8/20/24 LIVE DNC: Biden SNUBBED From Prime Time, DNC Attacks Trump Abortion, RFK VP Floats Dropout, Krystal Reacts To Clinton Cringe, Delegates Swarm Gaza Protesters
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Are we live? Are we good? Okay. All right. Hello, everybody. We are live from Chicago at the DNC. Shout out to all of our friends at Barstool Sports for allowing us to use the studio. Specifically, my man Eddie at the

Dog Walk podcast. Everyone, if you are a fan of Chicago sports, go subscribe to the Dog Walk show. Everybody here at the Barstool Chicago office, some love. They've been very, very kind to us and we are incredibly grateful as we continue our DNC live coverage. So we're going to go ahead and get going. We're going to go over some of the topics and all the other fun things. We do have some video from Crystal that we will be including in the show. Don't worry, everybody. She will be on the show tomorrow here live on

from Chicago on Wednesday and then on Thursday as well. So everybody stay tuned for that. We are, of course, running a promo right now, one month free trial, DNC free, breakingpoints.com, where you can sign up to become a premium subscriber. You're going to want to be, I think, a premium subscriber right now because not only get to support all of our work,

But we are going to be taking questions throughout this entire live stream. Probably every time we do a topic, we'll take them from our premium subscribers on Locals. And so we'll be incorporating them into the show. Producer Mac is on the switchboard. This is a quite fun experience for all of us because we've got the producer cam. Mac, can you show yourself? Can you show yourself? Do it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like Wendy Williams. Look at him. Look at him. Can we do a couch shot? Is that possible? Can we show Griffin? There he is. There he is. Give him the. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So you guys can meet the entire crew. Griffin is here after tremendous flight difficulties. He could have walked. Shout out to train. It was a plane. We are so, so happy that he is here. All right.

Why don't we go ahead and get started? So like I said, BreakingPoints.com, take advantage, DNC free if you want to support the channel. Let's go ahead and begin with President Biden's big speech, of course, that happened last night. Now, one of the major stories to come out from the speech is not just the speech content itself, but the time that it went on.

All of us were up very, very late last night. I guess shout out to ghost energy of empowering us right now. I promise we're not even getting paid. These are just so good. Yeah, we're the suckers, apparently. Also, you get a certain percentage of four daily vitamins. 100% of four daily vitamins. Incredible, incredible ghost energy. I mean, can you- Can't beat it. What else could you ask for, right? I'm not gonna have orange juice ever again. Let's get serious, let's get serious. Let's talk about the DNC and this-

this speech timing. Matt, could you go ahead and put the A1 element and load that up, please, up on the screen? Thank you very much. So what you can see in front of you is that President Biden did not take the stage until some 11 or 10.46 p.m. here in Central Time, which means he was officially passed

So here, what the media reporters over at The Times are saying is that ABC, CBS, and NBC News all planned to continue their live coverage of the convention past that scheduled 11 p.m. cutoff. But the later it gets, quote, the smaller the overall TV audience will be, a development that, quote, may irk his allies in the party. And that very much was the case. If we want to go ahead and put A2, please, up on the screen, Mac,

Just to explain to everybody, of course, we're on Central Time here. It's traditional that the candidate speech, the flagship speech, is supposed to happen in primetime, right, Ryan? And the longer that things were continuing, it was very clear that this was a massive snub and humiliation of Joe Biden. His own coronation, not coronation, his own, what, farewell,

at the Democratic National Convention is now overshadowed by people who are like Kamala's fourth grade friends who talked about driving to school. And, you know, they had who else like random congresswomen and others. Emily, as we were all watching it live together here, we have that text to Alex Thompson from a longtime Biden aide. Quote, This is awful. He literally set up a campaign and handed it over to them. Do they have to

cut him out of prime time. So if anything, one of the major stories before Biden even speaks, Emily, is that Joe Biden is kicked into 1130 p.m. or so East Coast time before he even begins his what one hour long speech to the convention. So just talk to us about that dynamic. What did you think of that?

Well, and they also started the night. This was supposed to be Biden's night. His daughter's speaking. His wife is speaking. They started the night with Kamala Harris. So Kamala Harris got electric response. And Ryan can maybe tell us more about that because he was literally in the arena. But she came out as a surprise. And to do that on Biden's night, I actually think is pretty interesting. Obviously, they're trying to book into the convention with Kamala Harris. But this is the sitting president. This isn't just

any old incumbent. So it steals a little bit of the thunder. And then I also have to say there's some conspiratorial stuff bouncing around about how Dems intentionally pushed Biden, shoved him into the corner, stuffed him late at night. I think maybe the bigger story, we're going to talk about this a couple of times in today's show, is that this is a very poorly managed convention. Yes, that's right. They had to cut... This is what tells me that more than anything.

They had to cut freaking James Taylor, who you know they did not want to have to go backstage and be like, bro, we're yanking you. You know they didn't want to have to do that. They did the same thing to former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They were at the last minute scrapping people who had big speeches that were supposed to be in primetime or musical acts that were supposed to be in primetime. So I don't think...

I don't think it was any grand conspiracy. I think they're just really flubbing it so far. What do you think, Ryan? Not sure you're right on James Taylor. So Taylor played at the Inflation Reduction Act ceremony. Oh, true. Who amongst us forgot about that? I was at that ceremony, and I said to the reporter next to me- The inflation went down. I was like, is that James Taylor? It's like 2 o'clock on a Tuesday. You're sitting around. Don't you have jobs? You're sitting around listening to James Taylor. Why not?

So my point there, that sounds like a Biden invitation to James Taylor. Like he must really love James Taylor. And he seems like the kind of boomer that would like James Taylor. So to cut James Taylor is actually a snub at Biden, less than it is Democrats being like, oh no, we really need James Taylor on there. I bet there are a ton of the operative class back there who are doing the organizing who are like,

This was a sop to Biden. And you know what? Who cares about Biden anymore? That's right. We're screwing him everywhere else. Let's also yank Biden. Like, you know, so they had Warnock speaking. They had Chris Coons speaking. They had

Warnock's speech, which was genuinely right. Emily, correct me if I'm wrong. No, it was fine. It was definitely a good speaker. But Warnock's speech is happening during primetime. Warnock's speech is now going up until the 11 p.m. mark on the East Coast. And he's not cutting down his remarks. He's not taking time cues.

It was very obvious, I think, that this was an intentional move. So, Mac, could we do a three, please, if we could put up there on the screen? This was the official response from the Harris Walsh campaign is it's a ridiculous and a silly suggestion. The idea that the DNC disrespected President Biden. So their explanation for all of this is that the that

that there was so much raucous applause in the room that they happened to go 90 minutes late. That's just simply not possible. I mean, and I'm- - You can't plan for applause at a convention. - You might think that. I am parroting, no, I'm parroting like Nate Silver and a few others who were like, "Guys, if you believe that it was not an intentional snub or effort by the Harris people,

to create some plausible ish scenario where Joe Biden, the most unpopular president in like modern times, is pushed out of primetime. And people are like, oops, I guess I have to watch Governor Andy Beshear and all these other cogent with it Democrats talk about abortion. He's like, you're an idiot. This is very obviously or you believe or you believe Democrats are just incredibly incompetent.

Well, I also believe that's what I believe. I think it could be a confluence of those two events. But OK, OK, go ahead. So then they're scrambling at the last minute to get rid of speakers that they'd planned to have. So like DWS and James Taylor and whomever else like that's the part that I just don't believe. I'm really on the side of the incompetence here. I think they wanted to get Biden out of the way on Monday. No question about it. They won't forget about him for the rest of the week as energy momentum builds towards Kamala Harris's speech.

Biden is literally going off to Santa Barbara. So he's not going to be anywhere near this thing. They won't have the stink of Biden on anymore. I think they wanted to do that. I don't buy that. It was I don't know. I'm sorry, Nate Silver. Maybe you're right. Listen, maybe I'm just a little bit too conspiratorial. So I guess all of that is a lead up to what was a very long speech, guys. I mean, how long was it was about 55 minutes, I think, on the clock. It was

very long. I mean, he did okay. Like, you know, he had a few old man moments and other things. I think he looked the worst that we've ever seen him physically. He didn't look good. Physically, he looked the worst. He physically looked frail. I mean, it was late. I didn't look particularly good either. I was tired. He got jet lag flying to Atlanta. I mean, Chicago. That's right. I mean, I think I tweeted that. And I was like, Biden famously, who has never crashed and burned after 9 p.m., will now take the stage roughly around 10.30 p.m. I was like, what could go wrong in terms of

them setting him up for, I guess, success or failure. Well, he lived up to, you know, some of his old reputation. He was kind of yelling a little bit into the camera. He tried to get very animated. He got a lot of thank you, Joe chants. So, Mac, why don't we go ahead and queue up? We've put together kind of a highlight reel for everybody. So I'll continue to just set it up. There we go. All right, Mac, let's go ahead and take a listen. Brand for president 2020.

because of what I saw in Charlottesville in August of 2017. Extremists coming out of the woods carrying torches, their veins bulging from their necks, carrying Nazi swastikas and chanting the same exact anti-Semitic vile that was heard in Germany in the early 30s. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan,

so emboldened by a president then in the White House that they saw as an ally. They didn't even bother to wear their hoods. I could not stay in the sidelines. So I ran because I had no intention of running again. I just lost part of my soul. But I ran with a deep conviction. In America, I know and believe in an America where honesty, dignity, decency still matter.

Women are not without electrical, not allowed, not without electoral. Folks, I've got five months left in my presidency. I've got a lot to do. I intend to get it done. It's been the honor of my lifetime to serve as your president. I love the job, but I love my country more.

I love my country more. All right, there we go. So that was our highlight reel. We tried our best to cut together. To be honest, my assessment of the speech, Emily, is it was pure grocery store list. It was very much like Biden's last State of the Union speech.

There was just checkmark, checkmark, checkmark, checkmark. Oh, got to talk about unions. Got to talk about NATO. Got to talk about ceasefire. Got to talk about Kissinger. Yeah, getting Henry Kissinger calling and complimenting him 10 days before he died, which was funny. What else? I mean, nothing stuck out to me other than him literally being snubbed. It being, frankly, a long farewell. It was obviously well-received by the enthusiastic crowd.

Lots of thank you, Joe chants that he was giving out. He gave shout outs to unions and a few other things. He tried to paint a optimistic portrait of a country that he is handing off for improvement to Kamala Harris. That was my overall take. What did you think? You know, that's an interesting point because it reminds me of when Donald Trump had to deal with Make America Great Again in 2020, right? He went with Keep America Great, keg. That's right.

That's what it ended up being. Awful slow. So it's something you always have to do as an incumbent. But Kamala Harris has started this dramatic economic policy rollout that we talked about yesterday. Like she's trying to move really far away from Biden and remove herself from the unpopularity of the Biden-Harris administration. So it's interesting that Biden and I think you saw a little bit of cope from Hillary Clinton last night, too. Massive. Don't worry. Right. Of course. Well, we have to.

Because it was really something. But yeah. So the other thing when you're talking about the grocery list, he, of course, spent a significant amount of time on Charlottesville, as he always does when he's talking about his kind of genesis as a presidential, a serious presidential contender, which he ended up being in 2020. And the other thing I wanted to mention is towards the end of the speech,

He talked about how he it's something that Jill Biden had said, too. She said when she was kind of introducing Ashley Biden, that his love for the country was so great that that's why he stepped down. He addressed it so vaguely. Yeah. Right. There was no detail. Not go into it at all. No, there were no specifics. It wasn't like I was sitting at home, you know, thinking about how much I love this country and decided to step down. It was really just a super like vague nod.

to this dramatic, historic, unprecedented decision that he'd made just in the last month. And that was it. What did you think, Ryan? So you were in... So just to explain a little bit of logistics, Ryan was actually on the floor because he's a print journalist and they have different privileges than us radio TV folks. Tell us a little bit about Ryan. Color, you were in the stage. Hold some of the protest conversation because we will get to that in a little bit. The crowd is...

super fired up. You can feel the energy in a way that you couldn't at some previous conventions. When Kamala Harris came out, as you mentioned, I was actually in the hallway and heard this just absolute explosion coming from inside the arena and popped my head in and said, oh, there's Kamala on the stage and the place is just rocking. But it was also rocking for Joe Biden

For like seven minutes or so, I feel like maybe maybe five minutes of like just sheer just expressions of love and support for Joe Biden. But you get the sense that a significant amount of that is like release of like.

satisfaction, joy that he's not running. Absolutely. Like if he were giving his speech as claiming the renomination, I don't feel like that you'd get the same five minutes. Did you guys notice that he was not liking the thank you, Joe chance? Yeah. That he really, it's like, thank you for stepping down. Exactly right. I had the exact same take or I was like,

Every time Thank You Joe broke out, he was not having it. He was not having it. And the we love you. Right. We love you was very different. That was like, okay. But it also comes across in a similar way. Like we love you for the selfless act that you performed. Of not running for. Which he does not talk about. Which is again, I mean, this is the craziest part. And I'm so glad that you brought that up because I didn't even have that in my notes. The level of detail for why stepping down was zero. It was here is why I've done an incredible job. Yep.

Every once in a while, I will say, thank you, Kamala, too. Thank you, Walsh. And then he's like, got to go out there. And, you know, you got to vote for Tim Walsh. And then roughly around 1 a.m. local time, he gets on a plane and now he's in Santa Clara, California. He's on literal vacation. And he's out.

