Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 3/18/26: Trump Says He Will Take Cuba, Ro Khanna VS ADL, Aipac Loses Key Elections, Dem Party Attack On Platner

Transcript

3/18/26: Trump Says He Will Take Cuba, Ro Khanna VS ADL, Aipac Loses Key Elections, Dem Party Attack On Platner · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
• 0:01
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• 0:33
  Speaker 3: When you're a star, they let you do it.
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump has some ideas about Cuba.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: Here he is in the Oval Office.
• 0:40
  Speaker 5: I think Cuba is in its own way, if you
• 0:43
  Speaker 5: know tourism and everything else. It's a beautiful island, great weather.
• 0:47
  Speaker 5: They're not in a hurricane zone, which is nice for
• 0:49
  Speaker 5: a change. You know, they won't be asking us some
• 0:51
  Speaker 5: money for hurricanes every week. But I think Cuba seed
• 0:56
  Speaker 5: the end. You know, all my life I've been hearing
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: about the United States in Cuba. When will the United
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: States do it?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: I do believe I'll be the.
• 1:04
  Speaker 5: Honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That'd be
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: good honor. That's a big honor, taking Cube in some form,
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: you know, taking Guba. I mean, whether I free it,
• 1:17
  Speaker 5: take it. I think I could do anything I want
• 1:19
  Speaker 5: with it. You want another truth? A very weekend nation
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: right now. They were for a long time, very violent,
• 1:28
  Speaker 5: very violent leaders. Casher is a very violent leader. His
• 1:31
  Speaker 5: brothers a very violent leader, extremely violent. That's how they governed.
• 1:37
  Speaker 5: They governed with violence. But a lot of people would
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: like to go back.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: What's crazy is that you can sort of see a
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: lot of people like Peter Deucey doesn't have a soul,
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: and yet you see it draining from his body.
• 1:50
  Speaker 6: Peter has a soul there, he does.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: He does clearly he lost it right there.
• 1:53
  Speaker 6: What did he say?
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: He was like, take it, take it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: You can just see the life draining from him. He's like,
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: what am my watching right now?
• 2:00
  Speaker 6: We're doing what? Now?
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Just take it?
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: I might free it, I might just take it. And
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: it's a kind of toddler approach to the world. But like,
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: I'm sure you have it too, that you're watching it
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: and you're like, okay, we can't do another day of this,
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: like the sun cannot set on another day with this
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: man as the most powerful one in the world, Like
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: like call a manager, somebody needs to do something.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: It's wild stuff like why this has to be stopped.
• 2:33
  Speaker 7: It's like not at all surprising that he's talking like this,
• 2:37
  Speaker 7: but you know his let's if we if we steal man,
• 2:41
  Speaker 7: how Trump, if he were sitting here, would defendless privately,
• 2:45
  Speaker 7: He wouldn't say this publicly.
• 2:46
  Speaker 6: Well actually maybe would say it publicly clearly, saving public
• 2:49
  Speaker 6: It's part of the deal.
• 2:50
  Speaker 7: Right, he's negotiating, he's putting the uncertainty. He's doing the
• 2:53
  Speaker 7: Kissinger Madman theories, injecting uncertainty into the situation as as
• 2:59
  Speaker 7: leverage over Q. But I think actually by what we're
• 3:01
  Speaker 7: just seeing him there is he's musing aloud about what
• 3:05
  Speaker 7: could happen in Cuba over the next couple of weeks
• 3:07
  Speaker 7: after Iran, after Venezuela. So Venezuela goes well from his standard,
• 3:13
  Speaker 7: from his perspective, although that could certainly.
• 3:16
  Speaker 6: Blow up at any moment as well.
• 3:18
  Speaker 7: We'll see goes on to Iran, and now he's feeling
• 3:21
  Speaker 7: he's going to go on to Cuba.
• 3:24
  Speaker 6: Iran is a.
• 3:25
  Speaker 7: Situation where he also lacked certainty. We know this every
• 3:29
  Speaker 7: single day.
• 3:30
  Speaker 6: We're learning this. We talked about it earlier in the show.
• 3:32
  Speaker 7: There wasn't some grand five D Chess plan in Iran,
• 3:37
  Speaker 7: and he seems to be perfectly content with how that's
• 3:39
  Speaker 7: working out as a show of American force in power.
• 3:42
  Speaker 7: He clearly doesn't have some grand five D Chess plan
• 3:45
  Speaker 7: in Cuba. He just wants to exert force and let
• 3:48
  Speaker 7: the chips fall where they may.
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm headed to Cuba this week this weekend
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: at Miami tomorrow and then Cuba Friday for a reporting trip,
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: and so I'll have more on particularly what the Cubans
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: are offering.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: It's right, CIA is gonna install me.
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: In power there, and so I'll have more on what
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: the Cubans are offering to get this madman to not
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: go to war with Cuba. The group Progressive International funded
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: some polling that we'll talk about on where Americans stand
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: on that. We'll talk about that in a minute, And
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: I should have more next week when I come back,
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: because what they're offering is is quite surprising, or and
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: maybe it actually at this point isn't surprising because because
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: they're under perhaps more intense pressure than they've ever ever
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: been under. Uh, there is a crime against humanity unfolding
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: right now, a war crime, an active war. The US
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: is actively blockading the island from getting oil shipments. They
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: put out some policy what they claimed was a policy
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: tweak that would allow private companies to import some oil.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: It's having very little effect. And what's kind of a
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: policy was kind of always in place. So they're blocking
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: Mexico and everybody else, including Russia and others, from sending oil.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: And we can put up D two. Over the last
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: day or two, that has led to a complete collapse
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: of the power grid. And I was talking to some
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: Cuban officials yesterday who said that significant parts of Havana
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: now have you know, have gotten power back on, relying
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: on solar for the most for the most part, some
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: natural gas, what oil. They're able to do ration you know,
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: they've gotten extremely good at rationing over the over the
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: many decades that they've been in power. This is leading
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: to nursing homes, hospitals, schools, all.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: You know, reaching collapse.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: When you deprive an island of some nine to eleven
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: million people of electricity, that inserts itself into the vulnerabilities
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: of people's lives and ways that can be fatal. You
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: just think about the people that you know in your life.
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: What would happen if all of a sudden there's no electricity,
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: and what things do they need to survive? You know,
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: young people, middle aged people who are healthy, you know,
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: we can survive. But people who are facing you know,
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: significant disabilities or difficulties can't well.
• 6:33
  Speaker 7: And they're also turning to China for solar yes, which
• 6:38
  Speaker 7: the entire Trump administration is supposed to be, of course,
• 6:41
  Speaker 7: undermining the international power of China and its foreign policy,
• 6:47
  Speaker 7: its efforts to make foreign policy inroads, let alone this.
• 6:51
  Speaker 6: Close to the United States.
• 6:52
  Speaker 7: A lot of the solar support now Washington Post report
• 6:56
  Speaker 7: the headline Trump has choked off Cubas oil supplied, China
• 6:59
  Speaker 7: is stepping in with solar not coming from Beijing.
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: So many headlines around the world where you're like, who
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: is the good guy, who's the back guy in this situation?
• 7:08
  Speaker 7: What Trump just said in the Oval Office, when people
• 7:12
  Speaker 7: in the United States look at Cuba and they look
• 7:15
  Speaker 7: at Cuban propaganda and they say this is ridiculous, I mean,
• 7:20
  Speaker 7: it reminds me actually of the Mark Carney speech that
• 7:22
  Speaker 7: he gave earlier this year where he said basically, the
• 7:24
  Speaker 7: pretense is gone, and the pretense was important. It was
• 7:27
  Speaker 7: kind of a muddled message, right like Trump is, he's
• 7:31
  Speaker 7: proving Mark Carney correct because he's just saying, I do
• 7:33
  Speaker 7: believe I'll have the honor of taking Guba and you know,
• 7:36
  Speaker 7: maybe by force.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: He's just maybe I'll free it.
• 7:39
  Speaker 7: Maybe not everything that, like a Smedley Butler accused the
• 7:43
  Speaker 7: United States of Trump is distilling into sound bites.
