12/3/25: Trump Plots Venezuela Strikes, Hegseth Panics Over War Crimes, Leftwing Populist Loses In TN, Tyson Wipes Out Nebraska Town

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – December 3, 2025

Episode Overview:
This episode dives into the latest developments in U.S. foreign and domestic policy, featuring in-depth analysis of Trump’s push for regime change in Venezuela, the fallout over U.S. military strikes and war crimes allegations, the impact of a left-wing populist’s loss in a deep-red Tennessee district, and the closure of a major Tyson beef plant in Nebraska. Krystal and Saagar cut through mainstream narratives, question the government’s motivations, and challenge the press—all with their signature skepticism and wry humor.

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1. Main Theme and Purpose

The episode critically examines recent political power plays:

• Trump's aggressive stance on Venezuela and Latin America
• The Pentagon’s handling (and media coverage) of controversial military strikes
• The evolving landscape of American electoral politics, with a focus on populism
• The socioeconomic consequences of corporate consolidation in middle America

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

A. Trump’s Venezuela Regime Change Ultimatum

[07:37–15:22]

• Trump issued an ultimatum to Venezuelan President Maduro: “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now.” Safety and sanctions relief would require immediate resignation.
• Maduro’s counter-demands: safe exit for approximately 100 regime insiders, dropping ICC cases, and U.S. oil company access.
• U.S. seeks regime change under the pretense of anti-narcotics operation; yet, as Saagar notes, “Everybody thinks that the war is for the oil, but the oil just justifies the bloodlust. We want the war, not the oil.” [09:54]
• Discussion of the U.S. penchant for using the AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) almost anywhere by rebranding rebel groups as “Al Qaeda” analogues (i.e., laying a legal pretext for intervention).

Notable Quotes:

“Turns out we don’t have a whole lot of principle when it comes to any of this.” — Krystal Ball, [09:16]
“It’d be really funny if we did a war for oil when the country’s like, just take the oil, and then we’re like, nah, we want the war.” — Saagar Enjeti, [09:50]

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B. Pentagon War Crimes Furor: Hegseth & The Press

[34:05–43:55]

• Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War) distances himself from responsibility for strikes killing survivors at sea, insisting: “I didn’t stick around...I moved on to my next meeting.” [34:33]
• Deflection of media scrutiny, blaming “air-conditioned office” journalists for misunderstanding “the fog of war.”
• Pentagon’s press briefings now dominated by pro-Trump “new media” figures (Matt Gaetz, James O’Keefe, Laura Loomer) who pose leading or adversarial questions but little substantive accountability.
• “If you actually took the law seriously, you’d be like, no, there’s no Al Qaeda here...But we’ve never done that.” — Saagar [21:45]
• Rand Paul confirming Coast Guard sources: About 21% of boats stopped suspected of drug trafficking are found not to be carrying drugs. Raises doubts about the effectiveness and morality of lethal strikes.

Memorable Moment:
The Pentagon’s new press corps is likened to an SNL cold open, underscoring the absurdity and partisanship that’s infected institutional accountability.

“You reporters sitting in your air conditioned office criticizing our commanders who are ALSO sitting in air conditioned offices…If CENTCOM is a little warm, get up and turn down the thermostat.” — Saagar Enjeti, [35:56]

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C. Left-Wing Populist Loss in Tennessee: Afton Bain’s Narrow Margin

[43:55–53:11]

• Afton Bain, running as a left-populist in a GOP +22 district, shrinks the margin to just 8 points—a significant swing.
• Debate: Was Bain “too left” for the district? Centrist critics say a moderate could have done better; Krystal and Saagar counter that populism energized turnout, and a boring candidate wouldn’t have closed the gap or told us much about midterm dynamics.

“What Bain was saying also was, she hates the Times Square tourist part of Nashville. …The fact that she had so much support among Democrats created a situation where she had thousands of door knockers and phone bankers and an enthusiastic base of support that then put her within 2 percentage points in the polls, which then brought in millions of dollars from Republicans.” — Saagar Enjeti, [46:43]

• Lessons for 2026: The special election’s turnout is unusually high—mirroring midterm conditions, unlike typical off-cycle races. Populist platforms can deliver large swings, even if they fall short of outright victory.
• Watch out for oversimplified takeaways blaming "populism":

“Sometimes you get kooky populist candidates…But it's often used as a smokescreen to say the populism was the problem, not the candidate was the problem. Because populism can be extremely energizing.” — Krystal Ball, [51:06]

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D. Tyson Wipes Out a Nebraska Town: Antitrust, Class, and Rural America

[55:05–68:46]

• Tyson announces closure of a massive Nebraska beef processing plant, imperiling 3,200 jobs in a town of 10,000. Ripple effects threaten to annihilate the local economy.
• Corporate rationale? Declining herd sizes, allegedly due to sensible (anti-parasite) import bans under Trump. But Saagar and Krystal probe deeper:
  • Dan Osborne (independent Senate candidate): Tyson’s refusal to sell (rather than close) the plant is a textbook monopolistic move—using market power to pay ranchers less and charge consumers more.
  • Antitrust law (Packers and Stockyards Act, 1921) explicitly bans this kind of manipulation, yet enforcement is absent.
• Economic policy becomes culture war: Prosperity/viability of entire small towns is tethered to the whims of corporate monopolies, with little care for the regular people affected.

“What could be more culture war than destroying an entire town—for multimillionaire billionaire profits?” — Krystal Ball, [62:01]

• Election impact: Osborne is making this the center of his campaign against billionaire incumbent Pete Ricketts—and Republican support for breaking up monopolies will be put to the test.
• Krystal: This is more than economics; to Nebraskans, it’s a “class issue” and a cultural wound.

“The point is to make people’s lives better. If this threat of Osborne means you get to keep the plant open, so be it!” — Saagar Enjeti, [66:41]

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We want the war, not the oil. We'll take the oil. But in Iraq... we really just want the war, clearly.” — Saagar Enjeti [09:52]
• “It is a fact, obviously, that drugs go from South America through West Africa and into Europe. That’s been happening for many, many decades.” — Saagar Enjeti [17:20]
• “You can’t bomb your way out of this…as long as the United States is willing to pay for their cocaine, they’re going to be willing to sell it to us.” — Saagar Enjeti [25:41]
• "What could be more culture war than destroying an entire town, right? For multimillionaire billionaire profits, Massive corporations hurting the little guy." — Krystal Ball [62:01]
• “Sometimes you get kooky populist candidates…But it's often used as a smokescreen to say the populism was the problem, not the candidate was the problem.” — Krystal Ball [51:06]

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4. Timestamps for Key Segments

• [07:37] — Trump issues ultimatum to Maduro in Venezuela; regime change discussion begins
• [09:50] — “War for oil” and the real motivations of U.S. foreign policy
• [15:22] — Wall Street Journal lays out “Al Qaeda in Venezuela” narrative
• [21:45] — The AUMF and legalistic elasticities for U.S. military action
• [34:05] — Pete Hegseth Pentagon drama: war crimes, press, and accountability
• [41:16] — Matt Gaetz asks regime change question at Pentagon press conference
• [43:55] — Afton Bain’s Tennessee race: populism vs. centrism in deep-red America
• [55:05] — Tyson plant closure in Nebraska: antitrust, class, and rural impact
• [64:20] — GOP populist conundrum: cowherd, beef prices, and billionaire politics

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5. Flow, Language, and Tone

Krystal and Saagar keep the language sharp but conversational, often inserting sardonic asides, personal anecdotes, and a sense of historical context. They are clear about their anti-establishment leanings and challenge both the right-wing and liberal political mainstream’s assumptions—seeking nuance and practical solutions for working people, not just party power plays.

