← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
11/6/25: Dems Blowout Elections, Economy Screws Republicans, Trump Panics Over Shutdown
00:58:47
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I.
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Don'T trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.
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B
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
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We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.
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C
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
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Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there.
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C
NBC News Reporting for America.
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This is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. JBL Tour Pro 3 earbuds are for those who don't conform to the standard. Yeah, I mean if you want to get into some touchscreen technology, how about the smart charging case? Clear sound. These are not standard things. You're only gonna get them with the JBL Tour Pro 3, baby. And I love the sound of JBL and goes. These earbuds are packed with innovation because you can't stand out by following others. TouchSC smart charging case for one touch control, instant EQ customization, true adaptive noise canceling and the one of a kind audio transmitter which can plug and play with everything from game consoles to in flight entertainment. What more could you want? First doesn't follow grab a pair at.
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Jbl.Com@Lowe'S this veterans Day and every day verified military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic silver status in Milo's Rewards with free standard shipping plus 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more now@lowe's.com Military 10% discount can't be combined with another offer Exclusions Terms and Conditions apply. Loyalty programs subject to Terms and conditions details@lowe's.com terms subject to change hey guys.
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Sager and Krystal here.
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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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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 to you, please go to breaking points.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have? Crystal?
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B
Indeed we do. We are digging into all of the cross tabs the election results, how big of a win was it for Democrats? What does it mean? What demographic groups shifted in which directions? We're gonna get into all of that. We're also gonna take a special focus on how much the economy played a role in Tuesday's election night results. We're also gonna take a look at the shutdown. This also connects to the election results. Trump is actually blaming the shutdown and putting pressure on Republicans in the Senate to nuke the filibuster in order to reopen the government. You also have some real fallout now hitting, especially in terms of air travel. So we'll take a look at all of that. Also yesterday, big day at the Supreme Court. They heard oral arguments with regard to Trump's Tarif. Six out of the nine of them sounded very, very skeptical of the arguments for the government. It is looking increasingly likely that Trump's tariff regime will be struck down. So obviously that is a seismic potential development there. We're gonna take a look at also bunch of stuff going on with the adl. Jonathan Greenblatt actually getting some pretty strenuous pushback from Joe Scarborough with regard to his treatment of Zoran Mamdani. So that is an interesting one. We've also got some AI updates for you. Sam Altman crashing out in an interview after getting a little bit of pushback on whether this whole OpenAI and AI in general is overhyped. And then Representative Summer Lee is going to join me to talk about Zoran's victory and what it means for the country and the Democratic Party moving forward. So it should be an interesting show.
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That's right. And please go ahead and sign up if you can BreakingPoints.com, become a premium subscriber. You guys enable our livestream. We had Griffin Ryan on the ground. Obviously a lot of travel, lots of logistics in order to make stuff like that happen. But we think it really elevates the show. It makes it a go to on critical nights like election night. So breakingpoints.com if you want to be able to join that coverage and see all the stuff afterwards, thank you to everybody who has been subscribing. If you can't afford it, no worries, just please hit subscribe on this YouTube to our channel and if you're listening to this as a podcast, please just send an episode to a friend or rate us 5 stars. It just really helps other people find the show. But yeah, let's go ahead and start with 2025. So much data to synthesize to put together in a short amount of Time. But we think we've done our best to pick some of the best.
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B
Indeed. So let's just go through some of the numbers here. So we all know it was a shellacking for the Republicans. Just how big of a shellacking? Well, here was one indication we could put a one up on the screen. So at the beginning of the night, I saw an election analyst who, you know, like a Twitter election analyst who put this up of, okay, here's my metrics. If Democrats get, you know, zero to three of these different things and it's things like, okay, Spanberger wins, Cheryl wins, proposition passes, et cetera. If they get 0 to 3, that's a pretty catastrophic night for them. If they get four to six, it's a bad night. If they get seven to 10 of these markers, it's okay. If it's 11 to 14, that's a good night. And if it's 15 to 18 of these markers, it's a fantastic night. Well, guess what? After the votes were counted, 18 of 18 on this list, and it really was across the board, you look at the margin in Virginia, you know, Abigail Spanberger just absolutely romping by 15 points. Mikey Sherrill. I think 13 points was the final metric in New Jersey. Every single county in Virginia shifted to the left. So it was not a mixed bag at all. Those were very high turnout elections. You also had in low turnout elections that the Georgia statewide races were actually crazy. You had point Democratic win in two statewide races in the state of Georgia. You had some things that were, you know, that we weren't even paying that close attention to, like the Mississippi Senate. Now they, the Democrats broke the super majority there. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court races when again wasn't even close for the Democrats. These were three statewide races that Republicans were really focused on because they matter in terms of election law and adjudicating, you know, different voting issues. Those overwhelmingly for Democrats so truly was a sort of coast to coast across the board reckoning. And Sager, I genuinely, usually in elections there's like some little thing you can, okay, well we did, you know, but we, we held onto this or you know, we shifted voters here, I don't see a single thing that Republicans can really point to. The one thing I saw from Dave Wasserman is that in the state of Virginia where Democrats, you know, obviously won all three of the statewide races, even the attorney general's race when their nominee was, you know, had these te have been revealed threatening like saying basically he wanted his Republican opponent to be murdered.
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And the children Pretty big scandal.
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B
And he's able to win. Actually he outpaced Kamala Harris in terms of his victory margin in the state of Virginia. But the one thing I did see is in the House of Delegates, Democrats picked up, I believe 13 seats. They won all of the swing districts, they won all of the districts that, that Kamala Harris had won. Then they won all of the districts that Trump had won by zero to five points. But he said at least they didn't win all the ones that Trump won by five to 10 points. So the bottom didn't fall out entirely. I think it's maybe the best thing that I saw, the most potential cop I saw for Republicans.
