12/10/25: Trump Bends Knee To China, NYT Demands War, Jon Stewart Rips Trump, Trump Gives Economy A+, Dem Landslides

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump bends the knee to China, NYT demands war footing, Jon Stewart rips Trump on Venezuela, Trump gives economy A+, Dem landslide elections.

 

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Episode Transcript

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All right, good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
So if this two hour program is not enough Ryan
and Emily for you.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Today, you can see us what tonight at.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
What's the Theater the Miracle Theater, the Miracle Theater and
watching the DC. We will be debating some reason bros
who are going to be defending big tech Apocalypse ors.

Speaker 5 (00:52):
Robbie Swabe and Elizabeth Nolan Brown. The resolution is big
tech does more good than harm. Ryan and I obviously
arguing big tech tech does more harm than good.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
We can put the details down in the show notes.

Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yes, comment and all that, but that's where we'll do
a couple.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Of nights left.

Speaker 5 (01:08):
Yeah, there are seats left, so come and join us
if you're interested.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Ryan, Where there's still seats left on the day. That's outrageous.
I would have thought this would be sold out.

Speaker 5 (01:16):
Ryan is disappointed in all.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Of You're disappointed everything.

Speaker 5 (01:19):
That'll be incredible, every single one of you. Yeah, it's
going to be fun.

Speaker 6 (01:23):
All right.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
So today's show, Donald Trump sat for an interview with
Dosh Burns of Politico that has just spawned several different
news cycles because he said all kinds of things like
the economy is an eight plus plus plus plus plus,
but also just called European Leaders Week and has a
new national security strategy that is circulating as a pdf.

(01:44):
You could read it yourself. So we're going to dive
into that. John Stewart went deep on the Venezuela crisis
and it's a it's a masterpiece. It's pretty good. It's
pretty good. And then we're going to talk about a
little bit about tariffs, Trump's thoughts on where the economy
stands heading into a midterm election cycle and some elections.

(02:04):
Last night, Ryan that had interesting results Miami in particular.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, some huge overperformances around the country for Democrats. And
then we've got Brad Lander jumping into the race in
Manhattan against Dan Goldman. Watch to the chagrin of Apak.
You have some consolidation around Lander already during mom Donnie
and Dorseg and Bernie Sanders and Dorsegm youl aknew candidate

(02:29):
dropped out to encourage some consolidation, much to the delight
of Republicans. You've got a Jasmine Crockett announcing her run
down in Texas for Senate.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
Talk about all that, yes, And Kamalin Harris is getting
into another war words with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who
was asked about it on MS. Now that clip you're
going to want to stick around for. But Kamala Harris
got a splashing profile in The New York Times this
week which has some pretty interesting details and it's a

(03:00):
whole lot like she wants to run for president again.
Gavin Newsom was flailing to try to answer for his
relationship with Apak as well. We're going to break that down.
And Sam Godaldig is going to join us his firm CGCN.
Sammy may I remember from a segment we did with
Brody Mullins and Sam himself talking about sort of the

(03:24):
dirty secrets of lobbying here in DC. Sam's ferm put
out a really interesting report that puts some numbers on
the realignment phenomenon and the class base element of the
realignment phenomenon. So we're excited to have him here. Yes, indeed,
all right, Well, let's get started with Donald Trump's comments
on NATO as he seeks to end the war in Ukraine,

(03:47):
though it seemingly has no end in sight at this moment.
Let's go ahead and roll this part of Donald Trump's
interview published yesterday with Dash Burns of Politico. This is
going to be a one.

Speaker 7 (03:58):
How involved are you going to get? I mean, could
we see you getting involved in European?

Speaker 8 (04:02):
I want to run the United States. I don't want
to run Europe. I'm involved in Europe very much.

Speaker 7 (04:09):
Might you endorse?

Speaker 8 (04:10):
Calls me daddy? I mean, I have a lot to say.
I just think he's doing a very good job in
a different sense on immigration. His country's landlocked. You know,
he's got a different kind of a country. He doesn't
have the sea, so he can't have ships coming in
with energy. He's got a big pipe coming in from Russia.
They've had it for a long time. It's some different
situation he's got.

Speaker 9 (04:27):
So would you consider some financial He's really gotten right
as the immigration because he allows nobody in his country,
and Poland has done a very good job in that
respect too, but most European nations.

Speaker 8 (04:42):
There decaying the decaying.

Speaker 5 (04:46):
Those landlocked comments were about Hungary and Poland in particular.
But this is another part of the interview where Donald
Trump talked about negotiations in Ukraine. Let's rule a two here.

Speaker 7 (04:58):
On Sunday, your son, Donald Trump Junior responded to a
reporter's question about whether you will quote walk away from Ukraine,
and your son said, I think he may.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Is that correct?

Speaker 8 (05:09):
No, it's not correct, but it's not exactly wrong. We
have to, you know, they have to play ball.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
That's a great line. It's not correct, but it's not
exactly wrong. Ryan Zolenski, meanwhile, just in the last day
or so has said they're not giving up territory and
he's doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on the So no closer
at all to an end of the war there.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
So it's a little bit right.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
It's a little bit schizophrenic where he's saying, on the
one hand, he doesn't want to run Europe. On the
other hand, NATO calls me daddy, which anyway.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
Actually true.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
His son, his son says that he's going to walk
away from Ukraine. He says that he's not, but that's
not necessarily wrong. So no, it's it's difficult to read exactly,
you know, where he is at this because he seems
to kind of be flailing. Meanwhile, you're getting you know,
more and more reports that pre that that a massive

(06:11):
portion of the Ukrainian soldiers who are on the front
lines at this point are are there as a result
of of what's what they call uh, what do they
call it? Uh, they were busified or they were bussed
Basically it means they were forcibly inscripted. That you have
these buses that go around Ukraine and they see somebody

(06:33):
of fighting age and fighting age can now be up
to like sixty four or something like that, yeah, uh,
and they grab them and throw them into the bus.
And there's a lot of a lot of videos that
are going around of you know, passers by or family
members shooting footage of this happening with sys some absolutely
you know, heartbreaking stuff with like you know, two little

(06:56):
girls in the backseat of the car and their father
like gets yanked out of the front seat of the
car and then and thrown into a bus. And at
Reuters did a report recently where they followed I think,
like a dozen men who went to the front lines
and over a period of months, and none of them
are there anymore, like either they're either a wall, injured

(07:19):
or dead. And a lot of those were just forcibly
sent there. So to me, it would be one thing
if the Ukrainian people were like enthusiastically, you know, rushing
to the front and saying the beginning of the war
right for the first Yeah, for the beginning they were.
If that was the case, then you could say, Okay,

(07:40):
the free world, whatever that is, free world needs to
defend people who were like willingly like throwing themselves into
this conflict. But to give Ukraine a whole lot of
money so they can fund the forcible grabbing of men
and then putting a gun in their hands and sending

(08:02):
them to the front against their will, that that can't
be the right side, doesn't mean there's a there is
a right side of it, but that that certainly is
not the good guys, and.

Speaker 5 (08:15):
Putin obviously has been forced to change recruitment methods as well.
I mean, it's just been a meat grinder for years
and years.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
At least ten times bigger or whatever.

Speaker 5 (08:25):
Right, Yeah, exactly, And so it's obvious that European leaders
are also getting frustrated with Zelenski. That New York Times
expos on the corruption and the mismanagement, I mean, that's
an understatement. The willful mismanagement might be a better way
to put it. Of tons looting funds, the looting of

(08:49):
tons of funds of the country that has been propped
up by its European neighbors, by the United States over
the last several years, and the money is turning into
just a graft for elite, so the well connected. It
is like a spoil system for well connected Ukrainians. And
so the incentives to end the war, if you're somebody

(09:09):
like Zelenski or if you're them, they're not aligned right
now with the people who are just getting pulled off
the streets. And so, yeah, completely tragic situation. And we're
now coming up on a year from when Trump took office.
And said he would have this, you know, ended in
twenty four forty eight hours. And it's if other people

(09:32):
are starting to get irked with Zelenski, if other European
leaders are really starting to get irked with Zelenski, his
time's running out on these negotiations. But then again, what
can you do right?