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: Explicitly, he's just.
• 7:48
  Speaker 7: Coming out and saying you don't need to get him
• 7:49
  Speaker 7: on tapes like Nixon. He's literally just saying it. And
• 7:54
  Speaker 7: it's proving like to have the president of the United
• 7:57
  Speaker 7: States talk like that about how maybe you'll just take
• 7:59
  Speaker 7: this country. It's what their propaganda has been telling them
• 8:02
  Speaker 7: the United States is doing for years, and it's what
• 8:05
  Speaker 7: people have been fighting and saying, no, that's not what
• 8:07
  Speaker 7: the US is doing.
• 8:07
  Speaker 6: This is about the Cuban people.
• 8:08
  Speaker 7: It's about liberating the Cuban people, is about giving the
• 8:11
  Speaker 7: Cuban people agency.
• 8:12
  Speaker 6: And yet you have the president of.
• 8:13
  Speaker 7: The United States, he's not wrong that he has technically
• 8:17
  Speaker 7: the force and the might to just quote take Cuba
• 8:19
  Speaker 7: depending on what he's willing to do.
• 8:21
  Speaker 6: But he's just saying it now.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: Whether he could hold it would be an interesting question.
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: I think absolutely they could go in and they could
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: probably you know, capture the president, but whether or not
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: they could hold it if they actually organized a kind
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: of gorilla insurgency, because there's a whole other other question.
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: The Cuban president this morning kind of fired back saying
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: that they would that they that they are committed to resisting,
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: you know, if if the US is committed to using
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: force against them. Now, Marco Rubio was asked about this
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: in the in the Oval office. Let's jump to D
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: four because I think there's some context that. So here's
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: Rubio talking about the Cuban economy.
• 9:07
  Speaker 8: The bottom line is their economy doesn't work. It's a
• 9:09
  Speaker 8: non functional economy. It's an economy that has survived. It's
• 9:12
  Speaker 8: for forty that revolution, it's not even a revolution. That
• 9:15
  Speaker 8: thing they have has survived on subsidies from the Soviet
• 9:18
  Speaker 8: Union and now from Venezuela. They don't get subsidies anymore.
• 9:20
  Speaker 8: So they're in a lot of trouble and the people
• 9:22
  Speaker 8: in charge and they don't know how to fix it.
• 9:24
  Speaker 8: So they have to get new people in charge.
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: Rubio keeps trying to say that the problems with the
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Cuban economy are the the communist regime. But I'd like
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: him to try to do a thought experiment. Let's say
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: that Miami, it's all of Dade County, was an ireland,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: and you had warships around it that blocked oil from
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: getting into all energy from getting into Miami.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Now, let's say you you couldn't use a credit.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: Card in Miami because we're calling them state sponsors of
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: terror or and and we're sanctioning them. First of all,
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: Miami without credit you would not have you not have
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: a single audie on that island.
• 10:09
  Speaker 8: So uh.
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: Trying to run and and so you often see people
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: saying like, well, Okay, it's only the US that won't
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: trade with them.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: They can trade with the entire world.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: No, because we've designated them as state sponsors of terror.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: Any other country that does business with them then can't
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: do business with us. So we blocked them from doing
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: business with everybody.
• 10:32
  Speaker 9: We just squeezed Mexico from We just squeezed Mexco right,
• 10:36
  Speaker 9: and we also we even went after their tourist industry
• 10:40
  Speaker 9: from Europeans used to go to Cuba, and you know,
• 10:43
  Speaker 9: significant numbers, and we put in a rule that said,
• 10:47
  Speaker 9: if you're a European and you go to Cuba for vacation,
• 10:51
  Speaker 9: you can no longer have visa free travel to the
• 10:54
  Speaker 9: United States.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: If we're so confident that our system is so perior
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: and theirs is so inferior, why not just let it
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: go and see what happens. Well, that's how would Miami
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: do if you were told you couldn't have a tourist
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: economy anymore.
• 11:10
  Speaker 7: I was gonna say, I feel like one of the
• 11:12
  Speaker 7: reasons that Trump should and we've seen.
• 11:15
  Speaker 6: Some like detent style plans.
• 11:17
  Speaker 7: I saw someone referring to it as like parastroika, Cuban
• 11:20
  Speaker 7: parastroka on acts that actually don't look bad. They sort
• 11:23
  Speaker 7: of look like Obama era plans, to be perfectly honest,
• 11:27
  Speaker 7: But one of the reasons that you should pursue something
• 11:29
  Speaker 7: like that is precisely because I'm fully confident that our
• 11:33
  Speaker 7: system is superior.
• 11:34
  Speaker 6: And I may disagree on this, but economics, yeah, let
• 11:37
  Speaker 6: them right, that's fine. Yeah, let's let's see what happens.
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: Liberate the Cuban people.
• 11:41
  Speaker 7: But yeah, so this is the best way to actually
• 11:45
  Speaker 7: undermine the regime might be to let the regime do
• 11:49
  Speaker 7: what you think.
• 11:49
  Speaker 6: Will undermine it. Yeah, but that's the that's the argument.
• 11:52
  Speaker 7: But and and also allow people to have more agency
• 11:57
  Speaker 7: economically and the like. But that's what the plans are
• 12:00
  Speaker 7: on the table right now. Is basically they actually kind
• 12:02
  Speaker 7: of remind me you were covering in time, but they
• 12:04
  Speaker 7: kind of remind me of what we saw out of
• 12:06
  Speaker 7: the Obama administration, like allowing foreign investments to come in
• 12:10
  Speaker 7: or US investments to come in, allowing more tourism.
• 12:13
  Speaker 6: That sort of stuff.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: Yes, and Trump actually has the trademark for Trump Havanna.
• 12:19
  Speaker 6: It lapsed. I checked this.
• 12:20
  Speaker 7: It laughed in like twenty twenty two, but he did
• 12:22
  Speaker 7: trade market and that's again.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: We're going to go get it.
• 12:25
  Speaker 6: You should go get it right now. It's wide open
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: unless he redid it. But I checked the last week.
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: When I go to Avana, first thing I'm gonna do,
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: go down to the I'm warning you Trump, I'm going
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: down to the trademark headquarters and I'm going to patent
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: Trump Havana.
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: You actually should do this.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: So it put up D three real quickly.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: The Cubans are saying, and this is not exactly new,
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: reported is new, it's call it new if that helps.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: They're saying that we'll allow nationals living abroad, So that's
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: Miami Cubans basically to invest in and own businesses on
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: the island. This is an olive branch, you know, to Miami.
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: The problem is if they do that, they will be
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: sued by other Miami Cubans and taken a federal court
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: and have and their investment will be seized. So it's
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: ironically it's not the Cuban government that is preventing investment
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: by using the state apparatus in Cuba.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: It is the US.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: We don't we don't allow investment because we say that
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: because of the revolution, because there was property confiscated. If
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: there's a new investment that is related to the confiscation
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: and then it's seized. So we're so deeply opposed to confiscation.
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: We confiscate things constantly. So there's some new new polling
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: on how Americans feel about this, And I wanted to
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: run through the organization Progressive in International, which is helped
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: to organize the reporting trip that I'm going on this weekend,
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: did this polling and a couple, just a couple of
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: key numbers you can put up when it comes to
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: the US approach to the Cuban government, which the following
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: comes closer to your view. The US should use force
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: to remove the Cuban government, You should use diplomacy, or
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: the Cuban people should decide on their own. The support
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: for use of force basically non existent. Eight percent of
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: Trump voters I think we should do what Trump wants
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: to do. The Cuban Yes, they're all in Miami and
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: some of them in New Jersey, and God bless them. Yeah,
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: God bless them my in laws and seven percent of them,
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: seven percent of total people. Everyone else is like either
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: if this is up to Cuba or is saying we
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: should use diplomacy.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: They also asked, how do you feel about this naval blockade?
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: So you've got twenty eight percent of Trump voters are
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: supportive of a blockade. So that's a non trivial number,
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: and I think it reflects the kind of hostility that
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: a lot of older people in this country have just
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: towards communism.
• 15:04
  Speaker 6: But a lot of Cubans as well, but.
