← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
12/16/25: Fox War On Christmas For Data Centers, Trump Aide Unleashes On Admin, Pinochet Defender Wins In Chile
00:43:45
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
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- [00:38]
Juan David Rojas
So you're telling me that the AI.
- [00:40]
Krystal Ball
That'S meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages? Funny how that works. Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business. Let's create Smile to Business IBM.
- [01:05]
Sophie Cunningham
This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snore loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep and which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don't sleep on osa.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.
- [01:43]
Krystal Ball
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:45]
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.
- [01:52]
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.
- [01:58]
Saagar Enjeti
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:09]
Krystal Ball
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.
- [02:17]
Saagar Enjeti
Let'S talk about Fox News and this War on Christmas. So this is a fascinating one. You've got a Fox News anchor who is saying we all need to buy artificial Christmas trees to make room for the AI data centers because they're going to take over the real Christmas tree farms. Let's go and take a listen to this.
- [02:38]
Krystal Ball
This farm is 150 acres.
- [02:41]
Sophie Cunningham
Yeah they're going to be farms and.
- [02:43]
Krystal Ball
There will be transmission lines that have to go through developments and farms. That's the very nature of a growing economy like that. Everybody needs to get on board. I just don't. It's a.
- [02:57]
Sophie Cunningham
You know what?
- [02:59]
Krystal Ball
Buy a fake tree. Oh, oh, oh. Dagger.
- [03:03]
Trashy Ad Voice
Right in my heart.
- [03:03]
Juan David Rojas
Dagger.
- [03:04]
Sophie Cunningham
What?
- [03:04]
Saagar Enjeti
I have a fake tree. Oh, I have a beautiful tree coming up. No time for this.
- [03:09]
Krystal Ball
I know.
- [03:09]
Saagar Enjeti
I can't afford the tree. One can only imagine the executive orders and state mandated real Christmas trees that would arrive if a lib said something equivalent over on msnbc.
- [03:22]
Krystal Ball
You know what? I'll defend them. That would be a good executive order. It's a good thing. In fact, you know, I'm from Texas. I'm from Texas. We don't do real trees.
- [03:29]
Juan David Rojas
Okay.
- [03:29]
Krystal Ball
Right. It's not really a thing. You know, pretty much everybody has an artificial. Some people pay the extra. My wife feels very passionately about real Christmas trees, which were some original fights in our marriage. I have come to become a real tree guy. Real trees are good and, you know, it does get you a little bit more in the Christmas spirit. But more importantly, about this whole data center buying artificial trees. This is a perfect example of what we've talked about with the mindset around AI, which is you need to personally sacrifice so that the slop can continue. So that you need to personally sacrifice, not just monetarily, but let's say the human experience. Putting up a tree in your house, having fun with your children, decorating that so that we can have this impersonal technology which the CEOs say is going to take their job and to rip even more of that away from us. I actually can't think of a better kind of clip to that encapsulates that and what worshiping GDP really looks like. Because that's what it is. That that is the explicit kind of view of what that means and of what people hold dear and why being, you know, an anti AI disposition is so increasingly popular in American politics today.
- [04:46]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, that's what they're saying is like we need to change our lives and our traditions to make way. We need to adjust for the AI revolution that is here. That is not really meant to benefit us at all. It's all to enrich and consolidate power in the hands of a very few number of people. I do have some good news on the AI front, however. Kyrsten Sinema, who is a former senator and cartoon villain, she has gone from being in the Senate to now being a lobbyist for AI data centers. She was pushing one in this one particular Arizona town and they overwhelmingly, I think unanimously, the city council voted it down. But in any case, she was also welcomed onto Fox and friends to make the case for AI data centers and how they are actually more eco friendly than they were in the past saga. Let's take a listen to that. As you know, there's this massive effort kind of on the left to kind.
- [05:48]
Krystal Ball
Of come into communities and give misinformation around water and energy and AI data centers. And that's a lot of misinformation. This administration is doing a good job of telling the truth, creating more energy.
- [06:00]
Saagar Enjeti
Domestically, the National Energy Dominance Council, doing.
- [06:04]
Krystal Ball
A whole of government approach to ensure that we're creating our own natural gas, our own nuclear to power the future. We're actually using less water with AI.
- [06:13]
Saagar Enjeti
Data centers than in the past.
- [06:14]
Krystal Ball
So that, that communication is bringing people together who just want efficient, proactive, good lives where their kids have a better life than they had. So this is, I think, a really important issue that has nothing to do with partisanship.
