Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 9/16/26: Bessent Defends Terrible Economy, Massie Says Impeach Hegseth, Trump Mail In Ballot Smackdown

Transcript

9/16/26: Bessent Defends Terrible Economy, Massie Says Impeach Hegseth, Trump Mail In Ballot Smackdown · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: can up our game for this critical election.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. We have an
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: amazing show today, don't we, Emily?
• 0:29
  Speaker 5: You know, we really do because we have a lot
• 0:30
  Speaker 5: of Ryan Grim original reporting in today's show.
• 0:34
  Speaker 4: A lot of dropside original reporting. Some Ryan Grim, some.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Some Ryan Grim. Ryan Grim edited reporting.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: There we go.
• 0:39
  Speaker 6: Let's go with that.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: And great stuff, too.
• 0:41
  Speaker 5: And on both the Iron Beam, we're going to get
• 0:43
  Speaker 5: into all of this, but also midterm election reporting out
• 0:46
  Speaker 5: of Michigan, we're going to start because the feds... announcement
• 0:49
  Speaker 5: is expected within a matter of hours. So we're going
• 0:52
  Speaker 5: to start going through a whole lot of economic news.
• 0:54
  Speaker 5: We actually had a hard time dividing the economic news
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: from the Iran news. We're going to do blocks on
• 0:59
  Speaker 5: both of them, but they're, of course, intertwined. There's so
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: much going on now as the Fed debates its potential
• 1:05
  Speaker 5: rate hike.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: I think we're all pretty much expecting a rate hike.
• 1:07
  Speaker 6: That's what we're expecting.
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: Yes. And midterms continuing to look terrible for Republicans, especially
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: bad in Michigan, as a new drop site report is
• 1:16
  Speaker 5: going to make Mike Rogers look pretty damn bad.
• 1:20
  Speaker 6: Yes, indeed.
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: We'll also talk about Section 219 is going to come
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: before the Senate now that they're back in session. That's
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: the one that would merge the Israeli and American militaries.
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: Murtaza Hussain and I looked into some of the claims
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: that are made that it is actually the U.S. that
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: benefits from our collaboration with the ingenious indigenous innovators over
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: in Israel when So we're going to take a look,
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: particularly at the Iron Beam, also at the Arrow missile program.
• 1:50
  Speaker 6: It's America first reporting. It's America first reporting.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: The real story is, you'll be surprised to know, different
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: than what you've been told before about that. uh cash
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: patel was up on capitol hill talking about bestiality for.
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: Some reason yeah he was talking about bestiality among other
• 2:06
  Speaker 5: things patel and besant both on capitol hill yesterday we
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: have clips from both of those but yes we will
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: break down what happened with cash patel yesterday there was
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: so uh much ground covered including of course bestiality and
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: then ryan we'll be talking about uh the hoothies because
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: you recorded an interview with a pro.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: Well yeah so i was explaining it to uh emily
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: yesterday as so we're gonna we're Yesterday I interviewed Hussein Al-Bukhari,
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: whose brother Mohammed is actually in the political bureau of
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: Ansar Allah. And so I said he's sort of like
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: he is to Ansar Allah, as I am kind of
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: to DSA. We are kind of sympathetic, but we're willing
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: to be critical when we think that they're going astray.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Fascinating, especially given all the news coming out of the
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: world right now.
• 2:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, very, very interesting interview. Stick around for that.
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: The most fun thing that we've been doing, though, has
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: been kind of humiliating Sagar on a weekly basis as
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: people now wait until Wednesday or Friday to sign up
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: for their free month. If you go to breakingpoints.com for
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: this weekly ritual of Sagar humiliation, you can do it there.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: Sign up, you get one free month. I was thinking
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: about what we could offer here. context of today's program.
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: And the world is really falling apart. And you're going to,
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: I think, have a greater sense of dread 20 to
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: 30 minutes from now after you've gone through all of
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: the latest updates on the economy and the war, which
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: are very much interrelated. So it is a fair forecast
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: that you are going to have much less money a
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: year from now. So I think if you go ahead
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: and do breakingpoints.com, do the one free month, forget to
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: cancel it, end up doing an annual subscription. If you
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: email me a year from now and you're broke, we'll
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: give you an extra year.
• 3:59
  Speaker 6: How about that?
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: And that means someone else will email you.
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: Only if you're broke, but you have to be broke.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Then you're going to have to give your email.
• 4:04
  Speaker 6: Ryan at DropSiteNews.com.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: So email me at Ryan at DropSiteNews.com. That's a year
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: from now. If you ended up buying this... Do not
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: email first.
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: The world fell apart.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Has to be a year from right now.
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: A year from now.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: That's fair. I think that's great.
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: And then you get a free extra year because... In fact,
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: nobody's going to be able to buy this a year
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: from now.
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: The important point is forgetting to cancel, though. And you
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: are always eager to emphasize that element of it.
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: That's right.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: It's great.
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: Sager, hardest hit. Subscription rips for Sager. It's going great
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: for Ryan. Ryan is loving every second of it. So
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: help Ryan out and help Breaking Points out. Keep us
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: doing our independent journalism here at BreakingPoints.com. You can get
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: a free monthly trial of the premium membership because we're
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: also doing an AMA Live after the show. So that
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: means you get access to the AMAs, which we do,
• 4:50
  Speaker 5: and you get to ask us questions. So all kinds
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: of benefits with that.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Should we get into it?
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I really can't emphasize enough. how much the wheels
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: are coming off of this economy. However, if you don't
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: want to hear that, I have Scott Besant for you.
• 5:05
  Speaker 6: So let's roll A1.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Under President Trump, the private sector has created over 1
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: million jobs. Real wages are outpacing inflation. The bottom 25
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: percent of wage earners are seeing larger wage increases than
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: those at the top. And the working families tax cuts
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: has delivered the largest share of tax relief directly to
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: millions of low- and middle-income Americans.
• 5:27
  Speaker 7: It's a little bit like you quoting the Atlanta Federal
• 5:30
  Speaker 7: Reserve as a GDP projection for the third quarter. The
• 5:33
  Speaker 7: Atlantic Federal Reserve has a GDP projection that is double
• 5:38
  Speaker 7: what the survey of professional forecasters is saying it will
• 5:41
  Speaker 7: be at 2.5%. So I saw a lot of happy
• 5:43
  Speaker 7: talk about the economy, which by the way is political malpractice.
• 5:46
  Speaker 7: When the American people, and this is in the Michigan
• 5:48
  Speaker 7: Consumer Sentiment Survey, see consumer sentiment lose 20 points since
• 5:53
  Speaker 7: the beginning of the Trump administration, You have a political problem.