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6. Conclusion

This episode offers a provocative, well-contextualized look at how power is wielded in America—whether in foreign entanglements, the decay of institutional accountability, the shifting terrain of electoral politics, or the raw, local impact of corporate decisions in the heartland. It’s an episode for listeners keen to understand what’s really at stake beneath the headlines.

Transcript

[Host/Announcer]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

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[Krystal Ball]

I O hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.

[Host/Announcer]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are.

[Krystal Ball]

So excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Can find honest perspectives from the left.

[Krystal Ball]

And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Host/Announcer]

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.

[Krystal Ball]

We need your help to build the.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Future of independent news media and we.

[Krystal Ball]

Hope to see [e-mail].

[Saagar Enjeti]

Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. So we have a plug off the top.

[Krystal Ball]

We sure do. We are going to be debating some libertarians next week here in Washington D.C. live in person. We're going to put the link in the email in the description, but this is us participating in the reason versus debate. So Big Tech does more, more good than harm. Ryan and I are arguing the opposite of that, that Big Tech does more harm than good. We're going to be up against Robbie Suave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown. So a little Robbie reunion in the works.

[Saagar Enjeti]

If we lose this, it will be like losing two flat earthers. We deserve the L. To be fair.

[Krystal Ball]

It's a reason event and a reason crowd. So we may be fighting a Sisyphean uphill battle.

[Saagar Enjeti]

They love their Big Tech. Well, they took an L just yesterday because Ted Cruz, on behalf of Big Tech, was trying to sneak into the NDAA what they call AI preemption. It would be a law that would say you cannot regulate AI if you are a state or a locality. Only the federal government can regulate AI and the federal government is not going to regulate AI. So absolute libertarian fever dream. They tried to get it into the one big beautiful bill. It got stripped from there. It got exposed and there was outrage against it. And so the people won again. But Ted Cruz will be back stripped.

[Krystal Ball]

Because it's just truly an insane.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's crazy, but they'll get it eventually.

[Krystal Ball]

Especially for the right to champion this law. Their entire problem, as they argue, is that there's a patchwork of regulations in every state. It's like that is called federalism. Sort of how we've done things for a couple hundred years.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Let's just make reason, defend that.

[Krystal Ball]

Just spend the entire defend that conversation, the AI moratorium.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Because that's where it heads anyway.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, anyway, so catch us there. That's on December 10th.

[Saagar Enjeti]

There's a little party afterwards. The Libertarians do like to party.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, they do that at least very well. We respect that and it's going to be a ton of fun. So if you want to come out December 10th, you can check out the link in the description. Reason.com versus Ryan. We have a big, big show because the news cycle won't slow down. Donald Trump held a two plus hour cabinet meeting one of those long televised cabinet meetings yesterday where everybody reports back to him on camera about how awesome he is, about how much they love him working, love working for him, how great they're doing. But they always are sure to say that anything that they're doing that is good is to his credit, of course.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Because he put all the mistakes are their own.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. So that made a lot of news. We have news to bring you from that. Some of it is on Venezuel, some of it is on Pete Hegseth. So we're going to break it all down. Afton BAIN Narrowed that 22 point margin in the Tennessee special election. 20 plus 22 Republican district, narrowed it to eight. She lost by eight points last night. So we're going to break down those results, too.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. And then in Nebraska, Tyson is closing one of the largest beef processing plants. While people are furious about beef prices. There are some Senate implications there because Dan Osborne is running as an independent there. And there are also some antitrust implications as well because even though this isn't getting much coverage, it appears like they did it so they could manipulate both the price they pay to cattle ranchers and also the price that they can then charge you for the beef. This is going to be, I think, a significant issue going forward. And so we're going to dig in on this, on, on the closure of this, of this processing plant, which will absolutely destroy this town and which is not irreversible. Like a government that actually cared about doing something for people could stop this from happening.

[Krystal Ball]

We'll see lots and lots of jobs on the line, not even just the jobs at the plant, but a lot of jobs that feed into the plant. So we're going to break that down as well. We're going to be discussing the fraud allegations and investigation in Minnesota. The but on top of that, Ryan, Donald Trump continues to make news on this front. So we'll get into his order that TPS so temporary protected status be removed for Somalian refugees in Minnesota. Now, the numbers on that, it's about 700 people in a population in Minnesota. That's about 60,000. That's according to Time magazine numbers I saw yesterday. So we are going to bring all of the information that we have onto the table and talk about it this morning. And Ryan, we have a guest.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. Sami Hamdi, who Laura Loomer and others got locked up when he came here to speak at a handful of care gals. He's a British journalist. They didn't like him. They didn't like that he was here. And so they arrested him, detained him for several weeks, and because of public pressure, he did not end up spending kind of the year in detention that a lot of immigrants do before being deported. He's now been deported back to the UK from where he will be joining us to talk about what he was going to say here and. And what his. What her ordeal was like and what he saw while he was in detention.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, let's get to it. Let's start with Venezuela this morning. We can put this first element up on the screen. This is Trump now giving Maduro an ultimatum. Quote, you can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now. And has apparently offered safe passage for Maduro and his family, quote, only if he agreed to resign right away. Brian, what do you make of that? Just stopping right there off the bat.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. The deal that apparently is close. Like, if you believe the reporting, and I think it's credible reporting. Trump is saying, you need to go. Maduro is saying, okay, like, I've seen what happens. I've seen what the US and its proxy, Israel are capable of when it comes to, you know, breaching what we understood to be basic norms of civility. So at any moment, he imagines he could just be executed. And so he's like, okay, if I go, then you have to lift sanctions on me. You have to lift sanctions on everybody that you've sanctioned and who is leaving power. He said that he apparently gave a list of about 100 people or so that who would go into exile. He said he wants the ICC case dropped. The US Is already sanctioning everybody involved with the icc. We don't like the icc. I guess it'd be funny if we were like, how dare you?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, we did do that with Putin.

[Saagar Enjeti]

How do you attack the sanctity of the International Criminal Court?

[Krystal Ball]

Biden did do that with Putin.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He did.

[Krystal Ball]

It's not above us.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. No, of course not. It turns out we don't have a whole lot of principle when it comes to any of this.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I mean, obviously this regime change operation is afoot and the actual event itself feels imminent.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So, last point of the deal is that Maduro has said what he wants is his vice president to take office for two years or so while they prepare for elections. The vice president would not run for reelection, and then there would be monitored elections and that the US Would be able to compete for Venezuelan oil. US Oil companies, which don't. Which is like. It's like. So it'd be really funny if we did a war for oil. When the country is like, just take the oil.