Speaker 4 (09:42):
And the Europeans they seem they continue to seem to
be all in on this conflict. It seems like in
the beginning on the corruption point, that the US sort
of hoped that vibes would override underlying structure, like your
country is under mortal existential threat from this Russian invasion,

(10:06):
and the vibes from that are going to produce a
level of patriotism that is going to stigmatize and suppress
the endemic corruption that was central or that is central
to the Ukrainian political economy. And that just that never happened.
And I don't know why it would like if you
look at the US during the Civil War, you look

(10:29):
at the US during World War One, during World War Two,
there are always people that are profiting off of war
in incorrupt ways by selling and the British Empires every
like every conflict you have scam artists and massive corporations

(10:50):
who will like sell substandard equipment to the troops or
no equipment at all and just invoice for it and
keep the money like that. It's just endemic when you
start with an underlying higher level of corruption. Yeah, uh,
this is this is what you're gonna this is what
you're going to wind up with.

Speaker 5 (11:08):
And it's also not their money. It's it's coming from
other countries. And that's what I mean, a lot of
it coming from US. And I think that's also what's
going to test the patients of European leaders the more.
I mean kind of everybody knows this, but when you're
able to start putting investigative reporting to the question, like
the New York Times did, actually running down some of
these trails that I think is obviously going to start

(11:30):
to test the patients of more and more people, and
we could put them element up on the screen. This uh.
Trump waiting back into these negotiations comes as their national
security strategy. The Trump Administration's National Security Strategy document was released.
There is a classified version of this as well. That
one outlet I've heard the name of it has a

(11:51):
look at but here we like this piece from Compact
which pointed out the first. So it has shocked in
two ways. According to the Compact this is about the document.
The first lies in its surprisingly dubbish stance toward China.
Those hoping for a grand strategy to confront the People's
Republic are there boy disappointed, thereby disappointed. The second chock
lies in the brusque assessment of the existential risks facing Europe.

(12:14):
According to the document, the continent faces the stark prospect
of a civilizational erasure. Now, the classified version of this,
by the way, says that Trump wants to create a
new group without any Western Europeans, and it would be
called like the Core five. So Russia, India, Japan, I'm
forgetting who else. I'm doing Rick Perry, but in the

(12:36):
China States, in Japan, China, Yeah, almost like a bricks rival.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
But it wants to do bricks but with us in it.

Speaker 5 (12:44):
Well, that doesn't that isn't. Now, this Compact piece goes
on to say, but those stances are connected. They come
from the conviction that whatever challenges the US faces from
China in the twenty first century, returning rerunning the paradigm
of the Cold War with the traditional European allies and
China and lieu of the Soviet is the wrong way
to do it. And it says not only is this

(13:05):
paradigm inadequate to grasping the nature of the challenge from China,
is also dependent on a coherent concept of Western civilization
that no longer reflects existing conditions in Europe. So Ryan
the political question this raises is as Trump struggles to
end the conflict in Ukraine, it looks like his national

(13:28):
security grand strategy is also to move away from alliances
with Western Europe. Now He's likely only in office for
another three years, So how much of this can be accomplished,
I think is a pretty open question.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Right, If it's jd Vance, true, he believes this and
then some as he never hesitates to point out right,
he's he's much more explicit about seeing Europe as kind
of a vassal situation, right, that that is anything of
an alliance in the Europeans have just kind of allowed
it to happen.

Speaker 5 (13:56):
They have, they have, and I don't know what option
that what else is on the table for them, really,
I mean the leverage that they have compared to obviously
compared to China, I mean it's just night and day.

Speaker 4 (14:10):
They could also, I mean they they could stop undermining
themselves economically constantly, Like coming out of the financial crisis,
Germany insisted that it that it lead the way when
it came to austerity, like the US had an insufficient
stimulus in response to the financial crisis, but ours looked

(14:31):
like the New Deal compared to what Germany insisted that
Europe do, and so it plu. If you look at
the divide in GDP per capita between the United States
and Europe, it begins in like two thousand and eight.
That's that's the Great divergence. And and Germany did that
to Europe. Now they're kind of de industrializing themselves in

(14:55):
order to basically just appease the United States. And it's
not going well by because basic what they're doing is
there they gave up cheap energy from Russia. The cheap
energy was fueling their manufacturing base, and so now their
manufacturing base is collapsing, as as is Ukraine. So yeah,

(15:15):
and they know anyway, they're giant mess.

Speaker 5 (15:18):
It really is a giant mess. And let's also put
a four on the screen. This is speaking of China.
The New York Times headline here is China's access to
powerful and Vidio chips comes at quote critical moment. Sub
head President Trump said, Vidia can export some chips, but
years of US restrictions have propelled China to make everything
it needs for advanced A I. And so the Trump

(15:41):
administration is trying to walk this tightrope when it comes
to in Vidia to kind of make sure that the
United States on the forefront and that China doesn't fully
develop its own alternatives, which is a case that you
can make if you're Gensen Wang. You want to keep
that money coming, but also please the Hawk, who say,
what the hell is this policy? So another another typrope

(16:06):
for the administration.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Yeah, So basically Trump is saying that he's going to
allow some of the most some of these most sophisticated
chips that the Biden administration and previous US administrations including Trump,
had been keeping from China because the belief is that
China will do what China Auburn does, which is take
US technology and kind of reverse engineer it and make

(16:29):
their own one new Navidia new Nvidia. And so I
have not found anybody who thinks that from a US perspective,
this is like a good thing.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
You know, we're objective here.

Speaker 4 (16:46):
We don't care about the US perspective alone, right, So
maybe if this moves US further away from war, well yeah.

Speaker 5 (16:54):
I mean I think that's the gloss that Jensen went,
wasn't he on Joe Rogan this week too? I think
that's what can put on this, which is it's possible.
I mean that that is possibly an answer that if
you keep China addicted to US tech, it's less and
less likely that you end up in a kinetic conflict.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
So I actually that is a good theory maybe, except
we have now made it so clear to them that
we are not a reliable ally, We're not a trustworthy
business partner by being as reckless as we are. That's
mutual and sure, but that that we were never expecting
that really, And so they are full steam ahead trying

(17:34):
to build an economy that is.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
That is not dependent at all in the United States.

Speaker 5 (17:40):
Yeah, as they should be. I mean, if you're from
their perspective, as they should be.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
Yes, And how long we need like all of their
stuff to make our weapons exactly?

Speaker 5 (17:49):
That's actually second and we need Taiwan, yes. And what
I was just going to add to that is the
administration's rationale for the Nvidia decision, and we are talking
about the strategic possibilities. I'm sure it had a whole
lot to do with Gensa Wane kissing the ring and
kissing the ring and not this like grand because that's

(18:12):
how the Trump formed policy two point zero has essentially
been conducted. It's by Trump himself making deals. So we
can put that rationale on the We can use that
sort of like substance of meat on the bones. But
that doesn't mean it's the reason, the real reason. At
the end of the day, the administration made the decision.

(18:32):
It might just be a strategy that makes them feel
more comfortable with the decision. But I think your point
is right. Even if they're dependent on in vidio chips now,
it doesn't mean that they're actually going to be dependent
on invidio chips along into the future.

Speaker 4 (18:50):
The New York Times is quite concerned that, and actually
I think reasonably so that the Chinese what actually whoop
us if we got into an actual conflict with them,
which should make really avoiding war with China probably like
the highest priority of the United States if we might
actually lose it. It's very long New York Times opinion

(19:14):
video that is worth watching just for a look into
the mindset of the kind of military industrial complex has
reflected through the Times opinion page, and it's looking bleak
for them.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Let's roll a little bit of this Times.