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A
That's terrible because in the current environment Nobody wins by 5 to 10 anymore. The days of 2008, Barack Obama are long gone. People win by 1 or 2% in the popular vote and that's it. And it's gonna be a nail biter in terms of the electoral College for the foreseeable future. There's just not a lot of independent voters that are out there anymore. Even when go sky high, there's high levels of partisanship. So no, I think there's no question that this was a absolute blowout against the Republicans. And any Republican telling you otherwise is absolutely lying to you. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen, cuz this is the most important one. Actually you've heard it here before on the show. The NBC News exit poll shows that voters who dislike both parties break for Democrats. And the key behind that is that a lot of Republicans were trying to hang their hat on the fact that Democratic approval rating is actually lower in some cases than Republican approval rating. But the case of that is that many of those are are partisan Democrats who are fed up with their own party. That doesn't mean they're not gonna come home to vote. Now a lot of Republicans are fed up with their party as well, but they are not coming out to vote. So if you put that together, you see a super majority really of a lot of the people who came to the polls who are basically anti Republican. That's very different than being Democrat. Right. It's kind of like how we've talked about maga. Very distinct from the Republican Party brand. And I do also think that's a key element of the story. The low propensity voters just didn't come out. It's not a surprise, it's off your election. A lot of the Democratic coalition is a lot of people who are college educated people who the News who are much, much, much more tuned in to the election, not to mention the fact that they have something to vote against. And if you're a Republican, you have all three branches of power, and they're not really giving you a reason to come out and to defend anything like, oh, yeah, please come out and support our governor so we can continue the shutdown, or so we can have regime change in Venezuela. You know, it's like, if you're a republic, what reason would you possibly have to go to the poll? So that's all together, you know, in Virginia as well, the composition of the electorate, the breakdown that I saw overwhelmingly, like Kamala Harris voters. If just those types of voters had come out in 2024, she would have won the state by landslide. Right. And I think that that largely was the case in all of these elections. And, yeah, I mean, that's why it's a meme to say it all comes down to turnout, but actually it's true because at the end of the day, you're subject to the people who come out to vote for you. So I think that's really the story of. Of this entire night of 2025. And the Republicans are in big, big trouble on a number of issues. One is the shutdown, and two, and we're gonna get to this here in a little bit, but they are turning themselves into Joe Biden. I mean, when you're chart posting about why the economy is actually good, you're dead, you're long gone. I mean, and especially when you lived through defeating a president previously, where Bidenomics was a ridicule, it was literally a term of ridicule. And every time one of these pansy economists would come to the White House podium under Biden, I mean, you. And how many of these recovered? They're like, actually, the economy is good. If you look at it compared to this, or if we cut things off right to Covid, then it shows, like, an upward trajectory. Well, they're doing the exact same thing. And so, yeah, it's just. It's all bad. It's all bad in every direction. They've got, I mean, to say work to do presumes it can be fixed. I think this cake is baked for 2026. I mean, not. Not everything is certain in politics. But, you know, even if you did okay, you were probably still looking at losses. And now with that gerrymandering, I would be feeling real uncomfortable to gerrymander. Seats in Texas, 52, 48. Ohio potentially in play. Sherrod Brown. There's A number of Senate seats. Susan Collins, she's gone. The only question is who's going to replace her out. I'm sure that'll be clipped when Susan Collins wins.
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But I think actually, do you remember.
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They clipped us saying Susan Collins would lose whenever she did win. So in particular, why would Susan Collins campaign actually clipped that?
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Well, so to bolster your point on gerrymandering, because, you know, Republicans are being very aggressive with the way that they're drawing these districts. And the assumption underpinning that is that any Republican is going to be able to more or less maintain the Trump voting coalition from 2024. I don't know why they think that that is happening. And you know, if, like, if they were unclear on how much people have shifted away from Trump and how much. Look, it's never been the case that a general like generic Republican is able to pull together the same coalition as Trump, but also a lot of those voters have away from Trump too. And so one of those key demographics, of course, Latinos. And we can put a 3 up on the screen. This is the overall Latino numbers. You can see the shift here. This was an area where Trump was very proud of his progress. And so they say that Latino voters swung hard in the GOP's favor nationally last November, with the presidential winning 46% support to Harris's 51%. With Latinos on Tuesday in New Jersey, the answer was no, that they could hold onto them. Cheryl won 64% of Latino voters to Citarelli's 32%. That is per CNN's exit poll. We got more. The next element we can put up on the screen as well. So this was Steve Kornacki, I believe, polled all of his municipalities that are 60% plus Hispanic. So you can see in 2024, Trump even won one of these districts, passaic. Trump got plus seven this time around. Mikey Sheryl plus 26. In every single instance, you see massive swings, like 30 points, double digit at least. And some of them are like 50 point swings towards the Democrats here. And so again, when they were drawing these districts, particularly in Texas, they were assuming some level of strength with Latino voters. And that is far from a certain assumption at this point. And just to give you one example of how tightly they're drawing these districts, in Utah, they drew two districts, districts that are now swing districts. One of them was Trump plus two and the other was Trump plus six. Democrats now have a real shot to pick up two seats in the state of Utah because of the way that they drew these maps. Meanwhile, you have the California ballot proposition passed. Overwhelmingly crazy turnout for to go and vote just for this one proposition. That was wild to see. So California is going to be aggressively redrawing their maps. Virginia. Now Democrats have, you know, a large margin in the House of Delegates, in the legislature and of course all statewide offices. They're also looking at redrawing their maps. There's another Maryland is also jumping in the fray as well. So what Republicans started, Democrats have now joined the fight and they're drawing maps that given the national climate, are much more likely to work out to their advantage. So it is not crazy to think at this point that it could actually be the Democrats that benefit from this overall. We're all gonna redistrict everything right now in this particular moment, given how much the Trump coalition has already fallen apart with Latino voters, also with young men, by the way, it is not looking like this was a wise direction for Republicans.
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A
So the case that really needs to be hammered home here is that the Republicans fell victim to the same mindset that the Democrats did in 2008 of demographics of destiny. Right. They assumed white working class would always be Democrat. They would add an incre large coalition of Latino and black voters and thus they would win. Well, Republicans now learned in Texas that over a five year period, a significant part of South Texas Latinos started to vote Republican and just assumed they would vote Republican forever. Now, considering that they voted for Hillary by some 40 points, why would you ever assume that? Right. I mean, it's so stupid. It actually begs like how you can professionally even be in this business. But it does really demonstrate also the folly of assuming that anyone is ever for you all the time. I also think, you know, with the sample, one of the things that's really important, as I underscored to say it's been a Latino swing, it's about the Latinos who turned out to vote. It also shows you in 2024, when you had a larger number of people who did come out to vote, yes, some of them, many of them actually in fact voted for Donald Trump. But in an off year election, if the Latinos that you're going to mobilize are the ones who are pissed off at Trump, then yeah, you're gonna see huge numbers in that. So to assume monolith, it's not like it's a sample of the same types of voters. And I guess that's the only possible cope you could come up with.
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Well, but even that's not really cope because midterm elections are also going to be that same.
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Exactly. I was going to say, I mean. Exactly.
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For an off year election turnout was pretty high in, you know, Virginia, New Jersey, other key places.
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And in New York, it was unbelievable.
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Yeah. New York City turnout was for general elections. The main race turnout was, was wild. Which by.
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I actually support that. I love that because it means that you had similar turnout to the presidential. And it's like, yeah, that actually affects your life in a local race because.
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It'S not like New York is really hotly contested in presidential elections. So this was a much more actually hotly contested race. So it does make sense that turnout would be so high.
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I hate to say it, but I.
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Don'T trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.
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It feels like it's trying to divide people.
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If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little.
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C
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
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A
Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there.
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C
NBC News reporting for America.
