← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
10/13/25: China US Trade War, Troops At Food Banks, MTG Flips On Trump Deportation, ICE Nabs Journalist
01:23:02
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- [00:00]
Emily
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
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- [00:40]
Crystal
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- [01:06]
Sager
You the US electric grid is approaching a breaking point as demand soars from data centers and home energy use. Our aging infrastructure can't keep up and the Department of Energy warns that without action, blackouts could surge 100 fold by 2030. The good news? One solution is already here. Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready, powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather. Learn more@propain.com hey guys, Sager and Crystal here.
- [01:38]
Crystal
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [01:45]
Emily
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:51]
Crystal
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:02]
Emily
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com.
- [02:10]
Crystal
Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Little lady show for you.
- [02:14]
Emily
Yeah, surprise. It was a set. We were ambushed by doing a lady show and we're happy to do it.
- [02:18]
Crystal
Yes indeed. We're always ready to step up with the ladies show and there is a lot of news to get to this morning. We got a China trade war. We got the government still shut down. We got ice gone wild in Chicago and elsewhere We've got Trump in Israel and we're gonna bring you some saucies. Just spe. Like right now as we're recording this. So we're gonna process that, bring you all of the news with regard to. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on there. We're gonna try to get to the story about whether or not there's going to be a Qatari air base on US soil, something Laura Loomer was very unhappy about. So that's an interesting one.
- [02:50]
Emily
It is just an interesting story in general. What is actually happening. Pete Hyksseth himself had to issue a clarification. So we're gonna break down actually the real story when we get to that block.
- [02:59]
Crystal
Yeah. Hexath said very clearly, they're going to have an airbase and then they're like fake news. They're not gonna have an air base. The media's lying to you. And we're like. We're just literally trying to listen to what the Secretary of War is telling us here.
- [03:11]
Emily
Yes, but thank you for using his preferred. I was gonna say pronoun, but preferred.
- [03:15]
Crystal
It does feel a little.
- [03:16]
Emily
He identifies as the Secretary of War. Yeah, that's true.
- [03:19]
Crystal
That's true. And then we have to get in this block about Peter Thiel and his views on the Antichrist. I mean, this is an incredibly powerful, influential man because of his wealth, because of his involvement with a variety of companies, because of his connection to the Trump administration. So when he's saying wild things, you kind of have to listen. And Washington Post got their hands on the audio of these four lectures, private lectures that he gave on the subject of the Antichrist. We also pulled some clips of things that he said publicly before. So we're going to dig into that a little bit.
- [03:50]
Emily
Yeah, looking forward to it, Crystal. But let's start with China.
- [03:53]
Crystal
Yeah, indeed. So whole lot of things happened with regard to this on Friday, and the markets really tanked in reaction. So China announced export restrictions, so banning blocking us aggressively from these rare earth minerals, which are really critical, which could have a major impact. Trump then responded saying he was going to increase tariffs on China to 100% and impose additional restrictions on them as well. As I said, the markets tanked. There was big reaction. Now we've got Trump kind of walking it back. So that's where we are this morning. Look, let's take a listen to JD Vance yesterday sounding off on this.
- [04:31]
Emily
I'll be honest with you, Maria. It's going to be a delicate dance, and a lot of it is Going to depend on how the Chinese respond. If they respond in a highly aggressive manner, I guarantee you the President, United States has far more cards than the People's Republic of China. If, however, they're willing to be reasonable, then Donald Trump is always willing to be a reasonable negotiator. We're going to find out a lot in the weeks to come about whether China wants to start a trade war with us or whether they actually want to be reasonable. I hope they choose the path of reason. The President United States is gonna defend America regardless.
- [05:07]
Crystal
So let me go ahead and put the Trump truth up on the screen where he initially announced his retaliatory actions. And to be clear, the Chinese are saying they were acting in retaliation to us changing some of the rules on our chips export restrictions. So they felt that we had violated a sort of verbal agreement that we had with them to just hold everything in place while a large deal was being worked out. That's why they upped their export controls on us. This is Trump announcing retaliation in response to that retaliation. So he says. It's just been learned China's taken an extraordinarily aggressive position on trade in sending an extremely hostile letter to the world stating they were going to, effective November 1st, impose large scale export controls on virtually every product they make and some not even made by them. This affects all countries without exception, was obviously a plan devised by them years ago. Absolutely unheard of in international trade. Disgrace in dealing with other nations based on the fact China has taken this unprecedented position, speaking only for the USA, not other nations who are similarly threatened. Starting November 1 or sooner, depending, the US of A will impose a tariff of 100% on China over and above any tariff they are currently paying. Also on November 1, we will impose export controls on any and all critical software possible. To believe China would have taken such an action, but they have and the rest is history. Thank you for your attention to this matter and put a 3 up on the screen that shows the extent of the stock market crash that we saw on Friday. Now as of this morning, right now it is 8:09am so markets are not open. But futures, Emily, are up because Trump put out another truth saying that, you know, it would all work out and be okay.
- [06:48]
Emily
Yeah, the CNBC headline right now, Dow futures jumped 300 points after Trump says China situation quote will all be fine. Everything's okay. He's got it completely under control. Crystal, there's no need to worry about it. He did say on Air Force One en route to Israel and Egypt that November first to him is, you know, a long time away. Other people say it's really close, but for him, he says it's a long time away. Projecting some confidence that he has China coming to the table on all of this. It's true. I mean, part of the true social, or actually, I'm sorry, this is part of what J.D. vance says. It is true that it's not like we have zero leverage in the situation. So there's, I mean, there are all kinds of things that can happen between now and then, but I don't know that I'm just, listen, I don't sell stocks. But Trump saying, quote, everything will be fine. It's not exactly the confidence boost.
- [07:36]
Crystal
Yeah, well, I fit. I mean, the whole thing kind of fits a pattern of what he's done in the past. In particular, some sort of something happening on Friday, some tariffs announced, markets reacting.
- [07:48]
Emily
But they're closed over the weekend.
- [07:50]
Crystal
Over the weekend, they're closed. And then, lo and behold, before Monday comes around, he makes some other comment that people, makes people go, okay, I'm sure everything will be fine then. And you know, the backdrop of this, of course, as we've been covering here, is that we likely have this gigantic AI bubble. The all but like point 1% of our GDP growth has come from investment in AI and AI data centers. 80% of the growth in the stock market comes from these AI related companies. So we're really betting the farm on this thing. And yet, you know, you've got all kinds of other economic indicators that for average people are going very poorly. The stock market just continues to go up and up and up because of that bet on AI. And if we could put a 7 up on the screen here in terms of how to think about this war between the US And China with regard to trade. This is Arnaud Bertrand, who wrote about, okay, why is it that China is taking these actions? Now, we've long known about this, what he describes as the rare earth card, which they have very strategically been able to secure. The ability not just to access the rare earth minerals, but the ability to refine them. They're really critical in all these technologies of the future. So why haven't they really played this card before? And he says that one of the answers is actually helium. He looked into the fact that helium isn't, he says, just a party. Balloon gas has plenty of industrial applications for things like quantum computing, rocket technology, MRI machines, coolant for chip lithography equipment, et cetera. And so they realized that they had a problem in terms of their own helium access. And so over years, they've made sure that they were able to diversify their access to helium, which is critical in a variety of things. And now they're at a point where 95% of the helium that they use comes from sources other than the US So now they're in a position where they can play this, what he describes as the rare earth card. He says that's what most people don't realize. Power is not about intentions or rhetoric. It's about what you can actually do. Many wonder why countries almost never retaliate when the US Imposes sanctions or export controls. The answer is simple. They can't. They lack the alternatives, the technology, supply chains. China is the first country that systematically worked to eliminate every single pressure point with humongous efforts. It's not just helium, it's chips, energy, telecom, pharmaceuticals, et cetera. That's why the rare earth card can finally be played now. Not because China suddenly became aggressive, but because they have developed the capabilities to say no. And Emily, I think this is such an incredible contrast between the Chinese system and the American system. So even putting Trump aside, first of all, in the American system, we tend to like to outsource to the markets. If the markets don't think that if they can obtain helium or rare earths in a cheaper way that doesn't secure the supply line here from China specifically, then that's what will happen. And there's been very little over the past 30, 40, 40 years, thoughtful industrial policy about, okay, these are things that are critical to our national security. These are the technologies that are going to be critical to the future. What can we do to create a system where we are investing in those and make sure that we are leading in those? And then you couple that with, under the Trump administration, they have some impulses in that direction, but they're also a bunch of fools and idiots who don't think three steps ahead. So this rare, they don't even think, think half a step ahead. I mean, the rare earth mineral thing is such an obvious problem for us. And yet Trump just barrels ahead, full speed, putting random tariffs on this country and that country and on China and these very aggressive postures that make us incredibly vulnerable in a way that was very, very predictable and very obvious.