- [06:27]
Saagar Enjeti
So keep in mind, again, this lady is paid to utter this absolute garbled nonsense. The fact that she can go up there with a straight face and be like, oh, this is all good for American energy production. Like we have looked at the way the grid is already being strained by the power usage of these AI data centers. And I also find it very interesting, Sagar, that she is framing this as a partisan issue that, oh, it's, it's all these left wing people who are coming in and telling you bad things about the AI data centers while the President is telling you the truth, that this is a good thing for the American economy, etc. Because the reality is, as we've covered here extensively, you know, if you look at the Georgia elections, if you look at the Virginia elections, if you look at local opposition to AI data centers being located here, it is very cross ideological and there is not a clear left right divide here. So that's something that clearly she and whoever's paying her are trying to push.
- [07:29]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I mean, it's the Kyrsten Sinema thing. It's just too much. And I think what everybody can appreciate now is how overtly corrupt so much of this is. You have not only the, I mean, this is an ex senator who took multiple votes on behalf of big industry, which we covered here at the time, left in order to personally enrich herself. I mean, and you know, by the way, there was all this debate, they were like, does she really believe this is she. It's like no, she's just, she just want to get back. I mean it looks like she just wanted to get paid right in terms of her advocacy. And now she's like pro Trump now hilariously for big business reasons. I just want to put it all together just to show how corrupt so much of this is. I recently flagged this, I was reading through. I took interest in this debanking conversation. I think the conversation on debanking is important. We've talked about Lee Fong with this before. There were legitimate instances of political deep banking that happened which are really concerning at a free speech level were weaponized by the tech guys who started saying that debanking happened in order to loosen restrictions around their industry. Famously we had the Mark Andreessen moment on Joe Rogan, but there are many others. We had Mark Zuckerberg and others for pro crypto interests. And again I think there are real concerns around industry specific for politics. But I could not get over as I was reading this new debanking report, only weirdos like me. This is the Office of the Comptroller from the Treasury. So they did a nine month investigation. They're gonna look into who's getting debanked. And you would be amazed to find that this new debanking report signals out not just crypto and other industries, but pornography. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. The OCC's preliminary findings show that between 20 and 2023, nine banks made inappropriate distinctions among customers in the division of financial services on the basis of lawful business activities by maintaining policies restricting access to banking, requiring escalating reviews and approvals. Sectors subjected to restricted access included oil and gas, coal, mining, firearms, private prisons, tobacco e cigarette manufacturers, adult entertainment and digital assets. Now let's stick with porn and with crypto. You know, there's this idea that these banks are ideologically opposed to porn and to crypto. These are some of the greediest people in the world. You think they don't want to take their money? Do you know why they don't want to take their money? With crypto, they're worried about kyc, know your customer laws and specifically money laundering, which they have a legal mandate not to, to, to help prevent and to help report to the FBI or to the US authorities on porn. It's the same thing. What, the bank suddenly grew a conscience? Do you think that that's the banks are like, oh my only fans. We can't be taking their money or the banks are looking at human trafficking laws and at revenge porn laws and at the internal enforcement of these gigantic conglomerates which are addicting all of these American men and which are flagrantly in violation of multiple trafficking laws on the books right now to help prevent women who are being exploited posted online international rings which are profiting to the tune of billions of dollars and are like, yeah, we can't take their money to. Because to do so would actually be a violation, specifically of trying to protect all of these girls, of which these laws were passed on their behalf. Maybe it's the latter. And so the Trump administration here taking significant pressure from the porn industry and others, which again, are salivating at the idea of access to the legitimate banking system and now effectively pressuring our largest financial institutions to basically take their money and. And look the other way. I can't think of anything worse. You know, look, you know, tobacco, fine, whatever. I get it. You know, that's one of those where, you know, I think tobacco is horrible. Smoking, obviously, it kills a lot of people, the industry, et cetera. That's one which, again, I get not wanting. You know, especially with lawsuits and everything, you don't necessarily want to be connected to that. But with pornography and with crypto, like we said, the banks don't care about conscience. They're doing it for a reason. It's not ideological. It's not even government.