He won't be presiding over the convention like Kamala Harris. He won't be in the box looking at anyone, clapping, doing interviews, talking to delegates. He is out and they want it that way. No question about it. And as we have tried to highlight, one of the things, guys, that we talked a lot about yesterday is that they put the most unpopular people up on the stage tonight or last night. So they had Hillary Clinton, AOC and Joe Biden. So we don't have any. Actually, I think Crystal talks a little bit about AOC, so I'll leave it to her.

I personally don't really understand why the pundits were like raving about her. Ryan, if we want to give our brief take here, like raving about who about AOC, I was like, she gave a very standard democratic speech and was like, well, I think, I think it's because the pundits are very pleased.

that she's a Democrat. Here's the left wing of the party up on stage. She's a good Dem. And Sean Fain also ran as like an insurgent. Right. Up on the stage, Sean Fain didn't even mention Gaza, which is a big thing that the UAW has been pushing Biden on. AOC did be

become like I think maybe the only or at least the first person to mention Gaza but did in a way that ticked people off by saying well she said Kamala is working tirelessly towards a ceasefire and we were all producer Mac was like what like I think audibly was shocked when she said that we were all watching it it's a very classic way of everybody sees what's going on yes yeah so I think that's why the pundits liked it because they're like cool we're all on the team now

The band is together. Now let's rock and roll and go beat Trump. Honestly, I mean, let's give a little bit of our assessment.

What do you think in the hallways? People were people were happy. And even the ceasefire delegates. So just a little bit of color. The ceasefire delegates are all wearing T-shirts to say where ceasefire delegates. People are not treating them badly or anything. Now, we'll get to how they treat actual protesters, but that's a different story. And just a question for Ryan. Could you talk a little bit about what kind of person is a Democratic delegate here at the convention? Because it's a little bit different than Republicans. So what's the makeup of the people that are actually in the arena? I mean, yeah.

So if you're in a major city and you're a delegate from Chicago, actually any major city, then you're more likely to be a party operative slash machine type figure, probably a lawyer, somebody who's like involved in party politics in a way that influences your profession. If you're a delegate in the suburbs or in a rural area.

You are a party activist. You're a diehard. - County party. - You love democratic party politics. It makes up your entire social life. You're committed. This is your thing. And you are probably a middle-class,

A normal person, except for the fact that you are like a hyper-partisan person. And this is the social life that you've chosen. Yeah, you really did feel like real fangirl energy for a lot of the Democrats. We watched, remember, Mark Kelly in the hallway? I mean, it's like he was like Jay-Z or something. I've never seen anyone- Mark Kelly? I've never seen anyone greet a United States senator. Parasocial relationship with Mark Kelly. Yeah, it was very odd. But they have to pay their own way. Yeah, true. These people like-

You know, they're regular people who just, this is their thing and they just deeply care. That's which is different than the plaintiff's attorney from who lives in Chicago. And so I'm a Democratic Party activist because like I need the party to be favorable to me and my profession. Any last thoughts here? Because we want to talk about Pelosi as well. Well, I was just going to ask about the changes to superdelegates. Are there still...

- Radically shrunk down. - Okay. - But those people are still here. - Right. - And they still get the same badges. - Oh, we saw it. - We could see some of the VIP host, the cloakroom areas and all that. Those were down in the basement. - The rainbow of hierarchy. - They looked nice. - Different badges. - It looked nice in there. It certainly did. - You get a golf cart if you were big enough. - Get a golf cart, that's right. - He'll wear a tux. - That's right. As long as you're wearing tuxes, I'm totally fine with the superdelegates, of course.

Let's go ahead and get to Nancy Pelosi on CNN also throwing some shade at Biden because it was ironic that at the same time that she I mean, she's the one more probably more responsible than anybody else for getting him out of the race. His own former campaign manager, Anita Dunn, confirms this. They've been in a war of words in the most like bitchy way possible. Yep.

where they're like, some people didn't want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Well, Nancy Pelosi is asked about this in a CNN interview very briefly before actually taking the floor of the convention. Matt, can we go ahead and cue that up, please, just so the audience can take a listen? Let's go and play it. It does seem like there's some...

residual bad blood or resentment and I'm wondering if you've spoken to him and what your response is to that. Sometimes you just have to take a punch for the children. And that's what you're doing right now? You're just going to take the punch for the children? Who's punching right now? I don't know. Anita Dunn said... I didn't even hear this. I'm just hearing. Maybe he's throwing the punch. I don't know. I'm not. I would never. She said she doesn't want to fight. Nobody wants to have a fight with Nancy Pelosi at this time. You know what?

Have you talked to him? It's my only question. I have to do what I have to do. Right. He made the decision for the country. My concern was not about the president. It was about his campaign. As he has seen the exuberance, the excitement that has come forth in our country. I just did an event for one of our members in Illinois, Eric Sorensen, today. Immediately, he got $1,100.

volunteers into his campaign as soon as that announcement was made. Nobody is questioning the fact that the Democratic Party seems much better positioned right now than it did four weeks and two days ago. There's no question about that. Former Speaker Pelosi. So why are we even talking about it? Yeah, why are we even talking about how you literally forced the president out of the race? He's dead. Why are we talking about it? No, that's it. That was, I mean, but there was something kind of deeply sick about it because

She not only is responsible for it, but we were all joking this morning. There's a video. I think Griffin sent it to all of our chat where she is also pictured literally holding and chanting. Thank you, Joe, on the floor of the convention when she I mean, I guess it is cognizant. And that's part of why Biden doesn't like the chant so much.

It's because it's like, yeah, thank you for listening to me and getting out of here. We put you out to pasture. We basically forced you out. And there was not, you know, that was the other thing that drove me crazy about the Jill Biden speech. There was no, you know, high minded stuff going on here. It was the donors pulled your money. You held on till the very last minute. And you're obviously bitter. And now you want to pat on the back. Yeah. Now you want to pat on the back for being such a patriot. Right. Give me a break. Yeah. Come on. All right.

Ryan, last thoughts on Biden. Pelosi has a book out on power. It just came out. I desperately want to read this. I have a copy. I can give you one. Jillian bought one at Costco. They have it at Costco. They have it at a Northern Virginia Costco. Probably flying off the shelves. It probably is flying off the shelves. Let's be honest. Biden should read it. Nobody understands power like Pelosi. And to understand power at that depth, you have to

have some level of sociopathology. Absolutely. Or almost taking delight in being able to wield it. Honest to goodness, we need a miniseries, like Game Chains style, about Nancy Pelosi pushing Joe Biden out of office. Oh, absolutely. That would be HBO. Well, look, Mark Halperin was right. He had the scoop. He was the guy. That's such a good point. He did have the scoop. So maybe we should get him to, we should maybe get him to- We'll premiere it. Premiere it. On Breaking Boys.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station. All right, guys, let's go ahead and move on. We're going to talk a little bit about also forgive our producers are walking back and forth. It's a live thing. Everybody forgives it. Everybody's OK with it. I don't. No, no. We have we we are embracing the the podcast streamer energy we're having right now. I actually yeah, I'm actually kind of enjoying it.

All right, let's go ahead and begin with abortion because that was the kind of signature event, an issue that we saw repeatedly on the stage. From Kamala Harris's remarks, there was abortion, kind of Roe versus Wade signature sign stuff everywhere, Ryan, in the convention hall. I'm sure you noticed that.

pro-choice, reproductive freedom stuff that was everywhere. And you could tell that is something that they're leaning into very, very hard. So one of these we have is a...

actually a video of a young woman, Hadley Duvall. So we've talked about Hadley on the show before. She very prominently featured in the advertising for Governor Andy Beshear in his 2022 race. And in particular, those ads were

led to Daniel Cameron getting defeated in the election. So Hadley actually took the DNC stage yesterday. And I mean, I thought it was a pretty impactful moment. She had the crowd in tears from what we could tell. Matt, can we go ahead and cue that up, please? That is B1. Yeah, here we go. Go ahead. Yeah, why don't we all take a listen to it and then we'll react on the other side, shall we? I was raped by my stepfather after years of sexual abuse. At age 12,

I took my first pregnancy test and it was positive. That was the first time I was ever told, "You have options." I can't imagine not having a choice. But today, that's the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump's abortion bans. He calls it a beautiful thing. What is so beautiful

about a child having to carry her parents' child. There are other survivors out there who have no options. All right, so that was Hadley speaking there about her experience, and Governor Andy Beshear actually came out immediately after she spoke, and he also gave remarks on abortion. I found that one pretty interesting, actually, because...

Bashir really went hard against Donald Trump, which is, I mean, in some sense, a bit difficult for him. This is a state that he governs where Trump won by, what, 30 points last time around? But he's actually quite popular, and he went hard almost entirely on the issue of abortion. What did you make of that? And he was a serious contender for vice president because of that. It's what makes Andy Bashir one of the most interesting Democrats in the country right now.

because he's able to not just sort of shrug, and Walls is similar to this, but he's able to not just sort of shrug off the cultural issues, but lean into the cultural issues and lean into them very hard. Now, that's not true across the board, but it's certainly true on this. What you saw on the stage, if you were watching the stream, is a couple of other, one was a couple, and then another woman, who were also sharing stories of horrifying, horrifying stories

tragic circumstances that had been made worse, the contention is, by anti-abortion policies of Republicans, the couple who miscarried. I mean, it was just... Well, actually, that's a good point. We should go ahead and just play it since you mentioned it. You should watch it. Matt, can we go ahead and cue up? That is a B... They're both labeled B1. I'm not sure. It's the abortion ad sat is the one that I'm talking about. Yep, I believe that is it. Go ahead and play it for everybody. Here's your little...

The blanket that she was in. It's okay. The 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it.

I was punished for three days having to wait for either my baby to die or me to die, or both. I was stuck in this horrific hell of both wanting to hear her heartbeat and also hoping I wouldn't. There has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah, there has to be some form. I almost died because doctors were forced to follow Trump's abortion ban. Kamala will protect a woman's right to choose.

We trust women to make decisions about their own body. And tell them what to do. I have so much faith in her. And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms as President of the United States, I will sign it into law. We have to fight for Kamala Harris. Our rights, our freedoms, and frankly our lives. Everything is on the line.

Okay, so that was a big moment there from the stage. That was actually, I believe, happened around 7 or 8 p.m. strategically. Again, I think these people know what they're doing. Maybe you guys disagree. But it was very promptly placed right around when people would be tuning into the coverage, checking it out, kind of seeing what was going on. And they were hit with the back

to back both of that couple's ad. So I thought that abortion was probably the messaging that they pulled off the best last night. And it was both with their speakers, all of the people. So they have these two individual speakers. That couple actually came out on the stage and spoke afterwards. Yeah.

including in the ad. Then they had Hadley Duvall and then Andy Beshear kind of backing her up on top of that. So you put all that together and I would say put Biden's speech and all that aside. I don't even think that was the most important thing out of last night. For me, it was abortion. It was very clearly they have their messaging dialed in and they know exactly which ones to turn up, which worked in 2022, Emily. Yeah.

Yeah. And this is why they're making at least one of the nights themed around freedom of the DNC, because abortion is such a strong talking point for Democrats right now. So it's not even just about what we saw at the convention. Just imagine what you just saw in those ads being played around.

around swing states from now until November. We've covered before on the show what happened in Kansas. We've covered what happened in Michigan. Maybe it was significant in Alyssa Slotkin's victory, for example, when you're looking at some of these numbers. And so ads that channel the pain and the emotion, the

pathos that you just saw there are going to be running around these swing states. What did you think, Ryan? Everybody almost across the board, except for maybe a 5% on one extreme end, supports exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.

And those two examples hit all three of those. That's right. Rape and incest in the Kentucky case and then with Willow, life of the mother. And Trump, by the way, supports exceptions for rape and incest. It's more the down ballot. But if you support the exceptions, yet your policy based on these commercials that you're seeing don't seem to actually be making way for those exceptions.

then your support of those exceptions isn't very confidence-inducing to voters probably. Right. Yeah, it's one of those where he could say it and it almost doesn't matter because you've got Republican people down ballot who have literally tried to pass legislation. J.D. J.D. Vance has talked about it. And I mean, I think the biggest issue is Arizona. I keep thinking that it's such a consequential event because they have that abortion, they have that referendum on,

on the ballot at the same time of 2024. And it couldn't have come, what, at a worse time for the, what was that, 1860 abortion law to come back into effect? And the way that that animated Democratic voters in Arizona, I think it explains why Kamala, if we look at the Sunbelt, right now, it's her strongest state. She's actually losing in Georgia, even with her momentum. She's out five points in Arizona.

according to New York Times-Siena, I think abortion is a very, very key part of that. Same with North Carolina. That's another place where abortion law and all of that is very iffy. You've got Mark Robinson, that candidate there. I think he effectively... Didn't he admit to his wife having an abortion? I didn't see that. I think he did. In North Carolina? Yeah, in North Carolina. I think he was like, well, actually, my wife had an abortion, so he, I think, then...

