← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
11/12/24: Trump Goes Full Neocon Cabinet, Kamala Begs For Money, Top Dems Face Zero Consequences
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- [00:02]
T-Mobile Representative
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- [01:27]
Crystal Ball
That's livenation.com gifts hey guys, ready or not. 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
- [01:39]
Sagar Enjeti
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have?
- [01:59]
Crystal Ball
Crystal that's right, a lot of big developments, especially on the Trump staffing front. Neocons quite happy with some of the recent picks. We'll break all of those down for you. We're also going to take a look at the spending of the Kamala Harris campaign, which was wild. We will show you some of the craziest things and what they paid for them. Libs are also cooking over on TikTok with some major election conspiracies that we wanted to share with you as well. So, yeah, that's a good one. We've got a look at the media, liberal media really suffering in the wake of Kamala's loss. But actually some surprising outlets, including ones that are allied with us, are gaining quite a bit of strength. So interesting to look at that media rebalancing. Also, Chris Wallace making the choice to leave CNN and become a streamer. Pretty funny. Okay, pretty interesting.
- [02:45]
Sagar Enjeti
We'll discuss.
- [02:45]
Crystal Ball
Yes, indeed. Jim Zogby is going to join us both to talk about the DNC and the massive overhaul that he thinks needs to happen there. And also to take a look at aoc actually went on Instagram and was like, listen, if you are an AOC Trump voter, I want to hear from you. I want to. You picked me and Donald Trump. And the responses are quite interesting. A lot of them have to do, frankly, with Gaza. So we're gonna talk to Jim about that as well. And one of the things that we haven't spent a lot of time discussing, which is how much Harris's support of the Gaza genocide really impacted her electoral outcomes. I'm also taking a look at the failed ideology that doomed the Dems. It was not wokeism. Jon Stewart had a good bit on that. I'll share some of that with you as well. And we're gonna talk today to Andrew Yang, get his post election analysis. You'll recall Yang was really on board with Dean Phillip. He was one of the people really early saying, listen, Biden is too old. Come on, guys, you gotta do something different. So he deserves a lot of credit for having that level of prescience. We're gonna have that for premium subscribers today. For everybody else, the free version will be out later this week. I think this weekend we'll get that out for everybody.
- [03:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. So sign up breakingpoints.com and get early access to our Andrew Yang interview. OG for many people who are fans of the show, for the 2019 Yang.
- [03:59]
Crystal Ball
Gang, first big interview we did at.
- [04:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Rising, actually the first clip to ever cross over 2000 views. So I will always do very special.
- [04:05]
Crystal Ball
Over 2000. That was the. Yeah, that was a test. That was a big deal for us at the time.
- [04:08]
Sagar Enjeti
It was a big day. It was a big day indeed. I'll never forget it. So Andrew Yang, he'll always have a place in my heart as long as the original Andrew Yang Gang. So like Crystal said, we're getting a lot of stuff that started to break late last night. The single most important appointment now so far. Let's go and put this up there. On the screen. This is from the New York Times, everybody. Keep in mind this is not yet 100% official, but Donald Trump is expected to name Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as his Secretary of State. Now, as The Times cautions, Mr. Trump could still change his mind at the last minute, the people said. But he appears to have settled on Rubio, who he also considered choosing as his running mate earlier this year. I mean, this is arguably the most important pick so far. Secretary of State, of course, is such an important part of the US Government. You're gonna be in the Situation Room. You will be America's diplomatic ambassador to the world. And I mean, there's no really sugarcoating this. Marco Rubio is definitely more of a neocon persuasion than anybody else who was in the running. It really was between him and Rick Grenell. I mean, cards on the table. I would have far preferred Rick Grenell. Grinnell was Trump's ambassador to Germany. Probably most importantly though, Grenell wrote op EDS while he was the ambassador to Germany, kind of justifying a lot of realism and of antinato skepticism, where the truth is that Rubio has really been on the other side of a lot of these issues all the way going back to 2016. Look, it's complicated because the supporters of this who are like, this is not a betrayal or whatever, it's like, well, Rubio voted against Ukraine. And it's like, yeah, in 2023, it's like, but what about in 2022 and who are the people about?
- [05:47]
Crystal Ball
That's actually such a great point.
- [05:48]
Sagar Enjeti
And this is, it's very important for me is it's not about Ukraine today because we're about to talk about Mike Walts, who was a new national security advisor. Fine. He's like, hey, you know, what did he say? He's like, well, now there's no path to victory. It's like, what were you actually saying at the time? Because the reason why it matters is your mindset going into 2022. Did you want war with Russia and I think with Rubio and what Mike Waltz, who about to get to. He also basically supported a full on war.
- [06:19]
Crystal Ball
Not basically. His criticism was that the Biden administration was holding back, that they needed to immediately authorize long range missile strikes and ship more weapons to Ukraine. So his criticism was from the hawkish direction vis a vis Biden. And I think your analysis is important because it's not just, okay, now that the party has moved and it's clear what's going on, and even some of the liberals are like, I don't know if this Ukraine thing is really working out the way we wanted it to. It's another thing to have seen where this was going and been a critic when it was more difficult and when it took more courage.
