← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
12/9/25: Young Voters Flee Trump, Jasmine Crockett Primary, Congress To Bailout Israel, Piers And Fuentes
01:23:03
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Saagar Enjeti
Guaranteed Human.
- [00:08]
Krystal Ball
So you're telling me that the AI.
- [00:10]
Malcolm Gladwell
That'S meant to make everyone's job easier.
- [00:12]
Krystal Ball
To manage just adds more to manage.
- [00:14]
Malcolm Gladwell
On top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages?
- [00:19]
Krystal Ball
Funny how that works.
- [00:21]
Malcolm Gladwell
Any business can add AI.
- [00:23]
Krystal Ball
IBM helps you scale and manage AI.
- [00:25]
Malcolm Gladwell
To change how you do business. Let's create Smile to Business IBM.
- [00:35]
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- [01:04]
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- [01:44]
Krystal Ball
Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal 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@breakingpoints.com.
- [02:17]
Saagar Enjeti
So there was a lot of talk in 2024 about the way that young people voted more for Trump than, I think any Republican president since George W. Bush. So significant shift there, especially among young, young men. Those gains appear to have rapidly evaporated. There's some new polling out making the case. Let's take a listen to Harry Anton.
- [02:36]
Harry Anton
He started off his term his net approval rating among voters under the age of 30 at plus 10 points. Hey, that's pretty gosh darn good. But you come over now. According to CBS News YouGov, this isn't falling into the water. This isn't going underseas. This is going into a deep, dark black hole. Look at that, -46. That is a shift on the net approval of 56 points in the wrong direction since February age 18 to 29 on Trump in the economy back in October of 2024. Who did those under the age of 30 trust, Harris or Trump? It was Trump by 10 points according to the Marquette University Law School. Paul, look at where his net approval rating is now on the economy, -52 points. Very similar to what we saw in The CBS News YouGov poll in terms of his overall drop in support on the net approval rating. And this minus 52 very. Yeah, it's just stunning.
- [03:31]
Saagar Enjeti
And Trump's drop among young people, especially among the youngest demographics, vastly outstrips his drop in approval rating from older demographic groups, although he's dropped among every age group. But let's put this next poll up on the screen. This is from Yale Poll and they have it broken out by smaller age demographics, so not just like under 40 or whatever. And you can see the single largest drop in Trump's approval from 2024 recalled vote is among 18 to 22 year olds. And I don't know if you guys remember, this is the same poll. And the pollster here, the head of data science, writes that in our last poll, Yale polling drew national attention for documenting the rightward shift among young voters and especially the youngest voters, 18 to 22, where they found actually a big split between 18 to 22 and then 23 to 29 and 30 to 34 that has now evaporated. You still have more Trump disapproval among 30 to 34 than among 18 to 22. But that gap is pretty narrow. And like I said, the biggest single shift comes among that youngest age group. I think. You know, Sara, I'm curious for your view on what is going on there. We can see three up on the screen. Just to add to some more numbers here to the mix, you've also got some this is, I think a Harvard poll or this might be from the Yale poll as well. In any case, this is again among young voters and heading into the midterms, huge enthusiasm gap among Democratic young voters, far more excited to turn out to the polls and vote in the midterms than Republican young voters. So, you know, clearly that'll be significant. You did not see that gap Actually, at the same time leading into the 2018 midterms, which did also end up being good for Democrats. So you see an even a major enthusiasm edge here, which could end up being significant. But I mean, to me it's a few things. It's a betrayal of the brand of like I'm the outsider and I'm gonna fight the corrupt bad guys. And now you're the guy in the Epstein files covering up the Epstein files. I think that is a blow to his brand. And then it's the economy. Like the people who are the most screwed by the current economy and also by the way, by the all in on AI, we're going to get rid of all the entry level jobs in the near term and then we're going to get rid of all the jobs in the long term. The people who are most screwed by that are young people. So it makes sense they would have the most dramatic shift against him.
- [05:54]
Krystal Ball
I think it's very simple. It's economy, Epstein, Israel. So those in Israel and Epstein are interchangeable. So economy is what is that things are not getting better? Is that broadly people don't have a lot of faith that things are going to get better. There's no vision. You know, more recently, it's kind of funny, I've seen some right wing, like Matt Walsh, he was like, what has the Republican Congress done exactly in the last year? And I was like, yeah, it was called the big Beautiful bill. Yeah, first of all, you don't even know. But second, yeah, it was tax cuts. It was just an extension of the 2017 tax cuts, which we had five years. It wasn't very broadly politically popular. It mostly solidified, you know, the current tax system and it gave a few more tax breaks.
- [06:32]
Saagar Enjeti
And cut, that's it. And cut Medicaid.
- [06:33]
Krystal Ball
Right. And it cut Medicaid. I mean, I'm not, I don't know if young people are paying attention to that one. But like, look, my, my point has always been about taxes is it's about opportunity costs. We only open the tax code every five years. So if you're paying attention and you saw that opportunity, you're like, where's my first time homebuyer credit? Where's my, you know, this, where's my ACA premium? Where's the reduction in my tax Here, here. Where is a potential tax credit to help me get it? None of that happens. So the biggest blown opportunity in the interim, you had the ACA problem, which, this is very underrated because this is an issue. The ACA thing specifically, mostly Applies to old people who are on Obamacare as they wait to go get Medicare. If you take a look at the statistics and then small business owners like you or I. But the point is, is that that elevated the conversation of health care. And I do actually think, I'm sure you had this experience when I turned 26 or whatever, you had to first get your first healthcare. You're like, hold on, what you have how much out of the paycheck? Like that's a kind of a ride of passage for a lot of people who are younger. And because healthcare inflation is so high, even for employer sponsored. They have that, they have the crushing costs and then there's no plan or vision. If you're in your mid-20s and you're 25, if we're not going to reopen the tax code until 2029, so you've got four more years to go. That's a huge part of your life of which you don't have any faith. Things are getting better. Epstein goes to the insider. Insider versus outsider revolutionary kind of. I mean, look, I think young people proudly supported Trump because they want to blow shit up. And I don't blame them. If you think back to when I originally made a case for RFK and for all these other people, I was like, yeah, people are fed up. Blow the system up right now. It went two ways, right? There's two ways that that could go. It could go the current way where everything is kind of majorly influential to whatever weirdo or billionaire happens to be in Washington. That apparently is the way it ended up. But you know, ultimately when people say they want radical change, like they're not asking for some neoliberal bullshit. Ultimately that's why Zoron is kind of the democratic response to that. So that's fundamentally the betrayal of what it is. And then Israel is a huge part of it where prioritize a small country. Tucker always says it best, in my opinion. You just can't have a nation of 9 million rule over 330 million. It violates natural law a lot of people get very upset about. So you put those three things together, you put the Internet, you know, and you gotta give some credit to the podcast guys and others who. People who supported Trump.
- [09:02]
Saagar Enjeti
No, I think that's influential. But don't you have to say it's group for sure.
- [09:04]
Krystal Ball
I'm saying you have to give them credit in terms of they turned relatively quickly. Like four months, five months in, it was dusted. You know, if I think if you look at you guys covered Tim Dillon, yesterday.
- [09:14]
Saagar Enjeti
Right.
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Krystal Ball
Like, look, I mean, these guys, they don't have a lot of loyalty. They're not connected to the system in the same way that a lot of those are. And they'll, they'll switch on you. That's not a knock. I think they should. That means you're honest. It just is like that when you put it all together. I mean, you've even got Rogan out there talking about mass deportations, right? So it's like you got everything together where it's, it's just, there's a recipe for a disaster.
- [09:37]
Saagar Enjeti
I think the AI thing here.
- [09:38]
Krystal Ball
Oh, AI is big. I forgot that.
- [09:40]
Saagar Enjeti
No, I mean, it ties into the economy, but I think it's really significant, especially for this age group, because, number one, they're the ones who, you know, young people tend to be early adopters of tech. So they're the most familiar with it. Right. They understand it the most, both its limitations and the fun applications and ways you can use it to cheat on your papers in college at this point. So most familiar with it, but also they're the ones who are kind of on the front lines of the really damaging impacts. There's already, if you look at the unemployment rate for college grads, that has gone up dramatically. And there may be a variety of reasons for that, but AI is part of that story. And certainly those entry level jobs that these young people would be slotted into, ordinarily, those are the ones that are most under threat, either because of the current reality of AI or because you have companies that see where this is going are like, well, I don't really want to hire for this. I'm going to wait and see if I can just use the people that I have and give them some AI tools to increase their productivity. I'm not going to pay them more, mind you, but to increase their productivity. So I don't have to hire these young people coming out of college anymore. I don't have to train them up. I don't have to deal with that. I, I'll just throw some more AI tools and more responsibility at the people that I already have. So they are really on the front lines of seeing the impact of AI in society as well. There was another thing that I found really interesting in terms of heading into these midterms. You know, we're sort of in a similar place as heading into 2018, where it looks like, okay, there's a backlash against Trump, there's gonna be midterm gains for the Democrats, that's already pretty much I think everybody expects that's the way things are gonna go. But there's a significant difference in terms of the type of voters Democrats are picking up this time versus the type of voters that they were picking up into their coalition last time. Let's put C4 up on the screen. This was interesting. I hadn't seen this analysis done before. So this is from the argument and the sourcing here is from Catalyst, which does data analytics as a Democratic aligned firm that does data analytics. In any case, the headline of this chart is the new Blue Wave looks very different from from the last one. So last time almost all of the gains coming into 2018 were from who white college educated voters. The single largest gain was 8 points from white college educated and from white voters in general. This time around there's zero in the category of white college, there's actually zero Democratic gains. Now perhaps they've just maxed out that category. They've already maxed the all the gains. The most significant gains this time are with non white, non college voters. So an 11 point Democratic swing for non white voters and a 12 point Democratic swing for non college voters. Now on the one hand that is good news for a Democratic party that has been struggling with non college voters, that has seen their edge with non white voters bleeding during the Trump era. So in a sense that is good news. On the other hand, in terms of midterms and turnout, it is. The analyst here described it as a less efficient coalition because these are not the people that turn out in every single election. You have to actually do something to excite them, to make it so that they're not just gonna go, you know what, I'm just staying home. Like screw all these people where they actually feel like, okay, affirmatively I'm going to come out and vote for, for a Democrat. But I found that very interesting in terms of the dynamics this time around versus last time. And again, I think a lot of it just comes down to the economy.
