← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
10/23/25: US Gaza Master Plan Revealed, Hannity Demands Venezuela Regime Change, WH Demolitions, Graham Platner Tattoo
00:55:34
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [00:09]
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- [00:23]
Krystal Ball
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [00:24]
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- [00:45]
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- [01:12]
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- [01:41]
Saagar Enjeti
Through every mission hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.
- [01:44]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [01:51]
Saagar Enjeti
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:57]
Krystal Ball
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to breakingpoints.com because 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.
- [02:08]
Saagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com let's go ahead.
- [02:17]
Krystal Ball
And start with this D1 guys. So you've got Bibi getting asked whether or not Israel is a US protectorate. Pretty interesting comments here. Let's take a listen to that.
- [02:26]
Saagar Enjeti
Israel is becoming some kind of state or protectorate of the United States.
- [02:31]
Donald Trump
Not only advising it what to do.
- [02:33]
Saagar Enjeti
But also commanding what to do. Why do you both comment on that? Well, I want to put it very clearly. You know, one week they say that Israel controls the United States. A week later, they say the United States controls Israel. This is hogwash. We have a partnership, an alliance of.
- [02:50]
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- [02:53]
Saagar Enjeti
We can have discussions, we can have disagreements here and there, but on the whole, I have to say that in the past year, we've had agreement. Agreement not only on goals, but how to reach them. And I think we're pursuing them successfully.
- [03:07]
Krystal Ball
So interesting too, to see the Vice President standing there while Bibi is taking that question. Sagar?
- [03:12]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, it is about as close to a screw you as can be mustered in diplomatic speak, especially when you tack on this. Let's go and put the next part up on the screen. The Knesset, while JD Vance, the Vice President, was in the country, approved a bill to apply Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. Quote, the proposal would say that the laws, judicial system, administration, sovereignty of the State of Israel shall apply to all areas of settlement in Judea and Samaria. It is a 25, 24 vote after a, quote, heated discussion. And it is one where they stipulate not only what I just read, but that it would actually apply in principle. So the difference here is that technically it was symbolic. The government is not going to affirm, officially carry this out. Now, frankly, considering how we have covered the west bank at this point with Jasper Nathaniel, it already exists, but it's effectively a symbolic thing at this point. Nonetheless, it was again, as big of a diplomatic fu. As they could muster, not only from Bibi, because it was not just the Protectorate conversation, the private conversations, at least some of it were leaked to various different reporters where JD is begging them, basically saying, give the ceasefire a chance. It's like a meme, please give peace a chance. They're like, please, please just try it. You know, you may enjoy it. It may actually work. And in addition, not only to the ceasefire conversation that's been happening with the US administration and others, is that they are not doing enough to address the actual underlying dynamic of the government itself. Like, you had Smotrich and Ben GVIR too. Members of the government who are outwardly. I mean, this is just. Today he says, this is from Smoja. If Saudi Arabia is telling us that in return for normalization, they want a Palestinian state, we will say, friends, no, thank you. You can continue riding camels on the sand in the Saudi desert.
- [05:06]
Krystal Ball
Okay? And these are the people, like, great friends.
- [05:08]
Saagar Enjeti
These are the people whose troops are supposed to be patrolling Gaza.
- [05:12]
Krystal Ball
Right, right.
- [05:13]
Saagar Enjeti
And then in addition to the fact.
- [05:14]
Krystal Ball
That the plan providing money for the.
- [05:16]
Saagar Enjeti
Reconstruction and providing the money for. For the reconstruction, they don't want any of this to work out. And it's like America is stuck pretending in this dreamlike state where the Israeli government actually wants a cease. They don't want a ceasefire period at all. Why do we keep the pretense? Like, guys, just be honest about what's happening here.
- [05:34]
Krystal Ball
That's one of the things that drives me the most crazy about foreign policy, is how much pretend there is, how much fakery there is from American politicians who have to pretend Bibi is different and his government is different and that they're not out there just openly saying, we are never giving Gaza back to Palestinians. We're gonna stay here forever, we're gonna have settlements, we're gonna push them out of the Gaza Strip altogether. They're just openly saying, and then we just have to pretend that we don't hear it. Or American politicians just pretend that they don't hear it and they don't actually know what's going on. It's one of the things that makes me the most insane on the west bank point. I mean, J.D. vance was annoyed by this because it created an uncomfortable situation for him. And we could put D2B up on the screen. He says that he was unhappy about it. The vote in the Knesset on annexing the west bank was strange. If it was a political stunt, it was a foolish political stunt. I was offended by it. We will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. And we were not pleased with this vote. Of course, the reality is they have allowed Israel to annex the West Bank. This was a key priority of top donor Miriam Adelson. And they've allowed mass settlements to go forward, including, as Jasper Nathaniel has pointed out, some extremely consequential ones that basically, you know, end the viability of a Palestinian state to include the West Bank. Mac also just sent us this. Apparently they are getting rid within Israel entirely of even the language west bank in favor of the biblical term Judea and Samaria. So another symbolic move to assert their own sovereignty over this area and these people, the parts of the west bank that are supposedly controlled by Palestinians, you know, it's the Palestinian Authority which are collaborators anyway. But in reality, Israel controls the nature of their day to day life, where they can go, what they can do, whether they can harvest their olives free from rampaging settlers or not. And so de facto annexation has already happened. It would have to be rolled back. It would have to take this administration or another actually asserting themselves and saying, this is unacceptable and here's what it's going to look like. And here's how we're going to get to some sort of peace and justice for Palestinians for that to happen. Right now they've got their hands full just keeping Israel from going back to full blown slaughter within Gaza. So at the same time, let's talk a little bit about the idea for quote, unquote, phase two. We could put D3 up on the screen. So this is some Wall Street Journal reporting and it dovetails very well with what we were talking about in the west bank, the reality in the west bank, because this plan looks a lot like they want to turn Gaza, Afghanistan effectively into a new West Bank. So the headline here is a US Plan splits Gaza in two. One zone controlled by Israel and one by Hamas. Now, the reality on the ground right now, and they say Jared Kushner floats a plan to rebuild the Israeli controlled half of the Palestinian enclave until Hamas can be disarmed. So right now the reality on the ground is Israel is still occupying 53% of the Gaza Strip. And anytime anyone gets close to what they call the yellow line, which doesn't exist like in reality, in physical real, just like on a map and in their heads, anytime any Palestinian gets close to that or wanders over it, they shoot and kill them. That is what we've seen in this quote, unquote, ceasefire. So they want to use the part that they occupy as effectively a cudgel to begin the rebuilding process there and allow potentially some of their vetted like gang affiliated people into that area and then to use that to pressure Hamas as like now you have to disarm because Palestinians want to come over and live in this reconstructed area. And we're not going to do any reconstruction in the area that the overwhelming number of Palestinians remain in and that you remain in control of. So that is the idea. You know, interestingly, people just caught this. I didn't note this from the 60 Minutes interview with Kushner and Wyckoff originally, but in that interview, and this is going to be D0 guys, Witkoff talks about how they've been developing this quote, unquote, master plan for two years. And Jared Kushner gets a very uncomfortable look on his face when Witkoff uses that language. Let's go ahead and take a look at that. Part of the plan is the reconstruction, the building rebuilding of Gaza. And you're builders, you've been in real estate. As you said, it's extremely complex. Tell us more about the plan and how much it's going to cost, where's the money going to come from and who's going to award the contracts. Three questions.
