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.
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today. What do we have, Rissel?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of big news breaking this morning.
Speaker 1: First and foremost, the debt ceiling bill did pass through
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives. We have all the numbers on
Speaker 1: that and what happens next, and also some behind the
Speaker 1: scenes and side deals cut and all the things you
Speaker 1: need to know about that, so we'll break that down
Speaker 1: for you. Also have some big updates on twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: A new entrant into the race next week, Mike Pence
Speaker 1: going ahead and giving it his shot, so not a
Speaker 1: big surprise, but still interesting. Lots to do over there
Speaker 1: also a New York Times focus group for Biden. It
Speaker 1: was Biden voters talking about how they feel about him.
Speaker 1: That was bad for him, but in some ways even
Speaker 1: worse for Trump.
Speaker 3: It was bad for everybody.
Speaker 4: It was not yeah, and it.
Speaker 1: Painted a very dismal portrait, I'm sure one that you
Speaker 1: probably can relate to of the state of American politics.
Speaker 1: So we'll break that down for you as well. Also
Speaker 1: new war of words between DeSantis and Trump. Some updates
Speaker 1: on how American officials and other officials around the world
Speaker 1: responded to those Ukrainian drone strikes within Russia. Obviously very
Speaker 1: very dangerous situation, and some note were they comments from
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that we will play for you as well.
Speaker 2: It is our two year anniversary and honestly feels completely
Speaker 2: surreal to the fact that we. I was just looking
Speaker 2: back at our tweets from two years ago about launching
Speaker 2: how excited we are were the Crystalisaga dot com, the
Speaker 2: mailchimp we.
Speaker 4: Have, ah, oh god, mailchimp.
Speaker 2: We'll save all of this. The very last segment of
Speaker 2: the show today will be reflecting. We have a fun
Speaker 2: highlight reel with the.
Speaker 3: Producer and all them put together.
Speaker 2: But I want to give a special shout out to
Speaker 2: Scarlett Murray. She was the first premium subscriber that we got.
Speaker 2: Scarlet is particularly impressive because she somehow was able to
Speaker 2: sign up before anybody else did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wee hours before.
Speaker 4: We hadn't even announced, like we didn't exit or anything.
Speaker 3: Scarlet. I don't know how you did it, but you
Speaker 3: did figure it out.
Speaker 2: So I just want to say thank you to you,
Speaker 2: and also to Christine McConnell, one of our lifetime members
Speaker 2: who has been more than generous. She absolutely deserves a
Speaker 2: special shout out from us here today. But really it's
Speaker 2: not just obviously without him, it's all of you. I mean,
Speaker 2: who signed up and backed us from the beginning exactly
Speaker 2: two years ago. So many of you were so excited
Speaker 2: about the show, and I only hope that we've been
Speaker 2: able to deliver on some of that promise. And we're
Speaker 2: just getting started. It's a very last day here at
Speaker 2: the desk again. We'll save all of our sappy reflections,
Speaker 2: yeah for the end.
Speaker 1: That part feels very surreal though, Like I don't actually
Speaker 1: believe that it's real that this is our last time
Speaker 1: on this set, with this desk. Goodbye to the brick,
Speaker 1: bye to the you know, the very special desk to
Speaker 1: the desk, very special, veryci custom made desk, all the
Speaker 1: debt core.
Speaker 3: Some of it will make the transition, but I am.
Speaker 1: Super excited about the news said, it's a huge investment
Speaker 1: for us. So yeah, we'll save some of that for
Speaker 1: the end of the show. We've got our producers to
Speaker 1: put together a little reflection that we actually haven't even
Speaker 1: seen yet, So excited to watch that as well. But
Speaker 1: let's go and get into the news this morning. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, Kevin McCarthy able to successfully shepherd that
Speaker 1: debt ceiling bill, that compromise deal that was struck with
Speaker 1: the White House through the House of Representatives, in spite
Speaker 1: of some vociferous operation opposition from within his own caucus.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put the final vote here up on
Speaker 1: the screen. There's a couple of things that are noteworthy here.
Speaker 1: First of all, the House passed the debt ceiling feel
Speaker 1: three fourteen to one seventeen, not close at all. In
Speaker 1: the end, getting over three hundred votes for passage is
Speaker 1: an impressive feat. The one note here though, for McCarthy,
Speaker 1: is you actually had more Republican opposition than you had
Speaker 1: Democrats seventy one Republicans voted against the measure, and only
Speaker 1: forty six Democrats voted in opposition, so he, in particular
Speaker 1: Soccer needed Democratic votes to get passed to pass the
Speaker 1: rule that would bring this thing to the floor. There
Speaker 1: was some reporting, I'll get to this in a minute,
Speaker 1: that he actually cut a side deal with Hikeem Jefferies
Speaker 1: in order to get the Democrats that they needed.
Speaker 4: To be able to get the rule to pass. So
Speaker 4: we don't know.
Speaker 1: This is like one of those backroom deals. Nobody actually
Speaker 1: knows what was in it. They're actually denying that it happened.
Speaker 1: But we'll put that aside for a moment. Let's get
Speaker 1: a little bit more detail about who were the opponents
Speaker 1: of the debt sealing bill within the Republican caucus. It
Speaker 1: can put this next piece up on the screen. This
Speaker 1: is from our friend Kyle Condick. He notes that there
Speaker 1: were twenty one House Republicans who did not support McCarthy
Speaker 1: on every speaker vote back in January. For the New
Speaker 1: York Times tracker of the debt sealing vote, twenty of
Speaker 1: the twenty one were no on the deal. So all
Speaker 1: of his opponents in terms of the speakership, anybody who
Speaker 1: put up any resistance to him being speaker. They all
Speaker 1: voted against the deal. Lauren Bobert apparently missed the vote,
Speaker 1: so she probably would have voted. I know for a
Speaker 1: fact she would have vote. Know, that's what she said
Speaker 1: publicly if she hadn't inexplicably missed the vote.
Speaker 4: But whatever.
Speaker 1: So most of the opposition for this really came from
Speaker 1: that sort of hardcore group freedom Caucus members. We played
Speaker 1: you yesterday with Emily, We played you some of the
Speaker 1: comments from Dan Bishop chip Roy. They seemed to be
Speaker 1: genuinely upset about the way that this all went down.
Speaker 4: But you know, at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Most of the caucus remained with McCarthy and was able
Speaker 1: to get you know, he got a majority of Republican votes,
Speaker 1: more than a majority of Republican votes on the final
Speaker 1: vote through. And I think there were a couple pieces here,
Speaker 1: Sager Number one. If they voted down this deal, there
Speaker 1: was no plan B. So then you're actually facing like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're actually going over the cliff, and you have some
Speaker 1: part of the caucus that's like, hell, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: But I think the majority of them were like that's
Speaker 1: a little bit much for me, including McCarthy, and then
Speaker 1: the other pie, says Jim Jordan, who obviously very respected
Speaker 1: among a lot of the sort of hard right, especially
Speaker 1: fiscal hard right conservatives. You know, he's anxious to get
Speaker 1: on with his like weaponization of government stuff and Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden's stuff and wants to lean more into that as
Speaker 1: we head into election season. We're already an election season
Speaker 1: than this, like tussling over the dut ceiling.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say, procedurally, this is a nightmare because
Speaker 2: the fact is is that, as Kyle Condack points out,
Speaker 2: if you have twenty of those twenty one who voted
Speaker 2: against McCarthy in the first place, their entire reason for
Speaker 2: why they caved and ended up allowing McCarthy to be
Speaker 2: the speaker was we got concession so that we can
Speaker 2: get what we want.
Speaker 3: Well, no, you didn't. You actually all just got humiliated.
Speaker 2: And like you know, they were guaranteed all these so
Speaker 2: called procedural things like the rules committee or you know,
Speaker 2: the emotion to vacate and all this.
Speaker 3: So well they haven't done a motion to vacate yet.
Speaker 2: We'll see, I've only seen one member or maybe one
Speaker 2: or two actually even float. It doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: a real idea. I mean, the truth is actually kind
Speaker 2: of what I said at the time. I'm like the fact,
Speaker 2: when you vote for him, it's like he's a speaker
Speaker 2: now and he's in control, and now, really the gauntlet
Speaker 2: has thrown to you.
Speaker 3: Are you really going to do something about it? I
Speaker 3: don't think so.
Speaker 2: I mean they seem upset, but they told their base
Speaker 2: and the Freedom Caucus guys and all these other Republicans
Speaker 2: who didn't like McCarthy, don't worry. We have all these
Speaker 2: things inside of the deal that can make sure that
Speaker 2: we have all this leverage and controls. Like, well, not really,
Speaker 2: because every single one of you voted against the deal
Speaker 2: and it's still passed. So then how exactly did you
Speaker 2: get it done? Like you gave away the store and
Speaker 2: he didn't McCarthy. I got to give the guy credit.
Speaker 2: He actually ended up giving way less of it away
Speaker 2: than it appeared on paper, or he was able to
Speaker 2: maneuver them very expertly.
Speaker 3: Either works, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean it's kind of weird because they'll
Speaker 1: send on a tweet like Dan Bishop or whoever, we'll
Speaker 1: send on a tweet that's like we agreed that it
Speaker 1: has to be a unanimous vote in the Rules committee,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, maybe you did, and maybe you didn't.
Speaker 1: You don't have it on paper. None of this was
Speaker 1: disclosed publicly.
Speaker 3: That's why didn't you write it down then?
Speaker 4: And there were other things like that too.
Speaker 1: That was like they said, we were going to have,
Speaker 1: you know, it had to be more Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 1: voting for the bill for something to be brought to
Speaker 1: the floor. First of all, that doesn't even make any
Speaker 1: sense because how are you going to block a vote
Speaker 1: from happening based on the vote that's going to have it? Like,
Speaker 1: that's not even logical. But maybe there was some sort
Speaker 1: of a handshake agreement, and again maybe there wasn't. But
Speaker 1: guess what, the public didn't know about it. It wasn't
Speaker 1: written on paper, so at the end of the day
Speaker 1: it proved to be worthless. One thing I was asking
Speaker 1: Emily about, because you know, she's like well sourced and
Speaker 1: hazard finger on the pulse of some of this stuff
Speaker 1: is how much of their upset is this genuine sense
Speaker 1: of betrayal and how much of it is them posturing
Speaker 1: for their own base that wants to see them, you know,
Speaker 1: play acting that they're upset and they're fighting, and they're
Speaker 1: standing up against leadership, et cetera. That's a real open
Speaker 1: question to me. I would say the fact that you
Speaker 1: only have a couple of them, one or two maybe
Speaker 1: seriously floating the idea of getting rid of McCarthy for speaker,
Speaker 1: I think that kind of reveals that some of this,
Speaker 1: from their perspective too, is a bit of posturing, is
Speaker 1: a bit of theater, because if they genuinely saw this
Speaker 1: as the betrayal that they're portraying it as to, you know,
Speaker 1: to their audience and their base, then I think they
Speaker 1: would be more seriously contemplating those.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, life is a stage, right, I mean
Speaker 2: this is especially politics, it's all theater.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, they're like a whole complaining and all. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: then you guys, look objectively, you absolutely lost.
Speaker 2: There's no app there's no way to look at it
Speaker 2: and say that you didn't lose in terms of not
Speaker 2: even in terms of spending. They literally expanded the food
Speaker 2: stamp program. Like, if you're one of those people, that's
Speaker 2: like a nightmare, how can you possibly say that that
Speaker 2: didn't work out? And then procedurally, none of the so
Speaker 2: called backstops that were supposed to ensure your veto power
Speaker 2: ended up existing. So now it's in the chamber of
Speaker 2: the Senate, we'll see. I mean it looks like it's
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say easily going to pass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think it's I think the action was
Speaker 1: mostly on the House side, exactly. You know, obviously the
Speaker 1: Senate is in Democratic control. Uh so you will have
Speaker 1: more Democrats who are willing, I think, to vote for
Speaker 1: it there than even in the House, just because of
Speaker 1: like partisan weird reasons. But John Thunne had very confidently
Speaker 1: stated that they had more than enough Republicans to get
Speaker 1: to that sixty vote threshold as well. Just one other
Speaker 1: note on kind of the politics of this. You can
Speaker 1: see the way that you know, different ideological factions are
Speaker 1: viewing this debt ceiling vote. A lot of the Democratic
Speaker 1: knows were from the progressive side. In the California Senate race,
Speaker 1: you know, you have three contenders. You got Adam Schiff,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi's handpicked choice, so she's trying to like make
Speaker 1: sure Jerry rig him in.
Speaker 4: He voted for the deal.
Speaker 1: He's considered to be you know, more of a centrist,
Speaker 1: certainly very pro establishment, pro the Democratic powers, that being
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, etc.
Speaker 4: So he votes for the deal.
Speaker 1: The other two who are more progressive, Barber Lee and
Speaker 1: Katie Porter, they vote against the deal.
Speaker 4: So that's interesting on that side.
Speaker 1: Put the next element up on the screen in terms
Speaker 1: of Republicans how they were viewing this. Ten Republicans rated
Speaker 1: as toss ups. So these are Republicans in actual swing districts.
Speaker 4: They all voted.
Speaker 1: For the debt sealing except for one, though, he George Santos,
Speaker 1: who you know, I don't know that you'd really call
Speaker 1: his thing a toss up at this point, given that
Speaker 1: he's been criminally indicted, and I think his prospects look
Speaker 1: a little bit dim. So he's doing whatever he feels
Speaker 1: in the moment without any concern for the politics of it.
Speaker 1: But so that's the way that different ideological factions were
Speaker 1: viewing this vote. One other piece that we wanted to
Speaker 1: share with you here is about the potential side deal
Speaker 1: that was cut between Hakeem Jeffries and Kevin McCarthy. Put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. They say, these their offices
Speaker 1: both deny that there was any deal to save the
Speaker 1: debt ceiling, but there was reporting suggesting for Democratic lawmakers
Speaker 1: said they had been told of a deal to saying
Speaker 1: they believed it involved boosting federal funding for projects and
Speaker 1: Democrats districts, known as earmarks or community project funding. If
Speaker 1: Democrats voted to advance the bill, that was that rules
Speaker 1: vote that McCarthy ended up needing to lie on Democrats
Speaker 1: to get across the finish line. So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: would think it was more likely than not than some
Speaker 1: kind of deal was cut there with regard to earmarks
Speaker 1: or something else, which I think just underscores, you know,
Speaker 1: part of what has been complicated with regard to the
Speaker 1: actual deal that was cut in terms of as an
Speaker 1: analyst trying to explain what exactly is in it. Some
Speaker 1: of the deal is in the text of what they
Speaker 1: just passed, and some of it was these agreements that
Speaker 1: have to do within the future, these budget you basically
Speaker 1: call them gimmicks that the Republicans agreed to pass that
Speaker 1: would help lift some of the domestic social safety net
Speaker 1: spending that is on its face cut in these deals.
Speaker 1: And so it has been a little complex to wrap
Speaker 1: your arms around exactly what's in this deal.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: Another area where there's a lot of conflicting information is
Speaker 1: on how dract Cody and the cuts to the IRAS are.
Speaker 4: This obviously is a.