- [13:15]
Krystal Ball
Isn't it just common sense? This is a swing coalition to wedge.
- [13:19]
Saagar Enjeti
Swing, swing demographic swings back. Yeah, I think Latinos in particular, like non college Latinos in particular are such, are like maybe the core swing demographic at this point and very sensitive of course to the economy. I think the immigration stuff plays in as well where they just feel like their whole identity under attack. But this is a group that has really swung very strongly dependent on who they feel like is going to be better on the economy. And there has to be a major sense of disappointment and stress over the state of things Right now I think.
- [13:50]
Krystal Ball
Economy is number one on immigration maybe, but I mean this is not a baby demographic. I mean there was all this discourse about the Puerto Rican thing after Tony Hinchcliffe and Puerto Ricans still turned out massively for Trump. Like these are not pearl clutchers, right? Like at the end of the day, I think economy is literally number one whenever it comes down to it. And this is. No one can say that they're wrong. Like no one can say that they are wrong. I use that term and shitification, like it's true for everything. And look, maybe I have rose colored glasses on about the past. I'm certainly, I'm sure. But I don't know if you saw this. There's this new Gen z trend romanticizing 2012.
- [14:27]
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Krystal Ball
It was awesome. Okay, I'm gonna be. It was great. I loved it. And part of it was that was before the time when social media truly dominated our lives. So there's a different, but there's also the cost element. Like the young social lifestyle everyone talks about. Oh, Gen Z doesn't go out to bars anymore. I'm like, yeah, well when a cocktail's 28 bucks. Look, I don't promote drinking. I think drinking is bad. But if you wanna drink a lot when you're young, go for it. I certainly did. And yeah, I think it probably worked out for the benefit. You know, when I was out there hitting the bars at age 22, the, the, the, the age of the four or five dollars deals and all that existed. I don't think that really exists anymore. I'm talking about even in downtown Manhattan. Like you could go out, maybe be seven, eight. I mean, what's it now, 25, 24, something like that. You go out to dinner. I've told you, I don't even drink anymore. My bills are starting to tick up. 70, 80, $100. You go out to drink, you know, eat dinner with your wife. No, neither of you are drinking and you're paying nearly 100 bucks with tip. You're like, what the fuck? I mean, I remember when this was $25 meal, right? And that happens for everything. There's also this whole thing about going out to eat now. It's like, well, when going out to eat, when fast food alone, you know, have you ever, have you been to Five Guys lately? My wife asked me. Five Guys?
- [15:41]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [15:41]
Krystal Ball
I go pick it up, it's $20 for a little cheeseburger and fry.
- [15:45]
Saagar Enjeti
I go, okay.
- [15:46]
Krystal Ball
I mean again, am I insane? I actually remember when it was 12 and there's just a big difference between all that. So if you are younger and you're, you know, just trying to go out and to meet people or whatever, I mean, you know, who has 150 bucks to go out? Even Uber is. Listen, back in 2012, there was this great thing called Uber Pool where we would pay 299 and ride around in cars with strangers. Yes. It took much longer, but it was cheap.
- [16:13]
Saagar Enjeti
It was pretty fun.
- [16:14]
Krystal Ball
We got. I rolled all over the city for $10. I don't think you can even do that anymore. Right.
- [16:19]
Saagar Enjeti
So it didn't even occur to me. They got rid of Uber.
- [16:21]
Krystal Ball
Oh, UberPool's long gone. Yeah, I miss it, Rip. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the hell.
- [16:26]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. It was also like 2012 was the early phase. It was like you had the benefits of social media without it just being super algorithmic and taking over everything, leading to all this radicalization. It was a very sort of almost innocent time on social media. Very earnest. Very earnest time on social media.
- [16:45]
Krystal Ball
It was pre Great Awokening. The Great Awokening was 2014, so there was no woke bullshit. The social media was, you know, it was like, buzzfeed is happening.
- [16:54]
Saagar Enjeti
Right?
- [16:55]
Krystal Ball
And Twitter. And then it's like Twitter just took down the Egyptian. You know, what was it? The Egyptian Mubarak. And everyone was like, oh, my God.
- [17:04]
Saagar Enjeti
It was like, oh, this is going to be this great democratizing thing. And then it just turned.
- [17:09]
Krystal Ball
Listen, here's the counter. Here's the counter. The economy was going to shit. Afghanistan was ramping up. The global war on terror. The drone strikes were all happening. Listen, there was still a lot bad, but I actually. There really was. And again, very naive, but there was a hope for. Especially people who are my age. I'm trying to think 2012. I was like, 20 or something like that. I was like, hey, we're gonna get out of this. Like, we're gonna be okay. Like, we're gonna get out of Iraq. Yeah, Obama fucked up Afghanistan. But, like, we'll figure it out. It's gonna be fine. And all of this, and we're gonna get things right back on track. And then, you know, things.
- [17:40]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. And you have a social movement like, you know, Occupy Wall street was.
- [17:44]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that was 2010.
- [17:46]
Saagar Enjeti
I think it was like 2010. But there was like a sort of, you know, there was an optimism that we could actually, like, change things. Right.
- [17:52]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. We believed in our political system. We, or a little bit, some of us still believed naively in our political system. I would say I had much more faith in the system at that time. And it was. It took me a lot about it much longer to be like, oh, fuck this.
- [18:05]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, no doubt about it.
- [18:08]
Malcolm Gladwell
Hello, Hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?
- [18:24]
Arvind Krishna
My one advice to them Pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah, so we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology is getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.
- [19:15]
Malcolm Gladwell
To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smarttalks.
- [19:26]
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- [21:28]
Saagar Enjeti
All right, so let's talk about the Texas Senate race because, I mean, relevant to the conversation about Latinos and non white voters, non college voters shifting back towards the democr Party Texas Senate race. Now, Texas is like Democrats white whale or whatever. Is that the expression? They always think they've got a shot at it. They never do actually have a shot at it. Probably going to be the same again this time. But this is shaping up to potentially be an extraordinary reckoning in this midterm. So who they pick as a Democratic candidate matters a lot. So yesterday we had a lot of movement in this race. Previously you had James Talarigo and Colin Allred who were in the race. And Tallorico, you guys probably seen him, he's like, young guy and he's attracted a big following. Went on with Joe Rogan. Rogan was into him.
- [22:18]
He's tried to, I think, really use some of the language and try to appeal to a left liberal.
- [22:28]
Kind of a lane. Okay, so like Elizabeth Warren adjacent kind of a lane. Right. And now yesterday we had the entry of Jasmine Crockett, who has made a national liberal Democratic brand for herself as like, one of the fiercest fighters against Trump. Now, ideologically, there's just kind of like standard Democratic positions, but she's bad on Israel. She took crypto money. I don't think she supports Medicare for all. But the woman has a lot of charisma. She has a lot of star power. She has a great ability to trigger the right, which is something that Democrats are really valuing. So she announces she's getting into this race, and I think part of the backstory there is through the Texas redistricting, like, her district got kind of screwed. So she's like, all right, I guess I got have to Go and jump in the Senate race. So when she announces, Colin Allred drops out. So now it's basically Jasmine Crockett versus James Talarico. Jasmine had, I think, a very interesting and very, I guess, controversial launch video that she put out. And for those of you who are just listening, it's just her. She's. It's her face. Like a close up of her face effectively staring into the camera while Donald Trump. Clips of Donald Trump insulting her and specifically insulting her intelligence play. Let's go ahead and take a look at this.
- [23:52]
Krystal Ball
How about this new one? They have their new star, Crockett.
- [23:54]
Arvind Krishna
How about her?
- [23:56]
Krystal Ball
She's the new star of the Democrat Party, Jasmine Crockett. They're in big trouble. But you have this woman, Crockett.
- [24:03]
Arvind Krishna
She's a very low IQ person.
- [24:05]
Krystal Ball
I watched her speak the other day. She's definitely a low IQ person. Crockett. Oh, man. Oh, man. She's a very low IQ person.
- [24:18]
Somebody said the other day, she's one.
- [24:19]
Arvind Krishna
Of the leaders of the party.
- [24:20]
Krystal Ball
I said, you gotta be kidding. Now they're gonna rely on Crockett. Crockett's gonna bring them back.
- [24:29]
Saagar Enjeti
So that's the whole thing. Just her sort of turning to the camera. What do you think, Sagar? Tell me your take and I'll give you my.
- [24:35]
Krystal Ball
Just the classic 2018 bullshit, you know, stand for nothing. Trump hates me.
- [24:41]
Saagar Enjeti
Okay, but do you think it'll be politically effective?
- [24:43]
Krystal Ball
100% he's gonna win. And that's. Listen, I mean, let's be realistic. This is part of the problem. Talarico is actually trying to intellectualize this way more because when you were talking about the standard left liberal thing, because he's trying to go after the new Texas Democrats. So the thing is, Texas, like Houston suburbs, Dallas suburbs, these people are Mitt Romney Republicans. I grew up with them. They're like Christian, but they're country club. They're rich mostly. Now they're Democrats. Well, you know, the Talarico kind of like, I'm evangelical, but I'm a Democrat.
- [25:16]
Saagar Enjeti
And you know, sort of like feels very Buttigieg.
