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Speaker 1: Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points Premium member today at breakingpoints dot com. Your hard earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to Breakingpoints dot com to help us out. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. When do we have Grissel? Indeed we do. I know I always say lots of big stories to take it too, but today it is like extra super, really true. Lots of stuff going on with Russia and Ukraine. Putin going ahead and calling up somewhere around three hundred thousand Russian citizens that mobilization has begun, protests and reaction of that are happening. Plus he's made new threats regarding potential nuclear weapons, so dig into that. We'll dig into Biden's big speech at the UN. We've also got a massive new legal developments for the former president, including some rulings that are going against him with regard to the Special Master and the classified documents. Also Letitia James, the Attorney General of York, announcing a new civil suit against Trump, Trump Junior, Ivanka, and Eric. So we have all those details for you. We also have big economic news. We have new indications about the housing market. We have the FED going ahead and moving forward with that seventy five basis point rate hike, and actually just on the Bank of England is moving forward with a rate hike as well. So that's that global tightening that we were talking about. New comments from the White House President Biden got a lot of attention, I guess, I would say, some support, some flak for saying that COVID is over. Now they're kind of trying to clarify those comments. So we'll dig into that debate. Soger's looking at gas prices. I'm looking at the case of Ed Nan Said, who of course was the subject of the block buster podcast Cereal It was literally the first podcast I ever listened to. Same I would not be the person I am today without Sarah kaneg shout out to her, because no, literally, I listened to Cereal and at the top was an ad one of the only ads that's ever worked Walchair audible. Oh, it was audib audible. It was always mailship when I was listening to it at the beginning, I guess in twenty fourteen, it was audible and it was like, Hey, if you like this, check out audio books and I was like, oh, okay, And I've probably since listened to like over a thousand audiobooks. Wow. As a result of it. It was funny because I went back. I talked about this in the monologue, but I went back and re listened to not every episode because there's twelve of them that would be a lot, but maybe like four episodes, a sort of key ones, the ones about Jay, the ones about like the you know that lay out the whole case, et cetera. And there were so many parts of it that were so nostalgic, like the phone call coming in from the penitentiary and like aDNA on saiet ad non sayet yeah, yeah, Anyway, Adnan is free. Is he innocent? I'm going to dig into what we know. Also, I'm super excited to talk about to our guests today. So this guy is the lead worker organizer for a new effort to unionize a home depot outside of Philadelphia. He also happens to be a big breaking points space breaking points, so it's it's pretty cool. I'm excited to talk about to him. Home depot is like the fifth largest employer in the whole country. Huge, Yeah, so if they were able to succeed there, you know, that could be potentially, you know, a really significant moment in terms of the growing grossroots labor moon. He actually said in an interview was like, listen of Chris Mal's could do it with an Amazon warehouse. I thought, you know, certainly I could do it with the three hundred people here at home depots. So we'll see how that effort is going. Before we get to any of that, though, we got a couple of announcements reminder, live show lo to Chicago. Let's put it up there Vic Theator October fifteenth, buy tickets. Now there we go, all right, So we released a couple of clips from the live show yesterday. Actually did quite well, so if you want to go ahead and check those out that it's a fun vibe. We have a really really good time with it, and it's just it's all just about, you know, thank you to the audience, and it's very participort participatory. We're all having a great time. We reveal our verbal tics. That was my favorite. Second. Yeah, people, people enjoyed it, so that's great. I'm glad you did. Go ahead my tickets. If you're in the Midwest, go ahead. There's a link down there in the description. Also used to be going well. Number two is the discount going on right now for Counterpoints. As we said, ten percent off on an annual membership here for Breaking Points helps us fund our expansion and hire the person who needs to help Ryan and Emily because James is swamped right now. Yes, for producer James, he took a bout at the end of the at the end of the show in Atlanta, and he loved it. So let's forgive it much deserved, much earned. Audience is very appreciative as we are of James and the work that he does. I also, I just want to remind people who are already premium subscribers because Frankly, my dad was asking me about this yesterday, so I wanted to make sure it is really clear. There's no added subscription or whatever. If you are a premium subscriber, you get our show. Oh, you get counterpoints, you get the whole thing for that same price that it's always been in back right now, it's obviously at a discount. It's delivered to you in the same way that our show is delivered to you, So nothing really changes. You just get an extra show in your inbox in on Fridays. So pretty cool thing. Oh yeah, that was the last one. We sent out the full live show to all of our premium members. They can watch the full thing. A lot of you guys, did you guys seem to really enjoy it. So we're not going to release the full thing to everybody. If you do want to be If you do want to watch the live show and see exactly what was going on, sign up a premium membership. It's part of your discount. You can watch it, you can listen to it, whatever you want. Okay, let's get to the show. Let's start with Putin. Obviously this is the biggest news, not only what Putin announced late Tuesday. Well, I guess you know, Tuesday to Wednesday, very early in the morning. But all of the geopolitical reaction, We're going to start very first with what Putin had to say. Let's put this up there on the screen. Putin declares partial mobilization of the Russian defense forces. The decree was signed that says, quote, this is a translation. Only citizens who are currently in the reserved and above all, those who served in the armed forces have certain military specialties and relevant experience will be subject to conscription. It's effectively the same as the United States calling up like the National Guard or the US Army Reserve. So not going fully to the general population, like drafting them into base training, but people who have already previous military experience. So let me say though that you know, that's what they're saying, and that's how they're selling it. But the order that he signed does not actually specify those limitaris. So it's actually just in his speech, not actually in his way. Yeah, so in terms of how they're implementing it now, it appears that that's the direction they're going in, but the order actually is a much broader potential mobilization. So important thing to keep in mind very important one. And look, this gives us a lot of insight into the state of the Russian militaries, like how many of the best people have already been called up, how many have they churned through? How many you know, there's a lot of so called refused nicks, people who are just refusing not to serve in the quote unquote Special Operation Zone because we're like, we don't want to go to war with Ukraine. Yeah, I don't want to need to do a bit. Well, there's reports of huge lineups at the border of Russian men trying to get out of the country before this comes for them. There were reports that I think were kind of unconfirmed that the airlines have been told to stop selling tickets. There's a lot of rumors going out at Russia. Yeah, so I don't know if that one is accurate or not, but there certainly is a lot of video floating around of you know, big lineups at the border of people like I'm getting the hell out of here before I have to go and fight in this stupid war that I didn't want anything to do with it it. We're freaking out, and you know, immediately after the Putin speech, let's put this up there. The Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shogu, he came out and said that Russia is going to draft three hundred thousand reservists to support the military campaign in Ukraine. He also gave us one of the most laughable statistics yet that only five, nine hundred and thirty seven Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the conflict. That is ludicrous the actual I mean, look, nobody knows the actual number, but it's probably more along the lines of like ten thousand to twenty thousand than it is six thousand. And we know that based on actual open source stuff coming out of Russia of people who are posting and you know, mourning their loved ones. This is just like what happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan. They always tried to cover up their death toll, and in the end people knew the truth because at the end of the day, you got to notify somebody's family when they die, and then people start talking and going to funerals. It's like, hey, there's all these funerals now, all of a sudden, and you weren't even supposed to grieve. It was one of the biggest. It's one of the factors actually that led to the decline of the Soviet Union, especially in terms of a lack of confidence in the state. So what does all of this mean. Well, there's a lot of different ways in order to read it, but I think focus first on Russian society because Putin this is a big loss for him. He sold this war. As you know, I was thinking about it recently in the context of the Iraq War. We were sold the Iraq War light footprint, one hundred fifty thousand guys, go in, lightning, come out, We're out. That's it. And Eric shin Seki and a lot of other guys told the US public and the US Congress are like, no, you're probably gonna need like four hundred thousand people otherwise you're gonna have a massive insurgency on your hand. The Bush administration didn't want to listen. In this case, that's the Putin and so Putin thought, I can do this with a couple hundred thousand guys, all this military equipment. We have one of the world to war power militaries. Sk me over in like two weeks, well six months into this thing. Obviously, they've now also suffered a humiliating defeat. So this is kind of like the quote unquote surge for Putin. He's doubling down on the war in Ukraine and saying, okay, fine, my initial cell to the Russian population that this wasn't going to really affect your life and I wouldn't have to call it preserves a quote unquote special operation, not a war. This is a big domestic loss, I think, no matter which way that you want to spin it. Yeah, another fascinating thing. You know, when I found Crystal, he cited nationalist criticism of him on Russian television, which really makes me think that it was all a Kremlin plot in the beginning, so manufactured manufacture descent coming from the right, saying why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you calling up? He acknowledged them in his speech and was like, I have heard you, I have to you, and that has led me to this disace. I mean, it's possible because you also saw, like we covered here, the amount of criticism that was coming on state TV and from these bloggers that you know normally isn't really allowed. So the fact that it was allowed, that's possible. I mean, it's also possible that Look, genuinely, the place he feels pressure from is from his right, from the harder core nationalists. And so after this, you know, what has been a series of stunning advances by the Ukrainian military and stunning setbacks for Russia, he kind of had to do something, And so the bulk of the political pressure was coming from that more nationalist front, and he certainly, you know, for him, this is existential, Like if they just lose, that's going to be a disaster for him. He cannot allow that to happen. It probably would be the end of his presidency. So to me, nothing lays out the sort of context here better than that image of the day that they're suffering these humiliating defeats in Ukraine. Is there inaugurating a new ferris wheel. Like they were still trying to hold on to this idea that the bulk of the public could be insulated from this conflict and that it wouldn't have to impact their lives. It became, you know, this was just like a total defeat of that original strategy that Okay, we could do a little bit of war over here in the public won't even notice. So I guess the more hopeful spin is that he is trying to find a way. I've seen some analyst saying he's trying to find a way ultimately to get out of this but save enough face so that he's able to hold on to his presidency. So you have to, like, you have to strengthen your hand, because the Ukrainians certainly aren't going to agree to a ceasefire or he's deal right now when they see total victory in sight. So that was one analysis that I saw, that this is an attempt to sort of strengthen the hand so that he might be in a position to negotiate for some sort of ceasefire that wouldn't just be utter and total humiliation. But there there's no doubt about it. From the beginning how he thought this would go, it has not gone anything like that. From hoping that it could just be this sort of limited effort that the public is protected from from thinking they could just roll right into Kiev, every step of the way, it has been a disaster for them and has not gone according to plan. Now, I think it's also important to ask, like, this is a lot of people they're callaly, three hundred thousand people is a lot of people now, a lot of them don't have much, if any training. This is certainly you know, they're not sending their best, so to speak. They've lost a lot of their sort of most skilled military, well trained folks alright, soldiers already. So how much of the difference is this going to make? Are they really prepared and are they organized enough to have this kind of surge into the field into Ukraine. I think those are all big, big questions to ask, And it seems to me like this winter, for a variety of reasons, is really going to be determinative. Not only because we'll see whether this surge of personnel makes a difference for Russia helps them to turn the tied and regain the upper hand. That's number one, number two, and we'll get to this more when we talk about Biden's un speech. It'll also be a question politically how the US population is still responding to this war. We still all in the European populations. How does it go with energy prices? You know, how much austerity and pain does this winter bring to European populations. So I think a lot will be determined over the course of this winter. Yeah, I think that's right, And you know, we also have to acknowledge some of the heroes across Russia. I mean, let's put this up there on the screen. Spontaneous protests broke out all across the country. Here's video just from Moscow. I'm not going to say this is the entire Russian population, but that's a lot of people that I'm looking at. It's clearly an organic pushback some percentage, yeah, right, exactly. I mean even if it's ten percent. And remember, look, to live in an authoritarian country like Russia, and it's not like these people can easily leave, and to risk your literal life and imprisonment to do this takes some serious, serious courage. So we want to acknowledge those people. In terms of the military, let's put this up there. Michael Kaufman, he's that military analyst that we relied on several times throughout this invasion. I think he put it in a very measured and important way. He's like, look, first and foremost, of course, we don't know, so we should not make any deterministic or definitive claims. But here's what he says. I would not suggest that this can turn around Russia's fortunes in the war. As in, are they going to be immediately on the offensive. Probably not. However, here's what he says, I would take care of being dismissive, especially looking towards the medium term of this winter and twenty twenty three, because force availability and manpower matters. Hence the implications can vary. What he essentially comes to and arrives at in this thread, and his analysis is that the Russian military can use these forces to plug up their weak defenses like those that folded in the Ukrainian offensive, and just make it into much more of a war of attrition and make it frankly, far more difficult for the Ukrainians to try and advance. Are they capable enough to go on the offense. What Coffin points out is that the Russians have led through some of their best generals, some of their best fighting forces. Their logistical challenges are obviously, you know, terrible, and it would take I've probably more than the quote unquote partial mobilization to actually they would have to basically fully mobilize their entire society and army in order to wage war, which was not supposed to be the case for a great part of military fighting. A quote unquote third rate army. Well, they've proven themselves that when you're fighting for your life, you're going to fight very differently. On top of the weapons that we have supplied to the Ukrainians, this is going to actually probably bring it even more balance to the conflict, which does unfortunately mean that everybody's kind of locked in at this point they were Ukrainians. Now they've really only got I don't know, let's say what eight to eight to ten weeks left of these people. Obviously they're not called up yet, they're not yet on the front line. They've really not that got much time before winter strikes and in which they can still continue to capitalize on that. That's why they're begging for weapons right now, harder than they ever have in a long time. So it's a very mixed in terms of what it tells us. Is it overly deterministic? No? Probably not. This does not mean the end of Ukraine? Does it mean though, that Putin is on his very last legs? Also know this is somewhere in the middle, which is why it's hard to describe to people. Yeah, I think it's important to have a lot of humility about what this will actually mean in the battlefield, because first of all, all the analysts have gotten things wrong, likely every step of the way. You know, in Afghanistan they were dramatically wrong. So I just like, at this point, I'm just you know, it might mean something, it might mean nothing. We'll see how it all unfolds. Great point in terms of what happens on the battlefield, you know, I do want to say with regards to those protests, there are credible reports that those who are being arrested are being immediately conscripted. Wow, so like taken into custody and immediately conscripted. So just to underscore how courageous it is to actually go out there in the streets and make your voice heard, I mean, that is incredible. Yegor are shared with me this morning there were actually one hundred and thirty Chechen women arrested in Chechnya for protesting, which again I mean that takes some series, real, real courage. So we have no insight into how widespread these protests are. We really have very little insight into how much of a societal backlash there is. But I would say, I mean, just logically thinking about this, the way that Putin sold this to the public as This isn't even a war. It's not going to affect you here. I am like, you know, inaugurating this, Ferris Wiel, don't worry about what's happening over here. To go from that to we're going to mobilize. We're going to send in three hundred thousand more conscripts, you know, the order. Like they're not stupid. They can see that the order is actually for a full mobilization. So no one is feeling particularly safe right now. So anyway, I could certainly imagine that there is significant, deep concern and backlash to the movement in this direction. So we'll see how all of that plays out. Yeah. Absolutely, Let's move on then, next to the most frankly important one, which is nuclear we'd opened or one of our shows on Biden's response to Putin on nuclear weapons, and Putin has issued a new and very troubling taunt both to President Biden and to the entire West. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is analysis from Andre Bakletiski. So he is specifically a nuclear analyst, and he breaks down President Putin what seemed like an offhand comment about nuclear weapons actually was a change in Russian nuclear doctrine and why it is just so important. In order to break it down, here's what he said. He said that quote, some high level representatives of key NATO states made statements about the possibility and admissibility of use of WMD nuclear weapons against Russia. First of all, I don't know what he's talking about, and that seems to be complete bullshit. So just let's all be clear about what exactly Putin is saying. However, in response to said fake comments, here's what he says. He reminds those people Russia has different quote means of destruct meaning nuclear weapons, and he continues by saying, quote, if the terror territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It's not a bluff, he continues. The citizens of Russia can be sure the territorial integrity of our motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured. I emphasize this again, with all the means at our disposal. So why does this matter? Two fronts? Number One, because at the same time those partial mobilizations were announced Crystal, they also announce those fake referendums that are going to occur in four separate regions across the Craine. We don't know the full date all of that. All of those referendums will be much like the Crimea referendum of fake pretexts in order to fully annex these territories into Russia and officially as part of Russian law, would be part of the Russian Federation. Why does that matter because then if we are talking about fighting in those areas in in Curse, in the Dune, boss in Lahns, in these regions, they could claim a part of this new nuclear doctrine that this violates their quote territorial integrity with weapons used by the West. This is the real nightmare scenario in terms of we obviously are not going to accept even Crimea, you know, as part of Russia. But if they think it is, and then this as part of their new doctrine say that it is, it would open the gates to a new higher level of warfare. So the fact that he added territorial integrity is very important because previously Russian doctrine said that first use in a conventional war when the existence of the state is threatened, not territorial and integrity. That was one of the first things and the quote unquote abstract protection of people, independence and freedom. So nuclear doctrine is very important to understand. You know, we have very very like laid out first use cases as to when we would use you know, first use strike of a nuclear weapons, so do the Russians. Stairs has generally been like the integrity of the regime, the integrity of the state. To add territorial integrity again, and you know, this is what Andre says, coming from the person who has the sole decision making power regarding nukes, this should be taken very, very seriously. You combine the referendum with this new addition to Putin's nuclear doctrine, and look, we have no choice in this country but to take it seriously. Is he lying? Is he bluffing? I don't know. He says he's not. He's bluffed in the past. He is obviously a liar. This pretext of all this is completely fake. But that doesn't mean that you can't take it seriously. Whenever he says these things, that's one hundred percent correct. Zelenski's response was basically like, nah, he's bluffing, but maybe yeah, you might be right and you might not, but the reporting is the White House and the Pentagon do take this possibility relatively seriously. And that's what we covered before. When Biden was asked in that sixty minutes interview, you know, what would what would you say to putin about his use of nuclear potential use of nuclear weapons? Was like, don't and then he was pushed about, Okay, well what would the response be, and ultimately his answer was well, obviously I'm not going to tell you right now, but it also would depend on what the nature of it was. So one thing that one scenario they've been considering is would there be some sort of a like test or tactical detonation is sort of like a warning. Those sorts of things are very, very scary, even as you know, oftentimes the way the media covers it is like, oh, this would be no big deal, but make no mistake, it would be a huge deal. It's also no accident that these referendum