12/18/24: Trump Says RFK Not Radical, Bibi Parades In Syria, NYT Hoax, Shock CEO Assassination Poll, Ukraine Moscow Assassination,
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Good morning and welcome to CounterPoint. Emily, how you doing? I'm good. We've got a lot of news to get through today. Even though we're so close to the holidays, the news cycle just won't slow down. It won't. It won't. I did want to start out with one quick personal thing, which is apologies for this show getting out as late as it is. About two weeks ago, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

That might also explain kind of losing my voice at the same time. This will be our last show, plus we're doing CounterPoints Friday until the Christmas and New Year's break, so we'll see you guys again in January. They've made extraordinary advances when it comes to treatment of breast cancer, and she's already getting the treatment, and we're very confident that this will be something that we deal with in the past.

I have to bear with us a little bit as we go through that. Yeah. Well, we're all pulling for you guys, Ryan. You've got all your kids, a lot to worry about. And, you know, we've got, speaking of health and human services. Right. Maybe your best transition ever. Luckily, there's going to be a very steady hand on the till. Yeah. RFK Jr. was on Capitol Hill yesterday meeting with senators. Looks like he actually might make it and become secretary of health and human service. We're going to talk about that.

A bunch of folks are in Doha trying to cinch up a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Saudi Arabia has gotten involved as well. We're going to talk about that. Over at Dropside News, we kind of busted the New York Times relying on a Hamas-adjacent source to verify documents. We talked to the source about those documents. He said...

Bro, I told the New York Times I have real doubts about whether those are authentic documents or not. And they just ran with it anyway. I hope he did say bro. I don't think he said bro, but close enough. So we'll get into that. AOC got crushed in her effort to become a ranking member of Oversight. Luigi's getting charged as a terrorist. What else we got? Yeah, he was indicted last night, so we have updates on that. Some interesting polling that'll be...

It'll be an interesting conversation topic, maybe for everyone's holiday dinner. We can talk about this. I was coming out of GW Hospital on Monday. I can't wait to see this. I don't think we're ever going to see it, but I got stopped on the street by two reporters. I said, do you have a second to talk about the health insurance industry? They're doing man-on-the-street interviews with people in Washington, D.C. They happen to run in a running room. They're British accents. They said they're from Sky News. I'm like, sure, I'll do this.

Well, we won't spoil it in case they do air it because what you said was. At the end, they asked my name. I told them. Amazing. Well, stay tuned. See if that goes to air. We're going to do updates from, well, actually there's a lot going on in Capitol Hill. So we will be talking a little bit about what happened with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Connolly for the oversight committee, it sounds like. I feel like we're usually talking about Republicans when we're talking about

random parliamentary stuff, but this time it's Democrats. It's a fun one, yeah. Yeah, there's all kinds of parliamentary stuff randomly going on with Republicans right now as they look to keep the government funded. So we'll probably touch on that a bit as well, Ryan. Updates from Ukraine and updates from both Germany and Canada where the leadership is in dire straits. Yeah, the center-left is collapsing all over the world. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Macron as well, maybe we can talk about that too. He's facing some stiff troubles right ahead. But

But to return to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., let's start with his trip around Capitol Hill, which seems to be going very, very well. I want to start with this mashup of clips so that you can just get a little flavor of what's been happening over the last couple of days as RFK Jr. meets to discuss his confirmation with senators. Here you go.

Can I follow up on Robert Kennedy? He's on the Hill today. He's meeting with senators. What do you say to people who are worried that his views on vaccines will translate into policies that will make their kids less safe? No, I think he's going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he's got a very open mind or I wouldn't have put him there. He's going to be very much less radical. But there are problems. I mean, we don't do as well as a lot of other nations and those nations use nothing.

Trying to gain GOP support to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is expected to be pressed on his views on vaccine. Senator, you met with RFK Jr. yesterday. What was your takeaway? Very impressive. I mean, here's a guy that wants to focus on health.

It's called health and human services, health, not sickness. So he wants to make us healthy. It's exactly what we are doing. I ran the biggest hospital company. I know we've got to figure out how to get people healthy. And that's what he's going to do. I think he's going to do a great job with regard to vaccines. If you listen to what he says, he is pro vaccine. What he wants is give you information so you can decide what you put into your body or your child's body.

Yeah. That makes all the sense of the world to me. Yeah, absolutely. Senator, it's great to see you. We so appreciate it. Let's get away from guessing and do facts, do science.

get behind the science and stay with it. Don't be guessing. And that's what a lot of these vaccines have done. They haven't been 100% proven. If you look at the number of vaccines these young babies get over a short period of time, it's dozens and dozens of them. And he's totally against that. He wants to make sure that parents understand the good and the bad and the ugly.

So I also grabbed about 15 minutes with Senator Tuberville after his meeting with RFK Jr. He said something similar, but in a little bit more detail. He said he talked to RFK Jr. about how he has a grandchild coming.

And he was saying, you know, there are all these, like the vaccine schedule, there are all of these vaccines. And RFK Jr. said to him, we only got three when we were kids. And that was a little bit from their conversation was like, it's basically you've just had all of these. It was like polio, smallpox and something else. It's just been added up and added up. And so Tuberville is using this line that he thinks RFK Jr. is going to, quote, follow the science. And saw a little bit of that from Rick Scott as well.

Part of this is a sincere ideological conversion from people like Tuberville, who has been now questioning people about Red Dye 40. I mean, you just never saw this from Republicans, right? You know this better than I do. I mean, there was this ideological and political deference to the business community.

and there have been sincere ideological conversions. A lot of it is obviously political. Now, let's actually skip ahead to A3, because this is what Tuberville told me. His first question was to RFK Jr. It was about abortion, he said, and this was going to be the big...

sticking point with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being confirmed by a Republican Senate. Josh Hawley posted a thread last night saying that he got all of these concessions, which I think are very significant concessions, whether you're pro-choice or pro-life, these are significant concessions from someone who says that he's pro-choice, reinstating the Mexico City policy. That's what Josh Hawley said. And what is that for us? For us, none.

non-initiated into the lingo of the abortion wars. Taxpayer funding for abortion internationally and domestically is what he committed to Hawley. That's Mexico City. Mexico City is foreign, right, yeah. But he also said in the same post that he would end taxpayer funding for abortions domestically. What does that mean? Probably Planned Parenthood taxpayer funding. Because currently Planned Parenthood doesn't

use the money that gets from the federal government for abortion services. But what he's saying is don't give them a penny, period. Perhaps, yeah. I mean, they don't specifically say that, but that's how I would, that's how Republicans would interpret it. And I think other people already have interpreted that way. Reinstating the bar on Title X funds, going to organizations that promote abortion. So that's probably also an umbrella on Planned Parenthood. I'm not entirely sure about that. But he also said, and I think this is the most significant,

that all of his deputies, according to Hawley, at HHS would be pro-life. So that's basically Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who says he is pro-choice, saying, I will have a pro-life health and human services department. Right. Then the problem there is that Planned Parenthood, as you know, does an enormous amount of health care services for low-income women who use them because they can't get services anywhere else. So

He's saying he's all about health, but obviously those types of services are crucial to health. But he's just going to kind of capitulate on it in order to get in there. I guess nobody should have expected him to die on like,

of the altar of women's rights. That's not what RFK Jr. was ever going to do. His big life's mission is vaccines and pharma and food. I would imagine. He's always actually talked about this in the language of bodily autonomy, which is where it gets really

tricky for him to now come out and talk about how he'll be running essentially a pro-life HHS. The reason that it's worth going through this Hall-Leaf thread is that this is enough. I think this will be enough to put him on a glide path to confirmation with Senate Republicans. This should satisfy them for the most part.

on the pro-life issue, on the issue of abortion. This is going to settle the pro-life groups down. They're going to stop lobbying against him or chirping against him. And now his tough thing is going to be, we heard Trump address it, is going to be talking to Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins about vaccines and people who are even less moderate than them. Tuberville, Scott said they've been satisfied in their conversations, but that's still a sticking point. Yeah, my guess would be, and tell me if you think I'm right, getting into the Republican mind,

that as long as he's good for them on abortion, they actually don't care about HHS. It's like not a top tier concern of theirs. Are they really, oh no, he's gonna run HHS into the ground.

Boy, that would be so sad for Republicans if something like that happened. What's funny is that I think they used to care about HHS to protect business interests, right? You know what I mean? It is interesting that, yeah, they're like, okay. They're adopting some of the crunchy, hippie vibes around what you would call a raw milk politics. Yeah, exactly. But Trump seems to

like be nowhere near that. And so that's why you saw at the top of the segment there, him saying like, no, he's not really into all that. So I think basically what they're trying to say is, okay, he's going to be really good on abortion for us. And he's not actually going to do these things. He's not going to ban the vaccine. He's not going to stop you from getting the vaccines. You might have out there ideas about it, but he's not actually going to implement them. Yeah. Which is kind of a funny, you know, way to kind of get yourself through. But what

Yeah, it's I mean, I think it'll probably work at this point, although Tuberville told me he thinks that Democrats are essentially saving their biggest attacks on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. until after the holidays when the confirmation process is really heating up. And actually, like people have to make the decision to vote yes or no. So do you think he gets through?

As of right now, I would say yes. I think there's just, like, the voters really, really like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Republican base really likes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for whatever reason. Yeah. So, I think. I also think, just from a Democratic small d perspective, like, if you win the White House and you run saying you're going to, like, bring a certain person into the White House. Right.

They'd be like, all right, guy one. He said he was going to put this guy in a job that's very similar to this. This is not a surprise. Yeah.

