Ryan and Emily discuss Trump plots Venezuela land strikes, Hegseth panics over boat strikes, leftwing populist surpasses Kamala margin in deep red district, Tyson wipes out entire Nebraska town.
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Episode Transcript
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Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. So we have
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We sure do. We are going to be debating some
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We're going to put the link in the email and
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versus debate. So big tech does more good than harm.
Ryan and I are arguing the opposite of that, that
big tech does more harm than good. We're going to
(00:59):
be up against Robbie Suave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown, So
a little Robbie reunion in the works.
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If we lose this, it will be like losing two
flat arthurs. We deserve the l to.
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Because it's a reason event and a reason crowd, So
we maybe fighting a Siscifian uphill battle.
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They love their Big Tech. Well, they took an l
just yesterday because Ted Cruz, on behalf of Big Tech,
was trying to sneak into the NDAA what they call
AI preemption. It would be a law that would say
you cannot regulate AI if you are a state or
a locality. Only the federal government can regulate AI. And
(01:40):
the federal government is not going to regulate AII. So
absolute libertarian fever dream. They tried to get into the
one big beautiful bill. It got stripped from there, it
got exposed, and there was outrage against it, and so
the people won again. But Ted Cruz will be back.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Stripped because it's just truly it's crazy, which.
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Is they'll get it eventually, especially for.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Like the right to champion this law. Like their entire problem,
as they argue, is that there's a patchwork of regulations
in every state. It's like that is called federalism. It's
sort of how we've done things for a couple hundred years.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Let's just make reason defend that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Just spend the entire It depends on the conversation. AI Morgorse.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
That's where it heads anyway.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Well, anyway, so catch us there. That's fun December tenth.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
There's little party afterwards. The Libertarians do like to party.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yeah, they do that at least very well. We respect
that and it's going to be a ton of fun.
So if you want to come out December tenth, you
can check out the link in the description recent dot
com slash versus Ryan. We have a big, big show
because the news cycle won't slow down. Donald Trump held
the two plus hour cabinet meeting, one of those long
(02:50):
televised cabinet meetings yesterday where everybody reports back to him
on camera about how awesome he is, about how much
they love him, working love working for him, how great
they're doing. But they always are sure to say that
anything that they're doing, those goods to his credit.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Of course, because he put all the mistakes of their own.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Yes. So that made a lot of news. We have
news to bring you from that. Some of it is
on Venezuela, some of it is on Pete Hegseth. So
we're going to break it all down. Afton Bain narrowed
that twenty two point margin in the Tennessee special election
plus twenty two Republican district narrowed it to eight. She
lost by eight points last night. So we're going to
(03:26):
break down those results too.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes. And then in Nebraska, Tyson is closing one of
the largest beef processing plants. While people are furious about
beef prices, there are some senate implications there because Dan
Osborne is running as an independent there. And there are
also some antitrust implications as well, because even though this
(03:49):
isn't getting much coverage, it appears like they did it
so they could manipulate both the price they pay two
cattle ranchers and also the price that they can then
charge you for the beef. This is going to be,
I think, a significant issue going forward, and so we're
going to dig in on the closure of this processing plant,
(04:10):
which will absolutely destroy this town and which is not irreversible,
like a government that actually cared about doing something for
people could stop this from happening.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
We'll see lots and lots of jobs on the line,
not even just the jobs at the plant, but a
lot of jobs that feed into the plant. So we're
going to break that down as well. We're going to
be discussing the fraud allegations and investigation in Minnesota. But
on top of that, Ryan, Donald Trump continues to make
news on this front, so we'll get into his order
that TPS so temporary Protected status be removed for Somalian
(04:43):
refugees in Minnesota. Now, the numbers on that it's about
seven hundred people in a population of Minnesota. That's about
sixty thousand, it's according to Time magazine numbers so yesterday.
So we are going to bring all of the information
that we have onto the table and talk about it
this morning.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
And Ryan, we have a guest, Yes, Sammy Hamdi, who
Laura Lumer and others got locked up when he came
here to speak at a handful of caregills. He's a
British journalist. They didn't like him, they didn't liked that
he was here, and so they arrested him, detained him
for several weeks, and because of public pressure, he did
not end up spending kind of the year and detention
that a lot of immigrants do before being deported. He's
(05:21):
now been deported back to the UK. From where he
will be joining us to talk about what he was
going to say here and what ordeal was like and
what he saw while he was in detention.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
All right, let's get to it. Let's start with Venezuela
this morning. We can put this first element up on
the screen. This is Trump now giving Madua an ultimatum quote,
you can save yourself and those closest to you, but
you must leave the country now, and has apparently offered
safe passage for Maduro and his family quote only if
(05:52):
he agreed to resign right away. Ran, What do you
make of that? Just stopping right there off.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The bat, Yeah, the deal that apparently is close. Like
if you believe the reporting, and I think it's I
think it's credible reporting. Trump is saying you need to go.
Maduro was saying, okay, like I've seen what happens. I've
seen what the US and its proxy Israel are capable
(06:18):
of when it comes to, you know, breaching what we
understood to be basic norms of civility. So at any moment,
you know, he imagines he could just be executed, and
so he's like, Okay, if if I go, then you
have to lift sanctions on me. You have to lift
sanctions on everybody who's that you've sanctioned and who was
(06:42):
leaving power. He said that he's apparently gave a list
of about one hundred people or so that that who
would go into exile. He said he wants the ICC
case dropped. The US is already sanctioning everybody involved with
the ICC. We don't like the ICC. I guess it'd
be funny if we were like, how dare you? Well,
we did do that with how do you attack the
(07:02):
sanctity of the International Criminal Court?
Speaker 4 (07:04):
But Biden did do that with Putin. It's none above us, Yes.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
No, of course not. It turns out we don't have
a whole lot of principle when it comes to any
of this.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Yeah, I mean, obviously this regime change operation is afoot,
and the actual event itself feels imminent.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And yeah, So the last point of the deal is
that Mnduro has said what he wants is his vice
president to take office for two years or so while
they prepare for elections. The vice president would not run
for reelection and then there would be monitor elections and
that the US would be able to compete for Venezuela
(07:37):
and oil. US oil companies, which does which is like
it's like it'd be really funny if we did a
war for oil when the country is like, just take
the oil, and then we're like, yeah, no, we actually
want the war.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Yeah, like we want the war that would be oil.
It's not as fun if you don't.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
It's interesting. Yeah, everybody thinks that the war is for
the oil, but the oil just justifies the bloodlust. We
want the war, not the oil. We'll take the oil.
But in Iraq, like did we even take the oil?
I mean we control the Middle East, so like sort
of yes, yeah, we really just want the war.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Clearly. So Secretary of State Marco Ruba was sitting next
to Donald Trump at that long Cabinet meeting yesterday and
so obviously this came up. Let's roll a one here.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Did they come in through a certain country or any country,
or if we think they're building mills for whether it's
spenta or cocaine. I want those boats taken out, and
if we have to, will attack on land also, just
like we attacked on a sea.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
And no, let's hear from Secretary Rubio himself, we can
go ahead and rule eight two.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
It never would have happened if you've been president.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
But this war is going on and the president is
trying to end it. Not because listen, we got a
million things to focus on in.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
The world as a country.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
But he's the only leader in the world that can
help end And that's why, that's why, even as we
speak to you now, Steve Woodcoff is in Moscow trying
to find a way to end this war, to save
lives of eight nine thousand people. Mister presidents, you want
to are dying every week.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Did you have noticed you watching that not listening to it.
Trump seemed to have his eyes closed for a suspiciously
long period of time. At one point.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I think he was deep in thought and basking in
the praise from Marco Rubio. Others have said that he
was fast asleep. And it's funny if you watch Rubio's face,
like it's very hard for me to feel any sympathy
for Rubio, but in that moment, like he's just must
be dying inside. He's just he's like, Okay, the camera
(09:28):
is on me, and he keeps saying, mister pres He
keeps saying, mister president, mister press him up.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to tell when Trump
is just looking down versus when his eyes are actually
closed because sleep did he did in this one, but
it's it's with him. It happens, and I'm looking at him,
and I'm like, I can't tell if because his everything
matches like everything is orange.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
And it's and it's humiliation on top of humiliation because
the thing that he was talking about we'll get back
to Venezuelan a second. Sorry. The thing that he was
talking about there is that wit ca Off and Trump's
son in law Kushner were at that moment across the
table from Putin negotiating this end to the Russia Ukraine war.
We're trying to and who's not doing it. The Secretary
(10:13):
of State, Secretary of State is stuck in this cabinet
meeting blathering on while Trump is asleep in front of him.
So it's compound humiliation for Rubio.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Yeah, that one. That was a tough one. That was
a tough one. He went on Sean Hannity last night
and said basically that if you're America first, you should
be wanting This isn't a surprising argument, of course, but
you should want regime change in Venezuela. Because it is
our hemisphere, and there's nothing more America first than our hemisphere.
So a little refining of the argument in progress.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It's like the definition of Israel just keeps expanding. Where
the borders are, so America America first, but America is
the whole world. So we're doing that first. At least
it's the hemisphere though. And if you notice in there
there was one there was a confirmation of a scoop
to Stagren. I had a come weeks ago where you
have Trump talking about bombing Mexico and Colombia. It's like,
(11:06):
there's all these sites because what we what Sager and
I reported was that Trump said, okay, you're telling me
all the drugs come from Venezuela. I'm hearing from this
reporting a job site that actually that's not true. I
see intelligence community. Tell me where the drugs coming from.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
He was like, I have the subscription to a great website.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Website, so give me the give me the targets, like
where where the drugs coming from? And they come back
to him with a list that includes a couple of
like coca facilities on the border, the stateless border between
Colombia and Venezuela. But mostly the targets are in Colombia
and Mexico. And that's how these wars expand you start
(11:45):
talking about war, start looking for targets, and then and
then hey, if when you're a hammer, you see that
the actual drug nails are legitimately in Mexico and Colombia. Yes,
like Ecuador has got a pretty big role in it
too when it comes to the ship and the transit
of it. But Columbia Mexico are the players. And so
they're like, wait a minute, so now we're doing war
(12:06):
with Mexico and Colombia.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
And Trump in that in the meeting is like, yeah,
well I'm happy to. I'm not afraid to. I'm not
afraid to do that at all. It's like what's going
on in Venezuela again, like what can we like? This
is completely incoherent. What is happening?
Speaker 4 (12:20):
The entire argument and you and Zacker have covered this,
but it's obvious the entire argument for this war would
be applied to bombing Sinaloa.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Or Sure, which is which is where it started. Because
Trump in the campaign said that that's what he was
going to do, right, And as.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
It turns out, Claudia Sinbaum knows how to operate with
Donald Trump and has likely staved off.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah, she's like, you're not doing that escalation.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, so, I mean she's probably had to give a
little on cooperating with CIA and drunt flights and that
sort of thing, but just in the content context of
military operations. But obviously he learned early on it would
be hugely escalatory with an ally in Mexico to really
bomb Sina Lowa cartel territory. Even though if you took
(13:05):
that to the American people, you could really make the
fentanyl argument to the American people, it would be wildly
different than making this argument about Venezuela, which isn't even
the largest source of our cocaine.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Right the Venezuela come, I mean the ventanyl comes from
China anyway, and then up through Mexico. It's like, what,
it's not none of this like Mexico, like Venezuela, like
every country. And we will talk about this with this
next one. We can put up a four. So this
is an article in the Wall Street Journal trying to
lay the predicate. It's called if you're listening, it's called
(13:39):
The headline is how Venezuelan gangs and African jihadists are
flooding Europe with cocaine. Now, why would the Wall Street
Journal Murdoch Paper need to run this. Well, the au
m F, the Authorization of the Use of force, is
specific to al Qaeda. So after nine to eleven, they
(14:01):
passed an AOMF that said, if the president wants to
wage war somewhere against al Qaeda, stateless organization, he has
the power to do that. Everybody voted for it, except
for like Barbara Lee, who was like, this sounds kind
of open ended, dangerous, Maybe we shouldn't give this much
power to the White House, And they said, nah, fine,
it'll be okay. So then if you're a bureaucrat or
(14:21):
you're a president who wants to wage war but you
don't want to have to go get permission to do it,
you have to find al Qaeda somewhere. All of a sudden,
we start finding al Qaeda everywhere.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
And no Wall Street Journal knows about it, and so like, for.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Instance, al Qaeda in Iraq wasn't even a real thing.