- [11:42]
Emily
Chinese politics don't center around the immediate news cycle. I mean, their politics is engineered over 100, 200 year cycles. And Donald Trump very much negotiates as though everything is this back and forth in a micro sense. I mean, like, he's more macro than other Presidents, but he's micro in his negotiations and that it's about the personal like moment the last time he spoke to Xi or the last communication that happened between the United States and China. And what gets lost in all of that? And this is actually the point I was trying to make earlier about the stocks. It's that, do I think that Trump might do a taco in this situation? Yeah, of course I think Trump might do a taco in this situation. What does that do to us though in the long term? Does that solve any long term problem or is it a stopgap for Donald Trump to have this macro sense look like he's making progress on the industrial policy? But actually what he did was solve a micro problem that you could argue he created by getting into this situation without a massive sort of long term industrial policy in place. So yeah, I mean, it's bleak. I think it's probably waking up. I mean, it's partially to your point. It's like we have the kind of worst of both world situation right now where we don't have a super smart targeted government industrial policy on rare earths, but we do have our like predatory capitalists who will try to quickly make a buck off of this when they realized that Trump wants to see them doing it and that they probably have a lot of financial disincentives to decouple from China. But there are actually people in Trump's own administration that don't want a financial decoupling with China. Like this is the war inside the Trump administration right now too. So basically nobody has any idea in the big picture sense like what a clear organized policy is going to look like. We don't have anything on the table right now.
- [13:26]
Crystal
Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, zooming out a bit, it shows kind of like the, the promise and the peril of a more planned economy. Yeah. Because the Chinese are executing this extremely well. You know, the amount when you look at the number of people have been lifted out of poverty over the past number of decades, overwhelmingly that is because of growth in China, like the, of their rapid economic growth and the number of their own people that they've been able to lift out of poverty is truly like one of the great economic miracles in history.
- [13:56]
Emily
And not in any small part by persuading us to trade with them more and more.
- [14:01]
Crystal
That was a big part of it they looked at. First of all, they rejected the path that we pushed on the former Soviet Union of this neoliberal shock doctrine. Saw that that did not go well. And explicitly rejected that path and understood the global international system well enough to basically sort of use it for their own ends. Right. To exploit the loopholes in it, to use it for their own ends and have had this incredibly intelligent strategic policy plans. And not to say that everything is rosy and it's all perfect and they don't have their own economic challenges to deal with. That is certainly the case. But we can see the way that their solar energy and renewable energy is coming online. We can see the way that their EV industry has developed and is way more advanced at this point than ours is. We can see the way that they are, you know, at least even with us in terms of AI development, you know, all of these areas that we used to feel like, oh well, they can just copy our tech after we put it out there. So we're always at the bleeding edge. That is no longer the case.
- [15:03]
Emily
Right.
- [15:03]
Crystal
In terms of China. So they've been able to accomplish something that is extraordinary because it's been driven by the top and it also has been extremely intelligent. And then with the Trump administration you do have this impulse towards more of top down government control, but it's done in this totally haphazard way with no forethought and no long term planning. I mean, part of that is just the nature of the American system where you get in office for four years and then you're tossed down again. But it also is because they have gone about this in such a slap shot manner. Just thinking back to that original tariff announcement with all the countries listed and some of it didn't make sense and incorrect and terrifying islands that only have penguins on it, whatever polar opposite of the intelligent strategic thought out direction that you would want to go. And meanwhile they're actively kneecapping the industries of the future. I mean, they don't have, you know, typically Republicans have said they have an all of the above energy strategy. They are actively hostile towards renewable energy while China is, you know, racing ahead in that field. So I think it's an incredible contrast between the, you know, the approaches of the two countries and the perils not only of neoliberalism, but a stupidly done planning from the top.
- [16:18]
Emily
Yeah, I mean, some of the people who push the renewables have made it hard to mine rare earths in places like Alaska. Like there is some of that going on at the same time. It's the strongest critique of industrial policy is that it becomes crony capitalism and that crony capitalism not only is immoral, but it's also inefficient and when Trump was pitching this industrial policy, you know, planning Liberation Day, nobody knew exactly what it would look like. The warning from the Boomer Khans and neolibs was industrial policy is crony capitalist. Industrial policy just becomes inefficient. It's crony capitalist, it's inefficient. And then all of the industrial policy people like Sager me are like, well, there's a way that this can be done that actually makes a lot of sense. And then Trump just has completely, explicitly shown it's basically crony capitalist. He has a system of crony capitalism that we haven't seen fully in fruition because he's still going back and forth on a lot of the stuff, like the China stuff right now. Like it's happening right now and Liberation Day was April. So we don't know exactly what the legacy of the Trump tariff policy is going to look like because we have no idea day to day where he lands with individual countries, including massive ones like China. Is he going to capitulate in ways that make no sense to the United States? Is he going to crack down on a way that's hawkish and puts us in? We genuinely do not know. Because so much of it depends on. On who he talks to last.
- [17:44]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [17:45]
Emily
What kind of deal they're making. I mean, it's actually like the AI announcement early in his presidency where he had Sam Altman behind, like, inconceivable a year ago during his campaign, or let's say a year and a half ago during the campaign, that he would be giving so much away to people who were brutally opposed to him in many ways for years. And there he was. So it's all haphazard. It's all completely haphazard.
- [18:09]
Crystal
To your crony capitalism point, it very much appears that there was somebody who made millions and millions of dollars insider trading on crypto in particular. People are tracking these wallets that were trading just before this 100% tariff announcement was made. Par for the course for this administration. Not shocking. It's barely even worth a mention. Cause that's just how. That's just the crony capitalist nature of this administration. He is validating some of the criticisms of libertarians. That is truly unforgivable. Never forgive him for that, Emily.
- [18:41]
Emily
That's the thing. But it's not as though, I mean, like, everyone knows that can happen and that can go wr. Right. Like everyone knows that. But Trump is especially more in his first term, but in his second term, he's just been surrounded by the business Community. He enjoys so much having industry kiss the ring. And they weren't doing it at all in his first term. So he wasn't even in a position to make deals with him.
- [19:02]
Crystal
And it's a way for him. He loves power, like, and that's a way for. There's nothing he loves more than, you know, people showing up. Tim Cook showing up at the White House with a gold bar for him and, you know, or Mark Zuckerberg being like, oh, sir, did I say the right dollar amount that you wanted me to say in terms of investment in the US and being able to have that direct line and really consolidate this system of oligarchs who surround him. Meanwhile, you know, excuse me, very relevant to this. You can put a 8 up on the screen. This is what I was referring to before. I mean, so much of our economy is literally just AI without data centers. GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025.
- [19:43]
Emily
Good Lord.
- [19:44]
Crystal
Financial Times had a great headline that was something like, the US is now just one big bet on AI. And that is incredibly increasingly the case. This will become relevant again in our final block on Peter Thiel and the Antichrist. Cuz his whole theory is that anyone who opposes this is actually like either the Antichrist or like in league with the Antichrist.
- [20:03]
Emily
But he's also like conceding it's a bet. You know, it's a gamble.
- [20:06]
Crystal
Yeah, he says it's dangerous, but it's more dangerous to not do it. That's his position. So that's where we are. And we can take a look at 810, just US dollar, it continues to decline precipitously this year. All sorts of troubling economic indicators. And the US dollar piece, and also Sagar and I covered last week, the extraordinary rise of gold is a incredibly significant development because effectively what the world is saying is US dollar, US Treasuries, you guys are no longer the safe haven. We are going to gold, we're going to hard metals. We're going to find somewhere else else that is a place to hedge our bets against this massive likely AI bubble that we can see inflating. So that is why that is very significant.
- [20:56]
Emily
Yep. And I mean, this is. I'm on CNBC again right here. Retaliation or escalation? This is the headline. Trust between the US and China is fading fast. Analysts say the root cause of the tension is due to a lack of mutual trust. This is what we were getting at before. Crystal is like utterly unpredictable because, and like I made the argument early after Liberation Day that the unpredictability was leveraged to an extent. And I think that would have been true. But now the unpredictability has people betting. Very clearly in the long term, a lot of these bets are being placed with countries outside of the United States, with supply chains outside of the United States. Not all of them, but a lot of them are enough that it should actually be genuinely concerning for us because this lack of, quote, mutual trust. Well, it's not just between the United States and China, it's between our other trading partners in the United States. Yeah, that's right. And they have to trust the relationship between the United States and China. They have to trust what the policy looks like is clear in one direction or the other. And really just like even at this point, how many months since April, people don't know and people have to make money, they have to make business decisions. And here we are.
- [21:59]
Crystal
Yeah, we're going to keep our eye on all of this, which is why gold, by the way, going up and up. Yeah, and we're going to continue to keep our eye on all of this, including the AI piece of this, because I really feel it isn't under covered like bubbling populist issue, both from the standpoint of where these data centers are being located and some of the battles with locals who don't want them there or after they're there are very upset about the fallout from that and then the spiking electricity prices, which is just that is like surest way to get some sort of a populist backlash is if you make it it more and more expensive for people just to be able to have the basics of living their lives.
- [22:42]
Emily
Maybe it's possible that six months from now Trump has worked out some type of massive deal with China and things are clearer and make more sense. But right now it doesn't look like that's where this is going. I get it. I get why Trump allies Trump supporters who say just trust the process. But for people outside of Trump circles, nobody trusts the process right now. Especially now we're going to show the clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tim Dillon as people's livelihoods are being like directly and obviously affected in material ways.
