Saagar Enjeti (2:05)

Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

Krystal Ball (2:06)

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of the show.

Saagar Enjeti (2:13)

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

Krystal Ball (2:19)

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.

Saagar Enjeti (2:31)

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com turning now to gambling loathe to cover clavicular but it is in this particular case actually relevant to our coverage. This was the Polymarket executive who was caught on a hot mic speaking with the kick streamer looks maxer. Let's take a listen.

Isaac Sol (2:57)

What's your position?

Saagar Enjeti (2:57)

I'm cmo.

Isaac Sol (2:59)

I was gonna say.

Saagar Enjeti (2:59)

So yeah, you know bro, he's the guy.

Isaac Sol (3:04)

You don't need to hear those titles. Hold on.

Saagar Enjeti (3:15)

Interesting. So that was the Polymarket CMO saying you have to understand bro and then saying oh hold on because realized that he was live and he was on a hot mic. Now we don't really know what they were talking about but it's a fun and a catchy of actually feeding some of you your vegetables who have been doing a little bit too much Poly Market betting. Let's put the next one up there on the screen. Why Almost Everyone Loses Except a few Sharks on prediction markets Wall Street Journal analysis shows only a small number of accounts on Polymarket and Kalshi, often pros using data driven algorithmic trading take home most of the winnings. And they specifically point to the fact that on polymarket, 67% of profits go to just 0.1% of accounts. That means less than 2,000 accounts netted a total of nearly half a billion dollars. Journal analyzed 1.6 million poly markets accounts that have traded since November of 2022. There are at least 2.3 million total accounts on the site, meaning just 0.1% on polymarket take home 67% of the profits. On Kalshi, losers vastly outnumber winners. Spokesperson Elizabeth Diana said that there are 2.9 unprofitable users for every profitable one based on data from the past month. So a 3 to 1 lose to win ratio. She said that the number is subject to change as the exchange grows. Total trading volume on both platform has now rocketed to 24 billion billion in April, up from 1.8 billion a year earlier. $24 billion traded in a single month on these platforms, who by the way they claim is not gambling. However, the statistics on this bear out in the exact same way that they do in every casino in the world and on every sports betting. Yeah, very very few people will actually make money. I believe that the sports betting number is 5% of accounts will ever take profit. The vast majority will either break even or lose. And most losers are so big that they lose. The vast majority, they're called gambling addicts. And then, yeah, in every casino in the world, a few sharks, they do their best to make sure that they're not allowed to play blackjack or something like that. Everybody else is allowed to play at a losing percent and every once in a while somebody will win. But to be honest, looking at this data, you are better off shooting craps and betting even the dark dumbest bets on the table than you are sports betting parlays and, or playing on like trying to do political or event market predictions. You're just not going to win.

Krystal Ball (6:00)

Just recall from our previous coverage that one of the ways they identify people who are like dumb and going to lose a lot of money is whether or not they're doing parlays. Yeah. Just so you know, like next time you're thinking about like, oh, they offered me this deal and I think that all these are going to hit. They're not going to hit. Like you are not the shark, you are the loser, you are the chump who's getting manipulated and is going to lose your money. Ultimately, you know, maybe not, maybe you'll have one day where you win, but over time you are going to just feed money into this system. The other thing that's funny is they, they love to pitch themselves as like, oh, it's the wisdom of the crowd, blah, blah, blah. But if the crowd is overwhelmingly losing and getting it wrong, then how wise is the crowd then?

Saagar Enjeti (6:40)

Like by the way, it is the wisdom of the crowd. That's the secret. Okay. And without disparaging everybody if you're too, if you're. Look, honestly, gambling has been the most black pilling thing I've ever covered. I have never seen so many millions, tens of millions of people piss their money away willingly and with the knowledge that they will lose. I tell them they'll lose and they tell me I'm wrong.

