the one where
Speaker 1: his kid was building the wall.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 4: So he was very happy to use this exact.
Speaker 1: Political dynamic that he's now decrying for his own benefit
Speaker 1: until it didn't work out for him any longer. So
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to shed a tear about, you know,
Speaker 1: him being sort of flayed now for accurately diagnosing the
Speaker 1: state of the Republican Party. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: do think it's fair to say here that he was
Speaker 1: referring to Trump supporters as listless vessels. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that that was taken out of context. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit unclear whether you know, he could technically argue like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I was just talking specifically about elected leaders. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's it's put out there pretty broadly, And I think
Speaker 1: it is fair to say that he was characterizing basically
Speaker 1: everyone who would just follow Trump regardless and no matter what,
Speaker 1: as kind of listless vessels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I, like I said, I don't think he
Speaker 2: should have said it politically, but analytically he's right. He's
Speaker 2: obviously right, and anybody who is not like wholly up
Speaker 2: the behind. I guess to say kindly of a single
Speaker 2: politician knows that he's right or is interacted, which said, people,
Speaker 2: but you know that's telling the truth. Isn't always a
Speaker 2: good isn't always the best strategy here. So we have
Speaker 2: some clips also that we wanted to remind people of,
Speaker 2: I guess just for fun about some of these past moments,
Speaker 2: because these things do matter. Hillary, of course talking about
Speaker 2: deplorable voters, here's what she said at the time.
Speaker 11: You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I
Speaker 11: call the basket of deplorable right, the races, sex, is homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic,
Speaker 11: you name.
Speaker 3: It hurts even today. Yeah, I hate her voice who but.
Speaker 2: Second in terms of how politically stupid it was to
Speaker 2: make that comment. And it also reminded us, Crystal of
Speaker 2: the forty seven percent comment that meant Romney made this
Speaker 2: is the all time hit.
Speaker 3: Let's take it.
Speaker 5: There are forty.
Speaker 2: Seven percent of the people who will vote for the
Speaker 2: president of a lot of wealth.
Speaker 5: All right, They're forty percent were with him. Who are
Speaker 5: the pentathlon government? Who believe that that they're victims, who
Speaker 5: believe the government has the responsibility.
Speaker 2: To care for them, who believe that they're.
Speaker 3: Entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing.
Speaker 5: Do you think that that's it's an entitlement and the
Speaker 5: government should give it to them and they will vote
Speaker 5: for this president.
Speaker 7: No matter what.
Speaker 2: I would still that that actually hurts the most just
Speaker 2: because it's so brutal, like it's such an out of
Speaker 2: touch at least statements said at the exact moment that
Speaker 2: some rich guys sip and wine and a private fundraiser. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you've got a waiter who hated the guy who was
Speaker 2: recording it. So is this DeSantis's uh, deplorable's moment forty
Speaker 2: seven percent moment? I don't think so, just because he's
Speaker 2: not he's not riding high enough for it to matter.
Speaker 3: He's already dropping regardless of the comment.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, that is kind of true.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, DeSantis's team is trying to clean
Speaker 1: it up. So it was taken out in context whatever
Speaker 1: I mean. Hillary said the same thing, like, oh well,
Speaker 1: listen to the other part of the sentence where I
Speaker 1: said the other people are you know, just having trouble
Speaker 1: economically and they feel left behind or whatever exactly she said,
Speaker 1: I think of Obama's like clinging to their guns comment
Speaker 1: as well. Same thing they tried to close is taken
Speaker 1: on a context. Hillary made another comment about like we're
Speaker 1: going to put a lot of coal miners out of work. That,
Speaker 1: by the way, in West Virginia, guy was way worse.
Speaker 1: Every single person in the state knew about that quote
Speaker 1: should which signaled not only like the reality of like, no,
Speaker 1: we're coming for your jobs in your economy, but also
Speaker 1: a level of contempt. She's similarly to oh, I was
Speaker 1: taken out of context if you listen to the whole thing,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But I agree with you, I don't think
Speaker 1: that this is as poignant as either of those any
Speaker 1: of those examples.
Speaker 4: Particularly are listless vessels.
Speaker 1: Is just not quite as punchy as a basket of deplorables,
Speaker 1: as one example. But to me, with DeSantis, it shows
Speaker 1: a little bit of recognition of reality, perhaps a little
Speaker 1: bit of frustration, a little bit of desperation that he would,
Speaker 1: you know, that he would allow himself to say what
Speaker 1: is clearly a very accurate analysis here, and it's certainly
Speaker 1: not going to help him out with the Trump voters
Speaker 1: that he's trying to win over.
Speaker 2: I agree, let's talk about Hunter Biden. This is just
Speaker 2: this is one of the most perfect clips that we've
Speaker 2: ever seen. So MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has on Hunter Biden's lawyer.
Speaker 2: I'll be loyal to flack for him, and Joe, I
Speaker 2: guess because he has to cave to the pressure now
Speaker 2: is like okay, So what was going on with all
Speaker 2: his foreign money flowing into Hunter's pockets? And the lawyer
Speaker 2: is very quick to defend his clients, his well known skills,
Speaker 2: his well known intellect as a businessman.
Speaker 3: Let's take a lessen.
Speaker 5: Or asking what did Hunter Biden think he was getting
Speaker 5: that seven million dollars for? Why would he be getting
Speaker 5: paid so much money?
