← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
11/26/25: Job Loss Surge, Leaked Witkoff Putin Call, Epstein Dershowitz Conspired Against Mearsheimer, Tucker Flips On GOP, Venezuela War Push
01:12:05
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Krystal Ball
Hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.
- [01:39]
Saagar Enjeti
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
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Krystal Ball
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
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So if that is something that's important.
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Saagar Enjeti
To you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com Become.
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Krystal Ball
A member today and you'll get access.
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Saagar Enjeti
To our full shows unedited ad, free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
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Krystal Ball
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning everyone and welcome to Breaking Points. Thanks so much for joining us on this pre holiday episode Ryan. Actually, you know it's the day before Thanksgiving, but what else is Ryan Grimm doing other than breaking news? So he has a news story getting into additional Epstein emails that Dropsite has obtained where we learn about Epstein doing a little behind the scenes work in the case of John Mearsheimer. Ryan, you're gonna break that story down for us.
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Ryan Grim
And of course, fan of the show and friend of the show, Alan Dershowitz is involved who if you haven't seen Dropsite, also had posted this clip of Bari Weiss saying that her method of kind of controlling the media going forward is she. She wants to cancel everybody outside of the center left and the center right. She said there will be no Hassan pikers, no Tucker Carlson's. And as a model for how she would like to see discourse go on between the 40 yard lines, she said, which I don't understand. Cause like you can actually. So there's no red zone activity in.
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Krystal Ball
Tucker scoring the touchdowns.
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Ryan Grim
That part, like, I think the analogy kind of fell apart. But this is what she said within the 40 yard lines is those are the only player. She wouldn't let the players go beyond the 40 yard lines. But the players she cited were a debate between Dana Loesch, former NRA spokesperson or maybe still current, and Alan Dershowitz and Glenn Greenwald went and found that debate, which they actually did host on CBS and it had like 850 views over like 24 or 48 hours. So yeah, Alan Dershowitz turns up in this story working directly in, in one week, he's working with Jeffrey Epstein to push back against Stephen Walt and Mearsheimer's paper called Israel Lobby. Major kind of watershed moment in 2006. And they're working to push back against allegations of sexual abuse leveled by a 14 year old at Epstein. And they're talking about how they've worked with a private investigator to like uncover all sorts of, they say sort of details about this girl to undermine her credibility.
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Krystal Ball
So it was a really busy day in palm beach in 2006.
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Ryan Grim
Yes, busy, busy day for that crew.
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Krystal Ball
So Ryan's gonna break that story down.
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Ryan Grim
So break that down.
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Krystal Ball
Stay tuned.
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Ryan Grim
We're, we're here at home because you know, you know, it's the holidays. Let the, let the crew take it easy, start hitting the road. You know, hope everybody's traveling safely if they have to travel. I'll be here in D.C. we're hosting. What about you?
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Krystal Ball
We'll be in D.C. for Thanksgiving, then heading to Wisconsin the next day. But you guys are hosting. Wow, that'll be quite a lot.
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Ryan Grim
Yes, we'll be like good Americans will be deep frying a turkey in our driveway. Which reminds me, and I think I speak for you too, here. We're so grateful for the audience here and for the people who continue to watch this show and allow it. Without the audience, the crazy stuff we said, we say would not have to be taken seriously in our discourse or the people we bring on here. And the news that we break could just be ignored. That is the preference by power centers that they just are able to ignore the stuff they don't want to hear. But when there are millions of people listening to it, they just have, they just have no choice but to grapple with it. And so that's a thank you. And if you're not already a subscriber, like, doing that helps make this show possible. Like this is. It's not funded by corporate advertising, by philanthropy. Anything else. This is a viewer supported program, which is, which is a really beautiful thing.
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Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's so true. I saw somebody in my Twitter mentions the other day saying Breaking Points is, it's well known that it's funded by Qatar. If you actually watch the show, that's obviously hilarious because maybe we have some people who watch us in Qatar, but the only way it would be funded by Qatar is if a subscriber individually. That's right, was, was subscribed over at.
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Ryan Grim
Breaking points for $99 a year. What, what is, what is it now? $800 a year. You, if you're the Emir of Qatar or if you're just a very wealthy citizen of Qatar, the same price for you.
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Krystal Ball
There you go. But yes, I just want to underline what Ryan said. We are so grateful. Grateful, grateful. And especially because, you know, we're going to be covering the jobs numbers in just one moment. It's tough times and could be tough times ahead. So that makes us extra grateful. We do have new ADP data, which is what we're relying on now on jobs to get to. And more and more updates on the Ukraine peace plan. A interesting rant from Tucker Carlson on the Sean Ryan Show. So we are going to get to all of that in just one moment. Let's start with those ADP numbers. You just saw them up on the screen. And Ryan, this is looking bleak. So the headline, private payroll, payroll losses accelerated in the past four weeks, according to ADP. And they're saying private companies lost an average of 13,500 jobs a week according to ADP data, over the past four weeks. What's your reaction?
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Ryan Grim
Yeah, and that's, that's up from an average of 2,500 job losses per week. So those are not the, those are not the Kinds of changes you like to see with a quintupling of, of job losses. It's not, it's not Armageddon, you know, it's not what we saw in, you know, 2007, 2008, where you're losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month plus. But it's not going in the right direction. And we don't know more broadly what this, what the circumstances are in the economy. Because BLS was shut down. One, one employee at the BLS was deemed to be essential or excepted from getting shut down. As you can imagine, one person is not enough to collect data on the economy from around the country. In fact, they probably need 10 times as many people as they have to collect genuinely accurate or as accurate data as possible. So we're relying on ADP and other private, private data collectors or, you know, private companies that work in employment and then, you know, spit out data as a result. But all of this is indicating that at least we're going to get a, we're likely to get in December a rate cut from the Federal Reserve, which is finally pushing down somewhat on mortgage rates. I think they're down to roughly 6%. They haven't cracked underneath 6%, but think at under 6%, that's a little bit more bearable for people. What was your reaction to this?
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Krystal Ball
I mean, not to sound. I actually think I might be trusting ADP's numbers. Governments, we're expecting more government numbers in December, December. But ADP should have a pretty good pulse of what's happening across the sector or across sectors. And so I think this probably matches people's experience. We can put the next element up on the screen. CNBC also reporting consumer confidence is hitting its lowest point since April as job worries grow. April, of course, was post Liberation Day. So they're reporting now consumers soured on the current economy and their prospects for the future, with worries growing over the ability to find a job, according to a Conference Board survey released Tuesday. So if we combine that with the prior CNBC report from yesterday about ADP's jobs numbers, and you combine it with consumers saying they're increasingly worried over the ability to find a job, it sounds like that's a pretty decent picture, sadly, of what's happening across the country right now. Ryan?
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Ryan Grim
Yeah, and what's so disturbing about this survey here is that they are, the people are saying that they expect six months from now that we're really going to be circling the drain. They have a higher impression of the current situation than they do of the future. 1 and you know that affect the reason that they survey consumers on this is because that obviously then has a self fulfilling effect where if you are thinking about some type of significant purchase you're going to then hold off on that. And then when you are not making those significant purchases then that has the knock on effects throughout the economy. Prices and inflation according to this survey still remain even though job loss and the difficulty of finding a job is growing in the kind of anxiety index prices, inflation are still number one. Tariffs and trade are mixed in there along with what they describe as politics and, and the, and the federal government shutdown. So people are like nervous about the stability of the economy. Like they're seeing the tariffs up, down. Do we have a deal? We don't have a deal. The court strikes it down. Well we're going to appeal it now. The Supreme Court's going to hear it. Supreme Court didn't seem to like tariffs. What, what's going to happen if they do that? Plus I think by politics I think people mean like this is just a weird time like this, this is what is going on. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene is just resigning out of nowhere. Like I think it just kind of, you know, this is a confidence survey. Our system is not inspiring confidence right now.