Speaker 10 (19:31):
Up ed America must prepare for the future of war.
This is the opinion of the New York Times editorial board.
You might be thinking America should focus on peace, not war,
but one of the most effective ways to prevent a
war is to be strong enough to win it. That's

(19:52):
why it's imperative that we change. The US must reform
not just its military, but also the political processes for
funding it and the industrial base that supports it. For decades,
our military has been built around the idea that more
sophistication is better. This made sense during the Cold War,

(20:12):
when the West could outspend Russia, but today our reliance
on expensive and exquisite systems has become a vulnerability. In wargames,
large ships like the US Gerald R Ford are often destroyed. Still,
the Navy plans to build at least nine additional Forward
class carriers in the coming decades. America must embrace new

(20:33):
and more nimble means of warfare. This means simultaneously winning
the war to build new autonomous weapons and leading the
world and controlling them. Doing so will require challenging the
status quo for how weapons are designed and manufactured. Defense
spending is routinely steered towards the five major defense contractors,

(20:54):
who have become experts at navigating thousands of pages of regulations.
But they're both slow and to jumpstart new technologies, the
Pentagon must relax its byzantine rules for buying weapons and
make bets on young companies that show promise to get results.
Congress needs to stop getting in the way. Each year,

(21:14):
the United States spends billions of dollars that the military
didn't ask for, often so that lawmakers can make their
districts happy. Let's focus on winning wars, not elections. We
also have a workforce problem. In the next decade, the
US will need to add one hundred and forty thousand
shipbuilders to its workforce, and that's just to meet the

(21:36):
demand for submarine construction. We should intensify recruiting and training
programs for manufacturing trades, and we should focus on recruiting
young people interested in software and technology. In long wars,
the countries that can manufacture the most win. America now
makes just seventeen percent of all manufactured goods, while China

(21:56):
makes almost twice as much, and their lead is growing.
It's only by partnering with allies that the US can
match China's manufacturing capabilities. So rather than slapping our allies
with tariffs, we should be partnering with them.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
I mean what I mean the last point that they're
making there that we just should just be partnering with
a lot more people.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
Okay, that's good. Diplomacy is good.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
The part about we shouldn't focus on peace, let's focus
on war, It's like, well, I don't know. We've been
focusing on war pretty hard here in the United States
for two hundred and fifty years, and this is where
we are now the context to put some contacts on this.
A couple of days ago, there was news report that
China is now able to produce hypersonic missiles at about

(22:43):
one hundred thousand dollars a piece. There are Ford F
one fifties that cost more than that, and so they
showed that image of the jailed forward getting hit. That's
massive aircraft carrier that is now in the process of like,
you know, trying to overthrow me dua.

Speaker 5 (23:00):
They said, go over the course of the next decades,
the US is trying to build nine more carrio decades, decades.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
And so if you have let's say you have ten
hypersonic missiles that you spent a million dollars to build,
like the chance that let's say you have one hundred
of them, spend ten million dollars, which is nothing compared
to the costs of a multi billion dollar aircraft carrier.
You send one hundred hypersonic missiles and an aircraft carrier,

(23:28):
they're not going to block every single one. And so
that's why they say in the war games, these ships
are sitting ducks, and yet here we are. We're going
to go spend enormous amounts of money to make nine
more of them over decades, decades, which will take which
they can all be sunk in the first week.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
They will still be making them after everything is like,
you don't even need them anymore, We'll still be making them.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
Right, so you can you can very easily see the
history being written after a conflict like the US did this.
They spent all the times, is right, They spent all
this money on these like hyper expensive things that enriched
the donor class and the billionaires. The Chinese built cheap

(24:13):
and effective things like hypersonic missiles and drones, hacked all
our systems and we lost in a week.

Speaker 5 (24:20):
Well, this is what was so confusing to me about
the video. I mean, on the one hand, they're making
a lot of extremely important, long overdue points. I mean,
the point about breaking up the monopolies in the defense
industry is like very obviously true, and that's what we
were watching. And I was like, was this sponsored by

(24:40):
Androl and Palmer Lucky Because he has a great point
about the industry and that's all true. It's just framing
it in this big picture context about how we need
to be focused on winning wars. You have to get
into wars to win the war. And the whole point

(25:01):
of shaking up the defense industry, let's take it at
face value from people like Palmer Lucky is the piece
through strength line, which is that you don't actually get
into the wars because your tech is better.

Speaker 4 (25:13):
Right, except the problem and Palmer Lucky is a good example.
He's building these multimillion dollar drones that just keep crashing
like China is building much cheaper.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Drones that work.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
We're giving Palmer Lucky millions for drones that don't work.

Speaker 5 (25:28):
Well, we aren't just giving it to him. He's trying
to sell it to us. That's the difference.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
And so but we're already we are buying a lot.
But like, I think that was a billionaire.

Speaker 5 (25:37):
Well, we'll see. I'm not a Palmer doomer. I think
I think there's something pretty interesting happening there. But we'll see.
I mean there's you could break up the monopoly and
then end up creating new monopolies so that that can
easily take the place. And we'll see about that. So
our system we can't do. Even when we do industrial policy,

(25:58):
we can't do it right.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
Making of War John Stewart went Daily Show, old school.
Let's watch this a little bit of this masterpiece of
a segment from him.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
Go watch the whole thing. But here's a clip of it.
On parallels between Venezuela and Iraq.

Speaker 5 (26:12):
But I know what.

Speaker 11 (26:13):
Maga is doing. They're convincing us that a rock was
an entirely different set of circumstances, that country was led
by a sword wielding mustachie oed madman who held an
iron grip on his people in his power. Nicholas Maduro
is nothing but oh shit.

Speaker 6 (26:31):
That drugged out dinghy was a floating weapon of mass destruction.

Speaker 12 (26:34):
Every boat carrying fentanyl and drugs in this country the
weapon of mass destruction?

Speaker 11 (26:40):
Are you fucking kidding me?

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Right now?

Speaker 11 (26:43):
You guys have the balls to tell us that the
pretext for a ROQ was bullshit and that war was
a mistake and we're not like that. And also Venezuela
has weapons of mass destruction and we have to stop them.
For those of you who are like, oh my god,
I didn't even realize that all the fentanyl in the
US comes from Venezuela. That's because it doesn't like almost

(27:09):
none of it, but none of it. Because as much
as you say war with Venezuela would be so different
from Iraq, it seems like you may be using the
neocons sales manual, like other than WMDs. Why was it
so important to take down saddamuzin is regime as an
active support for in cooperation with terrorist networks. Terrorist networks,

(27:31):
that's the worst kind of networks. Well, you'll never guess
where the terrorists are.

Speaker 12 (27:36):
Now Iran, it's IRGC and even hesblah, they have planted
their flag on Venezuelan territory with a full and open
cooperation of that regime.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Wow.

Speaker 11 (27:46):
So if you're saying we go to war with Venezuela,
we're also getting into a proxy war with Iran.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
I'm sold.

Speaker 11 (27:53):
Now if I remember correctly, though Iraq lasted until still.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
And what did they say about that? I think it
would be a cakewalk. I don't think it would be
a that tough a fight.

Speaker 11 (28:09):
I think the saddest part of getting into a war
of choice in twenty twenty five is it Dick Cheney
won't be around to see it.

Speaker 4 (28:22):
Later, he goes into the question of how you can
square America first with this, with the circle of this intervention.
He plays this great clip of my friend Jesse Waters
Yeah saying it's South America.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
America is right there in the name. It's obviously America first.

Speaker 5 (28:41):
Oh good, it's obviously America.

Speaker 12 (28:43):
Right.

Speaker 5 (28:44):
Well, that's all I let That's the only that Rubio
has been using is that if you are America first,
this is our hemisphere. It's a less sophisticated rendering of
the Rubio line.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
But it's also our world. Like, how does that not
apply to the world. They're trying to your world power.
I mean, they're first, it's our world. It's our world,
so everything in the world is ours.

Speaker 5 (29:01):
There you go that if it identifies as America, that
it's America.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
Says it right there.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
The America's yeah, Like what part of this is confusing
to you?