- [23:14]
Crystal
Yeah, she's a bit of a canary in the coal mine, I'd say.
- [23:17]
Emily
Yeah. The extent to which people are willing to quote, trust the process at this point is obviously, I mean, even people who were like Trump, curious independents, they're going to have a serious problem unless there's again, to your point, crystal, a clear, concrete industrial policy, deal with China, deal with other major major trading partners that is coherent and makes sense. That's going to be really difficult for them to sell heading into the midterms. Unless that changes.
- [23:41]
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- [24:42]
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- [25:12]
Sager
Lenovo the US electric grid is approaching a breaking point as demand soars from data centers and home energy use. Our aging infrastructure can't keep up and the Department of Energy warns that without action, blackouts could surge 100 fold by 2030. The good news? One solution is already here. Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready. Powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on on the grid or the weather. Learn more@probane.com.
- [25:47]
Crystal
Speaking of dysfunctional government, the government is still shut down and there's a big looming question about the troops getting paid. Trump is saying that he has secured funding for them sort of outside of congressional channels in order to make sure that they get this next paycheck. In the meanwhile, you know there's a lot of concern and a lot of struggle already. You can take A look at the number of of service members lined up in this local food bank. Let's look at that. There is quite a bit of military members and their families in line because of this government shutdown. We're in day nine of it and they're here for a food pantry. There's all sorts of food that is available. And I spoke with some military member spouses and I spoke with some department heads here at the Asymca on why this is so important. What's the difference in the amount of people that you've seen from today to priority previously? So when we first started coming, there definitely wasn't this amount of people. It was a lot, but it wasn't this amount to where it wrapped around the building. But lately it has been a lot.
- [26:49]
Emily
Like we were here last week and.
- [26:50]
Crystal
We were in line for like two hours.
- [26:52]
Emily
In a normal week, we usually run out of food around one o' clock in the afternoon.
- [26:56]
Crystal
Last week we ran out of food about 10:30. Reminder there too, that the number of service members who live paycheck to paycheck and when they saw like, oh, shoot, we may not get paid because Congress made no provision for that. Such a good point, you know, are like, we better take advantage of whatever resources we possibly can. Let me go ahead and put Trump's truth up on the screen talking about how he's going to pay the troops. He says Chuck Schumer recently said every day gets better during their radical left shutdown. I disagree. If nothing is done because of leader, he puts that in quotes. Fair enough. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, our brave troops will miss the paychecks. They're rightfully due on October 15th. That is why I'm using my authority as commander in chief to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our troops paid on October 15. We have identified funds to do this. Secretary Hegseth will use them to pay our troops. I'll not allow the Democrats to hold our military and the entire security of our nation hostage with their dangerous government shutdown. Radical left Democrats should open the government. Then we can work together to address healthcare, many of the things they want to destroy. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So he's saying they've found some funds that they can move around to be able to get this next paycheck out to the troops. But I mean, that's certainly a band aid at this point and no telling whether or not that would continue to work at the next paycheck if this Thing continues indefinitely. And meanwhile, many federal government, every other federal government worker is not getting paid. And Russ Vogt put out, floated the idea that maybe they wouldn't even get that back pay. This is obviously, you know, you're playing with people's lives, first of all. And second of all, federal government is the largest employer in the country. So this also has major potential economic ramifications.
- [28:35]
Emily
Yeah. And I mean, Democrats right now, what is their incentive to come to the table and Republicans, incentive to come to the table. Like, both of them feel as though the stronger incentive is to stay away from actually negotiating and open the government. And I think the political incentive for Democrats is strong. I'm not convinced that they're actually, you probably agree with this is my suspicion that I'm not convinced they're making the most of the politics. And I'm saying that like downstream or secondary to the substance, which is obviously there are people who are not getting paid and Rush Vote is using this. I mean, I think according to a court filing on Friday, there have already been 4,000 layoffs of federal workers. So from the perspective of like, average normie Democrat, it's starting to look dire for how Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. I mean, if I were average normie Democrat, I would have zero confidence in either Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries at this point at all, both on the politics and on the substance. Republicans, Republicans probably understand that they're going to take the blame in the media for what happens. And to some extent, they want the blame. Like Russ Vote wants to say, yeah, we are the ones who got rid of the 4,000 federal government employees. So, I mean, I don't think they're super concerned about that. But it seems as though Democrats have absolutely no plan to get out of the shutdown either because they're the ones withholding the votes. I mean, they're the ones who, if they vote, if they decide to vote on the cr, whether it's the clean CR or whether they come to the table on health care, fine. But there seems to be nothing in the works for that either.
- [30:06]
Crystal
Yeah, I think the Democrats feel pretty strong in their position right now because first of all, all the polling that's come out, and I mean, it's logical. Republicans control government. And so they're shouldering most of the blame for the shutdown.
- [30:18]
Emily
Totally.
- [30:18]
Crystal
And then they, you know, they certainly feel pressured from their base. Like, y' all gotta stand up, you gotta do something. And then.
- [30:24]
Emily
Cause they look so dumb when they're Trying to stand up. Like, I agree.
- [30:27]
Crystal
Yeah, they're not great at it. They're definitely not great at it. But. And then you have, you know, the substance of what they're fighting on, these healthcare cuts and, you know, the subsidies that are gonna go away. This is something else Marjorie Taylor Greene has been talking about. They feel they're on very strong footing there, especially maybe in particular, because the vast majority of the recipients of those Obamacare subsidies are in red states, red states that didn't expand due to Medicaid expansion now. So now you have you disproportionate number of the Trump coalition who are dependent on these health care subsidies for whom health care is just gonna. I mean, the amount the premiums is gonna go up, it's gonna be insane. And you had Trump even say something about we gotta deal with this healthcare thing, which I think they also took as a little bit of a crack in the edifice. You've got Marjorie Taylor Greene out there as a major crack in the edifice. So I think they feel like they're on very strong ground here. To your point about, like, I don't see any sign. I was expecting. And I actually think from the beginning there was reporting about how Chuck Schumer was looking for some kind. And then the majority, not just the Democratic base, but the actual Democrats in Congress were like, what the fuck, dude? Like, no, you cannot. We are not down. We have to actually fight this. And especially with, you know, they're not. The Democrats in D.C. aren't connecting this fight to, like, what's happening in Chicago, what's happening in Portland. But the base very much feels activated, of course, by seeing those images as well. And it's like, you can't fund this government. Like, they're threatening the Insurrection Act. You cannot fund these people. So, yeah, I don't see any sign that they're gonna back down. And then the. With the layoffs is kind of. I mean, it's terrible. It's also kind of politically interesting. We put B3 up on the screen. Russ Vogt making this announcement. The rifts have begun. And for those who aren't in the know, RIFs are reductions in force, which is DC speak for firing people. That's what's going on. And we had, as Emily mentioned, put B5 actually up on the screen first. You had some 4,000 workers who were announced as part of these rift. You can see the most coming actually from treasury and then from hhs. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. Commerce, Education, that's another significant one. Energy, Housing and Urban Development and Homeland Security. That's where these layoffs are coming from. Now, they could be challenged in courts because there are limits to layoffs that you can do during government shutdowns. You're actually supposed to be more constrained during government shutdowns about the people that you can lay off. So court challenges could be coming to that. But we can put before up on the screen, one of the places I mentioned HHS was really hit hard. More than 1,000 CDC staff originally received layoff notices during the government shutdown. And some of these are really the type of people that I would think that you would want around, they said, including in units that respond to infectious disease outbreaks, analyze science and health data to develop policy, monitor the safety of employees. Among those who initially received those layoff notices was leaders of the CDC's response response to growing number of measles cases in the US and abroad, including one official has more than 28 years experience overseeing a dozen federal agencies that have responded to outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg virus and MPOX in Africa over the years. Well, lo and behold, after this mass layoff, the Trump administration realized, like, you know, some of these people, maybe this is going to be a problem for us us if we keep them laid off so we can put the next element back on the screen. Some of them were brought back. On Saturday, Trump administration raced to rescind layoffs of hundreds of scientists at the CDC who were mistakenly fired on Friday night in what appeared to be a substantial procedural lapse. Among those rapidly, wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of that federal measles response team, those working to contain Ebola in Congo, members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the team that assembles the CDC's wanted scientific journal. The reason I think this is interesting, Emily, is obviously I want these people to be doing their jobs containing measles and Ebola and whatnot. But also the political assumption from the Republicans is that these layoffs are just meant to hurt Democrats like Democrats like the cdc, Democrats like the Department of Education. So if we make these cuts, that just hurts them. It's like, well, yeah, they don't want government workers to be laid off, but this is still your government. Like, this is your administration that you're gutting and defenestrating and make it impossible to respond to crises like the measles crisis or potential hurricane response and things like that. So it doesn't all cut in the direction of Democrats being upset about this. This also creates additional political problems for the Trump administration. We could see that from the fallout from Doge. Like, there's a reason that Doge kind of ran aground because the cuts felt cruel. It was clear to people that you were hurting services that they relied on. And so it came with the political price for Republicans as well.
