← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
11/14/24: Carville Admits Bernie Was Right, NYT Caught Deleting Amsterdam Israeli Video, Billionaires Buy Trump White House, How Dems Failed Young Men
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- [00:01]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [00:09]
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.
- [00:25]
Krystal Ball
Let's go ahead and move on to the Democratic side of the ledger here and some interesting post mortem that's been happening over on Ms. NBC. So to my absolute shock, there are actually a few mainstream figures who have now come out after the fact after they spent years crushing Bernie Sanders, demonizing him, his movement, anyone associated with it, like burning it to the ground, salting the ground, et cetera. After all of that, now suddenly you know, that guy Bernie Sanders, maybe he had a point. So here's James Carville on MSNBC with Ari Melbourne. Let's take a listen.
- [01:04]
James Carville
So you as Mr. It's the economy stupid. Was this an economy election and if so is Sanders right that on populist working class kitchen table issues the Dems didn't do enough?
- [01:15]
David Brooks
Well what he is not right about is Democrats have done a number of things for working people. I mean Obamacare expanded health care for 23 million more people than had before. A lot of things in President Biden's build back better program created millions of jobs working people. But I think senders has some of the point here and that is there were things we could have run on harder that have effective the minimum wage it passes everywhere by 70%. I mean I know that President Biden was fired and Harris was fought but we didn't put it front and center. What about taxing the incomes over $400,000 and taking that money and putting it in a first time homebuyer's mortgage relief fund. I mean there were things that Senator Sanders would favor that we could have put more front and center. You know there are a lot of things that are just popular that Democrats are fortunate. They're popular with every kind of Democrat in the country. They also happen to be popular with independents and even some Republicans. And we should run on a popular thing. A popular thing was not continuing the Biden administration. That was clearly not what people wanted. I think he's a great guy but people didn't want more of that. And that's what we gave him.
- [02:29]
Krystal Ball
Incredible. Incredible. And you know, I mean like in a sense I guess I should be like well Better late than never, you know, David Brooks, thanks for coming around like James Carville. But it's also like, you know, you had a 2016 was the time to truly offer like a post neoliberal vision. And all the energy was that, you know, from Occupy and it builds into Bernie Sanders and you have the left alternative to the Trumpian populist direction. And they just, people like him were went above and beyond. I mean, they fought Bernie Sanders far harder than they ever fought Donald Trump. And so at this point it's like, you know, I hope it's not too late, but I kind of think it is. And there is no Bernie Sanders. He's 83 years old. Like for him personally, he's still with us. Actually saw him speak last night and man, he is still sharp as attack. Hasn't lost a step intellectually whatsoever. But he's 83 years old. There has to be a successor to him. There's no one that's obvious that has the same type of just credibility and appeal that he truly did to independents and some Republicans. And even as James Carville says this thing about, yeah, there's things that he said that are popular, I think they still don't get that. It's not just about, okay, these policies are popular. And let's check off the list because frankly, Kamala Harris did do some of that. She did have good economic program that she ran a lot of ads about with anti price gouging and child tax credit and these other things. It has to be though part of a story with villains. And that's the part that the Carvilles and the David Brooks and the whoever of the world are uncomfortable with because they rely the people that would be the villains are like the billionaires, the millionaires, the donor class, the corrupt elite, the rigged media. And when you get to that part, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We just want to talk about minimum wage and talk about generally about maybe income inequality, but we don't want to name names about who are the villains here and what systems are the villains here, because that implicates them directly. And that's where the real rub comes in.
- [04:35]
Emily
I can't imagine what it's like for you to watch that on MSNBC now. I mean, sincerely like. And it has to be what it was like for Pat Buchanan to watch Fox News suddenly start talking differently about trade, foreign policy after Donald Trump came along. You were having serious conversations. Sean Hannity is having serious conversations about whether he's a free trade guy or fair trade guy. Actually platforming some of the stuff that Pat Buchanan was called anti Semitic and awful and an extremist for talking about. And then 10 years later, you're having mainstream conversations about some of these ideas on Fox News because of Donald Trump. But this is not impressive at all. People are getting plaudits right now for being willing to say what James Carville just said, but I can't imagine finding that impressive. It would have maybe been impressive or brave ten years ago, but it's way, way too late. I mean, they already have a second Trump administration. The fascist, quote unquote, has been reelected. That's two terms. So well done, guys. This is already an abject failure by your own standards.
- [05:39]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, no, it doesn't feel good to be like, I told you so. No, it does not feel good to be in that position because, again, I'm just sort of like. I also know that even as in their despair at the moment, they may accidentally admit that Bernie had a point. And one thing I've been pointing out is if you look at the groups that Bernie was strongest with, those are the groups Latinos, working class people, bros, Joe Rogan, literally himself, those are the groups that find the Democratic Party increasingly repellent and have been fleeing them. And so it's just, it's unequivocally the case that those are the groups that Bernie Sanders had the greatest traction. And by the way, that coalition was demonized. It was demonized by them. And Bernie himself was demonized as being racist and sexist. And for the left getting all the blame for identity politics, they're the ones that invented identity politics effectively, under the Hillary Clinton campaign to smear Bernie Sanders and by extension, his entire movement. And we're gonna talk to a young Democrat about the conversation around young men. But part of that conversation has to be the way that the young male supporters of Bernie Sanders were treated and smeared as toxic, sexist bros who were only there because they were interested in opposing the first historic female president. And so, yeah, when that's the message that has been routinely coming out of the Democratic Party now for eight years straight, that's gonna have an impact, too. I'm not saying that's everything that's going on, but I also don't think it's something that you should just completely ignore when you're looking at the number of people who did travel along that Bernie to Trump pipeline ultimately.