And people voted for him, so go ahead. Well, and really quickly, this is a great transition to A2, if we can go back to a great Christian Parenti piece in Compact about how RFK Jr. could, quote, take on the CIA. Now, you can't do that from HHS, but the position you can do that from is a trusted Trump advisor, a literal member of his cabinet, which RFK Jr. now is. That's another thing I've been trying to sort of sniff out a little bit is like, are you guys sort of treating him as the crazy hippie uncle at the Thanksgiving table who you just sort of like,

you know, wink at each other across the table while he's talking about whatever. No, he's actually very much in the inner circle. He is trusted and valued. And so to that extent, he could do a little bit of what Parenti talks about here. And the CIA links to HHS are kind of interesting. And he writes at one point, this is, I thought, a really interesting passage. Parenti writes, between 2013 and 2020, USAID, which is basically a CIA front,

along with Anthony Fauci's NIAID and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, all gave millions of dollars to a New York-based nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance. We've reported about that over and over. Run by Dr. Peter Dajak, EcoHealth Alliance, in turn, funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In 2015, EcoHealth Alliance also pitched In-Q-Tel, which is basically the CIA's private equity fund,

firm for funding with a proposal called quote identifying predictable patterns in disease emergence. We don't know the results of these proposals because In-Q-Tel provides limited public information on its investments and then Parenti writes, though thoroughly documented, this set of facts is so insane that they make any person reiterating them sound insane by association. It's one of the kind of advantages that

the CIA and the USAID and the Defense Department have had in the entire bioweapons space is that it just sounds completely nuts. And RFK Jr. has written an entire book about this. Yes. The Truth About Wuhan, I think it's called.

Yeah. Or something like that. About Fauci. Something. In any event, this is not a kind of hobby horse for him. Like, this could get interesting. Yeah, you have to know. And meanwhile, in the NDAA, they shoveled a whole bunch more money towards gain-of-function research that's headed towards passage this week. Yeah.

Yes, and towards the Global Engagement Center that was funneling money towards basically websites that were recommending suppression of, for example, the Federalist and the Daily Wire. So the NDA is getting interesting, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to your point about

Perentes links from HHS USAID to EcoHealth, then all of these things. You, in order to actually change this, have to basically know the ins and outs. You need to do chapter and verse in them while you're sleeping, and he can do that, which should be terrifying to the people who benefit from those funds. I don't think RFJK Jr. remotely has all the answers here, but I also know that we are a deeply unhealthy country. Yeah.

you can just travel around the country or look around and you can tell, you can just see it. Like we need help. Like we're not in a good place. And the corporate capture of our food, our medicines is like obviously a huge problem. So if RFK Jr. comes in as a wrecking ball, just because he doesn't know how to rebuild it doesn't mean that a little bit of

creative destruction wouldn't be useful. Because whatever path we're on is not a good one. Right. Yeah, creative destruction. The pollutants, the chemicals, the plastics, all of it together is like we're on a suicide path.

Yeah, creative destruction is, I think, the best case scenario here. So perhaps. It's what people voted for, so. It's exactly what people voted for. Let the wrecking ball swing. Although Tuberville also told me he was satisfied by RFK Jr.'s answers on climate. So that might not be so good for the crunchy left. What did Tuberville hear? I don't know.

I wasn't there, Ryan. I just asked questions. RFK Jr. is willing to give up on climate, too. Yeah, he's like, I can't do it. So actually, I bet what... So here's how I bet RFK Jr. finesses the climate issue with deniers like Tuberville. What I bet he said is that we overemphasize carbon. Yeah, yeah. And that we don't emphasize enough...

the problems of plastics, which come from carbon, by the way. Don't tell Tuberville that. And all the other poisons that go into our bloodstream and our actual streams. And so RFK Jr. is not saying climate is not a problem. He's saying that the

a monomaniacal fixation just on climate misses the holistic problems facing the earth. And I think Tuberville would hear that and be like, oh, he's with me. He doesn't care about climate either. He literally said he agrees with me on climate. Yeah, so I guarantee you that's how that conversation went and Tuberville, it was like, whoop. Well, don't tell anybody where the plastic comes from because then it gets really sticky. Yeah.

Hi, everyone. It's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from The Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right. Nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list. So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the hot. This is it.

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Go to 80dayobsession.com. That's 80dayobsession.com. All right, Ryan, we're going to be talking about Tourette's here. What have you got for us? So, yeah, there's a bunch of reporting coming out of the Mideast that they're getting increasingly close to an actual ceasefire deal.

I tend to think that they're exaggerating how close we are. This is just my gut and following this fairly closely that I suspect Netanyahu will continue to drag this out right until January 19th and reach a deal on like January 20th. What Hamas has said publicly is that they are ready to make a deal today

as long as Israel stops adding new conditions constantly. So what is happening is as they narrow each gap, then Israel will put in one more new thing. Say, oh, do this. And then it takes another couple days. People got to meet again. You got to pass the paper back and forth. Well, we saw this, by the way, around, it was like late August around the DNC. We were in another cycle. I mean, this seems to be closer than that, but we've seen it. Hamas was saying the exact same thing. We'll take the deal on the table. Biden

put forward a public deal that Israel's cabinet had approved, their war cabinet had approved. Biden made it public. Hamas said, we'll take it. We're done. We're good. This is it. We'll take it. And Israel kept saying no and just kind of moving the line. So the current deal that's on the table includes huge concessions from

Hamas, the main concession that it includes is that Israeli troops would not have to withdraw immediately from Gaza. That was a huge sticking point originally. Hamas was saying, there's no ceasefire until you withdraw from Gaza. Now they're saying, fine, Israeli troops can stay as long as there is some path for them leaving in the future. And during the pause in fighting, all the vulnerable and civilian hostages would be exchanged for several hundred

Palestinian hostages. And then next, you would move to talks towards a permanent ceasefire. Saudi Arabia has gotten involved, saying that they would help to finance the reconstruction of Gaza while normalizing relations with Israel. And Saudi Arabia has dropped its demand that Israel recognize a Palestinian state

and replace that with a, quote, path toward a Palestinian state. And this is all from, we know these broad contours from the Haaretz report. Haaretz and other reporting, there's some Axios reporting, there's some reporting from Arabic outlets as well. So it's from yesterday? It broke yesterday? Yeah, these are the broad contours of the deal. And

Think about that when you follow the news over the next several days that with without a deal like I excited I'd love to be proven wrong I'd love that just as we walk out of the studio They announced that actually that everybody has agreed to the ceasefire that yesterday in Gaza there were celebrations in the streets at the news that a ceasefire deal was close like everybody wants this but I think Netanyahu sees

another six weeks or five weeks or so that he can kind of rain hell down upon Gaza. There are still hospitals left standing. Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, which has been subject to now more than a month of relentless assaults from Israel, leading to the killing of multiple doctors, nurses, their families. Yesterday,

Yesterday, doctors were attacked while they were operating, like through the windows. But the hospital is still operating. And

I believe that Israel is attempting to completely ethnically cleanse northern Gaza and needs to shut down all the hospitals. So I don't think that they'll reach a deal until they've completely shut down all of the hospitals. So this sounds very cynical, not quite. I mean, I would be surprised, to be honest, if Netanyahu brokered this deal and agreed to this deal under Biden as opposed to under Trump. I think he obviously realizes... The reason that might happen under Biden is that that's kind of what Trump has been demanding.

Like Trump has been saying that he wants this done by the time he's in office. And he will then take credit for it. Which fine, I don't care who takes credit for stuff. He could do it on day one though, right? Which is why he might. That's why I said it might be on January 20th. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of credit, I don't defend Biden ever, but like he was getting dragged down.

yesterday for saying that he had helped broker a deal that freed a hundred, you know, he got more than a hundred. And in fact, in November, when there was a week-long ceasefire, 105 hostages were released by Hamas. And, you know, if you're going to say that Biden is facilitating the genocide, which I do say and I do believe, he also brokered that deal. So it's like, I don't understand why people were getting upset at him. It actually, to me, makes it worse.

Him because it shows that was possible like the only thing that has freed Hostages at scale was a ceasefire like that and the deal that we will eventually reach probably on January 20th after we after another several thousand people are killed violently and tens of thousands maybe more died of starvation or what and disease and malnutrition because like you know imagine going a year plus and

without access to reliable clean water, medicine, even the healthiest people are going to collapse under those circumstances. The deal we'll eventually get was on the table a year ago. They didn't want it a year ago. They wanted to do what they did for the last year. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, I mean, we should even take a look at Syria because we have some video of Netanyahu in Syria. Oh, that's right. So there's this kind of debate like,

There was some reporting that Netanyahu was on his way to Doha to finalize this deal. And then they said, no, he's not in Doha. He was supposed to be in court, actually. He got for his corruption trial. But he was allowed to not show up for his corruption trial. And then they released video of where he actually is over at the Golan Heights. He's addressing people in Hebrew here. Stunning visual. I mean, he's got his flak jacket on.

His flak jacket, but what's he wearing a flak jacket for? Right. He's not remotely at any risk there. But he's standing basically atop Mount Hermon, which Israel wants because it is basically the only way for Israelis to go skiing without having to fly somewhere. So within their own borders, so they can now have a ski resort. Their argument is it's a buffer zone. Yeah.

The buffer zone and the buffer zone and the buffer zone and the buffer zone. It's a ski resort. And they say they're going to settle it and populate it as well. They're going to double and then some the population in the area.