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Krystal Ball
Yes, that, that much is clear. And I wanted to go back and, and look at this. I mean Oren Cass was pointing out that consumer, the, the CPI, the consumer price index increased 1.5% over the past six months which is since that's actually the same increase during the six months prior. There's that evidence of course that 20% of tariff costs are what's being passed to consumers lower than some people expected. So at the same time that's a little, that's the anti doomer tariff pitch right now. At the same time this lingering uncertainty, it feels Ryan, like that hasn't quite. What's the right word? Manifested. That hasn't quite. The lingering uncertainty hasn't quite climax I guess in the economy and that you know we talk about the AI bubble, the uncertainty. Maybe it wouldn't be such like a bubble pop, but it could be something that's more, more gradual because you're going to see companies amidst all of this to the point Ryan was just making about things feeling unsettled, betting either fully in the United States like Sharpie, which was an incredible story the Wall Street Journal had about Sharpie to Tennessee and doing almost everything in Tennessee or you're just going to say screw it, we are. We're not even dealing with this at all.
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Ryan Grim
Yeah. And I feel like that that sense of paralysis comes from, comes primarily from people's assessment around the, the AI economy. Because I think people, people know that, like, people know that we're in a bubble. Like, we're in a, we're in a pre pop era. And the last bubble was close enough that enough people, you know, remember having lived through it. And then the tech, you know, the tech bubble for anybody, you know, Gen X or even millennial or up, has, you know, we understand that this is a bubble economy. We know what this looks like. We can see the signs. But then the fear comes from this kind of, you know, doomed if you do, doomed if you don't. Because if the bubble doesn't pop and AI does keep going, they keep talking about how that's going to take everybody's job. And people are seeing at work, like, right, that went, not necessarily that they're buying a robot and firing a worker, but when people are leaving, they're just not being replaced at the same pace. And people, if you're watching this, like you tell us if that's an accurate assessment from everybody I talk to, that's, that's the way they're seeing job losses going, that somebody will move on to another job or they'll quit or retire and they'll just figure out a way not to, not to hire for that position. And that's, and that some of that is automation, that things are becoming a little more efficient. But what that means is that the efficiency gains are going to the owners of the company, the shareholders of the company. Not. It's not as if, oh, now my life is just a little bit easier as a worker. No, you're. Now, you have to be more productive to make up for the fact that these other folks are leaving. So if the AI bubble pops, you're screwed because we're, you know, the economy is based on it right now. If the AI bubble doesn't pop, you're still screwed because that means it's working. And this, the data that you're seeing there of how hard it is to get a job is just going to go through the roof.
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Krystal Ball
Yeah. And a couple thoughts on that before we move to Ukraine is we're looking already at catastrophic numbers for college graduates or catastrophic relative to the last decade, really high levels of unemployment for recent college graduates, really high projections of what that unemployment is going to look like for recent college graduates as the economy calibrates. That's an optimistic way to put it to AI. I was reading this another long CNBC dive actually into data centers, particularly in Wisconsin yesterday, because they're trying to bring one into the empty Foxconn facility, the eighth wonder of the world, of course, Foxconn.
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Ryan Grim
What are they trying to bring there?
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Krystal Ball
Data center. And I think it's Microsoft and it's being protested. I mean, one of the. There are a couple dueling data centers in the area, but one of the local meetings, it was like a Planning Commission meeting. 40 of the 49 people who spoke were against the data center. And it's this. So the AI boom is promising these massive sprawling data centers that will actually only in the long term supply a fairly small number of jobs compared to factory work. It's not like that at all. It's not like they're rebuilding Chrysler, a Chrysler plant. That's not what's happening. And so you're seeing AI shave off all of these jobs and then come into communities and build these massive factories that'll use up or massive data centers will use up all of this electric. And at the end of the day they're employing like a thousand people still a lot. In some communities that can make a big difference. But it's again, not factory level. So this is this adjustment period. We're in the very early, early, early phases of it. And it's a bit frightening, honestly.
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Ryan Grim
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I think we're seeing that reflected.
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- [18:01]
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Ryan Grim
Some. Some serious drama going on with the Ukraine. Russian negotiations.
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Krystal Ball
That's right.
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Ryan Grim
The so sort of have a deal. Not exactly have a deal. There's some, some dispute over that. But it appears like somebody's trying to sabotage it by leaking phone calls of Russians. Russia's foreign minister. The implication from Russians and I think from anybody who's kind of following it objectively is that either the Ukrainians or the, you know, two, two groups here would be tapping the Russian foreign minister's phone. Ukraine or be the United States or the Europeans actually. So there's potentially three groups actually the assumption is that you that Ukraine is doing this and leaking it. But I think it's just as possible that some European, you know, Intel, Intel Agency is doing this.
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Krystal Ball
Or the US I mean this is Glenn already made the comparison, but it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility given what happened to Michael Flynn during the Trump 1.0 transition with Sergey Lavrov when that entire situation popped. So I don't think it's out of the question.
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Ryan Grim
There could be some element within the US that that wants to undermine Witk. And yeah, I mean that's also possible. A lot of, a lot of fingerprints could be on this knife. That's. Yeah, that's, that's for sure. And not to say that Russia doesn't do this as well. You know, they famously, I mean we presume it was them that that got this like incredible audio of Victoria nuland during the 2014 made on coup where she's basically says like f the eu, you know, we're putting our guy in. It was one really kind of blunt talk where you're like whoa, this is, this is the gloves off US approach. Behind the scenes, this Is this is what you hear about but you never actually hear directly. So everybody's tapping everybody here. So what, what the Russian Foreign minister and Witkoff are talking about, it happens right before Zelensky's coming to the White House. And Witkoff is like, look, I really think it'd be a good idea if your boss, Putin called Trump before this meeting. And the guy's like, oh, before, really? He's like, yes, you should do this before. And at that meeting, Trump was prepared to greenlight a bunch of tomahawks because Trump was getting increasingly frustrated with Putin. Like, why won't this guy just do a peace deal? You know what, Screw it. I'm just gonna give Zelensky whatever he wants and see how that goes. So Wyckoff seems to be trying to stave that off and say, no, no, no, have your guy call and stop with the details. He's like, you and I understand what the details are going to be. He says, don't, etc. You know, some type of agreement around, you know, some type of security agreement, but don't get into the details. Just talk in hopeful terms and call Trump a man of peace and say that we all want peace. And the guy's like, okay, man of peace. We'll do man of peace. I'll have Putin call. So Putin calls and they do a two and a half hour call before this Zelensky meeting. And then Trump goes into the Zelensky meeting. He's like, I talked to Putin, he said, you know, set up a man of peace. I think he really wants peace. So we're going to hold off on these long range missiles. And you know, in the. Yeah, and this, here's the transcript. Should we do the Russian accent and do a, do a dramatic reading of it?
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Krystal Ball
I think you should definitely do that.
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Ryan Grim
How's your, how's your, how's your Lavrov? No, no, it's not Lavrov. What's his name? Lavrov is the other guy.
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Krystal Ball
There's so many of them.
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Ryan Grim
Yuri or Yorov. What's it meant? Yeah, the whole, the whole, the whole thing is worth reading. I would, I would go and I would go and check it out. And then out of that, Witkoff gets a lot more room to negotiate.
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Krystal Ball
Right.
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Ryan Grim
And he's, and he says basically he's having Putin kind of do what his, his own work for him. He's like, tell, you know, tell, tell, tell Putin to tell Trump that you want Steve to be able to cook. Let Steve cook. It's like, let's it's kind of.