- [35:23]
Emily
Yeah, it'll definitely have a political price. I mean, it's unclear to me whether these will survive in court. I think the law is actually, like, pretty. I could genuinely see it being interpreted one way or the other. I don't have, like, the full precedent.
- [35:38]
Crystal
In front of that. Yeah, I'm not an expert on it either, but, yeah, I mean, when I.
- [35:41]
Emily
Dug into it, it's like, you understand why if you're Russ Vogt and you have a sort of longtime ideological commitment to shrinking the size of the federal government, you look at that and you can actually. This is a law that could be used in one way or the other. That's where your point about the political consequences, it's where you're seeing Trump move really quickly on getting the troops paid, for example. Like, that's. You can. That's happening right away, immediately. But the reason that Elon's no longer part of Doge is that people felt that his approach to it was totally haphazard, which obviously it was, and ineffective. And everyone sort of secretly wanted Russ Vogt to be the one who was doing some version of Doge. And here, because of the shutdown and because of the law that demands the government actually reduce the spending, if there's a shutdown, then it's sort of like, hey, here's the opportunity for Russ Vogt to do some type of DOGE 2.0. So, I mean, his argument is that you can reduce these like, that it won't defenestrate the administration because these are reductive positions and all of that. But right now, I think it's actually unclear as to whether this is a negotiating tactic to, like, squeeze Democrats to come to the table or if it's. They actually think this will survive in court? I don't know, because when I look at the law, I think this actually could survive in court.
- [37:03]
Crystal
But, I mean, the Supreme Court has given them everything they've wanted, by and large, up to this point anyway, mostly through.
- [37:10]
Emily
Although nobody's really ever done this, mostly.
- [37:12]
Crystal
Through the shadow docket. But, you know, in terms of like. Like the Department of Education, which we could put B7 up on the screen, they, you know, they. As part of these riffs, they got rid of the entire Special Education Department which really, I mean, that really bothers me. And I don't know, I was just thinking back, Emily, of like the Sarah Palin era Republicans where they made children with disabilities like a real priority and you know, as a pushback to what they would see as like the eugenics policies of pro choice people. And then, you know, the argument that a lot of, of babies with disabilities are aborted. And so there was this emphasis on so we have to take care of these, you know, these children whose lives are just as valuable and just as important as anyone else. So I don't know, this does really, really bother me. But the thing that I would say about the overall cuts and whether they'll be able to get away with it, I mean, I think they probably will. Cuz they had already gutted the Department of Education and said that they're basically like winding it down. Well, you, like, it's very odd, obvious legally in the past that would not be allowed. This is an agency, it was created by an act of Congress. It can't be destroyed without another act of Congress. But the Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits on these things, but have basically said, well, for now you can do it. And that just basically means you can do it. And so I would expect it to be something similar here. They've done something similar with regard to what's called rescission. So basically the, the administration not wanting to spend funds that were congressionally appropriated. And so the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on the merits of that.
- [38:48]
Emily
That's a big one.
- [38:49]
Crystal
But they're just letting the administration go forward with it, using the shadow docket to not really make a decision, but let them have a free hand to do whatever it is they want. Which also sort of screws up the ability to make any sort of deal with Democrats because, because based on the current legal landscape, Trump could come say, oh, sure, I'll give you your health care subsidies and then they fund the government and go back to work. And then it's like, no, we're actually not gonna do that. And there's nothing to stop him from that because of the Supreme Court basically abdicating their duty to rule on these cases. So it does also make it complicated in terms of striking a deal. One other thing I'll say about, I think the way Democrats are looking at this is, is, yes, Doge has sort of run aground. Yes, there had been less energy around gutting the federal workforce over the past couple of weeks, but it's not like that any of that had stopped. We Just had the hundred thousand workers who took the fork of the road deal officially resign. What was that a week ago? So I think Democrats, I don't think this threat is as effective because they feel like, well, y' all were doing this anyway. Like there was nothing stopping you from doing this anyway. Anyway, this was all what was going on anyway. So, okay, you cut 4,000 more people. That's terrible. That looks really bad for you. But we don't particularly feel more pressure around that.
- [40:08]
Emily
Yeah. And I mean as long as to your point about Democrats feeling confident in their leverage or the reason that they're holding out on the shutdown, because it's these health care subsidies that as Marjorie Taylor Greene has been saying, and we actually have this video. Right, Crystal, we'll play it. We'll play the Marjorie Taylor Greene video. And I think the next block we.
- [40:29]
Crystal
Have her on immigration. We didn't pull her health care part, but yeah.
- [40:32]
Emily
So she was on Tim Dillon over the weekend basically and fleshed out more of this point that she's been making on CNN and other places about why the Trump administration is sort of missing the big picture of the day to day. Average American chooses her own kids as an example who are going to see their premiums double because of the Biden 2021 subsidies being lapsing at the end of the year, expiring at the end of the year. That like the. For the average person, it kind of sounded like she'd been listening to our shows, to be honest. Crystal. Because the point that she makes, she.
- [41:02]
Crystal
Should come on our show.
- [41:03]
Emily
She should. Invitations open. That's right. It's in the inbox. But. And the DM box actually. But all that is to say this argument about short term pain with the promise of a long term fix, like some long term like Republicans eventually will have the structural free market fix to health care, just, you know, trust the Republican Party, let those subsidies lapse, pay double in your monthly premiums. Everything's going like that is an insane argument to make.
- [41:27]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [41:28]
Emily
On the other hand, for Republicans to come to the table with Democrats on health care subsidies for noncitizens is also like Republicans are not going to do that. They have zero incentive to do that. So until Democrats drop that, nobody has incentive to come to the table right now. So everything is pointing to a continuing shutdown going further and further. And some of it, but for example, the special education cuts, they are trying to transition the Department of Education, basically the bulk of what it was doing was administering grants and overseeing civil rights. Civil rights stuff is Going to doj. Overseeing of the grants, including these special education grants, goes to the Treasury Department.
- [42:04]
Crystal
So again, in theory, but that hasn't happened yet.
- [42:07]
Emily
And I was gonna say. Yeah, I was gonna say, like with. Same thing with what we were talking about the tariff policy earlier in the show, which is that, like, in theory, theory, there is a way to do this that is coherent and makes sense and would be a bitter pill for the neoliberals to swallow. And in the same way, with the theory of Doge, could be a bitter pill for the, I don't know, the federal unions to swallow and the quote, swamp to swallow and all of that. But then you have to actually see it working in a way that makes sense.
- [42:37]
Crystal
Well, and actually treasury was the department that got cut the most.
- [42:41]
Emily
They're administering the grants now and they have fewer people to administer, fewer people.
- [42:45]
Crystal
To be able to. To do that. Yeah. Let me just play this last piece from Speaker Mike Johnson because this will actually set us up. Well for some of the stuff that's going on in Chicago, talking about the Democrats and describing. So there's this upcoming. There's a no kings protest 2.0 coming up that they're trying to classify as some sort of like, domestic terror event. Now, we covered the no Kings protest here last time. Very large, very widespread, entirely peaceful. There were zero acts of even like, property damage, at least that I'm aware of. And it was mostly actually kind of like. It was sort of like boomer Democrats more. It was less. You know, most of the youthful energy on the left is around, has been around Palestine. This was more of, I guess, the kind of like traditional, like, backbone of the Democratic Party type of people. Not antifa, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
- [43:36]
Emily
It was sort of women's march.
- [43:38]
Crystal
Yeah, yeah, that's a. That's a good way of describing. So in any case, here's Speaker Mike Johnson describing this total, like, lib resistance protest as being a Hate America rally.
- [43:50]
Emily
We're so angry about it.
- [43:51]
Crystal
I mean, you know, I'm a very patient guy, but I have had it with these people. They're playing games with real people's lives.
- [43:58]
Emily
The theory we have right now, they.
- [44:00]
Crystal
Have a Hate America rally that's scheduled.
- [44:03]
Emily
For October 18th on the National Mall. It's all the pro Hamas wing and.
- [44:07]
Crystal
The, you know, the antifa people, they're all coming out.
- [44:10]
Emily
Some of the House Democrats are selling T shirts for the event.
- [44:13]
Crystal
And it's being told to us that they won't be able to reopen the Government until after that rally because they.
- [44:19]
Emily
Can'T face their rabid base.
- [44:21]
Crystal
Hate America rally. That's how he's classifying it.
- [44:24]
Emily
I mean, from a political standpoint, it makes complete sense that this is how Republicans are spinning it. It's funny for me because Mike Johnson is. He was kind of Freedom Caucus adjacent. And Republicans, this is all tongue in cheek because. Because they were the ones who were intentionally shutting down the government and defending it for years by withholding their votes. And that's technically the argument for blaming Republicans for government shutdowns over the last 10 plus years has been that they were the ones withholding their votes, which is a fair criteria if you apply it across the board. Now, the media has not applied it across the board in the case with Democrats. It's not to say that anybody, like, there are different arguments for shutting down the government. I have said over and over again that the incentive for Democrats to shut down the government. Here we were just talking about this, Crystal. Absolutely obvious. It's inarguable. It would have been stupid for them to come to the table and make a deal right away. From a political standpoint, that would have been stupid. I thought the same thing about Republicans during the Tea Party years. It's just funny then to see Republicans have the moral high ground, like play. Act as though they have the moral high ground and be like, listen, very important things are just. People need the federal government to work. It's very reckless and irresponsible to close down the federal government.