Like these were Iraqi insurgents who were doing the insurgency
against the United States. We rebranded them al Qaeda in Iraq.
Then we find al Qaeda in Syria. Then we've got
al Qaeda in Yemen, and then all of a sudden,
there's al Qaeda's popping up all over Africa. If you
(14:56):
talk to the people who actually follow us in the ground,
it's like the end. Nobody actually called on that. They
have their own names. But if we call them al Qaeda,
then legally we can use the AOMF to go to
war against them. So now we need al Qaeda in Venezuela.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Well, Instadam had all of a sudden been meeting with
all of these different people.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, and so it is a fact obviously that drugs
go from South America through West Africa and into Europe.
That's been happening for many, many decades. In for my
book back twenty years ago, i interviewed this one mid
level trafficker who said that actually the advent of the
(15:36):
five hundred euro note created a huge demand pull for
drug traffickers to move through West Africa into Europe because
if you think about it, and at the time, the
exchange rate meant that a five hundred euro note was
worth like six hundred dollars. This was before crypto, and
so you had to move cash around moving so you
(15:59):
could move six times as much euros around in the
same sized bag as you could move dollars around. And
that was a huge logistical problem that you had just
too much cash and didn't know what to do with it.
So the fact that there was a five hundred euro
now they're like, well, let's just let's just sell to
Europe then, and so, yes, drugs moved from South America
(16:22):
to West Africa into Europe. Are there some insurgents in
Africa who were associated with some like Islamic insurgents. Yeah, sure,
so that's where they get the quote unquote Jahatas thing.
But these are just rebel gangs and connected with their governments.
(16:42):
So and are there some Venezuelans who are involved with this?
Yeah sure, South America Like yeah, okay, fine, But like
the idea that you should that this that if you
that the answer is to go to war against Maduro,
Like no, this this is a glo global economy that
(17:03):
where we sell drugs to people who want drugs.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
This is where people have to be I think kind
of careful unfortunately with tossed around war crime and illegal war,
because the sad reality is that we have laws that
basically justify any war on the books. I mean, well,
the laws shouldn't agree.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
If you actually challenge, like, if you actually took the
law seriously, you'd be like, no, there's no al Katta
involved here, of.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Course, But we've never done that. We've used the AUMF
and like how many different regions.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Which basically is lawless?
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Then it's yeah, exactly, yeah, I think we've used it
in twenty two different countries that the AUMF, the post
nine to eleven AMF, I think it's been used in
like twenty two different countries. Like in fact check that
in just one second.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It is Yeah, it is cute that they think they
need to like check a box. They didn't get check
their paperwork box.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
At first back in September, they were literally just saying trust.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Us, we'll do whatever we want.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
And they're kind of still doing that because they still
aren't giving us names. They aren't charging anybody. You know,
they say they know who is on these boats, but
they're not saying you know who they are, what their
connection is, why they're confident that they're involved with.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Did you see that a mom of a Colombian kid
who was killed on one of these boats is like
suing now in like the world, like I forget which forum. Yeah,
And so our guy at drop side, who covers Latin
America for US, Jose Luis Granado Seija. He was in
Honduras for the election and he went up to the
northern area where there's a lot of enormous amount of
(18:34):
drug trafficking, which Wan Orlando Hernandez, who was just pardoned
by Trump helped establish joh built like six international airports
in Honduras, like while he was president. Why why guess
why hmm? And if you would ask, oh, this is
for the drugs, like the people who were like, this
(18:54):
is the fly drugs. So he wrote here in Honduras,
people tell me these strikes haven't dissuaded drug traffickers from
running drugs on these boats, which are manned mostly by
poor people trying to make money, not drug lords at
the top of the pyramid. Not only are they not legal,
they're not even effective. So think about that. This is
for all the people who think that these strikes are
(19:17):
a good idea and are not bothered by the morality.
So we're not talking to people who have a sense
of morality around this, because if you have a sense
of morality around this year against it. But let's say
you think that they're effective and that they're actually going
to save twenty five thousand lives, which is absurd because
like total of seventy five thousand overdose deaths a year.
So we've hit twenty one boats. You can pause this
(19:38):
and go do the math on whether or not every
single boat saves twenty five thousand lives, So set that aside.
These are low level people who are paid a one
time fee, often equivalent to roughly the amount of money
you could make in a year or two working in Honduras.
So you're twenty years old, you're twenty five years old,
you've got parents to take care of, you might have
(19:59):
kid to take care of. You're told we'll give you
a year's salary for this one day trip. And now
it's possible that you're going to get lit up from
the sky by the United States. But there's hundreds of
boats that go every day, and they bomb like one
boat a week, so you have about a point one
(20:21):
percent chance. Let's say you have a one in a
thousand chance of getting bombed and burned alive. But if
you make it, you get a year's salary. Desperate young
men are going to take that gamble. Enough, desperate young
men are going to take that gamble that you can
kill hundreds of them or thousands of them, and more
(20:44):
are going to take it because they're like, well, I
might die. It's a very low chance that i'll die.
But if I don't do this, I can't take care
of my parents, can't take care of my kids. So
I'm just gonna do it. I'm going to go for it. Men,
young men at that age take much greater risks for
(21:04):
much worse reasons. So the point here, pragmatically, you cannot
bomb your way out of a situation. Where as long
as we here in the United States are willing to
pay for their cocaine, they're going to be willing to
sell it to us.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Well it's not really I mean, we're paying for cocaine,
but we're barely paying for their cocaine. And we're also
being asked to trust the Pentagon's process here that the
boats they're blowing up, which do look like drug boats,
but they're not showing their work on that, and so
we don't actually even know that. I'm sure they are
mostly hitting drug boats, and.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
You saw what ram Paul said. Did you see this yesterday?
He backed up something we reported here before based on
a coastguard source that he said something like twenty one
percent of drug boats that were approached by the coast
guard are found to not have drugs. So this is
a coast guard whose job it is to wreck recognize
from up close, yeah, not even in the sky, from
(22:05):
like Tampa Bay or whatever, a drug boat and say stop,
we're going to board you. And eighty percent of the
time they're right. Twenty percent of the time they're like
our fault, go on about your business. We apologize and
we're not charging them, and we're not charging right, And exactly,
(22:27):
we used to kill them the survivors, Now we don't.
Now we just repatriate them, right.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
They're just being repatrioted action. Yeah, and so it's a
hell of a I mean, it's a hell of a lift.
And again, to take Rubio's point about your own hemisphere,
that is actually where if you are waging regime change wars,
if anything, I mean, we should be meticulous about legality
of armed conflicts period. But of course, when you're talking
(22:56):
about a regime change war in your own hemisphere, where
you could entacaganize other countries and by his own logic,
I'm just saying, like you could make the argument that
this is the type of thing that destabilizes the entire
region because it sends pink waves around Latin America's people
are furious, and that may actually end up happening because
of all of this. It's I mean, this gets into
(23:17):
the entire conversation about how this playbook has never really worked,
but that's probably for another day.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And meanwhile, one other piece of bizarre reporting that Soccer
and I did was confirmed by Trump. So we can
put up a six here. This is a truth social
from Donald Trump, where I challenge you to get through
all of this gibberish, how you pause this and try
to read through this, But basically what he is, what
(23:45):
Trump is sharing here is a theory that Venezuela in
twenty twenty and also in two thousand and eight, but
twenty twenty used their control of voting machines to flip
the election to Biden over Trump. So what we had reported,
(24:09):
what Sager and I had reported, is that Rubio, along
with his we need to stop the drugs argument, was
telling Trump that Venezuela stole the twenty twenty election from Trump,
and that then that's one reason that we needed to
go ahead and overthrow Maduro. This was a thing we
(24:32):
heard from multiple sources, confirmed a bunch of different ways,
and it was the kind of thing that in the
past I wouldn't even have reported because I thought it
would think it was too crazy. When I was burnt
by remember the Secretary of War thing, I had Pentagon sources,
had Pentagon sources telling me Pete Hegseth keeps saying he
wants to change the name to the War Department, and
(24:55):
you were like no, I was like, that's too stupid
to report me. So from now on, nothing is too
stupid to report. So I thought this was I thought
this was too stupid report I reported it anyway, Sager.
I reported it, And here's Trump just tweeting it out
that he that he's tweeting out this conspiracy theory that
Venezuela flipped the twenty twenty American election, not Venezuelan election,
(25:20):
American election. There's a related theory that Hugo Chavez flipped
Iowa two thousand and eight against Clinton for Obama. For
Obama the caucuses.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
That sounds like you believe.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
No, Like I think Obama clearly won Iowa. Yeah, yes,
we can.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
That was real, the Venezuelan and voting machines machine that
goes deep.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
And then there's a whole theory that Elon Musk sniffed
all this out and stopped it from happening in twenty
twenty four and that's why it wasn't stolen in twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Really.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
So meanwhile, Wnduro continues to dance. We got a five here,
Uh yeah, this, you know, so we'll see, Like.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
He's literally, if you're listening to this, he's dancing in
the streets of presumably Caracas. But he seems to be
in good spirits.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
He well, I mean, one reason I think he's in
good spirits is he keeps calling Trump's bluff. I think
what was he was supposed to be out by last Friday. Yeah,
and then so Trump keeps bringing out, bring the submarines,
bringing the aircraft carriers. You've got until Friday, we're bombing.
You close the airs, you must close the airspace, and
they don't close the airspace. And he's like, well, it's fine,
(26:39):
We're not gonna do anything about it. So the deal
is there for the taking. Trump just has to say yes.
I think it seems like Rubio is kind of staying
in the way of it because Rubio doesn't want a deal.
Rubio wants Maduro killed. Yeah, yeah, well he's willing to leave.
He doesn't want him just out. He wants him dead,
and he wants Machado put in. He doesn't want like,
(27:01):
he doesn't want a teaseful transition and elections. He wants
to install a South Florida puppet.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
He definitely that's the problem, right, and he doesn't That's why.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She would get like four percent of the vote at
this point, so that you can't have an election.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
The idea that they're going to make a deal with
Maduro to have two years of his vice president is
not happening. That's obviously a non starter. So it seems
like intentionally non starter. This is the case.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
So also at this meeting, we can move over to
Pete Hegseth's troubles. Also at this meeting, hag Seth continued
to kind of back off of responsibility for the second
strike on September second that killed the survivors of the
first illegal strike. Let's roll be one here. I watched that.
Speaker 7 (27:52):
First strike life.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
As you can imagine, the Department of War, we got
a lot of things to do, so I didn't stick
around for the hour and two hours whatever where all
the sensitive side exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on
to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
That that commander had made the which he had the
complete authority to do.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision
to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
He sunk the boat, sunk the boat and.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Eliminated the threat, and he was the right call.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
We have his back.
Speaker 5 (28:24):
You didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that
first rut, I did not personally see survivors, but I
stand because the thing was on fire. I was exploded
in fire and smoke. You can't see any you got digital'.
This is called the folk of war. This is what
you and the press don't understand. You sit in your
conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nit pick,
(28:45):
and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about
kill everybody, phrases on anonymous sources, not based.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
In anything, not based in any truth at all.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
And then you want to throw up really irresponsible terms
about American heroes, about the judgment that they made. I
wrote a whole book on this topic because of what
politicians and the press does to war fire.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So, first of all, these are drone attacks that were
launching at these boats. Why are they not in air
conditioned offices? Also, it's like you reporters sitting in your
air conditioned office. What you're saying criticizing our commanders who
are also sitting in air conditioned office. Hey, if sentcom
(29:27):
is a little warm, like, get up and turn down
the thermostat you can do it. You can do that, Yeah,
you can do it.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Well, And he's coming in Southcomb, sorry Southcomb. Yeah, he's
coming in real hot. Obviously, because they feel now with
the Washington Post report that the wind is at.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Their back and that they face in their face right.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Well, they feel like they have momentums. What I was saying,
like they feel like they hexeth I think feels really
comfortable right now. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I think they feel like it's because of the Times story.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Or the because the Times. The Times is pushback on
the Post report, which obviously the Time story and you've
been posting about this is planetical.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
It was planted, but it was basically identical.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Well, but Hegseeth feels he's like completely off the hook now,
because that's a distinction with a difference whether or not
he came in and said out of here or whether
he just said kill everyone and the admiral was the
one who Here's.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Where I disagree with you because the Post story, the
one distinction is that the post has him saying kill everybody, right,
heg Seth acknowledges he ordered lethal kinetic strikes, yes, and
he keeps repeating this phrase lethal kinetic strikes, lethal connect
(30:46):
strike means kill everybody. Like, So what he's trying to
say is he didn't say it colloquially. He just said
it in the military term. But the Post story didn't
say that heg Seth ordered the second strike. What the
Post story said is that Bradley interpreted the lethal kinetic
strike order to mean that the second strike should be taken,
(31:08):
and the Time said the same thing. So that's why
I don't quite understand why he feels like he has
the wind in his back, And that's why I was like,
why why he's back? You're mixing up your metaform.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
No, I think they I genuinely think they feel totally fine.