Speaker 5 (29:12):
But this is where we talked in the last block
about how the Trump National Security Strategy that was released
is a literal PDF titled National Security Strategy is trying
to move away from the Cold War coalitions with Western Europe.
But this is still all entirely Cold War rhetoric. It's

(29:33):
not even a rock. It's Marco Rubio talking about that
you can substitute Iran and Hezbola for Soviet Union. It's
exactly what we were doing in South America and Central
America during the Cold War. It's exactly the same playbook
and the same regime change playbook. And they're using I mean,
if you were trying to sell this word to the
American public, saying these are legit weapons of mass destruction

(29:56):
is about the dumbest way you could do it. That's
the quickest way that you can get dis trust about
the legitimacy of this war is to say, what did
jesse Water say those boats are three d up into
the mess or something like that, yeat, Like that is
the quickest way you can make people be like, whoa
hold on, let's go easy on this one.

Speaker 4 (30:13):
Like that, I mean, in his defense claiming weapons of
mass distraction destruction worked last time.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
They don't care that the war didn't go well. They
got to do their war.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
So in that sense, they're like, oh, let's do the
WMD playbook again. But to your point about Rubio, for
that reason drops that news is actually we're launching a
Latin American desk for this reason because like it's clear
that as you based on this national security strategy, what
Trump is saying about Europe and China, there is a
recognition that American global hegemony is at the beginning of

(30:51):
the end at least. And what that's going to mean
is that our friends closer by are going to get
a lot more attention. John Stewart define America first, as
we're not going to kill people over there, We're going
to kill people here, right, So we're going to have

(31:11):
to beef up our coverage of that.

Speaker 5 (31:12):
Yeah. But I mean also let's say you let's just
say you buy into that strategy. Their plan. They point
constantly to Panama, but their plan has not worked elsewhere.
Like give them that, give them that.

Speaker 4 (31:28):
So we had a massive military base in Panama already.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah, and Manuel.

Speaker 4 (31:34):
Noriega was a CIA asset. So like fire, like firing
your own asset and replacing them. Yeah, is not as
impressive a feat as going into a hostile place where
you don't have a military base and trying to completely
revolutionize the political structure.

Speaker 5 (31:54):
Well we did, I mean originally as Panama exists because.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
We were revolution and like, yeah, we created it, right
and for.

Speaker 5 (32:04):
Yes, And so if you again keep going back to
these examples, there's the best example is right now you
have a Sandinista president, Like, how has this worked for
you all? Like the in the the arc of history?
How have these regime change operations backing militants against alleged
communists or hesblosympathize sympathizers, which he's of course correct. And

(32:29):
this was the point that you were going to make,
or that you were making, which is that yes, Iran
and China are going to get footholds in Venezuela. To
some extent they already do have them. It's because of
the regime change wars that many people in those countries
have been open, have been open to embracing these different
countries because some people that really don't like the United States.

(32:52):
I wonder why, I wonder.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
I can't imagine why.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
One example of why they might not as Pete Hexith
being on a serial killer spree around the around the Caribbean.
Trump was asked in this interview whether or not he'd
be okay with Hegseth testifying. And if you're heg Seth,
you'd probably like to see a little bit firmer defense
than the President offered him right here?

Speaker 7 (33:18):
Should he testify Pete Hegseth under oath before Congress about
that controversial second strike on the alledged drug boat October.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
I don't care.

Speaker 8 (33:25):
Every day he can if he wants, I don't care.

Speaker 5 (33:28):
Do you think he should?

Speaker 9 (33:30):
I don't care.

Speaker 8 (33:31):
I would say, dude, if you want, he's doing a
great job.

Speaker 5 (33:34):
Have you watched.

Speaker 8 (33:37):
I watch everything? Yeah, I watch everything. I see a
lot of things.

Speaker 7 (33:41):
And do you believe that that second strike was necessary?

Speaker 8 (33:45):
Well, it looked like they were trying to turn back
over the boat, but I don't get involved in that.
That's up to them.

Speaker 4 (33:50):
I don't care, not exactly what you want when you're facing,
you know, war crimes allegations. Speaking of war crimes, he
was also asked about, and this was the story that
Sager and I had reported earlier, that he was given
a bunch of targets in Mexico and Colombia by his
intelligence community when he asked for targets connected to the
drug trade in Venezuela, because there isn't much in Venezuela

(34:13):
connectors of the drug trade except a little coca leaf
off in the jungle. And so he's now got his
eye on Columbia and Mexico. Let's roll that one.

Speaker 7 (34:23):
Would you consider doing something similar with Mexico and Colombia
that are even more responsible for fentanyl trafficking in the US.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
Sure we put up before here daily mail reporting Trump
sending shockwaves through Latin America. They should be watching Breaking
Points or reading drop side. They would not be shocked. No,
learn ahead of time what's going on by getting some
actual news, which don't just wait for it to spill.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
Out a Trump's mouth.

Speaker 5 (34:49):
Save yourself the shockwaves. But I actually don't even think
many people in Latin America at all surprised by this.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
To be honest, because daily mail might be sensationializing that
a little bit.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
You think they.

Speaker 5 (35:00):
Wouldn't do that. But yeah, he's sort of been telegraphing
a willingness. I speaking of Cold War two point zero.
With Trump, you genuinely do not know. I don't know
whether he knows if this is serious, if he's serious
about this, or if he's posturing. Because he does so
much posturing, he's comfortable with pushing the limits on what

(35:23):
typical politicians are comfortable threatening. And so it's hard to
say how serious that is. But because the President of
the United States said it, you have to take it seriously.
Of course you have to take it seriously. So we'll see.
You would certainly have a better justification for striking targets
in Sinaloa, for example, if you're trying to stop fentanyl

(35:44):
overdoses in the United States, federal trafficking into the United States,
that justification would be a whole lot easier than boats
that are going to surinam off the coast of Venezuela.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
We do have some good news on the economy, so
a lot of you out there may think that rents
and home prices are through the roof and becoming unaffordable.

Speaker 3 (36:10):
You might think it's really tough to get a decent job.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
You might think it's tough to keep the job you have,
and that your manager lately is feeling pretty good and
not treating you quite as well as here she was
in like twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two. You
might get a bag of groceries and be like, excuse me,
how much for that?

Speaker 3 (36:32):
You would be wrong? Fortunately, Yeah, this is the good news.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
This is the great news. Luckily for you. The economy
has never been better. Trump was asked about it and
celebrated his tremendous success in the interview with Politico.

Speaker 5 (36:44):
But I do want to.

Speaker 7 (36:45):
Talk about the economy, sir, here at home. I wonder
what grade you would give.

Speaker 8 (36:49):
A plus, A plus, A plus plus plus plus plus.

Speaker 7 (36:53):
We're going to pick a new FED chair soon. Is
it a litmus test that the new chair lower interest
rates immediately?

Speaker 3 (36:59):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (37:01):
Well this guy too.

Speaker 4 (37:02):
So the economy is a plus plus plus plus plus
public plus. But the Federal Reserve needs to be lowering
interest rates. I don't know if you're economically literated or not.
If you are, that's a contradiction, but never mind, forget it.

Speaker 5 (37:18):
But the good news is everyone's phone for a hoax.
So it's actually all fine, you've phone for a hoax.
This is the mid term message test. Trump gave a
speech last night in Pennsylvania where he said he's not
supposed to talk about affordability being a hoax.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
He was like out, I was told to stop, like
deaf thing, yet of.

Speaker 5 (37:38):
Course he did it. This was like, I think, a
ninety seven minute speech that I think he said at
one point also that they told him not to talk
about immigration. Talked about immigration.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
But find it hard to believe they told him not
to talk about immigration.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
What does he mean by that?

Speaker 5 (37:52):
I think he was supposed to. It was supposed to
be focused on affordability. Oh, it was a speech that
was supposed to start undermining the democraction.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
That it's a serious issue that people are concerned about.
Stop calling it a hoax and politicals.

Speaker 5 (38:05):
Yes, there were lines in this ninety seven minute speech
in Pennsylvania where he talked about, you know, affordability being
a problem. It's like your point on this paradox of
saying the economy is an a plus plus plus plus plus,
but the Fed needs the lower interest rates because people
are dying out here. It's at the same time, you

(38:28):
also then have to, as the Trump administration, say yes,
we've had a year in office, but if you're feeling
badly about the economy, that's Democrat's fault for the Biden
administration creating a bad economy. And it's also Democrat's fault
for making you think the economy like there's so many
paral paradoxes in this.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
It's Democrat's fault for creating the A plus plus plus economy.