- [45:35]
Crystal
They're not the best messengers for that. While they're like, and we're cutting PDF cancer research, by the way.
- [45:40]
Emily
I mean, it's just like they, it's so stupid. Like, it's also, it's just shutdowns are the dumbest thing in government.
- [45:47]
Crystal
It makes us look so. I mean, it's also like, I don't know, from the Republicans perspective, I'm also sort of like, why don't you just give them the health care subsidies? Like, this is a political, major political problem for Republicans that Trump's pollster Fabrizio said, you have a looming major issue with this.
- [46:01]
Emily
Yep.
- [46:02]
Crystal
And so, you know, they, I think again, Marjorie Taylor Greene, I'm sure is not the only one who recognizes. We ran. I think Trump really genuinely won primarily on cost of living. Right. That was the, you know, there were other issues too. We're about to talk about immigration, whatever. There were other things, but it was like, things are too expensive. My life has gotten worse because I cannot afford groceries the way that I Used to I can't afford the rent, I can never buy a house. Like the cost of living crisis really animated his election and you are going in the polar opposite direction of that. Like people's premiums are millions of people's premiums are about to spike. A lot millions of people will not be able to afford health care if these subsidies are taken away. And you already had the cuts from the big beautiful bill that's gonna kick millions of people have the effect of kicking millions of people off of Medicaid. So what are you doing here? And by the way, obviously the tariffs that we talked about before also cut in the opposite direct making life more affordable for your average person. So it is a major political liability here that in a sense Democrats are like trying to save them from themselves on but they're so adamant about not giving even the appearance of a win to Democrats that they're unwilling to. Their line is basically like oh sure, we'll deal with that but first you have to fund the government. And I think for most people to the extent that they're tuned into this like the ins and outs of this at all or like well that doesn't mean why not just deal with it now? Right. Why do we have to wait and take your word for it? Which Democrats are definitely not going to take their word that they're then going to negotiate and fix this problem down the road.
- [47:41]
Emily
Well Republicans, one thing that they have to be really careful about because if this is the political conclusion of the shutdown is like again I think Republicans would be insane to give Dems what they want right now on this question of subsidies. Any subsidies going to noncitizens just because the non citizen population has particularly exploded in the last few years and the Republican basically furious about that. So the political incentives are not aligned for them to come to the table on this. That what Democrats can do after it feels like this thing is running its course is come to the table and say we want Republicans, we want to agree with Republicans that we need these health care subsidies almost just going to US Citizens like of course that is a responsible thing to do. And then it will just be about the subsidies. As soon as Dems given on that it's just going to be Republicans looking like they're saying no to those subsidies. And so when that moment comes like that could be genuinely. I think shutdowns don't matter in the midterms. Yes.
- [48:40]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [48:41]
Emily
But as soon as people's premiums spike next year, Dems will have a huge talking point over and over again that this is what it was about. And on the point that you were making about Trump winning on cost of living, another thing the right forgets is that a lot of the cultural stuff was combined with the cost of living stuff because it made Dems look frivolous to be talking about identity politics. That's a good point. When people were struggling.
- [49:01]
Crystal
That's a great point. And.
- [49:02]
Emily
And so it gets to that again, where like, yes, a lot of the country, some of these things are like 80, 20 issues on culture stuff. But if you look like you're obsessed with culture stuff and not obsessed with cost of living stuff, which is what the Duns look like under Biden, that does become a problem. If you look like you're obsessed with these, like, ideological, generational ideological goals of, like, defenestrating the administrative state that don't register with normie voters outside of your hardcore base, that is a problem. And so it's. I mean, they should be aware that Dems probably will come to the table on that question of health care for people who are here and the specifics we don't have to get into. But I think Dems will come to the table on that, and then the onus will be on Republicans to just hold out on the subsidies. Yeah, good luck on that one.
- [49:51]
Crystal
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I don't know. It's unclear to me how this one is. Is going to play out and who's going to. Who's going to break, because I think the incentives for both parties are to basically continue in the same DISTANCE they're going 100%.
- [50:04]
Emily
Maybe they can. Maybe they'll do, like, skinny bills or something. I have no idea. But good luck to everyone. Our government can't function. And that's the fun thing about these shutdowns. It's just always such a reminder of the way that we fund our government structurally is ridiculous. Mike Johnson was on that side. He was like, we're not doing CRS anymore.
- [50:19]
Crystal
Great.
- [50:19]
Emily
That sounds good. I was like, oh, great.
- [50:21]
Crystal
Thank you, Mike.
- [50:23]
Emily
Here we are.
- [50:23]
Crystal
Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing we love about covering shutdowns is how much, like, Capital Beltway, like, insider language we're forced into talking about CR rifts and CRS and skinny bills. Yeah.
- [50:36]
Emily
But I should mention Chuck Schumer had another just completely idiotic tweet where he said, like, riff Russell vote. It's like, this is Dem leadership right now. It is so pathetic. They have such a gift in front of.
- [50:49]
Crystal
I mean, poor Bernie. Like, the man cannot rest. They're like, you can do this. You're good at messaging on this. Just go do your thing. Yeah, he and AOC are really carrying the load for decent messaging here.
- [51:01]
Emily
They're incapable. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are incapable of carrying the torch. Incapable.
- [51:10]
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- [52:44]
Emily
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- [53:16]
Crystal
MTG, who we've teased like a million times here now. And I pulled this one I thought was particularly interesting because she said a lot at this point about, you know, she's obviously talked about the Epstein files. She's talked about the horror in Gaza and describing it as a genocide. She's talked about health care in the context of the shutdown and insurance premiums going up. And that market being broken. But this was the first time that I'd seen her create any daylight between herself and the Trump administration with regard to their immigration policy. And I found that to be really noteworthy. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of Marjorie Taylor Greene with Tim Dylan. As a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry and as a realist, I can say we have.
- [54:01]
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- [54:03]
Crystal
Needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that. So. And I'm going to get pushback on that, but it's. I'm just living in reality from here on out.
- [54:17]
Emily
Yeah.
- [54:18]
Crystal
And if, if I'm, if anybody's mad at me for saying the truth, then I'm sorry. I'm curious, Emily, what you made of her comments, because I know we both watch the whole thing. And she said, look, we have to live in reality. The truth of the matter is that over decades, our workforce has been built around this, like, these are my words, not hers, but this, like, exploitable, undocumented population. And you can't just flip a switch and expect this all to, like, work out. And she also expressed like, Tim Dillon was talking about, you know, this is horrible to see ICE at, like, high school graduations pulling people out. And she's like, yeah, that is hard to watch. So he was expressing moral horror. And she sort of took it to, you know, my experience in the construction industry is like, this is just not real, really realistic what we're doing here, which I thought was kind of interesting.
- [55:03]
Emily
Yeah. And people are sharing that clip without having, I think, watched the full version of it. Their conversation was real. Like, I would recommend the full episode of Tim Dillon show to people who are curious to see because it's a very interesting conversation. It gets to a lot of the theme that we've been hitting on over and over in the show, which is that even if some of maga's kind of quote, drain the swamp, policies are ideologically defensible or coherent from a populist perspective, the execution of them is it's process versus direction. And when the process is annoying Marjorie Taylor Greene to the point where she's questioning whether the direction is worth it.
- [55:41]
Crystal
Whether there's no squish, certainly on immigration. No, not at all.
- [55:45]
Emily
And so this clip is getting taken as Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, listen, labor costs are getting too high. And that's actually not what she was saying. She was saying, the problem is that right now there has been no off Ramp. She uses the phrase off ramp very specifically. Another reason I think she listens to our show, because we use that phrase all of the time. That's true. If you don't have an off ramp here, then the policy end goal, I mean, when you think about millions of new people entering the labor force in three years, I think the neolibs are insane to act as though that had zero influence on wages, especially at, like the bottom, particularly maybe exclusively at the bottom wage tier. Like, I think that's just obvious that it probably did.
- [56:25]
Crystal
Although in fairness, actually, during the Biden administration, the lowest wage tier was the group of people who were seeing their wages increase the most towards the end of the Biden administration that were outpacing inflation. That has now reversed in the Trump administration.
- [56:39]
Emily
And I would argue probably a lot of that was from Biden, Biden subsidies.
- [56:42]
Crystal
I'm sure that is definitely part of it. Yeah. But it cuts against the argument that having, you know, a larger number of undocuments, undocumented immigrants, was like a massive problem. Now, I do think it's an issue when you have people who are being paid under the table because, yeah, they, they will be. They'll be cheap, they'll be exploitable, you won't have to adhere to labor laws. That's why I think people need to be brought out of the shadows. That's, you know, my solution to that problem. But I think, you know, your point is essential, salient one.
