8/26/24: Trump Pollster DIRE WARNING, Jon Stewart Flames DNC, RFK Endorses Trump, Israel Bombs Lebanon
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Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.

Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. And though it was fun on the road, I was saying it feels nice to be- It's been two weeks because of illness and travel. Yeah, you were sick. We're on the road. Nice to be back to just- We're happy. We're happy. In the studio schedule.

All right, so a lot to get to this morning. It does look like Kamala's getting a bit of a post-DNC bump. We will show you the polls as we have them and the indications there. We also had to share with you this quite amusing Jon Stewart take on the DNC, so we'll play that and react. Yeah, it was a good one. Also, this is big news. RFK Jr. is four or less out of the presidential race and is backing former President Trump. So we'll show you that and show you the...

transition that RFK Jr. has gone through in terms of his attitude towards former President Trump. We're also taking a look at what is happening in the Middle East, huge escalation between Israel and Hezbollah. It does look like both sides are trying to back down, but obviously this continues to be an extremely volatile situation. And those ceasefire talks are allegedly, supposedly ongoing. So we'll tell you what we can about that.

the progress or lack thereof there. Also, huge additional overseas news. The founder of Telegram arrested in France

Crazy story. Still getting details on what exactly he was arrested for, why he was even in France, because he seemed to know that he could be in trouble if he landed there. Yet he did land there. So we'll break all of that down for you. And also yet another just stunning, embarrassing, terrible failure for Boeing.

Their Starliner has been deemed officially unsafe by NASA. It will be returning to Earth uncrewed, leaving two American astronauts stranded at the International Space Station. They were originally supposed to be up for, what, eight days? Yes. And now they're going to be there for, like, nine months, two-thirds of a year. So it's...

a crazy situation and just yet another example of utter and complete Boeing company failure. - Yeah, it's a Boeing story, it's a US government story, and the billions of dollars we've thrown at this company, the amount that we're propping it up, the failure after failure after failure, and it just should show all of us

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Space is where even a tiny little mistake, as everybody learned in Apollo 13, can lead to life-threatening circumstances. And now just imagine how many of these problems are in the passenger jets that we all have to fly, in the military equipment that our service members rely on. So there's a lot to be said about this with this company and its ties to the U.S. government and inefficiencies and more. So I'm excited to talk about

Indeed. Thank you to everybody who subscribed. We had our one month free trial. So we appreciate all of those people who did take advantage. If you missed it, it's okay. You can still become a premium member today, right now, breakingpoints.com. But other than that, let's get to the DNC. Yeah, we got a lot coming up. De

Bates are- 15 days. Oh my God. 15 days. We're right here. And it's just off to the races. We're Labor Day next week. So it's really getting down to the homestretch with this election, condensed election season, which has been absolutely wild. All right, let's get to the news with regard to Kamala's potential post-DNC bounce. So perhaps the most telling indicator is that Trump's pollster is saying, yeah, she's gonna get a bounce. Just hang in there. First, they were warning of she's gonna get a honeymoon contract.

period. They were right about that. She's going to get a bounce. They were, you know, it looks like they're going to be right about that too. Let's put this up on the screen. This is from Mediaite, originally reported, I think, by the Washington Post. In any case, Trump's pollsters predicted she would see a temporary bounce in public polling after she accepted her party's nomination. Quote, post-DNC, we will likely see another small, albeit temporary, bounce for Harris in the public polls. Post-convention bounces are a phenomenon that happens after most party conventions, although notably not after. Yes.

Their party convention because it was like exactly erased by the fact that Biden dropped out. So don't be surprised to see Harris get a temporary two to three point bump is what they're predicting. The other thing to keep in mind is that while the media is going to focus on the national polls, we need to keep our eye on the ball. That is the polling in our target states. Our goal is to get to 270 and winning these states is how we do it.

We also had a new analysis from Nate Silver, also factoring what appears to be a Kamala Harris post-DNC bump. We haven't gotten a lot of polling at all after that was taken, you know, during or after the convention. So we're still sort of reading the tea leaves here. But here's what Nate Silver has in his model. You can see there at the tail end, the the.

percent for Kamala Harris ticking up just a bit. Donald Trump's percentage ticking down just a bit. He says we are already seeing a convention bounce for Harris and this is from data before her speech last night. Let's put the little bit of polling that we do have up on the screen. This is a Hill write up of a Farley Dickinson University poll.

I have no idea how good of a pollster this is. I'm not really that familiar with them. But in any case, in this poll, she holds a seven point edge nationally over former President Trump, making the largest gain for the Democratic presidential candidate as the general election approaches. This was released on Friday.

And it found her leading 50 to 43%. Sagar, I looked into this poll because they had this comment. They had some comments about like Harris's lead grows when people are asked to think about race or gender. They also made this comment later in this article about like,

people who identify themselves with traditionally masculine characteristics. There's a lot of discussion about that. So I looked in, I don't know if you looked at this, but this was just- I did not. There was a weird question that they asked that I just wanted to take note of. They asked the men in the survey whether they would describe themselves as completely masculine, mostly masculine, slightly masculine, or in a number of

feminine categories. And anyway, the ones who put themselves in the completely masculine category favored Trump 64 to 30, all the other men. So the mostly masculine, slightly masculine, et cetera, et cetera, favored Harris by a 20 point margin, 55 to 35. Among the women they asked a similar like, you know, completely feminine, mostly feminine, et cetera. There wasn't much of a breakdown there. But anyway, it's a weird question. I don't know how

Whatever. It's a strange way. There is a lot going on in that answer, right? Yeah, there is a lot. We maybe we'll talk about it tomorrow because there's a whole Dana Bash clip about this about masculinity. Right. Well, I do think one of the key like the 2016 election coming off of Obama and as Democrats were moving into this very like, you know, woke language phase, there was more of a sort of racial focus.

Even though Kamala Harris, obviously she's a black woman, she's also a woman. There feels to be more of like a battle of the sexes, gender divide thing coming about here, which, you know, with Tim Walz and his version of masculinity versus J.D. Vance and his like, and this sort of campy masculinity that Trump leaned into in his convention. So anyway, we'll put a pin in that. We can discuss that more later, but I just thought it was interesting. Oh, absolutely. I actually, I would not put J.D. or Trump, Trump maybe a little bit into that

I think RFK is like the emblem of what this new online masculinity would kind of coalesce around. The reason why the traditional masculine question and all that stuff matters is, I've talked about this for a long time, gender is now one of the major divides up there with the education divide. And actually, if you look at all of the gains that GOP has made over the last eight years, it's all in minority groups, it's all men. It's like Hispanic men, Trump is winning 50-50.

Black men, Trump is winning, not 50, maybe 20, 30% at best. White men actually, well, it depends. So white men with a college degree are actually becoming a lot more Democratic and have become almost majority Democratic over the Trump years, the Trump era. Whereas if you look at white college educated men, and then you would think about the cultural differences, the type of media that those two groups are going to consume is vastly different. So yeah, okay, you've truly scratched something for me. Yeah, I know.

That's why I wanted to bring it up. In terms of the general election, Trump and Harris, just interesting. I'm looking at the RCP polling average and I really like they have a this day in history comparison. So this day in history, August 26, 2020, Biden, 7.1% lead. Uh,

Clinton, 6% lead. Right now, Harris, 1.5. Now, I mean, are the polls better today? Are they worse off today? Because if they're anything as bad as they were in 2020 or in 2016, then Trump is gonna win by the four points. But if they're not, if there's been a little bit of a correction, if 2022, if abortion is a little bit more of a factor in this election, then maybe this is underweighting the common law sample. So we always wanna give people a sense of tremendous ambiguity when thinking about this.

On that, I saw this interesting—I'm not sure where this came from, but I saw people quoting it all over the place on Twitter. Apparently, the New York Times Sienna poll, which is considered one of the best, but which was off quite, you know— Off by four. —sizily in 2020, which is, you know, a decent miss being off by four points. And, you know, obviously here it would change this race dramatically in either direction.

So at the time in 2020, they would call people and they would get a number of respondents who were Trump supporters who would just say something like, F you, I'm voting for Trump and hang up the phone. And they wouldn't count those because they were incomplete. They were partial responses.