- [11:57]
Saagar Enjeti
These banks were happy to do business with Jeffrey S D, like, after, because the money was green. They're like, yes, let's do the deals. It's fine. We don't care. Like, we're going to continue to hang out with him. We've had more and more reporting about that. So, yeah, it's not like they're out here being some, like, good lefties, like, we're going to not work with. And it is interesting to me, going back to the Marc Andreessen Rogan appearance, and just to remind people he used the conservative perception and probably at times, like legitimate, Legitimate reality that there was ideological debanking to then launch a war on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had actually stood up. Rohit Chopra, who was the head of that agency, stood up against. Against ideological debanking. But they found he found it to be a useful construct. And then even some of the examples that he offered that he was like, this person was debanked just because they're like, a conservative and they like Trump. And then you dig one layer deeper and it's like. Or maybe they were committing, like, scams and fraud. I think people need to really Remember, especially crypto is rife with all kinds of scams and rug pulls and fraud and money laundering. Like, none of it's being prosecuted anymore under the Trump administration. But that has been the reality of crypto. So there have been very good reasons why banks would look askance and not want to get involved with some of these sorts of things. So it's a classic playbook that they have used. David Sachs did this too, in his defense of AI of them, like completely deregulating AI they take a culture war issue and they frame it in a way protect like a pro oligarch agenda. And so that's a lot of what's going on here as well. You remember David Sacks in his tweet, he was talking about like, oh, if you don't want to black George Washington, then we've got to make sure states can never regulate AI and we can just do whatever we want to do. So, you know, similar kind of bait and switch going on here as well.
- [14:04]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, these culture war stuff. You know, in absence of big arguments around here. By the way, again, like I said on AI, I've never had more pushback from the White House. It's kind of fascinating. I enjoy arguing with them about it. There is a legitimate view about the AI States thing. I don't agree with it necessarily, but I'm telling you right now, this porn thing, there's no defense 100% it's being pushed by the industry. This is. It's just like weed I talked about yesterday. You can defend weed, rescheduling all you want. And if it was done through a real process, I would, look, I would fight it, but I would, I'd be like, okay, so be it. But this is literally because the White House chief of staff we're about to talk about was hired by a weed company whenever she was outside of office and then brought that former client to the Oval Office who has billions of dollars at stake and whose stock massively profited. That's it. That's the only reason that this happened, because a bunch of multimillionaires hired pro Trump ex campaign officials, donated and or hired to the Trump campaign, and then got their way to the Oval and then did a corrupt deal in order to get it done. Like, that's it. It's the same thing here with porn. It's because, I mean, also, you kind of have to understand, if you're saying banks should disregard KYC regulations whenever it comes to, like, crypto and others, then, oh, okay, well, it is kind of difficult. Let's say to apply it to the pornography industry. For them in general, they wanna make it as easy as possible for all of these vice industries to do business. I think that's disgusting in an era where the very basics of life have never been more unaffordable or unattainable for a lot of younger people. And that these are the very things which are destroying them from the inside out. And you know, this is a big talk from the administration which care, you know, cares about Christianity or moral purpose or any of that. I have never seen a more socially libertarian administrator. Not even the Biden administration did shit like this. Let's go to C4. You know, just again, just to give you an example, Trump is now considering wiping federal gambling winnings taxes. Let me explain something again. There's no such thing as gambling winnings, only four. They did a study, hundreds of thousands of people who did sports betting. 4% of people had a profit after five years. 4%, 96%. You're going to lose, you're a loser. 100%. Now all this will do is give casinos and sports betting companies free advertising saying by the way, when you have this parlay which you're definitely going to hit, it will also be tax free. It is a gigantic giveaway and brand, you know, benefit to these gambling. It's so repulsive, like loosening restrictions on weed, porn, gambling. It's literally like they're personally attacking me. But look, this is not, this isn't about me, okay? At the end of the day, like you can live your life the way that you want. But, but, and this is just my opinion, I think that the government should not make it easier, easier for multi billion dollar industries to corrupt you, to corrupt the people around you, to corrupt your community. The point of the government of our society is to promote human flourishing. There's nothing about this which does any of that. All it does is vastly enrich people who wake up every single day thinking about how to milk you for as much money as possible. Those people are my enemies.
- [17:33]
Saagar Enjeti
The gambling thing is crazy because it comes at a moment too when I think there's increasing recognition of like, oh, this, this is a problem, right? This is a problem. You know, there we've got a major issue with addiction. We've got a major issue with people who are, you know, giving all their life saving betting on whether it's boarding events. Now we've got, you know, CNN making a deal with the betting companies. You bet on literally everything. All these scandals coming out about insider trading and rigging the Markets, all that sort of stuff. And you know, in the past when we've had things that society has considered to be like a vice or behavior they want to discourage, but they don't want to outright ban, oftentimes what you do is you actually tax it. You make it more expensive or you make it more difficult. Here you're going in the opposite direction. Like, instead of doing a vice tax, you're doing like a vice tax credit, you're doing like a vice encouragement. Actively trying to funnel people into something that we know is fundamentally rigged, exploitative, predatory, and damaging. So, yeah, I mean, you know, come get your Christian nationalists. This is. It is really pretty wild what's going on here. But it's the whole administration, the core foundation. There are no foundational principles outside of just like a money grab. I mean, that's what it is. It's just like a heist. They are taking everything that's not nailed down. Everybody's in it for their own bag. Like, you know, even the foreign policy is run for a bunch of oligarchs. Bag the domestic policy. The economy is run for them. That's. That's the whole thing. And so, you know, the fact that the, the gambling and the porn industry and whatever, getting their seats at the table and getting their taste. No surprise.