- [57:08]
Emily
She's just, she's basically saying, like, hey, we have to have a process that makes sense, that's coherent. She's not saying, yes, please bring in millions of more workers that can undercut American wages. She's just saying, if you're going to do the thing, do it in a way that makes sense. Which, again, we've talked about that today with tariffs. We've talked about that today with China policy. Like, it's obviously. And we've talked about that with Doge. It's the recurring theme is that, like, even if you are an ideological conservative, the process, the haphazard process over the first 10 months of the second Trump administration is even wearing on. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is not, she says this very clear. She's like, she has not wavered one bit on these policy ends. It's the means that she's questioning in this kind of grand cost benefit analysis of whether the cost of this haphazard process is worth the benefit of the end that she hasn't wavered from ideologically. But, but the other thing, Crystal, I think people should be aware of is just like thinking about people suddenly saying, oh, Marjorie Taylor Greene has changed again. If you think that you should go back to her original run for the house in Georgia and look at how similar exactly what she's saying is over and over again. Healthcare is a part of her origin story, as it is for many people who got activated during the Obama years and the Tea Party years. She talked to Megyn Kelly a couple of months ago about how she saw her father's company that she stepped into, like being crippled after Obamacare's small business provisions became really difficult for a lot of small business. So it's not like none of this is new for Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's just more and more politicians. Thomas Massie is another good example of this. They're realizing where the incentives are and the incentives are. She said over and over again on Tim Dillon, to be honest. And you can take that for what it's worth, you can say she's not being honest, she's being calculated. She's being cynical. I think if you watch all of her interviews recently, she's literally just speaking her mind and not letting any of those talking points get in anymore. There's some Democrats who are good at doing this too, but that's what she's like. You can say that it's honest or whatever, but maybe you believe it's cynical. And even if it was cynical, it would still make sense to at least act like you're being honest and spontaneous in these conversations because the incentives are aligning against party talking points. And some people are going to get really good at delivering party talking points in a way that makes them not sound like talking points. Talking points. I think J.D. vance is somebody who does that right now on podcasts like when he was on Theo Vaughan. But they're losing control and they'll find new ways to get control and to get people like Marjorie Taylor Greene in line. But that's what's happening right now. It's actually a huge shift in the way politicians are talking to constituents and voters.
- [59:45]
Crystal
There's been a lane opened up on the right that didn't really exist in the first Trump term. Everybody, most of right wing media was just like, go Trump. Trump's great. It's all like they're more cohesive, toeing of the line. Now you've got, you got Candace. I mean, Candace is the perfect example. Cuz in Trump 1.0, she was on the team like she was fully. She was in the White House. She was doing the thing. She was Hosting events for them. And she was fully on the talking points. And so you've got Candace, Nick Fuentes, obviously, huge voice on the right, Tucker being another one who. I mean, Tucker's kind of interesting. Cause he very rarely actually turns around directly criticizes Trump, but he's been critical of some of the Trump administration actions. And so there's been a space that has been created which had already existed on the left because of, like, the Bernie media and the way that ecosystem was very critical of the Democratic Party from the left. Now you have an equivalent thing on the right where there's an ability to be critical of the Trump administration from the right or from, you know, coming at it from a more, I guess, right. Populist perspective. Steve Bannon even, you know, you could put in that category. At the end of the day, he's always gonna back up Donald Trump. But, you know, getting to those decisions, he's gonna put pressure in a variety of different ways. So I think that that space opening up is a natural fit for Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I do think, you know, the fact that she wasn't a career politician.
- [61:10]
Emily
Yes.
- [61:11]
Crystal
And was just like a MAGA Facebook mom sharing weird conspiracies. Like, she's kind of legit in that way. In a way that a lot of other MAGA politicians aren't and are just, like, playing, you know, like, Ron DeSantis was always, like, playing a role to try to do the thing.
- [61:26]
Emily
Yes.
- [61:26]
Crystal
I think she genuinely comes out of that space and is a little more in touch with where, like, actual MAGA and her constituents are than some other politicians.
- [61:36]
Emily
And she was making that case on Tim Dillon. And if it sounds like we're glazing Marjorie Taylor Greene right now, it's actually just like, she's a very interesting case study. That's the way to put it. Right now, she's a really. I was reading Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death over the weekend, and he was sort of lamenting the rise of Ronald Reagan in the age of tv. And looking back, he was like, well, William Howard Taft could never have been elected in the age of TV because he was so, like, obscenely obese. Although probably by our standards today, he was not that obscenely obese. But anyway, we'll leave that aside. And what he was saying is basically that because of the way the mediums shape our politics, he's building off McLuhan. He's saying that changes, that these changes not just where we say things, but what we're actually saying. It's not just how we're saying things, it changes the essence of what we actually say. And so with tv, it did give something to the actors who were able to do these very inspirational, almost script worthy cinematic deliveries. And now in the age of smartphone cameras, which is the most intimate thing in the world because everybody has one and everyone can look like a politician, you don't need cinematography anymore to look like the average politician's video because they're filming it on smartphone cameras. And that has created an incentive for people who are smart enough to actually try to capitalize on it, or cynical enough to actually try to capitalize it on or sincere enough to actually try to capitalize on it. Whether you're Zoramdani or maybe you think Marjorie Taylor Greene's insincere, fine, but they understand that right now what people want to see is not talking points, it's not scripts, it's none of the production, it's not the cinematography. And that's not just change. You can be an establishment hack and film a smartphone video. It doesn't hit the same way because you're not changing the substance of what you say. And the substance of what you say has to feel a lot more raw, unpolished, real and unscript. And it's not always going to be, but it has to feel that way.
- [63:34]
Crystal
Yeah, I think the cynical take would be that she's positioning herself for a presidential run in 2028 in a post Trump world. And I think that's certainly possible. It is worth saying though that her position on Israel in particular, which is where I would say she has definitely changed. You know, she was voting lockstep on all the Israel and condemn anti Semitism and censure. She just labor. She was doing all that stuff up until very recently. And look, a lot of people have changed their position on Israel over the past. Again, that would be reflective of some of the Republican MAGA base that she would be in touch with. But in any case, the point I want to make in terms of her immediate political prospects, she creates a risk and a danger for herself with those positions because, you know, she runs in a very red district. She only has to worry about challenges from her right. And you know, very possible that AIPAC funds some candidate against her to the tune of millions of dollars and she has to contend with a genuine threat there. She's pissed off the Trump administration, they're not happy with her because of her being honest about what her views are at this point. She's arguable a certain way.
- [64:39]
Emily
She's arguably the best small donor small dollar fundraiser in all of Congress. Which would make an APAC bit of against her. Fascinating. Interesting because she has powers like AOC and Bernie when it comes to and Trump when it comes to small dollar fundraising.
- [64:53]
Crystal
Interesting.
- [64:53]
Emily
And that means she has a lot of average people who send her a dollar from around the country. So that would make it pretty pretty amusing to watch AIPAC try to take her down and maybe they could do it. But yeah, in a primary, I don't know. Maybe Randy Fine moves to the district.
- [65:09]
Crystal
Oh God, that was be an earthquake him moving into the district.
- [65:15]
Emily
Crystal.
- [65:16]
Crystal
What Crystal?
- [65:17]
Emily
It's too much time with Lyle. You're spending too much time with Lyle.
- [65:21]
Crystal
Do not dox.
- [65:22]
Emily
Do not dox. Okay, if you if you don't get that reference, go watch Last Friday.
- [65:26]
Crystal
Go watch Friday.
- [65:28]
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- [67:04]
Crystal
The.
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- [67:35]
Crystal
Of course, is interesting about Marjorie Taylor Greene here and the political moment we're in is that it was up until now Democrats who really were kind of on the back foot on immigration and now Republicans are having to answer for a lot. So I'm going to show you a few different videos I want to show, give you a picture of what's happening on the ground in Chicago and some of the absolute insanity that is unfolding here. The first one is the local newspaper report about ICE picking up this autistic 15 year old who reportedly has the capabilities of roughly like a four year old who was there with his family working at their stand and then went to go to the bathroom and they kidnapped him and did not let the family know. Family couldn't find him for days. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this report. The boy was here at this intersection in Spring Branch with his mom and sister selling fruit when he disappeared. And here's the information we just learned in the last 30 minutes. Take a look at this. So the boy has autism and is sometimes nonverbal and he disappeared last Saturday. He's 15 years old, but his social worker says he has the mindset of a 4 to 5 year old. So they're very worried about his safety. The mom said around 3pm on October 4, she was with a customer selling fruit when her son asked him or asked her to use a restroom room. And when she turned around, he was gone. Now they filed a missing person report with Houston police. And earlier today, Fiel Houston held a press conference with the family, begging for the public's help to find him. Now today police notified the family that the boy was found safe. Fiel Houston said a law enforcement agency found him and he's been at the Office of Refugee Resettlement Children's Detention center since Monday. The family is undocumented and they're trying to get him released from ICE custody. And I'm told that the mom just had a FaceTime conversation with her son in the last 30 minutes and is thankful he is alive and hopes to be reunited with him soon. So obviously, I mean, I don't know how you defend that. Completely indefensible picking up this child who has, you know, significant disability, not, not notifying the family, still being held in custody, just absolute Insane. And there's more where that came from. We can put this next one up on the screen. So there have been a number of instances of these car accidents. You can see here, ICE is in this white silver vehicle, rams into that car, begins to pull off. Bystanders who are recording say, hit and run, hit and run, and then they jump out. I'm saying ice, by the way, loosely here. I don't even actually know what. There's a variety of federal agencies on the ground, so I'm just using ICE as a blanket term. Then they come to this car that they rammed and pulled this lady out by her legs. She was apparently just trying to get to work. The her. This is a US Citizen, guys, by the way. US Citizen who happened to be wrong place, wrong time, gets hit by these federal goons and then gets pulled out and arrested. Her sister said that she had been fresh out of surgery, just cleared for work a month, month ago. They held her in detention for hours. The sister says they brutally dragged her out of car at gunpoint. We had to run all around the area just to find her. So, you know, just total, like, total insanity here. Incredibly dangerous. Crashing into this car. And then they were just gonna do the hit and run. When we got called out on that, they're like, all right, well, let me go back and pretend like I have a reason to arrest this lady. He's a US Citizen, ultimately family.
