9/24:24: Nebraska Saves Kamala, Trump Too Old For Rallies, Trump Takes Bernie Policy, How CIA Propped Up Afghan Heroin
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There has been quite a political drama playing out in the state of Nebraska with regard to their electoral college votes. So if you're not a total political geek, you may not know. Nebraska and Maine allocate their electoral college votes in a different way than I think any other state. Instead of doing it as winner take all, like you win the state, you get the electoral college votes, end of story. They do it by congressional district.

That means that there is a district in Nebraska, which is a perennial swing congressional district, that is worth one electoral college vote.

So there was an effort in the Nebraska legislature to try to change the way that they did their electoral college vote allocation to put it in line with all of the other states that just do winner take all. Let's put this up on the screen. This is very significant. I'll get into this. It could actually end up being the difference between who wins and who loses. But you had one Republican senator who was a kind of a holdout.

who yesterday finally issued a statement saying he would not vote for this proposed winner-take-all system for Nebraska's electoral college votes. He said, quote,

for decades, Nebraska's tried to live up to that ideal by allocating our electoral college votes in a way that gives all Nebraskans an equal voice in choosing our president. For Omaha, the city I love and have called home for 58 years, it brings tremendous national attention, is impactful on our local economy, and forces presidential candidates to make their case to all Nebraskans instead of just flying over and disregarding us. In recent weeks, a conversation about whether to change how we allocate our votes has returned to the forefront. I respect the desire to have the

and I have taken time to listen carefully. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from election day is not the moment to make this change. And Sagar, you can kind of understand his perspective because yeah, if Nebraska didn't allocate their electoral college votes this way, no politician would ever care about campaigning in Nebraska again, which also just sort of serves to underscore what an absurd system the electoral college system is to begin with.

that you only really matter in this election coming up if you live in a handful, seven specifically, of different swing states plus one district in Maine and one district in Nebraska. Well, I actually kind of, my hot take, I kind of like the congressional allocation. You know, I don't hate the system of-

I like it better than the way they do it now because that makes you, forces you to campaign. Yeah, I like that idea, especially in Nebraska. Nobody thinks about it. It's definition of a flyover state. This is basically all they got going for them. So that's what they're taking. Obviously, Trump wanted to remove it. But I mean, the main reason, let's go ahead and put C2, please, up on the screen is because of that

path to democratic victory. So what you see in front of you is the potential if Kamala were to win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania,

lose Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada with that single electoral vote from Nebraska, she would win 270 to 268 electoral votes. That would be, this is this nail-biting as a nail-biting. But this is a very possible scenario. Very possible scenario. Very possible scenario. And so that one- If you look at the polling average, it actually is the most possible scenario.

That's true. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, that one. That's why people have paid so much attention to this, because that one electoral college vote in Nebraska, which right now it is a swing district, but it favors Democrats in the polling that we've seen at this point. You add that to just the three, quote unquote, blue wall states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where her polls have tended to be decent, Pennsylvania being the most tenuous of them. She

She could lose all the Sunbelt states and still win the narrowest of victories. And obviously, like, you know, doing the math here, if they changed and it was winner-take-all, you could end up, if you had this same map, but it's winner-take-all in Nebraska, you end up with a 269-269 tie, and then it's a contingent election. I don't know, Sagar, what even happens? It goes to the House. Yeah, if it were 269-269, it would be a contingent election. It would go to the House of Representatives.

Senate. It basically hasn't happened. Nightmare. Total nightmare type of scenario for the whole country, but it'd be interesting. There is a reason. A lot of people have been right. Actually, I saw Dana Bash now just wrote a book. Audible, for some reason, was trying to force it down my throat. But prior to this year, when RFK was in the race, I was doing a lot of 1876 election reading. And that's the one where the closest election in American history. You know, a lot of people do forget, because Harry Enten has been talking about this, this could end up being the closest election since 1960. And that is

is probably more analogous to where we'll end up. A lot of people don't remember, but the margin between Kennedy and Nixon was razor tight. And there were allegations of cheating. 1960s also where the whole alternate elector scheme came up with. That's what they did in Hawaii. So there's some parallels to where we are today for the polling average and where the eventual result may end up. Kennedy was this close, this close for him to end up in the White House.

I mean, I think it's very unlikely that you have a popular vote blowout. You know, I mean, it could be like three, four points would be the most that would separate the popular vote. But then, you know, the electoral college...

Oftentimes, all the swing states go in one direction or the other direction. But you'll recall we covered yesterday these new New York Times Sienna polls, which are considered very highly rated, coming out of the Sunbelt states. And they were not good for Kamala Harris. They showed a lot of Trump strength.

So this, that's, which is why this makes this Nebraska move even more significant, potentially significant. To your point, Crystal, I mean, just this morning, you know, we were talking about that and the Times actually put out a really interesting analysis of its own Arizona polling. And they find that in Arizona, that there is a significant split for people who are Gallego Trump. So people who don't like Carrie Lake, but who want to vote for Trump and will vote for a Democrat.

in the U.S. Senate. They say Trump gets a lift from Arizona ticket splitters backing a Democrat for Senate. Gallego leads in the contest while Kamala Harris trails Donald Trump. And they point specifically to the fact that Gallego is leading Carrie Lake by six, whereas, quote, Trump has opened up a five-point lead. That means there's an 11% electorate

somewhere that is Gallego Trump. Remember too, split ticket, maybe it's more common in the age of bad candidates. Like there were a decent number of Oz Shapiro voters, which is kind of a crazy thing to say. But in the state of North Carolina, you could certainly envision that there will be a lot of, who is it, Josh Stein? Is that right? There will be a lot of Stein Trump voters. You could see that certainly happening. There will definitely be some universal votes for sure. Trump could win and Stein could also win. That would be nuts. I mean, that would mean

tens of thousands of people go to the polls and vote for Democrat and Republican. Very rare, in my opinion, in these days. But if you know, crazier things have happened in terms of, look, in general, just modern politics, I just don't really believe in 11-point swing, but it is theoretically possible. That's what the polls show. Nobody's really voted that way since 2008. People don't really vote that way anymore. But, you know, I guess, you know, rules are meant to be broken. I'm looking at the RealClearPolitics averages right now, which take all of

the polls into account, even some, you know, it's controversial. There's been this rise of like right-leaning polls that are meant to be almost like messaging polls. And some pollster averages include them and some don't. RCP includes all of them. And as of right now, Harris has a very narrow lead in Nevada, 0.4. She's got also a narrow lead in Pennsylvania, 0.6.