- [19:05]
Krystal Ball
Absolutely. All right, guys, I think we all talked a little bit too much, so we're going to have to go to Susie Wiles before we welcome our friend, Juan Daveed Rojas.
- [19:14]
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- [20:13]
Sophie Cunningham
This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at. Don't sleep on osa.com this information is provided by Lilly a medicine company.
- [20:53]
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- [21:24]
Krystal Ball
Turning now to Susie Wiles. This just broke this morning. We had to add this in. This is one of the craziest interviews by a senior White House official I have ever seen in my life in any other White House, any other time, normal time. She's getting fired today under this president. Who knows? Let's put this up here on the screen. This is a New York Times write up of a multi page interview that Susie Wiles has been sitting with Vanity Fair for over the last year in which she gets candid about the entire Trump presidency, admits that many of the things that the White House said are lies, admits that Elon is using ketamine. She criticizes the President. She says that the Vice president is a conspiracy theorist who his conversion to away from never Trumpism was political. She says Trump has an alcoholic personality. So let me read from the New York Times write up of this lengthy Vanity Fair profile. President Trump's chief of staff said she tried to get him to end his score settling against political enemies after 90 days in office, but acknowledged the administration's still ongoing push for prosecutions has been fueled in part by the President's desire for retribution. So number one, the mortgage fraud case against Letitia James or against James Comey, all of that, it's not about the case. It's political retribution from the President. She just tweeted it out. That's an old meme from the 2010s is just tweeting out what as journalists we've been working on this story trying to prove that this is the true reason why Trump is doing this, even though yes, it's obvious we need evidence. And now we have the White House Chief of staff. He's like, yeah, he's doing it for political retribution purposes. That's what these prosecutions are about. Okay, let's sit with that. Let's sit with that. As we continue again, for over 11 interviews that she's given, the Vice president, she said, quote, has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade. His conversion from Trump critic to ally was based, not on principle, what was sort of political. Elon Musk is an avowed ketamine user, an odd, odd duck whose actions were not always rational and left her, quote, aghast. Russ Vogt, the budget director, quote, is a right wing, absolute zealot. And the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, quote, completely whiffed in handling of the Epstein files. She continued, by the way, to say about Venezuela, this is my personal favorite. She said here about the boats, that the policy of the United States is that or for Donald Trump is to, quote, blow up as many boats as possible until Maduro decides to leave office. That's what she said. So admitting none of this is about drugs, it's not about fentanyl, which is all bullshit, which, again, I knew that I've been saying that here. But to have the White House Chief of staff just come out and be like, yeah, yeah, it's all fake and it's about regime change. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Susie Wiles. I mean, continuing here, describing Trump as an alcoholic personality with respect to, quote, operates with the view that there's nothing he can't do. That's not usually something I would describe of an alcoholic, but okay. She said so much of her job revolves around the President's personality and stream of consciousness. Public comments. She said that during the whole tariffs thing that the vice president, J.D. vance, was sent in to convince Trump to pump the brakes on tariffs. And she said that there was a huge disagreement, that they were deciding people were predicting disaster on usaid. She thinks no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody. I mean, the whole thing is crazy and we're just scratching the surface. I haven't even been able to. I haven't been able to get even all of them just yet. What these comments are. But trashing the Cabinet admitting the Epstein files is a huge problem. Says she can't understand why Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a different prison. Says that the Epstein files was mishandled. Says that Venezuela is really all about regime change, that USAID was a disaster, that she was a ga Keep in mind, you know, part of why this is so crazy is it's not just about telling the truth. This White House, her employee Caroline Levitt took to the podium to defend every single part of this bullshit at the time as the official part of the administration. And she's admitting that in private. My God, we were aghast by it. We were disgusted. We tried to move off of this policy. The prosecutions are political. I mean, how is that gonna play in court? How is this gonna play if this is a true court? James Comey, congratulations. You just got acquitted. All right. Letitia James, who they've tried to indict, what, three more times? Three times from a grand jury and can't get it. Yeah. Good luck to the prosecutors who are trying to do this. It's just so crazy. I have never seen anything like this in my entire time covering Washington, ever.
