← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
8/14/25: Trump Threatens Putin Before Summit, Will Dems Fumble 2026
01:15:29
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:05]
Sagar Enjeti
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- [01:59]
Theo Von
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [02:00]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [02:07]
Theo Von
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [02:13]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [02:24]
Theo Von
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoint.com Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. What do we have today, Crystal?
- [02:38]
Krystal Ball
Oh, we have a lot to tackle this morning. We're going to preview that big Trump Putin Alaska summit. We're also going to take an early look at how the midterms are shaping up. We've got some news out of Israel, including Netanyahu embracing the Greater Israel project. So just mask fully off at this point. Also going to take a look at Theo Von had an American doctor who was just back from Gaza's pretty extraordinary episode. I really recommend that you guys go and listen to the whole thing. But we have a clip from that. Wanted to talk a little bit about that as well. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer in an absolute flame war. Break the details down there. And Laura Loomer making a pretty dire prediction about the future of the Republican Party. So that is interesting to dig into as well. Perhaps more substantive, I don't know to dig into as well. Congresswoman Luna is telling Joe Rogan about UFOs. So Sagar has some thoughts there. I guess I have some thoughts.
- [03:26]
Theo Von
Well, she made some crazy claims, but she's also gone after some whistleblowers. So we'll talk about it. It's actually, there's a lot going on there.
- [03:32]
Krystal Ball
Okay.
- [03:33]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [03:33]
Krystal Ball
All right. You'll break that down for us. And then Israel might be preparing to go back to war with Iran. So we are going to have Dave DeCamp of Antiwar.com his first time on the show. I've been wanting to get him on for a little while to break down all of the details there. We're also going to be doing our AMA live today. If you guys want to be part of those, make sure that you sign up over@breaking points.com that's right.
- [03:53]
Theo Von
Breaking points.com Become a premium member today. If no worries. If you can't afford it, just please hit the subscribe button here on this video and or send your favorite episode to a friend. So let's go ahead and start with that Trump Putin summit it is tomorrow. We'll have some reaction on Saturday, by the way. We'll get to that in terms of our future programming notes. But we actually wanted to start with some of the contours of the debate and kind of where things lie. So we thought we would kick it off with Dave Smith, who was recently on Piers Morgan's show debating a very pro Ukraine pro Western NATO sentence, and really revealing some of the core truths, I think, behind what continues to drive a lot of the NATO support for the war. Let's take a listen.
- [04:36]
Dave Smith
What are we doing? You're just trying to insult Vladimir Putin, insult Russia. It's like the most childish, immature, just taunting. There's an actual war going on right now where hundreds of thousands of people have been dying, and there's a meeting coming up between the two leaders of the United States and Russia. As I said before, 90% of the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons. Let's all take this down a notch. Vladimir Putin has at least signaled recently that he will maybe is open to the idea of keeping the Donbass region, Donetsk and Luhansk, of getting a corridor to Crimea, and of leaving some of the other territory. Why are we not all pushing in that direction? It is undeniable that the west did a lot to provoke this conflict. It's just undeniable. Our CIA director through all of Joe Biden's term, Bill Burns, was the one who wrote the nyet means nyet memo, who warned Condoleezza Rice, do not keep pushing in this direction. And we continued pushing regardless. It's resulted in this catastrophe. Like I said before, Pierce, I'm not absolving Vladimir Putin of any responsibility. He launched this war, and he's responsible for the destruction. But when you start the program by asking a simple question like, what is the exit strategy here? What is the plan? No one really has anything. No one has anything other than maybe we could keep sending weapons and money in, and this slow grind of people dying will continue, and Vladimir Putin will then, at the end of that, take the territory he wants. Let's try to negotiate an end to this nightmare that never needed to happen.
- [06:09]
Theo Von
I thought he did a good job kind of laying some of the stakes out. And yes, again, I understand nobody's absolving Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine. We're simply acknowledging the contours of what led to this. Yeah, I actually find it almost similar maybe to the Israel Hamas conversation. Right. It's like, to talk about October 7th in a vacuum is kind of ridiculous.
- [06:30]
Krystal Ball
Wilton, like, do you condemn Hamas?
- [06:32]
Theo Von
Right, Exactly. Like, yes, of course, on October 7th. And it's like, let's look at the contours of the conflict. That's part of the reason, I think, that Daryl Cooper's series on fear and loathing in Jerusalem went so viral, because people are like, I genuinely had no idea about the history of these two actors and what led up to this and it starts to make a lot more sense actually from both sides in terms of their. Their actions both October 7th and the Israeli reaction. And you're able to actually be able to condemn both. And then look at it, you know, some single Israeli covered or Palestinian covered glasses. And that makes it what it's called nuance. It's about understanding how these things don't happen necessarily in a vacuum.
- [07:11]
Krystal Ball
It's not a version where it's just like he's an evil bad guy, so he does bad stuff and they're evil people, so they do. They hate us. Cause we're free. You know, it's like the cartoon version of it. And I will say there was one person on that panel that was absolving Vladimir Putin, the dude in the car, who was like some, I don't know, Russian state TV propagandist. And so that was supposed to be like Dave's ally in the debate. And obviously Dave doesn't agree with him, which he made clear, like, went out of his way to make clear, like the things that this dude is saying. I do not co sign whatsoever. So Piers is more pro Ukraine. The woman that was there is herself Ukrainian. And then you've got two neocons there who are, you know, very pro Ukraine. And so it was basically Dave versus the entire panel. And as you can see there, handled himself quite ably just by pointing out, you know, reality of where we are. Because this is, you know, I have a lot of sympathy and continue to have a lot of sympathy for the Ukrainians. In fact, I'm disgusted with the fact that the US Was so integral in blowing up a potential peace deal early on. I'm also disgusted with the actions that multiple US administrations, including the first Trump one, including Biden, including going back, you know, before this war that they took that led to the provocation that created the context for this illegal offensive action invasion by Russia. And so, you know, if you are interested in trying to bring this thing to a close, you have to live in reality. The other alternative being offered here is just what, endless war or, you know, if we're actually going to try to get Ukraine to, quote, unquote, win and take back all their territory. I mean, that would require our actual direct involvement.
- [08:52]
Theo Von
Yes.
- [08:52]
Krystal Ball
Does anyone want that? And that's what's driven me crazy about this conflict from the beginning, is there's been a total unwillingness to have an honest debate about what happened in the past, what it's gonna mean, what the off ramp is, what the plan is, where this whole thing is going and now it's just a mess and a quagmire. And, you know, I'm not particularly hopeful about this summit this weekend. I'll just put my cards on the table and I think we'll have some indications. You're about to share of, you know, not great signs going into it. But, you know, I don't know, I'm just at this point, there really needs to be some, some sort of rational close to this thing. And I don't know that we're anywhere close to.
- [09:32]
Theo Von
I don't see it either. Here's Trump talking about the summit, setting expectations. Let's take a listen. Shall face any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war.
- [09:43]
Dave Smith
After your meeting on Friday?
- [09:44]
Theo Von
Yes, they will. Yeah. What will. They will be sanctions, tariffs. There will be, I don't have to say there will be very severe consequences. Yes, very severe consequences. I'm gonna return to that because basically this thing, at least for now, looks like it's set up to fail to be fair. Here's what the Trump people have been telling me behind the scenes. He starts off from the maximal political place so that he can negotiate down from there, which sounds reasonable in practice, like maybe in business. But in something as sensitive as this, I still remain to be seen, I think, in terms of the success. And part of the reason why is this. Let's put this up there on the screen. There's been multiple reports out and none of it contradicted what the White House. Yesterday, Donald Trump held a meeting both with Ukraine and many of the European great powers ahead of the summit where they agreed, quote, on Ukrainian red lines with Europe. Before the Putin summit, the US leader told European peers he will not negotiate territorial issues during Friday's meeting, but will seek an immediate ceasefire. Now, included within that provision for a European cease fire, and I wanna reiterate this are some of the things which are based on already non starters for the Russians. I'm gonna read it here. Quote, ceasefire as a prerequisite for any further talks, quote, any territorial discussion will start from the current front line, quote, binding Western security agreements that Russia must accept, quote, Ukrainian participation in the talks and quote, support from both the US and Europe, including Ukraine, for any deal. Now already on the Ukrainian side, it's gonna be very difficult to get a deal. Why? Because Zelenskyy has a total ability to set the table and to bring anything to some sor national referendum which he's not even allowed to pursue any sort of peace on his own accord. He has to Bring it to the people. Now, he may not even want to bring it to the people. Cause apparently, according to their own polls, the Ukrainian people are actually much more pro peace than he is. Whereas his entire administration, remember he's deeply unpopular already for some of the authoritarian anti corruption laws that he just signed into office. He's already been dragging down in the polls. There's been no election. The Ukrainian opposition has either been banned or jailed inside of the country. Why would you wanna give that up if you're already a of that country? His vision for how this thing was gonna go is already out of step with the Ukrainians. Secondary to that is, quote, some sort of security guarantee that Russia can, that Russia must accept. The security guarantee would effectively be some sort of NATO style security guarantee outside of NATO. So Trump is trying to play two sides of this coin where he's like, well, it won't be from NATO. It's like, dude, if the US has a treaty bound, organized or treaty bound obligation to defend every inch of, let's say 80% of Ukraine, that might as well be NATO. I, it doesn't matter, right? It's not really functionally, whether it's America or whether it's outside of NATO or not. If all of the NATO powers have an obligation to come in to defend your territory, then that's basically NATO. Why would Russia live with that? And then the final one is that Russia must agree to the current frontline and they must not demand any more of their territory. Well, again, for people who don't even follow the conflict, Russia just had its best breakthrough on the front line in over a year. Part of the reason why a ceasefire for them right now may not make a lot of sense is because they're rolling every single day that the war continues. They're doing better. And then finally there's this theory of severe consequences. Russia is the most sanctioned country on earth by the United States. I actually don't think people know that more than Iran, more than any other place. There's not another sanction that's gonna be left. That's why they're threatening these, quote, secondary sanctions.