Speaker 1: Huge Republican priority. The cut that passed in this bill
Speaker 1: was relatively slim. It was one billion dollars. But again
Speaker 1: there's reporting that there's this sort of side agreement that
Speaker 1: is actually going to be twenty billion dollars. But then
Speaker 1: again the White House is saying, don't worry, we can
Speaker 1: backfill that. So it's actually not going to make that
Speaker 1: much of a difference. So it makes it very challenging
Speaker 1: to actually analyze what was past, what it means, and
Speaker 1: what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the IRS piece, I actually did a lot
Speaker 2: of digging in. Yeah, if basically they failed completely. What
Speaker 2: they wanted to do was to claw back the current
Speaker 2: initial ability of the IRS to expand. Instead, what they
Speaker 2: did is an overall cut which will take place theoretically
Speaker 2: sometime in the future. The twenty billion to what you're referencing,
Speaker 2: we already did money more or multiples of that. This
Speaker 2: will not impact IRS current operating capacity at all.
Speaker 3: It also does not include.
Speaker 2: Any of the provisions which they talked a big game
Speaker 2: about about making sure that they don't go after anybody
Speaker 2: who is you know, less than two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars, which in my opinion should be in there ironclad.
Speaker 2: Given the behavior of the IRS, it theoretically cuts it
Speaker 2: in the future, which I mean, as you and I know, Crystal,
Speaker 2: what is stop the government from just backfilling that the
Speaker 2: next time the Democrats have control. Yeah, you're just going
Speaker 2: to do that plus probably times ten, and then we'll
Speaker 2: have a fake game where we calw back like two years.
Speaker 3: It's all bs. Yeah, that's why this whole deal, this
Speaker 3: whole deal to me is just nonsense, Like it's nonsense
Speaker 3: on a space. I guess.
Speaker 2: The only people got taken care of are the Pentagon,
Speaker 2: the Government.
Speaker 4: Of Ukraine, always always the.
Speaker 2: Pentagon, the Government of Ukraine, and then the rest of us.
Speaker 2: Almost none of our lives are going to change, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, just to zoom out to the big
Speaker 1: picture here, because it can get lost in some of
Speaker 1: the details talking about how is our IRS funding work
Speaker 1: and how's this going to go with the budget appropriation process.
Speaker 1: The fact that we are in this place at all
Speaker 1: is just absurd, I mean, especially in some ways especially
Speaker 1: because they ended up not getting really anything work.
Speaker 3: That's my key then what they could have.
Speaker 1: Gotten through a normal, non hostage taking situation where you
Speaker 1: aren't threatening the entire global financial system and threatening by
Speaker 1: the way, like you know, if we defaulted, then you're
Speaker 1: having a way. Okay, seniors get paid, do veterans get paid?
Speaker 1: Do bondholders get paid? What does this all look like?
Speaker 1: I mean, all of this was on the line. This
Speaker 1: is not a joke and it's not a gain you're
Speaker 1: talking at. You're playing with millions of people's lives and
Speaker 1: jobs and their basic security, so that in the end
Speaker 1: it ends up as this sort of just like pathetic,
Speaker 1: confusing mishmash is.
Speaker 4: It's insulting. I think the Biden White House there.
Speaker 1: Was a lot of celebration of like, oh, the deal
Speaker 1: for them is not as bad as it could have been. Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: but they misplayed this from the beginning, and in fact
Speaker 1: it is. That's what was surprising was that McCarthy didn't
Speaker 1: extract even more from them.
Speaker 4: Because he certainly could have.
Speaker 1: They played their hand so poorly and in we're such
Speaker 1: a weak position, they gave themselves no other out than
Speaker 1: to pass some kind of deal with McCarthy. But I
Speaker 1: think at the end of the day, McCarthy was also
Speaker 1: very fearful of going over the cliff. Even though he's
Speaker 1: got these renegades in his caucus who at least act
Speaker 1: like they're crazy enough to do it, he did not
Speaker 1: share that sentiment whatsoever, and so he was also most
Speaker 1: interested in getting to a yes and averting this whole
Speaker 1: catastrophe that he was forced into as part of the
Speaker 1: speakership deal.
Speaker 4: Now that's all on him.
Speaker 1: I'm not like, you know, removing the blame from him whatsoever.
Speaker 1: But it's not like from the beginning he was enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about this fight.
Speaker 4: He was forced into it.
Speaker 3: There. I forgot to add a winner.
Speaker 2: By the way, yeah, Wall Street, because I don't know
Speaker 2: if people know this, but the uncertainty in the debt
Speaker 2: ceiling has spiked treasury bill rates to like near all
Speaker 2: time highs. And so, by the way, it's a great
Speaker 2: opportunity for free money if you're interested.
Speaker 4: And you know what that means.
Speaker 1: That means like it's more expensive, but yeah, government to borrows.
Speaker 2: Really in the reality out all taxpayers are paying out
Speaker 2: huge premiums.
Speaker 3: To Warren Buffett into all these other guys right who.
Speaker 2: Are printing tax free money gains off of Treasury bills
Speaker 2: and the now Wall Street not only got to profit
Speaker 2: off of some of that initial uncertainty, now they don't
Speaker 2: have to deal with any of the fallout from the
Speaker 2: debt ceilings. So yeah, I would be remiss if I
Speaker 2: didn't say a lot of billionaires were actually very happy.
Speaker 4: By very very good and important point.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're worried about, you know,
Speaker 1: the interest payments and the level of debt, obviously that's
Speaker 1: wildly counterproductive that you've just spike spiked the cost of
Speaker 1: government borrowing. The last piece we have here for you
Speaker 1: just to preview the fight in the Senate, which again
Speaker 1: I think is going to be smooth ceiling. I don't
Speaker 1: think they have any trouble passing this debt sealing deal
Speaker 1: through the Senate, though you don't know. One thing that
Speaker 1: was interesting I saw this morning.
Speaker 4: Ran Paul is.
Speaker 1: Going to sort of get Republicans on the record force
Speaker 1: a vote on a larger cut that would potentially include
Speaker 1: He says social Security would be off the table, but
Speaker 1: Medicare would be on the table.
Speaker 4: So that's a difficult political vote.
Speaker 1: That Republicans will have to take but I do think
Speaker 1: this thing will get through the Senate, probably without much
Speaker 1: of a problem. However, we did get a statement from
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders put this up on the screen expressing, I
Speaker 1: think effectively expressing here the progressive stance and upset with
Speaker 1: this deal. He says, I cannot in good conscience vote
Speaker 1: for the debt sealing deal. Among other things, he says,
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is that this bill is
Speaker 1: totally un necessary. The President has the authority and the
Speaker 1: ability to eliminate the debt ceiling today by invoking the
Speaker 1: fourteenth Amendment. I look forward to the day when he
Speaker 1: exercises this authority and puts an end once in ferralty
Speaker 1: the outrageous actions of the extreme right wing to hold
Speaker 1: our entire economy hostage in order to get what they want.
Speaker 1: He also name checks here, you know the fact that
Speaker 1: as part of this deal, again supposedly the concern is
Speaker 1: over the debt and the deficit, which everybody knows that's
Speaker 1: not really the case. There's just an ideological agenda against
Speaker 1: certain of these programs. They take off the table, closing
Speaker 1: the car at interest loophole, which would obviously raise revenues.
Speaker 4: They take off the table any.
Speaker 1: Sort of hike for the richest among us and for
Speaker 1: corporations that's all, you know, considered not even close to
Speaker 1: being a part of this deal. They take off the
Speaker 1: table things like negotiating drug prices, prescription drug prices through Medicare,
Speaker 1: which again would raise revenue.
Speaker 4: So he points to some of.
Speaker 1: Those pieces that you expose the hypocrisy and the fundamental
Speaker 1: unfairness of the deal itself. But also I think the
Speaker 1: bigger point is the one about how unnecessary this whole
Speaker 1: crisis and this whole quote unquote deal ultimately was.
Speaker 2: And Bernie was the first Democrat to come out against it.
Speaker 2: Jeff Merkley's also come out against it. We'll see how
Speaker 2: many others actually come out on the record. But as
Speaker 2: you said, there may be some procedural hijinks about forcing
Speaker 2: votes and stuff on amendments, and we may have a
Speaker 2: bit of a delay a thirty hour debate rule without
Speaker 2: unanimous consent. But you got four days till the so
Speaker 2: called till the soft deadline, which you know, you could
Speaker 2: probably stretch that out if you need to.
Speaker 3: So very likely not going to see any crisis. But
Speaker 3: we'll keep everybody updated.
Speaker 1: This whole thing was kind of frustrating and raging, and
Speaker 1: I'll be very happy to not talk about it again for.
Speaker 4: Quite a while.
Speaker 3: Good riding two years. We'll cover it on our four
Speaker 3: year endit.
Speaker 4: There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1: Apparently that's what we're at it. Okay, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about some new data we're getting out about
Speaker 1: the likely presidential matchup between former President Trump and current
Speaker 1: President Biden. Put this up on the screen for the
Speaker 1: New York Times. They did a focus group of eleven
Speaker 1: Biden vote and you know, always take these with a
Speaker 1: grain of salt. It's just eleven people, but it's always
Speaker 1: interesting to hear what actually actual voters are saying about
Speaker 1: how they feel about the stay of the country and
Speaker 1: the man that all eleven of them actually voted for
Speaker 1: but are feeling kind of shaky.
Speaker 4: On this time around.
Speaker 1: So keep this up on the screen, guys, because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read off they asked. One of the questions they
Speaker 1: asked is if you were giving the weather forecast for
Speaker 1: how things are going in America, what would you say.
Speaker 4: Here's the sample of the answers.
Speaker 1: One said, Icee Stormy, I think we're had in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. Next one says, cloudy with a chance of
Speaker 1: tick tick boom. He's a very literary person. I think
Speaker 1: there's going to be an outer force of danger that
Speaker 1: is going to unite as kind of like nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: Did oh, that's kind of dark too. The pendulint has
Speaker 1: to swing the other way. Another one said, my forecast
Speaker 1: is very cloudy with the chance of a heavy downpour
Speaker 1: and maybe a tornado, you know, just to recap, and
Speaker 1: we've got some other graphics we can show you. They
Speaker 1: asked this group a series of questions about, you know,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about Biden? And is he doing
Speaker 1: a good job? And is he a good leader? On
Speaker 1: a number of questions that you know had positive attributes
Speaker 1: about Biden, no one agreed with the sentiment. So they asked,
Speaker 1: is Biden a good leader? Not a one of them
Speaker 1: raise their hands. They asked, does he share my values?
Speaker 1: This actually surprised me. Not a one of them raise
Speaker 1: their hands. They asked, you know, did he do better, worse,
Speaker 1: or the same than you expected? No one said he
Speaker 1: did better than they expected. They asked, is he up
Speaker 1: to the task of being president through twenty twenty eight?
Speaker 1: No one said yes, And they asked, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about his handling of the economy, and no one
Speaker 1: had a positive feeling about his handling of the economy.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So they say, what is one word you would use
Speaker 1: to describe how you feel about the November twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four presidential election You are not going to be surprised by. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe there's one that you'll be surprised about, they say.
Speaker 1: The first person says, is shit show one word or two?
Speaker 1: How about circus nice? One says anxious, apprehensive, scared? I
Speaker 1: think unforgettable, scary, eager, okay, confused, geriatric self.
Speaker 4: Park episode and defeated.
Speaker 1: Put the next graphic we have up on the screen
Speaker 1: here as well. See another piece of this. They say,
Speaker 1: you're all in this group because you voted for Joe
Speaker 1: Biden in twenty twenty. That doesn't mean that you love
Speaker 1: what he's done or that you support him now. It
Speaker 1: just means you voted for him in twenty twenty. So
Speaker 1: why did you vote for Joe Biden in twenty twenty election?
Speaker 1: One person says, it really was the lesser of two evils,
Speaker 1: felt like the only thing I could do. Another says,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't stomach Trump. Another says, I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but pretty much the same reason, and another
Speaker 1: one says, I didn't vote for Biden, I voted against Trump,
Speaker 1: and sager. This was a consistent theme. Every one of
Speaker 1: these people said they are not impressed with Biden. They
Speaker 1: don't think he's up to the task of.
Speaker 4: Another four years.
Speaker 1: They're disappointed, they're unhappy with the economy, they see the
Speaker 1: outlook as stormy. They're all these sentiments, right, But then
Speaker 1: when you ask them, well, who are going to vote
Speaker 1: for this time, almost all of them said Biden again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Trump or DeSantis, in our opinion, is worse.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: There was one person, I think who said that they
Speaker 1: were very likely to just not vote, and I do
Speaker 1: think those people. You know, these are people that all
Speaker 1: voted for Biden last time. It was a narrow election,
Speaker 1: so he really needs to win all of these type
Speaker 1: of people again.
Speaker 4: So the fact that you.
Speaker 1: Have even any of them saying, you know what, I
Speaker 1: may just not vote, I may vote third party, I'll
Speaker 1: see who the Republicans put up. The fact that you
Speaker 1: have any of that going on is actually a bit
Speaker 1: of a worrying sign for Biden, and they are concerned
Speaker 1: about there's a higher percentage this time around than last
Speaker 1: time who say they would consider voting third party or independent.
Speaker 1: And you know, that was part of the complex set
Speaker 1: of factors that led to Hillary Clinton losing in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: when you had a lot of people who just literally
Speaker 1: would not stomach either Trump or Hillary and voted for
Speaker 1: Johnson or Stein in that election.
Speaker 4: So I thought that was interesting too.
Speaker 2: On DeSantis, I'm not sure it was all of them.
Speaker 2: I think it was only what three or four right
Speaker 2: who said that they wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Vote for him.
Speaker 2: But my personal favorite was this one from the Nick
Speaker 2: what do you mean by south Park episode? He says,
Speaker 2: there was an episode in south Park from two thousand
Speaker 2: and four there was a mock election. Everybody just keeps
Speaker 2: voting for the vote for the lesser of two evils.
Speaker 2: They're voting just to keep someone else out. I hate
Speaker 2: that because that becomes a scenario I have committed to
Speaker 2: vote for a third party this coming election.
Speaker 3: I thought that was really interesting. This was Nick.
Speaker 2: He's a thirty seven year old from Iowa, a white guy,
Speaker 2: independent and business manager. So you know, that's actually a
Speaker 2: good glimpse I think into you know, kind of like
Speaker 2: who and what are thinking about the election and the
Speaker 2: despair and all of that that they feel. I think
Speaker 2: what becomes very clear is that Trump himself does have
Speaker 2: and I think this is what his supporters always underestimate,
Speaker 2: which is as much as you love Trump, which is
Speaker 2: that's the thing with Trump, he gets more love than
Speaker 2: any politician probably that I've ever seen in my lifetime.
Speaker 2: He gets an equal amount of hate from a lot
Speaker 2: of people too. Yeah, and those balance out, you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of the positive.
Speaker 3: Number of people who are willing to come out and vote.
Speaker 2: And then in some cases not even just balance, like
Speaker 2: there are even more people who are both repulsed, and
Speaker 2: then when it comes time to pull the lever, decide
Speaker 2: not to. Now, look, there's obviously a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot that can go on, and he almost did win
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election. He came incredibly close, as we've
Speaker 2: pointed out here, and DeSantis did too.
Speaker 3: If you just.
Speaker 2: Encourage mail in voting, he literally would have won. So
Speaker 2: that's a whole other narrative that is out there. So
Speaker 2: I don't want to underestimate his strength, but you shouldn't
Speaker 2: underestimate some of his weaknesses either, and the weakness is
Speaker 2: very full on display here.