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Krystal Ball
How do you say that in Russian?
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Ryan Grim
He says to think about how Steve cooked in Gaza with that 18 point plan or the 21 point plan. It's like, let's do a similar thing between you guys. He's like, but don't talk about the points, what the points are. Just that it's a pointed thing. And you know, Steve Wykoff knows his man. Like he knows. Everybody thinks they know Trump because Trump is just, he is who he is. But Witkoff really knows Trump.
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Krystal Ball
Yep. Yeah, I think that's right.
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Ryan Grim
And what it did, it does seem to have worked. So, so then what? So we got a 24 point plan that included that was very friendly to Russia. So it's funny how this goes. So they're like, the Russians are skeptical. They're like, well wait a minute. If we propose doing a point plan and then if we put the plan together, they're going to say they're going to then just kind of change it and then accept it and say we have a deal. Like that's what the Russians are worried about because they were watching the extremely bad faith negotiations go on in Gaza where you know, Hamas would like get a 18 point plan. They'd accept it all except for like one tweak and then, then they would say, oh, now this is a Hamas plan. And yeah, and Hamas won't even accept it. Like the whole thing, it was just completely incoherent start to finish.
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Krystal Ball
Like, right.
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Ryan Grim
Witkoff would present plan and then Witkoff himself would reject it after Hamas would accept it or they would, or they would claim that somebody accepts it was just bad faith all around. And so I think the Russians were nervous about getting caught in that. So they say, well let's do this informally, this is not our plan. But clearly what like, so they put together the points, the US tweaked them and it was very friendly to Russia. Included giving up territory in the east that they don't even occupy yet and included, you know, not, not allow, you know, not allowing, you know, European forces in Ukraine, not allowing NATO, etc. And then sounds like from the reporting that Rubio and others got involved and took out a lot of those provisions. Now it's down to like an 18 point plan. And so now. But now it looks like they might reject it.
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Krystal Ball
Well, I was gonna say you're actually the perfect person given Drop site's very detailed reporting on the TikTok back and forth with the Gaza peace plan, which was also heavily being negotiated by Steve Witkoff of course, and then Rubio was sort of dip in. Trump would sort of dip in. And I think we're seeing a European struggle over that process, to be honest. Because, of course, if you're, I mean, this is the thing with the neocons absolutely losing their mind over the transcript of the call, especially some of them, like I'm thinking Republican congressmen who are losing their minds over the transcript of the call. It's like you are licking Trump's boots and Steve Witkoff does exactly what Trump does and you lose your minds because it's coming from Steve Wyckoff and not Donald Trump himself. When Donald Trump does it, you'll say, oh, he's a great leader. But when Steve Wycoff does it, he is, you know, verging on traitorous and as a, you know, Kremlin stooge. But I actually think if you don't include, for example, as you mentioned, Ryan, that plan that looked very friendly to Russia because it had territory that hasn't yet actually been occupied by Russia. This is, I'm curious if there are parallels in the Gaza plan, because that's how a negotiation goes. You put forward a proposal where there are things that, you know, you're going to take out as the negotiation is going back and forth. And so to me, that's not necessarily surprising or reflective of anyone trying to do Putin's bidding so much as it is. There are leaks of a peace process that is absolutely messy. And people are either taking this private information that's becoming public and treating it like the final word when it's just a little snippet from this broader process, or they have bad intentions anywhere and trying to sabotage anything that Donald Trump might do, do for peace because it would end up giving up parts of the Donbas, which they want Ukraine to fight for every last Ukrainian men man to keep.
- [27:58]
Ryan Grim
And I understand why people are upset at Woff, because if you think that giving Ukraine Tomahawks and permission to fire much deeper into Russia was going to give them leverage that was going to then lead to a better deal for Ukraine, then from that perspective, Woff has undermined Ukraine in the negotiations and deprived them of that leverage. But, but if you're somebody like Wyckoff who doesn't, who thinks that it's futile that no matter how many Tomahawks you give to Ukraine, no matter how many they strike in Russia, the math is just not going to work out in Ukraine's favor, right then you're actually, you're actually helping Ukraine get out of this faster than they would otherwise. So I. So I get why people are like, this is. This is Witkoff undermining Ukraine and helping Putin. But I think from Witkoff's perspective, he thinks Ukraine is deluded right now. And they might think that this is better for them, but in fact, they're now up to recruiting, what, well over 50 years old. They're running out of bodies to throw into the meat grinder. And so all the missiles in the world aren't going to give you the kind of leverage that you're going to need to get what you say you want out of this. So let's move this forward. And I think if you're going to defend Witkoff, you'd say he would do this kind of thing when it came to Israel and Hamas as well. He would give advice to the mediators. He never ended up meeting directly with Hamas. They were about to, and it blew up for various reasons, but his deputy did. And they would say, like, here's how. Here's if you want this, like, here is the way to frame this, right? To get it there. And so Trump was asked about this on Air Force One, and he said, I haven't listened to the recording or I haven't seen the transcript, but it sounds to me like normal diplomacy, right? Like, this is. This is what a mediator does. Negotiator does it.
- [30:11]
Krystal Ball
You.
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Ryan Grim
You tell someone, this is the thing you want. Here's how you frame it to this party. It's a little awkward for Trump that, like, somebody's, you know, telling somebody else how to talk to him, Right? Like, it's a little weird and awkward to have that out in public, but it's not. It's not terribly unusual, I think.
- [30:33]
Krystal Ball
No, I don't think so either. I mean, it's unusual. Remember when Medvedev and Obama had that moment where Obama said he'll have more flexibility after the election? So this would have been like 2011 or 2012. People lost their minds. People on the right lost their minds. I was too young to really lose my mind. I was still in college. So you can't go back and find clips. But to some extent, maybe that's different because he was promising something, I don't know. But to some extent, when these conversations, I mean, they have to have personal relationships. And Trump is more. I don't mean this in a literal sense. Like, he's more of a realist, personally, when it comes to those relationships as opposed to. And I actually find that kind of refreshing. Like, he does it With Xi Jinping. He does it with Kim Jong Un, like he does it with everyone, where he just lavishes them in praise and does it in order to butter people up to make. Make deals that they might not otherwise make. Now, whether that's. That works or successful, different question. But Donald Trump is the president right now, so there's no, nothing surprising whatsoever about Steve Wyckoff handling business this way when he's on the phone with the Russians.
- [31:41]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, no, I think that's right. So there had been a Thanksgiving deadline that Trump gave to Zelensky that appears to have been lifted, like giving him a little more time. Zelensky has said we have to choose between losing our dignity or losing our ally. But so that's kind of where we stand.
- [32:00]
Krystal Ball
That's maybe not the right bar for the dignity of Ukraine, which has been proven, by the way, in spades over the last couple of years as ordinary Ukrainians have sacrificed so much to keep their country. So I don't think it's appropriate. I would be insulted if I were a Ukrainian and Zelensky was chalking up their dignity to keeping all of the Donbas or some significant portion of it. So, anyway, well, speaking of foreign policy, Ryan, big new drop site report based on a tranche of emails that you all have obtained and you have some insight into a week in the life of Jeffrey Epstein and Alan Dershowitz circa 2006.
