6/18/24: Biden Bets On Trump Criminal Label, Mass Deportation Polling, Biden Trump Debate Preview, Cartoonish New Jersey Corruption, Israel Knew Oct 7 Blueprint Weeks Before
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Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.

Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Truly a jam-packed show this morning, so hopefully we can get through all of this. We've got a new Biden ad hitting Trump for being a criminal. We've got Americans apparently warming to the idea of mass deportation. Biden also preparing a new executive order with regards to immigration. That's interesting as well.

CNN is officially announcing their debate criteria. It seems tailor made and designed to guarantee no one but Trump and Biden could possibly make the stage. So I'll break that down for you. We have New Jersey doing very New Jersey things, massive racketeering case against one of the strongest power brokers in the state. So lots of very interesting there.

CNN, once again, lying about the details of October 7th and specifically the details of mass rape on October 7th with regards to, they also brought on Debbie Wasserman Schultz for an assist. Kamala Harris doing an event where she's also lying. So we want to break that down for you. We have a bombshell new report revealing that the Israeli government and the IDF knew specific details about

about the planning by Hamas for October 7th in advance and did nothing to stop it. So that is a massive bombshell here, but also, of course, in Israel. Sagar has a monologue. Maybe you should preview it for us. It's hard. It's basically Wells Fargo made the dumbest deal of all time and then a

new minted billionaire decided to cover up said deal and portray himself as an innovator. It's an amazing story and people are really going to enjoy it. I'm excited for this one. I'm excited to hear the details on this one. And we've also got Matt Stoller coming in to talk about his new report about how dramatically different Trump's rhetoric with regards to businesses is now

versus 2016. So very excited to talk to him about that. Yes, that's right. Before we get to that, the debates are actually very soon. Can you guys even believe it? The very first CNN debate, we're going to go over some of the rigging that's involved in that with respect to RFK Jr. But nonetheless, we will be covering it live here on the show. So if you want to become a premium subscriber, you're going to be able to have some exclusive benefits and more and input on that. So breakingpoints.com for the live presidential debates, and you can join us for our coverage.

But with that, let's go ahead and start with Mr. Trump. Yes, indeed. So fresh off of we actually had those exclusive word clouds revealing that in the wake of Trump's guilty conviction, the number one word that people are associating with him is the word criminal. Biden campaign leaning into that with a new $50 million ad buy across battleground states.

pegging him as a criminal. Let's take a listen to that. In the courtroom, we see Donald Trump for who he is. He's been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and he committed financial fraud. Meanwhile, Joe Biden's been working, lowering healthcare costs and making big corporations pay their fair share.

This election is between a convicted criminal who's only out for himself and a president who's fighting for your family. So based on those word clouds that we showed you before, the American public basically feels this is an election between a criminal and an old man. So the Biden campaign, I think, given who Joe Biden is.

Given that he's unwilling to actually run on like an affirmative economic agenda or anything approximating that, given that he's unwilling to change his wildly unpopular foreign policy, I think this is probably one of the stronger things for them to lean into here, Sagar, and really try to make that word criminal.

and Donald Trump be the number one connection that people make in their minds? This is the 2022 redux where 2022 we're subbing criminal in for stop the steal. What they really both come to is this idea about what people hate the most about Trump. Clearly what we saw in our word cloud, the so-called criminal tag, you know, getting added for his name, the convicted criminal is when they're going to be putting out

billboards, there's a reason they're putting a lot of money behind this ad. I just saw, even though they're putting as much as $100,000 just on News Nation. I mean, they're doing ad buys and throwing money everywhere behind this thing. And the main reason is that this is the best that they got. If you look at the so-called accomplishments about lower, it's like, yeah, okay, whatever. But

But it's not really about his record. It's about driving up all the negative towards Trump. And to be honest, that is the best that they have. It's abortion and quote unquote democracy. When we pair for those who watch the show a lot, if you look at our polling yesterday, the reason that seniors are gravitating towards Biden is they like the status quo. The reason that younger voters, black, Hispanic voters and others are

are grabbing towards Trump is they don't like the status quo. So when you want to win over possibly more status quo like-minded voters who vote a lot, seniors, much higher propensity, you wanna lean into the things that they care a lot about, like democracy, like trust in the justice system. If you're under 40 years old, do you really trust the justice system all that much? But if you're like 65 plus, you said this yesterday, you have a real reverence for capital I institutions in a very different way than most people do.

Yeah, and a lot of that sense that you're describing is much more based on vibes than it is reality, which we know from the fact, I would talk to Stoler about this. I mean, there's a big reason why Wall Street is now shifting back towards Trump, getting comfortable with Trump. The reason why the Wall Street Journal editorial board has been at war with the Biden administration, especially with Lena Kahn over his antitrust policies. That's been a real thorn in their side. It has undercut their ability to get gigantic bonuses every year. So there is a

upset in the Wall Street crowd and in billionaire crowd about some of those policies. But Trump of course has, and also by the way, it's also vibes on the Democratic side about quote unquote preserving democracy. Since these are the people who were perfectly willing to destroy democracy in their own primaries to guarantee that Joe Biden once again ascended to the nomination in spite of the fact that a majority of the Democratic base was like we would really like some other options.

So let's just be clear about what we're talking about here. But from the Biden campaign strategic perspective, we saw some polling a little while, I don't know, a week, two weeks, something like that ago that said, okay, if voters view this as a referendum on Joe Biden, forget it. He's toast. It's over.

If they view it as a referendum on Trump, then he wins and wins relatively easily. If they view it as a choice between the two, it's really quite close. It's a jump ball. I think it went 1.2 point in either direction. And so they want to push things as much as possible in the direction of making this a referendum of Trump at best for them or at least a choice because then they're in the ballgame. And so the other

advantage this narrative has. I mean, first of all, you can't deny it. He is a convicted criminal at this point, so it has the benefit of matching with reality. But negative attack ads always work best when there's something that an average viewer is inclined to believe. And that's the other thing we've seen about Trump. Whether or not it's changed people's votes, a majority of people do feel like he has committed crimes, that he has committed the crimes that he was convicted of and likely committed other crimes.

So it's a tag that fits and I do think the more that they can apply that label, it probably does in or some to their benefit. And so that makes the argument that some of what's going on with the trial and the guilty verdict could have an impact on the election. It was not the total upending game changer that Democrats may have hoped. But we do have some indications that this is an issue for independents and could shift them towards Joe Biden. Put this up on the screen.

This is from Politico. So you have 21% of independents saying that Trump's conviction does matter to their vote. All right, that's not nothing. Again, I think people are kind of bad at really breaking down what matters to their vote, but you've got a good number of independents here.

saying that this is an issue for them. Let's put the next one up on the screen. You have less than half of respondents believing that Trump was prosecuted to help Biden. So it's not a majority position. That being said, you have 43% is not nothing that does think that the prosecution was directly political and directly motivated to try to help Joe Biden.

And then just another interesting note here, which is not really directly related to the campaign, at least not yet, but let's put this next piece up on the screen. Of the various pieces of the legal system,

The entity that people have the least faith in is Supreme Court justices. Noteworthy, though, in the context of the Trump guilty verdict, the entity or the group that they have the most trust in is citizens serving on juries. So the fact that a jury of his peers found him guilty, I guess, isn't nothing. You've got a majority of people, 54%, saying that they have

a great deal or a fair amount of trust in citizens serving on juries. So there you go in terms of how people are, what people are making of the trial. I don't know how I feel about that one. I'll just put that aside. Look- Having served on a jury, I think it's fair. Crystal, maybe I would trust you. It depends on the county, depends on the state. My hometown, College Station, I don't know. Mine was actually in Manhattan, Manhattan, Tennessee.

But you were federal, right? Grand jury. Yeah. No, it was local. It was local Manhattan grand jury. And people, by and large, took it very seriously. All right. Well, maybe my bias is too colored here. And this has nothing to do with Trump. I've long been very skeptical, I guess I would say, of what's going on. I think what we can see from here is we would have been stupid to say it was gonna have no impact. However, I still think it is relatively marginal. That said,

if it is marginal, it's gonna be marginal in the Biden direction. And we shouldn't dismiss it because this is the marginal election. If we look at the 538 polling average, you have the projection of Trump winning 50 out of 100 times and Biden winning 49 out of 100 times. That's as close as to a toss up

as you can possibly get. Donald Trump only lost the election by some 150,000 votes across three separate states. Yesterday, I was doing a little bit of playing on the 270 to win website. I mean, we really need to internalize this. Donald Trump can flip Nevada, he can win Georgia, and he can win Arizona. But if he loses Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, he will

lose to Joe Biden, who will get 270 electoral votes to his 269. I mean, that's it. That's all it could be a race towards. So we could be talking about the margins of tens of thousands of votes, or it could be like the year 2000, and we could be a couple thousand votes in some hanging Chad nonsense. You know, rules, who actually gets to take the White House. So let's not dismiss the marginal in this respect.

But, you know, I do still think electorally the ones that they really had going for them, the January 6th case and the Georgia ones, those because they're going to be after the election, at least from what we can tell at this point, what they were really hoping for has not materialized. Yeah. Yeah. That's certainly the case. Let's go and put this next piece up on the screen from The Washington Post. We had an interesting, interesting report here. Had a lot of great quotes from voters. I'll read you one or two of these. But

It's also interesting because, you know, we tend to have this—and you can just leave this up on the screen while I'm talking—we tend to have this idea in the modern political era that basically everyone is locked in. D or R, hard partisan divide, negative partisanship too, we're just voting against the other side, there are very few swing voters, etc. And, you know, this indicates that's not really the case.

you've got 61% of voters who are not saying that they're definitely Biden, who are not saying that they're definitely Trump. They are truly still weighing their options. Now, this would include people who say they're likely Biden, likely Trump, they're leaning one way or another, but they're not yet willing to say I am 100% riding with Biden or I'm 100% on the Trump train. And I think that's

That's really noteworthy. Into that mix, we could put the next piece up on the screen. They have this broken down. You've got among sporadic voters, 18 to 25, that's 8% voted in 2016 or 2020, not both. You've got 24%. So you've got a mix of types of voters that fall into this category among uncommitted voters. So if you break this down, okay, well, who are they leaning towards?

Probably Biden is 13%. Other is 17%. Probably Trump is 15%. So it's relatively mixed there as well. So I guess this is all just a long way of saying that, you know, this thing's very much up in the air. As we discussed in yesterday's show, you have a lot of people who just are really unhappy with both candidates.

don't feel like they have a lot of great options, are reluctant to kind of commit because they just don't feel excited or happy about the choices that they have. They interview this one woman, Rikki Denning. She says by her own account, she's torn up about the November election. She's almost certain she'll cast a ballot, but just might leave the presidential line blank.

She says, I just hate both of the candidates and there's no third party candidate that stands a chance. This is a 26-year-old resident of Las Vegas, obviously Nevada, key swing state where Trump seems to have made up a lot of ground. He lost the state last time, appears to be in the lead there by some polls, significant margin at this point. They say forced to choose between Biden and Trump. She said she would lean toward Biden, then added, but I just don't agree with him as president at all. Her dissatisfaction includes her belief he is too old for another term.

hasn't delivered on a promise to eliminate her student loan debt and that he supports Israel in the war in the Gaza Strip. So, you know, a host of issues there that especially for her age set, I think you would hear very commonly in the dissatisfaction against Joe Biden. Now, if you're a Biden person, Sagar, you would look at that and say, yeah, I support all that. She's she's she's going to come along. Yeah, she's going to vote.

And she's leaning towards Biden. And at the end of the day, we're going to convince her that you can't risk another Trump term. She's aware that none of the third party candidates have a real chance. And so this is the type of person we are going to be able to persuade. And that's why the polls right now don't really reflect our ultimate strength in November. And listen, they may be right. If I had to bet, who would you bet that this person ultimately ends up voting for? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be rude, but it's like, lady, you're probably gonna vote for Biden.