• 5:56
  Speaker 7: I don't expect you to comment on that, but you
• 5:58
  Speaker 7: have a political problem, which is why my friends on
• 6:00
  Speaker 7: the other side of the aisle are not talking much
• 6:02
  Speaker 7: about the economy today.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Congressman, there's a survey problem because Democrats are now poisoning
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the survey.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 6:08
  Speaker 7: Secretary, you're better than that.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Reclaiming my time. I'm data driven.
• 6:13
  Speaker 7: Reclaiming my time.
• 6:16
  Speaker 6: So the economy is great.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: The problem is that you all out there are lying
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: to the survey people. and telling them that it's not great.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: That is Besson's argument here.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: That's a pretty bad messaging strategy. Pretty bad.
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: You cannot trust these lying American people to be honest
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: about how awesome things are.
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: He got a question saying, what is the expiration date
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: on blaming Biden for this economy?
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: That's a pretty fair question.
• 6:45
  Speaker 6: Because what is the expiration date?
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: I mean, when you take office, it's pretty hard to
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: take office.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: I don't remember what to say.
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: I actually don't even know if he got an answer
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: out because it was one of those back and forths
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: where they're like squabbling over each other. But it was
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: I mean, as soon as you take office from a
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: messaging standpoint, you pretty much have to own the economy.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: And now we're almost two years into the second Trump administration.
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: So it's especially grating in a midterm cycle when You're
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: in the middle of a war by choice on top
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: of all of that from this administration, also a tariff
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: war by choice.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: You do have to own it. So that's a tough
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: one for Besson to wiggle out of.
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: And to be fair to Besson, it is true that
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: under both Biden and now under Trump, the opposite party's
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: voters were more willing to say the economy stunk than
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: in the past. Like Republicans under Clinton or Democrats under
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: Reagan would be more willing to separate out.
• 7:42
  Speaker 6: So there's something to that.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: However, there is also a material reality to the economy
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: of which the bottom is falling out. When we put
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: up A2, he defended his efforts to shovel endless amounts
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: of money into the burning pit that is his attempt
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: to manipulate the way that the global economy is reacting
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: to what is happening both in the war and with
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: the American economy.
• 8:08
  Speaker 6: And he said, quote, we will.
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: Be talking about a fiscal consolidation plan that is coming.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: So fiscal consolidation is his word for deeper and deeper
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: intervention into the bond market. What he's doing, he's in
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: the phase that so many of you have been in
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: so many times, which is, hey, don't cash that check yet.
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: I got to move some things around. And let me
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: get back to you when you can cash that. So
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: he's in the I got to move some things around phase.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: That is such a perfect description of what's happening.
• 8:47
  Speaker 6: That's what he's doing. He's moving some things around. That
• 8:50
  Speaker 6: check is good. I promise. Just don't cash it right now.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Give us a minute.
• 8:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: Now, speaking of checks being in the mail, you.
• 8:59
  Speaker 6: Can put up A3.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: And this is why we don't know whether to count
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: this as war news or this is economy news.
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
• 9:08
  Speaker 6: So this is oil analyst Brett Erickson.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: Reuters reporting that Saudi Arabia is canceling shipments of crude
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: oil to Europe after the catastrophic destruction of the Saudi
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: East-West pipeline in recent days, paired with Ansar Allah strikes
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: against various Saudi infrastructure. And so they canceled late September.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: We're basically in September 16th now. They canceled late September deliveries.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: There is reporting that they're also.
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: October deliveries are wobbly as well.
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: In other words, if you're in Europe and you ordered
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: a tanker of oil from Saudi Arabia, it's not going
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: to show up, which you can move some things around
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: if you're Scott Besson in that situation, but there is
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: a fundamental material reaction. to our global oil-based economy that
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: is being absolutely ripped to pieces right now. Meanwhile, we
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: can put up a six, a plant in Joliet run
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: by ExxonMobil. producing enormous amounts of diesel, is offline.
• 10:25
  Speaker 6: And it looks bad.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: What happened here? Because you actually brought this up.
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: The thinking is that because this... So plants are supposed
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: to go down for regular maintenance. And when you're running
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: a normal economy, that's how you do it. When you
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: are running massive shortages across the world and when spreads
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: are so huge, If you have a diesel plant, you're
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: processing 24-7. And so the thinking is that they pushed
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: it beyond the limit and broke their plan. And so
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: you had the Gulf Oil top energy analysts say, like today,
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: you're going to start seeing huge increases in diesel and
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: gasoline prices at the pump. particularly in the kind of
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: Mountain West and the Midwest. And I don't know exactly
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: how much connection there is to that, but that's a
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: huge plant. But what he was saying is that the
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: inventories are so low that.
• 11:37
  Speaker 6: You're starting to immediately see it.
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: Now, Libya, meanwhile, the National Oil Company of Libya, said
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: that it was likely going to declare force majeure, which
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: means basically, you know, hey, there's nothing we can do
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: about this. And they are not going to be exporting oil.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: It's like when Michael Scott declared bankruptcy.
• 11:59
  Speaker 6: Right. It's related to their.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: And then basically, if you can cite force majeure, then
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: you don't have to pay on your contracts. You don't
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: have to pay the default fees. They are facing protests
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: all throughout Libya right now.
• 12:12
  Speaker 6: And so Libya....
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: You know, a non-trivial contributor to our, uh, global, uh, global, uh,
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: oil production. So Trump's eyeing the crisis that he produced
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: because he just couldn't say no to Netanyahu. So surveying
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: the wreckage of the world, he tells Zelensky, look guy,
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: Now is not the time to be smashing Russian diesel
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: production facilities and at least Russian diesel. The rest of
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: the oil infrastructure would probably be great if you didn't,
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: but he's not going to push on that. Can't ask
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: for too much from our allies. But he said, diesel,
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: please back off.
• 13:08
  Speaker 6: He didn't say please. He ordered him.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: Stop attacking the diesel infrastructure infrastructure. So we can put
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: up this next element. Ukraine strikes Cizron refinery in Russia
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: despite Trump claim of energy truce. Ukraine struck the oil
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: refinery in Russia's Samara region as Kiev continues its campaign
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: against Russian energy targets. The Samara governor confirmed an industrial
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: facility was hit but did not identify it while images
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: of the attack circulated on social media. The strike came
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: despite Trump's claim earlier this week that Russia and Ukraine
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: had agreed to halt attacks on each other's energy infrastructure.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: Russia simultaneously launched around 200 drones at Ukraine overnight, killing
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: two people and damaging petrol stations in Kiev, as well
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: as energy and port infrastructure elsewhere. Zelensky said Ukraine was
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: prepared to suspend such attacks, but wanted credible guarantees that
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Moscow would also stop. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Trump's proposal, quote.