So they decided like, well, those people are obviously voting for Trump, so we should mark them down. So this time they are including those types of responses. And apparently if they had just added in those responses, that would have accounted for half

of the miss of the poll last time. So I did think that was interesting in terms of, it's also funny to me that no one mentioned that last time, because remember there was a whole conversation about like, why were the polls off and there were all these different theories floated? How come no one brought this up at the time? But anyway, interesting. These dealers are of course true geniuses and that's why they charge $50,000 a

But I mean, this is part of the problem is that what we all have to look to, sampling has been off since the beginning. If you look at the very first polls, all the way back to the 1930s. In terms of the overall snapshot that they give, I really have been enjoying reading Nate Silver's analysis for how he very prudently explains his models.

and how different weights and historical stuff that he goes into. And I just think it is a very, very inexact science. Nobody should take this as a snapshot of exactly what is happening. It's about direction. And then we also have to consider fundamentals, recency bias. And I would just say in general, things are obviously better for the Democrats than they were whenever Biden was in the race. We could say that with absolute certainty. I think Trump

also has a very fighting chance, probably better than he ever has had coming in to this election. So I would take those two things and I would really consider that when we look at the polls, when we look also at the choices that these different campaigns are making and the analysis that there is internally. We know that so much of Hillary's hubris for why she lost was based on false polling. We know that a lot of Biden's inactivity

back in 2020 was both born out of necessity because of their Biden basement strategy, but also

Again, out of an inflated false sense of hubris. Whereas this time around, the Republicans are really scrambling because I think they understand that they went from almost a 70, 80, 90% chance of winning the election right back down to 50. And now they have to throw everything at the wall. Trump is uncomfortable. They're making different moves. Tomorrow, we're gonna talk about abortion and about how the GOP is really changing radically, at least publicly on their messaging around it.

what that is going to try and look at in terms of what their internal polls are. But overall, everything I hear from the DNC, Democratic insiders were telling Politico and others, they're like, hey, our polls are actually tighter than the national ones. Republicans are like, our polls are tighter than the national ones. So in general, I look at the choices those campaigns are making, and we see a toss up in the making.

There's a Democratic pollster that said, you know, they've been doing a lot of surveys over the past number of days and they're comparing it to 2020. And they said, according to their polls, Kamala Harris is doing one point better than Joe Biden was in their polls at this time last time around.

However, again, that's, you know, you change a point in either direction and it totally switch. I mean, think about how close it was in Georgia, in Arizona, in Michigan, like in so many of these key states last time. And so even if the pollsters are pretty close to right, if they're a point off, then you could end up with a completely different result.

So, you know, it's, listen, it's a closely divided country. This is as cliche as it gets at this point. It's going to be extraordinarily close, and these little movements in either direction can make or break. Let's go ahead and put the next one up on the screen. We do have one other poll that had some field work conducted after the DNC ended, which was on Friday. Most of it was during the convention, however. So this poll, Angus Reid found that

Harris 47, Trump 42, as compared to last time around, it was Harris 44, Trump 42. So Trump not really moving one way or another, but Harris picking up ground either from third parties or undecided. And, you know, that's another thing that we've talked some about here is,

It does seem like it's hard for Trump to get higher than like 43%. You know, like he's kind of, he's kind of stuck. He has a pretty hard ceiling. Now, does that persist? His approval ratings are also higher than they used to be. Obviously, Kamala Harris is really skyrocketing. She's basically at even, which for a modern politician is kind of extraordinary. But Trump has also come up in terms of his approval ratings. So, you know, is he able to break through

what has been a difficult ceiling for him. That's another big question. One thing that's very clear at this point is there continues to be huge enthusiasm from the base of the Democratic Party for the Harris-Walls ticket. The fundraising, the amount of money that they're raising is astonishing. Put this up on the screen. They celebrated that they had record fundraising. They've got huge volunteering momentum. They're going into Georgia for a bus tour.

They had more than 200,000 new volunteer shifts since the first day of the DNC. They've raised more than $540 million in basically a month. In a month, they raised half a billion dollars. Crazy. But the next one up on the screen, this also has some more details here about the fundraising in particular. They raised $82 million during the convention week alone. A third

A third of those donations just from last week were first time contributors. And as I mentioned before, volunteers signing up for nearly 200,000 shifts since Monday. A lot of these donors were not Biden donors, either this cycle or last cycle. So bringing in a lot of new time, new first time donors.

And in terms of the profession, continues to be heavily overrepresented by teachers, which makes sense with walls on the ticket, and also this time with nurses as well. So interesting demographics in terms of who is enthused here.

This, like I said, it's just undeniable. The polling all backs this up. Democrats were dragging themselves to election day when it was Joe Biden. Now they're excited. Like they want to get out and work. They want to volunteer. They want to donate. They realize they have a chance. They want to win, et cetera, et cetera. So night and day in terms of the sentiment around the campaign. That is why I'm trying to inject a tremendous sense of ambiguity because, but I am in general, something I really know is that from 08 and from 2022,

When the Dems are fired up, they're playing to win. And not only playing to win, they have all elite institutions on their side. They have colleges, they have media, they have everybody. You know, mailing, they have money, they have more money than God. You know, if you put all the Democratic billionaires together, on top of you have enthusiastic, engaged, upper middle class base,

that's just row, row, row your vote. I don't count these people out, man. They're very powerful. And that's something that I really have witnessed with the Kamala relaunch, the way that the favorabilities are where they are. I was watching a very funny clip of Quentin Tarantino, and he's like, I don't care if she does any interviews. He's like, I'm going to vote for her anyway, so she shouldn't do any interviews. He's like, it doesn't matter. He's like, we're playing to win. And he's like, that's what Republicans are always really good at. And I was like, well, you know, it's a little...

I could see why a partisan Democrat would think that. My only point being that engagement we saw in Georgia in those two Senate races, engagement that we saw in Georgia back in 2022, and the overwhelming, the overwhelming

activism that has gone on the issue of abortion and as well as the high salience of those issues in battleground states, I think that spells trouble for Republicans. And that's just something that a lot of Republican strategists, others really are struggling with right now. We'll talk about it tomorrow in terms of the split in the pro-life community as well. But Republicans really, I mean, we always say it's like the dog that caught the car and they're like, now what? What do we do here? It's one of the most unpopular issues. You have a

A base, pro-life base. Some are threatening to come out and not vote. I don't really believe them. But I mean, you know, it's about margins. If it's in Georgia or any of the Arizona, it was a sizable evangelical populations, Catholic populations in both of those states. Maybe they won't vote for Trump or for Vance. I don't really believe them when they say it, but they're going to vote for him. But what if they don't vote it? And what if they only vote at 90 percent, not 100 percent?

You know, that matters. Right. Or they don't, you know, the really dedicated pro-life activists, these are a key base of the Republican Party. These are the people that aren't just voting Republican. They're in there doing the work.

Right, the churches, their tribes. Exactly, they're talking to their neighbors. This is a whole key sort of identity in their life, etc. And so if you dampen that enthusiasm, it could make a difference on the margins when it's again gonna be a very close race. So we'll see where we go from here. We're already coming up on Labor Day. So as much as the Trump people wanna say it's a honeymoon and then it's gonna be a temporary post-convention bounce, it's like,

Yeah, but y'all only got, what, 10 weeks before Election Day? Roughly, yeah. So on the one hand, especially given what we've seen and how the world has been turned upside down politically in just a month, that's an eternity. On the other hand, it really isn't in the grand scheme of things a lot of time to turn around a campaign or to take the lead in a campaign that –

Right now, I do really think it's 50-50. It's easy to have a sense of like, Kamala is just romping because the picture is so different from when Biden was in the race. But when you really look at the polls, it is as close to a toss up as it could possibly be. Maybe she has a little bit of an edge right now. But given the polling misses we've seen in the past, when Trump has been on the ballot, I wouldn't count on anything. Yeah, so previously when RFK was still in the race, and we're gonna talk about this,

this, when he was drawing votes away from Trump, it's in the critical states like Michigan and elsewhere. I was at like 52, 48. Now I'm like straight back. With RFK gone, I think Trump is, I'm not saying he's cruising, but he's got just as good of a shot right now as Kamala Harris. That's just a lesson that all of us who have engaged with Trump on the ballot have cannot underestimate his strength. The only difference is that this time around, I'm also not underestimating the Democrats given the recent

showing that they made in 2022. Where previously in 2020, I remember we used to talk about this. I'd be like, any poll which had Trump down by six, I'd be like, you need to add five. I'd always give the Republicans a plus five. This time around, I'm not quite there, add a couple. But on the Democrats, I'm always considering that this time around, they also could be underestimated by four, maybe five, just as they were underestimated in 2022. So you gotta think about that.

There's a high level of variance that goes going into this election. That's exactly right. It's no longer you can just assume that it's undercounting Republicans because we have them missing the other direction in 2022. So it really makes it one of these, like you just have to be humble about what the polls say and your expectations of what is actually going to happen.

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Shop Blinds.com right now and get up to 45% off select styles and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Save up to 45% at Blinds.com. Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply. All right, let's go ahead and move on to Jon Stewart having some fun at the Democrats' expense with regard to his take on the DNC. Let's take a listen. They had Democratic Party icons and lifelong Republicans.

They had a guy yelling "screw the billionaires" followed immediately by a very happy billionaire. They had black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, gay Americans, Jewish Americans, Palestinian Amer- oh. Well, oh, to be fair, it was only four nights, eight hours a night.

But really, it's best not to think about the consequences of our actions over there, especially given the theme of the week. I can feel the excitement in this arena. It's filled with energy and with joy. The air of joy. Joy.

Joy! Yeah, the well done there by Jon Stewart. And I mean, just pointing out, as he always does in a very trenchant way, the utter distance between the joy vibe, the inclusivity, oh, we want all these voices. And something that, you know, people who are with the uncommitted movement or just in general want to see, you know, peace and justice for Palestinians and for the onslaught and the atrocities to end.

You had time for every frontbencher, backbencher, every Republican, pro-life, all these people you had time for. And trust me, as Jon Stewart points out, you probably only watched in primetime. Those speeches were going for a late. You had some random friend, Kamala Harris's from fourth grade or whatever. Multiple, two friends actually.