- [26:28]
Saagar Enjeti
It is wild. Let me read. And she, by the way, undercut a number of other policies. She talked about how they mean to be more careful with deportations. She said she did not agree with pardoning the violent January Sixers that she pushed to just do the nonviolent ones and was overruled there. So all kinds of the, like, most like core and controversial Trump 2.0 policies, she's effectively undercutting here everything from, you know, the day one J6 rioters pardons up until Venezuela, where she's just giving the game away, that the blowing up of the boats isn't about drugs, it's about regime change. On the political retribution piece, let me read a little bit of this. So she said, quote, we have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over. She said at the time when that did not happen by August, she told Mr. Whipple that I don't think he's on a retribution tour, but said that Trump was aiming at people who did bad things and coming after him. In some cases, it may look like retribution, and there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me. And so, in terms of just actual real world impact. Yeah. Any of those court cases, Tisha James. James Comey, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff. There's been all sorts of talk about people they're going to go after on this mortgage fraud bullshit. Those cases will all be undercut to the extent that they had any legs to begin with by this overt admission from the chief of staff that, yes, these are political. This is about retribution. That's what he's doing. So that in and of itself is wild to undercut J.D. vance. Trump may not really care that much about that, but to say, oh yeah, of course he converted to Trumpism because it was political, which is obvious. But here you've got the Chief of staff acknowledging what everybody could see, the reality in front of their eyes, calling him a conspiracy theorist, talking about Elon Musk's drug use. All of it. I mean, yeah, it's pretty wild. And the other thing about this saga is the White House participated with all of this. Like this was authorized. I mean, there's a big glossy photo shoot involved with a bunch of different administration officials. Other officials spoke to this reporter as well. So this was all. This whole project, this whole write up was greenlit by the administration. Even though I would be very surprised if they knew the extent of what Susie Wiles was saying here.
- [28:55]
Krystal Ball
No, they didn't know. I can already, my phone's, it's pinging a little bit here right now. Yeah, I'll just leave it at that. In terms of what people around Washington, including people who are. I mean, here's the thing. It's an unspoken rule here in D.C. when you work for somebody, you never make yourself the story. Never. So the White House Chief of staff, many chiefs of staff to presidents and others, they don't sit for interviews. Why? Cuz your job is to execute the agenda of the President. You're never supposed to be the main character, ever. That's the job of the principal. I know this sounds like kind of servile, but like in a certain way, like that's the job, right? That's what you do as a staffer. And so for sitting for 11 interviews here, 11 interviews, and just letting loose about your thoughts about how Pam Bondi's an idiot, she said, completely whiffed on Epstein. I mean, if the White House Chief of Staff thinks this, how can we as citizens have any confidence in our government? If the White House Chief of Staff is openly saying that what the President is saying is a lie, is that many cabinet members are idiots or incompetent, is that Doge, which was held up as a central pillar of the administration there at the time, she was, quote, aghast by it. First of all, what are you doing in that job, lady? What are you even doing? If you think this, you should leave. Right. What does it say about you that you think all of this and that you're sticking around to, quote, do something about it? Cause you're obviously not doing a very good job. You actually don't have that much Influence, if that's what you think that you're doing. And then second, yeah, I just, I cannot get over how you can just openly admit so many things, which, again, we all know are true. But there is a difference, legally. First of all, in a court of law, to say that you have a political prosecution, but like, on regime change, that's gotta be one of the most consequential policies of the entire Trump administration. And to just come out and be like, our flimsy bullshit pretext is, in fact, bullshit is amazing. I mean, it's. It's shocking to the character.
- [30:56]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, and that's, you know, something in a future administration, if you've got Democrats in control, like, people need to think about the, you know, potential prosecutions they clearly are worried about, like with the double tap strike, whether that was legal or not. Obviously, I think the whole thing is illegal. But they clearly got nervous about that as well, judging by the reaction. So when you have her coming out and publicly undercutting the bullshit legal pretext that they've been using. Yeah, that's a big problem for Pete Hegseth. That's a big problem for that admiral. What was it? Admiral Bradley, who was kind of thrown under the bus. That's a big problem for all of the seals that were involved in this policy. It's. That's a big issue. Let me read the part of the Epstein portion, because this is pretty wild, too. So this is about Pam Bondi. She also gets into Trump a little bit with regard to Epstein. So as you mentioned before, saga, she says, I think Bondi completely whiffed on appreciating that. That was very targeted group that cared about this. First she gave them binders full of nothingness. Then she said the witness list or the client list was on her desk. Ask. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn't on her desk. Mr. Vance, by contrast, she said, understood the sensitivity because he himself was a conspiracy theorist. She said. So again saying directly, when Pam Bondi told you that this was on her desk, she was lying. There is no client list. It sure as hell was not on her desk. That is what she had to say about that. And then she says that she has read the Epstein documents and acknowledged Trump's name is in them. Quote, we know he's in the file, and he's not in the file doing anything awful. Nothing awful, Sagar, so rest easy there. But neither, apparently, this is one more part on this. Neither, apparently, is Bill Clinton asked about Trump's claims going back years that Clinton had visited Epstein Island. Ms. Wallace said there is no evidence. Asked if there's incriminating evidence about Clinton in the files, as Trump has suggested, she says the President was wrong about that. So she's saying Trump is lying. Trump is in the files, but not doing anything awful, and that he is lying about what the files contain with regard to Bill Clinton.