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: Still thirty nine percent opposed. So and among the public overall,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: at you know, fifty six to eighteen opposed, So it's
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: not it's not remotely close. And then finally put it
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: last one, do you see Cuba as an extraordinary threat?
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: And thirty four percent of Trump voters see Cuba as
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: an extraordinary threat, that's the highest number of anybody. Thirty
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: five percent say it's not, thirty and thirty say they're
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: not sure. Overall, by a more than two to one margin,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: people say it's not an extraordinary threat.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: I don't see like how I guess it's communism.
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: And if you're over seventy you're going to say it's
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: an extraordinary threat, like extraordinary threat of what producing like
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: cancer cures.
• 15:58
  Speaker 7: Well, the threat at this point might be what we're
• 16:03
  Speaker 7: pushing even further, which is China does have spy stations
• 16:08
  Speaker 7: in Cuba. That's not like crazy propaganda, that's a thing
• 16:11
  Speaker 7: that exists. And so you can create a threat if
• 16:14
  Speaker 7: you keep pushing Cuba.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: And closer Chinese spy stations too ectly.
• 16:18
  Speaker 7: In this building, but that's where you could keep pushing
• 16:22
  Speaker 7: Cuba closer, closer to China and create a more significant threat.
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this Chinese for for the kind of communist international
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: out there, Chinese have been a real disappointment when it
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: comes to you know, there's been there was some hope
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: that Chinese would help Cubans out there. They're doing more
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: than anybody else, but they're not doing much. They're they're
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: they're just not They're not the kind of country that's
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: kind of going out on a limb for people in
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: the way that say the Soviet.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: Union used to.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: But and look where the Soviet Union is and look
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: where China is, so you know, yeah, well they learn
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: can yeah, can't, can't fault them, and we can put
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: up this final element. This was the Diaz Canal post
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: that I had talked about earlier. The US publicly threatens
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: Cuba almost daily with overthrowing the constitutional order by force,
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: and it uses an outrageous pretext the harsh limitations of
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: the weakened economy that they have attacked and sought to
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: isolate for more than six decades. They intend and announced
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: plans to seize the country, its resources, its properties, and
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: even the very economy they seek to strengthen to make
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: us surrender. Only in this way can the fierce economic
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: war be explained, which is applied as collective punishment against
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: the entire people in the face of the worst scenario,
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: Cuba is accompanied by certainty any external aggressor will clash
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: with an impregnable resistance. Diaz Canal, the president there is
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: not super popular.
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: And casters are still running the country or the family.
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: Uh, I don't know. I don't know how much that's true.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: I think you know, because.
• 17:58
  Speaker 7: That's the New York Times is the Trump plan is
• 18:00
  Speaker 7: to remove diaz Canal, but continue allowing the Castro family
• 18:04
  Speaker 7: to stay in power, like in Adelsia Rodriguez way.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: Which is so weird because like Cuba transitioned away from
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: the Castro family and we want to put them back
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: in now.
• 18:12
  Speaker 7: But again, this is where Trump's language of like, well,
• 18:14
  Speaker 7: I'm just gonna take it.
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: I'm going to do what I want.
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: And then they're orchestrating this plan from Washington about what
• 18:19
  Speaker 7: should happen in Cuba. He's just putting it into words,
• 18:25
  Speaker 7: making it explicit.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: But I'll have more for you next week. Yes, when
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: I'm back on that point.
• 18:30
  Speaker 7: Looking forward to that. We are doing some interesting like
• 18:34
  Speaker 7: the oil Trump is, what was this in late February
• 18:40
  Speaker 7: there's just so much news it's easy to forget about this.
• 18:42
  Speaker 7: But in late February quote, the Trump administration began allowing
• 18:46
  Speaker 7: US petrol products such as diesel to be sold directly
• 18:48
  Speaker 7: to keep US private sector circummending the long standing nineteen
• 18:51
  Speaker 7: sixty US embargo. That's where USA Today report about how
• 18:54
  Speaker 7: this is part of a grand plan from Mark Rubio
• 18:59
  Speaker 7: working in tandem Trump, and that just again is Trump
• 19:02
  Speaker 7: going faster than Rubio has this Today said there is
• 19:06
  Speaker 7: a master plan for Cuba. Rubio has it, and Rubio's
• 19:10
  Speaker 7: advisors have it. And this is like again, it's a
• 19:14
  Speaker 7: generational plan for Cuban Americans. And so is Trump just
• 19:17
  Speaker 7: going to be like, yep, Cuba is falling and then
• 19:20
  Speaker 7: undermine this grand strategy possibly?
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: And you know who one of the leading advocates of
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: Cuban statehood was throughout the years, Jefferson Davis. You can
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: you can look up his you can look up his
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: Senate speeches. It was part of his expansion of slavery plan. Yeah,
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: I remember that you can go west, but you can
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: also then he said go southeast down to Cuba.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Fun fact, he picked.
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: Up syphilis there and is fond memories when after the
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: Civil War, when the Union imprisoned him, his syphilis flare
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: up was so bad it blinded him, which there is
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: not much justice in history. But thinking about Jefferson Davis
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: in a rat infested dungeon, blind due to the syphilist
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: that he picked up trying to ennext Cuba into a
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: slave colony, a little bit of justice.
• 20:11
  Speaker 7: I saw the Jefferson Davis syphilis infection at Bonnau like
• 20:15
  Speaker 7: ten years ago.
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: It was the hell of a show.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: So this is like, that's a show. That's a man.
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 20:21
  Speaker 7: I looked forward to your screenplay about this though, because that's.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: Like something you've one man's screenplay.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Just Jefferson Davis in his blind dungeon.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: It's your vagina monologue, the Davis monologueloge love it.
• 20:35
  Speaker 6: Oh boy, all right, let's just cut.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: The show and start writing this.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: Yes, oh wait, no, we have two more segments, Rocanna
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: versus Apac in the ADL.
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: Usually when Roe is on the screen it means we
• 20:47
  Speaker 6: have him in studio.
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: We don't have him in studio today, he's.
• 20:50
  Speaker 6: Here in spirit. We're going to talk now about e one.
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: Put this up on the screen headline from well this
• 20:57
  Speaker 7: is actually the tweet from the Jewish Insider. Writer in
• 21:00
  Speaker 7: the story, says Jonathan Greenblat, CEO of the ADL, called
• 21:03
  Speaker 7: that two Democratic lawmakers, Chris van Holland and Rocana, from
• 21:06
  Speaker 7: the main stage of the organizations Never is Now conference
• 21:09
  Speaker 7: in Manhattan, accusing them of perpetua waiting anti Semitism. Right,
• 21:14
  Speaker 7: if you could tell us about so, Greenblat, It's not
• 21:17
  Speaker 7: a surprise in any way whatsoever that these criticisms are
• 21:20
  Speaker 7: being leveled. It's apparently over disagreement over the over Roe
• 21:26
  Speaker 7: saying that Israel pushed the United States It's war unclear
• 21:31
  Speaker 7: into war in Iran, that Israel pushed the US into
• 21:33
  Speaker 7: war with Iran. It's unclear whether Jonathan Greenblatt has made
• 21:35
  Speaker 7: similar criticisms of Marco Rubio, speaker of Mike Dotza, or
• 21:40
  Speaker 7: perhaps don't trump himself. But we could put the next
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: elements up on the screen here. This became an all
• 21:47
  Speaker 7: out Twitter war yesterday. Rocanno a week ago posted the
• 21:52
  Speaker 7: assault on Israeli Americans in San Jose Well speaking Hebrew
• 21:55
  Speaker 7: is horrific. This kind of anti Semitism is no place
• 21:57
  Speaker 7: in our community. I unequivocally condemned these attacks.
• 21:59
  Speaker 6: They sail.
• 21:59
  Speaker 7: It's best how the candibal and prosecuted. Someone posted on
• 22:02
  Speaker 7: acts literally a week ago. This is what Rokanna said.