- [13:24]
Krystal Ball
Right?
- [13:24]
Theo Von
Well, they've put 50% sanctions or tariffs on India. India has not budged a single inch, not one. In fact. They're going to Moscow, they're going to China, to Beijing. The two biggest buyers of Russian oil are China and India. China by far, by the way, and it faces no current consequences. The Senate has a bill which Trump has threatened to support, which would put 500% tariffs on any buyer of Russian oil. But let's think about the consequences of that. That would mean a 500% tariff on China, which would effectively bring the US commerce, industry, retail industry, E commerce, et cetera, to a complete halt and shut off trade. Is everybody willing to shut down our economy and all of our global trade for Ukraine? I mean, this is where, you know, it gets back to where we all had to pay higher gas prices because of the Ukrainian conflict. That wasn't popular, actually. Even though a lot of people were like, yeah, sure, I'll pay higher gas. It's like, yeah, how did it work out?
- [14:16]
Krystal Ball
In theory, the beginning in theory, yeah.
- [14:18]
Theo Von
You got a lot poorer. Most people paid a big hefty Ukraine tax at the pump for years. And instead, by the way, they still continue to pay it, at least in some form. But my point remain. Oh, I mean, I'm not even talking about the European consequences. All of those, you know, the summers where their electricity prices were sky high, it destabilized their entire economies. The German economy, it took a massive hit. I mean, it basically looked like their entire manufacturing sector was underwritten by cheap oil and gas. Like their whole future of their economy is up in the air right now. All that being said is just to say, you know, Trump would always say, we have the cards and he's right for Ukraine on Russia, it's not right. I mean, absent full blown US Military, NATO intervention, what else can you do? Yeah, this is not a military capable of adopting NATO weaponry. They've proven that they only, and I'll get to this in a bit, they only know how to fight in a Soviet way, which is throw as much manpower into the trench as possible. You think you're gonna beat the Russians at their own game? They have millions more people than you.
- [15:21]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I guess the alternative view with regard Russia's recent success on the front lines would be this has been going on for years now, and they've basically been stuck in place. There've been minor advances on the Russian side, but it hasn't been like, yeah.
- [15:38]
Theo Von
They'Re not taking over the whole country.
- [15:39]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, it hasn't been dramatic. And that these latest gains may be a result of them really throwing a lot of force in one area to try to improve their bargaining position. Going into this summit in these negotiations is kind of the alternative explanation as far as Trump goes. I guess we're just hoping, since he goes back on his word all the time, that maybe he doesn't actually mean anything that he's saying here about just Like, I'm in lockstep with the Europeans and the Ukrainians and Russia's gonna pay a price, et cetera, et cetera. Very possible, very possible that Trump doesn't mean a word that he is saying about any of this and will completely flip once he's face to face with Vladimir Putin because famously, he's very influenced by whoever happens to be in front of him at that moment. So we'll see. I just want to zoom out, though, also for a second and talk about how utterly hypocritical and preposterous it is at this point in time for the Americans to posture like they care so deeply about territorial integrity. We're going to cover later in the show how Israel is now greenlit. This massive and very consequential expansion of settlements that basically makes a two state solution impossible. It's directly intended, according to Smotrich himself, who's in charge of such things, directly intended to make a two state Palestinian solution completely impossible. Completely off the table. And of course, we are also greenlighting the complete annexation of Gaza as well. So west bank annexed, Gaza annexed. And that we are part of. We are green lighting, we are funding, we are providing diplomatic cover for. And then on the other hand, we're gonna pretend like territorial integrity is some rarefied, sacrosanct thing. I mean, it's just the levels of hypocrisy are so brazen and in your face.
- [17:19]
Theo Von
Yeah. And I mean, I've talked about. But, you know, all of the rhetoric that you hear on Ukraine, they're like, oh, my God, Russia's killing civilians. Look, I'm not minimizing any civilian death. I think it's bad. But Russia has killed, you know, on a daily basis. They'll be like, wow, 12 civilians were killed in Ukraine. I think that's horrible. How many civilians does Israel kill every single day with the US bomb? Who are we talking to? You know about this saying bucha, the massacre, it was a genocide. That's what the Ukrainians say.
- [17:49]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [17:50]
Theo Von
I mean, again, look at the death toll and compare it to the Palestinians. It's like we can't talk out of both sides of our mouth. And instead we just need to all be honest. This is a great power conflict. The goal was to try and destroy the Russians via Ukraine as a proxy state. It failed miserably. I never thought my great naivete was having any confidence in the US Global hegemony on banking. I thought that there was no way the Russian economy would survive. I have been stunned. There's a lot of lessons, actually, in the way that the Russians have been able to. It shows you that there's only two things that matter if you can make guns and if you can pump oil. That's literally all that you need. You don't need America at all. And you know they're doing just fine.
- [18:28]
Krystal Ball
The world is way more prepared to move on from us than we.
- [18:31]
Theo Von
It's true. I truly, truly underestimated not only them, but I vastly overestimated the power of US Sanctions and hegemony. And I kind of wish that we hadn't done it for a conflict which has no bearing whatsoever on the United States.
- [18:49]
Sagar Enjeti
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- [21:44]
Theo Von
Let'S get to President Zelensky, who recently had a press conference in London where he's been meeting with all of the European powers, setting the table for the summit. Let's take a listen. I told President Trump and all our European allies Putin is bluffing. Putin is bluffing that sanctions is nothing and they don't work. In fact, sanctions are hitting Russian war economy hard. That Putin definitely does not want peace. He wants to occupy Ukraine. And we all understand that Putin cannot fool anyone. We need future and further pressure and European and American sanctions against Russia. So you can see he's like, Putin doesn't want peace. And I mean all of the table for that is that I don't want peace either, right? Is that we want to continue fighting, throwing our people into the breach. Let's put the next one, please, up on the screen. Just to continue what I was saying. Trump promises, quote, very severe consequences at a military level absent sending troops actually on the ground. I was speaking with some military experts yesterday. There's not a whole lot left. Biden gave them everything that they could possibly have asked for. The critique from that is that, oh, he gave it to them too late. But we are where we are. We're in reality, right? The average age on the Ukrainian front line is probably between 40 and 60 years old. Nobody even really knows what that is. It's horrifying what has already happened to the entire population. But, you know, as you said, the hope is that maybe he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth and keeping everything up for negotiation, But I'm just not so sure considering. I would have thought that, you know, in the first month of the Trump administration, we have the Gaza ceasefire. I was like, wow. I was like, this is amazing. Right, well, you know, now we are where. We are where Wyckoff has used talks with Iran as cover for a strike, where on the Israeli side we just keep saying things like, well, it's up to Netanyahu. You know, it's like, well, here, here it seems like we've done a total about face from the initial days of the administration. Trump sending $250 million in additional military equipment. Trump continuing these via European arms sales, but still fueling the conflict. Sending Patriot batteries, threatening Russia with sanctions. This is straight out of the Biden playbook. The India thing is literally out of Lindsey Graham playbook. He's been wanting to do it since day one at a military level. Just to underscore that. Let's put this one, next one, please, on the screen just to show everybody what the military real is here. Excellent piece written by some people who are actually military experts and they say, quote, Ukraine's once nimble army is mired in Soviet decision making. I remember reading this over the last couple of years about how NATO tactics and others were encouraged. NATO weaponry and a lot of these other things. Training to try and get the Ukrainians to fight that way. But their response is basically, look, we don't even know how to do that. But also, this is just the way that we're trained. And as we've found, some level of battlefield success. But. But attritional warfare favors the great power, not the small power, especially the one that has no industrial base, that has no capacity to wage war on its own and would basically be giving up in a single day, 24 hour period. If the United States and Europe pulled the plug from the conflict, the person who is able to sustain that on a long enough basis is the Russians. And there was also this theory that lots. And I also got this wrong. I'll admit it if I look back. One of the things that brought down the Soviet Union or at least stirred up a lot of internal dissent was the death toll in Afghanistan during the Soviet war. And the Russians have. Nobody knows exactly how many troops have been killed, but it's a lot. Hundreds of thousands, probably. The Russians will claim otherwise. There doesn't seem to be very much. There just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of dissent. They somehow seem to have solved that problem. I guess the population just supports it, unlike they did in Afghanistan. I really have no other explanation. I also read that paying very generous salaries to a lot of the draftees or a lot of the people who will come in from the caucuses or these other regions, much more than they could ever earn otherwise. And so even the widowers and the families are like, well, it sucks to lose your husband, but I'm getting a pension for the rest of my life. I don't know how they did it, I'm not an expert or anything, but I thought that this could be an Afghanistan type situation for them. It doesn't appear to be people, they seem willing as a polity to accept hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties. In Ukraine, there has been, there's been zero actual internal dissent since 2022. And a lot of the draft, in fact, it may have worked out for them because the Western style elites, they all just left Russia. And so everybody who's left is like, yeah, we're on board, we're on the train, let's go.
