← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
10/24/25: Venezuela Regime Change, Trump 2028 Run, VA Delegate On Dem Future & MORE!
01:16:20
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- [00:00]
Crystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:07]
Kyle Kulinski
If you're waiting for your AI to.
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Krystal Ball
Turn into ROI and wondering how long.
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Kyle Kulinski
You have to wait, maybe you need.
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Krystal Ball
To do more than wait.
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Kyle Kulinski
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- [00:25]
Krystal Ball
How you do business.
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Kyle Kulinski
Lets create smarter business IBM.
- [00:35]
Ryan Grim
The US.
- [00:36]
Kyle Kulinski
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.
- [00:49]
Crystal Ball
The good news?
- [00:50]
Ryan Grim
One solution is already here.
- [00:52]
Krystal Ball
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- [00:53]
Kyle Kulinski
It's American made, stored on site and always ready.
- [00:56]
Ryan Grim
Powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather.
- [01:02]
Kyle Kulinski
Learn more@propain.com I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt and this is my personal best.
- [01:08]
Mac Callahan
YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co design their latest drop. I worked with designers to create high performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in store, online and in the app because your personal.
- [01:27]
Kyle Kulinski
Best is greater than any.
- [01:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:34]
Kyle Kulinski
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.
- [01:42]
Sagar 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.
- [01:47]
Kyle Kulinski
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.
- [01:58]
Sagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com Good morning everyone.
- [02:05]
Krystal Ball
Happy Friday. We've got a full packed BP crew here. We got Crystal, we got Ryan, we got Sagar, and we've got. I can't tell who that is. Is it a young Republican? Mac, what's going on here?
- [02:15]
Mac Callahan
Republican representing the youth here.
- [02:18]
Kyle Kulinski
Yes, that's right.
- [02:19]
Sagar Enjeti
Gen Z. Gen Z youth, right, that's right.
- [02:23]
Krystal Ball
We're not ready for Gen Alpha. So we got Gen Z here today and we got a bunch of stories. We've got Trump talking about more Venezuela strikes. We've got a bunch of other stories. Eric Adams has endorsed Cuomo in the New York Mayor race and a bunch of other fun stuff. But first we're going to go to Ryan And Sagar, who've been doing some gumshoe reporting, some reporting exclusively released here first Saga, Ryan, why don't you take it away?
- [02:51]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, Ryan and I have been working on this for a couple of days. Teased it yesterday, so I'm going to go ahead. It hasn't actually even been published, so this is exclusive, literally, to our entire Breaking Point audience. I'll just read a little bit from what I wrote at the top and then I'm going to throw off to Ryan, who, by the way, Ryan did the bulk of the actual reporting. So I do want to shout it out to him. I was just simply the phone.
- [03:12]
Ryan Grim
Sagar laced it back up, got back on the journalistic field. I love it.
- [03:16]
Sagar Enjeti
I appreciate it. I appreciate every opportunity you give me for a byline. So it is good to get the dusty fingers off. All right, so U.S. intelligence has assessed that none of the fentanyl that is trafficked to the United States is being produced in Venezuela, despite recent claims from the Trump administration. A senior U.S. official official directly tells me the official noted that many of the boats targeted for strikes by the administration do not even have the requisite gasoline or motor capacity to reach US Waters, dramatically undercutting claims by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, quote, despite the intelligence on Venezuela's lack of association with the fence with fentanyl, the Trump administration has made Venezuelan government drug trafficking be casus belli in its drive to overthrow the government of Nicolas Maduro. Toward that end, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has redirected millions of dollars, money previously allocated under usaid, towards pro democracy measures in Venezuela and the surrounding countries, a thinly veiled effort to prep the region for war. Two sources familiar with the discussions tell me that a long proponent of regime change, Marco Rubio is the driving force behind the aggressive military posture towards the Maduro regime. Toward that end, Rubio, who is in charge of the remnants of usaid, has redirected some money previously allocated for pro democracy measures in Venezuela in a thinly veiled effort, as we said earlier. And so I'm going to kick it now to Ryan, who actually did all of the reporting along with his colleagues over at Dropsite to actually expose what some of those efforts actually look like at a contract level.
- [04:48]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And so we tried to go around Congress seeing what had been noticed when it comes to, you know, money being moved from USAID over to INL or other State Department buckets. Jack Paulson, my colleague, dug through a bunch of kind of federal records and found some, some interesting buckets of Money being moved around. Maybe the most interesting, we've got a $4.8 million contract that was moved for a, quote, Columbia Virtual Shooting Range. It's a contract with an Arizona based company called Virtra. So funding a shooting range in Colombia. Meanwhile, a $1.73 million foreign military sale through the US Coast Guard of a bunch of 21 foot boats to a Colombian entity. And so we got a tip that what we needed to do is like, look at the Colombia, look at Venezuela and the bordering countries, particularly Colombia and Guyana, where these kind of anti Maduro Venezuelan factions set up shop. If you remember, there was attempted 2020 coup that was funded largely through USAID and other State Department money, which they comically referred to as the Bay of Piglets because it was such a, it was such a catastrophe. It couldn't even rise to the Bay of Pigs.
- [06:08]
Kyle Kulinski
It wasn't even a mature pig.
- [06:10]
Ryan Grim
Wasn't even a mature, mature pig. And so, and you also have this conflict playing out between, you know, ExxonMobil and Guyana, which, and, and these, this, and these, like Guianan entities that keep threatening to move on, move on Venezuela. And so what you've got is the ground being prepped for all sorts of kind of mischief and sabotage and troublemaking while President Trump is now, you know, talking about bombing. All of this, we're told, is being really driven by, you know, Marco Rubio, who throughout the beginning of the Trump administration was trying to make the case for regime change in Venezuela using kind of the old school, you know, South Florida arguments like human rights abuses. We got to get these communists out of our, our hemisphere. We got this. The election was stolen. We can't, we can't allow, you know, we can't allow stolen election here in our hemisphere. And Trump, I'd say, unsurprisingly, was not moved by any of those arguments. Trump, in the very beginning of his term was trying, and I think it was a Washington Post report this, to actually make good on his promise to attack Mexican drug cartels. But the lawyers and, and also the, a lot of diplomats are like, I'm sorry, like this is geopolitically untenable at this point. You cannot just start bombing inside Mexico. And Rubio's like, aha, guess what? There's cartels in Venezuela. And the cartel leader, his name is Nicolas Maduro. And here's this, like, indictment from 2020 where he was involved in cocaine trafficking. And that scratched Trump's itch. And so that's how he persuaded Trump to kind of start backing regime Change in Venezuela through this shoehorn of the drug trafficking. Meanwhile, it's all become about fentanyl. Because cocaine people, people don't think cocaine really causes hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States. You know, it can destroy people's lives, but it's not, it's not the thing that's ripping apart an entire generation of young people. That's fentanyl. And so just out of nowhere they started saying, fen as well is producing fentanyl. And you know, as, as we learned through our reporting saga, you could talk about this.
- [08:21]
Sagar Enjeti
Yep.
- [08:22]
Ryan Grim
American intelligence assesses that little to none, as you, as you mentioned at the top, little to none of the fentanyl, if any, is coming out of Venezuela.
- [08:29]
Sagar Enjeti
Is being mass produced in Venezuela.
- [08:31]
Kyle Kulinski
But did you guys ask the important question of what Israeli intelligence says, since we like to rely on them instead of our own intelligence?
- [08:38]
Sagar Enjeti
I think even this is reminding me.
- [08:40]
Kyle Kulinski
Of when, I'm just reminded of when Tulsi Gabbard went, you know, and testified to Congress and said, we see no indications that Iran is pursuing, pursuing a nuclear weapon. And they decided to just pretend that didn't happen, lie to the American people and be like, but the Israelis say something different.