- [33:10]
Krystal Ball
It's so crazy, man. I truly have never seen anything like this. The last interview that was anything remotely comparable, in my opinion, was maybe Steve Bannon in the first hundred days, where he openly trashed Jared Kushner and other members of the administration. Who was it to the American Prospect? Is that right? It was some like, kind of like.
- [33:29]
Saagar Enjeti
It was like New York Magazine.
- [33:31]
Krystal Ball
No, it was a lefty magazine.
- [33:32]
Saagar Enjeti
I remember New York Magazine is kind of lefty. But anyway, I don't remember exactly, but.
- [33:36]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, there was that. But honestly, like Stan McChrystal, the. The. He was the general in charge of Afghanistan at the time. And Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone journalist, ended up being delayed. And McChrystal, what did he say about Obama? He said he was an idiot, something like that. He said some comment about Obama where he was like, he's dumb, published it, and he was immediately fired. But that was in the old rules. I don't know if that's gonna happen now. I have no idea. I mean, how could you ever enter a cabinet meeting again when I mean, Susie Wiles, who I guess is one of your technically kind of your boss, is out there just trashing you in the public. It's amazing. But that's the world we live in. Is Cash Patel sitting for interviews about his love life with Stephen Miller's wife, who's dressed casually for some reason? This entire thing, I don't know. I don't know what is happening to this government. But, yeah, we're being Confederacy. I don't even have words. I'm literally speechless of how retarded this. This is. It's crazy. It's fucking crazy.
- [34:42]
Saagar Enjeti
So you have the Chief of staff. So this is not lib versus Trump derangement syndrome. Trump's Chief of staff saying he's lying about the Epstein files. Bamboo Pam Bondi was lying about the Epstein files. That she disagrees with the deportation approach, the USAID approach, that Elon Musk, who was handed the keys to the whole fricking government, is a drug addict. That Russ Vote, who still has the keys to the whole government, is a right wing ideologue. That the Vice President is a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorist. What? I mean, what More could you possibly get into this series of interviews? It's pretty wild. I don't know. I mean, I have to think that there would be some, like, there has to be some blowback for this. I mean, especially the parts where she says things about Trump, in particular that he's lying and that she disagreed with him on the J6 pardons and the undercutting of the Venezuela policy. That's a live, active, very significant, serious issue. And here she is just, like, giving the game away on that one. I don't know. It's very different from my impression of her. I didn't know anything about her, but it seemed like she was just this very. We haven't heard from her that she is very, like, disciplined and buttoned up. This is the total opposite of that.
- [35:58]
Krystal Ball
Well, you know, maybe everything Trump. Everyone turns into a narcissist around Trump. I guess, you know, that's possible.
- [36:03]
Saagar Enjeti
I also wonder how he'll, you know, he's. He's very against alcohol at all, Right.
- [36:09]
Krystal Ball
Being described as an alcoholic.
- [36:10]
Saagar Enjeti
Wonder how he'll react to being characterized as having the personality of an alcoholic.
- [36:15]
Krystal Ball
His brother.
- [36:16]
Saagar Enjeti
That will land with him. Yeah, I know.
- [36:18]
Juan David Rojas
Over.
- [36:19]
Krystal Ball
Well, no, whatever. All right, more consequential news. We got Juan David Rojas standing by to talk about Chile. Let's get to it.
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- [38:05]
Krystal Ball
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right.
- [38:10]
Saagar Enjeti
Now Mint Mobile is offering you the.
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Krystal Ball
Gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.
- [38:22]
Saagar Enjeti
So that means of half day. Yeah. Give it a try.