Speaker 4: And at this point, you know, Biden is incumbent president.
Speaker 1: That comes with significant advantages because people find you know,
Speaker 1: change in switching horses, minstream or whatever that whatever that's
Speaker 1: saying is they find that unsettling, and so incumbents and
Speaker 1: you have the bully pulpit, and you know, you are
Speaker 1: in the office of commander in chief, so nobody has
Speaker 1: any trouble envisioning it. That comes with a significant advantage,
Speaker 1: and so that makes it more difficult for Trump. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, at the time last time around, you
Speaker 1: had the immediate specter of Trump in office is just
Speaker 1: doing a horrific job managing the pandemic and you know,
Speaker 1: people dying, and it was a very bad time in America.
Speaker 4: So you had this immediate.
Speaker 1: Example of what it looked like to actually have Donald
Speaker 1: Trump as president of the United States. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that did surprise me was that no
Speaker 1: one said that Biden shares my values because one of
Speaker 1: his political strengths. And the man obviously has political strengths
Speaker 1: because he is president of the United States and was
Speaker 1: previously you know, vice president for eight years, and well
Speaker 1: like during that time. One of his strengths has always
Speaker 1: been that people do feel like he shares their values,
Speaker 1: that they do feel like he's sort of like an
Speaker 1: empathetic person and gets their struggles and what they're going through.
Speaker 1: So I was a little bit surprised by that, by
Speaker 1: that perspective offered by eleven, all eleven of these individuals.
Speaker 1: One woman who is a black independent who's not working, said,
Speaker 1: I think Biden is the corporate elitist type person that
Speaker 1: camouflages himself as a regular guy, and that was her
Speaker 1: answer for why she didn't feel that he shared her values.
Speaker 1: There was another portion, Nick, who's a thirty seven year
Speaker 1: old white independent business manager. He was talking about the
Speaker 1: economy and said, there's not enough being done to help
Speaker 1: shoulder some of these increases. When you see these other
Speaker 1: companies posting record profits. That's concerning to me. Continuing to
Speaker 1: line the pockets of the elite while everyone else is
Speaker 1: struggling is not okay. And I thought those were interesting
Speaker 1: because what a lot of people would take away from
Speaker 1: a focus group like this is like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we got to come to the center, and we got
Speaker 1: to be more moderate, and a lot of people express
Speaker 1: sentiments like that, but then when you ask some specifics
Speaker 1: about what they want, it's actually like, it's actually, we
Speaker 1: got to go after the elites. It's actually not sort
Speaker 1: of the classic view of what a corporate centrist moderate
Speaker 1: position would look like. So media's definition of what moderate
Speaker 1: is and actual voters how they articulate it tends to
Speaker 1: be very, very different. Another thing that I thought was interesting, Sager,
Speaker 1: is when they asked people what was it that you
Speaker 1: liked that Biden did, A number of them were like,
Speaker 1: I have to get back.
Speaker 4: To you on that, like I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: But the people who were able to name things, A
Speaker 1: few people named student loan debt relief that was something
Speaker 1: that was very tangible for them, and I think one
Speaker 1: of them named infrastructure. So I thought that was interesting too,
Speaker 1: And it kind of makes some sense because if you're
Speaker 1: a person who's going to benefit from student loan debt
Speaker 1: relief that is like really measurable, really impacting.
Speaker 4: Your life, it's going to stick with you.
Speaker 1: It's not something that I would some a morphous bill
Speaker 1: that passed and now I can't even remember the details
Speaker 1: of it. It felt very real and very concrete and
Speaker 1: was the thing that most immediately came to mind for
Speaker 1: a number of the people that they interviewed.
Speaker 2: Here kind of interesting. I love looking into the views
Speaker 2: of just like how people actually vote, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of the pundits, and everybody thinks that people are
Speaker 2: so iconic class they're really not like they're just completely
Speaker 2: they're really they have contradictory beliefs of which they would
Speaker 2: never find contradictory. They don't fit meekly into a box.
Speaker 2: A lot of it is personality based, but a lot
Speaker 2: of it is also policy base. And you just can't
Speaker 2: cast a wide breath, Yeah, telling I love about this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bottom line I would say from this poll, not poll,
Speaker 1: focus group, small caveats, remember all of that. But the
Speaker 1: general sentiment is pretty much backing up the theory of
Speaker 1: the case that the Biden White House has, which is, yeah,
Speaker 1: people don't really particularly like our guy. His favorability is
Speaker 1: in the toilet. People are disappointed, they don't feel great
Speaker 1: about the direction of the country. But when push comes
Speaker 1: to shove and they're faced with our guy versus Trump,
Speaker 1: They're all going to come home. They're going to vote
Speaker 1: a guy once again for what they view as the
Speaker 1: lesser of two evils and they're going to have no
Speaker 1: other choice than to come back into our camp. And
Speaker 1: you know, based on these responses, i'd say that it's.
Speaker 4: Frankly, it's not a bad bet. Yep, you're right, Okay.
Speaker 1: At the same time, we got some news about another
Speaker 1: contender entering the Republican side of the equation. This would
Speaker 1: be former Vice President Mike Pence, who's been signaling for
Speaker 1: some time that he was very likely to launch his
Speaker 1: own presidential campaign. Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: He is eyeing a twenty twenty four campaign launch next week.
Speaker 1: The source said. Pence's team is finalizing plans to launch
Speaker 1: the campaign his campaign for the White House, joining the
Speaker 1: expanding GOP primary field, with a forward looking video announcement
Speaker 1: and speech that makes the case for his candidacy. I
Speaker 1: guess he is going to say no thanks on the
Speaker 1: Elon Musk Twitter launch.
Speaker 4: Given recent experiences, He's going.
Speaker 3: With the sure be offered either true. I guess it.
Speaker 1: Technically, yeah, he theoretically was like, oh sure, I talk
Speaker 1: to anybody anyway. I don't know that there are gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of takers on that offer at this point.
Speaker 1: Pence going with a more traditional announcement. He is expected
Speaker 1: to put a lot of his focus on Iowa, they say,
Speaker 1: which hosts the first caucus of the GOP primary calendar.
Speaker 1: And also of note, he is participating in a CNN
Speaker 1: town hall in Des Moines on June seventh, so that
Speaker 1: is next week being billed as a presidential town hall.
Speaker 1: And you know, for those who are I guess looking
Speaker 1: to bolster the Pence case, there was a poll that
Speaker 1: found that you know, a majority of Republicans said they
Speaker 1: would consider supporting him, though they don't support him, but
Speaker 1: they would at least consider it. So he's not completely
Speaker 1: off the table here. So that's kind of the layelah
Speaker 1: Land for him. I mean, the Iowa focus saga, I
Speaker 1: think makes a lot of sense because you do have
Speaker 1: a very well organized, sort of evangelical right in Iowa
Speaker 1: that he has spent a lot of time cultivating and
Speaker 1: making inroads with. That's why he's leaned into things like,
Speaker 1: you know, his support of a national abortion ban. We
Speaker 1: noted right away that he was maybe the first major
Speaker 1: politician after Roe versus Wade was overturning that Dobb's decision
Speaker 1: to come out affirmatively for hey, we need to get
Speaker 1: on board with the national abortion ban. It's a very
Speaker 1: extreme position that has very low support among the public
Speaker 1: at large, But I think we'll find an eager audience
Speaker 1: within the Iowa caucus.
Speaker 4: Faithful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who won the Iowa caucuses in twenty sixteen, Ted Cruz.
Speaker 3: You know why? Evangelicals. I've got the breakdown right here
Speaker 3: in front of me.
Speaker 2: Evangelical Protestants make up the second largest religious group in
Speaker 2: all of Iowa.
Speaker 3: Combine them with.
Speaker 2: Catholics and you've got another eighteen percent, and you're literally
Speaker 2: looking at almost majority of the people in the state
Speaker 2: who are going to have at least a sympathetic view.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess technically on abortion or.
Speaker 2: The very least people were very motivated to vote in
Speaker 2: a GOP primary. It was very key to the Ted
Speaker 2: Cruz victory in Iowa was to go and mobilize the
Speaker 2: evangelical community. They had the Ted Cruz camps as what
Speaker 2: they were called at the time. Firstly would have had
Speaker 2: a better creepy yahtle in my opinion, a little weird,
Speaker 2: but worked out. So, I guess what can you say
Speaker 2: for the Iowa caucuses? This is going to be the
Speaker 2: key and it is also not a surprise that Mike
Speaker 2: Pence has not trained his fire on Donald Trump because
Speaker 2: he's not really competing with a lot of votes for
Speaker 2: him in Iowa. Who's he competing with Ron DeSantis, who
Speaker 2: as we speak, is in Iowa right now, and we're
Speaker 2: going to show you some clips in a little bit
Speaker 2: from his speeches there. He needs to take out DeSantis
Speaker 2: and to compete there if he wants to see any
Speaker 2: sort of victory in the state or place in the
Speaker 2: top three, which is why he actually took a shot
Speaker 2: at DeSantis in a very recent interview.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: I like Walt Disney, not Walke Disney, and I fully
Speaker 5: support what Florida did and challenging a left wing agenda
Speaker 5: for children under third grade. In fact, I'd like to
Speaker 5: see them expand that in the interest of families in Florida.
Speaker 5: But where I took issue several months ago was as
Speaker 5: a limited government conservative. I don't believe it's the role
Speaker 5: of government to then essentially go after corporations that differed
Speaker 5: with them in the political process.
Speaker 2: So look, Mike Pence is basically trying to run the
Speaker 2: Reagan two point zero playbook, just not as charismatic and
Speaker 2: not as good as a politician. So you know, we'll see.
Speaker 2: I do think I'm not going to say I'll be formidable.
Speaker 2: I think he'll place. I think he's probably good eight
Speaker 2: to ten percent of a decent amount of ceiling any
Speaker 2: of these places. And a lot of the polling bears
Speaker 2: that out put this up there on the screen. This
Speaker 2: is our latest twenty twenty four tracking from Morning Console,
Speaker 2: and it shows you in the polling number one Donald
Speaker 2: Trump at fifty six percent, Number two Ron DeSantis at
Speaker 2: twenty two percent, Mike Pence at five sounds about right,
Speaker 2: maybe double that in Iowa because you got more evangelicals
Speaker 2: and you got more Catholics. But you can't forget a
Speaker 2: lot of those people. They love Trump too because in
Speaker 2: a debate, not that may there may be a debate.
Speaker 2: We'll see whether Trump deans to go on the stage.
Speaker 2: But if he's going to hit back, he's got the
Speaker 2: greatest attack of all.
Speaker 3: I got it done. Mike didn't do anything.
Speaker 2: He didn't stand up for me on January sixth, and
Speaker 2: I'm the one who got it done. A DeSantis also,
Speaker 2: frankly has a good, credible legislative case of I signed
Speaker 2: a six week band in a purple state. I actually
Speaker 2: got that done. So once again, to that community, you're
Speaker 2: looking at two people who have actually done something and
Speaker 2: then one guy rhetorically who is not necessarily there. So
Speaker 2: looking at all that, I think Trump and DeSantis have
Speaker 2: a very coo credible case to make to the Evangelical Protestants,
Speaker 2: and you know.
Speaker 3: Either they're going to have to compete for it.
Speaker 2: If anything, Pence is just a spoiler for the Ronda Santis,
Speaker 2: for the Ronda de Santis campaign.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see a pathway to Mike Pence being
Speaker 1: the GOP nominee. You know, he the Trump people, the
Speaker 1: hardcore Trump people have no love for him because he
Speaker 1: didn't back Trump on January sixth, and has you know,
Speaker 1: castigated him somewhat mildly for his actions on that day.
Speaker 1: The hardcore never trumpers have no love for him because
Speaker 1: he didn't because he you know, carried water for Trump
Speaker 1: for all four years, and then even after you had
Speaker 1: this mob running around threatening hang him, he still could
Speaker 1: barely muster an attack on Trump over any of that.
Speaker 1: But I do think he is a real problem for
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis, maybe more so than some of these other characters.
Speaker 1: Because I do think he has a solid five percent,
Speaker 1: five to ten percent, and especially in a state like Iowa.
Speaker 1: And remember Ron DeSantis is really betting the farm on Iowa,
Speaker 1: Iowa and New Hampshire, but in particular Iowa, because if
Speaker 1: you don't come out of the gate strong and you're him,
Speaker 1: and you're facing down the juggernaut of Donald Trump, it.
Speaker 4: Gets real dicey, real quick.
Speaker 1: So the fact that Pence has any sort of traction
Speaker 1: in that state, and I do think he has some
Speaker 1: limited traction in that state, those are votes that are
Speaker 1: coming not from the Donald Trump pile of the of
Speaker 1: the voter base. They're coming out of the DeSantis group
Speaker 1: of voters. I would very much doubt that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of overlap between the Trump and the Pence voting
Speaker 1: base at this point. So this comes directly out of
Speaker 1: Desanta's to share the pie.
Speaker 4: And when you.
Speaker 1: Already have Donald Trump over fifty percent in certainly nationally
Speaker 1: and in a lot of these early primary states as well,
Speaker 1: you not only have.
Speaker 4: To coalesce all of the other.
Speaker 1: Voters that are out there, you've got to be able
Speaker 1: to eat into the Trump margin as well. Having Pence
Speaker 1: and the race just complicates the situation, you know, Emily
Speaker 1: and I covered yesterday too, Chris Christy getting in the race.
Speaker 1: Not that I think Chris Christy has a shot either
Speaker 1: at this whole thing, but the fact that you have
Speaker 1: so many contender jumping in show's number one DeSantis's weakness.
Speaker 4: He didn't scare them out of the race. He didn't
Speaker 4: do whatever.
Speaker 1: Was necessary to get everybody to cole less behind one
Speaker 1: Trump alternative. And I just think that that really makes
Speaker 1: things difficult for him. It makes it much more like
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. I know we've said this over and over again,
Speaker 1: but especially when I see like the way that they're
Speaker 1: all positioning themselves as I'm the true conservative, like Mike
Speaker 1: Pence is doing that, DeSantis is doing that, Tim Scott
Speaker 1: is doing that. That's what was tried in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: It was the best case they could make against Trump,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Ye guess close. It actually didn't work.
Speaker 2: Let's go to around DeSantis then, because it's actually Bears
Speaker 2: talking about This is one where I'm not so Look,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it'll work.
Speaker 3: I personally don't think so.
Speaker 2: But if it was ever going to work, it is
Speaker 2: going to look something like this DeSantis, Unlike Pence, Tim Scott,
Speaker 2: Nikki Haley, who's kicking in various directions, uh vivek Ramaswami,
Speaker 2: all these all these other people, is actually taking Trump
Speaker 2: on head on and casting himself as the only other
Speaker 2: legitimate challenger, which I think is true and is rhetorically
Speaker 2: not really letting any of the Trump attacks go unanswered.
Speaker 3: It's no longer silly season.
Speaker 2: Apparently he is actually decided to come out and confront
Speaker 2: Trump at the very least on some of the attacks
Speaker 2: that have been levied against him.
Speaker 3: And you know, I've been.
Speaker 2: Impressed by it, especially with the way he's been able
Speaker 2: to take it on in Iowa. Here's what he had
Speaker 2: to say on the ground. Keep in mind, in front
Speaker 2: of Republican voters. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: I do think unfortunately he's decided to move left on
Speaker 6: some of these issues. If you say Cuomo did a
Speaker 6: better job with COVID than Florida did, first of all,
Speaker 6: that's not what he used to say. This is like
Speaker 6: new like six months ago. He would have never said that, right.