And you also saw he people on the internet thought
he was cooked because he had in early September three
September third, the day of the strike, said he watched
the whole thing. And now he's saying, well, yeah, but
you can't really tell in the moment exactly what's going on.
So anyway, all that is to say, I don't think
(31:40):
they're worried one bit when you look at the way
hag Seth is talking about that. And Trump would pardon
them anyway, even even if there were a problem, Trump
would pardon them.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Trump would part yeah, Trump, Yeah, Trump doesn't care. But
Trump does care about the bad press. He always ask
how's this playing, how's this playing? Yeah, And he doesn't
like that Republics are pushing back against him. Hegsa's whole
approach here. If you go back and look at the
time that he instituted new rules on the Pentagon and
(32:14):
basically kicked out the whole Pentagon press corps lines up
exactly with this, and so he so he kicks them
all out, tells them, you know, any if you want
to come and cover the Pentagon. You have to agree
only to speak to authorized sources. You cannot solicit information
from unauthorized sources. Another word for that is reporting. It's
(32:37):
like a journalism and then you can come into our
press briefings and then you can get a Pentagon access.
And he got what he wanted. So here is how
this new press core is covering this issue. Let's roll
be two.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
Does the Department of War plan on pursuing any sort
of legal action against the Washington Post And what consequences
will there be for lying to the American people, because
of course, the implication there was that Pete Hegseth and
Admiral Bradley are war criminals.
Speaker 8 (33:10):
It is frankly disgusting that the Washington Post would publish
something that is so insanely false. And we've seen this
from the mainstream media before, right anonymous sources that are
being quoted that probably have no idea what's going on.
And the Washington Post actually went so far as to
falsely attribute a quote to the Secretary of Defense of
War excuse me that he never said. That is preposterous
(33:33):
that they would write that and pass that off as
true journalism. So the Washington Post, I think readership should
think twice before reading that outlet again. It is disgraceful
that they call themselves journalists, and we told them as such.
Right we get press queries like we do from all
of you. We told them this story was completely fake
news on Thanksgiving evening with a three hour deadline, and
(33:55):
they still published it anyway. It's disgraceful.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
My point, fair is they are feeling pretty good now.
I feel like they think they flipped the narrative, and
I think that's why you saw Hegsith going in so
hot at the cabinet meeting and they're now having reporters.
If you were listening to this, you missed on the
corner of the screen.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Matt Gates and right behind him James O'Keeffe.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
James O'Keeffe right behind him.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So the Pentagon this is an SNL called open that
was indistinguishable from an SNL called open.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
That clip was from a Pentagon press conference was about
half hour long yesterday where the new Pentagon Press corps
is all like MAGA new Media and Matt Gates, former
Congressman Matt Gates was there, actually asked a good regime
change venezuela question I don't know what you thought about
Kates this question, but he was the question what's your plan?
(34:44):
And he was wearing his representative, Matt Gates.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
She didn't even understand the question. If she did, she
answered a completely different question. It seemed like she didn't
even understand it. He asked, hey, when did the Iraq
war debatification turned hundreds of thousands of just regular government
employees into insurgents? Like, do you have a plan to
not do that again? Or is everybody associated with the
(35:07):
Maduro government going to be considered a narco terrorist? And
she answered, everyone in those boats, according to our intelligence,
is an narco trafficker. It's like, okay, you didn't listen
to the question. You didn't understand it. You don't know
about the batification. I mean, she would have been like
three at that at that time, I don't know how
old she is. She's like, can we just get back
to that guy who's asking if we're going to sue
the Washington Post?
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Right? Correct?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Yeah, they suck right. They call themselves journalists. You all
are journalists.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
It's an amazing setup.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
We gave you a little badge that says journalists.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
How bad is the Washington Post?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Kings very very bad, good question, excellent question. They are terrible.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Laura Lumer was also there.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
She was she asked an adversarial question was fine. Yah'll
give her that.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
It was fine, bonkers, but she wasn't asking how bad
is the Washington Price?
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Right? She asked, Muslim brotherhood is evil, So therefore, and
you're and you're designated some of them as terrorists, so
shouldn't you stop cuts her from using this American airbase?
Speaker 4 (36:03):
I actually think that's a fine question.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, especially from her right wing like she hates Muslims perspective. Question, like,
it's at least adversarial. Yeah, it's done the lineup with
my politics. That's not what I asked for in a journal.
It's just adversarials all I asked.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
And then there were the It was peppered with questions
from guys like that who were like, tell us, how
hard do you think you could smack the Washington Post
in the mouth? Kingsley That Yeah, three.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Hour deadline on Thanksgiving that's kind of dirty.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
That's shitty. That's not good. That's true. I don't know
if that's true, but that's not good. If that's what happened, that's.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
When you know, you have the story completely nailed and
you're not actually interested in hearing the lies from the government.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
Well, I mean, I'm sure their sources told them with
great confidence what they were telling them, and so they
probably I mean they.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Have in the room notes from the meeting. Like, if
you don't report that without confidence.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
If you have high level sources who are telling you
that the story might be incorrect, do your due diligence.
But you also still have two high level sources telling
you that.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
So I don't know, I don't know who knows what
went wrong on that story, if anything, but man, what
a what a time at the Pensgon.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Yes, indeed, let's move to.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Tennessee, where Afton Bain did lose that special election last night,
but the margin was single digits. So this is a
plus twenty plus twenty two GOP district that Afton Baine
was expected to eat away that margin and did again
twenty two. She loses after Bain loses by eight points
(37:43):
to Republican Matt Van Epps. Eight points is in margin
Republicans are still feeling pretty comfortable about. I saw some
in the GOP consultant type world, like Matt Whitlock saying
it's basically a five alum fire because if there are
margin erosions like this for team points in other swing
districts in the midterms, that's going to be a bloodbath
(38:05):
for House Republicans. Obviously, that math is true. Right on
the other hand, special elections or special elections, we could
put see one on the screen. These are the results,
and this is Tennessee seventh obviously to replace Mark Green,
about ninety seven thousand votes as of right now, ninety
five percent of votes in for Van Abson, about eighty
one thousand votes for Afton Baines. So we're looking at
(38:27):
fifty four to forty five basically, and Afton bain I
think Ryan coming to forty five nearly half of the
electorate is definitely a win for populists. She didn't get
it quite as close as people wanted to. Some people
thought maybe she actually had a chance to win. Didn't
come down to anything quite that close.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
In order to win, she would have needed kind of
this this almost contradictory situation, which would have been enormous
excitement on the Democratic side, very little attention from the
Republican side. And so you've had this debate Breakout online,
which has said that Afton Bain was too left, you
(39:10):
know for the district. So you've got the Galasias types
saying if they had run a very boring centrist candidate
who you couldn't hit with anything, then actually she would
have she would have performed even better.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
Wrong.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah, the problem the problem with that analysis, and besides
just vibes and feelings and like the you know, biased
because we like her and when I share politics, the
problem with that analysis is that she blew it out
of the water in Nashville, and you know, she wins,
you know, seventy eight twenty two there expanded her margin
(39:47):
over Harris By like thirty or.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Something like, which, by the way, is kind of ironic
because the people in Nashville are the people who actually
love Nashville, who should have been devastated by that clip
of after Bain saying she hated Nashville and the people
outside of Nashville are already going to be the ones
that are.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
The ones they actually do hate just a little point. Yeah,
And what Bain was saying also was she hates the
Times Square tourist part of Nashville. So she also had
this one quote that was in every ad where she
said I'm a very radical person, and so the centrists
are like, that's that's that kills you. It's like, okay,
(40:24):
But the fact that she had so much support among
Democrats created a situation where she had thousands of door
knockers and you know, phone bankers and an enthusiastic base
of support that then put her within two percentage points
(40:46):
in the polls, which then brought in millions of dollars
from Republicans. So it's sort of like a chicken and
egg situation. Like, Okay, if you have a boring candidate
who doesn't generate any excitement among Demo then it's true
that you might not get the millions of dollars being
(41:07):
spent by Republicans, and then in a super low turnout
special election, you might be able to eke out those
last nine points and you might be able to claim
that district. But the problem let's even say that that's possible.
The problem there is that that's not representative of what
(41:28):
the midterms are going to look like. So turnout wound
up being roughly what it was I think in twenty
twenty two in this special election, which is really unusual,
like it's hard to match up midterm with a special
election turnout, So people were tuned in here. And why
that matters is that in the upcoming midterms of twenty
(41:49):
twenty six, you're not going to be able to sneak
through like everybody's going to know there's an election happening,
So you actually want to play. If this is an
exhibition match, you want to play on as similar conditions
as possible to the regular midterms. So now you know
(42:09):
that in a district like this plus twenty twenty plus
district Republican district, you can look for about a thirteen
point swing, thirteen fourteen point swing, whereas if you ran
some boring Centrists who snuck through just based on anti
Trump turnout, that doesn't tell you as much. So that
(42:30):
that would be my counter argument to the Iglesias types
that you might might actually be right that if you
could have kept turnout fifty to half of what it was,
that maybe enough of that tilt's democratic. But so what
like you then get annihilated in November in that same district.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Yeah, I don't think Ashon Bain no offense is the
best candidate. I don't think anyone would say that somebody
who had such a candid pod podcast is the best kid.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
You should have said it was PTSD from the war,
thing like that. But the idea of that culture wars
PTSD from the culture from the.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Culture was, well, we all have that. But the idea
that that this debunks the point that populists make, and
I should say populist on the left and the right.
This goes back to Barry Goldwater. Literally, this goes back
to Ronald Reagan. Goldwater had the line of extremism and
defense of liberty is no vice, and what was it,
moderation and preciative justice is no virtue. And that was
(43:25):
basically to say these electability questions that you know are
going to send Gerald Ford or whomever, aren't necessarily I mean,
Reagan himself said bold colors with pale paint, with bold
colors instead of pale pastels. And the argument was that
the Reagan Revolution would be politically more powerful than moderate
Republicans at the ballot box because people are actually going
(43:48):
to believe what you say. People are actually or they're
going to believe you believe what you say. They may
not agree with you one hundred percent of the time,
but it's obviously a race by race designation. I mean,
if you're talking about running somebody who's super super maga
in you know, the Boston area, it's probably actually not
going to improve your margins. But in a special election
(44:09):
where you can flood the zone and you know, maybe
try to sneak someone past, that is different. So at
the other what was the Pennsylvania race not doctor oz
should I'm forgetting the really super maga candidate's name who
lost any like, probably lost Maston because Doug mashroon because
he was like right, you know what I mean? Like that,
(44:32):
those sometimes it's obvious that you needed just a better candidate,
but that will always get used to say, oh, it
was it's populism that's killing though, And sometimes you get
kookie populist candidates Christine O'Donnell example, that's a fun throwback
and the problem really is the candidate, but it's often
used as a smoke screen to say the populism was
(44:53):
the problem, not the candidate was the problem. Because populism
can be extremely energizing, especially in little special election type
races where you can send in a lot of money
and the base gets really excited and you bring attention
to the race. One final point, you made a really
interesting observation that if they thought they could sneak after
Bane past, they actually ended up getting a ton of
(45:17):
Fox News coverage for the race, which probably woke up
a bunch of Republicans in the area, Like they were
covering this race.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
A ton, right, right, So if you and maybe they
would have ended up covering any race at time, just
because there would be enough anti Trump energy that the
polls would show at least the competitive race, it certainly
made it more salacious that that they had the like
I hate country music, and I hate Nashville, and I'm
(45:44):
a radical person and you know all that well you
know video of her like you know, doing a sit
in and the state legislature, and they had they had
stuff to work with that that got the Fox News
bas riled up. Nashville. Twenty point swing, so even in
Nashville it didn't quite swing enough.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
That's it's significant though.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Twenty point swing is massive. Yeah, you don't see that
much in politics, especially with turnout that high right low
turnout in Nashville. Maybe you see a forty point swing,
but it's a much narrower number of aggregate votes.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
A Republican candidate could campaign on saying they hated Nashville
in Tennessee and everyone would know what they were talking about.