And that's why it's one of those where this is the difficulty of the system really that we live in. But some of the other data about who the quote unquote deciders are more likely to be black or Hispanic than non-deciders. One third of deciders are non-white compared to about fifth of other voters.

Deciders are more likely than non-deciders to live in urban areas and are more likely to have no religion. So this really is like the new secular America. These are people who are probably predominantly working class just based on a, you know, a purview, like a quick look at their demographic. And that

kind of tracks and makes sense to me. I mean, these are the people who Trump in general was able to activate or increasingly is bringing some people over to his side who traditionally never would have voted Republican. At the same time, the abortion issue is going to wave you down. If you are predominantly more secular, well, what are you going to do? Like, you're going to be pretty upset about some of this Christian right stuff that's going on. So it all depends on

the media that you're consuming and what you're looking at. And so again, like when we look at this and we say that the top issue here is the economy, but number two is quote unquote threats to democracy. That's one of those where when I, when I see, I could see the tie, I could see 50 going towards Trump and I could see them going to Biden as well, which is why I'm still just, I cannot count Biden as

despite all of the bad news that we see. I never want to bet against old white people in this country. I know, you know, I live around these folks. They love voting. I mean, they've got obscure signs in their windows. I'm like, how do you

how do you even have time to give a shit about who the, you know, like deputy mayor council is? These are the people who have the most time in the whole country. That's what I'm saying. They're posting signs all over our neighborhood. They're trying to renew parking rules to only allow people to park for two hours instead of four. I'm like, who cares? Why do we care about this? This is the biggest thing in their whole lives. These are the people Alito's wife are beefing with. Literally, they're lobbying against an apartment building nearby. And I swear, one of the posters says they're going to flood 911 calls. You can't make this stuff

In terms of what they care about. But living around these folks, I'm not counting them out. They will vote. They will always vote. They got nothing else to do. Oh yeah, no doubt about that. No doubt about that. Okay, well, let's see if this next poll changes your mind in terms of- This is the other side. In terms of Biden's prospects here because this is a doozy. Put this up on the screen. This is a poll of Iowa.

from the Des Moines Register. This is Ann Selzer who does this poll. She is the highest rated pollster in like Nate Silver's ranking of all the pollsters, okay? She's number one. She is famous in political circles in terms of her ability to closely predict the results of Iowa elections in particular. Now, just keep this up on the screen. No one is saying that Joe Biden ever had a chance to win Iowa. It's crazy. Barack

Barack Obama won Iowa, it doesn't seem like that long ago, but the state has trended red. Democrats have given up on rural America, and so no one was expecting Joe Biden to win Iowa. However, this poll has him clocking only 32% of the vote.

to Trump's 50%, RFK Jr. with a not insignificant 9%, and other third-party candidates combining for another 6% there. So 32%

for Joe Biden this time around. That would be, if you extrapolate these type of numbers across similarly situated Midwestern states like Wisconsin, for example, you're looking at a bloodbath. So the fact that some of the best pollsters

like Ann Selzer, like New York Times is considered, very highly rated pollster as well. The fact that some of the best pollsters are coming out with some of the worst results for Joe Biden,

Not a great sign for him, Zagre. Yeah, look, and that's the other side of the coin. That's why I also can't count out Trump in this race. I'm looking at this Des Moines Register poll, the highest quality poll allegedly in the entire nation. You take this and Trump is going to win Wisconsin by five points, which is an insane position. So we are either in a place where the highest quality pollster in the U.S. is totally wrong. And, you know, there's going to be some. Well, there's some huge shift between now and then. Black Swan event or massive, you know, shift in between now or, uh.

Trump is going to win. And it's like, I don't know. That said, we've seen enough craziness just here at the desk that you can't count it out. Yeah. Well, so just to give people a sense of how dramatic this is, last time Trump won the state, okay, but it was 53-45. Right, exactly. 53-45, so an eight-point margin versus this was 50, what did I say, 32? Mm-hmm.

I mean, if we've seen that kind of a shift in these intervening years, even in a state that isn't really in play, it's over. It's over. I mean, if this poll remains, if it's accurate, all of that, this is dire. And keep in mind too, I mean, listen, Iowa is a state filled with old white people. Like this is the place where he was supposedly, this is the demographic among which he was supposedly gaining ground.

where they're kind of betting the farm at this point to do better with seniors than they did last time around, actually win the senior vote, first time in modern history, etc., etc. That's the rationale for why they think the industrial Midwestern states, the former blue wall states, are their best bet because they have more of an old white population than the younger, more diverse Sunbelt states. But if this holds, it's

It's looking pretty rough. It's grim. Yeah. I mean, our goal always to just give you the ultimate like both sides of the coin to not just be like you should not walk around and have any certainty whatsoever about this election. I could genuinely see this election going in any direction. I could see Biden winning all the swing states. I could see Trump winning all the swing states. I could see it being, you know, split in different weird ways that were I could see any result at this point, just depending on the way the lens turns in that given day. But in any case, that's the info we have to bring to you today.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing.

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance.

And it was Peak TV. This is new scandal content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between.

This life right here, just finding myself, just this relaxation, this not feeling stressed, this not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things. That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story. So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarcki. And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark corridors of history and true crime. For each season, we explore a new theme. From poisoners to stalkers, art thieves to snake oil salesmen. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, such as Walter Minx, the man who built his own submarine hoping to escape with his blackmail payout under Lake Michigan. It sounds made up.

but it's 100% true. We'll explore the crimes as well as societal forces at play, from unfair sentencing to jaw-dissolving health risks. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We also could not leave this one out. Put this out of the screen. So just incredible Washington brain here. Incredible Washington brain. Opinion piece written by Kathleen Parker. Democrats are wrestling with an age-old problem. Maybe Hillary Clinton could come to the rescue. And this piece is really funny. I read it yesterday because it starts off with some solid analysis. It's like, you know what?

"Biden's really old, that's a problem. "Voters have a problem with that. "We can see him slow down. "It's not just spin." She wasn't trying to say it was the media, whatever, whatever. She's like, "No, we can see," right? And part of the issue is that people don't have faith in Kamala Harris as vice president. Okay, true. - Yes. - And she even made a point of saying, "This isn't about her race or identity. "It's just they haven't seen her to be a competent actor." Okay, well, I'm with you so far.

Then the final analytical leap that is just, like I said, the most incredible example of Beltway brain. And she says, so what they should do is drop Kamala from the ticket and sub in Hillary Clinton. Yes. Now, I want to correct myself because I think on Monday, I think I said that Joe Biden might be the worst possible Democrat to have at the top of the ticket.

I don't think that's correct. I think Hillary Clinton would be worse than Joe Biden. From an electoral perspective, I think she would actually be worse.

So congratulations to this columnist for coming up with one of the worst ideas I've literally ever heard. No one has mentioned there is a possible running mate for Biden, as far as I know. But why not replace Harris with Clinton? At 76, she might want no part of it, but it's hard to retire when you feel your job isn't done. If Biden needs to step down, even those who didn't vote for Clinton would have confidence in her ability to

Keep the country on track. It's just a thought, but worse ideas have been met with regrettable success. Don't you feel confident in her ability to keep the country on track? Somebody actually, some pro-Clinton person was like, this should have been the last year of Hillary's presidency. And I'm like, oh my God. Thank God that didn't happen. I mean, I can't even imagine. Okay, but also just-

I think on the most basic level, okay? The most basic level. This woman has a literal track record of losing to Donald Trump. So if you're trying to solve the problem, just the discrete problem of like, we want to beat Donald Trump and we don't think this is the ticket that's really designed to do that. Why do you reach to the person who already lost to him?

It's amazing. Who is arguably less, you know, less popular than Kamala Harris in terms of her negatives, like for unfavorables. Yes. We showed everybody a graphic yesterday, the hate both parties. The highest it's ever been was this election. Guess what the previous higher it's ever been? Hillary. Right. It's like, why would you pick somebody who explicitly is hated by so much people?

the public. That said, Hillary's not going away. She's raising some eyebrows, made a surprise appearance at the Tony Awards. Let's take a listen. What a great evening. I have stood on a lot of stages, but this is very special. And I know a little bit about how hard it is to make change

So I'm extremely proud of this original American musical by Shaina Taub. And of course, it is about some American originals, the suffragists who fought so valiantly for so long to give women in our country the right to vote.

It's almost impossible to think about what a challenge that was. But now it's an election year and we need to be reminded about how important it is to vote.

You know, she may want to take those words back, given that we just covered the fact that frequent voters are going to Republicans. That's right. Look, I don't know. Everyone is, I think it's generally like low IQ nonsense when they're like, they're going to replace Michelle, they're going to replace. And so I don't think that's going to happen unless Biden literally dies, like dies or has a debilitating stroke. And I hope that doesn't happen.

But with Hillary, I don't know. She's always positioning herself. She's always working the angles. That's like the Clinton MO. And she's ready. She's there if she wants to assume. So maybe that's the calculus. Maybe she enjoys. I don't know. Maybe she wants a cabinet position next time around. Oh, my God. I wouldn't even hope for that.

would you put it that way? Yeah, that's, you imagine. If we get her back in the cabinet, that'd be a nightmare. Yeah, I mean, I don't, the ticket is what it is. Like all this, the fantasy, and our position on this show has always been that Joe Biden is gonna be, you know, is not gonna leave. He is, there's no, you know, back room where they're plotting to sub him out for Michelle Obama or, you know, Ryan's idea. They're gonna put Barack Obama on the ticket with him or whatever. Like,

Ryan doesn't think that's gonna happen. He's just saying if they actually wanted to win, that would be a smart maneuver. None of that is happening. This is the ticket. It's not gonna be Hillary. It's not gonna be Michelle Obama. That's the weird, conservatives are obsessed with this idea that there's some secret plot to sub in Michelle Obama

And yeah, you know, I think you guys have a lot more confidence in like the desire of the Democratic Party to actually win than you should have. So in any case, that's where we are. That's right. Oh, and one other thing we wanted to get in here. This has been driving me nuts. The White House spin on the Biden videos is they've invented a new term. So

you, Crystal, remember misinformation that took over everything. Then the mal- Spawned a whole industry. Yeah, misinformation, then disinformation. Then there was malinformation. Malinformation is information that is true, but it's bad information or it's not complete information. So you guys will remember the term deep fake, right? So now what the White House has done is they have coined a new term served up by their media masters and they're working together called cheap fake, where it is a video that they don't like.

And doesn't present the whole context. So we have a video here of the White House talking about how angry they are about these videos showing Biden being old. And they're like, this is so out of context, this is outrageous, let's take a listen. Ironically, several recent cheap fakes actually attacked the president for thanking troops, for thanking troops. That is what they're attacking the president for. Both in Normandy this happened and again in Italy.

And I think that it tells you everything that we need to know about how desperate Republicans are here. And instead of talking about the president's performance in office, and what I mean by that is his legislative wins, what he's been able to do for the American people across the country, we're seeing these deep fakes, these manipulated videos.

And it is, again, done in bad faith. Deepfake. They changed that, by the way, because they didn't understand what the term. So there's this guy, Andrew Bates. If anyone has Twitter, I encourage you to go and follow him. His entire feed is trying to debunk these Biden age videos. Really? Yeah. He actually works for the White House. Yeah, no, he works at the White House. That's his whole job is just out here. And he's like, cheap fake, cheap fake, cheap deep fake, cheap. These people have no, like, sense of...

of reality as to what this is. So anyway, keep an eye out. You heard it here first. Cheap fake is the new misinformation, disinformation, whatever. That's what they have to come up with. And she was specifically responding to the video we played yesterday. That we played yesterday. In full context, by the way.

Right. We played the whole video. Yeah. But yeah, like you said, and so even to call it a deep fake. It's outrageous. That word has a meaning. Yes. The meaning is that it's actually altered, right? In some fundamental way. And she even said manipulated. That's not manipulated video.