- [07:13]
Emily
And I think it was such a good point, just lastly, about diagnosing the problem, but not being willing to go fully with the right treatment if we're using that metaphor and that finally they're seeing what has been obvious. I mean, again, it's not impressive for them to come around to this in 2024, but at least being willing to admit it and have that conversation, all right, that's one thing. But if you're not willing to admit that your friends are the villains in the story, then you can't treat the problem because that would require actually undermining their power, their influence, their bank accounts. Like that would require taking really tough pills, and they're not willing to do that.
- [07:54]
Krystal Ball
Easy to say Bernie is right now that Bernie Sanders is 83 years old and is completely.
- [07:59]
Emily
He won't run again.
- [08:00]
Krystal Ball
Irrelevant to any sort of future conversation about power. This was interesting to me. Let's put C2 up on the screen. And I think indicative of probably the way that Democrats are actually going to react to this loss. So among Kamala Harris voters, they asked this question. This was YouGov. Who do you think is more to blame for the outcome of the 2024 election? So 24% say Joe Biden. Makes sense. 6% only say Kamala Harris. And I actually think it is fair to blame Joe Biden more than Kamala Harris, although obviously both shoulder some blame for the decisions that were made here. But the majority say it's just a bad year for Democrats, meaning, like, you know, they'll get them next time. No need for any major changes or adjustments. And if. And you hear people like Jim Clyburn out there being like, everybody just chill out. It's like, by your own lexicon, the country just elected a fascist. And you're like, let's just chill out. No big deal. We'll get them next time. But I think if this is the way the base feels and is being sort of primed to feel by people who say, also, look, incumbents did bad all around the globe, and look at inflation. Actually, we did better than most parties in power around the country. And it's a unique set of circumstances, and Donald Trump's gonna be done after this, blah, blah, blah. We actually came really close. In the battleground states. There's million reasons they can come up with for looking at this and saying, like, we don't really need to adjust. We can keep doing our thing. There always is, and we'll get them next time. And I think that's probably going to be the primary reaction. You'll have the, you know, the signaling from Seth Moulton's of the world of like, oh, we're going to, you Know, whatever issue is polling the most poorly, like let's just throw that issue under the bus and you know, especially ones that don't harm the donor class whatsoever. Like being more oppositional to trans people is not going to hurt any donor base. So that's easy to do. So let's just do that in terms of any sort of like dramatic. We already know because they're reelecting the exact same House leadership they've had. There's no conversation about any sort of like massive purge. And so yeah, I think they're just gonna keep heading in this direction and this direction if the trends and the realignments continue, like they're screwed. Because yeah, right now you might be kinda in the ballgame. But only a third of the country roughly of adults has a college degree. So if you're effectively like only winning college degree holders, you are not a contender to be a majority coalition anymore. Like that if that trend continues, you're going to be a permanent minority with basically no power outside of certain blue areas.
- [10:40]
Emily
I mean it's for a lot of people on the right seeing the numbers among young people of shifts not just in terms of who they voted for via exit polls, but public opinion polling on different issues. Young men. I know we're talking about this later, but the point I'm trying to make here is, is that like that's shocking to people on the right. If you had told people on the right 10 years ago that young people would have shifted that dramatically on different issues, especially young men, it would have been unthinkable. That was literally like a fantasy that anyone would have ever been able to make those shifts in such quick time. And now Gen Z is seeing a boom in trade skills, people not going through a full college education.
- [11:17]
Krystal Ball
So yeah, I think college enrollment has peaked.
- [11:20]
Emily
I agree.
- [11:20]
Krystal Ball
So like if your projection is like, ah, but more and more people keep getting college degrees, I think that's a faulty assumption.
- [11:26]
Emily
Yeah, I agree with that and I think we're seeing pretty clear signs that's the case. So you know, this is a. Republicans I think are poised potentially, I agree with Ezra Klein that they're poised to over interpret their quote unquote mandate and overreach because Kamala Harris is like a terrible candidate and still managed to win nearly half of the country's vote. I mean this is probably going to be a popular vote. That's like a two point difference. So I think it's very possible and even in some of these battleground states that Donald Trump ended up sweeping, it was A really thin margin. So I think it's possible that Republicans overreach and they do over interpret this quote unquote mandate. But even so, the long term trends for Democrats, there are some really worrying signs, just like there are for Republicans. The country's not with them on abortion, country's not with them on tax cuts for the wealthy is not with the donor class of the GOP on. So the social safety net, there's some serious foreign policy differences between that donor class and the average voter as well. So there are real problems for Republicans down the line. But for Democrats, I mean, the long term trends with younger voters, that was never a worry. And now it is.
- [12:31]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, absolutely. I do think some of what was seen this time is not only a shift to the right, I think that's real. But there was also fewer young people who turned out. You know, there was a depression of the sort of like Democratic young base. And you know, Gaza has to be part of that. Has to be part of that. I don't wanna overstate it. I think, you know, it would be easy for me, given my ideology, to say like, this is the reason they lost. I think it is part of the reason they lost. Oh, you know, because how can you really feel like I'm standing for the good and the righteous when you see in your social media feed every day? I mean, I've seen things, horrors that I never imagined and will never be able to get out of my head. And I know I'm not alone. So yeah, that'll depress your base feeling. I don't wanna be complicit in a genocide. I don't wanna be anywhere near this. And so maybe I don't wanna vote for Donald Trump, but I can't pull the lever for this.
- [13:25]
Emily
I mean, it's not surprising, but I feel like the lack of conversation about how much that actually affected the youth vote, young turnout and potentially young people voting for Trump as an antiestablishment. Whether or not people agree with it. I mean, I know you and Sagar Talked about the AOC Q&A that she's been doing on her Instagram, right? Listen, in D.C. people don't have to agree with it and ideologues don't have to agree with it, but there are a lot of normal voters who that issue totally differently, just trying to give a finger to the elites, no matter how they do it. And for some of them, I think the war in Gaza is really a part of that and it's affecting voting patterns and there's Just been a total glossing over of how that probably shifted the election in Donald Trump's favor, too.
- [14:03]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, it is possible. It is possible, given how narrow, like Michigan was in particular, that that could have actually been decisive there. It's possible. Like, I'm not saying one way or another, but I find that theory to be plausible.