• 14:02
  Speaker 6: A very good idea.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: So what's there to argue about?
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: So Trump had a great idea. But I guess Zelensky
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: and Putin have another idea. And they're going to continue
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: bombing each other's energy infrastructure until the other one stops.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Two things can be true at once. Trump had a
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: great idea.
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: And it's going to keep going. That's apparently what the
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: Russian statement is telling us there. We also should get
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: to this Reuters survey of property experts.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: This is going to be a four. So Reuters reporting
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: yesterday on their survey, U.S.
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: Mortgage rates will stay higher than previously forecast and decline
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: only modestly over coming quarters. It's according to their poll
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: of property experts. They say it's going to keep home
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: price growth muted.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: Yes, of course.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: Through next year, those borrowing rate expectations published a day
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: before the U.S. Fed is set to raise its benchmark
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: interest rate for the first time this year, risk being
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: too low and leave government efforts to revive the U.S.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: housing market looking increasingly hollow.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: And so, again, worth emphasizing.
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: This is about the opposite of what the Trump administration
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: wanted to see from the economy a year ago when
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: Trump was relentlessly pushing the Kevin Walsh nomination, pushing investigations
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: into Jerome Powell. Worth noting, this is, again, the opposite
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: of what they wanted the economy— they wanted to be in
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: a— Trump was pushing Walsh specifically because he wanted rates to
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: come down. He was pushing Powell specifically because he wanted
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: rates to come down. He wanted to see— people buying houses, basically.
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: That's everything that he thought he was going to be
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: able to do with the economy. It was such a
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: high priority for him. He was willing to break all
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: of these norms when it came to Powell. And here
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: we are, because of his choice in the Iran war,
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: not even Kevin Warsh is going to be lowering rates
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: at this.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Point, Ryan. That's the expectation, at least.
• 15:55
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: And every quarter point on your mortgage is a huge
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: amount of money that you have to pay every month
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: to pay your mortgage off. And so it It really
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: changes how much, you know, house you can afford. And
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: if you're selling your house, how much you can ask
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: other people to pay for it, because, you know, if
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: they're paying huge interest rates, then they have less money
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: to pay. If you go and look at any of
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: the mortgage interest charts, I just pulled up Freddie Mac,
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: but you can look at any of them.
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: The day before Trump launched the.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: War in February is the lowest on record for going
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: back to COVID.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 16:29
  Speaker 6: COVID was super low. Just under 6% for the 30-year mortgage.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: That's painful to hear.
• 16:36
  Speaker 6: And you're looking, right?
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: So you're kind of familiar a little bit with.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: It's brutal.
• 16:41
  Speaker 6: Passively.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I'm in my early 30s.
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: There are a lot of people in their early 30s
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: right now who are looking to buy a home for
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: not just like economic reasons, wanting to put some of
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: your wanting to invest in property and a house, but
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: also just to have some.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: I don't know. There's a lot of like cultural.
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: Benefits that come with owning a home in your community
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: and kind of being part of that and planning routes.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: So Trump.
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: Talked about that all the time. Trump's surrogates talked about
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: that all of the time. And he had a boost
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: in young voters voting Republican in 2024.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: They were talking about this a lot.
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: And it was a huge priority for them to try
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: and be able to talk about this.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Nothing. They got nothing right now, except for higher rates.
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: And the rates last peaked in November of 2023. And
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: they're pushing 7.75. And then they start coming down rapidly
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: as both The Fed is tightening interest rates and also
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: the economy is struggling, you know, which is two things
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: are connected. And we're emerging from COVID and more or less,
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: you know, a little bumpy, but more or less steadily
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: coming down over the next over the next couple of
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: years until you get to. They're coming steadily down under Trump,
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: like you can you can see Trump, you can see
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: a real possibility for Trump to. oversee a pretty strong
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: economy throughout his entire term. All the numbers were heading
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: in the right direction.
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: Even with the trade war. And I actually think that's
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: an important point. There were a lot of dire forecasts
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: about the trade war. And it's not as though there
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: haven't been some negative externalities and consequences behind it. I
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: should say negative consequences behind it.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: If you look at the chart, you get a significant
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: bump because of Liberation Day in April.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: But manageable.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: And then it starts trending down again. So a bump there,
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: people were scared, then it starts coming down again. And then, boom,
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: he goes to war. And the number's just been up
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: and to the right since then.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Now over 7%. Like yesterday, it.
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: Eclipsed an average of 7%, which is puts housing out
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: of reach for just so many people.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: So many people.
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: I mean, you have to be rich, live in a
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: really low-cost area, or be pretty comfortable with debt to
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: take part in what we always considered the American dream, homeownership,
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: right now.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: And so, especially for people in their 20s and 30s
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: who are trying to enter that.
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: With the boomer homeownership where it is right now, there
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: are just not a lot of single-family homes.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Rates are really high.
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: So, All these things that they were trying to tackle,
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: they were touting this report yesterday to just bring in
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: what came out while Besson was testifying. It was a
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: Census Bureau data that found real median household income rose
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: by 2.6% to $ 87, 460 last year. According to that Census
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: Bureau report, the poverty rate fell by a nearly half
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: point to 10.2%. The poverty threshold for a family of
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: four last year was $ 32, 970. Besant celebrated the data, CNBC reported.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: But they also note the.
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: Census data covers 2025 and doesn't account for recent changes
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: in inflation or other economic shifts since the Iran war started.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: So, Ryan, this gets to exactly.
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: Your point about how all of the economic indicators were
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: trending in the right direction for the Trump administration until
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: February 28th when he decides to launch this war.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we didn't know which block to put this in,
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: but might as well talk about it here and then
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: transition to the next one. If we put a B4, actually,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: so this is Shanghai crude oil hitting a new record, $ 135.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: And what you're seeing here, when they say Shanghai crude
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: or otherwise, they're identify it by a location. That's what
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: people are actually paying for it, like when it's delivered.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: And you see the huge gap between how it's trading
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: in the market, which can be heavily manipulated by speculators
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: and by Scott Besson, who's out there constantly trying to,
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: you know, using American money to short it, to try
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: to keep the pressure down, which is basically just constantly
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: losing bets, deliberately losing bets to people on the other
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: side of the bet. We're just basically handing people money
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: to keep that number on the screen a little bit lower.
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: But then when somebody has to actually buy it at
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: the port, they have to shell out Shanghai crude $ 135
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: a barrel.