- [10:15]
Saagar Enjeti
I think it's going to cost a lot of money.
- [10:17]
Krystal Ball
What's a lot of money?
- [10:19]
Saagar Enjeti
You know, the estimates are in the $50 billion range. It might be a little bit less, it might be a little bit more. I happen to think that that's not a lot of money in that region. You have governments that are going to jump on in, and so the Middle.
- [10:32]
Krystal Ball
East countries are going to provide the money.
- [10:36]
Donald Trump
You'll see European participation and so forth.
- [10:39]
Saagar Enjeti
I think the beginning of this plan is how to get it going. And that's what me and what me and Jared work on all the time. The money raising, we think, is the easy part. We think that happens relatively quickly. But it's the master plan. And we're working with a group of people who have been working on master plans for the last two years.
- [11:03]
Krystal Ball
So there are plans already.
- [11:04]
Saagar Enjeti
We have plans already. We have a master plan already. And by the way, and Jared's been pushing this and we're working together on it, and I think if the world saw the progress so far, they'd be pretty impressed.
- [11:15]
Krystal Ball
So Witkoff says they've been working on a master plan for two years now.
- [11:19]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, this is the master plan. And this is basically the, yeah, West Bankification. They still have control. All of this falls apart. It's really hard to take it seriously because it's just. It's fake. I mean, look at the comments from the finance minister about Saudi Arabia. Who do you think the people would be responsible for, quote, unquote, disarming? Hamas would be. It would be the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. jD and Trump both say no U.S. troops will ever set foot on the ground in Gaza. Great. I mean, honestly, I support that. But eventually somebody's troops have got to set foot on the ground to have political administration. Their plan is like some phase rollout where they'll just encroach space by space. Hamas will be able, and then they'll slowly dehomasify it. How, how do you do that? Like, what does that look like? At a certain point, it's all just recreating the same dynamic as Iraq, Afghanistan. These people have no actual plan. In the absence, chaos will reign. Israel will continue to shoot and to kill and eventually some sort of mass attack or whatever. Either Hamas will do, maybe Israel will do. We'll see. And then we'll be right back to where things were. That seems like the modal outcome at this point. I don't really see another way that.
- [12:29]
Krystal Ball
It could go well. And like I said the, this quote, unquote, master plan that they're laying out. It really does look a lot like the reality in the West Bank. And so if you're going to be trying to get Palestinians voluntarily to go into the area that Israel controls, I mean, you're basically, you're getting them to voluntarily go into a direct military occupation where every aspect of your life is controlled by the Israelis. And so, you know, in the west bank you have three different areas. This was all set up in the, under the Oslo Accords. You've got areas A, B and C, different levels of control by the Israelis, theoretically. And part of what has now become actual reality, as Jasper's laid down, is that even in the areas that are supposedly under Palestinian control, your life is actually determined by the Israelis. And yeah, I mean, this is also why a lot of people have moved from feeling like a two state solution is okay, well, if you're just gonna annex, then give people rights and just have a one state. But of course that would be wildly unacceptable to the, to Netanyahu, to smoters. But not just them, not just the extremists. I mean, it'd be wildly acceptable to any mainstream Israeli politician for Palestinians just to actually have citizenship because then you have this quote, unquote, demographic threat. They have big families and they have, you know, they have already about half of the, if you look at, you know, all of Israel and Palestine put together, it's about half of the population. So pretty quickly you have this very different political reality if you actually allow them to have rights. And that's where the core of this campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing and occupation, that's where this all comes from. Because they cannot permit a situation where Palestinians have any sort of political say in their system.
- [14:11]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, the political administration of the entire system just looks like even more hopeless than ever before. Also in terms of the US dynamic, just look at what it takes to get Israel to stick to the ceasefire, at least in limited ways. The Vice president, the US envoy, the President's son in law, all have to be in Israel all the time just to be like, hey, please give this a. The US intelligence community has to monitor every explosion in Gaza just to make sure that the Israelis aren't lying about it as a pretext to go back. How can we possibly stick to that dynamic forever? I mean, I talked about how the schizophrenia of the administration, just so I know it's a Ukraine, but everybody stick with me because in the last week it has been a masterclass by the Trump administration. Literally less than a week. Actually six days. So six days ago, Vladimir Zelensky met with Trump at the Oval Office. He called Trump or he called Putin and he berated Zelensky for not agreeing to peace terms. That was six days ago. And he said, I won't give you any long range missiles in the interim period. He set a new summit for Budapest between him and Putin. And it looks like things were going in a more pro Russian direction. Three days ago, the Secretary of State and Lavrov, the Foreign Minister have quote, a disastrous phone call, whatever that means. The Budapest summit is canceled. They say they have no immediate terms. Yesterday, President Secretary Scott Bessant announces major Russia sanctions against the regime. And the Wall Street Journal reports that now long range missiles are on their way to Ukraine, which will be used to strike into. That is six days of what we just watched from berating Zelensky to give up the Donbas region, to giving, to giving long range missiles to Ukraine. Who knows where we'll be six days from now. Right, okay, now apply that to Israel and to cease. Yeah, we're in a ceasefire today. Who knows what will be tomorrow. This guy is rebuilding the East Wing. That's what he apparently. I'm not joking. I heard a story that he currently has two different types of marble tabletops in which he is asking every person who comes to the Oval Office which one they prefer. That's his current actual interest, not this. So good luck to anybody who's a ceasefire believer or anyone. Because a week from now, six days from now, who knows what you're gonna wake up and get. And that's why I would bet on the Israelis. Know what they want. Trump doesn't know what he wants.