And that's increasingly about to happen, like, oh, the traffic,
all the New York Libs and the LA Libs all
moving to Nashville. So it's actually kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, they've been running against the cities for two hundred years.
It's funny, Yeah, two thousand years.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Maybe let's take a trip over to Nebraska, Ryan where
the Tyson Beef, where Tyson Beef is just shedding thousands
of jobs in a new announcement.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, heartbreaking story, but it doesn't have to be over. Yes,
if the federal government takes this sea, obviously they could
reverse this. So put up the first element here. So
about a week and a half ago, Tyson announced that
it would be closing one of the largest beef processing
plants in Nebraska in the town of Lexington. So this
(47:16):
is a processing plant that employs thirty two hundred people
in this town of just ten thousand people. But importantly,
it will also have national implications, and it doesn't have
to happen. The federal government could step in and stop
this because it is probably illegal, and we'll talk about
why in a second. But just for some background, nearly
(47:40):
five percent of the cattle that is slaughtered every day
goes through this processing plant, five percent in the whole country.
Fifteen percent of the slaughter that goes through in Nebraska
every day goes through this processing plant. Now, what the
mainstream press is reporting about the closure of this plant
(48:01):
is that this is because the size of the herd
is down and there's there's less cattle going through every plant.
In twenty twenty one, the herd size was ninety four million.
Last year the herd size was eighty seven million, so,
you know, down down seven million cattle. Significant reason for
that is that in May of this year, the Trump
(48:23):
administration banned the importation of Mexican cattle because of this parasite.
So I'm not saying that that was a bad move,
not blaming Trump for that necessarily, because this is a
parasite that would be devastating, you know, to the to
the US cattle industry if it creeped, you know, across
across the border. So the press seems to be mostly
(48:46):
satisfied with this with this answer that this is about
the number of number of cattle declining, So you have,
so we got to know, shut down this processing plant.
And it's a shame for this town of ten thousand. Now,
as you think about what's going to happen to this town,
you put up this next element. About a week after
it was announced this plant was closed, a contractor for Tyson,
(49:10):
who basically was contracted to like trash and clean up
around the plant, said it would be laying off. It's
one hundred and thirty nine workers, So thirty two hundred workers.
Icet add another one hundred and thirty nine workers. And
then if you think about it from there, everywhere that
these workers go is now screwed. Fast food restaurants, regular restaurants,
(49:36):
shopping centers, everywhere. This is like, this town will be
wiped off the map if this is allowed to stand.
But so I handed earlier, why might this be ilegal?
Dan Osborne is making this point. So Dan Osborne, as
viewers may recall, was the independent Senate candidate who lost
(49:57):
to deb Fisher last time. But he's running again.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
Who's the Pete Ricketts?
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Pete Ricketts like a billionaire, right, yeah, Like it's almost
comical at this point. So he's running as a billionaire
senator named Pete Ricketts, give me a break. And so
he's making the point that this appears to be an
anti violation of anti trust law. So let's run through
(50:22):
Osborne's argument. We can unpack this. So he says, I
believe Tyson's decision to shut down it's Lexington, Nebraska plant
instead of selling it is a ploy to manipulate cattle
and beef markets in violation of our anti trust laws.
Let's move to the next one. He says, we have
an anti trust law in the books right now called
the Packers and Stockyards Act. This law was passed in
nineteen twenty one to protect farmers and ranchers from concentrated
(50:45):
abuse of monopoly power in the livestock industry. The Act
makes it illegal for meat packers to quote engage in
any course of business or do any act for the
purpose or with the effect of, and that's important, manipulating
or controlling prices or restraining commerce unquote. By shutting the
plant down instead of selling it to a competitor, Tyson
(51:06):
is driving down the prices they have to pay to
ranchers for cattle and driving up the prices they can
charge to consumers for beef, which is the quote manipulating
or controlling price or restraining commerce part of the aforementioned Act.
This plant in Lexington he goes On accounted for five
percent of beef production in the US. By shutting down
(51:28):
a plant that produced such a large portion of beef
in this country, Tyson will cut demand for cattle and
reduce the number of buyers competing for ranchers livestock. With
this increased leverage, Tyson will be able to pay ranchers
less for their cattle because ranchers will have precious few
alternatives to sell to, if any. This is why a
monopolized food system is so dangerous. Nebraska ranchers will suffer
(51:51):
the most because they will lose a local buyer. Normally,
when a politician speaks, I would try to interpret it
a little bit for people and put it into language
that you canunderstand. But I don't think I need to
do that here. Emily, what was what did you think
when you saw this this news in Osborne's reaction.
Speaker 4 (52:07):
To it, I mean, it's amazing how Dan Osborne, who
is getting some support from national dem organizations, is still
technically running as an independent. But this guy has his
finger on the pulse of the conversation in a way
that no establishment politicians do. And obviously Dan Osborne has
(52:28):
a background where you can see, I mean, you and
I talked about this a lot, like maybe the biggest
barrier to entry is just class in politics and journalism,
and Dan didn't come from the traditional political background. He's
still what just a couple of years into his political journey,
and it shows because he understands. But also I just
(52:50):
have to add, like this was a really sophisticated, I
think analysis.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Straightforward of how queen get it.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
Concentrate power, I mean, and that is just it's it's
not just that it's it's hard for people to talk
about because they're taking a bunch of money from billionaires
or whatever is that they have never really bothered to
care and they don't understand that the average Nebraskan sees
this as kind of a class issue, Like obviously it's
going to have an economic devastating and devastating economic ripple effect,
(53:21):
but on top of that, it's also infuriating to people
because it looks like billionaires organizing the economy in a
way that they profit and the normal people get screwed.
And so there's just it's almost a culture war. You know,
it's it's economic superficially, but it's I think it hits
people as a culture war question, if that makes sense?
Speaker 3 (53:40):
Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, what could be
more culture war than destroying an entire town.
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Right for multimillionaire billionaire profits. Yeah, massive corporations hurting the
little guy, right, Like, that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
And so that the counter argument that you'd see from
folks who support the free market would be, well, a,
they would just say, let companies do whatever they want,
and we don't like federal laws like antitrust laws period.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Oh, but they'll like the laws that help them consolidate
their power.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
They do like that. But the other argument that they
would make would be, well, Tyson has been reporting and
its quarterly reports that it is losing money, losing significant
amounts of money it is at its processing plants. That
because the cattle hevert is down, that you know, they're
they're operating at a loss, and you can't require them
to operate a laws. I would say that they they are.
(54:37):
What the counter argument to that would be that they're
cooking the books, that because they have such market control,
because they can because and because they are so friendly
with the other big three you know companies, they're helping
they're basically setting prices, and the the the processing plant
(54:59):
part of their operation is overall a part of their
price setting, and so they might be reporting on their
on their books that they're you know, they're they're taking
x loss when it comes to the processing. But the
but the business that they're doing in the processing is
directly related to their control of the supply that goes
(55:20):
out to the market, which is related to their ability
to set prices, which and they're doing quite well overall.
So it's like, okay, you're not really okay, you're claiming
to be losing money on the process, but actually it's
it's furthering this extremely profitable monopolistic business that that you're operating,
which will now be more profitable because of Osborne's point
(55:42):
that now you're going to pay farmers less who are
going to have to drive their cattle much further. Uh,
and you're gonna you know, cut supply further, which allows
you to then increase prices at the grocery store, right
people who are buying beef.
Speaker 4 (55:59):
Well, by the way the Trump administration is talking constantly
about beef prices and they're actually broke. Rollins talks about
cattle like this is they know, they're populous enough to
know that it's a serious concern and problem in the economy.
And so that puts Pete Ricketts in a rather interesting
position because Pete Ricketts is not really a populist. And
(56:19):
so here you have the competition between Dan Osbourne, who's
technically an independent, and a Republican who probably doesn't really
want to talk about all this stuff, even though he's
not like a he's not like a realignment Republican.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
He's not going to like to talk about this at all, right.
Speaker 4 (56:38):
And so it puts as it sets up a veeh,
you don't.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Want to say, such a shame. Yeah, And we should
be there for the workers. We should retrain them exactly,
learn to code.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
You can expect something that sounds a little bit like that.
And this just underscores the point that we have to
take a trip out to Nebraska to cover this campaign
because it's really becoming interesting. It was always going to
be interesting.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
Yeah, he's he's a mechanic and he's the only major
poll I know of. Was released by Osborne's campaign itself
found him trailing forty six forty five to Rickets. So
it's going it's going to be like this will be
close a way. The new poll has him leading anyway,
(57:21):
so it's it's going to be a close race. And
I think that Osborne is going to just hammer this
point over and over and if Trump So here's where
politics and electoral politics can be useful. Like, hey, if
you're in the Trump administration and you're watching and you
want to deprive Osborne of this issue because you want
(57:43):
to save your billion billionaire buddy Rickets, tell Tyson they
have to keep the plan open that that you find
it to be, tell them you find it to be
in violation of the Anti Trust Act.
Speaker 4 (57:53):
They might do that to neutralize the problem.
Speaker 5 (57:55):
Do it.
Speaker 4 (57:56):
I mean, they obviously have a really closely divided Senate.
The Senate is in competition, so they may honestly just
do it.
Speaker 3 (58:02):
Like you let this plant close, you were probably gonna
lect Osborne.
Speaker 4 (58:07):
The Tyson pack gives more to Republicans than Democrats that
it probably doesn't surprise anyone, but I'm sure they have
an open line of communication with Tyson and.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Let Ricketts take credit for it. Let him come in
be like, look, I saved this plant.
Speaker 4 (58:19):
M maybe it'll happen, and like.
Speaker 3 (58:22):
That the point is to make people's lives better. So yeah,
if this threat of Osborne, like, you know, one of
the things that was the best for American workers throughout
the second half of the twentieth century was the threat
of communism, and so American the American government and American
companies were much more generous to workers because of the threat.
(58:44):
Osborne is not the Soviet Union, but Osborne's threat. And like,
if you know, so keep the plan open or you
get Osborne? How about that? How's that for a deal?
Speaker 4 (58:54):
What an interesting thing? Well, so, actually I was telling
Crystal this recently. I was you they were texting and
I was like, should I watch Roger and Me or
Bowling for Columbine? And you were like, I was trying
to choose between the two on a Friday nights love
a very exciting life, and Ryan, it was like, you
got to do Roger and Me. And it's funny because
(59:14):
Roger and Me is so coded like it was it
was then coded as like left wing hippie stuff, but
it's now so coded as a first Yeah, it's America first,
but what Roger and Me does a really good job
zooming into is how these plants are part of an
ecosystem and a really fragile ecosystem, and so what can
(59:35):
happen is sad, just like personally sad obviously, but also
it's like devastating a swath of a state of like
that that can when when it ripples out. It's not
just about the plant, it's not just about retraining those
workers telling them to learn to code. It can devastate
the culture of an entire region.
Speaker 3 (59:56):
It's criminal, right, It's a crime visited upon this entire community.
Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
And all that is to say, Dan Osborne is getting
out in front of this because he has good political
instincts and anybody who's who's not in Nebraska is behind
the ball like they're missing it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Also, the other thing you could say is factory farming
is evil. So maybe the Trump administration actually is just
strongly against factory farming.
Speaker 4 (01:00:20):
I want to know what Robert F. Kennedy j thinking about.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Deduced the amount of suffering from animals.
Speaker 4 (01:00:25):
Let's hear from RFK Junior about the Tyson plant
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 3 (00:34):
Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. So we have
a plug off the top.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
We sure do. We are going to be debating some
libertarians next week here in Washington, DC live in person.