Krystal Ball (7:02)

Yeah, well, it's no different, like you said, it's no different than like, you know, if you're going to the casino or for like the day traders out there who don't really know what they're doing. And they, you know, the people who are winning on polymarket, very much like the people who win in the market in general, like they're doing algorithmic trading. They have these sophisticated ways of sort of like poaching, arbitrage opportunities, et cetera. They're not Approaching this the way that you're approaching it. And again, it's a very small handful of people, and they even lose also sometimes. Like, that is not you. But the difference is just to have it all so readily available so that it's done at scale is such a disaster. I mean, we've long seen, like, lotto tickets as a tax on poor people. And this is the same thing you get people who are, you know, want to have the dream of, I'm gonna be able to make it. I'm gonna be able to be financially comfortable and not be so stressed all the time, like, this is going to be my path, because there's no other path that I can figure out that is available to me. And so you're creating a false hope, an impression among people. And this is effectively what our country is like amounted to at this point is these bets on either crypto or FAND or polymarket that, oh, this time you're going to hit the lotto. No, no, you're not.

Saagar Enjeti (8:15)

Let me read the intro for this journal. This is prototypical example, exactly what I'm talking about. John Peterson, 33, couldn't find work. The former Outback steakhouse line cook was recovering from a car crash and running out of money. Kalshee promised a quick way to fix that. He took out a variable interest loan and started betting. At first, it worked. Peterson turned 2000 into close to 8000 by betting on Daily Snowfall in Detroit, where he lives. He parlayed that into $41,000 by trading on sports using a strategy he developed with the help of AI then he placed his most audacious bet of all, 41,000, that a celebrity would say a particular word on TV. He lost it all. And this is a classic casino strategy. One of the reasons why, why casinos don't care when you win is they know that 95% of you are so dumb that you will keep playing to win even more and thus lose all of it. This is like the tried and true. When you win, they're like, oh, you want another drink? You want something? Oh, don't let me comp you a night so you can keep staying here. Why do you think they do that out of the goodness of their heart? It's math. The more you play, the more you lose. Period. End of story. The best thing this idiot could have done has been taken his $41,000 walked away and, oh, I don't maybe get a job. Not to be all boomer Republican, like, boot, you know, get some bootstraps or something. But for real here? Like, you took out a variable interest loan. A very first of all, variable interest loan. Oh my God. Like, who's still doing that? Then second of all, you start betting with your variable interest loan brother. Do you have a plan at all? Yeah, let me guess. Whenever he was up, he didn't pay off his variable interest loan, at least to make sure that he was only betting money, which, while he was in the black, like, what are we doing?

Isaac Sol (10:10)

This is.

Saagar Enjeti (10:11)

I don't know. Like, I look at this and I know this sounds deeply paternalistic, like I do with all things whenever it comes to vice. Like, I'm sorry, bro. Like, we. In your own interest and in all of our interests, we can't allow this shit to happen. Like, period. Because guess what, Peterson, if you were 40, $1,000 just lost and you already took out a variable interest loan, dude, we all know this story. Like unemployment, welfare, something like, you know, and guess who's gonna pay for that? Us Lotto you talked about. What's the justification for lotto? Oh, pays for the schools, raise the property tax. Okay, yeah, that's better off.

Krystal Ball (10:44)

Yeah. I mean, what you're effectively doing, again, tax on poor people. Like, the people who are least able to pay are the ones who end up losing money there and spending, you know, $5 at a time, whatever. And so, you know, there's two groups that, that can probably. You've got the ones that are like very sophisticated and have whatever algorithmic approach that works out for them. And then you have the insider traders and there's a. There's a lot of those. Let's put D3 up on the screen. So this is Financial Times report, huh? This is interesting. While overall the numbers of these bets that were count is very small, half. Half of the long shot poly market bets on military action are successful. What do you think is going on there, people? What do you think is going on there? So they said. This is according to a report that suggests prediction markets could pose a bigger threat than previously recognized to the security of sensitive information. Analysis by the Anti Corruption Data Collect, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, found that long shot bets, defined as wagers of $2,500 or more at odds of 35% or less on the platform had an average win rate of about 52% when it comes to military and defense actions. That compares with a win rate of 25% across all politics focused markets and just 14% for all markets on the platform as a whole. And so what they point to here is that this is obvious if you something where there's a specialized special knowledge held within a small group of people, which military action is a perfect example of, it's going to be ripe for insider trading. And that is what's going on here. They did just indict one guy for betting on the Maduro raid, which is good. Although, I mean, we're going to cover with Isaac the way that, like this insider trading seems to be rife, part of a strategy within the Trump administration. If you look at the way major bets on economic news are timed, like by Trump's truths about tariffs or war gas or whatever is going on. But in any case, this appears to be extremely commonplace. So when you look at their numbers overall of like, well, this percent of people win, we only have three losers for every one, you know, for every one winner, that's not so bad. Yeah, but that one winner was like on the special ops team that knew that the raid was gonna happen. So unless you have special inside knowledge, it makes your chances of winning even lower than is presented to the public.