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D
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B
In any case. I mean, the indications are that even in the places where you had the highest turnout for an off year election, obviously it was still a, you know, total shellacking across the board. Let's put a five up on the screen. I mentioned this before. Young men, we see, you know, significant swings here. This is a demographic that Trump narrowly won in 2024. And now you see Abigail Spamberger won him by 14, Mikey Sherrill won by 10. Zoran Mandani won him by 40, by the way, in, in New York City. And, you know, the biggest divide, there are a number of interesting divides in that race that I into later a bit with Summer Lee. But the biggest divide was generational. I mean, Zoron won overwhelmingly with young voters and Cuomo won with older voters. So that was the biggest divide to take out of that race in particular. But you can see that we covered even before the election the way that Trump's approval rating has fallen off a cliff with young voters. He's now in the, like, 20s when it comes to his approval rating with young voters. Again, this is a demographic that Republicans were very proud to have improved significantly with, especially, again, young men. And you can see that those gains have largely significantly evaporated.
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A
It's the same thing as Latino. It's, the young dudes are gonna be pissed off at Trump. The young guys who like Trump or were Trump, they're just probably shouldn't come out to vote. It's gonna be skewed toward the Democrats. And then even with the swing ones, I mean, look, at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Like, it's not like all young people voted in the 2025, 2024 election. Same in 2025. But if the people who do come out to vote are overwhelmingly going to be polarized, in particular from social media, from activism, you know, you're gonna have a huge drop in that. So, yeah, it's a huge problem here because there was a level of online enthusiasm for the Republicans in 2024 that evaporated in the span of a year. It's honestly impressive to torch yourself that quickly. And there's. Let's think about the reasons why there's been so much analysis online. My personal favorite, by the way, is that Republicans beefing with each other is why Republicans didn't come out to vote. I was like, yeah, for sure. That's definitely the reason why. Or maybe it has to do with a monomaniacal obs Israel for an entire year. And the fact is, is that the basics of life have not changed at all. There's no optimism that they will change at all. There's no plan to make it so that they will change at all. So, people, one thing I appreciate about the younger generation is that they are cynical to the point of if you don't do something for me very quickly, I don't believe you anymore. Because at a certain point, we've seen the movie so many different times that after the one big beautiful bill, you're like, look, I've explained it here. We only open the tax code once every five years. So they opened it and that was it. And we got extension of the tax cuts. And nothing is really changing in terms of housing policy, industrial policy, whatever, anything like whatever the basics are. Interest rates are not going anywhere, as we've explained here as well. Trump can, to the best of his ability, try, but the tariffs complicate that story as well, which also, at the very least, either made things more expensive, but has injected an element of chaos. And so the full picture means that if you voted for Trump because you wanted to try and buy a house and you thought not that he would help you economically, that story is basically dried up. And at this point, you don't have enough trust for the next three years to put into the Republican Party generally.
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B
Yeah, there you go. And also, look, if you were kind of like a vibes voter, which, you know, I mean, based on the sense of the podcasts and him, you know, having a lot of success there and going on there, getting support from that world, I mean, we've been tracking the way that they've shifted, right? And the way that. And I think this is where things like the Epstein files actually do make a big difference. Because obviously the fact that you credibly put yourself out there as this very anti establishment figure, you're gonna be different, you're gonna be exposing the secrets, all of that stuff. And then you come in and you're like, nope, not releasing the Epstein files, nothing to see here. And by the way, I'm in the Epstein files. That's a big blow to your brand. And Trump of everyone will understand how important a brand truly is.
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A
Yes.
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B
And then when you have the, I think Israel is another certainly fault line, especially for young voters. And then you have, like you said, total fixation on. On those sorts of issues over. Now Trump says he's gonna work on affordability next year. Okay, don't worry. Whenever you have time to get around to that. So all of those pieces come together where if you're someone who thought he seemed cool going into 2024, you're no longer necessarily feeling that way at this point.
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A
If I think back to a year ago and if I think back to the Vibe election from September to November, which was like the height of what it all was ultimately. Why did the podcast young guys generation back Trump? I think it's because there is something exc about anything revolutionary which seems different. This is the same of the Zoran Mamdani phenomenon. It is different. You can't deny it, right? You can't say that. Akash Patel and a RFK Jr. And all these people, Tulsi, you'd never seen anything like it. You'd never seen anything like. And then Biden was the physical embodiment of an ossified political establishment. Kamala Harris was the embodiment again of just being handed something because of the color of your skin and of your gender. There was no competitive primary and it was just foolish. Everything that was Vibes based around Kamala seemed utterly and totally manufactured. The Trump one was truly organic, I think at a level of excitement. And that always was going to evaporate because that's the reality of colliding with power and of actually having to make decisions. Like, it turns out you can't appease Tulsi Gabbard and Marco Rubio in the same coalition. Shocker. If you knew anything about Washington, you knew that'd be dumb. But I mean, a lot of people did believe it. And Trump also made a lot of promises. We've talked here about voters, something that. I checked the stats on this yesterday. Statistically, There are between 100 and 200,000 people who voted for Trump because of free IVF, which I wish you'd asked me, told you you're an idiot. But listen, they did it. And so how I'm going to talk about this in our Zoron thing, it is so. I mean, when you believe in something and when you get burned, there is truly nothing worse than that. Whenever you are a younger, especially probably lower propensity voter or you maybe have still some faith in the political system. So there's that times what a million for housing, for trying to make things better, inflation, cost of living, foreign policy, I mean, nobody votes on foreign policy. But my true belief is that foreign policy matters because it like hovers in the ether. And if you watch the news, I.
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B
Don'T agree that nobody votes on foreign policy. Think of the Iraq war.
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A
So that's, that's kind of the thing is nobody in normal times votes on foreign policy, but when they do, they vote hard on it. And I will not say Israel is the number one reason that Trump lost yesterday in the 20 or two days ago in the 2025. But I do think that there's just something sick about watching this obsession with the political elites of this foreign country while your life gets worse.
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B
Right.
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A
That's why the Zoron answer how much of it was sure, him saying Netanyahu was a war criminal. There's a certain element of the DSA crowd which is gonna go wild for that shit. But there's a certain element of an everyday New Yorker who really doesn't care. And when Zoron says something like I'm gonna stay here in New York, it's like, hey, fuck yeah, man, I'm in on this. Right? And there's the reason I've said that's the most viral moment of his whole campaign.
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B
Yes.
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A
The whole nationally was I'm staying here in New York. Donald Trump and his people cannot credibly say that because of how they've governed over the last year. So I think there's a, I mean, I mean top to bottom, it's all baked in. You talk about vibes. The truth is, is like the vibe at that time is that it was physically exciting to try to see something new. Now we have what that new is. We've lived through it up now for what, 10 months approximately that he has been the president of that 10 months. Nothing seems all that different and if it does, it's worse. So it's like in a worse Israel direction, the worst economy direction and or flat, which in my opinion is worse. Cuz it means that nothing happened about it. And then also I talked about this immigration, remember during la, I was like, the warning is chaos is the people who were off about immigration were mad at the chaos of the border under Biden and of the uncontrolled unlimited amount of migration into the us. But this time around, every fucking story that you read is about chaos. With I, oh, I said this, the video says that they're lying. I mean, how many tiktoks are there floating around?
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B
I just saw this morning some ICE agent in Chicago charged with a dui.
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A
This is what I'm saying after he.