- [16:26]
Krystal Ball
It's interesting.
- [16:26]
Saagar Enjeti
So I would bet on Israel.
- [16:27]
Krystal Ball
It was interesting that it was Rubio that had a, quote, unquote, disastrous call with Lavrov that blew everything up in terms of a direction of, you know, having the Budapest meeting and all of that sort of stuff. And that's the thing is I think this President, this is not to deny him blame, he deserves blame for everything that's happening under his government.
- [16:44]
Saagar Enjeti
It's his.
- [16:45]
Krystal Ball
But I think he has checked out of a lot of pieces of it. He's obsessed with his renovations, he likes that. The physical legacy that he can leave of his hideous, tacky gold taste, that's the thing that he actually cares about. And so he's like, yeah, Marco, you talked to Lavrov? Yeah, Stephen Miller, why don't you run the immigration thing? Why don't you Guys work together on the Venezuela regime. Oh, you want to do regime change in Venezuela? Sure, be my guest. Like, look, go and make it a little personal project. He's outsourced a lot of parts of this. Even. I mean, even on the economic piece, it doesn't feel like he is as hands on and engaged with it as he was in the early days of this administration. So the kind of focus that would be required to keep this thing on the rails, it's hard to imagine. And let's keep in mind, also, even with JD Vance there, they're still taking their fricking like, let's annex the west bank and call it Judea and Samaria votes. And all we can muster is like, I was offended by that. Okay, but you're not gonna do anything about it, are you?
- [17:43]
Saagar Enjeti
Yes, it's like, what are you going to do? I actually really wonder because, yeah, he's on his way back to Washington now. What's gonna happen a week from now? Cause like I said with the Trump administration, they're gonna be on Ukraine now for the next three days. And then by the way, Venezuela, which we're about to cover. You get mired in that. Who cares about the Israel ceasefire? This is the problem. You get yourself into too many things. You don't have enough attention. You don't have a unified attention of government. This is, this is how things are going to go.
- [18:11]
Krystal Ball
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [18:15]
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- [18:29]
Krystal Ball
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [18:31]
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- [18:48]
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- [19:21]
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- [19:50]
Saagar Enjeti
Let's get to Venezuela. There's a lot of moving parts. But the major breaking news. President Trump from the Oval Office yesterday saying that he will soon notify Congress that land strikes on Venezuela must begin. Let's take a listen.
- [20:03]
Donald Trump
Legal authority, if they do come. Yes, we do. We have legal authority. Right? We're allowed to do that. And if we do buy land, we may go back to Congress. But we have. This is a national security problem. They killed 300,000 people last year. Drugs. These drugs coming in. They killed 300,000Americans last year. And that gives you legal authority. We have a national security, really. I will say this. When you look at the people we're dealing with and we know them, we know the people coming in, we know the boats, we know everything else. We're allowed to do it. It's in international waters. If we don't do it, we're going to lose hundreds of thousands of people. Now they'll be coming in by land a little bit more because they're not coming in by boat anymore. There are no boat traffic in the water. There are no more boats. We know the boat almost immediately. You know, it's pretty unusual when you see somebody with a fishing rod and five engines on the back of the boat, you know, you don't need that to go fishing. Wait, wait, wait. And we will hit them very hard when they come in by land. And they haven't experienced that yet. But now we're totally prepared to do that. We'll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we're doing when we come to the land. We don't have to do that, but I think, Marco, I'd like to do that. You may respond to that.
- [21:25]
Saagar Enjeti
So, yeah, now we are going to come to the land. Let me just explain a little bit because the sea campaign has actually heated up over just the last 24 hours. There was a new announcement of a strike on, on drug traffickers. But actually in the Pacific or alleged drug traffickers, I should say, that was actually in the Pacific Ocean. So this is now a two ocean front war. Now I mean what you look at from the expans, nature not only of the boats but of the rhetoric in terms of striking the land would obviously be a massive escalation. The reason why he says he has to notify Congress is all of this is currently being done under a drug interdiction mission. But none of it has actually been justified, presented with evidence there is, frankly. I mean, look, Ryan and I are working on a big Venezuela story right now. I can't give away all the details. The one tidbit I can offer is that there is not one shred of evidence internally that fentanyl is on any single one of these boats. Not one piece of evidence that fentanyl is on these boats. Which is again, I mean, this is the rhetorical justification of the strike. By the way, what he says there about the boats, again, small tidbit that we can offer. These boats would have to stop and refuel some 20 times in order to get to the United States. The current intel is that they're not heading to the US is that they're most likely heading to different places in the Caribbean, namely Trinidad and Tobago. By the way, everything I just said, Rand Paul also just echoed on tv. So I'm not giving it anything in particular really away. I'm just telling you that that's from based on our reporting, that's what we can able to offer you. So this is all part of a regime change operation. There's just no other way to describe it. Maduro quite literally offered up everything by Trump's own admission, in addition to numerous reported outlets about some of the behind the scenes talk. So this is, I mean, look, this is where things are trending right now. Trump genuinely believes the best way to get access to Venezuelan oil is to overthrow the government. The drug thing is a pretext. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with minerals, which we'll show you here in a little bit. But it's scary. It's scary.