- [08:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Anyway, I think even the Israelis are not dumb enough to claim this one. And I think one of the, one of the key pieces that Ryan and I kind of put together, first of all, the USAID money stuff is very interesting in and of itself. Perhaps the most interesting kind of tip that we got was about shaping the area around. And what Ryan and his colleagues were able to hammer down was that the battle space, if you will, of Guyana and of Colombia are the jump off points where previous regime change efforts have sprung from on Venezuela. And I think kind of secondary to what Ryan is talking about is the internal logic of the Trump administration. And one of the really interesting things that has happened is that Trump has somehow been convinced, at least as of this moment. Everybody remember, he can change his mind at any time, as he did. Remember the six day timeline I laid out on Ukraine is that we went from demanding a peace deal to sanctions and long range missiles in the span of literally five to six days. So of course, all of this is just current to what Ryan and I understand as of right now. But one of the key pieces is about the oil and the minerals, the vast amount of resources that Venezuela has. Keep in mind, Nicolas Maduro offered everything. This is according to Donald Trump and it's also according to the sources that Ryan and I were able to speak to. He was saying I will give you oil. I will happily to invite, you know, U.S. oil companies down here. And in fact, you know, he currently is shipping a significant amount of oil to China, some half a million barrels per day, actually just last month. And that is just scratching the surface of the Venezuelan oil capacity. Now, Trump is obviously salivating at that. He wants to get oil prices down here in the U.S. he wants to make sure that the U.S. oil industry is booming. Rubio has very cleverly convinced the President that actually the best way to get access to this oil resources is through regime change itself. And so that is why this is now kind of a central question inside the administration. And it's one which obviously, I mean, just, you know, our own editorial, Ryan and I are like, that doesn't make any sense. Collapsing a regime to extract resources when the current regime is like, take whatever you want. They're like, anything not nailed down to the floor, take it, you can have it. We're like, we're, we're gonna sell it to you. Yeah, we'll, we'll pry it up for you, you know, if you want it. It's a tremendous risk. And there's a couple of other areas that I think are really worth kind of delving into how this happened. And I'm not taking away Trump's agency, but just to explain some of the internal dynamics. One of the most interesting things that Ryan and I kind of delved into is the Florida cabal. And I think that's something that's really important to this story, is that you have the White House chief of staff from Florida, you have the Secretary of State from Florida, you have Senator Rick Scott, who's a very high level person on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Attorney General. Yeah, the Attorney General is from Florida. The White House, one of the White House senior communications aides is from Florida. The President himself is now a Florida resident. So he is surrounded in an ideological kind of cabal, which is genuinely unique to the situation at any time. And one of the things I think is hard to explain for, for anybody who's not familiar with that South Florida dynamic is the ideological fervor that they treat the overthrow of the Maduro regime. You have a lot of rich Venezuelan expats, You also have a lot of Cubans, others ideologically motivated actors against socialism. So this Florida picture is really key to the entire story. And it does show you how Rubio has a lot of allies on his side. Tertiary to also that crystal is something you mentioned about Stephen Miller, is that if the United States is engaged in a, quote, war with Trende Aragua and with Venezuelan. The Venezuelan regime, it actually legally bolsters the argument, the legal argument for the Alien Enemies act and for some of the other deportations that the Trump administration is currently doing. So that's a small part of the story, but it is important from a domestic point of view because what it belies is that there's not enough voices in the White House saying, hey, if we're worried about illegal immigration, the worst possible thing we could do is collapse a regime which is shaky at best, which governs millions of people, which could flood the region, flood the United States, flood, you know, basically all of Central America and cause a mass refugee crisis.
- [13:18]
Kyle Kulinski
Destabilize a bunch of countries. And then, of course, the fallout from ours as well. And just a quick note on the political dynamics as well, because I've been banging my head against the wall about why Democrats aren't saying much of it. I mean, very few, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, a couple of them, but by and large, they're pretty quiet. And I actually talked to Ro Khanna about this yesterday, Kyle and I did. And first of all, he revealed some news that the Progressive Caucus has an official policy not to take position for their members to not talk about. Palestine. Israel, Palestine. That's an aside. But he used that as a way of exposing how on a lot of foreign policy issues, even quote, unquote, progressives have this very old school, neocon, Cold war formed ideology. And so now, even though Florida is long gone for Democrats, like not competitive outside of, you know, into some individual congressional districts, they still, the part of the reason why you don't hear them loudly opposing this is because many of them don't really oppose it. And we saw that first, you know, certainly in the first Trump administration with the whole Juan Guaido, you know, coup attempt. And many Democrats were fully supportive. Many, if not most, if not practically all.
- [14:32]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [14:32]
Sagar Enjeti
And not to mention everybody remember who got the Nobel Prize this year. Right. It was a Venezuelan opposition figure who, you know, it doesn't take a genius to say is very supported, I'll say, at the least by the West. And so the political dynamics of this are very dangerous. We are moving. Griffin, can you go ahead and queue up Donald Trump? I got the logic for land strikes in Venezuela. This is the next part of the military campaign which we may see. Go ahead and play it. And briefed them on the operation. No, we will go. You will go and we will go.
- [15:05]
Krystal Ball
For them to object, I don't see.
- [15:06]
Ryan Grim
Any loss in going, no reason not to. You know, they'll always complain, oh, we should have gone.
- [15:10]
Krystal Ball
So we're going to definitely, I'd like.
- [15:12]
Ryan Grim
To just tell you, let's go, we'll.
- [15:14]
Sagar Enjeti
Go and we're going to tell them.
- [15:15]
Ryan Grim
What we're going to do. And I think they're going to probably.
- [15:17]
Crystal Ball
Like it, except for the radical left lunatics.
- [15:20]
Sagar Enjeti
And Mr. President, if you are declaring war against these cartels and Congress is.
- [15:24]
Crystal Ball
Likely to approve of that process, why.
- [15:28]
Sagar Enjeti
Not just ask for a declaration of war?
- [15:31]
Kyle Kulinski
Well, I don't think we're going to.
- [15:32]
Ryan Grim
Necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay. We're going to kill them. You know, they're going to be like dead.
- [15:43]
Krystal Ball
Okay, like that.
- [15:46]
Sagar Enjeti
Great question from friend of the show Philip Wegman. What he underscored there was a couple of things. Number one is about the military strikes, the not asking Congress. A second part which was very important actually to the discussion is we really had two options. Trump was actually asked live whether B1 bombers were present off the coast of Venezuela. He denied that despite flight radar actually showing these, you know, very capable, highly sophisticated US aircraft that were some 50 miles off the Venezuelan coastline. And actually that was later confirmed via Pentagon sources that it was a legitimate operation. This comes after we also had the B52 bombers, which very recently were off the coast of Venezuela, that took off from Barksdale Air Force Base, not to mention mention the large naval buildup that we have in the Caribbean. Third thing that we have to remember is that the southcom admiral, the admiral who was in charge of these operations recently departed his post. Now, I've been trying to chase some of that down and I don't have it all fully nailed down, but it does appear, at least from a little bit of what we know, is that he was objecting both to the legality and the scope of some of the operations that were happening. And I think everyone should be banging their head against the wall because I don't. And I said this yesterday. Where is MAGA on this? There's a New York Times article I do want to give credit, which just came out yesterday. Some MAGA allies, friends of mine, people like Kurt Mills, and apparently Laura Loomer as well. I guess we're glad to have you, Laura, are speaking out or at least a little bit, you know, behind the scenes. But the, you know, there is no large scale awareness in the way that there was on Iran, which was legitimately did check some of the regime change efforts that were happening originally by the Israelis and from the Trump administration, they at least felt that they were politically precarious this time. Much of MAGA is buying this fentanyl line, hook, line and sinker, I think because they're desperate to like see some war against the drug cartels. But they're not asking for basic evidence right now. It really is just Rand Paul who is standing up and speaking out about this. And of course, he's being heavily penalized by the White House. Everybody remember, if you're Lindsey Graham and you agitate for regime change across the world, Donald Trump will do his very first FundRaiser of the 2026 campaign with you at a golf tournament. That's not an exaggeration. He also only punished one senator recently in an invitation to the White House. That was Senator Rand Paul for speaking out against the Venezuela operation. This is now central to how Trump views himself as part of the Republican Party.
- [18:29]
Ryan Grim
The US Electric grid is approaching a breaking point.
- [18:32]
Kyle Kulinski
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.
- [18:43]
Crystal Ball
The good news?
- [18:44]
Ryan Grim
One solution is already here.
- [18:46]
Krystal Ball
Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready.
- [18:50]
Ryan Grim
Powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather.
- [18:56]
Kyle Kulinski
Learn more@probane.com I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt and this is my personal best.
- [19:03]
Mac Callahan
YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm always wearing.
- [19:06]
Kyle Kulinski
That's why I reached out to co.
- [19:08]
Mac Callahan
Design their latest drop. I worked with designers to create high performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in store, online.
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Ryan Grim
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Kyle Kulinski
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Kyle Kulinski
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Krystal Ball
Let's create smile to business.
- [19:52]
Kyle Kulinski
IBM and Lindsey Graham is floating making Venezuela the 51st state, which I don't think is what MAGA thought they were voting for. But now they're ready to go along with it, apparently. Can we just go back to that Trump sop because that was fucking insane. Like I, when I saw the quote of what he said, I thought it was some like Sort of shitpost, summarizing speculatively what he really meant. And then I listened to it, and I was like, oh, he actually said, like, we'll kill them. They'll be dead. Like, he actually said that. And when he's talking, I really, really, really want people to take this in, okay? When he's talking about the ability to randomly murder people that this administration claims are drug cartel members, we already know they've lied about some of that. We already know, as you guys reported, that they know that none of what they're doing has anything to do with fentanyl, okay? So we know that they lie routinely about all of this. They are claiming the ability to assassinate anyone that they want to with no due process and not, quote, unquote, just in Venezuela or Colombia or some, you know, in the Caribbean or in the Pacific, we're talking about here. And that's why the Stephen Miller connect is also very important and why I'm sure he loves this, right? Because they. They are claiming extraordinary powers for themselves to do the sort of things that previously in the war on terror, you know, were only done in foreign lands, to do them here on our soil. And for us to have no recourse and for them to not have to provide a shred of evidence that these people are who they say they are, by the way, even if they are drug traffickers, they shouldn't have. They. We have a court system, we have a judicial system, we have a justice system in order to try them and evaluate the evidence and for them to be held accountable. So this, to me, is a red alert. It is a red alert domestically. It is a red alert in terms of regime change, wars. It is a red alert in terms of thorn. Authoritarianism. Like, we are so far off the rails that I can scarcely wrap my head around it.