- [06:53]
Sagar Enjeti
I wanna stick with this for two issues, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Because here's the thing, it's fine to be dragged kicking and screaming to the correct position on Ukraine, which is, okay, we gotta wrap this stuff up. But I went back and I looked. Let's put the next one please, up there on the screen. This is Mike Walts. He will be the next National Security Advisor is again very confounding for a variety of reasons. The main one is I went and looked at all of the track record. Mike Waltz was advocating for the quote unquote arsenal of democracy to be thrown at Putin and Ukraine. He also specifically basically implied we should go to war with Russia and unleash the Ukrainian army to defend eastern Ukraine as a NATO expansionist of Sweden and Finland. Now he's like, okay, we don't need to increase it anymore. And now he says, okay, Ukraine should not be in NATO. But I also went back and I read his press release from February of 2020 and he basically criticized the Trump peace deal with Afghanistan. So those are very important test cases for me. Because guys, this is not about the issues at hand right now that are already on the downswing, right? Nobody at this point, even Biden was advocating for like full on war in Ukraine. The point is, what were you gonna do in office? What were you gonna do in the Situation Room? What judgment are you gonna have when these situations arise? So for example, when Donald Trump is trying to sign a peace deal with the Taliban, Mike Walz spoke against it. Mike Waltz actually was booed at CPAC back it was several years ago where he said that we should stay in Afghanistan forever and it should be a multi generational war. Marco Rubio as well, I've covered him for a long time and I don't wanna misconstrue. He is not a Tom Cotton figure. He is not a full on hardcore neocon as ideologically as others, but his persuasion and his intellectual kind of framework around the issue, especially Latin America, oh my God, but Latin America, Cuba, Venezuela, Cuba, Venezuela, all this stuff, but especially on Russia, on Iran, these are. He, I mean there's no getting away from it. He's a major hawk and he definitely comes 2015, 2016 campaign. I covered him extensively. He was probably the most hawkish candidate in the 2016 race. Did not support the peace deal with Afghanistan. And so far, there is only one voice in the room that passes those two tests, for me, at least, and that's J.D. vance. He's the vice President, and that's great. But the truth is the vice president only has as much power as the president gives him. The Secretary of State is going to run the Department of State. The National Security advisor. This is another thing people really need to understand. It's not just about the advice in the room. A national Security advisor's job is something called interagency cooperation. And I'm gonna get deep, so everybody stick with me. But there's a great book called the Essence of Decisions, one of the foundations of political science, and it looks at the Cuban Missile Crisis through various different lenses of how John F. Kennedy arrived at the correct decision in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And they're one of those that I think is so important, is called organizational theory. And really what it means is that it really wasn't up to Kennedy. It was about the options that were presented to Kennedy. For a guy like Trump, who, let's be honest, is old and also never took great interest in the issues, the people who are his advisors who are presenting him the options to choose from, they have a lot of power. So let's say it is February 2022, and Russia does invade Ukraine, and Trump is presented with three options, and the least hawkish option is the insane sanctions regime that we have pursued on Russia. Well, that's still a really bad option. That's actually a really dumb option. Now, the President can override that, but in the moment, you've got everybody in the Situation Room, and the National Security Advisor's job is running the meeting. And he says, all right, Mr. President Rubio, you're up first. Here are the three different things. The packages that we presented to you. And Trump, uneven, beknownst to him honestly, and unbeknownst to most presidents, picks what is already a hawkish option. Unless he has really rock solid intuitions and says, no, we're gonna do totally something different, well, we're in for a bad way. So in both of these cases, like, and like I said about yesterday, Elise Stefanik, I think, honestly, that's a lot of bullshit. That's just some Israel, whatever the Israelis are obsessed with. UN Fine. Whatever. She lives in New York. She's not particularly in part of the apparatus, but here we're talking about. I mean, Secretary of State is arguably the most important part of the Cabinet traditionally looked upon by the founders. Thomas Jefferson was our Secretary of State. He was looked at as a path of to the presidency. National Security advisor is hands down one of the most important national security positions. And he's decided to go in this direction. So look for a lot of people out there. It's funny, there are a lot of people who got into politics over the last four years, especially who got into Trump over the last four years, and they always got mad because I was like, look, I was there. I remember when he was actually president, and I saw a lot of this happening behind the scenes. And I've always warned you should have no illusions. What is it? RFK Jr allegedly didn't want Marco Rubio would be Secretary of State. I tried to tell you, in terms of the power that these people have and Trump, if we're really being honest, did ideology even play a role in this? Or was it. Mike Walsh is a former Green Beret.
- [12:14]
Crystal Ball
I like the way he looks and.
- [12:15]
Sagar Enjeti
He'S buff in a suit and he's tough and he goes on Fox News and look, he's not stupid. He's a smart guy. I listened to several interviews with him last night. He's got an ideology. He worked for Dick Cheney. He was his counterterrorism adviser. He worked for Donald Rumsfeld whenever he was in the White House. He knows what he's doing. And in fact, you should probably fear competence in a situation like that.
- [12:36]
Crystal Ball
I think you would actually prefer that he be dumb because then he would be less effective in pushing what has been. I mean, like you said, he worked for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Like, that's who we're talking about. So, yeah, you know, Michael Tracy pointing out five seconds ago, everyone pretending like there was some giant gulf ideologically between the Cheneys and Trump, like, you were tricked, you were fooled. That was always obvious, based on his track record in the first administration, that that was preposterous. He liked using the anti war label and having people like RFK Jr. And Tulsi Gabbard who were willing to abandon all the previous criticism they had of him to get closer to power and will have nothing to say, by the way, about any of these clear neocon warmongering picks. He liked having the anti war mantle placed upon him because he thought it was politically useful. Did he ever ideologically buy into that? No, there's never. He had John Bolton in the last administration, Mike Pompeo in the last administration. Like, actually and again, follow Michael Tracy because he digs into the details on all this stuff and is very consistent, calling out Republicans, Democrats alike on this issue in particular. But actually, as Tracy points out, this is a more interventionist administration that Trump is starting with than he did last time around. Because you've got Marco Rubio who is an ideological hawk, like you said, especially when it comes to Iran or any sort of Latin American country. Much more interventionist and much more ideological than the last time you had Rex Tillerson, some business guy. Yeah, Rex have an ideology whatsoever. So when you put together Elise Stefanik, who I think it was Tracy called Basically Nikki Haley 2.0, they effectively have the same ideology. So Trump makes a big show of saying no Mike Pompeo, no Nikki Haley, and then swaps in people who have basically the identical ideology between Stefanik, Rubio and Mike Waltz. You got people who have been actively itching for war with Russia, China, Iran and Mexico. So that's where we are. Everybody who deluded themselves. I'm not talking about regular people, I'm talking about the influencers out there. Deluded themselves or deluded their followers into thinking that this was gonna be an anti war administration. Like, sorry, you got played, you got played. And you've been warning people.
- [14:54]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes, I am.
- [14:54]
Crystal Ball
You've been warning people. But I also wanna ask, what does this say about who has Trump's ear? Who's actually influential? Because supposedly Don Jr. Was pushing against these sort of picks. J.D. vance would theoretically be pushing against these sort of picks. Tucker Carlson would theoretically be pushing against these sort of picks. And yet we've got, you know, an administration that is now stocked with unreconstructed neocons.