- [23:30]
Krystal Ball
There are a few things to pick up on from his comments. So let's be clear. What they're doing is random murder in terms of attacking these boats. I mean, the few details that we've had at this point, some of the people who were murdered who have been identified were like random fishermen. So maybe some of them are drug traffickers. We don't know that any of the literally any of them are. And they have now killed dozens of people without offering a shred of evidence that these are even the individuals that they claim. And Sager and Ryan's reporting that they have zero evidence internally that any of these boats have fentanyl on them, even though that is what they are telling the American public. That is in and of itself a bombshell. That's number one. Number two, when he Says we're going, you know, they're going to come to the land. Maybe we'll go to Congress. We don't have to go to Congress. Maybe we'll go to Congress. Let's be really clear about what that means. So right now we have random murder of potential fishermen in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. What he's proposing is random murder of people here on the land. That's what that expansion means. So they are trying to claim the power to arbitrarily to unilaterally just murder random people that they announced to the public are drug traffickers without providing evidence. That is the power that they are trying to claim. Maybe they'll go to Congress and maybe they won't, because Trump doesn't seem to think that they have to. So that's number two. Number three, let me read to you what Pete Hegseth tweeted out in response to announce this latest murder at sea. He says, because some of the language here is very important, so he says. Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out yet another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization, dto. Yet again, the now deceased terrorists were engaged in narco trafficking in the eastern Pacific. We're just supposed to take their word for that, by the way, the vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco trafficking route and was carrying narcotics. Three male narco terrorists were aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. All three terrorists were killed and no US forces were harmed in this strike. These strikes will continue day after day. These are not simply drug runners. These are narco terrorists bringing death and destruction to our cities. These DTOs are the Al Qaeda of our hemisphere and will not escape justice. We will find them and kill them until the threat to the American people is extinguished. So that language there saying, these are the Al Qaedas of our hemisphere. That is the pretext, the linguistic pretext that they're trying to use and convince you of to allow them this unconscionable power grab. That's the way they're framing it. And I think the regime change part is terrifying. Everyone should be very concerned about that. But it should also be very concerning to you what they're already doing and the powers that they're claiming for, not only these attacks on boats, but now trying to claim for here domestically on U.S. soil.
- [26:29]
Saagar Enjeti
Yes, you're exactly right. It is literally just gwat, gwat logic, gwat rhetoric. And in some Cases, the new rhetoric is actually more extreme than the gwat. Because at no time during the war in Iraq, even when we were spreading democracy apparently to Iraq and Afghanistan, did people come to the airwaves and say that Iraq should be the 51st state. But did not put that past Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity on Fox News. Let's take a listen.
- [26:57]
Donald Trump
I had a chat with you this weekend and I thought you had a pretty darn good idea. And you said you were gonna share it with the President. I wanna know if you did. And that is this opposition leader in Venezuela that won the Nobel Prize, that said it really deserved to go to Donald Trump. Sounds like a pretty good leader to me. For the people of Venezuela and the end of narco terrorism and a better relationship with the US or if they choose, maybe the 51st state. I don't know.
- [27:23]
Saagar Enjeti
Sounds good to me. Sounds good to me. 51st state of Venezuela. So, you know, we can't simultaneously be for mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants. What does Trump always say? He's like, they opened up the asylums, they opened up the jails and they sent them here. So we're gonna send them back and then we're gonna create them and to turn them into a citizen and make them all citizens, and then they're all gonna be citizens. Okay. Okay. That's not to mention the fact that it would cause mass illegal migration even if there was some sort of regime collapse. Again, I don't wanna get too ahead of the story Ryan and I are working on, but we have some bombshell stuff that we can report. The intel stuff, frankly, some of the least interesting. But the point I just wanna stick to is there is no evidence that Maduro is actually like a large scale drug trafficker, number one. Number two, there's no fentanyl on any of these boats. Number three, these boats, all the current intelligence not even show that they're necessarily for the United States. Number four, all of the powers that are being claimed by the administration are ones that the George W. Bush presidency and the Obama presidency use as sweeping powers to be able to drone strike and kill whoever they want. And five is actually Congress. Because the thing is, is that nobody's really doing anything about this inside of Congress. Like, look, I always say this, the true threat to America is real bipartisanship. The stuff that Everybody just comes 98, 0 votes on. Things like regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine. And you only have a few shitsters like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie willing to speak out. That's the real danger to the country. I don't see any large scale demonstration or you know, people like, I'll give credit where due, but like, let's be honest, it's like a minority congressman, a minority caucus in a minority, like in a minority ruling party of the House has no power to do anything. Like there's no standup about authorities here. It's very scary and it's moving much quicker. Again, I really don't think that the media is covering this properly. Like nobody points to the fact a United States senator saying Venezuela should be a 51st state combined with regime change operation should freak everybody. It should be front page international news. And everyone's just like, oh yeah, I mean we just struck two. It's a two ocean war now. Like, like when's the last time the United States even did a two ocean strike? I don't even know.
- [29:44]
Krystal Ball
And maybe, just maybe the opposition party should have something to say about that. You know, I mean, yeah, you have a few outliers like Ro Khanna, but by and large they are silent on. I mean it's just disappointment doesn't even begin to describe it. It really is like they barely exist. And so part of the reason why the media doesn't cover it in the way that it is is because, in the way that it should is because they aren't getting those signals from the opposition party of like, holy shit, this is really bad. And making the case against this so the American people know what's going on and can evaluate for themselves whether or not they'd like to be in a regime change war against Venezuela or like to be blowing up random fishermen in the Caribbean or like to have those powers brought here to domestic soil. And so, you know, there's, it's astonishing to me how little fight they have, how afraid they are of taking him on on anything outside of these few narrow issues. And so that's part of why you don't have a mass upset over this in the population, because there are so few voices that are actually speaking out against it at this point.
- [30:47]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I mean also, let's say about MAGA too, this is part of why I think Venezuela is more dangerous than Iran. And this will sound crazy, like the operation is that there is no organized or there is no organized rhetoric, language or project that takes invading Venezuela as a serious thing and opposes it. It. So on Iran, not nearly enough people spoke up in my opinion, but there was an organized effort on the right to speak up and to say that this is a bad idea to pursue regime change in Iran. And to not allow the Israelis to go full on and actually do it now. They still might. But to be clear, at the time, there was a real, real organized effort and the White House felt some pressure on Venezuela. They feel nothing. A huge part of the MAGA commentariat actually believes the fentanyl claim. I don't know why. I mean, look, listen, Ryan and I will put a story out soon. It just tells you it's complete bullshit. You don't need to hear from me. You can hear from a lot of other people. There's no fentanyl in Venezuela. DEA statistics say there's no fentanyl in Venezuela. But they're like, these people killed my, you know, cousin or whatever from heroin over. It's like, guys, no, they didn't. Okay, I'm sorry. Like it didn't happen. I'm sorry that happened to you. But your literal emotions are being weaponized by the government for a legitimate neocon wet dream of overthrowing Venezuela. So. So the fact that there's no organized project actually seems to me like it's gonna be more likely because what MAGA likes is the expansion of administrative power and strikes. It always feels good to blow up drug traffickers. Again, there's not necessarily any evidence behind that, but they don't have a theory for how this can go badly. Like you can't simultaneously oppose mass migration, which I do and which a lot of them ostensibly say. You can't talk about trend Nicaragua and Venezuela and takeover of neighborhoods and say that deposing the regime of Nicolas Maduro is gonna do anything about that. Same thing. You know, we have allies, neighbors in the region, Colombia, and these are thriving big countries, Central America and also who we are reliant on to make sure that, you know, they are stem the crisis before it even comes here. Where do you think they're all gonna go? You know, in the same route that they did under Biden. They're gonna flood the border. So just think about it. Maybe they won't make it here. They're gonna make it to you. And so there's an entire theory that is so obvious, but has not yet been articulated. And all they're hearing instead is Pete Hegseth, Fox News and Trump and others being like, this is actually the highest and best use of our military. It's honestly scary. The internal dynamics. I'll just say it. I mean, not that anybody listens to me, but you're getting taken for a ride. Like, this is complete BS1, 100%. Every claim on fentanyl drugs I'm telling you, it's false. And they know it's false. They stumbled on the drug thing after months to convince Trump because originally they're like, he stole the election. Trump's like, I don't care.