- [32:40]
Ryan Grim
That's right. And maybe we should finish this block playing the Bari Weiss Alan Dershowitz clip, because it's. So you've got the clip. Excellent. Thank you, Griffin. So in 2006, there was a watershed moment in kind of US Israel relations when Stephen Walt, who was at the time the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, and John Mearsheimer, who was one of the top international relations professors at the University of Chicago, published a paper called the Israel Lobby. It also ran in the London Review of Books. And you would think, okay, that's the most boring thing I can think of. Like, two academics published a paper that also ran in the London Review of Books. Okay, that's interesting, but why is the entire world supposed to care about that? The world lit up on fire. It is shot through with all of these caveats and apologetics that they're even broaching this subject. But they make a basic argument that a loose coalition of supporters of Israel. Israel in the United States have built a network and a lobbying infrastructure that has given Israel outsized influence on American foreign policy and at times has driven American foreign policy away from its own national interests and toward the interests of Israel. That was viewed as an absolutely shocking thing to say in polite society. And what, what genuinely concerned the lobby was particularly that Walt was saying it. Because Walt as. And Mearsheimer was at the time very highly respected. He is today a highly respected academic among people like us. But he took a huge hit in his reputation inside academia as a result of the pushback against this. Walt was the, as the dean of the academic school of Harvard's Kennedy School. That's like the plum position in that field. That's the dean of all of it, not just Harvard, but basically all of it. So to have somebody like him saying this, the fear was that this was going to open up, that this was going to create a permission structure for people just to. To debate and talk openly about the influence of pro Israel lobby in the United States. And so that had to be shut down. And the pushback against it was like nothing anything academia had had really ever seen. Talks were canceled. You know, it's like some pre cancel culture type of stuff going on. What we are reporting over@dropsite.01. So two other details. One, who was president of Harvard at the time? Epstein, buddy Larry Summers, you guessed it, who was either the main funder or one of the top funders of the Kennedy School. Les Wexner, the Wexner Foundation. And who controlled the Wexner Foundation's money? Jeffrey Epstein. So all those facts are known now what we know from Epstein himself was.
- [36:01]
Krystal Ball
Donating heavily to Harvard at the time as well.
- [36:03]
Ryan Grim
And Epstein himself was too do. But he was more influential for his control of Wexner's fortune. But yes, he, but he himself was giving millions. But now what we can report from his inbox, which as I mentioned last week, we have, we have currently have exclusive access to, thanks to distributed denial of secrets, which is making the, you know, they're making it available to other journalists as well, is that Epstein himself was involved with Dershowitz in kind of circulating Dershowitz, you know, giving feedback to Dershowitz's counter argument which the school published and helping to circulate it. And so he was involved, he was directly involved in the coordinated campaign to undermine this, this paper. Which means that a paper making a claim that a loose kind of collection of pro Israel supporters are leveraging their money and their resources and their connections was undermined by a loose coalition. Coalition of Israel supporters operating behind the scenes using their connections and their. And their financial resources. Yeah, as you said. So it's disconnected from this pushback, but that Same week in the, in the inbox, we found Dershowitz and Epstein going back and forth over Epstein's latest sex abuse allegation. And this one was from somebody who said she was 14 when she was abused. And you have Epstein with this kind of list of reasons why this girl's credibility should be called into question. Things that she had said on the.
- [37:52]
Krystal Ball
Internet because he had hired a private detective. You're reporting, right? To follow this girl around or to.
- [37:59]
Ryan Grim
At least to research her. Yeah, I don't know if they, if he was following or if it was just like online research. This was like one week of research. Right. May have gone beyond that, we don't know. But what we know is that they unearthed a bunch of dirt on this girl. And he's saying. And so they're going back and forth. Dershowitz is telling Dershowitz, who was his lawyer in this case, give this to the state attorney to tell him that he should not be going forward with these charges because this girl is not to be believed. So that was the twin campaigns that they were running at the time.
- [38:37]
Krystal Ball
I mean, just these inboxes, because there are multiple, are such a wild glimpses into what was happening behind the scenes and how elites are operating. Not just Epstein and Dershowitz and Summers, but more broadly. And that last bit, Ryan, is particularly irritating because you'll remember when was it? It was Rising. There was an episode of Rising where Alan Dershowitz was booked and it was you, Robbie and me. And at one point Dershowitz flew off the handle and said that we wouldn't have wanted John Adams to defend the Boston Massacre, the British in the Boston Massacre case, which is, I think when you're looking at these emails that you have about a private investigator being hired by Jeffrey Epstein to dig up dirt on a 14 year old girl, the obvious difference, you don't even know, need to know that that was happening behind the scenes to make the case that the obvious difference is John Adams believed with every fiber of his being that he was doing the right thing, that he was defending he wasn't just a defense attorney, he was defending the right. Cause that his, his side was correct in this case. Did Dershowitz think that Jeffrey Epstein was just clean as a whistle, had never done anything wrong, morally pure? Of course not. Of course not.
- [40:04]
Ryan Grim
Right.
- [40:05]
Krystal Ball
I mean, that's laughable.
- [40:06]
Ryan Grim
And their relationship over working together on the Israel lobby actually is directly relevant to this claim because let's say, okay, use the John Adams argument where you say, you know, even, even our Worst enemies in our, in our fair system. Absolutely deserve. Deserve rep. Representation. So that's the argument. But what if you also found out that John Adams was secretly working behind the scenes with the British on other unrelated matters in order to undermine other people, showing that they actually are a team, that they are not that. It is not that Adams is just defending the principle that everybody deserves a good lawyer. It's not that Dershowitz is representing Epstein even though he understands he's an awful person, but he thinks that everybody deserves an attorney. Like, that's clearly not what. Yeah, that's clearly not what is happening with Dershowitz because he doesn't. He's working with him secretly to undermine Mearsheimer and Walt's book.
- [41:10]
Krystal Ball
Right.
- [41:11]
Ryan Grim
That has nothing to do. You're not, you're not, you're not required to do that. Like you clearly believe that he's your ally. Yeah. In this, in this effort, in this ideological effort. So I think we can dispense with this idea that Dershowitz was a reluctant defender of Epstein, and he did it on the principle that everybody deserves an attorney.
- [41:35]
Krystal Ball
You know, it's also amazing because he.
- [41:37]
Ryan Grim
Was secretly working with him on this Israel lobby book.
- [41:39]
Krystal Ball
It is amazing to go back and think of the early days of Dershowitz's self defense of his relationship with Epstein and then compare what he said then to what we're seeing behind the scenes in these emails that I'm sure he never thought would see the light of day, which is, you know, whatever they're talking about Mearsheimer or the case, they were not just business colleagues and they were not just casual business acquaintances. They had a close relationship. Obviously. They had a close relationship. They were close conspirators. Yeah, they were allies. They were, you know, I don't mean conspirators in a legal sense. I just mean that they were behind the scenes operating closely together. Yeah. I mean, obviously in this case there's a little conspiracy conspiring that's. That's taking place. But it's just, I think worth thinking back to how he said. Yeah, well, you know, I defended him as his lawyer, met with him a couple of times. I'm paraphrasing obviously what the defense was back then, but laughable at this point.
- [42:37]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And. And Dershowitz is the man that Barry Weiss wants to hold up as a paragon of, of. Of serious, you know, center left charisma, the kind of person that's gonna, you know, bring young people, you know, back. So, Griffin, if you have this, let's Play it and play the whole thing. Because, yes, you got.
- [42:59]
Krystal Ball
You got some. You got some guff.
- [43:02]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. People tried to community note this and say that she didn't actually talk about Dana Loesch and Dershowitz, but it's like, no, you have to watch for like three whole minutes, and then. And then she gets into that.
- [43:13]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. Keep your attention span, folks.
- [43:14]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, so. So keep your attention span. You can roll it at 2x. An impersonation of an old person's version of a young person. Let's do all this.
- [43:25]
Saagar Enjeti
All of us see the moment that we're in, and all of us see that the choices that it feels like we have sometimes, which is Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes and, you know, Andrew Tate, the kind of.
- [43:38]
Ryan Grim
People, by the way, has said that CBS is trying to get him to do a debate.
- [43:42]
Krystal Ball
Incredible.
- [43:42]
Ryan Grim
Go ahead. Yeah.