Saagar Enjeti (13:14)

Everything should be asked in terms of what benefit can we possibly have from this? What social utility does being able to bet on Detroit snowfall totals give the United States of America nothing, except for a guy like John to lose all of his money? That's it. That's the only reason. Now, many would say, well, do you support the stock market? Well, first of all, I would make it a lot more regulated. But, you know, there's actually an argument for capital markets. You know what the argument is, is that you need to be able to raise capital to be able to do different various projects so we can employ people. Now, I oppose share buybacks and all the other sophisticated financial thing, but the bedrock principle of a capital market, by the way, where everybody can raise, where companies can raise money and other people can share and said profit, or in a long run, especially when index and mutual funds, which are low cost, is a social benefit to the people who take advantage of that, where it actually raises the aggregate wealth of the country and supposedly creates a feedback loop. Now, you could even make an argument that itself is bad, which I would love to listen to. But my point is just that's a long enough 100-year-old concept, which is largely proven out over the last hundred years or so, especially with a lot of bumps in the road like, oh, I don't know, the Great Depression. Well, this time around, there's no benefit whatsoever. Like the wisdom of the crowd. What wisdom do you need to bet snowfall totals? Why? Have you ever met Degenerate gamblers. Degenerate gamblers are people who will bet on whether an airline gate agent will use her left hand or her right hand in order to make the announcement. I'm not joking. This has actually happened in the Vegas airport. That's what people bet on. That's what we're basically enabling with various different things like this. There's no social utility whatsoever. Same with whenever it comes to betting on the Maduro Raid. Why? Or this guy lost all of his money on whether a celebrity would say a particular word.

Sponsor Announcer (15:04)

What?

Saagar Enjeti (15:04)

Like how can you allow this in society? And then.

Krystal Ball (15:08)

And creating incentives to like rig.

Saagar Enjeti (15:11)

I know.

Krystal Ball (15:11)

And manipulate like basic facets of everyday life. You know, like the guy who was changing the temperature at the airport. Or I always use it because it's so seared in my mind. But like throwing the dildos on the WNBA court, you know, it creates another level of fakery and phoniness over all of our political and cultural life.

Saagar Enjeti (15:33)

Yeah. And then last thing here, just to give some context, when they said that the military bets have a 52% win rate whenever it's sized over $2,500. Just to give you some context, if you are a sports bettor and you win 52, like a really skilled 52, you are a world class sports better because you beat the vig. And that means that in the long run that you're actually going to be profitable now you're going to have to lay a lot of money to actually make some because you're going to lose a decent number. Or a 52% win rate indicates that you're not a skilled better and you're actually just insider trading. So what's more likely, that you're a deeply skilled geopolitical analyst or you're just an insider trader? Especially when we compare to all of the other wagers across the platform. Let's say whenever it comes to sports, politics and events. And even then the win rates on those are garbage. They're like 14, 25%. Like genuinely in these cases you're better off just go to a casino, just go piss your money in the slot machine rather than do this. You actually will win. You would win more than if you were to participate in these events.

Krystal Ball (16:34)

And at least there's some sort of barrier of you have to like go, go to the casino and spend time there and like, you know, next up

Saagar Enjeti (16:41)

is a 90 year old with a MAGA hat on an emphysema tank. Ask me how I know. Okay, so like these are real people. You should see what it does to people. All right. Anyway, soapbox over. Let's get to Isaac. Let's. Let's get to Isaac, who's standing by.

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Krystal Ball (20:01)

So one thing that I think we have struggled to cover as extensively as we should is the epic level of corruption in the Trump government and with Trump and his family in particular. So fortunately for us, Isaac Sol, founder of Tangle News, has gone in and done the work over the past year or so, compiling as much as we can possibly get about the various corrupt schemes and dealings, compiling it into one comprehensive piece to truly understand the scale and magnitude of the level of corruption we're experiencing, which is truly unlike anything we have seen before. And Isaac now joins us. Great to see you.