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B
Left the Broadview facility, another one was out there bragging about what a good marksman he is after he shot a woman five times. Yeah, I mean that I think. And to that point, this is what I've been thinking about. I think people, not just Americans, I think people in general will accept a lot of authoritarianism if the trains run on time and their material conditions.
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A
Yeah, it's called China.
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B
But, you know, they aren't in it for the authoritarianism sake. And that's effectively what the Trump administration. Instead of making your life better. Right. Dealing with health care prices, dealing with cost of groceries, dealing with education prices, dealing with just generally the sense that things are going to be harder for my kids than they were for me. The AI apocalypse. I mean, they're ushering in the AI, you know, taking all of your jobs. So instead of doing anything, they thought it would be enough to have these images of, you know, in this authoritarian crackdown, like that's what people really elected them for. No, people were will are actually willing to tolerate some of that if it's making their life better. Yes, but you can't have that for its own sake and think that that is gonna appeal to people. People are gonna fucking hate that. And they do. And, and so I think the big verdict here is on the Trump economy. But the authoritarian crackdown piece, first of all, that demotivates their own base who have been upset about the free speech abuses and some of those things as well. But even more importantly, you are going to energize the hell out of the opposition. They are gonna come. They will crawl over broken glass to vote your ass out. They will. That don't tread on me instinct runs deep in America. And so if you are triggering that and you are not giving anything on the other side to compensate for it, and meanwhile throwing yourself Great Gatsby Halloween parties while the food stamp benefits are being cut and air travel is chaos and federal government workers are furloughed, building yourself a multi hundreds of millions of dollar ballroom, gilded ballroom, you know, and demolishing part of the historic nature of the White House. It's like I actually saw voters reference that in their vote because I think those images do touch something deep. I mean, it does feel directly like this Gilded Age thing where they're out there partying in this incredibly opulent way in his gilded, golden, golden White House, and you're struggling to make ends meet, meet, and there's zero sense that anyone is doing anything for you. Yeah, people are gonna vote your ass out they are going to in Mississippi, in Colorado, in Virginia and New Jersey, wherever they can, they are going to go and say this is not what I wanted. If I voted for you before, this is not what I voted for and I'm gonna do whatever I can to send a message that you have gone so far off track.
- [30:46]
C
Attention parents and grandparents. If you're looking for a gift that's more than just a toy, give them something that inspires confidence and adventure all year long. Give them a Guardian bike, the easiest bike to learn on, safest to ride, and the number one kids bike on the market. With USA made Kid specific frames and patented safety technology, kids are learning to ride in just one day. No training wheels needed. It's why Guardian is America's favorite kids bike and the New York Times and Wirecutter's top pick three years in a row. This holiday season, Guardian is offering their biggest deal of the year. Over 40% in savings on all bikes plus $100 in free accessories. Each bike arrives 99% assembled, so setup takes minutes, not hours. Whether it's their very first ride or their next big upgrade, Guardian makes every pedal feel safe, smooth, smooth and fun. Join over 500 happy families who've discovered the magic of Guardian. Visit guardianbikes.com to shop now. That's guardianbikes.com I turned off news altogether.
- [31:50]
B
I hate to say it, but I.
- [31:52]
A
Don'T trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.
- [31:57]
B
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
- [32:01]
A
We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little.
- [32:07]
C
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [32:10]
A
Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there.
- [32:13]
C
NBC News reporting for America.
- [32:18]
D
Tis the season for identity theft. This time of year, most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But guess what? Identity thieves have lists too. And your personal information might be on there them. Protect your identity with Lifelock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss by yourself. Even if you keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements, if your identity is stolen, your own US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. And all plans are backed by the million dollar protection package. The last thing you want to do this holiday season is face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or other financial losses from identity theft all alone. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With Lifelock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off terms apply.
- [33:18]
B
So I really do think, you know, when you put all of those things together, look, I think the economy, that's a good transition to, you know, the economy piece that we could put a 7 up on the screen here. I do think the economy is the central piece, but these other factors, whether it's Israel, whether it's the, you know, the just gaudy show of wealth and opulence, sucking up to these tech oligarchs and handing them everything that they could possibly want. The crypto. Yeah, the smash and grab. I mean, all the corrupt deals and padding the pockets of you and your family and your aides, the insider trading, all of that sort of stuff. And you couple that with a dire economic landscape that feels like it's only getting worse and worse. Yeah, there's gonna be a political reckoning there to pay. So this was G. Eliot Morris wrote this up. And the astonishing thing here, if we can hold on this for a moment, is that you had voters. Number one issue, as it usually is, was the economy. If you look at Abigail SPANBERGER In Virginia, 48% of voters said the economy was their number one issue. Of those, 63% voted for Abigail Spanber, New Jersey, similar numbers, 32% said that the economy was their number 1 issue. Taxes was another one. That was a significant issue there as well. I think Cittarelli really put that on the table. But in any case of those economy voters, Mikey Sherrill won 65%. Guys, this represents a 93 point swing away from the Republicans compared to the 2024 election. Economy voters went for Trump in the 60%. So it was the number one issue in 2024. And those voters overwhelmingly chose Trump. And now here we are a year later and Democrats are winning 2/3 roughly of the voters who say the economy is their number one issue. Put a 8 up on the screen here because I think this is also really important. I mentioned this before the election, but I just wanted to underscore. This is incredibly telling. So Right now in November 2025, 72% of Americans say economic conditions in the country today are poor. 72%. Only 28% say that they are good. If you rewind back to Trump's first term to the same period in Trump's first term, you had an almost complete flip of those numbers. 68% at that point said actually the economy's good and only 30% said it was poor. And I will remind you that even with those sorts of strong economic numbers, you still had a backlash. Election in 2018 that was overall very positive for Democrats. So now with the economic numbers looking so dire and possible, you know, we're obviously tracking closely the AI bubble and what that means, and all of these layoffs, some caused by AI as well, well, things could be worse by the time we get to the midterm elections. And so that reckoning happened in 2018. Just imagine what we could be in store for here in 2026, given that you have all kinds of upset over Trump and his authoritarian tactics and his foreign policy and all those sorts of things, and you also have incredibly dire economic conditions and very negative sentiment about the economy.