• 22:05
  Speaker 7: We can move on to the next element. Roe replied,
• 22:09
  Speaker 7: facts don't matter to Greenblatt. He is a Trump apologist
• 22:12
  Speaker 7: who attacked Obama's nuclear deal defense elon. It is basically
• 22:15
  Speaker 7: a show for the Trump administration and NASA Yaho. Sad
• 22:17
  Speaker 7: to see he has zero respect among any House Democrats anymore. Ryan,
• 22:22
  Speaker 7: You've covered these types of disputes for many years.
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: What do you make of it?
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: Uh, Rokanna is really taking the fight, you know, directly
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: to Apak in a way that you know, nobody other
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: than say Rashida talib Or ilan omar Is has been
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: willing to do. And they did it because you know,
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: APAC took the fight to them, you know when they
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: were like they were elected to Congress in twenty eighteen
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: and Apak literally spun off the organization DMFI explicitly to
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: like just go after to leave in omark, so like
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: the fight came to them, whereas Congress and Khana is
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: like taking it taking it to them. And he's and
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: he's what he's and he's linking the A D L
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: and A pack together. If you put up the four
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: APAC you know, hit back at him saying, you know, uh,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: he's they said facts like you applauding a group that
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: is trying to drive pro Israel Democrats out of politics,
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: or you sitting with a podcasters designers like they're they're
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: laying out all the things there that they're upset with
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: him about. And he responds, when will a PAC and
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: a d L be merging, green Blatt, You've sucked up
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: enough to the Trump administration you can probably get the
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: merger approved in this administration. That is, yeah, So because
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: the Anti Trust Division at the d J has become
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: a complete kind of pay to play operation with just
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: to shake down the corporate shakedown you want to merger,
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: you know, you gotta you gotta, yeah, pay pay pay
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: the piper at DJU, the judge and the.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Live Nation ticketmaster case.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: He seems to think that that's the case and recently
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: told d o J hold on to all of your
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: communications because I might be looking into this. So that's
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: what Rocana is referring to there, that if a ad
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: L and a PAC want to merge and just and
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: stop the pretense anymore that there's that there's a difference
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: between them, they should do that.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Because green Blat it is the Anti Defamation League.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: He's supposed to be combating anti Semitism.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: That's not what he does.
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: Like he's he he does basically what a PAC does,
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: which a PAC fine, Like you want to be you know,
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: you want to support the US Israel relationship and get fun,
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: you know, and spend money in elections, Like that's legal,
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: you can do that. Like that's that's your that's your goal.
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: But that's not what green Blad is doing. Like green
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: Blad is not doing the semity. He's doing what a
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: PAC is doing.
• 24:59
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I see saying and I was saying this on
• 25:03
  Speaker 7: after part of the other day. But like, there are
• 25:05
  Speaker 7: two things that need to be balanced. One is the
• 25:08
  Speaker 7: reasonable two reasonable reasonable concerns that need to be balanced.
• 25:13
  Speaker 7: One is the reasonable concern of Jews given that, as
• 25:18
  Speaker 7: Roe pointed out the other day, anti Semitism exists, given
• 25:22
  Speaker 7: that the industrial scale genocide of Jewish people existed in
• 25:29
  Speaker 7: living memory, like it exists in living memory of people
• 25:31
  Speaker 7: who are still here on this earth today, just like
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: Jim Crow is living memory of people who are still
• 25:37
  Speaker 7: in America today. On the other hand, there's the concern
• 25:41
  Speaker 7: for suppression of speech, which this country has a history
• 25:46
  Speaker 7: of and especially younger Americans are very sensitive too, and
• 25:51
  Speaker 7: that's reasonable as well, because censorship and sus suppression are
• 25:54
  Speaker 7: also things that have happened, and so when you balance
• 25:57
  Speaker 7: both of those things, green Blatt doesn't. Green Blad is
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: happy to inflate the definition of anti semitism as a
• 26:05
  Speaker 7: cudgel against political enemies to the point that you were
• 26:08
  Speaker 7: just making about acting basically in lockstep with groups that
• 26:11
  Speaker 7: advanced that advance the cause of the Israeli government. And
• 26:15
  Speaker 7: that's where you've blown up anti semitism to the point
• 26:18
  Speaker 7: the label anti semitism to the point where it includes
• 26:22
  Speaker 7: people who are just saying what the Secretary of State
• 26:25
  Speaker 7: said about the war that's really really not helpful, is
• 26:29
  Speaker 7: completely counterproductive. And if you actually believe that Rocana is
• 26:33
  Speaker 7: anti Semitic.
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: You are welcome to that belief.
• 26:37
  Speaker 7: You should not be the head of an organization that
• 26:39
  Speaker 7: is policing the definition of anti semitism because that's first
• 26:42
  Speaker 7: of all offensive, but second of all counterproductive because by
• 26:46
  Speaker 7: a matter of fact, he is not an anti semi
• 26:50
  Speaker 7: right And it's happening over and over again with people constantly,
• 26:54
  Speaker 7: and the right is learning what the left has learned
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: for a long time that you were called anti semitic
• 26:58
  Speaker 7: if you're critical of the Israeli government.
• 27:01
  Speaker 6: People on the right.
• 27:02
  Speaker 7: Robert Novak experienced that, Patu Cannon experienced that for a
• 27:05
  Speaker 7: long time too. But to actually say that somebody has
• 27:08
  Speaker 7: bigotry in their heart is a serious and stigmatized charge
• 27:13
  Speaker 7: in the United States of America, as it should be,
• 27:14
  Speaker 7: because we've spilled a lot of blood, sweat and tears
• 27:17
  Speaker 7: for victories like Lovvy Virginia, and to have the like
• 27:24
  Speaker 7: multiculturalism that actually exists the United States is like historically crazy.
• 27:28
  Speaker 7: We take it for granted, how amazing it is sometimes
• 27:31
  Speaker 7: and how quickly so much bigotry fell away over the
• 27:34
  Speaker 7: course of the twentieth century.
• 27:36
  Speaker 6: So not to say it doesn't still exist, of course
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: it still exists.
• 27:38
  Speaker 7: But to actually insult somebody and say that they believe
• 27:42
  Speaker 7: somebody is lesser than because of their mutable characteristics, because
• 27:45
  Speaker 7: of the race, because of their ethnicity, is a really
• 27:47
  Speaker 7: serious thing. And Rocanna's opinions on the liqud Party do
• 27:54
  Speaker 7: not reflect him thinking that anybody is lesser than because
• 27:58
  Speaker 7: of their mutable characteristics.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: And this new thing that green Blad's doing where he
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: is saying that if you say that Israel drove the
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: US to war with Iran, that is anti Semitic, even
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: after Marco Rubio himself said that at least the timing
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: was driven by Israel, people are.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Just not going to tolerate that.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: And we did this polling at drop site last week,
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: Hope that found a.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Majority of.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: A majority of people believe that, or I think it
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: was forty seven percent or something believe that Israel drove
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: the decision making, Israel drove Trump's decision making, and like
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: ten percent believed it would make their life better. So
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: you can't Maybe the ADL can claim that forty seven
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: percent of the public is just driven by an anti
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: Submitic conspiracy theory, Yes they will, but I don't know
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: how that's helpful to them. Yeah, you can't tell people
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: that they're not allowed to see what they see with
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: their own eyes.
• 29:05
  Speaker 7: Before Charlie Kirk died, he did a focus group at
• 29:08
  Speaker 7: one of the Turning Point USA conferences that people should
• 29:11
  Speaker 7: absolutely go back and watch, especially people on the right,
• 29:15
  Speaker 7: who I think, by the way, as somebody on the
• 29:17
  Speaker 7: right who was subject to this messaging, bludgeoned by this
• 29:20
  Speaker 7: messaging for years. The way it's used to dismiss the
• 29:29
  Speaker 7: left as like cranks and crazy people. As obviously started
• 29:32
  Speaker 7: we were just talking about this. I obviously started being
• 29:34
  Speaker 7: used on the right. And what's particularly kind of productive
• 29:37
  Speaker 7: on the right at this moment was on full display
• 29:39
  Speaker 7: in that Turning Point focus group where everyone said, listen,
• 29:43
  Speaker 7: we like Charlie Kirk. He went to the opening of
• 29:46
  Speaker 7: the embassy in Jerusalem.