- [43:44]
Saagar Enjeti
Those don't actually represent our values, and I don't think that they represent the values and the worldview of the vast majority of Americans. And so this is an opportunity to speak for the 75%, for the people that are on the center left and the center right that still believe in equality of opportunity, that still believe passionately in the American project, that still believe in all of the things that everyone in this room believes in, which is liberty and freedom and individual responsibility and individual. And in the most basic level, the right to know what is actually going on in the world, not the world as propagandists and ideologues imagine it to be, but what's actually going on in the world and in your community so you can make decisions about where to send your kids to school, about where to live and about how to vote. That used to just be normal. And the goal of what we're trying to do at CBS is to get back to that. That normalcy. And I feel incredibly energized and enthusiastic because I think that is where the vast majority of Americans actually are.
- [44:51]
Krystal Ball
And, Ryan, this is recent, right?
- [44:53]
Ryan Grim
So that articulation of that set of goals to speak into the lives of the 75%, how are you going to do that? What's your strategy for success?
- [45:04]
Saagar Enjeti
So I think one of the problems is a lot of people have tried to do centrist news. I know this because I am like, like the target audience for those things. And the reason that they have all failed is it's like trying to force feed spinach down someone's throat.
- [45:18]
Krystal Ball
Right.
- [45:18]
Saagar Enjeti
It's felt very like tofu oatmeal. It's like centrist News is choosing the midpoint between every single topic. It's felt like an absence of charisma and identity. And I, you know, as nostalgic as people might be for an era in which 30 million Americans every night watch Walter Cronkite and saw him as the voice of truth. And I understand why they're nostalgic for that. We're not going back to that. So how do you build trust in a moment of unbelievably low trust in all of our public institutions, especially the mainstream press? I don't think it's by pretending like we can go back to having a view from nowhere. I think it's about who's in the room. Right. I think it's about redrawing the lines of what falls in the 40 yard lines of acceptable debate and acceptable American politics and culture. I don't mean that in like a censorious, gatekeeping way. I mean having people that are. That are clearly, identifiably on the center left and on the center right in conversation with each other. And we've been doing so much of this at the Free Press. I was in. Where was I? Chicago last week. I think I've lost all track of time where Dana Lash, former spokeswoman from the nra, was debating Alan Dershowitz on guns. Now, these are people that have. Have wildly different opinions on the Second Amendment and yet showing that they can have good faith, very passionate, very charismatic disagreement and still like each other. At the end of the day, we think it's important. And so it's. For me, it's always about the curation, like who's in the room. How are you showing centrist news not as the absence of disagreement and the absence of charisma, but explicitly charismatic and disagreeable and yet doing it in good faith and the other. The other way you do it. You do it is, you know, by. By being really honest with your audience.
- [47:10]
Ryan Grim
I think we get it. Yeah.
- [47:12]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [47:12]
Ryan Grim
Incredible. Also. So Glenn. I said, Glenn went and found it. When he found it, it had 850 views. Let's.
- [47:22]
Krystal Ball
This is like here it is four hours ago.
- [47:24]
Ryan Grim
24 hours ago. Let's see how it's doing. 4.3. So we.
- [47:27]
Krystal Ball
Okay, so.
- [47:28]
Ryan Grim
So I think Barry's. Barry's video has been viewed like 8 or 10 million times at this point. Talking about Dershowitz as a charismatic leader. Yeah. And we put this link here underneath, and it still was only able to drive 4.3 thousand views to this Free Press and fire present Alan Dershowitz first.
- [47:51]
Krystal Ball
Dane Loesch, I will defend these, these conversations that Fire is doing with the free press because they've been not just with those quote unquote, centrists. And I don't think, by the way, Dana Lash is a centrist at all. I think it's crazy. I like Dana Lash, but what's the commonality? I saw people reacting this. Dershowitz and Lash are both ardent defenders of American support for Israel and of Israel itself. And so I, I think that's genuinely quite interesting. Yeah, right. I, I actually think that's interesting. So like Dana again, like, I actually do like Dana. She's not, I would not describe her center right. She's like a rock ribbed conservative. Whereas Dershowitz you can definitely describe as center and I don't know, you can definitely describe him as charismatic and he's a Trump supporter.
- [48:42]
Ryan Grim
And when he, when he talks about Gaza, he talks in the most extremist genocide terms like, like yet. Yet somehow that it's allowed to, you know, count as center, center. But that's left even, because clearly she didn't mean that Dana is the center left one. So he must be saying that Alan Dershowitz, it's Trump supporting genocidal maniac, is actually on the center left, which is.
- [49:06]
Krystal Ball
Like, because he was arguing for, for gun control and he has social left, social liberal perspectives. And that's where this discussion about what constitutes center left versus center right, it's really about temperament. And I feel like that's what's actually being described is like, Barry doesn't want people guns.
- [49:26]
Ryan Grim
He's like center left on guns.
- [49:28]
Krystal Ball
Barry doesn't want people who are, I would say, temperamentally anti establishment, probably pro choice too. Well, people who are impugning the motives of the political establishment or who started using the phrase the Epstein class. I like that. People who are, yeah, Roe imputing the, the motives of the Epstein class.
- [49:48]
Ryan Grim
He's got people mad about that.
- [49:50]
Krystal Ball
You, you can think whatever you want about guns, but if you're impugning the motives of the Epstein class, that's what gets you sort of like in the red zone to continue those mixed metaphor for a lesbian. She should have better sports metaphors right.
- [50:06]
Ryan Grim
At the ready inside the 40 yard line anyway. But yeah, so as I, as I mentioned while she was talking, Hasan Piker said that CBS News has been reaching out to him to try to set up a debate, which is comical since she's explicitly saying that he's the kind of person that should not be allowed in conversation.
- [50:29]
Krystal Ball
He was fun on trigonometry. I watched the whole thing last night.
- [50:32]
Ryan Grim
Oh really?
- [50:33]
Krystal Ball
Oh yeah.
- [50:34]
Ryan Grim
Excellent. Well, looking forward to that one.
- [50:39]
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- [52:38]
Krystal Ball
Details Speaking of people outside the 40 yard lines, let's go ahead and take a look at this clip of Tucker Carlson on the Sean Ryan show that just I don't know if you saw.
- [52:50]
Ryan Grim
This Ryan no and what I I hadn't what and what I what One of the things I love about this show is getting educated about this, the insanity that's going on and just the wild circus that's going on on the right now because I I Need somebody to safari me through this jungle.
- [53:08]
Krystal Ball
Gladly. I'll be the Sherpa here. This is Tucker Carlson making a comment that you might not think would be controversial, but the. The Libertarians were quite upset with it.
- [53:19]
Ryan Grim
We can roll and on the Republican.
- [53:21]
Maria Alvarado Salazar
Party, which is almost to the point.
- [53:23]
Ryan Grim
Where it's just useless. And I'm gonna have to oppose it because they're just.
- [53:27]
Maria Alvarado Salazar
I hate them too much, but because they're such betrayers.
- [53:30]
Ryan Grim
But anyway, they're pop in the Republican Party.
- [53:32]
Maria Alvarado Salazar
It's like. You a socialist?
- [53:33]
Ryan Grim
Are you from Mandani? No, not really a socialist. Just, I don't want any more dollar stores. I don't want high density housing in my neighborhood. I don't want any more strip malls that nobody goes to. No more karate studios and vape shops. Like, how about no. Oh, socialists. You don't believe in the free market because you bribed a county commissioner to build more garbage. You don't even live here in a normal society. We'd like, burn your strip mall down. You can't do that here. You can't turn my women into prostitutes. Sorry, only fans. And you can't destroy the landscape that I live in. No. How about no? That's not crazy, is it?