- [22:02]
Sagar Enjeti
Griffin, if you don't mind, could you pull up Pete Hegseth talking about this? Because this. I just want to pick up on this, Hegseth. I want everybody to listen to the language that he uses very carefully about ISIS and Al Qaeda. That's the one that you can look for, Griffin, because this kind of gets to the extrajudicial assassination previously that we saw the legal justification under the Obama and the Bush administrations where they're allowed to actually extrajudicially execute and assassinate anybody who is deemed a, quote, terrorist. Do you have it in front of you, Griffin? Can we play it?
- [22:35]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, coming up right now.
- [22:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay, cool. Yeah. So again, just setting it up and kind of bolster that point around how this is now coming here to the Western hemisphere, let's take a listen, tell.
- [22:47]
Kyle Kulinski
As was mentioned, these are designated terrorist.
- [22:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Organizations, foreign terrorist organizations. Our generation spent the better part of.
- [22:55]
Kyle Kulinski
Two decades hunting Al Qaeda, hunting isis.
- [22:59]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, as the President said, this is the isis.
- [23:02]
Kyle Kulinski
This is the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere.
- [23:04]
Sagar Enjeti
They intimidate, they terrorize, they extort, they.
- [23:08]
Ryan Grim
Poison the American people. The President's right.
- [23:10]
Sagar Enjeti
Every boat we strike is 25,000Americans whose.
- [23:13]
Ryan Grim
Lives are saved because of the drugs.
- [23:15]
Sagar Enjeti
That were headed in our direction. So our message to these foreign terrorist organizations is we will treat you like we have treated Al Qaeda.
- [23:24]
Ryan Grim
We will find you, we will map your networks.
- [23:27]
Kyle Kulinski
We will hunt you down and we will kill you. And you've seen that evidence in the maritime domain, whether it's in the Caribbean or in the Pacific.
- [23:36]
Sagar Enjeti
With the last two strikes, we know exactly who these people are.
- [23:39]
Kyle Kulinski
We know what networks they work with.
- [23:41]
Ryan Grim
What foreign terrorist organizations they're a part of.
- [23:43]
Kyle Kulinski
We know where they're going, where they originated from, what they're carrying.
- [23:47]
Krystal Ball
He knows who they are, except for I think there was people they had to release recently. Right.
- [23:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, so that's a, you know, that is an important part of the story and it kind of undercuts the same logic. If you struck a boat of terrorists and two of them survived, why would you return them to their home country free of any charge? Wouldn't you bring them here to the United States to face trial or. Right. So this is part of the thing which, you know, and this is where my media kind of critiques comes in. Like that story about the release and about those captured prison. It was nowhere. I mean, it was, I was like, you know, bottom of the fold, A four or whatever New York Times, like barely anybody was really talking about this because I don't think that they're putting the pieces together. And look, Ryan and I are not the first people to hear this about what's happening in town. And I do want to give credit, there are other kind of national security reporters who have reported much of the same types of dynamic, but it is not being taken seriously to the level that I think it should be. During Iran, as I said, there was a full on. There was a genuine discourse in the country around this. This is just happening and they're saying it out loud. But nobody seems to like, want to believe that this is actually going to happen. I'm at a point where unless we get some sort of Zelensky style reverse, which again, very possible, this, this is going to happen as of right now.
- [25:16]
Mac Callahan
So Sagar I'm curious, how much of this do you think, if internally they know that fentanyl isn't coming from Venezuela? So that's sort of a BS Pretext for all of this. If, you know, behind the scenes, Maduro is basically offering them minerals, oil, offering to cut relations with U. S adversaries, whatever else the case may be. If that can't really be the logic in terms of going after the resources, like, what is the split on this being about the resources and regime change versus just being sort of like a pure ideological project that guys like Marco Rubio have wanted to do for years and years and years. And so they're just hell bent on doing it regardless of what else is on the table.
- [25:56]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, great question. Stephen Miller is definitely. Or, sorry, Marco Rubio is in that latter camp, right. He is the ideological. He's been trying to do this since the day he came in. Now, the rest of them are kind of, you know, a little bit all over the place. And I will say, you know, Pam Bondi, Susie Wiles, all these other Floridians, they're more ideologically, more aligned with. With Marco Rubio, Trump was formally, firmly in the resource camp. That's all he particularly cared about. He's also, he's the person. He hates drugs. Like, any mention of drugs. Rubio can hang his hat on the 2020 indictment around Maduro.
- [26:30]
Mac Callahan
To convince somebody like Trump, like, you know, I'm the, I'm the deal maker. You know, I can make deals with anybody. You would think he would lean in that direction, right. Of Maduro's making me a great offer, whatever.
- [26:40]
Kyle Kulinski
And like, that's what we were hoping.
- [26:42]
Mac Callahan
So is Marco Rubio just that influential or.
- [26:45]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well, I mean, this is part of the. Ryan, you can talk to this. People are not like, he's the most powerful man in national security since Henry Kissinger. Like, it is almost no American parallel in modern history.
- [26:58]
Ryan Grim
It's, it's really interesting. We thought when Rubio was put in that job that he would be a marginal figure and boxed out and that Trump would get rid of him by the time his daughter was ready to run for Florida Senate. Intent. Instead, he has, you know, played the palace intrigue game quite effectively. We report in this story that there's effectively what, what people internally call a gang of five that run foreign policy, which is entirely unusual because, you know, there's, there's an entire national security and foreign policy apparatus that has been set up over decades and Trump has basically, you know, reorganized it. And so this, this Gang of Five is Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff, and these are the people. These are basically the five people that run foreign policy. Susie Wiles, the Chief of staff, Stephen Miller, the Deputy Chief of staff, then Witkoff, Marco. Marco Rubio. And who, who was the. Who's. Who's even the fifth person? Those are the. Oh, J.D. vance. Yeah. Which is also, like, unusual, but not necessarily surprising. But that's not. Certainly Kamala Harris wasn't in any. You know, if there would have been a Gang of Five in Biden, she wouldn't have been in it. So those five on the outs are basically everybody else kind of fighting, fighting their way in. And so then it just becomes this real game of intrigue inside the administration for who can. Who can talk to Trump last and what arguments they can make. And also the Florida hawks believe that if they can topple Venezuela, that Cuba follows.
- [28:29]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:30]
Ryan Grim
Like the verse domino theory that they've been working on since the 70s.
- [28:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. And just to explain a little bit more, in the National Security Council thing, one of the reasons why you really want an independent national security adviser is their job is to kind of be an advocate for the President, to get as many different viewpoints as possible. Now, it's been corrupted obviously many times in the past, but theoretically, the job of the National Security Advisor is to convene something called the Principals Committee, where you take options from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security, and then you say, okay, we need a hawkish option, we need a medium option, we need a latter option. The thing is, is that Rubio, as an ideological actor and the Secretary of State kind of had two different prongs at his disposal. He can control the information that's even getting to the President's desk, and he gets to put the information in there. Right. And so there's been a bit of a breakdown in how the normal process is supposed to work, which explains so much of Trump's movement in this direction. And there's just a variety of, like, political convenience inside the admin at the same time. And so that's why I genuinely think this is much closer to happening than Iran. And we got very close.
- [29:41]
Kyle Kulinski
Well, because who, who's on the other side?
- [29:43]
Sagar Enjeti
Right, that's what I'm saying.
- [29:44]
Kyle Kulinski
I mean, in Iran you had warring factions, and here you've got, like, alliance. I mean, the, the innovation of making it about, you know, some supposed war on drugs, like literal war on drugs, not the other type that we've been having for decades that seems to have brought all of the factions together and also, by the way, seems to have sold by and large the grassroots MAGA base, especially in the opposite, in the, in the absence of an opposition party to make the case and you know, press the case in the media that this is absolute insanity on every level. I mean, I find the connect between the domestic crackdown and the powers there and the, you know, continued like war on terror style expansion of the military industrial complex and the regime change wars, like all of those pieces together I find to be absolutely terrifying. And you're right, I'm pulling my hair out that we, you know, that that isn't the national conversation. It's not coming from Democrats. You know, there is an allowed MAGA faction that's opposing any of this. The decision to make this like somehow about drugs, even though it's preposterous, seems to have really worked. It worked to get everybody on board.