- [33:35]
Krystal Ball
They're like, I did the same.
- [33:36]
Saagar Enjeti
They're like, he's bad. He's a murderer. So, I mean, what, we don't have murderers that we do diplomatic relations with. Who gives a shit what's going on in Venezuela? But eventually they came down to drugs. He seems to believe it based on this fake indictment from 2020 and this new. What is it, the $50 million bounty. Scary, man.
- [33:57]
Krystal Ball
Unbelievable. Yeah, it is terrifying how easily people can just be talked into war. Like all you have to do is hit whatever their policy erogenous zone is, oh, they're narco terrorists. Fentanyl. And without any sort of critical thought, they're ready for the next regime change war. And zero thought about what the consequences of that will be. Zero thought about whether any of what they're being fed is truthful. Crazy. It's very disturbing to see. Come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [34:29]
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Krystal Ball
Whoa, this thing moves.
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- [35:36]
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- [36:05]
Saagar Enjeti
I can't be the only one which is watched with great alarm as the entire White House east wing will now be demolished in favor of Donald Trump's announced presidential Ballroom. Here he is laying out the reasoning. Let me just. Before we even play it though, let me describe this. Of course, he had announced his plans for the ballroom. Whatever, okay? So he's gonna build this new ballroom on the White House campus. However, what actually comes out now is that in order to build said ballroom, you have to demolish the entire, entire historical part of the East Wing. Demolition pictures began to leak online. They eventually told them, hey, stop taking pictures of it if you work in the government and leaking it to the press. Then they said, oh, only the facade itself will be destroyed. No, now they're coming for the whole thing. Here's Trump laying it out.
- [36:51]
Donald Trump
In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure. The way it was shown, it looked like we were touching the White House. We don't touch the White House. That's a bridge at last. Bridge going from the White House to the ballroom. Then you get into the lobby of the ballroom and then you go into the magnificent, the main room. And it's something that has gotten incredible reviews.
- [37:13]
Saagar Enjeti
Something that's gotten incredible reviews. Shall we. Let's review it. We'll all review it together. Let's play it. Let's. Let's put it up here on the screen. Yep. Here's the video. That's the East Wing. That's a bulldozer. They're taking it down. This is from above the fence again. This is the historic East Wing part of the White House where millions of tourists have gone. I personally, I've walked this halls a lot of times. It's really nice. If you ever, you know, had the ability to go to the Christmas tour or anything like that. That's. That's it. You know, all right there. In favor of this, whatever the. This is, this gigantic new footprint. The East Wing, the ballroom. Look at that. Look at that. I'm sorry, you know? Yeah. I don't even have words. It's like the tackiest shit I've ever seen in my entire life. I mean, just look at some of these renderings. On the left you can see the tiny little west wing where the rose, the colonnade, the rose garden, which by the way, has already destroyed. The Rose garden is awesome. On top of what you can see for the West Wing, the Oval Office, the Magisterium of like the understated part of the Oval Office in favor of a Gilded Age breaker style mansion of a ballroom which will be used for how many times in a year? It's grotesque. I mean, look, I mean, the one benefit is that Nobody in the, like, nobody's paying for it. Like, in terms of the taxpayers, apparently it's gonna be some 300 billion. But even that it's being sponsored by some major corporation. I mean, the thing that just galls me about this is the taste. It's so disconnected from American public history, architecture, anything that even remotely calls back to our reverence for our history. And of course, their cope is like, oh, well, Harry Truman remodel. Yeah. It's not the same. Okay. It's just not. By the way, that one actually was, in conjunction with the White House Historical association, was done because the White House was falling apart, not because we need a. A ballroom so that you can entertain more than 900 guests. They even say they're going to modernize it, which makes me literally want to have a brain aneurysm. If you've ever been to the East Wing, the entire point of the place is that it has deep history. If you want to put AC vents or something like that, okay, fine. But nobody. I mean, I'm just imagining glass sliding doors and fluorescent lighting in the East Wing, and it's going to give me an overall brain aneurysm just looking at all this. Now, here's the final question. Do you agree with Neera Tanden's take that the images of the White House could swing the election? I was like, look, Neera, you're after my heart. I am one of those people. I am a White House swing voter. But even I am not naive enough to say that people give a shit about the East Wing. I don't. I only honestly, let's be honest, it's kind of an insider thing to even care, because 99% of the US population has never even been inside of the East Wing. I've probably been there 10 or 15 times. The blue room, the red room, you know, all of these gorgeous places, even the photos don't really capture it. You know, when I go in this place, I'm like, wow, FDR did Fireside Chat here, you know, oh, this is where the famous George W. Bush interview and all that happened. I guess Americans just don't care. Trump certainly doesn't care at all. But I don't know, maybe I can hopefully inspire some reverence for our great architecture in favor of whatever this is.
- [40:35]
Krystal Ball
It makes me feel very conservative. Good, good. I mean, I do.
- [40:38]
Saagar Enjeti
Glad to have you.
- [40:39]
Krystal Ball
I don't know if I listen. I don't know. Maybe Neera's right. Who knows, right? What lands with people? And there is something. Clearly, Trump finds It to be somewhat of a political problem because, number one, he lied and said that the east wing wouldn't be touched. Well, it wouldn't be touched at all. There will be no demolition. It'll just go up alongside of it. Like, no demolition whatsoever, which I was concerned about.