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah. It's a tough case for Scott Besant to have
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: to make, which is why you're seeing him strain and
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: saying it's what people are telling the pollsters, the Democrats
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: who are being polled are polluting the data, essentially.
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so stop lying about how great things are and
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: everything will be great.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Suck it up.
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: Can't you also buy a mansion in Charleston if you
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: put your mind to it? Right.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: And also think about this. You don't need a mortgage
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: if your parents just give you the money for the house.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: Why don't you think about that?
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: That is a good point. Have you all not considered this?
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: Make that call. Just ask nicely. Come home for Thanksgiving.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: See what happens.
• 21:57
  Speaker 6: Or your grandparents.
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: Diversity of ways to succeed in America.
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: Well, we should move on to Iran because there's a
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: lot of news coming out of the Middle East right
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: now as well, Ryan, that intersects with everything that we
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: were just talking about. But Thomas Massey moved to impeach
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: Pete Hegseth yesterday.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: Let's get to it.
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: Outgoing Republican Congressman Thomas Massey moved to impeach Secretary of
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: War Pete Hegseth yesterday on war power grounds, basically. Let's
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: take a listen to what Representative Massey said on the
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: House floor.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 22:30
  Speaker 8: Speaker, pursuant to Clause 2... A1 of Rule 9, I
• 22:33
  Speaker 8: seek recognition to give notice of my intent to raise
• 22:36
  Speaker 8: a question of the privileges of the House. The form
• 22:41
  Speaker 8: of the resolution is as follows. Impeaching Peter Brian Hegseth,
• 22:45
  Speaker 8: Secretary of Defense for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Resolved that
• 22:50
  Speaker 8: Peter Brian Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, also referred to as
• 22:53
  Speaker 8: Secretary of War by the administration, is impeached for high
• 22:57
  Speaker 8: crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment
• 23:00
  Speaker 8: be exhibited To the United States Senate, articles of impeachment
• 23:05
  Speaker 8: exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States
• 23:08
  Speaker 8: of America in the name of itself and of the
• 23:10
  Speaker 8: people of the United States of America against Peter Brian Hegseth,
• 23:14
  Speaker 8: Secretary of Defense, in maintenance and support of its impeachment
• 23:18
  Speaker 8: against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: A little spoiler, actually, I have Tucker on After Party tonight,
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: and I asked him about that yesterday, if he would
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: support the impeachment of Hegseth and of Trump. Massey also said,
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: by engaging in hostilities in Iran for more than 90
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: days without congressional authorization, Secretary Hegseth is breaking the law
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: and must be held accountable. Congress must not turn a
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: blind eye to Secretary Hegseth's unconstitutional and illegal actions. And so, Ryan,
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: this is obviously not going anywhere in the Mike Johnson-controlled
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: House of Representatives.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: It could go somewhere. in a Democratic-controlled Congress.
• 23:52
  Speaker 6: Well, the problem is it would have to go somewhere
• 23:54
  Speaker 6: in the Senate.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not happening.
• 23:57
  Speaker 6: Because you need a two-thirds vote to convict.
• 23:59
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 24:00
  Speaker 6: But I.
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: Don't want to rule out the value of it because
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: we were all raised, taught about the checks and balances
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: that make our government worth preserving.
• 24:13
  Speaker 6: That's the thing that makes us a republic, we're told.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: And We very clearly in the Constitution delegate the power
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: to declare war to Congress. The War Powers Act itself
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: specifically outlines the way that Congress can intervene on questions
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: of war and peace. In pretty much a first, Congress
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: passed a war powers resolution demanding that the Iran war
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: be ended.
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: This is not.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: The kind of thing that you need fancy constitutional scholars
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: to debate.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: No, we're referring to it as a war. The president
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: refers to it as a war.
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: It's right there.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: And Congress actually, a Republican-controlled Congress, shockingly, did its job,
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: voted on the war, and voted it down.
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: And they pursued it anyway. Which is.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: And so then, okay, the next check in the process
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: is we're impeaching you. That is not a radical move.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: That is the process that we have set up to
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: try to maintain checks and balances. The party nature, where
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: people are more loyal to a party than they are
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: to the Constitution, is the thing that doesn't have doesn't
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: have a check in the system other than complete and
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: total lack of popularity. If they, if Republicans lose in Kansas,
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: we're going to talk about Kansas in our midterm block.
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: If they lose in Kansas and they lose in Nebraska
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: and they lose in Texas, maybe there are some senators
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: who just demand he resign and maybe he just resigns
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: as the fall guy, like Donald Rumsfeld resigned after 2006,
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: the 2006 midterms, which were understood to be a referendum
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: on Bush's war. But Congress at that point had not
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: ordered it ended. And Bush wasn't continuing illegal.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: There's way more public support for that war.
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: It was illegal kind of generally.
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: In 2006, there was way more public support for the
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: Iraq war at that point, even.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: As it was going down dramatically.
• 26:35
  Speaker 6: Probably still, yeah.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Yes. And additionally... We can put this up next. This
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: is from the Washington Sun.
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: A CBO report is saying that President Trump's war with
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: Iran has cost the U.S. nearly $ 40 billion, consumed as
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: much as two-thirds of some critical U.S. missile interceptors, and
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: is expected to push inflation higher into next year. The
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: CBO on Tuesday released its first projections for the war,
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: finding that the conflict had directly cost the U.S. $ 38
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: billion through August 1st and will continue to cost roughly
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: $ 2 billion to $ 3 billion each month. Each month, those
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: costs could rise during periods of heavier fighting, the Sun adds.
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: More than half of the cost so far, $ 21. 7 billion,
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: comes from replacing munitions, including $ 13 billion worth of missile
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: defense interceptors. And that, first of all, the CBO estimate
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: is lower than what different news outlets have come up
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: with trying to— do the math itself, but it is
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: the CBO. It's an acknowledgment from the CBO that, yes,
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: inflation is being caused by.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: The Iran war.
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: Not that anybody needed a CBO report to tell them that,
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: but it also goes with this report that came out
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: of the Pentagon watchdog. We have government reports now acknowledging
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: what the administration.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Is not acknowledging.
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: So, from NBC News, they reported on September 14th, two
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: days ago, the Defense Department's inspector general released his first
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: report on the war with Iran on Monday, saying the
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: conflict has resulted in a shortfall of U.S. munitions and
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: bottlenecks in supply chains as the Trump administration works to
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: replenish weaponry. The word bottlenecks is a direct quote from
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: the report. And so you now have a CBO report saying, yes,
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: the war has worsened inflation. And you have a Defense
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: Department IG report saying, yes, the war has caused munitions shortages.