- [54:13]
Krystal Ball
We could probably stop it there.
- [54:15]
Ryan Grim
No. And you can't take all my tax dollars and then stop. Refuse to do anything about child molestation. Yeah, the whole reason you exist, county.
- [54:24]
Maria Alvarado Salazar
Commissioners is to protect my daughters from getting molested.
- [54:28]
Krystal Ball
Fair point. But people lost their minds, particularly over the dollar store comment, Ryan. And the old right was out in spades saying rich guy hates dollar stores. And it's amazing because there's a wide variety of research that's been done over time showing dollar stores increase the likelihood of the small local grocery store, the small local guy being run out of business as soon as that dollar store comes into town. And so it's not as though dollar stores are uncontroversial in rural places or actually in inner city places at all. But of course, God forbid you say something like that. I mean, also the sentiment about the Republican Party is just like typical Tea Party era stuff. But the dollar stores don't attack the dol. God forbid we go after the dollar stores.
- [55:25]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, and this is an interesting one to try to parse because the people who shop at dollar stores do not like dollar stores. Like they.
- [55:35]
Krystal Ball
Or work at them.
- [55:37]
Ryan Grim
Or work at them. They hate them the most. They shop there because it's the only choice. And the system that we've built has left them with nothing but this dollar store, if they had any other option, certainly any other option to work, but any other option to shop, they would. They would take that option. It reminds me of. Did you see this Campbell Soup executive?
- [55:59]
Krystal Ball
I saw you tweeting about it, and I was like, why the hell is Ryan tweeting about Campbell?
- [56:04]
Ryan Grim
There's this Campbell Soup exec is getting dragged for saying that, like. Like, they're raviol. They're like, beef ravioli is disgusting or whatever, and nobody knows what's in it or, you know, whatever the. Whatever she said or he said. And it's like, yeah, like, everybody who's eating it is saying the same thing. Like, there's. There's nobody that thinks this is anything other than, like, mystery meat and. Or they're making fun of themselves while they're eating it. Now. They don't want you making fun of them. They would prefer to be eating it, eating something else in general. Some. You know, some of their. Some of their stuff is great.
- [56:44]
Krystal Ball
I agree.
- [56:45]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [56:46]
Krystal Ball
Here we have the video from Griffin anymore. It's unhealthy now that I know what the. In it.
- [56:52]
Ryan Grim
Even in can of Soup, I look at it.
- [56:53]
Krystal Ball
Look at me, bioengineered me.
- [56:57]
Ryan Grim
I don't want to eat a. A piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer.
- [57:01]
Saagar Enjeti
You. The recording of.
- [57:05]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. I mean, that's how anybody's gonna feel about those products, those processes. Like, where. What. What even is this kind of product? No, people are mistaken. What people do out of necessity for. For, like, their culture and how they want to defend their culture. Like, there's nobody who's like, my culture is the dollar store. And. And how dare you say something about it right now. How dare a rich person. Like, it's. It's one of those things like. Like, you, like, it's like talk. It's like your family, like, you can criticize them, but you don't really want somebody else to say it.
- [57:45]
Krystal Ball
That's exactly right. Yeah. And, you know, I. I mean, first of all, I think Tucker was speaking pretty casually there, but also just this idea that you have a massive global chain that sells all kinds of junk. And to Ryan's point, what they'll do is run the local guy out of business. And then do you think maybe when it's safe, they raise prices again? Do you think maybe that's what happens? Of course that's what happens. Do you think maybe they. Do you think maybe they get really shitty about working conditions? Yeah, of course. Yeah.
- [58:13]
Ryan Grim
Once they've driven the other stores out, then they close some of their own stores and make you drive even further. Yeah.
- [58:18]
Krystal Ball
And this is why your odds of having a better customer experience and worker experience with a local chain where the person has a stake in the community, because they're, you know, go to the PTA meetings, you're going to church, they're playing baseball, whatever with you.
- [58:35]
Ryan Grim
Well, yes.
- [58:36]
Krystal Ball
It's not always perfect. Oh, go ahead, Ryan.
- [58:38]
Ryan Grim
I'll add something unpopular. A lot of these small business owners in these small towns where you've known them your entire life, Scrooge. Total, total jerks.
- [58:48]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. I mean, of course. So they're human beings.
- [58:54]
Ryan Grim
A lot of them are terrible bosses and terrible jerks.
- [58:56]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. But you're gonna have a terrible boss no matter what. I guess I'd just rather be someone. The devil, you know, versus the devil who's somewhere in midtown Manhattan. And you have to get through five layers of calls just to somebody with the profit to return your damn stuff.
- [59:11]
Ryan Grim
Is our SOB at least. Yeah.
- [59:13]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And anyway, it does increase the likelihood that you'll have. I mean, I think it genuinely does increase the likelihood that you'll have somebody who has an incentive to have a good reputation in the community. Therefore, their incentive is not necessarily the gdp. Their incentive is to do a good job in the community because they have social ties that go along with more social ties that go along with their economic ties to the community. So, anyway, mom and Pop are often.
- [59:41]
Ryan Grim
Pretty cranky, is all I'm saying.
- [59:42]
Krystal Ball
They. They've been Ebenezer Scrooge, a Mom and pop shop.
- [59:46]
Ryan Grim
That's true.
- [59:47]
Krystal Ball
That's right. But yeah, this. This clip, just the. The defenders of the dollar store.
- [59:53]
Ryan Grim
What?
- [59:53]
Krystal Ball
It was remarkable to see all these, like, conservative writers come out of the woodwork being, like, rich guy hates the dollar store, and we're supposed to believe he's a class warrior.
- [60:02]
Ryan Grim
Ha.
- [60:03]
Krystal Ball
Got him.
- [60:04]
Ryan Grim
I thought so. I watched this. I'm like, all right, let's see, what's the controversy here? I thought it was going to be that the Republican Party is awful and I need to oppose it. Like, I thought that was going to be the thing that people were animated about. But no, that's.
- [60:17]
Krystal Ball
They were mad about that too.
- [60:18]
Ryan Grim
They're mad about that as well.
- [60:20]
Krystal Ball
But again, like, I don't know. I mean, I think it depends on what. Like, Republican voters have a pretty high level of support right now for the Republican Party, though it waxes and wanes, unlike Dems, who have very low favorability of the Democratic Party right now. Historically low favorability of the Democratic Party right now. But if you talk like that, at most, like county party headquarters, people are going to be like, yep, because they assume you're talking about the, like, elite, the Republican elite. They assume you're talking about like, Lindsey Graham or something. So. Also didn't strike me as that crazy either.
- [60:56]
Ryan Grim
Well, so we need, actually we have a main reporter who's been covering the Graham Platner race for us, Nathan Bernard. Maybe I'm going to have to ask him to go find a. Out what strip mall was built on a road that's between Tucker's cabin and the river where he goes fishing every day. Well, clearly, clearly some county commissioner got bribed by some developer to build a vape shop. We know everything that's in the strip mall. There's a vape shop, there's a dollar store. What, what was the third thing he was complaining about? A karate studio.
- [61:29]
Krystal Ball
That one's funny.
- [61:30]
Ryan Grim
There's a karate studio. So, okay, Nathan, if you're watching this, this because, you know, I'm trying not to work as much on, on the, the holiday. So this is how I'll sign the story. See if you can fig find the strip mall with the karate studio, the vape shop and the dollar store that has any Tucker Carlson ready to declare war on the Republican Party.
- [61:50]
Krystal Ball
Because, because we want to know what happened with the county commissioner and, and.
- [61:53]
Ryan Grim
The owner does not live there. We know that. So these are the things we know.