- [40:58]
Saagar Enjeti
But I was like, okay, whatever.
- [40:59]
Krystal Ball
Maybe, yeah, he's a builder. Maybe so. Number one, he felt the need to lie about it and continues to lie about it. Number two, he felt the need to cover up the pictures and demand that no one take a picture of this, because. So he certainly has some sense that this is at least not a great political look. Is it gonna swing the next election? I guess we'll never know. We'll have to do some sophisticated political regression analysis to figure out if this was the factor. Maybe we'll see his approval rating fall off a cliff and be able to point to this renovation, demolition, whatever. But. But it does make me feel very conservative.
- [41:31]
Saagar Enjeti
Good.
- [41:31]
Krystal Ball
It makes me feel. Because, I mean, I do feel this sense of, like, this isn't your. This is all of ours. Like, all of our nation's history. Like, all of these historic things that occurred in these spaces, and you just feel the power of a king to just knock it down without asking anyone's permission, without going to the public and seeing if that was something that people are interested in. Like, forget the money, but just. Just, you know, you've now destroyed a space that cannot be rebuilt. And there were. I can't remember. I wish I remember who was saying this, but there was another progressive who was saying, like, why does this bother me so much? And their analysis. And I think this could be the. I think there could be something to this, is that it is a physical representation of, like, Trump and his long legacy that is now going to be left. And I think that's why he wants it as well. And so when it was just one term, and this was some of the emotions that I think we all grappled with when Trump got reelected. When it's just one term that can kind of be an aberration. Hillary is a bad candidate, and there was backlash to Obama and all these kind of weird Russia and whatever was going Comey. And whatever was going on. When he gets reelected a second time, you're like, this is not an aberration.
- [42:45]
Saagar Enjeti
And wins a popular vote.
- [42:46]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, this is actually where our country is now. And so I feel like this is sort of a physical manifestation of that, which is why I find it. I do find it really disappointing.
- [42:56]
Saagar Enjeti
I think that's fine from like some left point of view. I'll just give you a more value neutral one, which is that it's the White House. It doesn't belong to you. It doesn't belong to anybody. Is that you are at the mercy of history in a certain sense. As in you assume the office, the office doesn't assume you.
- [43:09]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [43:09]
Saagar Enjeti
And that's really what it's about, is that the point is, is that the office is supposed to be bigger than everyone else.
- [43:15]
Krystal Ball
All previous renovations, you're a guest in our house.
- [43:17]
Saagar Enjeti
I know this sounds cringe and quaint at this point, even talk this way. Cause this is how they talk on msnbc. But it is unironically true at a very base level of no, it's the people's house. It is the White House. Now, previous renovations that have happened include Harry Truman. By the way, it was super controversial when he added the Truman Balcony. It was not. People were not happy about it. They basically added it for the pleasure of the President. I guess it's been, you know, 60, 70 years. So we could get over it at this point. I'm still not over it. But it's one of those where the whole point is, if you've ever been there, it's not that nice. And that's actually. I used to hate it whenever I would work there, but I have come to appreciate the charm of the fact that it is kind of a dilapidated office building. I don't know if you saw this. There's this viral photo of Nick Saban, who was the coach at Alabama. And he had this beautiful wooden office with all of these books and things behind him. And it just looked so vintage, as if a place where a person works. And then his successor, I think his name is Kalyn DeBoer, came in and turned it into, like a glass T mobile store. And by the way, the team isn't doing as well under the new coat. But there was something about that which was just so physically jarring for many people. And that's kind of how I feel about this entire thing is just looking at it, it seems disconnected. And actually, frankly, even that ballroom is just so reminiscent of the worst architectural design of US History. But if we are living in a second gilded age, maybe it makes sense.
- [44:51]
Krystal Ball
I mean, it does fit with that. And I think that's the other part that that bothers me too, is, you know, this is. Some of the money is coming from the, like, extortion that he's doing on these, you know, tech platforms. And I think some of the, like, YouTube fealty money is going to the ballroom. One of the things that I saw. Yeah, I think so. Double check that. But that was the headline that I saw. And so, so, but okay, what is his time and focus and attention going to building out this hideous, gaudy, like, you know, Gulfie meets Versailles meets Mar? A Lago Ballroom for a bunch of rich elites who can come and suck up to him and pay tribute and bring their gold bars or whatever it is to get their goodies. And so even, like, the purpose of it is gross, let alone the visuals of it. So, yeah, it does bother me. The pictures of it are visually jarring. Is it going to sway the election, Nir? I don't know about that. I'd like to believe it, but I don't know. In Northern stand up, you just never know.
- [45:53]
Saagar Enjeti
Look, what I would hope is it inspires a love of history. And part of the reason why, watching the transformation of the Oval Office and of the ballroom or the East Wing and all of this is because at least previous presidents, some had a deep reverence for the things that actually happened in that room. And I've told this story before, but one of the things that really hit with me whenever I interviewed Trump, it was maybe the first or second time, is the first time I ever went into the Oval Office. I was like, that's the Jack Kennedy shot, right? You know, at the desk. And I thought about Nixon and Kissinger praying on the floor right before his resignation or Eisenhower, and where he would play is going, you know, all these things you've read about for years and years and years. And then I'm looking at this man, I'm like, he doesn't think about any of that.
- [46:37]
Krystal Ball
He doesn't even know about it.
- [46:39]
Saagar Enjeti
Maybe, I don't know, probably not. But, you know, or Jackson, like, is this portrait of Jackson. And I'm thinking about even the Oval Room itself, such an unusual shape and the evolution of how that kind of came to be. The Resolute desk, the HMS Resolute, these are all the things that are, like, rolling through my mind now that can be bad. It doesn't necessarily translate to political success or to. To great leadership or any of that. But in that moment, I was like, oh, he doesn't care about any of that. And it's clear, obviously, in this is that imprinting this view of who America is is kind of in his own form. So, yes, you're right in that it is a physical thing of Trump's legacy. But more broadly, I think it is. I don't know, I think it's like a loss of history and a veterans of something. You can't get that back. You can't get back the east wind. And however it does, they say they're gonna modernize it. I don't want it to be modernized. It needs to stay relatively the same. That's kinda how we treat most of these places. It's like if anybody in Washington has ever been to the Hart Senate Office Building, it's a glass construction box. It looks like shit compared to the Russell Senate Office Building. It's marble. When you walk the halls, you see signs like, this was John F. Kennedy's office, this was LBJ's office. That's how it should be in my opinion. Just to ground people down to at least something that they are remotely connected to. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I agree with you. It makes me very sad. It makes me very, very sad. Especially for the future generations. You know, I had a dream because my wife and I, we'd done multiple tours and we were talking recently like, oh, we could take her to the White House, you know, and I'm like, no, she wanted, she wanted to get to see it.