Speaker 6: He used to say how great Florida was. Hell, his
Speaker 6: whole family moved to Florida under my governorship, are you
Speaker 6: kidding me? It's also the case that you know, we're
Speaker 6: proud of what we've been able to do in our state.
Speaker 6: We won the biggest election landslide that Florida Republicans have
Speaker 6: ever won. And did he ever say anything, I got
Speaker 6: a boy, good job.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 6: He attacked me three days before the midterm election, and
Speaker 6: then he started attacking after that. And so I'm just
Speaker 6: thinking to myself, you're a Florida resident. If I saw
Speaker 6: an election landslide where we swept every statewide office, super
Speaker 6: majorities in the legislature, elect twenty nine conservative school board members,
Speaker 6: as a Florida resident, I would be cheering for that.
Speaker 6: If you put the mission first, you would definitely be
Speaker 6: cheering for that.
Speaker 3: What can you say, Crystal? He's right, He's obviously correct. A.
Speaker 2: You moved to Florida, your whole family became residents. And
Speaker 2: the second one is I still believe that is the
Speaker 2: strongest attack against Trump, which is I'm an actual winner.
Speaker 3: I one big. You are the one who cost us.
Speaker 2: He actually even said later on, he said we would
Speaker 2: have had fifty five Senate seats if it wasn't for
Speaker 2: mother nonsense that was going on. Also possibly correct, right,
Speaker 2: given what the term, given what the wins were and
Speaker 2: all that. Who knows with roversus Wade, let's put that aside.
Speaker 2: The problem for DeSantis is for him, for the GOP
Speaker 2: bas to overall coalesce around that message, they would also
Speaker 2: have to believe that Trump was a loser, and they
Speaker 2: don't believe Trump was a loser. That that's the has
Speaker 2: like and I've said the Gordian knot before. I really
Speaker 2: think it is because I watched that and I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: that is such a compelling general election case. But we're
Speaker 2: not in a general election. Yeah, We're in a primary.
Speaker 2: And he has got to make he is. He's got
Speaker 2: a project on his hand, which is always the hardest
Speaker 2: thing to do. You have to change the way that
Speaker 2: voters think. You almost never can do that in politics.
Speaker 2: You usually have to come and meet MO voters exactly
Speaker 2: where they are. He has to change, he has to
Speaker 2: change their thoughts from Trump won and was unfairly stolen
Speaker 2: to Trump is a loser and I'm an actual winner.
Speaker 2: I personally just feel that it's such a titanic task
Speaker 2: that it's not able to accomplish. But I think if
Speaker 2: it ever could be, it's going to look something like that.
Speaker 2: Nobody else has been willing to say something, nobody else
Speaker 2: has been willing to take him on this way.
Speaker 1: Well, he tried the other approach of staying quiet, and
Speaker 1: it failed, and he saw his polls go like this.
Speaker 1: So I think he looked at that state of affairs
Speaker 1: and said, all right, well, that strategy is not working,
Speaker 1: especially because everybody else in the race, or even theoretically
Speaker 1: going to get in the race, they were all taking
Speaker 1: shots at him, not at Trump. So after watching that
Speaker 1: all unfold and seeing that it wasn't a winning strategy
Speaker 1: for him, He's decided to go on the offense. And
Speaker 1: I think that makes a lot of you know, logical
Speaker 1: rational sense. I saw this morning Trump just put out
Speaker 1: this mashup I think over on true social of Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis just kissing his but to try to get his endorsement,
Speaker 1: going on Fox this is the greatest Republican president that
Speaker 1: we've had, and going on and on, Oh, he's the
Speaker 1: art of the deal and he knows how to negotiate
Speaker 1: the whole bit because he was desperate to get Trump's
Speaker 1: approval and get his endorsement. I mean that part is
Speaker 1: actually true that Trump says about him and you know
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. It's kind of more visceral than
Speaker 1: this like theoretical ideological policy distinctions that he's making here.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be interested to see. I genuinely don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be you know, humble about making any
Speaker 1: predictions here. I want to see does DeSantis going on
Speaker 1: in the offense? Does it move the polls at all?
Speaker 4: It's really open in my mind.
Speaker 1: It's really open whether it changes anything, whether it causes
Speaker 1: him to go up in the polls, or it actually
Speaker 1: could cause him to go down very easily.
Speaker 4: This could have a backlash. There's a reason why every
Speaker 4: other candidate.
Speaker 1: Has decided I'm not even going to say anything about
Speaker 1: Daddy Trump because they're fearful of that backlash. And we've
Speaker 1: seen many instances in the past where people, you know,
Speaker 1: comment Trump and it ends up being too very much
Speaker 1: to their detriment. So I wouldn't be surprised by that
Speaker 1: outcome at all. I think he's got to do what
Speaker 1: he's doing right now. I think it is, you know,
Speaker 1: he's got to take a shot. You can't just sit
Speaker 1: there and continue to take on water and take all
Speaker 1: the hits from Trump and not say anything in your
Speaker 1: defense and not try to push back. But you know,
Speaker 1: I continue to be skeptical that it's really going to work.
Speaker 3: Out for it. That's why I admire it, because it's
Speaker 3: genuinely risky. You know.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean remember how many times we were talking
Speaker 2: during the twenty twenty primary with the Democrats or like
Speaker 2: Bernie Sanders refuses to hit you know, Bernie uh toe
Speaker 2: Biden because you personally likes him, and you know, even
Speaker 2: though tech he's like, oh, it's existential, but also he's
Speaker 2: my old friend Joe.
Speaker 3: It's like, listen, you very rarely see it.
Speaker 2: You very rarely see somebody who's a legitimate contender number
Speaker 2: two actually go after the number one because of their
Speaker 2: overall political popularity.
Speaker 3: It's actually usually you see.
Speaker 2: It from like the the number five and the number
Speaker 2: six and all that, and then there's all because I mean,
Speaker 2: here's the reason why, which is that the number two
Speaker 2: preference for Trump voters is one hundred percent going to
Speaker 2: be Ron DeSantis, and all the second choice data will
Speaker 2: back that up vice versa. In terms of DeSantis, a
Speaker 2: lot of the people who like DeSantis the big portion,
Speaker 2: not the I'm done with Trump are I like Trump,
Speaker 2: I'm willing to consider somebody else. Well, those people they're
Speaker 2: gonna have Trump as their number two. They don't really
Speaker 2: like to see party in fighting the whole Reagan rule
Speaker 2: thou shall not attack or whatever a fellow Republican. And
Speaker 2: DeSantis has decided correctly, I think, which is look, kissing
Speaker 2: his ass all the way to the finish line. It's
Speaker 2: not gonna work, as you saw by his sinking like
Speaker 2: a rock in all of these polls. The only way
Speaker 2: is to draw a contrast high risk because also he
Speaker 2: could flame out, you know, he could lose, go down
Speaker 2: and then never be seen as a treadible, credible alternative
Speaker 2: to Trump in the future. And Trump will not only
Speaker 2: win the primary, but then ridicule and make fun of
Speaker 2: him for the next eight year.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, so this is a very risky strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is again why I respect it. It might work.
Speaker 1: That is that's a good point. A lot of the
Speaker 1: other people that are in the race. Yeah, they'd like
Speaker 1: to be president now, they'd like to be Trump, but
Speaker 1: they're also positioning themselves for like maybe.
Speaker 4: I'll get a cabinet stirs terry of Treasury. Maybe, you know, if.
Speaker 1: Trump wins, then he can only serve one term. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll be next in line. And if that's a strategy
Speaker 1: you are pursuing, the most intelligent thing to do is.
Speaker 4: To you know, basically praise. I like Trump's policies and
Speaker 4: he was a great leader.
Speaker 1: I just think it's time to move on or say
Speaker 1: something generic like that, like that's kind of the Tim
Speaker 1: Scott approach, for example. And so, yeah, Santis has put
Speaker 1: all his eggs in this basket because very likely if
Speaker 1: you genuinely go on the offense against Trump and it doesn't.
Speaker 4: Work out for you, you may.
Speaker 1: Be dead within Republican politics in terms of ever running
Speaker 1: for president again. Certainly in terms of getting any sort
Speaker 1: of like plumb post ambassadorship or cabinet position or whatever
Speaker 1: in a future potential Trump administration, you could be crushing
Speaker 1: your entire political future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's only forty four years old. He's not playing
Speaker 2: it safe, and you know, personally.
Speaker 3: I like it. Yeah, all right, So let's go to
Speaker 3: the next one here.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a problem for Ron, you know,
Speaker 2: after we just praised him a little bit. Put this
Speaker 2: up there about the starring rob.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Leaked audio from a Ron Desanta's donor event is very
Speaker 2: bad news for his campaign. This is a reporter over
Speaker 2: at the Daily Beast. You got his hands on some
Speaker 2: leaked audio from inside of this. But it actually shows
Speaker 2: data internal Ron DeSantis data, which is really not that great.
Speaker 2: The data they showed showed both Trump and DeSantis quote
Speaker 2: unquote virtually tied. Now, of course they're trying to show
Speaker 2: the silver linings, but really what they did is they
Speaker 2: presented data showing him with better favorability in.
Speaker 3: Some of these states.
Speaker 2: But they also had a presentation where they try to
Speaker 2: explain why Desantas is not running stronger against Trump, but
Speaker 2: that means that the governor has not faced any current
Speaker 2: substance of a tax as president. They show that his
Speaker 2: favorability ratings actually might be inflated because he hasn't been
Speaker 2: fully attacked and defined by Trump on this. And it's
Speaker 2: also shows you that his favorability rating Trump's is still
Speaker 2: so high in every single one of these places, and
Speaker 2: not only that, according to their internal data, it's.
Speaker 3: Almost immovable at this point.
Speaker 2: And to that, I think they're right, which is what
Speaker 2: can you possibly say about him that has.
Speaker 3: Not been said?
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything exists every person in this country has been
Speaker 2: bombarded for the last seven years with ex Trump, the
Speaker 2: good things about Trump, bad things about Trump. It's exhausting,
Speaker 2: and so you're never I really believe at this point
Speaker 2: you will not change the way that anybody feels about Trump.
Speaker 2: You may like now, you could change somebody who goes
Speaker 2: I like him. I don't think it'll be as effective
Speaker 2: as a president. Again, I just did a whole segment
Speaker 2: on this where I'm like, I don't. I think that's
Speaker 2: a very tall order, but maybe that's something that could
Speaker 2: actually happen. But when you're looking at some of his
Speaker 2: internal data here even in the early voting states, to
Speaker 2: basically admit that your favorability ratings aren't as high as Trump,
Speaker 2: and that you're basically trying to show that, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of this is even pre hotly contested primary
Speaker 2: that's not necessarily the bad thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know all campaigns will do this still,
Speaker 1: cherry pick data to present to donors that's like their
Speaker 1: best theory of the case. And so Daily Beast gets
Speaker 1: their hands on this leaked audio, and the problem for
Speaker 1: the DeSantis camp is that it's sort of obvious by
Speaker 1: the way they're cherry picking things and what the numbers are.
Speaker 1: On the other side, that they have a pretty that
Speaker 1: they got a tough road, and then in some ways
Speaker 1: the data that they picked actually made a better case
Speaker 1: for Trump than it made for DeSantis. One of the
Speaker 1: pieces that I found particularly interesting is DeSantis's team presented
Speaker 1: datas showing voters believe the governor to be more conservative
Speaker 1: than Trump, a fact the presenter can be heard in
Speaker 1: the leaked audio saying quote is really important in a
Speaker 1: Republican primary. Indeed, DeSantis is considered very conservative by half
Speaker 1: of likely GOP voters in Iowa, forty three percent in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, forty five percent in South Carolina. But the
Speaker 1: problem is Trump is actually winning voters who say that
Speaker 1: they are very conservative. So even though voters in the
Speaker 1: GOP base think DeSantis by and large they think he's
Speaker 1: more conservative than Trump, even those who self identify as like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my lane and that's how I identify myself, many of
Speaker 1: them majority are still voting for Trump. So DeSantis, the
Speaker 1: way he's positioned himself is I'm a hit Trump from
Speaker 1: the right. I'm a position myself to the right on
Speaker 1: key issues like abortion for example, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be my way of sort of stripping some of his
Speaker 1: voting base from him by persuading them that I am
Speaker 1: the real conservative. But at least at this early stage
Speaker 1: in the game, he has successfully convinced voters that he
Speaker 1: is more conservative than Trump, but they're still like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always still liked Trump. Yes, I mean, that's pretty
Speaker 1: damaging in terms of your prospects. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that you were pointing to sober that I think is
Speaker 1: really important. Trump's favorability, which is high among Republicans, is
Speaker 1: it's a solid as.
Speaker 4: It could possibly be.
Speaker 3: It will change, It's not going to change.
Speaker 1: DeSantis has a high favorability among Republican voters, but people
Speaker 1: know him a lot less and so his is a
Speaker 1: lot softer. So it's unlikely it's going to go up,
Speaker 1: very possible that it goes down. So that is, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a potential weakness for him. Now they are presenting
Speaker 1: it as like, oh, he hasn't even introduced himself to
Speaker 1: the public, But the flip side of that is, yeah,
Speaker 1: he also hasn't gotten into the full melee of a
Speaker 1: presidential campaign, with where ratings almost always go down rather
Speaker 1: than go up. Because you're just taking on so much
Speaker 1: water from everybody else.
Speaker 2: It's also worth talking about favorability to Republicans. Do you
Speaker 2: know what that actually means. It means how much the
Speaker 2: liberal mainstream media hates you. That's basically it. And it's
Speaker 2: like Trump, you can say many things.
Speaker 3: He is the king of being hated.
Speaker 2: Sure the media hates DeSantis, but they don't necessarily hate
Speaker 2: him in the same visceral like he's a fascist and
Speaker 2: all these other cringe you know, takes that have been
Speaker 2: flying around now for seven years. Trump is the king
Speaker 2: of that, Like he is the person who invites more
Speaker 2: emotional reaction than any single human being probably in the
Speaker 2: United States, which, by the other, you know, the contrast
Speaker 2: is a huge number of Republicans love that about him
Speaker 2: because he pisses off their enemies more than anyone else. Desantus,
Speaker 2: you know, part of his whole thing about like I'm
Speaker 2: getting serious. Part of seriousness is not engaging in Mika
Speaker 2: Brazinski's facelift and pissing people off. So that's difficult, you know,
Speaker 2: for your favorability ratings. Again, that's a great case. Most
Speaker 2: of the general election, and most Americans are exhausted by that,
Speaker 2: but Republicans specifically actually love it more than anything. Now,
Speaker 2: are there enough of them who are exhausted by it?