- [25:19]
Krystal Ball
It's very buttigieg. Exactly. And by the way, who was Buttigieg's core constituency? Remind me. Right. The upper middle class is liberal. Yeah. So that's who he's going after. The thing is, though, is that right now those same people are radicalized as much as like with Boomer shitlib memes. So Jasmine Crockett is the logical endpoint of that. They hate Trump. Like, there's actually not A lot going on beneath the scenes. So Jasmine Crockett is the logical endpoint for the Texas Democrat, because for a lot of the people there, for them, they feel like they live in occupied territory, right? They're like, oh, we have a Republican governor and Dan Patrick and all this other crazy Ted Cruz and John Corn. We want somebody to stick it to Trump. And so that's why Talarico, again, to me, he's almost trying to like over intellectualize the process. She gets it. Stand for nothing, just be against Trump. And by the way, it's gonna work 100%. She's gonna win 100%. And that's one of those, I mean, I'll eat my words, I guess, if Talarico does win. But the thing is, she doesn't have a shot now because at least in my opinion, because what you just talked about, the core swing demos that Talarico, Crockett, what they're trying to do is just take anti Trump energy. What I think the lesson of the Zoran Mamdani campaign is, is that you have to take anti Trump energy and marry it to something else. And with that, you can win over the Trump voter. That is not happening. Beto O' Rourke already ground tested the anti Trump strategy in 2018, lost Ted Cruz by two points. You will never have that again. Because now there are still enough Latino Republicans who may, like, not all of them are gonna swing back. Right. Even if some of them do so the margins just don't exist. Like the statewide data is now in and it's very clear Texas, even with shifting demographics and all of this, you would have to win over a pretty historic number of these traditional Latino voting Republicans. Not happening under Jasmine Crockett. Definitely not happening under Colin, under tall Rico. Colin Allred. By the way, he kind of tried the inverse of this, the kind of like football.
- [27:31]
Saagar Enjeti
He's a football buff guy. Was he in the NFL?
- [27:33]
Krystal Ball
I think he was NFL. He was a football player.
- [27:35]
Saagar Enjeti
He's like, he's like a centrist Democrat.
- [27:37]
Krystal Ball
But he tried the, like, I'm standing up to Trump and I played football. You know, that type of thing. That shit didn't work. Like, Beto is as close as they were ever going to get. That was 2018. The shifting demos, like, no, sorry.
- [27:49]
Saagar Enjeti
So let me, let me caveat by saying, like, neither of these candidates exactly my ideological cup of tea, like, very. I mean, Talarigo took Mary Madison money. He's tried to shift his position on Israel. We want to talk to him because I want to know more Specifics about.
- [28:05]
Krystal Ball
Where he's also pretty sure he's pro gambling.
- [28:06]
Saagar Enjeti
So, yeah, problem with that, she's taking crypto money. Although I don't actually. I've tried to look. Her record doesn't seem that bad on crypto. I mean, she voted against the genius. Everybody, every Democrat voted against genius Act. In any case, she took the crypto money. She's really not. She's really bad on Israel. She's not for Medicare for All. Right, so neither of these candidates is like my ideological cup of tea, I think in the primary. I think you're right. Right now, the poly market odds have her up 51 to 48. So they have it effectively tied in terms of the poly market odds, for whatever that is worth. You already see her garnering endorsements for from House members. Ayanna Pressley came out and backed her. So that's gonna give her some momentum within the Democratic Party. And I just have to tell you, on pure, raw political talent with no ideological valence, the woman is a star. Like, she is a star. And I think the reason why that launch ad was, again, not what I would do. I would wanna foreground affordability and specific plans, et cetera. But why it was very politically clever for her is because it puts on display her greatest strength, which is again, triggering the right, which in the same way the right loved and still does love the candidates who can trigger the libs. Democrats now are in a place where if you can get Fox News mad at you and you can get Trump coming after you, they're like, yes, that is what we want to see. The other thing it does is it casts her as the main character, right? It puts her at, like, I am already at the center of this thing. And so I think she has a lot of strengths. Talarico, you know, there's. There's something. Even though there's. There's a lot that he says that should appeal to me, he has this very, to me, dated style, like, part of what was cool about Zoron, obviously the policy is the most important part, but he had this very modern aesthetic. The font, the vertical video, the cuts, the authenticity of it, the, you know, I mean, it just felt very natural to him. Talarico's launch ad is him standing in the back of a rusted out pickup truck with the church in the background and the Texas flag here and this fake crowd gathered around him. And it feels like 2006. And I don't know, there's something about it that to me is just like off putting, instantly. And again, it's not fair because, again, this is not about ideological valence or where he stands on issues, but there's a stylistic issue for me with him that I'm having trouble overcoming. And I think maybe it is also lingering Pete Buttigieg trauma, because Pete also did sort of had a similar stylistic approach, similar way of talking, also grounding himself, like, oh, I'm the Christian, so I can speak to the Christians on all of this stuff. So primary. I also give the edge to.
- [31:03]
Krystal Ball
Well, think about this.
- [31:04]
Saagar Enjeti
To Jasmine Crockett.
- [31:06]
Krystal Ball
Look, that is. Again, I'm from there. I've seen this movie before. That's like a blue dog Democrat strategy. This shit doesn't work. It's been dead since 2010. There used to be my congressman.
- [31:14]
Saagar Enjeti
It feels very driven, you know, want this.
- [31:18]
Krystal Ball
Like, I'm a rancher. It's like, who was the Montana guy? John Tester? Yeah, same shit. All right.
- [31:24]
Saagar Enjeti
He lost for him, but he did very well in that state, given the overall politics, because that was authentic. He actually really was a rancher. Right? He lost what, like, his hand, like his finger or something? And ranching eyes. Like, that was authentic to him. Tallarico. It feels very like, okay, we got the consultants together in a room, and you're a young guy, so we need you to make you appear, like, larger and like you've got this crowd behind you or. I don't know. It just all feels very, very crafted and inauthentic. Jasmine Crockett's ad, obviously, is also consultant driven and crafted and all of that. But it does feel like this is her. Like, she puts herself at the center. She puts herself in the spotlight. She does know how to pick these fights. And so, yeah, I think a lot of Democrats are going to. They already love her, right, because of the way she's picked these fights and are going to like that aspect of her in this campaign as well. In terms of the general election, like, it's definitely. I would bet on the Republicans. I think it's definitely theirs to lose. I wouldn't count her out. I feel like there is a just assumption that she's gonna perform poorly, that she won't be able to appeal to swing voters, et cetera. And listen, if there's one thing I've learned from the Trump era, it's that that, like, charisma and that star power, it overcomes a lot of. And she has that quality. So, you know, I don't. Like I said, I would definitely think the Republicans. It's their seat to lose. They've got a shot at it. But when you have this tremendous reckoning of the Trump era and discussed with what the Republican Party represents and the people who have swung the hardest against Trump are non white, non college voters, of which there are many, many, many of in Texas, you would expect, expect that Texas would be a place where Democrats would perform much better than they ordinarily perform in the state. So I am not willing to write her off completely for the general election in the way that many others have.
- [33:21]
Krystal Ball
I'll make my sock bet right now. I'll use sock on camera again. I'll do it. You know, I'll do it. If she even loses by a point, there's no way I'm telling. Like, I'll say it, because it just doesn't exist where, like, her strategy is one that will easily win a primary. By the way, if she were in a closer state, I actually think she would have more of a shot. But the state has fundamentally had a major political transformation over the last. Since the last time that a Democrat came close, like the Beto strategy, it just. It doesn't work anymore. I mean, the margins expanded in 2024, and the idea that you could bank just on, you know, those type of voters to come out for you, I just don't see it. Especially, by the way, there's going to be a raucous maga primary, which is currently happening with John Cornyn and all of them. So the Republicans are actually gonna be a little bit more engaged in this race than normal. It's not just gonna be normal. Smooth sailing. There is an argument that that's bad, but it does mean that they're gonna be paying attention. Paying attention means you come out to vote. And by the way, I mean, she's a gift, all right, you know, in the way that she triggers the. Right. Yeah. But that is useful to getting people to come out and hate vote, you know, against you, for everybody who may come out to vote for you. I think she stands for nothing. I also, I mean, look, I know. Look, she's a lightning rod and that's fine, but, like, I think she's genuinely, like, kind of dumb. Like, I don't. I've never heard her say a single smart thing.
- [34:35]
Saagar Enjeti
I don't. I don't. I don't.
- [34:36]
Krystal Ball
She's a complete narcissist. She has a background of herself on her. On her iPhone.
- [34:40]
Saagar Enjeti
Narcissist.
- [34:40]
Krystal Ball
That's insane.
- [34:41]
Saagar Enjeti
Sagra. These people are all narcissists.
- [34:43]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I agree with you.
- [34:43]
Saagar Enjeti
That's a given.
- [34:44]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [34:45]
Saagar Enjeti
That is a given. I don't think it's like, I don't see any sign that she's not an intelligent person. I think she is an intelligent. I think she's very savvy in the way that she's positioned herself and like I said, like ideological.
- [34:56]
Krystal Ball
She's maybe intelligent like Trump is for gaining attention. That doesn't mean you're a smart person.
- [35:00]
Saagar Enjeti
Like she's what matters.
- [35:02]
Krystal Ball
You're talking about politics.
- [35:03]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I'm talking about politics. What matters are people voting based on, like, you know, your SAT score.
- [35:08]
Krystal Ball
I wish they.
- [35:09]
Saagar Enjeti
No, they're not. She has star quality. And here's the other thing is at the Senate level, it matters. The individual candidates matter more. Matter some. I think what we learned in the off year elections is that it doesn't matter that much who Democrats. You can run a Mikey Sherrill. You can run Abigail Spanberger. You can run, you know, an Afton Bain in Tennessee. You can run what's the dude's name, J. Jones, who like, you know, said he wanted to murder his Republican. You can run him and win. I think a lot of this is going to be about the national wins much more than it is going to be about the individual candidates. Now, I'm not gonna say the individual candidates in local conditions don't matter at all. Of course they do. At the same time, statewide level, at the congressional level, I don't think they really matter all that much. But whatever, we'll put that aside. But I think the bigger dynamic is going to be what is the national mood and the wind is whether it's Jasmine Crockett or James Tallarigo or Beto o' Rourke or whoever they put in. The winds are at Democrats back right now.