Speaker 6: All right, well, stop with your seven million dollars and
Speaker 6: talk about how many years that Hunter has been in
Speaker 6: business and what happened to each of those specific years.
Speaker 6: When you say it that way, people think that somebody
Speaker 6: just sent him a check for seven million dollars.
Speaker 5: So Washington Post reported it was seven million dollars. What's
Speaker 5: the seven million dollars over? And how many countries did
Speaker 5: it come from? Well?
Speaker 6: Okay, so first of all, it's much more complicated than
Speaker 6: to say it comes from countries. There are joint ventures
Speaker 6: between American entities and in one or two occasions a
Speaker 6: potential foreign entity to create the possibility of jobs and
Speaker 6: energy in the United States. That's too complicated to try
Speaker 6: to explain. But I can answer the question that you
Speaker 6: asked in the following way over the time that he
Speaker 6: was in business. This is again something that people are
Speaker 6: to pay attention to. Hunter Biden went to Georgetown University,
Speaker 6: went to Yale Law School, was on the board of
Speaker 6: directors of a bank, was on the board of directors
Speaker 6: of Amtrak. Is somebody who went and worked in an
Speaker 6: international law firm.
Speaker 3: People seem to forget that.
Speaker 6: This is not the person who's simply out there having
Speaker 6: people write checks for no reason. He's a capable, educated,
Speaker 6: experienced person. Now, if Congress wants to start saying, wait,
Speaker 6: does he get opportunities because his last name is Biden,
Speaker 6: they should look to themselves. I mean Senator Joe Manchin's
Speaker 6: wife is on a commission in West Virginia where Congress
Speaker 6: had provided an enormous amount of funds.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot going on there is not wrong,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of art is kind of accurate.
Speaker 3: Not wrong.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of other corruption doesn't necessarily just my
Speaker 2: personal favorite is they basically refer to him as a
Speaker 2: job creator. You see, Hunter was creating a lot of
Speaker 2: jobs for hookers here in the US and across and
Speaker 2: drug dealers. You know, we got to think about if
Speaker 2: this is outrageous. You know all this his qualifications that
Speaker 2: he listed were all ones that also came as a
Speaker 2: result of his corruption.
Speaker 3: He's always served on the board of Amtrak.
Speaker 2: You know why I started on the board of amtract
Speaker 2: because Biden was obsessed with Amtrak.
Speaker 3: His qualification was, quote, he wrote.
Speaker 4: The trains a lot.
Speaker 3: Everyone thinks I'm.
Speaker 2: Kidding whenever I say that, if it's an official statement
Speaker 2: that he made whenever he applied for the job, And
Speaker 2: it would all be funny if it wasn't one of
Speaker 2: the most brazen like elements of someone getting away with
Speaker 2: it clearly by becoming filthy rich, exploiting his position. And
Speaker 2: now because his dad is the president, getting special treatment,
Speaker 2: and we're seeing that clear as day.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is a fascinating inside look where in talks with prosecutors,
Speaker 2: while Hunter was negotiating his sweetheart deal with the current
Speaker 2: special counsel, he actually hit lawyers, made a threat and
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any way to read it otherwise
Speaker 2: that President Biden would now have to be a fact
Speaker 2: to witness crystal for the defense at trial. The Department
Speaker 2: of Justice argued that by threatening to put the president
Speaker 2: on the stand his own father, he would start a constitutional.
Speaker 3: Crisis around whether the president can about immunity.
Speaker 2: But it is clear that Hunter was actually weaponizing his
Speaker 2: role as the first son to basically blackmails and try
Speaker 2: to get the DOJ to give him that sweetheart pardon deal.
Speaker 2: There's also some more elements that were beginning to learn
Speaker 2: about how exactly said sweetheart deal began to collapse, and
Speaker 2: it's becoming quite clear if we can go ahead and
Speaker 2: put D three please up on the screen. This is
Speaker 2: an inside report from the New York Times where they
Speaker 2: are talking about how Hunter Biden's legal team is now
Speaker 2: arguing and with some apparently sympathetic ears in the Department
Speaker 2: of Justice, that the irs whistleblowers should be prosecuted for
Speaker 2: coming forward. But if you put the two stories together,
Speaker 2: you actually learn something very interesting, which is that sweetheart
Speaker 2: deal actually collapsed after the whistleblowers came forward because the
Speaker 2: public details of what Hunter has gotten away with effectively
Speaker 2: by originally being able to plead misdemeanor and get immunity
Speaker 2: from all future federal prosecution. It looked terrible for the
Speaker 2: current special counsel, but he was like, all right, I
Speaker 2: can't be agreeing to this deal. There is all kinds
Speaker 2: of chicaneery. Now, this player going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 4: Such a mess. Yeah, this is such a mess.
Speaker 1: And the story in Politico that breaks down how this
Speaker 1: all fell apart is really interesting. I mean, basically, the
Speaker 1: TLDR is that Weiss screwed this up in every way
Speaker 1: that he could. First of all, he appears to have
Speaker 1: been way too swayed by Hunter's lawyers and their lengthy
Speaker 1: PowerPoint presentation and their long letters that they sent threatening, Hey,
Speaker 1: doj Joe bi you really want to force the President
Speaker 1: of the United States onto the stand as a fact
Speaker 1: witness here? Really you want to do that? And then
Speaker 1: also they were making the argument that, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: this would be seen as political if you went after Hunter,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, Where it was actually political that
Speaker 1: they didn't go after Hunter is what ended up happening.