No. Okay. You could say it wasn't clipped, right? Out of context. You know, words have meaning. They actually do. They should. Not to these folks. Yeah. So anyway, cheap fake, you guys heard it here. That's the new malinformation. Just wait. You're going to see it everywhere. I already do. I Googled cheap fake this morning. Washington Post stories citing the cheap fake. PolitiFact, cheap fake videos of Joe Biden. It's everywhere. This is the new media that we live in. Just-

Last thing on this. It would be one thing. You might have some credibility to say that if it was one moment. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. We played you multiple. Just yesterday, we played you multiple moments that are, you know, him wandering, him dazed, him confused, doing weird, you know, head thing with the Pope. Like, anyway, people are not stupid. You see an old man like that behind the wheel squinting that way? Changeling. Changeling.

Even Democrats, the number one worthy associate. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's reality. Thank you. Not a cheap fake. Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth-pulling scene that kicks off a romance.

And it was Peak TV. This is new scandal content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words. Yeah.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between.

This life right here, just finding myself, just this relaxation, this not feeling stressed, this not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things. That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

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This is a big electoral issue. So economy number one, we've seen a lot of the polling, sometimes immigration. This now immigration at the very least number two, genuinely number one for GOP voters. There's been some interesting shifts in coalitions to put this up there on the screen. This was a new poll from the CBS YouGov America. This was conducted June 5 to June 7, actually asked about mass deportation. So it says a majority of registered voters favor a quote, new national program to depart all

quote his words, undocumented immigrants currently living in the US illegally, 62 to 38%. But the real shock, I guess, to the people here in the media is that even among Hispanics, a majority of them now favor mass deportation at 53 to 47. Let's go to the next part here because this has been an interesting trend.

that in the last month or so has really began to materialize, where the share of Americans who say that they support mass deportation has basically exploded over the last four years. So you can see there that the top general public number is at 51%. This poll is from a month ago, just by the way.

And then we look at it by race and ethnicity. In this one, they found it was 56% of whites, 45% of Latinos, and 40% of black Americans. But if you look at political affiliation, you have 68% Republican, 46% Independent, 42% Democrat, and then generationally there is a massive split.

You have boomers at 60, Gen X at 53, millennials at 48, and then Gen Z at 35. So generationally, there is a big split. But Crystal, I think that this is really upturning. A lot of the ways that we're watching

kind of the media and everybody else grapple with this young and Hispanic move towards Trump. And specifically also amongst black Americans. Immigration politics has been flipped over really on its head where it's both that the, first of all, the migrant situation today is just so out of control, but to any previous situation kind of, I use the Marx term heightened the contradictions in terms of people really kind of had to choose a sign. But second and foremost,

The identitarian view that you could just rely on Hispanics to vote for you because you were like pro-DACA or whatever, that's gone. Those ages are totally gone. Trump obviously broke that in 2020. But I mean, to me, it's such a titanic shift in the way that people are even approaching the immigrant situation, the migrant situation. And then this blows identitarianism like out of the water.

And people are, people, I've seen democratic elites responding to this, being like, what happened? And it's like, well, you know, Trump happened, honestly. Rhetoric happened. Policy happened. There's been a lot of stuff that's been happening. Well, I think, I think there's a lot of things that go into this. First of all, you're right to note that the biggest divide is not, there is a race divide. Yeah.

But the biggest divide is actually age, not race. Yeah, it's all age. So you have older people who are increasingly hardline on immigration and younger people are still in the same more open and open to increased immigration as they were, say, four years ago, back when the whole Democratic Party was embracing that position in opposition to Trump.

So I think, number one, you do have just a reality of an increased number of migrants. Now, that has actually gone down over the past couple of months. But notwithstanding, there has been undoubtedly a large surge of migrants under the Joe Biden administration. So that's number one. You do have reality of, okay, there's a lot of people coming in. What are we going to do?

Number two, you have an increasing sense of economic anxiety. That, if you look throughout history, often pairs with increased views, hardline views on immigration. So you've got that. But I also think really critical to this is the fact that, you know, I mentioned before, Democrats under the Trump administration

They were very oppositional to the Trump immigration positioning. Now they're trying to position themselves as immigration hardliners, the overwhelming majority of Democratic elites, starting with Joe Biden. And so you basically have both parties making a very similar argument about immigration. So I'd be curious to see, I would bet that the bulk of the movement in openness to policies such as this actually comes from Democrats.

Because you've got 42% of Democrats here in that Axios poll saying that they're open to quote unquote mass deportation. If that was coming under a Trump, no way, it would be totally different.

So the political landscape there matters a lot. The other thing I want to say about this poll is I think it's important to understand the shifts in the electorate and how they're thinking about these things and where the issue stands, etc. I've done plenty of commentary before. You guys probably already know that I believe that Biden's immigration mistakes here are foolhardy because-

For people for whom this is the number one issue, he's never gonna out-compete Trump on this issue. He's going to continue to exacerbate his problems with young and progressive voters. I think that shows up in the polls here as well. So I think it's an electoral loser for him ultimately. But nevertheless, it's important to see this polling. But I also feel about this poll, sort of the way that I feel about the polls before Trump was convicted of people predicting how they would feel about a particular policy.

Because it's one thing to, you know, tell a pollster, like, yeah, sure, let's do mass deportations. It's another thing when you have the reality of, listen, we're talking about some 12 million people, roughly. Oh, it's more like 20 million. You're not talking about, you know, criminals or gang members or whatever, like, caricature of an undocumented immigrant is. You're talking about people who have been here for 10 years, 20 years. You're talking about potentially a million children. You're talking about community members. You're talking about a million.

huge cost. You're talking about crazy scenes of things that people under the Trump administration were sort of repulsed by. You're talking about also, if you're serious about this policy, which I don't think anyone is, including Trump. If you're serious about this policy, you're also talking about economic suicide. A majority of farm workers in this country are undocumented immigrants.

So, you know, if you were worried about price hikes during the Biden administration, like that would be nothing compared to if you actually implemented this policy, which is why, you know, Trump didn't try to do this in his first administration. I don't think he's even dumb enough to do it in a second administration. Okay, it's complicated. So first of all, unfortunately, I do agree with you. Americans don't have the stomach for mass deportation. It's not going to happen. I'm not the one saying that. You can ask a

the most hardline right wingers, Jesse Kelly, Ryan Groduski, who's an immigration hawk. All of us have come to the terms with no grandma on TV is gonna be able to watch some kid get sent back, allegedly because they're with their parents. It's fine. It is what it is. America is what it is.

That said, there's a lot that you can do, mandatory verify, boom, people are not gonna stay if they literally can't work. If you have mandatory verify, if you remove the public charge rule on welfare, people are gonna do a lot of self deportation. So that's really the policy that the Trump administration, as I understand it, Trump too would coalesce around. That's our Ryan talking about that.

this morning. So in general about the politics and all of that, it's complicated because I would be stupid not to acknowledge what you just said. Let's put this up there on the screen. Joe Biden is really leaning into the dynamic that you're talking about. He's got a new policies announcing this morning, giving legal status to quote immigrant spouses

of U.S. citizens. So, and this is the thorny part of allowing millions of people to live here who are illegal, is that now you have millions of people who are U.S. citizens who are then married to people who are illegal immigrants and whose children are U.S. citizens by birthright citizenship. So it's like, okay, well now what the hell do you do? His new program would, quote, offer work permits, deportation protections, and open a path to apply for a green card in the future. This is basically like a DACA plus

style program. For those who think that this is a done deal, there's no way. It will be challenged in the court system, and it's going to be months and or years if any of this even makes it through. There'll be rules just like they had with DACA. But more importantly, this is the dichotomy of the immigration conversation. So in the previous times, whenever illegal immigration was relatively low, like the Bush administration, appetite for basically pathway to citizenship was

is much, much higher. These days, when you have some six to eight million people who are here illegally just in the last four years, not to mention this crushing migrant insanity across all of the cities, the conversation is all about enforcement and the pathway conversation is low. Biden is trying to flip it, where he's trying to get some enforcement increase from what you were talking about, at the same time trying to tug on the heartstrings and say, well, what about these folks? Apparently, that's everybody who's here illegally.

Again, I don't think that any mass deportation program will ever happen. Both Congress will never fund it. That's part of the reason that Trump never did it. The ICE force, it's complicated. But basically, the way that it works right now is that unless you're like a convicted felon, you're not getting deported. You're basically just left alone. So there's a level of...

priority position or whatever it's called. I do think it's interesting. Now, I had been looking for some possible counter evidence to some of the stuff you've been talking about, about European parties. There's one counter example, which is interesting. This is a

The Washington Post has this written up, but it's a common dynamic. How progressive Denmark became the face of the anti-immigration left. Where basically, Denmark is one of the only neoliberal left parties that remains in existence in power in Europe. Well, popularly elected. And it has one of the most hardline immigration stances.

that exists, including telling like Muslim kids, like you're not allowed to pray the Quran in school or whatever, like some crazy stuff that would never even fly here in the US. But what I'm saying is that in Denmark, what they successfully at least were able to do is the so-called left basically paired and paired off

a lot of the anti-immigration voters, but they did it five, 10 years ago. So they have some credibility on the issue and they've been able to be reelected. At this point though, I think that effectively a lot of the policy stuff is irreconcilable. And so the immigration voter is probably going to vote for Donald Trump just because they don't have any other choice. Absolutely. I mean, they do have another, I mean, Biden is clearly, in some ways there's like a Nixon goes to China phenomena or like a Bill Clinton, you know, the Democrat is the one who kills welfare.

If the Democrats actually were appropriated the money and were very hard-line, I actually think they could get away with a lot more than Trump could.

Because you see that in the polling number. Like again, now you have 42% of Democrats saying, sure, deport all 12 million undocumented immigrants. Which again, if you take that policy seriously, it's actually insane. The level of surveillance, intrusion, deep state infiltration that would require the mass detention centers arresting grandmas, like you said, kids, deporting, the cost is

In and of itself would be insane, it would not fly, okay, that actual policy. But that just shows you that when you have the Democratic Party and they're just following the leader, well, they say this is fine, so we'll go along with it. It actually creates more political space.

But to your point, I think it is very clear Biden's moves with regard to immigration are not gonna solve his issue with immigration hardliners because those people are just Republicans at this point. And not just on immigration, right? There's a whole host of issues on which they likely disagree with Joe Biden. So on the political front, I did wanna mention with regard to this executive order, because you do have a real, people have complicated feelings about this issue.

So on the one hand, there is a new, at least theoretical embrace that again, I think if it was implemented would completely flip, but theoretical embrace of more hardline positions. But you also had the last poll had 74% of people saying they support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who've been in the country for a lot of years and pass a background check.

So I have no expectation that this executive order is going to provoke a backlash outside of people who are just hardline already on immigration. I think if you pull this

specific executive order. Which by the way, if it did go into effect and makes it through the courts and all of those things very much up in the air, Saugus, right? It'll take months for this all to be adjudicated. It's gonna be called into question, etc. The Biden administration thinks that they have a good legal argument. I don't really know, we'll see.

But the estimate I saw is this would apply to some 1.3 million people. So it's not nothing. This would be a significant number of people who would be getting work permits and a pathway to citizenship. And based on the polling that I'm seeing, you would have a pretty large majority support for such a program, just as you had very significant large support for the DACA program.

The other questions they asked, this is a Wall Street Journal poll from like two months ago. 66% of voters support creating a mechanism for immigrants brought into the country legally as children, often called dreamers to gain citizenship. 58%, according to this poll, back actually increasing the level of legal immigration to the U.S.,

So the polling on this and the political dynamics on it is far from straightforward, I would say. Absolutely. Look, I mean, nobody's saying that anybody supports like shutting things down. I'm not naive. Like I just said, mass deportation, it's not going to happen. I know what this country looks like. I know how television works, how the media works. But it's not just that. It's also, I mean, the morality, listen, to me, the morality part is very important. But I also think even Donald Trump would realize, like, economically, it would be such a disaster. Half of farm workers just die.