• 29:48
  Speaker 6: This guy was not anti Israel.
• 29:50
  Speaker 7: He became increasingly skeptical of the Israeli government. And when
• 29:54
  Speaker 7: he was talking to these students at the conference, they
• 29:57
  Speaker 7: were saying a lot of their more their increasing skeept
• 30:00
  Speaker 7: of Israel was coming from feeling like they're being told
• 30:04
  Speaker 7: what they can and cannot say.
• 30:05
  Speaker 6: Why might that be?
• 30:06
  Speaker 7: Well, young Americans just went through like a ten year
• 30:08
  Speaker 7: period where they were constantly being told if you say X, Y,
• 30:12
  Speaker 7: or Z, you're bigoted. And a lot of that was
• 30:13
  Speaker 7: coming from the left. And so if you're Jonathan Green
• 30:16
  Speaker 7: Black and you're looking at this number among even young
• 30:20
  Speaker 7: conservatives who should be pro Israel because historically that's been
• 30:24
  Speaker 7: the case for the last several decades, and you're panicking
• 30:27
  Speaker 7: about that, and you're reacting by calling more and more
• 30:30
  Speaker 7: people antisemitic and broadening the definition further and being even
• 30:34
  Speaker 7: more intense about those arguments again is totally counterproductive because
• 30:39
  Speaker 7: the thing that people are blanching at and that is
• 30:41
  Speaker 7: making them skeptical of that position is literally what you
• 30:45
  Speaker 7: continue to do at an even faster pace.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: And so APAC just spent more than twenty million dollars
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: in these Illinois elections, which we'll talk about in a moment.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: Put up E five, which will lead us into that.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: This is a tweet from Shane Goldmarketing Times reporter says
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: Jen Shikowski, who's a retiring member of Congress, pulls Donna
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: Miller endorsement and second Congressional district over APAC support.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: This is back in February and a pack then, you know.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: Quote tweets last night and then what happened, And what's
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: notable about this is that APAC hit its involvement in
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: its support for Donnam Miller. They created this, you know,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: like Chicago Women super Pac, because they know that using
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: their their name APAC or United Democracy Project, which is
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: their their branded super pack, is super damaging to candidates
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: that they support. And then when shows like this or
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: at drops, we do reporting that says, oh, actually, we've
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: pieced it together. This is a pack money that is
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: being funneled into the campaign. A PAC responds that that's
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: anti sim a conspiracy theorizing that you're doing. How dare
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: you suggest that? And then after their candidate wins, they
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: publicly take support for the thing that a day before
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: they were saying was a conspiracy theory.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Anyway, so let's move to well, on.
• 32:15
  Speaker 7: That, producer MaxEnt a funny tweet that I want to
• 32:18
  Speaker 7: read on that point. This is from DEI Speedwagon shout
• 32:21
  Speaker 7: out to you on X We're a couple cycles away
• 32:24
  Speaker 7: from APAX spending ad money accusing Pro Palestine candidates of
• 32:27
  Speaker 7: getting money from a bag.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: A couple of weeks away. Yeah, a good one, we're.
• 32:30
  Speaker 7: Laughing, but no, not out of the Roman possibility.
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: We'd start with F four here.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: APAX spent at least twenty two million dollars in four
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: Illinois congressional races that were very closely watched, because there
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: was only one race in which they spent openly and
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: acknowledged that they were spending the race. The other three
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: they funneled through kind of made up super packs, one
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: called Affordable Chicago now another one called elect Chicago Women,
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: and those got outed as a pack super packs. They
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: created a new one called Progressive Funds or something like
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: that that they started funneling money through. So let's go
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: through these four races. Let's start with the one that
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: everybody cares about the most, even though arguably it wasn't
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: the most important one when it comes to the kind
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: of gradients of ideological difference.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: Between the candidates.
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: That's that's District nine, which was Laura Fyne, who was
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: the APAC candidate.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: We knew it. It was clear, even though they were
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: using kind of fake super packs. Kat Abu Gazela and
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: Daniel biss Evanston mayor. And then you had Bouscha a
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: Mei Wala, who was a elected local elected official who
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: was running kind of to Cat and Daniel's left, and
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: people kept pushing to kind of drop out and endorse Cat.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: That was probably never gonna happen. What I would so
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: Daniel Biss one and one by about forty.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: Five votes, four points. Yeah.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: One thing I think the LAB should take away from
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: all of these races is that there should be a
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: deep stigma on candidates who cannot win and refuse to
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: drop out. And I'm not just talking about Busher, I'm
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: talking about across the board. There was a failure to consolidate.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: And when you combine a failure to consolidate behind a
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: single candidate with millions of dollars in spending for the
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: other candidate, it's very difficult to win. And you let
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: then APEC candidates, you know, win with like thirty percent
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: of the vote.
• 34:34
  Speaker 6: Finally got twenty percent, which is very interesting.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: So find just twenty percent millions spent on her on
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: her behalf.
• 34:42
  Speaker 7: I just have a pause for a moment, just think
• 34:44
  Speaker 7: about how completely ridiculous it is.
• 34:46
  Speaker 6: Ridiculous it is.
• 34:47
  Speaker 7: That the people of Illinois ninth District, suburban Chicago had
• 34:52
  Speaker 7: their race hijacked into a mandate on Middle Eastern fortunes.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Right, except none of the adda except none of the
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: actual ads talked about foreign policies, right, even though they
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: were this is crazy.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: And also, and I kept telling you all this, Now
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: you can believe me. Boucher finished sixth, So like people
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: were like, no, no, she has a shot, she has
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: a shot. No, so apak Apak put money behind I
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: mean Lawa, was I mean Walla's campaign trying to peel
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: votes away from from Cat and from Biss to try
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: to boost Laura.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: Fine.
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: She finished behind multiple candidates that you've never even heard of.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: She got a total of six thousand votes. Five percent.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: Every single one of her votes would have had to
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: go to Cat in order for Cat to win. And
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: there's just no world in which one hundred percent of
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: votes go from one candidate to another.
• 35:53
  Speaker 6: Yeah, a lot of there are protest votes anyway.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and a lot of a lot of her supporters
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: did not like Cats. Her support was concentrated among South
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: Asian population, which also had problems with.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Cat for other kind of optical reasons.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: So this who had the support of j Street Uh
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: and had millions spent against him by a pack or
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: hundreds of thousand at least, I don't know if he
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: climbed millions against but millions in total spent by a
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: pack to try to win this race. So BIS ends
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: up winning. Bis had kind of Elizabeth Warren Democrat. He
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: had Elizabeth Warren's endorsement, like on day one of the campaign,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: and this is kind of an Elizabeth Warren district, its
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: suburban district. So ended up so he ends up winning.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: He'll win he'll win in the in the he'll win
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: the general. It's not even close.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: In his.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: Victory speech last night, you know, he mentioned uh J
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: Street and a pac let's let's roll.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Let's roll that.
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: And this is simply by saying they have found out
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: the harbor.
• 37:07
  Speaker 7: Is not Zail.
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: So I'm pudding. Might be the last time I utter
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: their name.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: This victory belongs to stream.
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: He's a nail against unspeakable odds for that point of view.
• 37:32
  Speaker 8: That represents the mainstream in this district and the mainstream
• 37:35
  Speaker 8: of the Jewish community.
• 37:36
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: So the question now, Emily for the left will be
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: I think around organizing Biss and putting pressure on Biss.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: Uh. There is an argument that and this this unfolded.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: The Malinowski district in New Jersey eleven, where an Alilia
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: Mahea ended up winning thanks to Apec, you know, smashing Malinowski.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: So Malinowski was a former you know, had been an
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: elected Democrat before, he had worked at the State Department.