Speaker 1: So Weiss strikes this deal with Hunter that he really
Speaker 1: shouldn't have that the most egregious really in some ways,
Speaker 1: part of it was the broad immunity that they did
Speaker 1: agree to based on the letter that Politico got their
Speaker 1: hands on that had the specific language about exactly what
Speaker 1: legal issues would be taken off the table. I'll give
Speaker 1: you the specific language here. It's kind of technical, but
Speaker 1: just so you get a sense of it, they say,
Speaker 1: the US agrees not to criminally prosecute Hunter Biden outside
Speaker 1: of the terms of this agreement for any federal crimes
Speaker 1: encompassed by the attached statement of facts. And the statement
Speaker 1: of facts attached is Exhibit one to the memorandum of
Speaker 1: plea agreement filed the same day. This agreement does not
Speaker 1: provide any protection of grunts prosecution for any future conduct
Speaker 1: by Biden or affiliated business. And in those statements of
Speaker 1: facts that they referenced there, they go through chapter and
Speaker 1: verse of not only the drug issues, the tax issues,
Speaker 1: the gun issues, but also the foreign potentially corrupt dealings.
Speaker 4: They also list that all out.
Speaker 1: So when Hunter and his team in the court were like, no,
Speaker 1: the agreement includes this broad immunity, they were actually correct.
Speaker 1: Based on the deal that had been signed off both
Speaker 1: by the government and by Hunter Biden. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: it is outrageous that Weiss gave him this broad immunity.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was a real screw up. And it
Speaker 1: appears that Weiss came to understand when these whistleblowers came forward,
Speaker 1: and once there was political heat and scrutiny, came to
Speaker 1: understand that he gave away the store and really shouldn't have.
Speaker 1: And so then they try to backtrack. Then you have
Speaker 1: the whole Plea deal collapse in the courtroom. Now everything
Speaker 1: is really up in the air. Hunter's original lawyer, Jeffrey Clark,
Speaker 1: who negotiated this original Plea deal but again both parties
Speaker 1: signed off on. He is now off of Hunter's team.
Speaker 1: Abby Lowell, who you saw there on MSNBC, is now
Speaker 1: leading the team, very well known high power DC lawyer,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, because Clark may now be a
Speaker 1: witness in terms of the Hunter trial of how this
Speaker 1: deal all came together. Because Hunter's team is like, we
Speaker 1: had a deal, you signed off on it. I don't
Speaker 1: care if you changed your mind and thought it was
Speaker 1: too good of a deal, but we.
Speaker 4: Had this deal.
Speaker 1: And so part of the potential trial going up forward
Speaker 1: is going to be litigating whether or not this deal
Speaker 1: represents like a binding contract. But just to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom line here, it was insane that Weiss ever
Speaker 1: gave him this widespread immunity for all that he was
Speaker 1: doing in terms of business deals overseas, even as they
Speaker 1: have an investigation continuing and ongoing.
Speaker 4: You never should have given that deal.
Speaker 1: And now he's trying to cya to cover his own
Speaker 1: ass by you know, asking for the special counsel appointment
Speaker 1: and going back on his you know, the original deal,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But it's a total mess.
Speaker 2: And guess what, on top of all this, As if
Speaker 2: it doesn't get any worse, put this up there.
Speaker 3: It turns out.
Speaker 2: As crazy as all of this sounds, it gets even
Speaker 2: crazier because it turns out that Hunter Biden actually moved
Speaker 2: into the White House for two weeks all while this
Speaker 2: crazy stuff was going down, as he was resolving his
Speaker 2: legal troubles. In June, moves into the White House, having
Speaker 2: multiple private conversations with the President A HIPPLEA agreement was
Speaker 2: actually made on June twentieth, quote one day later, the
Speaker 2: President and First Lady welcome first House gets from California.
Speaker 2: His name, Hunter Biden, along with his wife and one
Speaker 2: of his young sons to stay for two weeks immediately
Speaker 2: after that was done.
Speaker 3: This is, first of all, not disclosed. How can the president.
Speaker 2: The President and the White House were like, hey, why
Speaker 2: do we have to disclose whenever our family is staying there?
Speaker 2: It's like, well, yeah, I guess if it's like your
Speaker 2: small child, that's one thing. It's your fifty plus year
Speaker 2: old son who's currently negotiate with the Department of Justice
Speaker 2: and getting sweetheart deals where you're directly weaponizing your role
Speaker 2: as first son.
Speaker 3: I think that's another one.
Speaker 2: Also, It directly calls into question and actually does bolster
Speaker 2: a little bit of Hunter's defense here. Where how can
Speaker 2: you say I've never spoken to my son about it
Speaker 2: when he's literally living with you the day afterwards for
Speaker 2: two straight weeks while you are the current president and
Speaker 2: head of the United States government. If Trump did something
Speaker 2: like this, people would lose their minds. You can cry
Speaker 2: Jared Kushner and all that stuff all you want. It's
Speaker 2: all true. We don't No one here is not going
Speaker 2: to validate it. But you cannot look at this state
Speaker 2: of facts and the pattern of everything that we have
Speaker 2: all just laid out and not say this is an
Speaker 2: outrageous scandal, and the Biden family in particular, and especially
Speaker 2: President Biden in his role here. He clearly does not
Speaker 2: think he has done a single damn thing here wrong.