- [36:13]
Krystal Ball
I'll tell you where she would have a better chance, actually. I think, Governor, because there's a lot of evidence that voters vote very differently statewide versus national.
- [36:20]
Saagar Enjeti
They vote less partisan, on a less part bipartisan basis. Statewide state offices versus, like if you.
- [36:25]
Krystal Ball
Look at Kentucky, North Carolina, there's a lot of red states with blue state government, blue governors. Exactly. Maryland, famously. Right. Larry Hogan. But they're not going to vote for him for Senate. They people, you know, you got to give them some credit. Like in general, they understand the power of a United States Senate seat. It's going to be very, very difficult. And in the history of the red states which would elect blue state Democrats, those have all been wiped out post 2010 with very, very limited exceptions. And that type that was successful doesn't look like her Maybe. I mean, you know, this like, raging narcissist triggering thing, it's worked for the Republicans, sure as shit has. You know, don't get me wrong, but it usually does not work in a state. Excuse me? It usually does not work in a state of the opposing party. Usually need, like. Like, if she's running in a blue state, I'd be like, oh, you know, it's a. There's no question about it. But she doesn't have that Larry Hogan type energy, I guess, that you would need as a Democrat, I think, to win. But listen, it'll be, you know, it'd be a good test. We'll see. Same thing. The stock bet stands. I'll do it if we need to.
- [37:33]
Saagar Enjeti
All right, what margin? What's the margin?
- [37:36]
Krystal Ball
I'll tell you. 1%. If she loses by less than 1%. So it's like a spread. Like, what is it, plus one. All right, we'll give her a plus one spread. So if she loses by more than one, I won't. If she loses by less than one, I will eat the stock. And if she wins, I'll eat two. All right, there you go. I'll even spot a couple of points to the audience.
- [37:56]
Malcolm Gladwell
Hello.
- [37:56]
Krystal Ball
Hello.
- [37:56]
Malcolm Gladwell
I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast smart talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its value fullest potential to create smarter business?
- [38:12]
Arvind Krishna
My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind it. If anybody is not using AI to to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah.
- [38:44]
Malcolm Gladwell
Wow.
- [38:45]
Arvind Krishna
So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.
- [39:02]
Malcolm Gladwell
To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smart talks.
- [39:14]
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- [40:46]
Krystal Ball
Speaking of Congress, we're going to move to the ndaa. A lot of very important stuff going on here and in Washington. Let's put this up here on the screen. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the few Republicans still left in the House of Representatives for the majority, has announced she will not be voting on the NDAA that quote, funds our military and is once again filled with America's hard earned tax dollars used to fund foreign aid in foreign countries wars. So let's take a look what's actually in said NDAA despite promises to end the war in Ukraine, another $400 million for the quote Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative for 20, 26, 27. You'll be happy to learn that for Israel we have the following 500 million for Israeli missile defense, 80 million for U S Israel anti tunnel cooperation, 50 million for U S Israel anti drone technology. We've got another 175 million for the Baltic security initiative. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, you've got a few hundred million there for the government of Iraq, Syrian militias. What's that? Syrian militias. Which militia exactly do you mean? 100 million to support Middle Eastern countries to increase security along their borders. So about half a bill there for the Middle east, for the pro al Qaeda government over there in Syria. Few cool hundred mil for the Israelis, a few cool hundred miles for Ukraine. And so, yeah, pretty much looks exactly the same that it always has been. Zatteo news. Doing some good breakdown here over the Israel stuff. Let's put that next one up here on the screen. This is amazing, by the way. The US Bill would actually fill the Israeli weapons gap caused by embargoes. So other nations that are boycotting Israel and are, you know, stopping them from acquiring certain weapons, what the US Bill would do is go around and would then buy said weapons and make sure that we deliver it to them.
- [42:45]
Saagar Enjeti
They're going to analyze, make sure we need to spend our government money analyzing, making sure the Israelis have absolutely everything they need, that they're not impacted by these embargoes from their genocide whatsoever. And then we will make sure to fill the gaps in anything that is not being provided by countries that have more of conscience than we do.
- [43:04]
Krystal Ball
America first. Indeed. And so actually, you know, what's kind of interesting here, guys, is this could be in trouble because you've got a lot of, you know, the margin right now in the House of representatives is like two votes. Let's put D3 up here on the screen. This is from Politico. They're talking about what you miss in the ndaa. They also, you'll all be happy to learn, is that they are making sure to waive any of the existing sanctions on Syria. We wouldn't want al Qaeda to pay a price, now, would we? Now that they're pro Israel in Syria, that would be unconscionable.
- [43:37]
Saagar Enjeti
Wave a lot of sanctions. But yeah, it's funny that this is the one that we choose to.
- [43:42]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, look, we can debate sanctions all we want. Do they work? Do they not work? There's a lot of evidence. They mostly don't work. But, you know, if you're gonna do it, if you're gonna waive it, you should waive it for a good reason. And in this case, like, what are you doing it for? So you can be pro Israel Al Qaeda in Syria. Okay. All right, got it. And like I said, hundreds of millions more here. I love this. You know, making sure to backfill all of the Spain, Italy and Germany weapons transfers by buying said weapons and make sure that Israel has absolutely everything that it needs. Now, originally I thought, of course, Ukraine, we're not even going to. I'll get to that money pit here in a second. It would disappear into the pockets of Zelensky and his cronies. Just, you know, he needs just a few more hundred million to make it all work. But what is amazing to me is I originally had thought, oh, well, you know, Marjorie won't vote for it, so maybe it'll be in trouble. But you informed me this morning, I had forgotten that many hawkish Democrats will probably bail them out because they support the Ukraine, the Israel section too. So it's great to live in a Uni Party state.
- [44:45]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. Bipartisanship still very important.
- [44:47]
Krystal Ball
It's alive.
- [44:49]
Saagar Enjeti
Don't listen to the haters who say there's no bipartisanship in Washington. No. So, I mean, you're losing Marjorie Thomas Massie, I'm gonna assume, probably not gonna vote for it either. That means you can only lose one more person. I think that's the math. And so if you did have more Republicans defect, the expectation is that there are a handful of hawkish Dems who would make sure to step up and fill the void. One other thing, provision I did want to mention because this was related to a central Donald Trump campaign promise. Remember he talked about how he was going to expand access to ivf, blah, blah, blah. Well, Mike Johnson, who is this ideological Christian zealot, he has removed provision that would have provided IVF coverage for military active duty members of the military. So that in spite of Trump's pledge to strengthen access to the procedure. So, you know, it's one of the line items here. There's, of course, this is a Christmas tree type of bill. There's all kinds of stuff put in here. But one of the pieces that got stripped out for religious ideological reasons here, seemingly from the speaker of the House himself, was this provision that would have provided IVF access for active duty members of the military.
- [45:57]
Krystal Ball
Wow. Yeah. Great. Let's continue here. D4 up on the screen. We wanted to stay on top of this. We had told you before that there are many Republicans who are weighing resignation. Well, now it says that there may be 20 in the next few weeks who will announce that they will not retire running for the exits before things get worse. It's a terrible job, I think, in my opinion. Conor always has, especially in the House of Representatives, but especially now. And when you're headed into a minority, you're gonna be doing nothing. You're just gonna have to be, you know, Trump's impeachment defense guy. And that's a great job for, you know, Jim Jordan or anybody like that who just loves to go on Fox News and be like, here's what we're gonna do to stand up to the Radical Democrats today, if you actually care about getting anything done already, being a minority sucks. Being the minority under Trump, where 98% of what's going to happen on the Democrats is investigation of Trump.
- [46:51]
Nick Fuentes
Get ready.
- [46:52]
Krystal Ball
You know, that's. It's going to be Benghazi committee all day long. Not a criticism. That's fine. That's what opposition parties do when they take over the House of Representatives. But that's the reason why. And they don't want to take their marching numbers well.
- [47:03]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's right. It's always a sign. You always see, like, in years where it's expected that it's going to be a Republican wave. You see a bunch of Democrats retire because they just don't want to deal with being in the minority. They're like, all right, I'm done here. This time, the indication is you've had more Republicans who have retired or outright resigned. Like, Marjorie Taylor Greene is not serving out the rest of her term. And so that is an indication of where the political winds are heading and the expectation from basically all of them that we're gonna be in the minority. So I'm not sure I wanna stick around for this. I mean, one question. First of all, we don't know how many. This says up to 20. Well, up to 20 is a pretty broad range. So how many exactly? The other question is, do others of them take the Marjorie Taylor Greenery route and leave before their term ends, triggering more special elections and putting the House majority in jeopardy even before we get to the midterm elections, which, again, given the narrow margin and given the way these special elections have been going, is, I think, certainly very much on the table that the. That Mike Johnson would lose control, majority control of the House, even before we get to 2026.
- [48:10]
Krystal Ball
Right? Yeah. So it's going to be interesting. And then I just had to put this in here because, you know, only been saying it for three years. D 5. Put it up here on the screen. You gotta love this. New York Times. They woke up from their coma. They say Zelensky's government sabotage oversight, allowing corruption to fester.
- [48:26]
Saagar Enjeti
Oh, really?
- [48:27]
Krystal Ball
And they say a Times investigation found President Vladimir Zelensky's own administration removed guardrails to prevent graft. And they point to this very specific example involving a gas company. This is the tip of the iceberg. And, you know, did you guys cover? Probably not. Which. The head negotiator, literally, we played a sot of him last week, the head negotiator for Ukraine's peace deal. He had to Resign because of corruption. His own defense guy.
- [48:57]
Saagar Enjeti
I think you covered that, didn't we?