I forget exactly what his position is, but my point is that even he is like, okay, well, we gotta try and find something, a different kind of, a different way of talking about this. And

Overall, I think the big takeaway from last night for us, you know, from all of the speakers was just how key abortion is going to play into their messaging, Ryan. Yeah. And Democrats have a genuine opportunity to actually codify Roe v. Wade such that you're seeing the abortion rights groups start to get angry about it. That's right. If you've noticed, it's because codifying Roe v. Wade is considered to be a...

illegitimate compromise from the perspective of the left because it would allow bans up to, you know, say some certain amount of time. It is not a comprehensive ban on bans. Yeah. So they're upset by that, which shows that it's actually a real possibility that they might do it. But if they do codify Roe,

they can then legitimately run every single election on genuine fear mongering, like mongering actual fear, not fake fear, that Republicans will overturn Roe v. Wade in Congress if they get back into power, because they will. Well, this is a good point. So Chuck Schumer actually made some news

Mac, I had a tweet that I sent to the chat. If we can pull that up, please, from Andrew Desiderio. Yeah, there we go. So Chuck Schumer actually gave a press conference this morning here in Chicago, and he talked specifically about how he wants to now revisit a filibuster carve out this time for abortions. That's really big news to me because Chuck is talking about a carve out saying, quote, they could get it done this time because of

Sinema and Manchin will be gone, and they would have Gallego in Arizona. This is, of course, if Democrats were to take the majority. But I mean, I thought that was a really, really big deal.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station. We're going to take some questions from the chat, from locals, from our premium subscribers. Just a reminder, everybody, we do have a one-month free trial going on right now. You can use the promo code DNCFREE at BreakingPoints.com. So I'm opening up the locals' chat. And, okay, Enraged Cog.

says, what have been your favorite and your least favorite parts of DNC and Chicago so far besides the press badge fiasco? Emily, why don't you go first? Well, first of all, Enraged Cog is an awesome follower. So thank you. Seriously, long time follower. Much appreciated.

Um, shout out to Enrage Cog. I will say we had great Italian beef yesterday. That was probably our favorite. Honestly, Barron's Burger, Burger Barron's. Burger Barron's. Shout out to the Burger Barron here in Chicago. A little dump. Very, um. So good. We rolled in at like 3 p.m. Classic, like, like diner vibe. And, uh, what was it? We got it dipped. Is that right? Yeah. We got it dipped. Yeah. The dip sandwich. That was good. Ryan, what about you? What was your favorite thing? I mean, uh,

I love being on the floor and seeing all of the like genuine joy. Like it's just nice to see people happy. Like you don't see that very often in this country. And even though this is a very self-selected group of people, obviously, because they're, they can afford to get to the democratic convention and they care about Democrats. Like, so I don't necessarily have to identify with that.

But if it's a knitting convention and people are like going nuts over knitting, I'd love to see that too. I just love to see people into stuff. - He just loves to see people happy. - Yes, I do. - Can I tell everybody? - Collectively happy. - My favorite part was a fan interaction with Ryan,

where a guy at the DNC, it was the kindest fan interaction I've ever seen. He just comes up to Ryan and he goes, I just want you to know that your work is such an inspiration to me. And you are the reason that I am here right now. And I was like, oh man, that's as good as it gets. My favorite was when somebody came up to Sagar and said, I actually like you. Yeah, that's

That's right. That's a great line. I actually like you. He was a kind dude. We also met a dude in this. I think we have a picture to prove it because it sounds unbelievable. A guy brought from, was it Hawaii? Yeah. No, he was from Hawaii. That's right. He brought two books, The Squad and Populist Guy from four years ago. He brought them from Hawaii hoping to run into us. And he actually did. And he had a Sharpie. That's sweet. It was honestly pretty incredible. I love that. Shout out to that dude. He was really cool. Can I do a least favorite?

Oh, go ahead. Yeah, we have to do our least favorite. So least favorite is that we have Ditka. We have all this Chicago sports stuff around us. I tried to put my brewer's hat on the table yesterday, but I felt really wrong doing it because we can't disrespect the kindness of Barstow Chicago. Barstow Chicago has been too kind to us. This is an amazing studio. It is a little bit difficult for me to be

behind all those Bears memorabilia. You just got to deal with it, okay? But I respect the franchise. When you're in Bears territory, no, I mean, it's not really fair because they said you can't talk about the press credentials, but honestly, that was really stressful. Our producer, Mac, literally had to, actually, Mac, do you want to tell the story? Yeah, I forget. You have your own Mac. You have your own microphone. Put your camera up, come up on the screen, and tell everybody what happened.

Mac Mike. Yeah, there is Mac Mike. Go ahead. Yeah, so I was basically tasked for the Breaking Points crew. I was the liaison to go and pick up all of our passes.

And it, no joke, probably took me two hours when it should have taken maybe maximum like 20 minutes because every police officer, every, you know, you know, security person who was there, the DNC workers themselves, everybody told me something different. I was given a full run around. I went inside.

The convention part, I had to go back outside of the convention part. I had to walk around this whole security perimeter. And I was basically just being lied to. Right. It was crazy. Yeah. A bunch of people who didn't really know what was going on. Nobody knew what was going on.

Yeah, so anyway, that was the least favorite. Our drop site editor, Noska, I think helped. She was like, just do not ask the volunteers anything because they do not know. She said, go to the Secret Service because they actually do know. Yeah, okay. Well, I guess first time the Secret Service will actually be useful here. Yeah, that would be my least favorite. The logistics have honestly been a massive pain in the ass, and we are actually going to do an entire segment about that in a little bit. So why don't we go ahead and turn? There was some breaking news actually that happened recently

just now that we wanted to talk about with RFK Jr. and his campaign. So his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, appeared on a podcast recently and is now talking about dropping out of

of the race, her and RFK Jr., and endorsing Donald Trump. So, Matt, could we cue that up, please? We have the video here. Guys, let's go ahead and take a listen. What that tells me right now is that we just have to keep being honest. I got to just keep being honest. I got to keep focusing on what matters the most outside of party lines. I need to...

focus on a vision that goes beyond November. And if that means that we stay in and, you know, there's benefits to staying in. If we get over 5% of the vote, we actually establish ourselves as a party. 71% of Americans want a strong third party with a real shot at winning. Um,

There's even public funds available if we get over 5% of the vote. So we could get, I think it's like $13.5 million in public funds to keep the party going. And that's worth something. That means that we can position for a real third-party vote

election in 2028 where we don't have to go around and spend tens of millions of dollars on ballot access, which means that we can spend all of that time and money campaigning. So, you know, there's two options that we're looking at. And one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Waltz campaign.

presidency because we draw votes from Trump or we draw somehow more votes from Trump or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and we walk away from that and we explain to our base why we're making this decision. Not easy. Clearly. Yeah, not an easy decision.

Okay, let's go over that because the most consequential part is right there at the end. There's two options that we're looking at. One is staying in, forming the new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and a waltz presidency because we draw more votes

from Trump. So there's a lot going on there. I mean, look, we haven't gotten a response yet from Bobby or anybody else, but it's pretty clear. We talked about this yesterday. So she bankrolled the campaign. Yeah, she's literally. Oh, actually, there's a bit of news on that. She got a refund. I'm going to pull this up. Actually, from the campaign.

There was just some news that came out this morning. Nicole Shanahan got a $925,000 amount of money that she put into the campaign, actually refunded last month. I'm not exactly sure how campaign refunds work. That's a whole other sign. Sometimes a loan. You can also do it.

Weird. Yeah. OK, let's think about this. We haven't heard yet from Bobby or RFK Jr. Any response from the campaign. But regardless, I mean, when the campaign's running mate is like, we don't know what to do. And there are haven't been a lot of campaign events. And she basically is like, we don't want Kamala Harris to win. And they would take away votes from Trump because empirically now at this point they are taking votes away from Trump. It does seem quite both logical if that's who they want to align themselves with.

But more importantly, I mean, what a crazy and a shocking thing to say kind of out loud if they do stay in the race. As a running mate. Yeah, as a running mate, especially. I mean, it's like, what? Wait, so are you in this to help?

So, I mean, basically, it's like, were you in this to hurt Joe Biden? Like, what are you doing here? This is the kind of thing that strategists or aides will strategically leak to Politico playbook. Right. Like, this is not the kind of thing that you're used to seeing just blurted out in full transparency on a podcast from the running mate slash main financier. Right. She's playing two roles there, running mate and major, I should say, not.

Maine, but major financier, maybe Maine, but I don't have the numbers right in front of me. So it's fascinating. The other thing that stood out to me from that I haven't seen getting a lot of attention is she says if we can get 5% of the vote, that if you- That's a lot less than they used to say. That as a ceiling, the fact that she's talking about maybe getting 5% of the vote here in August 2024 when they were hitting up to 17% before they felt like they had really even gotten off the ground six months ago.

We were talking about potential parole levels and with good reason, because it looked like there was a snowball starting to roll down the hill with money, with kind of organic support from the public, a smart strategy. But the fact that right now they're only talking about perhaps a ceiling of 5% of the vote, that is in and of itself from the major financier, a major financier, and the running mate herself. Yeah.

That's huge. This could be a very different convention. Also, I question her investment acumen if she's going to put like $100 million in to earn $13.5 million. Did she put $100 million? I don't think. Let's not go crazy. I think she floated that she could potentially do that. Well, I mean, it does just, I think, I mean, honestly, this is a bad look for the third party world is the way I would put it.

Because now you're effectively taking yourself out of the independent sphere and you're saying, well, we actively hate not to both candidates the way that – I mean one of the things that Bobby always tries to do is be like, look, I don't agree with Trump. I don't like Trump. I don't want to endorse Trump. There are so many things I'm very different in. That's why that you should vote for me. I am also not like the Democrats. I haven't sold out on whatever on X, Y, and Z. But with this –

running mate situation, you're like, well, it would mean Kamala Harris and waltz would win and it would draw votes away from Trump. So do we drop out and endorse him? You're like, wow, OK, well, that's actually a very different look for the third party system. And frankly, a lot of the appeal that RFK had

I actually thought a huge amount of the appeal that he's had, just anecdotally from talking from people who are independent, is they don't like Trump either. If they did, they would vote for him. It was the double haters with Trump and Biden. Bingo. Exactly. So whenever you kind of explicitly align yourself with Trump, and again, to be clear, Kennedy has not done this, but having his running mate do it is very significant. So Ryan, I wonder if this comment itself

I don't know if RFK Jr. voters who are already, you know, I mean, they're very enthusiastic people, are going to be happy with him, you know, for his running mate saying this. No, it's, yes, it's totally bizarre. Right.

like Emily said, it's so weird to see it done kind of out in the open like that. And we've had this long, long running conversation about who does he hurt more, Biden or Trump? And for her to just come out and say, like, actually, we are going to hurt Donald Trump if we stay in the race, and therefore we think we might need to get out is such a curveball from the beginning when Democrats were

Yeah. That Kennedy was going to be drawing. Right. I mean, honestly, Republicans should be the one. Didn't he? Didn't he run initially briefly in the Democratic primary? Yeah. Basically, they forced him out because he wasn't allowed basically to do anything. Biden wouldn't debate him. They effectively pretended he didn't exist, even though he was polling at like 20 percent. Yeah. I thought it was smart that he did the third party. One of the things that I mean, this is the thing.

As a person who actually does care about the third-party ecosystem, it is disappointing because she's correct both about the amount of money, public funds and the ballot access and being able to build something around some sort of unity ticket. That's how all third parties start. They start out very, very small.

I mean, look at Europe. You can go from literally 5% of the vote. Look at what the Front National or whatever in France. You can literally go from like 5% to like the number two party in the entire country. Parliamentary system. Sure, but here, I mean, it's all about ballot access. It's about names. And this is something that, what was the ticket that Trump ran on in 2000? What was that?

call. Oh, the Reform Party. Yeah, this was the original theory of the Reform Party, which was birthed from the Ross Perot victory for third-party candidates. And so that was a brief moment in time

Where it seemed likely. So anyway, I think it's very disappointing for like the overall third party system. But generally, I think it's a bad look for RFK, honestly. And if he now if he does do it, it does look like you were kind of in this all along to just hurt Joe Biden. And I mean, and that's that's not what you set out to do. What people in RFK Jr.'s social circle said at the time was that he because of who he and Cheryl Hines are friends with. Mm hmm.

and the dinner parties that they go to, et cetera, they don't want to do anything to help elect Trump. And Sheryl Hines definitely doesn't want to. They don't want to be the Ralph Nader of 2000, like socially for a while. Or the Jill Stein. I mean, he was killed, if you'll remember that. And so to go from there to now the vice presidential nominee is worried about

hurting Trump is just a wild swing. Certainly. My prediction is he just drops out. It could be. I mean, I think that's really the... Because he's plummeting. Right. Five is not a floor for him. Those arrows are pointed downward. Right. And to navigate all of those different sort of scenarios as we were just discussing, the best thing to do is just quietly drop out and say, I was crazy.

crushed by the DNC machine. I was crushed by the anti-third party machine of American politics. I was crushed by the establishment and maybe tried to rebuild something else afterwards. But Sager's point is so important that this candidacy was built on double haters. It was built on people being upset with both Trump and Biden. It's viewers of shows like this who just can't stand

what both parties are doing. And you cannot capitulate to that at all. Okay. Let's take some questions from the chat. We're going to take, what, five questions, Griffin? Yeah, three to four. We'll take three to four questions, and then we actually have a guest standing by. So while we stand by and get that guest ready, Crystal actually taped a monologue.

and a reaction to last night that we will play for all of you. So let's go ahead and begin with questions from locals. A reminder, everybody, these are from our premium subscribers. You can become a premium subscriber and try out one month free trial, dncfree at breakingpoints.com. First, who is that dude on the couch? That's producer Griffin. Yeah. How do people not know producer Griffin? Yeah, who is this, by the way? This is the man with the mustache. This is the man who...

Literally. I'm from Barstool. Yeah, he's actually, yeah. Griffin's with his mustache in the thrift store, grandma sweater. I bring the ghosts. He lives in this studio. He's our ghost supplier, actually. He's the distributor. Emily, did you bring Bud Light Lime to Chicago? No, but the- You drink Bud Light Lime? I think I said something recently about how Bud Light Lime is not a bad, it's not a bad beverage. That's a whole lot of them. Yeah.

It's not bad, but I did buy some Corona for us. That's true. Sager didn't touch it. Yeah, I did. Do you think RFK Jr. is just fielding cabinet position proposals? This is from Sebus101. What do you think? Allegedly, the reporting was that he went to Trump and was like, give me HHS and I'll drop out and endorse you. And they said no.