are going forward, are they referendu when it's plural anyway, referendums GM police are going forward at the same time that he makes this comment. I mean, that's those two things are definitely linked. There's no question about it. So that he's saying at the same time, we are claiming this as this is Russia, this is our territory, and he's shifting the line as to when and how they would potentially use nuclear weapons and saying, we will use him to defend our territorial integrity, not just when we see an existential threat to Russia. Those things are incredibly significant in terms of the territories that they're trying to lay claim to here. The latest reporting is that they're going to run poles there for five days starting tomorrow. There's four regions that they're going to conduct these fake polls and elections in, and those four regions represent about fifteen percent of Ukrainian territory, so it's very significant part of the state. Yeah, this look, it's a lot of parts of Ukraine, and these are the most contested parts where a lot of fighting is happening. It also overlays something that we talked about in one of our previous shows, which is that President Biden very much considering the exact tipho weapon systems that we're sending over there, because the Ukrainians like, hey, we need these long range weapon systems to hit Crimea, And He's like, I don't know if I want you to hit Crimea with you directly US provided systems. Well, if this territory now goes the direction of Crimea in that now we have to consider the Russian responses what that means with the update of the doctrine. And look, this is why the nightmare is whenever authoritarian countries have nukes, because they can just wave their finger in your face, and I mean, there's not a lot you can do about it without really upping the ante all the way. And we're getting starting to get close to that line. Anytime one of the world's great powers calls up three hundred thousand people and then changes its nuclear doctrine and then threatens nukes in the middle of an active conflict that you're semi involved in, says I am not bluffing. Says I'm not bluffing. Pay attention, people. So this is a new phase of the war. Who the hell knows what's going to happen. Let's move on to President Biden. So obviously the way that the United States is going to respond to this is also going to impact the conflict, both on the ground and geopolitically. President Biden happened to be speaking the next day on Wednesday at the UN General Assembly, where he directly addressed President Putin. Let's take a listen. Let us speak plainly. A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase the sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenants of the United Nations Charter, no more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force. Again, just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe in a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non proliferation regime. This world should see these outrageous acts for what they are. Putin claims he had to act because Russia was threatened. But no one threatened Russia, and no one other than Russia sought conflict. In fact, we warned it was coming, and with many of you, we work to try to avert it. For those who are just listening, he showed a couple stone faced Russians taking the exact translation. Now, let's at least understand also beyond the warnings, the chastising of Russia, how the US is spinning this along with the Western coalition. Let's put this up there directly. In response to this, the United States said that Putin's mobilization was a quote sign of weakness and Russian failure. That was specifically from the US ambassador to Ukraine calling it a failure, taunting the Russians, saying it is a sign of weakness. Now they're not wrong that it is a sign of weakness. Obviously nobody calls up more troops in a sign of strength, but also accused them of quote nuclear blackmail in terms of the new threats that are being made. So the reason why it matters is that we are putting this in the league of This is why we all have to remain united. And this is also why it is foolish on Putin's part. I mean, things are not good on right now on the European con. I think that if he hadn't done this, let's say that the war hadn't changed all that much, there might have been some opening for protests in France and Germany, especially as it gets colder in the winter. These governments now they're dug in. You can't you can't change policy. Whenever the guy is calling up three hundred thousand people and waving a nuclear weapon in your face. It just makes it like why wouldn't the German chancellor change policy then? Like now he's moving forward. They're nationalizing like a Russian oil plant in Italy right now. One of their biggest suppliers is also a Russian oil giant. They're probably just going to take it over. This is this is basically bifurcating the two economies and making it much more difficult for them. Now. Russia obviously is going to continue to I'm doing monolog on this. They're going to be fine ish on oil. They'll still sell to India and China. But any hope, I think they had a reconciliation with the West in the interim six month to one year period. No Western government is going to change its policy when you're calling up three hundred thousand people and waving a nuclear yes, well put, I mean the reality is at this point he's left with no good options. Yeah, I mean, that's the fact of the matter, is, like they are in such rough shape in Ukraine right now, and he's facing so much domestic political pressure, whether real or manufactured, to you know, have a more wholesale mobilization and have more of a full throated, like actual war footing that. I don't know that he felt he had any other hand he could play, But I think you're right about and we talked a lot about heading into the winter though, was a big question mark. That's why Zelensky orchestrated this particular push right now to keep the Europeans and to keep us on board, and to keep us enthusiastic and to convince us like, Okay, these weapons that we're sending and all to say that we're sending it's worth it. It's working. The pain that we're going to feel this winter, it's all worth it. It's the plan is coming together and the Ukrainians can actually succeed. So he executed that. It worked, you know, pretty much flawlessly in terms of what they were able to accomplish, both in reality on the ground and in terms of the sort of massive pr victory with regards to our public and to the European public. You have not had yet big signs that there is a real faltering of commitment either, you know, in any part of the NATO alliance. So you know, if Putin was betting on Okay, we're going to go into the winter and things are going to be tough, and the public is going to revolt against what the European and American governments are doing. That might still happen, but there aren't signs of it yet. And I think you're right that if that's what he was originally betting on, and what Selenski was originally concerned about, the fact that he is moving forward with this, you know, three hundred thousand person mobilization and saying, hey, by the way, I might use mooves. Yeah, that's going to harden commitment to opposition to Russia. Herald. He gives us no choice, I mean, and again, would I run everything differently? Yeah, I would. But I'm telling you in reality, the way that the West is currently positioned, they are locked in now for the entire winter, no matter how the gas, no matter how high energy prices are on the continent, they can't give in because that's just look politically in that dynamic that everybody's locked into. It's he has secured his He secured higher NATO spending when he invaded, and now he has secured the political dynamic geopolitically for time to come and This is why I always want to acknowledge, like, look, this is on him. Nobody forced his hand to invade Ukraine, and then nobody asked you to call up thre hundred thousand people and use nuclear blackmail against the West. So don't be surprised like when your economy is not when your economy is tanking, and then even when there is domestic political strife in Europe that they're just not going to give in. It's like, this is this is what happens, yes, when people get locked into conflict. In one more sign of how much things have gone off the rails for the Russian military. There was a report this morning, you know, take it with the Grand solid et cetera, et cetera, But there was an interesting report this morning that Putin is actually personally directing troops on the battlefield, which is like, it's about LBJ Vietnam shit, all right, do you have a functional military? Never happened that should not be happening. That's literally, that's I mean, let's do a little history lesson, right, Like one of the problem ones with the Vietnam War was that literally the president of the United States has like a Rolling Hills model of Vietnam and is picking B fifty two targets. Yeah, once that happens, things have gone bad, like very very especially in the age of a great power modern military. Josie's a narcisist, doesn't trust anybody true who's around to me. They've also taken hits in terms of you know, some of their top generals taking out with help from our intelligence. So so yeah, I guess he's feeling like the ranks are pretty fin point okay. But at the same time, and there is some important polling. This is why it's always important to balance. Let's put this up there. The Concerned Veterans of America. They're a great group. They do a lot of very like realist stuff, and they actually do polls on how Americans feel about US policy towards Russia and Ukraine, and they dig down into the nitty gritty. That's why I like it. So here's what they say. Quote, only fifteen percent of the American public support sending more military and financial aid to Ukraine than wealthy European countries, with twice as many people who want to send less assistance than we currently are. This of course comes at the same time the Biden administration wants fifteen billion more for Ukraine. Furthermore, fifty four percent of respondents said the United States should only continue to provide aid to Ukraine if the Europeans are willing to mat ras support fact check not happening right now. Second, around half of respondents of the United States said that the US should provide the same level of support for Ukraine as wealthy countries and not one dollar more. Then fifty seven percent strongly do not want direct American military intervention in the war in Ukraine. Only fourteen percent support strongly or somewhat. They all live here in Washington, DC. And then, finally, the plurality of respondents said that Biden should make lowering or eliminating inflation his top priority. Only two percent said they believe that ensuring a defeat of Russia and Ukraine should be the president's priority. So I love this poll because it ranks that these are tests. You ain't going to get this from Politico or from anybody else. They're like, they're like, hey, Europe spends x America spends Why and that's ten times more than all of Europe combined. How do you feel about that? Yeah, people are like, hey, that's bullshit. But they don't even know They don't even know the date unless they watch this show. Even then, you know, it's like how it's very difficult in order to get this information out. So when people are confronted, they're very nuanced. Of course they want to help Ukraine, but they think the European should step up. Yeah, they think that. They also strongly oppose intervention. I love this because it just shows you Americans are good people, but they also don't want to get you know, embroiled in a multi decade war and all this and the establishment people in this party and in the media they don't represent any of this view. Yeah, what these numbers really underscored to me is again what a sort of like pivotal moment this is because public opinion does hang on kind of a knife set. So right now there continues to be support for the direction. Obviously, with Silenski being able to not some significant victories, that's going to continue to encourage that support. And you know, the fact you've had gas prices coming down you're going to cover whether that's going to continue in that direction or not, has helped to sustain that support. European governments are starting to put together packages so that they can help their populations out to get through the winter. But it really does show you why both Putin and Zelensky saw this moment right now as such a critical moment in terms of the future trajectory of this war. So again, I think a lot is going to be determined this winter based on, you know, how energy prices go, how domestic populations feel about this, what happens on the battlefield. Does this surge of new troops from Putin doesn't make a difference, or does it just kind of continue the status Well, I don't know. I did, though, I'm feeling very conflicted. I just read a report about how high energy prices in Europe means that European companies now have to manufacture in the US, and I was like, I like, man, like, maybe I'm cheering on the higher aligning there. Yeah, like a little bit of a silver lining for US. So sorry Europe. All right, let's move on to this next part, the final if this one's very important in terms of Zelenski, who we alluded to, Let's put this up there on the screen. He said, quote, I don't believe the world will let Putin use nuclear weapons. Zelenski happened to be doing an interview with a German television network build I probably said that wrong, that he doesn't believe Russia will use nukes, but he doesn't completely rule out the possibility either. He says, quote in response to Putin, tomorrow, Putin can say, in addition to Ukraine, we also want a part of Poland, otherwise we will use nuclear weapons. We cannot agree on such compromises. Now, obviously Poland is actually a NATO ally, Ukraine is not. And it's not a surprise or accident that he's saying Poland because that's what precipitated the outbreak of World War Two. He's a very smart operator. I have to give it to it. I mean, he has an incentive also to downplay the potential of Putin using nuclear weapons, because from the beginning that's been one of the fears that has constrained US support. So, you know, the reason that we don't just wially nearly send them the longer range missiles that they want that could strike inside of Russia is exactly because of this fear. The totality of the strategy that the US government has employed has all been designed to keep US from having a dramatic escalation that would provoke this type of, you know, potentially world ending response from Russia. They talked about it as the boil the frog strategy, where it's you know, step by step by step by step, but very carefully. Now again, it's not exactly how I would have done things, but this is the way that they're thinking about it. And reportedly Biden has sort of frustrated some of his aids and some of the Hawks and his own party by saying, hey, guys, at the end of the day, we don't want to start World War three. So that's why Zelensky has an incentive to say basically like I don't worry about that. That's definitely not going to happen. He's just full of it, and it's a bluff. Yeah, no, it's a very difficult one. At the same time, let's put this up there. In that interview, he said Putin wants to quote drown Ukraine and blood, including that of Russian soldiers, including the blood of his own soldiers, and that was his immediate reaction. So I think it was very noteworthy on our part that the very first thing he said is don't worry about the nuclear thing, he's completely bluffing, and then kind of pivoting to his standard message about how Putin wants to erase Ukraine as an existence, which you know, if you listen to his speech from February, it is true in terms of what he he doesn't believe it's a real country along with all the other Baltic states, which is kind of crazy, but not that out of step, I guess with your typical Russians are. I thought it was important, you know, to include the Zelensky comments too, how he's spinning what exactly he wants the US to continue to do. Clearly, this is frankly the best thing that ever happened to him, because now he can just he's got more much more united West, he can beg for more weapons and we're probably going to give it to him. I think that's the you know, the TLDR that people need to take away. We will see turning to domestic politics, as I reference before, some major legal developments, some more major legal developments for the former president, who is you know, continues to face a number of investigations on variety of fronts. So let's start with this Attorney General Leticia James of New York. She announced, and she's been telegraphing this for a long time. She gave a press commerce before we kind of expected this was going to happen, But yesterday we got all of the details of exactly what she's announcing here. This is a civil suit, and it's not just targeting the former president. It's also targeting three of his adult children. That would be Eric, Evanka, and Don Junior. This has to do with their tendency, alleged tendency to dramatically overstate the values of their properties so that they could obtain loans from Deutsche Bank in particular, but from other lenders as well, and then to turn around and dramatically understate those values when it came to tax purposes. Let's listen to how ag Letitia James presented this at her press conference. Mister Trump and the Trump Organization repeatedly and persistently manipulated the value of assets to induce banks to lend money to the Trump organization more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to pay lower taxes, to satisfy continuing loan agreements, and to induce insurance companies to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums. So let me give you a few more of the details here. This is according to New York Times. Right up, go ahead and put this up on the screen. So the reason this is a civil suit is because her office actually lacks authority to file criminal charges. But she has referred some of these findings to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, so we will see whether any criminal charges are filed there. In terms of what this would mean, so first of all, she's seeking two hundred and fifty million dollars in damages, so that is a sizable chunk of change, even for someone as wealthy as President Trump is. She's also seeking to prevent the family from acquiring real estate in New York for five years in order to preclude the company from reinventing itself in Florida while expanding its New York operations. She's also seeking to bar Trump and his children from serving as officers or directors in any New York company, essentially chasing them out of the state. And just to give you a sense of some of the you know, some of the evidence she cited here and has been proffered before about what exactly they were up to. One example is I think his Park Avenue apartment. He inflated the size of it by three times, so it's actually ten thousand square feet and was like ever been sold before thirty thousand square feet and it's worth Yeah, it's valued at an amount that literally no residence in New York has ever been sold for. So that's one example. Another one they gave here, this one was new to me. There was a group of rent stabilized apartment in their build apartments in their building on Park Avenue. Don Junior apparently once described them as being the bane of his existence. Instead of acknowledging that the value of some of these apartments was capped in the building, the company listed the overall residential units as were two hundred and ninety two million, multiplying by six the figure that a Preys had assigned to the building's residential units and storage spaces. So the Trump reaction has been to say, basically, like, Leticia James is a partisan actor and she's just doing this as a campaign stunt and it's political, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's hard, you know, you have to acknowledge this is someone Leticia James as a Democrat. When she was running for attorney general, she talked about going after Trump. But also, you know, I also haven't heard them deny that these were the sort of ch canery that they were up to. Nor would anyone be surprised if these are the sorts of dramatic overstatements that they were engaged in. And also, you know, to me, she built some credibility when she was the person who really brought down Andrew Cuomo, who obviously is our same party, And she was the person who she went after Amazon over fire and Chris Small she want to she was the lead on this lawsuit alleging facebooks and monopolies. So she does have some credibility in terms of some of the investigations coming out of her office. Some of the stuff here is just so crazy, like the apartments that they want together, Like you were saying seven hundred and fifty to five fifty million, Like, how is that possible? Right? I don't even understand. I literally, you know, we run a business. I don't know how you do that. We I mean, like we would not get away with it. There's no way. And that's the thing is like okay, and I'll give you their defense in just a moment. But you know, some of these things, it's just so brazen. I cannot imagine with the straight face putting this stuff forward. Another thing he did is he counted as cash money that was actually his partners. So it was like in these accounts for some you know, joint development they were doing, but it wasn't his, and he's like, yeah, that's my cash. Can you imagine. I can't. I can't imagine doing that now. Okay, So here's here is their defense. And by the way, legal analysts say that this case could be kind of hard to prove. What they'll say is Deutsche Bank is a sophisticated financial institution. They were perfectly able to do their own due diligence, and ultimately, you know, their implication is basically, this is a victimless crime. And by the way, the law loans that they were able to secure, they paid back in full with interest, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not like these fraudulent valuations ultimately, you know, harmed even Deutsche Bank because they were able to make good on their commitments here. So that's their side of the story. I mean, I think that's not a terrible case. I mean, essentially, like what we're seeing here is that Trump, you know, shocker had shady business practices for the last forty years, and if she does get her way, also criminality as I understand it, Like what she's really seeking is that he has to sign a document saying he can't be a corporate officer in the state of New York, New York here, right, so like that you know, of course, since the Trump Organization, Trump Properties and all those other things are headquartered them, that would be a nightmare. But really what they're pointing to is they're just uncovering what I think a lot of people knew from all this. I'm not absolving any of the behavior. Do I think though, that it's going to have like some major political impact. No, But on a personal level, there is no doubt, like this is a dagger into the heart of their business just because it uncovers some stuff and they could unravel other loans and other corporate deals that they have going on right now. Yeah, Well, and the next question is, okay, as their attax fraud, is that the piece that comes out you know, from the prosecutors if they look at criminal charges. Are there federal tax avoidance schemes as well that are actually you know, reach a point of being illegal. Now, some of the reasons why this could be more irksome to Trump than you might think is Number one, as you're pointing at, like this is a significant potential glow to his business. I mean that's real. Number Two, his children are named, so it hits you know, in a personal way there that this is not just about him, it's about his about three of his adult children as well. And then also it does kind of strike at the core of his whole brand and image and mystique and like his you know, his projection of lavish extreme wealth and you know, the dollar figure she's seeking here is ultimately pretty significant. Couple other legal details that are worth mentioning. Apparently reportedly they had offered a settlement and Latisia James said no, thank you. Another thing was two of the four, so Trump, Don Junior, Eric and Evanka two of them pled the fifth when they were questioned about this. I think it was Trump and Don Junior and then the other two, Eric and Evanka did not. And one thing I learned in reading about this that I didn't know is in a civil suit. You are actually allowed to use against them the fact that they pled the Fifth Huh. This is a New York specific law, I believe. But you are allowed to like basically make the worst possible inference from that that