The State Department will say, oh, it's a buffer zone and this is temporary, while Israel is saying, actually, we're going to settle it and populate it. So two different lines coming from A, which is not unfamiliar at all, because this is an administration that on one hand says, we support a two-state solution, but we're supporting a war from a man who says there's no such thing as a two-state solution. So this is along those lines. Yeah, you have Israel being a little bit more open and honest about what they're doing, and the State Department just lying directly to our faces about...

that what we see and what they're saying is actually not what they're doing and saying. It's like, what's going on here? So no, he was not in Doha reaching a ceasefire deal. He was working on the invasion and occupation of Syria, taking the opportunity of the Syrian people overthrowing a dictator.

to get a ski resort and call it a buffer zone. Meanwhile, you guys at Dropsite have a really interesting report about Hamas documents provided by Israel to the New York Times. And all of this goes to Iran as well, which is the, I mean, that's the central fear of Americans here is the World War III component. And now you have the New York Times reporting

This is a great story. You should just add, like... Yeah, really fascinating and embarrassing for the New York Times story in Dropsite by Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel-Kadous. We can put this up on the screen. We can put a link in there. So basically to give the gist of what's going on here, so twice now in the last couple months, the New York Times has run major bombshell stories citing...

Hamas documents that were found by Israel and then given to the New York Times So that's the chain of custody alleged chain of custody of these documents. So when you're doing this reporting what you need to do is Figure out whether or not the documents that you're being given are authentic one of the ways you can do that is by verifying that the source of the documents it would have access to those documents which and

and doesn't have a motivation to lie about them. So in other words, if a Hamas whistleblower, for instance, or an IDF whistleblower reaches out and you can confirm that that is who they are and they hand over some documents to you, you start out with a threshold of, okay, these are probably authentic, but I'm going to need to cross-reference some things. I'm going to need to figure some other things out. Now, if Hamas came to you and said that they had discovered some IDF documents

and then gave you those documents, you start from a place of skepticism. Yes. Because they are motivated to lie about them, and they wouldn't really have access to them. They say, well, it was during October 7th, we were in one of the military bases, and we made off with some hard drives, and here are the documents that we got. What you would then do is you would take those documents, and you would give them to sources connected to the IDF, presumably former, because if you give them current,

then they're not gonna be able to do that unless they're quite trustworthy. And then those sources will then try to figure out, okay, here are some problems with these documents, or say, these actually kind of look authentic. There's other things you can do to try to authenticate them. So New York Times gets these documents from Hamas, I mean, allegedly from Hamas through Israel,

And so they take it to a former Hamas guy. They take it to Salah al-Awada. That's who they name in their article as saying that they bear resemblance to Hamas documents and that these are good enough, you should go ahead and publish these documents. That's who the Times cites. So Jeremy Scahill calls the guy up and says, what else can you tell me about these documents? This sounds very interesting.

And you can read the full story. He tells him, I didn't tell the New York Times these were authentic documents. I'll just read one portion of it. Al-Awadah told Dropsite that the Times only shared one page out of 30 with him. After looking it over, he said he told the Times reporter that there was a particular phrase in the document that he suspected was a translation and that the person who wrote it did not sound native in Arabic.

I told him, "This looks translated. It doesn't look real. This phrase is out of context. It is not used and its meaning is not clear."

The phrase in question roughly translates in English as, quote, air cover. Quote, I told him it might be translated from another language that whomever wrote it translated it literally, but it is not used in the modern Arabic context, unquote. And he also shared a voice note with Dropsite that he had sent to the reporter where he had raised these doubts. And he also shared, you know, the exchanges that they had. So we know that this conversation happened because the Times says it happened. Like the Times says they talked to this guy.

And he shared with us what he told them. So think about that. So now imagine that you are a reporter. Hamas has handed you documents that they say are Hebrew documents from the IDF. Yeah. You show it to a Hebrew speaker. And the Hebrew speaker tells you, a Hebrew speaker who used to be with the IDF, Hebrew speaker says, this word actually looks like it was originally written in Arabic and translated into Hebrew. Hmm.

this doesn't look right. You could not then source that person as authenticating your documents. What that person told you is that you have fake documents. And how pathetic is it that Israel, which is in the Middle East, doesn't have Arabic speakers to fabricate their documents? It's like not even a good fabrication. Like they're using Google Translate? Like they're starting in Hebrew or English and then just having it translated into

into Arabic. And what happens when you do that is that your language doesn't sound authentic. And so that particular story was a claim, you remember this bombshell, was a claim that Iran

was read in on October 7th. Right. And that Hamas wanted Iranian help for October 7th. Which is a hugely significant. And which was used as a pretext for the expansion of their assault on Iran. Yeah. Turns out that's just completely fake. So now, fast forward to just a couple days ago, they put out a new investigation that they said was from Hamas documents that Israel had obtained and given

to the New York Times. This one, the document said, basically it was Hamas saying, we love to hide our militants inside UNRWA schools. And UNRWA is our secret weapon to go after Israel. Like that's basically what they're saying this document says. In that article,

They say that they were not able to authenticate the documents, but they believed they were authentic because they bore similarities to previous documents that they had been able to authenticate. So they're clearly referring back to these Iran documents, which we now know were fabricated themselves. So Israel is just concocting. And then what do they do?

bombed in two honor schools and killed more than 60 people so like this is all premeditated like that so they cook up these fake documents they give them to the New York Times they say these are Hamas documents and then they use that article as Pretext then for some slaughter that they carry out they did get busted by build Not not by build build and I believe it's Jewish currents ran a piece

Based on quote-unquote Hamas documents that said that Yahya Sinwar was planning to escape to Egypt with a bunch of hostages that turned out to be demonstrably proven to be a hoax and a bunch of egg on Bill's face and Like that's not in question. You like you don't need to take it from me that that was fake But that happened before the New York Times getting hoaxed here. Hmm. I

So the reason I mean there's many reasons but one of the pieces of this puzzle that's so significant is obviously the Iran link because the New York Times what in 2002 2003 was relying on bad sourcing and That reporting was used over and over again to substantiate war, right? It's a lesson that is very has very recently been learned specifically specifically

specifically by the New York Times. And some of this, you and I probably disagree on some of this, but some of it doesn't even need to be faked and exaggerated because we've talked before about how there's a genuine challenge for UNRWA in Gaza to disentangle itself from the government, which is de facto Hamas. Right. They have tens of thousands of employees. Right. Right. Yeah. And it just, so all that is to say, for

For the New York Times. I mean, Israel is another question, but for the New York Times. And to the point, like most of those tens of thousands of employees are like teachers and those types of folks. So do some of them work on the side for Hamas? Yeah, like a handful, like no doubt. Yeah, it's a problem. But what Israel had claimed that they had found, you know, much more sinister collaboration, right?

and then used that to slaughter a bunch of civilians who were sheltering in these schools. It's very, very sloppy. I mean, on the part of the New York Times and such a high stakes reporting. Yeah, I don't even know why Israel and New York Times bother at this point. Israel has shown that it can slaughter endless amounts of Palestinians without any cover. They don't even need the New York Times to lie for them.

So if you're at the New York Times, you can stand down. The world has given up. The world is just allowing this genocide to unfold. You want to go ahead and burn your credibility in order to facilitate more of the genocide? You go ahead and do it, but you don't actually have to anymore. Nobody's going to stop them. It's a, I mean, Jeremy just calling the guy up. He's like, oh, can you prove that? Yeah, here's a voice memo, here's texts. Yeah.

That's such a sad statement. It's so embarrassing. Oh, so we went to the New York Times for comment. And they responded by saying that they didn't answer any of the questions directly. They responded by saying that it was a rich story based on lots of different sources. Sure. So they talked to analysts and other people for other parts of the story. The headline, the lead, and the whole story are about these documents that you obtained.

And you're not even going to stand up for those documents. Right, exactly. That's a cop-out. Pathetic. They should be ashamed of themselves. They feel like they have total impunity because the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, all these other outlets that used to be major competitors of theirs have all withered.

So the New York Times now just stands alone. That's and so they're just completely unchecked Except by people within their newsroom and by independent media at this point, but the editors there What will they even hold a meeting about this? Oh, hey, by the way guys we turns out we got hoaxed and ran two major stories on

based on documents that were fabricated and dozens of people were killed. Many of them were burned to death as a result of and on the predicate of these articles that we published. Should we meet about this and try to not have this happen again? Because even if you don't care about all the death, it's embarrassing.

But because they have so much impunity, because they have no competitors at this point... That's a really interesting point. They're not even going to have a meeting about this. In prior eras, the Washington Post would have loved to have run your drop site story. Yes, it would light them up. And they would have been calling the source. Yeah. If they had more resources and absolutely. Yeah, more like...

I mean, right now they're really just not even competing with the Times, so it's not necessarily even a thought. Like, oh, let's spend some of our reporters' time calling up one of their sources. Yeah, and there's also a kind of colonialism where it's like, you can actually just say whatever you want about Hamas and Hamas documents. Just say it, and nobody's going to raise an issue with it.

Hi, everyone. It's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from The Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right. Nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list. So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the hot. This is it.

Your moment. This is your time to make your comeback with Purdue Global. When you come back with a Purdue Global degree, you create opportunity for yourself, your family, and your future. It's a degree you can be proud of, a degree that employers will trust and respect. Purdue Global offers working adults like you over 175 flexible degree programs to meet your specific career goals.

goals. These include associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees and certificates. Purdue Global degree programs range from nursing to business to communication and more. Whatever your interest, we have the degree that will move you forward. You

You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Now it's time to get credit for the work you've done and earn the recognition you deserve with Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. You know you're worth it. We do too. So don't wait another second to get the degree that will take your career to the next level. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu.