Michigan, 1.8, and Wisconsin, 1 point. And Trump has narrow leads in the three of the Sunbelt states, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia. But the closest margin here for Harris is in that fourth

Sunbelt State of Nevada. So again, underscoring why this could be such a, we could look back at this and be like, oh my God, that was such a consequential decision that ended up happening with regards to Nebraska. Put C3 up on the screens, the latest poll we got out of Wisconsin, which showed some pretty significant Harris strength there. It has her up

51 to 45 when you include all of the candidates, 53, 46 in a two-way. Tammy Baldwin with a similar margin in the Senate race there, 52 to 44. This is the same poll

polling outfit, Mass Inc., that had a Pennsylvania poll that also was good for Harris last week had her up 50 to 46. So again, you know, this ties in with the sense that, okay, she's doing a little bit better in those industrial Midwestern states than she is doing in the Sunbelt states for whatever reason. And one other piece of news with regard to the Sunbelt, though, is we covered in depth the new revelations about Republican senators

gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, aka Black Nazi. And we can put C4 up on the screen. So the Republican Governors Association has officially called it quits and thrown in the towel on North Carolina ad buys. And RGA Spock says, we don't comment on internal strategy or investment decisions, but we can confirm what's public. Our current media buy in North Carolina expires tomorrow and no further placements have been made.

could be some effect on Trump in North Carolina. Maybe. I mean, very hard to say. I don't know that reverse coattails are all that common. But when we talked to Logan Phillips yesterday, who's like election forecaster, prognosticator, runs one of these, you know, comprehensive election models, he was saying, you know, it's not just Mark Robinson. It's the fact that the North Carolina Republican Party in general, which now has a super majority there in their legislature, has been governing more like it's like an Alabama or Mississippi party versus a party in a state that is Republican.

a swing state and specifically on the issue of abortion. They've adopted fringe positions and passed fringe legislation. So when you put all of that together, does that depress the vote for Republicans a little bit? Does that move a few suburban voters towards Democrats a little bit? Question mark. But the fact you've got RGA calling it quits also just means there's gonna be less

Republican ad dollars going to promote that ticket, less coordinated campaign in the state that Donald Trump is a beneficiary of. Zero dollars. They basically have pulled out Democratic. They are looking right now, the analysis, it's like basically zero currently being reserved for him through television. No ads on Facebook or Google. Dems, meanwhile, have 12.5 million

reserved in the state through November. So the next 40 something days, uh,

are going to be a real doozy if you live in North Carolina. You're about to get bombarded. There will be nothing counter on the Democratic side. And you just can't tell me that that's not a problem for Trump. It's obviously a problem. The only question is a degree. It could be a point. And that's basically the margin of what you won last time. Well, to your point, there's actually a new poll that just came out that I just saw minutes before this segment that it's an Elon University poll out of North Carolina rated B plus pollster has Kamala up by a

a single point in the state of North Carolina. It has Josh Stein up by

14 points. 49 to 35 over Mark Robinson. And I don't know when the polling sample, this could have predated actually the revelation of the whole black Nazi. I wish I was in the KKK. I wish slavery was good actually. I'd like to own some slaves. Comment revelation. So it could sink even lower than that actually. That's honestly nuts. But it does track. It tracks a lot.

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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What is Trump doing? How is he combating this? Is he in it to win it? Well, maybe. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Trump is now, quote, holding far fewer rallies than in past runs. And this data, honestly, that's pretty shocking, especially if you're comparing it to the 2016 campaign. So by the numbers, Trump had 72 rallies between June and September of 2016.

He has held 24 in this period this year with another on the calendar for today. So he will soon ramp up his schedule, quote, with multiple rallies per week in the final stretch of the campaign. That's according to his own advisors. But look, in 2016, he had 69 in the entire month of October and in early November, taking the stage as many as five times a day in the stretch run. That's actually crazy. That is crazy. And

honestly, look, he did the same thing in 2020. Even though it was literally during the pandemic, he had 43 in the five weeks leading up to election day. You and I remember those because what they were is they had that thing where he would arrive in an airplane hangar and he would just get off the plane and he would immediately go to the stage because they would have the stage inside of an airplane hangar. That's probably what they'll continue to do. But the current schedule does not indicate any of that. And

That is a real issue. Now, of course, he's certainly had a lot more energy back in 2016 because he was coming off of a successful primary run, but he fought for it and he barely won in 2016. So that is what, that is an indication to me. At the same time, his fundraising, it's a problem now versus Kamala Harris. Remember, he had a major edge over Joe Biden

But now that Kamala's in the race, let's put this in there. What we see right now is that there's some $150 million shortfall versus Kamala in just the month of August. I mean, Kamala, the big money on the Democratic side this time is insane. It's like Obama, $4 million in a single night out of Holly.

Kamala, 20 something million. If $25 million fundraisers were like unheard of, like what, five years ago? Now they're the norm. They happen all the time. And she is raising just an absolute ton, 189 million in August, while Trump raises just 44.5 million. Harris shook up what was previously a more evenly matched cash race,

where both Biden, Biden had 284, Trump had 217 at the end of the month in June. That was the totals in the coffers, not what they were fundraising. But he's always been a major fundraising juggernaut online. But come on, she's got a lot of money. There's a ton of major Democratic elite enthusiasm she will not want for anything going into this. And it might just be the, you know, the difference whenever it comes down to it.