- [15:16]
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- [17:58]
Sagar Enjeti
It'S always been this way and this is why, if anything, it's just exactly like it was last time around. So for everybody who will remember, Trump would what was it whether he strikes Syria? Assad. Right. Tucker would go on TV and be like this is terrible and it's a bad idea. Tucker would be then he would put up lists of Republicans who were neocons who were betraying the MAGA base. Did Trump ever make them pay a price? No. Tucker has been consistent on this. Always has been has. Who else? JD for example. But at the end of the day, he's the vice President. What can he do? I mean, Trump is the man in the office. This is also I would be remiss if I didn't say it's a coalition party. And the truth is Pro Israel came in big for Trump and I actually think this is where they are cashing in their chips more than Anywhere else. I mean, Rubio has been a darling of the Paul Singer network for fucking 10 years now at this point. All those free trips to Israel there ain't free. They come at a cost. Miriam Adelson. They don't give you $100 million for free. Okay? You get what you pay for. And what you pay for really is this Walt potato on Iran is like, unhinged. I went and I was looking at some of this, and frankly, that's kind of scary for what that looks like for in the future. I mean, Tucker tried to elevate my friend Bridge Colby. I thought he maybe had a shot just because I didn't think he had a shot until he went on Tucker's show. And then I was like, oh, shit, maybe this is real. And the truth. The problem, too, is on the campaign trail, Trump actually did present himself as anti war, and he did run with Tulsi and with RFK Jr and all these other people. I warned people because of how he presented himself in office last time. But in terms of the people on his campaign, I think. I think it's fair to say Rick Grinnell and all these other people. Rick led the outreach to the Muslim community, which worked obviously against Les Cheney. He won the vote in Dearborn, Michigan, and seems to. Yeah, he literally won the vote in Dearborn and many of these other places. But this is the issue is that Trump also is a creature of the Republican coalition, of the donor class, and also of television. And Marco, one of the things, he's a deeply narcissistic individual. Like, Mike Wallace has been around Trump.
- [20:04]
Crystal Ball
Or Marco or both.
- [20:05]
Sagar Enjeti
Actually, not Marco. Marco's a pretty humble guy. I like Mar. On a personal level. I've talked to him before. He's, again, he's a smart guy. He's somebody who. He thinks about the world. And he's not, you know, he's not like a total establishment hack in the way that a lot of people might think he's good on the child tax credit and stuff like that.
- [20:23]
Crystal Ball
He's not a bad figure to mention that. Obviously, I'm not a big Marco Rubio fan, but he is one of the Republicans who can be a little bit unorthodox in terms of economics.
- [20:32]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [20:33]
Crystal Ball
And so it's also a loss to lose him from the Senate in terms of, like, you know, any sort of new right populist direction in the Senate. Instead, you've elevated him on the issues where he's the worst and taken him out of play on places like the child tax credit, where he might be more interesting and more transformational.
- [20:48]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, yeah, it's actually. We will get to this, but unfortunately, because DeSantis now gets to appoint whoever he wants for the Florida senator, there's almost no chance that Marco Rubio would be a voice for any of this. Next time, on the child tax credit in the tca, Rubio actually held up the entire TCJA bill last time around.
- [21:08]
Crystal Ball
That's the big tax cut, the Tax.
- [21:09]
Sagar Enjeti
Cut act, specifically to try and get some earned income tax credit and other CTC stuff. He actually increased the corporate tax rate, which they were furious at him for, in order to try and get more family stuff. So that's sad. Also, JD Was one of the only other people who probably would have pushed for that in the Senate, and now he's the vice president, so that's the secondary thing. But look, at this point, really, what you should be betting on, personnel is policy, and I'm not gonna erase that. Really, what you should be hoping, if you're really anti war, is that when Trump is in the room and he gets presented with a lot of nonsense that he says, no, but, you know, that's a lot of faith to put in a person.
- [21:45]
Crystal Ball
That's on track record.
- [21:46]
Sagar Enjeti
That's a lot of faith to put into a person. And, you know, even all of this stuff about, again, like Iran, Ukraine and all this, these are entrenched conflicts. I'm not that worried about full blown there. But the thing is, is that when you're in the office, shit happens. October 7th happens. 9, 11 happens. Nobody voted for George W. Bush, who, by the way, ran on a restraintist foreign policy in 2000 and had any idea that the people who would be in office, like Donald R. Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, would be responsible for overseeing the mass transformation and invitation of the United States into the global war on terror and the disastrous prosecution of that. That's why you always should have to think really hard about the people you put in, because you never know what could happen. Trump likes to say Ukraine, Russia never would have happened on his watch. Maybe. But, you know, it could. Another one could.
- [22:35]
Crystal Ball
Absolutely.
- [22:36]
Sagar Enjeti
October 7th never would happen. Maybe, you know, it could.
- [22:39]
Crystal Ball
That one is the least credible. I can understand the case more on Russia would have been because he had Putin. Maybe, we don't know, but maybe on October 7th. A big part of the reason why Hamas organized and perpetrated October 7th had to do with the Abraham Accords that were of course, started and signed under Trump, because they felt like that was just completely taking the Palestinian issue off the table and creating this normalization that just ignored them and invisibilized them completely. They're right in that assessment. Obviously wrong in the execution with regard to killing innocent civilians, but. So I don't even see the case why Hamas would be deterred from October 7th if Donald Trump was there. That doesn't make any sense to me. But a few things like, you're absolutely right, every one of these picks. Not that this is a surprise because AIPAC always wins, whether it's a Democratic or Republican administration, but, I mean, these are some hardcore ideological Zionist believers. There's a clip going around of Marco Rubio engaging with Code Pink and Medea Benjamin of Code Pink. And he's quite aggressive. He's like, I want you to play this video. I want people to see me saying that. Not that I don't care that the civilians are being killed, but it's 100% Hamas fault. And I want people to know that. And they should go in and they should keep doing what they're doing until every vestige of Hamas is destroyed. Like, he's committed, he's ideological. Obviously, Stefanik made her name by inciting this fake antisemitism panic across college campuses and becoming an absolute darling of the donor class that was very interested in that whole conflict, many of whom became huge Trump supporters and sort of, in a sense, laundered their support of Trump, which is also in their own class interests, through this virtuous lens of, oh, we're standing up against antisemitism, so she gets her slot. Waltz is obviously very ideological. You should see that clip of him at CPAC talking about Afghanistan. You guys should watch it, where he's like, yeah, we've been.
- [24:45]
Sagar Enjeti
He got booed.
- [24:45]
Crystal Ball
He got booed. That's exactly right. He was like, we've been there 15 years. And you know what? This is gonna be a multi generational conflict and basically we should be there forever. It's like, okay, you know, so, yeah, now that things seem very different on Ukraine, and you recognize you've got to sound a little bit of a different note if you're going to have any chance at power within a Trump administration, you've changed your tune, but the ideology is in there deep again. This is an aide, a former aide to Cheney and Rumsfeld. That's who we're talking about. And there is no shift in terms of his ideological views. The other thing that just a quick note is the House has been called officially for Republicans. Now what? Do you know what the final margin was 222, 15.