- [26:19]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, they have a large, relatively poor rural population that is committed, that believes in the war goals, like, believes in the aims, and for whom those salaries are quite appealing. And so I don't know, but that's my guess as to why they've been able to sustain this high rate of casualty without having any notable significant societal backlash, as far as we can tell as outsiders looking in. So with regard to the ongoing war tactics, there was actually a great quote in that piece. One of them said, big Soviet army beats little Soviet army. Basically saying, yeah, they use these same terrible tactics of just throwing men into a meat grinder and never wanting to retreat, even when it makes sense, letting their troops get encircled and slaughtered. But they have a lot more people than we do. So in the end, how do you think that that is ultimately going to work out? You know, there was also some quotes in here from a guy who's 50 years old, wanted to go fight, signed up, he was like, you know, he'd never handled a weapon before, had zero training and never been in the military before, but wanted to serve and thought that he could go in and get some training and go do something that wasn't really on the front line. I mean, again, he's 50 years old, he's never been in warfare before, he's never fired a weapon. And they didn't even give him a gun before they sent him to the front lines and he left. He was like, I'm not doing this.
- [27:44]
Theo Von
That's the most Soviet thing I've ever heard.
- [27:45]
Krystal Ball
He was like, I'm not doing this. And apparently they have a lot of deserters because of exactly this. They're like, you didn't give me any training. You're sending me to the front lines. The guy who's in charge here is just willing to let us get encircled and slaughtered. We're not doing it. And so you also have that dynamic unfolding on the ground here too. But your point about us having all the cards with regard to Ukraine is a really important one. Really important. The party that we really have the most ability to pressure is the Ukrainians. They're very dependent on us. That's just the reality. And so pressure needs to be put on them and it needs to be done in order to secure a deal that, yes, they're gonna be unhappy with. Right. It's not like in order to bring this war to a close now, it would require territorial concessions. There's just no doubt about that. Certainly Crimea, you know, Eastern Ukraine. And what needs to happen is there needs to be some ability to create face saving for Zelenskyy. Like if you're interested in actually bringing this thing to a close, you put pressure behind the scenes. You try to resolve the underlying issues that led Russia to, you know, create to launch this illegal invasion to begin with. And you try to create some sort of face saving pretext for Zelenskyy so that he has. Cuz his ego is massive, clearly. And he's backed himself sort of into a rhetorical corner so that he sort of an out. And it just seems from the beginning the complete opposite policy has been pursued. The pressure has been on the Russian side. Zelensky gets publicly humiliated. That actually doesn't help you in terms of trying to get him to back off of his egoistic position, which you should be doing is pumping him up in public and then putting the pressure on behind the scenes to force an outcome that again, is not ideal and is going to be deeply painful. But increasingly the Ukrainian population is actually open.
- [29:33]
Theo Von
Yeah, I think, look, all well said. The prop, the summit, you know, the initial. By the way, as you know, I loved the initial Oval Office meeting. I thought it was great. I was like, he needs to be put into his place and finally we can break in terms of our so called special relationship. We could force him to the table. But since then it's like I said, Trump total about face. And this is not an advisor's thing. I really believe that he seemed to think that he could just use his relationship with Putin to bring the conflict to an end. And he did not understand the fundamentals behind Putin. The thing is about Putin is he's crazy, but he has very rational objectives from within his worldview. If you look at it, he disregards, which is insane, the existence of all of these breakaway republics. He thinks the Treaty of Brest Litovsk is one of the greatest disasters to ever befall the history of Russia and that the tragedy was the fall of, of the Soviet Union from the demise of a great power and that they've been bullied by the West. Like I said, he is a czar through and through in his security, defense or depth vision. Well, for him, if you look at him in that view, personality has nothing to do with it. Yes, he will use you as a personality to get relations or any of that, but he only cares about one thing. He invaded Ukraine for a reason. And he wants will continue along the same reason path. They've committed their entire country towards this end. They will not simply give up because of a nice phone call. Sanctions don't matter anymore. None of this stuff, it's all about territory. And with the current side, I mean, even on the Ukrainian side and the Europeans, they're like, we will never recognize diplomatically any of this territory. Maybe we can live with it, but we will never diplomatically recognize. I'm like, I just don't see a scenario where any of this stuff is going to fly. Right. How can you normalize relations or any of that in the future? I guess the Korean model, you know, some of these, you know, technically Korea's state of war with the treaty and all of that, it is possible, but it's very difficult to see with the emotions and the way things are right now. And, you know, if I tie it back to Israel, something I love that you said in one of our last shows, you're like, israel exists. It's not about right to exist. We have to deal where we are today. That's it. You know, we just have to look. And it's not just, it's not nice, but that's geopolitics. It's the, you know, there's no rights to territory. There's simply the ability basically to take it or not. In the Israel context, it's kind of flipped because we're the ones enabling the Russia of that region. And then out two sides of our mouth, we're speaking differently And I get that it sucks.
- [32:15]
Krystal Ball
We've done more to blow up that international law consensus of, like, territorial integration, integrity, and human rights than any other country on the planet.
- [32:23]
Theo Von
So, yeah, again, it's like the country that invaded Iraq based on the coalition of the willing is gonna go around telling people about territorial integrity. What are we doing here? You know, the country that toppled Libya and turned it into a failed state, Syria. Look at where it is right now, led by literally Al Qaeda. You know, it's like one of these where this commitment to democratic norms or any of that stuff, it has never been US Policy. And in fact, I think that by holding that up and continuing to act the way that we've done, it's exactly why we are where we are with Russia, with Ukraine, with so many of these other different conflicts. And, yeah, it just really holds us back. So, anyway, that's the table set. We'll see what the hell happens. It could all go otherwise. I remember Helsinki, where it was totally different.
- [33:10]
Krystal Ball
Right.
- [33:10]
Theo Von
So it could be very pro Putin. I could be wrong.
- [33:13]
Krystal Ball
I don't know. Absolutely possible that we're eating crow by Monday, and we would be happy to do it. I programming note, we are going to forego the Friday show in order for Sagar and Ryan actually are gonna cover the results of this summit on Saturday morning. So we're gonna have a Saturday show instead of a Friday show. So everybody look for that.
- [33:33]
Theo Von
That's right, because the powers that be decided that Alaska is five hours behind. And so by the time we even get all the news and all that, it probably won't be. It could be midnight or something like that. If it all runs late, which, by the way, having covered some of these diplomatic summits, they always go way longer than they're supposed to. The meetings are scheduled 20 minutes. They'll last an hour and 50 minutes. The press conference, well, you have to.
- [33:55]
Krystal Ball
Wait to get big translation of what happens.
- [33:59]
Theo Von
Yes, the instant readouts. They're gonna hold a just joint press conference, which that's gonna be kind of fun, actually. That's one of my favorite traditions from the Washington press corps is it's called a 2 and 2, where the American press corps, when you get called on by your president, you actually have the opportunity to ask Putin a question. And so whoever gets that, please do your homework. Don't ask some dumbass question. Actually ask something which is useful both for the Russians and for ourselves as well. So, you know, don't try and make yourself into a hero. Looking at you, Jim Acosta, or any of these other people.