And she's also had much more success, grassroots fundraising than Biden. That's been one of the primary differences between their fundraising in particular. It's possible that this is less reflective of a true overall cash disparity and more reflective of a different campaign strategy. So increasingly campaigns are outsourcing a lot of their even fieldwork, paid communications, like what used to be seen as sort of core campaign functions to outside entities that face

fewer restrictions and on, you know, the use of their money. And some of them, if they don't directly advocate for a candidate, even take in, you know, dark money, don't have to disclose it, et cetera, et cetera. And the Trump campaign seems to have outsourced some of those key functions. It's actually the strategy, remember, Ron DeSantis used in the primary campaign. It didn't work out that well for him, but could certainly work out fine for Trump, who has demonstrated no issues, certainly turning out his folks,

consistently when it is time for them to show up and pull the lever for Donald Trump. So I just, I would take this with a grain of salt. I think it does show, I think Kamala Harris is probably doing more fundraisers, working this a little bit harder. To me, it's more an indication of Trump kind of, you know, he's not doing as much of the work that he used to do. But it's also, going back to the rallies point, it was interesting.

- Interesting to me, the excuses that the campaign gave or the rationale the campaign gave for why he was doing fewer rallies, they gave three reasons, three primary reasons that he's doing fewer rallies. Number one, they said he's a known quantity. Campaign feels less need to define him or his candidacy for voters this time around.

True, he is a known quantity. That is true. The Harris people feel, I think, the same way about, you know, okay, people already know. Maybe we need to remind people of who he is and some of those worst flaws that they didn't like. But in general, you're not really going to move people that much on what they think about Donald Trump. But it ignores the fact that you also have a chance at these rallies to define Kamala Harris and Tim

walls in a way that you have so far failed to do. And, you know, part of the magic of his 2016 strategy is that the rallies fed into a media strategy that allowed him to grab hold of narratives time and time again in a way that ended up being favorable for him and that drove a message that was, you know, very critical of Hillary and that really took hold and really landed with the American public. So that's one. The second reason they give is that rallies are expensive. Yeah. Which, true, but...

I mean, it kind of reminds me of, remember back in 2016 soccer, there was a lot of criticism of the Trump rally strategy. Yeah, tons. And they said things like, oh, rallies are really expensive and oh, crowd size doesn't matter, et cetera, et cetera. And so, I don't know, like, obviously you sort of proved that this strategy works for you before. Now getting cost conscious about it, um,

that was interesting to me. Well, there's a human element too. Yeah. Everybody, I mean, we're all ignoring. Trump has literally been shot at. He got shot in the head. Also, somebody tried to kill him. But even before that, he wasn't doing as many. It would be weird not to be afraid to do a rally. He's doing a rally, what is it, on October 5th in Butler on the site of where the attempted assassination happened. But a lot of people keep pointing that out for the criticisms. They're like, hey, people are shooting at him. He's like, I mean,

I would be afraid too. Absolutely. Somebody should try to kill me. And so, I mean, you can't really put that aside. So that's certainly part of it. I mean, I guess the other one would be. Well, the other thing they say is he's older and more inclined to spend his time at Mar-a-Lago, which I think is probably true too. Like he just doesn't want to do it anymore. He doesn't want to do the debate. He doesn't want to do as many rallies. It's exhausting. Trump was famously a homebody even in 2016. So he would have a

rally in Nevada and while any other candidate would just pass out in Nevada, he'd get on the jet and go home to New York just to sleep in his own bed. I sympathize with that. I totally get it. But sometimes being on the campaign trail, that's not always the most practical thing. And he burned a lot of jet fuel doing that. I remember reading so many articles about it because people were like, it's just such a crazy way to do business.

But really what it means, I think this time around he's prioritizing himself. I think he feels a little bit more comfortable per se this time around, more set in his own ways. Doesn't feel like he has to fight as much. And look, he may be right. You know, right now he's got a 50-50 shot. And if he does end up winning, then all of this competition

convo will really have been for not. And he would have had a pretty comfortable run, so to speak, I guess, you know, putting aside him literally getting shot. But putting all that aside, like he would not have had to have worked as hard for the presidency as most people have to their first time around. So I'm actually curious. I really don't know where it's going to go. There was one other piece that's been interesting. Oh, the Melania thing. Yeah, which is Melania's

Tanya is absent from the campaign. She's totally on my mind. It's weird. They wanted her to speak at the RNC. Apparently they tried to die. She's like, no. The most I'll do is show up and, like, you're lucky I'm doing that, basically. She's not on the campaign trail at all. She's writing a new memoir about herself. She just did this...

really out of left field video about how like responding to criticism of her nude modeling which I haven't heard any criticism of her nude modeling in like a decade but I was gonna say that it came out of nowhere yeah

Yeah, and it would last like one news cycle. She just wrote a book or something like this? Listen, I don't know. But anyway, it all feels very like, you know, it's about her and her life and her journey, which I'm sure is interesting in its own regard, but it's very much not really about her husband or his quest for the White House, etc. And there was this news item that is quite curious. So she was apparently paid almost a quarter of a million dollars to...

To speak to the Log Cabin Republicans, which is a group of gay Republicans, she delivered speeches at two fundraisers, which is noteworthy in and of itself because, again, she's really not doing anything on the campaign trail for her husband.

The log cabin Republican president told CNN his group wasn't the one that paid for her appearance, and the form that revealed this payment to her didn't provide details on the payment. So we actually don't know who put up the cash, which is noteworthy and important in and of itself in terms of transparency, sunlight, all of that. But it's also just another interesting look. I do feel like if

If you had any other politician out there, right, if Kamala Harris's husband or if Joe Biden's wife or whatever were like pretty clearly didn't actually care that much whether their spouse won or lost, I think it would be more of a conversation. But with Trump, again, it's just one of these things that people are like, eh, that's just what it is. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, look, I think it's definitely weird, but, you know, it's not like Trump has always had the most normal personal life. Yeah.

So, look, I covered her. She's an enigma. That's the only way I can put it. She is an enigma. That's true. She's a true enigma. She tried her hand at being a more traditional first lady, the whole Be Best campaign, which I'll never forget. I was there for it.