Well, if you remember at the RNC, we were supposed to interview. That's true, you were. I was supposed to interview Bobby. I don't really remember all this because I was in the midst of wedding planning, but go ahead. Yeah, that's right. But the video leaked of that conversation. And so his day got completely shot. And I think that's where we started to really see the momentum halting is that it looked like he was cozying up to Trump. But I think maybe it was

More than anything, I'm curious what you guys think, but more than anything, I think it's just sort of a way to negotiate a good exit at this point. I don't think he had that in mind, but I think it's what maybe it's becoming. What do you think, Ryan? You think he's going for a cabinet position under Trump? Yeah. And more importantly, why won't Trump give it to him?

So the reporting was that the Trump campaign felt that it was too aggressive and explicit of a quid pro quo. He denied that when we reported this originally at CounterPoints. I did not mention that RFK Jr. denied it. My apologies for not mentioning that. Accountability here. He's not even confirmed by the Senate. Yeah, good point. Well, there are czar positions that he could have. He could take like an executive office job. He could be the vitamin czar. The vitamin czar.

I mean, hey, we worse. This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Here is a question. This is interesting. I've been tracking this a little bit. Guac ain't free. Do you plan to discuss the expected massive reduction in new jobs announced tomorrow? Could this be politically impactful? So for people who don't have been tracking this, it's actually a pretty fascinating story. I think the Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to revise down some millions of jobs allegedly created by the Biden administration, Ryan.

And the way it works, just so everybody knows, a BLS is not like a – it's not actually all that accurate. They use statistical sampling, and they use other basically efforts to estimate how many jobs. And they do frequently have to revise things down. But, yeah, Ryan, fill us in. Tell us what you think about that. What it means is that we'll probably get a half point cut, rate cut. So the question for the Fed in weeks now –

it seems to have gone, according to Wall Street and other people watching it, not from the question of will they cut rates, but will they cut rates by the traditional quarter point or will they cut rates by a half a point? The reason that they have not cut rates, despite the Biden administration and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie and everybody hounding them to do it, saying that they're going to throw people out of work, is they were looking at these BLS numbers and saying, well, look, these people are telling us that

we're actually seeing this robust job growth. So therefore, we need to keep the screws on the American worker. We need to tighten the screws and we're going to keep interest rates high. So those numbers proving to be incorrect mean that their policy was wrong. Elizabeth Warren was right. They should have cut rates sooner. Jerome Powell was wrong, which means it's very likely you get a half point cut, which means Wall Street will be happy. You'll get a little stock market jump.

And people will see mortgage interest rates come down, which then gooses home sales and other lending and exportation.

and potentially economic growth. And you will see Trump absolutely livid. How dare Jerome Powell? I'm going to put him up against a wall if I win. Ryan, a lot of people in the chat want this question from you. This is Kiem McQuaid. Question for Ryan. What do you make of AOC's positioning in the party and her future aspirations and potential? A lot of people wanted to hear it. Yes. I mean, she has...

She has gone from somebody who might have gotten boot and hissed at a convention if it were held in like, let's say you had a convention in early 2019 when she's like battling Pelosi and the squad is like,

you know, having weekly censure resolutions for anti-Semitic activity to now getting a rousing ovation from the Democratic Party faithful to the extent that she offers any criticisms of the party

she couches them in this very politic way of like the great example of Kamala Harris is working tirelessly towards a ceasefire because in Gaza, so she becomes on the one hand, the only elected official to mention Gaza, but does it in a way, knowing that it will ruffle, like, believe it or not, that will ruffle a couple of feathers, just the mentioning of Gaza, but does it in a way that is supportive of,

And anytime she would get asked about Biden or Gaza, like she would come back with kind of supportive things and talking about how bad the second Trump term would be. She stuck hard with, you know, maybe hardest with Biden out of anybody in the Democratic Party. And so she has positioned herself in a way such that party activists who very much distrusted her before are now

Huge fans now. And you could imagine that that has positioned her in future years for constant talk of, is she going to run for president? I think she's been a good Democrat. I don't just say that in terms of disparaging way. I'm like, she's a party woman. There's pluses and minuses to that, I think, as everybody knows, for people who supported her. It's not what people thought. It's not what people wanted. Not what people thought.

I guess it's what some people wanted, not necessarily some of her original supporters. Last question. Bernie was always a very loyal Democrat too for his entire career. An independent. But he was called an independent even though he caucused with Democrats and he called himself a democratic socialist. And he was not as much of a celebrity when he came in. So he was not on cable. People didn't actually practically ever heard of him other than as a quirk.

So she's had a different path to navigate because she, he didn't have to care what national Democrats cared about. Fair, fair point. Last question is for me. Username triple three. How does Sagar find a balanced reporting on JD Vance when he's friends? Is it difficult to hear all of the brilliant jokes? Uh,

Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, I try to disclose it, right, Emily? I think I do a good job. I'm usually like, hey, just so everybody knows, I've known the guy for a long time. But yeah, I won't lie. Part of the reason I disclose it is that if I seem salty or something, it's probably because I am. It's weird.

as some might say, to see somebody who you know on a personal level kind of become this national figure and people develop not only even a parasocial relationship, but people don't know anything about them. So you can't help but see the person that you kind of know at a dinner, right? Everybody at home, try and empathize with this. Somebody that you know, like your buddy or something like that. We're not all that

close, but somebody who you know. And then they become like a national flashpoint. It's an odd sensation. So I do always try and couch my criticism or even my analysis in all that, because I think it would be genuinely impossible for me to be objective on the subject. I want the Republican Party to go in a certain direction. I think he probably best exemplifies that.

I was very enthusiastic about him becoming the vice president. I won't lie. Seeing some of the attacks and the negativity and all that, it does make me question sometimes the political viability of this entire project. I'm like, can this shit even work? What does America even want? I honestly don't know. So what's it been like for you? Because you don't know, I guess, as much.

- Not as well as you do. - Tangentially, you do. So what do you think from an outsider perspective, like people, me, my social group and all of that, how we've been handling this? 'Cause I think they're, and look, speaking for them, there's been a lot of cope. Let's be honest, there's been cope. - It was really funny at your wedding, by the way, because it had just happened. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. That had just happened. - It had just happened.

You know, it's interesting because also a lot of these conversations have been hashed out in public and podcasting spaces, and that's been one of the things that has hurt J.D. I did a whole segment a couple weeks ago on this Project 2025 hit against J.D. on a video that I had filmed a couple of years back. Yeah, that's right. I thought you did that. And it's just like he was saying exactly what he believed because he was thinking about running for Senate at the time. But it's just one of those things where it's –

She's one of those things where I think one of the cool things about what we do, all of us, is that you don't get from legacy media people being honest about this stuff, right? They just have those relationships and don't ever talk about them publicly. Yeah, they have these behind the scenes and they won't even tell you. Yeah, it's like- So I'm telling you. Who was with the Supreme Court and Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Nina Totenberg. Nina Totenberg. Best friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg for years. So I think this situation is actually hardest for me. Yeah.

Because when you say, for instance, that you think about how you couch your language, I want to tell a couch joke. But I can't because I'm like, oh, that's Sagar's buddy. I can't do that. It falls to the wall. I have a deep respect for the left's ability to meme. And I did not think that I would ever say those words. I actually think the left was very bad at memes for a long time. You sound like Benny. But they're doing a good job these days.

And yeah, shout out to Benny Johnson. So one of my friends has a theory on this and I'll flow is quite controversial theory. His theory is that because a lot of the online right wingers are upset with Trump over Israel and all this other stuff that they're not bringing their best. They're not like bringing their best memers against Kamala. And when he said that, I was like, no, there's something to it.

I think he's right memes before swine. I mean think about people people are out there sitting making memes shit posting all day You're fucking loser. All right, like let's be honest. You're talking about like Groypers? Withholding? It's not just Groypers. It's like- If you have a million memers, you're gonna get a good meme out of that. I'm just saying- Look what Trump has to deal with like AI Taylor Swift stuff. He's got no good content. Young online guys are not memeing the way they were in 2016. Oh no, well because of R the Donald. Yeah, there was R the Donald.

Those were heady days. There was some serious, like the meme disparity at that time was immense. So then watching the couch thing like explode, I was just like, wow, I mean, what can I say? You know, like respect. Like it's not even real, but let's be real. Like this genuinely entered the zeitgeist to the point where fucking vice presidential candidate Tim Walz like makes a joke about it on the stage. And everyone in the audience knew what he was talking about. Like you can't, you can't just,

at least admire that they were able to culturally make that into a thing. And I do think for all the talk of mainstream media and, you know, the right has a lot of dissident power on the internet and all of that. My main lesson is like when the left wants to kill somebody, like they just can, and they can do it overnight, you know, if they want to.

Because the media gives them a huge shot in the arm. There's no question about it. And then on top of it, the weird attack. You have to, have to, have to give a shout out to Dems for making that stick. It's so smart. It's so smart. It's not that they don't have any of their own weirdness going on because I actually think they have plenty of it. But...

But if you can make that stick, politically, strategically, respect, because it can take people down pretty easily. - Yeah, and it's like, no, you're weird, 'cause you want trans, whatever. - Tampon Tim. - Yeah, but then they'll be like, you're the weirdo, you're the one bringing trans in this convo. And you're like, well shit, yeah, he's kinda one. - That's true. - Why are you talking about tampons? - Yeah, why are you talking about that? You're the weirdo. - You just brought up-- - But you did it. - But you just brought up tampons. - Right, but my point is that we're, I even openly admit this, it's weird

to bring it up because who's even obsessing about this online? But it's like, but you're the ones who made it into the thing. It's the defensive nature of the defensive nature of much of right wing politics by definition. Uh,

is can be it can be a strength whenever the left is overwhelmingly pushing a message like BLM and it's very unpopular. But in this case, I think it's very difficult for the right because what they've decided to do is to meme past Trump and just say he's irrelevant. What are you talking about? Oh, there he goes again. I roll. And I think the eye roll may be the most brilliant thing that they have done yet.

Well, because they're not reacting to him. They're just pretending he doesn't exist. I do. Which denies him a lot of power. I have a very quick point on that, which is Wall's in the weird attack that he is leveled every time he talks about books in schools. And it's a reminder that, you know, according to PEN America, the number one most targeted book ever

from these so-called book bans is genderqueer. And conservatives will take a page out of the book of genderqueer literally with these illustrations of oral sex that are intended for teenagers. - Yeah, they're sick. - They are. And then put them up on the screen and it's like, okay, well bro, that's kind of weird too. Like why are you tweeting this?

Yeah, no, it's fair. You have to have the conversation. You have to do it. Yes. Yeah, go ahead. One other point, because Sagar and I were talking about this this morning. In 2016, HuffPost put Trump in the entertainment section. I thought it was a poorly executed move, but the insight behind it was interesting, which was Democrats are approaching Trump wrong. Like they're they're saying they're they're putting the.

six-year-olds on TV saying like, this is so horrible. Like, look at these things he's saying. He's so mean. He's like, he's scary. He's going to be a dictator. And our argument was, no, the guy's a clown and you need to laugh at him and he cannot handle being laughed at. And I do think that that insight is being proven correct by the way that the eye roll and the weird attack is actually landing on him. So I think, I think

I think we were right on the substance. We just didn't pull it off. There you go. Okay, that's been a lot of questions. We will take more throughout the stream. Don't worry. So why don't we go ahead? And as a reminder, you can sign up at BreakingPoints.com. Promo code DNC free if you'd like to ask questions. We're reading all the chats, but we're only answering questions from the locals' exclusive chat. Thank you all for supporting Breaking Points. I can't tell you how nice it is that I didn't have to do that.

that. That grabbing got to do it. I was like, oh, I got to sit back. I got to take a sip of this ghost energy drink and I was like, what a beautiful moment.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

All right, let's go ahead and cue this up. Crystal very kindly filmed a reaction for all of us, so let's go ahead and cue it up, and we're gonna take a listen. We haven't heard from her yet. She will be here tomorrow, don't worry. - We've been texting. - Yeah, of course, we've been texting. She's been very active on the group chat, don't worry, she's not gone. Let's go ahead and listen to Crystal, and while that happens, if people hear anything in the background, we are gonna be setting up a guest live here in the studio. Mac, take it away.

Hey guys, Crystal here. I've been holding down the fort back home, but excited to hop on a plane to get to Chicago tomorrow and join the rest of the crew. I've been doing a fantastic job reporting live from the scene there at the DNC. Wanted to take just a couple of minutes, though, to give you my reactions, kind of top line thoughts about

about the DNC from day one. I think the intention was to make this a day where they could kind of bury the past as embodied by Hillary Clinton and, of course, most specifically Joe Biden. There was some awkwardness involved here because the speeches and everything was very, I guess, poorly organized, went way too long. The DNC planners are saying, oh, it was because the applause was so raucous that we didn't even get to Joe Biden until 1130 at night.

I'm not sure that it's really a bad thing from their perspective because mostly Joe Biden just served as a reminder of –

why people were so relieved that he's off the ticket. But I'll get to all of that. I thought I'd just go through kind of the good, the bad, and the extremely cringe Hillary fight song, looking at you with that one, and talk through what I thought were some of the best moments. And there were some good moments and some of the, what I would consider just absolutely morally unconscionable moments. Wouldn't surprise you what topic that is on, but I'll start with the positive. Most of the night up until really you got to Hillary Clinton,

I thought Democrats displayed a much sharper and more effective way of attacking Donald Trump and of contrasting their own agenda with the Republican Trumpian agenda. Frankly, it was a lot of class war. They really highlighted a lot of different union leaders.