- [14:15]
Emily
College towns in Wisconsin and Georg in North Carolina. Absolutely.
- [14:22]
Krystal Ball
All right, let's go ahead and move to a story. We can certainly find some common ground on here, Emily, which is bashing the New York Times. So Sager and I covered. I don't know if you guys talked about this story or not, about the whole Hoogan situation in Amsterdam. So this was portrayed quite hyperbolically by Joe Biden, Barry Rich Torres, all these sorts of people, and the news media as a Jew hunt pogrom against these Israeli soccer fans. There was indeed quite a bit of violence. However, the portrayal of them as just these innocent victims minding their own business, going to attend a soccer game, and being targeted solely for their religion was wildly misleading. In fact, there are quite a number of journalists on the ground there. Very young. We played some of his stuff. He was like 14 years old, who was out recording before there was any sort of retaliatory violence. You know, them going through the streets saying death to Arabs and bragging about the number of children who were massacred in Gaza, vandalizing, assaulting a cab driver, vandalizing a taxi cab, burning Palestinian flags, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so this descends into total melee with violence and a number of Israelis who were, you know, who were beaten in a brutal way. So news media portrayed this, of course, like I said, as completely one sided, just born out of antisemitism, period. End of story. So this was an interesting coda to the whole portrayal of this. So we can put this up on the screen. The New York Times had published a video that they said purported to show Israelis being chased down and beaten. Okay. It turns out it was the exact opposite thing that happened here. So let me read to you the correction that the Times themselves posted about this video. They said an earlier version of this article included a video distributed by Reuters with a script about Israeli fans being attacked. Reuter Assistance issued a correction saying it is unclear who's depicted in the footage. The video's author told the New York Times it shows a group of Maccabee fans chasing a man on the street, a description the Times independently confirmed with other verified footage from the scene. The video has been removed. So keep this up on the screen for a moment. So it turns out they put this video out. They thought that it showed Israeli fans being assaulted. Turns out it shows Israeli fans doing the assaulting. And rather than allowing that to inform their reporting and keeping the video up, because now they've confirmed, okay, actually it shows the opposite of what we were reporting. That changes the picture that we and others have been portraying about what's going on. Instead of doing that, since it now doesn't fit the narrative that they've been peddling, they just take it down. And I think that that is an incredibly revealing little decision that was made here that shows you that they had one way they wanted this story to be portrayed. And when the things that they themselves published did not match up with that story, rather than grappling with that as a news organization filled with serious journalists, they just took it down and hit it all together.
- [17:43]
Emily
The New York Times Israel coverage is such a fascinating glimpse into how elites are wrestling with Israel. And that Ryan makes this point too, about how after 2014 in particular, there was a movement to get Palestinian journalists into mainstream media organizations, and there was a movement to get better coverage, obviously, of Israel and Gaza into mainstream media coverage. And so the institutions themselves have this kind of internal battle between their own staff that is very much not of the old school foreign policy establishment when it comes to Israel, and then members of the staff that are very much like demand of demand that the sort of old school position on Israel is the norm, is the. Yeah, exactly. Is maintained. And so, for example, I'm looking at a New York Times article from, I think it was Monday or Tuesday of this week where they write, tensions had risen a day earlier when Israeli fans vandalized a taxi, burned a Palestinian flag in the city, and chanted incendiary and racist slogans according to the police. Now, I know people who would object to that even being in a story about what happened, when actually I think that context would have been helpful right up front, obviously, because there was this immediate. And again, I get this, by the way, from Jewish people whose grandparents survived the Holocaust. There's a level of sensitivity that is totally understandable that I don't have because I'm not Jewish. My grandparents didn't survive the Holocaust. And so I understand why that sensitivity exists for many, many people. We are still within the lifetimes of people who went through the greatest genocide that the world has ever seen. Greatest in the sense of like the most dramatic, most tragic and awful genocide the world's ever seen. So you understand the sensitivity. But then if you are a news organization, the context is more important than the sensitivity, obviously.
- [19:42]
Krystal Ball
And not only that, but I don't think you do Jewish people any favors either, because now the narrative they're getting in the world is Jews are being hunted just for no reason other than their religion on the streets of a European city.
- [19:56]
Emily
Absolutely.
- [19:57]
Krystal Ball
And, you know, noteworthy in this whole melee is that, you know, Dutch Jews, there's no indication any of them were targeted. Like, there's no indication that there's been an uptick in violence or there's shops act or anything like that.
- [20:11]
Emily
Like, targeted for being Jewish.
- [20:13]
Krystal Ball
Yes, it was you know, purely, like, in the context of this soccer game and these fans chanting, like, you know, these hooligans chanting death to Arabs and bragging about killing children and burning Palestinian flags and running around with steel pipes and being incredibly provocative. I saw a report one was going through up and down a subway car looking for a Palestinian to harass. So, yeah, it's important for everybody that you actually understand what is going on. And to your point, about the internal struggles and the struggle sessions that are happening there right now. The first article that was published about these events went through at least four different headline changes. At least four.
- [20:59]
Emily
That's interesting.
- [21:00]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. Where it was like, I know Ryan. I saw this from Ryan, too, because he was like, hey, if you were involved in this, can you go ahead and hit me up on signal, let me know what was going on here? Because, yeah, it was clearly very tortured. The attempt, like, how do we word this? And is it antisemitism? And where do we lead with that? And do we put in the previous. Like it was. They were. Clearly, there was some sort of an internal war going on, even about how to headline this series of events. Yeah.
- [21:25]
Emily
You know, it actually reminds me, like, even as someone who I have, like, a more libertarian take on the police, but it reminds me of a lot of the coverage of police violence against black Americans. When you public. When you do public polling about how many police killings. This is obviously like five years ago when we were talking about it more and more. But when you do polling about how many unarmed people are killed by police every year, the public vastly overestimates what the number is.