Isaac Sol (20:38)

Thanks for having me, guys. Glad to be here.

Saagar Enjeti (20:39)

Good to see you, dude.

Krystal Ball (20:40)

Yeah, of course. So let's put your story up on the screen here, which is the everything everywhere all at once corruption story. Well said. And I also want to, as a jumping off point here, just to get at the level of sort of brazenness and how this has just become part of the water that we swim in with the Trump administration. This clip of Eric Trump, the president's son, appearing on Fox News and being congratulated for contracts that his company won with the Pentagon. As if this is a completely like normal and above board thing. Let's take a listen to that. And the company's chief strategy advisor, Eric Trump, President Trump's son.

Saagar Enjeti (21:22)

Congratulations to you both. Thank you so much for being here.

Isaac Sol (21:27)

Thanks, Maria.

Saagar Enjeti (21:27)

Thanks for having us, Maria.

Krystal Ball (21:29)

And as you rightly, Isaac in the piece point out, like we spent a lot of time and you spent a lot of time thinking about Hunter Biden and potential corruption. Nothing compared to this. Imagine Hunter Biden going on MSNBC and having their congratulations on this contract you scored with the Pentagon. I Mean, it's unimaginable. But before we get into some of the specific details of your piece, just talk about that climate and the environment it's created for journalists and the way that this has just become kind of an accepted part of the way that the Trump administration operates.

Isaac Sol (22:02)

Yeah, I mean, there's something happening where it feels kind of like we're under a bit of a spell. And I don't really know how to explain it, but I think for opponents of the president, Democrats, people who didn't vote for him, there's just so much coming out of the fire hose every day, it's hard to get your head around it. And I think they don't know really where to focus or where to attack or which allegations even prosecute. And then the people who support him, I mean, the brazenness, they're being so forward about it. I mean, Trump told the New York Times, look, my first term, we tried to separate the family business. Nobody cared. I got no credit for it. So this time I don't care. We found out nobody cared. So we're just doing what we want, basically, is how he put it. And it's true. I mean, they are literally. The President's son in law is landing deals, raising money from Saudi Arabia while he is in the Middle east negotiating a war that we're involved in with Saudi Arabia's primary regional enemy. I mean, the, the thought of that a year or two ago or happening under the Biden administration was really unfathomable. But we've just become so used to it now and it's so almost expected. I don't know if it's, you know, just low expectations or it's the fact that it's happening so much that we've kind of numbed ourselves to it. But when you look at it all together as I did, and you try and take it all in at the same time, it's just, it's gobsmacking. I mean, I. Reading my own writing, I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

Saagar Enjeti (23:32)

Isaac, you. There are, there's almost literally too many for us to mention. So why don't you pick a few of the examples? And again, everyone needs to go and read this. Like, just go read it. We'll have a link down in our description. But for those who are just listening, can you pick a few examples which you think are the most egregious over the last year?

Isaac Sol (23:50)

Yeah, look, I mean, the one to me that is probably the most offensive is just the whole of the cryptocurrency stuff, which is, you know, Trump launched a literal meme coin that had zero value with his name as the name of the coin. And basically Rug pulled a bunch of investors leading up to his inauguration and then the days after his election. And now he's soliciting dinners at the White House, at Mar a Lago, at his properties across the country to people who buy the most amount of coin of his Trump meme coin, which again, has no inherent value. It's just basically this social hype cryptocurrency, and he is just out there advertising it and flaunting it. And the people who are paying money to get to those dinners are not just random American fans of his. They are sometimes foreign dignitaries. There are people with associations with governments whose, you know, who we're making foreign policy around. They are people in industries that Trump is responsible for regulating. I mean, the over overtness of it is so insane. It's, it's really is genuinely hard to fathom. And I don't mean to be hyperbolic. I am somebody, like I said, I'm not. I don't have Trump derangement syndrome. I spent the four years of the Biden administration chasing the Hunter Biden story, which I thought there was a lot of smoke around and some very weird stuff happening there that was worth investigating. But what we're seeing now is just a waterfall unlike anything I can really comprehend. And then I'd say second to the cryptocurrency is the pardons. I mean, we now have what I called in this piece, a pardon industry. There are people around Trump who are taking money to literally go to him and say, hey, we got a pardon. This guy who paid me a million dollar fee and donated to your campaign and wants to get out of prison for Medicare fraud or for defrauding donors when he was a member of Congress. And Trump's just doing it. I mean, these are some of the slimiest slime of the D.C. swamp that he promised to drain when he first came up the escalator, you know, and now he's letting all these people off with a free pass for some of the really grossest, you know, kind of fraud and low denominator DC Schemes that you can imagine. And it's, it's hard to accept.