Yeah, wow. Wild moment. Remember when she wore that jacket to the border? Yeah, I really don't care. Do you? Is that what it said? Something like that. Yeah, something like, I really don't care. Do you? Yeah, that was a big moment. And she eventually just basically retreated into herself and she's like, I don't care about any of this anymore. I can't really blame her. I mean, in a certain sense, a lot of these politicians' wives, you get dragged to a life that you never wanted. I mean...

I'm sure she did not think when she was marrying Donald Trump that this was her future. No. She thought, I get to be trophy wife. Yeah. I get to hang out and have my dual life in Mar-a-Lago and in New York City. That's a pretty good life. Like, make my son in peace and whatever and do the little things that I want to do, but that's it, you know? Yeah. Well, a lot of them, I mean, it's honestly sad. If you read between the lines of Obama's book and Michelle Obama's book, there's some pretty brutal admissions there.

of Obama being like, I'm running for office and Michelle's like begging him, like, please don't do it. And he just did it. And she was like, okay, then my mom has to live with us. And he's like, no, I don't want that. And she has to lay down the law. She hated being first lady by most people.

by most accounts. So I don't know. Look, that's between them, you know, in terms of the way that they conduct business. But yeah, it's not all that uncommon, I guess, to fall into something like this. But it is noteworthy. I mean, I feel bad for her in a certain sense. It's clearly she doesn't want she does not want this life. She doesn't want this life at all. Yeah, I think that has been made very abundantly clear.

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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The official website for deals to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. Let's move on to the credit card. This is interesting. This is enjoyable and actually kind of fun.

Okay, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So all this debate kicked off in elite circles after Trump floated an idea at his rallies. So what he said, this was on September 18th, quote, while working Americans catch up, we are going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates.

Quote, we are going to cap it at around 10%. We can't let them make 25 and 30%. So this is up there with some OG 2016 kind of Trump populist stuff. Things like everybody will have the best health care. In the more recent era, we have seen three, I think, proposals that really count in this regard.

One is saying no tax on tips. That was quickly a proposal also adopted by Kamala Harris. Second is arguably the most consequential for the federal deficit and for the IRS, which is that America will not tax Social Security benefits. Third is now this idea that you should cap credit card interest rates.

Now, the reason why it doesn't sound that crazy, and I actually totally agree with the policy, but it would fundamentally change the entire credit card industry overnight. And definitely not to my benefit as one of those guys who plays the points game. Let's put this up there on the screen. So, for example, Lawrence Wright, of course.

says, quote, or sorry, Lauren Summers says, a cap on credit card interest rates is a far more egregious price control than anything Democrats have suggested. I am not enthusiastic to put it mildly, but Democratic anti-gouging ideas, none hold prices more than a few percent away from market levels.

The Trump plan would in many cases constrain credit costs to be 70% or more away from market levels. I do not understand with all of his tariffs, price controls, and arbitrary tax provisions, candidate Trump is supported by market-oriented conservatives. And that is kind of the fun debate here, is that even when Trump floats this price control on credit card, is that, look,

We're all, let's all be real. Like, is this really going to pass a GOP Congress? No. All right. But, you know, the idea, I think it's a sound one. It's actually a decent one. I think, didn't you say it's like Bernie Sanders, AOC and others? Bernie and AOC, they actually proposed capping. I believe Josh Hawley has done it as well. They proposed capping at 15%. Right. So he's getting to the left of their proposal.

Well, I mean, this is the way for us to explain too. It's like, okay, and that's interesting, right? It's like, wait, how could they not make any money through 10%? Well, they could. They wouldn't just make as much money as they can at 25% or 30%. And in fact, and this is the sad admission from people like me who take advantage of the points game, the vast majority of these points are paid for by people who are terribly in debt. As in, if you look at the bottom line profits-

And they're very open about it. American Express and all these other companies, the vast, vast majority of their income does not come from the 2% or the 3% processing fee. It comes from balance with high interest rates. They're charging 25%, 30%. So the reason – and the argument from them is that the way that we make credit widely available to the U.S. public is by charging exorbitant interest rates.

because that means that we can eat it to give Sager free flights to Europe whenever another person is doing this. Now, look, I can't change the system, so I'm going to take advantage of it. But if we could change the system and you could cap it at 10%, that's not the worst thing in the world because you've got horrible amounts of credit card balances and debt at an all-time high level in 2024.

People are running up balances with very little financial literacy. These credit card companies are also so predatory. I'm not sure about you. I get offers in my email and in my mail every day. You've been pre-qualified for $10,000 a month. I didn't qualify. I didn't apply for a damn loan. I don't want a loan. Not to mention when you go to shop at a store and they're always trying to get you to sign up for the store credit card and whatever. And yeah, I mean, this is like one of the top ways. And by the way, credit card debt has soared.

Yes, it's all-time high right now. One of the top ways that people get behind and cannot catch up. If you're down 30 already, it's like, what are you going to do? It's brutal. It's absolutely brutal. I mean, okay, we both agree this is not happening, but let's imagine it did, okay? Well, the debate is fun. Yeah, the debate is fun. I mean, let's live in the theoretical reality, right? Right.

Think you would have an outcome immediately where a lot of people lost access to the you know the Availability of credit card debt that they have now and I do think it would be you would have to have some sort of transition because I do think that there would be a difficult Transition period if you've got people who have basically, you know relied on credit cards to be able just to like live their life and get groceries and you know be able to like afford a

if they have a flat tire or some kind of car trouble or whatever. But, you know, yeah, in the long run, do I think it would be better if credit card companies were not able to gouge consumers the way that they do now? Yeah, in the same way, this is the same argument, by the way, that the like free market argument that's being made here by Larry Summers and others.