That's it, no more crops rotting in the field. If you think prices were high recently, it would be nothing compared to that. I just hate this argument because- You'd have supply chain issues, you'd have meat processing plants shut down, you'd have construction, housing costs are already astronomical. You've got some 20% of the construction industry that's undocumented immigrants.

cooks, restaurants, food prep. I mean, just the widespread economic chaos would be political and economic suicide for the country. But I'll put it this way. It's bad for American GDP to go into a trade war with China. I still support it. I fully admit and believe that it is bad for top line GDP. I think it's bad for a lot of businesses. I don't care. I think it's a great thing to do. Same thing here.

It's like, so our broken system employs a bunch of people who are here illegally and who are unskilled. It's like, yeah, deportation or forcing them to leave through self-deportation matters through E-Verify. Will there be a higher cost? Yes, true. Will wages go up? Yeah, I do believe that. I mean, will it be bad for Tyson food meat processing? Will Costco rotisserie chicken say $5 for a Tyson food? It wouldn't just be bad for a Tyson food, it would be bad for families who are trying to

buy Tyson food in Costco. I agree. Yes, it's true. Yeah, the price will go up. Let's be very real here. Huge, massively. I believe the price will probably go up. A lot. We'll be a more cohesive society where we have better supply and demand and better wages. Yeah, I believe that. So sometimes we just have to sit here and like lay out the full truth. And also, I believe the full thing should be, uh,

laid out to the American people, like I said on the China issue. If you ask them, are you willing to pay higher prices and your stuff doesn't come from China? Most people say yes. There's a lot of polling on this. So on the same thing, it's like, well, what do you want? What do you want? What country do you want to live in? We can live in all low prices. The cohesive society thing, I just want to put to the side because I think that's, first of all, I just wildly disagree. Like, I mean, actually the poll numbers support the fact that

you don't have actually racial divides have never been less in terms of political partisan identities than at any time, you know, in our lives. But so I want to put the cohesive society part to the side because I think that is very fraught and also very subjective. But, you know, we really disagree about the economics of this. Sure. First of all,

The typical view of just supply and demand of workers, and so if you increase the supply, it's going to create lower wages. It's not that there's nothing to that, but the real picture is much more complicated than that. Because if you think about, for example, okay, you now have deported or in the process of deporting 50% of all farm workers, right?

All right, well, that's gonna have huge economic implications for those farmers. It's gonna have huge economic implications for the consumers. It's not really likely to increase wages because why? Because workers don't really have enough power in the country to be able to claim their share of the economic pie.

So that's why I always think it's a red herring to focus on immigration as the soul and this is I'm not saying this necessarily about you saga because you do embrace unionism and other things but most people most politicians on the right Embrace reducing immigration as the sole path to increasing wages when they have no other demonstrated interest in raising wages in any other policy area

If you look throughout history, most consistently, the thing that has increased wages has been worker power. If you look at the charts, if you look at when unions started to decline and workers started to have less power and then the New Deal coalition starts to fall apart, that's when you see wages decline. And it's not up and down with regard to what the immigration levels happen to be at that point.

So, if the actual concern is wages, I'm not gonna deny that levels of immigration have an impact there. I think that would be dishonest. Although again, I think it's much more complicated. And if you look at the studies, they would suggest it's much more complicated. But the real thing you would wanna do is increase worker power so that they can claim their share of the record-breaking corporate profits that we've seen.

So, you know, to take up your example with China trade, which I'm also sympathetic to that, you know, to that direction as well. You know, for me there, you have a real, which was demonstrated in the pandemic. You have a real problem in this country, which is that we have outsourced so much that we are really vulnerable. And, you know, it's a problem for consumers. We saw when the pandemic hit and you couldn't get things and there were shortages and prices escalated, etc.,

But even more to the point, we were making our own face masks. Our industrial capacity has been so stripped that it really creates a national vulnerability. And I don't see a better way to deal with that than some of the nearshoring and friendshoring and reshoring and some of the programs, the industrial policy that's being engaged in under Joe Biden, which does have the potential to somewhat increase prices.

Here, if your concern is wages, I see way better ways to go about this that aren't cruel and don't require massive expansion of the deep state and are much less costly and are ultimately, and don't massively create potential hyperinflation and

in food prices and meat prices and housing prices, etc. So to me, you know, the solution of, oh, let's just shut down immigration, it doesn't make sense for that to be the solution if the problem you're trying to solve is wages. I think it's a yes and. I mean, if you look at a lot of those times, there are also times where we had historically low levels of immigration or it's what type of

country do you live in at that time? So it's very unfair to compare high levels of immigration combined with a mass industrial economy. We have 68 million people who have arrived in this country in the last four years who we are lucky if they are literate in Spanish, let alone English, don't speak any English in a society which is rapidly de-industrializing and going towards a service-based economy and knowledge-based economy. It just doesn't work.

It's one of those where then there is a huge amount of competition in the lower wage and lower skilled sector. So not only that, millions, billions of dollars being thrown at basically allowing these people to live here rent-free and charity-wise. I mean, you can look it up. Unless they have a work permit, they literally have to live on charity, which is- Right, which is why they should have work permits. But why should they have work permits? You arrive here-

So that they can- It's bullshit. I mean, they're coming here from countries, by the way, El Salvador just solved all of its crime problems. Do you know what the crime rate in El Salvador is now? It's lower than Manhattan. So you can go back. You don't have to fear for your life anymore. Honduras is building a 10,000 person prison to implement the exact same thing. This whole idea that these countries can't solve their own problems, which they are now solving, is BS. Like this TPS status for people who've been living here.

25, 30 years. It's outrageous. But again, so you view migrants as a net negative. I don't view migrants as a net negative whatsoever. It depends on the migrant. It depends on who you are. But hold on a second.

We have a looming demographic issue in this country, as do all developed nations, of an aging population and a dwindling workforce-aged population. And the native-born population is, you know, you're the first to point out. Birth rates are low, right? We don't have a replacement rate.

I've lived in places in the country that have seen the population dwindle and go away. Those places are in crisis. We need workers. We need workers.

So the idea that they're just a burden and a drain, well, a core part of the problem is the fact that they do need work permits. They need to be able to work not in the shadows, so they're not exploited, which does have larger impacts than on the low-wage workforce. Because if you can get an undocumented worker who's being paid under the table and not gonna take you to OSHA if you're violating labor laws, etc., that's a much larger issue. So listen, where I am personally, I don't

know if I'm quite ready to go where Ryan is with the full open borders because I do think- Is he a full open border guy? Yeah, he's an open border guy, which I respect. But I do have questions about, okay, well, if you just did open borders, how many people are we talking about? And how many can you really deal with? There is a limit, I think, to the capacity at one given time.

But significantly increasing the legal pathways to citizenship here, I am wildly in favor of. I think it'd be good for the country, obviously be good for those migrants. But more importantly, I think it'd be good for the country. I think it would be good overall for workers. I think it has to be paired with a stronger labor movement, which we're already seeing come into fruition. But

You know, just to talk about the last few months, like we have had very high levels of migration, as you would point out, over the past few months. And we also have had wages for the first time in quite a while that have risen at a faster pace than inflation. So if migration was just the like blanket disaster for workers and that was the reason to deport everybody and, you know, lock the gates, etc., that hasn't been the experience of our economy just over the past, you know, year, several months. Look.

It's a 25-year issue. This is not, you know, we can't put three months of data and say that's indicative of everything. If we, by the way, if the Biden administration, I call on the Biden administration to release the true economic number, how much we have spent on these people. Get on an airplane these days. I'm flying from Phoenix. Half the guys on the plane are illegal, getting paid with taxpayer citizens with their little packets, flying to Washington, D.C. because they get free whatever, shelter. They don't want to be charity-caved. They want to work. Okay.

Yeah, but okay. They wanna work, they wanna earn money, they wanna pay taxes. That's fine, work in your own country. Most of them do pay taxes, by the way, too. You are welcome to work in the country that you're born in. Otherwise, you can apply for a quote unquote pathway to citizenship. I'm just saying, these aren't people who wanna be welfare moochers. But they are. They want to work. They want to contribute. They do pay taxes overwhelmingly. I do not begrudge them for wanting to work here. Everybody wants to work here. Over a billion people who've been pulled over in the world say they wanna move to the United States. But that's why I would say to Ryan, that's insane. You can't allow a billion people

to move here and nor should we. The demographic argument is a different one and that's one where again, we should be able to choose who gets to come here and or not and what type of society and people that we want to allow into our economy and thus become future citizens. That is something that should be decided by democracy, not based on whether you can walk across Mexico and pay a drug smuggler to enter the United States illegally. Why are they better off than somebody from Africa? All right, so let's bring in more people from Africa.

But that's what I'm saying. I'm down for that. Well, actually, funnily enough, lots of Africans are now flying to Mexico. There you go. So it's more egalitarian. You should be happy. That's not egalitarian. Listen, the reality is that in terms of migration, if you look not just now, but historically, people typically want to go to countries that are nearby. In fact, there's far more migration between different South American countries than there are South American migrants coming here because there's more cultural affinity or more likely to have family ties, etc.,

And so, it's not just the fact that you happen to be able to walk there. It's also that you're more likely to want to move to a place that is closer. But the bottom line for me also is just when I look at the immigrants that I know in my life, when I look at the contributions of immigrants across society, I think we would be so foolish to not embrace

the contribution of a group of people who just by nature, like it is not an easy thing to pick up your whole life and move somewhere and try to make it. And you know that like they are in a lot of ways, I know this sounds hokey, but I really feel this. They are in a lot of ways like the embodiment of the American dream.

And to shut your doors to that, to like, you know, kick out people who've been here 10 and 20 years, who have families who are deeply enmeshed in society, who are contributing members of their communities. I don't just think it's wrong morally. I think it would be so catastrophic in terms of the economics and politics of society that, again, even Trump himself,

didn't contemplate such a draconian move in his first term and wouldn't contemplate such a draconian move because he relied on undocumented immigrants in his own businesses. So this is a man who is acquainted with the reality- He taxed advantage of the system. Of what needs-

to occur in the way our economy actually works. I support a law called E-Verify, which would require Donald Trump and all employers to verify that their employees are not illegal immigrants. Problem solved. I support that plus a much larger legal, if you have a much higher level of legal migration where there is an actual pathway to citizenship, you're going to have much less chaos at the border.

you can then have more enforcement, right? There's a path here that, you know, there's a way to do this and you're not doing it the right way. As of now, you just have, you know, it's completely broken down for people coming from most countries. There is no pathway to citizenship. We all know the asylum process is

completely broken. And so, you know, that's how you end up with Americans looking at it and saying like, ah, we got to do something here. Okay. We'll agree to disagree. Not going to solve it here. As usual, the immigration section goes on for too long. It will continue. And the producers are about, yeah, maybe Trump will win and we'll get to find out. All right. That could be an interesting possibility.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, unpacking the toolbox where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new scandal.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

that I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story. So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarcki.

And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark corridors of history and true crime. For each season, we explore a new theme. From poisoners to stalkers, art thieves to snake oil salesmen. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, such as Walter Minx, the man who built his own submarine hoping to escape with his blackmail payout under Lake Michigan. It sounds made up, but it's 100% true.

We'll explore the crimes as well as societal forces at play, from unfair sentencing to jaw-dissolving health risks. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, let's go to the debate section and talk about how CNN is rigging the debate rules. Let's put it up there on the screen. So what do we have here? They have announced the official mutually agreed upon rules. Biden and Trump have agreed to mic muting to podiums and in an empty stage. So, quote, the debate, which will be hosted by CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who we will get to later in the show.

will mark the very first in-person showdown of 2024 campaign. Now, the rules that the two have agreed upon include two commercial breaks. The campaign staff will not be allowed to interact with their candidate during that time. Both candidates will appear at the uniform podium. Their podium positions will be determined by a coin flip. Microphones will be muted throughout the debate,

except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. While no props or pre-written notes will be allowed on the stage, candidates will be given a pen and a pad of paper and a bottle of water. Some aspects of the debate, including the absence of studio audience, will be a departure from previous. As in the past, moderators, quote, will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion. But here, let's get into the nitty-gritty.