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: That sounds obvious if you're watching this show. It is
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: something the administration is outright being deceptive about.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: And so the report found hundreds of buildings were destroyed
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: across at least 15 bases. Dozens of aircraft added up
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: to well over $ 30 million is.
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: Their estimate.
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: But that is Before, and they're clear about this, that's
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: before the cost of rebuilding all of this, which we
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: can hopefully forget about, because can you imagine us rebuilding
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: any of this?
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: We have pictures, right, of some of the recent damage? Yeah,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: we should get to this. Let's put up... This is.
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: From CBS News.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: CBS News.
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: To their credit, look at them doing some journalism.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: CBS got its hands on these pictures showing damage to
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: buildings and vehicles at several U.S.
• 29:20
  Speaker 8: Positions.
• 29:20
  Speaker 6: They're calling that plane damaged.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, damaged.
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: Just put it in the shop for a couple days.
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: It'll come out good as new. Ryan, this was... Where
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: was this?
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: I think that was in Jordan.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: In Jordan, yeah, that's what I was thinking. Okay, so
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: look at that. I mean, if you're listening to it,
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: utter destruction.
• 29:38
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: So the rebuilding cost. will be significant.
• 29:41
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: And that doesn't count the number of munitions that we
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: fired off. Remember how we had said, was it last
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: week or the week before, whenever it was that Iran
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: launched that salvo at our Jordan base?
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: That it looked like at least.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: 50 anti-ballistic munitions were used in order to stave that off,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: including some THAAD missiles, which are the most expensive. Turns
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: out it was 70. You didn't know we were conservative
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: broadcasters here. We're like under-selling to you how bad it
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: is going. And they estimate something like 20 Iranian ballistic missiles,
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: which are You know, much, much less expensive than the 70.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: And forget the price. The time it takes to make
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: them is in the months and years.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: And we shot them all in a span of like
• 30:45
  Speaker 6: five minutes.
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: Yes, quite an opening for Xi Jinping should Xi Jinping
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: want to take Taiwan. Yes, Putin as well as allies
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: in Europe are well aware at this moment. CBS News
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: reports that picture we showed you of the plane was
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: at Prince Sultan Air Force Base in Taiwan. Saudi Arabia,
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: and that is the back half of a Boeing E3
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: Sentry four-engine aircraft. As CBS says, quote, it's tail severed
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: from the charred fuselage that also supported a rotating radar
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: that is essential for collecting mid-air intelligence. That one that
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: looks like a tent everyone was looking at just a
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: moment ago, that's Kuwait.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: And they have pictures of U.S.
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: Military trailers being absolutely destroyed by an Iranian strike at
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: Camp Bering in Kuwait as well.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: So, We haven't seen a lot of these images.
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: And I think, Ryan, that does change the mindset of
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: the public when you can physically review the destruction.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: It's kind of abstract.
• 31:43
  Speaker 6: You're like, oh, that's what it looks like.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:45
  Speaker 6: It doesn't look good.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: Doesn't look good.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: It looks like your ability to get health care just
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: going up in smoke. We'll talk about this probably more
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: in the Iron Beam blog if we can put up B5, too.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: Tucker did some reporting on this as well. So Trump
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: is now... And also, hey, mainstream media, you've got to
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: do something about the use of the word sale in
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: these headlines and leads.
• 32:11
  Speaker 6: So this is a Washington Post article.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: Trump's planned sale of controversial bombs to Israel is largest
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: in years. And so Congress was notified at some point
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: yesterday or the day before that. Trump is planning, and
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: I'll read from the Washington Post what they say, quote,
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: the largest single sale of the controversial ammunition in recent years. Again,
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: it's not a sale. We're giving it to them. We
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: are paying for it. It says, so the $ 2. 8 billion package,
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: which would be purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars. This is
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: from the same Washington Post article. Includes 40,000 bombs that
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: weigh 2,000 pounds each. including 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s,
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: said the official, who, like others, spoke in the condition
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: of anonymity. The sale also includes 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: So in what world does the word sale belong in
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: the headline in the lead, when in the second paragraph
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: we learn that it's going to be, quote, purchased with U.S.
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: Taxpayer dollars?
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, sale, sale.
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: We have a block later in the show where you
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: get into the quote-unquote sale related to Iron Beam.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: You just are.
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: Coming out of a deep reporting project on this, which
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: is why I think it touched a particular nerve, but
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: it is absolutely ridiculous that what you're pointing out is insane.
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: And to the Post's credit, and John Huds is a
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: very good reporter who wrote this. I think this is
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: just how the paper requires them and every other MSM
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: outlet to cover this, but it says, he writes, among
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals, An MK
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: 84 explosion sends metal fragments in every direction for thousands
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: of feet, can rip through metal and thick concrete, and often.
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: Creates large craters in the earth. What would Israel need
• 34:03
  Speaker 6: that for?
• 34:04
  Speaker 5: So Tucker wrote on this. I do talk to him
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: about this in the episode that airs tonight, but I
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: just got his daily newsletter. He wrote on to this.
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: How big is the shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: of bombs. This is actually kind of helpful. He says,
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: for perspective, the largest American air raid of World War
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: II was the 8th Air Force's attack on Berlin in
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: March of 1945. Combined, the 2,000 allied aircraft involved dropped
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: about 3,000 tons of bombs. That's 7.5% of what Trump
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: is sending to Israel.
• 34:31
  Speaker 6: For what? Like southern Lebanon?
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:33
  Speaker 6: There's nothing left to bomb in Gaza. However, they still
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: continue to bomb.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, yeah, it very well could
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: be for Gaza.
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: I'm sure you saw this. They did another double tap
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: strike yesterday where they.
• 34:47
  Speaker 6: Killed a boy and then another boy is running up.
• 34:51
  Speaker 6: And we have rare footage of the actual second strike.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: And recall that a few months ago, the IDF bragged,
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: And it's now video saying they were about to bomb
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: a gathering of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: were able to see that there were like curly sideburns
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: and they recognized that, oh, these are Jewish Israelis, so
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: we're not going to bomb them. And they said this
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: publicly as evidence of their ability to be restrained. So
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: what they're telling you is that they can see the
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: contours of a person's hair from the sky before they strike.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: So they clearly saw this child running up to this
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: other injured person and struck anyway. And so that is
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: the military that we are going to be sending 40,000
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: tons of new weapons to for free.
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: And Tucker's reporting, I don't know if you have any
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: on this, Ryan, as well, that it originated at the U.S.
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: Embassy in Jerusalem and then went to the State Department
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: where Rubio, I think Tucker said, enthusiastically approved it.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Chain of events.