You had time for all of these people. But you could not make room for a vetted, very safe, very frankly laudatory speech endorsing Kamala Harris and criticizing Donald Trump from a Palestinian American. So, I mean, it's a glaring hypocrisy. And, you know, I...

I do think that this is a risk for them because when you are running this, oh, the joy and the inclusivity and when you're running on vibes and when you're, a lot of the gains that Kamala Harris has made hasn't been, it hasn't been at all from Republicans. It has been somewhat from independents, but it's actually been a lot of getting the Democratic base to come back home. You do risk undermining the overwhelming enthusiasm, excitement that you have from this campaign. And it also just,

on just a purely like, you know, how are you running your operation thing? The whole thing was handled so incompetently. It was such a mess. They tried to lie to reporters and be like, well, actually we said yes, but they said no bullshit. Like you're just making stuff up. So it was haphazard. It was a foolish decision. It created a drama and a spectacle. It undermined all of their messaging. And you know, is it going to be the make or break? I don't know, but we do have a lot of polling to suggest that

that she would benefit number one, the more she can separate herself from Joe Biden, the more she benefits politically. And number two, there's a lot of polling at this point that voters are more likely to reward a candidate who is in favor of stopping the weapon ship and stop shipping the bombs and really going hard for a ceasefire. So in any case, well,

Great commentary from Jon Stewart. You think half a billion dollars just raises itself? I mean, that's really where it comes down to. Look, we got to be honest about where the money is and also where what we saw when we were at the Democratic National Convention. I spoke with Michael Tracy. He attended the Jewish Democrats meeting with Dag Emhoff speaking about the commitment to Israel. There was one of those little side panels which were on the

outer rings where Philip Gordon, the vice president's national security advisor, said we'll never consider arms embargo. You have very strong language, which is in there, and it makes people who are hawkish, like Democratic centrists, more Hillary Clinton type donors, who are very, very comfortable with this. And this is exactly what they want. So I think this was not a voter play. It was purely about consolidating a lot of

the rich donors. I mean, think about all of those people who were donating to Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania. All those other people were freaking out about activism. Everybody thinks it's Republicans. No, it was definitely fueled by Republican or right-leaning outlets like the Free Beacon. But the people who are themselves are the... If you're donating a billion dollars to UPenn, you're not a Republican, okay? You're a Democrat. You're just one of those old school Hillary people. Those are the people with the money, the power brokers. And I think Kamala is very...

comfortable in those spaces. That's something that we talked with David Sirota about, the Silicon Valley. She shouted out the founders. I mean, this lady's from California. She knows where the bread is buttered. If anything, being a machine politician, you know that more than anybody. So for her, I think she can benefit enough from the vibe, from the

media and all of that, keep the donors happy and she can go in. And if she has to inherit a problem, well, that's a whole other story. And that's why a few people I've been speaking to, smart, even who are on the left kind of privately, they're like, she'll never survive. She's gonna be one of those people who she may be able to get herself elected. But when she actually has to deal with the problems, you can only run from the media and from governance for so long. One day, if you become president, just imagine, you actually have to make a call here, put out a statement. Are we gonna do it or

not. Are we going to Israel or not? You can't just both sides out of your mouth for four years straight. And so I think that eventually will catch up with her as it does all people who are ambiguous as candidates. But for right now, I just looked it up. She's got 71 days. There weren't a lot of protesters that showed up to the DNC. The uncommitted people mostly rolled. They're mostly like, yeah, we're here to support Kamala and all that. And so they think they can win. And I think they're

right. I honestly do. You look at Gretchen Whitmer. She didn't even say anything, right? And she's represented for Michigan. I just checked the timeline of a few Michigan people, elected officials and others who we've spoken to in the past. I don't see anything criticizing Kamala. They're stuck in a hard place too. They don't really know what to do. There's also a risk for her. I mean, colleges are about to be

back. And, you know, that should be, yeah. I mean, depending on the, on the school, they're going to be back in session very soon. So you could see a reigniting of that, um, college protest wave, which was really, you know, the beating heart of a lot of this energy. And I, I think you're right about, you know, how she's weighing things and, um,

obviously like the elite of the democratic party has long just been, you know, completely committed to Israel. Obama came the closest in recent times to bucking them at all with regard to the Iranian nuclear deal. But even there was, you know, it's very tepid. It's very moderate in terms of descent. But, um,

I think that model is a little out there because if you think about the bulk of the donations that are coming in from her, it's not from the billionaire donor class. It's from, you know, rank it like teachers. It's from nurses. It's these grassroots first time donors. And so it's

she's gonna have plenty of money, right? Whether she does exactly what, you know, Miriam Adelson or whoever, Bill Ackman, who were both Republicans giving to that side of the equation, whether she does exactly what they want her to do on this issue or not. I think politically she has an opportunity

to benefit from showing distance from Biden, something she's unafraid to do on literally every other issue. On every other issue, she's trying to at least rhetorically distance herself from this president. But for some reason when it comes to Israel, she wants to maintain exactly his posture. I also saw, Sagra, I'm sure you saw this after we did our reaction to her DNC speech, she got all

this praise online for what she said about Israel and Gaza. I was like, this is literally just exactly what Joe Biden has been saying. And even she called for, you know, like a just and lasting peace or something like that and a two state solution. And she was loud and was like brave for that. This has been the position of every

every president in modern history. It is in the position of every United States president going back, I think almost, yeah, six or seven presidents. So I was like, I just like, did we listen to the same speech? It was so confusing to me, the desperate attempt to make this some sort of a like good moment if you're someone who wants this horror to end. And, you know, and all of the

potential escalation and danger. We're going to talk about this later that comes along with it, even if you do not care at all about Palestinian lives. So in any case, I thought the whole the whole approach was very disappointing and not just on Palestine. I also think in terms of the way she oriented her speech, not leaning into more of the populist economic, she talks

some about it, but it was a very light touch. I mean, I also think, again, just putting my own politics aside, electorally, there were some polls that just came out. It's like 70% of people support actual price controls. So she shouldn't be afraid.

Of price gouging laws, which are on the books already in a majority of states. She should not be afraid of leaning into those pieces. And yet I feel the consultant class like- Oh yeah, you can see it. Taking hold. I see them getting a grip of the messaging. I see-

I see her reverting a lot back to the sort of, you know, Clintonite instincts, both in terms of Hillary and Bill and the Obama type like triangulating instincts. And I think it's very much to her detriment. And I do think it's a risk. Well, come November, if she loses, we'll have a lot to talk about. Oh, yeah. We'll have a lot to talk about. She wins a lot to talk about either way.

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Let's go to RFK. We gotta talk about the big endorsement. RFK teased this, but it was basically confirmed by the time we brought everybody the news on our shows on Thursdays and Friday, where we talked about how he had filed paperwork across multiple states, withdrawing himself from the ballot.

indicating that he was gonna endorse Donald Trump. I watched his entire speech and it was interesting because it's a little confused in terms of, dude, are you in the race or not? The TLDR is that he has suspended his campaign in all of the states where it is not competitive. He is explicitly withdrawing his ballot from all of the states where it is competitive and is urging people in those battleground states to vote for Donald Trump.

After that speech, he joined Trump on the stage at a campaign event in Arizona. Here's what they all had to say. He is a brilliant, I still think of him as young. He's not that young. I always call him young, but he's not that young. But he is a phenomenal person, a phenomenal man who loves the people of this country as much as anybody can love the people of this country. So Bobby, please say a few words. Thank you very much.

or 200 trillion, a 200 billion dollar wars in Ukraine that we could use that money back here in the United States. The best way to build a safe America is to rebuild our industrial base and rebuild the middle class in this country. And don't you want a president who's going to get us out of the wars and who's going to rebuild the middle class in this country?

Don't you want to know that the food that you're feeding them is not filled with chemicals that are going to give them cancer and chronic disease? And don't you want a president that's going to make America healthy again?

All right, so that was the crux of the speech. He followed up with it in a tweet. Let's put this up there on the screen. What MAGA really means. The phrase has troubled liberals who think it's a call for return to America before civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights. But I have a more generous interpretation, one that is truer to my experience of Donald Trump as he is today. Make America great again recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with a hope and a belief in itself.

It was an America that was beginning to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in its past and present, a nation of broad prosperity, the world's most vibrant middle class and idealistic belief. It was a nation that led an innovation, productivity, and technology, and it was the healthiest country in the world. I have talked to many Trump supporters. I have talked with this inner circle. I have talked to the man himself. This is what

America, this is the America they want to restore. So obviously it's quite a bit of a turn from how RFK previously used to talk about Donald Trump, previously how he used to talk about endorsing Donald Trump here on the show, about joining him on a ticket. And I'll just say, the about face is certainly a little bit something to behold. Now, the justification that I have seen from RFK and from Nicole Shanahan is they're like, well, the Democrats sued to get us off the ballot.