- [21:51]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [21:52]
Emily
Because the media coverage is so, so intense during different parts of the last decade, I would say. And to your point about who this is, like, whether this actually helps to even have that heightened sensitivity, I would say it doesn't because it doesn't create an accurate picture of what actually happened. And I'm sure saying Death to Arabs elicited death to Jews. Like I don't doubt that that happened on the streets of Amsterdam. I' sure that there's legitimately antisemitism and there was probably some of it at play here. But if you were following this on my timeline and somebody who's on the right as it was happening, you would be misinformed about what actually went down that day. And that's, I mean it's not journalism and it's not doing anyone any favors.
- [22:39]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I mean there is a similar dynamic from my left perspective of people think that the crime rates right now are much higher than they are.
- [22:46]
Emily
Yes, I agree.
- [22:47]
Krystal Ball
They think they're like the highest in history. If you go back and look at what was going on on in the 80s and early 90s, y'all, we are nowhere close. And in fact, you know, in a lot of places violent crime has come down. That's not. There was a decided uptick during COVID there's no doubt about those things. But yeah, I mean it's, yeah, there's a misimpression that is created about the level of crime that's occurring right now. And also people, people are also very unaware of the fact that the number of migrants crossing the border has also in recent months come down quite significantly from its peak as well. So in any case, a lot of, a lot of inaccurate pictures created of our, of our world and our country here.
- [23:25]
Emily
Yes. And the media is to blame.
- [23:28]
Krystal Ball
Yes.
- [23:29]
Emily
So something we can all agree on.
- [23:30]
Krystal Ball
Indeed. So the Biden administration had a kind of strange duality to economic policy that has confounded quite a number of analysts. Now on the one hand, they completely failed to deliver for working people in the near term. After the American rescue plan, the COVID social safety net was systematically dismantled. The $15 minimum wage hike completely scuttled and the build back better agenda buried, never to be heard from again. As reported by Lover News, the number of Americans saying it was difficult to pay typical expenses skyrocketed. Inflation of course would eventually ease, but prices, they would not come back down. And the child tax credit debt, forbearance, rent, forbearance, stimmies and super dole, none of that was going to come back. On the other hand, the Biden admins approach to labor antitrust and crypto was actually really great. Genuinely provoked the ire of the billionaire class. Literally dozens of hate screeds against FTC chair Lina Khan were published in the Wall Street Journal alone. The people who had seen a chill descend on their deal flow and who now had to grapple with workers threatening union drives were 100% read in on exactly what the Biden administration was doing and to whom. And they were pissed. Just see how even Democratic aligned billionaires like Reid Hoffman and Mark Cuban waged a war of their on their own nominee to pressure her into buckling on the best parts of the Biden administration's economic policy. This Biden policy was actually really excellent best of my lifetime, but it did little to deliver significant gains for regular people in the short term. So you kind of had a worst of all world. He had a pissed off billionaire class and a pissed off electorate. Perhaps if the President was able or willing to explain his attacks on these forces, the landscape could have been somewhat different. But if a billionaire cries over his lost merger in the woods and no one hears it, does it really make a sound? Not as far as the mass voting public is concerned. But in fact, quite a few of those billionaires did speak loudly with their checkbooks because no president in history has had more unified mega donor support than Donald J. Trump. Now that might seem unlikely given that Kamala raised so much more money than Trump did, but these vast resources were largely pulled from the affluent, resistant, liberal donor base. The Financial Times compiled the numbers and you can take a look. It's quite clear both candidates, of course, enjoyed generous support from wealthy donors, but Trump's elite donor haul vastly dwarfed that of Harris and her allied PACs. So in total, Kamala raised about $127 million, or about 6% of her total funding from America's billionaires. Trump, on the other hand, vacuumed up a whopping $568 million, or about a third of his total funding from that billionaire class. This level of disparity between billionaire giving is actually pretty unique in this election, and reflected a clear verdict on how the wealthiest people in the world viewed this contest through the lens of their own class interests. As Maureen Tkachik writes for the American Prospect, of the top 10 mega donors, only the bottom two gave to Democrats. Trump's haul from his own top 10 donors, none of whom boast the surname Coke or Teal by the way, amounted to about $945 million. Harris is top down at 254 million. Now, Harris ended up, she pointed out, raising more money thanks to resistance giving, but Trump got to spend much less time raising it. And with Musk, he also had the algorithms on his side. Maureen's piece posits an interesting and I think correct theory that I hadn't considered before, which is that but much of the billionaire raging over Gaza and campus antisemitism was really a proxy war over the Biden policies that hurt their bottom lines. After October 7, billionaires congregated in group chats to organize cancellation campaigns, defund insufficiently pro Israel news outlets, and even raise money to fund a squad of goons to assist the NYPD in cracking down on college protesters. Maureen details the various, very specific grievances that these same billionaires had with the Biden Harris administration. When it came to their bottom line, she writes, all of the whales had self serving grievances with the Biden White House. Elon Musk has been fuming at Biden ever since the National Labor Relations Board forced him in 2021 to delete a 2018 tweet threatening to rescind the stock options of Tesla workers who voted to unionize Harvard Boycott and Do Not Hire list coordinator Bill Ackman is likely nursing a grudge over some deleted tweets posted by a top SEC official about his dubious spac. So apparently Elon was pissy over the National Labor Relations Board checking his union busting. Ackman had a $2 billion stake in Google, which was successfully sued by the Biden doj. The billionaire who launched a donations boycott against Upenn happens to be CEO of the private equity firm that owns a grocery store whose merger Biden was blocking, and also owns a for profit diploma mill that the Biden Department of Education was going after. A bunch of these guys, of course, have big crypto investments that were in danger thanks to SEC Chair Gary Gensler actually regulating them now. They used Israel to launder their class interests, positioning themselves as the defenders of the average Joe against the militant college lefty while simultaneously cloaking themselves in the language of microaggressions and safe spaces. An incredible jiu jitsu move, I guess, and a successful one because I bet if you asked 100Americans which candidate raised more from billionaires, 99 of them would pick Kamala. The reality, however, is the polar opposite, and that's to say nothing of the billionaires who simply quietly dropped their previous opposition to Trump. Jeff Bezos was the most prominent example, with his decision to block his newspaper, the Washington Post, from making an endorsement in the race. Warren Buffett stayed on this election entirely. Google's Sundar Pichai called Trump to make nice, as did Apple's Tim Cook and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Even Kamala's big billionaire surrogate Mark Cuban, he didn't actually give her any money for her campaign and he has now scrubbed his Twitter account of all previous pro Kamala tweets. Kind of incredible. Trump himself had become a comfortable choice for many elites after dropping his 2016 rhetorical opposition to billionaire donors and commitment to drain the swamp. It's worth recalling just how vitriolic he was back then towards the Republican Party donor class. You remember this quiet.