- [71:02]
Emily
This is a really, really, really bad situation. And that sounds like a kind of obvious way to put it, but I just want to make the point that it's not just a bad situation because of ice. I'm going to get back to that. I think it is a bad situation because of ice, to be very clear. But also because imagine these. You're given these different tasks, jobs, whatever, by Kristi Gnome. Higher ups deep. And there was just a shooting in Dallas. People trying to. Someone apparently trying to take out ICE who took out two migrants. There have been efforts to go after the ICE guys. And so I'm saying all of that to emphasize that they are trigger happy. And I don't just mean that literally. I mean that when they're driving in cars and they see somebody who they think is maybe obstructing them or whatever, they are now, like, on Razor's Edge. And. And that's a super, super dangerous situation, especially. Oh, go ahead.
- [72:00]
Crystal
Well, I would. And many of them, like, pretty untrained.
- [72:03]
Emily
Yeah, yeah.
- [72:03]
Sager
New.
- [72:04]
Crystal
You know, they dramatically reduce the amount of training these guys have to get.
- [72:08]
Emily
Yeah.
- [72:09]
Crystal
They've been operating with total impunity. So I mean, it reminds me a little of like, you know, not to equate the situation, but reminds me of IDF who have been, you know, recording their war crimes and acting with total impunity. And it just fuels the sense of like, you know, here I am, big bad tough guy, all kitted out with my gun and with the federal government saying, go ahead, total backing, you know, And I mean, we saw like, I think a really important development was there was a video that came out of, I think it was ice throwing this lady, grabbing her hair and throwing this lady on the ground at a courthouse in New York. He was initially put on leave and then within a week they're like, no, you're fine, you can go back. I mean, that sends a message to everyone of like, no, you can do whatever you want and you can get away with it. So the type of people who would be attracted to the job at this point too, like, think of the type of people who would watch this sort of thing or know that you're like, zip tying children and, you know, picking up grandmas and arresting autistic 15 year olds. And you're like, yes, that's the job for me. You know, that's the type of person that is being attracted to this line of work at this point.
- [73:14]
Emily
It's, it's a really, like, it's just very, very dangerous. And I think it's, I think everyone senses right now that it's all getting worse by the day. It's not in any way getting better by the day. And I wasn't saying what I was saying to suggest that people shouldn't protest ICE or shouldn't do activism, like whatever. I'm not saying that at all. I was just explaining that when we see some of these confrontations, it's partially that to Crystal's point, these guys have been operating with complete and total backing no matter what happens. And, and they also feel like they're in danger and under threat for whatever reason. Sometimes that's for good reason, sometimes it's maybe for a BS reason, but this is like a recipe for disaster. And the leadership from ice, and this is to get back to the part of this that actually is seriously problematic. It's that by the New York Times count, looking at at least 15 US citizens that have been detained or arrested so far, I think that number is probably higher. That was ones that they were able to verify as of last week. I think that number's probably, I assume it's gotten even higher in the last Week because of Chicago in particular. If people are paying attention to what's happening in the UK right now. Keir Starmer has this digital ID push partially because people. His justification is partially because people want to crack down on illegal immigration. Well, what does that create a situation where if you are a conservative, especially if you're like a civil libertarian, this is an opportunity for mass surveillance and for more power to the federal government, for more of a police state, for more space surveillance. They have these huge contracts with Palantir right now obviously, which is sifting through mountains of data. And if you don't think that US citizens are being caught up in that dragnet, I mean, I don't know what to say. On the other hand, this gets back to the process versus direction thing directionally. The last year the Biden administration, they said there were 80,000 arrests of non citizens on criminal charges that weren't immigration related. So assaults, those types of things, murders in some cases. And that does exist. That's just during the Biden administration. 80,000 people in one year. They do have a job to do. There is actually a legitimate law enforcement aspect when you have this explosion, even if you didn't have the explosion. But with the explosion of the last several years, does anybody think that that's actually more effective right now?
- [75:42]
Crystal
Well, and that's a very key point because the polar opposite is actually happening, right? Instead of resources going to okay, let's go after the gang leaders, right? Let's go after the drug traffickers. The resources have been shifted to let's go raid the Home Depot. Let's go raid the 7 11. Let's go, let's go surge into Chicago just cuz we don't like J.B. pritzker and Brandon Johnson and try to create some sort of a confrontation. Let's raid an entire apartment building with Black Hawk helicopters, detaining mostly American citizens to get, you know, they claimed that There were some 37 people arrested by the way. We haven't gotten any details. I mean that's another key point that I want you guys to take in. You cannot believe a word these people say. You have to verify literally everything they say. Because there was, you know, we've had instance after instance guy an immigrant shot and killed, that they lied about the circumstances. An American citizen shot five times. They've already been caught in lies with regard to how that all went down. There was another video that I didn't include in our lineup here, but of a 15 year old who was being arrested and they claimed no, no, no, this was from months ago. And she was part of robberies? No, actually people went and like there she is in ICE custody. And were able to ascertain that the details matched what activists were saying and not remotely what DHS was saying. So that's the other thing is they will just lie. Like brazenly, blatantly lie. Even with the Venezuela like drug boats. Zero proof that any of them had drugs. One of them now has come out, wasn't even from Venezuela, it was a Colombian national. So that's the other thing you're contending with here is just the way that they will invent their own reality to justify the things that are totally unjustifiable. And here we have another instance of that. Perfect setup for this next piece. So this is a reporter for a local reporter who, she's a camera woman. Camera woman. Okay. And who was arrested here in a very aggressive manner. And what DHS had originally said was that she had been throwing objects at ICE and that she was arrested effectively for assaulting these law enforcement officers. Well, lo and behold, she was released with no charges. So you tell me whether that really happened or not. So they arrest the reporter and then they swipe another car on the way out and just take off. And I. Let's put C5 up on the screen just to confirm what I was saying. Before released, no charges. After they said that she'd been assaulting law enforcement officers. And this comes Emily, after there'd been a court decision saying hey, you have to like people have the right to protest and journalists need to be persistent, protected. There was also a ruling about they've been just pepper spraying, basically anyone and everything, including that pastor that we showed last week. And there was another ruling saying hey, you can't just indiscriminately use these riot control methods. People have to be allowed to exercise their first amendment rights. None of those rulings seems to be slowing them down at this point.
- [78:46]
Emily
So. And in this case it's a, I think a helpful example. Cuz there's a flurry of these videos coming out every day on social media. And they're not, I mean they're obviously being, being used as political footballs. But in this case there was a video that came out that did make it look like something had been thrown in the direction of the ice vehicle. It's very strange because it's like how was someone just stand, was she just standing on the street like ready to throw it? It does look like something is thrown at the ice vehicle that said they did not they obviously didn't have enough evidence to make that stick. Otherwise, you know, that they. They would have kept her and made it stick.
- [79:25]
Crystal
Yes.
- [79:26]
Emily
So the same thing has happened a couple of times. So, for example, there was this video going viral of an ICE agent saying to a US Citizen, turn around or you're getting the dog. Turn around or you're getting the dog. If you are a conservative, that should send chills down your spine. This US Citizen presented their driver's license, according to the attorney, presented their driver's license, license to ICE and still ended up being detained, which is the easiest thing in the world to verify if someone is a US Citizen in a case like that. On the other hand, I have seen videos go viral where you don't see the part where someone is trying to actually obstruct or whatever. So these things are going everywhere. But at the same time, I would just say for people on the right who are looking at some of this stuff, watch the full video, read the full news coverage of some of these cases. Because. Because you will find some really ugly stuff under the surface.