- [34:32]
Sagar Enjeti
The reviews and ratings are in and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer. And to cap off the season, iHeart presents the Big Three basketball players this Sunday at 3pm Eastern. The remaining four teams battle it out for the right to make the Big Three Championship in the most physical, fierce and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big 3 Monster Energy Celebrity game where your favorite stars compete in Big 33 on 3 basketball. Then the first of two semifinal games features Dwight Howard and the LA Riot taking on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J's first place Chicago triplets. The finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley and Lance will make you Dan Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas power who finished the season winning five straight weeks to capture second place. Can Glen Rice, Greg Monroe and Paul Millsap stop Miami's physical assault? Or will Miami and Beasley put an end to Dallas winning ways? Who will make it to the Big Three championship? This no holds barred action starts Sunday at 3pm Eastern, 12 Pacific only on CBS.
- [35:34]
Unknown
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- [36:33]
Riley herbs from 2311 racing here and you know what grinds my gears? Waiting for coffee.
- [36:38]
Theo Von
But instead of counting frappes and lattes.
- [36:40]
Unknown
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- [36:44]
Theo Von
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- [37:04]
Krystal Ball
So we haven't done a lot on polling and where we are as we head into, I mean, I know we still have a good bit of time before the midterms, but trust me, these things are already taking shape, already heating up. So we wanted to do spend a little bit of time on the horse race and taking a look at where things stand. As best we can tell as of today, Harrington did a breakdown specifically on the issue of inflation and how Trump has really fallen off a cliff on the issue that voters continue to say is their number one concern. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
- [37:34]
Unknown
Look, voters on Trump and inflation. He won the 2024 election because he was more entrusted on inflation than Kamala Harris was led by a margin of 9 points. Look at where his net approval stands today though, on inflation. My goodness gracious. On the issue that got him elected, he led by nine points on it last year and now he's 25 points under water. As I said, this is a complete and total disaster for the President. United States trust which party more on inflation. You go back to the 2022 midterms. Look at this. Republicans led by 13 points on which party was more trust than inflation. Look at where we are now. Nearly a 15 point shift in the Democrats direction. It's within the margin of error, but the Democrats up by a point. This just looks totally different from where we were back in 2022 when of course, Republicans took back the House. That's what Democrats are trying to do this time.
- [38:20]
Theo Von
Camera.
- [38:20]
Unknown
What is the top issue for you right now? It's a runaway. It's inflation. It's 34% compared to the economy, which is basically very similar at 16%, Medicare and Social Security at 14%. But the bottom line is voters in poll after poll after poll say that Donald Trump has taken his eye off the ball, off the big issue of the day, which is inflation. And that is why Donald Trump is way underwater on this issue. And it's why Democrats have caught up to Republicans, Republicans on the all important issue of inflation.
- [38:48]
Krystal Ball
And Sagar, in some ways, I think that last piece about which issues are most important to people is maybe the most devastating for Republicans because as Harry Anton points out, Trump is now very unpopular on any economic issue. But inflation, you know, certainly. So inflation is the number one issue. Economy in general is the number two issue. I don't think just like firing the BLS person and not putting out jobs report is really gonna fix that for him. And then number three is Medicare And Social Security. Well, what do you think that's about? Yeah, that's true. That's about the big beautiful bill. That's why people are concerned about Medicare. And I do feel like the big beautiful bill is that, like, we probably need to talk about it more because I think for average people, it's factoring into their perception of this presidency much more than it's sort of given credit for. Because just think about the numbers you have. Millions of people now have to be concerned about whether or not they're gonna have healthcare going forward. And you pair that with the fact that the way that's being financed is a giant tax cut, predominantly for the rich, and it is an utter political disaster.
- [39:50]
Theo Von
Yeah. Especially on the Medicaid front. Right. Where you're gonna see some impact. And I mean, by the way, part of the problem with the messaging or whatever around this is that, you know, for a lot of people, they didn't necessarily read Medicaid. They thought maybe it said Medicare.
- [40:02]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, significantly. Well, there are changes to Medicare as well, but the bigger changes are certainly.
- [40:06]
Theo Von
Medicaid, Medicaid, Snap, any of those types of programs. By the way, just as you and I were talking, there is a new report out that shows that the core producer price, the PPI inflation, came in at 3.7% versus 2.9%. And the stock futures are diving literally, as you and I are talking right now. The wholesale price rose by 0.9% in July, which is much more than expected. The producer price index, which features final demand goods and services, jumped 0.9 compared to the Dow Jones estimate of just 0.2%. That's excluding food and energy prices. So that's particularly wholesale goods, which is going to show up at the grocery store. I know 0.9 doesn't sound like a lot, but it's much more about the impact of the overall rise in inflation. It's almost three times higher. It's as high as it's been since April of 2021 in terms of the jump. So that is one where it could be a precursor to higher inflation. Just again, though, that's going to be something that if the economists, the stock market and all these people are worried about, that could be something that's showing up for you. Combine it with the Social Security, the Medicare, any of this stuff where, again, look, I mean, Social Security didn't get touched. But the Medicaid stuff, and in particular the tax cut, because again, the thing about the tax cut that everybody doesn't remember is that that's when The Trump presidency in 2017 went off the rails. The first six months of the first Trump administration was an outright battle inside between, like, Paul Ryan and Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. Remember, Steve Bannon had his whiteboard for all the things that they wanted to do. And there was even about the border wall. There was this floated tax called the border adjustment tax, which, by the way, would've been a great tax, which went after remittances and trade. It was supposed to be an initial kind of trade imbalance, way to correct with Mexico, and that would've financed immigration enforcement. And the entire GOP was like, yeah, we're not doing that. They're like, we're cutting taxes for rich people and that's it. Right. And so by the time that came out with the corporate tax, the reduced taxes, not only for corporations, but for the highest income brackets, that is really where Trump, Trump sank to his lowest ever level of support. It makes total sense to me. It's very similar to Obamacare. If you think back to the coverage of the 2010 election, the anger that was bubbling up in the town halls was over Obamacare, but the country, national media had kind of moved on from there by that point. They were talking about various different things, but that is what slammed them at the ballot box. So it's very possible that inflation, and in particular, the capriciousness around trade policy. What I have found is that Americans don't want to tune into the news on the economy. They want it to just run. And so when they have to check every day, not only their portfolio or businesses have to pause deals and unpause, have to pause hiring and then maybe reduce salary. Or if you have to think about policy when it impacts their business, that's when people get upset. They don't want it to. They only want to pay attention whenever it's good, but when it's bad, that's not what they want. And by and large, that's mostly where things are right now.
- [43:03]
Krystal Ball
Well, and you pointed out, too, there are certain, certain, certain key items where you can really see that price hike directly as a result of tariffs. In fact, I saw, I sent us this morning. Ro Khan is doing something smart. He's introducing legislation to roll back, specifically the tariffs on coffee because we hit Brazil so hard, you know, because we're mad at them over their court decisions. With regard to Bolsonaro, that is causing coffee prices to spike dramatically. It also is causing beef prices to spike to spike dramatically. Good, probably for American cattle ranchers. But if you're trying to include steak in your diet here in the, it's gonna become much more costly. So in any case, I thought that was a clever tactical move from him. Yeah, smart.
- [43:42]
Theo Von
Well, the coffee pressure on that look, it's something, I think the vast majority of Americans drink coffee every single day. If not, it's probably like 70, 80%. I need to check the data. But the point is actually is that if you look at the way it will really impact you is if you buy it at a retail chain like Starbucks or anything, by the way. Starbucks or anything. Has anyone been recently? I never go to Starbucks. I went, it's like $5. I was like, what the hell is going on here? Yeah, exactly. I was like, I was like, whoa. I mostly brew almost entirely all my own coffee. I'm pretty much, you know, immune from whatever the retail market or anything. But every once in a while you'll just check and you're like, what the hell is going on?
- [44:16]
Krystal Ball
I mean even if you're not going to Starbucks, like how many, you know, blue collar guys are going out, you know, early morning, they're stopping at 7:11, getting their cup of coffee as they're on the road headed to their job. I mean this is very common, you know, experience, cross class experience. And those would be the people who will be most sensitive to those price increases. And so even if it's not five bucks at Starbucks, you're still gonna notice that price increase.
- [44:38]
Theo Von
Absolutely.