Speaker 5 (38:50):
Right, the Biden economy was so this is what they're
gonna This is what you have to say, that the
Biden economy was so bad that the economy is still bad,
but also the economy is great. Those things cannot all
be true.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
I've seen them talking about rates of growth and improvement,
and so maybe they'll start to say it's really great
just for just not for you, and that's kind of
a you problem.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah, everybody else.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
Is doing great. I don't know why you're feeling so badly.
Let's look at the broader economic data. Oh, they're not
rolling out the economic data, so they're major price indexes
are not going to be coming out anytime soon, so
they're delaying a lot of different data that the FED
would like to see and replacing it with Trump telling

(39:36):
you that it's a plus plus plus plus one plus.

Speaker 5 (39:38):
So he also called affordability a hoax twice and then
said he's no longer quote allowed to use the phrase
as we mentioned, and he whipped out this old saw
where he says, you don't need thirty seven dollars for
your daughter two or three is nice, which, by the way,
I agree with. It is a politically disastrous message though
for a billionaire to be making on the campaign trail
in a midterm season when people are broadly dissatisfied with

(40:01):
the economy, so that's that's going to be a brutal
messaging effort. They're hoping that tax cuts kick in and
by the time summer rolls around people are feeling better.
But like broadly right now, people are unhappy with the
tariff policies, and businesses are unhappy with the tariff policies,

(40:23):
saying that the tariffs are causing price hikes. So we're gonna, like,
I think what we'll see is some holes poked in
the tariff policy. Big picture tariff policy. I would expect,
like coffee, bananas, those sorts of things to have some
deals made right going forward.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
I think we tried to encourage our our local banana
growers to increase production and encourage our American coffee producers,
but apparently only the Hawaiians we're willing to step up.

Speaker 3 (40:56):
Nobody else here in the continental.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
US, and Alaska basically has produced zero coffee despite all
of the tariffs.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
What is wrong with them?

Speaker 4 (41:06):
And so I think at some point you just have
to recognize that the American people just aren't up to
stuff when it comes to growing coffee beans. So at
that point you're going to have to back off the terraffs.
But he is willing to increase tariffs on some goods,
he said, if we can roll this.

Speaker 7 (41:22):
Next one is more carve outs on other goods that
Americans find too expensive.

Speaker 8 (41:26):
Some carve outes you mean from tariffs from.

Speaker 7 (41:28):
Tariffs, Yeah, like coffee, like bananas.

Speaker 8 (41:31):
I've done that already with coffee. They're very small. Carveautes
is not a big deal.

Speaker 7 (41:35):
So would you rule out reducing tariffs on any more goods?

Speaker 8 (41:40):
On some and then some I'll increase tariffs because you
know what happens is because of tariffs, all of the
car companies are coming back.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
So meanwhile he says he's going to increase tariffs. Car
company is all coming back. Manufacturing jobs have collapsed faster
than any time since the financial crisis under Trump.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
It's actually rather shocking.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
The manufacturing jobs exploded under Biden and are collapsing under Trump.
So apparently there's twenty trillion dollars flooding And I saw
a Botya saying that on the network she's on now,
the twenty trillion dollars is flooding in because of tariffs.
What are they doing with this twenty trillion dollars if
they're actually firing tens of thousands of manufacturing workers every month.

Speaker 5 (42:32):
So Reason had a good roundup, and obviously Reason libertarians
they don't like tariffs, right, hate detest tariffs. But they
had a good roundup of just the big like the
aggregate picture right now, looking at surveys of business owners
and the data overall. And so that's where I think,
as sympathetic as I am to the point that Baya

(42:53):
is making that some of this is necessary, and some
of this, you know, in the law term, if done correct.

Speaker 4 (43:01):
We're both sympathetic that we need a manufacturing base and
that we should have federal policy to encourage its.

Speaker 5 (43:09):
Right, and so I'm not completely closed minded to the
possibility that if this continues, if these policies continue and
are done really strategically in a year or two years,
that the costs are worth the benefit worth the benefits.
But right now, these these tariffs have been haphazard. The

(43:31):
haphazardness has continued since the Liberation Day period, and that
is creating an environment I don't even think is a
fair test of industrial teriff industrial policy, because it's not.
It's on the one hand, yes, there is some leverage
for Trump being the kind of Madman Nixon figure where

(43:52):
you don't actually know what he's going to do. You
just hope that different companies are betting on the US.
They got these big tax breaks for MANUFACTUS and all
of that, But that actually has to work in the
long term, and so far, prices are higher and manufacturing
jobs are continuing to slip, and manufacturing is part of
GDP is still not going.

Speaker 4 (44:14):
Right, and it seems like the main reason for that
is that if you manufacture something here in the United States,
there's a ninety nine percent chance that significant amounts of
your inputs come from overseas, and there was no accounting
made for that in the tariff policy.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
So the idea would.

Speaker 4 (44:39):
Be, okay, well, then you're going to encourage domestic manufacturers
to make those inputs. But in the meantime, the American
companies are just going out of business, and so then
there's no incentive to have the inputs made domestically because
your customer are are out of business right or they

(45:02):
moved overseas where they don't have to play the tariffs.

Speaker 5 (45:05):
So Jamison Greer, obviously the trade representative US trade representative,
and this is I'm reading from the Eric bamepiece and
reason that I just referenced, said he gave two points
or two ambitions of the terror strategy, two metrics by
which you could judge the terariff strategy. He says, the
trade deficit needs to go in the right direction, and

(45:27):
manufacturing is a share of GDP needs to go in
the right direction. Now, you may agree or disagree with
those as metrics, but they're what the administration has set
for itself. Bame notes, from January through July, America's trade
deficit was eight hundred and forty billions. It was about
twenty three percent larger than during the same months in
twenty twenty four. And now he's saying, also Bame is arguing,

(45:48):
and I think these are pretty persuasive numbers. The manufacturing
sector is being crushed by tariffs, he says. Monthly surveys
by the Institute for Supply Management show that overall manufacturing
activity has declined for seven consecutive months through September. So
that's brutal for the aggregate picture. Because the administration has
listed all of these examples of manufacturing being brought back

(46:08):
to the US. The Wall Street Journal highlighted this like
fascinating example of Sharpie which bet on the US opened
this factory in Tennessee, brought new jobs to Tennessee. But
then you have the separate survey that Bain points out.
This is from the Dallas Federal Reserve in August found
just two point one percent of business owners believe the
tariffs had a positive impact, and in manufacturing, seventy percent

(46:30):
of firms said they had negative impacts. Seventy percent affirms
said they had negative impacts from the tariffs. So the
aggregate picture as of right now December twenty twenty five,
what eight months after Liberation Day is not what the
administration would want to see. It's not meeting their own
goals at this point at all, and so they're going
to have to in the new year, I would think, right,

(46:51):
and make sharp, significant, dramatic changes to their policies.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
Yeah, And I think I might have set a year
ago that I would One guess I had is that
he might just tank the economy for a year and
then lift the tariffs. You know, with enough time into
the midterms that you've got the.

Speaker 5 (47:12):
Economy growing again, and it feels like he did it.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
He's on his way, so we'll now.

Speaker 5 (47:17):
But like it would feel to consumers like this was
a Trump because.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
Yeah, like things are getting better, prices are going down
because he lifted the tariffs.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
That'd be really funny.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
And then he puts them right back on in like January,
destroys the economy for another year, and then heading into
the presidential election, lifts him again and you know, can
just do his own It's a way of doing your
own kind of economic policy without having to deal with
Congress the same way. He's like taking tariff money and

(47:46):
and you know, his tariff policy is destroying the farms,
and then he's giving the farmers a giant bailout.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
Meanwhile, he's betting the entire house on AI.

Speaker 4 (47:56):
And so let's take a look from more perfect union
of what what AI is doing with the money that
we're funneling to them.