- [29:37]
James Carville
A lot of times, a lot of times that's all of his donors and special interests out there. So that's what it is. That's what. And by the way, let me just tell you, we needed tickets. You can't get them. You know who has the tickets for the. I'm talking about to the television audience. Donors, special interest, the people that are putting up the money. That's who it is. The RNC told us we have all donors in the audience and the reason they're not loving me, the reason they're not, excuse me, the reason they're not loving is I don't want their money. I'm going to do the right thing for the American public. I don't want their money, I don't need their money. And I'm the only one up here that can say that.
- [30:23]
Krystal Ball
A recently resurfaced tweet has Trump castigating Marco Rubio for being Sheldon Adelson's perfect little puppet. Kind of incredible given that Trump himself was this time around beneficiary of an eye popping $100 million from Sheldon's widow Miriam, who already seems to have received for it a bespoke Israel first administration, complete with end times evangelicals running the Pentagon and serving as ambassador to that nation. But wasn't just Miriam Trump courted. He flipped his position on crypto, blatantly promised a roomful of billionaires he will cut their taxes, told another room of oil and gas executives that he would fulfill their wildest deregulatory dreams. If 2016 was drain the swamp, 2024 was suck off the swamp. So outside of Miriam, what are the rest of the billionaires getting for their dollars? The general contours are crypto regulation over tax cuts for the rich. Lina Khan and aggressive antitrust enforcement over general deregulation. Pro labor National Labor Relations Board gutted. I have no doubt specific donors will reap their version of bespoke government rewards in the same way that Miriam was able to get her Israel first administration. Much of that we probably won't even see from our vantage point. Elon Musk may of course be the biggest winner, and he is already clearly reaping the rewards. One Source says he's been running around with Trump acting like he's co president. As we discussed earlier, Elon's officially been awarded his custom whole of government gig to crush any sort of legal and regulatory hurdles that his business interests are facing and keep those massive taxpayer subsidies coming. Don't forget Musk's companies are some of the largest recipients of government contracts, period. SpaceX alone received $15.4 billion from the government over the past decade. Your tax dollars have helped to make him the richest man on earth. And so it is reasonable to expect that our government would provide some oversight of those expenditures. And in fact, Musk's companies are increasingly entangled in a web of regulatory disputes and investigations over things like workplace safety violations, union busting, environmental abuses, and more. Now look, some of these investigations might have merit, some might not. But does anyone think that under a Trump administration, he will face scrutiny over literally anything? Even if Doge is really just a make work project for Elon and Vivek, these benefits are real and they are gigantic. Our government being run to serve the interests of the richest man on the planet, it is a deeply disturbing outcome. Even if you love Elon, just imagine it was Bill Gates, imagine it was George Shores. Then tell me how you would feel about one billionaire, any billionaire, having this level of immunity and control. Now, Musk is also apparently meeting with Trump every day to help oversee government staffing, even to speak with foreign leaders. No unelected billionaire should have this kind of control, period. So do Democrats deliver for the working class on a material basis in the here and now? No. Did they aggravate enough billionaires for them to throw hundreds of millions of dollars to get lina Khan and company off their backs? Absolutely. Now, in 2016, the Capitol class, they didn't know what to make of Trump and whether he might cause trouble for them, their bottom line. But ultimately, in the end, he delivered for them. His cabinet was the wealthiest in history, stocked with CEOs, billionaires and wall street executives. His primary accomplishment was a tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. He stocked his National Labor Relations Board with union busters who made sure that stand a shot at increasing their labor power. So this time around, there was little concern, plenty of enthusiasm actually, about getting their man back in the White House. They are fully confident that any chaos which is unleashed will leave them unscathed. And that is one of truly the most impressive accomplishments.
- [33:58]
Sagar Enjeti
And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today@breakingpoints.com.
- [34:06]
Krystal Ball
So of course, there's been a big conversation about the bros, the young Gen Z men, shifting right and backing Donald Trump and some also just staying home. So to try to understand more of what may be going on there, we're lucky to be joined this morning by Sanjay Moralithar, and he is the vice president of the College Democrats, hoping to give some advice to his Democratic brothers and sisters. Great to see you, Sanjay. Welcome.
- [34:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, thank you so much for having me.
- [34:31]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, it's our pleasure. So let's go ahead and just put the numbers up on the screen and get your reaction to some of the shifts that we saw. So young women in 2024, 58% voted for Kamala Harris. That was a decline from 2020 when 65% voted for Joe Biden. With young men, you saw an even steeper decline. You see only 42% of young men voting for Kamala Harris, meaning that Trump won 56%. And that is a total flip from back in 2020 when Joe Biden won 56% of this population. We're talking about men under the age of 29. So what do you see in these numbers? What do you think is going on here?