- [36:36]
A
It doesn't take a genius to figure it all out, does it? You know, to your point about authoritarianism, or just generally, like, what is society in particular? Yeah, sorry, let's not go too deep, shall we? But everyone agrees that if somebody is threatening someone on the street, that their rights have to be at least somewhat deprived. So that other people's rights are not deprived, Correct? Right. Everyone agrees with that. Now, when I think about the most authoritarian but high functioning societies in the world, you can look at Singapore, where you literally cannot enter the country with chewing gum. Gum. They do public canings. They have rigid enforcement. But when you're in Singapore, it's awesome, okay? That's the dirty little secret about it. People who live there, they like it. And honestly, why? Because it's clean, it functions. They have good jobs. They have an extremely high level of state functioning, and they buy into that. And they don't really care very much. In fact, they laugh at America and they say, we are less free because of our freedoms. They're like, yeah, you are free, you know, to be assaulted by somebody. You're free to live in a shithole. You're free to have horrible public transit. When you ask the Chinese people who actually broadly support the Chinese Communist Party, they're like, yeah, I can't talk badly about Xi Jinping, but, you know, remember that video I showed you of Chengdu from 1980 to today? If you live through that, I mean, that's one of the most extraordinary economic and physical transformations in the history of mankind. So, yeah, you're like, okay, whatever. But here, I mean, be honest. Have things gotten better? No. All right? And, you know, it's not the same. We don't have centralized control and there's local stuff and all of that, but at the end of the day, if you don't give somebody a lot of benefits and you see that happening, then obviously people are gonna say, well, I'd rather at least not have to deal with that or to feel as if there is chaos in my country. And I think broadly that's where even the people who do support some of this are. They, I'll admit the chaos, but they're saying that the chaos is the point. I think there is like a logical insanity to that which. Which is that it incites self deportation. So you can say, okay, it's net worth it or whatever in the end. But I don't think that's a gamble that 90% of people are willing to take. Which is part of the issue is that broadly, under Biden, it felt chaotic. This is just not just on immigration, but I think generally because his old age made it so that nobody was running the show. And under Trump here, there's kind of an element to that as well. Cause you have all these disparate parts of the government, they're not talking to one another and everybody's constantly beefing. I mean, I'm still knee deep in Venezuela. I'm getting calls every single, single day from. Oh, he changes mind. You know, by the way, I can currently update that he has changed his mind currently because of a more recent update. Who knows?
- [39:15]
B
We're invading Nigeria now, apparently.
- [39:17]
A
Well, we may bomb Nigeria, but my point around Venezuela, right, it's like one of those where everyone is kind of just willing is under this, you know, this Mafioso like system where people who are vying for the ears of the boss, remember, my analogy of Trump is that it's like Versailles, right? It's like whoever gets the ear of King Louis while he's taking a shit is ultimately the great victim.
- [39:41]
B
Well, he feels checked down half the time too. I mean, there's significant pores.
- [39:44]
A
Like this ballroom shit, all this, all.
- [39:46]
B
The ICE stuff, that's like all, you know, put into Stephen Miller's purview and Kristi Noem and whatever.
- [39:52]
A
But then even they're fighting, you know, like Stephen and Kissy are fighting. And then Corey Lewandowski, her alleged boyfriend, is the person who is underneath that. And then you've got the border patrol guy who's beefing with the head of ice. And then you got Tom Holman who's beefing with him. And it's like trying to explain this to a liberal doesn't make any sense because they don't actually understand like, like the intra, like, you know, party, like, beef over. But it actually does matter because it manifests in where it is right now in a lot of ways. You know, ICE is Losing because their image is being subsumed by border patrol. Now again, try explaining that to a defund abolish ICE person. But it actually kind of matters because the ICE people are like, hey, we want to arrest criminals, drug dealers, rapists. And the border patrol people are like, no, we want to do these vast raids, always seize everybody up.
- [40:34]
B
They're the ones who did like the apartment with the Blackhawk military helicopters. They actually are more militarized and have like, they have their own like basically mini air force. They have drones, they have helicopters, whatever. And so, yeah, it looks like they're winning the battle right now. You had a huge, you know, a bunch of ICE guys who got fired and replaced with CBP types. So in any case, you're to your point. Yes. Even though there's a lot happening, but every week it's, you know, we're here, we're there, this is our focus. That's our focus now we're in this city. No, we're not getting into that city. And meanwhile, know you, you've got these images of masked thugs tear gassing kids, going to a Halloween parade. I don't think it's making people feel like you've got this under control and I'm gonna get some actual benefit out of this. Another example of the authoritarianism that has been popular is Bukele right down in El Salvador. But what did he do?
- [41:29]
A
I'm glad to hear you admit that.
- [41:30]
B
I mean, it's true. First of all, they had much worse crime than we had in terms of the level of loss, lawlessness. And he genuinely threw horrific tactics that I would never support. He has brought the crime rate down.
- [41:43]
A
Yeah, but you might support, you might support that if you had people getting beheaded in the streets. And Marisol, whatever you call it, you.
- [41:49]
B
Know, I can't say because I've never, you know, I've never lived in that situation.
- [41:52]
A
I mean, I remember thinking about that. But do twer what is do territory here? They'd be like, oh, it's horrific. I'm like, yeah, well you have drug dealers everywhere shooting people. I don't know. You know, maybe I'm going to get to a point too where I'm like, yeah, kill him.
- [42:03]
B
Okay, right.
- [42:04]
A
And then you've never lived through that. You have no idea.
- [42:06]
B
Extrajudicial assassinations of random people in the ocean. And you know, and meanwhile the actual number of indictments of drug traffickers, human traffickers, like those sorts of things, the actual, you know, the, even the deportation of violent criminals is down because instead they're just going after, you know, your Home Depot guys and your, your, you know, ladies selling tamales on the street or whatever. In a, in any case, the bigger point that I said before is the one that I've been thinking about, which is that yes, people will tolerate authoritarianism, but only if it's actually benefiting them and only if it comes along with some sort of market increase in their material well being. They're not gonna take mass thugs in the street and I can't afford steak anymore and I can't make rent at the end of the month and rent is going up and my healthcare premiums are going up 100% this year. And you shut down, the government can't bother to do anything about it. No, they're not gonna take that. And so your own supporters are gonna be demoralized. The opposition is gonna be incredibly, incredibly energized and will do whatever it takes to send that message. And so one of the things I've been very worried about, the midterm elections and the gerrymandering and the Supreme Court coming in and them seizing all the voter rolls and all the executive orders, and I've been very obviously tracking that very close, closely. What's heartening to me about this is it does look like things are gonna be too big to rig and that the very likely, the Latino voters, you know, that have shifted and all of these demographics that they counted on to still be in their camp are gonna screw their gerrymandering ambitions and it's gonna be too much for them to be able to overcome. Now what's gonna be interesting to see is how do they respond? So you know what? First of all, one option is they just bury their head in the sand publicly. We're seeing a lot of that JD Van saying, oh, these were just new Virginia blue states. We can't really read anything into that. Which is. He knows that's not true. He knows because he's looking at these same results of frickin Mississippi and like, you know, all of the Georgia and Pennsylvania he knows, but I see a lot of that of basically like, yeah, it's no big deal. This doesn't mean anything. We're not going to read anything into it. So one possibility is you just stay the course and you don't really do anything. Another possibility is you try to adjust. You take the message of like, okay, people are sending us this message on affordability. Trump is now talking about affordability nonstop. I saw Ryan say on Twitter, he's like, by the end of the week, he's gonna be talking about fast and free public buses and just totally taking the Zoron mantle. But in any case, we also have one of his. Who is this guy? Campaign political director from 2024. Talking about how Trump plans to refocus his messaging on cost of living. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
- [44:46]
A
75% of Mickey Sheryl's ads were positive, overwhelmingly talking about cost of living and heavily talking about lowering power costs. Jack didn't really talk about that about taxes, and he won the tax vote, but he didn't address those key issues of affordability very effectively. He was mostly talking generically about change, New Jersey, and I'm not denigrating Jack, but it was not in line necessarily with what voters were saying. Two, in Virginia, over half of winsome Sears ads talked about transgender. And it's not even the top five issues, according to voters. Why did Zoran Mandani do so well last night? He relentlessly focused on affordability. People can talk about communists, they can say all these things, but the fact is, he was talking about the cost of living.