Speaker 12 (48:03):
Walk into any grocery store, and on average, everything is
about thirty percent more expensive than it was in twenty twenty.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
Inflation, supply chains.

Speaker 12 (48:12):
We've heard it all, but what if something else is happening,
something intentional. What if someone who's charged two dollars for
these eggs put another person to charge two forty at
the same exact store, and it's pushing prices up. Five
months ago, a researcher reached out to me about Instacart.
She'd been studying their Washington DC workforce, different pay for
nearly identical work per question, if they do this to workers,

(48:37):
what about consumers. Five months of digging, what we found
is bigger than Instacart. Yes, inflation is real, but something
else has been pushing prices higher this whole time. There's
a system when that grocery stores and tech companies built together.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
So you're an instacart user.

Speaker 5 (48:54):
I am sort of ashamed to say that, but yes,
I use in stecars.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Tens of millions of people are using instacard.

Speaker 5 (49:00):
Yeah, I mean they definitely, you know, they mess with
the prices. Yeah, but it's it's a little bit embarrassing
because I'm trading the convenience of having the groceries delivered
to my door for in some cases definitely higher prices
than if you actually just walked into the store.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
So you think they are doing this dynamic pricing quite clearly.

Speaker 5 (49:17):
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that they are. I
saw Robbie tweeting in response to this. Some person on
the left was posting the more Perfect Union video, and
Robbie said, hilarious watching a left to discover that the
labor theory of value is indeed wrong. Price is determined
by what you're willing to pay, not what it costs
to make news. You can use Robbie Swabe of course

(49:38):
of reason and the Hill and it's like, yeah, yes,
of course that's what's happening here. It doesn't mean that
it's moral or good if they are price gouging. I mean,
price gouging is you know that it is not defensible.
After a certain level and on certain goods. I mean,

(49:58):
like I would pay Mark Screlly life savings for a
life saving treatment. Doesn't mean he should be able to
charge me three thousand percent of what it costs to
make that life saving treatment, or that he should do
it right.

Speaker 4 (50:12):
Basically, what Robbie wants is the entire global economy to
operate like a Bangkok market for tourists, where the tourists
come in there and the price you pay is based
on you know, what the seller thinks.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
He can extract from you.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
Yeah, and you know what your your ability to kind
of fool them and you're desperate and your desperation level.
They want to take, you know, mass surveillance so that
they can figure out, you know, how desperate you are
for whatever particular you know, product or services on offer,

(50:51):
and how much money you can pay toward that, how
much credit you have, how much willingness you have to
play out that credit, throw that in their algorithm and
then produce the maximum price that they think they can
extract from you.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
That is a.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Libertarian dream, yes, truly, and we're living in that nightmare.

Speaker 5 (51:13):
I mean, yeah, the instacart and dynamic pricing is testing
the libertarian dream in real time. I send a story
to you guys the other day. We didn't verify it. It
sounds it's accurate, but it sounds very accurate. But take
this for what you will. It was like one of
the DC local blogs, someone pulled into a parking garage

(51:34):
and the dynamic pricing had the charge at twenty eight
dollars by the time they left. And I don't know
how that worked, if it was the price was in
flux when you pulled in or whatever. But the dynamic
pricing stuff happening in real time is going to suck
so hard. Sucks so hard because if you're organizing your

(51:54):
life around particular prices, which is what people who live
paycheck to paycheck, which is most of the country actually do.
For example, this part of my routine, I go to
Wendy's for coffee and breakfast because it costs X amount
of money that I've budgeted. Well, if Wendy's does dynamic
pricing and changes that part of your budget, yes you're
going to have to change. But it's just going to

(52:15):
piss people off. Like I mean, talk about class consciousness.
That's going to spark some real backlash.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yep and put up C four here.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
Despite the economy cruising at this a plus plus plus
plus plus plus rating, the bankruptcies are at their highest
rates since the financial is a great financial crisis, which
is weird. That must be you know, poor personal decision
making on the part of a lot of Americans, given

(52:47):
that Trump has gifted you with this incredible economy.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
So a lot of people participating in this hoax here.

Speaker 5 (52:55):
The politics of this, obviously the administration is realizing, are
a nightmare. And that's why they sent Trump Pennsylvania last
night to deliver the speech where he said he wasn't
allowed to call affordability a hoax and has did it
multiple times. So they're going to have to put their
heads together in the new year about those midterm cycle
because this, you know, when you have something like Jack

(53:17):
Sherman reported, maybe twenty House members Republican House members contemplating retirement,
they could be looking at a blood bath.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Yeah, and Matt van Apps, who beat Afton Baine recently,
basically almost never talked about Trump. Like one thing you're
noticing in a lot of these elections is that Trump
is where he used to be helpful, and having him
on the ballot was useful. That's not that Republicans don't
take it for me. Take it from Republicans. Republicans don't

(53:47):
think that's the case anymore. But Susie Wiles, so I
have bad news for those Republicans. Susie Wiles went on
what was this the mom view? She's the I think
soon to be former White House Chief staff saying that
he's going to party like it's twenty twenty four.

Speaker 13 (54:04):
Typically, you in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting
at the White House, it's you localize the election and
you keep the federal officials out of it. We're actually
going to turn that on its head good and put
him on the ballot because so many of those low
propensity voters are Trump voters. Yes they are, and we
saw a wee could go Tuesday. What happens when he's

(54:27):
not on the ballot and not active.

Speaker 5 (54:29):
So I haven't quite broken.

Speaker 13 (54:30):
It to him yet, but he's going to campaign like
it's twenty twenty four. Again, for all these people that
he helps. He doesn't help everybody, but for those he does,
he's a difference maker and he's certainly a turnout machine.
So the midterms will be very important to us. He'll
work very hard to keep the material, and he'll use himself,

(54:51):
and he'll use his money that he's raised, probably his
money too, and nobody can outwork him. So there's every
reason to be confident, but we have to actually get
it done.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
So I think Democrats are pretty excited at the idea
that Trump will be out on the campaign trail constantly
saying that affordability is a hoax. However, can we confirm
that does even a show? What is this mom view thing?

Speaker 5 (55:17):
I like how they're like permanently stuck in two thousand
and two. It seems like they're trapped into with their audio. Yeah,
it was that was rough. I don't know what that is,
but it for Susie Wilds, I think the strategy of
sending Trump everywhere during the midterms is like you can
see the wisdom and that Trump motivates a section of

(55:38):
the GOP base to vote, and without him on the ballot,
Republicans really suffer. And a lot of people took that
as a lesson from what just happened in the off
your cycle. Now that happened in twenty eighteen, It's happened
consistently since Trump has been the leader of the Republican

(55:58):
Party that mid elections off your elections are real struggles
for Republicans. So the wisdom of having Trump on the
campaign trail is that you're motivating the Trump coalition, which
other candidates have still never figured out how to replicate.
The only person who really has is maybe Glenn Youngkin

(56:19):
in Virginia in a very particular, very particular time. But
without Trump, you have this massive advantage for Democrats because
their coalition votes in midterms and off your elections. We're
going to talk about this later in the show. Because
it's increasingly affluent and increasingly motivated to vote, and the
opposite of true is true of Republicans. So if you

(56:40):
have the affluent voters who are highly motivated, highly plugged
into the news cycle coming out during the mid terms,
they're going to be more likely to vote for Democrats now,
and the Republicans who like Trump but don't like the
Republican Party on average, those types of voters that you
need to make up the difference in the middle, they're

(57:01):
not going to come out for you know, your your
average Joe Chamber of Commerce.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
We have some evidence of that last night. We have
some good news from Republicans yesterday. We we'll get through
in a second, but some bad news as well. We
can put up C six here. So Trump won the
Miami by like twenty one or twenty two points or
something like that, a real blowout in the exact same

(57:28):
area Democrats won in a landslide. I think it was
like a twenty two point swing or something. Trump is
plummeting with young people, plummeting with Hispanic voters, including in Miami,
which is sometimes you know which is which is a
different set of Hispanic voters than the rest of the country.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
You put up C seven.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
There were also elections elsewhere around the country, so you
had a.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Through Florida. You had the old.