[Krystal Ball]

And then we're like, yeah, no, we.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Actually want the war. Yeah, like, we want the war, then the oil.

[Krystal Ball]

It's not as fun if you don't do the war.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's interesting. Yeah. Everybody thinks that the war is for the oil, but the oil just justifies the bloodlust. We want the war, not the oil. We'll take the oil. But in Iraq, like, did we even take the oil? I mean, we control the Middle east, so, like, sort of, yes. But, yeah, we really just want the war, clearly.

[Krystal Ball]

So Secretary of State Marco Rubio was sitting next to Donald Trump at that long Cabinet meeting yesterday. And so obviously, this came up. Let's roll a one here.

[Saagar Enjeti]

If they come in through a certain country or any country, or if we think they're building mills for whether it's fentanyl or cocaine, I want those boats taken out. And if we have to, we'll attack on land also, just like we attack on sea.

[Krystal Ball]

And now let's hear from Secretary Rubio himself. We can go ahead and roll a two.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It never would have happened if you'd been president, but this war is going on, and the president is trying to end it. Not because, listen, we got a million things to focus on in the world as a country, but he's the only leader in the world that can help end it. And that's why, even as we speak to you now, Steve Woodkoff is in Moscow trying to find a way to end this war to save lives of 8,9000 people. Mr. President, as you want to, are dying every week.

[Krystal Ball]

So you may have noticed, if you're watching that, not listening to it. Trump seemed to have his eyes closed for a suspiciously long period of time.

[Saagar Enjeti]

At one point, I think he was deep in thought and basking in the praise from Marco Rubio. Others have said that he was fast asleep. And it's funny if you watch Rubio's face. It's very hard for me to feel any sympathy for Rubio, but in that moment, he just must be dying inside.

[Krystal Ball]

Here's my big moment.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He's just. He's like, okay, the camera is on me. And he keeps saying, Mr. President. He keeps saying, Mr. President. Mr. President.

[Krystal Ball]

Trying to wake him up.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

I don't know. It's hard to tell when Trump is just looking down versus when his eyes are actually closed. Pretty sleep he did in this one. But with him, it happens. And I'm looking at him and I'm like, I can't tell if. Because everything matches. Like everything is orange.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And it's humiliation on top of humiliation. Because the thing that he was talking about. We'll get back to Venezuela in a second. Sorry. The thing that he was talking about there is that Witkoff and Trump's son in law, Kushner were at that moment across the table from Putin, negotiating this end to the Russia, Ukraine war, or trying to. And who's not doing it. The Secretary of State. Secretary of State is stuck in this cabinet meeting blathering on while Trump is asleep in front of him.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So it's compound humiliation for Rubio.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, that one. That was a tough one. That was a tough one. He went on Sean Hannity last night and said basically that if you're America first, you should be wanting. This isn't a surprising argument, of course, but you should want regime change in Venezuela because it is our hemisphere and there's nothing more America first than our hemisphere. So a little refining of the argument in progress.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's like the definition of Israel just keeps expanding where the borders are America first, but America's the whole world, so we're doing that first. At least it's the hemisphere, though. And if you notice in there, there was one. There was a confirmation of a scoop that Stagger and I had a couple weeks ago where you have Trump talking about bombing Mexico and Colombia. It's like, there's all these sites, because what Sagra and I reported was that Trump said, okay, you're telling me all the drugs come from Venezuela. I'm hearing from this reporting at job site that actually that's not true. I see intelligence community, tell me, where are the drugs coming from?

[Krystal Ball]

He was like, I have this subscription.

[Saagar Enjeti]

To a great website website, so give me the targets, like, where. Where are the drugs coming from? And they come back to him with a list that includes a couple of, like, coca facilities on the border, the stateless border between Colombia and Venezuela. But mostly the targets are in Colombia and Mexico. And that's how these wars expand. You start talking about war, start looking for targets, and then, hey, when you're a hammer, you see that the actual drug nails are legitimately in Mexico and Colombia.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, Ecuador's got a pretty big role in it, too, when it comes to the shipment of it, the transit of it. But Colombia and Mexico are the players. And so they're like, wait a minute, so now we're doing war with Mexico and Colombia? Yep. And Trump in that, in the meeting is like, yeah, well, I'm happy to. I'm not afraid to, not afraid to do that at all. It's like, what's going on with Venezuela again? Like, what can we. Like this is completely incoherent what is happening.

[Krystal Ball]

The entire argument. And you and Sagar have covered this, but it's obvious the entire argument for this war would be applied to bombing Sinaloa or.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Which is where it started. Cuz Trump in the campaign said that that's what he was gonna do.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And as it turns out, Claudia Sheinbaum knows how to operate with Donald Trump and has likely staved off.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. She's like, you're not doing that Escalation.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. So I mean she's probably had to give a little on cooperating with CIA and drone flights and that sort of thing, but just in the context of military operations. But obviously he learned early on it would be hugely escalatory with an ally in Mexico to really bomb Sinaloa cartel territory. Even though if you took that to the American people, you could really make the fentanyl argument to the American people it would be wildly different than making this argument about Venezuela, which isn't even the largest source of our cocaine.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. The Venezuela, I mean, the fentanyl comes from China anyway and then up through Mexico. It's like what? It's not none of this like Mexico, like Venezuela, like every country. And we will talk about this with this next one. We can put up a four. So this is an article in the Wall Street Journal trying to lay the predicate. It's called, if you're listening, it's called, the headline is How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists are Flooding Europe with Cocaine. Now why would the Wall Street Journal Murdoch paper need to run this? Well, the aumf, the authorization of the use of force is specific to Al Qaeda. So after 9 11, they passed an AUMF that said if the President wants to wage war somewhere against Al Qaeda stateless organization, he has the power to do that. Everybody voted for it except for like Barbara Lee who was like, this sounds kind of open ended and dangerous. Maybe we shouldn't give this much power to the White House. And they said, nah, it's fine, it'll be okay. So then if you're a bureaucrat or you're a president who wants to wage war, but you don't want to have to go get permission to do it. You have to find Al Qaeda somewhere.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

All of a sudden we start finding Al Qaeda everywhere and the Wall Street.