- [30:53]
Sagar Enjeti
It's very, it's very important to just, you know, last thing before I have to jump as Mr. Dad Daycare is that that is the central part and kind of the political genius is it's just drugs. And, and I, I don't know why people don't question this stuff because even aside from Ryan and I's report, which is current, but before that, guys, I mean, from the day one crystal, you remember this? I was like, hey, look at DEA statistics. It took me five minutes. Right? It's not hard like you can do a ChatGPT or a Google search to go look at DEA analysis. I mean, by the way, you know, one of the sources I spoke to, it doesn't take a genius to say the absolute vast majority. And I'm saying 99%, it's from Mexico with precursors from China. You don't even need to believe me. Go look at previous statements from this administration and previous administrations about fentanyl. Like fentanyl is a very specific substance which has been obviously poisoning Americans. We have a long standing understanding of the supply chain and where it comes from. Venezuela was not even tertiary to the conversation until these recent strikes.
- [32:03]
Ryan Grim
Remember they tried this earlier with Canada, Trump putting tariffs on Canada because fentanyl was coming through.
- [32:10]
Kyle Kulinski
Yeah. One last, one last side note on all of this. I was reading yesterday, you know, one of the people that was randomly murdered in the Caribbean was a, a Trinidadian fisherman. And there's a big, a very disturbing article in the New York Times about how in these areas of Trinidad, like random charred dead bodies are now washing up on the coast and the locals are like what the fuck is happening? And yet, even though every other Caribbean nation has said we oppose these, you know, random assassination assassinations in the Caribbean, the Prime Minister of Trinidad has not and appears to be supportive. And it could be a very important military staging ground for, you know, the, the future operations in Venezuela.
- [33:02]
Sagar Enjeti
I'm glad you said that. Trinidad Tobago is actually one of the destinations for some of these boats who, look, some of these boats actually may be carrying drugs. But one of the things that Ryan and I, and by the way, this actually backs up what Rand Paul and others have said about this, who presumably are, are read in like, at least to a limited extent as well, is that many of the drugs, if they're aboard the boats, there's not a lot of evidence they were coming here. They're more likely heading to Trinidad and Tobago, which could be a way station to Europe because remember, cocaine is much more expensive in Europe and in particular the holy grail is Australia. So for, for a lot of these drug traffickers. The second part is, don't forget there are a lot of American tourists who go to the Bahamas and who go all over the Caribbean who like to buy cocaine. And so in a lot of ways, actually that's where probably some of these drugs actually are headed, if they are drugs. But the one thing we can also say is that there is no current evidence that there's some mass fentanyl operation, you know, industrial breaking bad style, vats of chemical, you know, engineers and others cooking this stuff up that does exist, but it's in a country called Mexico. And that is not, not what we are being told about right now. There's no regime change that's being mounted on that ground.
- [34:16]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, I can, I can reach into my first book on this. Like the trafficking from South America into the United States used to go through the Caribbean in like the 1970s. Yeah, yeah, 70s. And as in George H.W. bush really cracked down on that and he brought the hammer down in the Caribbean. Didn't have to, you know, launch airstrikes from the air. But what it did is it that, that, that's, that's when trafficking moved up through Mexico. So drugs that are coming from South America into the, into the United States are, are coming through the Mexican US border like that, that 99% like the idea that you would put them in a boat, take them to the Caribbean, put them in another boat and then take them to Florida. Like that's. Why would you do that when you can just run it? You know, you have these, we have.
- [35:02]
Sagar Enjeti
Nafta we have millions of trucks a month that passes.
- [35:07]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [35:07]
Sagar Enjeti
And now we have a government shutdown like you. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
- [35:12]
Ryan Grim
On a human level, when you just. When. When people keep saying, you know, on Twitter, you'll say, look, look at this boat. It probably did have drugs on it. Like, who do you think is piloting these ship? Let's say it is a drug. Let's say there is cocaine on this thing and it's taking it somewhere. Who. Who do you think the cartels are putting on that?
- [35:32]
Kyle Kulinski
They're senior leadership, random, desperate people.
- [35:35]
Ryan Grim
Desperate people that they are. Many people who they're forcing to do it. This is not a. Put it. Put something out on Facebook, Marketplace, or Craigslist.
- [35:43]
Kyle Kulinski
It's not the kingpin. It's not El Chapo out there piloting the little dinghy.
- [35:48]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. It's like, you're doing this. Either we have some leverage over you, or we're. We're going to commit violence against you or your family if you don't do this. And if you do it, you get a hundred bucks or whatever. But these are just. These are highly disposable people. Like, can you imagine if we just had people at the border and you could scan the drug mules, the women who, like, have to, you know, swallow, you know, the. The drugs, and then. And we just, like, if. If they happen to have drugs, you just sniper them right there. And then you'd have people on Twitter, but.
- [36:20]
Krystal Ball
Well, don't give them any ideas, Ryan. Please don't give them any ideas.
- [36:24]
Ryan Grim
It does look like they're announced.
- [36:26]
Kyle Kulinski
I mean, that's what Trump is announcing that they have. That they want to do and that they have the power to do. Ryan's scenario, like, literally. I mean, you almost can't come up with a scenario that's too preposterous for these people to, you know, to contemplate and put into action. So. I know Ryan and Sagar. I know both of you guys got to jump. Ryan, do you have time, just really quick, to break down this government shutdown news that you were taking a look at?
- [36:49]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. Okay.
- [36:50]
Kyle Kulinski
Sorry.
- [36:51]
Sagar Enjeti
You want to jump? Thank you, Saga. Having me.
- [36:55]
Kyle Kulinski
It's your show.
- [36:56]
Sagar Enjeti
No, it's all of ours. It's all of ours. All right, I'll send pictures of Pete, who's gone.
- [37:02]
Ryan Grim
All right.
- [37:03]
Kyle Kulinski
Please do. Bye, Sagar. 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.
- [37:20]
Crystal Ball
The good news?
- [37:21]
Ryan Grim
One solution is already here.
- [37:23]
Krystal Ball
Propane. It's American made, stored on site and always ready.
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Ryan Grim
Powering homes and businesses with cleaner, reliable energy that doesn't depend on the grid or the weather.
- [37:33]
Kyle Kulinski
Learn more@propain.com Sunday Scaries are officially cancelled. Abercrombie's new Sunday Sets collection is taking their place. Made from their iconic soft AF fabric, these matching sets will give you that cozy Sunday feeling every day of the week. But we can't forget the OG the A and F Essentials collection. Specifically their viral essential popover hoodie that just came out in tons of new colors and prints. Permission to start living in sweats? Shop Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores. If you're waiting for your AI to.
- [38:10]
Krystal Ball
Turn into ROI and wondering how long.
- [38:16]
Kyle Kulinski
You have to wait, maybe you need.
- [38:18]
Krystal Ball
To do more than wait.
- [38:22]
Kyle Kulinski
Any business can use AI. IBM helps you use AI to change.
- [38:27]
Krystal Ball
How you do business. Let's create smarter business.
- [38:31]
Kyle Kulinski
IBM. Go ahead, Ryan.
- [38:38]
Sagar Enjeti
All right.
- [38:39]
Ryan Grim
Yes. So yesterday Jason Smith, the chairman of the Ways House Ways and Means Committee, was on Bloomberg tv. And I don't know if, if we have that Mirror article that we can put up that we can get his exact quote, but basically what he said was that there's a lot of talk in Republican circles now of ex. What the way he described it, extending the CR through December of 2026. And what, what if you extend the CR, that's, that's the continuing resolution, that's the budget as it was. That means you keep the ACA subsidies in place through the midterms of 2026. To have the Ways and Means chairman saying this on Bloomberg TV is a real signal that Republicans are thinking to themselves, maybe we just like, extend these subsidies and just do it. It's a political albatross around our necks to have the subsidies go away anyway going into the midterms. Like it's not to me, it's always been strange that they've been stopping Democrats from letting them save themselves. And so I talked to a source in Democratic Senate leadership and, and he said that, yes, that he's. Their sense is that Republicans believed that Democrats would cave quickly, that this would be a. And they've done. They had reason to believe that that's, that's been the pattern in the past. You shut it down for a couple of days, people get fired. It's, it's chaos. You, you realize you're not going to win this. You bring everybody back. Republicans are realizing that Democrats are much more solidified in their, in their position at this point. And so all of their, all the different calculations that they've made have turned out to be wrong. And so the sense that, the sense among Democratic leaders is that they actually, that Republicans might actually cave. And so even if Democrats are wrong about that, the fact that they think that matters because that will then strengthen their resolve to continue with the shutdown, thinking that if we just hold on a little bit longer, Republicans are going to give us what we want. And if they, and so that, that's, so it is, it is tilting, I feel like, in the direction of Republicans saying, you know what, why are we, why are we dying on this Hill anyway? Like, do we really want people's health insurance prices to double on our watch? Like what? Like what?