Speaker 2: He has no remorse. They're not even trying to dispel
Speaker 2: with the appearance of corruption. I just think that it's
Speaker 2: so outrageous to have him staying in privately in the
Speaker 2: White House quarters while all this is going down.
Speaker 3: There's no attempt to even distance himself from any of them.
Speaker 1: The part that I found most actually interesting in this
Speaker 1: reporting was about how most aids, almost everyone working in
Speaker 1: the White House, they won't even talk to Joe about
Speaker 1: any of this. They have this report here, they say
Speaker 1: inside the White House, most aids strenuously avoid discussing Hunter's
Speaker 1: troubles with a president, believing their contributions and ideas would
Speaker 1: not be welcome, even as they worry about the personal
Speaker 1: toll is taking on the elder Biden court. And a
Speaker 1: half a dozen current and former officials who spoke on
Speaker 1: the condition of anonymity, Biden's tendency over the course of
Speaker 1: his long tenure in DC is to have the same
Speaker 1: very small circle of advisors, and those are the only
Speaker 1: people he really lets in now. In the beginning of
Speaker 1: this administration, apparently there was an attempt made to bring
Speaker 1: some of the newer folks into the circle. There were
Speaker 1: larger meetings that everyone was participating in, and the anecdotal
Speaker 1: reports that I have heard is that that is becoming
Speaker 1: less and less frequent, and that he is now increasingly
Speaker 1: sort of confining himself to this long time circle of
Speaker 1: you know, guys who are his same basically age and
Speaker 1: generation that have been with him forever. And part of that,
Speaker 1: I think does have to do with the fact that, look,
Speaker 1: the Hunter Biden, this is going to be a big
Speaker 1: deal in the presidential campaign. It's a big deal politically,
Speaker 1: it's a big deal in terms of reality and perception
Speaker 1: of corruption. These are issues that you would want all
Speaker 1: of your advisors to be able to speak with you
Speaker 1: about and weigh in on. But because there is such
Speaker 1: great sensitivity about it, basically no one will talk to
Speaker 1: him about it. He doesn't want to hear from anybody
Speaker 1: on it. And it has made his circle increasingly insular
Speaker 1: in terms of who he even lets in to talk
Speaker 1: about anything, not just Hunter, etc. So I think that
Speaker 1: is also a fascinating look inside the White House about
Speaker 1: how he's increasingly becoming more and more insular as these
Speaker 1: issues regards arding Hunter take up more and more of
Speaker 1: his mind share.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right, and I think it's crazy
Speaker 2: that Biden apparent. I mean it just look, he thinks
Speaker 2: he's an ordinary man. He's like, my family is off limits.
Speaker 2: He thinks that's he can just set the rules as
Speaker 2: the president and people should listen to him. You know,
Speaker 2: someone should tell him that we actually live in a
Speaker 2: democracy and that's not how it works. So local continue
Speaker 2: to look into this. But man, I mean this is
Speaker 2: some of the for all the reporting that's out there,
Speaker 2: I think rightfully about January sixth and Mark Meadows and.
Speaker 3: All this stuff.
Speaker 2: This is like a soap opera level of political drama
Speaker 2: which is not getting its due.
Speaker 3: Let's move on to the next one here.
Speaker 2: This is a story I know that a lot of
Speaker 2: you are very interested in and actually is quite fascinating.
Speaker 2: Michael Burry of Big Short fame has now put a
Speaker 2: massive bet on the US economy crashing.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: This was just a couple of days ago where Burry's
Speaker 2: scion asset management has now put nearly one point six
Speaker 2: billion dollars worth of put options for the S and
Speaker 2: P five hundred and the technology sector in particular. So
Speaker 2: what's fascinating is that Burry has long kind of been
Speaker 2: famous for placing these big bets of making sure that
Speaker 2: there's going to be a crash. He was seen obviously
Speaker 2: as the Cassandra. I think that's like his most famous
Speaker 2: brand after two thousand and eight, when he correctly called
Speaker 2: the housing crisis years earlier and shorted it. But this
Speaker 2: is one of the biggest shorts that he's actually made
Speaker 2: since then. And I guess the reasoning for his analysis
Speaker 2: is really interesting. I mean, effectively, what he says is
Speaker 2: he looks at the impending Federal Reserve decision on interest rates,
Speaker 2: declining earnings, the fact that inflation remains high, and he's like, look,
Speaker 2: the fact is is that all of these fundamental yield curve,
Speaker 2: all this other stuff, the fundamentals are all blowing towards
Speaker 2: an actual recession and a major drop eventually the bill
Speaker 2: does have to come doe for reality, the current s
Speaker 2: and P five hundred game and all that are not
Speaker 2: actually pegged to earnings or to any of the other
Speaker 2: important metrics for these companies, and the S and P
Speaker 2: five hundred and all of that will eventually reflect a
Speaker 2: crystal So, you know, given his stature and given the
Speaker 2: nature of like who he is and his past record,
Speaker 2: I do think it's interesting in order to look at
Speaker 2: it and to think about his controversial quote unquote analysis here.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's right. If he's right, he's gonna make a
Speaker 3: ton of money.
Speaker 1: I mean, he plays in a very big bed here.