- [80:22]
Crystal
And you can't. Like, the same way you were skeptical of the government when it was Joe Biden, 1000% be skeptical. Please do not take these people's. And I feel the same. Like, I think this administration is extreme in the way that they will just brazenly lie about something. We can all watch with our own eyes. But your job as an informed citizen, and certainly our job as journalists, is to be skeptical of government claims and to not just accept them at face value, which is also a lesson that most of the news media needs to take as well. In any case, I've got one more here for you, which is another U.S. citizen. Okay? I had read about this guy's case, and he went on with Tim Miller over the Bulwark podcast to talk about his experience. So this is a US Veteran, okay, American citizen, who was on his way to work at a farm. He works security at this farm. And there were apparently, like, protests in the area, and there was some ICE action in the area. And so he pulls up and he's trying to talk to the ICE agent, say, hey, I'm just trying to get to work here. And I'll let him describe what then ensues. Let's take a listen.
- [81:27]
Emily
They put me on suicide watch, and they put me in this. They put me in this cell. I'm naked in, like, a hospital dress, and just a concrete bed with, like, a mattress, like a thin mattress. And they leave the light on 24 7, there's a glass door. An officer is just always standing, like, sitting out there. The psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day. And so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon when I'm released, I'm literally on in that cell, naked, just in that room. What the fuck? With the light on.
- [82:03]
Crystal
How is this real?
- [82:04]
Emily
Like, this is a nightmare. I mean, like, I was just. The entire time I was in there, I was just hoping, like, I would just want to see my kids again. Like, literally, that's the only thing that matters. Like, I literally just want to see my kids. Did your family know where you were? Like, all they knew was that I was arrested by ICE and that was it. They didn't know where they took me. They didn't know where I was.
- [82:31]
Crystal
So he's there trying to get to work. Okay. He's trying to talk to the ICE or whoever else is on the scene. Like, hey, that's my place. I'm not trying to approach it. I'm just. Just trying to get to work. They give him. They surround his car aggressively, like agents on all side. And then they're giving him all these contradictory directions. Get out of the car, go forward, back up. And so he's trying to comply. They spray tear gas. Tear gas is filling up his car. He's having trouble seeing. He's having trouble navigating away. They go away for a while, and then as he's trying to exit, they come back and surround his car again and break his window open and aggressively arrest him. And then this again. American citizen held four days. No phone call to his family, no phone call to a lawyer, no nothing. You hear the degrading treatment he was subjected to to put on suicide watch. Forced in the cell with a glass door, naked for days. And he was like, my ID is literally in the car that you dragged me from. Like, I can show you. And. Doesn't matter. So if you think this just stays with immigrants or people that you think this would be acceptable to be done to, which that's a whole other conversation. It doesn't. We already have so many instances of the way that they will just snatch up any American citizen who they don't like or gets in their way or looks a little too brown or is at the wrong job site or whatever.
- [83:58]
Emily
Yeah. This guy is a veteran. This guy put on the uniform.
- [84:01]
Crystal
Yeah. Served the country.
- [84:03]
Emily
Yep. And it's another case where citizenship should have been easy to verify. I get that this was a big raid. You know, this raid actually did. And it's sort of like the south side apartment building that we were talking about earlier. Crystal. If you read people who had lived there for a long time, they pretty much, much there's some good reporting that it had an obvious gang problem, that it was like a place where legitimately there probably is room for ICE activity. And it sounds like it was the same place. It was the same case in this situation, although not from a criminal perspective, but from just a non citizen, undocumented labor. Yeah. Or maybe they had a silent. I don't know. But whatever it was, it sounds like there were people who were non citizens that were working there, that the ICE was whatever. You cannot do that in a way that over and over again repeatedly is detaining US Citizens. Now, that is what we have seen in multiple occasions. So if you're going to do it, if we were Talking about those 80,000 arrests, criminal arrests during the Biden administration last year, the Biden administration, and it was similar numbers every year over the last few years. So if you have that many criminals in the country, legitimate criminals in the country, you are hurting efforts to actually do that by making the entire process less legitimate, whether it just looks less legitimate, whether you end up legally, like putting those efforts in jeopardy. Whatever it is, it's wrong to do this to US Citizens without verifying what they're telling you, which is that they're U.S. citizens. There's no reason that he should have been captured, kept as long as he was. There's no reason that another person, when he handed the officer his ID should have ended up in detention. Like, these are just, it's stupid. And it is going to undermine any, like, credibility or any public support there is for actually going after criminals. Because people are gonna say, well, we don't trust that you're actually going after criminals.
- [86:04]
Crystal
Look at all these U.S. citizens. I mean, drug trafficking convictions under this administration, way down. Human trafficking convictions under this administration, way down. Because as a percentage, no in total members. Because not only do you have. Stephen Miller can put this next piece up on the screen, who is confirmed running the show here and also directing a lot of our foreign policy, according to this CNN report, which I don't think would be a surprise to anyone, but they lay out that within the administration, they call him the prime minister, which, you know, in most systems with a prime minister and a president, like if you think about Israel, for example, Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister. He is the driving force. But in any case, what Stephen Miller has prioritized not just with ice, but with dhs, overall, with cbp, with FBI, is to push them all into these shows of force at farm raids and Home Depot raids and whatever. So if you're pulling FBI off of legitimate casework to send them in to get kitted up and raid a farm or whatever, of course you're gonna have less actual law enforcement going after the bad guys. And that's, in fact, what we have seen. So even though the language they use is about criminals and going after the worst of the worst and all of this, the reality is the polar opposite of that. Because of where they've put their resources are about going after, you know, the fruit stand vendor, the autistic child of the fruit stand vendor, rule, rolling up on schools at pickup time and those sorts of things. That's where they've pushed their resources rather than the more tedious and difficult casework that is required to actually go after the, you know, the violent criminals and the bad guys you would want them to.
- [87:49]
Emily
It's such a mess. I mean, that sounds obvious. It is obvious. It's just a mess. And maybe it actually does. I shouldn't say that because maybe it doesn't sound obvious because I think that's part of what bothers me about a lot of this. A, the immorality, then, B, I feel like they're taking advantage of, to some extent, conservatives who just believe, like Marjorie Taylor Greene said this in a way, too. She was like, there are people who waited in line for these rallies in the cold, and they're the ones that are now being given the backseat to people in Trump's orbit who maybe hated him before or spent money, in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, to defeat him. And there are a lot of those aver people who put their trust in this administration not to create more of a surveillance state and to create more lawless federal enforcement and not to detain us. It's like they put their trust in the administration. And I get like, this is why I don't put any trust in any politician. And that's probably why I'm in media and journalism. It's probably the same with you, Crystal. I don't trust people in positions of power, but people did trust them. And it just feels like I know a lot of people support tough immigration enforcement, and I understand where that comes from, of course, but when you dig into a lot of these stories, it's farcical what ends up happening with, again, veterans, people who served the country who are U.S. citizens. Yeah. It just obviously sucks. So they're taking it advantage of well intentioned people who trust them.
- [89:31]
Crystal
Yeah, and I think Zorin said this, and I think this was well said, is like this is what's being given to people in lieu of dealing with the cost of living crisis, in lieu of delivering for them economically. It's like we'll give you an ASMR video of people being deported. We'll give you a show of force in a blue city that you may think is scary or where you don't like the political leadership. That's basically what people are being fed in lieu of actually bringing down prices and addressing their economic needs. One last note I just wanted to mention about that Stephen Miller piece from cnn, which is interesting for this block, but also just an interesting thing for us to know going forward and to take note of is that basically Stephen Miller is more and Miller and Rubio are more important for Department of Defense policy than Hegseth. And so here's the line they say Pentagon officials now take routinely present Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio with operational options and relevant data. They then decide what to do with it and work directly with Chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Kane to execute their military plans, said the source, who characterized the two men as far more involved than Pete Heseth in deciding how the military is used.
- [90:55]
Emily
At Hill's.
- [90:55]
Crystal
Pet Nutrition we know that pet parent guilt is real. Leaving too long, playing too little. New homes, new babies, Waking them up when they look so comfy.
- [91:06]
Emily
Running out of patience, running out of treats, running the vacuum. You can only do so much.
- [91:12]
Crystal
That's why there's hills. So science led nutrition to help you give more love than humanly possible because you're only human. There's hills.
- [91:20]
Emily
Find the right food@hillspet.com science does more. It's football season and now you can get anything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost. Almost anything. You can't get a running back, but baby back ribs.
- [91:35]
Sager
Yes, Uber Eats official on demand food.
- [91:38]
Emily
Delivery partner of the NFL. This is Bo Ngang from Las Culturistas, and I'm Matt Rogers, also a host of Las Culturistas. Big news. Do you know what the perfect thing.
- [91:47]
Crystal
To bring to any party is?
- [91:48]
Emily
But when we talked about this, I'm a person, not a thing. Oh, I didn't mean you. I meant Casamigos.
- [91:53]
Crystal
Okay, chic.
- [91:54]
Emily
And honestly, the only other correct answer A Casamigos margarita. That's a sleigh. Ah, Casamigos. Anything is a sleigh because anything goes with my casamigos. Anything goes with my Casamigos. Beau, you're a poet. Please drink responsibly. Imported by Casamigos Spirits Company, White Plains, New York. Haz amigos tequila. 40% alcohol by volume. This is an I heart podcast.