It's the same one that's used to justify payday lenders. Yes. Which are some of the most predatory, exploitative, like the percentage of the APR, the percentage

the rate that you pay on that is just loan shark stuff. I mean, it really is insane. It's like 70 or 80%, I think. Yeah. And so predator. And they'll say, yeah, but people wouldn't use it if they did any. We're providing a service for low-income and working-class consumers, et cetera, et cetera, which, I mean, it's just a deeply dystopian system. Debt throughout history, not to go too deep here, but it's used effectively as a tool of social control and compliance.

It forces you, once you get behind, like you'll do anything to be able, you'll work that second job, you'll work that third job, you'll take the crap from your boss or whatever because the alternative of bankruptcy and failure and public shame and all of that is just so immense.

So I support it. The interesting thing that Larry Summers points to that, you know, the one piece of that tweet that he's right about is that you do have a lot of, quote, unquote, free market conservatives who, if this was floated by common, they would totally lose their minds. But they're betting that on this, on tariffs, on any number of things.

those ones in particular also on immigration. They're betting the only part of the Trump economic plea and that's actually serious is extending the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. And by the way, they're probably right. No, no, no, they're definitely right. Except about tariffs. That's the one thing I'll push back on is because the Commerce Department does have broad leeway under, I forget, it was section something. I would have to go back and look. But

look. But what Trump was able to do, I mean, he effectively imposed almost $250 billion in tariffs on the Chinese economy with no congressional action. That Congress was definitely pissed about it. They've tried to change the law. They haven't done it. On the rest of it, things like not taxing Social Security. Remember this, it's literally in the Constitution. Anything with tax has to come through the U.S. Congress. So that tells us the idea that we would not pass tax, that a GOP Congress of any kind would pass no tax on tips,

Insane. Almost certainly not going to happen. And if they did, they would offset it with something in terms of a way to pay for it, which would probably be way worse for people. Second, there is no way in hell deficit hawks will ever vote to not tax Social Security because that is hundreds of billions of dollars. Like, think about how many old people are in this country that get Social Security benefits.

then do the math for the IRS, for the coffers. Not going to happen. Again, they would have to make that up with probably very onerous taxes on regular working people, and that would set up a whole contrast between people who are already paying for Social Security and they're not getting any tax. Even I think that's pretty unfair. But then on the price control thing with the credit cards, it would take an act of Congress. And in fact, some of my friends who work in Congress tell me

one of the most, the piece of legislation they get lobbied on the most is called like the Credit Card Fairness Act. And it doesn't even cap interest rates or any of that. It injects, I believe, a little bit more competition into the system. I'm not exactly sure, but it so dramatically threatens the bottom line of Amex, Visa, and MasterCard, they will throw anything,

at this to protect their monopoly. And that is something where, again, look, we have a quasi-private system where Visa, MasterCard, and American Express not only can hold retailers hostage for the processing fee that they get, they have the payment network of the entire world. They process like billions of dollars of transactions per second. And then on top of that, with all of these reward systems, and like you were saying with shops,

and all of that, people are duped basically into financial contracts that they have no understanding of. So I believe in personal responsibility and all of this, but that presumes financial education. We have zero financial education in America.

Do the math. Can people do basic math on what 30% interest means, like you were talking about, about what financing groceries are? What are you actually agreeing to if you take a personal loan on your American Express card? People don't know. And so when you have that power imbalance, the people who are supposed to advocate for the government, the consumer, is supposed to be the government in this case. And that's where what Trump is proposing, it's not a terrible idea. But yeah, it would shrink credit a lot.

But again, if you believe in personal responsibility, maybe that's not the worst thing in the world. People shouldn't be floating their entire lives on credit cards. I mean, it's not like those people...

to be in that position, you know? But it's a very convenient thing that you just fall into. is wages have not kept up, you know, and I'm not just talking about right now with inflation, which has obviously really put a hit on people's real, like, real earnings and what they can actually buy with their dollar, but I'm talking over 40 years. Yeah, 40 years. Um,

where wages have not kept up with increases in productivity, have not kept up with the key basics of a middle-class life. I'm talking housing, I'm talking education, I'm talking healthcare. And so instead of wages keeping up, instead people have been pushed into this usury economy where the only way that they can really make it month to month is by relying on these exploitative technologies

credit card issuers. And so, yeah, if you disrupt that, I mean, it is a gigantic disruption. There's no doubt about it. And so in any case, again, it's interesting to think about how this would play out. It's interesting to think of, of course, there's the credit card issues where it

lose their minds. They would move heaven and earth to make sure that this never saw the light of day. There would be plenty of Republicans and Democrats who would go along with it. Donald Trump has shown no desire or willingness to stand up to the billionaire class or Wall Street or whatever. So it's not like we actually expect this to happen. But it is interesting him trying to sound some of those populist notes. But going back to the disparate reaction between when Kamala Harris proposed to

an anti-price gouging law, which was left relatively vague. No, not even relatively, like entirely vague. Quite vague, entirely vague. No detail. You know, in theory, it was supposed to like, you know, mirror some legislation Elizabeth Warren had put together, but the details were never really firmly established. Looks to be very similar to legislation that already exists in something like 38 states across the country, like not a radical proposal whatsoever. The level of freak out about that from...

from the Trump side of the equation, including Donald Trump himself, quite different. Price controls, that's been tried in the former Soviet Union, Venezuela, even in this country in the 70s. It was a disaster. Every time it's been tried, no matter, over hundreds of years, not just...

over hundreds of years price controls, you end up with no product, you end up with massive inflation, and you end up with the destruction of a country. And her only idea for solving inflation is to impose communist-inspired price controls, which have never worked. So there you have Trump himself, Vivek Ramaswamy, also sounding similar notes. Let's take a listen to that.

Their grand economic idea that she unveiled, the Nobel Prize winning plan, perhaps to control price gouging in the grocery market with price controls. She didn't get a great response to that. That was actually the first thing that burst the bubble of the honeymoon period that Kamala Harris has been in.

And so the reality is she kind of learned her lesson. It's like a Pavlovian training, teaching her that, okay, the more you talk about policy, the dog bites back. You say you don't want to do that anymore. Interesting commentary there too, because actually if you poll the American people, they're overwhelmingly in support of the plan, but it is true. She did get some donor pushback and has not talked much about it since that moment.