People thought it was impossible to build a firm, lifted booty and flatten and shrink your abs at the same time. But we've cracked the code. I'm Carl, the CEO of Body. That's body with an I. And if you want to lose weight while you build a firm, round booty and flat, tight abs, even that lower pooch, you need to start the 80-Day Obsession Fitness and Eating Program on Monday. 80 workouts shot in real time. It's like you're training with the cast as they make progress day by day. Crazy booty gains. Flat.

tight abs. We tested it, improved it, and now it's your turn. There's no subscription needed. You can get this in-home program for less than a dollar a workout and own permanent digital access. But here's the thing. We're inviting you to get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday. And if you don't see results in your butt and abs in the first 30 days, you get your money back, no questions asked. So get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday.

Go to 80dayobsession.com. That's 80dayobsession.com. Let's move on to the indictment of Luigi Mangione. He was indicted last night. We can put C1 up on the screen. He was indicted for first-degree murder, obviously, in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. That is, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's

attorney's office. So that's a step towards actually getting, he's facing two counts, we should add, of second degree murder. One of it is killing as a crime of terrorism.

So he's facing all kinds of charges. This one obviously is the headline charge.

But it also comes amidst discussion about an Emerson poll. This is C2 we should put up on the screen here. Ryan, did you see this Emerson poll where a majority of voters think the actions of the killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, are unacceptable? 17% find the actions acceptable, while 16% are unsure. Now, interestingly...

The pollster says, while 68% of voters overall reject the killer's actions, younger voters and Democrats are more split. 41% of voters aged 18 through 29 find the killer's actions acceptable. But to be clear, the breakdown of that is 24% of those 18 to 29-year-olds said it was somewhat acceptable.

17% said it was completely acceptable and when you combine both of them, that's where you get the 41% thinking that it was acceptable even though some of them just said somewhat. And Mediaite covered this as you just saw on the screen as a quote, "stunning poll." I don't know that it's that stunning, Ryan. What do you think?

Also, one detail I think we should let the viewers know is that this murder happened on December 4th, which is the day that we were recording CounterPoints here in the studio. And if you remember, there was a kid named Luigi Mangione who came by and was in the control room from about 6 a.m. until about, I think we did a CounterPoints Friday recording afterwards, so that went until...

11 or 11.30. It might be a different Luigi Mangione, but...

From seeing him, it seemed like the same guy. Baltimore, I remember we talked about Gilman, his prep school kid. He talked about how he'd never been to New York. Didn't have any plans on going to New York. Yeah. He can't even ride a bike, actually, from what I remember. He couldn't ride a bike. He would never ride a city bike. Because you do. People don't know this. Hates McDonald's. You love to talk about bikes. I do. Yeah, we had a long conversation about bikes. Curly hair. Anyway. Yeah.

So, by the way, I'm curious if you're taking the terror charges. Yeah. I've seen people make what I think is a fair point. Like, hey, wait a minute. January 6th, guys, they were trying to terrorize all sorts of people. They don't get charged with that. Lots of people don't get charged with terror.

On the other hand, you know, if that wasn't Luigi who was here in the control room, I think it was, but it wasn't, whoever was guilty of this has said that the goal was to sow terror. It's in the paragraph manifesto. When Lennon and Robespierre use the word terror, they don't,

Use it pejoratively. Yeah. The goal is to terrorize. Please, please don't charge me with terrorism. So, not saying that he did it, but if he did, the goal was to terrorize. So, the pearl clutching around the terrorism charges to me is like, well, look, man, if you're going to do this stuff, that's what you're doing.

Right, and Mangione is pleading not guilty, right? He says this is not what happened, which is very interesting. Because he was here in the control room. But it continues to be very interesting because there's a manifesto that is being pinned to him, and maybe it is him. It seems likelier than not. If the manifesto doesn't fit, you have to quit. It seems likelier than not that it is. But, but.

But we've seen setups. It's not impossible that there are... I mean, really, though. He's pleading not guilty. The whole situation is extremely bizarre. He's able to get... He shoots a guy in cold blood in Manhattan during the day and just...

gets away for days, just blends into the crowd in Midtown and is able to actually get out of state to Pennsylvania and isn't caught for days. That, I think in and of itself is pretty strange. That continues to me to be the weirdest part of all of this. - I would like to know the real story on how they caught him because, you know, whenever, like, this feels like one of those stitched together cover stories for how they caught him where in fact they were using

surveillance technologies that are to put it generously maybe on the constitutional edge of being allowed and so what what will often happen if you use those types of authorities to Solve a crime or to catch somebody you then figure out a way that you could have done it legitimately and you pull that together Or maybe they really are completely incompetent and just you know somebody

You know saw him at the McDonald's and made a phone call Speculation is that he's going to plead not guilty by insanity, which is obviously a different Yeah, that's very different than saying I flat-out didn't do it the not guilty by insanity like Right. There's two you're basically you're trying to get the jury to you're trying to give the jury a reason to acquit you even though they know you did it and the one would be I Wasn't there wasn't me as this was all planted and it's like mmm. I

Like you said, it's getting hard. Yeah, it's pretty hard to do that. There's a lot of footage. Yeah, because they could subpoena our cameras here and find that actually Luigi wasn't here. But then the second one would be to say he was insane. And then the jury can be like, yeah, he was temporarily insane. Right. And that doesn't mean we condone it. We mean it was an act of insanity, but it means we're going to let him go. And then they give him a gun charge or something. Right, well, he has a bunch of gun charges. So they feel like they've still...

said there have to be some consequences here, but not necessarily life in prison. Right. I think that's my guess of where the strategy goes. Yeah. Are you surprised that the 41 to 40 youth, that's 29 and under, say that by 41 to 40, now it's Emerson. There's a thousand person poll. Right. But

Anyway. Well, I'm saying that's not. I mean, I'm sure pollsters would look at me and be like, a thousand people. That's statistically stupid. It is, but if you're a bad pollster, you can get whatever you want out of that. Well, when you're down in the 17%, you can find 17% of Americans who say just about everything. Like it's usually around 20% you can say in a poll. It's 41% that say it's somewhat acceptable.

It's 41 combined with the 17. Right. So somewhat, that's... Somewhat and definitely acceptable. Completely acceptable, right. Yeah, so all that is to say... I think it's a tough one because people have complicated views about this. I think they're like, it's wrong to commit murder. I wouldn't commit murder. I wouldn't urge anybody to commit murder. What do I think about this? Kind of rather not say. So where do you...

Where do you come down? Like, how do you pull that sentiment, which I think is pretty widely held? And by the way, we should be clear that we don't exactly know how Mangione is exactly going to plead. Again, the speculation is not guilty by reason of insanity. It does look like all of the indications are not guilty, that that's his case. It's going to be he's not guilty. But how exactly he makes that plea is a different question. Now, back to this, there's two different things here. I mean, if you're asking the question of somewhat acceptable,

versus completely acceptable. To your point, the complicated feelings about acceptability are going to come in and that's where it seems-- - I guess that falls under somewhat acceptable. - But that's the thing, right? - Or somewhat unacceptable. - There's a totally different question as to whether it's acceptable to talk about Thompson's corruption in the aftermath of his death. And I feel like it's very easy to conflate those two things, especially if you're just responding quickly to a poll.

And so I think some of it comes from that. And there's all of this hysteria over people getting, Zoomers getting Mangione tattoos.

They're doing it because everyone's going to their fainting couch and acting as though healthcare executives are beyond criticism. And it just strikes me as such a, like, when somebody, take an example of a Columbine. What do we do after something like that? We talk about bullying. We talk about why it's not okay to bully people because it makes people snap.

It doesn't mean it's okay. Nobody's saying it's okay for people to snap. We are adults and can hold multiple views at the same time that are not inconsistent. Two things can be true, that the more you create a climate that pushes people to extremism and makes them miserable,

makes them angry, the more likely you are to get situations like this. It doesn't justify it and it doesn't make it right. So I think the way the question is worded is in that direction and I think the reason that so many people are acting out and ironically, and sometimes not ironically, embracing Mangione

It's not the way that I'm reacting to any of this, but the reason is because there's now so much hysteria that's like weirdly defending the healthcare industry and acting like he was just a guy who was trying to do his best. Diving deeper into the poll, the other interesting number is the somewhat unacceptable because it's somebody who shot a guy in the back on 6th Avenue and to

To get people off of totally unacceptable, which is where everybody starts with that act, and move them even to somewhat unacceptable, that's something. That's some gray area. For young people, that was an extra 7%, so that takes it to 48%, which leaves only one in three people under 29 saying that it was completely unacceptable. So two-thirds of

young people confronted with, hey, somebody walked up and shot somebody in the back in broad daylight. Is that completely unacceptable? Two out of three were not willing to say that that was completely unacceptable. So even though only 41, so it's actually kind of a higher number. Yes, and I do get why people are, I get why, you know, there are people who, the types of people who introduce themselves at happy hours, just like classical liberals, are disturbed by the,

These numbers and I get why like normal people these numbers they are like yes It's that's it speaks to the problem of the healthcare system and it speaks to the problem of like the deep deep anger and sense of unjust like unjustness and Just misery that people are experiencing and this is like cathartic. So yes, it's disturbing because the system in order to operate

In order to, let's say, exact justice peacefully and through the classically liberal process, you have to have buy-in. And what you're losing is public buy-in. And you can't just blame the public for that. You have to also blame the top for that. Just to lash out at the public is the exact wrong way to go about it. And it's only going to make things worse if you're just lashing out at the public. And I feel bad for TikTok just as they thought they were maybe going to get...

some salvation from their coming band. All of a sudden, all these young people are now celebrating Luigi. So TikTok is like, they're starting to take it out of app stores, right? It's like, the band is coming. It's like a month away or something like that.

But there's still time to stave it off. Donald Trump, at his press conference this week, hinted that there might be some daylight there. Let's roll Trump here at C3. How do you plan to stop the ban on TikTok next month? We'll take a look at TikTok. You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points. There are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that. Now, Joe Rogan did and...