Krystal Ball (26:06)

Yeah, I do want to, I want to pause on the crypto part as well, because not only by the dollar amount is that the most significant, the bulk of Trump's wealth at this point comes from crypto investments. It's this incredible scheme to funnel him money to facilitate some of the pardon industry comes directly through investments in Trump's or assistance for Trump's various crypto ventures. It also is direct exploitation of his own supporters who are the ones that, through buying both Trump's shitcoin and Melania's shitcoin, had the rug pull and ultimately lost money in service of further enriching the very guy that they so support and believe so and believe in. So I feel like the crypto piece is what has really enabled the truly world historic amounts of corruption and graft that Trump personally himself has been able to participate in.

Isaac Sol (27:03)

Yeah, I would say on top of just the sadness and frustration that I feel for his supporters who sort of followed him out onto this branch before they cut it off. And Melania Trump participated in this too, as you said, with her own shitcoin that she rolled out. We also have, I mean, literally some of the wealthiest people and most politically influential people in the Middle east, like from the uae, who own nearly half of World Liberty Financial, which is this crypto firm that the Trump family stood up. I mean, they're investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this firm. And I want to reiterate, when Biden was President, we spent four years talking about his son getting a $50,000 a month salary for a Ukrainian at a Ukrainian energy firm. And now we have the most influential people in the Middle east closely tied to a conflict that we're deeply involved in, who own hundreds of millions of dollars of a crypto firm that the Trump family is running. I mean, the dynamics there are genuinely horrifying in terms of what it means for the decision making process that we as a country are making as we set off into this war in the Middle east with Iran and the uae. Again, like Saudi Arabia is a country that wants us to stay in this war, which right now we're doing. And it's just, it's too easy to do the one plus one equals two here. But it's so ob. I don't know what else to think.

Saagar Enjeti (28:33)

Yeah, you talked there. Not just about. I mean, give us some of the other examples you cite, like Trump Mobile, a branded phone. I didn't even see. You had so many things in here. I'm like, I didn't even know about this. I didn't know that there was a Trump phone.

Isaac Sol (28:46)

It took so long to compile this picture. But yeah, Trump mobile is a $400 branded phone. 4745amonth for the 47 plan. The Trump Organization doesn't even manufacture this phone. They're basically just licensing his and selling it. There's a club in Washington, like, what

Saagar Enjeti (29:07)

does the phone do?

Isaac Sol (29:09)

I believe it's an Android phone. The phone is yet to be released. The network is going to be operated by Liberty Mobile Wireless, by the way. So there's sort of this circular thing here where they're looping it back into their other firms and companies. He's just licensing his name and then promoting the presidential brand, you know, while he's, while he's in office, and then taking a profit from all the people who sign up for it. And this is a theme too. I mean, the Trump family opened the existing executive exclusive club called the Executive branch in Washington. $500,000 for a membership to it. The parent company, Trump Social media platform of Trump Social is djt. That's their ticker in their public stock. Trump holds a huge stake in that company. And weirdly, the stock seems to fluctuate with the Trump's popularity, the President Trump's popularity. Eric Trump, as you mentioned, went on Fox News, graciously accepted a Congratulations for this $24 million Pentagon contract a company he's helping run got. While I was doing this story, the Financial Times reported that the Trump sons had taken a stake in this Kazakh mining company. And then literally hours later, a Bloomberg story came out about the US Air Force agreeing to buy an undisclosed number of interceptor drones from a company that the Trump sons are also backing. I mean, it's just on and on and on. Don Jr is investing in and advising Polymarket and Kalshu Gambling companies, where, by the way, we've seen these very peculiar trades happening. Huge, huge whales coming in and betting on things like tariffs being called off or a ceasefire in Iran with the kind of timing that to me only implies insider information. I mean, the deeper you go, the more there are. And the crazy thing for me was as this piece was coming out, as I was literally drafting the piece of more stories were breaking. So I'm like having to add paragraph and paragraph right up to publication time. I mean, it seems like every other day there's another story like this.