- [48:10]
Krystal Ball
That's right.
- [48:10]
Saagar Enjeti
Took that away from me.
- [48:11]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. One thing I will say about Neera's point is I think if it was like Obama or Biden who did it, the Republicans would be able to make it the right would be able to make this a effective campaign issue.
- [48:22]
Saagar Enjeti
Yes, you're absolutely.
- [48:23]
Krystal Ball
Can the Democrats pull that off? I don't have that level of confidence.
- [48:26]
Saagar Enjeti
I agree, I agree.
- [48:29]
Krystal Ball
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [48:33]
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- [48:48]
Krystal Ball
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [48:49]
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- [49:07]
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- [49:40]
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- [50:08]
Saagar Enjeti
Crystal, what are you taking a look at?
- [50:10]
Krystal Ball
So guess what guys? Graham Platner's tattoo has made me more ride or die for him than ever. Let me explain my thinking here. So, as Ryan and Emily covered yesterday, Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is under fire for a variety of old Reddit comments and an extremely poor tattoo choice. So here is that tattoo revealed in a pic of Graham drunkenly serenading the crowd with Miley Cyrus wrecking ball as a gag at his brother's wedding. Honestly, it's a good song. You guys should listen to it. Graham says he got the tattoo with a few of his buddies in the service during a drunken night of shore leave in Croatia. And it turns out it's not just a cool looking skull and crossbones, but a Nazi insignia. Yeah, well, yesterday we received the update that he has already had that tattoo covered. Let's take a listen.
- [50:51]
Saagar Enjeti
I think that racism and anti Semitism are a long scourge on our society and a long scourge on our politics, and I think it has no place in our world. For that reason, I have gone and gotten it covered up. Last night I went to a tattoo parlor and I got this to cover.
- [51:10]
Bernie Sanders
Up the skull and crossbones.
- [51:12]
Saagar Enjeti
It's a Celtic knot with some imagery.
- [51:15]
Krystal Ball
Around dogs because my wife Amy and.
- [51:17]
Saagar Enjeti
I have two wonderful dogs that we love a lot. This far more represents who I am now than even the skull and crossbones did, which I thought that it was.
- [51:27]
Krystal Ball
So now the tattoo is obviously still hideous visually, but no longer hideous symbolically. So, so what are we antifascist leftists and progressives to do with all of this? Well, the first and most important question to answer is is this man actually a secret Nazi? Obviously, if the answer was yes, that would be disqualifying, but from the available evidence, the idea he's actually a Nazi seems utterly preposterous. Here, the likely by the way, Palantir hacked Reddit leak is very useful. We can read through a wide variety of Graham's often impolitic comments which he made when he thought he had Internet anonymity and no expectations of running for public office. So what do we see in those comments? Well, some comments on sexual assault and race that are definitely not progressive, for which Graham has expressed regret, and some comments proclaiming himself a psychedelic taken communist and antifa super soldier, which would make him about the furthest thing possible from being a Nazi. For what it's worth, he was also a Michael Brooks fan, crediting the late socialist commentator with his political shift and mourning his untimely death. Death. So between the fact that we actually have access to his edgiest shitposts and none of them are far right, and the fact that I am personally married to a man who accidentally got a Metallica tattoo while sober, I might add, but he thought it looked cool so he just went for it. I do believe Graham's Croatia Shore leaves story and think we can confidently reject the theory that he is somehow a secret Nazi. For me, this makes the question of whether to continue supporting Graham or not extremely simple and also vitally important. In fact, I genuinely believe that this Graham Platner question is at the heart of what course the Democratic Party is going to take for the future. Will establishment Democrats continue to limit the field to the most professionally boring and uninspiring people on the planet? Or will the Democratic base reject their smear tactics and force a new anti oligarch direction? Because if you are opening the gates to a broader range of candidates who haven't just been planning presidential runs since they were like five, like total psychos, you're gonna get some warts, you're gonna get some weird tattoos, some off color remarks, some very messy life trajectories. The reward though is you get a party that doesn't give America the ick. As Emma Vigelin puts it, quote censorious hall monitor liberalism that refuses to accept growth in people unless you're a corporate centrist and all is forgiven, just ask Cuomo supporters is far more of a threat to the Democratic Party's chances in the future than anything dug up on Graham Platinum. And it's more than the Democratic Party's chances which are at stake here. Status quo neoliberalism has failed to deliver for people, and those failures are exactly what enabled the rise of fascism. The question of whether the Democratic Party base can elevate new candidates with new profiles and most critically, new politics is existential for the party and for the country as a whole. So Graham's tattoo also raises the question of what do we even consider to be a scandal? They want you to believe that a bad drunken tattoo is more scandalous than bad policy. Backing billionaires at the expense of ordinary people and support for genocide at the expense of our souls. We have to fight that view with everything that we have. In Maine currently, there's a choice between two leading candidates. On the Democratic side, you've got the sitting governor, Janet Mills. She's the choice of Chuck Schumer and the dscc. As governor of Maine, she has opposed a millionaire's task. She vetoed adding higher income tax brackets. She opposed hiking corporate taxes, but she did implement a cigarette tax, which will disproportionately hit the working class. Now, she did pick a fight against Trump, which I appreciate, but if it's not matched with a willingness to confront capital, it is not nearly enough. Mills also opposed local Israel divestment efforts in Maine. She threatened to veto statewide divestment efforts efforts. She's been silent on the genocide and just generally toes the lockstep pro Israel line. She also happens to be the least popular Democratic governor in the entire nation and would end her Senate term well into her 80s. Do you really believe that that is the type of candidate that Democrats should rally behind for the future of the party, let alone the country? Now, Graham supports a billionaire minimum tax, strongly supports Medicare for all, wants to surge federal government direct housing construction to deal with housing affordability, wants to end the forever wars and especially to end the genocide and bring peace and justice to Palestinians. Now, with no public profile or political office, he has built a grassroots movement both in Maine and around the country of people who are inspired by his model of politics. This was just last night, by the way. He routinely garners hundreds of cheering supporters to his events. So guys, is he a risk? Sure. Could more come out? Sure. But Maine Democrats have tried to beat Susan Collins with standard issue safe choices before and all of them very safely lost. There is also, I should mention, another candidate named Jordan Wood in the race who is responsible for a network of scam PACs and running exploitative fundraising tactics, who has probably done more to harass Democratic voters and scam them amount of money than perhaps any other individual. He's at 1% right now, by the way. So I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far in response to Tatu Gate Congressman Ro Khanna, Senator Sanders, Senator Heinrich, they're all standing behind Graham. Even a sort of centrist ish Democrat Ruben Gallego did not throw Graham under the bus. Here are Bernie's most recent comments. Clip is a little long, but I couldn't cut any because you guys need all of this. Pure quintessential Bernie. I do have a question about your endorsement of Graham Platner, but it was.