- [25:27]
Sagar Enjeti
Two seats.
- [25:28]
Crystal Ball
It's very narrow. Okay. It's a very narrow margin that they have. And with Waltz and Stefanik, you're taking two House members out and making that an even more narrow margin for Republicans. And while Democrats. Yes. Just got, you know, shellacked in a big national general election, they do really well in special elections because now they are the party of like, like, high information, high turnout. I show up at every election, every primary, whatever, voters. And plus, the Democratic base is gonna be super pissed and ready to, like, show up and try to resist this Trump administration. So I'm not sure the makeup exactly of either one of these districts, but you have to think at least there's some chance in New York and Florida that. And it's not like super rural Florida either, that there could be a shot. There could be a risk for one or both of these seats.
- [26:15]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's a good point. I will say. I was told by a source that the Defense Secretary pick will come sometime. I don't know what it will be. They said I would be surprised, so I don't know what that is. Oh, it's not exactly. I don't know what that is. Yeah, you know, I mean, at this point, I can hope.
- [26:30]
Crystal Ball
I can have surprises.
- [26:31]
Sagar Enjeti
I would. I wasn't that surprised, actually, by Rubio.
- [26:35]
Crystal Ball
Well, he was named as being in the running.
- [26:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Right. I was way more surprised by Waltz, where he was in the running, but I was like, oh, man, he's really going for it in terms of the wide, those two back to back. It was a little bit of a gut punch. I actually think there is a. I'll give it like a 10% chance that Tulsi Gabbard gets Secretary Defense. I'm serious. That's basically the way that I was looking.
- [26:58]
Crystal Ball
I would be surprised.
- [26:59]
Sagar Enjeti
I would be surprised.
- [27:00]
Crystal Ball
I would surprise. 10%.
- [27:01]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay, 10%, but 90%, it'll be somebody like Bill Haggerty or somebody like that. Haggerty actually would be pretty good. He's pretty consistent on Ukraine. There are a few others where, again, there's a lot of names out there. I'm not gonna be sure. But, yeah, the fact that they told me I would be very surprised, I was like, huh? Okay. I was like, who would I actually be surprised by? I mean, really? Tulsi's the only one. I would be. I would be. I was like. I'd be like, wow. If that were the case, I would take her in a heartbeat over any of these other people. So we'll see it's better over here now.
- [27:31]
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- [29:10]
Bartesian Representative
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- [30:12]
Crystal Ball
I just do think it's really, I don't know, darkly funny the way that Trump made this big show of like, oh, I'm not gonna have Nikki Haley and I'm not gonna have Mike Pompeo. So that people who are on the new right who share your ideology would be like, okay, like, this looks like this is good. This is encouraging. And then hours later, it's like, instead, I'm gonna have this group of neocons who have the exact same ideology as Crystal.
- [30:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Look, left people are used to getting shit on by their coalition. For the right people, you should get used to it as well. All right, you know, we have.
- [30:44]
Crystal Ball
Here's the first dose.
- [30:45]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, this is the first dose. Get ready.
- [30:47]
Crystal Ball
Trump is anti war dream officially dead. And it's not even. We're exactly a week from election.
- [30:52]
Sagar Enjeti
He could not do anything while he's in office. It's just that this makes it harder to not do anything while he's in office. So the results are what's ultimate. Ultimately, the results are what speak for themselves. We will see. I think if he did pick Tulsi, honestly, look within the. Within the realm, that would be fantastic, you know, for at least what I believe in. But from what I'm seeing right now, I think it is relatively unlikely. Let's get to the next most confounding pick. Let's put this up there on the screen, guys. The Kirstie Noem.
- [31:22]
Crystal Ball
This is the second element, the one we added. Yeah, there we go.
- [31:24]
Sagar Enjeti
So this broke light last night. Trump is picking Kirsty Noem to serve as a Secretary of Homeland Security. Now, here's the thing that people don't understand. Homeland Security is one of the largest government agencies. The DHS is actually the largest law enforcement agency in the world. So not only would she be in charge of the Border Patrol and of the mass deportation operation, she would be the face of it. The same way that. What was that lady's name? I'm totally blanking on it right now. From 2018, wasn't it? Whatever.
- [31:58]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
- [32:00]
Sagar Enjeti
There was a previous woman who was in the job in 2018 under the law.
- [32:03]
Crystal Ball
She likes women for this job, I guess.
- [32:05]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. But the thing is that you would be the face of it. You would be the one taking the podium. And let's be honest, Kirsten is not an impressive political individual. Like, she this whole thing about murdering her dog, she never came up with a good answer. That's child's play compared to the shit the press is gonna throw at you. They're gonna drag up every sob story of every illegal immigrant that's ever come to the United States and say, how do you justify this? This is not America. This violates the Statue of Liberty. Do you really think that she could stand up to pressure like that? I don't. And also I.
- [32:41]
Crystal Ball
By the way, the press 100% should do that. And they should have been doing it under Kamala and Biden and Obama as well.
- [32:49]
Sagar Enjeti
I disagree on that one.
- [32:52]
Crystal Ball
You shouldn't cover what's actually happening in the country. Of course.
- [32:55]
Sagar Enjeti
Sure you should. You should also cover a lot of illegal immigrant murders and rapes. Right? That doesn't. No, it gets covered on the right.
- [33:01]
Crystal Ball
Sean Hannity with a list of.
- [33:02]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right. But over on msnbc, it's like, these are the greatest angels ever walked the face the earth anyways.
- [33:08]
Crystal Ball
Well, they're more law abiding than us Asians.
- [33:11]
Sagar Enjeti
That's fine. Then they can be law abiding at Crystal in El Salvador, which apparently is such a nice country now, and the rest of these places. Regardless. The point is that is this a very smart individual? I mean, is this an impressive individual who will be able to make this case? Also, is this a competent individual? Kirsten is running South Dakota. Okay, that's great. All right. It's a small state. State, let's be honest. Let's look at the GDP ranking and all of this. Is this somebody who is up to the task not only of one of the most red hot jobs in Washington, is it also going to be like the ability to actually run the agency? I mean, honestly, I don't see it at all. And I have no understanding of why this is picked. Like, I guess the best case for it would be that she's like sometimes good on TV and is a surrogate for Donald Trump. Right. But you know, even in the past, like, in terms of her support for Trump and all that, that's been wishy washy. So this is the most confounding one to me. I have no understanding, you know, of this one.