if they had responded, it would have implicated them in a negative way. So that's what I know about that. That's a lot. Yeah, it's fun learning about New York corporate law. Who knew I had to go get a lot degree after all? This for against us? Crazy, Well, why don't we get to the special masters? Okay, Yeah, So this broke yesterday evening, and this is maybe even a big deal than the Letitia James suit at this point. So let's go ahead and put this up on this screen. Government securing a pretty significant victory here with an appeals court panel. They have granted the DOJ's request for a stay of parts of Judge Cannon's rule. It specifically, what the government won here, and this is a big deal, is the right to be able to use the classified docus about one hundred classified documents that were seized in the search. They're allowed to use them in their ongoing criminal investigation. Previously, they had been blocked from doing that, and that was going to significantly delay what they were able to do in terms of deciding whether or not to file charges. So this panel of three judges, two of whom were Trump appointees and one of whom was an Obama appointee, and they'll rule unanimously in the government's favor, saying no, you can go ahead and use these classified documents. And furthermore, the other piece here, as I understand it, is that means that the Special Master who has been agreed appointed to go through all the documents, now those hundred classified documents are out of the Special Master's perview. So it's a pretty significant win for the government as I understand it. There are a couple of possibilities for the Trump side to appeal this. One would be to ask the uh eleventh Circuit to consider this quote on bank on bunk, which is like with all of the judges as a three judge panel, that's from what I read, unlikely to happen. The other avenue would be to take this to the Supreme Court. Also unlikely that the Supreme Court would take this up, just because it's this kind of like nitty gritty procedural matter. So looks like a significant victory for the government that will allow them to continue to investigate this and potentially build a case and not create these long delays that they were concerned about. Right, So two parts of this, right, yes, as I understand it. Number one, the Special Master is basically like, if you can't prove that you didn't declass by these documents, you're done. There's so that's a step that's a separate one from the Special mass. Let me let me break that one down. I know I can't get my head because I was going to say at the same time, though, but the documents can be resumed being looked at. Yes, So it's like, okay, yeah, well it's yes, I do. It does sort of seem like it almost negates this previous part of the story. But this part is interesting just because it shows the direction the Special Master is going. So let's put this next piece up on the screen. So this happened before a couple days back. The Special Master really had a pretty spicy exchange with Trump's lawyers where he was like, hey, you can't have your cake and eat it too, meaning you can't float this idea of oh maybe he did declassified all of this and so you should worry about the fact that it's classified, but then not enter any specific evidence of the fact that these documents were declassified. Now this ultimately, again this may end up being kind of meaningless from a legal standpoint, because now we have this other ruling that says basically, a hey, Special Master, don't worry about these classified documents at all. But why this is significant in terms of reading the tee lees is because remember, this Special Master was on a list that the Trump team had picked. So this was someone that they thought, according to reporting, was going to be on their side. They thought he was a real deep state skeptic. He was involved in the whole like I'm sorry to go back to all of this, but the whole Carter page fies the court stuff. He was actually on the Fize court and apparently it was very critical of how that was handled. So they thought, oh, this is one of our guys. Well from these exchanges, he basically was like, I don't really know what I'm even expected to do here. It seems like it's pretty simple answer. If it turns out, you guys aren't going to offer any evidence that these documents are declassified. So it didn't seem like he was just going to fall into their you know, taking their side of the debate in all of these issues. Was what seemed significant about to be okay, So two things. Number One, the government can restart looking at the documents. Number Two, Trump's defense looks really shady. Well, he was on shot with Sean Hannity and he was again talking about whether or not these documents were declassified, and he said that a president even even just thinking about declassifying documents, that that's enough. So that's his defense, man, That's just that's just not going to fly in court. So like let's put that all together. Yeah, look, I think they've got him dead to rights. And this is not a judgment of like of whether the case is good or not. I'm just telling you, like on the merits from everything I've read, if that's your defense, and you can't show that you legally sign something, well, as your government argued in court whenever they said just because Trump tweets something declassified, that it doesn't mean it's declassified because you have to go through paperwork. That's right. I don't see how old Donnie wriggles his way out of that. I mean, honestly, I really don't. It is a let's just say, it's an extreme legal view to take to be like a president can literally literally just declassified it, but there's no jaris thinking about it. Back that up. I can't imagine that anyone serious really believes that, because remember, declassification isn't just like a willy nilly thing. That means that then you know Ken Klippenstein, another investigative journalist, Ken Foya, those documents, like the public then gets access to them, which we should so, right, So the idea that this can be done in such a casual or even just like a thought exercise, I can't see that's with standing experiity. And then even if you were to grant them that, or they come up with some standing order that they had or whatever cash Betel produces some proof that they actually declassified these documents, it's not even clear then that that really matters, because ultimately the statutes that they are evaluating for potential indictment and charges don't require that the documents are actually classified. So you know, when you put it all together, and this is to me the most significant part of the Letitia James civil suit as well, is you just have so many mounting issues on so many different fronts. You've got the investigations into a super pack. You've got the investigations into January sixth and incitement. You've got the fake electors investigations both in DC and down in Georgia. You've got the documents issue. Now you've got the civil suit in New York that could hobble his businesses. It's just a lot that can and I'm probably like forgetting one or two things in this list, by the way, it's just a lot that continues to mount and continues to mount and makes it increasingly difficult to see number one, how he totally gets out of it, and number two, how the government avoids charging him with something, because there is just far too much out now in the public public sphere to then say, well, yeah, we see that he committed all these crimes, but we're not actually going to do anything about it. I just think it's substantially different from the Mother investigation. There is, frankly, just more there on every single front. YEA, on these and on this one in particular, like, I just don't see how you can get out of it, Like it's possible that they decline to indict, but I mean, all the facts and all of that make it clear, like if he didn't sign some paperwork, he doesn't have a case, as his own special master now says, so good luck in court. Like, I don't see how I don't see any other way that it can turn out, which is crazy, you know, from a macro political view. But we will just zero in on this until that actually happens. I'm just saying, like, from what I can read and a lot many other conservative yeah, legal experts and more, I haven't seen a single one say that that isn't the case. Yeah. Well, and I think it's significant that on this Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, this three person panel, two of them Trump appointees, and it was a unanimous decision in the government's favor. So that tells you, like his people that he put on the court are not really too inclined to bail him out at this point. Yeah, well said okay, we also have a big economic news. Let's go and put this up on the screen. So the Federal Reserve did go ahead and move forward with what was expected. Here's the Boston Globes has fed at tax inflation with another big hike and expects more so that might be the most critical part. They hiked the rates by seventy five basis points. That's point seventy five of a percent. So there had been some analysts saying, oh, they might even do a full hundred basis points. They didn't do that. They stuck with the point seventy five. That being said, that is still quite extraordinary of an action. This all comes, as you know, there was a hope that inflation was really starting to be brought under control. Those hopes were dashed, I would say somewhat by the last reports. We got about exactly what the inflation numbers are. And as I said before, their expectation is they're going to continue in this direction. And I know we're broken record on this, but it's a dangerous situation because number one, you're using a tool that isn't really well suited to deal with the underlying problems here. Number Two, there is a lagging effect where when you hike the rates, it takes a while for the impact to hit. They're very clear about, hey, we want to get wages down, we want to get unemployment up. This all could potentially be a disaster for you all, because the worst possible scenarios. You continue to have inflation, but you also have a severe recession. Yeah, exactly right, and all of the downstream effects are just becoming completely crazy. Let's prow this next one up there on the screen. Existing home sales fell dramatically in August and prices are softening significantly. And then furthermore, I mean, put the next one up there. This is a crazy one that you found. The median American household would need to spend forty four point five percent of their income to afford payments on a median price house in the United States, the highest percentage on record going back to two thousand and six. Wow, So what is going on here? Here's here's another way. Somebody just sent me this, and it's actually completely insane whenever you consider it in terms of mortgages, if you secured a thirty year fixed mortgage on a six hundred thousand dollars home at a two point six percent interest rate in twenty twenty one, you now have the same monthly mortgage as someone that just bought a three hundred and ninety two thousand dollars home. Wow, at today's six point two percent interest rate, that's how much interest rates matter. Whenever you buy property, almost what two thirds of the value of the house. And so that that's why what we say is like, look, just because the stick of price goes down, you ain't paying less, got it, a bank you're doing you're not doing so well. Yeah, it really is the worst of all possible worlds because if you're a homeowner, number one, you're stuck in your house because you can't afford to give up the orgy rate that you've got locked in. I mean, you're in the best possible position, but you're also watching your equity go down as prices are coming down in most major markets right now. As of now, you've only had two markets across the country, Boise and Fairbanks, Alaska, that have actually seen year over year declines, But you have a majority of markets that have seen prices come down from their peak. Okay, so we are in that prices are softening, they are headed downwards. So homeowners are stuck and they're seeing the equity in their house decline. But they're in the best possible position, right people who have a dream of one day in their life being able to afford a home. I mean, this is a disaster because yeah, you might see, Okay, the sticker price is coming down, but then you do the math on what the mortgage is going to cost, you're like, there's no there's literally no way. It's never been more unaffordable. So it really is kind of a worst of all possible worlds for regular people. Now, if you're permanent capital and you've got tons of cash and you can come in and benefit from the fact that prices are going to come down, well that's going to be great for them, and they're all position to want to be America's landlord. And it's a disaster in terms of like building middle class wealth and having some reasonable track to get to the American dream. So that's who ultimately this state of affairs benefits. But you can see a huge slowdown in terms of the number of homes that are sold. So in sales were nineteen point nine percent lower than in August of twenty twenty one. So when you look year over year, the number of homes being sold down twenty percent, So you can see the market is sort of seized up even as you don't have this dramatic fallen prices, because the other pieces you still have low inventory. Home builders are still because rates are going up. Homebuilders are still sort of holding off in terms of what they're putting into the market. So it is a terrible situation and isn't going to benefit any ordinary Americans right now. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, it's just it's a very very difficult situation and everyday life, both on inflation and in terms of mortgage is now much more unaffordable for people, on top of squeezing the rental market. So it's very sad, and ironically enough, only contributes even more to rental inflation. That's yeah, exactly right. So that's how those effects that, as we pointed to, when the Fed hikes rates, it doesn't it's not all anti inflationary. There are some effects here, like increasing rent prices that actually go against what they're trying to accomplish. Okay, finally, the fun Block. A little bit of a controversy this week based on President Biden's in my opinion, totally anodyne comments about the COVID pandemic and where we are this is on sixty minutes. You know, they were so anodyning. We're like a dayly too that we're like, no, we're not even going to cover it. Yeah, but I didn't even think it was worthy covering now. It was like, ah, whatever, Yeah, But now since then, there's been some other developments we'll get to in a minute. So let's take a listen to what the President said on sixty minutes. Is the pandemic over. The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. It's but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing, and I think this is a perfect example of it. So Sarder personally, what irritated me about the backlash to this among you know, liberals who are super committed to like COVID forever politics. Yeah, is it really ignored that second part of what he said, because he didn't say, like, the pandemic is over and COVID is gone and that's it. He added some very reasonable caveats here that basically indicates like it's not a pandemic anymore, it's not endemic to the population, and yeah, we still have a problem, but we'ren't a better place, Like how can you deny that that's ultimately descriptively correct. Like people do not predominantly wear masks anymore. People are not predominantly like pulling their kids out like some people are. I live around a lot of them, and you know, I feel bad for them, but hey, look, you know it's a free country. You can do whatever you want. Yeah, that's what he was saying. On a population wide level, most people are not behating like their pandemic, nor should they in my opinion. But that's my opinion. So descriptively he was stating a fact. And yet, of course, you know, the branch Kavidians freaked out at these comments, Crystal prompting then, I haven't heard that fault. Oh it's my personal favorite. There's so much you can do with it from a meme perspective. Then, though, as a result, because apparently these people have tremendous cultural cachet, this is why we have to cover it. The White House Press secretary, Well, it gets involved. It's not just they have cultural cachet, it's that they have a lot of sway within the democratic part. Because you're talking about them being disproportionately represented among the donor base. And we'll get then there's a piece of that that's important in a moment. But so yeah, these in my opinion, accurate and anazyne comments that shouldn't have sparked any sort of disagreement, is just like manifestly true. They got enough pushback so that the pres Secretary Koree John Pierre got asked about it with the folks over at Morning Joe. Let's take listen to that. Also, in the sixteen minutes interview said that the pandemic is over. There's been quite a bit of pushback to that statement by the President. Where is he today on that? So just to step back for a second, what we saw during that interview, sixty minute interview when he made those comments, he was walking through the Detroit Car Show, the halls of the Detroit Car Show, and he was looking around. We have to remember the last time that they had held that event was three years ago. Even as we're talking about anga, the President's going to speak shortly, as I just mentioned, that hasn't been held in person for about three years as well, So we are in a different time. He's been very consistent about that, and the reason why is because we are now prepared, We are now ready, We know how to deal with this pandemic is now more manageable. It's not as disruptive as it's been in the prior in the prior years, so personally pushing back. Personally, my only issue with her response there is number one, don't say unga. Yeah, you're talking about the UN General Assembly, Like literally no one knows your number one, don't say unga. Also it's just like a I don't know at all. It's a very inside washing. I was telling inside washing, and I was like, that's one of my most hated things when people in dc A. It's like me when I'm like the Center for a Financial you know, I'm like, we call it scipious. That's you know, it's like and then I'll move on, but you'll just open with sipius. It's us anyway, Okay. So that but also like there's clearly very like defensive crouch here where I mean you should just be like, yeah, we're in about a place. So who can deny that pandemic is over? I think it speaks. I was listening to uh doctor of a name Prosad who we had on the show, and out to him, Yeah, who was on with briand and Joy Gray on bad Faith and I thought you made a really good point, which is that, you know, this has kind of been an issue for Democrats throughout COVID is they're overly responsible responsive to this group within their own base. Rather than trying to lead that group to a different, like less fearful response, they instead sort of like cater to them. And I think there's a little bit of that in the messaging here, where it's like, don't be defensive. What he said was fine, Like just own it and be good with it. I completely agree. Why is the White House contradicting him and be like, no, actually what he meant was but no, he meant the pandemic was over. This is just again it guess to the Taiwan thing. It's like, the president is the president, he was elected, not you. Why are you pushing back? You tell these MSNBC commentators just be like, yeah, that's what he said. That's exactly what he said, and you know what he was right, Like, why don't you just your job is to defend. You're not wearing a mask right now, Yeah, you're not wearing a rest Mike article Arnicle. Mike article's old as hell. By the way, I didn't see her really as contradicting him. She just didn't state it as sustinctly because he also. Part of why it feels like a contradiction from her, like she's undermining him, is because everybody who seized on these comments didn't include the other portion where he's like, we still have a problem with COVID, We're still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over. If you noticed, no one's wearing masks, so they didn't include that other piece of him being like, obviously, guys, it's still here. So to me hearing her cleanup comments, it wasn't really a contradiction. It just felt to me a little bit too defensive. And then just to show you of sort of where the energy of this comes up, Biden had to speak to it a DNC fundraiser, go and put this up on the screen from the Hill. Biden clarifies COVID comments the pandemic is quote basically not where it was. So clearly it was sort of like under pressure again from the donor class to explain, what do you mean when you said the pandemic is over again? I don't really see that being a contradiction from what he said earlier, because he had the caveats in there. But to me, it was noteworthy that, you know, the donor class. Clearly he had to sort of, you know, make amends to that. Until it doesn't help that the Keebler Alpha to put this up there on the screen, you know, Doctor Anthony Fauci says, quote, we are not where we need to be if we're going to quote live with the virus. Like what does that mean? Because people are all living with it right right now? So I genuinely don't what are you saying, Like, where are you coming from? What fake numbers are you making up at this point? You know, he says, even now, even now, more than sixty seven percent of our population is only vaccinated, only one half of those have a single boost. So it's like, what are you saying if the entire population was one hundred percent boosted, then we could move on because A that's not going to happen. B Is there any evidence to support that that's actually true? And it would actually quote unquote stop COVID because we don't have a hell of a lot. I mean, right now, that is just so insane. I just want to say, obviously, there are still, you know, people that are dying every day from COVID. They're overwhelmingly people who are either you know, really elderly, or a lot of them didn't decide to get vaccinated. And we can't lock down the whole population forever, right and be on this footing forever when you know, these are individuals that I'm not trying to like shame them or they mean to them or whatever, but they made their own personal choices about this and they decided to take on that risk. So anyway, this whole thing has been kind of frustrating to me because the thing that really irritated me about it was the freak out to start with, when I thought ultimately his comments were extremely reasonable and had all the necessary caveats. I mean, COVID is not like measles or polio, where we have an expectation that it can be totally eradicated. Right, It's a different beast. I wish it was. But we're going to have to deal with variance. We're gonna have to deal with, you know, I mean, trying to match up, and some are going to be worse than others. And that's just that's life. Now that we all have to deal with, and you know, most people, frankly are, so I think the president's comments just reflected that I agree with that, tiger. What are you looking at? Well, we all knew that this time would come, but it's still sad. Nonetheless, yesterday, for the first time in ninety nine days, the average price of gas did not go down. The previous ninety nine days were an important political lifeline for the Biden administration, lowering at least the severity of inflation at the pump and reducing the flashing sign every American has to drive past as a daily reminder of his failed policy. Now, it's not an exaggeration to say that a decline in gas prices is one of the reasons midterm elections are even close at all. So in an environment where we return to possibly five dollars gas, the entire landscape could be completely different. We have exactly forty eight days until the election, which you can either look at is just around the corner or political eternity with gas. I'm gonna choose the latter because of just how much it hits people's pocketbooks. So let's do a deep dive into gas and where it's going first, and foremost, why were gas prices down in the first place. It would be nice to say it was a result of competent policy by the White House and the West after Ukraine, but the sad truth is data from Triple A and other motor analysts say that after gas hit five dollars a gallon, people just stopped driving so much. Triple A found in July that drivers are quote almost two thirds of US adults change their driving habits or lifestyle since March, twenty three percent making quote major changes. Drivers top three changes to offset high gas are driving less, combining errands, reducing shopping, and dining out. That was always my fear with high