Ben Shapiro also weighed in on the Kamala price gouging proposal. You can put his tweet up on the screen. He says, Kamala's campaign is basically joy and free money and price controls and no questions. If Americans vote for this, well, Mencken was right. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. And again, her proposal is so modest and very much non-revolutionary compared to a cap on credit card interest rates. But

You know it really for me soccer Exposes the fact that it's such a damn shame that Trump isn't who he said he was in 2016 because all of these partisan hacks will

We'll go along with whatever he says, like Ben Shapiro and Vivek Ramaswamy and, you know, Bill Ackman and whatever the billionaires are behind him at this point. Like if he gets behind a policy, suddenly they forget all their like price controllables because it is a cult of personality.

And the downside of the cult of personality is that no one dissents. And the upside of the cult of personality is that you can force through things that otherwise would not be possible. But he shows zero interest in actually effectuating most of. There are a few exceptions that I will grant you. But the overwhelming majority of the populist leanings that he gave voice to in 2016 are

That's not what is sitting on the shelf. That's not what's easy to get through Congress. That's not what's easy to pass muster with the donor set. And so by and large, these just get floated at a rally. And then just like how you're going to all have great universal health care never end up actually having. The lesson is really about

about what your priority is when fighting with Congress. And in 2017, you just didn't fight, basically just did whatever they wanted to do. And that's how you got TCJA. Now, whenever you had full authority, like on something you really believed in, like tariffs, it was a different story. And that's why, you know, on immigration, a few other places where you have full executive authority or in foreign policy, yeah, you should really pay attention and listen because that's what you actually can't do.

But whenever it comes to this, anything to do with tax, anything to do with capping credit card interest and all that, the president basically is – it's impossible to unilaterally act. And the lobbyists and all that know that because, listen, if Visa, MasterCard, and all of them were really taking this seriously, you would see a hell of a lot of donations. But they're laughing all the way to the bank because they know how to work the –

Like I said, if you can't even get whatever, the Credit Card Fairness Act through Congress, good luck getting a 10% cap on interest rates. It would never happen. Yeah, you would have to make this the fight of your life. By the way, it would also be like 90% popular. I would guarantee you if you were to pull it, it would be like 80% to 90%. It would be hugely popular. That's the, you know, I mean, that's the interesting thing about the American public.

Because when you ask them about these, they're like, socialism, let's do it. I wouldn't call that socialism. There's been many times. Price controls then, let's do it. Credit card interest rates are by, this is the other, whoa, let the free market decide. Do you know how highly regulated credit card interest rates are? And about the number of consumer protection, the Bureau and the Treasury Department and the way the government subsidies and all these companies get. So just cut me a break whenever we're talking about that.

All right, let's get to our guest. Seth Harp is great standing by. 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.

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Joining us now is Seth Harp. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and he's the author of the forthcoming book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, in July of 2025. We're excited to see him. Thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So the reason we booked you is not only because of your forthcoming book subject, but because of a graph that really caught our eye. Let's put this up there on the screen. A lot of perhaps counterintuitive, depending on what you thought about the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. But according to the Financial Times, poppy growing in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, has fallen 90%.

nine percent since the U.S. withdrawal. So, Seth, considering the title of your book, considering a lot of discussion over the last 20 years about opium and the U.S. role in cultivation, poppy and heroin, what do you make of that graph? And considering what you're writing about, what can you shed light on some of the background of why that is?

Well, it's really stunning. And it's only now that the Taliban has been in control of Afghanistan for several years that we're able to fully judge what the true history of the heroin trade in Afghanistan really was and its significance from 2001 to 2021 during the 20 years since.

of U.S. occupation before the Taliban took over and completely eradicated the country's entire poppy crop, it was kind of difficult to say who was responsible for that drug production. But actually what the Taliban have just done in 2022

was an exact repeat of something that they did in 2001, which was to eradicate all drug production from Afghanistan, poppy cultivation, and the synthesis of heroin in laboratories. And

In the process of writing the book, I learned a lot about the heroin trade in Afghanistan and compiled basically a list of facts that I think every American citizen should know about their government's support for international drug cartels, which actually goes back to the 1980s. So I'd be happy to run down or if you guys just want to ask questions in general about the subject. Go ahead. Anyway, tell us what you got. Yeah.

Like I said, U.S. intervention, or excuse me, U.S. support for drug traffickers in Afghanistan goes back to the 1980s.

When the Soviet army occupied Afghanistan and a lot of people are familiar with the so-called Charlie Wilson's war, the America's covert war in Afghanistan to drive out the Soviet occupiers by arming and funding certain warlords to wage guerrilla war in that country against the Russians.

It's also pretty well known that a lot of these people were radical Islamists and that this covert Program led to the formation of Al Qaeda And the events that that led to 9/11 or contributed to it. I was in the background of it But it's less well known that those same Mujahideen as are often called many of them were deeply involved in the drug trade. This is something that we don't

We don't hear much about, although it is out there in the open, I think that Steve Cole writing for the Washington Post in the early '90s was one of the first to describe this. Gulbuddin Hekwetar and Nassim Akhundzada were two of the biggest recipients of CIA cash in arms

And both of them were two of the biggest narcos in Afghanistan and once the Russians had successfully been driven out They set about transforming Afghanistan essentially into the world's largest poppy plantation because the geography and climate of Afghanistan are very advantageous for the cultivation of poppy and through their brutal methods they forced

a lot of Afghanistan's peasantry into conditions of essentially narco-surfdom and obligated people to plant poppy when in the past they've been planting food crops or fruit.

And so the 1990s in Afghanistan is a kind of forgotten interlude, but there was a drug war there, essentially the same as there was a drug war in Colombia. And there is one in Mexico today. And the Taliban actually emerged as a reaction to the infighting between these warlords and

And, you know, we hear a lot about the Taliban's wicked ideology and their repression of women and how they don't allow music and kites and things like that. But we never hear about their anti-narcotics agenda. But that was actually fundamental to their ideological identity from the very beginning. The Taliban, as you might imagine, being such a conservative movement, didn't look kindly upon the production of drugs or the consumption of drugs either.