- [44:39]
Krystal Ball
Let's go and get to this next slide that shows you where the generic ballot is. So this is just. If you ask people would you vote for the, you know, whoever the Democrat is or whoever the Republican is in your congressional district without specific names attached, who comes out on top? And you can see, look, listen, let's all take the polls with a grain of salt. At this point in our lives, at this point in American history, however, you have a very consistent trend here in favor of Democrats. The overall RCP average has them up 3.5% on the generic ballot. You've had one poll from Yahoo News. Actually this Atlas intel one is the highest one up on the board of plus eight for Democrats. More common is more in the 2, 3, 4 type of range, but a significant edge, especially when you consider that Republicans have a very narrow edge in the House. Now what is going to happen with all this redrawing of the maps in Texas and California and New York and whatever's going on there? I don't know, maybe Republicans. But I mean, I think the very fact that they're pulling the fire alarm to potentially do a new census to redraw these maps, et cetera, shows you they don't feel real great about their position going into the midterms either. Now on the other side, on the flip side, let's put this next piece up on the screen. I think this is what Republicans are kind of comforting themselves with. The Democratic Party is wildly unpopular. Net favorability plunges to near three decade low according to polls. And to me, Sager, I think this reflects a lot of things. I mean, there's just a lot of mistrust of the Democratic Party overall. But the reason it's reached this historic level of unpopularity, and this is reflected in the data, is because there are a lot of Democrats that are disgusted with the Democratic Party. And I do think Israel is a big part of that because it's just such a moral atrocity. There's such massive divergence in the numbers are starker than maybe any other issue. I've seen the distance between Democratic leadership and where the base is. Then you add to that that they feel that they aren't fighting, fighting the Trump administration. They aren't going to the mat to try to fight for democracy, fight against their legislation in the ways that they wanna see. And then you see Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries not even willing to endorse Iran Mamdani. I mean, they're just an embarrassing, pathetic mess. Especially at that. The higher up you go, the more embarrassing and cringe worthy it becomes. So I think that's a big part of why their favorability has sunk to such a historic lows.
- [47:15]
Theo Von
I saw it actually in the D.C. context. Dave Weigel was like, you know, because the D.C. mayor and the politicians were all caught off guard. And Weigel was like, you've only had seven months to prepare. When he said he was gonna do it on the campaign trail, it's like, so if you're Chuck Schumer, fine, you're not focused on Washington D.C. if you're mayor Bowser, it's like, wait, you never thought about it? It's like you guys literally never thought about it. You had no plan for how this was all gonna go and the police chief embarrassing herself on national TV or anything. It's like, so what's happening?
- [47:43]
Krystal Ball
Right?
- [47:44]
Theo Von
It's like, I think that's what's so frustrating for a lot of people.
- [47:47]
Krystal Ball
A councilwoman who was, who's more on the left. Yeah, I remember who was disgusted with her and like, you know, you're not even going to like, try A lawsuit to, you know, at least force them to say what the emergency is. Like at least go through that process. But instead it was just like, okay, what are we going to do?
- [48:03]
Theo Von
Yeah. I just thought it was crazy the way that. Well, actually D.C. another good example, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who if you live in Washington is your. She has a non voting power in the House of Representatives. But it's symbolic. But I mean you have, you're a politician, you're popularly elected. What is she, 88 years old? She has not made a single public statement on what's happened and is running for reelection. And is running for reelection and by all accounts is based, look, I mean to avoid any libel or whatever. Hasn't showed up to a lot of events.
- [48:34]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [48:35]
Theo Von
Lot of questions by some of her constituents about her health. The DC political machine machine doing nothing about it. And it's like you look at that. If you're Washington, D.C. lib, which statistically 95% of you are, you should be really mad about that. I mean, you know, if you're, if everyone license plate says no taxation without representation, but it's like even your representation is doing nothing.
- [48:56]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [48:57]
Theo Von
Again, I'm not saying, you know that I'm. That if you're a Republican you should be like, yeah, that's hilarious. But if you're a Democrat, you should be mad. I mean you should think about it in the Republic Republican context from back in 09. That's exactly why they voted out so many of their leaders in 09 or in 2010 and again in 2014, because they felt completely abandoned on the issues that were the most core to them.
- [49:17]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And that's what is different, is that they do feel abandoned. Democrats do feel abandoned by their leaders in a way that is very different from any other time that I've seen in modern history. And if you play out that Tea Party 2010 wave analogy, you also had Republicans unpopular with their own base, but that didn't mean that they didn't do well. In the midterms there was a massive wave. Obama called it a shellacking. So many Democrats swept down of office, it ends up being incredibly consequential. Cuz then you had the 2010 census, then you had redistricting. That helps to lock in the political era that we're in at this point in time. But in any case though, I don't know that this number of Democratic unpopularity is going to be the saving grain race that Republicans hope it is. Now what I will say is if they were doing a lot better I think they would be poised if they were fighting in a way and had a clear and compelling message and had people who were younger than 80 years old making that clear and compelling message on a day to day basis, I think they would be in position to truly romp and have an opportunity maybe take back the Senate or things like that. I think the fact that they are not particularly trusted will limit the gains, but I still think they're probably in well positioned. History would indicate that in this midterm you're likely to get a backlash against the indicators incumbent party in any case. The other thing that to keep an eye on that's coming up more rapidly here is there are two states this year that have their governor's race. It's New Jersey and it's Virginia. New Jersey obviously more of a Democratic state and Virginia more of a swing state can put before up on the screen. So this race is gonna pit former undercover CIA agent Abigail Spanberger.
- [50:53]
Theo Von
Why are these spooks running?
- [50:55]
Krystal Ball
The Democratic party loves any national security, police, whatever. They love that this is a Rahm Emanuel thing. Actually recruited all these veterans and cops and whatever. So anyway that's who Abigail Spanberger is. She's very centristy, kind of a Democrat. And the Republican is Winsome Sears who is the current lieutenant governor. And she right now Spanberger has a pretty wide and as far as I can tell in the polls quite consistent. Now again the polls can be wrong, but I will say in Virginia, Winsome Sears has a particular problem because of dosh. So many federal government employees live in Virginia. And I'm not just talking about Northern Virginia, although Northern Virginia is where a lot of the political power in the state is at this point in time. You also have a lot of federal government jobs throughout the state, surrounding many military bases, et cetera. I mean the little town I live in is based around civilian and scientist naval research center called Dahlgren. And so this is a very key issue. And Winsome Sears has not availed herself well when she's talking about Doge. She's been unable to separate herself from the Trump administration, unable to separate herself from the Doge federal government worker cuts. And so I think that has significantly hobbled her chances. And I think it was gonna be a difficult race to begin with. I believe I saw something about the RGA basically like abandoning, not funding.
- [52:29]
Theo Von
It's all a question of how much he's gonna. I mean I think Spamberger might been. What do you think? 17, 18 points? I don't think that's too Far. So what's Duncan won by two the pre.
- [52:40]
Krystal Ball
Well, what was the 2017 point span burger by seven.
- [52:42]
Theo Von
Span burger by seven. Wow. That's still actually lower than I would think because I mean all indications right now are just a blowout. Put B5 up there on the screen. I sent this because this is just shows you how crazy things are. The Virginia Police Benevolent association, which four years ago supported every Republican in the state, is now backing Spanberger over Winsome Sears. They're like, yeah, she's done. We don't even have a choice.
- [53:06]
Krystal Ball
Well, I think, yeah, and I think that's what it is. First of all, Spanberger did try to vote for like police funding. She was certainly never a defund the policer. Right. But they endorsed against her when she ran for Congress. And so now I read it as they see the writing on the wall and they're like, we may as well endorse her and be in good with her because it'll put us in a position to advocate for whatever it is we want when she's governor. That's how I read the endorsement anyway.
- [53:35]
Theo Von
I think that's the right way to see it. But the point is just that it's always been a precursor. This one, I think as you said, it's more of an outlier just because Doge is going to be so impactful. If you saw yesterday Emily and I covered the layoffs highest since 2021. A massive portion of it is government employees. Massive portion of those are going to live in Northern Virginia. And so those people are just, I mean again, these are my neighbors, they're irate. They hate, they probably hate Trump more this time than last time because of those. They just can't stand it.
- [54:06]
Krystal Ball
Here's the other thing is it's not just the direct federal government employees, the contractors here.
- [54:10]
Theo Von
Right.