Some of the other people that were recommended by my son Baranin, who have any new names, I said, who is that? Tell me, who's that? Dad, you got to be kidding. I can't believe you don't know. And I did those interviews and it was actually sort of cute. Do you want to know the truth? So I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart, I'll be honest. I love how transparent Trump is about the transactional nature of his support for someone. We've always known that, that

The only litmus test for Trump, whether he likes you, is if you like him. Yes. Kim Jong-un does like TikTok young people. Muslims in America. Yeah. Doesn't matter. If you like him, he likes you. By the way, not to be the actually guy. He did not win the U vote by 34 points. We're in a circle which does that. Leave him alone. I think it was 52-46 for Harris. Let him bask. Don't kill the vibes. If he wants to think...

If he wants to think that young people supported him by 34 points and he wants to then govern based on what young people want for this country,

Then Donald Trump you won young people by 34 points I actually don't believe anybody who tells you otherwise one of the funny things is when we were talking with our friend Luigi in the control room on December 4th He said that Trump won 90% of the youth vote, but we never checked it out Yeah, but it could be true and Luigi said that he really separates Trump from the rest of the oligarchs right now by Starting this bit you have probably gotten us in so much trouble. I didn't start the bit what people would

probably know that I'm just referencing memes on like Facebook and elsewhere of all these people saying like, just wanted to talk about this cool December 4th morning I had with my friend Luigi down in San Antonio. We got coffee. We did the little walk on the river there. You brought the bit here. You'll have to accept that blame. That's fair enough. In any event, I think TikTok has a chance of surviving for this reason.

The deep state had wanted to ban TikTok for a very long time because they don't control it. China's got its influence over there. And they don't like having their U.S. news media. They want U.S. news media to be the sovereign domain of our corporate overlords, not our Chinese overlords.

But they could never get any traction with that belief until after October 7th. After October 7th, people were able to see people in Gaza who they connected with in a parasocial way being slaughtered on a daily basis. And it turned the public who was getting their news from TikTok...

Off of the off of the genocide like it convinced them that what they were being told in the in the sanitized version of the news Did not comport with what was actually happening on the ground That's when they were able to get bipartisan buy-in to pass the legislation to force a sale Which they're saying they won't sell it. So therefore they will shut it down. I think now that they Basically are successful in their genocide and nobody's gonna stop them that

the main thrust behind the band is kind of gone. So maybe they'll give it a reprieve. What do you think? - I don't know, I mean,

just wait until we start talking more about China and the drones, right? Republican and Democrats. Right, and Michael McCaul saying... Michael McCaul yesterday. That's news. That was news last night. He said it was likely Chinese technology or likely Chinese drones, which I don't...

know why he's saying that without, you know, it's just, we've heard from Jeff. We were already told they were Iranian drones. We were told they were Iranian from Jeff Bandrew. That was by a transportation secretary, a transportation committee member, which, like, get out of here with your... Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know who told. He said someone told him that. He said, I'm on the committee and I talk to people. Talk to people in the business. He's talking to some drone company owner. So when Paul came out and said that last night, my spidey senses went up. I mean, maybe. So now this has come from the intelligence side. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe. But I just, I think your point about control is really important. And I actually. I commented on it and said he doesn't know. I. I.

I have a very unpopular take on this. I've said that TikTok should be banned for a long time, but not for any of these reasons. And the TikTok bill is such a disaster. I didn't support any of that because it was complete deep state overreach. I think all social media should be banned for people under 16 or something. I'm getting close to that. Because it's a collective action problem. As a parent, I'm completely failing when it comes to my kids and social media. Parents can't do it alone.

So I think that the deal, the grand bargain that we should strike with China, and Trump's already talking about US and China together can do great things for the world. So here should be the deal. We will allow TikTok to continue.

But Chairman Xi gets to regulate our children's social media consumption. In China, it's like you get one hour on Friday, one hour on Saturday. I think that includes video games. But you know they just pump government propaganda into the— Fine, but it's only an hour. Fine. You want your kids getting U.S. government propaganda? If it's only for an hour on Friday and Saturday? It's like Top Gun 2 clips. Yeah, whatever. Fine. So—

I look at China's regulation of social media for their kids and I'm so jealous. They've got that under control. So if we can outsource that to Xi, then we'll let TikTok keep going.

Hi, everyone. It's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right. Nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list. So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the hot. This is it.

Your moment. This is your time to make your comeback with Purdue Global. When you come back with a Purdue Global degree, you create opportunity for yourself, your family, and your future. It's a degree you can be proud of, a degree that employers will trust and respect. Purdue Global offers working adults like you over 175 flexible degree programs to meet your specific career goals. These include associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees and certificates.

Purdue Global degree programs range from nursing to business to communication and more. Whatever your interest, we have the degree that will move you forward.

You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Now it's time to get credit for the work you've done and earn the recognition you deserve with Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. You know you're worth it. We do too. So don't wait another second to get the degree that will take your career to the next level. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu.

People thought it was impossible to build a firm, lifted booty and flatten and shrink your abs at the same time. But we've cracked the code. I'm Carl, the CEO of Body. That's body with an I. And if you want to lose weight while you build a firm, round booty and flat, tight abs, even that lower pooch, you need to start the 80-Day Obsession Fitness and Eating Program on Monday. 80 workouts shot in real time. It's like you're training with the cast as they make progress day by day. Crazy booty gains. Flat.

tight abs. We tested it, improved it, and now it's your turn. There's no subscription needed. You can get this in-home program for less than a dollar a workout and own permanent digital access. But here's the thing. We're inviting you to get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday. And if you don't see results in your butt and abs in the first 30 days, you get your money back, no questions asked. So get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday.

Go to 80dayobsession.com. That's 80dayobsession.com. Ryan, I've been excited over the last couple of days to get your take on what went down in the back rooms of the Democratic House caucus when Jerry Connolly...

just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, victory for himself, defeat arguably for the Democratic Party, when he took chairmanship of the House Oversight or ranking member of the House Oversight Committee from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wanted the job. Yeah, so the backstory here is Jamie Raskin had this position as top Democrat on Oversight Committee. He moved over to take the top spot on the Judiciary Committee, which is kind of higher

higher ranking spot. He and AOC are very close. He had made AOC the vice chair, which is a kind of position that he made up, but came with real authority on the committee and ability to learn the operation of it and how to get things done and how to do oversight both towards the law enforcement direction, subpoena direction, but also using the committee as a platform for

creating political controversy and narratives and videos, which is like 99% of Congress's job at this point. Well, and Jim Jordan used it very effectively as well. When you're in the minority, you still have a lot of power if you're on oversight because you're just driving different investigative narratives. Yeah, and so if the vote were just up to the Oversight Committee,

Democrats there they're mostly all AOC allies win that overwhelmingly goes to the steering committee Which is a kind of secretive leadership Situation it was that where you know that like she never had a shot there. Mm-hmm, but then you can challenge it and take it to the entire caucus and We can put up the results of that and

caucus vote, which just happened, she lost 131 to 84. And so later today, but it'll air on Friday, Thursday, if you're in premium, we'll be interviewing Greg Kassar, congressman from Texas, who is the new chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus has, we'll ask him, 95 members, 100, something like that. It has more than 84. So in other words, so these are secret ballots, by the way. So nobody knows how people voted in

AOC didn't even win the entire progressive caucus. That shows. And she's close with a decent number of people who are not in the progressive caucus. So Connolly did fairly well creeping into the CPC. How? Explain that. That I think is probably very baffling. And we'll talk to Kassar about this. The progressive caucus, for many Democrats, is a branding exercise to progress.

Just tell people back at home that they're progressive which is the opposite of the Freedom Caucus which actually like pretty rigorously enforces Right and they kicked out Mario Taylor green. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah There have been some efforts by by the Perilla Jayapal to tighten To tighten kind of conditions for getting in you have to support two-thirds of the things that you know that they You know complicated

litmus test but a lot of room for letting people walk and on the one hand like there are there are circumstances like Matt Cartwright mm-hmm who lost RIP was Scranton progressive who kept winning this Trump district. Mm-hmm and It would progressives would say okay look there are gonna be some things he's not with us on because he represents this kind of rural

Pennsylvania district, but he's for Medicare for all. He's for green utilities. He's for all this stuff. And he's a populist Democrat. He's the kind we want. That's a good argument. But a lot of other Democrats use that argument to smuggle in a lot of corporate behavior. What really happened here, though, was predictable from the very beginning. And that is that AOC ousted Joe Crowley. Right.

came in in a way that is unacceptable to her colleagues. Unforgivable. And unforgivable. Came in with other people who had unforgivable views when it came to Israel and Palestine, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, and then proceeded to continue to endorse some primary challenges to sitting Democrats. Not as many as the left would like. Not as early as the organizations would like, but far more than was acceptable to

to incumbent Democrats. The acceptable number of primary challenges for incumbent Democrats is zero with the asterisk being it's okay if you want a primary. Cori Bush, Jamal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, those kinds of incumbent Democrats, you can challenge those and that's not actually a threat to the Democratic Party. You can still be a team player. Although even there, it's like you didn't have a whole lot of

Democrats openly going against Jamal Bowman and Cory Bush for for that reason that there's there's this Come there's this like omerta within this within the house within the house Which is again it is so so different and we'll talk about this a little bit but it's so different from Republicans would basically are I say this not pejorative like a circus like they air their stuff out which they should good good for them and so in my book the squad

Interviewed a lot of AOC staff members who who said that very early 2019 like this was this was a fundamental question facing her as she came into office like would she try to get along with her colleagues well and move up the ranks of Democratic Party build power that way and then use that power for good or

Is she a constant insurgent who uses her platform in the House to build a national movement and just understands that the House is not the place where she's going to exercise her power, but that the House is actually a defanged institution anyway and that there's more power culturally and politically at being a national figure. And her staff who were on the other side of this argument

disagreed with the idea of kind of playing playing by the rules and moving up to the ranks said It's actually not even a choice for you. There is nothing that you can do to shrink yourself down Small enough that they will ever forgive you for what you did. I was last night I was pulled I wanted to pull up one quote because I think it's quite prescient from Corbin Trent if you remember

That was her Tennessee communications director who had that fun southern drawl. It was always kind of discordant and fun to hear him representing the Bronx congresswoman.