gas prices. We wouldn't solve it through policy. The only way would is we make people live less comfortable lives. In fact, in the first week of September, demand for gas was seven percent lower than the first week of July. That is a stunning drop, even when you consider July is part of the major driving season in the United States. Further explanations on gas also come from demand, just not demand here in the US. The economic crisis in Europe has significantly reduced gas demand on the continent, and China's zero. COVID idiocy has helped too, because it literally forces people not to drive to their limited credit. The Biden administration has at least been releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the last few months, which have helped further drop the price of oil. To date, they released one hundred and fifty five million barrels of oil from a set promise of one hundred and eighty million. They just announced a further sale of ten million barrels in November, and that's gonna help a little bit, but the number show they are nearing the end of their rope. And the reason I'm setting it up this way is because it's important to understand why prices were dropping in the last nine to nine days. It was a confluence of mega high gas driving down US demand, demand destruction in China and Europe for a variety of different reasons. It was bolstered similarly a little bit by US policy with the spr The problem with all those factors is this is probably the low point, and to borrow a phrase, the price is still too damn high. The national price of gas right now is three dollars and sixty eight cents a gallon for most of the Western United States, that price is above four dollars a gallon, and in California their gas is still in average of five to forty dollars. So to put that in context, that is still forty three percent higher than the average gas price in September twenty nineteen pre pandemic, almost sixty percent higher than gas in January of twenty twenty, the last month truly before the effects of COVID were fully known. Here, if this is the bottom, that's not good. It's not a victory. And with a slight uptick for the first time in ninety nine days, things can get real ugly. As we discussed earlier, Russia is showing no signs of backing down holding referendums. They're partially mobilizing three hundred thousand of their people, gearing up for what looks like a long, long conflict. The disruption to the global supply chain, the Europeans oil squeeze is going to continue Furthermore. While I supported using the SPR to stop the oil crisis, while we got our policy figured out, the problem is we didn't actually figure out any policy in the meantime. Right now, the SPR reserve is at the lowest level since nineteen eighty four. Again, wouldn't be a problem if foreign policy and other plans could have brought more oil online, but there appears to have been no structural changes made to global oil supply in the meantime, meaning we just depleted a ton of oil from the spr we can't really tap it in the future, and in fact, we'll probably have to buy more oil to fill it back up. On the foreign policy front, Biden had four months to secure some sort of agreement somewhere. What they landed on was the dumbest scheme of all time, number one, trying to cap the global price of Russian oil. Of course, that literally only works if you have total control over the global market. Immediately after announcing their genius plan, the Russians came out and said, Okay, we just won't sell it to anyone at that price cap, and the Indians of the Chinese are like, hey, we'll buy more at whatever price as long as you want. As long as that Russian price is lower than the global market price. They're making a killing. So outside of Russia, what did they do instead of securing some agreement with the Saudis, the Venezuelans or anyone else with oil. The majority of OPEC countries instead chose to actually cut back oil production two weeks ago. That cut was less about depleting supply, but about signaling to the global market OPAK they are love and high gas prices. Specifically, they will defend one hundred dollars a barrel, a price which is now floating much of these petro economies. It was described this way quote OPEK plus is demonstrating and is willing to shrug off the entities of the Biden administration, which has been lobbying Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other producers to increase output and help bring down the price of gasoline. So, in fact, Biden's slop job trip to Riot accomplished nothing. In fact, all indications currently say the Saudis are two timing us, both buying oil from Russia at a discount that they burned domestically, and then selling as much of their oil at high price to us. It's all a big game to them, except for the people here at home who are getting gouged. I don't really have a hopeful way to end this. The stoppage and decline of price indicates we have probably hit the floor. Now we're in for the fun times. Another single shock to send us right back up to five dollars a gallon. Maybe beyond hurricane could do it. More developments on the Russian front, maybe in China. The fact is the last three months it was more of a vacation away from reality and it seems to be coming back hard. And that's really what I took away from this. Well, I was like, you know me, why did it stop you a first time? And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Cristle, what do you take a look at? Well? Guys, there was huge news this week for Adnan Sayed, the now forty one year old man who was convicted of murdering his former girlfriend when he was just seventeen. Adnon's case and his life would have been just one more lost to a messy and often unjust criminal justice system were it not for Sarah Kanigg's smash podcast hit Cereal. Over the course of twelve episodes, Kane pulls apart the details of the case against Ednon, finding a ton of holes and inconsistencies and failures in the process, but in the end, Kanag is no closer to unraveling the mystery of who murdered Hayman Lee than when she started. She did, however, successfully launch a true crime podcast, Frenzie, which continues to this day. So here is the big update. After serving twenty three years in prison, Adnon is free. Specifically, Timore judge vacated his murder sentence because they found that information about two other possible suspects was kept from the defense in the original trial. One or both of those suspects had a criminal record that involved violence against women, one of them had a family connection to the area where Hayes's car was ultimately found, and one had a legendly threatened hay and had a motive to kill her. Now we don't know who those alternative suspects are, but there is some speculation one could be Ronald Lee Moore. Moore is brought up in the final episode of Cereal as a potential alternative suspect. That was due to the fact that he was out of prison at the time of hayes murder and that he had committed similar crimes in that area of Baltimore. Now caanang herself is not saying who the alternative suspects are, but she does say she knew of them while she was recording the podcast series. So basically, the bombshell that led to this conviction being vacated was that the state hid the ball, legally hiding information from the defense that could have helped Adnon get off in his original trial. Supporting underscore, none of this means that he it was actually innocent or was found to be innocent. In fact, prosecutors have thirty days to decide whether to try this case again, although it appears unlikely at this moment that they will actually do so. That being said, DNA evidence is still being analyzed using techniques that weren't available when the murder first happened, so I suppose there could always be another plot twist here now. As far as what I think goes, I was a big Serial listener back in twenty fourteen. I'm pretty sure it was literally the first podcast that I ever listened to, and while I was listening, I was always looking for ways to give Adnan the benefit of the doubt. I know it sounds simplistic, but he just didn't feel like a killer. And I suppose it says something about my own views of human nature, being the overly trusting, often to the point of me naivete person that I am. So when I first heard the news and saw the information about the alternative suspects, my initial instinct was satisfaction that, even though this wasn't exactly what the judge ruled, ad Non must have been innocent. After all, I thought about the unbelievable cruelty and living hallow spend decades in prison for a crime you did not commit. But I went back and I re listened to the key episodes from the original podcast. I kind of found myself right back at square one, especially with regards to the state's key witness and a star player in the podcast, Adnon's friend Jay. As a little bit of refresher here, Jay is with ad Noon for key stretches of the day when hay is murdered. It's Jay who ultimately fingers Adon as the killer, saying that Adnon told him he was going to do it, that Adnon showed Jay Hayes's dead body in the trunk of Hayes's own car, and that Jay then even helped ad Non dispose of the body at the time, the state used cell phone data to corroborate key portions of Jay's story, but since the original trial, that type of data was found to be much more problematic and inaccurate than originally thought. Still, though, while a lot of the cell phone data was kind of a mess and conflicted with both Jay and add On story, there were key parts of that record that backed up Jay's telling of events. Based on what we know of the new alternative suspects, neither of them appears to be Jay. Bottom line, new alternate suspects don't explain a way the fact that Adnon's friend Jay knew where Hayes car was located. So is ad Non innocent? It is still really not clear at all. What is clear is he never should have been convicted. There was more than enough evidence at the time of his trial to create reasonable doubt. That, of course, is the standard, and it is a true disgrace that he was sent to prison based on a story that to this day has a million holes and a million inconsistencies, solely based on the testimony of Jay, someone who admitted to being a liar. As Canan herself put it quote yesterday, there was a lot of talk about fairness. But most of what the state put in that motion to vacate all the actual evidence was either known or knowable to cops and prosecutors back in nineteen ninety nine. So even on a day when the government publicly recognizes its own mistakes, it's hard to feel cheered about a triumph of fairness, because we've built a system that takes more than twenty years to self correct, and that's just this one case. What's more, let's be honest, if Adnan hadn't been made into a celebrity, he would almost certainly still be in prison today. This case was extraordinary for the national obsession over it, but in another way, it actually was entirely ordinary. Whether Adnan is innocent or guilty, it is quite clear his conviction was secured through an unjust rigged process, and in that he is far from alone. Between nineteen eighty nine and twenty nineteen, there were at least twenty four hundred exonerations. Forty four percent of those exonerations were due to the exact same reason that Adnon himself was ultimately released, and that was prosecutors failed to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence. Untold numbers of these cases of injustice go unnoticed, No Hit podcast and draw attention to the rampant misconduct of police and a prosecutors. Then Aison's project. They do incredible work trying to write as many of these wrongs as possible, and I really recommend you support them if you are able to. In the meantime, I guess this case kind of ends where it began, with messiness, a whole lot of doubt, and a still grieving family that really doesn't care what new theories Reddit is able to come up with. They just want their little girl back. We may never know who really killed Hayman Lee, but we know for absolute certain that everyone from victims to the accused, deserve a hell of a lot better from our justice system. So that's where I came to Sagar, I my first instinct, and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com. Joining us now is Vince Keilas. As I just said, he is the lead worker organizer at that effort to unionize a home depot outside of Philly. Great to see events, Hey, good to see events. Thank you guys so much, for having me. I really appreciate your guys coverage. Yeah, of course absolutely, We're grateful to have you here today. I know you must be very busy more perfect union. Uh are on our friend Jonah Furman over there. I had a good write up of your effort. Let's gohead and put this up on the screen. They say new inside the historic union drive at home Depot. Over one hundred workers at the Philly store signed on in five weeks. Managers were immediately flown in to hold captive audience meetings. And here's a quote for you. You You say that it is backfiring. Another quote you had in this piece that I love, Vince, was you said, listen, if Chris Small's could do that at a warehouse of over eight thousand people, we can do it in our store of three hundred. So Vince, just tell us a little bit about what gave you the idea and how the effort is going so far. I mean, that's it's kind of a multifaceted thing. I also have to give a huge shout out to you guys. You know a lot of like the covers that you guys gave and honestly too, just you guys making to move to breaking points to being independent and you know, challenging yourselves to step out into a new field to do something different was extremely inspiring, you know, and taking that in conjunction, which is some of the circumstances in the store, we felt that this was the best move for us. You know, we I tried having conversations over the last like month and a half with people in various you know, parts of home depot, trying to let them know the concerns of the store, and it just felt like, honestly, we were getting a lot of spin. We weren't really getting the answers that we were looking for, and so you know, kind of just taking a time you're in the store, we felt like, hey, this is this is going to be the best move for us, and myself and some other individuals within the store felt that, you know what, we have the courage and we have the capacity to be able to get this done. That's so incredible to hear. Vince, you know very much to us in terms of the impact of our work, but important let's focus on you and your store. Talk to us like, why is this a step that you're considering making. What are you guys looking for? Like what can make your lives better at your workplace. So I mean we're we're kind of focused in on, you know, various things like like wages, staffing in the store, proper training, and overall just wanting a say in how things operate in our store. You know, Home Depot has a tendency to kind of make blanket decisions that go across all stores. And look, we're one hundred and ten million dollars year store. We have very high volume. It's not going to work out the same that it does in a thirty million dollars year store, you know, and we just felt decisions that were being made, you know, things that were being told to us were just not true. You know. Some of the I guess some of the things that I was able to kind of pool people's attention with was to just speak on you know, some of the value that store in particular was generating. You know, over over twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, throughout the course of the pandemic, that store made fifty eight million dollars in profit, but only I don't know an exact estimate, but about like two million dollars was actually invested into the people that work in the store, you know, and it's it's just to see those large levels of disparity, Like I was just dumbfounded, you know, particularly when you would look at conversations where we would tell people like, hey, we're being overworked. You know, we've got a lot going on. People are freaking out in us because they're not getting enough help. We're getting thrown all across the store. We're being asked to do all of these additional tasks. And then when it comes time to you know, be paid in order to in order to you know, say thank you for the work that we're putting in, it was all, well, the company can't afford it. The investments that they've made in compensation over the last couple of years, you know, has has kind of expended them a bit. And it's like, well, you guys had fifteen billion dollars to spend block five bags last year. Maybe spend a little bit less your stocks and spent a little bit more on us. You know, at the end of the day, you wouldn't have that money on the work that we're doing. I think that is an excellent point that I believe will resonate with our audience. It also strikes me. I mean, part of why this is significant is, first of all, Home Depot is a company that did extraordinarily well during the pandemic. People were stuck at home, they decided to invest in their space and making their space better and all kinds of DIY projects and making sour dough bread and whatever like that was all happening during the pandemic. So I'm sure you all were completely swamped. I know they were making huge profits, so the opportunity to be able to reward the workers who help them to make those profits is certainly available to them. Is that big picture? Are you hearing that from your co workers? Like that big picture? Is that a concern for them? Do you think that the impact of the pandemic and the way they were treated, do you think that was kind of an eye opening experience because that seems to be a similar thread throughout a lot of these efforts and even through a lot of the things we're seeing throughout the workforce, including you know, white collar service sector and blue collar workers. Is it just changed the way they were thinking about their job. Yeah? Absolutely, I mean I think one of my coworkers said it perfectly went on when our district hr person came for the store to see us, and she said, honestly, we felt abandoned. You know, they didn't come into the store for about a year and an interesting tidbit for us, and I'm sure it can probably resonated other stores district. Didn't walk in for about a year, and when we had our first walk when they came back, we got ripped the shreds we got you know, criticis on everything that was wrong with the store, and it's like, you know, is this is this what you guys really think? Like you like, people were getting threatened. People were like there's a guy that got beat up and carjacked out in the parking lot, Like you know, somebody had to go get checking the mental hospital for working at thirty two hour shift straight, Like there there are some serious issues and some serious concerns that are happening in this building. And again, like I tried my best to be fair. You know, I'm I'm not somebody when I'm trying to get something done. I don't want to be like super combative. I don't want to, you know, try and come at those personal character. But I tried to give them the opportunity to say, like Hey, like, we know the numbers, we know how you guys are doing, and we're just not seeing the effort right you know. One of the things that they're trying to kind of do right now in the statements that they're making is oh, well, you know, I'm uninformed. It comes to the idea of the union and what it is that they can get done. But if you guys were to walk into my store right now, they've literally doubled their triple the payroll with all of the salaried managers in there, with all the help that they're getting in. So it's like, you guys can go and you can invest all of this, you know, to prevent a union, But you can't, you know, invest this, you know, in a proactive manner to take care of the people that took care of you, right because you want to. You want to brand yourselves as ow we're taking care of our essential workers, We're looking out for our people. Where is it? We don't feel it? You know, it wasn't an expetition was filed that I could see the hope in people's eyes in that store. You know, before then everyone had the life locked out of them. Sorry, ahead, I was just going to say, it does remind me so much of some of the things that Chris Mauls told us about when he was fighting for the Amazon union. Is they try to paint him as like, oh, he was stupid. I'm the famous like always in articulate, he's not smart, And they really tried to persuade people like this guy doesn't really know what he's doing. And I actually think some of the large unions here too. I think that's why there was a reluctance among some progressive politicians even to back them, because like, all, this guy he'd never done this before, he doesn't really know what he's up to. But talk to us about My understanding is you are going a similar path. You're forming a home depot specific grassroots workers union. What made you decide to go in that direction run than going to one of the larger and more established unions that could you know, give you that suppoor, give you that guidance, and give you that funding up front. So again, I mean, look shout out to Chris Wallas. You know, watching a lot of interviews with him, whether it was with you guys, you know, Breakfast Club and a bunch of different places. You know, that was kind of the framework that I tried to follow, just because I was like, all right, like, look, this is about organizing, right. The point of it is to garner the face of the people, you know, And I was like, look, these are people that I've worked with for five and a half years. You know, I was a supervisor in that store, and you know, I did my best to try and help people however I could, and that that carried me a lot of favor and a lot of trust. So it was a matter of how do we deliver on that trust. And you know, there had been attempts to unize in my store before that had been unsuccessful. You know, a lot of people kind of looking around saying, oh, a little bit skeptical of any outsiders coming and saying, hey, we're here to help you. So I said, look, you know, honestly, I feel that I have the wherewithal the capacity to get this done. You know, it takes a firm resolve, and it takes remembering that, hey, you're fighting for your people. And again, as I could see, you know, in the conversations that would be had with the different associates there whenever corporate will come through and they'd be talking to individuals and you would see, oh yeah, we care about you, we really respect you, and it's like you're not showing it. You know. At the end of the day, I could sit here and I could say a bunch of nice things to my colleagues and to the employees that work with me, you know, but it's up to me to show them right, not just to say things, but to actually do things. And you guys are a three hundred billion dollar company, like you have the capacity to it's just a matter of if used to you know, And that's just what I saw, was was that there was no choice to right. You know. There's half a million people who work at home depots, one of the largest employers in the country, so I think that your experience probably resonates with a lot of them. Hopefully they watch the show. So we really appreciate you joining us, Vince. It means a lot to hear what you said about us, and we wish you the best of life. Keep us updated and we happy to have you back on. Honored to talk to you, Evince. Thanks for taking the time, Thank you guys so much, and just again, thank you guys for caring. Our store really appreciates all the coverage we're getting. Thank you sir. Yeah, it's truly our pleasure at least we can do. Absolutely, Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. As we got we said live show Chicago, it's here, you can watch the clips. I think it was awesome and it's going to be even more awesome in Chicago. We learned a couple of lessons and then number two, we've got the discount going on. You can help support our work. It's interviews like that Crystal then make it all work. I can't tell you when they reached out. Actually, Jonah Furman reached out and was like, you know, Vince is a fan of breaking points, and like you guys were part of what gave him this. I'm huge. That's like, I can't tell you how much it means to it. So I realized, like everything you improve my relationship with my dad. Those two it's like, wow, we do that with even like three people. It's way more than we ever could have mappened. So thank you guys so much for making it possible. We are so incredibly grateful to you. Enjoy Counterpoints tomorrow Tomorrow, Joy down and leaking. We've got the discount going on right now. If you want to help support them, help support continued expansion. It means so much to us. Link is down in the description for all that stuff. We'll see you all next week. Love y'all, see you next week.