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: He had a lot of credibility among Democrats in the
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: House when it came to foreign policy. And so what
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: Apex said publicly was that even though Malinowski was much
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: milder in his criticism of Israel. His mild criticism was
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: more of a threat to them than Mayhee his strong criticism,
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: because they can they can They think they can marginalize
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: Mahea and say, well, you don't need to listen to her,
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: she's crazy, squad radical, but Malinowski is harder for them
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: to marginalize. And so that that was their what either
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: cope or the rationale for why they were actually okay
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: that their preferred candidate lost and they accidentally boosted this
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: squad like candidate.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: Now, I think they miscalculated.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: I think Ana Lily is going to have a lot
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: more power in the House than they expected.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: But that was their rationale.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: That was the same rationale they used to spend millions
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: to defeat Andy Levin in Michigan. Levin was a synagogue
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: president and part of the leven family dynasty.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Member of Congress.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: He was redistricted into a race with Hailey Stevens, and
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: APEX spent millions to back Stevens over leven because there
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: and they publicly made this argument that it was dangerous
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: to have a guy who called himself a liberal Zionist,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: who was a synagogue president who was criticizing Israel who
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: was casting votes against Israel and was supporting Rashida Taleb
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: and elan Omar when they were being called anti Semitic,
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: he would show up with them and say, they are
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: not they are my friends. They have legitimate criticisms of Israel,
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: and you cannot you cannot, you know, you cannot weaponize
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: anti semitism against them because you disagree with them politically.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: And the fact that he was a Synagogue president made
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: it made that punch from him land much harder. And
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: so they said we need to get him out of office. Yeah,
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: and they spent and they got him out of office. And
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: a similar thing is unfolding with Biss thisss mom was Israeli.
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: He's got lots of connections to Israel. He has the
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: support of J Street, you know, which is which calls
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: itself liberal Zionist.
• 40:18
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: And so to have thisis out there attacking a pack
• 40:22
  Speaker 4: and criticizing Israel and supporting Block the Bombs which isn't
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: doesn't go far enough, but it is considered to be
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: existential to Israel. An apac to Block the Bombs act.
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: They feel like this is more is a significant threat
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: to them.
• 40:38
  Speaker 6: You can see how that would make sense.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and so for them to they're now doing this
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: cope like, ah, we beat Kat and we beat Bushra.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: Six, get out of here. I'm gonna give me. You
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: spent money to support her.
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: You're gonna got twenty one percent of the vote.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and collectively Bis and Bo Gazella got well over
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: a majority and their candidate got twenty percent.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, got washed.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: So now what what people have to do is organize
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: around this.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: I saw somebody saying yesterday that the kind of anti
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: Zionist movement needs to have more space for these quote
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: unquote liberal Zionist critics of Israel, because their argument was
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: in the journey from you know, full on Apac level
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: support of Israel to becoming anti Zionist, it's actually a
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: bigger leap to go from the APAC hardcore right wing
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: Zionism to liberal Zionism, Like that is a harder move
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: to make and more dramatic than it is to go
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: from liberal Zionism to anti Zionism. Because once you've once
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: you're in the liberal Zionist space and you're starting you're
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: starting to talk about apartheid and occupation and genocide, the
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: rationale and the logic just pushes you to anti Zionism eventually,
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: Like it's just a question of how long it takes
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: you to move from from there from there to there.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: So the the argument would be the goal now of
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: Cat supporters and Buscher supporters needs to be to pressure
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: Abyss to go further, and I think they get there.
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: There's also opportunities to do that in the two other
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: districts were APEC one, but let's let's do District seven next,
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: where APAC caught just a brutal l the only race
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: where they spent money with their chests and it admitted
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: that they were the ones doing the spending. It was
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: like four to five million dollars they put behind Melissa
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: Kanyer's Irvin, who is the Comptroller of Chicago currently under
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: investigation for corruption, like just like comically corrupt.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: There was.
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: This was a massively divided field and according to all
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: of the kind prognosticators, them putting this many millions in
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: the race behind her was going to be enough to
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: just push her over the top. That you just couldn't
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: compete with that avalanche of money she lost. She finished
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: with twenty point five percent, almost exactly what Laura Fine
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: got APEX many millions of dollars got her nineteen thousand votes,
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: which is three thousand less than Lashan Ford.
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: I wonder how much money that was per vote.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: And that's only the money we know about.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: That doesn't count, like mailers and like C four and
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: like all the off the books kind of spending incredible,
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: Like you could have gone around and paid one thousand
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: dollars to every person, like old school Chicago.
• 43:44
  Speaker 6: So literally you could have done it. You could have
• 43:46
  Speaker 6: paid two thousand.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: We'll give you, We'll give you two grand, please just
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: show up.
• 43:51
  Speaker 6: Oh my gosh.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: Instead they gave it to consultants who are going to
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: buy a vote and lost. Now the races they won.
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: We saw that they were bragging about Donna Miller. So
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: in District two, jan Chikowski endorsed Donna Miller and then
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: they and then A Pax started doing this, you know,
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: fake these fake super packs to support her. And when
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: it was exposed that it was a Pac money, Shaikowski
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: withdrew her her endorsement a Pac now you know, boasting
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: ha ha. We want anyway, as we talked, as we
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: talked about that, in the last segment, they sort of
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: deny and call it a conspiracy theory that they're the
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: ones behind these super packs, but then when their candidate wins,
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: they they take credit for the victory, which is there's
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: just do you get to do that?
• 44:43
  Speaker 6: I don't think I guess I don't think.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: You get to do that.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: So Donna Miller did win with forty percent of the vote,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: and this is this is where we need to stigmatize
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: the lack of consolidation. So sixty percent of people voted
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: against her, but she still won. So Jesse Jackson Jr.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: And Robert Peters split split their vote, Jesse Jackson Junior
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: trying to make a comeback. Peters was kind of like
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: the progressive real hope in that race. But Jesse jacks
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: Junior has such a has such a name and a
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: reputation there that you know he was always going to
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: do quite well. He got almost thirty percent. Was Yvette
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: Brown with ten pulling another. You know, so those three candidates,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: one of them needed to you know, the left needs
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: some mechanism to say, no, this is who we're getting behind,
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: because if it's just if.
• 45:36
  Speaker 7: This was a typical tea party, yeah conundrum, it's tough
• 45:40
  Speaker 7: party hitting the same snag yep it's tough.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: The left is not organized enough or ruthless enough to
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: be able to pull this off, and so the same
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: problem hit them in in District eight. Melissa Bean another
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: former member of Congress. Before that, she was a top
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: JP Morgan banker. I covered her when she was in Congress.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: Last time around, they put her on the Financial Services Committee,
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: where she played a very unhelpful role when it came
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: to banking reform.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: Now she's coming back.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: APAC spent heavily and she finished with third vout almost
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: thirty two percent of the vote, very narrowly beat Juneid Akhmed,
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: who had twenty seven percent of the bost so very close,
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: very close race. Akmed had the support of Justice Democrats.
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: He was the kind of left wing candidate. Now there's
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: a group called American Priorities. This is the kind of
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: anti genocide pack that a pro palaestime pack that's spent
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: heavily for Nita Alam in North Carolina. They've raised like
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: ten plus million dollars and they've pledged that they're going
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: to take on a pack. There was a lot of
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: pressure among progressive electoral folks for them to get into
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: this race and get behind Achmed and the argument was,
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: like he can do this, like he's a serious candidate.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: When I was told was that they have a poll
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: from like January that showed that they didn't think he
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: could win, and so they didn't they and so they
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: refused to get in the race.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: They resisted this pressure. APEX meant heavily.
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: And what I think, what these results show is that
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: they could have made up twenty five hundred votes.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: Thirty five hundred votes.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: Maybe not now, maybe a million dollars from them doesn't
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: push off Bet over the top.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: But I think it does.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: Like if the race is that close, then you've got
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: a couple multiple other candidates had six percent or more.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: Morrison at nine, bank Call at nine, Tully at twelve
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: point seven.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: Like no consolidation.
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: Plus the refusal to get behind the folks behind this
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: new pack are similar to a lot of people who
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: get into politics who were like people people before us
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: haven't figured out how to do it, but we figured
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: it out. It's it's mathematical, it's quantitative, we're going to
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: follow the data.
• 48:08
  Speaker 6: We're we're gonna moneyball it.