Speaker 5 (58:02):
Villages, Bran's old stomping grounds.

Speaker 4 (58:06):
You had in each of these special elections, you had
fifteen to fifteen to twenty points swings. While while you're chatting,
I can pull up a couple others, because there were
other elections that had everywhere from ten to thirty. They
flipped one in in a very rural district with a

(58:27):
candidate who had lost by like twenty plus points. He
won yesterday in like a house, you know, the state house,
like special election.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
So the same pattern. We're seeing.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
The same pattern we saw in Tennessee and we've seen
in other special elections continuing.

Speaker 5 (58:47):
Yeah, absolutely, it feels a lot like twenty eighteen. Doesn't
feel new, but it does feel a lot like twenty
eighteen for Democrats now they were on Actually it might
even be more powerful cycle of Democrats because then we'll
remember those campaigns were so focused on Russia collusion and
Russia in general and trying to kind of muster this

(59:09):
resistant spirit to the question of Trump, like shattering norms
and all of that. What we're going to talk about now.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
I think, oh, it was Georgia, by the way.

Speaker 5 (59:19):
Georgia, and you know those we talked about.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Trump plus twelve district and Democrats flipped it.

Speaker 5 (59:25):
About a month ago. We were talking about these random
down ballot races local elections in Georgia where because of
data centers in some cases, Democrats were winning. It's now
a pattern, obviously not a pattern, which is why scuse
why I was talking about how Donald Trump is going
to campaign like it's twenty twenty four in the twenty

(59:46):
twenty six midterms. But in twenty eighteen, Democrats had this idea,
like they had this plan to campaign almost. I don't
want to call it fully cultural, but it was kind
of this cultural question of rejecting trump Ism and rejecting
collusion with Russia, rejecting what Trump stood for, and that

(01:00:10):
helped motivate the base. It didn't help in presidential cycles.
I mean, I guess it helped in twenty twenty, although
I still think that's it's kind of difficult to say
what really like in terms of what put Biden over
the edge. There's the COVID question. Of course, would Trump
have won if if it weren't COVID? I don't know.
But all that is to say, Trump comes back after

(01:00:33):
the law fair and claims this bigger victory than before
in twenty twenty four. And the problem for Republicans isn't
that Trump can't get elected probably this last term. The
problem is none of the other Republicans are Trump. And
that's where, for example, we can put C eight up

(01:00:55):
on the screen. This is a report from Notice RSC
so the National Republican Senatorial Committee. According to notice, and
I confirmed this actually this morning ran a quote astrotur
recruitment process to push Jasmin Crockett into the Texas Senate race.
Ryan you said they robo called hyperpensity. Democrats urged them
to call Jasmin Crockett's office, then connected the caller to

(01:01:16):
the office. They pushed poles, suggesting that she would win.
Crockett believed this hype and then launched her run, which
is completely predictable. It's why the NRSC was like, this
is going to be super cheap, and we'll give us
Jasmine Crockett to run against in all of these different
races around the country. It's not just about Texas, where
they feel fine about John Cornan. I'm sure they'd rather

(01:01:40):
I'm sure they would rather run with Cornan than Ken Pack.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Percent want Cornan, but he's losing now right.

Speaker 5 (01:01:47):
We'll see. I mean, there's a question of whether Crockett
getting in makes Paxton's life easier because he can say
character is probably not going to be on the ballot.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Oh yeah, because Paxton can win.

Speaker 5 (01:01:57):
Yeah, he might say something like that. But either way,
Republicans feel pretty comfortable in Texas is my sense of it.
You know, they've they've never been last ten years super comfortable,
but they feel pretty comfortable.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Were they nervous if it was going to be the
like Colin al the Little White Guy or Colin Alred
tall Rico.

Speaker 5 (01:02:17):
I think Tallerico makes them nervous for sure. I don't
know that. I haven't confirmed that it's I know it's crazy.
I think that maybe they're buying into the hype of
Tallarico going.

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
On him against Paxton Corning Winds, I think easily right.

Speaker 5 (01:02:31):
Yeah, I think so Tallarico against Paxton would be really
interesting because tall Ico could plausibly make a character argument
against Paxton, who has a character characters, scandals in his
in his past.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
But you're you're a Christian? Does does the fact that
like absolutely not.

Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
No, he feels like a a Democrats version.

Speaker 5 (01:02:55):
Of it, Like that's exactly of an evangelical Christian. Yeah,
that's exactly right. He doesn't speak the lang which of
evangelical Christianity. He speaks the language of like, which is of.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
A by kind like the social justice like.

Speaker 5 (01:03:07):
I mean, I would of course argue that Christianity is
predicated on social justice. But what you're saying is this,
like this kind of niche politicized social justice. And I
don't mean politicized in a pejorative sense. I mean that
it has a political connotation. The language has a political
connotation and it's a very different language than what your

(01:03:27):
average Texas evangelical speaks. And so the media sees tall
Rico and DC people see Tallarico talking about scripture and
they're like, oh, do we have something here. This guy
could really give Conservative Christians a run for their money.
And it's like nobody is buying that as their own,
like one of their own. So it's yeah, I think

(01:03:50):
it's kind of a DC phenomena. But Republicans are not
immune to that at all. You know, people sitting at
the NSC I definitely would find that compelling, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
And so Crockett announced that she was running yesterday.

Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
In her announcement speech, she said that she saw the poles,
she saw herself rising in the polls. And so let's
linger for a second on what the Republicans pulled off here.
And you're that's interesting that you were able to confirm it.
I'd be curious if you get from your source whether
they also ran a like bought reply campaign, Like if like,
if I were, then what I would do is every

(01:04:21):
time Crockett would tweet, you know, she's hyper online checking
her replies, just reply.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
You need to run for Senate? Run for Senate. This brilliant,
brilliant tweet, go get them now run for Senate.

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
So what they did, Crockett was not in the polls
that were comparing the that were in the Democratic polls
or the head to heads. So the NRSC ran a
poll asking, you know, putting Crockett in, it's clever.

Speaker 5 (01:04:47):
Nobody had been talking about it, nobody.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
And she's popular, like among the Democratic base, and so
Poles showed, oh wow, she's looking actually pretty good. So
they pushed that poll all the all the press, and
they get some coverage around it, and then future pollsters said, well, okay,
well now Crocketts in the press will include her an
hour poll too, and so she could consistently performed well and.

Speaker 5 (01:05:10):
Her name recognition's way higher than random state, right as
somebody member totally.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
And so then there's this technology you've maybe been on
the receiving end of it, where you robo call, you
get a voter file with like, and you can say, like,
who who are the big Democratic activists and this give
me one hundred thousand Democratic activists. You robo call them
and say, you know, we're from ex sounding nice group.

(01:05:38):
Jasmin Crocket should run for Senate, Like, if you agree,
press one, press one, would you like to call Jasmine
Crockett's office and urge her to run for Senate?

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
If so, press two or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
So you press two, and then right there on the phone,
they connect you with the office. And so the office
is talking to a genuine human being who genuinely wants
Jasmine Crockett. But they were never going to call if
they NRC hadn't reached out and prodded them to do it.
So then at the end of every day Crockett and

(01:06:11):
I sympathize with her on this front. She's getting these
reports from her staff like we're getting flooded with phone
calls from constituents who really need say that you should
run for Senate. Now, Democrats have done this pied piper
type stuff to Republicans, and sometimes it works and they
get a terrible candidate in there.

Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
Well, Democrats push Trump, for example.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
And they sometimes it backfires yea.