And I actually think we should point to the words of like Jill Stein, where Jill Stein was like, yeah, he's right. The Democrats have been suing to get us off the ballot. She's like, but that doesn't mean that I'm gonna turn around and endorse Trump. She's like, that was the whole point of a third party campaign was to point out the rigged system. And it's not like RFK didn't face Republican pressure in Texas and elsewhere on the ballot as well. It's one of those where clearly both sides were trying to keep them out. If anything,

You watched how in the midst of his independent run, how a lot of MAGA influencers who have been propping up RFK Jr. whenever he was a Democrat running in the race against Biden immediately turned on him whenever they thought that he was going to draw votes away from Trump. And I think empirically he was. And actually, we see the acknowledgement from Nicole Shanahan. She's like, well, we don't want to help.

Kamala and Tim Walz. And in a lesser of two evils way, I think that's fine. I think the problem I have with it is there are a lot of people out there. I've met them. Probably no news show has really engaged at a professional level with RFK supporters more than we have. And they did not like it.

Donald Trump. They don't want to vote for Donald Trump. I have had these boomers outside the farmer's market where I live for almost eight weeks handing out Kennedy literature. I talked to them and they're like, yeah, we're Democrats. They're like, we don't like Trump, but we also don't support Joe Biden or Kamala Harris for a variety of reasons. And so there's a lot of people out there, not

They locked on doors, got ballots, raised money because they believed in an independent third party run. And I actually think in terms of everyone talks about leverage. I'm like, well, what did you realistically get? Because he's talking about let's make America healthy again. Well, he wanted HHS. Listen, bro, you're never getting nominated in the United States Senate, ever.

Now, could you get a czar position? Maybe. I don't know if that's been promised. You know, they haven't talked about it or any of that. But realistically, on the core issues, you know, you are endorsing Donald Trump

He's a guy who did Operation Warp Speed. I mean, that was literally his number one critique originally on abortion. I mean, you and I remember here on this show how vociferously he talked about Donald Trump and Roe versus Wade on environmental issues. I mean, by the way, I'm pro-nuclear. RFK is very anti-nuclear. So is Trump is pro-nuclear. So it's like,

There are a lot of issues, ostensibly, which he pretended to, or at least said that he cared a lot about total non-negotiables. And then he decided to turn around and endorse Trump. And it's like, dude, is this just about personal spite? Because if it is, I don't think that's a good look for the third party movement. And I think there are a lot of voters out there who are quite disappointed. A lot of the ones I see who are cheering him, I think they're just Republicans anyways. And they were directionally aligned with him. But the real RFK people,

who we have met, we've talked to, done focus groups, et cetera. I don't know if they're going to be so happy about this. I think a lot of them just won't vote. There was a reason they weren't supporting Donald Trump. Yeah, that's right. He was there the whole time. They could be supporting him the entire time and they didn't, right? And they were backing RFK. I mean, it really gives a lot of credence to just like the most cynical resistance lib interpretation of his run the entire time. Yeah.

He was in the Democratic primary when he thought that would help hurt the Democrats. Then when he realized he could hurt Joe Biden by running third party, then he does that. Then when Joe Biden drops out and all of those like disaffected Democratic voters come home and now he's very clearly, you know, causing a problem for former President Trump, then he drops out because he thinks that's the best way to help the Republicans. And Nicole Shanahan

I mean, all but came out and said, I mean, they said she said that we like we don't want to hurt Trump. We do not want a Harris-Walls campaign. And so at the end of the day, your core goal was to hurt one side and help the other. It's very hard to come away with any other conclusion at this point. That and the fact that

He wants to remain relevant. He's, as all these people are, an extreme narcissist, as is Kamala Harris, as is Joe Biden, as is Donald Trump. All of them are, right? And this is his only path to remain relevant. And if you think this is some principled stand, consider that he also went to the Kamala Harris team and apparently begged them for some sort of a gig and took whatever the best offer was. So if you think this is about some kind of a principle, I mean, it's sort of preposterous. He

decided he wasn't gonna win. He wanted to maintain his relevance. This is where he could get the best deal that was on the table, and so that's what he did. And just to your point, Sarah, we can put the next piece up on the screen about the way he was talking about Donald Trump. Just to quell any speculation, under no circumstances

Now, the cope I saw in this one was, well, he's not technically on the electoral ticket. Okay, all right. Well, continue, though. Go to the next one. Go to the next one. This is, he maybe lays it out in even greater detail.

I will read all of this, but it is a long screed about how terrible President Trump was. President Trump scammed American workers. President Trump let the Bush wing of the GOP run all his agencies. President Trump's supposed support for farmers all went to big ag conglomerates. We had the worst rioting looting this country had seen since the 60s under President Trump. He bragged about arming Ukraine more than Obama. He appointed the worst neoconfirm.

cons, the highest positions of power. Keep in mind from that speech that we showed you now, he was like, oh, he's anti-war. Okay, well, which is it? He goes on, he bombed Syria. Trump killed Mehrani in general, failed to fulfill his promise of ending the war in Afghanistan. President Trump invented lockdowns. President Trump did nothing to solve the opioid crisis. And then he concludes, if you think a second Trump term would be any different, you are engaging in wishful thinking. All

All right. So listen, people can change their mind. But we're talking about in a very short time period and a complete evolution that just so happens to serve your own personal interests of like remaining relevant into the next administration. So there you go. Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's

sad because he had a chance, I believe, in actually shocking the system, you know, and really changing things up. I think that RFK had a chance. He really had the name, had the money, the ID, the ability. I think he still could have, everyone, you know, Nicole Shanahan's like, we only got to win 5%. I don't think so. I think he could have won more. If he actually fought and won it, I think he could have won maybe eight. I mean, that's a lot.

especially if you run it up in states like California and elsewhere, as she accurately points out about public funding, about the ability to build on top of something. If you really believe in these issues, you could force ballot referendums. You could source a lot of different things, you know, from vaccines to whatever, to food, et cetera. Like that's what you actually could try and

do. I mean, I don't see any evidence currently that he really extracted anything of true value. Maybe, maybe it did. I don't actually know. There hasn't been any confirmation. We'll find out if Trump wins. But given, this isn't some J.D. Vance said something in 2015 about Trump. That was from May. That was like months ago. All right, so it's like, well, okay, well, what are we talking about here? About this whole vitality and all of that. I'm like, I don't even disagree with you. But what I more point to is,

on those issues, all of which you laid out. I would say for RFK, what's his number one issue? Probably free speech, censorship. That's like in terms of what he's always said. Yeah. It's like, okay, well, you know, sure. You know, there's definitely some Republicans that have talked about that. But as he accurately had pointed out previously in many of his tweets and attacks on Trump, he's like, well, Trump wasn't perfect on that issue. Whenever he would ask him about Ukraine. Trump's gonna criminalize flag burning right now. And so, yeah. Or you look at, what was it?

The second one, Ukraine. He was like, well, Trump sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine. It's true. Look, I don't support arming Ukraine. I have no qualms that Trump will be perfect on the issue. The best you can hope for is like, yeah, maybe J.D.'s voice will win out there. But anybody who has had any experience with Trump 1.0, the guy who told us he was getting out of Afghanistan, and then 2017 sends more troops to Afghanistan, I got some news for you in terms of the man who keeps his word. Yeah, I mean, what he

He said about, if you think a second Trump term is gonna be different, you're like, this is just delusional. He's right about that. Well, that's what he said. Maybe. Look, I don't know. It's a false positive. I don't know if he's right or not. It could go different. The Trump people always tell me it's different. They told me it was different in the first time around too. So why should I believe you? For me, it's all about the proof, like actually of what you do. And we'll find out whether that's true or not. But forgive me, because I'm just as cynical as you are. I don't 100% believe you. And that was really what Bobby said.

was running on. So anyways, I mean, he did do the third party movement in general. He has done a tremendous blow here because Ross Perot actually stayed on the ballot, came, won a huge amount, and people respected him for all time. People thought

about how are we gonna win those voters to our side. And now that you basically are using it as a bargaining chip, now you're more like an intra-party figure, much more so than you actually are, a real third-party candidate. And in that vein, let's continue with RFK's running mate, Nicole Shanahan. She says, "I'm not a Kamala Democrat. I'm not a Trump Republican. I'm an independent American who is endorsing ideas, not a person or a party. I will continue working to give a voice to the voiceless and bring power back

to the people. And she also, though, at the beginning, she made a big deal out of being pro-choice, about being a reformed Democrat. That's why she was sticking with RFK, believing above the two-party system. So I'm just saying, once again, a lot of that is different. You can believe the whole, like the Democrats had it out from the beginning. I don't even think any of that is untrue. But if it's just about punitive

Like, well, they were mean to me and these people were kind of nice to me. Well, that just doesn't track with a movement which allegedly was supposed to be bigger than those ideals. It's fine. If you want to follow RFK to Trump, no offense, you were probably going to vote for Trump anyway. I believe that.

I really do. I'm like, if that's really all it took, you were probably at the end of the day when it came down to it. Now, in terms of his, do you want to say anything before I move on to the electoral analysis? Yeah, I just, to talk just for a minute more about the third party thing and the damage this truly does if you care about third party movements and independent candidate movements.

A number of the states that RFK was able to get on the ballot line with, he took the ballot line of other smaller third parties. Oh, that's true. Yeah, they lent it to him. Yeah.