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Krystal Ball
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- [38:37]
Krystal Ball
Turning now to our friend Juan David Rojas who joins us live to discuss the most recent elections in Chile who have elected a new right wing president, Jose Antonio cast by nearly 20 point margin. Juan, our excellent analyst of all things Latin America joins us to break it down. Good to see you man.
- [38:56]
Juan David Rojas
Thanks for having me back on, guys.
- [38:58]
Krystal Ball
Absolutely. So let's put this up here on the screen why the Chilean left failed. You discussed some of the policies over the last five years, some of the rise here of Jose Antonio Cass about how exactly this all came to be. Why don't you break some of it down for us and maybe what it means for the region and if anything for the United States.
- [39:16]
Juan David Rojas
So Cast, he's, you know, he's been called far right, like ultra conservative. He's very conservative. He is a apologist for the Pinache dictatorship which for decades after the dictatorship people on the right tried to like distance some distance themselves from the former dictator. And actually the first like few presidents after the dictatorship were all like center left. It was only until Sebastian I think in like 2010, who was like the first conservative one, he was like tried to distance himself from the dictatorship. Cost is like he says that like you know, he condemns the human rights abuses but that, you know, his legacy and especially Pinache's economic legacy were great. His brother actually was one of the Chicago boys that advised Pinache and like installing this neoliberal model, the country known as like the cradle of neoliberalism. And so his brother Miguel actually served as the president of Chile's central bank during the dictatorship. And so you know there's a lot of polarization around this. People on the left will say that you know, we'll condemn the human rights abuses and like a lot of the legacy of the economic policies and people on the right will say oh look, but we had this great economic growth afterwards and it's kind of, there's kind of flaws in some of these arguments. So that's a bit of the rundown for the moment for the United States cost almost all right wingers in Latin America. You could describe them as neoconservatives. They worship the United States, they hate Russia, China, Iran, blah blah blah. This guy like is going to be really good for the current administration. He loves melee. A lot of like posting after the election was showing how like geographically the continent of south. The South America is like divided along the middle between right and left governments. And Milei, what he did is that he posted like the, the like western half that are like conservative governments, this like tech bro like futurism stuff with like skyscrapers and then the leftist governments are a bunch of like Brazilian favelas. So that's to give you an idea.
- [41:22]
Krystal Ball
Got it.
- [41:23]
Saagar Enjeti
Gotcha. So they're, they're excited about like the prospera type ification of those countries. So.
- [41:30]
Juan David Rojas
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
- [41:32]
Saagar Enjeti
So his, his brother was a Chicago school neoliberal, economic adjustment, austerity, dad was a Nazi, he's a Pinochet apologist. This is a lot, it's a lot to take it. So what was it that people were responding to to reject the more left leaning government and go with this guy who I mean his politics are pretty radical from those familial connections and his embrace or justification of Pinochet, but also the embrace of Milei also says he wants to consult with Bukele with regards to crime. So I mean this is a pretty dramatic turn. What led to it.
- [42:13]
Juan David Rojas
Yeah. So I will say that Kass, despite his past and, and like he, this is the third time he ran for president and in previous other times he was like really hard line on abortion. He kind of toned that down this time around. He is honestly as far as like anyone can really say a committed Democrat. He's not, he said he's not interested in like trying to take over all the institutions, persecute his opponents and like govern for life like pin. And in general you can even also say that like the candidate that he defeated was a Communist party candidate. She was nominated by the Communist Party but for a communist, honestly, she was pretty moderate. She was really critical of like human rights abuses by like Maduro and Ortega in Latin America, which is I, I said like in some other time that it's rare for like leftists to openly like celebrate Maduro. It's also rare for them to like be stridently critical of him too. So that's something interesting in Chilean politics. And I, I think that explains a lot why so many people are willing to gravitate towards him. As for the failings of the current government, current president Gabriel Borich, he won in 2021. He was seen as like the shining star on the international left. The country was like trying to rewrite his constitution and he said he was going to bury neoliberalism. Him that didn't work, really work out. And we can talk some more about that. But in a nutshell, I like to say that he was basically like the Chilean Mamdani. And to be clear, I like him and mom, Donnie. I think both of them, like, on a personal level, they seem kind of like nice guys and charismatic etc. And Bori actually did some really good things, in my opinion. He like raised the minimum wage like 20%. The four, the 40 poorest Chileans, the bottom 40% of Chileans now have access to free health care. Pensions are a little bit less miserable, which historically were terrible in Chile. And the best thing actually is that there's a gradual reduction in the work week from 45 to 40 hours. That's something that unions had been demanding for decades. Really, really good stuff. The problem is that the