But so he, like, so at one point, so this is from the book, he said Trump, Trent, Corbyn Trent said he would often warn Ocasio-Cortez that because of the way she had burst onto the scene and because of the threat she represented to others, her hope of being accepted as a member in good standing would always be frustrated. Quote, disarming will not make them happy, he said.

Even if she left politics and became merely an influencer or an MSNBC talking head, he argued, they'd still hunt her until the end of time. He said, quote, the funny thing is it still wouldn't prove to her that it won't work. I just have to get a little smaller so nobody thinks I'm a threat. Okay, sorry again, guys. Sorry again for all this trouble. And so she tried that.

That route of, sorry for all this trouble, but look how prepared I am at the oversight committee hearings. Look how much good I do for the party. I've gone to Nevada, which we won. I helped Jackie Rosen win in Nevada. You sent me to Pennsylvania with the Puerto Rican population. I'm popular on TikTok. These oversight hearings are going viral on TikTok. Young people absolutely love me. It is their hook into the Democratic Party. Yeah.

She kept believing that the Democratic Party cared about any of the Democratic Party cared about winning or doing good things That was that's her fundamental like disconnect if you see these members of Congress as just individual, you know power-seeking politicians rather than people who are engaged in a collective fight to make the world a better place and

then you're going to analyze the situation right. So it's by having too much faith in her colleagues

And you found a good post from her Republican friend. Well, I was going to say. Put that up here? Yeah, let's put the next element up. And as we do, I just want to say, like, I think it's true. They care about themselves winning, right? Like Nancy Pelosi cares about. Right. They care about power among their friends like Joe Crowley. That's why you want Joe Crowley to win, not necessarily. Although, ironically, she was even fine to see Joe Crowley lose because he was going to challenge her for Speaker. He was.

But she just didn't like the idea that, broadly speaking, you're going to challenge Democrats. The block of establishment, right, who are loyal to her. So Tim Burchett, who I believe is Freedom Caucus, but they're like Fight Club. You're not allowed to know. You're not allowed to know.

Some of them will say Freedom Caucus, like we know some of them are. But I'm happy for us because the Democrats don't realize that in their youth circle, she is a rock star. That's what Tim Burchett, a Republican, said of Connolly defeating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And there's also David Sirota posted after this happened.

Today's reminder that no change agent will be able to quote, nice their way to power inside the Democratic Party. Power will have to be ripped away from the establishment. They're not going to give it away in exchange for good manners or being a team player. When I read that, I just think that is so accurate because it reminds me of the exact dynamics that happened with John Boehner and who was going up against John Boehner, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. And

And ultimately, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, they were not interested in playing nice at all. That was clear. They thought they, the establishment sort of thought that they snuffed out the Tea Party. Donald Trump came along. And Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, you're gonna get a Donald Trump if you are elevating Connolly over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And AOC's just trying to tell

them. I'm just trying to say you have to listen to the populists. Um, but at some point you just have to go completely, you have to go completely like right outside the structures of power because they don't care. Right. Because even from a cynical perspective, Democrats, even for their own individual advancement should actually have sided with it. AOC here, because there was reporting that she was telling, uh, Democrats that she was going to stop

endorsing challenges to incumbents. Right. If you give her the ranking... That's huge. If you give her the ranking seat, you have brought her fully within the tent. Yeah. And she's going to then stop

You know, you have them completely pulled her in. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So she's no longer a threat to you. She's in the club. But they hate her and what she represents so much that even if she completely surrenders it, it's not enough for them. So the only question will be, does she respond to this by saying, well, Pelosi was my problem. Once she's gone, I'll be okay because Pelosi organized behind the scenes.

And if I just keep showing my colleagues that I care about the party and I care about making the world a better place, that I'm a good person to have on the team, that they will eventually welcome me in. And maybe she can just outlive them all. Like she's young enough and they're old enough. I mean she definitely will. So that's one option. Like they all just actually die.

And then she's in her 50s and there's all these people in their 30s and 40s who kind of came up in politics admiring her. That's one path. The other is to say they're never going to accept me. They're never going to accept you. And I'm going to build my power base as the leader first.

of a movement which was the kind of Bernie Sanders wing of the party, was the Elizabeth Warren wing before that, now I'm gonna make it the AOC wing and that's gonna be my power base. Yes. Like that's an option that's in front of her and we'll get to see where it goes. She knows that voter sentiments are way closer to her than they are to Nancy Pelosi, the base of the party. And so what she should realize is that maybe she, I mean, I don't know, it sounds like she doesn't realize this, but

The House Freedom Caucus operated as a block. It said, we are taking the Tea Party sentiments because we recognize they are what is popular with our voters, and we are going to vote in lockstep.

They're losing their ability to do that. We should report right here the House and Senate released a 1,500-page NDAA. Basically, it would fund the government. The government will shut down on Friday at midnight if a bill is not passed to continue funding the government. And Mike Johnson has put out a bill in order to hit the 72-hour review deadline.

rule. It's kind of funny how he's being hampered by the concessions that Kevin McCarthy made to people like Mike Johnson and then more broadly to the Freedom Caucus specifically to become Speaker which was putting conservatives on the Rules Committee. So that's Chip Roy, Thomas Massey who are now thwarting the parliamentary procedure of how Johnson ends up getting this bill to fund the government through. So that's just an amusing little takeaway that only happened because the Freedom Caucus operated as a block.

That is if the if the squad if there was something between the squad and the Congressional Progressive Caucus that's like a middle size between squad which is too small to operate as a block and the CPC which is like too Sprawling to be in lockstep on progressive priorities. They would be so powerful Well, it was headed in that direction and in 2022 a ton of them got nuked by a pack and DMF I so it was a real I mean the squad was growing. Yeah. Yeah, I

Yeah, I mean, like, it's, you can't, you can't. Which is the final chapters in that book. Even if it's smart for them to put you in the club, they don't want you in the club. They don't want you in there. So, good luck. And they're never gonna, yeah. Yeah, and by the way, changing and reforming the entire system, this entire, Mike Johnson, who was Freedom Caucus adjacent, he wasn't in the Freedom Caucus, but he talked like a lot of them. He's now putting an omnibus out that is full of pork,

that Republicans said they would not do, and he's forcing them to vote on it. He's probably gonna have to work with Democrats. So is it, have anti-establishment Republicans changed the system through the Freedom Caucus and through saying screw John Boehner, we're working outside of the halls of power? No, but they're getting closer. And at the very least, they've set the standard that this is not acceptable, and Democrats don't have anything like that right now.

Hi, everyone. It's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right. Nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list. So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the hot. This is it.

Your moment. This is your time to make your comeback with Purdue Global. When you come back with a Purdue Global degree, you create opportunity for yourself, your family, and your future. It's a degree you can be proud of, a degree that employers will trust and respect. Purdue Global offers working adults like you over 175 flexible degree programs to meet your specific career goals. These include associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees and certificates.

Purdue Global degree programs range from nursing to business to communication and more. Whatever your interest, we have the degree that will move you forward.

You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Now it's time to get credit for the work you've done and earn the recognition you deserve with Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. You know you're worth it. We do too. So don't wait another second to get the degree that will take your career to the next level. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu.

People thought it was impossible to build a firm, lifted booty and flatten and shrink your abs at the same time. But we've cracked the code. I'm Carl, the CEO of Body. That's body with an I. And if you want to lose weight while you build a firm, round booty and flat, tight abs, even that lower pooch, you need to start the 80-Day Obsession Fitness and Eating Program on Monday. 80 workouts shot in real time. It's like you're training with the cast as they make progress day by day. Crazy booty gains. Flat.

tight abs. We tested it, improved it, and now it's your turn. There's no subscription needed. You can get this in-home program for less than a dollar a workout and own permanent digital access. But here's the thing. We're inviting you to get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday. And if you don't see results in your butt and abs in the first 30 days, you get your money back, no questions asked. So get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday.

Go to 80dayobsession.com. That's 80dayobsession.com.

Moving over to Ukraine, stunning footage emerging out of Moscow and published simultaneously in a bunch of Ukrainian television networks. So we don't have to wonder about, you know, how the footage was taken or what happened here. We can roll this video here. So this is the moment that General Igor Kirillov, who's basically in charge of Russia's nuclear protection force, is walking out of his

There you see it, walking out of a building and boom. If you're listening to it, yeah, you just see snow and debris covering the camera all of a sudden. Yeah. And so this is happening as Zelensky is huddling with European leaders,

doing everything he can to try to get as much support in place for his war effort as possible before Trump takes office. But meanwhile, things are collapsing politically around him. Not only

Is Trump coming into office in in Washington you have? Trudeau on his way out. We're gonna talk about that in a moment Trudeau on his way out in in Canada Canada has been one of the really top Western supporters of the Ukrainian war effort and I think has the third largest population of Ukrainians in the world including including Ukraine and You have the German Chancellor Schultz on his way out Which is?

and he's probably going to be replaced by the Christian Democratic Union, whatever they call that center-right party over in Germany, which has actively been saying that they want to reduce support for the Ukraine war effort. You've got Macron in trouble in France. And so the writing is clearly on the wall when it comes to Western support for this war effort. Meanwhile,

Ukraine is running out of Ukrainians to throw into the trenches here while the Ukrainian economy is in complete collapse, as any economy would be facing these circumstances and just completely propped up by NATO financing. Whereas Russia's economy is not completely booming off the walls, but they're doing well. Putin is facing no political backlash to speak of.