We're going to put the link in the email and
the description. But this is us participating in the reason
versus debate. So big tech does more good than harm.
Ryan and I are arguing the opposite of that, that
big tech does more harm than good. We're going to
(00:59):
be up against Robbie Suave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown, So
a little Robbie reunion in the works.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
If we lose this, it will be like losing two
flat arthurs. We deserve the l to.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Because it's a reason event and a reason crowd, So
we maybe fighting a Siscifian uphill battle.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
They love their Big Tech. Well, they took an l
just yesterday because Ted Cruz, on behalf of Big Tech,
was trying to sneak into the NDAA what they call
AI preemption. It would be a law that would say
you cannot regulate AI if you are a state or
a locality. Only the federal government can regulate AI. And
(01:40):
the federal government is not going to regulate AII. So
absolute libertarian fever dream. They tried to get into the
one big beautiful bill. It got stripped from there, it
got exposed, and there was outrage against it, and so
the people won again. But Ted Cruz will be back.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Stripped because it's just truly it's crazy, which.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Is they'll get it eventually, especially for.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Like the right to champion this law. Like their entire problem,
as they argue, is that there's a patchwork of regulations
in every state. It's like that is called federalism. It's
sort of how we've done things for a couple hundred years.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Let's just make reason defend that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Just spend the entire It depends on the conversation. AI Morgorse.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
That's where it heads anyway.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Well, anyway, so catch us there. That's fun December tenth.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
There's little party afterwards. The Libertarians do like to party.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yeah, they do that at least very well. We respect
that and it's going to be a ton of fun.
So if you want to come out December tenth, you
can check out the link in the description recent dot
com slash versus Ryan. We have a big, big show
because the news cycle won't slow down. Donald Trump held
the two plus hour cabinet meeting, one of those long
(02:50):
televised cabinet meetings yesterday where everybody reports back to him
on camera about how awesome he is, about how much
they love him, working love working for him, how great
they're doing. But they always are sure to say that
anything that they're doing, those goods to his credit.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Of course, because he put all the mistakes of their own.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Yes. So that made a lot of news. We have
news to bring you from that. Some of it is
on Venezuela, some of it is on Pete Hegseth. So
we're going to break it all down. Afton Bain narrowed
that twenty two point margin in the Tennessee special election
plus twenty two Republican district narrowed it to eight. She
lost by eight points last night. So we're going to
(03:26):
break down those results too.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes. And then in Nebraska, Tyson is closing one of
the largest beef processing plants. While people are furious about
beef prices, there are some senate implications there because Dan
Osborne is running as an independent there. And there are
also some antitrust implications as well, because even though this
(03:49):
isn't getting much coverage, it appears like they did it
so they could manipulate both the price they pay two
cattle ranchers and also the price that they can then
charge you for the beef. This is going to be,
I think, a significant issue going forward, and so we're
going to dig in on the closure of this processing plant,
(04:10):
which will absolutely destroy this town and which is not irreversible,
like a government that actually cared about doing something for
people could stop this from happening.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
We'll see lots and lots of jobs on the line,
not even just the jobs at the plant, but a
lot of jobs that feed into the plant. So we're
going to break that down as well. We're going to
be discussing the fraud allegations and investigation in Minnesota. But
on top of that, Ryan, Donald Trump continues to make
news on this front, so we'll get into his order
that TPS so temporary Protected status be removed for Somalian
(04:43):
refugees in Minnesota. Now, the numbers on that it's about
seven hundred people in a population of Minnesota. That's about
sixty thousand, it's according to Time magazine numbers so yesterday.
So we are going to bring all of the information
that we have onto the table and talk about it
this morning.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
And Ryan, we have a guest, Yes, Sammy Hamdi, who
Laura Lumer and others got locked up when he came
here to speak at a handful of caregills. He's a
British journalist. They didn't like him, they didn't liked that
he was here, and so they arrested him, detained him
for several weeks, and because of public pressure, he did
not end up spending kind of the year and detention
that a lot of immigrants do before being deported. He's
(05:21):
now been deported back to the UK. From where he
will be joining us to talk about what he was
going to say here and what ordeal was like and
what he saw while he was in detention.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
All right, let's get to it. Let's start with Venezuela
this morning. We can put this first element up on
the screen. This is Trump now giving Madua an ultimatum quote,
you can save yourself and those closest to you, but
you must leave the country now, and has apparently offered
safe passage for Maduro and his family quote only if
(05:52):
he agreed to resign right away. Ran, What do you
make of that? Just stopping right there off.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The bat, Yeah, the deal that apparently is close. Like
if you believe the reporting, and I think it's I
think it's credible reporting. Trump is saying you need to go.
Maduro was saying, okay, like I've seen what happens. I've
seen what the US and its proxy Israel are capable
(06:18):
of when it comes to, you know, breaching what we
understood to be basic norms of civility. So at any moment,
you know, he imagines he could just be executed, and
so he's like, Okay, if if I go, then you
have to lift sanctions on me. You have to lift
sanctions on everybody who's that you've sanctioned and who was
(06:42):
leaving power. He said that he's apparently gave a list
of about one hundred people or so that that who
would go into exile. He said he wants the ICC
case dropped. The US is already sanctioning everybody involved with
the ICC. We don't like the ICC. I guess it'd
be funny if we were like, how dare you? Well,
we did do that with how do you attack the
(07:02):
sanctity of the International Criminal Court?
Speaker 4 (07:04):
But Biden did do that with Putin. It's none above us, Yes.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
No, of course not. It turns out we don't have
a whole lot of principle when it comes to any
of this.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Yeah, I mean, obviously this regime change operation is afoot,
and the actual event itself feels imminent.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
And yeah, So the last point of the deal is
that Mnduro has said what he wants is his vice
president to take office for two years or so while
they prepare for elections. The vice president would not run
for reelection and then there would be monitor elections and
that the US would be able to compete for Venezuela
(07:37):
and oil. US oil companies, which does which is like
it's like it'd be really funny if we did a
war for oil when the country is like, just take
the oil, and then we're like, yeah, no, we actually
want the war.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Yeah, like we want the war that would be oil.
It's not as fun if you don't.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
It's interesting. Yeah, everybody thinks that the war is for
the oil, but the oil just justifies the bloodlust. We
want the war, not the oil. We'll take the oil.
But in Iraq, like did we even take the oil?
I mean we control the Middle East, so like sort
of yes, yeah, we really just want the war.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Clearly. So Secretary of State Marco Ruba was sitting next
to Donald Trump at that long Cabinet meeting yesterday and
so obviously this came up. Let's roll a one here.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Did they come in through a certain country or any country,
or if we think they're building mills for whether it's
spenta or cocaine. I want those boats taken out, and
if we have to, will attack on land also, just
like we attacked on a sea.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
And no, let's hear from Secretary Rubio himself, we can
go ahead and rule eight two.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
It never would have happened if you've been president.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
But this war is going on and the president is
trying to end it. Not because listen, we got a
million things to focus on in.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
The world as a country.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
But he's the only leader in the world that can
help end And that's why, that's why, even as we
speak to you now, Steve Woodcoff is in Moscow trying
to find a way to end this war, to save
lives of eight nine thousand people. Mister presidents, you want
to are dying every week.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Did you have noticed you watching that not listening to it.
Trump seemed to have his eyes closed for a suspiciously
long period of time. At one point.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I think he was deep in thought and basking in
the praise from Marco Rubio. Others have said that he
was fast asleep. And it's funny if you watch Rubio's face,
like it's very hard for me to feel any sympathy
for Rubio, but in that moment, like he's just must
be dying inside. He's just he's like, Okay, the camera
(09:28):
is on me, and he keeps saying, mister pres He
keeps saying, mister president, mister press him up.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to tell when Trump
is just looking down versus when his eyes are actually
closed because sleep did he did in this one, but
it's it's with him. It happens, and I'm looking at him,
and I'm like, I can't tell if because his everything
matches like everything is orange.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
And it's and it's humiliation on top of humiliation because
the thing that he was talking about we'll get back
to Venezuelan a second. Sorry. The thing that he was
talking about there is that wit ca Off and Trump's
son in law Kushner were at that moment across the
table from Putin negotiating this end to the Russia Ukraine war.
We're trying to and who's not doing it. The Secretary
(10:13):
of State, Secretary of State is stuck in this cabinet
meeting blathering on while Trump is asleep in front of him.
So it's compound humiliation for Rubio.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Yeah, that one. That was a tough one. That was
a tough one. He went on Sean Hannity last night
and said basically that if you're America first, you should
be wanting This isn't a surprising argument, of course, but
you should want regime change in Venezuela. Because it is
our hemisphere, and there's nothing more America first than our hemisphere.
So a little refining of the argument in progress.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
It's like the definition of Israel just keeps expanding. Where
the borders are, so America America first, but America is
the whole world. So we're doing that first. At least
it's the hemisphere though. And if you notice in there
there was one there was a confirmation of a scoop
to Stagren. I had a come weeks ago where you
have Trump talking about bombing Mexico and Colombia. It's like,
(11:06):
there's all these sites because what we what Sager and
I reported was that Trump said, okay, you're telling me
all the drugs come from Venezuela. I'm hearing from this
reporting a job site that actually that's not true. I
see intelligence community. Tell me where the drugs coming from.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
He was like, I have the subscription to a great website.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Website, so give me the give me the targets, like
where where the drugs coming from? And they come back
to him with a list that includes a couple of
like coca facilities on the border, the stateless border between
Colombia and Venezuela. But mostly the targets are in Colombia
and Mexico. And that's how these wars expand you start
(11:45):
talking about war, start looking for targets, and then and
then hey, if when you're a hammer, you see that
the actual drug nails are legitimately in Mexico and Colombia. Yes,
like Ecuador has got a pretty big role in it
too when it comes to the ship and the transit
of it. But Columbia Mexico are the players. And so
they're like, wait a minute, so now we're doing war
(12:06):
with Mexico and Colombia.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
And Trump in that in the meeting is like, yeah,
well I'm happy to. I'm not afraid to. I'm not
afraid to do that at all. It's like what's going
on in Venezuela again, like what can we like? This
is completely incoherent. What is happening?
Speaker 4 (12:20):
The entire argument and you and Zacker have covered this,
but it's obvious the entire argument for this war would
be applied to bombing Sinaloa.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Or Sure, which is which is where it started. Because
Trump in the campaign said that that's what he was
going to do, right, And as.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
It turns out, Claudia Sinbaum knows how to operate with
Donald Trump and has likely staved off.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah, she's like, you're not doing that escalation.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yeah, so, I mean she's probably had to give a
little on cooperating with CIA and drunt flights and that
sort of thing, but just in the content context of
military operations. But obviously he learned early on it would
be hugely escalatory with an ally in Mexico to really
bomb Sina Lowa cartel territory. Even though if you took
(13:05):
that to the American people, you could really make the
fentanyl argument to the American people, it would be wildly
different than making this argument about Venezuela, which isn't even
the largest source of our cocaine.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Right the Venezuela come, I mean the ventanyl comes from
China anyway, and then up through Mexico. It's like, what,
it's not none of this like Mexico, like Venezuela, like
every country. And we will talk about this with this
next one. We can put up a four. So this
is an article in the Wall Street Journal trying to
lay the predicate. It's called if you're listening, it's called
(13:39):
The headline is how Venezuelan gangs and African jihadists are
flooding Europe with cocaine. Now, why would the Wall Street
Journal Murdoch Paper need to run this. Well, the au
m F, the Authorization of the Use of force, is
specific to al Qaeda. So after nine to eleven, they
(14:01):
passed an AOMF that said, if the president wants to
wage war somewhere against al Qaeda, stateless organization, he has
the power to do that. Everybody voted for it, except
for like Barbara Lee, who was like, this sounds kind
of open ended, dangerous, Maybe we shouldn't give this much
power to the White House, And they said, nah, fine,
it'll be okay. So then if you're a bureaucrat or
(14:21):
you're a president who wants to wage war but you
don't want to have to go get permission to do it,
you have to find al Qaeda somewhere. All of a sudden,
we start finding al Qaeda everywhere.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
And no Wall Street Journal knows about it, and so like, for.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Instance, al Qaeda in Iraq wasn't even a real thing.