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: I can only imagine.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Sounds accurate. Yeah.
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: Well, as a very tough midterm cycle looms ever closer, actually,
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: Election Day, I should say, looms ever closer, Donald Trump
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: continues to be extremely frustrated with the Supreme Court. Here's
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: a Truth Social post from yesterday. He said Republicans just
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: got another bad decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, one
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: that the court system took forever to give and then
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: blamed it in part on no time left to implement
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: a solution to our totally corrupt and out-of-control mail-in voting disaster.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: Which is a laughingstock all over the world.
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: He goes on to say, Justice Alito and Thomas, legends
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: both strongly disagreed with this horrible, highly political ruling. It
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: is a big loss for Republicans and America itself. It
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: makes cheating by the radical Democrats on mail-in ballots a
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: much easier thing to do. Now, what he's talking about
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: is the Supreme Court ruling that, as CNBC reports, blocked
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: a controversial in the U.S. Postal Service rule on mail-in
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: ballots from being used for the upcoming midterm elections. Let's
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: go down a little bit further here just to say
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: CNBC is saying on Monday this was three liberal justices,
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: Chief Justice John Roberts, catching folks up if they didn't
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: see this decision yesterday. They said that you have to
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: leave in place what this Boston court judge's injunction said
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: that prevented the Postal Service rule from the Trump administration
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: from being applied to ballots mailed in for November's election.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: That is a mouthful and complicated.
• 37:43
  Speaker 5: That's the process. It leaves in place an injunction from
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: a federal court in Boston on the Postal Service rule
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: that came from an executive order. It was trying to
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: have standards of CNBC reports for ballot envelopes, and then
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: it required states to enter information about voters and ballot
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: envelopes into a Postal Service portal.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: So the injunction on that is standing.
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, basically what they were doing was trying to produce
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: a system that would be unworkable. Like you'd have, uh,
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: the state would have to send a list of like,
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: say for every tranche, like 10,000 voters. Uh, and then
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: they would send 10,000 ballots to the post office that
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: would be to be mailed out to these 10,000 people.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: And if the postal service could find an error in
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: the spelling of any of the names or a hyphenated name,
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: or one person doesn't live at this place anymore, then they,
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: would be ordered not to deliver the entire 10,000 tranche.
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: And so, clearly, somebody was told to sit down and
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: figure out a way to basically use rules to make
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: mail-in balloting impossible for the states to actually effectively roll out. Hopefully,
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: for voting, this is early enough that states can get
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: their ballots out on time and get everything done. It
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: does suggest that the Supreme Court, after kind of playing
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: footsie with allowing this to go through a couple weeks ago,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: is now saying that was a procedural ruling. And now
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: that we're getting closer to this being coming real, we're
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: not going to allow this to happen.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: And it seemed to be a procedural ruling at the time,
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: but you never know. how these things go when they're
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: actually voted on. So this comes as, let's put this
• 39:35
  Speaker 5: New York Times, this is C8, New York Times tear
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: sheet up on the screen. New York Times Sienna polling
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: has found, quote, even some Republicans are losing faith in
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: Trump's economy and Democrats were favored on the top issues
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: as the sprint to the midterms gets underway.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: So you can see right there.
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: Some of their polling on this question, if the 2026
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: general election for Congress were held today, which party's candidate
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: would you be more likely to vote for in your district?
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: So this is the Time Siena generic ballot. Democratic candidate,
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: that is at 51 percent. Republican candidate is at 43 percent.
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: So pretty significant gap there. Democratic voters, or I'm sorry,
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: voters overall are giving Democrats a 60 percent to 36
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: percent advantage on health care. 52% advantage on immigration. Very
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: unusual in recent years, by the way, for Democrats to
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: have the advantage on immigration. And on the economy, 51%
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: to 45%. So that's Democrats plus seven on the economy,
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: according to the New York Times-Siena polling.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are plenty.
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: Of principled objections to mail-in ballots that people in the
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: administration have, but there are practical ones that they have
• 40:42
  Speaker 5: as well right now, which is they're in rough shape
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: and they know those mail-in ballots are not going to
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: go their way. And so anything they can do to
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: tamp that down. By the way, we're not having a
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: debate here about mail-in ballots. I generally hate widespread use
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: of mail-in ballots. But all that is to say, this
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: is more pragmatic, I think, right now than it is principled.
• 41:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: Yes, I think they're against ballots.
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: They're against people at this point.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: Yes, because as Bess has said, people are out there
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: saying the economy is lousy when it's actually incredible. Democrats
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: are going to go in and they're going to poison
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: the ballot box by voting against Trump. Before we get
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: to the news out of Michigan, C7 put that up.
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: A Republican pollster is out telling Republicans how to talk
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: about data centers The only issue that Republicans in that
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: New York Times poll even had any advantage, and it
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: was plus two, was on AI. So what are the
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: GOP maestros telling their candidates to say on data centers
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: to survive?
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: They're trying to.
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: And actually, by the way, this is good advice. It's
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: good advice. They're saying basically to acknowledge. It's good advice,
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: but it's sneaky. To acknowledge concerns.
• 42:00
  Speaker 6: I feel your pain.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: Yes. Hear the voters. Yes, it's bad.
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: Say we are going to because we hear you, because
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: we acknowledge that these can be real problems.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: We are going to.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: Get every squeeze everything out of these companies that is
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: possible to bring money into the area. So it's a
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: three three step process. But those first two steps from
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: this Fabrizio Tony Fabrizio memo are the important ones saying
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: we hear you. And we're going to put the screws
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: to these companies as they come into your neighborhood.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: We're going to get so many concessions. Politically, I think, again,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: good advice.
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: But it's a sneaky way for Republicans to basically back
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: data centers.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: To the hill.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 42:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the question. And it comes out of credibility.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: Do people trust that you're actually going to get any
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: concessions that make it worth what the data center is
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: going to cost your community?
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 42:50
  Speaker 6: And cost it in terms of noise and.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: Pollution and water usage and all the things that people
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: are are concerned about.
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: Which the companies building the data centers can afford. They
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: could always afford it. They never needed the tax breaks, ever.
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: They never needed the incentive packages. Never had to happen.
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: So now you can see it's pretty clear they're working
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: hand in glove with Republicans just to figure out how
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: to sell this better so they can keep building the
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: data centers and hyperscaling to fuel the AI boom.
• 43:16
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: So we have a couple of Michigan-related stories that we
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: can get to over at Dropsite.
• 43:21
  Speaker 6: The first is from Alexandra Zajic. great reporter.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: He put this element up on the screen. His headline,
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: Got Oxy? How Michigan's Mike Rogers Helped Fuel the Opioid Crisis.