Krystal Ball (31:07)

Yeah, well, and you are going to have to continue to update this as long as he's in the White House. Because, yeah, it is every day that a new revelation comes out, or new questions too, because some of it is hard to pin down. Like the insider trading thing, there's a lot of smoke there, but you can't pinpoint exactly who or exactly how much, et cetera, etc, but it certainly seems like it's a systematic aspect of this administration. Talk to us a little bit about the role that the Trump Properties serve. I was kind of shocked by this statistic you have here. You say eight foreign governments have hosted or sponsored events at Trump Properties in just the first year of his second term. You can also fold into that the deal making that Jared Kushner is doing throughout the Middle east and around the world as well. So how significant have these Trump branded properties been to this operation?

Isaac Sol (31:58)

Yeah, they've been pretty significant. And this is something that I think is really understated because Trump has done a really good job of branding Mar A Lago as the winner White House. And we've all sort of become accustomed to the fact that he might meet with some foreign leader or have some high level meetings at his properties outside the White House, which this is almost a place where I could be a little more sympathetic to the President. He comes in as this businessman. He owns these properties. Of course, he might use them. They're functional for these kinds of high level, glitzy meetings. But then you dig into it and you realize that these properties exist all over the world. And as Trump's political fame has risen, they've used in that, they've used that fame to raise all this money for people who are donating to his campaigns. And then they're sometimes gifting out big events at these major properties. Sometimes they're allowing people to pay to come in and host big events at these properties, not just in the United States, but again, all over the world. These are often foreign leaders who are organizing events or meetings, high level events or meetings, then giving the Trump family cash under the table, which is sort of like this open, hey, we just gave you a few million dollars. And now I'm going to come meet with you at maybe your golf course in Ireland or at this site of a luxury hotel that's not even finished yet, but you're building in a place like Qatar. And then while we're there, we're going to discuss how the US Regulates arms deals to Qatar. That is problematic. Like, there is an issue there that everybody should really care about. I think one of the big ones that we're going to see happen now is that Trump just selected National Doral Miami Hotel to host the December G20 summit this year. So 20 of the biggest countries and leaders are going to be coming to his property. There's going to be a huge amount of money dumped into reserving that property and paying the Trump family, the Trump Organization, organization, to come use it. And then when everybody's there. Trump's going to be on his home turf kind of, you know, negotiating and navigating all these relationships he has. That that alone, like that story by itself I should just say would be a massive months long scandal in any other administration. And it is two sentences of a 6,000 word piece that I wrote about this. Like that alone would do you know, newspaper headlines in a different era for months on end. But in this administration it's like most Americans don't even seem to know about it.

Saagar Enjeti (34:29)

That's crazy. Well, you did such a great job, Isaac. Again, we're gonna have a link down in the description. Go subscribe, go read, support them over there. We appreciate you man. Thank you.

Isaac Sol (34:38)

Thanks for having me on guys. I very much appreciate it.

Saagar Enjeti (34:40)

Very welcome.

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Krystal Ball (37:45)

so Marjorie Taylor Greene may be out of Congress, but she is not going quietly into the night. She recently gave a speech that got a lot of attention down in Texas at the Ron Paul Institute, talking about her fallout with Trump, spilling some of the details about the text messages that he sent her and saying that MAGA is quite, quote, dead. Let's take a listen to a bit of what she had to say.

Marjorie Taylor Greene (38:05)

It was the most shocking thing. When I sat in a conference meeting and I learned that the president didn't want to release the Epstein files. I was like, what? Yeah. Come to find out, he was very much against it. So we kept on trying and kept on talking about it. And then the president told Mike Johnson, no, do not bring that resolution to the floor for a vote. He told the Rules Committee and Johnson told the Rules Committee, no, you will not mark up any bill in the Rules Committee that will allow the Epstein files to be released. And the resistance built and built and built. He told Pam Bondi, don't release the Epstein files. He told everybody, don't release the Epstein files. Well, I'll never forget it. I was in my office in the Rayburn Building and I got a phone call from the President and he was at the White House and he wanted to talk to me about the discharge petition that I'd signed my name on on. And he said, marjorie, you're going to have to take your name off that discharge petition. We can't let. This is a hoax. We can't carry this. This is a hoax. It's a Democrat hoax. And we've got to just put this away and stop doing this. And he said, my friends are going to get hurt. He said his friends would get hurt if we released the Epstein files. And I've saved these text messages. I'd probably get put in jail if I released them publicly, but I saved them where Donald Trump proceeded to tell me that it was my fault and that I deserve it if my son gets killed, I deserve it because I was a traitor to him. That is our President of the United States.