[Krystal Ball]

Journal knows about it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so like for instance, Al Qaeda in Iraq wasn't even a real thing. Like they, these were Iraqi insurgents who were doing the insurgency against the United States. We rebranded them Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then we find Al Qaeda in Syria, then we've got Al Qaeda in Yemen. And then all of a sudden there's Al Qaedas popping up all over Africa. If you talk to the people who actually follow us on the ground, it's like, yeah, nobody actually calls them that. They have their own names. But if we call them Al Qaeda, then legally we can use the AUMF to go to war against them. So now we need Al Qaeda in Venezuela.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and Saddam had all of a sudden been meeting with Al Q. All of these different people.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so it is a fact obviously that drugs go from South America through West Africa and into Europe. That's been happening for many, many decades. For my book, back in 20 years ago, I interviewed this one mid level trafficker who said that actually the advent of the €500 note created a huge demand pull for drug traffickers to move through West Africa into Europe. Because if you think about, and at the time, the exchange rate meant that a €500 note was worth like $600. This was before crypto. And so you had to move cash around so you could move six times as much euros around in the same size bag as you could move dollars around. And that was a huge logistical problem that you had just too much cash and didn't know what to do with it. So the fact that there was a €500 node, they're like, well, let's just sell to Europe then. And so yes, drugs move from South America to West Africa into Europe. Are there some insurgents in Africa who were associated with some like Islamic insurgents? Yeah, sure. So that's where they get the quote unquote jihadist thing. But these are just rebel gangs, right, Connected with their governments. So. And are there some Venezuelans who are involved with this? Yeah, sure. South America, like, yeah, okay, fine. But like the idea that you should, that, this, that if you. That the answer is to go to war against Maduro, like, no, this, this is a global economy where we sell drugs to people who want drugs.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Krystal Ball]

Are back at Starbucks, so share the.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Krystal Ball]

This is where people have to be, I think, kind of careful, unfortunately, with tossing around war, crime and illegal war. Because the sad reality is that we have laws that basically justify any war on the books. I mean, it's. Well, the law shouldn't exist.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I mean, if you actually challenge, like if you actually took the law seriously, you'd be like, no, there's no Al Qaeda involved here, of course.

[Krystal Ball]

But we've never done that. We've used the AUMF and like how.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Many different regions, which basically is Lawless then it's.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think we've used it in 22 different countries. The AUMF, the post 9 11AMF, I think has been used in like 22 different countries. I can fact check that in just one second.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It is, yeah, it is cute that they think they need to like check a box. They didn't check their paperwork box at first.

[Krystal Ball]

Back in September they were literally just saying, trust us, right?

[Saagar Enjeti]

We can do whatever we want.

[Krystal Ball]

And they're kind of still doing that because they still aren't giving us names, they aren't charging anybody. You know, they say they know who is on these boats, but they're not saying, you know, who they are, what their connection is, why they're confident that they're involved with Cartel de los Oles.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Did you see that? A mom of a Colombian kid who was killed on one of these boats is like suing now in the world. Like I forget which forum.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so our guy at dropside who covers Latin America for us, Jose Luis Granado Ceja, he was in Honduras for the election and he went up to the northern area where there's a lot of enormous amount of drug trafficking which Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was just pardoned by Trump, helped establish. JOH built like six international airports in Honduras, like while he was president. Why? Why? Guess why? And if you would ask, oh, this is for the drugs. Like the people who were like, this is to fly drugs. So he wrote here in Honduras, people tell me these strikes haven't dissuaded drug traffickers from running drugs on these boats, which are manned mostly by poor people trying to make money, not drug lords at the top of the pyramid. Not only are they not legal, they're not even effective. So think about that. This is for all the people who think that these strikes are a good idea and are not bothered by the morality. So we're not talking to people who have a sense of morality around this because if you have a sense of morality around this, you're against it. But let's say you think that they're effective and that they're actually going to save 25,000 lives, which is absurd because like total of 75,000 overdose deaths a year. So we've hit 21 boats. You can pause this and go do the math on whether or not every single boat saves 25,000 lives. So set that aside, these are low level people who are paid a one time fee, often equivalent to roughly the amount of money you could make in a year or two working in honduras. So you're 20 years old, you're 25 years old. You've got parents to take care of. You might have kids to take care of. You're told, we'll give you a year's salary for this one day trip. And now it's possible that you're going to get lit up from the sky by the United States, but there's hundreds of boats that go every day and they bomb like one boat a week. So you have about a 0.1% chance, let's say you have a one in a thousand chance of getting bombed and burned alive. But if you make it, you get a year's salary.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Desperate young men are going to take that gamble. Enough desperate young men are going to take that gamble that you can kill hundreds of them or thousands of them and more are going to take it because you're like, well, I might die. It's a very low chance that I'll die. But if I don't do this, I can't take care of my parents, can't take care of my kids. So I'm just going to do it. I'm going to go for it. Men, young men at that age take much greater risks for much worse reasons. So the point here, pragmatically, you cannot bomb your way out of this, a situation where as long as we here in the United States are willing to pay for their cocaine, they're going to be willing to sell it to us.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, it's not really. I mean, we're paying for cocaine, but we're barely paying for their cocaine. And we're also being asked to trust the Pentagon's process here that the boats, they're blowing up, which do look like drug boats, but they're not showing their work on that. And so we don't actually even know that they're. I'm sure they are mostly hitting drug boats.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And you saw what Rand Paul said. Did you see this yesterday? From yesterday, he backed up something we reported here before based on a Coast Guard source, that he said something like 21% of drug boats that were approached by the Coast Guard are found to not have drugs. So this is a Coast Guard whose job it is to recognize from up close.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Not, not even in the sky from like Tampa Bay or whatever.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

A drug boat and say, stop, we're gonna board you. And 80% of the time they're right. 20% of the time they're like, our fault. Go on about your business. We apologize, and we're not charging them and we're not char. Right. And exactly. We used to kill them, the survivors. Now we don't. Now we just repatriate them.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. They're just being repatriated back to. Yeah. And so it's a hell of a. I mean, it's a hell of a lift. And again, to take Rubio's point about your own hemisphere, that is actually where if you are waging regime change wars, if anything, I mean, we should be meticulous about legality of armed conflicts, period. But of course, when you're talking about a regime change war in your own hemisphere where you could antagonize other countries. And by his own logic. I'm just saying, like, you could make the argument that this is the type of thing that destabilizes the entire region because it sends pink waves around Latin America as people are furious. And that may actually end up happening because of all of this. I mean, this gets into the entire conversation about how this playbook has never really worked, but that's probably for another day.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And meanwhile, one other piece of bizarre reporting that Soccer and I did was confirmed by Trump. So we can put up a six here. This is a truth social from Donald Trump where I challenge you to get through all of this gibberish. You can pause this and try to read through this, but basically what Trump is sharing here is a theory that Venezuela in 2020 and also in 2008, but 2020, used their control of voting machines to flip the election to Biden over Trump. So what we had reported, what Sagar and I had reported, is that Rubio, along with his we need to stop the drugs argument, was telling Trump that Venezuela stole the 2020 election from Trump. And that's one reason that we needed to go ahead and overthrow Maduro. This was a thing we heard from multiple sources, confirmed a bunch of different ways. And it was the kind of thing that in the past, I wouldn't even have reported because I thought it would think it was too crazy. But I was burnt by. Remember the Secretary of War thing? I had Pentagon sources.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, that's right, I do. I had that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I had Pentagon sources telling me, Pete Hegseth keeps saying he wants to change the name to the War Department.

[Krystal Ball]

And you were like, no, I was.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, that's too stupid to report.

[Krystal Ball]

I don't want that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So from now on, nothing is too stupid to report. So I thought this was too stupid to report. I reported it anyway. Soccer and I reported it. And here's Trump just tweeting it out that he. That he's tweeting. Out this conspiracy theory that Venezuela flipped the 2020American election. Not Venezuelan election, American election. There's a related theory that Hugo Chavez flipped Iowa 2008 against Clinton. For Obama. For Obama, the caucuses.