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: We're moneyball it. It's and it's not quite that simple.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: And but also emotion ends up playing a role in it.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: I wonder if you know they they were outspent by
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: AI and APAC in the nit Alam race and lost
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: this like brutal, very very close race a thousand votes
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: or something, And so I bet that emotion ended up
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: playing a role that they that they were they were
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: burned and like on their heels then coming into Illinois
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: and lacked and so they lacked the confidence to get
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: in for Jeanne Aid. But that so that's a missed
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: opportunity for them just to be a little ruthless love
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: love them, but you know that's a miss Yeah, that
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: is a mess. But now there are two opportunities here,
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: Donna Miller and Melissa Bean. I think Miller represents a
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: stronger upper Kennedy. So she won with APAC support, but
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: it was the secret APACK support. But she knows she
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: only got forty percent of the vote. Does she want
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: to face a primary challenger in two years that has
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: consolidated support from the left, or does she want to
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: publicly announce tomorrow that she will not take a pack
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: money that she rejects.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: She's angry about their support. She wishes they.
• 49:28
  Speaker 6: Hadn't stay away from me, do not ever.
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: Elect me to Congress again? How dare you do not come?
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: But that's what value Fouchet did, and she's headed back
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: to Congress and it may have been just enough to
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: keep enough support. So what I would say to activists
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: in her district, Miller represents an opportunity to basically snatch
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: victory from defeat. That if a pack secretly goes around
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: and spends millions of dollars to elect a candidate and
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: then you come in and lobby them and turn them
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: into your ally, that strips away that tactic from APAC
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: because once look at Max Frost, like in down in Orlando,
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: APAC and DMFI basically made a deal where they would allow,
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: they would allow they wouldn't spend against Max Frost if
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: he would back off some of his you know, you
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: know criticism of Israel. Once he was in office. He
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: has been a strident critic of Visrael, and a pack
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: is now kind of screwed because he's popular.
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: In the district.
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Okay, I see what you're saying. They could replicate that.
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: So maybe maybe Donna Miller, if she's watching, like look
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: at Max Frost, you could tell APAK I'm not taking
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: your super pack support ever again, thank you for helping
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: me get here. Now I'm done, right and she then
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: but then she has to do what Fouchet did, which
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: is demonstrated. Sign all the letters that the activists ask
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: you to sign, vote the way that they want you
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: to vote on these issues, and then you'll win enough
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: of them that it drains support for a primary challenge
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: in two years because like like, it doesn't matter who
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: who's in office really what it's what they do in
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: office that matters to people. So if an initially a
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: packed back candidate turns on them, maybe take that win.
• 51:36
  Speaker 6: Interesting.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: So hey, just something to think about, very.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: Interesting, And then we've got the I don't know if
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: you can do that with Melissa Bean, the JP Morgan banker.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: That's probably She's a pretty right winging Democrat, but.
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: Hey, that that one you probably want to start organizing
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: for Junaid Akhmed like to day to challenge her in
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: two years and this time consolidate around a single candidate.
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: So we have, I think, and next time the super
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: pac American priorities might not make the same mistake.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: They might they will see that perhaps being as more vulnerable.
• 52:13
  Speaker 6: So much going on yesterday, in Illinois particularly.
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then we've got this wild Illinois Senate race.
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: You can put up F three here.
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: So this hit.
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: Roger Christian Murty, congressman, who raised insane amounts of money
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: from crypto.
• 52:35
  Speaker 6: Like millions, tens of men like twenty.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: Million, ungodly amounts of money against Juliana Stratton, who was
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: is JB. Pritsker's lieutenant governor, and she had the support
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: of kind of progressives in the state. She heavily won
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: black voters in the state. She did not really have
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: much vocal support from the Congressional Black Caucus, which is,
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: you know, which they should be criticized for and maybe
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: related to the amount of crypto and corporate money that
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: was being spent against her. But Pritsker went in heavy
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: for her and made made this kind of a referendum
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: on his own popularity and and she she ended up
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: beating him by what seven points, so fairly convincing.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Victory.
• 53:26
  Speaker 7: There very when you have that level of money flooding
• 53:31
  Speaker 7: into the race and you have a seven point win, that's.
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: And there was, and they spent like the corporate and
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: crypto money went in heavily to support Robin Kelly who
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: finished third as another black woman running, and their cynical
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: idea was We're going to split the black vote, and
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: it didn't.
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: It didn't work.
• 53:56
  Speaker 7: Uh.
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: You may have seen Juliana Stratton.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: She was the one who did the shoot a lot
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: of money F Trump, remember that ad?
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, so clearly F Trump works in Illinois.
• 54:09
  Speaker 7: Well, abogaz Aale was doing that. But I guess maybe
• 54:13
  Speaker 7: maybe I don't know. But so the amount of crypto
• 54:18
  Speaker 7: money here, this is the political group fair Shake. They
• 54:22
  Speaker 7: spent about ninety nine million, nine million on ads for
• 54:27
  Speaker 7: Christian Worthy's opponents. So they were trying to Yeah, they
• 54:33
  Speaker 7: were trying to have some fun with that.
• 54:35
  Speaker 6: They're nice, trying to boost him by just smearing.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: Nice to see the crypto guys lose. That's something. Yeah,
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: we can take that, right.
• 54:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: So they were spending for Kelly against Stratton right in
• 54:48
  Speaker 7: the race.
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: Right there, cynical, cynically trying to lift Kelly, Yeah, to
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: pull votes away from Stratton.
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: There's just a crazy amount of money in this, I
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: mean yeah, yeah.
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: And to make an obvious point whatever this was on
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: display yesterday in Illinois, it's not democracy like all of
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: these well, I mean and corporate and crypto and AI
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: just dumping money in but not but not running on
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: their issues.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: It'd be one thing.
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: It's like crypto rules, like we should all like and
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: you ran your campaign on that. But they're not, like
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: you said, they're doing this cynical stuff of like, oh,
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: we actually support Robin Kelly, she's wonderful.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: No, you don't.
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: You're just trying to trick people who otherwise would vote
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: for Stratton to vote for Kelly so that Rajo wins.
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: That's like that. It's just so gross.
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: Bring back the Tammany Hall Chicago machine. Stuff like that
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: was much cleaner than this system.
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: You're more agency in the system.
• 55:58
  Speaker 7: But actually no, I mean I think there's there's glass
• 56:00
  Speaker 7: half empty. You just laid that up very well, glass
• 56:02
  Speaker 7: half full. Voter said no to the crypto.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: That's true. A voter like the voter. Voters saw through it.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: And several of these races.
• 56:14
  Speaker 7: We got to play this platter ad. We gotta play
• 56:17
  Speaker 7: this anti platiner ad from Janet Mills.
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: This dropped the last couple of days.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Janet Mills, governor of Maine, is trailing oysterman gram
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: Platner in every public poll for months now.
• 56:30
  Speaker 7: Governor mayn with a lot of support from the leadership
• 56:34
  Speaker 7: of the Democratic Party.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: Yes, from the chairs of the party to the vice
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: chairs of the party. Her support is very deep. We'll
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: get into that in a second. Let's let's roll this
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: ad F seven.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Did you know Graham Plattner wrote that women worried about
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: rape need to quote not.
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: Get so full they wind up having sex with someone
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: they don't mean to.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Disgusting, Platner wrote, to avoid rape, women should.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: Quote act like an adult.
• 56:58
  Speaker 6: For sake, Graham Platter, we blame the victim. That's a
• 57:01
  Speaker 6: horrible thing to say.
• 57:02
  Speaker 8: Disqualifying.
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: I have not seen this.
• 57:04
  Speaker 6: He's a bully.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: This guy gives off a vibe.
• 57:07
  Speaker 8: Just no way I could vote for you.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: No, Grand Platner. The closer you.
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: Look, the worse it gets.
• 57:13
  Speaker 8: I'm Janet Mills and I approve this message.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: And so if people are new to that, I I
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: highly doubt they are. This was a scandal that emerged
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: many months ago when Platner first ran a where some
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: opposition research uncovered his Reddit posts from from years ago.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: He was a bartender to tune in and then there.
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: He is covering veteran struggling with PTSD.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, so those were his observations at
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: the time as a bartender.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: An as observations which which he has.