And now those parties are like really kind of screwed. So there's there's that dynamic. And then there's just always like the whole conversation about Jill Stein, Cornel West and RFK Jr. Always that comes from the media. And yes, from the Democratic Party in particular, these are just right wing plans. And you gave a lot of credence to that. Now you gave a lot of credence.

to that very unfair and oftentimes untrue talking point. So I think he's done incredible damage. One other thing that I just wanna mention here in terms of what he could have achieved, Dave Smith always talks about if he had truly been anti-war, if he had truly been the guy who was against both arming Ukraine and continuing down this no end in sight path in Ukraine,

And he had been the guy that was like, we got to get the ceasefire and we got to get the hell out of it. Like, what are we doing with this Israel Gaza situation? I think the ceiling on his support could have been much, much higher. I think he could have had a lot more more energy and could have sustained something even after Joe Biden drops down and you have fewer double haters. So I you know, but he's I.

either ideologically or for whatever reason. He's very committed to that issue, so that was clearly not a path he was going to travel. But just speaking in terms of cynical political calculation, that was the lane that was open. And obviously he didn't take it. Just one last thing to reflect on your comment about like, it's just about your bitterness towards the Democratic Party. It reminds me of

when the Elizabeth Warren supporters, who supposedly, again, are like, oh, we support Medicare for All, and we support all these progressive values, when they decided, many of them, to back Joe Biden instead of Bernie Sanders because some people associated with Bernie Sanders, just like rando online supporters, had been mean to them. It's like,

Okay, well, is your personal hurt feelings more important now than getting people healthcare? Because that seems kind of absurd and extremely petty, and the vibes here are very similar. Yep, I think you're right. Let's look at the polling analysis, Nate Silver. Really recommend reading this. It's pretty interesting.

It says, we've removed RFK from our model, but it didn't hurt Kamala. So far, Harris's convention bounce has offset any impact so far. So if you look at the overall polling analysis, they had Harris roughly at 48, Trump around 45, and then Kennedy now negligible. If you continue to read it, though, it is kind of interesting in terms of her electoral chances, where

For now, at the very least, like what we saw in terms of the polls that are coming out of the battleground states, RFK was just much more of a hindrance towards Donald Trump. But there is no like 100% evidence right now that this will put Trump, let's say, over the finish line. Intuitively, though, I can't help but think it does. At the very least, it makes things easier for Trump, which in a 50-50 election, how can we discount that?

that. We had 12,000 votes or whatever in Georgia, 20, 30,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, some 60,000 vote swing. When we think about Arizona and elsewhere, when you don't have to contend with RFK also on the ballot drawing it away from you, then I think you're in a better position. So really what it does is it moves it from, like I was saying, when RFK was in the race, it was like 52-48. I'm just right back to 50-50. In general,

Now it's just gonna be about engagement, engagement, engagement, and turning out your base of voters and seeing, let the independents kind of fall where they may. I think that analysis is very logical. Yeah. And if you're just purely looking at the numbers, hard to dispute. However, I think we would be remiss if we didn't point out

RFK Jr comes with a lot of frickin baggage. There's a reason why the Kamala Harris people wanted nothing to do with them because they don't wanna have to answer for the next like he chainsawed off a whale's head and put it on the minivan and left a bear in Central Park. And by the way, cheated on his wife 37 times and then she killed herself. There's a lot that comes with him and Trump is already dealing with a fringe weirdo problem.

I'm not sure that RFK Jr helps him in that regard. I mean, this is a man whose favorability is profoundly underwater.

He has like people in general do not like him. He has a, you know, a committed fan base. And I'm sure his approval ratings on the right now among actual committed Trump supporters are going to skyrocket at this point. So they're going to like him. But if you're looking at independence, he is not popular. That's why not many people were voting for him. So he comes with a lot of downside risk also. So if I mean, my best opinion

prediction here, if I have to make one, is it probably just doesn't really matter because the vote totals that we're talking about are so small. The effect is so ambiguous. Many of his supporters who truly were committed to him are just either not going to vote or vote for a different third party or whatever. But I think that there is some level of risk

that comes with associating yourself. He says it himself, like the number of skeletons in my closet are like, there's no way that we can feel even like the amount that we know about him is the extent of what's gonna come out about him. So to have to associate that with your campaign and now having to be dodging all these stories and dealing with this because you've so directly tied yourself to this individual, it's not without risk. - Absolutely, no, very true.

It could come out. I'm curious to see how the Trump people use him, whether he'll just sit it out, hang out in California, or is he going to take on like a surrogate role? And is he going to kind of hit the airwaves, hit the rallies? Maybe he would hit the rallies in the states where he was polling the best, places like Michigan and elsewhere, and just be like, hey, all you people who were here to see me, you guys should come out to vote for Trump. That would be the smart way to use him, to put him strategically in those battleground states. But you do risk where you're talking

What do you think that they'll do? Because you have some, like, Benny Johnson, for example, who's like, this is the ticket. And it's like, well, J.D. Vance is still the vice presidential, not me. But there are some MAGA-aligned figures who want him to almost assume that role of being that integral to the campaign. Do you think Trump is amenable to that direction? Or do you think it's more like, thank you for your endorsement. I'll see you, you know, I'll see you later. I think...

Look, R.K. is a loose cannon. You can't control him. So I think he'll probably just continue to do what he wants to do. I think he'll probably just keep going on podcasts. I mean, he's good at it. They like him. He's a good guest. And he'll continue to talk about whatever, wherever, whenever somebody invites him from the Bussin Barstool podcast, Tim Dill, whatever. Those people are not going to stop the invites. If anything, he's a little bit more interesting now. And so now he's got something to kind of hook on for him. Maybe he'll write another book. The guy cranks out books like crazies.

So maybe he'll write another book about the campaign. It wouldn't surprise me. Just to back that up, let's put this up there on the screen about his image. Right now, amongst, quote, high engagement voters, he's got a minus 18 favorability rating. Amongst low and mid information voters, he's got a plus 12. Now that he becomes more in the spotlight, if he does, that would be the risk of tracking the people who know about the bear, the whale, all the personal problems.

stories, et cetera. That's certainly a risk, you know, that he runs. The 2024 presidential election is here. MSNBC has the in-depth coverage and analysis you need. Our reporters are on the ground. Steve Kornacki is at the big board breaking down the races. Rachel Maddow and our Decision 2024 team will provide insight as results come in.

and the next day Morning Joe will give you perspective on what it all means for the future of our country. Watch coverage of the 2024 presidential election Tuesday, November 5th on MSNBC.

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So an extremely dangerous situation continues to unfold in the Middle East. Israel conducting what they described as a preemptive strike on Hezbollah military assets. We can put this up on the screen. On one side you can see some of the fallout from these airstrikes.

You had over 100 Israeli Air Force jets that were involved in this. And on the other side, you see Rear Admiral Daniel Higari, who is making an announcement here about those Air Force planes attacking targets across southern Lebanon. You can see the smoke rising here, etc. So they described this, like I said, as a preemptive strike.

There is some fuzziness about what exactly happened here, how effective the Israeli strikes were. Hezbollah did then announce that they conducted their own strikes inside of Israel. They claim that those strikes were very effective. The Israelis say, no, no, we were able to deal with it and there was very minimal damage caused. One thing we know for sure is that this was the most explosive exchange we have had between Israel and Hezbollah in quite some number of months.

We also know that, you know, this region continues to really be on the brink, especially, you know, because of Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza, but also because of the recent provocations. They assassinated a, you know, senior military commander in Gaza.

Beirut in Lebanon and, of course, a top Hamas leader in Iran. We still have not had that Iranian response. So once again, underscores that as long as the conflict continues, as long as the onslaught on Gaza continues, we have this

very, very dangerous situation. The good news is, Sagar, it looks like both the Israelis and Hezbollah are looking to sort of back down from this latest escalation at this point. But no one should feel good about where things are right now. No, you shouldn't feel good at all. I mean, we had over 100 Israeli jets who participated in

This is the biggest exchange of fire between Israel and Lebanon since 2006, a devastating war for Israel and one that IDF planners were desperate to avoid this time around. But they have to deal with the same problems that all of us do.

which is that Netanyahu and elements of his government, they want a war with Lebanon. That's the best thing that could possibly happen for them. It's also maddening just because the people actually in Israel have much more dissent around this war. They're like calling them warmongers, like we don't want this. Our kids died last time around. Whereas if you say any of that here, you're like, hey, you know,

oh, you're a complete anti-Semite. You know, I was just reading this morning that there are two aircraft carriers that are now stationed. Yeah, here. Pentagon says in a new statement as part of its support for Israel, the Secretary of Defense will keep two aircraft carriers in the region for an undefined period of time, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Abraham Lincoln. Do you know how much money it costs to keep those two aircraft carriers out there? Do you have any

idea what it means for war plans, for force, for a cost, to deploy all of those people in the strike groups and all those other assets just to try and prevent a war between these two,

The US taxpayer has probably spent at this point hundreds of billions of dollars just on this conflict in the last ten months. For what? Like for what? Like people really need to ask themselves that question. So we can be the world's policemen when Israel gets itself in trouble? Why am I paying to shoot down missiles?

So that whenever they're getting into problems with Hezbollah, you blew up an Iranian embassy and I'm supposed to pay for the defense. Why? It's like, for what reason? Right. Somebody justify that to me. We do 50 something billion dollars a year of trade with you. Do it four times more with Brazil. If Argentina and Brazil were gonna go to war, would anybody say that that's something that we should get involved in? By the way, you'd have a better case for that when you would right now. That's what drives me crazy. True. Yeah.