- [48:59]
Krystal Ball
I don't think we did because we covered that. We did the Saat. And then the next day he literally resigned. Resigned because of. Can you imagine that? Like you're negotiating peace and the next day you're like, oh, actually I gotta go because they got me. I tweeted out the story. They got some close Zelensky advisors, business partners with hundreds of millions in cash and Euros in the middle of their apartments when they're being busted. Zelensky is literally at war with his own independent agency. To the extent that there's any independent agency trying to. And what do we do? We hand him another 400 million. It's amazing to me. It's amazing to me. Like one of the reasons, look, I get the Europeans, why they're all bought into this. If this war ends, it's a disaster for him. It's a gravy train. Like, this is the only thing propping up the entire Zelenskyy regime. They have profited to the tune of hundreds of millions. And it's pathetic because at the time when we used to talk about it in 2022 and 2023, when it wasn't popular to point out how corrupt this country was, they said you were a Russian propagandist. If you wanted an independent agency to review. And coincidentally, Cigar. One of the greatest government agencies in U.S. history with special Inspector General for Afghanistan, it just issued its final report. And I read it. I've been reading those for 20 years. And its final report detailed the hundreds of billions that we wasted in Afghanistan. And the only reason we even know about so many of that is cause that independent agent, we still wasted it. Now, you would think, you know, eventually that we would get an accounting. Now we don't even have the mechanism to account. We're gonna rely on some New York Times investigation or whatever. Ukrainian opposition will come in and just point out only the Zelenskyy corruption, not their own. And all this stuff, you know, who knows how many billions we pissed away in this war and how many people died as a result of. Even if you do support Ukraine.
- [50:48]
Saagar Enjeti
And it has a major ongoing impact because, you know, part of the deal that is being crafted, which seems like it's not really particularly going that well at this point. The Russians don't like it, the Ukrainians are rejecting peace, whatever. It doesn't seem like that's really coming together. But who knows what's happening behind the scenes. In any case, part of that is, okay, you're not going to be in NATO, but you get to be a part of the eu.
- [51:08]
Krystal Ball
That's right.
- [51:09]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, the EU has guidelines about corruption, anti corruption. So they're looking at this and, like, not so sure we really want Ukraine, given the track record right now, to be part of the eu. So it has consequences, you know, not only which is significant in terms of where our tax dollars have gone and who's into whose pockets they have gone in and what little interest our political class has taken in answering that question, but also in terms of what happens in the future, you know, whenever this war is brought to some sort of an ugly conclusion.
- [51:40]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, I don't think I'm not optimistic for a deal. Trump is not focused enough on it. The Russians have their own. You know, they look, the Russians, like, they don't really need this deal. They're fine. They don't care about killing as many of their people as possible. The only people who need a deal is Ukraine because they're dying and they're keeping losing their territory. Putin basically behind the scenes has said, look, we're gonna take this shit one way or the other. You could give it to us or we're going to bleed another 100k. They don't care. Their economy is fine, Their population seems to support the war. I don't get it, but they do. Okay, I'm not Russian. I guess they've been convinced of it. The Ukrainians are the ones who are moving in the opposite direction. They got enough people killing and they've got enough people been killed, and they're willing to negotiate at least a little bit. And the Europeans are blowing smoke up their ass about how, oh, don't worry, we'll fund you in the interim, and as long as nothing happens, it's good for Ukraine. Because what did I just show everybody in the ndaa? Hundreds of millions are still pouring in. Just enough to keep them in the fight, to continue to lose more territory. And so, look, we're going to end up in the same place no matter what. So they think that they're being smart by holding this off, they're being dumb because they're just going to continue to lose their territory. They refuse to wake up to reality. They demand NATO protection, security guarantees, and Trump wants to give it to him. He's the one who's to blame here. It's been a year now, you know, basically since he's had an opportunity, and nothing is moving in any direction. So if you're pro Ukraine. You should be mad. And honestly, if you're mad, you should be even more mad because you're like, you said this was gonna end and you just keep pouring money into the conflict, doing nothing. And dragon. Dragon feet. People are dying by the hundreds, you know, hundreds of thousands.
- [53:20]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, and remember the messaging from him. This will be easy to solve.
- [53:23]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's what you said.
- [53:23]
Saagar Enjeti
I'll do it before I even take office or I'll do it on day one. I mean, that was what he, he said. And people bought into this brand. Oh, he's a great deal maker. If anyone can get it done, it'd be him. Blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and I think people were not really buying in that it was gonna be literally handled on day one. But if you look at his polling, this is one of the issues where his rating is the lowest because, you know, it is another major blow to his brand. You're supposed to be the great deal maker. This was supposed to be so easy for you. And here we are a year in and, you know, we had some rumblings of, okay, things are coming together and look again, I don't know what's happening behind the scenes. I have no special knowledge, but we haven't heard much about progress being made. And it seems like both sides are balking at the provisional point.
- [54:06]
Krystal Ball
I doubt I will be so doubtful. Look, we're about to go into Christmas. You know, things go on hiatus, the money gets passed, get a couple hundred million more. Zelenskyy and his guys get to go to Vienna and Paris.
- [54:19]
Saagar Enjeti
And it's at the point now where it's easier just to put it on the back burner.
- [54:22]
Krystal Ball
It's Afghanistan now. We're just going to keep pouring money into this shit and it'll get worse and worse and worse. One day it'll blow up and then everyone, oh, my God, how do we all let this happen? It's like, well, it would have been easier to solve this shit in 2022, but everybody said, oh, I'd rather pay high gas prices for Ukraine. How'd that work out for you? They lost way more territory since that time. So thanks for destroying whatever we keep ranting.
- [54:46]
Malcolm Gladwell
Hello. Hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast smart talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?
- [55:03]
Arvind Krishna
My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, if anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah, wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.
- [55:53]
Malcolm Gladwell
To listen to the full conversation, visit IBM.com smarttalks.
- [56:04]
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- [58:06]
Saagar Enjeti
So let's talk about this pretty remarkable exchange between Piers Morgan on his program and Nick Fuentes over the course of two hours. I was among the millions that watched all of it. I know you mentioned millions. I think so, yeah.
- [58:19]
Krystal Ball
Was it millions? Let's check.
- [58:20]
Saagar Enjeti
That's what Pierre said. He was bragging about it being millions anyway, so I'm taking his word for that. Of course he said that, but, you know, 2.2 million. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, there were, you know, there are a lot of clips you guys probably seen already. Some of the things that are floating around, maybe you have or have not. We'll get to some of the ones that have been clipped out the most. But there was a different exchange where Nick acknowledges that his politics are basically the. Not basically, he says they are the same as the politics of Israeli Zionists, that he wants the same thing for the US that they want in Israel. And in a certain sense, I thought that was maybe his most accidentally revealing comment. So let me go ahead and play that and we can talk about that on the other side.
- [59:05]
Nick Fuentes
There's a genocide going on right now. It's not against how many Christians are.
- [59:09]
Krystal Ball
There, it's against Gaza.
- [59:10]
Arvind Krishna
How many Christians are there in the world?
- [59:13]
Nick Fuentes
One point. Some billion. We are losing as a civilization, a mass migration. And here's the difference. In Israel, they have my politics. In Israel, they want to maintain a Jewish majority. If they had it their way, it would only be Jewish people. They're fighting like hell. So the Jewish people can have as much territory, a Jewish state. They can be proudly Jewish in their own land, whereas in America, we are being besieged by 10 million illegal immigrants in four years. And then whites and Christians are gonna be the minority. And that's true in Canada, Australia, all the countries in Europe. So you could say there's 2 billion people, but what's the proportional. What is the percentage of people being born that are white? Where's the arrow pointing? Where are we going to be in 50 years? In 50 years, there might be an Israel. In 50 years, there isn't going to.
- [60:00]
Krystal Ball
Be a white Christendom.
- [60:02]
Saagar Enjeti
So the reason I think, Sagra, that this is very instructive is because we have all spent a lot of time now thinking about Israeli society.
- [60:09]
Krystal Ball
Yes, I agree.
- [60:10]
Saagar Enjeti
Israeli politics, thinking about how that is going for Israelis, let alone how that is going for the world. And so Nick is saying here, my project of ethno nationalism is the same as the Israeli project of ethno nationalism. So as much as he is critical of them, he actually admires their commitment to an ethno state with Jewish supremacy. He just wants it to be white people who are on top, white Christians who are on top here versus Jews as it is in Israel. And I think we can all see very clearly from recent experience what that actually looks like. I mean in terms of Israeli society, they have major issues, they're suffering, you know, an exodus of especially the sort of like college educated elites who are leaving the country. You have a massive issue in terms of like the social welfare state and people who actually wanna work and pay in. You have of course extraordinary violence. You know, all this language about oh, we need Israel because it's the only place where Jewish people can be safe. And it's quite the contrary. It's probably the place where Jewish people are the least safe. It requires and necessitates an apartheid regime because you're constantly terror in terror of a demographic replacement and of Arabs, Palestinians becoming the majority. So then you end up doing both violence, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. It leads to mass state violence, like multiple wars on multiple fronts. Bombing all of these countries for the Greater Israel Project so that you can make sure that your ethno state is demographically secure. Like that is their project. And here Nick is saying, yes, that is what I want for the United States. So that's why I think that that comment to me was so interesting.
- [61:57]
Krystal Ball
Not just interesting, that is the fundamental problem for the American Zionist project. Cuz the American Zionist project is that Israel is defense of Western values. And he is saying, actually no, it is representative of my vision and for an ethno nationalist American state. And in a lot of ways he's honest about it, right? He's right. And I think that's part of the problem is we all, at least most of us with our eyes open, we see that society now for what it is. Now I would say if you look at the right, left valence, for a lot of the criticism of Israel, it comes at a two things. Number one, from the left, it's almost entirely based on human rights concerns. On the right, a lot of it is about this tiny country, I said before, it violates natural law. A country of 9 million, that rules 330 million or at least has a vast amount of influence. But you know, look, Americans, even people who are skeptical of immigration, like let's talk about the Trump people, Whenever the Trump people overtly make immigration stuff racial, it becomes much less popular. Is that correct? Now why? Because what do people mean when they say they want immigration restriction or something like that? You point to control over your border. Now here's the other thing, too. If you actually ask people whether they want ethno nationalist politics, they're like, no, actually, I mean, look, first of all, it's a little fucking ridiculous to hear a guy who admits that his family is Italian and Mexican start talking about heritage American. Like, seriously. Okay, all right, you know, if we want to play this game, my wife's blood goes back to Plymouth Rock, all right?