In order to meet CNN's qualifications for the debate, candidates must satisfy requirements outlined in Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution to serve as president. Both Biden and Trump meet those requirements, as does RFK Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein. Participants must file a formal statement of candidacy to the FEC, all five have done so. Here's where they get RFK.

All participating debaters must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency and receive at least 15% in four separate national polls of registered or likely voters that meet CNN standards for reporting. Okay, so let's be very clear here about the polling and the 270 votes.

requirement because here is how they are getting RFK. Let's go to the next part, please. As you can see clearly, the Kennedy campaign has said he submitted 3,300 signatures in Minnesota on Friday, listed the states, 19 states with 278 electoral votes where he claims ballot access.

But at least half of those states have not yet verified that his submission is valid. So that crystal is how they are really rigging it. Yeah, this is outrageous. Because officially, he's not on the ballot in those states, half of those states, which why do they have any incentive?

to approve him in the interim. Why would you do it? They're like, no, we're keeping him off of the debate stage. So he technically has qualified. He's going to qualify for 278 electoral votes, absent some crazy shenanigans. So this is my other thing too, when you look at the rules. Why is it that you're allowed to poll up to 15% in non, you know, there's no such thing as public polling, in NBC poll, whatever poll. So we can take like non-official polling, but a

But officially you have to be on the ballot for 270 votes. How does that make any sense? It's outrageous. It's straight up rigged, like to keep him out. That's right. It's 100% rigged to keep him out. There's no doubt about it. They're trying to put a pretense of neutrality on it. But they've made the criteria such that it is literally impossible

for him or any other third party candidate to be able to gain access under that criteria. Because yeah, these states are all run by Democrats or Republicans. Neither group wants RFK Jr. to be on that stage or to be on their ballots, by the way. And so they can drag their feet and take as long as they want to certify his signatures, etc. And so yeah, this is their mechanism in order to make it appear like, oh, we have these neutral criteria and you just didn't meet it. I'm sorry. You know, try harder next time. No. No.

You made it literally impossible. And it is outrageous. I mean, I'm not surprised, right? We knew the moment that CNN announced that they were doing this debate and Trump and Biden agreed, etc., etc. We knew what it was going to look like. But, you know, this should be something these debates should be something that is really protected in a democracy. You know, but the Biden people want to talk all about preserving democracy, etc., etc.,

It is dramatically anti-democratic to block out the most significant third-party candidate that we've had, what, since Ross Perot? Literally since Ross Perot. So it's 1992. 15% in multiple polls. You have a lot of—we covered earlier the number of, quote-unquote, deciders, people who are still—

contemplating which way they wanna go. A disproportionate number of them are open to RFK Jr. And you just wanna shut out the ability of the American people to hear what this man has to say. Now you guys know, I'm not an RFK Jr. fan. I'm not voting for him. I got all kinds of issues with him. So this isn't about him, his politics, but support for him specifically.

This is about a democratic process that they have no regard for. And it really is outrageous. People should be outraged and they should be disgusted. And CNN knows that if they actually understood what was happening, it would be a problem for them, which is why they go to lengths to

to try to hide the fact that they just rigged it and made it impossible for him or again, anyone else, any other third party candidate to have a chance of making it on that stage. And it's not fair too, because the Trump people are like, he's in this to hurt Trump. The Biden people are like, he's in this to hurt Biden. By his own words, he's in this to hurt, quote, unquote, I want to be damaging to both candidates. He's really running on his own name. Take a listen to his recent comments on Piers Morgan. If the three-way race occurred today,

President Trump wins. And if I drop out of that race, President Trump wins even more. He wins two extra states, which would be Maine and Virginia. So I think my presence in the race helps President Biden at this point. I'm hoping in the long run that I'll be very damaging to both of the candidates. But also, you know, all of our polling is showing that I'm

bringing in a lot of people who had given up on the political process, people who weren't gonna vote this cycle if I am not in the race. - So there you go. He says, "I'm hoping in the long run that I'll be very damaging to both of the candidates." He's not, you know, the ammunition that both of these people really want for him, which is why it's kind of ironic. And the more that he plays into that, the better off.

I think he's going to be because that gets to the critical I hate both parties demographic, which as you and I just saw yesterday, that's a full 25% of the entire electorate. That's huge. There's tens of millions of people. If he was on the ballot in all 50 states, I mean, I'm not saying he would win any single state, but I think he would get a good portion of the vote. I think he'd get 20, 25. You think so? Yeah, I think so. I don't think so. I think he would get 25%. I think he would get double digits.

Potentially. And even that would be astonishing, right? I mean, double digits would be very significant and a real break from recent history. I just say that because I do think when you come down to it, people recognize the political system we're in and that unfortunately we're in a position where you really, at the end of the day, it's gonna be one or the other and people kind of feel like, all right, well, I gotta pick between one of them. Third party candidate support falls off, et cetera. Not to mention that because he,

So far, the polls are really mixed about who he quote unquote takes more from. And I think he's right that a significant number of his voters too just probably wouldn't vote otherwise. So I think he's correct about that. But it has been very mixed over which side he takes more from, which means that he's also taking incoming from both sides. And I do think at a certain point that we've already seen that he's taken on water from that if you look at his polling over time.

There has been a downward trend as he's getting hit by the Democrats and by the Republicans. And so, you know, I think that's been a challenge for him. The other challenge for him, I think, Dave Smith made this point, and I think he's right about this, is he had a very compelling and very unique perspective.

as a quote-unquote anti-war candidate when he was speaking out strongly against Ukraine. And then when October 7th happened, and he is at least as Zionist and pro-Israel as Joe Biden, let alone Donald Trump, I'm not sure

I think that really undercut his appeal among people who not only are anti-war, but who just have that instinct of like, why are we spending all this money over here when we got problems back at home? I do think that his, you know, the fact he isn't at all differentiated from Biden or Trump

when it comes to the key foreign policy issue of the time right now. I think that is really limited his appeal. I think it's especially limited his appeal among young people who otherwise I believe would have been quite open to him. And so he also in that Piers Morgan interview, you can just hear like,

Even now he's against a ceasefire, which does actually technically put him to the right of Joe Biden on this issue as well. Really hasn't changed his tune at all vis-a-vis Israel. Let's take a listen to how he sounds today. - At what point does this desperation

to eliminate the last members of Hamas get overtaken by the sheer volume of civilians being killed in the process, which I cannot believe will do anything longer term than ferment the ideology that drove Hamas in the first place. Yeah, I mean, you're asking a lot of questions, and I'd like you to give me time to answer them. Sure.

You could ask the same, you brought up Nazi Germany as an analogy for what's happening in the Mideast. In 1945 or '44 at Casablanca, Churchill and Roosevelt had an argument because Roosevelt said we have to denazify Germany. If we don't denazify Germany, the Nazis are going to rise up and do the same thing again.

Churchill did not want an unconditional surrender for the Nazis. He said, we'll have to kill too many civilians to do that, and everybody will fight for the death. But Roosevelt won that argument. We killed about two million Germans during World War II in order to get into Berlin and denazify it. Today, Germany is the richest country in Europe. It's one of the most powerful economies in the world. I think it's the fourth most powerful country.

And nobody's scared of Germany because it's a peaceful country. So I don't see how people who are saying, well, you should have a ceasefire, then what? Then what? You've rewarded Hamas for taking hostages.

And they're going to keep taking the hostages to get more and more advantage. So in any case, he really hasn't changed his tune. We're still doing the World War II Nazi comparisons. I guess theoretically then we should be maybe considering nukes in Gaza, as others have also suggested. And I do want to grapple directly with this idea that you'd be, quote unquote, rewarding Hamas.

if you had a ceasefire agreement. You know, allegedly, Hamas doesn't want a two-state solution. Allegedly, Hamas doesn't care about Palestinian civilians. So in what way does it quote-unquote reward Hamas to have a ceasefire? I mean, it's also just at this point, it's like...

how many people, how many dead civilians is acceptable to you? Because we are at just insane levels of death and destruction, annihilation, far more than actually dressed in World War II. But in any case, this is where he is. He's not moving. Even now, he's against a ceasefire. This is not a popular position, by the way. I mean, if you look at the country, if you ask

what percentage of people are in favor of a ceasefire. It is overwhelming majorities in support. And so somehow his anti-war positioning and his rhetoric about wanting to spend that money instead of overseas, focusing it at home, there's a big old carve out when it comes to Israel. Yeah. Look, I mean, I guess the only thing he could say about it is he definitely believes it because there would be really no other reason to say it.

at this point, electorally. So at the same time, Titanic story in the state of New Jersey in a plot line straight out of The Sopranos, where a Democratic power broker is accused of working with real estate developers to jack up prices on the city waterfront.

and then attends the press conference where the New Jersey Attorney General indicts him to his face. Let's take a listen. We're here today to announce the unsealing of a 13-count indictment charging George Norcross with leading a criminal enterprise, of which his five co-defendants in this case, along with several unindicted co-conspirators, were allegedly members. The state alleges that defendants George Norcross, Philip Norcross, William Tambusi, the former mayor of Camden, Dana Redd,

Sidney Brown and John O'Donnell committed the crime of first-degree racketeering conspiracy, among other offenses, to further the purposes of the Norcross Enterprise. The abandoned industrial sites along the Camden waterfront had the potential to serve as the city's salvation. But as the state alleges, the Norcross Enterprise manipulated government programs and processes designed to attract development and investment to instead suit their own financial desires.

instead of contributing to the successes of the city of Camden. Through a series of criminal acts alleged in the state's case, the Norcross Enterprise took the Camden waterfront all for themselves. As George Norcross himself allegedly said, quote,

This is for our friends, end quote. This is for our friends. The details of this are nuts. Let's put this up there on the screen. It is so funny. In this recorded phone call, he literally has a developer who asked him on the phone, are you threatening me? And he says, absolutely.

- Absolutely. Recorded phone call. And look, let me just repeat, like this quite literally is a plot line out of "The Sopranos." The indictment accuses Mr. Norcross of bullying rival developers who were trying to capitalize on a push to revitalize the waterfront in Camden, a poor city outside of Philadelphia long plagued by violent crime.

And they talk about how he showed up to the press conference. Like I said, we have a photo of that, actually, if we want to put that. Look at him. He's right there. He's in the front row as he gets indicted. Yeah, I know. I don't know what's happening in this country, but whatever. He's bringing his, he lives in Florida right now. So apparently he's bringing his Florida bullshit to New Jersey. That's not how we dressed in our suits here in the East Coast, Mr. Norcross. But, you know, what we see here,

is that Norcross basically controlled the state for 20 years. He was reportedly, quote, a close friend of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and also a member of Mar-a-Lago. I mean, this is the epitome of the wheeler-dealer, the state of New Jersey, never elected to anything. This

Super close to Chris Christie, too. Super close to Chris Christie. He knows everybody who is in the state, has helped half the governors of the last 20 years get elected, and he's milked them for millions and millions of dollars. And it's just shocking to me that it almost fulfills the meme and the fictional plot lines that

And it's all actually happening in reality. It's like that's what this was. It's the real story that we could see very clearly. Yeah. No, I mean, the movies get their ideas from somewhere. Right. We actually just finished rewatching Sopranos. So straight out of there. Oh, it's it is so great. We watched Boardwalk Empire this year as well. Great show. Straight out of there as well. Corruption deal straight out of there as well.

The Wire, they also had their property. Yeah, what is about Waterfront? Why is Waterfront always being revitalized? This is classic bread and butter corruption. Because, yeah, it's like, okay, well, the government officials have advanced knowledge of this big revitalization effort or whatever. And then they controlled the bidding process to make sure it's their friends and their buddies who are positioned to cash in on this new development. And this guy got away with it.