Speaker 1: He hasn't given a lot of insight into exactly you
Speaker 1: know why he's so bearish on the US economy. But
Speaker 1: some of the things that you know, people have been
Speaker 1: pointing to are, like we've been covering the commercial real
Speaker 1: estate market and the fact that you have all this
Speaker 1: fake and office space and downtown's you know, especially place
Speaker 1: like San Francisco really sort of entering this doom loop.
Speaker 1: You've got all of this debt coming do in the
Speaker 1: commercial real estate space, you know, not only in terms
Speaker 1: of office space, which is the most troubled, but also
Speaker 1: apartments another troubled sector.
Speaker 4: So you've got that. You also have, you know.
Speaker 1: A lot of worries about the Chinese economy, which we
Speaker 1: covered here as well, and whether there could be huge
Speaker 1: spillover effects from a major downturn there as well. So
Speaker 1: you know, he's in his own way with the bets
Speaker 1: that he's placing, sounding the alarm. It is worth pointing out, though,
Speaker 1: that his track record is certainly not one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: This was interesting from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: They took a look at not just him, but other
Speaker 1: people who have sort of famously placed the right bet
Speaker 1: at a critical financial moment. So people who got the
Speaker 1: Great Depression crash right, and then people who got the
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight crash right as well. Put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. The
Speaker 1: headline here is how to get rich and famous from
Speaker 1: a stock market crash. Big short hero Michael Burrase's disaster
Speaker 1: and eventually he'll be right again. So you've got a
Speaker 1: list of all of the predictions that he has made
Speaker 1: since he got it right in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that they point to, Sager,
Speaker 1: is if you were you're right in this really spectacular way,
Speaker 1: it probably inclines you as a human being to make
Speaker 1: other really big, sort of spectacular predictions trying to replicate
Speaker 1: the initial thing that brought you fame, stardom, and people
Speaker 1: tend to only focus on the times when you got
Speaker 1: it right, says like broken cloak at the clock is
Speaker 1: right twice a day, et cetera. But then again, you
Speaker 1: know he was right once he called it when a
Speaker 1: lot of people didn't. So you also can't just discard
Speaker 1: what he's saying because he was seeing something in the
Speaker 1: market that other people were not seeing at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the reason why we are
Speaker 2: even covering it is just because of course of his
Speaker 2: past record. We're trying to offer the caveat. And I
Speaker 2: do think though it's important. You know, every mainstream financial
Speaker 2: analysis out there, which always makes me suspicious is like we.
Speaker 3: Think it's gonna be okay, We're going to achieve the
Speaker 3: soft landing.
Speaker 2: Yes, interest rates and all that, But like you said,
Speaker 2: look at the commercial property, look at inflation, look at
Speaker 2: earnings which are going down.
Speaker 3: Look at all the pressure.
Speaker 2: And the feeling right now within the economy, and a
Speaker 2: lot of economy is expectations. The expectations are people feel.
Speaker 2: I was actually looking at this the right track wrong
Speaker 2: track number is the exact same today as it was
Speaker 2: in the height of June of twenty twenty when everything
Speaker 2: literally felt like it was falling apart. People feel as
Speaker 2: if something really bad is happening. The engine of our economy,
Speaker 2: which has been financialization and rich people. Those people have
Speaker 2: been dramatically the people who have seen a contraction in
Speaker 2: their finances and in their spending. I was just reading
Speaker 2: today that the banks are no longer having to lend
Speaker 2: out big jumbo mortgages to rich people as a way
Speaker 2: of making money.
Speaker 3: I mean, on the one hand, it's money.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, that puts a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: downward pressure on the housing market, specifically in more urban areas,
Speaker 2: and that constricts debt and the ability to cash out,
Speaker 2: And there's all kinds of downstream effects from this stuff
Speaker 2: that if he's right, you know, obviously he's gonna make
Speaker 2: it big. But you know, as you said, there's a
Speaker 2: bias when you are right once like that in order
Speaker 2: to keep calling it that way. But overall, I think
Speaker 2: we should elevate some of the quote unquote crank voices
Speaker 2: out there. Just given what happened in eight You always
Speaker 2: have to be suspicious of what the mainstream people are saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the last thing I think to note specifically about
Speaker 1: the bets he's placing. Is he focused in on the
Speaker 1: tech sector, and there are a lot of concerns right
Speaker 1: now that there's like an AI bubble basically that anyone
Speaker 1: who slaps like AI on whatever they're doing is getting
Speaker 1: huge valuation. I think not price bumps is. I think
Speaker 1: he's probably right too, just seeing like some of the
Speaker 1: deeply flawed results of AI and how the tech is
Speaker 1: in a lot of way is like, not even close
Speaker 1: to there yet. I think that that may be, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it is very possible there.
Speaker 2: You have to think about it in the context of
Speaker 2: the past, which is in the dot com bubble, everyone
Speaker 2: was like, oh, pet, you know, everyone famously pets dot com,
Speaker 2: diaper dot com, grocery dot com, all this stuff. All
Speaker 2: of what ended up becoming profitable from the Internet was
Speaker 2: nothing of what people predicted in ninety seven all the
Speaker 2: way to two thousand. It ended up being social media
Speaker 2: sites like those, some few monopolistic winners people like Amazon
Speaker 2: and others. But really, you know what the big winner
Speaker 2: was is that all of that debt financed broadband internet
Speaker 2: access for everyone, on top of creating mobile phone infrastructure
Speaker 2: that it unleashed Web two point zero, which is kind
Speaker 2: of the web that we're living in right now. Nobody
Speaker 2: predicted that in ninety seven. I think the exact same
Speaker 2: thing is going to happen with AI. There's a million
Speaker 2: different possibilities. I've talked previously here about there's some interesting
Speaker 2: documentaries people should go look at about how people thought
Speaker 2: the Information super Highway, not the Internet. The Information super
Speaker 2: Highway was going to be like the DVR, and your
Speaker 2: TV was going to be like the main place that
Speaker 2: you were going to access the internet, not your phone
Speaker 2: and not your computer. My point is just that, like
Speaker 2: in the forefront of these technologies, nobody ever predicts how
Speaker 2: it eventually will work out. These VC guys are placing
Speaker 2: massive bets on everything because that's how their business works.