- [41:06]
Mac Callahan
Who do?
- [41:06]
Ryan Grim
What do we care? 32 trillion versus, you know, 32.3 trillion debt. Like, what's the difference to us when, you know, the midterms are coming up, right?
- [41:16]
Kyle Kulinski
Midterms are coming up. And also, by the way, with the government shutdown, you know, the holiday season is coming up. You're people who rely on, you know, on snap benefits, not getting them starting in November. You know, the longer that this thing drives on, the more real world impacts that you feel there. Also, one thing I wanted to mention that. So, you know, I live in this town that has a naval base, dog or naval base, and a lot of the workers there are not actually furloughed because it's a, quote, working capital organization. So they sort of sell their services almost like an internal military industrial complex. Like they compete and they sell services to other branches of the government. And there's other entities like that within the federal government. A lot of them, actually, people don't realize. And they will be funded basically through the end of October. So then in the beginning of November, there's a whole nother wave of federal government workers and services that will stop because a lot of that working capital funded, those projects will run out of funding at that point and they will be out of work as well. So, you know, I think they're looking at the polls realizing voters are blaming Republicans by and large for the shutdown down. Watching Trump's approval rating is now like the lowest it's been. Democrats approval rating actually has ticked up a bit because people see them fighting. They've managed to put health care at the center of the agenda, which is obviously much better issue for Democrats than it is for Republicans. And so, yeah, increasingly the logic looks like, all right, well, I guess you know, maybe the least bad political option for Republicans is to extend these subsidies and also save themselves the heartache of, of the vast majority of the subsidies go. 77%, I think, go to red states, go to, like, you know, it's a disproportionate number of Republican voters, too. So why do we just. Why don't we just rip off this band aid? I mean, it does make sense to me.
- [42:59]
Krystal Ball
And we've got Marjorie Taylor Greene to thank for all this, don't we, for breaking cracks in the walls here for Republicans on all this health care stuff. Do you think that created any pressure for Republicans?
- [43:13]
Ryan Grim
I think it was more the, the miscalculation about the Democrats. Strength of Democrats and their, and their willingness to take this to the.
- [43:22]
Mac Callahan
So did they think the Democrats would just fold under the. Oh, they're giving, they're giving, you know, health care to illegal immigrants or whatever. And Democrats would feel the pressure on immigration line or.
- [43:33]
Ryan Grim
I think they would. I think they thought they would fold over the pain to federal workers and the end the threats to, like, fire and riff a bunch of, you know.
- [43:42]
Mac Callahan
Which is, as you guys have pointed out before, it's like, they're already doing that. Like they were doing that. They're going to continue to try to rip apart the federal government and to fire as many federal employees as they can.
- [43:52]
Ryan Grim
So, yes, when you operate in a completely lawless, reckless fashion, you take away the card of you better hold back. It's like.
- [44:01]
Krystal Ball
Or I'm gonna be crazy.
- [44:03]
Kyle Kulinski
Yeah, you're already crazy.
- [44:05]
Krystal Ball
Where are we with the mass layoffs? Like, the mass layoffs were threat. Like, how. How deep into that are we. How many people have been getting laid off?
- [44:13]
Ryan Grim
I don't have the data on that. You know, they're. They're doing what they can. Yeah, but I think that they cut so deep into the bone previously that.
- [44:25]
Krystal Ball
The Doge stuff seemed more brutal.
- [44:28]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. Interesting.
- [44:29]
Kyle Kulinski
All right, Ryan, well, I know you got to jump, too, so we'll let you go. And Mac and Griffin and I can. I, I have a few more things I want to say on the shutdown. You guys probably do as well. Ryan, thank you. Have a good one.
- [44:40]
Ryan Grim
All right.
- [44:41]
Krystal Ball
Have a great weekend, Ryan.
- [44:44]
Sagar Enjeti
All right.
- [44:45]
Kyle Kulinski
But, yeah, I actually, I mean, I was gonna say, I think I also thought the Democrats would cave quickly because that is my experience with Democrats. And I think they. Remember there was that reporting at the beginning that Schumer was trying to look for some sort of an off ramp. You know, hey, can we pass like, a short Term CR or you know, the other thing that I think Ryan and Sagar had floated on the show they did together was like, let's just get to November 1st and then we can say like, oh, it's too late for Obamacare subsidies. So we tried and the Republicans stood in our way. Guess there's nothing we can do about it. May as well open up the government. I think that the leadership was very interested in pursuing some weak kneed direction. In fact, I think leadership didn't want to do this shutdown at all. And they felt, they have felt the pressure from the Democratic base that's like, these are fascists. You cannot fund them. You cannot bend the knee. You will shut down the government. You will not capitulate. And there would be. This again, is something I talked to Ro Khan about yesterday. Like, there would be a mass Democratic base revolt if these people caved to the Trump administration. So I don't think so. I mean, it's a, it's a rare instance where actually there was some, like, grassroots Democratic, like, small D Democratic input here that I think has completely shaped this entire trajectory from the, the Democratic Party perspective.
- [46:06]
Mac Callahan
Yeah, I totally agree. It does. It feels like they got backed into a corner into doing this.
- [46:12]
Kyle Kulinski
Yeah.
- [46:13]
Mac Callahan
And especially because it's over something that was pushing the. Yeah, go ahead.
- [46:19]
Krystal Ball
I was just gonna say Ezra Klein's been pushing the shutdown for a while. Right. And he was kind of right in saying, like, if you do it, you got to have one really clear demand. It can't be a kaleidoscope of issues. And seems like with the help of Bernie and a few other people, they zeroed it on healthcare and the Republicans just don't have a good answer for that.
- [46:41]
Mac Callahan
Yeah. I mean, it's such a direct, material thing to be like, everybody's, you know, premiums are going to double or everybody's, you know, health insurance is going to skyrocket in the next couple of months if we don't prevent these, these subsidies from going away. So, I mean, it's, it's a pretty cut and dry issue. Although, like, I think, Crystal, you or maybe Ryan has made this point before where I wonder if there is any sort of broader reckoning within the Democratic Party in terms of Obamacare being a failure in general. The fact that it needs to rely on these kinds of subsidies in order to function at sort of like a bare minimum level. Like, do you think there's any sort of lane there with the base or with, you know, some faction in the Democratic Party to like, like Open the door to a conversation about broader structural change to healthcare in this kind of a moment, or is it just we're gonna save the subsidies and then, you know, move on with that?
- [47:33]
Kyle Kulinski
I think with the base. Absolutely. I mean, I think the base is there. Like that Graham Platner poll that we saw yesterday, I was like, oh, man, you know, everything that we. Because this is what we've been saying from the beginning of Trump 2.0, is that the, like, normie liberal Democratic base has been kind of radicalized. You know, they're. They are much more now where we have been. You know, they. They see the failures of the establishment, they're disgusted with leadership and the. And, you know, they're discussed with people who can't call a genocide a genocide. And part of that package is, you know, more radical reform to healthcare, which, by the way, has been the policy preference of the Democratic base for years at this point. But they were always persuaded by, like, oh, Bernie's not electable. We just can't do it. We have to be pragmatic. We have to stop Trump. And that all of that calculation appears to be out of the window. I mean, you see it with Zoran's election. You see it with the way Graham Platner is just wiping the floor with a sitting governor comes out of nowhere, and, you know, Abdul said strength in Michigan again against another establishment approved candidate. I think these are all signs that. And this shut down the fact that the base forced the hand of Democratic leadership. It's all very encouraging to me about the way that the base wants the Democratic Party to be and that they're not going to be manipulated like sheep the way that they were, frankly, in the past? So now my big question is, you know, are there going to be, like, free and fair elections that allow for that transformation to happen and create a possibility of, you know, taking the country in a different direction? And maybe now's the time to play Steve Bannon talking about Trump 2028. But, you know, you have a lot of very troubling things that are happening on the election front. They are openly floating, using militarized forces in all 50 states that would be there in time for the midterm elections. You have an executive order that forces all states, mandates all states to send their voter rolls into the doj. You have people in key positions in the Trump administration overseeing this, like, you know, elections who are 2020, stop the steal. Complete nut jobs. You have the refusal to. To seat Adelita Grijalva by the speaker of the House. And now you have Steve Bannon saying, by the way, in 2028, Trump's not going anywhere. I think we should believe them. Like, I don't think. And that's not. Without even talking about all the redistricting stuff and the Supreme Court. She's probably going to hand the Republicans another, maybe be as many as 12 seats in the House. We're gonna have a guest on from Virginia who can talk about some of the redistricting, like the counter redistricting efforts in Virginia. But, you know, they, they are really, they're really going for it. Like, they are really going for it. If it's with the Venezuela conversation too, you know, claiming the power just randomly murder people. Oh, we. They were terrorists, they were antifa terrorists, they were drug terrorists. Do we have any evidence? No, but they're gone now, so you should be happy.