- [63:31]
Saagar Enjeti
I've got way more heritage American credit.
- [63:34]
Krystal Ball
My kid, even though it's a Jeep mongrel, according to the groipers, has got more heritage American blood. All right, if you guys want blood and soil, like, we can do that.
- [63:47]
Rolling it back to the. I mean, this.
- [63:50]
Saagar Enjeti
It's just something you and I both have in common. We both have cheat mongrel children.
- [63:54]
Krystal Ball
It's so preposterous. Does it not annoy anyone else that only in America that you can become so assimilated to be a Italian Mexican espousing ethno nationalist white politics? You know, again, my wife's ancestors would have been horrified at a Italian post 1860 Italian Catholic saying that he's a white American. I mean, does this not drive anybody else crazy? All right, okay, moving back about the ethnonationalist part. Yeah, this is the logical conclusion of like Zionist Israel. And that's a nightmare because Israel has always relied on we are better than everybody else. We are better than these barbarian Muslims who live in Doha, by the way. Look, this is. I'm. I lived in Qatar, okay? I don't want to live in Islamic country. It fucking sucks if you ask me. Completely, completely out of step with most Western values. I don't want that bullshit over here. But they want that. That's what I'm saying. They want that in their own version to be imported here. That's part of what drives me crazy. They're the most identitarian people in the world.
- [65:06]
Saagar Enjeti
Think about what we have seen in Israel. Like to associate yourself with their politics. To me, at this point, it's honestly wild. Just this week, we didn't even get around to covering it because there's so much psycho shit that they do. Ben GVIR and his acolytes who are members of the government, their new symbol, their new pin that they're wearing around.
- [65:25]
Krystal Ball
Oh, I know.
- [65:25]
Saagar Enjeti
Yellow hang them. It's meant to look like the hostage ribbon, but if you look closely, it's a noose. It's a noose. The symbol of racial terror. You like the national, global symbol of racial terror. That's what they're wearing. Why are they wearing that? Because they want the right to execute the Palestinian detainees that they are holding, some of whom are children, none of whom ultimately. Or very few of whom ultimately even face charges. They're just randomly pulled. If you're military age men, you're just assumed to be guilty. So there's that we all witness the right to rape protests and the way that the rapists are celebrated in the country. Like that is a natural extension of the Israeli Jewish supremacist ethno nationalist project. As is the apartheid, as is the violence, as is the ethnic cleansing, and as is the fact that. That you are not interested in making peace with your neighbors. Like all of that violence comes from this one rotten seed of we must do anything we have to do, and it doesn't matter. Nobody else matters. Only we matter. And we will do literally anything to maintain our demographic majority. So let's just be really like he is telling you those are his politics. And that is perfectly in line with everything else that he said. And the reason I appreciated this interview with Pierce is because Nick has been doing like. He just did one with Steven Crowder. That was so fucking embarrassing. I'm sorry. It was Steven Crowder. That was.
- [66:59]
Krystal Ball
You don't have to say sorry.
- [67:00]
Saagar Enjeti
Humiliating. It was humiliating because from the jump he's, you know, he's clearly afraid of Nick and his audience and everything's like. Now you've said some things, I don't agree, but I think you were just joking. I think you're taken out of context. Like, let me, you know, let me give you the full floor to explain that you're really much more reasonable and moderate that these bad people wanna make you out to be. The Tucker interview. Also embarrassing, right? He's been going on this tour and now he's sort of like, can't be denied anymore. So, you know, everybody's gonna talk about him and everybody's gonna talk to him. And mostly what he's been getting is softballs or they don't have his words directly there, so he doesn't have to directly address them. Now, there are parts of this that I would have handled differently. But, you know, Pierce, like, to his cry, he's good at this type of interview. He's not afraid of confrontation. He's quick on his feet. He had A moment where he, like, caught. He had a couple moments where he caught Nick in some, you know, some things that were, like, logical inconsistencies that I thought was very clever to do in the moment. He doesn't handle everything the way that I would, but he kind of forced Nick to actually be straightforward about what are your actual views? Are these jokes or are these not jokes? And I think that was at this point where we are with him being uncanceled and him being in the mainstream and having all this influence and all of that. I think that was important to do. So let me go ahead and play one of those moments. So.
- [68:30]
Nick actually called me out for always calling him a Nazi, prefacing with the fact that he's a neo nazi every time I talk about him, because I think that is an accurate description of his politics. So one of the clips that Piers played was him saying how great and cool he thinks Hitler is, and he challenges him with that. Let's go ahead and take a listen how that goes.
- [68:47]
Arvind Krishna
You think Hitler was very fucking cool?
- [68:51]
Krystal Ball
Yes, I do. And I'm tired of pretending he's not, to be honest.
- [68:57]
Arvind Krishna
This is the problem, you see. It's a bit like when you just say, I'm a racist. You're a racist who thinks Hitler's cool, but you're not anti semitic. If you're a Jewish person watching this, what are they thinking?
- [69:09]
Saagar Enjeti
So there you go. Yes, I think Hitler is cool. I'm tired of pretending he's not. Let me go ahead and play. Also this moment where Piers challenges him, Nick, with some of the things he said in the past and ask him, well, I mean, aren't you just basically admitting here that you're a racist? And Nick says, yes. He affirms, yes, you could say that I am a racist. This is F3. Let's take a listen.
- [69:28]
Nick Fuentes
I'm a new generation of white person. I'm not living around blacks. Sorry. You know, I want white kids, and I don't want my white kids bringing home black people to marry.
- [69:42]
It's racial for me and call me racist. Oh, very Christian to you. I don't give a fuck.
- [69:51]
Arvind Krishna
I mean, it couldn't be clearer, really. Unless you want to say that's another of your jokes. But you're basically saying, yeah, I'm a racist, aren't you?
- [70:00]
Nick Fuentes
Yeah, yeah, I'm fine with that.
- [70:02]
Arvind Krishna
You're fine with saying you're a racist?
- [70:05]
Krystal Ball
Totally. I think everybody's racist.
- [70:07]
Nick Fuentes
I think everybody, if we're being honest, is racist. I think everybody, the Only people that aren't racist or pretend not to be are white people, to their detriment.
- [70:17]
Saagar Enjeti
There was a funny moment right after that because Nick had taken great offense at Tucker playing for him something he'd said about his dad, which indicated his dad was Piers Pierce. Oh, I said, tucker, sorry. Piers played something for Nick that he had said about his dad that indicated his dad was first, how dare you. You say my dad is racist. And then here he's like, well, yeah, everybody's racist. And so Pierre's like, but wait, your dad is the one racist, non racist person.
- [70:40]
Krystal Ball
I thought that the whole dad thing was kind of weird. Cause whatever. But my point is just like, look.
- [70:45]
Saagar Enjeti
I think it was clever because it got him sort of angry.
- [70:49]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's fair.
- [70:49]
Saagar Enjeti
And frazzled. Off the jump. Now listen, to be clear, Knicks fans think he did a fantastic job. He thinks Pierce was owned. They think it's so based that he was like, yes, Hitler's cool, and yes, I'm a racist and all of that. Like, they're totally happy with his performance. To me, I think it's very useful to have this new interview where he says overtly, yes, Hitler's cool. Yes, I'm a racist. I support the politics of apartheid Israel. That's what I want for the United States. Okay, good, good. People need to know exactly where you are and not do this, like playing cute and coy and like, oh, I want to work with the left and I'm really reasonable. And no, I've been so mischaracterized.