The apex of that was Sean Payne, who's the new president of the UAW, who gave a barn burner of the speech. He's a fantastically talented speaker and leader. He's the one who really helped to secure incredible gains for auto workers in America using his strike strategy. And he was wearing a shirt that said Donald Trump is a scab. And he led the whole room in a chant of

of Trump is a scab, which having been at the DNC back in 2016 when it was Hillary Clinton, I cannot tell you how different a politics that is versus what we were doing back then, the identity politics, the trailblazing, the moralizing, et cetera. So huge distinction from the Hillary Clinton approach to Donald Trump, which was very much demonstrated later when Hillary Clinton herself spoke.

And also a big distinction from how Joe Biden approached the, you know, going after Donald Trump, where it was much more sanctimonious, but also much more sort of gloves on, like unwilling to really throw a hard punch. This was much more unvarnished, gloves off, partisan in sort of a positive connotation of the word. You know, it was not afraid of a divisive politics issue.

And I'm not afraid of a divisive politics when it comes to divisions along the correct lines. And for part of the night, they did that, you know, very class focused with Sean Fain, with a bunch of labor leaders. AOC speech hit some of those themes as well. Others did, too. You also brought in some of sort of the best of the resistance lib attacks on Trump.

I may be cringed a lot of people, but I do think like the comp versus the criminal stuff is very effective. They had a video that was very effective in that regard. I thought Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who is very talented and very charismatic individual. I thought she did a good job of sort of landing those blows as well. And you had some interesting to me, you know, as like a wonk and someone who really cares about this policy stuff.

You had a really interesting moment from, of all people, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who you may not have any clue who she is, but she is the former governor of Rhode Island and a former venture capitalist. And is from the decidedly planted in the corporate wing of the Democratic Party in the pro Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.

And she came out and was singing from the hymnal of Lena Kahn and talking up the anti-monopoly efforts of this administration. And why is that exciting to me? Because that's an indication that that battle is basically won. Like all the, you know, Reid Hoffman and everybody else, all these other billionaires who are coming out trying to pressure Kamala Harris to fire Lena Kahn to stop the direction the Biden administration was going on in one of the better things that they've done in terms of antitrust and taking on corporate power, etc.,

Not going to happen. That fight, if you have Gina Raimondo talking about antitrust actions at her DNC speech, that battle is over. That fight is won. So that was very heartening to see. On a separate note, there were a number of women who came forward and gave really personal testimony about the way the ending of Roe versus Wade had been personally devastating to them.

including a young woman from Kentucky who had been raped by her stepfather. And she had been the subject of an incredibly powerful ad on behalf of Andy Beshear. And he was running for governor re-election in Kentucky. And he ends up winning that race even in Kentucky by five percentage points. Andy Beshear also spoke publicly.

I thought that was really powerful. I thought hearing from them directly, these real people, real families, real stories, I thought that landed. Obviously, that's an issue that is going to be really important to Democrats. And Andy Beshear went on to kind of emphasize some of those points.

So in any case, when they were doing, you know, the more class war framing Trump as an out of touch fraudster billionaire criminal, I thought that all from just a partisan political perspective, I think it worked well. I also think it's more in line with the, you know, the type of politics I would like to see that is focused on economics and working class economics, working class power, but

The heavy intentional presence of labor and the excitement around that, again, huge contrast with back in 2016 when those sorts of issues were really being sidelined. So that's the good. The cringe was very obviously Hillary Clinton, Kathy Hochul, also governor of New York. Terrible speech, terrible speaker. It's incredible that such an untalented person is governor of such an important state. Put that one to the side.

Hillary Clinton's speech was everything you would expect. It was highly narcissistic. She did get a raucous applause in the room. They love her. I don't know why. This is the person who is most approximately responsible for putting Donald Trump in the White House, but...

She has successfully rehabbed herself with the Democratic Party faithful, not so much with the rest of the country. But, you know, she went through it was very 2016. It was very like, you know, here's the glass ceiling that I wasn't quite able to shatter. And here's Kamala Harris, historic identity, etc., etc.,

And I think in general, the Harris-Walls campaign has been very intelligent and very effective in letting her trailblazing status speak for itself. Like we can all see that you're a biracial woman. It's not a surprise. So then when she finishes her speech and they play her off to fight song, which just hearing it at all is extremely triggering for me after that whole experience.

Um, it, you know, really encapsulated just how failed her politics are, how cringy her politics are. There was a moment there too, that caught people's attention where the crowd started cheering, lock him up while Hillary speaking. That was probably the highlight of Hillary's speech, to be honest with you. She looked very pleased during all of that, but you know, fair enough, fair enough. Since she had that chanted to her the whole time she was running for office. Um, interestingly, Kamala in particular, I think Tim Walls too, um,

When people have been chanting that at their rallies, they've tried to tamp it down and say, no, no, no, we're going to beat him electorally. Let the judicial system handle handle that. Hillary had no such qualms about letting the cheers ring out. And again, I suppose that's her prerogative, given what they put through her through on the bad. It's very difficult to talk about this convention, this party, this ticket, this current president.

without the giant elephant in the room, which is that all of these people are enabling horrifying atrocities that are occurring on a daily basis in the Gaza Strip against the Palestinian people. They continue to ship weapons. You know, as we speak, there are these supposed ceasefire talks that once again, the administration is completely running cover for Bibi Netanyahu saying, oh, well, Israel accepted the ceasefire terms and now it's just Hamas that's standing in the way.

In reality, what Netanyahu put forward and accepted isn't even a ceasefire. The biggest qualm that Hamas has with this proposal is that it's literally not a ceasefire. And of course, they've completely moved the goalposts.

Hamas did agree to the deal that Israel had supposedly also accepted back several months ago. And they just keep adding conditions until they get to the point where, of course, Hamas is not going to accept a ceasefire that is not actually a ceasefire.

So, you know, that's the context that hangs over all of this. You had quite large protests yesterday. I don't think they were as large as the organizers hope they would be, but they were still significant. You actually had protesters who jumped up during Biden's speech. And kudos to Ryan. He was all over this. He's one of the only reporters, you know, got a heads up about this, was able to, you know, able to record this as it all went down. And the response from the crowd was crazy.

It was horrifying, honestly. One person was hitting one of the Muslim women who was holding up this banner with a sign that said, I love Joe, of all things, hitting her in the head with that. And obviously, you know, crowd was doing their best to cover up the sign with their I love Joe signs that they were holding. So there was that. One of the most outrageous moments to me was

When AOC is speaking, and this is someone who has, under pressure, called Israel's assault on Gaza, accurately, a genocide. And then she gets up there, you know, in front of an adoring crowd, shows her complete transition into being a mainstream Democratic Party figure. She gets up in front of this adoring crowd and swears that Kamala Harris is working night and day for a ceasefire. There's no evidence. That's just not true.

And so, you know, it's one thing to say, as I think many people feel, OK, well, Trump would be worse. And there are things about the Biden-Harris administration that I appreciate on the domestic front. There are these concerns about democracy, abortion, whatever it is. And when I weigh it all in the balance, even though I am utterly horrified by the atrocities that are happening here, we have to still get behind this ticket. It's another thing to just lie, given the current context.

And if Kamala Harris differs from Joe Biden on Gaza, she needs to come out and say it. So far, all we've gotten is, you know, a little bit of tone shift. We've gotten a positive indicator in picking Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro, whether it was for that reason or not. No, we don't really know. We've gotten more engagement.

And I'm someone who is actually hopeful that because she's not an ideologue in the way that Joe Biden would be, I'm not expecting her to turn into Rashida Tlaib. But I do think that she would be more subject to pressure. And I think any like normal Democrat who is just weighing the political benefit and political cost of this strategy, putting the morality aside, would have abandoned or never taken the Bibi Netanyahu bear hug strategy in the first place.

But I have come to think that this idea that because she's in the administration, she can't really break with Biden. I think this is nonsense. I think this is an excuse. I think it's cope. So if if there is a change in strategy approach, if there is distance, she needs to come out and say that. So anyway, that was from AOC.

And as someone who, you know, she's supposed to be this beacon of progressivism and have this base among progressives, you're just just covering up for them. I when you've you have accurately called it a genocide. I don't I think that's inexcusable. The same time, Joe Biden, you know, is interesting speaking of tone shift in his speech. He kind of said some of the right things in terms of, you know, we need a ceasefire. We want peace.

putting an emphasis that he normally doesn't on Gaza's civilian life. But again, it rings so hollow when you consider you just shipped more weapons and you are right now running cover for these atrocities that continue to kill, sicken, wound, displace civilians.

Palestinians. I can play for you what he said, and then I'll react a little more on the other side. Let me go ahead and pull this up. I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago, I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we've done since October 7th. We're working around the clock, my Secretary of State, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages of their families and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now. Then the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people

And finally, finally, finally deliver a cease firing in this war. So, you know, he's saying some of the right things given that and I'm sure, you know, they're looking at the polling and this is very clearly where the Democratic Party basis has been for a long time. Majority of Biden voters view this as a genocide, but the actions still fall. I mean, not even fall short. They're the polar opposite.

of what you would want to see. Why at this late date, are you still running cover for Bibi Netanyahu and buying into his line that, oh, he's offered some great deal for a ceasefire when it's literally not even a ceasefire? And more to the point, it's this continued feigned impotence like, gosh, gee, golly, I really wish I could get that ceasefire. You are the American president.

This country and this evil leader of that country is wholly dependent on you and your actions and your arms. And you won't, you may like hope and wish that he would just come to his own decision to, you know, institute a real and lasting ceasefire and a two-state solution. That is not reality. If you want a ceasefire, go get a ceasefire. So, you know, those were,

To me, the most horrible moments. I mean, I think that sort of goes without saying in terms of the context of the gravity of the situation. And it really is headspinning trying to cover this in a way that makes sense because you're like, you know, other than the atrocities that they're enabling, committing great job at the DNC. Like, how do you.

How do you talk about this in a way that is moral, ethical, pragmatic, reasonable, et cetera? But, you know, I guess the last thing I'll say just to tie up the sort of medical medical political point here, Biden, as I mentioned, pushed way late in the night, doesn't start till 1130, et cetera. And I guarantee you there was not one person in that room or in the country at large who listened to Joe Biden's speech, which was.

for Joe Biden, fine. Had some iffy moments, had a little bit of verbal slurring or whatever, but judging by the Joe Biden bar below the floor standard, fine. There was not one person who would look at that and go, gosh, I wish that guy was our nominee. I wish we still were running with that guy.

It was as Hillary's speech was a reminder of why everyone should be glad in the Democratic Party that they've moved past Hillary Clinton politics. Certainly, Joe Biden's speech was a very clear reminder of why they are so relieved and why they are so enthusiastic about

to have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz instead of Joe Biden leading the ticket. So in any case, team there in Chicago is doing a fantastic job breaking everything down, reporting from the scene, grabbing interesting video from the people that are there. And as I said, I'm really excited to be there with them tomorrow so I can join the whole crew and continue to react to whatever the Democrats have in store for us. See you guys soon.

Excellent. Thank you, Crystal. That was a very good video and we're very excited to be joined by her tomorrow. She'll be here live in the studio, but we've got a great guest who materialized out of nowhere. Ryan, why don't you go ahead and start us off? She was behind here and just popped up. Ryan is the one who made this happen. So Lexi Zedan is one of the founders, is that right? Or a leader of the uncommitted movement. Yeah, one of the founders from Michigan and now the co-chair of the national movement.

Okay, so you're in town wheeling and dealing, trying to pressure Democrats to get toward a ceasefire or beyond and an arms embargo. Interestingly, there may be some confusion out there. You guys are not actually organizing any of the street demonstrations. No, we're not. First of all, why not? Because I think people watching are like,

seeing the street protests and being like, oh, cool, those are the uncommitted folks that have brought people in the street. But it's not exactly right. So what's the relationship there? Yeah, I mean, I think, listen, pressure happens in all ways. And I think pressure is needed in all ways, whether it's in the streets or inside the DNC.

And for Uncommitted particularly, we actually were really strategic to create a mass rally across the country ahead of the Democratic National Convention where we launched a campaign called the Not Another Bomb Campaign where folks all over the country and over 35 states and every single major battleground state inclusive of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia that went to the streets protested.

between August 16th and August 18th and ultimately demanded not another bomb, that no more of our tax dollars fund any more of the bombs that are dropping on Palestinians, that we want the genocide to end. And we did that strategically ahead of the convention to then dovetail where our uncommitted delegates are going into the convention on the convention floor with the same exact messaging of no more money for genocide, that we don't want to fund any more bombs. And what we did, what we were able to do with these efforts is actually recruit ceasefire delegates from

So folks that are actually here to endorse VP Harris and support the Harris-Waltz campaign, but also stand in solidarity with our movement that are saying we don't want any more of our tax dollars funding genocide. We actually have over 210 ceasefire delegates that have signed on to our ceasefire delegate petition letter demanding VP Harris pledge to enact an arms embargo. And so it was really just a strategic move we made.

to take the energy and the capacity and the resources we had to organize folks ahead of the DNC, but also to organize delegates inside the DNC. Yeah. Can you explain that to us? So Ryan and I were in the convention hall. We saw a lot of delegates walking around with t-shirts that said ceasefire delegate. What does that mean? So are we advancing or trying to advance a DNC legislation or sorry, a DNC platform, try to force a vote of some kind, or is it just about, I guess, sending a message while in the convention?