• 43:33
  Speaker 6: And so we were looking at this.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: We took a look at this because Rogers in the
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: 2024 campaign was hit by Slotkin a little bit for
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: his work on fueling the opioid crisis. And Abdul El-Sayed
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: has made some kind of over-the-top allegations about what his
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: role was, which turned out not to be really that accurate.
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: And so we're like, well, let's, let's take a look
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: at exactly what Rogers did. And I frankly was stunned.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: I did not, I did not realize like how tied
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: at the hip Mike Rogers was as a member of
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: Congress to the Sackler Purdue pharma funded effort throughout the
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: two thousands to basically push this idea that there are
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: 100 million people in America who are living with untreated
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: pain and it is cruel to deprive them of oxy, basically.
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: And we need the NIH and we need the federal
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: government pushing so that doctors understand that they should be
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: basically much looser with how they're prescribing oxy. It was
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: an extraordinarily effective campaign run through the American Pain Society,
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: the American Pain Foundation. And one congressman was the lead
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: champion of this in the early 2000s, up through a
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: lot of it getting into law through the Affordable Care Act, actually.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: And his name was Mike Rogers. We put up Steve
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: 3 here. So this is in September 2003. You've got
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: Mike Rogers appearing with the American Pain Society, announcing that,
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: you know, declaring that, like the headline in the UPI here,
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: pain is the biggest U.S. health problem, and announcing that
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: he's going to tackle legislation. They write here, UPI writes,
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: Congress is aware of the problem and has declared this
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: the decade of pain control and research, but the legislative
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: body looks unlikely to to do anything significant soon to
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: address the problem. Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, has
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: introduced a bill in the House called the National Pain
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: Care Policy Act, which seeks to improve pain treatment, but
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: it does not look likely to pass this year, and
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: as yet, there is no companion bill in the Senate.
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: Despite the small chance Congress will pass any significant pain
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: legislation this year, Rogers said he is not deterred and
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: remains committed to improving pain treatment. If his bill fails
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: to pass this year, Rogers plans to reintroduce it in 2004. Quote,
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: I'm like a bad rash. I'll keep coming back year
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: after year, he said. That is Mike Rogers promising to
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: be a rash.
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: Hopefully someone can get some oxy for the rash.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: He made good on his promise. It did not pass
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: that cycle. He reintroduced it again the next cycle. He
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: reintroduced it again the next cycle and continually... Got more
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: support for it, more co-sponsors. There was more of a
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: public PR campaign around it. And then eventually, through the
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: Affordable Care Act, they put most of the legislation through
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: at that point. We'll get to that in a second.
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: But one thing that Zajic found, we can put up
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: C4 here. So this is a PowerPoint presentation given at
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: the 2004 American Pain Foundation conference. and where they're listing
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: their quote-unquote advocacy accomplishments. And they write here, developed mobilization
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: project description and proposal, piloted mobilization strategies resulting in increased
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: co-sponsorship of HR 1863, that's Mike Rogers' bill, contributed to
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: HR 1863 strategic planning, conducted Hill Day's advocacy training. If
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: it's not clear exactly what they mean by that, means
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: they helped Mike Rogers write the bill They helped him
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: strategize how it was going to get through the Hill.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: They helped him get co-sponsors to build support for it.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: And they brought people to Congress and trained them how
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: to talk to members of Congress so that it didn't
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: sound like it was the Sacklers saying, we feel like
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: we could make billions of dollars a year if we
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: get people addicted to opioids. That's not going to work.
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: Here's what we're going to say. pain is what they
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: call the fifth vital sign. This is the organization, the
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: group of organizations that came up with this idea of
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: the fifth vital sign. And then you come up with
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: this number that 100 million people are in untreated pain.
• 48:28
  Speaker 6: And they would always say in.
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: Their lobbying, it would be good if there are some
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: pain treatments that are not addictive. However, they were constantly
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: against medical marijuana, and they never put forward treatments that
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: were non-addictive.
• 48:49
  Speaker 6: But they would say, in the meantime, let's use what
• 48:52
  Speaker 6: we can.
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: And so when Mike Rogers started this, I think the
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: number of people who died of an overdose was in
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: the low thousands. Last year it was 70 plus thousand.
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: And there have been many years where it was over 100,000.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: And that doesn't count the people who.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: Were brain dead or went into a coma or weren't
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: revived in time, were revived in time that they didn't die,
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: but they're going to suffer lifelong consequences from this. There
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: is just no question that this American Pain Society, Sackler,
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: Purdue campaign, was responsible for the increase in opioid use
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: throughout the 2000s and 2010s. And there's no question that
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: Mike Rogers was their lead champion in the House. And
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: I actually, I hate to say it, I did not
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: know that he had played that central role in this.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: And it took Alex a decent amount of work to
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: go back and look through the congressional records and everything else,
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: because in 2011, Rogers, after it gets pushed through on
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: the ACA, Rogers joins the Intelligence Committee. And after that,
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: he pivots politically. And from then on, he's this national
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: security guy. So the Mike Rogers that you know is
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: this deep state national security tough guy who's going.
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: To fight terrorists.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: So he came from the FBI, right? Right.
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: He did like four or five years in the FBI.
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: And so he basically dropped that entire thing. American Pain Society,
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: I think, dissolved in 2011. And the 2010s, they were
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: in retreat. The numbers are still going up, but they're
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: getting sued by everybody. They're dodging prosecutions. They're getting their
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: names taken off of buildings as the consequences of what
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: they did become impossible to ignore. And so I think Rogers,
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: as a savvy politician, was like, okay, a decade of
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: this was good. I don't need to have my name
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: associated with opioids anymore.
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:16
  Speaker 6: That's not going to be.
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: Well, it just gets to the point of, like, we
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: have buried so much of the history because there was
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: genuinely a reckoning for the Sackler family.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: They did face a reckoning.
• 51:27
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: Didn't go to.
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: Prison, still have some decent amount of their money, but
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: they faced a huge social reckoning.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Social reckoning, yes, exactly.
• 51:34
  Speaker 6: And they had to pay some money as well. They
• 51:36
  Speaker 6: had to pay.
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they did have their name stripped off, those sorts
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: of things. Yeah, it's probably not fair to call it
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: a total reckoning because they didn't go to prison, frankly.
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: But they faced social consequences, some financial consequences. But they
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: had a whole lot of people in an apparatus boosting
• 51:51
  Speaker 5: them in Washington, Wall Street.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: And Mike Rogers was a big part of that.