- [34:15]
Crystal Ball
We do have an understanding that she's good looking. I mean, she slept with his boy, Corey Lewandowski. Yeah. But again, that's good as she's good looking and, you know, probably feels like since they have all the dirt on her with regard to that affair, that she'll be unfailingly loyal and sycophantic. And ultimately that's what he wants.
- [34:32]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [34:33]
Crystal Ball
And probably. And I guess, you know, may feel like it's better to have when they're gonna be, you know, creating new orphans as they rip parents and children apart, as they did in the last administration, and sending people who have been here for many years to camps that perhaps it would help to have a woman to be able to sell that. Deeply cruel and inhumane.
- [34:52]
Sagar Enjeti
But it didn't happen last time around, did it? You know, it's like, what didn't happen? They completely bucked on child separation, even though they had a woman.
- [34:59]
Crystal Ball
Not before they orphaned, like thousands of children.
- [35:01]
Sagar Enjeti
All right. Again, very in dispute. And then, regardless, this is complicated, but we'll get to that, I guess, when we continue with some of these other. These other people who were appointed. So we also saw the news on the border front that Tom Homan, who was the acting director of ice, would be appointed as the quote, unquote, border czar under the President. The reason why that's, again, is a little bit confounding is that czar only has as much power as the president gives you. You don't have statutory power. Kirsty Noem will have stat.
- [35:33]
Crystal Ball
There was a thought Homan might actually be dhs.
- [35:35]
Sagar Enjeti
That's what I thought. Hobby is gonna be the DHS secretary. He's a former Border Patrol agent. He's rock solid on the issue of immigration. And he was there last time around. Stephen Miller will be. Was appointed. I think they announced he will be the deputy chief of staff. Deputy chief of staff is actually a very important position in the White House. They're the real movers and shakers. There's two of them. So the chief of staff gives a policy portfolio. Her job is to run this stuff in the Oval Office. It's more like an operational role. Whereas the deputy chief of staff will get a policy portfolio. And their job is to enforce that throughout the White House. Obviously. Miller, he served all four years with Donald Trump. He served all four years on the campaign. He has been with him since day one. Really. I mean, if you think about it, Miller and Jeff Sessions are two of the original figures to ever back Donald J. Trump back in 2000.
- [36:24]
Crystal Ball
Miller was a Sessions aide growing up.
- [36:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes, he worked for Jeff Sessions. Sessions is one of the original immigration hawks in Washington. So that's where. Where that comes from. Yeah. On the DHS front. I don't know. I don't get it. I truly don't understand Tom Homan as the border czar Again, Border Czar is a fine position, but you have no statutory authority. Your portfolio is to just sit there and pressure the DHS secretary to do something, pressure the Border Patrol, pressure ice. You can convene meetings in the White House, but you don't have a lot of power. And in some cases, some of these agencies, they can just say, screw you. I'm not gonna listen to you. Stephen Miller, it's a little bit different. He's the actual deputy chief of staff. He will have a lot more enforceability, and presumably he'll have, quote, unquote, walk in privileges into the Oval Office. So how that works, we'll see. But, yeah, I don't doubt that some mass deportation program of some sort will happen, but with Kearsi Noem at the helm of it and actually running the police force, I have a lot less frankly confidence that it will be run competently in a way that is defensible to the American people. Because, look, you know already, the debate we're having, just wait until it's actually real. It's gonna be the most red hot issue in D.C. they're gonna throw everything they possibly got white on the immigration.
- [37:53]
Crystal Ball
Has almost never popular than at the peak of the child separation policy last time around. And I don't know if that'll be the case this time, because at the time, Democrats were uniformly offering a different vision and were in uniform opposition to the Trump border policies. Now, they basically accepted the Trumpist worldview that immigrants are just bad and the only thing we should do is kick them out. So I don't know if it'll be the same, but I know that there will be. There will be a lot of people who did not really intellectualize what an actual mass deportation policy looks like, feels like entails, et cetera. And so, yeah, but look, this is what people voted for.
- [38:40]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, I mean, he got popular vote.
- [38:42]
Crystal Ball
On the anti war part, I think people were completely sold a bill of goods, and I think they were just straight up lied to by a bunch of online influencers and people like RFK Jr. And Tulsi Gabbard. So I don't think they voted for war with Iran and Mexico and China and Russia and whatever. But on this, you can't say that he didn't run around talking every day about having an aggressive mass deportation policy. So Homan and Miller. Maggie Haberman at the New York Times is usually correct about Trump internal dynamics or whatever. She reports that Miller's portfolio will be quite large and he'll have a lot of power which wouldn't be surprising because obviously he's been with Trump. He's been with Trump much longer than Susie Wiles, who's the actual og. He is an og. He is extremely ideological. There is nothing Trump could do that would lead Miller to break with him whatsoever. And so, yeah, I think he is a hardcore anti immigrant ideologue. I think everybody knows that about him. And he is going to be in a significant position of power and no one should be surprised about that.
- [39:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, look, I think you're right. If I had to guess, of all the campaign promises that actually gets fulfilled, immigration will probably be it because you have the united government. Right. So HR 2, the border bill that most. I think every Republican, almost every Republican has voted for. So that will likely, maybe it won't become law of the land. Things become squirrely when you actually have to vote for something. But something like that is likely to get in there in terms of mass deportation and all of that. It really depends on funding. It also depends on the execution. But I mean, personally, I have faith in Tom Homan, I have faith in Stephen Miller. But like I said, when you actually have the person there who is going to be running this agency, who frankly has no previous experience in law enforcement, running the largest law enforcement agency having, I mean, this is an administrative and bureaucratic nightmare to run this thing, I truly don't understand it.
- [40:42]
Crystal Ball
So there was one war that I'm not sure if is confirmed yet, but did you see the reporting that Scott Besant will be Treasury Secretary?
- [40:51]
Sagar Enjeti
It's not reported, but it's not 100. Right.
- [40:53]
Crystal Ball
Anyway, well, we'll keep an eye on that one hedge fund billionaire guy.
- [40:57]
Sagar Enjeti
He's on the shore. Look, it was going to be a hedge fund billionaire. Garright. He's the one who him or what was Scott Paulson.
- [41:02]
Crystal Ball
John. John Paulson.