Yeah, great question. We definitely have DNC demands. Uncommitted had DNC demands going into the convention of asking for one, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who's a pediatric intensive care doctor that has been serving in Gaza for years, actually performing surgery on men, women, and children who have suffered from U.S.-funded Israeli bombs. And we're asking for her to be able to speak from the convention floor. We have also asked for a Palestinian-American leader to speak from

from the convention floor as well to be able to raise the voice around Palestinian human rights and how the Democratic Party orients towards discussing Palestinian self-determination. We additionally asked for some sort of panel as it relates to discussing Palestinian human rights within the Democratic Party, which we were able to land. It was a historic thing that was given and happened actually yesterday. And it was one of the, they had quoted it as one of the most highly attended events on the convention or within the convention yesterday as well.

And so those were really our demands coming into the convention. And then in addition to those demands, just really uplifting this idea that we want, you know, VP Harris to listen to her base of anti-war voters, inclusive of people that are there to endorse her, because we are looking at an election in November where we have a very

racist, fascist leader at the, at the, uh, on the Republican side that nobody wants to see elected. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to get VP Harris, the Harris-Waltz campaign to see and understand that majority of Democrats want a ceasefire. They want an arms embargo. And we're hoping that the public pressure that we're able to, uh,

portray both outside the convention with our National Weekend of Action and inside the convention and get started to move on this policy change. So, yeah, let's stick with that a little bit, though, because if you're there, if you're already there to endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, then why should they listen to you?

Not new per se, but, you know, the uncommitted movement now that you're in the convention hall and especially if you're not endorsing some of the protest action and other things. So, like, why should those who are in power, as we saw with the DNC platform, why should they take this seriously? There's not a real threat to withhold a vote. I mean, it's all about building movement power. When you look at history, movement work is exactly what leads to policy change.

And there's a reality with the uncommitted movement that it's not a monolithic movement. There are people who are fully supportive and believe in the Democratic Party and want to see VP Harris win. There are folks that have given up on the Democratic Party, but they want to see a ceasefire and an arms embargo. And there's folks that and majority of folks who are waiting for VP Harris.

to make a move to be able to go to the ballot box in November and vote for her. And so folks that are ceasefire delegates that are there to endorse VP Harris, they understand how important this movement is come November. They understand the 730,000 voters that voted uncommitted. You know, every vote matters towards this election. And they're there because, yes, they support VP Harris, but they also support Palestinian solidarity or Palestinian human rights and self-determination. And they want to be able to work in unison with uncommitted and our uncommitted delegates to really lift up that,

that ask. Well, and I have a question on that point because, you know, I'm used to talking to yesterday in Union Park when you're talking to sort of the activist class of genuine leftists, you know, there were code pink folks there. I was asking them, you know, is there anything are you uncommitted? Are you voting for Kamala Harris? And most people said they were uncommitted, but they would genuinely vote for Kamala Harris if there's a ceasefire negotiation that is acceptable to them. And I'm just not used to hearing that. And I think

you know, from cold pink types, genuine leftist activist types, usually be like, hell no, I'm not voting for the Democrat. This is a different crowd. There are people from a lot of different walks of life that are getting involved in this movement. I think that speaks to, I'm curious your sense, you're from Michigan. In some of these states,

there is a group of swing voters that might be small compared to, you know, the suburban women demographic that everybody talks about. But in a very close race, when you're looking at Jill Stein margins potentially making a difference, this is huge. Do Democrats sense that? Yeah. I mean, when you're looking at the polls, obviously, when Biden was the Democratic nominee, polls between Trump and Biden were pretty

pretty large gap. And when you're looking at the polls now, it's a very narrow gap between VP Harris and Donald Trump. When you look at history in Michigan, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 10,000 votes. And it's a very minor margin of victory. And so when we say that every vote matters, we mean every vote matters. And I think we're in a very high stakes, tough political landscape.

You have the Democratic Party right now who's literally directly funding genocide, who there are U.S.-funded bombs that are dropping. You know, we listened to doctors speak this morning about what they've witnessed in Gaza. And a doctor who literally spoke about a moment where a woman was in the hospital and said that when she looked at the missile that was dropped on their, I think it was a school or wherever they were, it was a U.S.-made missile that dropped on Palestinians.

And so you're hearing and seeing all these things that our Democratic Party is doing. But on the flip side, you have a very racist, fascist leader and people don't know what to do. And so you're hearing a lot of the conversations of we want to go to the polls and vote for VP Harris. But it's really it's a moral it's a moral conscious thing. People can't find themselves voting.

or they can't have the ability to go to the polls and vote for people who are aiding and abetting in genocide. And they also don't want to vote for Donald Trump. And so I think this movement has become such a diverse, multi-generational, multi-faith, multi-ethnic movement because people know how important it is to value human life. And they believe in the values of the Democratic Party. But the reality is our Democratic Party is not making decisions aligned with those values. And the people are trying to do that. And so you mentioned the list of demands that you guys have. And

to Emily's point, there are some who are definitely open if she moves, that they're willing to vote for Harris. But there's also been this interesting overlap that I've almost never seen before among kind of

far left folks who are at some of these protests and kind of democratic operatives who are both saying the same things. The far left activists are saying the uncommitted delegates, they're not going to get anything and they're going to capitulate at the end and support Vice President Harris. And the high level operatives are saying, we're not going to give the uncommitted delegates anything and they're going to come home eventually anyway. So are they right? Like, is that a fair criticism? And to that list of demands,

are you making progress on any of them? Like, do you think she'll be able to speak? Is there anything else that you think you'll be able to extract or is it more an atmospheric changing of the tone? Yeah. I mean, listen, I think, you know, part of this work that you're doing is you're working under policies that you're like, there are policies, you know, they aren't accepting, right? Arms embargo. We know VPRs doesn't support that right now. All the things that we're fighting against, we know that the democratic party doesn't necessarily align with those things. And that's the purpose of movement work. You know,

You know, folks say that we might not get anything. But when you look at the history of what's happened over the last six, seven months, people might call it breadcrumbs. People might call it progress towards the full loaf of bread. And I think what we've seen is, one, we've been able to influence the conversation around a ceasefire originally where VP Harris and President Biden were never discussing even discussing a ceasefire.

And then two, in this most recent conversation after launching the Not Another Bomb campaign, two of our leaders, Leland Abbas, meeting quickly with VP Harrison demanding or asking for a meeting to discuss an arms embargo, where now you're seeing the headlines talk about an arms embargo, to this third option or idea of having this historic panel of being able to discuss and talk about Palestinian human rights.

I think, you know, all these things are progress. And we've made ourselves very clear that we are ready to mobilize and endorse VP Harris as long as there's a conversation in relation as it relates to an arms embargo, whether it's discussing how we are currently violating. You know, we're not following international law when it comes to war crimes and having the discussion of being able to behold and uphold Leahy law to the actual conversation about an arms embargo. And I think that's the that's the clear demand on the table today.

And that's what we have to work towards. And that was, that's exactly what we have to focus on. So if there is, so you're saying just a conversation, but what if there is no arms embargo? I mean, if you see, uh, if you get the meeting, politicians are great at this. All of us cover politics for a living. They're very good at taking meetings and, uh,

having rhetoric. But one of the things I've heard most from the uncommitted movement, from Crystal, from many other folks, is that we need to actually see action. So, I mean, what is the movement and you personally going to do if you do feel like you're just being bought off with rhetoric? Like at the end of the day, it comes down to a vote and to action. What are you going to do? What is the movement going to do? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I've had to like

drive home to folks is in movement work, you pivot with reactions. And right now, the only thing we know and that we can be accountable to and that I could say with my entire chest is that we are working

tirelessly around the clock to be able to engage with VP Harris and her team because we know what's at stake come November. But we also know more importantly what's at stake right now, which is saving Palestinian lives. And so for us, it's literally taking all of our energy to try to engage as much as possible across the landscape with our base of anti-war voters, but also navigate the political part of this, which

It's a very tough thing to navigate when you talk about the rhetoric and you want to see the change. What we've said and what we'll continue to say is we can't go back to our base and say, oh, we think VP Harris will be better on Gaza policy. What we're saying is you need to turn the page on Gaza policy to save lives and to save our party. Got it. Last question, Ryan. What kind of pressure have you had?

have you or any other uncommitted leaders gotten from the Democratic Party? Because some of the uncommitted folks are party operatives. Their work is working within the party. Has there been any direct pressure put on leaders to say, get in line or else? I mean, what I will say is, in that quick moment of interaction between VP Harris and even two of our leaders,

from their their mouth directly that she was very genuine her reaction was very genuine genuine very empathetic you heard president biden on stage last night talk about why the protesters are doing what they're doing they're hurt that's them publicly but then but then there are hatchets saying that they're hatchet men are there any hatchet men who i mean nobody's any bag man work nobody has come to us and pressured us to do anything different than what we've been doing they understand the trauma the grief the things that we're all carrying and they're understanding that we're a movement that's trying to make moves and make demands of the party to save it

And it's really been a lot of conversation of back and forth of this is what we're coming for. This is what we want. This is what we need. And really engaging in thoughtful conversation on both sides to be able to get what we can, again, ahead of November, but furthermore,

The reality for us is we don't want to wait till January to save Palestinian lives. So we're trying to do what we can to influence the Biden-Harris administration, but also understand the electoral imperative we have of raising this notion that VP Harris, you have to turn the page on the Gaza policy to be able to win voters over in November. And last thing, you guys were not involved in the disruption last night. Those were other delegates. Yeah.

Anything interesting coming from uncommitted delegates or are you guys going to be well behaved on the floor? What's the...

Well behaved is the great way to put it, I guess, if you will. Um, I think again, strategy, our goal isn't to, you know, I think people approach their, their sense of, um, protests differently. And our goal in being at the DNC convention is to showcase, uh, our, our, our delegates in a way of we're here to uplift Palestinian human rights and to actually work with the DNC to try to get a Palestinian, uh, American leader, uh, speak as well as Dr. Tanya Hash Hassan. And that's what our delegates are doing. They're going to the, the, uh,

elected officials on the floor. They're talking about this issue. They're engaging other delegates to be able to get them to sign the ceasefire delegate letter and also to get the petition that we have out there to get Tanya Hutchison to speak as well. Are you worried about things getting out of control at all? I mean, as potential tensions build throughout the week, everything seems like it's been very orderly and well managed so far.

I mean, what I will say, a positive note, is somebody came up to one of our uncommitted delegates and asked them to sign on to a ceasefire delegate letter. And it was actually a Harris delegate who asked our uncommitted delegate to sign on. And what you're seeing is actual Harris delegates that are organizing because they're

I mean, what we're asking for is nothing crazy. We're asking for to do the morally right thing, to stop sending bombs, to save lives for people who are just as real as all of us. And people believe that the Democratic base believes that. And what we're trying to do is get the Democratic leaders to move with their base and see majority people want to cease fire. Majority people want an arms embargo and we need to enact it now. Got it. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. It was fun to be able to talk to actually somebody. Yeah. Talk about uncommitted movement.

Yeah, now I'm here in the flesh. Why don't you tell people where they can find you, follow you, et cetera? Yeah, I mean, we're on Instagram at uncommittedmvmt. You could search our most recent petitions at notanotherbomb.com and keep up to date with all those things via our social media. Cool. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Let's get some questions in here from the premium subscribers. A question for Ryan. Do you have a good weed guy out there in Chicago? Oh, my gosh. There you go. So immediately pivoting to the important things. Is it legal here? Is weed guy a sign? Here in Chicago? Yeah, actually, I'm your weed guy because I am going to smack it out of your hand. My weed guy is Big J.B. Pritzker. Big J.B. Pritzker. The state is the one who is giving you your weed. Okay.

All right. Here, let's continue here. What do we have? Any questions about what we just heard, guys? What do you guys think from our premium subscribers? Like any questions about that movement, Uncommitted, some of their tech? Why don't I ask a question, Ryan, as a proxy? I mean, I'm hearing a lot of

Very politician II language now that she's stepped. I you know, I don't want to be unkind But like to her face or whatever, but everything I'm hearing is like well, we want to have a panel about human rights I'm like first of all like it's a fucking panel Okay, and the second if you don't get it like it's pretty much they were like well They're still gonna support Kamala Harris So I mean you're there's not a lot of teeth behind this the point the point that he made earlier is is very important where she said

Kamala Harris is not going to endorse an arms embargo. She doesn't support it. She's not going to support it. That's a fact. They're putting pressure on it. And so then when you come back and say, well, it's not going to work, it's like, yeah, they also know it's not going to work. So then, like she said, it becomes this moral question that people are going to decide differently. Okay, well, we tried. We put some pressure. We maybe got a fig leaf.

do I then stay out of the election and not vote for Harris and let Trump win? So, yeah, it's, you know, and some of the uncommitted organizers talked about it as a way when they would pitch it to Democratic Party officials who were telling them, you're destroying the Democratic Party. How dare you do this? They'd say, no, we're actually saving the party because,

All of these people who are voting uncommitted, they weren't even going to show up at all in the primary. You get them to show up in the primary. You then talk to them in a way that is sympathetic. Then they will vote for you in November. So we're actually doing your work for you. If they do that and don't get any policy gains on the ground and people's bodies just keep getting ripped to shreds on a daily basis...

then you can be like, all right, well, then what was that? Yeah. All right. Maybe one or two more questions here. This one's for you, Ryan. Do you any of you act? I guess technically for all of us. Well, I'll throw it to Ryan. Do you actually believe Kamala will do anything about Gaza? My answer is no. I don't think there will be any meaningful difference between her and Joe Biden on Gaza. Yeah. I mean,

So I said yesterday that, you know, that for the first time, you know, pretty much everybody has an incentive to make a deal. And by everybody, I meant kind of Israel more broadly, because it would be able to then stave off the attack from Iran and it would be able to quiet the north, which is

causing enormous pressure on them because they've got thousands, tens of thousands of people dislocated both from the north and the south, blowing up their economy, having all the soldiers getting pulled out of their economy. They're bringing in all these people from India to try to replace the Palestinians to do the low-wage work. So they have an incentive to end this war.