Like these were Iraqi insurgents who were doing the insurgency
against the United States. We rebranded them al Qaeda in Iraq.
Then we find al Qaeda in Syria. Then we've got
al Qaeda in Yemen, and then all of a sudden,
there's al Qaeda's popping up all over Africa. If you
(14:56):
talk to the people who actually follow us in the ground,
it's like the end. Nobody actually called on that. They
have their own names. But if we call them al Qaeda,
then legally we can use the AOMF to go to
war against them. So now we need al Qaeda in Venezuela.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Well, Instadam had all of a sudden been meeting with
all of these different people.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, and so it is a fact obviously that drugs
go from South America through West Africa and into Europe.
That's been happening for many, many decades. In for my
book back twenty years ago, i interviewed this one mid
level trafficker who said that actually the advent of the
(15:36):
five hundred euro note created a huge demand pull for
drug traffickers to move through West Africa into Europe because
if you think about it, and at the time, the
exchange rate meant that a five hundred euro note was
worth like six hundred dollars. This was before crypto, and
so you had to move cash around moving so you
(15:59):
could move six times as much euros around in the
same sized bag as you could move dollars around. And
that was a huge logistical problem that you had just
too much cash and didn't know what to do with it.
So the fact that there was a five hundred euro
now they're like, well, let's just let's just sell to
Europe then, and so, yes, drugs moved from South America
(16:22):
to West Africa into Europe. Are there some insurgents in
Africa who were associated with some like Islamic insurgents. Yeah, sure,
so that's where they get the quote unquote Jahatas thing.
But these are just rebel gangs and connected with their governments.
(16:42):
So and are there some Venezuelans who are involved with this?
Yeah sure, South America Like yeah, okay, fine, But like
the idea that you should that this that if you
that the answer is to go to war against Maduro,
Like no, this this is a glo global economy that
(17:03):
where we sell drugs to people who want drugs.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
This is where people have to be I think kind
of careful unfortunately with tossed around war crime and illegal war,
because the sad reality is that we have laws that
basically justify any war on the books. I mean, well,
the laws shouldn't agree.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
If you actually challenge, like, if you actually took the
law seriously, you'd be like, no, there's no al Katta
involved here, of.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Course, But we've never done that. We've used the AUMF
and like how many different regions.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Which basically is lawless?
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Then it's yeah, exactly, yeah, I think we've used it
in twenty two different countries that the AUMF, the post
nine to eleven AMF, I think it's been used in
like twenty two different countries. Like in fact check that
in just one second.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
It is Yeah, it is cute that they think they
need to like check a box. They didn't get check
their paperwork box.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
At first back in September, they were literally just saying trust.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Us, we'll do whatever we want.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
And they're kind of still doing that because they still
aren't giving us names. They aren't charging anybody. You know,
they say they know who is on these boats, but
they're not saying you know who they are, what their
connection is, why they're confident that they're involved with.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Did you see that a mom of a Colombian kid
who was killed on one of these boats is like
suing now in like the world, like I forget which forum. Yeah,
And so our guy at drop side, who covers Latin
America for US, Jose Luis Granado Seija. He was in
Honduras for the election and he went up to the
northern area where there's a lot of enormous amount of
(18:34):
drug trafficking, which Wan Orlando Hernandez, who was just pardoned
by Trump helped establish joh built like six international airports
in Honduras, like while he was president. Why why guess
why hmm? And if you would ask, oh, this is
for the drugs, like the people who were like, this
(18:54):
is the fly drugs. So he wrote here in Honduras,
people tell me these strikes haven't dissuaded drug traffickers from
running drugs on these boats, which are manned mostly by
poor people trying to make money, not drug lords at
the top of the pyramid. Not only are they not legal,
they're not even effective. So think about that. This is
for all the people who think that these strikes are
(19:17):
a good idea and are not bothered by the morality.
So we're not talking to people who have a sense
of morality around this, because if you have a sense
of morality around this year against it. But let's say
you think that they're effective and that they're actually going
to save twenty five thousand lives, which is absurd because
like total of seventy five thousand overdose deaths a year.
So we've hit twenty one boats. You can pause this
(19:38):
and go do the math on whether or not every
single boat saves twenty five thousand lives, So set that aside.
These are low level people who are paid a one
time fee, often equivalent to roughly the amount of money
you could make in a year or two working in Honduras.
So you're twenty years old, you're twenty five years old,
you've got parents to take care of, you might have
(19:59):
kid to take care of. You're told we'll give you
a year's salary for this one day trip. And now
it's possible that you're going to get lit up from
the sky by the United States. But there's hundreds of
boats that go every day, and they bomb like one
boat a week, so you have about a point one
(20:21):
percent chance. Let's say you have a one in a
thousand chance of getting bombed and burned alive. But if
you make it, you get a year's salary. Desperate young
men are going to take that gamble. Enough, desperate young
men are going to take that gamble that you can
kill hundreds of them or thousands of them, and more
(20:44):
are going to take it because they're like, well, I
might die. It's a very low chance that i'll die.
But if I don't do this, I can't take care
of my parents, can't take care of my kids. So
I'm just gonna do it. I'm going to go for it. Men,
young men at that age take much greater risks for
(21:04):
much worse reasons. So the point here, pragmatically, you cannot
bomb your way out of a situation. Where as long
as we here in the United States are willing to
pay for their cocaine, they're going to be willing to
sell it to us.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Well it's not really I mean, we're paying for cocaine,
but we're barely paying for their cocaine. And we're also
being asked to trust the Pentagon's process here that the
boats they're blowing up, which do look like drug boats,
but they're not showing their work on that, and so
we don't actually even know that. I'm sure they are
mostly hitting drug boats, and.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
You saw what ram Paul said. Did you see this yesterday?
He backed up something we reported here before based on
a coastguard source that he said something like twenty one
percent of drug boats that were approached by the coast
guard are found to not have drugs. So this is
a coast guard whose job it is to wreck recognize
from up close, yeah, not even in the sky, from
(22:05):
like Tampa Bay or whatever, a drug boat and say stop,
we're going to board you. And eighty percent of the
time they're right. Twenty percent of the time they're like
our fault, go on about your business. We apologize and
we're not charging them, and we're not charging right, And exactly,
(22:27):
we used to kill them the survivors, Now we don't.
Now we just repatriate them, right.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
They're just being repatrioted action. Yeah, and so it's a
hell of a I mean, it's a hell of a lift.
And again, to take Rubio's point about your own hemisphere,
that is actually where if you are waging regime change wars,
if anything, I mean, we should be meticulous about legality
of armed conflicts period. But of course, when you're talking
(22:56):
about a regime change war in your own hemisphere, where
you could entacaganize other countries and by his own logic,
I'm just saying, like you could make the argument that
this is the type of thing that destabilizes the entire
region because it sends pink waves around Latin America's people
are furious, and that may actually end up happening because
of all of this. It's I mean, this gets into
(23:17):
the entire conversation about how this playbook has never really worked,
but that's probably for another day.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And meanwhile, one other piece of bizarre reporting that Soccer
and I did was confirmed by Trump. So we can
put up a six here. This is a truth social
from Donald Trump, where I challenge you to get through
all of this gibberish, how you pause this and try
to read through this, But basically what he is, what
(23:45):
Trump is sharing here is a theory that Venezuela in
twenty twenty and also in two thousand and eight, but
twenty twenty used their control of voting machines to flip
the election to Biden over Trump. So what we had reported,
(24:09):
what Sager and I had reported, is that Rubio, along
with his we need to stop the drugs argument, was
telling Trump that Venezuela stole the twenty twenty election from Trump,
and that then that's one reason that we needed to
go ahead and overthrow Maduro. This was a thing we
(24:32):
heard from multiple sources, confirmed a bunch of different ways,
and it was the kind of thing that in the
past I wouldn't even have reported because I thought it
would think it was too crazy. When I was burnt
by remember the Secretary of War thing, I had Pentagon sources,
had Pentagon sources telling me Pete Hegseth keeps saying he
wants to change the name to the War Department, and
(24:55):
you were like no, I was like, that's too stupid
to report me. So from now on, nothing is too
stupid to report. So I thought this was I thought
this was too stupid report I reported it anyway, Sager.
I reported it, And here's Trump just tweeting it out
that he that he's tweeting out this conspiracy theory that
Venezuela flipped the twenty twenty American election, not Venezuelan election,
(25:20):
American election. There's a related theory that Hugo Chavez flipped
Iowa two thousand and eight against Clinton for Obama. For
Obama the caucuses.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
That sounds like you believe.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
No, Like I think Obama clearly won Iowa. Yeah, yes,
we can.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
That was real, the Venezuelan and voting machines machine that
goes deep.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
And then there's a whole theory that Elon Musk sniffed
all this out and stopped it from happening in twenty
twenty four and that's why it wasn't stolen in twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Really.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
So meanwhile, Wnduro continues to dance. We got a five here,
Uh yeah, this, you know, so we'll see, Like.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
He's literally, if you're listening to this, he's dancing in
the streets of presumably Caracas. But he seems to be
in good spirits.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
He well, I mean, one reason I think he's in
good spirits is he keeps calling Trump's bluff. I think
what was he was supposed to be out by last Friday. Yeah,
and then so Trump keeps bringing out, bring the submarines,
bringing the aircraft carriers. You've got until Friday, we're bombing.
You close the airs, you must close the airspace, and
they don't close the airspace. And he's like, well, it's fine,
(26:39):
We're not gonna do anything about it. So the deal
is there for the taking. Trump just has to say yes.
I think it seems like Rubio is kind of staying
in the way of it because Rubio doesn't want a deal.
Rubio wants Maduro killed. Yeah, yeah, well he's willing to leave.
He doesn't want him just out. He wants him dead,
and he wants Machado put in. He doesn't want like,
(27:01):
he doesn't want a teaseful transition and elections. He wants
to install a South Florida puppet.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
He definitely that's the problem, right, and he doesn't That's why.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
She would get like four percent of the vote at
this point, so that you can't have an election.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
The idea that they're going to make a deal with
Maduro to have two years of his vice president is
not happening. That's obviously a non starter. So it seems
like intentionally non starter. This is the case.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
So also at this meeting, we can move over to
Pete Hegseth's troubles. Also at this meeting, hag Seth continued
to kind of back off of responsibility for the second
strike on September second that killed the survivors of the
first illegal strike. Let's roll be one here. I watched that.
Speaker 7 (27:52):
First strike life.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
As you can imagine, the Department of War, we got
a lot of things to do, so I didn't stick
around for the hour and two hours whatever where all
the sensitive side exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on
to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
That that commander had made the which he had the
complete authority to do.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision
to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
He sunk the boat, sunk the boat and.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Eliminated the threat, and he was the right call.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
We have his back.
Speaker 5 (28:24):
You didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that
first rut, I did not personally see survivors, but I
stand because the thing was on fire. I was exploded
in fire and smoke. You can't see any you got digital'.
This is called the folk of war. This is what
you and the press don't understand. You sit in your
conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nit pick,
(28:45):
and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about
kill everybody, phrases on anonymous sources, not based.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
In anything, not based in any truth at all.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
And then you want to throw up really irresponsible terms
about American heroes, about the judgment that they made. I
wrote a whole book on this topic because of what
politicians and the press does to war fire.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
So, first of all, these are drone attacks that were
launching at these boats. Why are they not in air
conditioned offices? Also, it's like you reporters sitting in your
air conditioned office. What you're saying criticizing our commanders who
are also sitting in air conditioned office. Hey, if sentcom
(29:27):
is a little warm, like, get up and turn down
the thermostat you can do it. You can do that, Yeah,
you can do it.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Well, And he's coming in Southcomb, sorry Southcomb. Yeah, he's
coming in real hot. Obviously, because they feel now with
the Washington Post report that the wind is at.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Their back and that they face in their face right.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Well, they feel like they have momentums. What I was saying,
like they feel like they hexeth I think feels really
comfortable right now. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
I think they feel like it's because of the Times story.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Or the because the Times. The Times is pushback on
the Post report, which obviously the Time story and you've
been posting about this is planetical.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
It was planted, but it was basically identical.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
Well, but Hegseeth feels he's like completely off the hook now,
because that's a distinction with a difference whether or not
he came in and said out of here or whether
he just said kill everyone and the admiral was the
one who Here's.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Where I disagree with you because the Post story, the
one distinction is that the post has him saying kill everybody, right,
heg Seth acknowledges he ordered lethal kinetic strikes, yes, and
he keeps repeating this phrase lethal kinetic strikes, lethal connect
(30:46):
strike means kill everybody. Like, So what he's trying to
say is he didn't say it colloquially. He just said
it in the military term. But the Post story didn't
say that heg Seth ordered the second strike. What the
Post story said is that Bradley interpreted the lethal kinetic
strike order to mean that the second strike should be taken,
(31:08):
and the Time said the same thing. So that's why
I don't quite understand why he feels like he has
the wind in his back, And that's why I was like,
why why he's back? You're mixing up your metaform.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
No, I think they I genuinely think they feel totally fine.