Speaker 2: They only have to hit it big on one Amazon
Speaker 2: and they can lose ninety nine other bets. But that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean, though that the stocks aren't going to get
Speaker 2: wiped out, just like they did in the dot com bubble.
Speaker 3: So I think he's right.
Speaker 2: I think right at least to be dubious about some
Speaker 2: of the promises in that in the immedia term, not
Speaker 2: in the long.
Speaker 4: Term, though it could be something there.
Speaker 3: Crystal, what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, Americans were the most scammed people
Speaker 1: in the entire world, and the amount of losses to
Speaker 1: scammers skyrocketed to all time highs. Those are some of
Speaker 1: the takeaways from a report on the state of scamming
Speaker 1: by Social Catfish, which compiled in depth statistics on who
Speaker 1: was getting scammed, how they were getting scammed, and how
Speaker 1: much these victims lost. A few of the takeaways here
Speaker 1: teens and seniors are particularly vulnerable. Most victims will never
Speaker 1: recover their money, and with AI development, the problem is
Speaker 1: only getting worse. First, let's just take a look at
Speaker 1: some of the top line figures here, because in some
Speaker 1: ways this.
Speaker 4: Is the most disturbing part.
Speaker 1: In just five years time, the amount of US scammed
Speaker 1: losses tracked by the FBI and FTC has nearly quadrupled,
Speaker 1: rising to a record breaking ten point three billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Just look at how the amount of losses that's the
Speaker 1: dark purple bars. Look at how those losses have grown
Speaker 1: skyrocketing in just the past couple of years. But even
Speaker 1: these numbers wildly underestimate the amount of harm and loss
Speaker 1: in a given year, because the overwhelming majority of scam victims,
Speaker 1: they never report out of shame and justified expectation they're
Speaker 1: not going to recoup their losses anyway. In fact, Social
Speaker 1: Catfish estimates that the total amount of losses was more
Speaker 1: like two hundred million in twenty twenty two alone. Now
Speaker 1: you might be a little surprised about who was most
Speaker 1: taken in by these scams. Although boomers lose the most
Speaker 1: money to scammers, after all, they have the most money
Speaker 1: to lose, teens are actually falling prey to scammers at
Speaker 1: the fastest rates. Team losses to scammers have grown twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred percent over the past five years. Judging by
Speaker 1: the number of highly suspect tiktoks that my fifteen year
Speaker 1: old credulously sends me or presents as rock solid facts,
Speaker 1: I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised. After all,
Speaker 1: this is a generation that lives out so much of
Speaker 1: their real life in the online world. Their friendships, romances,
Speaker 1: leisure activities a seamlessly move back and forth between the
Speaker 1: real world and the digital one. So just from sheer
Speaker 1: time spent online, there are more opportunities for scammers to
Speaker 1: take advantage of. Couple that with a teenage naivete about
Speaker 1: the world, and you've got a recipe for disaster now.
Speaker 1: The most common scams targeting teenagers specifically take advantage of
Speaker 1: their desires for connection or for clout. Scammers might pose
Speaker 1: as a young attractive person, luring the teenager in before
Speaker 1: asking for money or asking for nuds that they then
Speaker 1: use for extortion. They may pose as a social media
Speaker 1: influencer promising some sort of prize if the team just
Speaker 1: pays a fee or sends bank account info. They might
Speaker 1: advertise a too good to be true discount on some
Speaker 1: product and make off with the cash or bank account
Speaker 1: info when it's sent in, or scam young gamers with
Speaker 1: a promise of some in app purchase for rewards that
Speaker 1: do not actually exist. But make not a mistake. Whatever
Speaker 1: age you are or interest you have, there is a
Speaker 1: scam tailor made to target you. They prey on all
Speaker 1: of our nation's failures, in all of our vulnerabilities, in
Speaker 1: an era when housing is wildly unaffordable, wages are stagnant,
Speaker 1: debt is sky high. Get rich quick crypto schemes have
Speaker 1: become the most financially devastating scam in the whole nation.