[Krystal Ball]

That sounds like one you'd believe.

[Saagar Enjeti]

No, like, I think Obama clearly won an Iowa. Yeah. Yes, we can. That was real.

[Krystal Ball]

The Venezuelan voting machines, man.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The Venezuelan voting machines.

[Krystal Ball]

That goes deep.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And then there's a whole theory that Elon Musk sniffed all this out and stopped it from happening in 2024, and that's why it wasn't stolen in 2024.

[Krystal Ball]

Really?

[Saagar Enjeti]

So meanwhile, Maduro continues to dance. We got a five here.

[Krystal Ball]

He continues to dance. Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So we'll see.

[Krystal Ball]

He's literally, if you're listening to this, he's dancing in the streets of presumably Caracas. But he seems to be in good spirits.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He. Well, I mean, one reason I think he's in good spirits is he keeps calling Trump's bluff. I think he was supposed to be out by last Friday.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And then, so Trump keeps bringing out, bringing the submarines, bringing the aircraft carriers. You've got until Friday. We're bombing. You close the air, you must close the airspace. And they don't close the airspace. And he's like, well, it's fine, we're not going to do anything about it. So the deal is there for the taking. Trump just has to say yes. I think it seems like Rubio was kind of standing in the way of it because Rubio doesn't want a deal. Rubio wants Maduro killed and he wants him out. Yeah, well, he's willing to leave. He doesn't want him just out. He wants him dead. And he wants Machado put in. He doesn't want like, yes, he wants Machado. He doesn't want a peaceful transition in elections. He wants to install a South Florida puppet.

[Krystal Ball]

He definitely.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's the problem.

[Krystal Ball]

That's why that and she would get.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like 4% of the vote at this point. So you can't have an election.

[Krystal Ball]

The idea that they're going to make a deal with Maduro to have two years of his vice president is not happening. That's obviously a non starter. So it seems like intentionally non starter is the case.

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[Krystal Ball]

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[Host/Announcer]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

So also at this meeting, we can move over to Pete Hegseth's troubles. Also at this meeting, Hegseth continued to kind of back off of responsibility for the second strike on September 2nd that killed the survivors of of the first illegal strike. Let's roll B1 here. I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn't stick.

[Krystal Ball]

Around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the Sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting.

[Saagar Enjeti]

A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the.

[Krystal Ball]

Which he had the complete authority to do. And by the way, Admiral Bradley made.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The correct decision to ultimately sink the.

[Krystal Ball]

Boat and eliminate the threat.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He sunk the boat. Sunk the boat and eliminated the threat. And he was the right call.

[Krystal Ball]

We have his back.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You didn't see any survivors? To be clear, after that first strike, I did not personally see survivors, but.

[Krystal Ball]

I stand because the thing was on fire.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It was exploded in fire smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital.

[Krystal Ball]

This is called the fog of war. This is what you and the press don't understand. You sit in your air conditioned offices.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Or up on Capitol Hill and you.

[Krystal Ball]

Nitpick and you plant fake stories in.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The Washington Post about kill everybody phrases.

[Krystal Ball]

On anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw up.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.

[Krystal Ball]

I wrote a whole book on this topic because what politicians and the press does to warfighters.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So first of all, these are drone attacks that we're launching at these boats. Why are they not in air conditioned offices? Also? It's like you reporters sitting in your air conditioned office.

[Krystal Ball]

I see what you're saying.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Criticizing our commanders who are also sitting in air conditioned offices. Hey, if CENTCOM is a little warm, like, get up and turn down the thermostat.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. You can do it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You can do that.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, do it. Well, and he's coming in.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Southcom.

[Krystal Ball]

Sorry, Southcom. Yeah, he's coming in real hot, obviously, because they feel now with the Washington Post report that the wind is at their back and that face at their.

[Saagar Enjeti]

In their face right at their back.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, they feel like they have momentum is what I was saying. Like they feel like they. Hexith, I think, feels really comfortable.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Oh, interesting.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I think so. I think they feel like it's because.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Of the Times story or the.

[Krystal Ball]

Because the times. The Times pushback on the Post report, which obviously the Times story and you've been posting about this is planted.

[Saagar Enjeti]

No, it was identical. It was planted, but it was basically identical.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, but Hegseth feels he's, like, completely off the hook now because that's a distinction with a difference whether or not he came in and said out of here, or whether he just said, quote, kill everyone. And the admiral was the one who.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Here's where I disagree with you. Because the Post story, the one distinction is that the Post has Him saying kill everybody. Right. Hegseth acknowledges he ordered lethal kinetic strikes.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And he keeps repeating this phrase, lethal kinetic strikes. Lethal kinetic strike means kill everybody. So what he's trying to say is he didn't say it colloquially. He just said it in the military term. But the Post story didn't say that Hegseth ordered the second strike. What the Post story said is that Bradley interpreted the lethal kinetic strike order to mean that the second strike should be taken. And the Times said the same thing. So that's why I don't quite understand why he feels like he has the wind at his back. And that's why I was like, why his back? I thought you were mixing up your.

[Krystal Ball]

Metaphor, but I genuinely think they feel totally fine. And you also saw he people on the Internet thought he was cooked because he had in early September, I think it was September 3rd, the day of the strike, said he watched the whole thing. And now he's saying, well, yeah, but you can't really tell in the moment exactly what's going on. So anyway, all that is to say, I don't think they're worried one bit when you look at the way Hagseth is talking about. I mean, Trump would pardon them anyway, even if they were a problem. Trump would pardon them.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Trump would pardon. Yeah, yeah. Trump doesn't care. But Trump does care about the bad press. He asked, he's always asking, how's this playing? How's this playing? And he doesn't like that Republicans are pushing back against him. Hegseth's whole approach here, if you go back and look at the time that he instituted new rules on the Pentagon and basically kicked out the whole Pentagon press corps lines up exactly with this. And so. So he kicks them all out, tells them, if you want to come and cover the Pentagon, you have to agree only to speak to authorized sources. You cannot solicit information from unauthorized sources. Another word for that is reporting, like journalism. And then you can come into our press briefings, and then you can get a Pentagon access. And he got what he wanted. So here is how this new press corps is covering this issue. Let's roll B2. Does the Department of War plan on pursuing any sort of legal action against the Washington Post? And what consequences will there be for lying to the American people? Because, of course, the implication there was that Pete Hegseth and Admiral Bradley are war criminals.

[Krystal Ball]

It is frankly disgusting that the Washington Post would publish something that is so insanely false. And we've seen this from the mainstream media before, right? Anonymous Sour that are being quoted that probably have no idea what's going on. And the Washington Post actually went so far as to falsely attribute a quote to the Secretary of Defense of War. Excuse me, that he never said that is preposterous. That they would write that and pass that off as true journalism. So the Washington Post, I think readership should think twice before reading that outlet again. It is disgraceful that they call themselves journalists. And we told them as such, right? We get press queries like we do from all of you. We told them this story was completely, completely fake news on Thanksgiving evening with a three hour deadline and they still published it anyway. It's disgraceful. My point there is they are feeling pretty good now. I feel like they think they flipped the narrative. And I think that's why you saw Hegseth going in so hot at the cabinet meeting. And they're now having reporters. If you were listening to this, you missed in the corner of the screen, Matt Gaetz.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And right behind him, James o'. Keefe.