- [45:26]
B
Folks that I'm talking to privately who. Who are supporters of President Trump think that he needs to be talking about cost of living a whole lot more.
- [45:34]
A
I think you'll see the president talk a lot about cost of living as we turn the year and into the new year. The president is very keyed into what's going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you'll be see him be very, very focused on prices.
- [45:50]
B
Sagar, can you give me. Yeah. Give me a view into the White House and like how they think about the economy right now.
- [45:57]
A
Yeah, look, none of them are stupid. They did win an election. A popular vote, man. The first since 2004. Okay. Of a Republican. So that's one thing where we shouldn't always discount necessarily the political skill of the comeback. This happened to Bill Clinton. This happened to. I mean, multiple. Yeah, I could go on forever. Obama. Right. All of these people who did seriously get checked in the first two years of their presidency adjusted to course, maybe not to the benefit of the country, but to their own political benefit. Their sense generally is that the president does need to talk more about the White House, about the economy, but still.
- [46:32]
B
Complaining about the White House.
- [46:33]
A
He's talking too much about the White House. But this is what always belies. The problem is this is not a normal White House. Trump is a singular figure who actually doesn't have to run for reelection again. That's part of the reason he's doing the ballroom and labeling the Oval Office in gilded script that you may see at a march Mar a Lago resort. That's the kind of the stuff he has always cared about. Right. And then you have all of these disparate other people. You have the cash grab section which includes like his son and his own family. Then you have the people who are pursuing their own ideological agenda. Let's say Marco Rubio who's trying to push regime change in Venezuela. JD who has to try and balance being good to his boss and wanting to run in 2028. So he's probably in the worst position because he's defend all this shit. Annie has potentially run on it again. Then you've got the secretaries of Scott Bessant who are. Scott is ultimately a creature of Wall Street. He does not want to be humiliated in his job. Cuz he eventually has to go back. That's what these people all do. Look at Steve Mnuchin and others. And by the way, Mnuchin, part of what guided his behavior when he was the Secretary of the treasury is he's currently still back on Wall Street. They need to maintain some credibility. So that's why he's bailing out his friends on Argentina. Okay. It's all paid for play like in terms of what the future is. So there's no one sense of the White House at any one moment my phone is blowing up from a different contingent of the White House who are pissed at their other colleagues in the White House. Look, I've only ever covered really Trump, Like I had no real insight into the Biden administration or leaking to a very different. But everything I've ever read that's not all that common in a White House. So yes, there's a huge container contingent of his White House which is upset with the direction that they are taking. But I think the demonstration is that they don't have a lot of power to compel a change in behavior because they're all playing the same game. Sometimes they win, sometimes they don't. So on the affordability piece generally, did you notice the language that he said? We're going to talk more about it. Talk is cheap, bruh.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah, it's not a messaging.
- [48:40]
A
It's all. Yeah, it's like Biden.
- [48:42]
B
Yeah.
- [48:43]
A
No, after the gas prices went up to $5, everyone's like fuck you. All right? I don't want to hear the word you have to say.
- [48:49]
B
It's Not a messaging problem.
- [48:50]
A
Exactly. And this is the problem that they have right now. Their heads were far up their ass and they believed the vibe shift. I actually think that more than anything, it's an information bubble. You can see this with a huge amount of Republicans Twitter. Elon buying Twitter is one of the worst things that ever happened to them because it definitely helped them win the election. But there's no question in the world that a lot of them huff their own bullshit. And there's also a huge perverse incentive in MAGA world to make suck up to the White House, right? So no one's inviting me back to the briefing room anytime soon. Nobody is pitching me, Scott Besant or whatever for some fluff. It's not happening, okay? Cuz they demand total fealty. Like the days of me trying to get a Trump interview or whatever. It's over, it's not gonna happen. But that's the issue is that these people all suck up to them and so they don't really tell them what they wanna hear. So the White House is in a situation where they don't trust the main and they don't even really believe anything that they say. You know, to be fair, they won two elections out of three, so. Or in their mind, three out of three. But whatever. The point though is that the stuff that they're consuming, there's one person, one Tucker Carlson, who is willing to be like, yeah, I think what you guys are doing is wrong. But turn on Fox News, turn on Glenn Beck, turn on any right wing aligned podcast. It's all propaganda all the time. Go on Twitter, you can follow entire accounts, which a lot of these people in the White House do. They're more online than anybody who are just mainlining propaganda about how great they are. So imagine, you know, the information environment that they're swimming in. That's really dangerous actually when you're in power. And that's why I think some of them were really shocked at the election results. I really do. I mean, I think they knew they were gonna lose. But you know, there's all this down ballot stuff that nobody else cares about except for people like me. Like the Bucks County School Board, which was like a harbinger of the youngkin, you know, revolution. Anti CRT trans stuff. Like the trans mafia is fully back in control if you live in any of these places. Yeah, no, we're fucking. If you're a parent, it's not good.
- [50:51]
B
Right now to your point, someone shared the stat, you know, these Moms for Liberty school board candidates or like, you know, conservative, whatever. There were 31 contested races involving Moms for Liberty candidates. You know how many they won? Zero. Yeah, I know all 31 lost. Every one. And that's why it was such a reckoning. I mean, even. Look, I was expecting it to be bad for Republicans. I was not expecting the coast to coast everything from Georgia and Mississippi. And I mean every single, whether it's a local level or a state level or somewhere in between, at every single level it was a uniform shift and reckoning against the Republicans. And so I'm sure they are shell shocked. And so. Yeah. So, you know, the interesting thing will be to see if they do more than just say like, oh, next year we're going to get around to talking about affordability. As to your point, talking about it is not. I mean, they would have to do a total 180 on what they've been doing. And this will be a good transition actually into the tariffs. Well, we've got tariffs. Later on we'll talk about how the spring court's gonna probably rescue them from their tariff insanity. But you have to do a total 180 on the economy. You have to actually deliver on health care. You have to actually make people feel like their lives are getting better. And you gotta pull the mass thugs out of the neighborhoods. You gotta take back the National Guard. You have to do a complete, complete 180 on the way that they've been running this administration thus far or you have to really try to go full authoritarian and make it so that votes don't matter. And I just don't know know if there is enough that they could do at this point to truly make sure that, you know, come 2026, there's no meaningful elections whatsoever. I think it's sort of too far gone for, you know, it would take too much and spark too much of a backlash if they were to do what it would take to make it so that there were really no meaningful elections.