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: And what they were so good at doing, so by
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: the time they got a lot of this through the
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: Affordable Care Act, it created a couple of pain commissions, basically,
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: at the NIH and Institute of Medicine. And by that point,
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers had so thoroughly seeded this
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: pain industry with their people that even put up the
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: next element, put up C5, that.
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: Basically, the commissions then became stacked with these industry people.
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: And so these questions would go, what should the prescription
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: levels be set at? How should we write the guidance
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: to doctors about.
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: The risks and the benefits of these medications?
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: And the people writing all of these things that were
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: put through the Affordable Care Act that came from Rogers'
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: bill had all themselves were getting paid off for the
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: most part by doctors.
• 52:53
  Speaker 6: This quote-unquote pain industry.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: It makes your blood boil.
• 52:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's bleak. It's really bleak.
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: You know, there was this detail in the Times-Siena poll
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: that we were talking about.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: It's actually really interesting.
• 53:06
  Speaker 5: They say those earning less than $ 50, 000 were more than
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: twice as likely to say they would vote for a
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: Democratic congressional candidate this fall rather than a Republican. Those
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: numbers are 63% to 31%. The Times says that would
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: represent a dramatic shift from 2024 when Mr. Trump narrowly
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: carried that group, according to exit polling. I bet this
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: is similar in Michigan, if we were able to zero
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: in on Michigan voters, to what the Times and CNN
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: are finding nationwide, where you have people earning less than
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: $ 50, 000 a year who actually supported Trump, according to exit polling,
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: in 2024, flipping for Democrats.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: The Rogers story is interesting.
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: And that's tough for him to try and make any
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: more inroads. It gets to this idea that there was
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: a trajectory of this working class realignment that was going
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: to outlive Trump for the Republican Party. It's actually not
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: even lasting through the second Trump administration.
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: It was growing previously.
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: And now it has been just halted in its tracks.
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: And part of the reason is probably their insistence on
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: running people like Mike Rogers who have such baggage.
• 54:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah. How do you present this guy?
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: And so Rogers did not respond to our request for comment.
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: But in the past, when he's been asked about this,
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: he has cited his support for a bill called the
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005 PDMP.
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: It created a national prescription drug monitoring program. He'll say, look,
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: I was trying to do that. But the industry was
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: generally supportive of the pain. It was generally supportive of
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: this measure because what it did is it pretended to
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: address the problem.
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: It would use this database and it would find some
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: people who were addicted to opioids by measuring the amount
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: that they were getting and how long they've been getting
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: it and then just boom just cutting them off Most
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: of them then go to the street.
• 55:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah, what it but what it didn't do is focus on.
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: Purdue Pharma or the other distributors like the wholesalers are
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: the distributors in other words a All the data was
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: right there.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: Who were telling doctors to over-prescribe it.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this stuff was being made very publicly. You're
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: not making this stuff in a back alley. They're making
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: it in a facility that is FDA approved. So the
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: other approach that people were calling for was, no, investigate
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: these companies. They know which pill mills they're sending drugs.
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: millions of pills to. That's what we want to know.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: Find these and then shut them down. And then you
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: have to come in with a holistic project as well. Otherwise,
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: everybody's just going to turn to heroin, which is now
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: flooding in from Afghanistan at that time.
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: So, you know, triple, quadruple whammy going on.
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: But this database was It's a very common Washington tactic. Okay,
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: there's pressure to do something. Let's channel that pressure into
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: something that looks like we're doing something but actually doesn't
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: do anything about the system. Now, we don't have this
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: article up yet. It should be up maybe by the
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: time this goes up.
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: We'll have it up.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: But since we're picking on good old Mike Rogers, this
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: one's wild. Tom Perkins is a great reporter in Michigan.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: He wrote this for Dropsite News as well. So if
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: you remember, there was this group called Michigan Jews Against Extremism.
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: which was roughly 400 people who said that they were
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: Democrats and wanted to support Abdul El-Sayed, wanted to support
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: the Democrat, but they were so infuriated by El-Sayed's quote-unquote
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: anti-Semitism or his criticism of Israel that their consciences dictated
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: that they were going to have to support Mike Rogers.
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: And this creation of this 400-person group ended up creating
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: enormous amounts of media attention nationally. Is, you know, is
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: El-Sayed going to lose all of these Democrats who are
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: supportive of Israel? So what Tom did is he looked
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: through the list of people. He found that roughly 50
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: of them were involved with Jews for Mit.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: This is crazy.
• 57:25
  Speaker 6: Which is a 2012 thing.
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: Where people said that they were Democrats, but that Barack
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: Obama was so anti-Israel that their consciences insist that they
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: were going to have to vote for Mitt Romney. So
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: people who are saying that they're really hardcore Democrats are
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: saying that Barack Obama was too anti-Israel for them. And
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: so at least since 2012, they've been voting Republican. So
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: then he looked through the rest of the list and
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: you find Enormous numbers of people of the 430 on
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: this list who have donated to Donald Trump, donated to Republicans,
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: been involved in in Republican causes.
• 58:10
  Speaker 6: You even have.
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: So the chair, the finance chair for Mike Rogers's campaign.
• 58:17
  Speaker 6: So, in other words, this is not a Democrat.
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: He signed the Democrats from it. thing this time.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: And now he's the rogers finance now.
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: He's a rogers finance chair this time he had the
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: good sense not to sign this letter because he's publicly
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: the finance chair for the mike rogers campaign yep so
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: don't pretend that you otherwise were going to vote for
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: el sayed six of his family members are on this
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: who have republican links are on this list of supposed
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: democrats So subtle, subtle.
• 58:52
  Speaker 6: You look very closely. Tons of tons of Republicans. He
• 58:56
  Speaker 6: also looked. This is less surprising.
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: Over 90, I think roughly 90 percent were are highly
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: active with pro-Israel groups, which you would expect, although it
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: wasn't really it wasn't put forward as like an apex.
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: Project.
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: Because Mike Rogers has nothing to do with AIPAC. He's
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: not interested in AIPAC's help. Please, AIPAC, stop associating with
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: Mike Rogers.
• 59:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so if you want to.
• 59:21
  Speaker 5: A little joke about Mike Rogers trying to actively distance,
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: if you haven't seen it, he is trying.
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: To like, He told him, please don't spend publicly, even
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: after they said publicly that they were going to spend
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: publicly for him. He said, actually, please don't do that
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: because that's going to make it look really bad for me.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: Then that weekend he goes to California for three different fundraisers. Yeah,
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: Bobby Shostak is the former head of the Michigan Republican
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: Party and the finance chair for the Mike Rogers campaign. So, yeah,
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: hardcore Dems here.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: We'll look forward to that over at DropSite.