[Krystal Ball]

James o' Keefe right behind him. So the Pentagon.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is an SNL called Open. That indistinguishable from an SNL called Open.

[Krystal Ball]

That clip was from a Pentagon press conference about a half hour long yesterday where the new Pentagon press corps is all like, maga, new media. And Matt Gaetz, former congressman Matt Gates was there, actually asked a good regime change Venezuela question.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I don't know what you thought about.

[Krystal Ball]

Gates, but he was a question, what's your plan? And he was wearing his representative, Matt Gaetz.

[Saagar Enjeti]

She didn't even understand the question. If she did, she answered a completely different question. It seemed like she didn't even understand it. He asked, hey, when we did the Iraq war, de Ba' athification turned hundreds of thousands of just regular government employees into insurgents.

[Krystal Ball]

Right?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, do you have a plan to not do that again? Or is everybody associated with the Maduro government going to be considered a narco terrorist?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And she answered, everyone in those boats, according to our intelligence, is a narco trafficker. It's like, okay, either didn't listen to the question, didn't understand it. You don't know about de Ba'. Athification. I mean, she would have been like three at that, at that time.

[Krystal Ball]

I don't know how old she is.

[Saagar Enjeti]

She's like, can we just get back to that guy who's asking if we're gonna sue the Washington Post?

[Krystal Ball]

Right? Correct.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. They suck, right? Because they call themselves journalists. You all are journalists.

[Krystal Ball]

It's an amazing setup.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We gave you a Little badge that says journalists.

[Krystal Ball]

How bad is the Washington Post, Kingsley? Very, very bad question.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Excellent question. They are terrible.

[Krystal Ball]

Laura Loomer was also there.

[Saagar Enjeti]

She was. She asked an adversarial question.

[Krystal Ball]

It was fine.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, I'll give her that.

[Krystal Ball]

It was fine.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Bonkers.

[Krystal Ball]

But she wasn't asking, how bad is the Washington Post?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right, right. She asked, Muslim Brotherhood is evil, so therefore, and you're designated some of them as terrorists. So shouldn't you stop Qatar from using this American air base?

[Krystal Ball]

I actually think that's a fine question.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. Especially from her right wing. Like. Like she hates Muslims. Perspective question. Like it's at least adversarial.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It doesn't align in with my politics. That's not what I asked for in a journalist. Just adversarial is all I ask.

[Krystal Ball]

And then there were the. It was peppered with questions from guys like that who were just like, tell us, how hard do you think you could smack the Washington Post in the mouth, Kingsley? That.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, three hour deadline on Thanksgiving. That's kind of dirty.

[Krystal Ball]

That's shitty. That's not good if that's true. I don't know if that's true, but that's not good if that's what happened.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's when you know you have the story completely nailed and you're not actually interested in hearing the lies from the government.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, I mean, I'm sure their sources told them with great confidence what they were telling them. And so they probably, I mean, they.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Have in the room notes from the meeting, like. Yeah, you don't report that without confidence.

[Krystal Ball]

If you have high level sources who are telling you that the story might be incorrect, do your due diligence, but you also still have two high level sources telling you that. Yeah, so I don't know, I don't know who knows what went wrong on that story, if anything. But man, what a, what a time at the Pentagon.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes, indeed.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's move to Tennessee, where Afton Bain did lose that special election last night, but the margin was single digits. So this is a plus 22. Plus 22 GOP district that Afton Bain was expected to eat away at that margin and did again, 22. She loses. Afton Bain loses by eight points to Republican Matt Van Epps. Eight points is a margin Republicans are still feeling pretty comfortable about. I saw some in the GOP consultant type world like Matt Whitlock saying it's basically a five alarm fire because if there are margin erosions like this, so 14 points in other swing districts in the midterms, that's going to be a bloodbath for House Republicans. Obviously, that math is true, Brent. On the other hand, special elections are special elections. We could put C1 on the screen. These are the results. And this is Tennessee's seventh, obviously, to replace Mark Green. 90. About 97,000 votes as of right now, 95% of votes in for Van Epson, about 81,000 votes for Afton Baines. So. So we're looking at 54 to 45, basically. And Afton Bain, I think Ryan coming to 45, nearly half of the electorate, is definitely a win for populists. She didn't get it quite as close as people wanted to. Some people thought maybe she actually had a chance to win. Didn't come down to anything quite that close.

[Saagar Enjeti]

In order to win, she would have needed kind of this almost contradictory situation, which would have been enormous excitement on the Democratic side and very little attention from the Republican side.

[Krystal Ball]

Right, right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so you've had this debate break out online which has said that Afton Bain was too left, you know, for the district. So you've got the glaciers types saying if they had run a very boring centrist candidate who you couldn't hit with anything, then actually she would have performed even better.

[Krystal Ball]

Wrong.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. The problem with that analysis, and besides just vibes and feelings and like, the, you know, biased because we like her. And when I share her politics, the problem with that analysis is that she blew it out of the water in Nashville and, you know, she WINS, you know, 78, 22 there, expanded her margin over Harris by like 30 or something. Like.

[Krystal Ball]

Which, by the way, is kind of ironic because the people in Nashville are the people who actually love Nashville who should have been devastated by that clip of Afton Bain saying she hated Nashville. And the people outside of Nashville are already going to be the ones that are.

[Saagar Enjeti]

They're the ones that hate Nashville. They actually do hate Nashville.

[Krystal Ball]

Just a little point.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And what Bain was saying also was she hates the Times Square tourist part of Nashville. So she also had this one quote that was in every ad where she said, I'm a very radical person. And so the centrists are like, that kills you. It's like, okay. But the fact that she had so much support among Democrats created a situation where she had thousands of door knockers and phone bankers and an enthusiastic base of support that then put her within 2 percentage points in the polls, which then brought in millions of dollars from Republicans. So it's sort of like a chicken and egg situation. Like, okay, if you have a boring candidate who doesn't generate any excitement among Democrats, then it's true that you might not get the millions of dollars being spent by Republicans. And then in a super low turnout special election, you might be able to eke out those last nine points and you might be able to claim that district. But the problem, let's even say that that's possible, the problem there is that that's not representative of what the midterms are going to look like. So turnout wound up being roughly what it was, I think, in 2022 in this special election, which is really unusual. Like, it's hard to match up midterm with a special election turnout. So people were tuned in here. And why that matters is that in the upcoming midterms of 2026, you're not going to be able to sneak through. Like, everybody's going to know there's an election happening. So you actually want to play, if this is an exhibition match, you want to play on as similar conditions as possible to the regular midterms. So now you know that in a district like this, plus 20, you know, 20 plus district, Republican district, you can look for about a 13 point swing, 13, 14 point swing. Whereas if you ran some boring centrist who snuck through just based on anti Trump turnout, that doesn't tell you as much. So that would be my counterargument to the Iglesias types. That might actually be right, that if you could have kept turnout to half of what it was, that maybe enough of that tilts Democratic. But so what, like you then get annihilated in November in that same district?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, and I don't think Ashton Bain, no offense, is the best candidate. I don't think anyone would say that somebody who had such a candid podcast is the best candidate.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You should have said it was PTSD.