But for years, because he was buddies with Chris Christie, he was buddies with the Democrats, and he was buddies with Nancy, but he was connected across. He was truly bipartisan, truly bipartisan, really unifier across both the parties, even though obviously because Democrats usually are in control in New Jersey, he's more closely affiliated with the Democratic Party. He's like South Jersey power broker again, cross-party.

crossed the aisle. It was only when he sort of got crosswise with the new administration that suddenly this became an issue. And so he and the current governor, Phil Murphy, apparently they were at it. And then this attorney general who's announcing this prosecution, they had issues with each other. Now, reportedly, according to the news article that I read, he and Phil Murphy, though, the governor, have reportedly reconciled.

And perhaps part of why is because Phil Murphy is now doing his own tax credit development scheme. So maybe he doesn't want to be so critical of what was going on here with Norcross at this point, now that he may also be vulnerable to these charges of political favoritism, just suggesting that that could be something that's going on in the background here, not too sure.

it's like, is it possible to do business in this state and just not? He's doing business. Yeah, it's like, can we just do business in the state and people can get elected and people don't have to be constantly bilking water? At this point, any waterfront development, I'm like, this is a scam. Like anything that's happening in front of this thing. So anyway. Donald Trump might have something to say about that, Tyler. Well, certainly. A spokesperson for Mr. Murphy said the governor had

No comment. In addition to Mr. Norcross, his brother was also charged. Again, fulfilling the meme, his lawyer was charged. The CEO of the, quote, Camden Community Partnership, a chief executive of the trucking and logistics company, and someone who had been in the executive leadership of residential development. So again, literally out of the mob.

You have trucking and logistics, you have waterfront development, real estate, you have tax dollars being illegally, allegedly funneled across. And then you have this man who is so flagrantly like working the system that he shows up to his own indictment press conference. And remember with Menendez, Menendez got off

You know, this guy, he's got a lot of strings. He's probably helped, got a lot of judges on the bench. I wouldn't count him out just yet. This is a state case. It's on his turf. He may survive. You never know. He's got a few million in the bank. You know, it probably cost $2 million to defend. He's probably made $20 million or whatever off the deal. Probably a good transaction. Apparently, he's also threatening to run as an independent. Oh, smart.

Which would, could scare the Democrats. Yes. And then that could be used as like a chit to try to work the system in terms of his political issues. So that's the theory of what he's up to at this point. But when I ran for Congress,

I'm doing my what they call call time where you're like cycling through trying to beg these people for money day in and day out, which is horrible. And you get a list, you get a sheet that has at the set, you know, this was 15 years ago. So I'm sure the process has changed somewhat. But basically you get a sheet that lists all of their political giving history. So you can see you can get a sense of their ideology. Oh, they gave to the, you know, politicians.

They're environmentalists. They gave to Emily's List. They, you know, are into women and pro-choice or whatever. And you can see what Democrats they gave to were Republicans. And I was so naive at this point.

I would see these people who gave like 50-50 Republican and Democrat. I'm like, how does that make any sense? How does it make any sense? This is how it makes sense. This is how it makes sense. Because, and it was a lot of times, it would be like developers, you know? Because they want to be connected and have access and have that forward knowledge, that insider knowledge of what's coming up. They want to be in line to get, you know, priority, you know,

picking when there is a bidding process or when you've got the opportunity to get these tax credits, et cetera. They want to be the front of the line. They want you to pick up their calls, whether they don't care whether you're a Democrat or a Republican. They're a member of the Green Party, but not the one that Jill Stein is affiliated with, the one that is the color of our money. So you want to talk about some of the real influencers and high rollers in our politics. They look a lot like this dude right here. Yep, exactly. That's why we covered it, because it's like this is the real insight, how the politics works.

yeah, those 50-50 guys, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. It's just all about business. So there you go. Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's and I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show to officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three mesmerizing, but

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth-pulling scene that kicks off a romance.

And it was Peak TV. This is new scandal content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words. Yeah.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

that feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to the CINO Show. I'm your host, CINO McFarlane. I'm an addiction specialist. I'm a coach, I'm a translator, and I'm God's middleman. My job is to crack hearts and let the light in and help everyone shift the narrative. Whether your get down is sex, drugs, alcohol, love addiction, self-hate, codependency, or anything else for that matter,

I want to help you wake up and I want to help you get free. I want to help you unleash your potential, overcome obstacles, and achieve your goals. Most importantly, I don't want you to feel alone. So join me on The Cino Show, where each week we'll feature a compelling individual with an even more noteworthy story that will be sure to inspire and educate. Listen to The Cino Show every Wednesday on iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

An astonishing bombshell report coming out of Israeli media. This was actually first obtained by an Israeli public broadcaster. There has long been discussion of what the IDF and the Israeli government may have known in advance of October 7th. You had a group of actually mostly women who were observing preparatory activities of Hamas

in advance of October 7th, who claimed they had warned their superiors or basically ignored. Well, now we have an IDF document that has been revealed that was distributed two weeks before October 7th that had granular details

of the way that October 7th would unfold. I'm gonna play you the report that aired in Israeli media. It was originally in Hebrew. We have a dubbed English version. Now, we haven't been able to specifically verify this translation. However, we did check the key details

And they match up with other reporting, which is why we feel comfortable showing it to you, but just wanted to give you that disclaimer that we have not been able to officially verify this dubbed English translation. Nevertheless, let's take a listen to this report. Almost nine months to the return in October, while the IDF still hasn't published the investigations of the default. We are tonight revealing the intelligence document of 800 minus two that was distributed only two weeks before that Sabbath.

and gave the Southern Command an accurate picture of the raid plan on the OTEF, including the exact number of abductees that was rehearsed in advance by the terrorists. The document that came to us was compiled in the Gaza Committee and was given the title "Detailed End-to-End Raid Training." It was distributed on September 19, 2023, less than three weeks before the Hamas plan went into effect.

The person who wrote it reveals in great detail a series of instructions from the elite unit of Hamas, the Naqva, to attack military outposts, Kibbutzim. This document starts by discussing Hamas's military arms company training sequences. Sweating Division's intelligence staff meticulously trailed every tiny detail.

At 11 in the morning, several companies were observed gathering for the beginning of the faith, not before prayer and lunch. At 12, equipment and weapons are distributed to the fighters, and then an exercise of when the company is ready.

At 2 o'clock, the raid practices begin. The authors of the document detail a series of exercises carried out by Hamas forces before the attack. The military arm of the organization practiced ground and air raids on Israeli territory in front of the eyes of the members of the southern command. The first step in the exercise, according to the document, is to open loopholes in the Deh-Metzali situation built in a strip that simulates the outposts in the Gaza envelope.

After breaching the fence, they attack. The exercise was carried out by four companies, and each company was assigned a different station. The Israeli intelligence officers who followed the exercise formulated in the document the next steps after the break into Israeli territory and the takeover of the outposts. The handing over of the soldiers and prisoners to the company commanders. The expected number of hostages was written between 200 and 250 people.

The military targets of the raid that were also practiced were described in the document. The headquarters of the bases, control and control headquarters. The synagogues at the bases, the squadron headquarters, the communications headquarters, Roayour systems, and the residences of the soldiers and female soldiers.

And if what you have seen so far is not creepy enough, now it turns out that the intelligence of the Southern Command and the Gaza Strip was not only aware of the Hamas kidnapping plan, but in that document there is an exact breakdown of the conditions of the hostages' detention.

including instructions for the kidnappers and what to do in an extreme case, how to hold them, and under what conditions the kidnappers can be executed. So you can hear from that report the level of detailed knowledge that they had just two weeks

before October 7th. We can put this Jerusalem Post report up on the screen that, again, verifies a lot of the key details in that report, that dubbed English report we just brought you. They say, for example, the report detailed that Israeli intelligence officials monitored the Hamas exercises, documented the steps Hamas planned to take

Now, we just to go back to that time saga because we talked about this a lot.

a lot at the time. We've known from reporting early on that they had some indications that Hamas was planning something. We did not know the level of detail that they had. And it makes even more insane the decision to move a number of IDF soldiers from that area around the Gaza envelope to the West Bank to protect settlers.

So leaving them exposed and not only was there no anticipation, no planning, the security response on that day was an utter disaster. We now have confirmed that some of the Israelis who were killed on that day, it was by the Hannibal directive by friendly fire.

But not only does that make that decision completely insane and outrageous from an Israeli security perspective, it also makes the decision, I don't know if you remember this at the time, the Nova Music Festival, where so many of the massacres and horrors of the atrocities committed on October 7th occurred and so many of the hostages were taken and people brutally murdered, that festival was supposed to be over.

And the festival organizers had petitioned the IDF and the Israeli government to extend for a further day. And even having this document in their hands, knowing what was being planned, they allowed it to be extended a further day. And it ends up being this soft target that is the location of some horrific massacres.

So, you know, as Bibi Netanyahu is fighting for his political life and had really, he was Mr. Security, his whole thing, I can control the level of the flame. He also directly propped up and, you know, supported effectively Hamas being there because it served his interests of keeping the West Bank and the Gaza Strip divided. It meant he could point to them, so we have no partner for peace. Like he liked this state of affairs. So I have to think domestically in Israel, as there's increasing opposition

reckoning over what transpired on October 7th, how this was able to occur given the massive investment in security and high-tech weaponry, all of that on the Israeli side, that this is going to be a very challenging piece of information for Bibi Netanyahu specifically. No question. This is why he wants the war to continue because then we just stop asking questions. What about this? What about the intelligence chief? Why were all the troops in the West Bank? Why didn't, if he knew so much about it? I mean, this is basically on par with 9-11.

This is, I was telling our producer before, this is on par with Bin Laden determined to attack the US, intelligence about multiple agents here in the US, CIA know these guys have US visas, living here in Los Angeles, Saudis basically knowing and helping some of the 9/11 hijackers. Every piece was there to prevent the attack if we wanted, and somebody looked the other way. We decided to invade Iraq, and then everybody just forgot about it.

That's what they want. That's why he wants a war with Lebanon. That's his Iraq. He just wants everybody to move on. That's right. That's exactly right. At the same time, we wanted to highlight for you, you know, as we focus on the U.S.'s role in all of this and how we're getting, you know, dragged further and further back into the Middle East, not that we had ever extricated ourselves. Ken Klippenstein with this report. Ken, again, has gone independent, support him over at his sub stack, but he gets this

Biden deploys a record number of troops to Jordan in a quiet buildup. And, you know, there are now a record 3,813 American troops in Jordan. That's according to the White House's War Powers Report to Congress that it just released. That is a 625 troop increase over December with the number of soldiers and airmen exceeding the number at any time since the Second Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq. A review of past War Powers Reports reveals. And it's just something to keep an eye on.

And if you look, he has a chart saga that shows the numbers of American troops in Jordan over the years. And this is the steepest increase

that we have seen over the time period that he tracks. Yes, it's crazy. It's one in which, again, why are these guys even here? For Syria? For Israel? What is it? You should tell Congress, report to the American people. But they just get away with it. The troops go over there. Nobody asks any questions. Then three of them end up dead, and then we just keep sending more troops over there. And nobody asks any more questions. Yeah, these individuals are at risk. Literally. I mean, three of them are dying.

They already died. People died. We all just completely moved on from it. It's nuts. Yeah, that's right. So we also had to bring to you some outrageous propaganda courtesy of CNN, you know,

I really wish they would stop saying this stuff so we could stop talking about it. But as you guys know, October 7th, as we just discussed, there were genuine war crimes, atrocities, massacres, which were committed. However, there were also incidents that the Israeli government promoted that turned out to be lies. There were the beheaded babies. There was the baby cut out of the woman's stomach, etc., okay?

And among what appears to be those fabricated tales was the story of mass rape as a weapon of war used by Hamas on October 7th. Now, this is not my words. This is now the indications of that Times of London report that I brought to you. This is what...

Pramila Patten at the UN, this is what she said, the recent UN report that came out also confirmed that while there was gender-based, there are indications of gender-based violence, the allegations of rape, mass rape, rape as a weapon of war are unfounded, unproven at this point, lacking evidence, okay? Now, you would think that would be important to a news organization, but if it's CNN,

CNN or really any other of them. It's not. So you have Dana Bash setting up a segment with Debbie Wasserman Schultz in which she proceeds to lie about seeing photos that do not exist.

in service of promoting a Kamala Harris propaganda press conference about similar content. So let's take a listen to the segment and we can react on the other side. What's worse, to get kidnapped, to be raped, or to get shot? That is a quote from Tali Beiner. It's what she said she was asking herself amid the chaos at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7th.