Speaker 1: Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points Premium member today at breakingpoints dot com. Your hard earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to Breakingpoints dot com to help us out. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. When do we have Grissel? Indeed we do. I know I always say lots of big stories to take it too, but today it is like extra super, really true. Lots of stuff going on with Russia and Ukraine. Putin going ahead and calling up somewhere around three hundred thousand Russian citizens that mobilization has begun, protests and reaction of that are happening. Plus he's made new threats regarding potential nuclear weapons, so dig into that. We'll dig into Biden's big speech at the UN. We've also got a massive new legal developments for the former president, including some rulings that are going against him with regard to the Special Master and the classified documents. Also Letitia James, the Attorney General of York, announcing a new civil suit against Trump, Trump Junior, Ivanka, and Eric. So we have all those details for you. We also have big economic news. We have new indications about the housing market. We have the FED going ahead and moving forward with that seventy five basis point rate hike, and actually just on the Bank of England is moving forward with a rate hike as well. So that's that global tightening that we were talking about. New comments from the White House President Biden got a lot of attention, I guess, I would say, some support, some flak for saying that COVID is over. Now they're kind of trying to clarify those comments. So we'll dig into that debate. Soger's looking at gas prices. I'm looking at the case of Ed Nan Said, who of course was the subject of the block buster podcast Cereal It was literally the first podcast I ever listened to. Same I would not be the person I am today without Sarah kaneg shout out to her, because no, literally, I listened to Cereal and at the top was an ad one of the only ads that's ever worked Walchair audible. Oh, it was audib audible. It was always mailship when I was listening to it at the beginning, I guess in twenty fourteen, it was audible and it was like, Hey, if you like this, check out audio books and I was like, oh, okay, And I've probably since listened to like over a thousand audiobooks. Wow. As a result of it. It was funny because I went back. I talked about this in the monologue, but I went back and re listened to not every episode because there's twelve of them that would be a lot, but maybe like four episodes, a sort of key ones, the ones about Jay, the ones about like the you know that lay out the whole case, et cetera. And there were so many parts of it that were so nostalgic, like the phone call coming in from the penitentiary and like aDNA on saiet ad non sayet yeah, yeah, Anyway, Adnan is free. Is he innocent? I'm going to dig into what we know. Also, I'm super excited to talk about to our guests today. So this guy is the lead worker organizer for a new effort to unionize a home depot outside of Philadelphia. He also happens to be a big breaking points space breaking points, so it's it's pretty cool. I'm excited to talk about to him. Home depot is like the fifth largest employer in the whole country. Huge, Yeah, so if they were able to succeed there, you know, that could be potentially, you know, a really significant moment in terms of the growing grossroots labor moon. He actually said in an interview was like, listen of Chris Mal's could do it with an Amazon warehouse. I thought, you know, certainly I could do it with the three hundred people here at home depots. So we'll see how that effort is going. Before we get to any of that, though, we got a couple of announcements reminder, live show lo to Chicago. Let's put it up there Vic Theator October fifteenth, buy tickets. Now there we go, all right, So we released a couple of clips from the live show yesterday. Actually did quite well, so if you want to go ahead and check those out that it's a fun vibe. We have a really really good time with it, and it's just it's all just about, you know, thank you to the audience, and it's very participort participatory. We're all having a great time. We reveal our verbal tics. That was my favorite. Second. Yeah, people, people enjoyed it, so that's great. I'm glad you did. Go ahead my tickets. If you're in the Midwest, go ahead. There's a link down there in the description. Also used to be going well. Number two is the discount going on right now for Counterpoints. As we said, ten percent off on an annual membership here for Breaking Points helps us fund our expansion and hire the person who needs to help Ryan and Emily because James is swamped right now. Yes, for producer James, he took a bout at the end of the at the end of the show in Atlanta, and he loved it. So let's forgive it much deserved, much earned. Audience is very appreciative as we are of James and the work that he does. I also, I just want to remind people who are already premium subscribers because Frankly, my dad was asking me about this yesterday, so I wanted to make sure it is really clear. There's no added subscription or whatever. If you are a premium subscriber, you get our show. Oh, you get counterpoints, you get the whole thing for that same price that it's always been in back right now, it's obviously at a discount. It's delivered to you in the same way that our show is delivered to you, So nothing really changes. You just get an extra show in your inbox in on Fridays. So pretty cool thing. Oh yeah, that was the last one. We sent out the full live show to all of our premium members. They can watch the full thing. A lot of you guys, did you guys seem to really enjoy it. So we're not going to release the full thing to everybody. If you do want to be If you do want to watch the live show and see exactly what was going on, sign up a premium membership. It's part of your discount. You can watch it, you can listen to it, whatever you want. Okay, let's get to the show. Let's start with Putin. Obviously this is the biggest news, not only what Putin announced late Tuesday. Well, I guess you know, Tuesday to Wednesday, very early in the morning. But all of the geopolitical reaction, We're going to start very first with what Putin had to say. Let's put this up there on the screen. Putin declares partial mobilization of the Russian defense forces. The decree was signed that says, quote, this is a translation. Only citizens who are currently in the reserved and above all, those who served in the armed forces have certain military specialties and relevant experience will be subject to conscription. It's effectively the same as the United States calling up like the National Guard or the US Army Reserve. So not going fully to the general population, like drafting them into base training, but people who have already previous military experience. So let me say though that you know, that's what they're saying, and that's how they're selling it. But the order that he signed does not actually specify those limitaris. So it's actually just in his speech, not actually in his way. Yeah, so in terms of how they're implementing it now, it appears that that's the direction they're going in, but the order actually is a much broader potential mobilization. So important thing to keep in mind very important one. And look, this gives us a lot of insight into the state of the Russian militaries, like how many of the best people have already been called up, how many have they churned through? How many you know, there's a lot of so called refused nicks, people who are just refusing not to serve in the quote unquote Special Operation Zone because we're like, we don't want to go to war with Ukraine. Yeah, I don't want to need to do a bit. Well, there's reports of huge lineups at the border of Russian men trying to get out of the country before this comes for them. There were reports that I think were kind of unconfirmed that the airlines have been told to stop selling tickets. There's a lot of rumors going out at Russia. Yeah, so I don't know if that one is accurate or not, but there certainly is a lot of video floating around of you know, big lineups at the border of people like I'm getting the hell out of here before I have to go and fight in this stupid war that I didn't want anything to do with it it. We're freaking out, and you know, immediately after the Putin speech, let's put this up there. The Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shogu, he came out and said that Russia is going to draft three hundred thousand reservists to support the military campaign in Ukraine. He also gave us one of the most laughable statistics yet that only five, nine hundred and thirty seven Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the conflict. That is ludicrous the actual I mean, look, nobody knows the actual number, but it's probably more along the lines of like ten thousand to twenty thousand than it is six thousand. And we know that based on actual open source stuff coming out of Russia of people who are posting and you know, mourning their loved ones. This is just like what happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan. They always tried to cover up their death toll, and in the end people knew the truth because at the end of the day, you got to notify somebody's family when they die, and then people start talking and going to funerals. It's like, hey, there's all these funerals now, all of a sudden, and you weren't even supposed to grieve. It was one of the biggest. It's one of the factors actually that led to the decline of the Soviet Union, especially in terms of a lack of confidence in the state. So what does all of this mean. Well, there's a lot of different ways in order to read it, but I think focus first on Russian society because Putin this is a big loss for him. He sold this war. As you know, I was thinking about it recently in the context of the Iraq War. We were sold the Iraq War light footprint, one hundred fifty thousand guys, go in, lightning, come out, We're out. That's it. And Eric shin Seki and a lot of other guys told the US public and the US Congress are like, no, you're probably gonna need like four hundred thousand people otherwise you're gonna have a massive insurgency on your hand. The Bush administration didn't want to listen. In this case, that's the Putin and so Putin thought, I can do this with a couple hundred thousand guys, all this military equipment. We have one of the world to war power militaries. Sk me over in like two weeks, well six months into this thing. Obviously, they've now also suffered a humiliating defeat. So this is kind of like the quote unquote surge for Putin. He's doubling down on the war in Ukraine and saying, okay, fine, my initial cell to the Russian population that this wasn't going to really affect your life and I wouldn't have to call it preserves a quote unquote special operation, not a war. This is a big domestic loss, I think, no matter which way that you want to spin it. Yeah, another fascinating thing. You know, when I found Crystal, he cited nationalist criticism of him on Russian television, which really makes me think that it was all a Kremlin plot in the beginning, so manufactured manufacture descent coming from the right, saying why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you calling up? He acknowledged them in his speech and was like, I have heard you, I have to you, and that has led me to this disace. I mean, it's possible because you also saw, like we covered here, the amount of criticism that was coming on state TV and from these bloggers that you know normally isn't really allowed. So the fact that it was allowed, that's possible. I mean, it's also possible that Look, genuinely, the place he feels pressure from is from his right, from the harder core nationalists. And so after this, you know, what has been a series of stunning advances by the Ukrainian military and stunning setbacks for Russia, he kind of had to do something, And so the bulk of the political pressure was coming from that more nationalist front, and he certainly, you know, for him, this is existential, Like if they just lose, that's going to be a disaster for him. He cannot allow that to happen. It probably would be the end of his presidency. So to me, nothing lays out the sort of context here better than that image of the day that they're suffering these humiliating defeats in Ukraine. Is there inaugurating a new ferris wheel. Like they were still trying to hold on to this idea that the bulk of the public could be insulated from this conflict and that it wouldn't have to impact their lives. It became, you know, this was just like a total defeat of that original strategy that Okay, we could do a little bit of war over here in the public won't even notice. So I guess the more hopeful spin is that he is trying to find a way. I've seen some analyst saying he's trying to find a way ultimately to get out of this but save enough face so that he's able to hold on to his presidency. So you have to, like, you have to strengthen your hand, because the Ukrainians certainly aren't going to agree to a ceasefire or he's deal right now when they see total victory in sight. So that was one analysis that I saw, that this is an attempt to sort of strengthen the hand so that he might be in a position to negotiate for some sort of ceasefire that wouldn't just be utter and total humiliation. But there there's no doubt about it. From the beginning how he thought this would go, it has not gone anything like that. From hoping that it could just be this sort of limited effort that the public is protected from from thinking they could just roll right into Kiev, every step of the way, it has been a disaster for them and has not gone according to plan. Now, I think it's also important to ask, like, this is a lot of people they're callaly, three hundred thousand people is a lot of people now, a lot of them don't have much, if any training. This is certainly you know, they're not sending their best, so to speak. They've lost a lot of their sort of most skilled military, well trained folks alright, soldiers already. So how much of the difference is this going to make? Are they really prepared and are they organized enough to have this kind of surge into the field into Ukraine. I think those are all big, big questions to ask, And it seems to me like this winter, for a variety of reasons, is really going to be determinative. Not only because we'll see whether this surge of personnel makes a difference for Russia helps them to turn the tied and regain the upper hand. That's number one, number two, and we'll get to this more when we talk about Biden's un speech. It'll also be a question politically how the US population is still responding to this war. We still all in the European populations. How does it go with energy prices? You know, how much austerity and pain does this winter bring to European populations. So I think a lot will be determined over the course of this winter. Yeah, I think that's right, And you know, we also have to acknowledge some of the heroes across Russia. I mean, let's put this up there on the screen. Spontaneous protests broke out all across the country. Here's video just from Moscow. I'm not going to say this is the entire Russian population, but that's a lot of people that I'm looking at. It's clearly an organic pushback some percentage, yeah, right, exactly. I mean even if it's ten percent. And remember, look, to live in an authoritarian country like Russia, and it's not like these people can easily leave, and to risk your literal life and imprisonment to do this takes some serious, serious courage. So we want to acknowledge those people. In terms of the military, let's put this up there. Michael Kaufman, he's that military analyst that we relied on several times throughout this invasion. I think he put it in a very measured and important way. He's like, look, first and foremost, of course, we don't know, so we should not make any deterministic or definitive claims. But here's what he says. I would not suggest that this can turn around Russia's fortunes in the war. As in, are they going to be immediately on the offensive. Probably not. However, here's what he says, I would take care of being dismissive, especially looking towards the medium term of this winter and twenty twenty three, because force availability and manpower matters. Hence the implications can vary. What he essentially comes to and arrives at in this thread, and his analysis is that the Russian military can use these forces to plug up their weak defenses like those that folded in the Ukrainian offensive, and just make it into much more of a war of attrition and make it frankly, far more difficult for the Ukrainians to try and advance. Are they capable enough to go on the offense. What Coffin points out is that the Russians have led through some of their best generals, some of their best fighting forces. Their logistical challenges are obviously, you know, terrible, and it would take I've probably more than the quote unquote partial mobilization to actually they would have to basically fully mobilize their entire society and army in order to wage war, which was not supposed to be the case for a great part of military fighting. A quote unquote third rate army. Well, they've proven themselves that when you're fighting for your life, you're going to fight very differently. On top of the weapons that we have supplied to the Ukrainians, this is going to actually probably bring it even more balance to the conflict, which does unfortunately mean that everybody's kind of locked in at this point they were Ukrainians. Now they've really only got I don't know, let's say what eight to eight to ten weeks left of these people. Obviously they're not called up yet, they're not yet on the front line. They've really not that got much time before winter strikes and in which they can still continue to capitalize on that. That's why they're begging for weapons right now, harder than they ever have in a long time. So it's a very mixed in terms of what it tells us. Is it overly deterministic? No? Probably not. This does not mean the end of Ukraine? Does it mean though, that Putin is on his very last legs? Also know this is somewhere in the middle, which is why it's hard to describe to people. Yeah, I think it's important to have a lot of humility about what this will actually mean in the battlefield, because first of all, all the analysts have gotten things wrong, likely every step of the way. You know, in Afghanistan they were dramatically wrong. So I just like, at this point, I'm just you know, it might mean something, it might mean nothing. We'll see how it all unfolds. Great point in terms of what happens on the battlefield, you know, I do want to say with regards to those protests, there are credible reports that those who are being arrested are being immediately conscripted. Wow, so like taken into custody and immediately conscripted. So just to underscore how courageous it is to actually go out there in the streets and make your voice heard, I mean, that is incredible. Yegor are shared with me this morning there were actually one hundred and thirty Chechen women arrested in Chechnya for protesting, which again I mean that takes some series, real, real courage. So we have no insight into how widespread these protests are. We really have very little insight into how much of a societal backlash there is. But I would say, I mean, just logically thinking about this, the way that Putin sold this to the public as This isn't even a war. It's not going to affect you here. I am like, you know, inaugurating this, Ferris Wiel, don't worry about what's happening over here. To go from that to we're going to mobilize. We're going to send in three hundred thousand more conscripts, you know, the order. Like they're not stupid. They can see that the order is actually for a full mobilization. So no one is feeling particularly safe right now. So anyway, I could certainly imagine that there is significant, deep concern and backlash to the movement in this direction. So we'll see how all of that plays out. Yeah. Absolutely, Let's move on then, next to the most frankly important one, which is nuclear we'd opened or one of our shows on Biden's response to Putin on nuclear weapons, and Putin has issued a new and very troubling taunt both to President Biden and to the entire West. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is analysis from Andre Bakletiski. So he is specifically a nuclear analyst, and he breaks down President Putin what seemed like an offhand comment about nuclear weapons actually was a change in Russian nuclear doctrine and why it is just so important. In order to break it down, here's what he said. He said that quote, some high level representatives of key NATO states made statements about the possibility and admissibility of use of WMD nuclear weapons against Russia. First of all, I don't know what he's talking about, and that seems to be complete bullshit. So just let's all be clear about what exactly Putin is saying. However, in response to said fake comments, here's what he says. He reminds those people Russia has different quote means of destruct meaning nuclear weapons, and he continues by saying, quote, if the terror territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It's not a bluff, he continues. The citizens of Russia can be sure the territorial integrity of our motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured. I emphasize this again, with all the means at our disposal. So why does this matter? Two fronts? Number One, because at the same time those partial mobilizations were announced Crystal, they also announce those fake referendums that are going to occur in four separate regions across the Craine. We don't know the full date all of that. All of those referendums will be much like the Crimea referendum of fake pretexts in order to fully annex these territories into Russia and officially as part of Russian law, would be part of the Russian Federation. Why does that matter because then if we are talking about fighting in those areas in in Curse, in the Dune, boss in Lahns, in these regions, they could claim a part of this new nuclear doctrine that this violates their quote territorial integrity with weapons used by the West. This is the real nightmare scenario in terms of we obviously are not going to accept even Crimea, you know, as part of Russia. But if they think it is, and then this as part of their new doctrine say that it is, it would open the gates to a new higher level of warfare. So the fact that he added territorial integrity is very important because previously Russian doctrine said that first use in a conventional war when the existence of the state is threatened, not territorial and integrity. That was one of the first things and the quote unquote abstract protection of people, independence and freedom. So nuclear doctrine is very important to understand. You know, we have very very like laid out first use cases as to when we would use you know, first use strike of a nuclear weapons, so do the Russians. Stairs has generally been like the integrity of the regime, the integrity of the state. To add territorial integrity again, and you know, this is what Andre says, coming from the person who has the sole decision making power regarding nukes, this should be taken very, very seriously. You combine the referendum with this new addition to Putin's nuclear doctrine, and look, we have no choice in this country but to take it seriously. Is he lying? Is he bluffing? I don't know. He says he's not. He's bluffed in the past. He is obviously a liar. This pretext of all this is completely fake. But that doesn't mean that you can't take it seriously. Whenever he says these things, that's one hundred percent correct. Zelenski's response was basically like, nah, he's bluffing, but maybe yeah, you might be right and you might not, but the reporting is the White House and the Pentagon do take this possibility relatively seriously. And that's what we covered before. When Biden was asked in that sixty minutes interview, you know, what would what would you say to putin about his use of nuclear potential use of nuclear weapons? Was like, don't and then he was pushed about, Okay, well what would the response be, and ultimately his answer was well, obviously I'm not going to tell you right now, but it also would depend on what the nature of it was. So one thing that one scenario they've been considering is would there be some sort of a like test or tactical detonation is sort of like a warning. Those sorts of things are very, very scary, even as you know, oftentimes the way the media covers it is like, oh, this would be no big deal, but make no mistake, it would be a huge deal. It's also no accident that these referendum are going forward, are they referendu when it's plural anyway, referendums GM police are going forward at the same time that he makes this comment. I mean, that's those two things are definitely linked. There's no question about it. So that he's saying at the same time, we are claiming this as this is Russia, this is our territory, and he's shifting the line as to when and how they would potentially use nuclear weapons and saying, we will use him to defend our territorial integrity, not just when we see an existential threat to Russia. Those things are incredibly significant in terms of the territories that they're trying to lay claim to here. The latest reporting is that they're going to run poles there for five days starting tomorrow. There's four regions that they're going to conduct these fake polls and elections in, and those four regions represent about fifteen percent of Ukrainian territory, so it's very significant part of the state. Yeah, this look, it's a lot of parts of Ukraine, and these are the most contested parts where a lot of fighting is happening. It also overlays something that we talked about in one of our previous shows, which is that President Biden very much considering the exact tipho weapon systems that we're sending over there, because the Ukrainians like, hey, we need these long range weapon systems to hit Crimea, And He's like, I don't know if I want you to hit Crimea with you directly US provided systems. Well, if this territory now goes the direction of Crimea in that now we have to consider the Russian responses what that means with the update of the doctrine. And look, this is why the nightmare is whenever authoritarian countries have nukes, because they can just wave their finger in your face, and I mean, there's not a lot you can do about it without really upping the ante all the way. And we're getting starting to get close to that line. Anytime one of the world's great powers calls up three hundred thousand people and then changes its nuclear doctrine and then threatens nukes in the middle of an active conflict that you're semi involved in, says I am not bluffing. Says I'm not bluffing. Pay attention, people. So this is a new phase of the war. Who the hell knows what's going to happen. Let's move on to President Biden. So obviously the way that the United States is going to respond to this is also going to impact the conflict, both on the ground and geopolitically. President Biden happened to be speaking the next day on Wednesday at the UN General Assembly, where he directly addressed President Putin. Let's take a listen. Let us speak plainly. A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council invaded its neighbor, attempted to erase the sovereign state from the map. Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenants of the United Nations Charter, no more important than the clear prohibition against countries taking the territory of their neighbor by force. Again, just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe in a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non proliferation regime. This world should see these outrageous acts for what they are. Putin claims he had to act because Russia was threatened. But no one threatened Russia, and no one other than Russia sought conflict. In fact, we warned it was coming, and with many of you, we work to try to avert it. For those who are just listening, he showed a couple stone faced Russians taking the exact translation. Now, let's at least understand also beyond the warnings, the chastising of Russia, how the US is spinning this along with the Western coalition. Let's put this up there directly. In response to this, the United States said that Putin's mobilization was a quote sign of weakness and Russian failure. That was specifically from the US ambassador to Ukraine calling it a failure, taunting the Russians, saying it is a sign of weakness. Now they're not wrong that it is a sign of weakness. Obviously nobody calls up more troops in a sign of strength, but also accused them of quote nuclear blackmail in terms of the new threats that are being made. So the reason why it matters is that we are putting this in the league of This is why we all have to remain united. And this is also why it is foolish on Putin's part. I mean, things are not good on right now on the European con. I think that if he hadn't done this, let's say that the war hadn't changed all that much, there might have been some opening for protests in France and Germany, especially as it gets colder in the winter. These governments now they're dug in. You can't you can't change policy. Whenever the guy is calling up three hundred thousand people and waving a nuclear weapon in your face. It just makes it like why wouldn't the German chancellor change policy then? Like now he's moving forward. They're nationalizing like a Russian oil plant in Italy right now. One of their biggest suppliers is also a Russian oil giant. They're probably just going to take it over. This is this is basically bifurcating the two economies and making it much more difficult for them. Now. Russia obviously is going to continue to I'm doing monolog on this. They're going to be fine ish on oil. They'll still sell to India and China. But any hope, I think they had a reconciliation with the West in the interim six month to one year period. No Western government is going to change its policy when you're calling up three hundred thousand people and waving a nuclear yes, well put, I mean the reality is at this point he's left with no good options. Yeah, I mean, that's the fact of the matter, is, like they are in such rough shape in Ukraine right now, and he's facing so much domestic political pressure, whether real or manufactured, to you know, have a more wholesale mobilization and have more of a full throated, like actual war footing that. I don't know that he felt he had any other hand he could play, But I think you're right about and we talked a lot about heading into the winter though, was a big question mark. That's why Zelensky orchestrated this particular push right now to keep the Europeans and to keep us on board, and to keep us enthusiastic and to convince us like, Okay, these weapons that we're sending and all to say that we're sending it's worth it. It's working. The pain that we're going to feel this winter, it's all worth it. It's the plan is coming together and the Ukrainians can actually succeed. So he executed that. It worked, you know, pretty much flawlessly in terms of what they were able to accomplish, both in reality on the ground and in terms of the sort of massive pr victory with regards to our public and to the European public. You have not had yet big signs that there is a real faltering of commitment either, you know, in any part of the NATO alliance. So you know, if Putin was betting on Okay, we're going to go into the winter and things are going to be tough, and the public is going to revolt against what the European and American governments are doing. That might still happen, but there aren't signs of it yet. And I think you're right that if that's what he was originally betting on, and what Selenski was originally concerned about, the fact that he is moving forward with this, you know, three hundred thousand person mobilization and saying, hey, by the way, I might use mooves. Yeah, that's going to harden commitment to opposition to Russia. Herald. He gives us no choice, I mean, and again, would I run everything differently? Yeah, I would. But I'm telling you in reality, the way that the West is currently positioned, they are locked in now for the entire winter, no matter how the gas, no matter how high energy prices are on the continent, they can't give in because that's just look politically in that dynamic that everybody's locked into. It's he has secured his He secured higher NATO spending when he invaded, and now he has secured the political dynamic geopolitically for time to come and This is why I always want to acknowledge, like, look, this is on him. Nobody forced his hand to invade Ukraine, and then nobody asked you to call up thre hundred thousand people and use nuclear blackmail against the West. So don't be surprised like when your economy is not when your economy is tanking, and then even when there is domestic political strife in Europe that they're just not going to give in. It's like, this is this is what happens, yes, when people get locked into conflict. In one more sign of how much things have gone off the rails for the Russian military. There was a report this morning, you know, take it with the Grand solid et cetera, et cetera, But there was an interesting report this morning that Putin is actually personally directing troops on the battlefield, which is like, it's about LBJ Vietnam shit, all right, do you have a functional military? Never happened that should not be happening. That's literally, that's I mean, let's do a little history lesson, right, Like one of the problem ones with the Vietnam War was that literally the president of the United States has like a Rolling Hills model of Vietnam and is picking B fifty two targets. Yeah, once that happens, things have gone bad, like very very especially in the age of a great power modern military. Josie's a narcisist, doesn't trust anybody true who's around to me. They've also taken hits in terms of you know, some of their top generals taking out with help from our intelligence. So so yeah, I guess he's feeling like the ranks are pretty fin point okay. But at the same time, and there is some important polling. This is why it's always important to balance. Let's put this up there. The Concerned Veterans of America. They're a great group. They do a lot of very like realist stuff, and they actually do polls on how Americans feel about US policy towards Russia and Ukraine, and they dig down into the nitty gritty. That's why I like it. So here's what they say. Quote, only fifteen percent of the American public support sending more military and financial aid to Ukraine than wealthy European countries, with twice as many people who want to send less assistance than we currently are. This of course comes at the same time the Biden administration wants fifteen billion more for Ukraine. Furthermore, fifty four percent of respondents said the United States should only continue to provide aid to Ukraine if the Europeans are willing to mat ras support fact check not happening right now. Second, around half of respondents of the United States said that the US should provide the same level of support for Ukraine as wealthy countries and not one dollar more. Then fifty seven percent strongly do not want direct American military intervention in the war in Ukraine. Only fourteen percent support strongly or somewhat. They all live here in Washington, DC. And then, finally, the plurality of respondents said that Biden should make lowering or eliminating inflation his top priority. Only two percent said they believe that ensuring a defeat of Russia and Ukraine should be the president's priority. So I love this poll because it ranks that these are tests. You ain't going to get this from Politico or from anybody else. They're like, they're like, hey, Europe spends x America spends Why and that's ten times more than all of Europe combined. How do you feel about that? Yeah, people are like, hey, that's bullshit. But they don't even know They don't even know the date unless they watch this show. Even then, you know, it's like how it's very difficult in order to get this information out. So when people are confronted, they're very nuanced. Of course they want to help Ukraine, but they think the European should step up. Yeah, they think that. They also strongly oppose intervention. I love this because it just shows you Americans are good people, but they also don't want to get you know, embroiled in a multi decade war and all this and the establishment people in this party and in the media they don't represent any of this view. Yeah, what these numbers really underscored to me is again what a sort of like pivotal moment this is because public opinion does hang on kind of a knife set. So right now there continues to be support for the direction. Obviously, with Silenski being able to not some significant victories, that's going to continue to encourage that support. And you know, the fact you've had gas prices coming down you're going to cover whether that's going to continue in that direction or not, has helped to sustain that support. European governments are starting to put together packages so that they can help their populations out to get through the winter. But it really does show you why both Putin and Zelensky saw this moment right now as such a critical moment in terms of the future trajectory of this war. So again, I think a lot is going to be determined this winter based on, you know, how energy prices go, how domestic populations feel about this, what happens on the battlefield. Does this surge of new troops from Putin doesn't make a difference, or does it just kind of continue the status Well, I don't know. I did, though, I'm feeling very conflicted. I just read a report about how high energy prices in Europe means that European companies now have to manufacture in the US, and I was like, I like, man, like, maybe I'm cheering on the higher aligning there. Yeah, like a little bit of a silver lining for US. So sorry Europe. All right, let's move on to this next part, the final if this one's very important in terms of Zelenski, who we alluded to, Let's put this up there on the screen. He said, quote, I don't believe the world will let Putin use nuclear weapons. Zelenski happened to be doing an interview with a German television network build I probably said that wrong, that he doesn't believe Russia will use nukes, but he doesn't completely rule out the possibility either. He says, quote in response to Putin, tomorrow, Putin can say, in addition to Ukraine, we also want a part of Poland, otherwise we will use nuclear weapons. We cannot agree on such compromises. Now, obviously Poland is actually a NATO ally, Ukraine is not. And it's not a surprise or accident that he's saying Poland because that's what precipitated the outbreak of World War Two. He's a very smart operator. I have to give it to it. I mean, he has an incentive also to downplay the potential of Putin using nuclear weapons, because from the beginning that's been one of the fears that has constrained US support. So, you know, the reason that we don't just wially nearly send them the longer range missiles that they want that could strike inside of Russia is exactly because of this fear. The totality of the strategy that the US government has employed has all been designed to keep US from having a dramatic escalation that would provoke this type of, you know, potentially world ending response from Russia. They talked about it as the boil the frog strategy, where it's you know, step by step by step by step, but very carefully. Now again, it's not exactly how I would have done things, but this is the way that they're thinking about it. And reportedly Biden has sort of frustrated some of his aids and some of the Hawks and his own party by saying, hey, guys, at the end of the day, we don't want to start World War three. So that's why Zelensky has an incentive to say basically like I don't worry about that. That's definitely not going to happen. He's just full of it, and it's a bluff. Yeah, no, it's a very difficult one. At the same time, let's put this up there. In that interview, he said Putin wants to quote drown Ukraine and blood, including that of Russian soldiers, including the blood of his own soldiers, and that was his immediate reaction. So I think it was very noteworthy on our part that the very first thing he said is don't worry about the nuclear thing, he's completely bluffing, and then kind of pivoting to his standard message about how Putin wants to erase Ukraine as an existence, which you know, if you listen to his speech from February, it is true in terms of what he he doesn't believe it's a real country along with all the other Baltic states, which is kind of crazy, but not that out of step, I guess with your typical Russians are. I thought it was important, you know, to include the Zelensky comments too, how he's spinning what exactly he wants the US to continue to do. Clearly, this is frankly the best thing that ever happened to him, because now he can just he's got more much more united West, he can beg for more weapons and we're probably going to give it to him. I think that's the you know, the TLDR that people need to take away. We will see turning to domestic politics, as I reference before, some major legal developments, some more major legal developments for the former president, who is you know, continues to face a number of investigations on variety of fronts. So let's start with this Attorney General Leticia James of New York. She announced, and she's been telegraphing this for a long time. She gave a press commerce before we kind of expected this was going to happen, But yesterday we got all of the details of exactly what she's announcing here. This is a civil suit, and it's not just targeting the former president. It's also targeting three of his adult children. That would be Eric, Evanka, and Don Junior. This has to do with their tendency, alleged tendency to dramatically overstate the values of their properties so that they could obtain loans from Deutsche Bank in particular, but from other lenders as well, and then to turn around and dramatically understate those values when it came to tax purposes. Let's listen to how ag Letitia James presented this at her press conference. Mister Trump and the Trump Organization repeatedly and persistently manipulated the value of assets to induce banks to lend money to the Trump organization more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to pay lower taxes, to satisfy continuing loan agreements, and to induce insurance companies to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums. So let me give you a few more of the details here. This is according to New York Times. Right up, go ahead and put this up on the screen. So the reason this is a civil suit is because her office actually lacks authority to file criminal charges. But she has referred some of these findings to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, so we will see whether any criminal charges are filed there. In terms of what this would mean, so first of all, she's seeking two hundred and fifty million dollars in damages, so that is a sizable chunk of change, even for someone as wealthy as President Trump is. She's also seeking to prevent the family from acquiring real estate in New York for five years in order to preclude the company from reinventing itself in Florida while expanding its New York operations. She's also seeking to bar Trump and his children from serving as officers or directors in any New York company, essentially chasing them out of the state. And just to give you a sense of some of the you know, some of the evidence she cited here and has been proffered before about what exactly they were up to. One example is I think his Park Avenue apartment. He inflated the size of it by three times, so it's actually ten thousand square feet and was like ever been sold before thirty thousand square feet and it's worth Yeah, it's valued at an amount that literally no residence in New York has ever been sold for. So that's one example. Another one they gave here, this one was new to me. There was a group of rent stabilized apartment in their build apartments in their building on Park Avenue. Don Junior apparently once described them as being the bane of his existence. Instead of acknowledging that the value of some of these apartments was capped in the building, the company listed the overall residential units as were two hundred and ninety two million, multiplying by six the figure that a Preys had assigned to the building's residential units and storage spaces. So the Trump reaction has been to say, basically, like, Leticia James is a partisan actor and she's just doing this as a campaign stunt and it's political, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's hard, you know, you have to acknowledge this is someone Leticia James as a Democrat. When she was running for attorney general, she talked about going after Trump. But also, you know, I also haven't heard them deny that these were the sort of ch canery that they were up to. Nor would anyone be surprised if these are the sorts of dramatic overstatements that they were engaged in. And also, you know, to me, she built some credibility when she was the person who really brought down Andrew Cuomo, who obviously is our same party, And she was the person who she went after Amazon over fire and Chris Small she want to she was the lead on this lawsuit alleging facebooks and monopolies. So she does have some credibility in terms of some of the investigations coming out of her office. Some of the stuff here is just so crazy, like the apartments that they want together, Like you were saying seven hundred and fifty to five fifty million, Like, how is that possible? Right? I don't even understand. I literally, you know, we run a business. I don't know how you do that. We I mean, like we would not get away with it. There's no way. And that's the thing is like okay, and I'll give you their defense in just a moment. But you know, some of these things, it's just so brazen. I cannot imagine with the straight face putting this stuff forward. Another thing he did is he counted as cash money that was actually his partners. So it was like in these accounts for some you know, joint development they were doing, but it wasn't his, and he's like, yeah, that's my cash. Can you imagine. I can't. I can't imagine doing that now. Okay, So here's here is their defense. And by the way, legal analysts say that this case could be kind of hard to prove. What they'll say is Deutsche Bank is a sophisticated financial institution. They were perfectly able to do their own due diligence, and ultimately, you know, their implication is basically, this is a victimless crime. And by the way, the law loans that they were able to secure, they paid back in full with interest, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not like these fraudulent valuations ultimately, you know, harmed even Deutsche Bank because they were able to make good on their commitments here. So that's their side of the story. I mean, I think that's not a terrible case. I mean, essentially, like what we're seeing here is that Trump, you know, shocker had shady business practices for the last forty years, and if she does get her way, also criminality as I understand it, Like what she's really seeking is that he has to sign a document saying he can't be a corporate officer in the state of New York, New York here, right, so like that you know, of course, since the Trump Organization, Trump Properties and all those other things are headquartered them, that would be a nightmare. But really what they're pointing to is they're just uncovering what I think a lot of people knew from all this. I'm not absolving any of the behavior. Do I think though, that it's going to have like some major political impact. No, But on a personal level, there is no doubt, like this is a dagger into the heart of their business just because it uncovers some stuff and they could unravel other loans and other corporate deals that they have going on right now. Yeah, Well, and the next question is, okay, as their attax fraud, is that the piece that comes out you know, from the prosecutors if they look at criminal charges. Are there federal tax avoidance schemes as well that are actually you know, reach a point of being illegal. Now, some of the reasons why this could be more irksome to Trump than you might think is Number one, as you're pointing at, like this is a significant potential glow to his business. I mean that's real. Number Two, his children are named, so it hits you know, in a personal way there that this is not just about him, it's about his about three of his adult children as well. And then also it does kind of strike at the core of his whole brand and image and mystique and like his you know, his projection of lavish extreme wealth and you know, the dollar figure she's seeking here is ultimately pretty significant. Couple other legal details that are worth mentioning. Apparently reportedly they had offered a settlement and Latisia James said no, thank you. Another thing was two of the four, so Trump, Don Junior, Eric and Evanka two of them pled the fifth when they were questioned about this. I think it was Trump and Don Junior and then the other two, Eric and Evanka did not. And one thing I learned in reading about this that I didn't know is in a civil suit. You are actually allowed to use against them the fact that they pled the Fifth Huh. This is a New York specific law, I believe. But you are allowed to like basically make the worst