- [54:10]
Krystal Ball
Which so many of these contracts, like the funding was cut and you know, even if you're not losing your job, okay, you don't, you're not on with this particular client. I was actually just talking to a woman about exactly this. She's like, well they cut our contract over at, I can't remember, but I think she was at usda. And so now there's not really a place for me to go internally. So I'm just going to be working at like Booz Allen Hamilton, you know, doing the whatever in the office. And so it's, it has a wide ranging impact and if you drive around this area, you know, within a 40 mile radius, it's contractor after contractor after Contract. And this has been a huge upending of their lives. And, you know, it's the having to come into the office, it's the, you know, the change to lifestyle, the commuting, the pay cuts, the contract loss, the actual job loss. Just the chaos and the uncertainty, which is very stressful. So that will definitely weigh on the Virginia race. I mean, in some ways it'll be interesting to watch the New Jersey race, even though all expectations are that the Democrat, Mikey Shop Sherrill, who's another centristy type of Democrat, all expectations are that she will end up prevailing, but the margin there will be interesting to see as well if there's some sort of a Democratic over performance, especially since New Jersey was a state where Trump sort of overperformed, so.
- [55:31]
Theo Von
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I still wonder how much of that is a 2020. I think the 2024 election will be the high watermark for Republicans and Republicanism for quite a long time. Time. There's a lot of reasons for that. The popular vote, you have the popular vote, you have the vibe you have Kamala. Like there are multifaceted reasons for why it was. Yeah, I think it could either be a flash in the pan or they could have built on it. I think the built on it has passed mostly at this point. I mean, they could still talk about.
- [56:00]
Krystal Ball
This more in the Laura Loomer box.
- [56:02]
Theo Von
It's possible. It's very possible. They could do it again. It would have to be, I think, a total change both in the way that the two parties come into the 2028 election. But yeah, just looking at where things are trending right now and in terms of the way that they've handled themselves, it does not look like the midterms are going to go all that well, all gerrymandering or redistricting or whatever withstanding, which is still such an insane story, the way that.
- [56:24]
Krystal Ball
That they could also screw themselves with that.
- [56:27]
Theo Von
Yeah, I agree.
- [56:28]
Krystal Ball
If they try to be too cute and make the districts a little too tight, they could like it's not, you know.
- [56:34]
Theo Von
Yeah, Ryan made that point. If you go 52, 48 in every single district, you can find yourself in some serious upsets, which happens in Texas.
- [56:41]
Krystal Ball
Especially because Trump has this particular unique poll. So the numbers that Trump pulled, let's say with Latino voters in, you know, the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, you can't rely on another random Republican to be able to pull the Ted Cruz or whoever to be able to hold.
- [56:58]
Theo Von
Ted Cruz win in South Texas, you know. Yeah, they probably hate him.
- [57:01]
Krystal Ball
You know, it's that story.
- [57:05]
Theo Von
I'm sure John Cornyn is going to climb clean up down in Laredo. You know, it's like that's not happening.
- [57:10]
Krystal Ball
Exactly. And so I think that makes it even dicier is that Trump is sort of like his own entity, so you don't have as much predictability about the way individual like voting groups are going to behave. So anyway, we'll continue to track that. That's an interesting story in and of itself.
- [57:28]
Theo Von
Agreed.
- [57:30]
Sagar Enjeti
The reviews and ratings are in and Ice Cube's Big three is the surprise hit of the summer. And to cap off the season, iHeart presents the Big Three basketball playoffs this Sunday at 3pm Eastern. The remaining four teams battle it out for the right to make the Big Three championship in the most physical, fierce and competitive basketball league in the world. The action starts with the Big 3 Monster Energy Celebrity game where your favorite stars compete in Big 33 on 3 basketball. Then the first of two semifinal games features Dwight Howard and the LA Riot taking on Montrez Harrell and Dr. J's first place Chicago triplets. The first the finale will see popular Miami 305 with stars MVP Michael Beasley and Lance will make youe Dan Stevenson take on Nancy Lieberman's Dallas Power, who finished the season winning five straight weeks to capture second place. Can Glenn Rice, Greg Monroe and Paul Millsap stop Miami's physical assault? Or will Miami and Beasley put an end to Dallas winning ways? Who will make it to the Big Three championship? This no holds barred action starts Sunday at 3pm Eastern, 12 Pacific only on CBS.
- [58:30]
Unknown
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Theo Von
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Sagar Enjeti
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- [60:02]
Krystal Ball
All right, let's go and throw this up on the screen. A little update about some of the full mask off that the Israelis are going on at this point. So Netanyahu says he is on a historic and spiritual mission. Mission. And that he feels a connection to the vision of Greater Israel. Let me go ahead and read this. Specifically, he was asked if he feels a connection to that vision of Greater Israel. Netanyahu says, quote, very much that question about a Greater Israel. After he asked a premier if he feels he's on a mission on behalf of the Jewish people, Netanyahu answers, he's on a mission of generations. There are generations of Jews that dreamt of coming here and generations of Jews who will come after us. So if you're asking if I have a sense of mission, historic, historically and spiritually, the answer is yes. And this has been a pretty consistent theme here, Sagrarth, that like from the beginning, if you'd listen to either the most hyperbolic leftist or the most psychotic settlers, you would have a much better understanding. Certainly don't listen to the Western press. Certainly not listen to the US Politicians who just pretend they have no idea what's going on. Even as you have words directly out of the mouths of the prime minister, the minister of defense, like, like the Smotrich Ben gvir, the members of his coalition, et cetera, they just pretend they don't hear or see any of that. But at this point in time, Netanyahu is feeling so emboldened thanks to a combination of Biden and now Trump enabling every atrocity and allowing him to do literally whatever he wants, apparently that he is just out and out saying, yeah, Greater Israel, I'm into that, just so people, if they don't know. Now, in fairness, there are apparently different conceptions of what quote, unquote, Greater Israel might mean. Some of them mean just from the river to the sea, you might say, including quote, unquote, Judea and Samaria in The Israeli, which is the west bank in with Israel and the Gaza Strip. But there is a more expansion, expansive vision as well. We can put this map up on the screen that looks like this, you know, includes Egypt, includes part of, part of Egypt, part of Saudi Arabia, part of Iraq, Iraq, part of Syria, all of Jordan, Sinai Peninsula, of course, all of Israel plus the west bank plus Gaza. So just putting it out there that this is a potential vision and certainly the actions that Israel has taken, given that they have been bombing almost all of these countries over the past couple of years, again with our support and arming them, makes it much less preposterous than it felt at one point. Point. We can put this up on the screen. C3 Saudi Arabia very unhappy with these comments from Prime Minister Netanyahu Foreign Ministry expressing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's condemnation in the strongest terms possible of the statements made by the Prime Minister of the Israeli occupation government regarding the so called vision of Greater Israel and expresses its outright rejection of the settlement and expansionist plans adopted by the Israeli occupation authority. So Sagar, what did you make of these comments?
- [62:58]
Theo Von
Well, the Saudi Arabian ones are interesting because the entire theme theories, the Abraham Accords and all of that, but the whole point around Greater Israel is just the ideological vision and divorcing it from the things that they say. As in like, look, we're just about dismantling Hamas, we're just about occupying Gaza, we're not gonna stay there, we promise. Even though we said that there was gonna be an indefinite presence. I mean, the reason why KSA is so upset about the map is because, did you see the map that we put up?
- [63:28]
Krystal Ball
Like it's half, it's half a Saudi.
- [63:29]
Theo Von
Arabia, it's a country in it. And, and the reason why you are forced to take it seriously is because of the actions of the Israeli government under Netanyahu. If it was just Gaza, it would be part of the Greater Israel project. But you have to contextualize it with the current treatment of the west bank, of the two tiered system of justice, of the indefinite presence in Lebanon, of the indefinite presence in Syria, of the overthrowing of the Syrian government, and then basically trying to establish a Druze Israeli free zone inside of a country outside of the Golan heights, of the 67 recognized boards.
- [64:05]
Krystal Ball
Right?
- [64:05]
Theo Von
So all of these things point to an expansionist rogue power and we're gonna get to a little bit later on in the show about the potential war with Iran. But it all fits together as part of something which is just destabilization regime change everywhere else in order to serve this smaller nation, which could never do any of this without the backstop of the United States of America. Yeah, that's really the point.