True. Yeah. And you're right about the internal dissent in Israel. I was reading some of the Israeli press, the English language Israeli press. And, you know, keep in mind, northern Israel near the Lebanese border is still evacuated. These people have it's empty.

these people have not been in their homes since October 7th. And so the mayors and the representatives of those towns, they were actually pissed off about this because they're the ones who have to bear the brunt of the retaliation from Hezbollah. So this is all about you just caring about Tel Aviv first and foremost. You don't care about us. You don't care about actually making it secure so we can get back to our lives and to our homes here. I also did a monologue that was, I was

surprised by how viral it went about the tremendous economic cost that Israel is bearing. They had this huge intel plant that pulled out, as I mentioned just a moment ago, this huge region that's evacuated. You still have all these reservists getting called up. That's totally undercutting their tech sector. Air travel is consistently disrupted. Tourism is completely dead. The construction industry and many others are

horrifically hobbled because they really relied on like Palestinian day laborers as cheap labor, and they're not allowed to come in and work anymore. And they haven't been able to fill those ranks with cheap foreign-born workers. So they're screwed in a lot of dimensions economically, and people are feeling the pain from that as well. But yeah, there's one clear solution to this, which is for the US to force a ceasefire here. And it's not going to be from these

bullshit talks that are happening right now because clearly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are still unwilling to use any sort of actual pressure to force an end to the hostilities. And all of the tensions with Iran and all the tensions with Hezbollah and all the tensions with the Iraqi militias, all of this is centered on what is happening in Gaza. Let me go ahead and put this up on the screen, the latest in terms of the ceasefire talks that

Most of the indications seem to be that this is really going nowhere. I mean, these have been ongoing for weeks. The US officials are trying to paint a rosy picture about this. They're saying, oh, this has been constructive. They were conducted in the spirit of reaching a final and implementable agreement with all sides sharing that sentiment. However, in this Times of Israel report, they say, notably, US

officials appear to be the only party in the talks who sound hopeful about their trajectory. Despite the U.S. officials' optimistic framing, the Biden administration had last week indicated it was aiming to have a deal reached by now. And...

We've discussed this before. So just to recall the timeline of events, Netanyahu had agreed to more or less the ceasefire deal that Biden announced in that big speech and said, hey, Israel's agreed to this. Now we need Hamas to come to the table and accept these terms, which he framed as being very generous.

And Hamas kind of called it their bluff and okay, we accept. And then Bibi starts laying her, and his own officials by the way, Israeli officials are the ones saying he's adding on, Bibi is adding on additional conditions to make it a poison pill that Hamas will never accept.

But US officials never even call that out. They continue to insist on this framing that Hamas is the only problem here. When it's very clear and has been very clear, Bibi Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire. He does not want an end to the deal. And one of the things that he has included as a condition that is unacceptable to Hamas here is we want a ceasefire that's not actually a ceasefire, where we get to go back to prosecuting this war exactly in the way that we've been prosecuting it. So I have

very little, I have no hope at this point that these particular ceasefire talks are going to come to any greater end than the previous rounds of ceasefire talks that we have seen, Saqib. Yeah, but one of the things I do have a real worry about, let's put the Financial Times, please, please up on the screen. And what they talk about here, as I said, the biggest exchange of fire since 2006, sharp increase in hostilities. Nasrallah is trying, I mean, he says if the result is satisfactory and the intended goal is achieved, we will consider the response immediately.

Operation has ended. If the result is not enough, we will reserve the right to respond at another time. But this has just been flaring up now for weeks. And, you know, can he really? He also has internal constituencies and things he has to manage. He's got 100 guys, 100 jets, which just blew the crap out of a preemptive attack, allegedly, at least according to the IDF. And this is where stuff actually starts to get very real about the internal politics of

Lebanon, about the use of force by US forces. And remember, I mean, look, put them all out of this. I don't particularly care that much. What I care about is we got sit and duck troops in Iraq and Syria, which are just waiting to be attacked by these same proxy groups. And then what's gonna happen? And also, this is where I gotta bring Joe Biden in. So I just see this morning, he's gonna be spending the entire week in Delaware.

he's coming from vacation in California. So it's like, what are you doing? It's a nice gig, this presidency thing. Yeah, it sounds nice, right? That sounds like a great gig. Just a week at the beach after a week at the beach. Yeah, to go spend a week in California after your DNC humiliation and now I get to go spend a week at my beach house in Rehoboth. It's like, do you,

do anything, dude? Like what is happening right now? And every once in a while he'll pop up on a phone call for 30 minutes and then they leak that he's very concerned. I'm like, we have a husk as president. The entire region is, there's a power vacuum. We're obviously consumed by our own domestic politics. I mean, what I look at is the signs and the signs are two US aircraft carriers, multiple US assets, the secretary of defense and the secretary of state basically living abroad in the Middle East. And I'm, I'm scared.

I honestly am, you know, by the behavior that we see here. Maybe it's a temporary reprieve, but we don't know. We have no idea. Yeah. And there's a very simple answer here. Stop shipping the bombs. Stop shipping. That's it. You know, I mean, that's, it's a very simple answer. And sure, Israel has a right to defend themselves. They do not have a right to use our weapons to do so. And so the,

the impotence here. It's humiliating. It's immoral. It's disgusting at this point. You mentioned Sager. I honestly can't believe we're still getting these reports. Oh, Biden had another tough phone call with Bibi Netanyahu. He urged him to get on board with the ceasefire deal. It's like,

Who is this for at this point? Like, who is buying this at this point? I genuinely don't know. Like, do they still think that this is a thing that anyone cares about, that anyone gives any credence to him, you know, weekly while he's sitting on the beach or whatever? Oh, Bibi, you gotta, gotta. Bibi doesn't care. That's very clear. And no one should be fooled by the idea that Joe Biden is taking any kind of a tough stance with Bibi Netanyahu because-

Obviously, his words do not matter to the extent that he said anything tough to Bibi whatsoever. You have to pull the plug. You have to force the outcome as still the American president of the world superpower. You have that power. You're just choosing not to use it. And it is utterly pathetic. And if you, Joe Biden, care so much about your legacy, which I think you do, this is going to be one of the primary things that

people remember you for. This blood, this horror, this potential escalation, which is incredibly dangerous for American interests, all of that is on you. So if you actually want to be able to salvage any sort of a reputation coming out of this single term as the American president, this is what you need to do. You need to make this end now. Well, he's too busy on vacation. So anyway, we're in good hands, folks. Don't worry about it. Everything is cool.

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Let's move on to a very terrifying story and a very troubling situation. Let's put this up there on the screen. Telegram chief Pavel Durov has been arrested in France. So Pavel Durov is a fascinating figure, very elusive billionaire who had dual French-Russian citizen. He's a longtime tech entrepreneur, had fled Russia actually for refusing to capitulate to Russian demands that he have censorship.

on their social media. He's been living in Dubai now for quite some time. It's unclear exactly why he was in France, but he was there on a flight, private flight from Azerbaijan that landed in Paris. And it appears that he has been taken into custody by French authorities. Keep in mind, he is a French citizen or a dual French-Russian national.

Now, according to French media, he has been detained by the office, which is, quote, preventing violence against minors who had previously issued an arrest warrant for Durov in a preliminary investigation, quote, into alleged offenses, including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime, promotion of terrorism.

He is accused of failing to take action to curb the criminal use of his platform. The investigators said, quote, enough of Telegram's impunity, adding that they were surprised that he came to Paris knowing that he is a wanted man. Now, this goes back to the very ethos of Telegram itself, which does not believe in censorship. Part of the reason that Durov has basically had to live in debauchery

by had to flee Russia, had to basically flee the United States and any of these EU jurisdictions is that all of these governments are begging him to censor content that they don't like. And that's one of the things I hate the most about the discourse on Telegram. They're like, oh, it's pro-Russian. Well, yeah, a lot of Russians use it. You know who else uses it? The Ukrainians. And that's why the Russians, they also don't like Telegram. They want to penetrate.

Telegram. That's the other thing. The NSA and the U.S. services, they want to penetrate Telegram because they want to see what the Russians are up to. Everybody has a reason for hating Telegram, and that just tells me they're doing something right. And Durov himself is genuinely committed to the principles of free speech, not

bowing to censorship and his product works as a result. He has 900 million users on the platform. It's one of the largest social networks in the world. It may not be all that popular here, but for those of us who follow foreign stuff, I'm part of a couple Telegram channels and others. I've never had any thought. I'm like, this at the very least is being spied on, this channel and otherwise.