- [35:11]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, I think these are largely unsurprising, to put it simply. I think that as Democrats, we failed to directly make the case to young men. And the right has very much successfully exploited, I guess, the struggles of young men. And I guess to truly understand this, we have to take a step back and kind of largely contextualize Gen Z men and just Gen Z as a whole. You know, Gen Z. We're a generation in crisis. 42% of us struggle with depression or anxiety. 73% of us have indicated that we feel alone sometimes or always in our most formative years. And this mental health epidemic is further exacerbated within, you know, the male populace because it just simply isn't socially acceptable for us to go out and talk to our buddies about our feelings. You know, we tend to kind of bottle it up, quote, unquote, man up. And the result of this is terrible. You know, and I think the right has kind of very much successfully tapped into, you know, these feelings of these general, like, mal sentiments and utilized that in a way that's resulted in their electoral victory.
- [36:14]
Emily
And why do you think, at least so far it looks like Kamala Harris failed to inspire a big turnout among voters under the age of 29. Why do you even compare it with Joe Biden, who, by the way, I mean, it's not just Biden's age. Obviously, Bernie Sanders was able to mobilize a pretty significant, significant chunk of the youth vote. But why do you think the Harris campaign, and I'm curious what you make of the turnout question in general, but why do you think the Harris campaign struggled to get young people even to come out and vote for her?
- [36:43]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, I think, I mean, it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room of Gaza. You know, college Democrats haven't been afraid to take a stand and, you know, actually go up against the Biden administration on this consequential issue. I think there's this common misconception that a lot of these people who are protesting are like, you know, some type of fringe left wing radical. But a lot of them are actually college Democrats who are actually civically engaged and care about elections as a whole. And if you're not listening to young people across the country who are literally getting beaten, literally getting arrested and pepper sprayed for standing up for global justice, it shouldn't be surprising that they didn't turn out in the numbers that we expected. So I think that's the biggest one. But I also think young people in general, we just want to know whether or not the people at the top care about our futures. Right? We're not this kind of high up, elite niche group that cares about culture war issues. We want to know, are we going to be able to afford a house? Are we going to be able to pay for our groceries? Are we going to be able to pay off our student loans? And while Democrats, we have the policies that solve each of these issues, we fail to connect what you guys referred to in some of your earlier segments as the laundry list of Democratic policies to our daily lives. And I think failing to make that connection, coupled with the fact that the concerns of young people in Gaza were largely ignored, would be the two most predominant reasons why across the board we saw it.
- [38:07]
Krystal Ball
I've been thinking, Sanjay, too, about how it's almost like an instinct or it's like the typical protocol within the Democratic Party to sort of bash their young base post Obama 2008. And even Obama after 2008 kind of made a point of punching left and, you know, like hippie punching, which often ends up being the young, idealistic activists who bear the brunt of that. But, you know, it's clear for me in particular with the response to the Bernie Sanders movement, which was largely a youth movement, and that was eight years ago. So some of the people who were big Bernie Sanders supporters aren't under that age of 30 anymore. But it's indicative of the way that the Democratic Party tends to treat its young activists base, its young idealistic base. And you see the same instinct with regard to the treatment of campus protesters where you have Joe Biden, Kamala Harris going out of their way to condemn them, to smear them all as blanket antisemites. And so I don't think it should be surprising then, when, if this is the treatment, year after year after year, people start feeling like, even if they're not gonna vote for Donald Trump, why am I gonna show up and vote for these people who don't even really seem like they want me or my voice in their coalition?
- [39:22]
Sagar Enjeti
Exactly. It definitely makes our job tough as college Democrats. I remember all the way back in May, Ryan Graham actually covered this when we put out a statement in regards to this issue, I told the New York Times that we have all the manpower, all the organizing capacity, but if we're given a broken script that doesn't actually align with the best interests of college students, it's very tough for us to excite these type of voters. That's why we spoke out as early as we did, because to us, it would be a disservice to the party party if we didn't tell them that, hey, we know that you need youth to win. And looking at what we're seeing on the ground where our own members of our organization are getting beaten and arrested, that's not going to do well for turnout. And I deeply do hope that in future election cycles, they learn from this. And I guess you don't need to agree with campus protesters and everything, but at the very least, support something as simple as an arms embargo. And I think what's really telling are the numbers in Dearborn, Michigan, for example, where Rashida Tlaib won 60% of the vote, but Harris lost to Trump. And I think that should be proof that we're not losing because we're failing to outcompete the right as shifting rightward. We're losing because we're failing to actually tap into issues that matter to both young people, but just Americans across the board.
- [40:38]
Emily
When we get back to that question of the vibes, we can put the next element up on the screen. This is E2. Some responses to the New York Times questions about These are all Gen Z voters, by the way, who went for Donald Trump. And Pierce, 26, from North Carolina says, I voted for Donald Trump. I decided after Kamala went on call her daddy. Lillian, 27, of Virginia said, I voted for Trump and made that decision the same day. The mainstream media was having a meltdown after the Madison Square Garden rally. So one of the things I just wanna put to you, Sanjay, is LOL.
- [41:12]
Krystal Ball
At the guy who wrote in. Mike Bloomberg.
- [41:14]
Emily
Mike Bloomberg, yeah. That's a weird one. He's really against the gulp. That was the factor for him.
- [41:21]
Krystal Ball
He wanted an overt, like oligarch and then not like a subtle one, just an overt one in the White House.
- [41:26]
Emily
Yeah, But a little bit of a throwback too. But the question, it seems to me this is very unusual for the right, but it seems to me like there's something very fashionable among people who listen to what they see as alternative kind of dissident podcasts, people like Joe Rogan, people like Theo Vaughn. It almost became fashionable to vote for the Republican candidate because it's Donald Trump. And now for Republicans, that seems to me be a problem because it won't translate after Donald Trump to other Republican candidates, like a J.D. vance. People won't see it in quite the same way. But could you speak to a little bit maybe what you saw among college students, college Republicans and people even recently out of college when it came to that question of was there something actually very exciting to that about voting for Donald Trump? It's so unusual, again, just to see that for the Republican candidate among young people. But I get the sense that actually is what happened.