And as I alluded to a moment ago, once they had consolidated control of Afghanistan's major population centers after a civil war in the 1990s,

They completely eradicated all of the heroin production that was taking place in Afghanistan in 2001. That eradication effort was completed in the summer of 2001. And some experts at the time described it as the most dramatic event in the history of illegal drug markets. They completely decimated the world supply of

of heroin, eliminated something like 95% of heroin from the global black market. That was, as I said, in the summer of 2001. Seth, let me pause you for one second because I have a question about that piece that also connects with today. What sort of tactics did they use to have this level of complete eradication?

That's a good question. As far as I can tell, they just went around telling people, hey, you can't do that anymore. They didn't really they didn't dump pesticides from airplanes. They didn't use any of the heavy handed eradication methods that the U.S. and proxy forces or client states have used.

in countries like Colombia, for example, very low-tech methods using sticks to beat down the plants or tractors to uproot fields. And were people just afraid of the consequences of not listening to the Taliban?

That's a good question. I'm not sure. I suppose so. I mean, the obvious answer is yes, the Taliban. The government has a monopoly on the use of force there and people didn't disobey when told to stop growing poppy. So sure, they could fear the consequences. But I'm not able to find very many reports of violence in this latest eradication campaign. A few sporadic shootings between traffickers that resisted.

But for the most part, yeah, they seem to just ask people nicely. And so when we invade Afghanistan, what is our relationship to the cultivation of poppy?

well so the us invaded afghanistan just five months after they had completely eradicated poppy from afghanistan and that invasion force was led by the cia backed by jsog and delta force and they immediately teamed up with many of the same narco warlords that had taken refuge in the north of the country which was the only part of afghanistan where heroin productions was still taking place

And we called that group of militias and warlords the Northern Alliance. And not all of – I don't want to say that every single one of the individuals that was part of that effort was involved in drug trafficking, but many of them, especially the Tajik and Uzbek warlords, Rashid Dostum, I think, chief among them, were deeply involved in the international heroin trade, and the CIA knew it.

And when they installed the new Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai, one of the government's first actions was to legalize poppy cultivation. Yes. A fact that went almost entirely unremarked in the American press. Within a single year, heroin production in Afghanistan was back to pre-Taliban highs of production.

there were known narcotics traffickers in control of all of Afghanistan's major heroin producing areas, including the Helmand, Narmahar, Kandahar, Jalalabad, all these areas where either poppy was cultivated or heroin was trafficked internationally. And within eight years, Afghanistan was producing 10 times more heroin than the rest of the world combined. It was the largest drug

drug output. It was the largest production of heroin or any drug in world history. I mean, I really want to emphasize the scale of this.

So heroin in Afghanistan, the production of it was around topped out and stayed at the level of about a thousand metric tons of pure heroin per year for almost 15 to 20 years on end. That's double the global demand for heroin. So they're producing twice as much heroin as the entire world can absorb. Mexico is a second place producer.

producer, only puts out about 50 tons of heroin a year. Colombia, 20 tons of heroin. The only other country that's even on the map is Myanmar, and I think they produce like one or two tons. And again, Afghanistan producing 1,000 tons of pure heroin per year. So Seth, to stick within the title of your book, what is the grand role of our own government in not only the cultivation? I know at one point we were actively wanting to

create cultivation of poppy. In fact, in preparation for this segment, I found criticism of the Taliban from the U.S. Institute of Peace by some Afghan scholar who was like, why Taliban shutting down opium production is bad for Afghanistan? I was like, what? I mean, this seems a little bit too naked here. So is the cynical take correct? I mean, what exactly was going on in terms of our own government, our military in helping stoke this production?

It's very hard to understand what these people were thinking in allowing this. They didn't talk about it very much during the war. And to the extent they did, it was very much in line with that article that you just referenced by the U.S. Institute for Peace, basically implicitly saying, hey, this is good for the economy. This is a way for us. Like a jobs program. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

But at the same time, we always heard during the war that the Taliban were responsible for this and that the insurgency and all the drug production were really two sides of the same coin. From our politicians, from our most prestigious and trusted institutions and media, we always heard that the Taliban were basically, were narco-terrorists was the term I think was invented in

in the early 2000s to describe this. And anytime we heard about the drug production that was going on in Afghanistan, which was very much soft peddled, very much not in the news, but to the extent it was, we always heard the Taliban were responsible. Now, and looking into this,

I found that there's no evidence to support it at all. And I don't claim that my research skills are exhaustive, but if there's anyone out there who can find a case of a named Taliban individual who was seized or apprehended or convicted or it was otherwise shown for a fact that they were producing or trafficking drugs, please get in touch because I wasn't able to find a single case of that.

And, you know, you don't have to take my word for it because in 2018, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, Saigar, they put out a report, a retrospective on narcotics in Afghanistan. And this is a U S government publication. So,

You know, they kind of couch it in delicate terms, but it's very clear from reading that report that their conclusion that they came to was that there was never any evidence at all to back up the idea that the Taliban were either profiting from the direct participation in drug production or were even taxing it, as we sometimes heard. The best I think you could say is.

is that at times some groups that were called Taliban, which is actually a more diverse coalition than we realize, some of those groups at times in certain places may have levied attacks on other drug traffickers.

But beyond that, there's no reason to think that the Taliban participated in the drug trade. It also goes against, as I mentioned before, their original ideological identity of being a force that was against narcotics. The Taliban would occasionally put out edicts that banned their own fighters from using drugs or participating at all in the drug trade.

We never gave them any credit for that, but in fact, it seems to be pretty consistent on their part. Now, who was responsible? Go ahead. To the economic point,

Afghanistan, obviously a poor country under sanctions by the U.S. We also withheld a significant chunk of their central bank reserves. You know, post after we left, there was a sort of economic freefall, at least for a certain period of time. So what has been the economic impact of the total eradication of poppy production when it was so central to the agricultural economy?