- [41:03]
Sagar Enjeti
John Paulson.
- [41:03]
Crystal Ball
He's. He's the one. Isn't that Hank. Whatever. Anyway, John Paulson, yeah.
- [41:07]
Sagar Enjeti
Not to be confused with Hank. Hank Paulson who was the Secretary of Defense and a billionaire and a former Wall Street.
- [41:12]
Crystal Ball
Yeah. Get all these rich, rich dudes confused. But in any case, he's the one that they would like dispatch to CNBC to be like, don't worry about the tariffs guy. It's not gonna be bad. He's just using this as a negotiating tool. It'll be fine. You know, he's not really serious about this across the board thing. So that was his deal. And Trump apparently loved to shout him out at rallies because Scott would tie the stock market performance to Trump's poll numbers. And Trump, of course, ate that shit up.
- [41:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, Scott Bess. I mean, look, Trump is a creature of the 1980s. And one of the things in the 1980s was that we almost always had billionaire Wall Streeters as our treasury secretaries. He wants to recreate the Reagan magic. That's what he's looking to do. I'm not justifying it. I'm just telling people how his mind works. And on this one, you were never fooled. He always was honest about this. So let's be very clear about which direction he's looking at. And especially, look, a lot of the Wall street guys did support his campaign, and he does. Trump owed a lot to them, especially some of these. I think. I mean, obviously the majority of Wall street money did go to Kamala in.
- [42:19]
Crystal Ball
I don't think that's actually. That's actually not true. So the bulk.
- [42:22]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh, no, I'm thinking of billionaires.
- [42:23]
Crystal Ball
The bulk of billionaires went to Trump over. It's actually the fewest. The biggest billionaire party consolidation was behind Donald Trump this time, which you wouldn't know. Now, Kamala raised vastly more amounts of money that was predominantly from more like upper middle class resistance liberals who poured in smaller donations. But yeah, the billionaires almost all united behind Trump. And even Kamala's most prominent billionaire, Mark Cuban, actually did not even donate to her campaign, which is kind of crazy.
- [42:54]
Sagar Enjeti
No, I have October 3rd. Yeah. From Forbes magazine. Kamala Harris has more billionaires prominently backing her than Trump. So, I mean, I'm not sure where that's coming from because Bill gates obviously gave $50 million. So, sure, Mark Cuban was a surrogate. I'm not trying to say Trump is better or whatever, but I don't think it's accurate to say the majority of billionaires were supporting top 10 mega donors.
- [43:16]
Crystal Ball
Only the bottom two gave to Democrats. Trump's home.
- [43:18]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay, but that's mega donors.
- [43:19]
Crystal Ball
From his own time, donors amounted to about 945 million. Harris is topped down at 254 million. She ended up raising more money thanks to Rosa. Trump got to spend much less time raising him with musk, blah, blah, blah. So anyway.
- [43:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, but that's not the same.
- [43:35]
Crystal Ball
He has a lot of big money behind him.
- [43:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, he had a lot. But I'm just saying the majority of billionaires did support Kamala Harris. Now, whether they put their money behind it or not, I don't know. But I'm just saying. I'm not saying Donald Trump is the, what, less billionaire friendly candidate or whatever. Like, let's be real. Yeah. So anyway, that's how the administration is currently shaping up and I guess it'll be an interesting couple of years. That's the way I put and that's basically exactly what I expected. So if you expected something else, I don't really know what to tell you. You were warned and I did tell you that it was probably going to happen.
- [44:06]
Bartesian Representative
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- [45:48]
Bartesian Representative
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- [46:48]
Sagar Enjeti
At the same time, gotta pay attention to the campaign that flopped big and that was Kamala Harris. And it appears the biggest flop not only was just the vote total, but it actually was a lot of the money decisions that were made inside the campaign. So we have curated now a list. It appears that the Kamala Harris campaign, despite raising over 1 billion, still ended up some $20 million or so in debt and is now currently fundraising, still asking people for money after she lost. Let's put this up there on the screen. So this is an example of one of the emails that she's been sending out. Now she says, first and foremost, we want to acknowledge the fear, the confusion, the sadness many of you are feeling at this moment. For others, you may be looking for something meaningful and important to channel your emotions. If that's you, then we're asking you to make a donation to the Democratic Party today. Here's why this is important. As you read this, there are U.S. senate and House races that are too close to call or within the margin of recounts. They all need your help to get across the finish line. So can you please rush a contribution to the Harris fight fund program today? Hmm. Does anyone want to name like a high profile race other than Pennsylvania that's not in recount territory? That's right. So this is a grift. Let's all be honest. Let's put this up there on the screen. From Newsweek, Ada, it appears that there is significant amount of debt within the Harris Walsh campaign. Enough so possibly up to the sum of some $20 million. And people are starting to ask major questions about how some of that got spent. What we see actually, and very interestingly so far is not only could she possibly, it appears there are reports out there that she's not able to pay some staff.
- [48:32]
Crystal Ball
The staffers came out and said it wasn't true.
- [48:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay. By the way, staffers came out, this.
- [48:35]
Crystal Ball
Article actually debunks that thing. But the 20 million does seem to be correct.
- [48:38]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, 20 million does seem to be correct. And that's a lot of money. And so we should start to take a look then at where some of that money went. And the craziest is this. This is hands down the craziest. Let's put the next one, please. From the New York Post. The Harris campaign reportedly spent some six figures on the Call Her Daddy podcast set. So as they say, it didn't even crack a million views. But what's fascinating is that, you know, Call Her Daddy, as I understand it, you know, Alex Cooper, all of this, she has a home, she has a, like, she films it, you know, normally. But for some reason, this set, the one that people are in front of, which frankly doesn't even look that good, doesn't even look as good as our set. And from what I can tell in the dollar figure crystal, I think they spent more money on it.
- [49:20]
Crystal Ball
More for a single episode appearance, honestly.
- [49:23]
Sagar Enjeti
A single appearance.
- [49:24]
Crystal Ball
Insane.
- [49:25]
Sagar Enjeti
That is astounding.
- [49:26]
Crystal Ball
It's like this one expenditure obviously is not responsible for the hair slot, but it really displays a stunning lack of understanding of what matters in the new media space too. No one is showing up for your friggin, like, aesthetics.