And so when we see him blatantly get arrested, it's a very chilling effect. Again, I don't know why he was in Paris. And there's a lot of, even the investigators, Lamont said, they're like, we don't even know why he would come here when he has an arrest warrant. I don't know what the, you know, I mean, he is a French citizen at the same time. He has a right to defend himself, at least, you know, allegedly. But his detention has now been extended, Crystal. Originally, it was like a 48-hour detention. It's now been extended to 96 hours. We have heard nothing from him.

and he remains inside of French custody. Nonetheless, it's very chilling because it comes on the heels of a lot of the crackdown going on in the UK right now, where they're imprisoning a lot of people for, you know, look, if you're a rioter and you're genuinely committing violence, fine. But in the UK, they don't think that way. They're like, oh, if you encourage rioting, boom, you might as well have participated. You are going to jail for, in some cases, longer than they have. So they also, by the way, one of the dings against him in France is, oh,

Oh, his telegram helped organize the far-right protesters in the UK. So clearly there is a major chilling effect here, and I'm very concerned about what happens with Pavel Durov. It's a very concerning development. There's no doubt about it. Telegram has become extremely important for, you pointed out, you know, Russians, the

like pro-war military Russians organizing there, the Ukrainians organizing there. Some of the horrible atrocities that we've seen coming out of Gaza have come because IDF soldiers were posting them on Telegram. Oh yeah, that's right, they were on Telegram. Yeah, that's true. And actually, we learned that the Israeli government was behind some of those Telegram channels that were posting some of these unbelievable horrors.

So, I mean, yeah, awful that they're posting this stuff, but also important that the world was able to gain an insight into what is going on there and the way these IDF soldiers were super proud of it. And those are just a couple of instances. So, you know, anytime a country moves to block Telegram, it's a very concerning development because it has become so important for these dissident channels. He certainly, you know, I think it's fair to describe him as like a radical anti-censorship activist.

At the same time, I do want to sound a note of caution. I want to know more about the details of what they're alleging here and what he actually was arrested for. And I also will say, you know, I believe in the conception of free speech as embodied by, you know, the American Bill of Rights, which isn't totally unfettered free speech.

Posting threats, not acceptable. Posting kiddie porn, not acceptable. Posting revenge porn, in my opinion, not acceptable. And there have been times when Telegram has failed to moderate content like that, which I do think should be moderated. So I just want to add a little bit of nuance into the conversation of like,

I don't actually support a platform where you literally can post literally anything because, again, I think the child porn thing is like the most clear example. But I also would use those other ones as as instances like credible threats you shouldn't be posting as well. But the fact that he's been targeted, arrested here is something that any one of us who was concerned about free speech, concerned about censorship,

should certainly be paying very close attention to. And I want to know a lot more details. Here's my thing. Look, if they had him on kiddie porn, they would say it. All right. They would. We would all know. All of us would know. Also, this channel has got nuked for us even saying those words out loud by the YouTube algorithm. So I guess everybody enjoy this on the podcast. But whatever. That's what we have to do here. If they had the proof, they would have released that. You know, everything that they are releasing so far is that they're taking steps to cut back

disinformation, the sharing of links and bots, that they're looking at the exchange. The office also, by the way, that detained him, like I said, has nothing to do with child pornography. Allegedly, it has to do with terrorism and with criminal enterprises.

that are organizing there on the platform. Now, and this is the other problem, this is Europe. They don't have free speech in Europe. They literally don't. They basically guilty before proven innocent. In France, they can take your citizenship away and throw your ass in jail if they want to, and they really don't have to prove anything in their judicial system. So they need to release the evidence at the very least.

He has previously, it seems, traveled to Berlin, San Francisco, London, Singapore, and other cities before making Dubai the headquarters. He actually gave an interesting interview with Tucker Carlson just a few months ago, where he talked about one of the reasons why he had to leave the United States. Let's take a listen. We get too much attention from the FBI, the security agencies, wherever we came to the U.S.,

So to give you an example, last time I was in the US, I brought an engineer that is working for Telegram and there was an attempt to secretly hire

my engineer behind my back by cybersecurity officers or agents, whatever they are called. The US government should hire your engineer? That's my understanding. That's what he told me. To write code for them or to break into Telegram? They were curious to learn which open source libraries are integrated to the Telegram's app on the client side. And they were

trying to persuade him to use certain open source tools that he would then

integrate into the Telegram's code that in my understanding would serve as backdoors. Would allow the US government to spy on people who use Telegram? The US government or maybe any other government because a backdoor is a backdoor regardless of who is using it. One time I was having my breakfast at like 9 a.m. and the FBI showed up at my house that I was renting.

And that was quite surprising. And I thought, you know, we're getting too much attention here. It's probably not the best environment to run. Why would they have had you committed a crime? No, they were interested to learn more about Telegram. They knew I, you know, left Russia. They knew what we were doing, but they wanted details. And my understanding is that they wanted to establish a relationship to Telegram.

could, in a way, control Telegram better. See, this is why Durov is very inconvenient for them, because put this up there on the screen. He left Russia because the Russians wanted to pressure him to censor the social media network that he founded in the company, which is very popular. I think it's like their Facebook. I'm not even going to try and pronounce it.

But I know it exists, it starts with a V. The point though is that the guy has always been kind of standing up to governments trying to say, no, I'm not gonna censor what you want. Everything that we have right now is an indication, Crystal, not of the stuff that you're talking about, which I don't disagree, but is about the so-called criminal organizing.

So a representative of Alexei Navalny has come out and has defended Durov being like, just because criminals use Telegram does not mean that he is liable for that. I mean, and you can obviously apply that same logic here in the US to WhatsApp or to any messaging service, like the whole idea of a platform and that.

But though, because France in particular, where Rumble, one of the channels we post on, I think it's banned in France for this exact reason, they have a much more hardcore government censorship regime. So since he's a French citizen, you know, it's a problem. It's definitely going to be a problem.

Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely want to know a lot more details about what it is that they allege that he did. And it does get to some of these questions about like, are you a publisher? Are you a platform? Yeah. Like if you're, are you just like, you know, a telephone service, like this neutral carrier? Or do you have some responsibility for what's posted on your platform? And if you do, how much responsibility and where are the lines about what's allowed to be posted? And if there, you know, if there's a failure in that,

is how is that adjudicated? So it gets to some of those questions too. But again, we know very little about this. And I do think you are absolutely correct that it should be very troubling to people because Telegram has pissed off so many governments around the world, including our own, Russia, Ukraine. If you are a truly sort of radical free speech activist,

in favor of transparency, in favor of creating these neutral platforms, that is going to put you in a very dangerous position. And that's exactly what appears is unfolding. And that's why, you know, that's why he's always known this. He very rarely does interviews. He very rarely, you know, kind of keeps a very, very low profile. And I'm worried about him. And

Look, it's on the French government. They need to prove what he allegedly did. Because think about what the Europeans have done. Very recently, the UK is locking up all these so-called far-right provocateurs, even if they are. It's not a crime in this country. It is a crime in their country. You have the EU who sent that weird letter to Elon Musk telling him not to interview Donald Trump on X, which is like, who the fuck are you? Sorry. What have you created lately?

And now you have the French government who's arresting this Telegram CEO basically for – at the very least now they're extending his detention. They haven't released any of the charges, and it's – the burden of proof is on them because their censorious regime is proven now to anybody who looks at these issues. So I guess for anybody out there, just stay away. Stay away from France.

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Let's go to Boeing. This is a very concerning situation. I mean, I had my eye on this now for quite some time. We've been tracking the story of these astronauts who are stuck in space because of the failure of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft to be able to safely return them to Earth. Well, it now turns out, according to the NASA administrator, that they are going to have to stay up there until February 2025.

because they do not trust that Boeing Starliner is safe enough to return them back to Earth. They're going to have to come back on a SpaceX vehicle. Let's take a listen to what the NASA administrator had to say. NASA has decided that Butch and Sunny will return with Crew-9 next February, and that Starliner will return uncrewed, and the specifics in the schedule will be discussed momentarily.

Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine. And a test flight by nature is neither safe nor routine. And so the decision to keep Butch and Sonny aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety.

Our core value is safety, and it is our North Star. So just imagine you're these two astronauts. You're supposed to be up there for eight days. Now you're going to have to spend eight to nine months in space. Think about this. When they come back, the new president will be inaugurated. That's how far that they are going to be staying in space. Aren't there health ramifications, like vessel loss and bone density loss?

- They didn't plan for it. I mean, it's kind of complicated. There are people who have spent, I think they have spent this long in space. I'd have to go look it up. I think that there's a guy who spent a year. But yes, I mean, there are like, they're probably be studied by scientists. There's like osteoporosis and there's all these exercises.

and all these other things that they have to do. One of the most interesting things they did is like a twin study with Mark Kelly and his twin, Scott, after one went to space and they could literally compare them biologically and be like, oh look, his genes changed a little bit or this changed or he has this level of radiation or his height went down this amount.

I mean, look, being in space, it's not a natural environment. Right, it's not what we're built for. We're literally not built for it. Your bodily systems and everything. Nobody really knew how that was gonna be affected. At the very least, you could say it will certainly have an effect of some kind. So more importantly,

for their very lives, this is terrifying because this was a multi-billion dollar now boondoggle by Boeing. Let's put this up there on the screen. So it all goes back to the fact that the Starliner vehicle has been literally in development for years.

and that transported those astronauts to the space station on June 6th. Now, during the flight to the station, several thrusters, quote, temporarily failed, and engineers identified additional leaks within the propulsion system. Since then, NASA and Boeing have been trying to fix the problems, trying to determine if any of these threats, if the vehicle left the station carrying the astronauts, would have a safety problem for them and transport back.