And she was a lucky one. She was able to hide from Hamas terrorists as they raped and slaughtered scores of people, people attending the festival to listen to music and to promote peace. More than 200 civilians were taken hostage that day, including women brought into Gaza and sexually assaulted. Hamas used sexual violence and continues to use it as a weapon of war, is violating the

women, Israeli women, and I hosted a forum with the second gentleman on Capitol Hill a few months ago, and the Israeli police came and showed us videos that were taken by Hamas terrorists themselves engaging in the kind of sexual violence that Cheryl's film shows, cutting off the breasts while raping their victims.

first-hand accounts from first responders as well as others and Israelis who were hiding from Hamas terrorists.

The denialism is outrageous. We have to make sure that we knock it down. So CNN should retract and apologize for this segment because those videos do not exist. The congresswoman is lying. And again, this is not my words. I'm reading from the Pramila Patten, UN Special Representative, Sexual Violence and Conflict Report.

She says the mission team, specifically the forensic pathologist, the digital analyst, reviewed over 5,000 photos, around 50 hours, and several audio files of footage of the attacks provided by various state agencies through an independent online review of various open sources to identify potential instances and indications of conflict-related sexual violence. She goes on to say, while the mission team reviewed that extensive digital material depicting a range of egregious violations,

No digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence was found in open source. The videos that DWS is claiming to see, that by the way, Joe Biden has claimed the same thing, they do not exist. According to the UN, according to the Times of London, according to independent researchers, they do not exist. Okay? So...

Again, there is a reason why they persist with this and because they're seeking to justify the atrocities they are committing in Gaza by pointing to these atrocities that they have invented. And again, there were atrocities on October 7th. I am not denying that, but I also require facts and evidence to understand what actually happened on that day.

I do not wanna see a genocide justified by DWS and Joe Biden and CNN and others based on videos that they invented in their minds. So, at a certain point, Sagar, obviously they're railing against the denialists, etc. I'm sure they put me in that camp even though again, I'm just looking at the evidence that's been presented. And by the way, let me make a distinction here too.

There have been hostages who've been released, at least one who has directly testified to sexual assault while she's being held hostage. I think we should all take that very seriously, okay? The allegation, though, that there was systematic weapon of war, mass rape deployed on October 7th has not been supported. And if the Israeli government has such evidence, if they believe that that actually occurred, they should cooperate, right?

with the full independent investigation, which they have completely rejected and failed to do. The last thing I'll say, I'll get your reaction, is of course, we also can't take seriously that these people actually, including Kamala Harris at her event that she just did, which screened the Sheryl Sandberg, Agitprop documentary, quote unquote, about this as well, that they actually care about sexual violence in any context, let alone in the context of war, is because we do have evidence

that there has been a persistent pattern of sexual violence committed against Palestinian hostages or prisoners or detainees, whatever you want to call them. None of them ever says a word about that, nor do they care about it.

So this is all for blatant propaganda purposes, which is why it irritates me so much. Yeah, and it should. And now we've got Kamala Harris jumping in. Let's put this up there on the screen. Kamala Harris is launching initiatives to provide support for, quote, sexual violence survivors, launching Dignity and Documentation Initiative, addressing global conflict-related sexual violence and supporting them through UN efforts to

and leadership programs, but pegging it specifically to October 7th and after a partial screening of quote, "Cheryl Sandberg's documentary film, Screams Before Silence." So yeah. - And also from Kamala, not a word at this. This event is not supposed to just be about Israel. She mentioned, and again, also,

without evidence that Hamas had committed rape and gang rape at the Nova Music Festival. Again, there is no evidence, according to the UN, no evidence to back up those claims. She claims that this event is about conflict-related, gender-based violence everywhere.

Not one mention of the confirmed reports with regards to Palestinians. So obviously you can't take these people seriously in their supposed care and concern and desire for accountability whatsoever. It's purely for their own naked propaganda purposes. And it's frankly disgusting.

There you go.

And because I'm in this world, a card that's been making the rounds for a few years now is the Bilt card. It has one of the best point value redemptions in the game for anyone who rents, and it has spurred their founder, Encore Jane, to a billion dollar plus net worth. The only problem has been nobody can really figure out how does this company make money? Why? How did they somehow figure out a scheme that nobody else could make work?

Well, a new Wall Street Journal expose reveals how exactly they made this work. And it is absolutely delicious. For those who don't know, Bilt's major pitch to consumers is that you can pay your rent and you can get points for doing so on the card. Usually landlords don't take credit cards because they don't want to eat processing fees. Bilt boasts that you can do so, that they will eat the fee and they will mail a check to the landlord. That way, everybody wins. Landlord gets paid, you get to pay something that you would anyways, and you get to redeem points for potentially thousands

Now, you might be asking, wait, how does this work? It turns out,

Wells Fargo, the bank that helped Bilt issue the card, made a huge mistake. They assumed when they were underwriting the card that consumers would not be as savvy as they are. In fact, they assumed most people wouldn't take advantage of the rental provision and that instead a huge portion of the credit card users would carry a balance and that they could milk them for interest. Instead, a much smaller portion of card users than normal are carrying a balance and a

massive portion of them are just paying their rent with a card and immediately zeroing out the balance. This means that Wells Fargo is eating the processing fee, which has now led to a whopping $10 million a month loss for the bank. Since this card has been around for years, well, it means they have lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the program.

The best part is they are locked into this contract until 2029, and they are doing their damnedest right now to get out of it, leading to major panic within the bank. Even funnier is that not only are they eating the credit card processing fee, but their contract actually requires them to pay built every single time a new person signs up. They assumed that the card would be a loss leader at worst, and that maybe they could just sell mortgages to built customers, who are obviously renters, but then

high interest rates, screw that up for everybody. I'm not gonna leave built unscathed here though, even though people should take advantage of their card while they still can. Their CEO, Ankur Jain, recently had a gaudy monstrosity of a wedding where he literally rented out the Great Pyramids of Giza, has seemingly spent millions and millions of dollars, he has relished in his status as a billionaire, and he has built-built as a massively innovative financial technology company.

But now that we know the truth, it makes a lot more sense. So the last time he was on CNBC, he had a train wreck interview where he could not explain how this company actually made money without outing his insane deal with Wells Fargo. Take a listen. Let's go back to the math of it because I do want to understand the economics of it. So you're collecting a fee.

a processing fee, transaction fee every time. Correct. Which is what percent? Which is what percent? It depends on the type of payment method. You can pay by bank ACH. Okay, but we're talking between 1.5% and 3%. Are we talking Amex style? I mean, Amex was 3%. MasterCard was lower, obviously. It really depends if you pay by Amex or pay by Visa or pay by MasterCard. If you pay with your bank, what's the lowest you can get? That's right. And so you get different levels of points. But what's the rate for the lowest if you pay by bank? It depends on the landlord, too, and the property owner. But

Just like Stripe and any other... But go back. I'll answer this question. This is an important piece. When you go to a local merchant, today, instead of giving, say, a 10% local discount to bring in local customers on those off hours, off days, they can say, like with American Express, but, hey, we want to focus on the neighborhood. And if you come in, we can fund 2.5% or 5% in rewards...

and introduce our business to all those people moving into the neighborhood every month. So think about this, half of renters move every year.

So you have all these people moving out of the neighborhood every year, and these merchants, these small business owners, have no way to get in front of them. So now you can be in front of everybody when they move into the neighborhood. You have a plug-and-play loyalty platform, and instead of giving the 10% local discount, you spend a quarter of that, and you actually attract the local residents through recurring rewards for coming in, and all the points they've earned on rent can now be spent at that local business. Right.

- I love that so much. Well, some people pay some fee and there's this merchant program. No, it doesn't. It turns out the bank is just eating the whole fee. The best part is that the clip goes on for five more minutes. The entire time, Andrew Ross Sorkin, he keeps trying to ask him, he goes, "Wait, how do you actually make money?" And they can't say why.

Anyway, clearly this gravy train ain't gonna last past 2029. I wouldn't put it past Wells Fargo to sue and try and get themselves out of the deal. In the meantime, this is not financial advice, but I can tell you that card is a pretty damn good deal. And it is just even sweeter knowing that those free flights come at the direct expense of one of America's worst banks who are dumb enough to sign a deal like this. Couldn't have happened to a better person. We're gonna skip the reaction because Matt Stoller is standing by and we are really running short on time. Let's get to it.

Hi, I'm Katie Lowe's. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing. But also,

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance.

And it was Peak TV. This is new scandal content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words. Yeah.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story. Oops.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to the CINO Show. I'm your host, CINO McFarlane. I'm an addiction specialist. I'm a coach. I'm a translator. And I'm God's middleman. My job is to crack hearts and let the light in and help everyone shift the narrative. Whether your get down is sex, drugs, alcohol, love addiction, self-hate, codependency, or anything else for that matter.

I want to help you wake up and I want to help you get free. I want to help you unleash your potential, overcome obstacles, and achieve your goals. Most importantly, I don't want you to feel alone. So join me on The Cino Show, where each week we'll feature a compelling individual with an even more noteworthy story that will be sure to inspire and educate. Listen to The Cino Show every Wednesday on iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, guys, very excited to have our friend Matt Stoller in studio. He is, of course, the author of Big by Matt Stoller over on Substack and also over he is at the American Economic Liberties Project and great on all things antitrust and much more. Great to see you, Matt. Good to see you, man. You had a piece recently you can put up on the screen that I really took interest in. The headline is, why has Trump stopped attacking big business? In 2016, you say Donald Trump went after CEOs so unkindly.

often that the Wall Street Journal set up a tracker of stocks whose leaders he had insulted. No longer, what happened? So take us through the shift from 2015 vintage Trump to the way Trump talks today. And has there been a policy shift that has accompanied that rhetorical shift as well? Yeah.

So I was really surprised because I'm not a Trump hater. I mean, I'm a Democrat, but I'm not a Trump hater. But I went back to 2016 and 2017 because I noticed he hasn't really been attacking CEOs very often. I was like, is that a what? Is that a thing? And so I like I looked at the last three speeches he gave because you can't really trust the press. And they're reporting on Trump is this dumb thing.

And so I just like read his speeches, which are long and rambling, but he like didn't attack any CEOs. He still was like against immigrants and he had some of the traditional like stuff in there, but it was like that was gone. And I was like, OK. So I went back to 2015, 2016, 2017 and looked at the stuff he had said. And I was I was surprised. I thought I paid close attention to Trump.

But it was really surprising because of just how often and how aggressive he was about attacking like Ford, like Nabisco. He called for a boycott of Apple at a certain point. He was like, you know, he went after Jeff Bezos for being a monopolist and not paying his taxes and said he's going to have a huge antitrust problem under me.

And he was like, his final ad was amazing. It was like a two minute long ad that was like the global power structure. And it was, you know, is trying to defeat me and they've outsourced your jobs. And it was, you know, it was pictures of Wall Street, pictures of empty factories. It was like straight up populist, economic populist stuff. And then when he got into office, you know,

He was not like, he was not FDR, right? To put it like, he did do some real things though. Like he was mostly like an orthodox Republican, corporate tax cuts and stuff like that, deregulation. But he actually did, the tariffs were different. So he did some tariffs, didn't close the trade deficit, that got worse, but he did change our trade policy framework

And there's some weird stuff in trade as well. Like under Trump is the first use of environmental rules to stop illegal logging ever in Peru. Like it was crazy. And that was just because Trump is a protectionist and he was like, well, we wanna protect the domestic. Yeah, that's exactly right. But it's like, and there's like labor organizing in Mexico because of some of the things that Trump did, which is again, protectionist. Labor costs in Mexico go up. Yep. More,

less offshore. This was part of the, yeah, I remember this. Yeah, yeah. So, and this is both the Democrats in Congress and Trump, but it was real, like not, you know, it's certainly like, maybe I'm saying 20% of it was real and 80% of it was just like pro-corporate. But on antitrust, you know, same thing, lots of huge mergers, bad stuff, but he did challenge AT&T Time Warner, right? Which was the first challenge of a merger like that in like 40 years.