- [42:19]
Sagar Enjeti
No, Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly unusual to me. You know, as a Gen Z man on the left, I was shocked when NBC exit polling showed Trump, you know, performing better among young men than our candidate. I think the reason for this. I want to kind of come back to my first point about how, I think, you know, Donald Trump and his team have successfully exploited the loneliness epidemic that young men are facing. So there's a lot of different rabbit holes you can fall into kind of when you're trying to in this search for meaning. And I kind of narrowed it down to three big ones. The first is kind of the whole self help youtuber or self help influencer whose whole business model is predicated on you not getting self help. Someone like Andrew Tate who pushed out Hustlers University as this kind of way to escape the matrix. And it ended up just being a pyramid scheme where you're incentivized to share it with more people and then he gets a cut of the revenue. I think the second group is kind of these largely apolitical but slightly light reading, rightward leaning, kind of like conservative influencers, the likes of like Aden Ross, Logan Paul. And I think you can throw in you know, just a general conservative influences who are also kind of entertainers. So likes of like Charlie Kirk, Steven Crowder and then the last group kind of being the one who. Those who kind of defy the system as a whole. Right. I think your best example is Joe Rogan who, you know, he can't be canceled because his network is bigger than anyone who would try to cancel him. Like CNN, they've got 20, literally like 1 28th of the viewership that he does.
- [43:45]
Emily
Even Neil Young and Joni, like Joni Mitchell couldn't cancel him when they got mad at Spotify for.
- [43:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh no. Yeah, you literally can. And I think honestly, I mean sidetracked, but I think us Democrats need to accept that and actually embrace his viewership. But, but I think Donald Trump kind of taps into all three of these different, I guess, rabbit holes in such a perfect manner. I would argue he's like the self help influencer whose whole business model is predicated on you not getting self help. We saw it with Trump University, which was, I know, starkly similar to all these niche pyramid schemes that we've seen with the likes of Andrew Tate. He's obviously also kind of an entertainer. We've seen with Apprentice and his whole style is just entertaining and he's defied the system. There is no political precedent for Donald Trump and I think him kind of effectively tapping into these three different realms is what's resulted in him being such a successful candidate.
- [44:37]
Krystal Ball
That's such an insightful, that's so insightful about Trump University. I don't really. And the Andrew Tate model being similar and Trump University being like old school version of that is so insightful.
- [44:47]
Emily
Those categories are helpful too.
- [44:49]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, go ahead, Sanjay, you can finish your point.
- [44:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh no. Yeah, but I think the point that I'm getting at is like they're successful in this regard and then us as Democrats, the best way that we can combat this is to kind of combat traditional masculinity with modern masculinity. But I think until we do that, we're going to continue seeing young men kind of shift rightward.
- [45:09]
Krystal Ball
I've been trying to figure out Hasan Piker talks about how all of the. It's kind of similar to what you're saying, but how all of these spaces for men have just become right wing. And so if you wanna get fit, the fitness influencers are right wing. If you wanna like the self help, like it's Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate or whatever that's become right wing. If you're a gamer, that pipeline is Also right wing. If you're just into weird history and aliens and shit, it's like Joe Rogan, and that's also right wing. So is that. I'm just trying to figure out the chicken and the egg scenario here. Like, did that. I don't know whether that was a response to where young men are or whether young men were influenced by the fact that all those spaces trended to the right. You know what I'm getting at? Like, which caused which.
- [46:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, I think that this is largely owed to the fact that us Democrats are always kind of on our high horse and we're not willing to go into spaces that are somewhat antagonistic to us. And that's kind of what's allowed the right to kind of have a monopoly on the so called manosphere. So my advice to Democrats would be to do two things. One, to enter in these spaces, get off your high horse, and go on Joe Rogan. I remember I was sitting in class, scrolling through ground news, and then when I saw Donald Trump going on Joe Rogan, I was like, oh, crap, this is not good. He's going to get like a massive viewership base. And that's. Kara's going to get none of this. And it's like. So I think the first thing is, you know, we got to go into these spheres. And I think not just Joe Rogan, but I think they would break the Internet if, say, like Kamala Harris or Tim Walls, for example, did a live stream with, like, Aiden Ross or Logan Paul, you know, because these are largely apolitical guys who don't really know much. But I think if you go in there and make your case, they'll hear you out. The second thing that I would advise those who are more powerful than me in the party would be to kind of display a strong narrative that actually resonates with young men. And I think the narrative that I would push is a strong man stands up for himself and a stronger man stands up for others. And what I mean by that is a strong man stands up for himself by eating healthy, taking care of his body, going to the gym, but also taking care of his mind, you know, going to therapy and being open with his emotions. You know, it isn't weak to take the time to grow as a person. It's actually strong to go against the social norm of kind of having to man up and suffocating your emotions, but also stand up for others in the sense of championing LGBTQ rights, championing a woman's right to choose for the women that are important in your lives, you know, championing a greater minimum wage so those who are less fortunate can know, be able to put food on the table but also, you know, being able to support your family by or your loved ones or whoever by going out there and being successful career wise. And I think we've got to, you know, make this case of kind of the modern man but also say that, you know, we're not, we don't just believe this, we're going to help you get there.
- [48:04]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, we have to be not boring. Like that's the thing is like Joe Rogan didn't sat down to like I'm going to win Dr. Name. It was just like, you know, he's entertaining and people want to listen to it. And if you have some like Democrats can be like you said, kind of too high minded and stuffy where it's like this is not entertaining, you know.
- [48:22]
Emily
And that's my last question. Actually. Sanjay is basically like that message. I think it makes sense. But are there ways that Democrats have to change their making of the message? I remember Nina Turner during the DNC saying that the Democratic Party feels too feminine for black men, that it feels like it's been totally feminized. And James Carville has said something similar that that for men it's almost like it would be unmanly for them to vote for Democrats. Just the way that the party messages on some of these issues, it sort of, it feels like it's undercutting masculinity. So how do Democrats make all of those cases about what it means to be a strong man or for example, even on positions I would disagree with on whether it's, you could take any issue, immigration, anything like that. How do you make that message not feel whether or not we agree it's feminine or feminized right now? How do you make it so it doesn't hit the average male voter as feminized?