- [71:25]
Krystal Ball
Well, even in Trump criticism, you know, I mean, look, it's been very effective very recently. He tries very. Look, he's smart. Like, let's give credit where it is due. He's a very calculated person. Like when he does his normal guy interviews with, I don't know, like Bradley Martin or something like that, he'll sit and he'll very cogently explain the problems with US Support for Israel and, you know, stuff that has broad based support. But this stuff is also important to Couch. I mean, look, you know, the gripers are correct in that. And quote, he did a good job. He very accurately represented himself, you know, very accurately. If you knew anything about him, this is exactly what it is. And I'm not gonna sit here in pearl clutch. I'm pretty confident enough in American politics and more to say, I don't think most people are cool with that. I just don't. And like, that's the part where, look, this kind of begets, like, media responsibility for couching in everything. What this is an important. By the way, why are we even paying attention beyond like this is a thing? Because the thing is, and again, this is, in my opinion, kind of rewinding back. I think the last time we talked about Fuentes. I ultimately blame much of the quote, liberal Zionist or right wing Zionist project for this bullshit because they are the ones who try to defend ethno nationalist Israel, who murders women and children in the language of American interests and of liberal Western values, which a lot of Americans believe in. And they kind of broke that open and that criticism window where ultimately it really was like Nick and a few others who were willing to say, no, this is bullshit. And like that's the vacuum that was ultimately filled. And so, and you know, look, even now with the pro Israel, right, everyone is basically saying the same shit about Muslims. You know, this like rampant, like low IQ Islamophobia as literally. By the way, go read that Charlie Kirk letter to Netanyahu. He even says there, and there was a whole poll tested strategy. They're like, we need to attack Islam to like move away from people attacking. But this is what these like Zionists never understand, guys. If you openly normalize talking generically about cultures and moving away from talking about people as individual or openly talking about people as a race and specifically like openly normalize, like grouping people in together, historically that's always been really bad for Jews, right? But they seem to think that it's not gonna blow back on them. He's only taking it to a very logical conclusion. And so that's why his Israel comment combined with the race, it's like, yeah, that is, that, that's the project. Listen, I mean, look at America, like in general, broadly, what we mostly have come to terms with, again, even coming to immigration. I know you disagree, but there are a lot of people who still voted for Trump on the immigration agenda. I again think it was about control. And one of the things, I mean, even in this whole like race thing, whenever he talks about, I think he literally said at one point, race is not skin deep. Right? Which, okay, I mean, yeah, if you believe that, I mean, that's fine, I guess, you know, not a lot of good evidence actually, whenever it comes to US culture. This is my look, I don't love the race IQ discourse. I don't think there's any, a lot of really good that comes from it. But if you wanna, if you want to look at educational attainment by race and all that, you would be amazed at the difference. Let's say in the Term white. White is a meaningless term. The income gap between a quote unquote French heritage American compared to a Italian American or a, you know, Serbian or Caucasian American, like from the caucuses is almost a difference between like white and black. You can also do that in terms of Asian. My point is like Laotian versus Japanese or Indian. Now I don't want to go down this whole road, but my point on that is that if it was just not skin deep, then that wouldn't be the case because their skin color or their race would determine it. I think a lot of it is cultural and in fact that is value based and it transcends. In fact, it's kind of an inspirational story if you ask me. You know, I read this piece, it was in KILAT years ago actually, talking about black Americans and you know, the legacy of Haitian, you know, the Harlem Renaissance and Caribbean black Americans versus some of the legacy of like Jim Crow south. And why exactly there were educational differences in income. Yeah, it's all culture, turns out. And you can't even say, oh guys, genetically they're the same. They're both descendants of a slavery based island, you know, system. So actually it's all cultural based. I think that's kind of cool. Very inspirational actually. But nobody, you know, and again, I think entertaining. This is dangerous, but I guess at this point, like we have to talk differences, you know, in all this. And so look, and by the way, you know, I don't think people want to go down this whole road of, you know, they were talking about the Somali fraud thing. I'm like, okay, you want to talk about fraud like, you want to talk about fraud? Like we can.
- [76:24]
Saagar Enjeti
Let's discuss Rick Scott. Yeah, how about that?
- [76:26]
Krystal Ball
Okay, but let's also look at, but I'll say it, the Hasidic Jewish culture. Right. Well, guess what, go to New York City, you can look at landlords and all people, racists, do this all the time who are anti Semitic. Do I think that's cause they're inherently Jewish? No, I think that ultra insular communities of any sort often can use their different network effects in order to pull off fraud.
- [76:46]
Saagar Enjeti
I mean, Nick, coming from an Italian background, this is something that said very much about the Italians, you know, the mob and the way that that all worked. I mean, yeah, it's a very common phenomenon. Phenomenon. Especially with immigrant communities. Especially if there is, you know, especially actually if there's some sort of discrimination against that community and that makes them even more tighter knit and they're looking out for one.
- [77:05]
Krystal Ball
Hey, don't let. Don't let my own people off the hook. I'm not a race. I don't believe, you know, in all the. A lot of Indians commit fraud. A lot of them. You know why? In India, it's a non rules based system where corruption and graft is rife. Culturally. It's a huge problem over there. And so they come over here and some of them who use the same practice. Does that mean all Indians are corrupt? Love it. No, in fact, is it inherent to our brown condition or is it a legacy of the institutions and all. Now I'm fine with that. We can talk about that shit all day long, but let's not all pearl clutch over it and let's definitely not make it some sort of like skin color, you know, My point is it's America. We should all be treated as individuals. I'm happy to discuss culture all day long. From Somalis to Hasidic Jews to anybody else. We can talk all day long about merit. That's ultimately why I think a merit based, individual based system and evaluating everyone as ultimately as the US Constitution inherently at its best wanted us to look at is fundamentally why I think the American Project is still sounding good. We have tried his vision before. It was called the Jim Crow South. Beyond openly just being a place where people were lynched or whatever. They'll love that one. They're always talking about how the lynchings weren't always that bad. It's amazing. No, it's. If you never delved into Southern.
- [78:20]
Saagar Enjeti
I didn't know about that.
- [78:21]
Krystal Ball
Oh man. Southern revanchism is a whole other.
- [78:24]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, and there's. I mean, for me, I think the culture piece, like I give that some credence. I also think material conditions are incredibly important. Even when, you know, that was one of the things that was frustrating me when Piers and Nick were going back and forth on like crime statistics is you have to talk about material conditions to get a complete picture there as well. And Piers, because he doesn't, you know, he doesn't really have an opposite or like an alternative ideological frame. So he doesn't have a lot of grounding to come into those discussions. Like he doesn't have, for example, a class based frame to apply or even, you know, you would bring more of a cultural frame to it to apply. Like he doesn't have it. But in any case, putting that aside, you know, I think there's another dynamic here. First of all, most of what Nick says about black people, about immigrants, most of this has not been a problem for The Republican Party. Most of this is pretty mainstream in terms of the Republican Party. You can just ask Stephen Miller and look at what the President says about Somalia, about Somalis, not even Somali immigrants, like Somali U.S. citizens, Somali Americans, to see the way that this racial lens has become the dominant lens of Republican politics. And it's ironic because in a lot of ways they position themselves as pushing back on the racial lens or the identity lens that came from liberals and the left. That's what wokeism is. It's a racial lens, but from a left wing perspective. And now they have applied their own. And I mean, this has always existed in Republicans. It's not new, but now it's, I think, more front and center than it's ever been before and with more overt power in the person of Stephen Miller and others within the White House. Just look at the way the DHS account post where they have this very explicitly racial lens. That's how you end up with the refugee program shut down. Except for Afrikaners coming out of South Africa. Right, Whites, literal whites only refugee policy. But where Nick comes in from their opprobrium is when he applies it to Jewish people as well. And so, you know, that's why, like you say, okay, you blame liberals. Look, I think there's a lot of blame to go around for the flirtation.
- [80:37]
Krystal Ball
For the right wing Zionist movement, right wing Zion trying to. They're trying to have it both ways.
- [80:42]
Saagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [80:42]
Krystal Ball
They're trying to say denaturalize and deport all Somalis because we don't like Ilhan Omar.
- [80:47]
Saagar Enjeti
Right.
- [80:47]
Krystal Ball
But if you do the same, if all Jews, if you conflate for Israel, you're an anti Semite and you should be.
- [80:53]
Saagar Enjeti
And you should literally be criminalized.
- [80:54]
Krystal Ball
Right, exactly.
- [80:55]
Saagar Enjeti
And locked up. And that should be made actually illegal. Yes.
- [80:58]
Krystal Ball
No, I blame the right wing Zionist for his robbery.
- [81:01]
Saagar Enjeti
And I agree with that. And then to zoom out more broadly, I don't think any of us should be surprised that radical politics is ascendant, that it's more overt. It's a product of certainly Internet culture, but also just a product of the fact that the neoliberal project has run its course. It has failed to deliver on its promises. People are slipping in their living standards. They're living less. I mean, their life expectancy is literally shrinking. The most basic metric of how society could do so from a more macro perspective, you know, that's where I sort of pin this phenomenon. But I also feel like, you know, Nick in this interview, he's very confident. He's like young people agree with me and I'm winning, I'm winning the argument. I don't see a lot of evidence for that. In fact, look, I don't know. This poll is, who knows how accurate this is. Many people don't even know who Nick Fuentes is. But his favorability among the American population right now is 6%. Okay, I wouldn't look at that. If you put a random person's name in there, you're likely to get more than that. And interestingly though, actually if you dig into the cross tabs, the place where he has his greatest support, of course, young men. But if you break it down by racial groups, it's actually black people and then Latinos and then white people, only 3% favorability. So it's like 12%. And so, you know, I think the Israel criticism reads to a lot of people as like anti establishment and also reads if you don't listen to him all the time and you don't hear him saying, or you think he's just joking when he says, like, no, I am actually a racist and I actually don't wanna be around black people and I cross the street when I see them and I don't wanna live in their neighborhoods and I don't want my kids to bury them. If you aren't paying enough attention to hear all of those things, it may also read as concern for equal rights and concern for humanity because that is one of the essential, the dominant frames with which people view Israel. So anyway, I thought that polling was interesting, even as I take it with a grain of salt. And this is not to dismiss him because I think a lot of the discourse right now about, oh, it's all bots and it's all inorganic and foreign influence and whatever, like there may be some of that, but he genuinely has a devoted following. You can see them irl. They turn up at events all the time. They watch his interviews religiously, they post his content. Like, this is clearly a fan base that exists and is very influential and incredibly impactful with young, especially with young Republicans.
- [83:30]
Krystal Ball
To say it is a bot thing is ludicrous. It's literally not true. Look, it is. He is a very popular person, okay? He's, he's popular now. Now I think to say is the most influential amongst young men is a little, is a little Twitter brained, in my opinion. I think Ben Shapiro was actually far more influential. I wish that were not the case to be kidding.
- [83:51]
Saagar Enjeti
I don't, I don't agree at this point. He's fallen Off. He's fallen off. I think he was very. I think he's fallen off very hard.
- [83:57]
Krystal Ball
I totally agree.
- [83:58]
Saagar Enjeti
Go look at his view count.
- [83:59]
Krystal Ball
It's not just his view. He still has. One of the most popular podcasts in the US is a top 10 political podcast. He has many more downloads even in ours. I wish this were not.
- [84:07]
Saagar Enjeti
But also I think his audience is older.
- [84:09]
Krystal Ball
See, I look his numbers.
- [84:11]
Saagar Enjeti
Listen his numbers. I mean Tim Pool was talking about this. Like all conservative influencers outside of the griper lane and outside like Candace is doing very well, Tucker's doing well, Nick is doing very well. But the pro Israel Republican commentators, they're all falling off.