Speaker 2: None of that that currently indicates that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, by the way, Republicans think that Trump is more
Speaker 1: likely to win in the fall, now whether that's whether
Speaker 1: that's the case, so that wasn't from this leaked audio,
Speaker 1: that's from other peoples. They'd see him as a stronger
Speaker 1: candidate to defeat Joe Biden. Whether that's true or not,
Speaker 1: literally don't know. I think that Dessanta, some of the
Speaker 1: ideological positioning he has done has made him more vulnerable
Speaker 1: in terms of a general election and compromise some of
Speaker 1: his electability case to voters in my opinion, But you know,
Speaker 1: who knows what the whimsor voters are at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. I really don't advise you all to
Speaker 1: be thinking about candidates in terms of trying to play
Speaker 1: pundit and predict which one is going to win and
Speaker 1: which one is not going to win. But you know
Speaker 1: that is also an issue for him that his two
Speaker 1: key cases are I'm the true conservative and people are
Speaker 1: like that's true, but we still like Trump, and I'm
Speaker 1: more electable and people are like, yeah, we don't really
Speaker 1: buy that. We think Trump Trump, We think Trump did win.
Speaker 1: We think he you know, we obviously won in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: We think he won in twenty twenty. We think he
Speaker 1: can win again, and we want to stick with our guy.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, picking up on one you made Zccer,
Speaker 1: which I think is very insightful. The most successful politicians, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't change people like what they're already thinking. They
Speaker 1: speak to something people already feel but maybe haven't fully articulated.
Speaker 1: Maybe hasn't you know, no one has really grabbed on
Speaker 1: to the sentiment and being able to run with it.
Speaker 1: So it's something that's there, bubbling under the surface, and
Speaker 1: they're able to harness that and really capture that. I
Speaker 1: think Trump is a perfect example of that in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen speaking to you know, the carnage and the russ ballot,
Speaker 1: and I mean there was a lot, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: very ugly like xenophobia that was packed into that, but
Speaker 1: there was a genuine sentiment of the area that I
Speaker 1: live in, my prospects for myself, my prospects for my kids,
Speaker 1: Like no one is really speaking to these challenges. And
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton was the perfect opponent for him to go
Speaker 1: up against to make the case of like, these are
Speaker 1: the people that sold you out. So he really spoke
Speaker 1: to something that was already there that no one was capturing.
Speaker 1: And I just don't see any sign that DeSantis, in
Speaker 1: order to overcome Trump, who is a juggernaut within the
Speaker 1: Republican primary, is a juggernaut in American politics period.
Speaker 4: In order to do that, you are really.
Speaker 1: Going to have to have that same like spidy sense
Speaker 1: of what it is bubbling underneath the surface for the
Speaker 1: Republican base, that isn't being harnessed, isn't being articulated, isn't
Speaker 1: being spoken to. I personally don't see that he has
Speaker 1: managed to pull that off yet, But I'm also not
Speaker 1: a Republican voter, so maybe he has more insights into
Speaker 1: this than I do.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean, at this time, it's really a wait
Speaker 2: and see game and we'll just see how it works out.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the next part on Ukraine.
Speaker 2: There's some big important developments that have been happening in
Speaker 2: the Ukraine conflict. One of them, of course, was the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian presumptive Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory on Moscow, that
Speaker 2: ended up going into residential areas. Coming after a second
Speaker 2: attack on the Kremlin itself, the White House Press Corps
Speaker 2: asked the Biden administration, Hey, are you guys cool with
Speaker 2: our allied supposed allied government striking Russia and residential areas
Speaker 2: and potentially even with US equipment after they promised that
Speaker 2: they would never do so when you provided them with
Speaker 2: F sixteen's, And she didn't have a real answer.
Speaker 3: Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 6: It's the president belief that Ukraine risks losing the moral
Speaker 6: high ground.
Speaker 4: In this conflict if it strikes at Tehia cimillion targets
Speaker 4: in Moscow.
Speaker 7: So I'm going to be very clear, we're gathering information.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to get into hypotheticals from here. We
Speaker 7: do not support the use of US made equipment being
Speaker 7: used for attax inside of Russia. We've been very clear
Speaker 7: about that.
Speaker 2: Oh, we've been very clear about that. We don't support it.
Speaker 2: We're still gathering.
Speaker 3: But here's the issue.
Speaker 2: The US is not the only one who's involved in
Speaker 2: this conflict, and in fact, our so called cousins, I
Speaker 2: guess across the Atlantic, if you think our press and
Speaker 2: our country is crazy about Ukraine.
Speaker 3: As I found out while I was over there, we
Speaker 3: got nothing on the UK.
Speaker 2: Put this up up there on the screen because it
Speaker 2: includes an important quote from the British Foreign Secretary, so
Speaker 2: effectively their Secretary of State, James Cleverly. He says quote
Speaker 2: Ukraine has the right to project force beyond its borders.
Speaker 2: And also a spokesperson for the German government said that
Speaker 2: international law of course allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory
Speaker 2: in self defense, but then added that Berlin opposed the
Speaker 2: use of German weapons for such attacks. The Brits actually
Speaker 2: did not use the qualifier that they shouldn't use Theirs.
Speaker 3: And this is why it's so messy. No one is
Speaker 3: saying that they don't have the.
Speaker 2: Right to project force beyond their borders, which is what
Speaker 2: you know, Cleverly seems to be using this as And
Speaker 2: no one is.
Speaker 3: Saying that you can do whatever you want now.
Speaker 2: The idea though, that you should do whatever you want
Speaker 2: with the stuff that we give you is a whole
Speaker 2: other conversation. And actually, just this morning, crystal ironically, in
Speaker 2: the Washington Post, they published a story which is you know,
Speaker 2: people are already freaking out about because it just tells
Speaker 2: the truth quote Biden shows growing appetite to cross Putin's
Speaker 2: red lines.
Speaker 3: And here's what I love.
Speaker 2: Here is how the US defense policy makers put aside
Speaker 2: problems with red lines. US officials say the dynamic reason
Speaker 2: for brushing aside the threats is that, since the opening
Speaker 2: doors of the war, Russia's president has not followed through
Speaker 2: on promises to punish the West for providing weapons to Ukraine.
Speaker 2: His bluffing has given US and European leaders some confidence
Speaker 2: they can continue doing so without severe consequences. But to
Speaker 2: what extent remains one of the most dangerous uncertainty. So
Speaker 2: basically their argument is, well, they haven't done anything yet,
Speaker 2: so we'll just keep upping the ante and giving the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians whatever they want. I will once again remind everyone
Speaker 2: that we are literally openly crossing Putin's red lines and
Speaker 2: all this maybe that's worth it. Whenever Texas is at
Speaker 2: stake or a real ally like NATO or any of
Speaker 2: other people. We're talking about the eastern Dunboss region of Ukraine.
Speaker 2: In what world does it make sense to potentially drag
Speaker 2: us into a world war by Biden's own work, like
Speaker 2: not my words, his words over a scrap of territory
Speaker 2: in a place we have no formal agreement with and
Speaker 2: literally has zero importance to the global economy.
Speaker 3: This does not mean that I am not do not.
Speaker 2: Have deep empathy for the people who live in that region,
Speaker 2: who have been flattened, who have been killed, for all
Speaker 2: the soldiers, and for all the people in Ukraine who've
Speaker 2: been unjustly bombed and been killed by.
Speaker 3: The Russian machine.
Speaker 2: That does not mean that we should then put ourselves though,
Speaker 2: in a place where we need to risk our own
Speaker 2: national security over this you know, area of the globe.
Speaker 2: It's this basic cost benefit analysis which only you know
Speaker 2: are makes sense to people, Chrystal when you start using
Speaker 2: terms like democracy or you know, autocracy versus democracy, when
Speaker 2: we forget that one of the places that was invader
Speaker 2: is one of the most corrupt countries on planet Earth,
Speaker 2: invaded by the way, by one of the other most
Speaker 2: corrupt countries on planet Earth.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're using Ukraine as a pawn in our
Speaker 4: great power games.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous we're doing.
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with the sanctity of democracy
Speaker 1: or you know, national sovereignty or any or our love
Speaker 1: for Zelenski or anything like that. It's we see an
Speaker 1: opportunity to weaken a country that has been a rival
Speaker 1: still have this like cold war mentality baked in there.
Speaker 1: We're fearful of their alliance with China. We don't like Putin,
Speaker 1: he doesn't, you know, sde to our wishes, and you know,
Speaker 1: he's gone rogues since we like handpicked him for the job,
Speaker 1: by the way originally, and so they see it as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to push him out, and they're using Ukrainian
Speaker 1: lives as like, you know, fodder for our war games.
Speaker 1: I think it is disgraceful that I don't agree that
Speaker 1: Ukraine has a right to just do whatever they want,
Speaker 1: because you're talking about targeting residential civilian buildings, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that that's acceptable. I mean, in any instance,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's accepted. I don't think it's acceptable,
Speaker 1: and Russia does it. I don't think it's acceptable when
Speaker 1: we do it. You know, these are regular Russian people
Speaker 1: who you know didn't start this war, and some of
Speaker 1: them may be adamantly opposed to it. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing is saying like we'd be fair
Speaker 1: game because of our individual civilians in America being fair
Speaker 1: game because we started the war in a rock. So
Speaker 1: I don't accept that framing, but you know, do I
Speaker 1: understand certainly the idea of like Ukraine projecting them and
Speaker 1: doing everything they can to win the war on there.
Speaker 1: Of course, right, that doesn't mean that our interests coincide
Speaker 1: with theirs. It doesn't mean that it's not incredibly risky
Speaker 1: and dangerous escalation. And if you're Russia looking at our
Speaker 1: reaction to the targeting of residential apartment buildings in downtown Moscow,
Speaker 1: and we can't be bothered to even like come close
Speaker 1: to connect we say this theoret Oh we told them
Speaker 1: not to use our weapons for these strikes. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: gonna just be furthered in your belief that this is
Speaker 1: in fact a proxy war and that we are in
Speaker 1: many ways enabling these types of attacks on their soil.
Speaker 1: I mean not, in many ways, we effectively are enabling
Speaker 1: these types of attacks on their soil. And it's also
Speaker 1: very likely to harden the Russian population and make them
Speaker 1: more committed to the war. Effort and willing to sustain
Speaker 1: and endure were hardship and you know, difficulties in order
Speaker 1: to be successful. So you can see that the Krumlin
Speaker 1: spokesman Dmitri Peskov, he's told reporters to Russia would have
Speaker 1: preferred to hear at least some words of condemnation and
Speaker 1: said we will calmly and deliberately think how to deal
Speaker 1: with this. I also always just reject this idea that's
Speaker 1: floated in the Washington Post and by the Biden administration
Speaker 1: that like, oh, Russia hasn't responded.
Speaker 4: I don't think that's true. I think they have responded.
Speaker 1: I think they have escalated, they did a draft, they've
Speaker 1: continued to expand operations, They've you know, stepped up their
Speaker 1: bombing of Kiev, which is horrific for the people that
Speaker 1: live there. So and they have just recently started talking
Speaker 1: again about nuke. Some of that talk had sort of
Speaker 1: like faded away. Now it's getting back into the official statements.
Speaker 1: And I think we even if there's a tiny, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny percent chance that you know, that's a possibility, it's
Speaker 1: something we have to take deadly seriously.
Speaker 3: Of course, you have to take it seriously.
Speaker 2: These people have once again, these people have nuclear weapons,
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, oh, you're supposed to just back down.
Speaker 2: I mean no, whenever we're talking about again Berlin, Yes,
Speaker 2: maybe when we're talking about a scrap that literally has
Speaker 2: no effect on any of our lives here whatsoever. And
Speaker 2: look at the way this is. Medvedev put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. He was supposed to be the
Speaker 2: reasonable one. Look at the way that these people are talking.
Speaker 2: Now they've gone nuts, he says. The UK's Foreign secretary
Speaker 2: cleverly has stated Ukraine is a legitimate right to protect force.
Speaker 2: According to him, legitimate military beyond military targets beyond Ukraine's
Speaker 2: borders are part of its self defense. The goofy officials
Speaker 2: of the UK are quote eternal enemy. Should remember that
Speaker 2: within the framework of the universally accepted international law, of
Speaker 2: which they of course ignore, their state can also be
Speaker 2: qualified as being at war today. The UK acts as
Speaker 2: Ukraine's ally, providing it with military aid in the form
Speaker 2: of the equipment and specialist de facto is leading an
Speaker 2: undeclared war against Russia. That being the case, any of
Speaker 2: its public officials who facilitate the war can be considered
Speaker 2: as a legitimate military target. I mean basically openingly threatening
Speaker 2: assassination and you know death. I mean, look, this is
Speaker 2: scary stuff, and you know people will say, oh, he
Speaker 2: said it before I said it before, maybe say at
Speaker 2: fifteen times on the sixteenth time you're right, and the
Speaker 2: risk of being right on or the risk of being
Speaker 2: real on the sixteenth time so high that you should
Speaker 2: probably just do everything in your power to make sure
Speaker 2: that it doesn't happen, and that you only breach and
Speaker 2: get up to this point whenever it's actually worth it,
Speaker 2: you know. And I guess ilhan Omar who has had
Speaker 2: a very strange I guess relationship with Ukraine war. She's
Speaker 2: anti war, but then on Ukraine she's not saying much.
Speaker 2: She was confronted by a reporter Liam Cosgrove yesterday on
Speaker 2: Capitol Hill and said, hey, if what are you willing
Speaker 2: to reconsider at least your support for Ukraine if they're
Speaker 2: going to be bombing, you know, targets inside of Russia.
Speaker 3: Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 8: If there is escalation where Ukraine is now fighting inside
Speaker 8: of Russia and causing lives to be lost in that regard,
Speaker 8: then you know, we would have to make a different calculation.
Speaker 9: I've got some comments from Jerry Nailer last week and
Speaker 9: he said kind of the opposite. He said he personally
Speaker 9: wouldn't care if they do attack Russia with our weapons.
Speaker 9: So you disagree with them on.
Speaker 4: That, Oh, certainly, I think you know.
Speaker 8: For me, my support for Ukraine has always been to
Speaker 8: preserve lives, for them to be able to have the
Speaker 8: resources that they need to minimize the number of people
Speaker 8: that were being killed because Russia invaded, and you know,
Speaker 8: in that space, I only want.
Speaker 4: People in battle to be heard. So if there are.
Speaker 8: Ukrainians that are now attacking Russians in Russia, that changes
Speaker 8: the culculation.
Speaker 9: And so last question for you, would this change your
Speaker 9: decision on continued support, continued funding and military support.
Speaker 8: I would have to learn more, but certainly it does
Speaker 8: change my calculation in the way that I think about
Speaker 8: supporting sovereignty and preserving lives.
Speaker 2: Interesting comments, Interesting listen, I think she deserves well earned
Speaker 2: criticism or supposedly being anti war then shipping them, voting
Speaker 2: for weapons.
Speaker 3: To Ukrainie and all this.
Speaker 2: But you've got to give credit where it is due,
Speaker 2: at least willing to come out and say it whenever
Speaker 2: it's out there.
Speaker 3: And credit to the guy also for asking.
Speaker 1: And let me say, you know, I think the calculation
Speaker 1: on these things is difficult because especially the early packages
Speaker 1: of aid. I mean, I supported some of the early
Speaker 1: packages of aid. When you're talking about, you know, Russia
Speaker 1: invades them, it's an illegal war. They're trying to defend
Speaker 1: themselves like. That's a very sympathetic cause and one that
Speaker 1: someone who is anti war could genuinely support. When you
Speaker 1: get to this point and you've had the Biden administration
Speaker 1: really clearly spell out that this isn't about just Ukrainians sovereignty,
Speaker 1: this is about let's try to topple the Putin regime.