Speaker 1: Jumping out of business. Email compromised schemes as the most
Speaker 1: costly in twenty twenty two, more than ever before. Young
Speaker 1: Men in particular were lured in with fake initial coin offerings,
Speaker 1: fake exchanges in wallets, and pump and dump schemes, but
Speaker 1: financial insecurity was the bedrock of a whole host of
Speaker 1: successful scams. Lonely boomers were preyed on by scammers posing
Speaker 1: as wealthy businessmen looking for love, luring the victim in
Speaker 1: with promises of wealth and business opportunities, convincing them to
Speaker 1: send money for investment schemes that do not exist. Others
Speaker 1: fill for lottery scams where they're told they'll win a
Speaker 1: big prize if they just pay a fee or send
Speaker 1: in private identity information. Black Americans facing massive wage and
Speaker 1: wealth disparities, they were loured in with fake work from
Speaker 1: home job opportunities that might help a single mom make
Speaker 1: ends means still have time with their kids, but really
Speaker 1: are just a trick to steal their identity or some
Speaker 1: upfront payments. And they were tripped with fake apartment scams
Speaker 1: by frauds to exploit the desperation caused by high rents
Speaker 1: and housing discrimination to steal deposits and application fees for
Speaker 1: non existent rentals. The highly charged emotional political climate has
Speaker 1: also become a ripe landscape for scammers. We've documented some
Speaker 1: of this on this show, from the We Build the
Speaker 1: Wall scheme that Steve Bannon was indicted over to the
Speaker 1: fake trump Bucks which were sold as legal tender.
Speaker 4: Former President Trump's.
Speaker 1: Devoted followers have been robbed by scammers who exploit their
Speaker 1: sincere devotion to their political hero. But it is not
Speaker 1: only Magga that is being robbed. The George Floyd social
Speaker 1: justice movement gave rise to fake go fundmes, fraudulent charities
Speaker 1: claiming to fight for progressive causes but really just stealing
Speaker 1: people's money. The unfortunate reality is this is just the beginning,
Speaker 1: with financial procarity rising, loneliness festering, pas to personal empowerment closing.
Speaker 1: Our nation is only becoming more vulnerable, and with the
Speaker 1: widespread adoption of AI creating a new landscape of voice impersonation,
Speaker 1: face swapping, and deep fake videos, the tools to trick
Speaker 1: people are only becoming more sophisticated. Our nie and status
Speaker 1: as both wealthy and wildly unequal with a threadbare social
Speaker 1: safety net, has made us the number one target of
Speaker 1: scammers from all around the world. No other country even
Speaker 1: comes close in terms of online scam victims in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. When it comes to falling for scams, apparently
Speaker 1: we are number one.
Speaker 4: And Sager, what was wild to me in this report
Speaker 4: was they go through a bunch.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 4: All right, Sager, are you looking at it?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 2: For those who know the mythology of the show, it
Speaker 2: really does all start with Andrew Yang. Back in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty during the Democratic primary, Crystal and I started a
Speaker 2: radical experiment on rising Can we cover the news in
Speaker 2: a way that doesn't make people hate each other and
Speaker 2: isn't the typical parts in bs you see on TV.
Speaker 2: We're plugging away, pleased with our modest progress. And then
Speaker 2: Andrew Yang showed up for an interview. We treated him seriously.
Speaker 2: After that it went stratospheric. So because of this, I
Speaker 2: always have a very soft spot for Andrew Yang and
Speaker 2: for the Yanggang. What we saw at that time was
Speaker 2: that Yang and his supporters only desire was to be
Speaker 2: treated with respect by the media and the.
Speaker 3: Overall electoral process.
Speaker 2: Pretty much until the end, he was denied that respect,
Speaker 2: and in many ways he continues to do so. But
Speaker 2: his campaign did spawn a lot of lessons for me especially.
Speaker 2: Yang was I believe, the first true candidate of the Internet,
Speaker 2: in that he quite literally could not have ever existed
Speaker 2: without it. There were predecessors, to be sure, Barack Obama,
Speaker 2: for example, he used his website to raise money in
Speaker 2: an unprecedented way from small donors, but at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, he was a traditional politician.
Speaker 3: He was a sitting US senator.
Speaker 2: Yang, for all intents and purposes, was just a dude
Speaker 2: who wrote a book with the message though that spread
Speaker 2: enough through the annals of the Internet, he made his
Speaker 2: way to the debate stage and was revolutionary at the time.
Speaker 2: So with this election, the question arises, who is the
Speaker 2: successor to Andrew Yang? In my opinion, we already have three.
Speaker 2: Two of them are on the Democratic side, RFK Junior
Speaker 2: and Maryanne Williamson.
Speaker 3: Both are probably.
Speaker 2: Even more marginalized by the media and the establishment than
Speaker 2: Yang was because of the current lack of primary process.
Speaker 2: But on the Republican side we're seeing a different story
Speaker 2: and it's important to try and understand why and how
Speaker 2: this campaign appears to be working, and that campaign is
Speaker 2: Vivike Ramaswami's Ramaswami, by all rights, should be a footnote
Speaker 2: to the twenty twenty four campaign. He has never held
Speaker 2: elected office. He's never really been involved in capital P
Speaker 2: politics at all really before twenty twenty one. Seemingly kind
Speaker 2: of came out of nowhere with a book called Woke, Inc.
Speaker 2: Written after the twenty twenty which is when he first
Speaker 2: came on my radar, but even at that time, the
Speaker 2: seeds of his so far successful campaign were planted. He
Speaker 2: seemingly did every podcast that asked interviews big and small,
Speaker 2: mainstream media but independent as well, and he used his
Speaker 2: Twitter account to spread the word. If you go ahead
Speaker 2: and take a look at this, just like Andrew Yang
Speaker 2: when he announced for president, He's continued his strategy. He
Speaker 2: has appeared just like Yang did, both on mainstream media
Speaker 2: but also shows like Ours Megan Kelly, the All In Podcast,
Speaker 2: Anyone with a massive platform. A search for Ramaswami's name
Speaker 2: on YouTube yields videos with hundreds of thousands to even
Speaker 2: millions of views, and anecdotally Vivik's interview with us yielded
Speaker 2: one of the most views and downloads of any candidate
Speaker 2: in the race. RFK Junior is the only one that
Speaker 2: comes close in interest, similar really to RFK and Mary Anne.