Krystal Ball (39:53)

Pretty remarkable stuff there. Number one, her saying that. He told her overtly, my friends will be hurt.

Isaac Sol (40:00)

Right.

Krystal Ball (40:00)

If the Epstein files are released. Yeah, and you'll be hurt too, buddy, by the way. And then these text messages where she went through, you know, this one was relatively nice to me. Susie Wiles didn't even get back to me. Trump said, you will deserve it. You will deserve it.

Saagar Enjeti (40:15)

Yeah. And she's told those stories now multiple times. They haven't been denied yet, or at least, or maybe they have been by the White House. I'd have to check. But yeah, just to make clear that, you know, that's been out there for some time.

Krystal Ball (40:25)

I call on her to release the text messages.

Saagar Enjeti (40:27)

She should release the text messages. Text messages. I agree. I just wonder with her how much I think the big test is the electable conversation around this. Because look, we're all online, we know the MTG conversation. But at the end of the day, the Trump endorsed guy to replace her. She resigned. The Trump endorsed guy to replace her. He won. And the big test actually is coming soon with the Thomas Massie primary, which we really have no idea idea which way it's going to go. The polling remains small. Massey has a huge war chest. Obviously I'm pulling for him. But I think the bigger meta question, especially with Tucker with MTG and everything is like, what's the actual appetite for this? Because remember, Harry Entin did some of the CNN polling on Tucker, how he has all these net favorable have plunged with a lot of hardcore Republicans but at the same time, he's more popular than ever. The question is the, like, what's the lane for that? And I just don't know. Like, I really am curious. I do think it's millions of people. The Internet is huge, but how does it channel into political energy? Like, I'll give you a good example. Sean Ryan just had Cenk Uygur on his podcast. And I saw the clip where I was like, oh no. And Sean was like, do we need a new political party? And I was like, oh no. Oh no. Anytime we. I've seen it too many times. I get it, I get it.

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Saagar Enjeti (41:46)

Why everybody wants to go down the road. How many we've lived through, how many Jill Stein and third party meander people's party people. Yeah, guys, like the evidence is clear.

Krystal Ball (41:56)

It is what it is. You got to take one of these parties and do with it what you can.

Saagar Enjeti (42:00)

Right, exactly.

Krystal Ball (42:01)

So I mean, that's the reality.

Saagar Enjeti (42:02)

Right? But when I start to see stuff like that, you see a lot of angst, but then you're like, okay, but how do we channel this angst into something useful? Right. Or into something politically impactful? And I mean, obviously, you know, this is my job is the angst. I don't know about the channeling, but I mean, I'm an analyzer of the, of the, of the, of the useful. And you know, I haven't seen it yet.

Krystal Ball (42:22)

Here's what I'll say is I feel like there's sort of a mirror process of what was going on leading up to the 2024 election on the right, where you would have these individual people who would kind of drift to the right. And any one of them you could kind of write off, you know, like Naomi Gwynne going on Steve Bannon's show all the time. Naomi Klein wrote a whole book about like the Mirror World and her getting confused with Naomi Wolf, but she went from being this feminist to being this like hardcore right winger and anti COVID vaccine activists and all this stuff. And she's going on War Room. You see, you know, RFK Jr. Is this longtime lefty environmentalist, et cetera, and he's now shifting over to the right. And you see, you know, you see these various influencers and sort of, you know, high level people who. Or gradually kind of indulging in some of the right wing language and showing up on these podcasts, becoming more and more amenable. Then next thing you know, you have Maha as a whole thing and getting subsumed into the Trump coalition. And so at first I didn't take it that seriously because any one of these people, again, you can kind of like dismiss as a one off or a crank or whatever. But when it all came together, it added up to something real.

Saagar Enjeti (43:33)

It added up to 51.