It's not as if his position is threatened. His goals continue to remain achievable. So looking like a complete mess. And Trump just the other day calling for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. A sign of what I think is some desperation there.

comes from a recent tweet and video. We can put this up as just a VO. This is related to this charge by Western allies that North Korea has surged a bunch of special forces operatives into, you know, to support the Russian cause.

Couple weeks ago. I repeated that on this show because I thought it was just a fact like I thought it was like a publicly known fact and that North Korea was like That North Korea wasn't denying it. Nobody was denying. I was like, this is this is what we're doing It turns out no like It turns out that this is an argument that Ukraine and and Ukraine supporters in the US have been making in order to try to gin up support for the war effort like I I

And it seems, it was like, wait a minute, that's what this is? Are you saying that the claims are exaggerated? Or it may not even be true. So there's no evidence that...

that North Koreans are actually fighting in Russia other than these claims that are being made. And so what we showed you there was Zelensky tweeting that the reason that they have been able to provide zero evidence that there are North Koreans participating in this assault is that Russia has been deleting all the videos and that they've been burning the faces of the Korean troops

who've been killed so that Ukraine can't then get the bodies and prove to the world that this claim they made about North Koreans being there. And I don't know, if you believe that, I don't know what to tell you. Like, if that's where you are at this point, you're saying that they're burning their faces? And so they put up a little bit of video that purports to show something along those lines, and it's like, I don't know, man. It's just...

So the reason I repeated on the show is like I just I just thought it was true I just thought like oh North Korea is sending some troops because Russia asked them to do that Okay, fine like we should end this war but but the source of this has been Nato sources saying that North Korea is doing this therefore we need to you know ramp up more funding for this war which is like that's how far removed I am from the the propaganda here because it's like

I don't even see how that's a persuasive argument. I don't even get the idea that that's a persuasive argument. To me, your position on whether or not this war should continue shouldn't be changed whether or not there's some North Korean special forces involved. Right.

Well, it's actually, I think, the opposite. I think that's what's interesting about this line, which is they think, they're convinced that what this means is we need to give, people will respond to this and say, oh my gosh, yes, please send all of the money to Ukraine. Let's continue this war. Let's defeat Putin. He is now engaging. This is like axis of evil. I think that's what they assume people interpret it as. Yes, yeah. Whereas a lot of people look at it like, you're kidding me. There's another nuclear power involved? Yeah.

Stop. Stop this thing. This is so out of touch. The New York Times reported yesterday that

On a general US general whose Air Force Major General Pat Ryder the Pentagon spokesman told reporters on Monday that the North Koreans had entered combat last week in Kursk and they Assessed that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat and have indications They have suffered casualties both killed and wounded reportedly I think they think it's around 30 casualties something like that the New York Times to something we talked about earlier in the show said those claims could not be independently there because they're burning their faces and

Are you kidding me? Like and look if North Korea is sending troops to Russia like it's not as if I believe that North Korea has some like Morality that would prevent it from allowing its special forces to become mercenaries for Russia Sure, they'd be fine to do that, but we need a little evidence and this like claims could not be corroborated That's one thing when you go and say your claims could not be corroborated because Russia is destroying video evidence and burning the faces of the Korean soldiers That's what I'm like. Hold on a second

That makes no sense. It actually, I mean, North Korea's involvement isn't entirely surprising. It wouldn't be. I mean, sure. But...

If they're not involved, we shouldn't say that they are. Definitely not. And look, maybe I'm totally wrong and the U.S. military is telling the truth for once, but we need some evidence and the excuse for there not being evidence really cannot be that the Russians are burning the faces of the people killed. Which is in the Zoloft script. Come on, how do you do that?

They're all walking around with gas cans. No idea. I just find that, and you still would have the rest of the person, even if you burn their face. Oh, face is burned. You can't tell who this is. Right. Or, right, like uniforms and there are other things. I don't know. Maybe we're as stupid as they think they are. What do you think they are? They think we are. Yeah.

Hi, everyone. It's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. We love this time of year. There's so much to celebrate. That's right. Nobody does the holidays quite like today. All season long, join us for special performances with the brightest stars. Plus, festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list. So join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the hottest. This is it.

Your moment. This is your time to make your comeback with Purdue Global. When you come back with a Purdue Global degree, you create opportunity for yourself, your family, and your future. It's a degree you can be proud of, a degree that employers will trust and respect. Purdue Global offers working adults like you over 175 flexible degree programs to meet your specific career goals.

goals. These include associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees and certificates. Purdue Global degree programs range from nursing to business to communication and more. Whatever your interest, we have the degree that will move you forward. You

You have the knowledge. You have the experience. Now it's time to get credit for the work you've done and earn the recognition you deserve with Purdue Global, Purdue's online university for working adults. You know you're worth it. We do too. So don't wait another second to get the degree that will take your career to the next level. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal.edu.

People thought it was impossible to build a firm, lifted booty and flatten and shrink your abs at the same time. But we've cracked the code. I'm Carl, the CEO of Body. That's body with an I. And if you want to lose weight while you build a firm, round booty and flat, tight abs, even that lower pooch, you need to start the 80-Day Obsession Fitness and Eating Program on Monday. 80 workouts shot in real time. It's like you're training with the cast as they make progress day by day. Crazy booty gains. Flat.

tight abs. We tested it, improved it, and now it's your turn. There's no subscription needed. You can get this in-home program for less than a dollar a workout and own permanent digital access. But here's the thing. We're inviting you to get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday. And if you don't see results in your butt and abs in the first 30 days, you get your money back, no questions asked. So get 80-Day Obsession by Friday so you can start on Monday.

Go to 80dayobsession.com. That's 80dayobsession.com. Speaking of stupid people, this is a good transition to Justin Trudeau. Smart dude. Nailed it. Yeah. He's smart. You can say what you want about him. You think he's smart. Oh, yeah. No. Watch when he...

You think he's kind of a bimbo or something? Yeah, you think he's like a sort of snowy Gavin Newsom? Yeah, he's read books. He's read books? I bet he's read books. He's read like Gone Girl. Oh, by the way, I do have to like, I totally face planted during that interview that we did with Guy Stewart, the Syrian who went to fight in Syria. I was making fun of our audience for not reading and told everybody that they should go read

I thought I was saying for whom the bell tolls. Oh, yeah, that was bad. So I'm blaming Guy since he's not here. So Guy was saying that there's this character in the book that keeps talking about manana, which is, there's a similar phrase in Kurdish. That's from for whom the bell tolls. Right. Obviously, people say manana.

In George Orwell's book, Homage to Catalonia. But it's much more of a thing in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Mañana Mañana, which is by Ernest Hemingway. It is a great book. But I've conflated Homage to Catalonia and Homage to Catalonia.

And from the bell tolls, while making fun of young people for not reading, it was utterly embarrassing. It's quite all right. I mean, none of us caught it. There's three of us here, and none of us caught it. The audience caught it right away, though. Of course they did. Well-read audience. But actually they didn't catch that. They're like, no, dude, that's by George Orwell. The actual own would have been, no, dude, that's for whom the bell tolls.

That's the act cuz I said it was an American right who went to fight in Spain, right? George Orwell is not an American. No, so you had that part right just a lot of jumbled You know, it's people are easy to confuse It's fair. Yeah, you guys tried doing four hours of shows straight What exactly this is we're about to talk here about the German Chancellor Justin Trudeau

Exactly. Did you catch that one? Good one. So not a good one at all. But Justin Trudeau has, Justin Trudeau is facing very serious calls for his resignation, very serious calls for his resignation. We can put First Almond up on the screens from the BBC. His finance minister quit, resigned. And this is, as the BBC puts it in the headline, all coming amidst a, quote, spat over Trump's

threat. The Trump threat obviously being the tariffs and his finance minister resigned, she said, because he's prioritizing political gimmicks, meaning he flew down to Mar-a-Lago and sort of made nice with Donald Trump and then the two have exchanged barbs ever since because Trudeau realized that his own party was furious about that. So this is a significant threat to his party, a significant threat to his leadership. Ryan, how do you think this is going to shake out for Trudeau? I will say,

To give Trump credit, it is funny when he calls him Governor Trudeau. Oh my gosh. And calls the great state of Canada. It's hilarious. That's good stuff. Yeah. So he asked Chrystia Friedland to step down as Minister of Finance and take a different cabinet position. She said no, and then she timed her vicious resignation letter for maximum political damage to him. Basically, what her argument is, is that

The game is on. Trump is coming for us. This is an existential threat. It's a 25% tariff. Canada needs to put aside all of our different differences and completely unite against Trump right now. The same way that they did, say, when they were renegotiating NAFTA, that we need to collectively fight for this because this is going to set our path for a generation or more. And she's saying we need to harbor...

as many of our resources, financial resources, as we can in order to be ready for the trade war that they believe that they should have to try to back Trump down from these tariffs. Because, like, Trump's predicate here is kind of ridiculous. He's saying that he's going to slap these 25% tariffs on Canada because its border is insecure. Come on. Stop with... Seriously, you're like...

The Trump base really wants a wall all the way across the northern Canada, like northern U.S. and southern Canada. Really? That's what we're going to do? Come on. Also, if it's a state, if it's just another state and he's the governor, we don't have walls between our states. None of it makes any sense. Not yet. Freeland's argument was, look, we can win this if we stand up to him because he's not really serious about us.