- [84:25]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's a YouTube thing. But if you look at the podcast charts, the Matt Walsh is of the world of Charlie. The Charlie Kirk show was huge before this. It was a top 10 ban in war room. This is not just old people to deny that they do not have a big audience really whitewashes that there is a whole. Again, this is just Twitter brain. Like there is a SC style Republican out there who listens to the Ben Shapiro show every day.
- [84:50]
Saagar Enjeti
But they're older. I mean, look at the poll. Look at the polling with young Republicans on Israel.
- [84:55]
Krystal Ball
Yes, but that's not just Nick Fuentes. That's just organic.
- [84:57]
Saagar Enjeti
I'm not saying it's only Nick Fuentes, but I think Ben has lost a lot of whatever purchase he had with young people, which I'm not convinced that he ever had a lot of purchase with young men or women.
- [85:08]
Krystal Ball
No, but he was popular.
- [85:09]
Saagar Enjeti
But whatever purchase he had with young people I think has been severely eroded by the fact that Israel is so central to him and that that has become for the young right. That has become a real litmus test.
- [85:23]
Krystal Ball
Look, I don't disagree, but again, I wouldn't take podcast or Twitter virality exactly to the bank. Like Megyn Kelly is the number one conservative podcaster right now. Ben Shapiro is number. Yeah, number two.
- [85:37]
Saagar Enjeti
Like look, but again, podcasts tend to be older. I mean than YouTube or.
- [85:42]
Krystal Ball
That's not what our data. Twitter is really. Our data shows them. I mean they're much more in our YouTube demographic. I don't know. Okay, exactly 100. I would have to look, but I again, I would not take it all the way as like this is the number one. Now look, let's give him credit. He has literally banned on most podcast platforms. So if he was able to compete fairly, maybe he would be as big. But I also think there's an element of people who live on Twitter too much like, take this much more to the bank. To be fair, that has a Republican elite problem because a lot of Republican elites are only on Twitter, so it can be very influential at that level. But there's still a lot of, like, normal frat dudes out there who are not supposedly necessarily into Nick Fuentes. Let's say they're listening to Tucker Carlson right now. Who is one of the bigger younger audiences. Candace is up here.
- [86:26]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. But they're all. They're like Nick Fuentes adjacent. You know what I mean? I mean, I think it is fair. I'm just talking about. In terms of Candace. Yes. In terms of the Israel criticism. That is the dividing line. Right. Candace is an Israel critic. Tucker is an Israel critic. Nick is an Israel critic. Right. And so, yes. That they have more strength with younger audiences. That's my point. That's my point. Right. And the Shapiro's and the Tim Pools and Steven Crowders of the world have fallen off because in the same way, this is a litmus test with Democrats overall and not even just young Democrats over. You know, it is, I think, a litmus test with young Republicans. And I do think that that is a big part of why Nick Fuentes has seen such a rise right now, because he's taken the ideology that is a Senate in the Republic, the racialist ideologies of the Senate in the Republican Party, and has been flirted with by all these people, and he's saying it outright. So that's number one. So he comes across across as a truth teller. Number two, it has been disallowed to have any sort of Trump criticism. And so the only place you would get that previously was, like, you know, outside of yourself and Emily, like, there's a few other voices basically, that exist on this channel alone. But outside of that, if you're gonna get someone on the right, it's gonna be Fuentes and then to a lesser degree, Tucker and Candace.
- [87:49]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [87:50]
Saagar Enjeti
So that there was, like, a market opening there as well. And then. Yeah, I think Israel has just become such an incredibly central dividing line. But in any case, to bring this back around to the interview with peers, I thought peers did a serviceable job. I appreciate just the direct getting on the record of, yes, I'm a racist, yes, I'm a misogynist, yes, I like Hitler, like, having all of those things said on the record now. Okay, all right. We know what you are. We can deal with this. You're not doing this hide the ball thing anymore. Appreciate that. And to me, affirmatively affiliating yourself with the ethnonationalist politics of Israel is very useful because we can all see what that means and where it leads. We don't have to imagine. We can see it right now in real time. Is that what you want? Is that what you want? It's not what I want.
- [88:39]
Krystal Ball
A lot of Republican critics of Israel, a lot of them are horrified by their. They don't want to live in that society. That's what they. They don't want right to. I mean, literally, it is funny, you know, if you think, if it's like, what is the logical conclusion of ethnonationalism? Like, rewind the clock here, go back 100 years. You basically saw the same level of like breaking out rapists or whatever down in the South.
- [89:00]
Saagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [89:00]
Krystal Ball
This shit replaces itself because when you.
- [89:01]
Saagar Enjeti
Dehumanize people, this is the natural. That's the natural extension. And especially when you have this, like, demographic project where it is an existential threat. If some other group starts having babies and they're otherized, then it leads inevitably to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, violence, genocide. Like, that is the track that Israel has always been on since its founding because of its core ethno nationalist, Jewish supremacist ideology. And especially since they tried to kick the people off their land and set up shop in a place that.
- [89:35]
Krystal Ball
It came to head in the war. It came to head in the war. And saying that is actually, again, is one of the more revealing things of all of this. Just final thing to tie up on. When I was saying about influence, what I meant is not the Israel thing.
- [89:47]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [89:47]
Krystal Ball
What I meant was, look, I could be deeply naive. I do not think the vast majority of young Republicans are overt. I think that race is not skin deep. I just don't think so. I mean, this is based on my own experience. Now, listen, there's a shitload of gripers out there, don't get me wrong, they're 100% and the irony culture, but in general.
- [90:07]
Saagar Enjeti
And they're very engaged, they're super, which gives them. Makes them punch above.
- [90:10]
Krystal Ball
That's what I meant about the Twitter thing where like, yeah, you can get a lot of interactions, but that doesn't mean. I mean, look, I know every time I meet somebody who watches the show, not on Twitter, barely politically engaged, they're like, yeah, I listen to the show, love the show. You know, something like that, going about my daily business. That's kind of what I meant by Shapiro, Tucker, Candace, all these people, like, they have much more, I think, normal audience now. To the extent that the normal audience exists. And why Nick is appealing is Nick speaks very eloquently about being a young man, disaffected young white man in America. I sympathize with that. I talk about it here too, right? Not just white, part disaffected.
- [90:44]
Saagar Enjeti
Disaffected, part young Mexican American.
- [90:45]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, disaffected young men. He speaks very eloquently about what that's like. He speaks eloquently about what he thinks is like too feminized of a cult. Now he takes it pretty far.
- [90:58]
Saagar Enjeti
Not just far.
- [90:59]
Krystal Ball
He says women should, women shouldn't have.
- [91:00]
Saagar Enjeti
A right to vote, they shouldn't have equal rights.
- [91:02]
Krystal Ball
Look, he is, he is very obviously just like with Israel thing and taking it to full blown anti Semitism. He takes something with a real gripe, you know, in society and you take it full on. But he speaks, you know, he's capable when he wants to, of speaking about that. He also, he's very witty, he's funny and he has some very scathing criticism of Trump. All the ingredients for broad appeal are all there. This is just being honest, you know, from a purely like analytical perspective. And then the grand opening of Trump MAGA sycophancy and right wing media unable to critique Israel sycophancy from the Ben Shapiro's created the storm. And the funny part is they are just like him. Like the way they talk about Somalis is the way he talks about Jews 100%. You're just like, you can't, you're not gonna win.
- [91:46]
Saagar Enjeti
And he also talks about Somalis that way, by the way. Yeah, so they're agreement on that.
- [91:51]
Krystal Ball
One point is he's the logical conclusion in many ways of the way that they want to defend their own Israel politics. And he's saying, actually I'm the real representative of Israel here. I kind of agree with that. And so it's all just a question now of which way we want to go. So to the extent that this is an important interview at all, it's because there are people, I think a lot of right wingers who are grappling with the what does it mean to be an anti Israel Republican? What does it mean to be anti Israel and not a leftist? And they have difficulty in their options of the Ben Shapiro or the Fuentes and all that. And it's like, you guys, you know, you don't have to pick either. Maybe operationally you kind of do. And then similarly on the left, people are like, oh, can we make, you know, common cause or whatever, because he's what did he say? He's like, we want to work together or something. And it's like, you know, like they don't want to work with you.
- [92:40]
Saagar Enjeti
Right.
- [92:41]
Krystal Ball
Or at least they probably shouldn't. They shouldn't if they want to win, you know. Right. It's really a question about like political effective coalitions and like what it means for this. And so, yeah, that's my final like tie bow here is I think Nick is a creation of the right wing Zionist movement, I think broadly also it's a representation of why we need better spaces for people to actually talk about all of those issues, which we do here on this show all the time. It is, you know, there's a reason that the fringes become popular in moments like this and it's because there's no mainstream legitimacy. And then you have a revolutionary like Trump gets elected on their backs and then basically becomes more. That makes you lose even less faith in the political system. So I get it. And it's not an excuse at all, I guess it's more of a. It's a real leadership question, really, if you're a Republican, especially to be able to find some way to talk about this eloquently. And I haven't seen a single person really be able to do it now. It's kind of tragic, actually, because I think this is just going to keep rolling.
- [93:44]
Saagar Enjeti
Yep.
- [93:45]
Krystal Ball
Rolling.
- [93:45]
Saagar Enjeti
All right. Yep.
- [93:46]
Krystal Ball
Long, long winded. We'll see everybody. It'll be a great counterpoint show for tomorrow. Thank you for bearing with my voice. I'm sure it was grading for some of you. Tried my best. We'll see you all on Thursday.
- [94:12]
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- [95:22]
Krystal Ball
Janice Torres here, and I'm Austin Henkiewicz. We host the podcast Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks. We're back for season four to talk.
- [95:33]
Trashy Ad Narrator
To some incredible small business owners.
- [95:36]
Krystal Ball
The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing. Everyone's a rookie. That's how fast the industry is changing. 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.
- [95:51]
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [95:53]
Saagar Enjeti
Guaranteed Human.