- [56:49]
Bernie Sanders
The American health care system? No.
- [56:51]
Krystal Ball
Well, it's something he.
- [56:52]
Saagar Enjeti
He talks about a lot.
- [56:52]
IBM Ad Voice
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- [56:53]
Saagar Enjeti
Okay.
- [56:53]
Bernie Sanders
All right, let me just say a few words. Number one, I am impressed that media is so concerned about the tattoo that Mr. Platner has. Meanwhile, as a result of Trump's massive cuts to Medicaid, the estimate is that if we don't change that, 15 million people are going to lose their health insurance, 50,000 people a year are going to die. Maybe equivalent to the employee importance of Mr. Platinus tattoo. In terms of Mr. Platner. This is a guy who served four. Four. Four terms, as in combat. He was a Marine, four tours of duty. He was a machine gunner. He saw friends die. He came out of that war, as he has acknowledged, with ptsd, got good treatment at the va, got his life together. This is a man who served his country, who suffered, who had some difficult moments, who said things that he should not have said, and he has apologized for them. But I think if this country is about anything, it's about understanding that every person, me, you, everybody else, has gone dark. Moments in our history. And we go on. I think the issues that Graham is talking about, the need to deal with massive income and wealth inequality, health care is a human right, raising the minimum wage, are the issues that are going to resonate in Maine, resonate all over the United States of America.
- [58:33]
Krystal Ball
So you're standing by your endorsement? Can I ask you about the tattoo? Do you think it's necessary that he.
- [58:38]
Saagar Enjeti
Gets it removed or covered up? Look.
- [58:41]
Bernie Sanders
Once again, we are dealing with a collapsing health care system. As a result of Trump's policies, 50,000Americans may die unnecessarily every year. And you were asking me about whether or not a guy should get a tattoo removed.
- [58:56]
Krystal Ball
Sorry, he said he was going to remove it. Classic Bernie. I also spent a good bit of time reading through the replies from the Normie Dem Pod Save audience under their interview with Graham. I didn't see a single negative one. In fact, I've actually seen more nervous lefties than liberals, possibly because of our past John Fetterman trauma, which I do understand. But let's be real, guys, Fetterman did have ideological red flags in the present day, not based on some old post. The biggest red flags were on Israel, of course, and also that whole trying to murder a random black guy in his neighborhood situation. Also worth remembering, though, that Fetterman has literal brain damage, which apparently made him basically a different person. So it does seem like a pretty unique situation. The other intelligent critique I've Seen from lefties is just basically, listen guys, we gotta pick our battles and the Nazi tattoo guy is just not worth it. Journalist Adam Johnson, for one, tweeted this quote. Do you think it's wise to piss away capital defending someone with a Nazi tattoo, someone with little pedigree on the issues that matter and was a Blackwater murder. Does this feel like a good use of our time and energy? To that I would respond, yes, this is the absolute best use of our time and energy. It is an essential use of our time and energy and I will die on this hill. And to be honest, the shit posting but mostly leftist Reddit post actually kind of laid my fears on the Blackwater front. And that was the most concerning aspect of Graham's lore for me personally. But on the political capital front, with respect, I think this analysis is just wrong. It's not how political capital works. There's not like a well of capital the left holds in reserve, which we have to budget across a variety of candidates and causes. In fact, when we go in for a candidate and stick with them and succeed, our political capital and our political power grows. We didn't abandon Zoron when he wouldn't condemn globalize the Intifada and was relentlessly smeared as an anti Semite and a jihadist. And standing with him even when he was under fire only grew our collective power. In the same way, you cannot capitulate to Trump. You cannot capitulate to the establishment Democrats who helped to bring us Trump. A reckoning is happening right now in the Democratic Party. They know it and we know it. The leadership has lost control of the normie liberal base, making the kind of political revolution that Bernie dreamed about actually maybe possible. They are out there asking Cory Booker and Gavin Newsom about aipac. They forced reluctant leaders to back a shutdown. They didn't want to do it. But if the Democratic establishment is able to get us to abandon Graham, they will use this playbook over and over and over again on every candidate who poses even the slightest challenge to the pro oligarch consensus. And guess what guys? Not all of those candidates are going to be as impeccably and improbably squeaky clean as Zoran Mandani appears to be. People are messy. If you are going to be a party of people and not a party of creepy skin robots, you're gonna have to live with some dirt. Or in this case, some ink. And Sagar, we got a poll out this morning, think we have it.
- [61:43]
Saagar Enjeti
And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue become a premium subscriber today@breakingpoints.com all right, we've talked far, far too long, so enjoy the show. We'll see you Friday show tomorrow.
- [62:11]
Krystal Ball
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
- [62:15]
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- [62:29]
Krystal Ball
Whoa, this thing moves.
- [62:31]
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- [62:51]
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- [63:17]
Saagar Enjeti
Compatible TV required for 4K display. Wednesdays on BET an all new episode.
- [63:22]
Bernie Sanders
Of 106 in Sports from executive producers.
- [63:24]
Saagar Enjeti
LeBron James and Maverick Carter, Ashley Nicole Moss and Cam Newton break down top moments in sports, culture and Entertainment.
- [63:31]
Bernie Sanders
Check out 106 in sports on BET.
- [63:33]
Saagar Enjeti
And next day on BET.
- [63:36]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.