- [50:26]
Krystal Ball
So we can imagine what that looks like.
- [50:29]
Kyle Kulinski
Yes, exactly.
- [50:30]
Krystal Ball
And we can imagine, like, what that looks like in a presidential election. What does that look like for a midterm, though?
- [50:36]
Kyle Kulinski
I don't know exactly. I mean, I think part of it could. So I think the one scenario that Ryan floated is that, no, they allow him to go forward more or less, but then they just don't actually, like, if there are subpoenas in the House. House, they just don't listen to them. So they effectively just bypass Congress. Like it doesn't exist. Which is not hard to imagine because they basically already do that right now at the current moment, it's because Republicans have just completely capitulated to them. But you could see them continuing to just do whatever they want and not actually paying attention to any of the legitimate subpoenas or investigations that are launched by the House. That's one possibility. Another possibility is that they, you know, they're obviously doing all the redistricting efforts to try to tilt the playing field, which would make it so the Democrats have to win by something like five points plus in the popular vote. So would have to climb a big hill just to be able to win. Another possibility is that they use some of the tactics they used in the. Have been using for years, but ramped up in the last election where they kick legitimate people off the voter rolls and, you know, target especially minority groups that vote disproportionately for Democrats, usually black voters, kick them off the voting rolls and so skew the results that way. Another possibility is that they, you know, the elections go forward, Democrats win the House, and Trump just insists it was all rigged and that the mail in voting was fraudulent and refuses to seat them. And then we're in a standoff. Who's going to force them to seat these new members of Congress? That's why the thing that's happening with Adelita Grijalva, I think is important because, you know, Mike Johnson is just refusing. This woman won her congressional. He's just refusing to seat her. So where's the forcing mechanism for that? Are the courts going to intervene? Like, how is that all going to go? And then you also have this little detail of Dominion Voting, which is the, you know, they're the makers of voting machines in any number of states that were the center of all sorts of wacko conspiracy theories in 2020. Dominion Voting is now owned by a Trump 2020 Stop the Steal psycho. So there is a lot here.
- [52:43]
Crystal Ball
Nice.
- [52:44]
Kyle Kulinski
There is a lot here to be extremely, extremely concerned about. Shall we play Bannon talking about Trump 2028?
- [52:52]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, let's, let's get. If we're not concerned enough, folks.
- [52:56]
Kyle Kulinski
Yeah, well, he's going to get a.
- [52:57]
Crystal Ball
Third term, so Trump 28. Trump is going to be president 28.
- [53:00]
Krystal Ball
And people just ought to get accommodated with that.
- [53:02]
Sagar Enjeti
So what about the 22nd Amendment?
- [53:05]
Krystal Ball
There's many different alternatives.
- [53:07]
Crystal Ball
At the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is. But there's a plan and President Trump.
- [53:11]
Kyle Kulinski
Will be the president in 28.
- [53:13]
Krystal Ball
We had longer odds in 16 and longer odds in 24 than we got in 28. And President Trump will be the President United States.
- [53:21]
Crystal Ball
And the country needs him to be President United States.
- [53:23]
Krystal Ball
We have to finish what we started.
- [53:25]
Ryan Grim
And the way we finish it, do Trump.
- [53:28]
Sagar Enjeti
Trump is a vehicle.
- [53:29]
Krystal Ball
I know this will drive you guys.
- [53:31]
Crystal Ball
Crazy, but he's a vehicle of divine providence.
- [53:34]
Krystal Ball
He's an instrument.
- [53:34]
Crystal Ball
He's very imperfect.
- [53:35]
Krystal Ball
He's not churchy, not particularly religious, but he's an instrument. But he's divine will.
- [53:41]
Kyle Kulinski
And you can tell this of how.
- [53:42]
Krystal Ball
We, how he's pulled this off. All right, that's the gist of it right there. Crystal, what do we make of that?
- [53:48]
Kyle Kulinski
I mean, implement divine providence, like, and they, and they get mad when we call it a cult. You know, I mean, the audacity of these people. And here's the thing. I saw, I, I saw someone on Twitter. I think it was Weigel, though. I don't want to like blame him if it wasn't Weigel, but I think it was Weigel who was like, well, listen, if Democrats can't beat an 80 some year old Trump in 2028, like, just wrap it up, call it quits. You don't deserve to exist anyway. But that assumes that elections, again, are like a thing and, and not just and, and when I say that, I don't mean that there won't be the trappings of Debar. There's the trappings of democracy in Russia, there's the trappings of democracy in Hungary, there's the trappings of democracy in Turkey. But I'm talking about a more or less even playing field where voters actually get to express their preferences. And may the greater man or, you know, the better man or woman win. I think we're very unlikely to have that, that in 2028, and certainly not when they're talking like this is God's, you know, divine will to have this man occupy the White House until he strokes out.
- [54:52]
Krystal Ball
My question for Mac, then. Mac, what do you think? Like, you think, you think that even like 1% of the people that support Trump now would not support him running again in 2028? Will he have the same exact coalition?
- [55:04]
Mac Callahan
Well, I mean, like Crystal said at, at that point, if they're actually making a play for 2028, it almost doesn't really matter. Like, if he has a lock on 30% of, of his base or whatever, then that might be enough to, to pull it off. I guess another thought that I had watching that banning clip is I'm, you know, we've, we've covered on the show a few times, like some of Trump's health related stuff. His hands bruising up his ankles are extremely swollen. He has this, this reported heart thing or whatever. And so I'm like, as a broader fascist project that they're trying to build here and dismantling the, you know, sort of facade of democracy that we have in this country. Like, is this so in a cultish way centered on Trump that they don't even have a backup plan to carry on this project in 2028. Like it's going to be like a borderline. A borderline like on death's door. Donald Trump in 2030, who's running this project still? I mean, is that the plan? Like, if Trump were to die, does this, all this fall apart? Or like it doesn't seem like they really have a plan of Trump?
- [56:10]
Kyle Kulinski
What do you think?
- [56:11]
Krystal Ball
100%. I mean, we, I mean, the J.D. vance vibe check, he's, he's been not passing people been saying that on both sides of the spectrum. No. Yeah. I mean, all this does kind of go with him, which means that you just keep putting out fake videos of him. This administration's already shown that they're willing to post any fake bullshit, like, blatant lies, memes, just completely fabricated video evidence. So, like, what's to stop Trump from, like, being half dead in a bed and them just posting videos of him, like, walking around doing the dance? Like, I. I think there's 100 a chance that we would see something like that in 2028. You know, a Biden basement strategy combined with AI.
- [56:52]
Mac Callahan
Yeah. Imagine if Biden had had the AI that we have today. He could have. He could have, like, barnstormed the country on virtual tours.
- [57:00]
Kyle Kulinski
I don't think it's quite there yet. Like, it's still in a little bit of the uncanny valley. Yeah. Zone. But very likely by the time you get to 2028, they will have figured it out enough that we could legitimately be fooled by it. And certainly there's. Trump is so distinctive, and there's enough of his comments on record that it wouldn't be hard to, like, come up with things that he's allegedly said. I mean, this stuff sounds so insane, but every day I read some other news article that is equally, if not more insane than the craziest things I could come up with in my head. So, you know, it's your question of whether or not this whole thing falls apart without Trump. I am of two minds about it. Okay. Number one, I think Trump is the kind of singular. Singular figure. I used to kind of reject that. I used to kind of reject that. But now I do think the combination of his celebrity, his comedic stylings, his charisma, his unique pull on the culture, like this, you know, almost reptilian instinct that he has for pushing society's buttons and keeping his, you know, name in the news constantly. Like, keeping us all just agitated about him all the time. Like, I do think he is a sort of singular figure. However, we have to look around the world like, we're not the only country that's backsliding in democracy. We're not the only country that is seeing the rise of far right fascist movements. And there's a reason for that. It's because, you know, you've had a failure of the, you know, the ancien regime, the neoliberal order, which has failed to deliver for people materially, which has turned on a wealth pump that has, you know, immiserated the working class and continues to pump more and more wealth into the hands of a few. And, you know, State Rep. Sam Rasool has joined us now. Just finished my rant here about the wealth pump and inequality, and then we'll we'll chat with you about what's going on Virginia, but welcome. Great to have you.
- [58:55]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
- [58:56]
Ryan Grim
Me.