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: People can find the video he posted about it. He
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: has said like he's embarrassed by them. He distances himself
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: from them now, it's not how he feels today. And
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: he has said that, you know, if if you're held
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: to the standard of the worst things you've ever said
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: on the internet, then nobody real can ever run.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: For office, which nobody real is gets us to our
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: next element. You can put up this from the main.
• 58:18
  Speaker 6: Wire, the conservative main publication.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: It looked like, you know, it looked like Janet Mills
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: had found you know, regular main women who were appalled
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: by these comments. The main wire news outlet that you
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: can brief us on in a moment, finds that it's
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: Peggy Schaeffer, who's a former main Democratic vice chair, Lynn Bromley,
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: a former Democratic state senator, Jill Barkley roy is director
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: of Emerge Action Fund, a Democratic aligned group, and Brenda
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: Garrand it's a consultant and a former longtime member of
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: the Main Public board. Some Mills couldn't even find actors,
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: I guess incredible, So just getting pure kind of a
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: democratic establishment figure years to say they don't like the
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: guy who's challenging the democratic establishment. Interesting also that they
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: went with this rather than the the the like skull
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: and bones, Nazi linked tattoo or some of the other stuff,
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: I mean, because it's maybe maybe they've got more in
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: the canon.
• 59:18
  Speaker 6: I'm sure they do.
• 59:18
  Speaker 7: But it's falling flat on its face because all of
• 59:20
  Speaker 7: the polling coming from this race is showing double digit
• 59:23
  Speaker 7: Even Mills is polling, if I'm remembering correctly, it is
• 59:26
  Speaker 7: showing double digit margins right now.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: For Grand Plaid Summer single digit.
• 59:29
  Speaker 7: So okay, credit but significant single digits I'm assuming like
• 59:33
  Speaker 7: upwards for because this is falling on its face, and
• 59:38
  Speaker 7: it's falling on its face for a reason that they're
• 59:40
  Speaker 7: struggling to make an argument against, which is he's trying
• 59:43
  Speaker 7: to say, you know, I have all kinds of quibbles
• 59:45
  Speaker 7: with this argument about identity politics, but he's trying to
• 59:48
  Speaker 7: say that is the wedge that elites are using to
• 59:52
  Speaker 7: divide us. He's correct on that point. He's saying this
• 59:55
  Speaker 7: is a class question. This is it's not even he's
• 59:58
  Speaker 7: not even talking about affordability in the kind of cringe sense.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 7: He's talking about like actual nuts and bolts, democratic socialism
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 7: and what he thinks. He has like a pretty coherent
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 7: vision of what he wants the government to look like,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 7: the economy to look like. And Janet Mills is just
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 7: talking about identity politics as he's running the smartest campaign
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 7: against identity politics, which is this ad where you have
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 7: a bunch of politically connected women reading his old Reddit posts.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 7: She's not even attacking him at she could argue that
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 7: she thinks democratic socialism is bad for reason X, y
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 7: and z.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 6: She could, She's welcome to do that.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: And there's an argument that if let's say, if he
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: survives this, that he comes out of it a much
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: stronger general election candidate because a it shows the main
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: public that he's not the choice of the Democratic Party establishment,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: which being the choice of the Democratic Party establishment in
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: any state and particularly in Maine, is something you have
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: to overcome rather than something that benefits you. But also
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: there's this interesting dynamic that I'm pretty convinced unfolded in
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen during the Bernie Hillary campaign,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: which is that when centrist Democrats attack a candidate, whether
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: it's Graham Platner or Bernie Sanders as being racist and sexist.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: What it ends up coding to some moderate or conservative
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: voters is that, oh, maybe they're not as left wing
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: as I.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: Thought they were.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: Like it makes so I think that Bernie actually ended
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: up getting some conservative Democratic votes because they understood this
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: identity politics charge from Hillary as deeply left wing coded,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: left wing, culturally coded, and it made Hillary look left wing,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: and it made Sanders look more moderate totally.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: And so to the extent that Platner has problems in
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: the general election.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: It's probably more connected to him calling himself a communist
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: and like training like paramilitary gun groups, which is hard
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: for the Republicans to hit him on. Well, no, it's
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: kind of cool to train paramilitary.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: But there's a trans I was.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 7: Gonna say, it's the trans stuff that's going to This
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 7: is a problem for Mills too, because Mills has been
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 7: the whole thing.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: Is that is the trans question?
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 6: I'll see you in court, Yeah, exactly, Mills.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 7: Mills has staked kind of her political career in this
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 7: moment against Trump, fighting the Trump administration on bands and
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 7: like trans athletes and bathrooms and this sort of thing.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 7: And so I mean that is that will be a
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 7: hurdle for Planner to overcome because it's not popular.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: But my argument is that this actually in a way
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: helps him overcome that totally. Because the more linked you
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: are to identity politics right now, the more and into
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: pennant voter thinks you are a far leftist rather than
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 4: being you know, a communist and like wanting to like
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: seize the means of production and raise taxes on the ridge,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: like that's left wing has become code for you know,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: lean in twenty twenty identity politics stuff. And so having
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: him attacked for you know, from the lane of identity
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: politics codes him as more independent, centrist and moderate in
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: a in a in an unexpected and I think way
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: that most democratic establishment consultants don't understand. But out of this,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: like mishmash, that's what will reach a lot.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 6: Of voters totally agree.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: We're like, oh, I guess he's not that radical.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 6: No, I think that's right. I think that's right. And
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 6: just playing straight into his hands.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: Keep it up, Mills, incorrect, do the Nazi one, because
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: if you do the Nazi one, people are going to
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: be like, oh, well, he can't be a communist and
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: a Nazi and he's obviously not a Nazi.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: And so communist.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: That's the communist charge. Just when if you're calling him
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: a Nazi.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 6: It brings up different mass murder questions.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: Right if they want to accuse him of being a
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: Stalinist or something we're.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 6: Thinking of, go ahead, yeah, that's what's on the table.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: Collins can try to warn that he's going to create
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: gulags in Maine.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 7: That also might not be super successful, but uh yeah,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 7: the Mills campaign just it's it's incredible to watch them
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 7: play directly into Platner's hands because it's all they have.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 7: I mean, it doesn't have to be all they have.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 7: She could actually make an argument, she could actually lead, or.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: She could be like, I'm losing badly and I should
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: just and it's I'm like seventy eight, I should just retire.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: Really, it's beautiful, like, just go do something else.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 6: Enjoy it. Have some oysters. She knows a guy who
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 6: can get some fresh ones.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: He'll give you a deal.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 6: Oh my goodness. All right, well that's probably enough for
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: us today.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that should do it.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: Okay, Well, thanks everyone for tuning.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 7: In Premium subscriptions, you can get over at Breakingpoints dot Com.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: We appreciate it.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 7: Ryan's ben being cute, but we look forward to a dispatch. Actually,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 7: you'll probably be back in studio Wednesday, right.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, and we didn't get to cover the micro penis
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: debate that I that I triggered.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 6: That's right, that was you. That's right.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: So I was telling Emily, a high school friend posted
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: to a little group chat. Ryan is now involved in
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: a national micro penis debate.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 9: Uh, he is.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 6: Look that one up Ryan gram micro.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: We're not going to talk about it here, but you
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: can go you can go search that.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 6: Yeah, just type that in.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 7: You know, we could have talked about it in the
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 7: green Blad segment though, because it's the same It is
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 7: the same concept, just attacking people for retweeting Ryan.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 6: Which listen, when Ryan I first started hosting together, I
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 6: got it all the time. Yeah, I'm sure he got
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 6: it too from me.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 7: Indeed, So if you are doing the guilt by association
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 7: thing when people share legitimate facts, which is all Rian
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 7: did tweet, It's all he ever does, then you're losing
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 7: the argument.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 6: Okay, that does it for us today.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: We maybe will come on Google.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 6: We could cod cover it Friday, but you won't be
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 6: on Friday.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: I don't think so.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 6: All right, Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. Appreciate it.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: We'll see you on Fridays. Well, Ryan, we're just going
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 7: in circles here. Ryan, won't see you on Friday. I'll
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 7: see you Friday.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 6: We'll see you next Wednesday.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: By