- [64:29]
Krystal Ball
They recognize the historic moment that they're in where support for Israel is plummeting off. I mean, we're the only country that really matters to them and support for them is plummeting off a cliff. They've already lost the Democratic Party. It's gone. I don't think you're going to get a 2028 Democratic nominee who holds the same positions that Joe Biden and Obama and every other bipartisan politician has on Israel and modern history. I don't think you're going to get that in 2028. I don't think it's going to be possible. And certainly the Democratic base is discussing, disgusted and horrified by what our tax dollars have done. And on the Republican side, as we've discussed, you have a younger generation that thinks very differently. I think they know that. And so that's why they are really going for it, trying to secure this Greater Israel vision, abandoning the pretext that this. I mean, just think of how preposterous it is at this point to pretend like, oh, this is all just in self defense and we're doing these limited targeted strikes against Hamas and this is just all about going after the bad guys Who Us on October 7th. Utterly and completely preposterous. When you consider the number of countries that they're bombing, the territory that they've annexed, the actions in the west bank, you know that we're going to talk a little bit more about that Jasper Nathaniel has been highlighting. I mean, the west bank annexation is all but complete. And this is all in quote, unquote, self defense for October 7th. You'd have to be a fool to believe that at this point. Or a liar, which, you know, there are many of those as well. Just to take it back to what the settlers have been saying, because they've long been pushing this biblical vision, quote, unquote, of Greater Israel. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Daniela Weiss explaining why this is central to her conception and her ideological goals.
- [66:10]
Theo Von
How big is that land? Because it's very big. No, this is the promise of God to the patriarchs of the Jewish nation. It's 3,000 kilometers. It's almost as big as is this Sahara Desert. So this is the biblical Israel. Can I call it? Yeah, so, so, and this is what's and so which countries are this?
- [66:34]
Krystal Ball
Which country?
- [66:34]
Theo Von
Don't mention. I think it's Iraq, Iraq and Syria. So you believe part of Saudi, Saudi Arabia, this is a holy place. It's a place, one part of the universe that, that was chosen by God. It's a kind of a stage for the Jewish nation to express the ideas.
- [67:01]
Krystal Ball
And ideals of the Jewish nation. So there you go, it's very large. She lays down for you. It's Iraq, it's Syria, it's part of Saudi Arabia. This is God's promise to us. This is also why theocracies are really bad. Because if you believe, if you believe that your religion justifies a genocide, rogue wars against all your neighbors, this incredibly expansionist, aggressive foreign policy, if you believe that. And obviously Netanyahu is sort of embracing that, even though himself, he's more of a secular figure, but he's allied with these hardcore religious figures and who have absolutely psychotic ideas about what the state should be and what they should do to effectuate it. You end up with absolute horror, which is exactly what we have.
- [67:50]
Theo Von
Yeah. And it fits actually with this next piece. Let's put it up there on the screen. This is very significant. And inside of Israel, it's actually getting a lot of play. So after a 20 year freeze, the finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has approved the construction of new housing units in an area where the development has been blocked. The reason why even these psycho settler movements and others have not allowed, allowed settlers to go and be there is because doing so would, quote, effectively block the establishment of a Palestinian state due to its strategic position separating areas south of Jerusalem from those to its north. And actually they followed it up this morning, Smotrich in a press conference in the country where he said, by doing this we, quote, bury the idea of a Palestinian state. Just again, to understand exactly while all this is happening and even in the Israeli press, here's what they say to understand the significance, we have to go back to 1948. During the war of Independence, the Arab militias placed a siege on Jerusalem. After they broke the siege, the holiest site has now been under Jordanian occupation until the IDF liberated it in 1967. This siege left a stain on the consciousness of Israeli leadership, but they've kept it open for the potential establishment of a Palestinian state.
- [69:06]
Krystal Ball
State.
- [69:06]
Theo Von
So now by green lighting, yes, even this small settlement of 3,400 people, the strategic location of it is a signal to the Palestinians, to the Arab states, to the Jordanians and others. It's not happening. And it's also meant as a counter diplomatic signal to all of the Western countries which are talking about recognizing Palestinian statehood. You can't recognize statehood if it doesn't exist in any sort of conception.
- [69:28]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's what people say is like, okay, point to me on the map where the Palestinian state is. Because this is an extraordinarily provocative and I think significant development in terms of blocking any future Palestinian state. Smotrich, again, he says it out loud, says it. This isn't us just theorizing or making it up. They put it out there and make it plain what is going on here. And this is what Jasper Nathaniel wrote about in that piece that we interviewed him about. He actually talked about this specific development and how consequential it was in terms of blocking the possibility of a Palestinian state. So this is what's going on. This is why annexation of the west bank is de facto complete. Because the Israelis have, in real life, like in what's actually happening on the ground right now, they have complete control over everybody's life who lives in the West Bank. They are living under Israeli government rule. And it is truly, you know, I mean, any thought that this wasn't an apartheid system goes out the way window when you realize that yes, the Palestinians who live in the west bank are fully under Israeli government control. And we know that they don't have any rights whatsoever. We know the settlers are encouraged to go and murder them. And then, you know, they get, the settlers get off scot free and are just sent more, sometimes American made weapons. So that's the reality of what's happening in the West Bank. And just to again tie it in here, because it's not only the religious extremist terrorists running Israel that are a problem and part of what has created such an insane situation. You also have some, you know, plenty of religion being invoked to justify our continued endless support of Israel here in the US as well. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Lindsey Graham.
- [71:16]
Unknown
I am tired of the word genocide. Let me tell you about genocide. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could. They have the capability to do that. They choose not to. To people in my party, I'm tired of this crap. Israel is our friend. They're the most reliable friend we have in the Mid East. They're democracy. It's not a hard choice if you're a Christian. A word of warning. If America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us. Israel is not the bad guy, they're the good guy. The bad guys are the radical Islamists who would kill everybody in this room if they could. So I haven't lost my vision of right and wrong when it comes to foreign policy. President Trump has stood up for all the right things, and he stood up against wrong things.
- [72:15]
Krystal Ball
Yes, the government that is starving babies to death, they're the good guys. Those are the good guys. But he says if Americans pull the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us. And Sagar, perhaps you want to weigh in on his statement that Israel's the best friend we could ever have. They're great.
- [72:31]
Theo Von
I can't weigh in whenever it's rooted in your, like, biblical ideology, which, you know, many of your own believers say is, Harris, look, I'm not Christian. You know, it's not my job to sit here and critique dispensationalism or whatever. I can only just say I think it's crazy and not really the way that you should conduct foreign policy based upon the particular interpretation of the Bible, which is a much more recent development and divorced from any sort of national interest. But that's Lindsey Graham and the Republican Party for you. I don't even know. That's the other thing here with him. Does he really believe this, or does they just use it as a cudgel? I actually don't know which one it is. I kind of think the latter, because, you know, look, Lindsey Graham, he has crazy beliefs. I don't think he's a dumb guy. I think what he does is see clearly to preserve his, like, neoconservative ideology, that the one last bastion of pro Israel support is these cufi John Hagee Evangelical Republicans. South Carolina's full of them. And so that's the one way that he can message himself as, like, the upholder of their religion in terms of their foreign policy priorities. That's the only way I could possibly see it. And to hold on to any sort of, like, grasp organically at a political level. But that is a window into Israel's support. Now. It's all biblical. Biblical.
- [73:45]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. I think you're right that it's probably cynical. I mean, not that it really makes a difference whether he believes or not, but the Israelis certainly use it cynically. Of course, you know, they see this and have long cultivated the, you know, evangelical Christian right in order to, you know, make sure that they have this solid base of support in the US and we have to say, it's been very successful for a long time.
- [74:05]
Theo Von
Yeah, absolutely.
- [74:06]
Krystal Ball
All right, let's go and get to this next piece. I listened to this entire Theo Vaughan podcast. I really recommend that you guys do as well. You know, Theo made a lot of waves when he came out and said, listen, guys, I think this is a genocide. He asked JD Vance about it when he was on the show. And he went a step further now by hosting a doctor, an American doctor who was just back from God, you know, for a full episode to discuss what this doctor saw when he was there on the ground at Nassar Hospital. Let's go and take a listen to a portion of this Saturday.
- [74:38]
Unknown
They had the mci, it's called a mass casualty incident. And they basically pull a fire alarm. I was like, what the hell is that? They're like, oh, every doctor come down to the ER to try to help. And so I was like, okay. So went downstairs, got in there. It's just like brain matter coming out of people. There's guts coming out of people's abdomen. There's people's legs blown off and someone's carrying it in next to the, you know, one of the family members bringing it in for the doctors. And, you know, they think you can just reattach it. And it's just like absolute chaos. There's family members, security in the hospitals, trying to push out the family members so the doctors and nurses can take care of the patients.
- [75:10]
Theo Von
It's.
- [75:11]
Unknown
It's absolute chaos. And then us American physicians are just like, looking at each other like, what is going on here? And, you know, that was, that was. That's when reality hit. And I was like, okay, this must be like a one off. And it just kept happening every day and sometimes multiple times a day. Essentially. Basically, we can, we. We found the pattern related to when the GHF sites were opening up.