Speaker 1: When you've had not just this instance, you've had multiple
Speaker 1: instances of the Ukrainians attacking Russians on Russian soil, and
Speaker 1: you know, increasingly brazen strikes, including one on the Krumlin
Speaker 1: that you know it was sort of like a rather
Speaker 1: pathetic attempt in this fascination if it was, but still
Speaker 1: you're you're striking the Kremlin like that is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: That should at the very least cause people to pause
Speaker 1: and reconsider their calculations. What I want to say is,
Speaker 1: you know, I wish more journalists were pressing politicians in
Speaker 1: this way and framing it in this regard.
Speaker 4: In almost every instance, they're.
Speaker 1: Getting pushed from the other perspective, where it's like why
Speaker 1: didn't you send the F sixteen sooner?
Speaker 4: And what about you know, what about the no fly
Speaker 4: zone or whatever?
Speaker 1: It's usually it's always pushing in the other direction. So
Speaker 1: it's nice to see a journalist who is framing questions
Speaker 1: in this way and pushing in the other direction of
Speaker 1: what about you know, I'd love to see more.
Speaker 4: What about the plums? Do you remember?
Speaker 1: And Ryan asked a question about the plums? He was
Speaker 1: like the only one in the White House Press briefing
Speaker 1: room whoever asked a question about, Hey, what can we.
Speaker 4: Do to enable diplomacy here?
Speaker 1: We need a whole lot of that because ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: if you get politicians on the record and you force
Speaker 1: them to sort of grapple with what their positions are
Speaker 1: and how they align or miss the line with their
Speaker 1: stated principles, it can be a powerful force.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: Give a shout out to him. Liam Cosgrove is his name.
Speaker 2: You guys should go follow him on Twitter. It's done
Speaker 2: a couple of good things.
Speaker 4: Actually, he also he got those comments from Jerry Nadler.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 2: He also got the comments from Nadler, so hey, you know,
Speaker 2: we support He also asked of the State Department an
Speaker 2: interesting question as well, so go throw them the follow
Speaker 2: We'd like to support people who are doing interesting work stuff.
Speaker 4: Like that here, all right, so aready looking at well?
Speaker 2: Last week I did a monologue delving into the price
Speaker 2: of used cars and what's driving the price up. The
Speaker 2: usual suspects all appeared demand quality of cars, but really
Speaker 2: it pointed the finger at the financialization of car companies
Speaker 2: and of car dealers themselves. I've always been obsessed recently
Speaker 2: with car dealers their business models now for a few years,
Speaker 2: and it all traces to a little noticed study that
Speaker 2: I came across, actually, which opened my eyes as to
Speaker 2: who the so called blue collar rich in America are.
Speaker 2: Everyone knows people in finance and Silicon Valley as rich,
Speaker 2: but what the other rich people who don't work in
Speaker 2: those sectors.
Speaker 3: Who are they?
Speaker 2: A twenty nineteen study of ze point one percent earners
Speaker 2: in America, defined as those who make more than one
Speaker 2: point five to eight million dollars cash per year on paper,
Speaker 2: revealed that the most common occupation among them was one
Speaker 2: car dealer. In fact, one estimate finds twenty percent of
Speaker 2: all car dealers in America have an owner making more
Speaker 2: than one point five million dollars.
Speaker 3: Now, how is that possible?
Speaker 2: Well, a new dispatch actually from the National Association of
Speaker 2: Car Dealers meeting it tells us a lot about it.
Speaker 2: Car dealers spend tens of millions of dollars per year
Speaker 2: to lobby federal, state, and local officials. They do a
Speaker 2: few things that are very important to them. Number one,
Speaker 2: they regulate land so that nobody else can start a
Speaker 2: rival dealership. Too, they regulate licensing to prevent the same thing.
Speaker 2: But now an urgent and important initiative that they care
Speaker 2: about most of all preventing direct sales of vehicles to
Speaker 2: consumers by manufacturers. The latest threat arose with the prominence
Speaker 2: of Tesla, which got rid of the dealer model for
Speaker 2: its cars, and it allows consumers to buy directly from
Speaker 2: the company. Naturally, they took issue with that. Car dealers
Speaker 2: now spent millions of dollars successfully passing laws in states
Speaker 2: banning consumers from buying cars directly from manufacturers. They do
Speaker 2: this only because not only does it mean their survival,
Speaker 2: but actually puts a moat around their ability to extract
Speaker 2: as much profit as they can from their existing sales. Now, recall,
Speaker 2: a study has showed you before by the Labor Department.
Speaker 2: It finds it between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: dealers use their regulated monopoly status to dramatically drive.
Speaker 3: Up the price of used cars.
Speaker 2: The Labor Department actually found dealer markup alone accounts for
Speaker 2: anywhere between thirty five to sixty two percent of all
Speaker 2: inflation in vehicle pricing across the United States. Now, as
Speaker 2: I've said, that's great work if you can get it.
Speaker 2: By all accounts, all the auto dealers in the country
Speaker 2: actually made more money in the last three years than
Speaker 2: ever before, meaning that if they were making one point
Speaker 2: five million a year on average in twenty nineteen, it
Speaker 2: might even be double that today. All of this on
Speaker 2: display at the latest meeting of this national Association of Dealers,
Speaker 2: where they were remarkably candid about how well that they
Speaker 2: did over the last three year, and about worries and
Speaker 2: what them the most in the future.
Speaker 3: The answer is simple electric vehicles.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned before, Tessa's direct to consumer model actually
Speaker 2: woke a lot of people up, not just in the
Speaker 2: EV world, but for companies like Rivian, which has been floated.
Speaker 2: It's also been floated by company CEOs like Ford and
Speaker 2: others who secretly would love to ditch the dealers. But
Speaker 2: the dealers are not idiots, and they know this. They
Speaker 2: have dropped the hammer and money on every politician in America.
Speaker 2: In fact, as Slate found in Florida, there are currently
Speaker 2: two dealer sponsored bills making their way through to the
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis desk, which, by all accounts, he will likely sign.
Speaker 2: It will make it illegal for car manufacturers to set
Speaker 2: transparent prices for their cars, and it would allow buyers
Speaker 2: to would allow buyers to order.
Speaker 3: Evs from legacy manufacturers online.
Speaker 2: It would disallow that, but even with that mote, evs
Speaker 2: still represent a real threat to dealer profits. The vast
Speaker 2: majority of dealer profits don't come from the sale of cars.
Speaker 2: They actually make it from financing and from servicing. EV's,
Speaker 2: no matter whom may make them have far less component parts,
Speaker 2: they don't need oil changes, they don't need as much servicing.
Speaker 2: In fact, evs generate some forty percent less aftermarket revenue
Speaker 2: for dealers. On top of that, as Slate explains, can't
Speaker 2: just repurpose a regular old mechanic to work on an
Speaker 2: EV when they come in actually costs a lot for
Speaker 2: specialized training, so they make less money and they have
Speaker 2: to pay for specialized labor. Not a genius then to
Speaker 2: see why they all hate it so much. It's reflected
Speaker 2: in the numbers right now. Two thirds of US car
Speaker 2: dealers in America don't have any.
Speaker 3: EVS to sell.
Speaker 2: Forty five percent of dealers say straight up, we will
Speaker 2: never sell them, no matter what happens. Over and over again,
Speaker 2: you see massive resistance within the dealer community to EVS.
Speaker 2: What research I did for this monologue taught me is
Speaker 2: that the current Biden plan for EVS has a deep flaw.
Speaker 2: It only focuses on manufacturers and on consumers, but it
Speaker 2: forgot dealers basically run this country like it or not.
Speaker 2: We've got to get some programs in place to incentivize
Speaker 2: uptake amongst dealers for evs, or they will just rig
Speaker 2: the mart and the local laws to prevent them from
Speaker 2: being sold. What this represents is the reality of dealing
Speaker 2: in the car business in America. It also demonstrates another
Speaker 2: hole in the ev uptake strategy. Remember that, according to
Speaker 2: the state of California, all new cars trucks sold in
Speaker 2: the state in a little over a decade must be electric.
Speaker 3: How is that going to work?
Speaker 2: Alongside the Biden administration's pledge that half of all new
Speaker 2: cars sold in the US must be electric in twenty thirty.
Speaker 2: That is seven years away, and we're only a ten percent.
Speaker 2: The infrastructure to support these cars for long haul driving
Speaker 2: is nowhere even close unless you own a Tesla. We
Speaker 2: have major, major work to do if you want to
Speaker 2: make this a reality, and increasingly it just doesn't look
Speaker 2: like it's going to happen. You can either have an
Speaker 2: electric future or you can have a colossal boondoggle, and
Speaker 2: right now the latter just looks more likely than ever.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you think, Ryssel.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: So what do you taking a look at?
Speaker 1: Well, guys, there is a new anti woke hit topping
Speaker 1: the charts literally actually, including a video wherein the artist
Speaker 1: peruses the aisles at target and search for any item
Speaker 1: that might be construed as LGBTQ friendly.
Speaker 4: Take a look.
Speaker 10: Target target ye had azarggian and target target ye had
Speaker 10: a target cans target target ye had a target and
Speaker 10: target targean.
Speaker 4: Anyway, get the point there? This comes a mad.
Speaker 1: Of course, a rash of conservative freak out over various
Speaker 1: corporate pride gestures all started with the campaign against bud
Speaker 1: Light for their use of a trans influencer, But now
Speaker 1: cloud chasers are looking for all manner of meaningless corporate
Speaker 1: pro gay virtue signaling to freak out about. One movement
Speaker 1: is focused on the fact that Chick fil A, a
Speaker 1: notably conservative corporation, has a diversity officer. Someone dug up
Speaker 1: an old Ford Raptor ad from like two years ago
Speaker 1: in an attempt to spark a Ford boycott.
Speaker 4: Target, of course.
Speaker 1: Been taking huge incoming over a store pride display. Let's
Speaker 1: be clear, these companies have no ideology outside of making money,
Speaker 1: no agenda other than selling like more trucks and more
Speaker 1: chicken sandwiches. But some segment of conservative media figures and
Speaker 1: their followers have thoroughly lost their minds on wocism in
Speaker 1: general and on gay rights in particular. For example, as
Speaker 1: Emily and I covered yesterday, Ted Cruz was trashed by Republicans,
Speaker 1: including former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, for daring to signal
Speaker 1: opposition to a Uganda law that would literally imprison all.
Speaker 4: Gay people for life. What is wrong? With you people.
Speaker 1: Let me just insert a little bit of political reality
Speaker 1: into this discussion here. In twenty twenty three, America, gay
Speaker 1: rights are actually really popular, and it's by a lot.
Speaker 1: Support for gay marriage has now reached a record breaking
Speaker 1: seventy one percent. In fact, acceptance of gay marriage is
Speaker 1: so widespread even a majority of Republicans support.
Speaker 4: Gay marriage now.
Speaker 1: And I haven't specifically seen pulling on life in prison
Speaker 1: for all gays, but I'm gonna go ahead out on
Speaker 1: a limb, and guess it's pretty unpopular now. Support for
Speaker 1: trans people has also risen dramatically in recent years. Sixty
Speaker 1: six percent of Americans support allowing trans men and women
Speaker 1: to serve openly in the military. Large majority support laws
Speaker 1: that were protect trans people from discrimination in penance. On balance,
Speaker 1: tell polsters they see trans people as a net societal good.
Speaker 1: Corporate America has embraced generic displays of LGBTQ support because
Speaker 1: it's popular and thus they think it's going to help
Speaker 1: them make money. Now, the right does have majority support
Speaker 1: on a few issues. They're with the majority on questions
Speaker 1: about trans girls competing with ciss girls in sports and
Speaker 1: on a general level of discomfort around kids transitioning. Now,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, we are in the phase of the
Speaker 1: movement one might.
Speaker 4: Call wild overreach.
Speaker 1: It's easy to forget that in the ancient times of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Trump was actually selling pride hats with a
Speaker 1: rainbow colored MAGA logo to honor.
Speaker 4: His LGBTQ supporters.
Speaker 1: But between now and then a politically strategic pushback on
Speaker 1: wokeness and a narrow focus on the nexus of trans
Speaker 1: issues and kids, it has morphed wildly into an all
Speaker 1: out assault on anything with a rainbow that might smack
Speaker 1: of tolerance. This looks like a mirror image reaction to
Speaker 1: what people like Ronda Santis call the woke mind virus.
Speaker 1: Liberals they were on solid footing when they were fighting
Speaker 1: for civil rights and color blindness, broadly shared.
Speaker 4: Values across the society.
Speaker 1: When the push for tolerance slid into authoritarian demands for equity,
Speaker 1: complete with word policing, censorship, and enforced group think, it
Speaker 1: was disastrous for Democrats, and it was actually a key
Speaker 1: component of the appeal of Trump. Republicans have now quickly
Speaker 1: slid from a critique of woke overreach into their own
Speaker 1: spiral of extremism and insanity driven by their most rabid
Speaker 1: and most online base. It's an anti woke mind virus.
Speaker 1: This has resulted in book bands for speech laws and
Speaker 1: state mandated ideologies in school curriculum, and has resulted in
Speaker 1: the current vogue in Republican circles of drudging up any
Speaker 1: and all pride related virtue, signaling for boycotts and pearl
Speaker 1: clutching meltowns, having panic attacks over all nods towards any
Speaker 1: sort of diversity. It's also pretty clear at this point
Speaker 1: that even the original more narrow focus on kids, athletes,
Speaker 1: and schools, it wasn't a particular political winner for Republicans.
Speaker 1: After some promising results in Virginia, Republican candidates across the
Speaker 1: country leaned into trans panic and races from coast to
Speaker 1: coo groups sprung up to back school board candidates explicitly
Speaker 1: running ideological campaigns against so called gender ideology and critical
Speaker 1: race theory. It didn't actually work out that wall. Republicans,
Speaker 1: of course, wildly underperformed in the midterms, and many of
Speaker 1: the right wing crusading school board members ultimately lost. Now,
Speaker 1: I would chalk this up to two primary factors. First
Speaker 1: and foremost, just wasn't a top issue for a lot
Speaker 1: of voters, not a lot of folks heading to the
Speaker 1: polls to notch their opinion on the like one trans
Speaker 1: kid playing high school sports in their state, and two
Speaker 1: the overturning of Roe versus wide handed Democrats the most
Speaker 1: potent issue electorally that they have had in a very
Speaker 1: long time, and the abortion dynamic.
Speaker 4: It's actually instructive.
Speaker 1: Americans have very complex, conflicting feelings on the issue, just
Speaker 1: as they do on trans issues. With the Dobbs decision,
Speaker 1: all of the ground Republicans are fighting on now is
Speaker 1: extreme ground, things like six week bands and national abortion bands.
Speaker 1: Whichever party plays most aggressively to their extremists on cultural issues,
Speaker 1: that party is likely to lose. And with plenty of
Speaker 1: Republicans eagerly lining up behind the most deranged, anti gay,
Speaker 1: anti trans parts of their they've taken what was n
Speaker 1: oka issue for them and turned it into a very
Speaker 1: clear liability. In twenty twenty two, Republicans, they seemingly had
Speaker 1: everything going for them. Inflation was high, the president was
Speaker 1: really unpopular, overwhelming majority said the country was on the
Speaker 1: wrong track, and yet the red wave never materialized, and
Speaker 1: there was really one overwhelming reason why in cities, suburbs,
Speaker 1: and small towns alike, voters were repulsed by the GOP's
Speaker 1: ideological extremism on abortion and on stop this deal. Now
Speaker 1: you can add another issue where Republicans are increasingly aligning
Speaker 1: themselves with an extreme anti gay panic that is less
Speaker 1: popular than defund the police. Long story short, This whole
Speaker 1: thing you guys are doing here probably not going to
Speaker 1: help you if you actually want to beat Joe Biden
Speaker 1: and Sager.