- [58:57]
Kyle Kulinski
Yeah, of course. So we were just talking about whether if, you know, when Trump is no longer with us, whether the, the MAGA cult coalition is able to survive. And I was saying on the one hand, I think he's singular. On the other hand, we have to recognize the underlying dynamics that brought us to the place where a large swath of the American public is open to effectively a fascist movement. And you know, I think wealth inequality is at the center of that. And, and Mac and Griffin, you guys were mentioning AI. Like, AI is only going to consolidate even more extraordinary powers and in the hands of a few and money and wealth in the hands of the few and to absolutely a misery. I mean, their goal is to put, to make human labor irrelevant. So, so, you know, I, I don't think we like there's, even with Trump gone, if we don't respond in, you know, a way that's necessary and offer an alternative vision and allow people to share and, you know, broadly in prosperity, then we are definitely not going to be out of the woods. So with that being said, State Rep. Rasool, guys, just so you, you know, a little bit of the background, I'll allow you to introduce yourself as well. He is a longtime state representative in Virginia, in the Virginia House of Delegates. Also happens to be Palestinian American, has been attacked by prominent Virginia Democratic candidates and elected officials for his views and his opposition to genocide. He is one of two Muslim members of the Virginia legislature. And, you know, it's just a really interesting, I think, thoughtful person. So, Sam, great to see you.
- [60:33]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, great to be with you. Thanks so much for having me, Crystal.
- [60:36]
Kyle Kulinski
Yeah, of course. I don't know if you remember, but I'm pretty sure we Talked back in 2010 when I was running for Congress and you had just run in 2008. Yeah. And probably, I'm sure I asked you for advice. I probably also asked you for money. But in any case, it's nice to be, be nice to be reconnected with you and there's a lot I want to ask you about, but the first thing is I just saw this news that the, that Virginia Democrats, okay. I think of jumping into the, you know, the redistricting wars and, you know, trying to, to redraw the Virginia state map to add a couple more likely Democratic seats. One of them would actually be in that, the area where, where I live here in King George County. But in any Case. Sam, can you break down for us what is going on here and your. Your view on it?
- [61:21]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I was one of the few who actually voted for redistricting reform because I believe that there needs to be a fair process. I believe that we should try to remove as much as possible the partisanship out of it. The reality, though, is that Trump has ordered these especially Republican state legislatures to redraw the maps. This is. This is cheating. And it's being done mid cycle, breaking all the rules as usual. And what we need to be able to do is to keep our options open. The way it works technically in Virginia is Virginia needs to make a decision or pass a resolution before an election. We have an election in about 10 days, and it's a long process, but the end of that process has a referendum going to Virginia voters. So all we're doing is a procedural motion that allows us to maybe, if things continue to get out of hand, allow for Virginia voters to decide what we should do.
- [62:21]
Kyle Kulinski
How. How amenable are your Democratic colleagues to this move? Is anyone squeamish about it? Or is everyone like, listen, we gotta fight fire. Fight fire with fire.
- [62:30]
Crystal Ball
Look, the reality is, is when Trump ordered Texas and now other legislatures, we saw North Carolina just completed their to break the rules and cheat and say, we're going to redraw the maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Unfortunately, that's just thrown all the rules out the window. And so in Virginia, what we have said is we're not drawing maps next week. We're not doing that in the short term because we can't constitutionally. But what we can do is procedurally keep our options open. And so what we have to have is a vote. Vote before the election, a vote after the election with the new legislature, and then that sends a referendum, and Virginia voters decide what should we do about this moving forward?
- [63:14]
Kyle Kulinski
Gotcha. So it has to go to the voters before any maps can really be redrawn. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about, you know, you represent Roanoke, which for people who don't know, is like, in southwestern part of the state and, you know, part of Appalachia. So you're not, you know, up in and in Northern Virginia. I think it gives you a bit of a unique perspective. What are you seeing in terms of how voters are feeling about this administration, how they're feeling? Obviously, Virginia has, you have an election. Everybody in Virginia, you know, the governor's races this year as well. How are people feeling about, you know, the State of the country right now.
- [63:47]
Crystal Ball
Look, being the only Democratic legislator in the western half of the state, this little blue dot in a sea of red. The reality is, I think, that there are a lot of folks who don't know the difference between when President Obama was in office, then President Trump, President Biden. Now back to Trump. We have been in place to what you were saying just before I came on about the socioeconomic disconnect. We left so many people behind really about 40 years ago, began the trend in earnest in this area with NAFTA where we said, hey, we're going to outsource all these jobs, but with no plan, no plan to make sure that people have, have an economic future. And so that's what, in my opinion, that has, what has given birth to Trump in 2015, when this guy came down an escalator and says, you know why your life stinks? It's because of those Mexicans, the rapists, the Muslims, the blacks. He said all these terrible things. He used identity politics because people were economically frustrated and needed to place it somewhere. And Democrats need to take that narrative back, back.
- [64:53]
Kyle Kulinski
How much have you seen? You know, when you, you ran for Congress in 2008, you know, in an Appalachian district performed very well, but at that point the partisan slide in Appalachia had really set it and it was just too big of a hill to climb. And so I'm curious, you've had a, a front row seat to watching the partisan hardening of rural Appalachian voters into the Republican Party. And you know, do you like, are they just gone for good? What would be some of the direction you would take the Democratic Party in that would make it so that, hey, in the future maybe you could run for that Appalachian congressional district and have a shot at it and not be just, you know, totally destroyed out of the gates because you happen to have the, the D by your name?
- [65:42]
Crystal Ball
Look, you know, if a Palestinian Muslim can get elected in Appalachia, I think that there's a place for all of us at the table. But we have to, to think generationally here. There's gotta be a long term conversation. And the reality is it begins with building relationships. We've got to go back and do deep canvassing, get back into these neighborhoods. And people need to believe that the Democratic brand is for them. And what I like to describe to folks is it's not a Democratic Party. We are a coalition of many factions and our faction that believes that socioeconomics has a place, a prominent place in this conversation. People deserve to be inspired by vision for their future and the future of their children, and we just haven't given them that. We've been playing into the Republican narrative for too long. There's absolutely a play here in Appalachia, in these rural parts, but we've got to put the elbow grease into it.
- [66:38]
Kyle Kulinski
So, Sam, you had the audacity to oppose genocide. I wouldn't think that that would be a controversial position, but apparently among some, it is. How has that. That. What is the response to your position there, Ben?
- [66:51]
Crystal Ball
Well, we've been through the gamut, right, from two years ago when when we were saying, well, man, how could they be attacking these hospitals? People had said, oh, Israel would never attack hospitals. And now almost every hospital has been attacked, every university has been obliterated. There's a genocide that we are funding with our own tax dollars. And I think people are frustrated. And there's a thread, and you're seeing it, I'm sure, on the. On the right and the left of people saying, why are our tax dol. And I think if you take a Republican and you ask them, you know, america first or Israel first, I think their heads will explode because they don't know exactly how to answer that many times. But if we can, you know, reclaim the narrative and say, look, this is one of the darkest moments in human history to watch a genocide play out piece by piece. When is never again really mean never again? And I will tell you that in my lifetime, nothing has brought the Jewish community closer together to the pro Palestinian community than this genocide. It has been a silver lining, because on the front line of every single one of these protests have been one of my Jewish brothers and sisters saying, this does not define me. This does not make up who I am.
- [68:08]
Kyle Kulinski
What have you made of the, you know, the failures on the Democratic side? You know, Democrats are supposed to be these humanitarians, supposed to believe in international law, supposed to believe in human rights. And I feel like belatedly now you start to see a little bit of a shift. But, you know, we've watched these. We, you know, under the Biden administration, we were funding these whores. You've had very few members of Congress who are willing to call it a genocide. And Abigail Spanberger, who's the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia, was critical of some of the comments that you made.
- [68:41]
Crystal Ball
Well, look, I have tried to clarify with folks that it's not Judaism, it's not our Jewish brothers and sisters. This is a political supremacist ideology called Zionism. And Zionism wants to destroy everything in its way to get what it wants. And we know that the AIPAC network as well as a variety of other funders are coming in and pushing this on us. And so when we can kind of number one, even like in defense of Judaism, that this is a political supremacist ideology that's been around over the past hundred years that has kind of taken over saying this is really the enemy. It's not just Netanyahu's war that we've got to push back against it. It begins to crystallize things for folks because they framed it as though it's Jews versus Muslims and forgetting that most of the Arabs in America are Christian. But it's not a religious war. It is is wanting to steal land and eradicate a people as they try to have this conquest. Right now we are seeing that Gaza is the litmus test if you're running for higher office for U.S. senate, for U.S. president. Where were you during the darkest moment in modern history? Where are you on this Zionist propaganda and ideology that is wanting to control our politics? I'm glad we're having that conversation.
- [70:05]
Kyle Kulinski
Griffin and Mac, you guys got anything?