The person that doesn't is Netanyahu, and that is still the case. So his interests diverge. The U.S., I think, still has some interests.

in having Israel be a powerful military force in the region and is not at all willing to use leverage against them. So it doesn't seem at this point like we're necessarily much closer to ceasefire. I'd love to be wrong. And I don't think that, to your question, changing the name of the president from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris is

changes the U.S. relation. All right. This one's questions for me. Phil Thomas, would Sagar become committed to learning alternative tie knots? Okay. First of all, Phil, Phil, whoever you are, whoever you are. I'm really asking for it. I challenge you to a tie knot contest. I can tie four separate tie knots. So send me an email.

and we'll see how many you can do. My bet is that Phil-- - This is very defensive. - Phil knows how to do a four in hand and maybe watch the YouTube video once on a full Windsor. But he does not know how to rock a double four in hand or a half Windsor, a full Windsor. - I think Phil's got a lot of knots in his pocket. - Oh, and by the way, Phil, I can also tie a bow tie. I tied my own bow tie at my wedding.

Perfectly, perfectly first try. You guys saw it. By the way, Phil, I can tie a bow tie. I can tie four different tie dots. My name is Sagar and Debra. I'm just saying, whoever Phil is out there. Sagar, where are you a Boy Scout? I was a Cub Scout for two years. That was it.

What else? Let's see. Okay. Just a reminder to everybody, we are taking questions from our premium subscribers. We have a promotion going on right now for those who are just joining the stream. Free month trial at breakingpoints.com. DNC free is that promo code. So we just spoke with that. Should we do Hillary or protest? Yeah, let's go to Hillary next. You want to talk about Hillary? Yeah, let's go to Hillary. Let's talk about Hillary. All right.

If we must. So, Crystal did tee up some of that Hillary conversation for us, but we of course also need to react. There were some interesting Hillary moments. She talked a little bit about 2016, but perhaps the most interesting, the times have truly changed moment was when lock him up chants erupted

Oh, do we have my thing? Yeah, we're about to play. Oh, no, not your video. Not your video of Lock Him Up. We actually have Hillary reacting to Lock Him Up. And she seemingly nods at it despite the fact that she took a lot of... She definitely had a different approach whenever it was Lock Her Up that was a major political chance. So let's go ahead and take a listen, Mac. Let's cue it up. There it is. Let's play it. Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial. And when he woke up,

He made his own kind of history, the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions. As Vice President Kamala sat in the Situation Room,

Yeah.

When Hillary took the stage, I was like, oh my God, she is so bad. The first time she robotically held her arms up like this, it was all of these flashbacks from 2016. - Can we talk about how, first, I'm really curious for Ryan's take inside the arena when the lock him up chants were going, but we were,

All watching in the BP frat house. And I was like listening to the Sara Bareilles song that she walked out to, which was Brave, whatever. And I was like, they used to use these kind of interchangeably with fight song. And I was like, no way. They're not going to do fight song. Hillary walked off the stage to fight song, which is such a

parody and there's no self-awareness like that's the most incredible thing there's no self-awareness i guarantee you hillary clinton personally personally requested fight song absolutely and nobody wanted to say no to her she doesn't know it's a meme no because nobody every time i play i literally play that song in my car and i cry with laughter at hillary's defeat uh because that's what i will always associate it with ryan give us your reaction to the lock him up chance the the theme of

Well, they were intense. And where I was, they were loud. People were fired. Oh, it was loud. Yeah. Those were not isolated chants. The theme of the night was for the people. It was heavily focused on abortion rights and Kamala Harris.

And Hillary Clinton was the only one who came out and gave just a biographical speech about herself. It was so such a good. I kept thinking the same thing is she's talking about herself. Shirley Chisholm. 2016. Shirley Chisholm. Geraldine Ferraro. Actually, with all of the past, I'm realizing now both Hillary and Biden, frankly, throwing it back to him. He resurrected a lot of the January 6th talk.

A lot of Charlottesville. Nobody cares about. OK, like, you know, it's been years since all of that. And it was a reminder, actually, how uniquely bad both of those politicians are and their own unique vulnerabilities. Which is why Bill is on Wednesday. Yes. Hillary's on Monday on the night when they're trying to shove people off and move on. And then Bill Clinton's on Wednesday. And so and so thematically what she's going at and is talking about, you know, breaking glass ceilings and being trailblazers. And she was explicitly talking about that. And if you've noticed,

Kamala Harris never talks about that ever, ever, ever. There is messaging guidance in Democratic circles that the, quote, first woman of color line just does not work. People don't respond to it. Or worse, they respond to it negatively. So they have adjusted by saying, here is what we will do. I mean, eventually it took them weeks to tell us what they would do. Yeah.

Did they ever tell us? Because, okay, look, she hasn't told us anything. Well, she told us the economic policy. Yeah. Well, yeah, she gave a speech, but she didn't give an interview. She's answered one question about it. But you will not put her, not give her too much credit. She's a beautiful mystery. You will not see any of the trailblazing first woman of color rhetoric coming from the Kamala Harris campaign. I think you'll see, but don't you think you'll see a small, tiny, like, nods to it rather than trying to send a question? So, Emily's list will target it at donors. Mm-hmm.

It works for donors who are already like deeply committed and it lets them give another six figures. But for the public at large, they do not want that messaging out there. Hillary Clinton just went all in on it. Maybe we should put a bet down on this because I feel like it will come up briefly, one time maybe in Kamala Harris's speech. But it won't.

It won't be a feature or a theme of the campaign. It will be an illusion. Like she will allude to how, what she will say. But it won't be like Hillary. I mean, Hillary's the way she started off. She's like, my mother born in a place. What she'll say is what every other candidates who comes from anything other than rich background, they will say, uh,

My rise to the White House shows that anything is possible in America. Right. Like, she'll do that, but it won't... That's Obama-esque. That's fine. I'm actually... I don't think you're going to hear Shirley Chisholm. All right, so let's... We can put DraftKings money down on that. No, I agree with you. Maybe DraftKings has... No, PolyMarket. That's where you would...

That's not an endorsement. Don't gamble, folks. It is corrosive to the soul. Let's go to the 2016 revelry that Hillary just had to get in there where she not only reminisces about her 2016 campaign, she even brags about the number of votes she got, which is just so incredible with the bitterness seeping out of her. Let's take a listen. Mac, cue it up for us, my friend. There it is.

And then there was 2016 when it was the honor of my life to accept our party's nomination for president. And nearly 66 million Americans voted for a future where there are no ceilings on our dreams. And afterwards,

We refused to give up on America. Millions marched. Many ran for office. We kept our eyes on the future. Well, my friends, the future is here. Make one point on that. 2016, we got millions of votes. I covered the aftermath of the 2016 campaign in the Democratic Party extremely closely. It makes up a couple chapters and a couple of my books.

The Democratic Party had nothing to do with the Renaissance, had nothing to do with the Women's March. They were afraid of the Women's March. That was a genuinely bottom-up, Facebook-fueled, organic, suburban women-driven event. Then she talks about all...

all these people who ran for office, that was organic too. These were mostly women, well-qualified, who had never considered running for office before. They saw Donald Trump win the White House and instantly they were like, well, if he can be president, I can run for state house or Congress. And they did it. And a bunch of them are now senators and members of Congress and

The Democratic Party and its establishment had nothing to do with it and was even afraid of it. So I actually thought this was the most interesting speech of the night because this is in the trajectory of Hillary Clinton's career. You can see she thought or she believes Kamala Harris potentially becoming presidency can be reframed and rewritten.

or can reframe her 2016 devastating loss, right? She doesn't have to huff the Putin copium anymore. She can actually now say, what I did was be the foundation that led to the first female president also being a woman of color.

I can. It's offensive because it's just not true. Well, and she said that the highest, hardest glass ceiling is a woman becoming president. That's the implication of her line. Not a black person becoming president, which Obama did before that ceiling. So which I also think is somewhat offensive. He beat her and she hated him. Yeah, of course. Of course. And so now the highest, hardest glass ceiling. So she has found a way in the wake of Biden dropping off the ticket to

She was so pleased to be there and to have the speaking moment because it was this opportunity for her to change, to rewrite Hillary Clinton's history in real time. And I think she thinks it's going to work and maybe it will. But she really believes now that the story of 2016 isn't going to be the story of a

you know, sort of fascist, sexist pig defeating the first woman president with help from Vladimir Putin, the story of 2016 is going to be this woman paved the way for Kamala Harris. That's such a sick point because I know it's true. I'm like, I feel ill thinking about that because I know that it will probably be retconned.

And then in schools, that's how they'll try and teach it if Kamala wins is that this was the foundation. But I mean, overall, again, the vibe from Hillary is just bitterness. This woman is so politically untalented. How could you be anything but bitter? Yeah, look at her. You were guaranteed to win the White House. Yeah.

And you lost to Donald Trump. You were under a glass ceiling. There is not a soul. You were in the Javits Center. It was just a tiny glass ceiling. Yeah, and you have the rest of your life to live anyway. And when Biden is being forced out,

She's sitting by her phone like, awesome. Here comes my moment. Just come on. Come on, ring. Why is my phone not ringing? This is weird. I'm the one. I've already beaten him. I got more votes than him. Why is my phone not ringing?

And so even if she could work through her bitterness from 2016, more bitterness comes through every single time that the phone doesn't ring and she expects it to. Absolutely. Okay, we'll take one question before we move on. Somebody says, I want to see BP after hours with them just chilling, a tie-less saga, hanging out, talking about everything. He wears a shirt last night. He sleeps in his tie. What are you talking about?

He was in a t-shirt. I saw it. I saw it. I don't know what you're talking about. He was in a t-shirt. I don't know of what you speak. And hanging out, talking about everything, and of course, Emily mocking Sagar with her voices. Somebody in the chat sends a picture of the State Department press secretary and says, Sagar as press secretary, which again, it's offensive. We don't look alike. I mean, we don't look alike. Let's cut to Mac. Let's cut to Mac.

We don't look alike. I'm on Sagar's side. I think this is like maybe you like in middle school or something. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's fair. How are you working out? Kind of woke much over there? Yeah, yeah. Would you all be willing to try and get Hasan on the show at some point? So we did actually run into Hasan yesterday. I don't know if people know this. He is a

very tall guy i keep saying i was shocked by this i was shocked i'm like six two he's six five he's gotta be a good six five right yeah he's like a head taller than me i was like whoa that's actually quite shocking it was funny too because he was you were like does the chat know saga and he's like yeah they know saga and i was like yeah the chat hates saga i'm pretty sure uh but uh we tried to get hasan he's busy yeah he's uh he's got a little dnd handler too he's doing drop site stuff yeah uh

He's doing drop site stuff. Well, he was going to use our drop site desk in the arena. And this is an interesting political point. The DNC gave him his own handler. No, it's crazy, guys. He's like a VIP there. And gave him a sweeter spot than the one that we have. Not that we have a sweet spot. We just had a normal desk. The drop site spot. So they're like, no, no, don't worry about it. We've got him taken care of. And, you know, he...

trashes Democrats. Oh, I know. Constantly. Yeah, but they don't care. He literally had his own little comms girl and was taking her around. That's kind of an interesting point. We're going to get to that about the DNC kind of being a shit show. We'd like to get him on if we can get him to not be busy on the stream. Yeah, we tried. He's streaming constantly. Yeah. He wears a lot of jewelry. That was another... He's in California. He wears a lot of rings. We end our show by 7 a.m. West Coast time. Right, right. Is that when he wakes up? No.

I don't know. People would know better. People would game for 12 hours.

that Ryan is more rings on. Uh, yeah, we got to put more rings on to be more. So anyway, that is the question about get Hassan. Uh, we, we, we did ask him, but he's busy and he's doing his own thing. Uh, no, not Hassan Minaj. Somebody said, did you mean, did you mean Hassan Minaj? No, I mean, I could ask her. Why not? Yeah, actually, you know, I did ask him, uh, people know Hassan and I had beef, but we squashed the beef. He invited me to the show. Um, and, uh,

He did say he was willing to come on the show at some point. So, anyhow. That'll be fun. We're talking about Hasan Minhaj here, not Hasan Piker. Okay. Let's, someone goes, you mean Nicki Minaj's brother? Anyway, this is all getting my own live stream. It's fun doing a live stream. We don't get to do this enough.

This election season, the stakes are higher than ever. I think the choice is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne Tha God, for We The People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris and you, live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Let's go to the protest block here and let's talk a little bit about that. There were a couple of moments. Ryan, I'm going to rely on you to explain some of this. First, let's watch the video here. These are two delegates who we met briefly. Was it the two of them? More than two.

But the interesting thing was not just their protest, was their reaction inside the hall to their protest. People were very upset and they did their best. Mac, go ahead and cue up that video. E1, let's take a listen. Impossibility. Impossibility. During the break of a once in a century pandemic, historic joblessness. Calls for racial justice now overdue. We are afraid the connections are very much lost.

Okay, tell us about what we just saw. Yeah, and there are other videos where... We're going to show yours. Yeah, where you can see the guy kind of like swinging. Why don't we play that right now? You want to play Ryan's video? It's not my video. I think that's... This is E3. E3? There's another one where he's like...

And it's so perfect and poetic because it says we love Biden. Yeah. To beat somebody with a pole that says love is there's just something. We have a time. We have Ryan's video, right? Mac, you want to go and cue that up? And we can just we'll just talk. We'll just talk over it. That's what we're saying. You're the one who filmed this. Yeah. So so I was right by the Florida delegation, which is where this is happening. And you've got the guy that you saw in the picture who's the protester. It's a delegate from Michigan named Liano Sharon.