Well, it's hard to say. Probably not good for the farmers that have immediately lost out on their poppy revenue that they were making. But Afghanistan has really serious economic problems as a result of the crushing international sanctions that are on them and the fact that the U.S. basically just stole all the money that was in their bank by freezing it.

So Afghanistan is in a terrible economic situation right now, which makes it all the more remarkable that the Taliban was willing to eliminate what had been the majority of their GDP. It really shows that they were determined to eliminate Afghanistan.

this trade from Afghanistan. Yeah, I mean, I think what's shocking about this is that it turns a lot of stuff on its head. Like you said, Seth, I worked in that space for a long time. I covered the Pentagon during the Afghan war. We heard constantly, narco-terrorists, that these people were involved in drug production, that they were much more drug lords than they were this. But then it's a little bit counter if all of that gets shut down the moment that they actually take over the country. You would presume that the inverse would happen.

And that when you have total control over state resources, you would ramp opium production up. So then if they weren't producing the opium, somebody was, and somebody was profiting. I'm sure you don't want to give away too much, but to what role can you speak about from your own book to the deep involvement of the U.S. military forces in perhaps not only officially sanctioning this, but getting involved in the actual moving and selling of drugs?

Well, that same Saigar report that I mentioned a moment ago is unequivocal about this. The U.S.-backed Afghan government at every level and at every geographic region of Afghanistan was either directly involved in producing drugs or was profiting from it in the form of bribes or taxation.

All of the major warlords who comprised the U.S. client state under Hamid Karzai originally and under Ashraf Ghani later were known narcotics traffickers. Fahim Khan was Hamid Karzai's defense minister. He was a big time drug trafficker.

Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was the kingpin of Kandahar, who had the, as they would say in Mexico, derecho de piso over the entire Helmand, the ability to charge drug traffickers.

the commission to move drugs through kandahar um i mentioned rashi roshi dosan uh rashid dosan a moment ago up on the border of afghanistan uh uzbekistan and tajikistan he was a major drug lord the cia worked closely with him uh hazarat ali in jalalabad another big-time uh drug trafficker controlling the drug trade from afghanistan to india which absorbed a lot of the heroin during this time and these are all people who have names

whose role is known. And the way that it was done out in the open, it's really kind of jaw-dropping. And it's not just the people at the top. It's, as the Saigar report said, people at every single level in every department of the Afghan government were directly involved. Mm-hmm.

in the drug trade. And if you ask any grunt who served in Afghanistan, a Marine, whatever, they'll tell you that the security forces of these people under these warlords, they used drugs constantly and were often too stoned on hashish or opium to even go out on patrol. So the Afghan client state was the world's biggest drug cartel. And it was directly backed

at all times by JSOC the CIA and the whole of the US government and past instances of like CIA complicity in the drug trade that we're familiar with pale in comparison, you know There's the whole dark alliance thing that reporter Gary Webb revealed in the 90s that the CIA knew that the Nicaraguan Contras were trafficking cocaine from Colombia through Mexico into the United States

at the time of the crack boom. I mean, that was significant, but there's just no comparing the scale of this. As I mentioned before, for 20 years, Afghanistan inundated the entire world with extremely cheap, extremely potent, and extremely high quality heroin. It was available everywhere. And that changed, I mean, that had a huge impact on history, an extremely deleterious effect on the social fabric

of many countries that directly surround Afghanistan, including Iran had a terrible heroin crisis during this time. China as well had to really crack down on heroin trafficking through Jianjiang, if I'm pronouncing that correctly in the Uyghur occupied part of the part of China, uh, Russia suffered a terrible heroin crisis during this time, all of Europe. And of course, America, and it was all the result of having a huge, uh,

glut of very high quality and very cheap product that was available. Seth, my last question for you is an intentionally naive one. How does this square with the U.S.'s relatively draconian anti-drug policies? Well, when you say relatively draconian anti-drug policies, I guess you're referring to the criminal penalties that are available to punish traffickers that are caught here in the U.S.,

Well, it just goes to show that, you know, the government really kind of instead of fighting a drug war, it's more that they pick winners and losers in the game and say who can who is allowed to traffic drugs internationally. If the DEA at any point had wanted to look at Afghanistan and say, you know, sometimes when they say describe a drug trafficking organization in Mexico, let's say, and

and create like an organization chart and put this guy at the top and say these guys are his lieutenants. A lot of that, there's some artistic license that goes into that. These groups are not as coherent as you might think. My point is that if at any point they had wanted to look at Afghanistan and describe what was going on there as a cartel and create like an organization chart, it easily could have been portrayed as this is the most

This is the most profitable, productive, and dangerous drug trafficking organization in the entire world. And it's inundating the United States with heroin because the heroin crisis in the United States perfectly coincided with this time period. And there's...

Endless reports from the early 2000s from medical professionals and others, especially county sheriffs, talking about how they were seeing a much increased supply of heroin in the most remote rural counties in the United States, not just the cities. The whole country was saturated by heroin that was white in color, high quality, high potency. Now, as a caveat, the DEA says heroin

that none of this came from Afghanistan. They say that the United States alone in the world is the only country untouched by Afghan heroin. And that's a claim that you see sometimes repeated in mainstream media accounts during this time. And in my book, I'm going to go into all the reasons why I don't think that's true at all. I think that the

that all of that supply or the great majority of that supply that directly caused the heroin crisis in America was a consequence of the war in Afghanistan. I can't wait to read it. Yeah, we're going to let you now get back to writing that book because we're now all dying to read it and see what else you have to say. And I hope you'll come back on when the book is published, if not before, and explain in detail your additional findings there. Thank you so much for joining us today, though. It's been eye-opening, absolutely eye-opening. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Definitely. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. Thanks so much for watching, guys. We appreciate it. If you can become a premium subscriber, you want that exclusive content, you can. BreakingPoints.com. Otherwise, great counterpoint show for everybody tomorrow.

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