Krystal Ball (43:34)

Yeah. And it also added up up to a public perception of this side, the Democratic side, is losing even some of their stalwart, longtime defenders to the right or to the Trump coalition. And so it created this sense of like, where the vibe in the country was going. And it was enough that then Trump ends up getting elected. So I kind of feel like there's that reverse thing happening right now where you've got the Marjorie Taylor Greene's who she's not becoming a Democrat, but she is. She spends pretty much all of her time trashing Trump, trashing maga, like being very aggressively critical of the side she used to be part of. You see Tucker, who again, not a Democrat, but being very critical of Trump. You can see the Tim Dillons, the podcast bros, any one of these, Sean Ryan, any one of these you could kind of dismiss. But when you add them all together, it does create this overwhelming sense of a backlash. And then of course, you add to that just the reality of how bad the situation was with Iran, gas pumps, disappointments on Epstein files, et cetera. And it does create something real. So if it was just mtg, especially now that she's not in Congress, it's like, whatever. But especially because, and this is again, goes to the Naomi Wolf comparison. Bannon loved to build her up as this. She was an advisor, Al Gore, she was a feminist. I can't believe she's here agreeing with me now. There's kind of a similar dynamic with Marjorie where she talked about in the speech, she's like, I was the biggest trumpet cheerleader. I was Trump's soldier. I spent millions of my own dollars going out and getting him elected. And now if I can see this and I can say this, just imagine how bad things have gotten. So that's why I think she's got

Saagar Enjeti (45:10)

to be very insightful. But see, this is where a real political leader is necessary. And when you were talking, there's only one Democrat who could do that, Ro Khanna. Literally, that's it. He's the only person who has the, at least has the foreknowledge, has the leadership on the Epstein issue, has the ability to go and to talk to any of these spaces. Doesn't code as like a, you know, horrific shit lib or, you know, like he doesn't code to me as a culture warrior, although I'm sure it's like polar opposite. Right. But willing to go into various different spaces. Somebody like Gavin, I just, I could not see that. No, the thing, what was Trump's ultimate superpower. Trump literally convinced people that, like millions of people, that he was gonna pay for their IV ivf, which you and I both know, if you believe that, you're a fucking idiot. Like, let's be honest, right? But millions of people were like, yeah, like, he's gonna pay for my ivf. So he took that guy, some guy who talks about glyphosate a lot, you know, like the glyphosate guy, and then a Mitt Romney country club Republican and got all three to vote. That's how you win. That's a coalition, ultimately. So your point is, is very correct.

Krystal Ball (46:17)

But no, you're right to have the right opening is there. Yeah, It's. Who can pull that together? And, you know, I do think that especially as the economic situation gets more dire, which sadly I think it's going to. I mean, even if the Iran were stopped today and the blockade ended, we're going to have months of dealing with the fallout and things are going to get worse before they can get better. And that's just the sad, horrifying reality that we're dealing with at this point. There is such a wide open lane for someone to come in and really care about that, like in a meaningful way, care about that. And there's also a wide open lane for someone with a clear message on AI, which is becoming a deeply disturbing and important issue to people and I think is only going to rise in importance as the impacts continue to be felt both locally in the community in terms of the, like, societal fallout. It's all there for the taking. But you're right, it requires someone who is a leader, who has courage, who says things that makes sense, sense, who is broadly appealing to a wide swath of people, doesn't just code as being of this faction or of that faction. And so that is gonna be the question mark of whether there's anyone that actually pulls that off.

Saagar Enjeti (47:25)

I wish I had confidence it would go that direction, but I don't see it. I hope so. I really do, for the good of the nation. Because ultimately, political entrepreneurship, which is ultimately what a lot of people thought Trump was doing in 2024, is melding destroying like old barriers, bringing people into a coalition, setting a new political and majority time paradigm, because ultimately that's what it's all about. But it's a tough order. The reason why it doesn't happen is because it's hard and it takes, like genuine skill. And then you see somebody who could have done it and then squander it within what, six months and then put the nail in the coffin with the war. It was shocking. It really was to see. So I don't know, maybe somebody else could do it. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. They Ryan and Emily will be on tomorrow. We'll see you then.

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What do you mean? People hate the sound of chewing. Maybe they won't like the crunch.

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