And you also saw he people on the internet thought
he was cooked because he had in early September three
September third, the day of the strike, said he watched
the whole thing. And now he's saying, well, yeah, but
you can't really tell in the moment exactly what's going on.
So anyway, all that is to say, I don't think
(31:40):
they're worried one bit when you look at the way
hag Seth is talking about that. And Trump would pardon
them anyway, even even if there were a problem, Trump
would pardon them.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Trump would part yeah, Trump, Yeah, Trump doesn't care. But
Trump does care about the bad press. He always ask
how's this playing, how's this playing? Yeah, And he doesn't
like that Republics are pushing back against him. Hegsa's whole
approach here. If you go back and look at the
time that he instituted new rules on the Pentagon and
(32:14):
basically kicked out the whole Pentagon press corps lines up
exactly with this, and so he so he kicks them
all out, tells them, you know, any if you want
to come and cover the Pentagon. You have to agree
only to speak to authorized sources. You cannot solicit information
from unauthorized sources. Another word for that is reporting. It's
(32:37):
like a journalism and then you can come into our
press briefings and then you can get a Pentagon access.
And he got what he wanted. So here is how
this new press core is covering this issue. Let's roll
be two.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
Does the Department of War plan on pursuing any sort
of legal action against the Washington Post And what consequences
will there be for lying to the American people, because
of course, the implication there was that Pete Hegseth and
Admiral Bradley are war criminals.
Speaker 8 (33:10):
It is frankly disgusting that the Washington Post would publish
something that is so insanely false. And we've seen this
from the mainstream media before, right anonymous sources that are
being quoted that probably have no idea what's going on.
And the Washington Post actually went so far as to
falsely attribute a quote to the Secretary of Defense of
War excuse me that he never said. That is preposterous
(33:33):
that they would write that and pass that off as
true journalism. So the Washington Post, I think readership should
think twice before reading that outlet again. It is disgraceful
that they call themselves journalists, and we told them as such.
Right we get press queries like we do from all
of you. We told them this story was completely fake
news on Thanksgiving evening with a three hour deadline, and
(33:55):
they still published it anyway. It's disgraceful.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
My point, fair is they are feeling pretty good now.
I feel like they think they flipped the narrative, and
I think that's why you saw Hegsith going in so
hot at the cabinet meeting and they're now having reporters.
If you were listening to this, you missed on the
corner of the screen.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Matt Gates and right behind him James O'Keeffe.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
James O'Keeffe right behind him.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
So the Pentagon this is an SNL called open that
was indistinguishable from an SNL called open.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
That clip was from a Pentagon press conference was about
half hour long yesterday where the new Pentagon Press corps
is all like MAGA new Media and Matt Gates, former
Congressman Matt Gates was there, actually asked a good regime
change venezuela question I don't know what you thought about
Kates this question, but he was the question what's your plan?
(34:44):
And he was wearing his representative, Matt Gates.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
She didn't even understand the question. If she did, she
answered a completely different question. It seemed like she didn't
even understand it. He asked, hey, when did the Iraq
war debatification turned hundreds of thousands of just regular government
employees into insurgents? Like, do you have a plan to
not do that again? Or is everybody associated with the
(35:07):
Maduro government going to be considered a narco terrorist? And
she answered, everyone in those boats, according to our intelligence,
is an narco trafficker. It's like, okay, you didn't listen
to the question. You didn't understand it. You don't know
about the batification. I mean, she would have been like
three at that at that time, I don't know how
old she is. She's like, can we just get back
to that guy who's asking if we're going to sue
the Washington Post?
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Right? Correct?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Yeah, they suck right. They call themselves journalists. You all
are journalists.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
It's an amazing setup.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
We gave you a little badge that says journalists.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
How bad is the Washington Post?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Kings very very bad, good question, excellent question. They are terrible.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Laura Lumer was also there.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
She was she asked an adversarial question was fine. Yah'll
give her that.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
It was fine, bonkers, but she wasn't asking how bad
is the Washington Price?
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Right? She asked, Muslim brotherhood is evil, So therefore, and
you're and you're designated some of them as terrorists, so
shouldn't you stop cuts her from using this American airbase?
Speaker 4 (36:03):
I actually think that's a fine question.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, especially from her right wing like she hates Muslims perspective. Question, like,
it's at least adversarial. Yeah, it's done the lineup with
my politics. That's not what I asked for in a journal.
It's just adversarials all I asked.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
And then there were the It was peppered with questions
from guys like that who were like, tell us, how
hard do you think you could smack the Washington Post
in the mouth? Kingsley That Yeah, three.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Hour deadline on Thanksgiving that's kind of dirty.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
That's shitty. That's not good. That's true. I don't know
if that's true, but that's not good. If that's what happened, that's.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
When you know, you have the story completely nailed and
you're not actually interested in hearing the lies from the government.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
Well, I mean, I'm sure their sources told them with
great confidence what they were telling them, and so they
probably I mean they.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Have in the room notes from the meeting. Like, if
you don't report that without confidence.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
If you have high level sources who are telling you
that the story might be incorrect, do your due diligence.
But you also still have two high level sources telling
you that.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
So I don't know, I don't know who knows what
went wrong on that story, if anything, but man, what
a what a time at the Pensgon.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Yes, indeed, let's move to.
Speaker 4 (37:22):
Tennessee, where Afton Bain did lose that special election last night,
but the margin was single digits. So this is a
plus twenty plus twenty two GOP district that Afton Baine
was expected to eat away that margin and did again
twenty two. She loses after Bain loses by eight points
(37:43):
to Republican Matt Van Epps. Eight points is in margin
Republicans are still feeling pretty comfortable about. I saw some
in the GOP consultant type world, like Matt Whitlock saying
it's basically a five alum fire because if there are
margin erosions like this for team points in other swing
districts in the midterms, that's going to be a bloodbath
(38:05):
for House Republicans. Obviously, that math is true. Right on
the other hand, special elections or special elections, we could
put see one on the screen. These are the results,
and this is Tennessee seventh obviously to replace Mark Green,
about ninety seven thousand votes as of right now, ninety
five percent of votes in for Van Abson, about eighty
one thousand votes for Afton Baines. So we're looking at
(38:27):
fifty four to forty five basically, and Afton bain I
think Ryan coming to forty five nearly half of the
electorate is definitely a win for populists. She didn't get
it quite as close as people wanted to. Some people
thought maybe she actually had a chance to win. Didn't
come down to anything quite that close.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
In order to win, she would have needed kind of
this this almost contradictory situation, which would have been enormous
excitement on the Democratic side, very little attention from the
Republican side. And so you've had this debate Breakout online,
which has said that Afton Bain was too left, you
(39:10):
know for the district. So you've got the Galasias types
saying if they had run a very boring centrist candidate
who you couldn't hit with anything, then actually she would
have she would have performed even better.
Speaker 5 (39:24):
Wrong.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah, the problem the problem with that analysis, and besides
just vibes and feelings and like the you know, biased
because we like her and when I share politics, the
problem with that analysis is that she blew it out
of the water in Nashville, and you know, she wins,
you know, seventy eight twenty two there expanded her margin
(39:47):
over Harris By like thirty or.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Something like, which, by the way, is kind of ironic
because the people in Nashville are the people who actually
love Nashville, who should have been devastated by that clip
of after Bain saying she hated Nashville and the people
outside of Nashville are already going to be the ones
that are.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
The ones they actually do hate just a little point. Yeah,
And what Bain was saying also was she hates the
Times Square tourist part of Nashville. So she also had
this one quote that was in every ad where she
said I'm a very radical person, and so the centrists
are like, that's that's that kills you. It's like, okay,
(40:24):
But the fact that she had so much support among
Democrats created a situation where she had thousands of door
knockers and you know, phone bankers and an enthusiastic base
of support that then put her within two percentage points
(40:46):
in the polls, which then brought in millions of dollars
from Republicans. So it's sort of like a chicken and
egg situation. Like, Okay, if you have a boring candidate
who doesn't generate any excitement among Demo then it's true
that you might not get the millions of dollars being
(41:07):
spent by Republicans, and then in a super low turnout
special election, you might be able to eke out those
last nine points and you might be able to claim
that district. But the problem let's even say that that's possible.
The problem there is that that's not representative of what
(41:28):
the midterms are going to look like. So turnout wound
up being roughly what it was I think in twenty
twenty two in this special election, which is really unusual,
like it's hard to match up midterm with a special
election turnout, So people were tuned in here. And why
that matters is that in the upcoming midterms of twenty
(41:49):
twenty six, you're not going to be able to sneak
through like everybody's going to know there's an election happening,
So you actually want to play. If this is an
exhibition match, you want to play on as similar conditions
as possible to the regular midterms. So now you know
(42:09):
that in a district like this plus twenty twenty plus
district Republican district, you can look for about a thirteen
point swing, thirteen fourteen point swing, whereas if you ran
some boring Centrists who snuck through just based on anti
Trump turnout, that doesn't tell you as much. So that
(42:30):
that would be my counter argument to the Iglesias types
that you might might actually be right that if you
could have kept turnout fifty to half of what it was,
that maybe enough of that tilt's democratic. But so what
like you then get annihilated in November in that same district.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Yeah, I don't think Ashon Bain no offense is the
best candidate. I don't think anyone would say that somebody
who had such a candid pod podcast is the best kid.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
You should have said it was PTSD from the war,
thing like that. But the idea of that culture wars
PTSD from the culture from the.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
Culture was, well, we all have that. But the idea
that that this debunks the point that populists make, and
I should say populist on the left and the right.
This goes back to Barry Goldwater. Literally, this goes back
to Ronald Reagan. Goldwater had the line of extremism and
defense of liberty is no vice, and what was it,
moderation and preciative justice is no virtue. And that was
(43:25):
basically to say these electability questions that you know are
going to send Gerald Ford or whomever, aren't necessarily I mean,
Reagan himself said bold colors with pale paint, with bold
colors instead of pale pastels. And the argument was that
the Reagan Revolution would be politically more powerful than moderate
Republicans at the ballot box because people are actually going
(43:48):
to believe what you say. People are actually or they're
going to believe you believe what you say. They may
not agree with you one hundred percent of the time,
but it's obviously a race by race designation. I mean,
if you're talking about running somebody who's super super maga
in you know, the Boston area, it's probably actually not
going to improve your margins. But in a special election
(44:09):
where you can flood the zone and you know, maybe
try to sneak someone past, that is different. So at
the other what was the Pennsylvania race not doctor oz
should I'm forgetting the really super maga candidate's name who
lost any like, probably lost Maston because Doug mashroon because
he was like right, you know what I mean? Like that,
(44:32):
those sometimes it's obvious that you needed just a better candidate,
but that will always get used to say, oh, it
was it's populism that's killing though, And sometimes you get
kookie populist candidates Christine O'Donnell example, that's a fun throwback
and the problem really is the candidate, but it's often
used as a smoke screen to say the populism was
(44:53):
the problem, not the candidate was the problem. Because populism
can be extremely energizing, especially in little special election type
races where you can send in a lot of money
and the base gets really excited and you bring attention
to the race. One final point, you made a really
interesting observation that if they thought they could sneak after
Bane past, they actually ended up getting a ton of
(45:17):
Fox News coverage for the race, which probably woke up
a bunch of Republicans in the area, Like they were
covering this race.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
A ton, right, right, So if you and maybe they
would have ended up covering any race at time, just
because there would be enough anti Trump energy that the
polls would show at least the competitive race, it certainly
made it more salacious that that they had the like
I hate country music, and I hate Nashville, and I'm
(45:44):
a radical person and you know all that well you
know video of her like you know, doing a sit
in and the state legislature, and they had they had
stuff to work with that that got the Fox News
bas riled up. Nashville. Twenty point swing, so even in
Nashville it didn't quite swing enough.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
That's it's significant though.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Twenty point swing is massive. Yeah, you don't see that
much in politics, especially with turnout that high right low
turnout in Nashville. Maybe you see a forty point swing,
but it's a much narrower number of aggregate votes.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
A Republican candidate could campaign on saying they hated Nashville
in Tennessee and everyone would know what they were talking about.