- [75:34]
Krystal Ball
So he's there backing up the claims, which we heard directly from a doctor who was just recently back. We, of course heard from Anthony Aguilar, GHF whistleblower, that when the sites are active, you are going to have mass casualty incidents. You are going to have, he says, hundreds of people showing up in the hospital wounded in the conditions that he describes. There were a couple other moments, Sagar, that I also thought were really interesting. I mean, horrifying. He said that he heard of people who were basically trying to commit suicide by ghf, where an Islam suicide is banned. And so people would talk about, listen, if I lose my family, I'm just gonna go to one of these GHF sites and hope that they take me out. Like, that's how grim and dire the situation was. And yet he was really inspired, of course, by the people he saw there. He was really, man, doctors are cut out of a Different cloth because he felt so energized by just getting to go and help care for people and be in this situation where he was able to do something and not just watch from afar. So I mean, it's just remarkable to see, see the way these people operate. And then there was also a moment that I thought was pretty interesting from Theo, cuz he explained more why he felt the need to speak out on this and come forward, even though he felt some pressure not to. And he's like, you know, from the time that you're a kid, you're taught endlessly about the Holocaust and this idea of like this genocide and can never happen again. And then you see it happening and you're supposed to stay quiet. So he, you know, he sort of really took in at face value this idea of like, we can't be involved in that. When we said never again, we really actually should mean it. And that's why he felt the need to say something and speak out, even though that's obviously sort of an uncomfortable place for him to be.
- [77:24]
Theo Von
Yeah, I mean, I think for him he is just naturally found out about the issue. He's horrified by the issue. He's not boxed into politics and he's like, this is how a normal person reacts. So it's actually a good barometer, I.
- [77:35]
Krystal Ball
Think, for sure for a lot of.
- [77:36]
Theo Von
People, you know, because for most people, they're not coming in with all the bags of Washington and the social consequences and they're like, yeah, I think this is really messed up. That's it. And then actually it's when you get the backlash that you're like, whoa, am I crazy? And then that's the battle test for theo and for Ms. Rachel. It's kind of fascinating. The track of Ms. Rachel, if you go and you look at it, is she started out with a single thing where she's like, my heart weeps for the babies of Israel and Gaza. Boom. I'm. I mean, mass attack. Then she did her Hop Little Bunny song with a three year old girl who got her leg blown off. Same thing. Now it's like anti, Semite, anti. And she had to decide. I've actually been listening to some interesting episodes and stuff where she talks about this. And she was like, look. I mean, by the way, look, let's not deny it. Ms. Rachel's filthy rich. All right? So at this point, you don't need to do it for the money. You're one of the most watched YouTube videos, Netflix and all. You're a brand. And so she's like, okay, so if I'm the next Mr. Rogers, which she considers herself, like, in that vein, she looked back to a 1969 episode that Mr. Rogers did where he hosted a black man and they both put their feet in the same pool as a statement against segregation. He didn't make anything about it. It was just one of those things.
- [78:51]
Krystal Ball
Just treated as normal by doing it.
- [78:53]
Theo Von
Treated as normal as a statement against Jim Crow and against segregation. So she sees herself now in that vein where you've made enough money that you don't care anymore and then you set yourself at the standard. And what I think that a lot of these Zionists and pro Israel supporters don't understand is that when you bring the full hammer down on people, especially if you're independent like Theo or Ms. Rachel or places like this show, you don't have the tools of control. You actually make us be like, no, actually, screw you. Like, we're going all in.
- [79:20]
Krystal Ball
I'm going all in.
- [79:21]
Theo Von
Yeah, we're going all in. We're talking about intermarriage, we're talking about talking about Jewish supremacy. Like, we're putting it all on the table now. And I think that's what they underestimated in terms of US popular culture is that for the Internet and for people who don't have their ties to all these think tanks or whatever, you can speak very, very freely and say whatever you want and so you know and acknowledge reality. And that's part of the consequence of how this has all gone about. And it's actually really pushed people and made them feel as if they have a response responsibility at a certain point to be like, no, I need to counter all this other BS that's out there.
- [79:55]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And it's why the tactics become increasingly heavy handed where it's like, okay, we're going to deport you, we're going to arrest you, we're going to block your. We're going to install an IDF sensor at TikTok. They become increasingly desperate and it also ties in back to what we're saying about them really going for it with the Greater Israel Project and the complete annexation both of the west bank and the Gaza Strike Strip because they recognize that there is a limited Runway here for them at this point. One other thing I wanted to highlight is Emma Vigeland, interviewed over on the Majority Report Doctor who was talking about, you know, what he saw and the ways in which he believes, and this is backed up by a Lancet study and other studies of the death count, why he believes the Official death count is such a wild understatement. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that.
- [80:44]
Unknown
The numbers are wild under count. That's perfect. I can tell you for example, about malnutrition. So I work within the Ministry of Health system, right? We as what are called emergency medical teams, international doctors and nurses and allied health professionals, we go in in solidarity with medical teams. And so we, we sort of follow their lead in terms of how they do things. When I document what the cause of death is for somebody, everybody receives a piece of paper that says how they died. What our directive is is that if there's anything other than simple malnutrition that's causing this death, don't write it a malnutrition case. You can write it as secondary or tertiary, but don't write that this person died from malnutrition. Similarly, Palestinians do not count the dead unless they have been to a hospital. So for example, there have been many AID massacres, which by the way, is another kind of depravity we haven't even touched upon. When the AID massacres have been happening, there are many bodies that people tell me. Lots of my patients will tell me there are bodies stranded there that we couldn't get to. We don't count those dead. We don't count them even really as more than missing because we don't know for a hundred percent sure that that person is dead. Like look at the lists the Palestinians release. They release only the bodies they can identify with the ID numbers attached to them. Of course it's a wild undercount. Think of how many people are under the rubble, how many people are still in red zones, how many people are thrown around laying dead in the sun, polluting at GHF sites. Of course it's a wild undercount really. Credible organizations that have done these counts for other places like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo estimate the number at this point to be five to six times more easily. That's 300,000 people who are very likely dead. And of course there's another concept in medicine called excess deaths. So for example, I've seen numerous number of people, dialysis patients, I saw dialysis patient who we worked on yesterday for a number of hours who ended up dying. In our account, that person died of a kidney related cause. But obviously that person was malnourished. They couldn't receive dialysis care the way they were supposed to. They were killed by Israel, they were.
- [82:36]
Theo Von
Killed by the occasion.
- [82:37]
Unknown
But we don't count those as direct conflict related deaths.
- [82:40]
Krystal Ball
So I thought that was a really effective explanation of the ways in which and the very, you know, rational ways in which this is likely a very wild undercount. And you know, I also think about Amir, who was killed at a JHS aid site and is now just quote unquote missing. You know, how many other people were. I mean, likely what happened is Israelis came in with their bulldozer and he is buried somewhere under the sand there by that GHF AIDSite. Very likely the case, you know, as they come through and they use the bulldozers to destroy all of Gaza City. Like how many bodies under the rubble will never be recovered. And then he talks about, you know, people who have other conditions, they're not able to get the medical treatment they need. Their bodies are incredibly stressed by hunger and a lack of clean drinking water and the endless displacement. And now they're exposed to the elements with there's been extraordinary heat waves in the Gaza Strip and those deaths don't get counted in the official war death toll. So, you know, I don't know if we'll ever know exactly what the count is, but I think we can say with a lot of confidence now it is wildly higher. The number of people who've been killed by Israel during this genocide is wildly higher than the official number. And if anything the news media downplays that number. It's oh, the Gaza, you know, the Hamas run Gaza help. Health ministry.
- [83:58]
Theo Von
Yeah, we're not doing that anymore. Health ministry, Truther ism or whatever. Look, eventually one day we'll know. I actually thought his point about Rwanda and all of that was very apt because the death toll did take a while for it all to come in. It would make sense that you can't have accurate counting of the dead. I mean, what you think the Nazis had a very accurate account, right, of who they killed and when? It was more accurate than people thought. But people had to go back and look to actually assemble all the records to come to the numbers that they eventually did. So it's just one of those where you really have to just think about both the death toll and the way that it's being messaged. But I do broadly think that The Theo Vaughan, Ms. Rachel phenomenon on all of that is very impactful on the culture in a way that a lot of people in Washington are underestimating. I really think American politics is way too captured by Twitter where Israel is wildly over representing and that if you look at any other social media platform, it's 90 10. I remember thinking that with the Nelk Boys episode. And that's a real lesson, you know, for people just in terms of media consumption and kind of where the country is going, people and I think it should be internalized by people in power. But they don't want to listen.
- [85:08]
Krystal Ball
No, they certainly do not. Foreign.
- [85:25]
Sagar Enjeti
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Unknown
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- [86:54]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.