Speaker 4: I wonder what you think of all of this.
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 3: Joining us now is a journalist Alison Young. She is
Speaker 3: also a professor.
Speaker 2: At the Misses School of Journalism, but for importantly for
Speaker 2: our purposes, author of a new book on lab leaks,
Speaker 2: Pandora's Gamble, lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk.
Speaker 3: Alison, thank you so much for joining us. We really
Speaker 3: appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Daddy, Allison, thank you so you came.
Speaker 2: To notice We've been covering lab leak now here for
Speaker 2: a couple of years, but I've also been doing some
Speaker 2: deeper dives for a piece that you published about anthrax
Speaker 2: that you were able to reveal in your book. Pandora's gamble,
Speaker 2: Maybe first just give people an overview of the book, and.
Speaker 3: Then we'll delve a little bit into anthrax itself.
Speaker 11: Sure, so, I have been an investigative reporter covering laboratory
Speaker 11: accents for fifteen years. I mean, everyone's interested in lab
Speaker 11: leaks right now. But the issue of the kinds of
Speaker 11: problems that are in these high containment labs has been
Speaker 11: a problem for a very long time. And so Pandora's
Speaker 11: gamble is looking at the whole question of did COVID
Speaker 11: nineteen come from a laboratory accident? In the larger context
Speaker 11: that these kinds of accidents happen all the time.
Speaker 4: Elaborate on that.
Speaker 1: When you say these kinds of accidents happen all the time,
Speaker 1: what are we talking about and what is it that
Speaker 1: leads to viruses escaping the lab?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 11: So, there are a variety of levels of laboratory accidents.
Speaker 11: I mean, you have people get bitten by infectious animals,
Speaker 11: they stick themselves with needles, they cut themselves with scalpels,
Speaker 11: they splash infectious fluids on themselves, various sort of airflow
Speaker 11: systems that help keep microbes inside cabinets or inside facilities.
Speaker 11: Those systems fail, wastewater systems leak. There are all kinds.
Speaker 12: Of issues in these facilities. The good news is.
Speaker 11: The majority of time people don't become infected. But that's
Speaker 11: really a matter of luck. And the question is, you know,
Speaker 11: how long will our luck last? And has it actually
Speaker 11: already run out?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I think that was so important, which is that
Speaker 2: you know, you know muhan. We can focus all day
Speaker 2: on that, and I think, you know, basically, at this
Speaker 2: point it almost is tedious to go through the details.
Speaker 2: The more parties, like how many more wuhans are there,
Speaker 2: how many wuhans have actually happened here in the United States.
Speaker 2: You really opened my eyes to this piece about did
Speaker 2: a military lab spill anthrax into public waterways?
Speaker 3: Focusing on a twenty eighteen accident.
Speaker 2: Can you give us some of the details what you're
Speaker 2: able to uncover exclusively in your book.
Speaker 12: Yes.
Speaker 11: So, on the Friday before Memorial Day in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 11: at Fort Dietrich, one of the premier labs run by
Speaker 11: the US Army USAMRED, they had a wastewater tank, a
Speaker 11: fifty thousand gallon wastewater tank, which by the way, was
Speaker 11: rusting and had a variety of other problems.
Speaker 12: One of the pipes burst.
Speaker 11: On it and it shot over a containment wall as
Speaker 11: much as three thousand gallons of unsterilized laboratory waste. And
Speaker 11: in the weeks before that happened, those labs had been
Speaker 11: working with anthrax, ebola, marburg virus, I mean, a variety
Speaker 11: of the most dangerous pathogens in the world.
Speaker 12: So that's bad enough, But one of the bigger.
Speaker 11: Problems is that that incident has been kept secret until now.
Speaker 11: The Army only admitted late a few weeks after the
Speaker 11: incidents happened that they had had flooding and that there
Speaker 11: had been a leak, but they didn't say there were
Speaker 11: three thousand gallons in that leak. And that's a huge omission.
Speaker 11: And these kinds of omissions, and the secrecy that surrounds
Speaker 11: these accidents is pervasive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so what was the fallout from that incident?
Speaker 1: What is the fallout today from that incident? And you
Speaker 1: know what should be learned from it?
Speaker 11: So at the time, this was one of a series
Speaker 11: of problems at that facility. In twenty nineteen, the federal
Speaker 11: government took the rare step of suspending usamred's ability to
Speaker 11: work with what are called select agent pathogens. But why
Speaker 11: that happened, other than that there were various safety issues,
Speaker 11: was not known until now.
Speaker 12: So there is now starting to be.
Speaker 11: Fallout from the revelations of the book that it was
Speaker 11: three thousand gallons. I mean, there's a citizens commission in Frederick, Maryland,
Speaker 11: which is just north of the Washington, DC area.
Speaker 12: They were not aware.
Speaker 11: They had asked questions of what had happened in this incidant,
Speaker 11: and the army didn't tell them, and so they're learning
Speaker 11: about it from the book as well.
Speaker 3: One of our camera guys that lives there, so he's
Speaker 3: probably finding this out live.
Speaker 11: And the thing for people who are not in this
Speaker 11: area that they don't realize is so this all happened
Speaker 11: in an area where there was an open storm drain
Speaker 11: that went into something called Carroll Creek, and that's the
Speaker 11: centerpiece of downtown Frederick. It's a beautiful area and entertainment
Speaker 11: district well.
Speaker 2: And so, Alison, one of the things I respect so
Speaker 2: much by your work is that you're looking at this
Speaker 2: dispassionately and you're reporting very basic facts. You've published previously
Speaker 2: about near misses at the UNC Chapel Hill and high
Speaker 2: security labs and accidents with coronaviruses.
Speaker 3: So, once again, put Wuhan aside, why is the some.
Speaker 2: Of this research, why does it lead to these types
Speaker 2: of accidents, This particular one, coronavirus research itself, seems to
Speaker 2: be at the tip of some of the worst accidents
Speaker 2: that we've seen in labs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 11: The thing that's really concerning about accidents with coronavirus or
Speaker 11: various kinds of avian flu viruses are that those are
Speaker 11: pathogens that can spread from person to person. Is we've
Speaker 11: all learned with the current pandemic, you want to be
Speaker 11: sure that you have high safety standards there. The accidents
Speaker 11: that occurred at UNC show that these accidents happen everywhere.
Speaker 12: And the question of why is we're human beings.
Speaker 1: Accidents happen, right, And so with that in mind, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Do You just stop researching things?
Speaker 1: You know, are there ways you can tighten up the
Speaker 1: security procedures so that accidents are much much much less likely,
Speaker 1: because as you state, I mean, it seems like there
Speaker 1: are so many ways that something can escape the lab.
Speaker 1: That it's very difficult to make sure that every single
Speaker 1: thing is locked down.
Speaker 11: Yeah, there are a couple of things that have been
Speaker 11: proposed for a very long time. One of the things
Speaker 11: I think that surprises people is that there is no
Speaker 11: universal regulation of biosafety in laboratories.
Speaker 12: Now, think about that.
Speaker 11: Okay, a lot of it is sort of a mixture
Speaker 11: of guidance. There are some regulations of various sort of piecemeal,
Speaker 11: but it's fragmented and it largely relies on these labs
Speaker 11: policing themselves. The other issue is that, unlike in a
Speaker 11: lot of other areas, there is almost no transparency for
Speaker 11: the public. Which transparency is a key component of accountability,
Speaker 11: and so it not only shields the mistakes and lacks
Speaker 11: safety practices of labs, it also shields those organizations that
Speaker 11: we the public are trusting from the accountability to know
Speaker 11: that they're doing their jobs.
Speaker 2: That's been such a difficult part of the line. I've
Speaker 2: seen it with members of Congress. Most of them don't
Speaker 2: even know about what any of these research. They don't
Speaker 2: even know about the money that they are appropriating in
Speaker 2: bills to fund this. So have you seen you know,
Speaker 2: obviously COVID woke the entire world up to this dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yet you know, money wise, it seems like the cannon
Speaker 2: is still going towards this.
Speaker 3: Do you think we've made any meaningful progress or.
Speaker 2: Can you know with the release of books like yours,
Speaker 2: or even public awareness around the release of COVID, what
Speaker 2: do you think?
Speaker 11: Well this area right now there is huge public awareness
Speaker 11: and concern about the issue of did COVID come from
Speaker 11: a laboratory accent? And I think it's important for the
Speaker 11: public to start thinking about this, as you've said, in
Speaker 11: a wider sense that if whether or not COVID nineteen
Speaker 11: came from a laboratory accents.
Speaker 12: The Government Accountability Office, which is.
Speaker 11: A nonpartisan, not a hysterical organization anyway, they have been
Speaker 11: warning for more than a decade that the growing number
Speaker 11: of labs, the more research that we're doing, is increasing
Speaker 11: the risk of a catastrophic accident. And to your point,
Speaker 11: this research is really important, and so the issue is
Speaker 11: how do we do it safely?
Speaker 12: How is there accountability that's put into it.
Speaker 11: And one of the things on the funding is there
Speaker 11: is a lot more funding for research because of COVID.
Speaker 11: There are more labs being built because of COVID. But
Speaker 11: what is not usually earmarked in this legislation and in
Speaker 11: this funding is funding for biosafety. There are biosafety officers,
Speaker 11: but they often don't have the funding to do the
Speaker 11: kinds of safety oversight.
Speaker 4: Got is that part of the.
Speaker 1: Issue for reform too, that a lot of people do
Speaker 1: have you know, their careers and their you know, their
Speaker 1: ability to make money and published papers and whatever is
Speaker 1: wrapped up in this world and in this research. Is
Speaker 1: that a barrier to significant reform.
Speaker 11: There are huge conflicts of interest in this area. So
Speaker 11: if you're looking at where there are oversight mechanisms, currently,
Speaker 11: the organizations in the federal government that either have guidelines
Speaker 11: or some regulatory power, those same organizations fund the research
Speaker 11: and they do research themselves. And so in the case
Speaker 11: of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is
Speaker 11: one of the agencies that oversees some of this research.
Speaker 12: Their labs have had some of the worst accidents.
Speaker 11: Okay, So I mean those are the same people and
Speaker 11: they have an interest in secrecy and not having public transparency.
Speaker 5: So on.
Speaker 12: The one of the issues that.
Speaker 11: Various experts have put forth is should there be a
Speaker 11: separate independent entity outside of the research community, but obviously
Speaker 11: grounded in science that is overseeing this. I mean a
Speaker 11: great analogy is how nuclear the nuclear industry is regulated.
Speaker 4: Right, That's such a great point.
Speaker 1: And lastly, I think Sager's right that it is sort
Speaker 1: of tedious at this point to go over all the
Speaker 1: details of the COVID lab leak or not lab leak.
Speaker 1: I'm curious though, just given your expertise, that you've been
Speaker 1: studying this for so long, when you first started to
Speaker 1: learn about coronavirus and to think about what its origins
Speaker 1: might be, like, what were the thoughts that were going
Speaker 1: through your head initially?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean initially I have to say, like most people,
Speaker 11: I'm like, this couldn't be. You know, this couldn't be.
Speaker 11: But the more I looked into it, and especially I
Speaker 11: thought it couldn't be because some of the world's leading
Speaker 11: scientists came out of the gate saying this is.
Speaker 12: Absolutely not a lab larian.
Speaker 11: Absolutely absolutely, And as you know, we have later learned
Speaker 11: there were a number of secret meetings where they discussed
Speaker 11: their own concerns that this was not only a lab leak,
Speaker 11: but of a potentially engineered virus, and so that disconnect
Speaker 11: between what was being discussed privately by top scientists and
Speaker 11: what we were being told in the public was very
Speaker 11: concerning and and so once I started having a greater
Speaker 11: awareness of that, obviously with my background reporting on this
Speaker 11: issue for fifteen years, it was always plausible to me
Speaker 11: that this could be a laboratory accident.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly why we need drink. Because you know,
Speaker 2: you can't rely on these people to play it.
Speaker 3: They're human beings.
Speaker 2: They're not you know, specially nobody can police themselves. Probably Allison,
Speaker 2: you have done such an excellent job here. Really, thank
Speaker 2: you for in such a professional manner. I encourage everybody
Speaker 2: go and buy the book. We'll have a link down
Speaker 2: in the description to go ahead Pandora's Gamble. If you're
Speaker 2: just listening, go ahead and search it, buy it wherever
Speaker 2: you buy your books.
Speaker 4: And thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, absolutely.
Speaker 4: So, guys.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned at the top of the show, today
Speaker 1: is officially two years.
Speaker 3: Two years.
Speaker 1: Here are breaking points here at the desk. See since
Speaker 1: we got the desk very famous to usk and it's
Speaker 1: kind of one of those weird things like it feels
Speaker 1: like it flew by, but it also feels like a
Speaker 1: lifetime ago that we were even at Rising doing the thing.
Speaker 1: You guys know the story. You know, we decided to
Speaker 1: make the break go on on our own. We put
Speaker 1: our trust in faith that you all would be there
Speaker 1: for us, and you have come through in the most
Speaker 1: amazing way possible. So now as we get ready to
Speaker 1: you know, move on to year number three and to
Speaker 1: say goodbye to our beautiful set here and hello to
Speaker 1: a beautiful even more beautiful professional new set that you
Speaker 1: all made possible.
Speaker 4: Our producers and we haven't watched this yet yet, not yet.
Speaker 1: They put together a little I guess you call it
Speaker 1: like a highlight reel of Soger and ize time together.
Speaker 1: So we will be viewing this live along with you all.
Speaker 1: Let's take a look.
Speaker 7: Joining me now is saw there and Jet Team is
Speaker 7: White House correspondent for the Daily Caller.
Speaker 3: So let's jump right in. Thanks for having me, Arthil. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a very interesting question.
Speaker 2: Senator Ted Cruz has already come out against this bill,
Speaker 2: saying that it's just simply a non starter for him
Speaker 2: and for many of the other Conservatives in the Senate.
Speaker 1: We selection destroyed more than the Democratic majority in the Senate.
Speaker 1: It also shattered a number of myths, myths that have
Speaker 1: enabled democratic elite complacency. The last myth, and the one
Speaker 1: that will doom Democrats in twenty sixteen, needs to be
Speaker 1: busted right here. That myth has to do with the
Speaker 1: inevitability and electability of a Hillary Clinton presidency. I think,
Speaker 1: for me, the new Left is a democratic party that
Speaker 1: actually puts the interest of the working class at the center.
Speaker 3: What is the new right?
Speaker 2: It's a departure from the free market consensus. Is about
Speaker 2: your family, and it's about putting policy in place in
Speaker 2: order to make it so that you can live a
Speaker 2: successful and meaningful life.
Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today. What we have Bristol?
Speaker 4: Indeed we do.
Speaker 2: Good morning everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 2: for everybody today.
Speaker 3: Do a convention show. Do we have Crystal?
Speaker 4: Indeed we do.
Speaker 3: Good morning everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today. What do we have Crystal?
Speaker 4: Indeed we do? All right, Zider, what's on your radar?