[Krystal Ball]

From the war, something like that. But the idea that the culture wars.

[Saagar Enjeti]

PTSD from the culture wars.

[Krystal Ball]

From the culture wars. Well, we all have that. But the idea that this debunks the point that populists make, and I should say populists on the left and the right. This goes back to Barry Goldwater, literally. This goes back to Ronald Reagan. Goldwater had the line, extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. And what was it? Moderation and appreciative justice is no virtue. And that was basically to say these electability questions that are going to send Gerald forward or whomever aren't necessarily. I mean, Reagan himself said, paint with bold colors instead of pale pastels. And the argument was that the Reagan revolution would be politically more powerful than moderate Republicans at the ballot box because people are actually going to believe what you say. People are actually or they're going to believe you believe what you say. They may not agree with you 100% of the time, but. But it's obviously a race by race designation. I mean, if you're talking about running somebody who's super, super maga in the Boston area, it's probably actually not going to improve your margins. But in a special election where you can flood the zone and maybe try to sneak someone past, that is different. So at the other. What was the Pennsylvania race? Not Dr. Oz. Shoot. I'm forgetting the really super MAGA candidate's name who lost and he like probably lost Mastrion because Doug Mastroni because he was like.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

You know what I mean? Like those. Sometimes it's obvious that you needed just a better candidate, but that'll always get used to say, oh, it's populism that's killing them. And sometimes you get kooky populist candidates. Christine o', Donnell, for example, that's a fun throwback. And the problem really is the candidate. But it's often used as a smokescreen to say the populism was the problem, not the candidate was the problem. Because populism can be extremely energizing, especially in little special election type races where you can send in a lot of money and the base gets really excited and you bring attention to the race. One final point. You made a really interesting observation that if they thought they could sneak Afton Bain passed, they actually ended up getting a ton of Fox News coverage for the race, which probably woke up a bunch of Republicans in the area. They were covering this race a ton.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right, right. And maybe they would have ended up covering any race a ton just because there would be enough anti Trump energy that the polls would show at least a competitive race.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It certainly made it more salacious that they had to like I hate country music and I hate Nashville and I'm a radical person and you know, all that, you know, video of her like, you know, doing a sit in at the state legislature and they had stuff to work with that got the Fox News base riled up. Nashville, 20 point swing. So even in Nashville it didn't quite swing enough.

[Krystal Ball]

That's a. I mean it's significant though.

[Saagar Enjeti]

20 point swing is massive.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You don't see that much in politics, especially with turnout that high.

[Krystal Ball]

Right.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Low turnout in Nashville maybe you see a 40 point swing, but it's a much narrower number of aggregate votes a.

[Krystal Ball]

Republican candidate could campaign on saying they hated Nashville and Tennessee and everyone would know what they were talking about. And that's increasingly about to happen. Like the traffic, all the New York Libs and the LA libs all moving to Nashville. So it's actually kind of funny.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, they've been running against the cities for 200 years.

[Krystal Ball]

It's funny.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, 2,000 years, maybe.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Krystal Ball]

Let's take a trip over to Nebraska, Ryan, where the Tyson Beef where Tyson Beef is just shedding thousands of jobs, literally, in a new announcement.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, heartbreaking story, but it doesn't have to be Over.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

If the federal government takes this seriously, they could reverse this. So put up the first element here. So about a week and a half ago, Tyson announced that it would be closing one of the largest beef processing plants in Nebraska in the town of Lexington. So this is a processing plant that employs 3,200 people in this town of just 10,000 people. But importantly, it will also have national implications, and it doesn't have to happen. The federal government could step in and stop this because it is probably illegal. And we'll talk about why in a second. But just for some background, nearly 5% of the cattle that is slaughtered every day goes through this processing plant. 5% in the whole country. 15% of the slaughter that goes through in Nebraska every day goes through this processing plant. Now, what the mainstream press is reporting about the closure of this plant is that this is because the size of the herd is down and there's. There's less cattle going through every plant. In 2021, the herd size was 94 million. Last year, the herd size was 87 million. So, you know, down. Down 7 million cattle. Significant reason for that is that in May of this year, the Trump administration banned importation of Mexican cattle because of this parasite. So, not saying that that was a bad move, not blaming Trump for that, necessarily, because this is a parasite that would be devastating to the US Cattle industry if it creeped across the border. So the press seems to be mostly satisfied with this answer, that this is about the number of cattle declining. So we got to shut down this processing plant, and it's a shame for this town of 10,000. Now, as you think about what's going to happen to this town, you put up this next element. About a week after it was announced this plant was closed, a contractor for Tyson, who basically was contracted to do, like, trash and cleanup around the plant, said it would be laying off its 139 workers. So 3200 workers iced. Add another 139 workers, and then if you think about it, from there, everywhere that these workers go is now screwed. Fast food restaurants, regular restaurants, shopping centers everywhere. This is like this. This town will be wiped off the map if this is allowed to stand. But so I hinted earlier, why, why might this be illegal? Dan Osborne is making this point. So Dan Osborne, as viewers may recall, was the independent Senate candidate who lost to Deb Fisher last time, but he's running again. Who's the.

[Krystal Ball]

Pete Ricketts.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Pete Ricketts, like a billionaire, right?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's almost comical at this point. So he's Running as a billionaire senator named Pete Ricketts. Give me a break. And so he's making the point that this appears to be a violation of antitrust law. So let's run through Osborne's argument. We can unpack this. So he says, I believe Tyson's decision to shut down its Lexington, Nebraska plant instead of selling it is a ploy to manipulate cattle and beef markets in violation of our antitrust laws. Let's move to the next one, he says. We have an antitrust law in the books right now called the packers and Stockyards Act. This law was passed in 1921 to protect farmers and ranchers from concentrated abuse of monopoly power in the livestock industry. The act makes it illegal for meatpackers to, quote, engage in any course of business or do any act for the purpose or with the effect of. And that's important. Manipulating or controlling prices or restraining commerce. By shutting the plant down instead of selling it to a competitor, Tyson is driving down the prices they have to pay to ranchers for cattle and driving up the prices they can charge to consumers for beef, which is the quote, manipulating or controlling price or restraining commerce, part of the aforementioned act. This plant in Lexington, he goes on, accounted for 5% of beef production in the US by shutting down a plant that produced such a large portion of beef in this country, Tyson will cut demand for cattle and reduce the number of buyers competing for ranchers livestock. With this increased leverage, Tyson will be able to pay ranchers less for their cattle because ranchers will have precious few alternatives to sell to, if any. This is why a monopolized food system is so dangerous. Nebraska ranchers will suffer the most because they will lose a local buyer. Normally, when a politician speaks, I would try to interpret it a little bit for people and put it into language that you can understand, but I don't think I need to do that here. Emily, what did you think when you saw this news in Osborne's reaction to it?