- [70:06]
Mac Callahan
Yeah, I mean to, to your point earlier, it seems like it's a unique opportunity here where, you know, you can make a right wing case against continued support, funding, arming, giving diplomatic cover to Israel to, to the right and you can also make it to the left, whether it's from the America first angle or it's from a more humanitarian centered angle. And also in terms of the, the foreign influence peddling and organizations like aipac, it does seem like it's a unique opportunity to have a, a broad coalition on what I think many people used to think of as a super divisive issue amongst the voting base. So where do you think that this could go in a, in a state like Virginia? Do you think there's an opportunity there across the state to build some sort of a cross coalition there at the upper levels or is it mostly just consolidated amongst the establishments of both parties right now?
- [70:57]
Crystal Ball
Well, there's clearly a threat and we have seen a variety of folks on the right who have, have taken advantage of the opportunity to kind of break the chains themselves. I wish that they would talk kindly about a variety of other issues that we care about, but more importantly for us is to not just stand in solidarity with Palestinians. You know, as a Palestinian American, what we want to show is that this is all interconnected and we. If you are against the military industrial complex, if you are against war, if you are an environmentalist, list if you believe that we shouldn't have paid for American bombs to drop over six times the number, the amount of bombs that we dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima on this little Gaza Strip, then you can see that there's a thread here that's interconnected in the progressive movement, where you have the Israeli military training American police officers, where you've got so much of this that's got to be broken. If we're going to have a true progressive movement, if we're going to talk about lives mattering, then we've got to make sure that we're coming together as not just in solidarity with all these movements, but to realize it's all one movement as we move forward.
- [72:21]
Kyle Kulinski
And representative, another thing that we hear a lot is like, well, you should just, you know, Americans don't really care about foreign policy. We should just focus on bread and butter economic issues. What is your response to that? Because my experience has been that people actually connect these things quite a lot. First of all, they're just horrified morally to be involved in all at all, in the slaughter that they see on their, their timelines and their news, you know, feeds every single day. And second of all, they're like, wait a second, we have a lot of problems here at home. We, you know, we're about to see these subsidies expire for the aca. People's premiums are gonna skyrocket. Rural hospitals, probably in areas like yours, are gonna be closing, and we're shipping all of this money routinely to the people who are bombing babies. Like, what is happening here. So you described as a litmus test issue. I have also seen it be much more important to, to the election of Donald Trump, to the success of Zoran Mandan, to a lot of these Democratic primaries that are playing out. I've seen it be much more central to voters calculations than perhaps the polls would really suggest. And certainly that the establishment thinks $30.
- [73:27]
Crystal Ball
Billion plus we have sent during this genocide, that really opens eyes right away. People are saying, man, what would that pay for? You pay for a whole variety of things. Not only completely ending homelessness in America, but doing things like being able to make sure we've got all of our kids, as I'm the chair of education here in Virginia, and we've got a bill that comes through every year that I hate not being able to fund, which is free meals for all kids right in school, you know, so we've got so many priorities. And here we are feeding into the military industrial complex. And when you tie it back in, look, it's I think it's very fair for people to ask the question like, what's in it for me? Why does this matter to me? There are so many problems in this world and in this case, when you've got our free speech being squashed by the Zionist movement, when you've got 30 billion doll plus that has gone to this genocide, when you have this authoritarian regime that's working hand in hand with war criminals like Netanyahu and some others, it clearly has an impact on us and we can't divorce it. And so we've got to say, look, this is part of a broader movement whether we're sending $20 billion to Argentina to a right wing authoritarian down there, there.
- [74:47]
Kyle Kulinski
It's 40 now by the way.
- [74:49]
Crystal Ball
Even worse, $40 billion. The, the reality is, is we've got our priorities that we've got to figure out here in, in Virginia, but certainly in, in, in the United States. And that resonates, that resonates with folks. So we, we need to make that connection and we're happy to do it. And as look, and as, as the only Democrat in the west half of the state and being a kind of super minority out here, I have to do that all day and talking with folks, folks, and I think that that's our challenge and our charge as Democrats moving forward.
- [75:18]
Krystal Ball
I got a behind the scenes question for you. State Rep. So, you know, we are technically in a tenuous ceasefire right now. Very tenuous. You know, Israel has still struck Gaza recently and, and we're not sure every day if this is going to hold. Has that given some of the, I would say more Zionist or people who don't want to talk about Palestine and Democratic Party party, are they relieved? Are they like, finally we can move on to other subjects? Because you know, we've done a lot of reporting on groups like the Dem dark funded money group chorus and a lot of the instructions within that were like, you know, just don't talk about Palestine. You know, it's just too divisive. It's not something that brings people together and unites people. So let's just kind of avoid the subject. Are you hearing behind the scenes any sort of liberal relief that they can start to pretend like the issue doesn't exist anymore, that they can like move on and talk about other stuff? What are you hearing behind the scenes?
- [76:15]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I mean what we see on the ground is I think people wanting to release the issue. But it was very, very clear right away. I was, I was in a hair salon the other day and just Talking with folks. And people were just talking. I told you all, that Trump was trying to make that into some kind of real estate development for Jared Cook Kushner. You know, people, I think, saw right past this farce of a peace deal, and that's why you didn't see me and other Palestinians celebrating this at all. Because we know the reality that the west bank is Gaza 2.0. They've already. Tons of thousands of Palestinians in the west bank have already been pushed out of their homes. We see that Americans are being locked up in Israel. Even kids, American children are locked up in Israel right now. Now, you know, what are we doing? Allowing this craziness to continue? So people would like, I think, to move on in some respect. And I know it's tough. I mean, watching genocide, watching the mass starvation, the intentional forced starvation from Israel. But if we allowed for this neoliberal movement over the past several decades to create space to justify a genocide, to create space to give us Donald Trump, then anything can happen. None of us are safe. And we've got to make sure we keep bringing all of this to the forefront.
- [77:51]
Kyle Kulinski
That is such a great point. I do have one last question, which is about healthcare in your area. I mean, you have the, quote, unquote, big, beautiful bill. You know, the massive cuts to, you know, to Medicaid. You've got the rural hospitals that are under threat. You have the ACA subsidies, which are, you know, not at this point, extended. You know, how. How does this mess impact the constituents of. Of your district? And, you know, what. What are you hearing from people about the impact of our broken and wildly expensive and inefficient healthcare system?
- [78:26]
Crystal Ball
Well, having the fourth highest Medicaid utilization rate of all of the legislative districts. I have a district that is very much in need, and we have about 350,000 Virginians who are about to be kicked off of Medicaid because of this terrible bill. So it's going to have, and is already having profound impact because people are in anticipation, just frantic about what's happening right now. And so bread and butter coming back to how can we be defending democracy? This is what happens when we lose touch. And I see the establishment of folks wanting to keep pointing at Trump.
- [79:05]
Sagar Enjeti
Trump.
- [79:06]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, look, I tell him, look, the fight is on two fronts always. Number one, pushing back against the hateful policies from Trump and his cronies. But number two, we have to have a vibrant debate about how we got here in the first place. And not only how we got here, but like Groundhog's day. We elected Trump, we had this what we so called reprieve and now we're back with Trump. The reality is we just lost touch with way too many folks folks. And while the wind is at our backs right now with the terrible things that Trump is doing, we need to fix the kind of broken establishment as we move forward.
- [79:44]
Kyle Kulinski
All right, well, Representative Rasool, thank you so much for your time this morning. We're extremely grateful. People want to check out your campaign or support you. I know you're up for reelection here in just a couple weeks time. Voters are actually already going to the polls. So where can people find more from you?
- [79:59]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, they can check us out on SamfordVA.com for sure and hopefully we'll continue the conversation conversation and think through how we can approach all these issues in an intersectional way.
- [80:11]
Kyle Kulinski
Yes, agreed. Great to see you.
- [80:13]
Krystal Ball
We'll include your links in our description of our video. Thank you State Rep folks. That's gonna do it for the first half of the show. In the second half we have a lot of fun stuff. I have an insane artificial intelligence ad from Andrew Cuomo. We have an Eric Adams endorsement. We've got more Curtis Lee, we're I'm also going to ask these cringe lefties, Crystal and Mac about the Bernie Borders clip on Tim Dillon. We've got a lot of spicy stuff in the second half. If you want to see that, go to breakingpoints.com sign up for a membership we've got yearly and monthly and we'll see you all in the second half. See you then. Bye bye.
- [80:51]
Sagar Enjeti
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- [80:57]
Ryan Grim
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Sagar Enjeti
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Ryan Grim
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- [81:23]
Krystal Ball
Get ready to power up your play with Nintendo Switch 2. Power up the visuals with 4K support.
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Ryan Grim
And a bigger, more vivid screen.
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Krystal Ball
Power of the fun with exclusive new games like Mario Kart World.
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Sagar Enjeti
And Donkey Kong bonanza.
- [81:42]
Krystal Ball
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- [81:48]
Kyle Kulinski
And systems sold separately.
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Krystal Ball
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Kyle Kulinski
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