- [49:43]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [49:44]
Crystal Ball
You know, I mean, it's nice. We have a great set. We're proud of it. We like really were proud that you guys helped us build it. It looks great. It helps us attract bigger guests, whatever. Especially on a podcast like Call Her Daddy. Like the aesthetics are really not the important part. So it just also displays this like lack of really understanding of the space. But the other thing that disgusts me with this is, you know, Kamala had her big money backers, no doubt about it. A lot of these donations didn't come from big money backers. They came from like regular people. You wasted their money to pay Oprah a million. Like you took regular working people's money and you siphoned it to Oprah Winfrey and like Beyonce and Katy Perry and these other celebrity stars. That's disgusting. That is utterly grotesque. It's one more reason why you really should have public funding of elections. It should not be this constant emotional manipulation of the public begging them for dollars to go fund another. An Oprah Winfrey show and a Beyonce speech where she doesn't even perform. The whole situation is completely grotesque to me. And the other thing I would say, obviously the money really didn't matter. At the end of the day, it really didn't matter.
- [51:08]
Sagar Enjeti
It didn't matter at all.
- [51:09]
Crystal Ball
You can argue. I think the best case you could say is in the battleground states, she actually performed better than she did in the non battleground States, meaning that the ads that were played and the field program that was run were at least somewhat consequential in terms of narrowing the gap. Obviously not enough, but the money really wasn't the thing. And if Democrats are gonna get serious about winning again, which I doubt they will, but maybe you never know. They need to throw the whole of their big donor class overboard. They need. Everybody talks about sista soulja moments with the left or what? No, no, no. The whole party has been nothing but a series of sista soulja moments with the left for decades. You need to have a sister soulja moment with the donor class because you don't even. You don't even need their money. Their money is actually a hindrance, and it just leads to grotesque expenditures. Like a million dollars to an already like, Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire. She did not need regular people's million dollars. And what does it say about her that she needed to be paid to come out? And what does it say about you that she needed to be paid to come out and endorse and back your candidate? Just disgusting. It's just such so emblematic of what is deeply wrong at the core of this party's ideology.
- [52:28]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. And. Well, we'll continue within that. Let's go to the next part, because this is honestly the craziest one, is that it appears that Kamala Harris paid Oprah Winfrey $1 million during the failed campaign. What's even crazier is it wasn't just Oprah. It includes people like Katy Perry, Lady God, Ricky Martin. There was almost 10 million bucks that were spent behind this, many of which actually did go into the pockets of these event management companies and the stars. Now, here's how naive I am. I am a very cynical guy. Can I think everybody agree with that? All the people who've been watching for years. I genuinely did not know that celebs get paid for an either.
- [53:09]
Crystal Ball
I didn't either. I was like, listen, they believe in the cause. They show up, you do a concert. Like, that's what I thought was going on.
- [53:15]
Sagar Enjeti
If I was a billionaire. If I was a billionaire and I was Oprah, Right? You know, like, it's one like, okay, you donate money to the campaign. If anything, it should be the other way, Right? Of course you should be giving money to the campaign. Cause they're like, look, she's something. I believe in all of this. Oh, all you want is my time. I'm famous. You want me to come and speak? Okay, cool. Yeah, I could do that. Yeah. Honestly, I would do that now, you know, if I was in a position of where but to shake you down for a million bucks? That's crazy.
- [53:38]
Crystal Ball
Insane.
- [53:38]
Sagar Enjeti
And then Katy Perry, apparently, they also had to drop Alanis Morrison. Alanis Morrison. I don't know how to say her name.
- [53:45]
Crystal Ball
Alanis.
- [53:46]
Sagar Enjeti
I'm a boomer. I don't even know who this woman is.
- [53:49]
Crystal Ball
That's the opposite of being a boomer.
- [53:51]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay?
- [53:51]
Crystal Ball
I'm old enough to remember when she was called.
- [53:53]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay, got it. So I don't even know who this woman is, but whoever she is, they didn't have the money to pay her. And I was like, wait, why? Why is she getting paid? She should just show up. You don't need to be compensated for your time. Like, to me, that's crazy. So, anyways, I don't know how all that is going down, but, yeah, that was the wildest one.
- [54:15]
Crystal Ball
There's one more too, that we can put up on the screen. They spent half a million dollars a day to pay for the, like, Vegas sphere thing, which is, who did this persuade? Like, really, who did this persuade? And I saw someone who said, you know, this is the perfect emblem of a campaign that had all the money in the world and no ideas. And, you know, that's basically it summed up right there. All the money in the world. But just like with Hillary in 2016, who also wants spent, it doesn't matter if you aren't selling something that people don't want to buy. And Trump's campaign fundamentally understood the media landscape vastly better than the Harris campaign did, both with the podcast strategy, but also with the strategy of, like, it's cool if we get outspent, because Trump knows how to generate. Be controversial and divisive and generate a lot of earned media, and he's gonna do his thing, and that is gonna set the tone of the campaign and drive the messaging and persuade people in favor of our campaign and against Kamala Harris. And that theory of the media was correct. And the Kamala Harris theory of the media was obviously major failure. Perhaps one of the biggest tactical misunderstandings that they made in terms of this campaign, I would say.
- [55:32]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh, absolutely. There's no question. This Vegas fear thing is also just a hilarious one. It's like $450,000 that they spent on this. Listen, her dear.
- [55:41]
Crystal Ball
Per day, right?
- [55:42]
Sagar Enjeti
Sphere's cool. I really want to go to the sphere. I'd like to go see a show there and all that. But, you know, he lost Nevada. So how did that work out? That's pretty great. And everyone was saying like, oh, Kama's got F you money. If she's able to buy out the sphere. It's like, yeah, it turns out you do have FU money, but you don't got any votes.
- [56:00]
Crystal Ball
F you to who? That was the question.
- [56:01]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, exactly. You're like, jesus. So this is a colossal spend and I want to pick up on one. There are a lot of hardworking people out there who did give her money. It's not just wine moms and all these other people. A lot of people out there, lower middle class folks and others chipped in five, ten dollars. They believed in the cause and you pissed their money away. And that's sick. We did a lot of reporting here on the show after Stop the Steal, when Trump was shaking down people for $250 million for basically bullshit, whenever he knew that he wasn't gonna be able to overturn the election. And there are hardworking plumbers, workmen, whatever, who also gave money to that. And I thought that was wrong. And I think this is just as especially the Oprah thing. You need to pay a lady, the billionaire lady needs a million dollars to show up and screw you. Also Oprah, you should know better than to accept that money because you don't even need it. It's less than marginal at this point. And now when it comes out, you look like a money grumper. True. Any of us gonna believe in Oprah endorsement in the future? I'll tell you, I'm not. I truly did not believe it. I thought when Kid Rock, and maybe it is on the Republican case, I don't know. But I thought when people just showed up, they're like, yeah, that's what they think. Okay, cool. You know, whatever.