- [52:42]
A
Yeah. Can it be fixed? I'm not so sure. I'm of the belief that Biden was dead by October of 2021. I don't think there was any world where a Democrat could have won after that period because of the way that he ran the country for up to that time with inflation and the spike that eventually happened and then his eventual deterioration. I really, I don't see a world where a Democrat could have ever won 2024. Maybe that's a little bit too reductive, but I don't know. I mean, if I, if a Lot.
- [53:12]
B
Of the cake was baked.
- [53:13]
A
Let's think about it. I mean, think about the approval, the vibe. Everything was. I mean, if you think back to that, that's what Youngkin happened. And they were given, you know, a tiny little savior with Roe vs. Wade, which gave them a lot of hope, and then they were dead. I mean, it was literally over. So I'm starting to feel a lot of the same way. We're right around the same time. Obviously, a lot could change. But on the horizon, I see much less chance of success and many more pitfalls for my things. Where I see it AI bubble on the horizon, I see a tariff problem. On the horizon, I see an international crisis with Taiwan. On the horizon, I see regime change in Venezuela. I see Israel and Iran just sitting there, just waiting for something to happen, for some sort of international crisis. Ukraine still going on. There's a reason we don't want these things to happen. Because it doesn't take a genius to read a book and say, at any moment, at any time, the globe can explode and gas prices can explode. Explode, Right. And could go all the way up like they did under Biden. They can sink your presidency. So this is. And. And that's why it's to your benefit to try to get these things all wrapped up. I mean, if you asked me when the Vibe turned against Trump, what would you say? I would say March. And by the way, see, I disagree. I think. I think they turned before that. I think it was March, March of 20. What was that? March of 2025. And if we think back, the vibe was with Doge. They were. They were winning. I think the vibe wars in the original, there was the ceasefire that initially happened in February under Steve Witkoff. A lot of the promises made, promises kept stuff was there. The revolution still felt as if had had energy. And right around March, something began to change. Where the Doge reality started to hit, the opposition started to start to flare up. The sheer stupidity of a lot of the White House's statements and things falling apart. I believe Seekot was around that time as well. So if you think about all that to get together, that is when people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, and that's exactly when I started to see a few dissonant comments. And then things exploded by, I would say, May of 2025.
- [55:15]
B
You know, if you actually look at his approval rating, one of the hits he took was on Kilmara Prego Garcia. Yeah, because that wrapped up suicide and lawlessness and all of that sort of stuff. And Democrats, a few of them actually got around to like, making a point of about it. And it sort of focused people's minds on, you know, what was going on in this administration, what it actually looked like. And. But I do, I actually feel like the Epstein files were a critical turning point too because that's when you got some MAGA voices being like, dude, what the hell? You know? And when you have your own side.
- [55:46]
A
They all shut up, didn't they?
- [55:47]
B
When you have your own side, yeah, they sure did. But when you have your own side chirping at you, that's always, you know, a difficult thing.
- [55:54]
C
Attention parents and grandparents. If you're looking for a gift that's more than just a toy, give them something that inspires confidence and adventure all year long. Give them a Guardian bike, the easiest bike to learn on, safest to ride, and the number one kids bike on the market. With USA Made Kids specific frames and patented safety technology, kids are learning to ride in just one day. No training wheels needed. It's why Guardian is America's favorite kids bike and the New York Times and Wirecutter's top pick three years in a row. This holiday season, Guardian is offering their biggest deal of the year. Over 40% in savings on all bikes, plus $100 in free accessories. Each bike arrives 99% assembled, so setup takes minutes, not hours. Whether it's their very first ride or their next big upgrade, Guardian makes every pedal feel safe, smooth and fun. Join over 500 happy families who've discovered the magic of Guardian. Visit guardianbikes.com to shop now. That's guardianbikes.com I turned off news altogether.
- [56:59]
B
I hate to say it, but I.
- [57:00]
A
Don'T trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.
- [57:05]
B
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
- [57:10]
A
We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little bit.
- [57:15]
C
NBC News brings you clear reporting.
- [57:18]
A
Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there.
- [57:21]
C
NBC News reporting for America.
- [57:26]
D
Tis the season for identity theft. This time of year, most of us are checking off our holiday gift lists. But guess what? Identity thieves have lists too. And your personal information might be on them. Protect your identity with Life Lifelock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points every second and alerts you to threats you could miss by yourself. Even if you keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements, if your identity is stolen, your own US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed. Or your money back. And all plans are backed by the million dollar protection package. The last thing you want to do this Holiday season is face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, loans or other financial losses from identity theft all alone. Make this season about joy, not identity theft. With LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code iheart or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off terms apply.
- [58:26]
A
Let's get to the shutdown. I know we're still a bit tight on time, so shutdown. We need to focus here on Trump and kind of his view of where things are. He kind of said the quiet part out loud, which you're never supposed to do in the shutdown, by the way. We are now officially in the longest shutdown in American history. And he was like, well, the Republicans, he's like, it didn't have anything to do the midterms with the shutdown. But also maybe it did have to do with the shutdown. Here's what he had to say. But I thought we'd have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it. And Don, celibate shutdown, how that relates to last night. I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans, and that was a big factor. And they say that I wasn't on.
- [59:12]
C
The ballot was the biggest factor, but.
- [59:15]
B
I don't know about that.
- [59:16]
A
But I was honored that they said that, so you could see what he's saying there. Well, you know, if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for Republicans, but I wasn't on the ballot. And also, don't worry, the shutdown didn't have too much to do with it. That's why we need to nuke the Phillips buster. And that's, you know, obviously that's gaining some steam, although I don't think that's really going to happen with a lot of these Republicans.
- [59:37]
B
Well, reportedly, behind closed doors, he was much more like, we've got to open the fricking government.
- [59:42]
A
Oh, yeah. I mean, look, he's not stupid. I mean, anybody who's looking right now.
- [59:46]
B
I feel like that is cope. Because if you think that these election results were just about the shutdown, sure. I think they actually had pretty little to do with.
- [59:53]
A
I totally agree. But nothing is worse than chaos. I mean, what did I just say when feeling out of control. Actually, let me just go and put that up the top. B7, please. Put that up here on the screen. The last element, the FAA just today announced it's cutting thousands of flights starting tomorrow due to the shutdown. 10% of air traffic at 40 major airports. I cannot even quantify the billions of dollars in lost profit, productivity and more as a result of this Airline stocks are going to take a dive. I mean just the sheer amount of cash chaos that that is going to cause. I cannot be the only person who's going into Thanksgiving genuinely, if the shutdown's going to happen, I'm probably going to cancel it because the airport Houston that I would have flown in and out of had a three and a half hour line for security, for pre check for pre, for pre check for three and a half hour line. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not subjecting my kid to that. Like it, oh my God.
- [60:45]
B
Can you imagine? What a night.
- [60:46]
A
Yeah. Having a six month. It's not happening. I would rather rather die than experience.
- [60:51]
B
I would rather walk to Houston.
- [60:54]
A
Yeah, I would walk from Houston to Washington D.C. i'm not the only person.