He'd rather take on China and Europe and Mexico. He's willing to negotiate too. And also they need, like we, USMCA, we need their wood, their oil. We need, there are imports from Canada, maple syrup, because it's not getting cold enough in Vermont. There are imports that we need from Canada that putting a giant tariff on is not going to do anything for domestic manufacturing opportunities.

New York New England is making as much maple syrup as it can like putting a Tariff on Canadian maple syrup. It's just gonna let them charge us more. I'm gonna be honest I like the cheap maple syrup that RFK Jr. Is probably about to ban. I don't even know the corn syrup stuff. Yeah one of my daughters like says I'm like Stop it right now. Come on. So

The opposition reader. Same with the timber and the like oil and natural resources. Like what's the point of a tariff on that? Well, but here's, I actually think to your point about whether Trudeau is smart or stupid, I sort of think he's handling this in a smarter way than raging against Trump's quote economic nationalism, which is what Friedland did in her resignation letter. And when you put up F2 here, yeah, this is her, this is about her resigning. Right. And I mean,

There's Trump is what the one thing, the one way that you don't get a deal with Donald Trump is by going full like elite, knocking him and treating him like he's dirt, all of that. That's like a really bad way to get something in your country's interest from the incoming president. They can't prevent Donald Trump becoming the president of the United States. They have to work with Donald Trump. And we saw him negotiate a lot with AMLO, with USMCA, like

they can get a good deal out of Donald Trump. And I think that's why Trudeau, to your point about maybe him being smart, maybe he is the winter Gavin Newsom, flew down to Mar-a-Lago and tried to actually work something out. Now, was it a little embarrassingly...

What's the right word? Sycophantic? Maybe. It might have been. I'm sure that's what caused a lot of ripples in Canadian politics. Probably wasn't a different way that he could have done it, although I don't know if Trump would have allowed it to be done a different way without that photo op at the dinner table. But Donald Trump is the president. It's as simple as that. You have to work with the incoming president. And Trudeau's popularity, according to BBC in June of this year, it was at 28%. 28%.

He's overstayed his welcome. I mean, he's been there forever. The vibes have shifted. There was a great piece recently about how Trudeau and Obama, like the center left, as we were talking about, we will be talking about with Schultz and Macron in this block, the center left had its moment where it was riding high and felt really good. And it looked like Trudeau was the future. And Trudeau would be like the...

He was setting the tone for the future of Canada. And I think this was in a piece about Angela Merkel and her new book. And that has collapsed. That vision of the future has completely collapsed. And it's one that the sort of Davos set was really optimistic about because it meant they had control. And that moment has totally faded from Western politics, to say the very least. So

His opposition, the opposition leader in this case, whose last name I can't say, Pierre Palivre, I never can say it, but he is a very formidable opponent. He has a robust presence online, support from American conservatives now, goes viral a lot. He had like a barn burner speech in

Whatever their Congress is. Yeah, whatever the guy says it's well their state so they don't know their let's state legislature He if you haven't seen the video of him like munching on an apple while just destroying a reporter highly recommend looking that one up But he is his support from like American conservatives, but more importantly all of that stems from him just being very articulate He's he makes his case really well. He's a good ambassador for his ideas Canada's next federal election according to BBC must be held in October at the very latest and

He is calling for opposition party is calling for earlier elections Trudeau is facing calls from his own party to resign It is just a complete mess and maybe as that politico headline suggested the chaos is good for Canada because they need something other than Trudeau and So if we can put up f3 here, this is an interesting wrinkle here amid all this collapse their their dollar is crashing and

That has interesting implications for Trump's attempt to do a trade war. So when your dollar crashes, or when your currency crashes, then your exports are cheaper. So what this means is Canadian products that get exported into, let's say, into the United States, we can buy them cheaper. Trump then has his tariffs kind of defanged. Mm-hmm.

So the goal of a tariff is to basically raise the price of something for domestic consumers, which then encourages domestic production of that thing. Like we said, when it comes to Canada, some of that's ridiculous because maple syrup, wood, et cetera. But whatever. But setting that aside, it just means that if your currency collapses by 25%,

And then you come in with a 25% tariff. We actually have to come in with now closer to like a 35% tariff because of math in order just to get it back to where you were originally. So all the jawboning between Trump and Trudeau, which is driving down their dollar, actually makes it then harder for Trump to do what he's trying to do with his money.

With his tariffs, currently it's doing the reverse. It's like a reverse tariff. Now, over in Germany... We're subsidizing their exports right now through Trump's mouth.

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has lost a vote of confidence and the fallout from that is continuing as well in the parliament. So this really, Ryan, to your point about the center-left, Macron right now is struggling with the center-left coalition that he cobbled together, the weirdest coalition that we sort of covered a lot when it was happening. But in this case with Scholz, kind of interesting that it's happening during Angela Merkel's book tour, by the way.

That's not great timing, or maybe it is great timing, but maybe it's going to help her sell books. But as NPR reports, Schultz's fractious three-party coalition government collapsed in early November when the chancellor fired his finance minister, sound familiar, in a dispute over how to revitalize Germany's stagnant economy. Where does this go? Yeah, and so this is heavily Ukraine-related in the sense that he wanted to

bus through, you know, Germany loves its deficit controls. Yeah, loves its Russian oil. They love, well, they love their Russian oil. But yes, they, it's just the German culture just hates to spend beyond what it believes or its means. But he wanted to do so for the ongoing Ukraine war. And

His coalition collapsed basically as a result of that. His coalition was with the Green Party too, though. It's interesting. And the Greens have been very militaristic too. The reason that he has this bizarre coalition is that the far right, the far, far right party, is picking up now like 15, 12 to 15% of the parliament and nobody...

will form a coalition with the far, far right. Good for them. Germany has a troubled history when it comes to the far right. And so that leaves then less of the parliament to form a coalition. It makes it very hard for anybody to have a majority government that can actually do anything. And it's going to get especially interesting next time because this AFD, the

Far-right party is expected to grow to maybe 20% Well, it's a vicious cycle because the less or the more that you have right stagnant center-left Mealy-mouthed they can't deliver anything right the more exactly The more powerful AFD gets and the more fuel you're adding to the fire So it's I mean they're in like the exact definition of a pickle right and it looks like the far left might

be able to barrel its way into the parliament too through people probably following her, Sarah Wagenknecht, this like kind of firebrand leftist who... Wagen? Wagenknecht, whatever. She's this firebrand leftist who, East German, she joined the Communist Party back when there was still in East Germany. She's like you. Yeah, there you go. Bernie, except she has gone...

hardcore anti-immigrants. - Not uncommon in Europe. - But she's kept all the other left wing stuff

but become like super German nativist. And it's an interesting test for that kind of politics, which are being upended now. By Syria. By Syria. Yeah. Because so many Syrians are like, yeah, you thought we were lying. Like we literally are refugees. Yeah. We would rather be in Syria now that we can go back to Syria. Yeah.

We're going to go back to Syria. But a lot of them have been there 10 years, have built businesses and have built roots. And so some are, you know, significant number are going to stay. So, you know, if she barrels in with, you know, 10, 15 percent, AFD's got 20 percent. You'd have to have basically every other...

Every other party would have to team up together to form a government. Mm-hmm, but those parties don't agree with each other so functionally

What do you do? Right. I guess we'll find out. Donald Trump enters office once again at a very precarious time in geopolitical history. Yeah, I mean, Europe's screwed, as Sager likes to say. Europe is just completely screwed. Yes. Yes. Well, and that's why I think Breaking Points works is because it's a good example of how the U.S. may be better positioned to not follow in the failed path of Europe. And that's failures on the left and the right. Yeah.

We really kind of, the grass is always greener on the other side and like over here, left and right, I think both kind of love the parliamentary system because it allows you to vote your conscience and support, let's say if you're on the right, you know, whichever flavor of right you like, you vote for them and then they get a little piece of the parliament.

So it means you don't have to, if you're on the left but you don't like Joe Biden, you vote for the Bernie party. - Right. - Or there's some technocratic like left Warren party and then there's whatever Biden is in. - Like AOC said, in Europe she would never be in the same party as Nancy Pelosi. - And that's correct, she would not be. - We saw that play out this week. - So we kind of pine for that, on the other hand,

It has its problems. Huge. I mean, stagnant. Which we're seeing. I mean, we feel like we're stagnant. We can't pass anything through our own Congress. But what gets worse is when you have the seesaw effect. You're changing a lot and nothing's really changing. Like, policies just swing back and forth. We pass all our stuff in December of after elections. Yeah, right. Yeah. That's the way we do things. When voters don't get a say anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Ryan...

We're all pulling for you to close the loop on the beginning of the show. And I'm just amazed at you and your family, how you're able to keep going and bring us the news. Yeah. We'll look back on this. It'll be a thing that happened. Absolutely. That's the hope. Absolutely. We will be back with one more show before the new year because Ryan booked a great guest, a huge guest, actually. Chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Greg Kassar, incoming chairman of

from Austin, Texas. And we will, that's a Friday show. So we're going to sit down with him for a good long conversation about a lot of what we discussed without having a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus here to kind of talk about the future and tactics and strategy and recent news as well. So that'll be it.

Fascinating, Ryan, especially on the cusp of a government shutdown, by the way. So lots to talk about with Greg Kassar. Tune in on Friday for that, breakingpoints.com. If you want to get a premium membership, you get access to CounterPoints Friday shows early. You get to watch them on Thursday night, which when we have a lawmaker is cool because you actually get access to breaking news. There you go. All right, breakingpoints.com. We will be back here Friday with more, and we'll see you after the holiday break with more CounterPoints. See you then.

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