- [57:09]
Crystal Ball
Yeah, that's what I thought too. I genuinely thought that as well.
- [57:13]
Sagar Enjeti
It's shocking.
- [57:14]
Crystal Ball
It truly is. One last thing on just like the bigger takeaway on political giving. Money matters a lot in politics, but the lower you go down the ballot, the more it matters. So if you wanna give political donations to candidates and causes that you believe in, the place where you're gonna have the biggest impact is at the lowest. So like, you know, your local school board or city council or your state rep, or even your state senator, you know, all the way up to like members of the House. Right. It really makes a difference there. In fact, the fact that Democrats significantly outspent Republicans, both at the House and the Senate level is probably part of the reason why they were able to stem some of the losses at those levels and perform better than they did at the top of the ticket because the money just goes matters more there where you have less media saturation. So in any case, if you're a person out there who does political giving, don't get, don't give it to the top of the ticket. Like it's honestly a waste of your money. It's a waste of your money.
- [58:14]
Sagar Enjeti
Absolutely. That's such a good point. Especially with earned media. That's the most important.
- [58:18]
Crystal Ball
You know, they have plenty of rich people who are going to give them, you know, I mean Miriam Adelson gave Trump $100 million. Like Kamala had her big donors as well. They're going to have the money that they need. So just don't give to the presidential level. It's.
- [58:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, it's right.
- [58:34]
Crystal Ball
Because of this, because of this.
- [58:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Also don't give to the dnc. We're about to get to that. Oh yeah, let's go to the next part, shall we? Yeah, let's put this up there on the screen. It appears that every major Democratic leader in the House will get reelected to their position as a governor here says all the post election takes mean zero. As the House stems reelect their leaders without any dissented.
- [58:55]
Crystal Ball
Incredible.
- [58:56]
Sagar Enjeti
There will not be any drama. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, he's coming back. Minority Whip Katherine Clark, coming back. Democratic Chief Caucus Chair Pete Aguiar, he is coming back. So number one, two and three in the House of Representatives, every person is coming back. This is really a sick and they.
- [59:12]
Crystal Ball
Say likely unanimously, unanimously.
- [59:15]
Sagar Enjeti
This is a sick part of America's system. In the UK when you lose, you get your ass booted out of there and, and maybe every once in a while David Cameron, he comes back as a foreign secretary. That's as good as it gets for you most of the time. What's that former Liberal Democrat guy, he works for Facebook. Gordon Brown. Who? When's the last time you heard about Gordon Brown? When's the last time even Boris, he's gone. He's not even there. He's flitting around the world. He's trying to mount his comeback. Rishi Sunak, he's gonna move to Silicon Valley anytime soon. And you know why? Cause in their system when you lose, you're done. They think they're like, okay, the party has spoken. We get a new chairperson, you know, a new chair, a new leader and then they get to mount the campaign as the opposition. And if you lose, then you elect somebody new. It's a very healthy anti fragile system. In our system we Reward, decrepit nepotism. You know, in many respects, we have candidates who lose and then they come back. We have House speakers who lose and allow, I mean, people like that should not get rewarded. That's another thing we were talking about with, with Rick Scott. I don't get it. He was responsible in part for the 2022 losses in the Senate. True, you don't get rewarded for that.
- [60:22]
Crystal Ball
True.
- [60:22]
Sagar Enjeti
You're supposed to be punished. But in America, for some reason, our system rewards longevity, nepotism and corruption all within our parties. It wasn't always this way. Actually, in the past, there were some times in our parties that did have reinforcing mechanisms and they were like, no, if you, you know, we elect somebody new. But this time, you know, why would you stick with Hakeem Jeffries or any of these other people? Because they failed monumentally. Jeffries entire job. A big part of that leader position is specifically to dole out funds and to contest the House and to take it back. And as the margin shows for Republicans, it was possible for the Democrats to win. They could have pulled this off if they wanted to, even with the Trump plan. So, I mean, you're supposed to get punished and instead he's rolling back in unanimously.
- [61:13]
Crystal Ball
Not to mention every one of the people that you mentioned and Chuck Schumer and Jamie Harrison, Nancy Pelosi, who still obviously holds a lot of sway, et cetera. They all have the same basic philosophy and ideology. That was just an approach that was just completely rejected. And if Democrats continue on this track, will continue to be repudiated and could result in, I mean, they should feel like they are in a place of existential threat to the entire party right now. And to me, what this displays is that there is no real soul searching going on over on the Democratic side because there's no way that you just go ahead and performative, like perfunctorily reelect the same. Exactly. Leadership with no even challenger, no resistance. It's going to be unanimous. If you're engaged in any sort of real soul searching about what just went wrong for your party, how did you lose to this person who supposedly your whole mission of the party since he emerged on the scene was to defeat him and to remove him from the public sphere, how are you not questioning the direction of these leaders that have been in place? How are you not questioning everything about your party's approach right now? And so to me, that's what this is indicative of, is they are not interested in really righting the ship. They'll as we're gonna show. They'll blame wokeism, they'll blame this, they'll blame that. They'll say, oh, let's just relax, it wasn't that bad. Like, let's just like Jim Clyburn said, let's all just chill out. It's like you told us this guy was an existential threat and now you're like, let's just not point fingers. Let's not play the blame game. Let's all just chill out. Like, they are so committed to learning absolutely nothing. And it's no surprise because the people who benefit from learning nothing are exactly these people. And the consultant class. It's a racket. The DNC is a racket. The, you know, these leadership positions are racket. They all benefit from the money and the power and so they have no interest in really rocking the boat. And within the Democratic caucus, like as much as you have a few voices out there who are like, hey, maybe we should do things differently. When push comes to shove, they're not willing to make waves. They have bought into this idea that internal Democratic Party unity is the most important value. And they gleefully watched as there were leadership, was leadership tumult on the Republican side. And they were so proud that everyone on the Democratic side just frickin falls in line. And so yeah, you're going to just keep marching in the same direction endlessly until someone decides to break that habit. And you know, does not appear that that is coming anytime soon.
- [64:05]
Sagar Enjeti
Very true.
- [64:16]
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- [64:46]
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- [65:45]
Bartesian Representative
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- [65:46]
Guardian Bikes Representative
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