- [60:59]
B
I bet you like. You know, most of the year it's mostly like business traveler. Like Thanksgiving is the time when normal people are traveling with their kids and they are planning far in advance. So they're looking now at these headlines and going, I don't know if this is gonna happen. Like I may pull my trip, I may not make those plans. I'm sorry grandma, it's not happening this year. I mean those sorts of things are already happening with where we are in the shutdown right now.
- [61:25]
A
Yeah, exactly. So there's that with the shutdown and then there's the politics of the shutdown with Mike Johnson speaking out saying actually the shutdown had nothing to do with what happened. Take a listen to that. I don't think the loss last night was any reflection about Republicans at all. I think people are frustrated and angry as we are. I am. The president is. And we express that different ways. No shut down at all. Oh did it? Did it. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Okay then you've got got some of the stuff going on right now with the Democrats where. No shit. They're hardening their position. Wouldn't you? After you just won this election. Let's put the next one please on the screen. The Democrats warned of hell to pay if they cut the quote, weak post election shutdown deal. So they showing that they are absolutely ironclad. They don't wanna budge because of the healthcare premiums. I mean, you know, actually, you know what's interesting? My tweet about my in laws went massively viral.
- [62:21]
B
Really?
- [62:22]
A
Yeah, because I tweeted their insurance premium. It wasn't even a political statement. I just said my in laws. Obamacare premiums went from 1800 to 4200amonth. And I mean, it got like thousands of retweets and it was shared, like, all over the health spectrum. Republicans were like, yeah, see, that's why there shouldn't be any subsidies. And then Democrats were like, see, this is what happened. But I was like, that's just the reality, okay? And as you and I have discussed, Obamacare is a horrible system. No one should even be paying $1,800. No one should be trying to subsidize 18 to $4,200, by the way. It's not that, like, they're the early retirees of Mike and Shelley. They're self employed, okay? Just over everybody's. For everybody's information. And, you know, they just happen to live in this little state called Pennsylvania, if you've ever heard of it. And maybe, maybe it's electoral importance, somebody else can, can enlighten me as to what it is. But that's happening to a lot of people. And no matter who you are really on the political spectrum, if you go from 1800 to 4200amonth in healthcare, you are just gonna start asking a lot of questions about whose fault is that Again, I think Obamacare is a horrible system. I think the subsidies are incredibly stupid and they just subsidize the healthcare companies. I think it actually inflates healthcare prices. I could go on forever about the critics, but at the end of the day, you're still probably gonna be in a more politically popular position to say, hey, hey, hey, let's not make it so. People have to pay 40 times $200 a month for health care. Right. In the immediate term. So, yeah, that's kind of a winning position, especially if that's what you're generally going to offer people. Put it all together. It's not good. And there's like, maybe one Republican who is speaking out against.
- [63:54]
B
Yeah, that would be Steve Bannon. We can put the next element up on the screen who, you know, I think Republicans, I think Emily shared this one thing. They were saying the only silver lining for us is Zoran getting elected. And he's like. Bannon's like, listen not to. Not so fast. This guy's got some things going for him. He's compelling. And he and some of the other politicians who are kind of in the same vein, they are not to be trifled with. You have to take it seriously. And this also has some layers of cope in it too, but he basically gets down to also, okay, Trump's really gotta deliver on cost of living. And Bannon is one. He'll sound the alarm before something. He'll say, you know what? You actually in the big beautiful bill should raise taxes on the rich, and then it won't happen, and then we'll never hear about it again. He'll say, you know what, this whole dalliance with Elon and like, throwing in with the tech oligarchs, maybe not the best idea. But then once it happens again, you don't hear anything more about it. He warned about the Medicaid cuts, right? He's like, listen, a lot of MAGA is on Medicaid now, same food stamps. A lot of MAGA is on food stamps as well. And, you know, even though Court said you have to pay out, they said they're gonna do 50%. That even that is not forthcoming whatsoever. I mean, that's. You guys have. That's a huge number of people who are really gonna be immediately right now because of those food stamp cuts. So, yeah, he's sounding the alarm. He's not sounding like J.D. van saying, oh, nothing to see here. It was just blue states. He's saying, no, the Sauron guy is something you should be taking seriously and you better get to work on the economy or else you're gonna be in a very dire situation.
- [65:29]
A
Well, let's pull over an element which we didn't end up using. Per the NBC News exit polls, Mamdani lost immigration voters by 26 points, crime by 40, 41. But he won cost of living by 36, and they represented 55% in electorate. That's the whole ball game. It's all cost of living, 100%, period. So that's why, if you think about 2024, it was an economy election, but it was also an immigration election. It was also a crime election. And so, yeah, that's why the Republicans probably fared better in aggregate. But if the entire discussion is gonna come down to cost of living, the Democrats as the opposition party, they're gonna beat your ass. Even if they have much less popular positions on trans, on crime, whatever, immigration, et cetera. This is where, you know, I just talked about the school board stuff. How many people were even there voting for school board who were like, well, what's their position on gender affirming care? Nobody. They were like, screw the Republicans, screw Trump. So they voted for him. Now, you know, I think that's gonna reap a lot of destruction in the future, but so be it that's the way the politics works here in our country. That is the issue right now with the shutdown and with the chaos. And the fact is, is that, yes, so SNAP is being held up by both parties at this time with shutdown. When you run the government, you will bear the blame, period. Especially whenever you're like, no, we're not going to pay it, even though maybe we can kind of if we wanted to as the people in the government. That's the issue that you have here. Same with Governor Youngkin. Recently, he was asked specifically about Virginia and the elections. He talked about the shutdown. So he's not stupid. Let's go and take a listen to him. A lot of Republicans, including lieutenant governor, ran on the idea of keeping the good times going, referring to the successes of your administration. Given the fact that the lieutenant governor lost by 15 points, Republicans are on track to lose more than a dozen House seats. Is it possible that Virginians don't see your administration the same way that you do? Well, I believe that Virginians thoroughly support what we've been doing. I mean, at the end of the day, when people say it's is the state heading in the right direction? People say yes. As I said, I firmly believe that particularly the government shutdown was a very.
- [67:40]
C
Very big challenge as we ran into this election.
- [67:43]
A
We have 330,000 government workers here that weren't getting paid.
- [67:46]
C
That is a real challenge heading into an election.
- [67:49]
A
And therefore I again encourage the Senate to please open the government because Virginians are hurting and it's time for the government to get back open and then for you all to do your work. This episode is brought to you by pbs, home of Ken Burns. His newest film, the American Revolution, reveals untold stories of people, some familiar, many forgotten, who risked everything to change the course of of history. It's the story of a war that was bloody, complex and profoundly consequential. Ken Burns and his co directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt shine a light on how this historic fight for independence lit the spark for freedom that still burns today. The American Revolution premieres Sunday, November 16 at 8, 7 Central on PBS and the PBS app. Don't miss it. Ah, greetings from my bath festive friends.
- [68:51]
D
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D
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A
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D
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A
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 make their.
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B
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- [69:49]
A
This is an iHeart podcast.