- [49:23]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, I mean I think it comes down to the narrative that I was mentioning just about Strongman being someone who stands up for others. I think for standing for a more just immigration system shouldn't be seen as feminine. I think if anything it is incredibly masculine to stand up for the best interest of marginalized groups. And honestly I think it's just a slight messaging issue. I think largely we're right on a lot of these issues across the board. But I think once Democrats are largely willing to go into these manosphere spheres and directly speak to the concerns of young men, they'll be fine. It's tough for me to Talk about the feminization of the party. Because I feel like as a guy who considers himself a feminist, I don't want, you know, tap in too deep and kind of talk about something that I don't know if I have the credentials for. But I think just at the very least, as long as we go into these spaces and directly make the case about, you know, kind of connecting these policies in a way that kind of helps us young men kind of go out and live kind of like the provider esque lives that we hope to, I think will be successful.
- [50:26]
Krystal Ball
Well, I think something like, I think there's models. I mean, Bernie is the obvious model. No one felt like Bernie's campaign was like too femme. In fact, it was the opposite. It was smeared as being way too bro y. And that was like, that was used to tag all his supporters like, you're toxic and you hate women, blah, blah, blah.
- [50:43]
Emily
And he went on Lex Friedman.
- [50:45]
Krystal Ball
That's right, he did go on Lex Friedman. He went on with Joe Rogan. He got Joe Rogan's sort of endorsement. And that was very controversial. But I mean, I would also say Hasan piker. You know, I mean, Hasan is very lefty and no one would code him as being like too femme. And I would put my husband, Kyle Kalinske in that bucket too. And I think part of the problem is that Democrats, while Republicans are happy to go in any of these spaces, you know, many of these spaces Democrats don't like, not even on our own. Like, very few go on with Hasan. He's gigantic. Right. The only Democrat who basically will come on this show is Ro Khanna, which kudos to him. But like, there should be more, you know, and we're trying, you know, like even now after this whole reckoning about new media, reach out to Senator Chris Murphy's office. Crickets, really. Crickets. Yeah. And so, you know, it's not just they won't go on the like right wing coded spaces, they won't even go in the left wing coded spaces. What do you expect? And a lot like, you know, the audience here is disproportionately male. All the YouTube audiences are, whether they're on the left or the right. Kyle's audience is disproportionately male. Tyt like all the these spaces are disproportionately male. And they won't even go on the people who are more ideologically aligned with them because they know they won't just get a shoulder massage the way they will from an MSNBC or a cnn.
- [52:10]
Sagar Enjeti
No Yeah, I think you're spot on with that. I think that when you look at the future of the party, I look at Ro Khanna, I think he's one of our advisors of College Democrats of America. And the fact that he's willing to go on Breaking points or just new media in general is testament to what the future of the party is. And I think at this point, it's not a choice anymore. We saw what happened when we didn't, and now we're going to have no choice but to let go of these easily scripted conversations and actually go and talk about what we really think. I'm not the biggest fan of Joe Rogan's antics as a whole, but I do appreciate the medium. I think the medium of a three hour unscripted conversation is just good for a democracy in general. I would strongly hope that those at the top of the DNC embrace that sentiment and start pushing our candidates to be more authentic and be able to survive through our long conversations.
- [52:59]
Krystal Ball
Sanjay, really insightful thoughts and comments from you this morning. We're really grateful for your time. It's nice to meet you.
- [53:06]
Sagar Enjeti
Nice to meet you as well. Thank you so much.
- [53:07]
Krystal Ball
Our pleasure. Sager did text Emily to weigh in on the Matt Gaetz pick. Of course he said he won it to be registered that his biggest complaint about Matt Gaetz is that he is pro weed.
- [53:18]
Emily
So that sounds right. That sounds right to me.
- [53:21]
Krystal Ball
We should have just anticipated that, taken and included it in the show. But anyway wanted to get that in here at the end.
- [53:26]
Emily
Also, more inside baseball. Krystal fully took her microphone off before.
- [53:30]
Krystal Ball
We moved close, wires hanging out, ready to get out of here.
- [53:36]
Emily
You know, Sunjay was great though. That was his. Super interesting. I liked his three buckets of influence.
- [53:41]
Krystal Ball
Same. Yeah, he really had thought like he had organized thoughts about this which were helpful. So it's always good to see someone from within the party apparatus who, you know, the College Democrats are kind of a pipeline to bigger like party influence, et cetera. So I think we'll be seeing more of him.
- [53:59]
Emily
And, you know, we should also say his friend was. After we wrapped the interview, he showed us, he moved his camera. His friend was on the couch. So shout out to both of them because they're both big fans of the show and have been watching Ewan Sager all the way back to rising. So shout out to them. It's always so fun when we have like, it's very flattering young Democrats or like young even people on the right. Ryan went to a gathering of young conservatives recently and everyone liked him. Yeah, so he went with Sagar, actually.
- [54:26]
Krystal Ball
Oh, that's right. That was on election night.
- [54:28]
Emily
Yes.
- [54:28]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is crazy to me because I was like so exhausted, but then I couldn't sleep, so I should have just done something like that.
- [54:36]
Emily
You may have gotten a different reception, Crystal, among the right wing bros. They're like, oh, this Ryan guy, he looks like. He looks like I got a beer with him.
- [54:47]
Krystal Ball
He seems okay, this one. Don't know about her.
- [54:50]
Emily
A little sus.
- [54:50]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, fair. Fair enough. Well, anyway, all right, guys, enjoy the weekend. Sagar will be back here for part of next week and then we will have a lot more Emily and a lot more of the ladies show, so. Looking forward to that.
- [55:04]
Emily
That's right. It'll be a blast.
- [55:05]
Krystal Ball
All right, guys, see you soon.