Speaker 2: It though, is the mainstream media is having a weird
Speaker 2: time with all of this. Vivek is getting coverage here
Speaker 2: and there from the New York Times or others. But
Speaker 2: over on Fox they really showed their hand in a
Speaker 2: recent segment on the so called Fox News Power rankings.
Speaker 2: Take a listen to this again if you missed it
Speaker 2: from our previous bit on Thursday.
Speaker 1: Our power ranking show former President Trump keeping a firm
Speaker 1: grip on the party.
Speaker 9: So here's what we have, Dana, he is far and
Speaker 9: away the front runner. Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott are in contention.
Speaker 9: You've got five others in the conversation, and the rest
Speaker 9: are on the outside looking in.
Speaker 8: Hi, Dana Envil, that's right feeling right at home here
Speaker 8: in Iowa. We can tell you that this morning Senator
Speaker 8: Tim Scott breaking into the.
Speaker 2: Top three and those Fox News Power rankings that.
Speaker 3: Were just released.
Speaker 2: So Fox, in a system that they literally just made up,
Speaker 2: decided that Tim Scott is now in play.
Speaker 3: But what is the act.
Speaker 2: Will data tell us. The RCP average of polls shows
Speaker 2: us clearly it's Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswami. If you are
Speaker 2: to believe a smattering of recent polls, Ramaswami is actually
Speaker 2: tied with DeSantis and in some has even overtaken him.
Speaker 2: So how can they justify putting Scott ahead of him
Speaker 2: when in the actual average he's multiple candidates behind. The
Speaker 2: answer comes down to the same institutional bias that we
Speaker 2: saw with Yang. They simply cannot believe that it's real.
Speaker 2: And look, maybe it isn't one red flag for vik
Speaker 2: was it? The most recent New York Times Siena poll
Speaker 2: found him at nearly two percent, far below the other averages.
Speaker 2: Maybe that was an outliar, maybe the others won't. But
Speaker 2: within the system that we have, it's clear that he
Speaker 2: is a much more serious contender than many traditional candidates,
Speaker 2: at least as serious as they can be within the
Speaker 2: confines of the Trump dominated party, Which brings us to
Speaker 2: the less in section for the future. Considering Trump's complete
Speaker 2: domination of the party and the press and the mind
Speaker 2: of the GOP voter, it seems clear he is most
Speaker 2: of the conversation around so called competition. It's all academic.
Speaker 2: What can we learn from Ramaswami candidacy, at least so far.
Speaker 2: One lesson is clear, if you have something to say,
Speaker 2: you got to say it, and you got to say
Speaker 2: it loudly and to everyone that will listen. And I
Speaker 2: can tell you that booking him was incredibly easy relative
Speaker 2: to many of these other candidates. The others have been
Speaker 2: a byzantine process of negotiation, with aids on timing, often
Speaker 2: getting no response despite the fact that shows like ours
Speaker 2: are watched by millions of people at the same time,
Speaker 2: we get no response that I'll see. These candidates then
Speaker 2: pop up on a weekend CNN hour watched by probably
Speaker 2: one fifth the number.
Speaker 3: Why they're playing an old game.
Speaker 2: They are wedded to the old style, traditional questions, traditional answers. Second, though,
Speaker 2: is of uniqueness. Having something to say is not the
Speaker 2: only metric. You got to have say something that is
Speaker 2: genuinely unique relative to everyone else. And when it comes
Speaker 2: to defending Trump, Vivek always goes the extra mile and
Speaker 2: a signal to Trump supporters he's on their side. When
Speaker 2: it spans foreign policy, climate, wokeness, any other issue, he's
Speaker 2: got an extra long Twitter essay loaded with bullet points,
Speaker 2: and he comes prepared with interviews to actually defend his positions.
Speaker 2: He's perfected the online art of saying something outrageous and
Speaker 2: then having the intellect to at least back up some
Speaker 2: of it rhetorically, which scores him, earn media and makes
Speaker 2: people pay attention. All successful Internet candidates have done this
Speaker 2: Yang with Ubi Marianne with Radical Acceptance, RFK Junior on
Speaker 2: the COVID Establishment. It shows again that the Internet at
Speaker 2: its most powerful is a dissonant force to establishment voices,
Speaker 2: and it injes Us closer to my own personal dream
Speaker 2: a world where the gatekeepers actually don't matter at all anymore,
Speaker 2: and that anyone anywhere with something to say may actually
Speaker 2: get a shot at winning. And so I think it's
Speaker 2: really interesting what Vig has been able to accomplish even today.
Speaker 3: I just saw Time magazine and.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: Listen, guys, it's been a great show. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a lot tomorrow. As a reminder,
Speaker 2: we've got that debate special. We'll be dropping for all
Speaker 2: of our premium describers predictions. It's going to be well produced,
Speaker 2: going to be a lot of fun. It'll drop for
Speaker 2: everybody else later on. Thanks to everybody helps us out
Speaker 2: here on the show, and we will see you all tomorrow.
Speaker 2: M