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, it's amazing how Dan Osborne, who is getting some support from national Dem organizations, is still technically running as an independent. But this guy has his finger on the pulse of the conversation in a way that no establishment politicians do. And obviously Dan Osborne has a background where you can see. I mean, you and I talk about this a lot like the. Maybe the biggest barrier to entry is just class in politics and journalism. And Dan didn't come from the traditional political background. He's still just a couple of years into his political journey and it shows because he understands. But also, I just have to Add like this was a really sophisticated, I think, analysis, straightforward of how clean get it, but concentrated power. I mean, and that is just. It's not just that it's hard for people to talk about because they're taking a bunch of money from billionaires and whatever. It's that they have never really bothered to care and they don't understand that the average Nebraskan sees this as kind of a class issue. Like, obviously it's going to have an economic devastating and devastating economic ripple effect. But on top of that, it's also infuriating to people because it looks like billionaires organizing the economy in a way that they profit and the normal people get screwed. And so there's just. It's almost a culture war. You know, it's economic superficially, but I think it hits people as a culture war question, if that makes sense.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, what could be more culture war than destroying an entire town, Right.

[Krystal Ball]

For multimillionaire billionaire profits, Massive corporations hurting the little guy. Right. Like that's what it is.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And so the counterargument that you'd see from folks who support the free market would be, well, a, they would just say, let companies do whatever they want. And we don't like federal laws, like antitrust laws, period.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, but they'll like the laws that help them consolidate their power.

[Saagar Enjeti]

They do like that.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But the other argument that they would make would be, well, Tyson has been reporting in its quarterly reports that it is losing money, losing significant amounts of money at its processing plants, that because the cattle herd is down, that they're operating at a loss. And you can't require them to operate at a loss. I would say that the counterargument to that would be that they're cooking the books. That because they have such market control, because they can, and because they are so friendly with the other big three companies, they're basically setting prices. And the processing plant part of their operation is overall a part of their price setting. And so they might be reporting on their books that they're taking X loss when it comes to the processing, but the business that they're doing in the processing is directly related to their control of the supply that goes out to the market, which is related to their ability to set prices. And they're doing quite well overall. It's like, okay, you're not really. You're claiming to be losing money in the process, but actually it's furthering this extremely profitable monopolistic business that you're operating, which will now be more Profitable because of Osborne's point that now you're going to pay farmers less who are going to have to drive their cattle much further, and you're going to cut supply further, which allows you to then increase prices at the grocery store. People who are buying beef, by the.

[Krystal Ball]

Way, the Trump administration is talking constantly about beef prices. And actually Brooke Rollins talks about cattle. They know they're populist enough to know that it's a serious concern and problem in the economy. And so that puts Pete Ricketts in a rather interesting position, because Pete Ricketts is not really a populist. And so here you have the competition between Dan Osborne, who's technically an independent, and a Republican, who probably doesn't really want to talk about all this stuff, even though he's not like a realignment Republican.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He's not gonna like to talk about this at all.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And so it sets up a very.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He's gonna want to say, well, it's such a. And we should be there for the workers and we should retrain them.

[Krystal Ball]

Exactly, exactly.

[Saagar Enjeti]

They can learn to code.

[Krystal Ball]

You can expect something that sounds a little bit like that. And this just underscores the point that we have to take a trip out to Nebraska to cover this campaign because it's really becoming interesting. It was always going to be interesting.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But, yeah, he's a mechanic. And the only major poll I know of was released by Osborne's campaign itself, found him trailing 46, 45 to Ricketts. It's going to be like, this will be close a way. The new poll has him leading anyway, so it's going to be a close race. And I think that Osborne is going to just hammer this point over and over. And if Trump. So here's where politics and electoral politics can be useful. Like, hey, if you're in the Trump administration and you're watching and you want to deprive Osborne of this issue because you want to save your billionaire buddy Ricketts, tell Tyson they have to keep the plan open, that you find it to be viable.

[Krystal Ball]

They might do that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Tell them you find it to be in violation of the Antitrust Act.

[Krystal Ball]

They might do that to neutralize the problem.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Do it.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, they obviously have a really closely divided Senate. The Senate is in competition. So they may honestly just do it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Like, you let this plant close, you are probably gonna elect Osborne.

[Krystal Ball]

The Tyson PAC gives more to Republicans than Democrats. That probably doesn't surprise anyone, but I'm sure they have an open line of.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Communication with Tyson and let Ricketts take Credit for it. Let him come in, be like, look, I saved this plant.

[Krystal Ball]

Maybe it'll happen.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And like that. The point is to make people's lives better. So if this threat of Osborne, like, you know, one of the things that was the best for American workers throughout the second half of the 20th century was the threat of communism. And so American, the American government and American companies were much more generous to workers because of the threat. Osborne is not the Soviet Union, but Osborne's threat. And like, if, you know, so keep the plan open or you get Osborne. How about that? How's that for a deal?

[Krystal Ball]

What an interesting. Well, so actually I was telling Crystal this recently. I was. You and I were texting, and I was like, should I watch Roger and Me or Bowling for Columbine? And you were like, I was trying to choose between the two on a Friday night because I live a very exciting life. And Ryan was like, you gotta do Roger and me.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, no question.

[Krystal Ball]

It's funny because Roger and me is so coded. Like, it was. It was then coded as, like, left wing hippie stuff, but it's now so coded as Trump America First. Yeah, it's America First. But what Roger and Me does are really good job zooming into is how these plants are part of an ecosystem and a really fragile ecosystem. And so what can happen is sad. Just like personally sad, obviously, but also it's like devastating. A swath of a state of like, that can. When it ripples out, it's not just about the plant. It's not just about retraining those workers, telling them to learn to code. It can devastate the. The culture of an entire region.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's criminal. It's a crime visited upon this entire community.

[Krystal Ball]

And all that is to say, Dan Osborne is getting out in front of this because he has good political instincts. And anybody who's not in Nebraska is behind the ball like, they're missing it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Also, the other thing you could say is factory farming is evil.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, there's that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So maybe the Trump administration actually is just strongly against factory farming.

[Krystal Ball]

I want to know what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Thinks about reduce the amount of suffering from animals.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's hear from RFK Jr. About the Tyson plant.

[Saagar Enjeti]

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[Host/Announcer]

It clears your space, your mind, and it can give you shopping power. With trashy. Just buy a trashy bag, fill it with clothes and shoes you no longer need, then ship it free and earn points instantly. Build your points by shopping exclusive trashy offers and redeem for gift cards to brands you love, or donate them to charity. It's time to make space for what's next. Start decluttering today at Trashy IO that's T R A S H I E.

[Krystal Ball]

I O.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Janese Torres here and I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast Mind the Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks. We're back for season four to talk.

[Host/Announcer]

To some incredible small business owners.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing. Everyone's a rookie.

[Krystal Ball]

That's how fast the industry is changing.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So what I'm really excited about is to be part of that change. So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Guaranteed Human.