possible inference from that that if they had responded, it would have implicated them in a negative way. So that's what I know about that. That's a lot. Yeah, it's fun learning about New York corporate law. Who knew I had to go get a lot degree after all? This for against us? Crazy, Well, why don't we get to the special masters? Okay, Yeah, So this broke yesterday evening, and this is maybe even a big deal than the Letitia James suit at this point. So let's go ahead and put this up on this screen. Government securing a pretty significant victory here with an appeals court panel. They have granted the DOJ's request for a stay of parts of Judge Cannon's rule. It specifically, what the government won here, and this is a big deal, is the right to be able to use the classified docus about one hundred classified documents that were seized in the search. They're allowed to use them in their ongoing criminal investigation. Previously, they had been blocked from doing that, and that was going to significantly delay what they were able to do in terms of deciding whether or not to file charges. So this panel of three judges, two of whom were Trump appointees and one of whom was an Obama appointee, and they'll rule unanimously in the government's favor, saying no, you can go ahead and use these classified documents. And furthermore, the other piece here, as I understand it, is that means that the Special Master who has been agreed appointed to go through all the documents, now those hundred classified documents are out of the Special Master's perview. So it's a pretty significant win for the government as I understand it. There are a couple of possibilities for the Trump side to appeal this. One would be to ask the uh eleventh Circuit to consider this quote on bank on bunk, which is like with all of the judges as a three judge panel, that's from what I read, unlikely to happen. The other avenue would be to take this to the Supreme Court. Also unlikely that the Supreme Court would take this up, just because it's this kind of like nitty gritty procedural matter. So looks like a significant victory for the government that will allow them to continue to investigate this and potentially build a case and not create these long delays that they were concerned about. Right, So two parts of this, right, yes, as I understand it. Number one, the Special Master is basically like, if you can't prove that you didn't declass by these documents, you're done. There's so that's a step that's a separate one from the Special mass. Let me let me break that one down. I know I can't get my head because I was going to say at the same time, though, but the documents can be resumed being looked at. Yes, So it's like, okay, yeah, well it's yes, I do. It does sort of seem like it almost negates this previous part of the story. But this part is interesting just because it shows the direction the Special Master is going. So let's put this next piece up on the screen. So this happened before a couple days back. The Special Master really had a pretty spicy exchange with Trump's lawyers where he was like, hey, you can't have your cake and eat it too, meaning you can't float this idea of oh maybe he did declassified all of this and so you should worry about the fact that it's classified, but then not enter any specific evidence of the fact that these documents were declassified. Now this ultimately, again this may end up being kind of meaningless from a legal standpoint, because now we have this other ruling that says basically, a hey, Special Master, don't worry about these classified documents at all. But why this is significant in terms of reading the tee lees is because remember, this Special Master was on a list that the Trump team had picked. So this was someone that they thought, according to reporting, was going to be on their side. They thought he was a real deep state skeptic. He was involved in the whole like I'm sorry to go back to all of this, but the whole Carter page fies the court stuff. He was actually on the Fize court and apparently it was very critical of how that was handled. So they thought, oh, this is one of our guys. Well from these exchanges, he basically was like, I don't really know what I'm even expected to do here. It seems like it's pretty simple answer. If it turns out, you guys aren't going to offer any evidence that these documents are declassified. So it didn't seem like he was just going to fall into their you know, taking their side of the debate in all of these issues. Was what seemed significant about to be okay, So two things. Number One, the government can restart looking at the documents. Number Two, Trump's defense looks really shady. Well, he was on shot with Sean Hannity and he was again talking about whether or not these documents were declassified, and he said that a president even even just thinking about declassifying documents, that that's enough. So that's his defense, man, That's just that's just not going to fly in court. So like let's put that all together. Yeah, look, I think they've got him dead to rights. And this is not a judgment of like of whether the case is good or not. I'm just telling you, like on the merits from everything I've read, if that's your defense, and you can't show that you legally sign something, well, as your government argued in court whenever they said just because Trump tweets something declassified, that it doesn't mean it's declassified because you have to go through paperwork. That's right. I don't see how old Donnie wriggles his way out of that. I mean, honestly, I really don't. It is a let's just say, it's an extreme legal view to take to be like a president can literally literally just declassified it, but there's no jaris thinking about it. Back that up. I can't imagine that anyone serious really believes that, because remember, declassification isn't just like a willy nilly thing. That means that then you know Ken Klippenstein, another investigative journalist, Ken Foya, those documents, like the public then gets access to them, which we should so, right, So the idea that this can be done in such a casual or even just like a thought exercise, I can't see that's with standing experiity. And then even if you were to grant them that, or they come up with some standing order that they had or whatever cash Betel produces some proof that they actually declassified these documents, it's not even clear then that that really matters, because ultimately the statutes that they are evaluating for potential indictment and charges don't require that the documents are actually classified. So you know, when you put it all together, and this is to me the most significant part of the Letitia James civil suit as well, is you just have so many mounting issues on so many different fronts. You've got the investigations into a super pack. You've got the investigations into January sixth and incitement. You've got the fake electors investigations both in DC and down in Georgia. You've got the documents issue. Now you've got the civil suit in New York that could hobble his businesses. It's just a lot that can and I'm probably like forgetting one or two things in this list, by the way, it's just a lot that continues to mount and continues to mount and makes it increasingly difficult to see number one, how he totally gets out of it, and number two, how the government avoids charging him with something, because there is just far too much out now in the public public sphere to then say, well, yeah, we see that he committed all these crimes, but we're not actually going to do anything about it. I just think it's substantially different from the Mother investigation. There is, frankly, just more there on every single front. YEA, on these and on this one in particular, like, I just don't see how you can get out of it, Like it's possible that they decline to indict, but I mean, all the facts and all of that make it clear, like if he didn't sign some paperwork, he doesn't have a case, as his own special master now says, so good luck in court. Like, I don't see how I don't see any other way that it can turn out, which is crazy, you know, from a macro political view. But we will just zero in on this until that actually happens. I'm just saying, like, from what I can read and a lot many other conservative yeah, legal experts and more, I haven't seen a single one say that that isn't the case. Yeah. Well, and I think it's significant that on this Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, this three person panel, two of them Trump appointees, and it was a unanimous decision in the government's favor. So that tells you, like his people that he put on the court are not really too inclined to bail him out at this point. Yeah, well said okay, we also have a big economic news. Let's go and put this up on the screen. So the Federal Reserve did go ahead and move forward with what was expected. Here's the Boston Globes has fed at tax inflation with another big hike and expects more so that might be the most critical part. They hiked the rates by seventy five basis points. That's point seventy five of a percent. So there had been some analysts saying, oh, they might even do a full hundred basis points. They didn't do that. They stuck with the point seventy five. That being said, that is still quite extraordinary of an action. This all comes, as you know, there was a hope that inflation was really starting to be brought under control. Those hopes were dashed, I would say somewhat by the last reports. We got about exactly what the inflation numbers are. And as I said before, their expectation is they're going to continue in this direction. And I know we're broken record on this, but it's a dangerous situation because number one, you're using a tool that isn't really well suited to deal with the underlying problems here. Number Two, there is a lagging effect where when you hike the rates, it takes a while for the impact to hit. They're very clear about, hey, we want to get wages down, we want to get unemployment up. This all could potentially be a disaster for you all, because the worst possible scenarios. You continue to have inflation, but you also have a severe recession. Yeah, exactly right, and all of the downstream effects are just becoming completely crazy. Let's prow this next one up there on the screen. Existing home sales fell dramatically in August and prices are softening significantly. And then furthermore, I mean, put the next one up there. This is a crazy one that you found. The median American household would need to spend forty four point five percent of their income to afford payments on a median price house in the United States, the highest percentage on record going back to two thousand and six. Wow, So what is going on here? Here's here's another way. Somebody just sent me this, and it's actually completely insane whenever you consider it in terms of mortgages, if you secured a thirty year fixed mortgage on a six hundred thousand dollars home at a two point six percent interest rate in twenty twenty one, you now have the same monthly mortgage as someone that just bought a three hundred and ninety two thousand dollars home. Wow, at today's six point two percent interest rate, that's how much interest rates matter. Whenever you buy property, almost what two thirds of the value of the house. And so that that's why what we say is like, look, just because the stick of price goes down, you ain't paying less, got it, a bank you're doing you're not doing so well. Yeah, it really is the worst of all possible worlds because if you're a homeowner, number one, you're stuck in your house because you can't afford to give up the orgy rate that you've got locked in. I mean, you're in the best possible position, but you're also watching your equity go down as prices are coming down in most major markets right now. As of now, you've only had two markets across the country, Boise and Fairbanks, Alaska, that have actually seen year over year declines, But you have a majority of markets that have seen prices come down from their peak. Okay, so we are in that prices are softening, they are headed downwards. So homeowners are stuck and they're seeing the equity in their house decline. But they're in the best possible position, right people who have a dream of one day in their life being able to afford a home. I mean, this is a disaster because yeah, you might see, Okay, the sticker price is coming down, but then you do the math on what the mortgage is going to cost, you're like, there's no there's literally no way. It's never been more unaffordable. So it really is kind of a worst of all possible worlds for regular people. Now, if you're permanent capital and you've got tons of cash and you can come in and benefit from the fact that prices are going to come down, well that's going to be great for them, and they're all position to want to be America's landlord. And it's a disaster in terms of like building middle class wealth and having some reasonable track to get to the American dream. So that's who ultimately this state of affairs benefits. But you can see a huge slowdown in terms of the number of homes that are sold. So in sales were nineteen point nine percent lower than in August of twenty twenty one. So when you look year over year, the number of homes being sold down twenty percent, So you can see the market is sort of seized up even as you don't have this dramatic fallen prices, because the other pieces you still have low inventory. Home builders are still because rates are going up. Homebuilders are still sort of holding off in terms of what they're putting into the market. So it is a terrible situation and isn't going to benefit any ordinary Americans right now. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, it's just it's a very very difficult situation and everyday life, both on inflation and in terms of mortgage is now much more unaffordable for people, on top of squeezing the rental market. So it's very sad, and ironically enough, only contributes even more to rental inflation. That's yeah, exactly right. So that's how those effects that, as we pointed to, when the Fed hikes rates, it doesn't it's not all anti inflationary. There are some effects here, like increasing rent prices that actually go against what they're trying to accomplish. Okay, finally, the fun Block. A little bit of a controversy this week based on President Biden's in my opinion, totally anodyne comments about the COVID pandemic and where we are this is on sixty minutes. You know, they were so anodyning. We're like a dayly too that we're like, no, we're not even going to cover it. Yeah, but I didn't even think it was worthy covering now. It was like, ah, whatever, Yeah, But now since then, there's been some other developments we'll get to in a minute. So let's take a listen to what the President said on sixty minutes. Is the pandemic over. The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. It's but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing, and I think this is a perfect example of it. So Sarder personally, what irritated me about the backlash to this among you know, liberals who are super committed to like COVID forever politics. Yeah, is it really ignored that second part of what he said, because he didn't say, like, the pandemic is over and COVID is gone and that's it. He added some very reasonable caveats here that basically indicates like it's not a pandemic anymore, it's not endemic to the population, and yeah, we still have a problem, but we'ren't a better place, Like how can you deny that that's ultimately descriptively correct. Like people do not predominantly wear masks anymore. People are not predominantly like pulling their kids out like some people are. I live around a lot of them, and you know, I feel bad for them, but hey, look, you know it's a free country. You can do whatever you want. Yeah, that's what he was saying. On a population wide level, most people are not behating like their pandemic, nor should they in my opinion. But that's my opinion. So descriptively he was stating a fact. And yet, of course, you know, the branch Kavidians freaked out at these comments, Crystal prompting then, I haven't heard that fault. Oh it's my personal favorite. There's so much you can do with it from a meme perspective. Then, though, as a result, because apparently these people have tremendous cultural cachet, this is why we have to cover it. The White House Press secretary, Well, it gets involved. It's not just they have cultural cachet, it's that they have a lot of sway within the democratic part. Because you're talking about them being disproportionately represented among the donor base. And we'll get then there's a piece of that that's important in a moment. But so yeah, these in my opinion, accurate and anazyne comments that shouldn't have sparked any sort of disagreement, is just like manifestly true. They got enough pushback so that the pres Secretary Koree John Pierre got asked about it with the folks over at Morning Joe. Let's take listen to that. Also, in the sixteen minutes interview said that the pandemic is over. There's been quite a bit of pushback to that statement by the President. Where is he today on that? So just to step back for a second, what we saw during that interview, sixty minute interview when he made those comments, he was walking through the Detroit Car Show, the halls of the Detroit Car Show, and he was looking around. We have to remember the last time that they had held that event was three years ago. Even as we're talking about anga, the President's going to speak shortly, as I just mentioned, that hasn't been held in person for about three years as well, So we are in a different time. He's been very consistent about that, and the reason why is because we are now prepared, We are now ready, We know how to deal with this pandemic is now more manageable. It's not as disruptive as it's been in the prior in the prior years, so personally pushing back. Personally, my only issue with her response there is number one, don't say unga. Yeah, you're talking about the UN General Assembly, Like literally no one knows your number one, don't say unga. Also it's just like a I don't know at all. It's a very inside washing. I was telling inside washing, and I was like, that's one of my most hated things when people in dc A. It's like me when I'm like the Center for a Financial you know, I'm like, we call it scipious. That's you know, it's like and then I'll move on, but you'll just open with sipius. It's us anyway, Okay. So that but also like there's clearly very like defensive crouch here where I mean you should just be like, yeah, we're in about a place. So who can deny that pandemic is over? I think it speaks. I was listening to uh doctor of a name Prosad who we had on the show, and out to him, Yeah, who was on with briand and Joy Gray on bad Faith and I thought you made a really good point, which is that, you know, this has kind of been an issue for Democrats throughout COVID is they're overly responsible responsive to this group within their own base. Rather than trying to lead that group to a different, like less fearful response, they instead sort of like cater to them. And I think there's a little bit of that in the messaging here, where it's like, don't be defensive. What he said was fine, Like just own it and be good with it. I completely agree. Why is the White House contradicting him and be like, no, actually what he meant was but no, he meant the pandemic was over. This is just again it guess to the Taiwan thing. It's like, the president is the president, he was elected, not you. Why are you pushing back? You tell these MSNBC commentators just be like, yeah, that's what he said. That's exactly what he said, and you know what he was right, Like, why don't you just your job is to defend. You're not wearing a mask right now, Yeah, you're not wearing a rest Mike article Arnicle. Mike article's old as hell. By the way, I didn't see her really as contradicting him. She just didn't state it as sustinctly because he also. Part of why it feels like a contradiction from her, like she's undermining him, is because everybody who seized on these comments didn't include the other portion where he's like, we still have a problem with COVID, We're still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over. If you noticed, no one's wearing masks, so they didn't include that other piece of him being like, obviously, guys, it's still here. So to me hearing her cleanup comments, it wasn't really a contradiction. It just felt to me a little bit too defensive. And then just to show you of sort of where the energy of this comes up, Biden had to speak to it a DNC fundraiser, go and put this up on the screen from the Hill. Biden clarifies COVID comments the pandemic is quote basically not where it was. So clearly it was sort of like under pressure again from the donor class to explain, what do you mean when you said the pandemic is over again? I don't really see that being a contradiction from what he said earlier, because he had the caveats in there. But to me, it was noteworthy that, you know, the donor class. Clearly he had to sort of, you know, make amends to that. Until it doesn't help that the Keebler Alpha to put this up there on the screen, you know, Doctor Anthony Fauci says, quote, we are not where we need to be if we're going to quote live with the virus. Like what does that mean? Because people are all living with it right right now? So I genuinely don't what are you saying, Like, where are you coming from? What fake numbers are you making up at this point? You know, he says, even now, even now, more than sixty seven percent of our population is only vaccinated, only one half of those have a single boost. So it's like, what are you saying if the entire population was one hundred percent boosted, then we could move on because A that's not going to happen. B Is there any evidence to support that that's actually true? And it would actually quote unquote stop COVID because we don't have a hell of a lot. I mean, right now, that is just so insane. I just want to say, obviously, there are still, you know, people that are dying every day from COVID. They're overwhelmingly people who are either you know, really elderly, or a lot of them didn't decide to get vaccinated. And we can't lock down the whole population forever, right and be on this footing forever when you know, these are individuals that I'm not trying to like shame them or they mean to them or whatever, but they made their own personal choices about this and they decided to take on that risk. So anyway, this whole thing has been kind of frustrating to me because the thing that really irritated me about it was the freak out to start with, when I thought ultimately his comments were extremely reasonable and had all the necessary caveats. I mean, COVID is not like measles or polio, where we have an expectation that it can be totally eradicated. Right, It's a different beast. I wish it was. But we're going to have to deal with variance. We're gonna have to deal with, you know, I mean, trying to match up, and some are going to be worse than others. And that's just that's life. Now that we all have to deal with, and you know, most people, frankly are, so I think the president's comments just reflected that I agree with that, tiger. What are you looking at? Well, we all knew that this time would come, but it's still sad. Nonetheless, yesterday, for the first time in ninety nine days, the average price of gas did not go down. The previous ninety nine days were an important political lifeline for the Biden administration, lowering at least the severity of inflation at the pump and reducing the flashing sign every American has to drive past as a daily reminder of his failed policy. Now, it's not an exaggeration to say that a decline in gas prices is one of the reasons midterm elections are even close at all. So in an environment where we return to possibly five dollars gas, the entire landscape could be completely different. We have exactly forty eight days until the election, which you can either look at is just around the corner or political eternity with gas. I'm gonna choose the latter because of just how much it hits people's pocketbooks. So let's do a deep dive into gas and where it's going first, and foremost, why were gas prices down in the first place. It would be nice to say it was a result of competent policy by the White House and the West after Ukraine, but the sad truth is data from Triple A and other motor analysts say that after gas hit five dollars a gallon, people just stopped driving so much. Triple A found in July that drivers are quote almost two thirds of US adults change their driving habits or lifestyle since March, twenty three percent making quote major changes. Drivers top three changes to offset high gas are driving less, combining errands, reducing shopping, and dining