They've had almost three months now at this point to try and to fix this. And I think that's what's the most galling thing to me is, you know, space flight, American space program was like the pinnacle of American ingenuity. Everybody looks at Apollo 13 because the miracle of Apollo 13 is you had all these things go wrong and they came back safely, which is incredible. I mean, literally putting the whole round peg, what was it? Square peg in a round hole. That's amazing.

I mean, it really is amazing. Not even just watch the movie. If you go read, there's a book I like called Andrew Chaikin. I forget the title. Anyway, read the history of it, and you are astounded that this all happened in a 48-hour period. These people have had three months, and they still can't figure out how to get these people back. And those, our astronauts, were going to the moon, and we were able to get them back in three days. Well, and that's...

There's a really there's a several very important broader societal trends that are worth taking note of here One is when you're talking about Apollo 13 that wasn't some outsourced come that was no. Yeah us government capability that we had technical expertise the best in the world and

OK, that gets stripped away over years from an ideological assault that, you know, occurred under both Democratic and Republican administrations under neoliberalism. Then you get to the point where, you know, we're so inept that we're having to like bum rides with the Russians. And that happened for in the 2000s.

That happens in the early 2000s. Then there's this decision basically like, all right, this is too embarrassing. We know what we'll do. We'll go with it. We'll outsource it to the private sector. And that's how you end up with, you know, this partnership with Boeing, which there's, you know, other storylines here that are important, too. I mean, part of why Boeing sucks.

is number one because they have massive market consolidation. So there aren't a lot of other alternatives. SpaceX is supposed to save their ass here in terms of getting these astronauts back home in February or whenever it is. But so you have the stripping of government capability, that's number one, you have a

the outsourcing to Boeing and their lack of competition in the space and the fact that they're like, you know, government contractor and like literally everything and they gouged a taxpayer. The amount of money that the American taxpayer gives this company is just disgusting and absurd. Then you have the trends, which Matt Stoller has also tracked very closely, perhaps better than anyone, of total financialization, where rather than your profits coming from, oh, I don't know, creating a good and effective and safe product.

It comes from a bunch of market manipulation. So all the technical expertise is stripped from the top of the country. You put on a bunch of like money managers at the top and Nikki Haley sitting on the board and all of this nonsense. And you end up with a situation where the planes don't fly and their space shuttle doesn't work. And it was disgusting to me too, to read about how Boeing has been arguing for weeks, I guess, with NASA, like, no, no, no, it's fine. There's no big deal. It's totally safe. It's cool. And it's like, Jesus Christ, can you imagine risking your life on this?

thing. I think the propulsion system wasn't functioning. I'm not an expert. That seems pretty important. And when you consider the extremes that these space shuttles are subjected to, even the tiniest problem can turn into utter and complete catastrophe. So Boeing

They literally wanted to risk these two astronauts lives to cover their own corporate shame. That's basically what was going on here. And that is a disgusting testament to the state of corporate America at this point. This Starliner is a decade long boondoggle. $1.4 billion in losses on the program. That's not the amount that's been $1.4 billion in losses on the program now so far. Delays in software, sticky valves, the parachute system.

All the leaders at NASA have said that they have had massive debates with Boeing engineers over the thruster problems and the helium leaks. They didn't know if it was going to be 100% fixed. And this is after the government actually had a quasi-monopoly with Boeing. If we didn't have SpaceX, we'd be screwed. So Ashley Vance is a great writer. She's written a lot about space and previously wrote a biography of Elon, which I really recommend.

It was 2017, so a lot of it is pre-Twitter. Let's put this up there on the screen. So he recently wrote this book on space, and he accurately has this timeline where he talks about how in 2014, NASA awarded Boeing a $4.2 billion fixed price contract to develop Starliner.

reusable spacecraft that carry astronauts and cargo back and forth from the ISS. The contract includes once a year flights with crew of four. 2017, the first crewed test flight was originally scheduled for that year. In 2019, the first unmanned orbital flight took place on December 20th. It is considered quote, a partial failure. Boeing had to take $1.6 billion in charges of the program after this flight, mostly due to the failure. 2020,

an investigation and a review takes place. 2022, another second investigation takes place. That one was successful. Astronauts are then selected for a crewed flight. Then the program is delayed indefinitely in July of 2023. Boeing takes a $288 million loss in 2023.

and including 257 million in the next quarter. And finally, 2024, the very first crewed test flight launches June 5, experiences thruster malfunction on approach to the ISS, which is that precision, you know, the ability to actually dock. NASA concludes it is too risky to return. So look at that. We're looking at almost $5

billion dollars lost on Boeing. Meanwhile, Crew Dragon has not cost anywhere close to that. That's the SpaceX one. That's the SpaceX one. SpaceX has not cost anywhere close to that. They have had to pass all their safety inspections. But one of the things that they point out is that Boeing, because of its previous relationship with the US government, sues the government and does everything in its power to stop

them from even having alternatives to go with SpaceX. Imagine if they had been successful, then those guys would be stranded up there or worse, they would actually say, got to roll the dice, you know, we'll figure it out. And let's say there's a 5% chance. Well, 5% chance is a lot actually, when you consider somebody's life. That's the really scary and terrifying part. So my only hope is that given all the mishaps, given, you know, the door plug,

all of the talk about financialization, and now this humiliating failure of a flagship American company, which was supposed to be the beacon of innovation that at

everyone here in Washington can wake up. But I'm not stupid. They got plenty of money. They make a lot of good weapons programs in a lot of different government states. And you and I were checking their stock yesterday. It was actually up. I know. We were like, oh, is there a story here about the Boeing stock crash? And we go and look and it's like, nope. Well, it was up on the day. No, actually down today. It's down by 1%. So there you go. Their stock has gone through some things in general. So I'm sure it's not where it once was.

However, if you're an investor and you're looking, you're like, you've got nowhere else

to go. They're still gonna get their guard. They're still gonna get their weapons contracts. They're still gonna be selling airplanes. They're still gonna be part of the space shuttle program. So it makes sense actually, and that shows you how broken this is. This is a catastrophic humiliating failure. In fact, we've been meaning to cover it for a while because you were paying attention for a while. I kept being like, gosh, they're still stranded up there. It's been a month, then two months. There was so much going on, it kept getting pushed off, but we kept looking at it.

what a catastrophic core failure. And if the free market works in the way that it's supposed to, you know, Ayn Randian theoretically work. - Yeah, ditch 'em. - This would be then, okay, their stock crashes, their executives are punished, they figure it out, they bring in people who actually know what the fuck they're doing and they right the ship.

But guess what? That's not happening because this is a broken market, because this is a monopoly, because they have so much market consolidation, because they have so much government capture. The revolving door, I'm sure, between Boeing and the federal government would turn your stomach. And so, yeah, they'll be fine. You might not be fine, right? The commercial airplane. And that's the other thing is, I don't feel like we're going to be able to do anything.

I don't feel as confident getting on. I hadn't flown in a while. And you guys know I went through whatever normal air travel issues trying to get to Chicago. And one of the issues was the plane we got on. First, they're like, oh, minor, minor mechanical issue. That's when you know you're screwed. Immediately, you're like, oh, this is going to be bad. And then it's, oh, it's worse than we thought. You guys can deplane because it's going to be a while. And then you really know that you're screwed. But that little, you know, that concern you have in your head, it is like...

is larger for me than it once was. I used to set a foot on an airplane. I never thought twice about whether I'd get there safely. Now it's like you've got all this door plug and all these other issues that have been mounting over the past number of years and the whistleblower testimony about how, hey, they don't really pay that much attention to what they're doing here. They'll use non-conforming parts. Safety is not the

priority anymore. And that starts to seep into a lot of travelers' heads and you're going to have a very ugly situation with air travel. Yeah, it's just one of those, look, have I stopped flying? No, I fly all, in fact, I think I've got my most flights ever in a short period in the next two months. But, you know, I'm going on an air bus in a couple of days. I'm happy about it. I'm like, okay, yeah. And I don't want

I don't wanna feel that way. - Right, that's right. - That's a freaking French company. They barely work 35 hours a week. I shouldn't be thinking about that. But, you know, it's an Airbus, I'm like, okay, cool. And then every time, you know, you get on, you get those little, the maintenance thing, I never even thought twice. But now, you know, recently, you'd be an idiot not to. Will I stop flying? No, but if there's like maybe five, six more incidents, maybe whenever you look, 'cause they do tell you the aircraft, whenever you book the plane, maybe you book the Embraer plane. And that's a Brazilian company. I'm not supposed to think about that.

But that's one of those where they created this reality for us. And I think that's actually really devastating. So anyways, it's such an important story. We'll continue on it. I mean, who knows? Also, with Boeing corruption, what they can try and force. Maybe they'll sue the government and try and force NASA to bring these people back. I would not put it past them for what they will try and do. Maybe they wanted these two astronauts to die on the return flight so they wouldn't be able to speak out against them. There you go.

Just saying. That's good. All right, guys. We appreciate you. It's been a fun show. Finally back in the studio. We appreciate all of our premium subscribers and others. BreakingPoints.com. Otherwise, we're going to have a great show for all of you tomorrow, and we'll see you then.

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