Jewish delegate and then a Muslim delegate from Florida named Nadia Ahmad. And then there was another delegate from Connecticut named Issam Boray, who helped as well. He had told me

that on Sunday he was trying to get into a DNC reception and they found like a Palestinian flag in his bag and security swarmed him and like made him leave the floor. Is there a no flag rule? I don't. Oh, I was curious that they're confiscating Palestinian. Yeah, they booted him out with the flag. Little did they know he actually was planning the next day. It was a little racial profiling and they got lucky. So Nadia Ahmad,

smuggled this entire banner, which Lauren Steiner, another Jewish activist from North Carolina, helped paint. Is that the delegate that we met? I don't think you met her. I wrote about this for Dropsite. You guys can check that story out. So basically what's going on here is initially you saw that kind of miniature violent response where they try to rip it out of their hands and then they're swinging the little cardboard things at them. But the crowd, I'd say to their credit,

ish, because I think it's also absurd, said, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, deescalate, don't get violent, don't get violent. But then they just completely obscured. They're like, everybody signs up, signs up. I think their smarter move might have been to just ignore it, actually. Because the cameras just stayed on Biden the entire time. Yeah, look at this guy who keeps throwing his sign in front of your...

This guy. One of your phone. This guy. He's the former executive director of the Florida Democratic Party. Oh, yeah. I learned later. Did you call this guy out? I mean, you're a journalist. We are credentialed media on the floor of the DNC. And I was telling the dude that. I'm like, what are you doing? And towards the end, I'm like, look, there's like eight other cameras here. Are you going to block all of them? He's like, yes, I will. What is happening?

Yes, we can. So I just was constantly moving around. Occasionally, I'd be able to find somebody who could pick him. And then I'd have a shot. I'll be with you next time, dude. Next time I'm home. Yeah, I needed a pick. I thought you were just going to body people. A little pick and roll. Yeah.

Or a little Reggie White swim at times. So it was surreal. And so while I say impressive, I mean in the sense that like the guy had a lot of energy. Like he was, he was, he followed me for like 10 minutes around there. But also absurd. Like, yes, you're supposed to be Democrats. Yeah.

Like, you're not acting like Democrats. Remember, this is the Democracy Convention, the lowercase c, Democracy Convention. As they talk about at the conventions, the oldest political party in the world, and it stands for these great values. So that kind of clashed. But

So then Sharon was taken out. And I don't know if we have any of this from the very end of the clip. We might not, but it's in the Dropsite article on Substack. Matt, can we plug Dropsite, please? E2, put that up there on the screen. So the other cool part, apparently the other person who knew about this ahead of time was Amy Goodman. Oh, Amy! Absolute legend. The goat was on the scene. And

And, you know, so she was there with a camera person as well. And so she followed. If you go to the very end of this video. So there he is. This is this is Sharon. So he was not like dragged out or arrested. And he was able to give an interview with with press here talking about, you know, why, you know, he felt like.

that it was necessary for him to do this. And he actually said that he is voting for Kamala Harris. He said to other people- Oh, he did? Yeah, he did. Yeah. Interesting. Oh, is that Amy? Yeah, there she is. Yeah. She was actually interviewing him. That's interesting.

So, yeah. So that was the effort at disruption. And I think watching, you tell me, watching it, you could barely tell anything happened, right? No, you wouldn't have not had any idea. No, no. Watching it from where we were? No, absolutely not. You didn't even know. The broadcast. Media basically pretended...

like it didn't exist at all. The broadcast didn't pick it up. It wasn't, you couldn't hear it. The banner said stop arming Israel. You couldn't hear it. The cameras didn't pan to it. Yeah, there was really no, unless you were on social media and you saw it, you wouldn't have known that it had happened. Um, the other thing we do have, we can put, this was all from inside. We can put E4 up on the screen. This is a, um,

These are some pictures from what happened outside the convention, actually even outside the security perimeter. This is from actually a fan of the show that I met at the protest in Union Park, Dylan Kiley, the photojournalist. Yeah, big shout out to Dylan. He put a lot of effort into making sure we could get these up on the screen. And Mac, you can just scroll through. But that first one that you just saw was important because that was a Kamala Harris photo.

It was a sort of cut out of her head that was beside a Netanyahu cut out of his head, which when you're talking to some of these protesters in Union Park outside the convention, they can't get in the security perimeter. These are a lot of locals, types of people that I talked to, at least a lot of locals, a lot of people who come from neighboring states, Indiana and Michigan. Jewish Voices for Peace were there. There were some Code Pink activists there.

One of the things I heard is that we talked about this earlier in the show. If Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are able to reach a ceasefire, a lot of these uncommitted voters might just swing Harris. And there's you know, that would have to be obviously it's a huge ask. It's a huge ask.

It does put some pressure on the Democratic Party for all the talk about 1968. I just have to say, expectations of tens of thousands of people. One report I saw was close to 100,000 expected to descend upon Chicago. And so far we've seen sort of smatterings of a few thousand. It is not 1968 here in Chicago. No, it's not even close. At least yet. At least yet. And something else sick is that...

So Netanyahu doesn't necessarily need to agree to a ceasefire to get in good with Kamala Harris. What he could do if he thinks Harris is going to win and he's trying to position himself for that eventuality, he could just reduce the bombing.

And a source told me yesterday the Cyprus landing, which is where an enormous amount of the aid was moving from originally, has just now been completely shut down. So he has ways of torturing and causing great suffering to the million-plus Palestinians in Gaza that don't involve bombing schools. So one possibility, if these ceasefire talks fall apart, is that cynically they just hold off on the

smashing them to pieces for just a few months. And there are some analysts who are following this now who think that that could be Netanyahu's path forward, that he never reaches a ceasefire, but has long lulls where the overt violence that we see

is reduced for weeks or maybe even months at a time, but people are still displaced. Aid is still unable to get in. So people are dying of treatable diseases, polio is surging, et cetera.

But that makes fewer headlines and Democrats might say, okay, cool. That works for us. And several people were arrested last night trying to breach the security perimeter. Yes, they were hoping for a Jan 6 moment just so we could see drama. Yeah, it's not happening. Ryan and I were like, where is it? Let's go.

The fence does look similar. But so there's a gathering, I think, that's happening at the Israeli consulate in Chicago tonight. Obviously, it's possible that when you have a decent amount of protesters, I mean, thousands of protesters are still a big number of people. Tensions can build throughout the week. So we will see. But one of the things I just wanted to mention here is.

the sort of logistics that we've panned on behalf of the DNC. I mean, the absolute nightmare that was last night's broadcast, the credentialing, incredible lines for security. Hours. Worse than the RNC. Although the RNC had some bad ones on its own day one. We'll see what happens DNC day two. Everyone that I talked to who was here to protest had

had nothing but positive things to say about how the protests have been handled so far by the city of Chicago. Everyone said they felt safe, felt orderly. So it's kind of an interesting split screen with, I don't know if it's easy, Mac, for you to put up F3, but it's kind of an interesting split screen when you have, for example, reporters saying like, hey, the RNC was way better managed than the DNC. Yeah, it is.

And at the same time, they're at least managing these thousands of protesters, which did not come to the RNC. There were hundreds of, I would say, protesters, maybe a couple thousand at one point on one of the days. But here at the DNC, they're managing these thousands of protesters just fine. And then the actual logistics of the event itself so far have really sucked. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Interesting enough. I totally agree. All right. Let's take a couple of last questions here from the chat, and then we will preview the events tonight. While you look for a question, I want to talk for one minute about non-BNC news. Something hilarious that just came out of the Treasury Department this morning. They sanctioned Michelle Martelly, the former president of Haiti. Oh, we're getting a hate message today.

for being a drug trafficker, which everybody believes is true. This is the guy that Hillary Clinton installed completely illegitimately as president of Haiti. He's now being sanctioned as a drug trafficker. That's all funny. The even funnier thing, he's a Florida resident. So the U.S. government believes that he's an international drug trafficker to the point where he needs to be sanctioned.

But he's an American citizen. He's not a citizen. But he lives in Florida. He's just going to hang out in Florida? That's cool. That's just how we're going to do that. That is so weird. You're sanctioned for being a global narco-trafficker.

But you can just live in the villages or whatever. Oh, and by the way, there's an election in the villages today. Yeah. Oh, Ryan's... The guy that I've covered. Ryan's been all over the village. The guy that I've covered, Oren Miller. Okay. Another little bit of non-DNC news. Kamala Harris announced a 28% corporate tax rate yesterday. I guess it's kind of DNC-y. What is it now, 25? No, 25.

It's lower. Trump lowered it to like 20 or something. Closer. It's in the lower 20s. That's actually going to be a big fight. That'll be interesting. We'll see. All those rates are up. Can you do your best Trump impression? Her impressions are really good. Go ahead. I'm not prepared. Come on. What do you got? I'm only good in the moment. Okay, fair.

Okay, fair enough. I get that. We call her Comrade Gamala. Nobody ever called her that before I did. 28% chairman. She wouldn't even do 28%. Couldn't do it. Nobody thought that we could ever have a Comrade Gamala. There is a nasal quality to it, which is very difficult. Yeah, but I only started adding that to it because I used to do more of like a, after Gila started doing it, it is clear that you have that guttural, Comrade Gamala.

- Nobody ever called her that? - It's about the cadence. - The best message. - The basil, yeah. - It's tough. - But it's also about the hands, right? Like you have to be able to get-- - No, the hands are key. - And the best way to learn how to do a Donald Trump impression is to simply watch Charlie Kirk do a Charlie Kirk impression because he has absorbed all of the Trumpian hand gestures. Like, my name's Charlie. - Okay, what else we got? We're not getting a ton of questions here.

We answered pretty much everything. It's because we've answered everything, isn't it, right? I think that's 100%. Okay, well, we'll go ahead and peace out, everybody. Well, let's go over who's speaking tonight. Oh, right. I apologize. I mean, I have a list right here. Obama's. We've got Doug Emhoff. We have Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Oh, that'll be interesting. Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that tomorrow. We've got Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth. Yep. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. Fuck.

- Could be good. - We're hearing that Chuck Schumer will speak. - I don't get the Pritzker stuff. I just don't think he's a good politician. - I think he's fine. - I think he's a normal dude. - I don't think he's good. - I mean, he's the governor here. He's gotta speak. - I know, but he comes with so much billionaire baggage. He's not particularly charismatic. He's just kind of-- - But he's so big. - He's a big boy. - Yeah, he's big. - Big JB. - Yeah, he's just big.

All right. Who else? Big JB. Obama's the last. The night apparently is capping off with both Michelle and Barack. Okay. That'll be interesting. Maybe we'll get a week when they go low, we go high moment again. That's a doubtful. Yeah. Yeah. No, they were chanting, lock him up. No, that's what I mean. I want to see how she handles that this time around. Um,

I don't really remember her 2020 speech at all. I'm not even sure she did one because of COVID. Obama, look, I mean, he's probably the most beloved Democrat in the entire country. So I'm curious to see what he does. Obviously, he's talented. Generally, the way that he handles Trump is definitely a lot more deft than Biden, Hillary ever did.

I want to see the message that he tries to push, but I mean, at the same time, he's always been terrible at transferring his own personal popularity. So that'll be difficult. It does appear that tonight will be hosted MC by Anna Navarro. So everybody get ready, um, to put a bullet to your head. So that'll be kind of interesting. Uh,

What else? Well, so on that point, how incredibly dumb of them to have Ana Navarro MC. It's playing fight song. She is the human manifestation of fight song. She is a longtime slimy Republican operative, basically, who when Donald Trump came along, suddenly flipped and became, you know, you know the type.

And became just enemy number one of Donald Trump, performatively sanctimonious about the threat of Trump, but in the most boomer possible way on The View when she guest hosts, not even like a full time host of The View. So that is just the lack of self-awareness that it takes to be putting celebrities like Ana Navarro up as your emcee is truly a beautiful thing. OK, so there you go. That's our preview tomorrow. We're going to be live. What time tomorrow?

Later? So Crystal will be here tomorrow. Very excited. We'll have the full four panel. We'll probably be starting somewhere around like 2 p.m. Central time. 2 p.m. Central time. Again, we are running a free month trial online.

week long for unlimited time. Mac, if you can throw it up again. For our premium subscription, you get our entire show an hour early, uncut in your inbox every morning. This is a month trial, so you can cancel it on the 29th day and not get charged a penny. That's not true. Life hack!

- People are gonna love it so much. - I think so, yeah. - Take advantage. Take advantage. DNC free, breakingpoints.com. This was a lot of fun. It really was. Thank you, Ghost Energy. - Oh, dude, I'm shaking. Like, I'm literally shaking. - I need to rewatch this when I'm more calm and be like, hmm, I wonder if I did as well as I hoped. It was a lot of fun to participate in.

Thank you, Ryan, for getting us a live studio guest. Thanks to our two incredible members here. We've got Mac, producer Mac. Go ahead. Let's go Mac Cam. Mac Cam. I love this. We need to get this in our studio. Yeah, I love it so much. It's kind of like Pat McAfee, the Pat McAfee show. Or Jamie. Or Jamie, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I love the producer. It's like Wendy Williams. Exactly. All right, so I'm loving this. Maybe we'll try and incorporate it at breaking points, but

Until then, we will see everybody tomorrow. We love you. Thank you all very much, especially to our premium subscribers who enable all of this. We are gonna go down to the DNC and see what kind of chaos that we can film and bring to everybody tomorrow. So there we go. We'll see you later.

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