out. That was always my fear with high gas prices. We wouldn't solve it through policy. The only way would is we make people live less comfortable lives. In fact, in the first week of September, demand for gas was seven percent lower than the first week of July. That is a stunning drop, even when you consider July is part of the major driving season in the United States. Further explanations on gas also come from demand, just not demand here in the US. The economic crisis in Europe has significantly reduced gas demand on the continent, and China's zero. COVID idiocy has helped too, because it literally forces people not to drive to their limited credit. The Biden administration has at least been releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the last few months, which have helped further drop the price of oil. To date, they released one hundred and fifty five million barrels of oil from a set promise of one hundred and eighty million. They just announced a further sale of ten million barrels in November, and that's gonna help a little bit, but the number show they are nearing the end of their rope. And the reason I'm setting it up this way is because it's important to understand why prices were dropping in the last nine to nine days. It was a confluence of mega high gas driving down US demand, demand destruction in China and Europe for a variety of different reasons. It was bolstered similarly a little bit by US policy with the spr The problem with all those factors is this is probably the low point, and to borrow a phrase, the price is still too damn high. The national price of gas right now is three dollars and sixty eight cents a gallon for most of the Western United States, that price is above four dollars a gallon, and in California their gas is still in average of five to forty dollars. So to put that in context, that is still forty three percent higher than the average gas price in September twenty nineteen pre pandemic, almost sixty percent higher than gas in January of twenty twenty, the last month truly before the effects of COVID were fully known. Here, if this is the bottom, that's not good. It's not a victory. And with a slight uptick for the first time in ninety nine days, things can get real ugly. As we discussed earlier, Russia is showing no signs of backing down holding referendums. They're partially mobilizing three hundred thousand of their people, gearing up for what looks like a long, long conflict. The disruption to the global supply chain, the Europeans oil squeeze is going to continue Furthermore. While I supported using the SPR to stop the oil crisis, while we got our policy figured out, the problem is we didn't actually figure out any policy in the meantime. Right now, the SPR reserve is at the lowest level since nineteen eighty four. Again, wouldn't be a problem if foreign policy and other plans could have brought more oil online, but there appears to have been no structural changes made to global oil supply in the meantime, meaning we just depleted a ton of oil from the spr we can't really tap it in the future, and in fact, we'll probably have to buy more oil to fill it back up. On the foreign policy front, Biden had four months to secure some sort of agreement somewhere. What they landed on was the dumbest scheme of all time, number one, trying to cap the global price of Russian oil. Of course, that literally only works if you have total control over the global market. Immediately after announcing their genius plan, the Russians came out and said, Okay, we just won't sell it to anyone at that price cap, and the Indians of the Chinese are like, hey, we'll buy more at whatever price as long as you want. As long as that Russian price is lower than the global market price. They're making a killing. So outside of Russia, what did they do instead of securing some agreement with the Saudis, the Venezuelans or anyone else with oil. The majority of OPEC countries instead chose to actually cut back oil production two weeks ago. That cut was less about depleting supply, but about signaling to the global market OPAK they are love and high gas prices. Specifically, they will defend one hundred dollars a barrel, a price which is now floating much of these petro economies. It was described this way quote OPEK plus is demonstrating and is willing to shrug off the entities of the Biden administration, which has been lobbying Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other producers to increase output and help bring down the price of gasoline. So, in fact, Biden's slop job trip to Riot accomplished nothing. In fact, all indications currently say the Saudis are two timing us, both buying oil from Russia at a discount that they burned domestically, and then selling as much of their oil at high price to us. It's all a big game to them, except for the people here at home who are getting gouged. I don't really have a hopeful way to end this. The stoppage and decline of price indicates we have probably hit the floor. Now we're in for the fun times. Another single shock to send us right back up to five dollars a gallon. Maybe beyond hurricane could do it. More developments on the Russian front, maybe in China. The fact is the last three months it was more of a vacation away from reality and it seems to be coming back hard. And that's really what I took away from this. Well, I was like, you know me, why did it stop you a first time? And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Cristle, what do you take a look at? Well? Guys, there was huge news this week for Adnan Sayed, the now forty one year old man who was convicted of murdering his former girlfriend when he was just seventeen. Adnon's case and his life would have been just one more lost to a messy and often unjust criminal justice system were it not for Sarah Kanigg's smash podcast hit Cereal. Over the course of twelve episodes, Kane pulls apart the details of the case against Ednon, finding a ton of holes and inconsistencies and failures in the process, but in the end, Kanag is no closer to unraveling the mystery of who murdered Hayman Lee than when she started. She did, however, successfully launch a true crime podcast, Frenzie, which continues to this day. So here is the big update. After serving twenty three years in prison, Adnon is free. Specifically, Timore judge vacated his murder sentence because they found that information about two other possible suspects was kept from the defense in the original trial. One or both of those suspects had a criminal record that involved violence against women, one of them had a family connection to the area where Hayes's car was ultimately found, and one had a legendly threatened hay and had a motive to kill her. Now we don't know who those alternative suspects are, but there is some speculation one could be Ronald Lee Moore. Moore is brought up in the final episode of Cereal as a potential alternative suspect. That was due to the fact that he was out of prison at the time of hayes murder and that he had committed similar crimes in that area of Baltimore. Now caanang herself is not saying who the alternative suspects are, but she does say she knew of them while she was recording the podcast series. So basically, the bombshell that led to this conviction being vacated was that the state hid the ball, legally hiding information from the defense that could have helped Adnon get off in his original trial. Supporting underscore, none of this means that he it was actually innocent or was found to be innocent. In fact, prosecutors have thirty days to decide whether to try this case again, although it appears unlikely at this moment that they will actually do so. That being said, DNA evidence is still being analyzed using techniques that weren't available when the murder first happened, so I suppose there could always be another plot twist here now. As far as what I think goes, I was a big Serial listener back in twenty fourteen. I'm pretty sure it was literally the first podcast that I ever listened to, and while I was listening, I was always looking for ways to give Adnan the benefit of the doubt. I know it sounds simplistic, but he just didn't feel like a killer. And I suppose it says something about my own views of human nature, being the overly trusting, often to the point of me naivete person that I am. So when I first heard the news and saw the information about the alternative suspects, my initial instinct was satisfaction that, even though this wasn't exactly what the judge ruled, ad Non must have been innocent. After all, I thought about the unbelievable cruelty and living hallow spend decades in prison for a crime you did not commit. But I went back and I re listened to the key episodes from the original podcast. I kind of found myself right back at square one, especially with regards to the state's key witness and a star player in the podcast, Adnon's friend Jay. As a little bit of refresher here, Jay is with ad Noon for key stretches of the day when hay is murdered. It's Jay who ultimately fingers Adon as the killer, saying that Adnon told him he was going to do it, that Adnon showed Jay Hayes's dead body in the trunk of Hayes's own car, and that Jay then even helped ad Non dispose of the body at the time, the state used cell phone data to corroborate key portions of Jay's story, but since the original trial, that type of data was found to be much more problematic and inaccurate than originally thought. Still, though, while a lot of the cell phone data was kind of a mess and conflicted with both Jay and add On story, there were key parts of that record that backed up Jay's telling of events. Based on what we know of the new alternative suspects, neither of them appears to be Jay. Bottom line, new alternate suspects don't explain a way the fact that Adnon's friend Jay knew where Hayes car was located. So is ad Non innocent? It is still really not clear at all. What is clear is he never should have been convicted. There was more than enough evidence at the time of his trial to create reasonable doubt. That, of course, is the standard, and it is a true disgrace that he was sent to prison based on a story that to this day has a million holes and a million inconsistencies, solely based on the testimony of Jay, someone who admitted to being a liar. As Canan herself put it quote yesterday, there was a lot of talk about fairness. But most of what the state put in that motion to vacate all the actual evidence was either known or knowable to cops and prosecutors back in nineteen ninety nine. So even on a day when the government publicly recognizes its own mistakes, it's hard to feel cheered about a triumph of fairness, because we've built a system that takes more than twenty years to self correct, and that's just this one case. What's more, let's be honest, if Adnan hadn't been made into a celebrity, he would almost certainly still be in prison today. This case was extraordinary for the national obsession over it, but in another way, it actually was entirely ordinary. Whether Adnan is innocent or guilty, it is quite clear his conviction was secured through an unjust rigged process, and in that he is far from alone. Between nineteen eighty nine and twenty nineteen, there were at least twenty four hundred exonerations. Forty four percent of those exonerations were due to the exact same reason that Adnon himself was ultimately released, and that was prosecutors failed to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence. Untold numbers of these cases of injustice go unnoticed, No Hit podcast and draw attention to the rampant misconduct of police and a prosecutors. Then Aison's project. They do incredible work trying to write as many of these wrongs as possible, and I really recommend you support them if you are able to. In the meantime, I guess this case kind of ends where it began, with messiness, a whole lot of doubt, and a still grieving family that really doesn't care what new theories Reddit is able to come up with. They just want their little girl back. We may never know who really killed Hayman Lee, but we know for absolute certain that everyone from victims to the accused, deserve a hell of a lot better from our justice system. So that's where I came to Sagar, I my first instinct, and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com. Joining us now is Vince Keilas. As I just said, he is the lead worker organizer at that effort to unionize a home depot outside of Philly. Great to see events, Hey, good to see events. Thank you guys so much, for having me. I really appreciate your guys coverage. Yeah, of course absolutely, We're grateful to have you here today. I know you must be very busy more perfect union. Uh are on our friend Jonah Furman over there. I had a good write up of your effort. Let's gohead and put this up on the screen. They say new inside the historic union drive at home Depot. Over one hundred workers at the Philly store signed on in five weeks. Managers were immediately flown in to hold captive audience meetings. And here's a quote for you. You You say that it is backfiring. Another quote you had in this piece that I love, Vince, was you said, listen, if Chris Small's could do that at a warehouse of over eight thousand people, we can do it in our store of three hundred. So Vince, just tell us a little bit about what gave you the idea and how the effort is going so far. I mean, that's it's kind of a multifaceted thing. I also have to give a huge shout out to you guys. You know a lot of like the covers that you guys gave and honestly too, just you guys making to move to breaking points to being independent and you know, challenging yourselves to step out into a new field to do something different was extremely inspiring, you know, and taking that in conjunction, which is some of the circumstances in the store, we felt that this was the best move for us. You know, we I tried having conversations over the last like month and a half with people in various you know, parts of home depot, trying to let them know the concerns of the store, and it just felt like, honestly, we were getting a lot of spin. We weren't really getting the answers that we were looking for, and so you know, kind of just taking a time you're in the store, we felt like, hey, this is this is going to be the best move for us, and myself and some other individuals within the store felt that, you know what, we have the courage and we have the capacity to be able to get this done. That's so incredible to hear. Vince, you know very much to us in terms of the impact of our work, but important let's focus on you and your store. Talk to us like, why is this a step that you're considering making. What are you guys looking for? Like what can make your lives better at your workplace. So I mean we're we're kind of focused in on, you know, various things like like wages, staffing in the store, proper training, and overall just wanting a say in how things operate in our store. You know, Home Depot has a tendency to kind of make blanket decisions that go across all stores. And look, we're one hundred and ten million dollars year store. We have very high volume. It's not going to work out the same that it does in a thirty million dollars year store, you know, and we just felt decisions that were being made, you know, things that were being told to us were just not true. You know. Some of the I guess some of the things that I was able to kind of pool people's attention with was to just speak on you know, some of the value that store in particular was generating. You know, over over twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, throughout the course of the pandemic, that store made fifty eight million dollars in profit, but only I don't know an exact estimate, but about like two million dollars was actually invested into the people that work in the store, you know, and it's it's just to see those large levels of disparity, Like I was just dumbfounded, you know, particularly when you would look at conversations where we would tell people like, hey, we're being overworked. You know, we've got a lot going on. People are freaking out in us because they're not getting enough help. We're getting thrown all across the store. We're being asked to do all of these additional tasks. And then when it comes time to you know, be paid in order to in order to you know, say thank you for the work that we're putting in, it was all, well, the company can't afford it. The investments that they've made in compensation over the last couple of years, you know, has has kind of expended them a bit. And it's like, well, you guys had fifteen billion dollars to spend block five bags last year. Maybe spend a little bit less your stocks and spent a little bit more on us. You know, at the end of the day, you wouldn't have that money on the work that we're doing. I think that is an excellent point that I believe will resonate with our audience. It also strikes me. I mean, part of why this is significant is, first of all, Home Depot is a company that did extraordinarily well during the pandemic. People were stuck at home, they decided to invest in their space and making their space better and all kinds of DIY projects and making sour dough bread and whatever like that was all happening during the pandemic. So I'm sure you all were completely swamped. I know they were making huge profits, so the opportunity to be able to reward the workers who help them to make those profits is certainly available to them. Is that big picture? Are you hearing that from your co workers? Like that big picture? Is that a concern for them? Do you think that the impact of the pandemic and the way they were treated, do you think that was kind of an eye opening experience because that seems to be a similar thread throughout a lot of these efforts and even through a lot of the things we're seeing throughout the workforce, including you know, white collar service sector and blue collar workers. Is it just changed the way they were thinking about their job. Yeah? Absolutely, I mean I think one of my coworkers said it perfectly went on when our district hr person came for the store to see us, and she said, honestly, we felt abandoned. You know, they didn't come into the store for about a year and an interesting tidbit for us, and I'm sure it can probably resonated other stores district. Didn't walk in for about a year, and when we had our first walk when they came back, we got ripped the shreds we got you know, criticis on everything that was wrong with the store, and it's like, you know, is this is this what you guys really think? Like you like, people were getting threatened. People were like there's a guy that got beat up and carjacked out in the parking lot, Like you know, somebody had to go get checking the mental hospital for working at thirty two hour shift straight, Like there there are some serious issues and some serious concerns that are happening in this building. And again, like I tried my best to be fair. You know, I'm I'm not somebody when I'm trying to get something done. I don't want to be like super combative. I don't want to, you know, try and come at those personal character. But I tried to give them the opportunity to say, like Hey, like, we know the numbers, we know how you guys are doing, and we're just not seeing the effort right you know. One of the things that they're trying to kind of do right now in the statements that they're making is oh, well, you know, I'm uninformed. It comes to the idea of the union and what it is that they can get done. But if you guys were to walk into my store right now, they've literally doubled their triple the payroll with all of the salaried managers in there, with all the help that they're getting in. So it's like, you guys can go and you can invest all of this, you know, to prevent a union, But you can't, you know, invest this, you know, in a proactive manner to take care of the people that took care of you, right because you want to. You want to brand yourselves as ow we're taking care of our essential workers, We're looking out for our people. Where is it? We don't feel it? You know, it wasn't an expetition was filed that I could see the hope in people's eyes in that store. You know, before then everyone had the life locked out of them. Sorry, ahead, I was just going to say, it does remind me so much of some of the things that Chris Mauls told us about when he was fighting for the Amazon union. Is they try to paint him as like, oh, he was stupid. I'm the famous like always in articulate, he's not smart, And they really tried to persuade people like this guy doesn't really know what he's doing. And I actually think some of the large unions here too. I think that's why there was a reluctance among some progressive politicians even to back them, because like, all, this guy he'd never done this before, he doesn't really know what he's up to. But talk to us about My understanding is you are going a similar path. You're forming a home depot specific grassroots workers union. What made you decide to go in that direction run than going to one of the larger and more established unions that could you know, give you that suppoor, give you that guidance, and give you that funding up front. So again, I mean, look shout out to Chris Wallas. You know, watching a lot of interviews with him, whether it was with you guys, you know, Breakfast Club and a bunch of different places. You know, that was kind of the framework that I tried to follow, just because I was like, all right, like, look, this is about organizing, right. The point of it is to garner the face of the people, you know, And I was like, look, these are people that I've worked with for five and a half years. You know, I was a supervisor in that store, and you know, I did my best to try and help people however I could, and that that carried me a lot of favor and a lot of trust. So it was a matter of how do we deliver on that trust. And you know, there had been attempts to unize in my store before that had been unsuccessful. You know, a lot of people kind of looking around saying, oh, a little bit skeptical of any outsiders coming and saying, hey, we're here to help you. So I said, look, you know, honestly, I feel that I have the wherewithal the capacity to get this done. You know, it takes a firm resolve, and it takes remembering that, hey, you're fighting for your people. And again, as I could see, you know, in the conversations that would be had with the different associates there whenever corporate will come through and they'd be talking to individuals and you would see, oh yeah, we care about you, we really respect you, and it's like you're not showing it. You know. At the end of the day, I could sit here and I could say a bunch of nice things to my colleagues and to the employees that work with me, you know, but it's up to me to show them right, not just to say things, but to actually do things. And you guys are a three hundred billion dollar company, like you have the capacity to it's just a matter of if used to you know, And that's just what I saw, was was that there was no choice to right. You know. There's half a million people who work at home depots, one of the largest employers in the country, so I think that your experience probably resonates with a lot of them. Hopefully they watch the show. So we really appreciate you joining us, Vince. It means a lot to hear what you said about us, and we wish you the best of life. Keep us updated and we happy to have you back on. Honored to talk to you, Evince. Thanks for taking the time, Thank you guys so much, and just again, thank you guys for caring. Our store really appreciates all the coverage we're getting. Thank you sir. Yeah, it's truly our pleasure at least we can do. Absolutely, Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. As we got we said live show Chicago, it's here, you can watch the clips. I think it was awesome and it's going to be even more awesome in Chicago. We learned a couple of lessons and then number two, we've got the discount going on. You can help support our work. It's interviews like that Crystal then make it all work. I can't tell you when they reached out. Actually, Jonah Furman reached out and was like, you know, Vince is a fan of breaking points, and like you guys were part of what gave him this. I'm huge. That's like, I can't tell you how much it means to it. So I realized, like everything you improve my relationship with my dad. Those two it's like, wow, we do that with even like three people. It's way more than we ever could have mappened. So thank you guys so much for making it possible. We are so incredibly grateful to you. Enjoy Counterpoints tomorrow Tomorrow, Joy down and leaking. We've got the discount going on right now. If you want to help support them, help support continued expansion. It means so much to us. Link is down in the description for all that stuff. We'll see you all next week. Love y'all, see you next week.