Speaker 4 (01:06:36):
And sometimes even when it doesn't work, you increase the
nastiness and the polarization by cementing a particular type of
by artificially cementing a particular type of candidate, Because now
Crockett will have the support of her own base, Plus
she'll have Republicans support out there because and the Republicans

(01:06:57):
have said that they're going to fund some like independent expenditures,
So outside groups are going to be out there attacking
Taller Rico and boosting Crocket paid for by Republicans, right right, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
I mean the point of running Jasmin Crocket, or the
point of nudging Jasmine Crockett into the race isn't even
just about Texas. It's about having this worked really successfully
for Republicans in twenty ten when it came to Nancy Pelosi.
It's kind of laughable to again like Beltway types like, oh, really,
you're running fire Pelosi ad campaigns. But when you're tying
a San Francisco liberal to the to let's say, a

(01:07:38):
Tallarico type candidate in a red state, that's actually pretty effective.
And so if you're going to tie Jasmine Crockett, who
has said that what was a Latinos who vote for
Trump have a slave mentality, I mean she said all
kinds of just reckless stuff. Because she reminds me of
Jennifer Welch in this sense, there's this vacuum of Democrats

(01:08:00):
willing to break rhetorical norms in the same way that
Trump does, and so they stepped into that void, but
they're not necessarily like going to be persuasive figures to
swing voters. And so Democrats lack the person that can
do both that both. They lack the person that's willing
to violate rhetorical norms like Trump has done and like
voters are happy to see them do, but then also

(01:08:22):
be appealing swing voters. I think Grant Platner is the
best example of somebody who actually that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
He's doing that. Now.

Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
AOC in twenty eighteen did that in the way that
Bernie does it for sure, and twenty twenty the way
that she would like her like concert presence on Instagram,
her Twitter clapbacks yes when that was the thing.

Speaker 5 (01:08:40):
Yeah, although that Crockett takes that to another level, and
Waltch takes that to another level. And I think Watch
doesn't running for anything, So it's apples and oranges in
that case. But I just think their crocket is the
crocket rhetoric when it's if it were I think clever
and smart, which it often isn't, you know, when you're
just accusing people of taking money.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
But it's well done right, Like the the butch thing
that she pulled MGG, I couldn't.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
I couldn't pull that off. I was masterful.

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
You believe she believes what she says when she's talking
about some of that stuff. Now when she's talking about
crypto Ryan, you reported this in your book. I don't
know that she really believes anything.

Speaker 4 (01:09:19):
Yeah, the substance doesn't match the rhetorical norm breaking. She
and also in twenty twenty, she celebrated herself for not
taking corporate PAC money compared to her opponent.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
Within months of that started taking corporate PAC money.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
Has taken like over three hundred thousand now in corporate
Pac money since she's been in Congress. Yes, she's gotten
millions in support from crypto Yeah. In my book, I
reported that Basically the campaign was like, look, we might
get attacked by these crypto people.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
How she handle this? She's like, well, what's what are
the options?

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
They're like, well, if here's the crypto plank, Like, here's
here's what they want you to say. She was like,
how much is it if you say this, Like they
will support you and give you money. If you don't
say this, they will come after you. And she's like
she said very much, what do I have to do
kind of candidate. She's like, okay, fine, I'm not running.
And so to give her like the steel Man on this,

(01:10:16):
it's like she doesn't care about Crypto, right, and a
lot of people don't.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
Right. It's like so she's like whatever, Like who cares?

Speaker 5 (01:10:23):
How much does it cost?

Speaker 4 (01:10:24):
Just sign the whatever they say they want, just because
if I don't sign it, they're going to Nukemi because
they were going around nuking everybody that was like remotely
like questioning Crypto. So you can justify it to yourself, Well,
I'll never get into Congress to do the good things
I care about if I take a stand on this
thing that I frankly honestly don't care about. She also,

(01:10:46):
you know, it's a similar on Israel, like twenty twenty
three took an APAC funded trip, has consistently voted to
send weapons to Israel, And there's some clips going viral
now of defending our allyship with Israel. So you get
the kind of squad like rhetoric, but it's not matched

(01:11:07):
with you know, any type of like policy that would
challenge corporate power.

Speaker 5 (01:11:13):
For more checkout ruying Groom's TikTok so we' we were
miss if we didn't play a little snippet here from
Brad landers announcement video is challenging, Dan Goldman. Let's take
a look. Hi Rad, good morning. Great to see you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
This community means everything to me.

Speaker 6 (01:11:37):
It's where Meg and I raised Mark and Rosa, and
where we've worked together for years to make life better
for our neighbors.

Speaker 14 (01:11:44):
Brad rooted out waste and corruption, divested billions in fossil fuels,
built housing New Yorkers can afford, saved fifty thousand families
from being kicked out of their homes.

Speaker 6 (01:11:54):
When Donald Trump and Elon Musk tried to steal eighty
million dollars from New York.

Speaker 5 (01:12:00):
City, Brat caught it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:02):
And when Ice ages started kidnapping our neighbors, I fought.

Speaker 5 (01:12:06):
Back, kay fighting, But.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
I think a look at this medio is brand Lander
being arrested by Ice.

Speaker 6 (01:12:17):
I've always believed that you fight for the things you love,
and I love this city. I love the streets where
I walked my kids to school, the public schools that
nurtured their curiosity, the fields in Prospect Park where I coach.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33):
Their Little League games. But most of.

Speaker 6 (01:12:36):
All, I love the people who make this city what
it is. So I'm running for Congress because the challenges
we face can't be solved with strongly worded letters or
high dollar fundraisers, and not by doing apax. Fitting in
a district that knows our safety, our freedom are thriving,
is bound up together our mayor an ally in Washington

(01:13:01):
instead of an adversary in his own backyard at a
moment of dark oppression, we can shine right.

Speaker 5 (01:13:09):
And you know Brad Lander, we had him on the
show actually not too long ago. What do you make
of this announcement.

Speaker 4 (01:13:14):
This is a very welcome announcement to the kind of
mom Donny coalition Mom. Donnie immediately endorsed Bernie Sanders has endorsed.
You Lyn Knew, who came within like a point or
two of beating Dan Goldman the first time he ran,
was running again and she dropped out, and she put
up a heartfelt thread that I'll encourage people to go

(01:13:37):
find where she said, Look, we lost last time because
the left did not consolidate. You had Mandair Jones build
a Blasio, which a lot of people forget. I totally forgot,
and you Lynn Knew all splitting the vote, and it
allowed Dan Goldman Levi strauss Air to spend his own
fortune and kind of Stull to victory with like thirty

(01:14:01):
What you know, because it's first past the post, you
don't have to do a runoff. So so with a
divided opposition, Goldman was able to get in. And so
what what you land knew is signaling is that everybody
should get out and let this be a one on
one Goldman versus Lander. And you know, if you know,
Goldman can spend an enormous amount of money because he

(01:14:22):
has it and can raise it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
But Lander's going to be able to.

Speaker 4 (01:14:26):
Raise small dollars too, from from the Bernie wing of
the party.

Speaker 3 (01:14:30):
So you know, I think this is Landers to lose Man.

Speaker 5 (01:14:34):
This is going to be one to follow a couple. Yeah,
I think Krocko versus Tall Rico is also just an
interesting test of the different strands and a Democratic party.
Right now you have tall Rico running sort of Biden
with maybe a slightly more Burnie aligned. I don't even
know if you can say that, because he's also a
big APAC guy. He took money from Miriam Madelson, I believe.
I don't know the particulars of the Apac connection.

Speaker 4 (01:14:55):
But yeah, and when it's you know, Goldman's move would
be to say that criticism of his support for Israel.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):
Is anti Semitic.

Speaker 5 (01:15:04):
Oh, he'll definitely do that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
Telling that to Brad Land are the highest ranking Jewish
elected official in New York, supported by Bernie Sanders, the
most famous Jewish elected official from New York. Isn't going
to land the same way it's going to land against
a mom, Donnie.

Speaker 5 (01:15:18):
It's just not especially post oroon. Yeah, and with Taliki
you have this almost Biden style, we will restore norms
and civility, and Crockett is the opposite, but their populism
is reversed. Like you have this interesting if these are
the two character traits, you have kind of populism at

(01:15:38):
least Talarico kind of runs and tries to make people
think he's populous. We would probably disagree with that characterization.
And love of norms versus non populism and hatred of norms.
You're sort of switching. It's a little bit interesting role reversal.
So these are some really interesting tests coming up for Democrats.

Speaker 4 (01:16:03):
The Wood British Action