And that's increasingly about to happen, like, oh, the traffic,
all the New York Libs and the LA Libs all
moving to Nashville. So it's actually kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, they've been running against the cities for two hundred years.
It's funny, Yeah, two thousand years.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Maybe let's take a trip over to Nebraska, Ryan where
the Tyson Beef, where Tyson Beef is just shedding thousands
of jobs in a new announcement.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Yeah, heartbreaking story, but it doesn't have to be over. Yes,
if the federal government takes this sea, obviously they could
reverse this. So put up the first element here. So
about a week and a half ago, Tyson announced that
it would be closing one of the largest beef processing
plants in Nebraska in the town of Lexington. So this
(47:16):
is a processing plant that employs thirty two hundred people
in this town of just ten thousand people. But importantly,
it will also have national implications, and it doesn't have
to happen. The federal government could step in and stop
this because it is probably illegal, and we'll talk about
why in a second. But just for some background, nearly
(47:40):
five percent of the cattle that is slaughtered every day
goes through this processing plant, five percent in the whole country.
Fifteen percent of the slaughter that goes through in Nebraska
every day goes through this processing plant. Now, what the
mainstream press is reporting about the closure of this plant
(48:01):
is that this is because the size of the herd
is down and there's there's less cattle going through every plant.
In twenty twenty one, the herd size was ninety four million.
Last year the herd size was eighty seven million, so,
you know, down down seven million cattle. Significant reason for
that is that in May of this year, the Trump
(48:23):
administration banned the importation of Mexican cattle because of this parasite.
So I'm not saying that that was a bad move,
not blaming Trump for that necessarily, because this is a
parasite that would be devastating, you know, to the to
the US cattle industry if it creeped, you know, across
across the border. So the press seems to be mostly
(48:46):
satisfied with this with this answer that this is about
the number of number of cattle declining, So you have,
so we got to know, shut down this processing plant.
And it's a shame for this town of ten thousand. Now,
as you think about what's going to happen to this town,
you put up this next element. About a week after
it was announced this plant was closed, a contractor for Tyson,
(49:10):
who basically was contracted to like trash and clean up
around the plant, said it would be laying off. It's
one hundred and thirty nine workers, So thirty two hundred workers.
Icet add another one hundred and thirty nine workers. And
then if you think about it from there, everywhere that
these workers go is now screwed. Fast food restaurants, regular restaurants,
(49:36):
shopping centers, everywhere. This is like, this town will be
wiped off the map if this is allowed to stand.
But so I handed earlier, why might this be ilegal?
Dan Osborne is making this point. So Dan Osborne, as
viewers may recall, was the independent Senate candidate who lost
(49:57):
to deb Fisher last time. But he's running again.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
Who's the Pete Ricketts?
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Pete Ricketts like a billionaire, right, yeah, Like it's almost
comical at this point. So he's running as a billionaire
senator named Pete Ricketts, give me a break. And so
he's making the point that this appears to be an
anti violation of anti trust law. So let's run through
(50:22):
Osborne's argument. We can unpack this. So he says, I
believe Tyson's decision to shut down it's Lexington, Nebraska plant
instead of selling it is a ploy to manipulate cattle
and beef markets in violation of our anti trust laws.
Let's move to the next one. He says, we have
an anti trust law in the books right now called
the Packers and Stockyards Act. This law was passed in
nineteen twenty one to protect farmers and ranchers from concentrated
(50:45):
abuse of monopoly power in the livestock industry. The Act
makes it illegal for meat packers to quote engage in
any course of business or do any act for the
purpose or with the effect of, and that's important, manipulating
or controlling prices or restraining commerce unquote. By shutting the
plant down instead of selling it to a competitor, Tyson
(51:06):
is driving down the prices they have to pay to
ranchers for cattle and driving up the prices they can
charge to consumers for beef, which is the quote manipulating
or controlling price or restraining commerce part of the aforementioned Act.
This plant in Lexington he goes On accounted for five
percent of beef production in the US. By shutting down
(51:28):
a plant that produced such a large portion of beef
in this country, Tyson will cut demand for cattle and
reduce the number of buyers competing for ranchers livestock. With
this increased leverage, Tyson will be able to pay ranchers
less for their cattle because ranchers will have precious few
alternatives to sell to, if any. This is why a
monopolized food system is so dangerous. Nebraska ranchers will suffer
(51:51):
the most because they will lose a local buyer. Normally,
when a politician speaks, I would try to interpret it
a little bit for people and put it into language
that you canunderstand. But I don't think I need to
do that here. Emily, what was what did you think
when you saw this this news in Osborne's reaction.
Speaker 4 (52:07):
To it, I mean, it's amazing how Dan Osborne, who
is getting some support from national dem organizations, is still
technically running as an independent. But this guy has his
finger on the pulse of the conversation in a way
that no establishment politicians do. And obviously Dan Osborne has
(52:28):
a background where you can see, I mean, you and
I talked about this a lot, like maybe the biggest
barrier to entry is just class in politics and journalism,
and Dan didn't come from the traditional political background. He's
still what just a couple of years into his political journey,
and it shows because he understands. But also I just
(52:50):
have to add, like this was a really sophisticated, I
think analysis.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Straightforward of how queen get it.
Speaker 4 (52:59):
Concentrate power, I mean, and that is just it's it's
not just that it's it's hard for people to talk
about because they're taking a bunch of money from billionaires
or whatever is that they have never really bothered to
care and they don't understand that the average Nebraskan sees
this as kind of a class issue, Like obviously it's
going to have an economic devastating and devastating economic ripple effect,
(53:21):
but on top of that, it's also infuriating to people
because it looks like billionaires organizing the economy in a
way that they profit and the normal people get screwed.
And so there's just it's almost a culture war. You know,
it's it's economic superficially, but it's I think it hits
people as a culture war question, if that makes sense?
Speaker 3 (53:40):
Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, what could be
more culture war than destroying an entire town.
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Right for multimillionaire billionaire profits. Yeah, massive corporations hurting the
little guy, right, Like, that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
And so that the counter argument that you'd see from
folks who support the free market would be, well, a,
they would just say, let companies do whatever they want,
and we don't like federal laws like antitrust laws period.
Speaker 4 (54:09):
Oh, but they'll like the laws that help them consolidate
their power.
Speaker 3 (54:13):
They do like that. But the other argument that they
would make would be, well, Tyson has been reporting and
its quarterly reports that it is losing money, losing significant
amounts of money it is at its processing plants. That
because the cattle hevert is down, that you know, they're
they're operating at a loss, and you can't require them
to operate a laws. I would say that they they are.
(54:37):
What the counter argument to that would be that they're
cooking the books, that because they have such market control,
because they can because and because they are so friendly
with the other big three you know companies, they're helping
they're basically setting prices, and the the the processing plant
(54:59):
part of their operation is overall a part of their
price setting, and so they might be reporting on their
on their books that they're you know, they're they're taking
x loss when it comes to the processing. But the
but the business that they're doing in the processing is
directly related to their control of the supply that goes
(55:20):
out to the market, which is related to their ability
to set prices, which and they're doing quite well overall.
So it's like, okay, you're not really okay, you're claiming
to be losing money on the process, but actually it's
it's furthering this extremely profitable monopolistic business that that you're operating,
which will now be more profitable because of Osborne's point
(55:42):
that now you're going to pay farmers less who are
going to have to drive their cattle much further. Uh,
and you're gonna you know, cut supply further, which allows
you to then increase prices at the grocery store, right
people who are buying beef.
Speaker 4 (55:59):
Well, by the way the Trump administration is talking constantly
about beef prices and they're actually broke. Rollins talks about
cattle like this is they know, they're populous enough to
know that it's a serious concern and problem in the economy.
And so that puts Pete Ricketts in a rather interesting
position because Pete Ricketts is not really a populist. And
(56:19):
so here you have the competition between Dan Osbourne, who's
technically an independent, and a Republican who probably doesn't really
want to talk about all this stuff, even though he's
not like a he's not like a realignment Republican.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
He's not going to like to talk about this at all, right.
Speaker 4 (56:38):
And so it puts as it sets up a veeh,
you don't.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Want to say, such a shame. Yeah, And we should
be there for the workers. We should retrain them exactly,
learn to code.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
You can expect something that sounds a little bit like that.
And this just underscores the point that we have to
take a trip out to Nebraska to cover this campaign
because it's really becoming interesting. It was always going to
be interesting.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
Yeah, he's he's a mechanic and he's the only major
poll I know of. Was released by Osborne's campaign itself
found him trailing forty six forty five to Rickets. So
it's going it's going to be like this will be
close a way. The new poll has him leading anyway,
(57:21):
so it's it's going to be a close race. And
I think that Osborne is going to just hammer this
point over and over and if Trump So here's where
politics and electoral politics can be useful. Like, hey, if
you're in the Trump administration and you're watching and you
want to deprive Osborne of this issue because you want
(57:43):
to save your billion billionaire buddy Rickets, tell Tyson they
have to keep the plan open that that you find
it to be, tell them you find it to be
in violation of the Anti Trust Act.
Speaker 4 (57:53):
They might do that to neutralize the problem.
Speaker 5 (57:55):
Do it.
Speaker 4 (57:56):
I mean, they obviously have a really closely divided Senate.
The Senate is in competition, so they may honestly just
do it.
Speaker 3 (58:02):
Like you let this plant close, you were probably gonna
lect Osborne.
Speaker 4 (58:07):
The Tyson pack gives more to Republicans than Democrats that
it probably doesn't surprise anyone, but I'm sure they have
an open line of communication with Tyson and.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Let Ricketts take credit for it. Let him come in
be like, look, I saved this plant.
Speaker 4 (58:19):
M maybe it'll happen, and like.
Speaker 3 (58:22):
That the point is to make people's lives better. So yeah,
if this threat of Osborne, like, you know, one of
the things that was the best for American workers throughout
the second half of the twentieth century was the threat
of communism, and so American the American government and American
companies were much more generous to workers because of the threat.
(58:44):
Osborne is not the Soviet Union, but Osborne's threat. And like,
if you know, so keep the plan open or you
get Osborne? How about that? How's that for a deal?
Speaker 4 (58:54):
What an interesting thing? Well, so, actually I was telling
Crystal this recently. I was you they were texting and
I was like, should I watch Roger and Me or
Bowling for Columbine? And you were like, I was trying
to choose between the two on a Friday nights love
a very exciting life, and Ryan, it was like, you
got to do Roger and Me. And it's funny because
(59:14):
Roger and Me is so coded like it was it
was then coded as like left wing hippie stuff, but
it's now so coded as a first Yeah, it's America first,
but what Roger and Me does a really good job
zooming into is how these plants are part of an
ecosystem and a really fragile ecosystem, and so what can
(59:35):
happen is sad, just like personally sad obviously, but also
it's like devastating a swath of a state of like
that that can when when it ripples out. It's not
just about the plant, it's not just about retraining those
workers telling them to learn to code. It can devastate
the culture of an entire region.
Speaker 3 (59:56):
It's criminal, right, It's a crime visited upon this entire community.
Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
And all that is to say, Dan Osborne is getting
out in front of this because he has good political
instincts and anybody who's who's not in Nebraska is behind
the ball like they're missing it.
Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Also, the other thing you could say is factory farming
is evil. So maybe the Trump administration actually is just
strongly against factory farming.
Speaker 4 (01:00:20):
I want to know what Robert F. Kennedy j thinking about.
Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Deduced the amount of suffering from animals.
Speaker 4 (01:00:25):
Let's hear from RFK Junior about the Tyson plant
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