- [61:56]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I think your experience in Vermont, I mean, I've always thought it was sort of like Vermont's billboard. You know, when you're, when you're coming up in a conservative movement that sort of looked at like, as, as hippie nonsense. But I feel like the, the difference between the old right and the new right is looking at Vermont, protecting the aesthetics of the, like, highway and saying, actually, I don't think that's an infringement on the rights of the, of the free market, the free marketeers who want to sell their vapes or whatever on the highway. This is one of the most beautiful places in the world.
- [62:30]
Ryan Grim
And it's, it's really fun that Vermont and New Hampshire share, share this massive border because you just go from Vermont into New Hampshire and like the hippie, you know, communal focused approach gives way immediately to the libertarian approach, like strip.
- [62:48]
Krystal Ball
Balls as far as the eye can see.
- [62:50]
Ryan Grim
Where, yeah, where we lived, like, you had to go over there if you wanted to go to the Walmart or any of the big box stores. Just right across the border. You know, liquor, liquor laws different. But yes, the. It just looks wildly different. The billboards and the strip malls and, and the, the character as a result is, Is different.
- [63:11]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, well, that I guess is a, a good place to leave it for the pre Thanksgiving show, Ryan, because. Anna, we're leaving.
- [63:20]
Ryan Grim
Let's give one, let's give one update on our.
- [63:23]
Krystal Ball
The Honduras.
- [63:25]
Ryan Grim
Well, Afton Bane. Well, yeah. Oh yeah, we could, we could, we can roll.
- [63:28]
Krystal Ball
We could keep rocking here. We, we. This is premature.
- [63:31]
Ryan Grim
That's right. I have a 9:30 podcast. I have a couple more minutes. So Afton Bane, there's a new poll out that has her down by two points. Oh, this is the special election for what's his name, Mark Green. Mark Green seat in Nashville stretches from Nashville and a bunch of rural areas outside of it. Latest poll has her down. Has her down, I think down. Was it down to or up to? I'm pretty sure it was down 2. But this is a plus 22 district and she has been getting just blasted.
- [64:08]
Krystal Ball
With her podcast and sometimes rightfully so because. Wow.
- [64:14]
Ryan Grim
Well, it's, it's, it's a, it's an inverse or it's a parallel even not even inverse to Platner in some ways. Platner inadvisably spent 15 years vomiting all of his darkest thoughts onto Reddit. Afton Bain spent. Has spent years vomiting all of her thoughts dark and otherwise into a podcast.
- [64:37]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. Not anonymous.
- [64:38]
Ryan Grim
Not anonymous at all.
- [64:39]
Krystal Ball
Not Pee Hustle.
- [64:41]
Ryan Grim
Not Pee Hustle. So then there was the one. And I, I think though, that they're over emphasizing the I hate Nashville one because that's almost too absurd. And, and I think people will quickly understand that the parallel would be like if a New Yorker said, I hate Times Square.
- [65:00]
Krystal Ball
Exactly. Yeah, I think that's right.
- [65:01]
Ryan Grim
It's like, yeah, of course everybody hates Times Square except the tourists.
- [65:04]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [65:04]
Ryan Grim
And so she's talking about the tourist area, whereas some of the other ones are almost worse. He's talking about, you know, people who don't have kids and like, yeah, you know, she can have more power with that. Like, it's like, it's like, whoa. But.
- [65:18]
Krystal Ball
And it was 2020, so it was like as this, this wave of elephant in the zoom politics, as Ryan once wrote, was cresting. And everyone, I mean, nobody really thought it was going to go away. Everyone kind of thought it was going to be there for a while and you had to be on the right side of it. You had to talk the right way about it.
- [65:36]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. Yeah. So we'll say that's. That election is coming up I think today may be the last day of early voting or something. And then. Then we'll say you. You think she has any shot at all?
- [65:49]
Krystal Ball
You know, I think she has a.
- [65:50]
Ryan Grim
Shot of less than 1% maybe.
- [65:53]
Krystal Ball
But. But it's. It's certainly in a. What did you say? Plus 20 something district. It's certainly a statement if you get close and that can energize the. The local grassroots folks. So, Afton Bain, breaking points viewer. That is a race that we are. Are watching closely. We had a few minutes with her last Friday that ended up, of course, on Fox News. Why else or where else? Producer GR Asking after Bain about her. Her podcast has gone very, very. Asking her about her podcast remarks on Nashville that Ryan just referenced has gone very, very viral. Agree. They're. They're probably over.
- [66:25]
Ryan Grim
Apparently Fox is playing our Friday show interview.
- [66:28]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, the. The one from last week. Yep. Congrats, Griffin. You should have said, hi, Mom.
- [66:35]
Ryan Grim
What? What? Which one did they play?
- [66:37]
Krystal Ball
They played. So they played the one Griffin keeps popping in trigger. I thought you guys could hear him, but you can't. He's. He's tidbits throughout the show. But they played the moment where Griffin asked Afton Bain about her Nashville comments on the podcast and she said that she was conceived to a George Strait song. Honestly, to Ryan's point, maybe not as much of a disaster as people might think.
- [67:04]
Ryan Grim
What's wrong with that?
- [67:05]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, there you go. There you go. She said, I don't hate country music. I was conceived to a George Strait song. But if you're a real. If you're a real country fan like me, you don't love George Strait. So that's. That's a little.
- [67:15]
Ryan Grim
So maybe that's the problem with that.
- [67:17]
Krystal Ball
That's the problem. George Strait is too soft off, but.
- [67:20]
Ryan Grim
It'S also stolen country valor. Like your parents liked George Straight.
- [67:25]
Krystal Ball
True.
- [67:25]
Ryan Grim
I'll give. And people were looking it up. It sounds like they played in February of 89 in Florida.
- [67:32]
Krystal Ball
People are looking this up.
- [67:34]
Ryan Grim
Yes. You gotta fact check claim like this. That's so. So her parents. If they were in Florida in February library, then that might be where they saw George Strait play.
- [67:48]
Krystal Ball
Or they were just listening to George.
- [67:49]
Ryan Grim
Strait on the radio and they just. Either they had a false memory or they lied to her. Do you also. Why are you telling your daughter?
- [67:59]
Krystal Ball
Tell your kids that? Oh, my gosh. Oh, all right. Should we take a trip down to Honduras, Ryan?
- [68:07]
Ryan Grim
Oh, yeah. And yeah, Griffin, I guess we could play some of this clip later. Later. Or you can add A post if you want, but. So this Sunday Honduras will have an election and Jose Luis Granados Ceja, who was on the drop site live stream yesterday is a reporter in Mexico City. We had him on to talk about the Mexico protests, which was actually really helpful. He's going to Honduras to cover that election. He'll be doing a dispatch for us. You're, you're seeing two things. One is that the current president, Shiomora Castro is almost as popular there as Sheinbaum is in Mexico. His left wing, 65ish percent approval rating but in their constitution you can't serve a second term. So her husband was ousted in a coup in 2009 supported by Hillary Clinton and the US at the time. So she comes back, she, she wins. So and so now it's one of her cabinet members basically is running instead and the US is very heavily getting behind her, her main opponent and is sowing all sorts of doubt about the elections saying like can't trust these numbers which is always a signal that you're planning something. So that when the, because this is supposed to be a very close election. So if the numbers come in, in and the left has won slightly, you can probably look for US proxies to call for people to go out in the streets and, and demand, you know, and cry foul, stop the steel. So there's, there's a U S backed stop the steel thing going on and this is obviously driven by the fact that we have a South Florida, you know, leader, Marco Rubio as our Secretary of State and he's got a bone to pick with, with the left all over Central and South America and the Caribbean, but also that Castro, they probably don't like that her name is Castro Castro when she first came into office.
- [70:12]
Krystal Ball
Not helpful, not helpful.