broader political environment after the pandemic shifted to issues that really benefited the right. There was a crime wave. Some of that had to do with the fact that there were these like, mass protests in 2019 that led to the Constitutional Convention, similar to 2020 here with BLM. Like there was backlash against the police and that led to officers like not wanting to like, police high crime areas. There's also been a broader reconfiguration of the drug trade in South America, favoring like Asian and European markets. So that's led a lot of like organized crime to move into countries like ch. There was inflation. And even though the government raised the minimum wage, the truth is that the increase was roughly in line with previous governments. So in relative terms, like people's buying power went down. And finally, this is always the kryptonite for progressive governments. There was this huge migration surge, especially in illegal immigration. The country's immigrant population has doubled to 1.6 million, is around 300,000 undocumented, mostly Venezuelans now in Chile. And that doesn't sound like much here, but that's enormous in Chile considering that the country's whole population is around 20 million. And so how did Aborig handle that? Similar to with Biden. His government had like, the lowest amount of deportations in history, around half of the previous government. And like, for example, with Biden, like, you can say, for instance, that Biden deported a lot of people at the border. Within the country, not so much. And so there was this. Every single time, including in Latin American countries, you see this divide between people who are more college educated and more working class. And every single time, the more college educated people have a reluctance, understandably so, for like, you know, humanitarian reasons to not really want to, like, do think things like deportations. Whereas working class people feel, you know, they have concerns over crime, strains of social services, competition with illegal labor. So it borried, to his credit, he did, like, militarize the northern border to try to stem new arrivals. But people really resented the fact that, that the government was not really keeping up enforcement. And so Kass has this Trumpist program. He wants to build a border shield of walls, ditches, and it's gonna be a long shield.
- [46:52]
Krystal Ball
Man, that's a skinny country.
- [46:55]
Saagar Enjeti
I'll know the shape that's gonna be.
- [46:58]
Krystal Ball
A tough wall to build. Love Chile, by the way. Very cool country that I've been to before. So finally, question for you, Juan. You talked there about America. What about Venezuela? Like you just said, what's the opinion on the current government, on regime change? Would they be supportive of something like that? Traditionally, you know, with Pinochet and our past relations, it was viewed as this, like, power center, a bulwark against Latin American leftism. Is that something that we're gonna see again? What do you think?
- [47:27]
Juan David Rojas
Yeah, I'd say that the President elect, his administration will go along basically with whatever the Trump administration wants, including Venezuela. The current government avoid each. Like I said, they were very critical of Maduro. They have said that they would not, you know, support any kind of regime change, like by force in Venezuela. But, yeah, it's. Yeah, this is a really sensitive topic. I mean, who knows, maybe cast could be apprehensive about this stuff. Because the thing is, you know, the precedent you set for this, it's like, okay, you know, maybe we're. You like it if it's against Maduro, but it's like, you know, what if they can do it to Maduro?
- [48:09]
Krystal Ball
Right.
- [48:09]
Juan David Rojas
They can do it to anybody. So yeah, it's.
- [48:13]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:14]
Saagar Enjeti
Just because they like you today doesn't mean in the future they won't turn right. So that very, very interesting stuff, Juan.
- [48:22]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:23]
Juan David Rojas
Oh, you know, one interesting thing actually, in Chile, permanent residents. This is hilarious. Are allowed to vote if they've lived in the country for five years. And so Venezuelans were actually a really coveted electorate during this past campaign. And guess who they voted for. They voted for cast who was promising to. To deport them because Venezuelans are super neoconservative. So there's been a lot of discussion around that. The leading conservative candidate now in Peru for 2026 said that Peru should just give citizenship to Venezuelans so that they can vote for him. It's. Talk about importing voters.
- [49:03]
Krystal Ball
Wow.
- [49:03]
Saagar Enjeti
Wow.
- [49:06]
Juan David Rojas
It's some funny stuff.
- [49:07]
Krystal Ball
Well, dude, this is why we like talking to you. Yep, Lot of other stuff going on in the world. Chile, always a fascinating country. Beautiful country. Wish them the best. Thank you for joining us, sir. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We have a great crown of points show for you all tomorrow and we will see you all on Thursday. For our last show before Christmas, Crystal will be back in the studio. Don't worry. See you all then.
- [49:47]
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- [50:17]
Krystal Ball
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- [51:19]
Juan David Rojas
Only one movie answers the call.
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Krystal Ball
It's me, SpongeBob. For the biggest comedy event of the.
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Krystal Ball
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- [51:32]
Juan David Rojas
Rated DG Friday.
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Krystal Ball
This is an I heart podcast.
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Saagar Enjeti
Guaranteed human.