Speaker 3: Full confession.
Speaker 2: I had an entire other radar written and I was
Speaker 2: ready to go for today.
Speaker 3: But then something happened that made me so hopped up
Speaker 3: and mad. I literally dropped everything I was doing. All right, Crystal,
Speaker 3: what's on your radar?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 1: As Twitter amuses itself with horrified reactions to Pete's cringiest
Speaker 1: whitest dands of all time, it's really quite simple, like
Speaker 1: you're not saying you.
Speaker 4: Love everything I say.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I love everything you say. But there
Speaker 1: are these two new coalitions rising in America. You can
Speaker 1: either deal with that or you can try to ignore
Speaker 1: it and isolate yourself increasingly into these ideological corners. And
Speaker 1: I just think that is fundamentally the wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, that's foolish.
Speaker 1: We also have some big news, which is that today
Speaker 1: is going to be our last day at the Hill
Speaker 1: doing rising here, which we feel a lot of praise about.
Speaker 3: We've had an amazing run here. It's almost two years
Speaker 3: to the day since I believe officially became your So
Speaker 3: tell everybody, why'd you leave the Hill? What do you think,
Speaker 3: Chris Well, why did we leave the Hill?
Speaker 4: We wanted to live our values.
Speaker 1: We talk all the time about how much we believe
Speaker 1: in the new media ecosystem, how much we believe in
Speaker 1: independent media, free of any sort of corporate influence. And
Speaker 1: so even though I have to admit, like I'm really
Speaker 1: nervous and it feels very uncomfortable, but in a good way,
Speaker 1: we wanted to step out and go independent and do
Speaker 1: a show of our own.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing with Rising, We loved it. It's amazing
Speaker 3: that they let us get away with as much as
Speaker 3: we got two years through. At the end of the day,
Speaker 3: though I wanted to do a better show.
Speaker 4: You guys are honest.
Speaker 12: I mean we're talking about that early like.
Speaker 4: It's so rare.
Speaker 6: You say what you feel, and that is so valuable.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 4: Hold on, I'm about to make my entrance. There is
Speaker 4: the one and only Matt tyav.
Speaker 2: Of course, the best friend of the show to show,
Speaker 2: Glenn Greenwald, Tony's.
Speaker 4: Now we have Ken Clefvenstein, David Serda. Great to see sir,
Speaker 4: Great to see you, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Joining us now. My friend Jeremy Corbel, friend of the show.
Speaker 1: Connerson Rocanna had come out and called for her to resign,
Speaker 1: something that we considered quite courageous, given that you are
Speaker 1: a fellow California and you've taken quite a bit of
Speaker 1: heat for those comments. We're lucky to have you in
Speaker 1: studio today. Thanks big breaking news regarding lab leak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a news that should absolutely shock anyone except
Speaker 2: over at MSNBC.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: The lab leak most likely origin of COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 3: The Energy Department now says.
Speaker 1: All out assault on train, land, air, sea, cyber truly
Speaker 1: just a shock and all effort from the Russians, and
Speaker 1: we are going to cover it from every angle.
Speaker 3: Hello Chicago, Hello, Hello Austin.
Speaker 2: Howdy, as they say in these parts, Hello Boston, Hello London.
Speaker 4: Guys are fired up tonight.
Speaker 3: I love it you guys inside into what you want
Speaker 3: helping us.
Speaker 4: This is what you have been helping us yet.
Speaker 2: The beautiful box of Lights is one of almost a
Speaker 2: dozen boxes that we have here in the studio and
Speaker 2: want to thank all of the yearly and the lifetime
Speaker 2: members Crystal who have signed up.
Speaker 3: We're helping us.
Speaker 2: This is the biggest expense ever in the history of
Speaker 2: breaking points.
Speaker 3: And it's costing a hell of a lot of money.
Speaker 2: But the reason that we are doing it is because
Speaker 2: we know how important it is not only to you
Speaker 2: to have something that looks and feels important, but something
Speaker 2: that you can share with.
Speaker 3: Your friends and your family and it will help us.
Speaker 1: When we launched, we only wanted to do it if
Speaker 1: we could do it the right way and continuously improve
Speaker 1: with your support. We believe in you, guys, We believe
Speaker 1: in the show. So thank you, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: for this box and the many more like it, and
Speaker 1: can't wait for you to see the full set. I
Speaker 1: think you'll be as excited about it as we are.
Speaker 4: To growing a bat for going through all of it.
Speaker 1: They went all the way back to Daily callar Day,
Speaker 1: all the way back watching MSNBC and the cycle. Thank you,
Speaker 1: by the way for picking of the clips of me
Speaker 1: saying something that was actually like good and correct and
Speaker 1: one of the many cringey things that I said, Well.
Speaker 3: I don't want to think about it.
Speaker 2: I was like I need a shot a whiskey, even
Speaker 2: watching the original clip. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy to
Speaker 2: think about two years exactly to the day, almost Actually
Speaker 2: we're it's ten am here on the East Coast. This
Speaker 2: is exactly whenever we were attempting two years ago Bristol
Speaker 2: to go live and we were screwed by a mailchimp.
Speaker 4: We were over an hour and a half panicking.
Speaker 2: Because Mailchimp just decided not to let us send our
Speaker 2: email out to everybody. So yeah, we were absolutely losing
Speaker 2: our mind. Literally, yeah, what is it seven hundred something
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: But that was interesting what we said in those clips
Speaker 1: that almost it was almost two years to the day
Speaker 1: that we were rising together when we broke off, and
Speaker 1: now almost two years to the day that we're here
Speaker 1: launching kind of a new you know, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the same show, but it's the set is really quite opning.
Speaker 2: So June first is the exact four year anniversary of
Speaker 2: the day officially became your rising co host. So, cause
Speaker 2: I was looking back through that, Wow, there's a photo
Speaker 2: first photo I ever found the two of us together
Speaker 2: from that time. I was like, wow, you know, like
Speaker 2: the iPhone memories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was like, what a crazy time.
Speaker 2: It was actually us eating beef jerky start following.
Speaker 4: I think that's a sign I guess it's ready to go. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess. So.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that I really reflect
Speaker 1: on watching back that montage is how much the show
Speaker 1: has grown, how much we've had to adjust to the news.
Speaker 1: I mean, when when the Democratic primary, which you know,
Speaker 1: that was like a key part of what we're focused
Speaker 1: on and what that really made, you know, the interview
Speaker 1: with Andrew Yang and the fair coverage of the Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders campaign and all of that, like that really sort
Speaker 1: of built us up.
Speaker 4: And then in an instant.
Speaker 1: That was over and it was COVID and that was
Speaker 1: the first time that we're like, all right, we got
Speaker 1: to we're going to really find out what we've got here,
Speaker 1: Like are people just here to hear us like you know,
Speaker 1: shit on Biden?
Speaker 4: Like I talk about it. Really you know, people were
Speaker 4: there for that.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that, the panels and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: Or is there something more sustainable that we can build here?
Speaker 1: And so, you know, we went all in on trying
Speaker 1: to understand what was happening and trying to analyze what
Speaker 1: the political response to it was and what the reality
Speaker 1: was going to be for ordinary Americans versus what was
Speaker 1: being given to elites at the time. And I think
Speaker 1: when we were able to make that transition, that's when
Speaker 1: I knew that we would be able to do the
Speaker 1: show for the long term and that there was an
Speaker 1: audience there that, you know, really cared about the core values,
Speaker 1: not just the horse race of the politics of the day.
Speaker 1: And since then there have been a lot of other
Speaker 1: obviously major twists and turns in terms of the focus
Speaker 1: of the show and what's happening in the world and
Speaker 1: our coverage the Ukraine War that they played, you know,
Speaker 1: when Russia invaded Ukraine. Initially that was another big moment
Speaker 1: obviously in world politics most importantly, but in terms of
Speaker 1: huge shift and focus of coverage here, we both did
Speaker 1: all that we could to sort of bone up on
Speaker 1: our understanding of what was happening in the world.
Speaker 4: And I just want to say, like.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm incredibly grateful to you. You know,
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of co.
Speaker 4: Hosts in my time, and I'm lucky I never did.
Speaker 1: I can tell you it's like it's it's a challenging relationship,
Speaker 1: and you.
Speaker 4: Know, with you make it easy, like it really is easy.
Speaker 1: We've had we've had some gnarly moments, but overall, especially
Speaker 1: since we launched here smooth Sailing, they're amazing partner. I
Speaker 1: couldn't be more fortunate and grateful. And then also to
Speaker 1: you guys, like through all those twists and turns and
Speaker 1: you know, different focuses of the show, and but maintaining
Speaker 1: the core values. Like you guys have been there and
Speaker 1: you've put your faith in us to try to interpret
Speaker 1: what's going on in the world as best we can.
Speaker 4: And I'm just so grateful for that same.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't say it enough, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: You know, you only have to hear about the set
Speaker 2: for one more week and then it's there.
Speaker 3: Shut up about it and all that.
Speaker 2: But for real, I mean, it's just crazy to think,
Speaker 2: you know, two year anniversary to the day. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, you and I we put this whole set
Speaker 2: on our individual credit cards.
Speaker 3: You have no idea if this thing is going to
Speaker 3: work out. I'm am I gonna be broke, like you know,
Speaker 3: like what's gonna happen?
Speaker 2: Like it's one of those where we left all this
Speaker 2: money on the table health insurance, you know, all of
Speaker 2: the easiness that comes with being attached to a corporate organization.
Speaker 2: It was a huge risk, I mean, is the biggest
Speaker 2: risk will probably ever take in our lives.
Speaker 3: And yet it's one of those where not only.
Speaker 2: Did it work out, but it actually built something you know,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, that we could have never imagined. And
Speaker 2: that's what the new set looks like, and I also
Speaker 2: want to tell everybody like we take it's such we
Speaker 2: take it so seriously. The responsibility that we have to
Speaker 2: all of you, like every day when we wake up
Speaker 2: in our team. The way that we think about it
Speaker 2: is like you gave us your hard earned cash and
Speaker 2: your money because you're supporting you believe in something like
Speaker 2: that is a leap of faith which we do not
Speaker 2: take for granted. And also I know that there's so
Speaker 2: many things that the that people still want to see
Speaker 2: about the show.
Speaker 3: We are you know, we try to be humble, like we.
Speaker 2: Are good if we make We have made so many
Speaker 2: mistakes and we will always try to not only own
Speaker 2: up to them, but improve upon them. So on the
Speaker 2: new set, you're going to see many things which I
Speaker 2: know people have asked about. We've already got a panel
Speaker 2: that has booked for the very first week. We've got
Speaker 2: politicians that are going to be coming in here. We
Speaker 2: are going to try and level up and take things
Speaker 2: exactly to where you always wanted it to go. So
Speaker 2: consider it a building period, a learning period for the
Speaker 2: two of us. I mean transitioning from just two people
Speaker 2: who show up, you know, to running your own company.
Speaker 3: Was was an insane.
Speaker 2: Transition I think, you know, just at a very basic,
Speaker 2: like fundamental level, and then also having to sit here
Speaker 2: and continue to do the show, like so many different
Speaker 2: things change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know I want to say, uh, Ryan
Speaker 1: and Emily, oh my god, joining the fold and what
Speaker 1: they've put together with counterpoints, which I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of. I enjoy watching it. I enjoy when
Speaker 1: I fill in for Ryan too. You know, they have
Speaker 1: their own dynamic and energy. A lot of times their
Speaker 1: issue focused a little different from ours. I think it
Speaker 1: has been so additive to the overall what we've been
Speaker 1: able to do here, and that just sort of like
Speaker 1: you know, came together in a way that has been
Speaker 1: really exciting. You know, our whole crew that supports us
Speaker 1: every day, Like, thank you guys so much. You guys
Speaker 1: have been amazing. Anytime we want, you know, we come
Speaker 1: up with these crazy ideas.
Speaker 4: Let's do a live stream.
Speaker 3: Were there?
Speaker 4: All right, let's do it down. Here's how it's gonna work.
Speaker 1: Griffin and Mack both knew this year, and let me
Speaker 1: tell you, like.
Speaker 4: They have really stepped up, both of them.
Speaker 1: You know, Mac is really integral and everything we do,
Speaker 1: but in particular He's taken a particularly focus on counterpoints,
Speaker 1: has done a phenomenal job building them up. Griffin has
Speaker 1: really spearheaded this new set development, which is a whole thing.
Speaker 1: And I can't tell you how grateful I am to
Speaker 1: not be parsing through all the details there and to
Speaker 1: have the confidence that he just has it handled.
Speaker 4: Those two guys absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3: They change the game for us.
Speaker 4: Totally top notch.
Speaker 1: And they really they have brought so much to the
Speaker 1: table in terms of development and show and it's just
Speaker 1: getting started exactly.
Speaker 3: And you're the ones who may know any of that
Speaker 3: possible only a reason that we can even pay for
Speaker 3: real talent, you know, to come in here. You know,
Speaker 3: all the guys in the control room. I remember our
Speaker 3: very first.
Speaker 2: Set, everybody said, hey, the audio sucks. It's like, hey,
Speaker 2: guess what daily audio? We pay for it now thanks
Speaker 2: to all of it, we don't even think about it too.
Speaker 2: It's one of those where it's like a baked in cost.
Speaker 2: It's not going to change anything whenever it comes to
Speaker 2: the quality of the show is not It's not something
Speaker 2: that you and I blink twice at spending money on
Speaker 2: I was just looking at the original computer that we bought,
Speaker 2: and we were talking to the guys in the control
Speaker 2: room before the show about how much you know, we
Speaker 2: had trouble with all that processing time, and that was
Speaker 2: the first real purchase that we were able to make
Speaker 2: that iMac being like we have an M one iMac
Speaker 2: it can actually process it. Now we've you know, graduated
Speaker 2: to like some gigantic monstrosity which barely looks like a
Speaker 2: computer to be capable of handling four K and all
Speaker 2: these brand new cameras that we're looking at. I mean,
Speaker 2: so it just like as slow and steady. But also
Speaker 2: when you think about how much has changed over the
Speaker 2: last two years, it's remarkable. So that's a I think
Speaker 2: that's a good place to leave things. Breakingpoints dot com
Speaker 2: if you're able to help us out, you know, throughout
Speaker 2: all of this, if you made it this far, this video.
Speaker 1: But just programming reminder next, this is our last These
Speaker 1: are our.
Speaker 4: Last moments on the set.
Speaker 3: Last time.
Speaker 4: Take a look around the brick, the.
Speaker 3: Calvin Hobbes, the TV, all of this. Yeah, we do.
Speaker 1: It's a little preview on the new set does have
Speaker 1: little shelves too. They're a little smaller for you know,
Speaker 1: our little mementos so that some aspect will carry over.
Speaker 4: But yeah, this is it for the set.
Speaker 1: We're going to do the show remotely next week while
Speaker 1: everything gets built down and what we tested and make
Speaker 1: sure everything is ready to go. And then, assuming all
Speaker 1: goes according to plan, week after new set.
Speaker 2: And don't forget, there will be a surprise little event
Speaker 2: for premium subscribers where they will get the first look
Speaker 2: at the set and they will get it well well
Speaker 2: before anything. So if you want to sign up Breakingpoints
Speaker 2: dot com like I said, otherwise, we will see you
Speaker 2: all remotely next week.
Speaker 4: Love you guys, see you soon,