- [70:13]
Ryan Grim
She immediately went after all the crypto bros who had used the previous government which was this run by this right wing narco terrorist. And when I say narco terrorist, he's literally in federal prison now after being, being the US's you know, guy and we knew he was a narco terrorist.
- [70:31]
Krystal Ball
When he was fighting the narco terrorist Ryan, we were.
- [70:36]
Ryan Grim
Well another reminder that of Kissinger's quote that it's like it's dangerous to be a US adversary, but it's fatal to be a friend. As soon as he was no longer useful, we literally have thrown him in federal prison. And so while he was in power, power which came through after this consolidation of the US backed coup, he created all these carve outs for crypto bros to build these Basically law free zones where they would have their own sovereignty. Castro came in and said, no, we're done with these, we're revoking those. There's a big fight going on over that. Plus she immediately very or very quickly recognized China and broke relations with Taiwan, which really pissed off the United States. And, and then so China offered, you know, some belt and road style, you know, investments in, in Honduras.
- [71:27]
Krystal Ball
Well, so that's, I think that that's a, that's really important. And Griffin, you can tee this clip up of South Florida Congresswoman Maria Alvara Salazar, who's former, what Telemunda or uniform?
- [71:39]
Ryan Grim
Oh my God. You should get really good play, play this one all the way to the end. It's so amazing.
- [71:45]
Krystal Ball
She's the same like mold of a cold warrior Cuban Republican congresswoman. Lots of fun for sure. But here's what she said about Venezuela.
- [71:58]
So we know, we have information that maybe the top echelon of the military forces in Venezuela may be with Maduro and they're going to flee with him. But the middle and lower ranks are with the opposition. We're talking about that. This is going to be very similar to Palestine, Panama. I was there, I was a news reporter and I remember when the Marines were walking in and the Panamanians girls were asking them to marry them. I think it's very similar.
- [72:22]
Maria Alvarado Salazar
Yeah, no, I remember. Well, I was there just after it kind of bled into 1990. It started in late December of 1989, bled into 1990 and I went in in January and it was remarkable how receptive the Panamanians were to the change. And it's been a relatively peaceful country since. But I mean, just the transition, I mean, Maria is, is a wonderful woman, the opposition leader. She's fantastic. But how will that transition take place? Will, will there be a snap election after he flees or what?
- [72:58]
Krystal Ball
Well, she has a, and I have spoken to help to her extensively. They have a 100 day plan.
- [73:03]
There you go.
- [73:04]
Shared with the White House. They are prepared. She knows what she's doing. I mean they have been at this for 25 years. Like I said, 80, 90% of the Venezuelan people, plus the 8 million Venezuelans who have fled, they want to come back. This is going to be a very major success and a success story, not only for them, but for us. And I salute President Trump for having the fortitude, the courage, the political vision to be doing this, because Maduro is the head of a transnational criminal organization. Maduro is not the legitimate president of the country. So we're not invading a sovereign country that has a free and fair elected democratic president. No, this guy is a thug. And he's good friends with Hezbollah. They are giving uranium to Hamas and to Iran and to North Korea and to Cuba and to Nicaragua. Come on. It's time for the United States to do what we need to do. And thank God that Trump is doing it. And I'm telling you that these people, the Venezuelans, have the largest reserves of oil in the world. Iran, we're talking about, this is going to be a windfall for us when it comes to fossil fuels.
- [74:12]
Maria Alvarado Salazar
Well, and again, it's, it's the actual transition that, that a lot of Americans are a little wary about because of the fact that regime change always has unintended consequences.
- [74:23]
Krystal Ball
Ah, yes. So the reason this is connected with Honduran politics as well is that what you're seeing emerge more overtly right now is the reality that this is a new Cold War dynamic. Not just that we're using soft power, but that we are planning to use hard in this new Cold War dynamic. To take, for example, oil. Really, really good example. To prevent. And this is a parallel, of course, with the Soviet Union, to prevent an alliance between places like Venezuela and Iran, with Hezbollah, with the Hamas, which, like. Listen, you and I would probably debate the. Yeah. Uranium. You and I would probably debate the substance of those claims. I think neither of us would debate that. There have been overtures. Of course.
- [75:08]
Ryan Grim
That's, That's a debate I think I could win if, if you were fired to argue that Venezuela is shipping uranium.
- [75:16]
Krystal Ball
No, I'm not arguing North Korea. Absolutely. Iran does have a foothold, and I.
- [75:22]
Ryan Grim
Can take the other side of that one. I, I am confident in my debating abilities that I could walk away with.
- [75:27]
Krystal Ball
A W. I think you'd have that one. I don't think either of us would debate that. Iran has, and, And Maduro have had.
- [75:32]
Ryan Grim
A little bit of North Korea. Like Venezuela is sending uranium to North Korea and Hamas.
- [75:37]
Krystal Ball
It's just this is the parallel between.
- [75:39]
Ryan Grim
How are they getting the uranium into Gaza?
- [75:43]
Krystal Ball
If you were in the 1970s, if you were a populist lefty, or even. Not even a lefty, and you talked a little bit about nationalizing this, or you talked a little bit about an alliance with the Soviets. Be careful. Be careful, or they'll make the economy scream and then do a little CIA covert action. So, so that's, that's what's emerging in the region. It's been happening with, like, a lot of soft power, USAID stuff. But Trump is, is militarizing with Venezuela, obviously, and so different countries are going to have that possibility injected back into their politics. Yeah, there you go.
- [76:23]
Ryan Grim
So we'll, we'll be watching that on Sunday.
- [76:25]
Krystal Ball
Happy regime change Thanksgiving. Another good one where David Asbin was like they were greeted as liberators after backing Noriega for however long, who is.
- [76:36]
Ryan Grim
Also a narco trafficker and was our man in Panama. He was working with the CIA.
- [76:42]
Krystal Ball
CIA Director George H.W. bush met with him anyway, we don't.
- [76:46]
Ryan Grim
Have to get into it. And then we, and then he's removed for being a narco trafficker and just not being useful anymore. So be careful. If you're a narco trafficker, don't trust the United States for your retirement plan.
- [76:56]
Krystal Ball
Just don't do it.
- [76:58]
Ryan Grim
Tip.
- [76:59]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. All right, Ryan, I know you're hosting Thanksgiving, so you, in addition to having a podcast coming up, have a lot of responsibilities in the next couple of days.
- [77:07]
Ryan Grim
So this was important stuff.
- [77:09]
Krystal Ball
This was fun. You doing the journalist football game again this year?
- [77:14]
Ryan Grim
Yes, well, we every, every, every Sunday after Thanksgiving, a journal football game, so think they'll it's going to be a heavy times contingent this weekend, so that'll be fun.
- [77:27]
Krystal Ball
All right, well, happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there. Thank you again. We're super grateful for your support even if you're not a premium sub. We totally understand. We appreciate you watching the videos, sending them around means a lot to us. So have a great one, everyone.
- [77:44]
Ryan Grim
Ah, greetings from my bath festive friends. The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of the my money getting 5% cash back when I pay in 4. No fees, no interest. I used it to get this portable spa with jets. Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body. Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal. Save the offer in the app ends 12:31 see paypal.com promoter points can be redeemed for cash and more. Paying for subject to terms and approval. PayPal Inc. And MLS 910457 you know what a girl's best friend is not diamonds. Her lawyers. From executive producer Ryan Murphy comes a fiery new legal drama.
- [78:22]
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Ryan Grim
You can't afford to miss.
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Krystal Ball
Make it ring. Showtime.
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Ryan Grim
Ladies, stand up straight and breeze into.
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Krystal Ball
That room like a storm no one saw coming.
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Ryan Grim
Hulu Original Series All's fair now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers terms apply.
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Jay Shetty
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