He did bring a suit against Google and a suit against Facebook. These were huge. Remember when Facebook tried to start their own currency, Debra? I think we had you on to talk about that. It feels like so long ago, but he helped block that. So there was real stuff, but on the other hand, there was standard deregulation and inequality got worse. I don't want to overstate it, but there was some populism there. It was certainly not what you would expect from a standard

Republican administration. And Wall Street actually funded Hillary Clinton and then Joe Biden in 2020 more than they did Trump. Okay. Today, he gets about 50% more money from Wall Street or from securities industry and finance industry than Biden does. Right? So there's been this really big shift in the money. And he is still talking about immigration, but he isn't talking about

the Wall Street establishment or anything like that. The populism has kind of moved to foreign policy a little bit. He's kind of like, if I were in charge, none of this bad stuff would be happening, right? So it's not, that's not like, you know, you can laugh at it, but it's like, it's moved, it's changed. I'm just looking at the rhetoric, right?

In terms of your question about what's the policy change going to be, I don't know. Nobody knows. And I talked to my friends on the right and they're like, this doesn't look good, but we don't know. I mean, my friends on the right are like realignment types. And they're just kind of like,

we don't think he's gonna be good, but they're not sure. - I think the Trump thesis is simple. He got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. He doesn't need any of that. You could literally pass TCJA. You can be very popular. He's currently beating Joe Biden in the polls. And he went to the business round table and was like, "I'm gonna cut all of your taxes." And only people like you and me are even gonna pay attention to any of that. Other people are gonna go to the grocery store and say stuff is too pricey or too high.

So, I mean, and reflected in your speech, what does he even say about the economy? Like, other than the economy is bad, in terms of the speeches that you read? Well, he says, you know, it was awesome when I was president. Right, yeah, that's it. He's like, remember when it was awesome? And people are like, I guess, I do, yeah, I remember that. And, yeah.

You know, and that works. There's a nostalgia power. I'm not saying like, I'm not giving an electoral analysis, but I will say this. The polling does show that voters think that Trump is on the side of Wall Street more than, a lot more than Biden. Oh, interesting. And so there is vulnerability there. Yeah, that was really interesting in your report. I encourage people to look at that polling you pulled out because I hadn't seen that. And I did think that that was really interesting and I bet would represent a massive shift from

From the way he was positioned in 2016, where I would say a core part of his appeal, I mean, it was during the swamp and it was, you know, the TPP was a huge piece of his appeal. Anti-immigrant was also part of it as well then too. But, you know, has the, in terms of the Wall Street money. Right.

Is the shift exclusively that they're more comfy with Trump? He's not saying that stuff anymore. Also, you know, we were there during Trump and things were actually pretty good for us. Or is it more that they've been unhappy with some of the actions that Biden has taken, specifically in the area of antitrust, where you focus? And also, I mean, Biden, the other piece here is

Trump was very, in spite of, you know, the talk about labor, his National Labor Relations Board was packed with exactly the type of characters you would expect in any Republican administration, you know, standard approach towards actual labor issues. The Biden administration has taken a different tack there as well. Yeah, I think it's kind of funny. So, yeah, just to give you an example, like Trump,

Remember the second Boeing Max crash, right? And Trump was so deregulatory that he wouldn't even ground the Max airline, like airplanes, until every other...

everyone else in the world had grounded them. And I saw that recently. I was like, oh yeah, I remember endless little decision after little decision that was kind of terrifying. Things like arsenic and water or the Boeing 737 MAX. And it was really maddening as a liberal to see the liberals focus on stuff that was stupid instead of the stuff that he was- Like Russiagate or the Boeing. I remember this whole thing about, yeah, whatever. But the point is, is that

There were a lot of policy choices that I think we kind of ignored that I'm sort of looking at and saying, "Oh, that's kind of a problem."

But but on the Biden side of things. Oh, yeah. Sorry about him, because I'm sort of trying to draw you out because we do a lot of, you know, criticism here. Right, right, right. And you recently tweeted that Biden had been a pretty good president part in. And in a certain sense, like I have major issues with him on foreign policy, on economic policy, the stuff you focus on actually agree in a certain on antitrust.

I think he's represented a significant shift on the labor issues that I care a lot about. He's represented somewhat of a shift as well. So what's your case for why he's been pretty good and why that may have rubbed Wall Street the wrong way? You know, it's kind of funny. I like to tweet like Biden's pretty good just because it annoys everyone on Twitter. Right. And like the establishment just kind of hates Biden. Like what's what's interesting is that it's like cool to support Trump now.

right? Whereas in 2016, it was like cool to support Clinton. On Twitter, that's true. I don't know if it's true in general, but yeah. If you go to like any group of young people and you're like, hey, do you like Biden? They'll be like, no, right? Like he sucks. But if you're like,

And if you just put a, like, you give them, like, a piece of paper and say who you're going to vote for, they'll be like, they'll, like, write Biden. But it's, like, not cool to say it, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, okay, so Biden, like, he's incoherent, and his administration is incoherent. But on, in a number of ways, like...

you would think Wall Street would really like it, right? Because the stock market's at record highs, executive pay is good, like they're making a lot of money, but like they're really mad. And they're really mad because they're not allowed to merge, right? There's been $11 trillion of mergers that have not happened because there's an antitrust regime that says, no, you can't buy up all your rivals and raise prices. They're also doing things like helping workers

which is not something that I, it's not the kind of law that I look at, but that is something that's happening. They're doing things like banning non-compete agreements, which is really important. Private equity loves to like lock up all the doctors in an area and not let them go work for someone else or lock up all the vets in an area or nurses or whatever. And the Biden administration is saying, no, you can't do that. Yesterday, the Biden administration just said, we're not going to let Adobe like continue to make it impossible to cancel your subscription to their like product.

And everyone in the creative field hates Adobe because they just charge you a lot of money and don't let you- I think we pay for Adobe, I'm pretty sure, in the back room. But if you try to cancel, good luck with that, right? Getting on the phone, all these junk fees that these guys are laying on you. The thing about all that stuff is that there's a billionaire behind every junk fee. And they are really mad that someone is telling them no because they're not used to hearing no. And so-

having some, now most of the Democrats don't know that their party is doing this. Like another example is,

The IRS just came out with its own free version of TurboTax. Yeah, free tax. Right? And you will now be able to, like, file your taxes. And the people who will be, like, the customer service are, like, work at the IRS. And, like, Intuit's stock just, like, took a dive because—but that's, like, one more thing that's much less annoying in our lives because of what Biden is doing. But it's also, like, Intuit's going to be really mad because—

And like, they're all, you know, all the lobbyists, they're all friends with each other. And so that's what's going on here is like the nest of people with capital are getting really mad, not because they're losing money, they're actually making more money, but because someone's telling them no. And it's these random people in the Biden administration. Do you have confidence those things will continue in a second Biden administration? Because, and I guess this gets to the question of like,

What is his orientation towards those policies? Yeah. Because it's not something he talks about a lot. Right. They have certainly done a terrible job of selling these pieces. Like, they don't lean into this. Yeah. So does Joe Biden know this is happening? Does he care it's happening? Is this important to him in terms of what he would do in a second term? Yeah.

it's a little bit like Trump. We don't know. Don't know. Right? Like, Ron Klain, who was the first White House chief of staff, was super into this stuff. Right. Jeff Zients doesn't care. Yeah, he doesn't care. He's also filthy rich because of the opposite. He's like, you know, he's like anchorman like Brick Tanlin. Yeah. He's just like, he's polite and rarely late. Yeah. He doesn't, he's totally superficial. Yes. He knows nothing. Like, their next chief of staff after Jeff Zients, if he's into this stuff or she's into this stuff, like, then it'll,

So in other words, it's not about Biden. Biden just doesn't care. We have no... Biden... No, Biden... It's not that Biden doesn't care. Biden, like, has an instinct. He doesn't like people getting screwed. He doesn't like CEOs because he thinks they talk down to him. He, like, kind of generally is like, where could people are getting screwed? But he's not that interested in it, and he doesn't follow the details. So, like...

It's different than Obama. Obama was very hungry, aggressive, and straight neoliberal. The people are revolting, and we need to put our boot on their neck. Right. But in a cool way. That was his thing. With celebs. Yeah. And he's an influencer type. Biden actually has the opposite view, but his interest is foreign policy, where he's doing an awesome job. Oh. Yeah.

Anyway, but the thing is- In his mind, that's true. In his mind, he's killing it. There's a lot of legitimate criticisms of Biden, right? But I think a lot of the vibe hostility to him is actually coming from big money, right? All of the people on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and they all pay off academia. They're all like, none of them have an incentive to say, yeah, I don't like Adobe overcharging you, right? Because there's some-

group of people making money from that. And they're all friends with a group of people making money from everything. It's like you, if you attack the things that people don't like in our society in commerce, you will make people very angry. And that is why when I put up on Twitter, because I think of Twitter as like, you know, it's sort of like, that's what organized money is talking about. When you put up something on Twitter, like Biden's pretty good. Like, you know, the rage, like the level of rage, they're not like, oh, well, you know, but what is, what about it? What he's doing there or there? It's like,

here or there, the rage is aggressive. And it's out of whack to what he's truly doing. Interesting. I think that's fair. Last thing I'll...

question you on, though, is my assessment's a little bit different, which is that I think the things you're talking about, especially the antitrust piece, also the labor organizing piece, which is very important to me, I think these could make a significant difference in our economy a little bit down the road. But it doesn't pay off for people, by and large. I mean, the junk feed stuff, that's real right now, but it doesn't pay off right now in the short term. And on the other hand, you've had over the course of the Biden administration, all of the COVID social safety net that was spun up, you've

You've had that piece by piece by piece taken away so that people are more strapped in terms of cash, the amount in their bank account is lower. You've seen net worth, especially among some demographics, continue to decline. If you're a young person, you're looking at the housing market, you're like, I'm never gonna be able to afford a house. You've had inflation, inflation is cooling somewhat, prices are still much higher than they were under the Trump administration.

So I think there's some there there, especially among people who are not yet asset owners in terms of their sense of how this economy is for them right now in this moment. Well, who cares about people who don't have assets? Good point, Matt. No, I mean, I think—and we'll end it there.

Well, look at something very basic, which is gas prices. Gas prices have come down a lot and they've come down a lot because of Biden policies. Right. And very explicitly, like they figured out there was a big price fixing conspiracy in terms of withholding production, the fracking companies. And then they released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to break that cartel.

It worked. And gas prices are much lower than they were. They're not as necessarily as low as they were before the pandemic, but they have come down a lot. Okay. The, um,

Rent, okay, or airplanes, right, airlines. Prices are actually below where they were in 2019. You take something like rent. Rent is a huge problem. The Biden administration is actually bringing an antitrust case against a company that has software that fixes- Yeah, we covered it. Yeah, right. So you guys know, like, yeah, of course.

Of course, but like the, you're one of the only people that know about it. If you don't explain what you're doing, right, then how are people gonna know? I mean, there are real, like Trump said, I lowered pharmaceutical prices. It wasn't true, but a lot of people believe it 'cause he kept saying it, right? I'm not, this is not a criticism of Trump. It's kind of like, if you don't explain what you're doing, there's no way for anyone to know what you're doing.

So it's true, there are a lot of huge problems that I think people are experiencing. There are always a lot of huge problems that people are experiencing. I'm not like a political expert or anything, but it does seem to me like if you are not explaining what you're doing, then people aren't gonna know what you're doing. It just seems very basic. - That seems pretty clear. - Well said. - But yeah. - All right, well, it's great talking to you, man. Appreciate you coming down. People should read the piece and subscribe to the Substack. Otherwise, we'll see you all later.