Donald Trump and Joe Biden are neck and neck in a new CNN/ORC poll, but it's not a close one. Is this a referendum on Joe Biden? Or is it a referendum about Donald Trump's unelectability as a presidential candidate? And if so, what role does it play in the outcome of the 2020 election between the two candidates in 2020 and in 2020? And what does it say about Joe Biden's chances of defeating Donald Trump in a general election rematch in 2016? The answer to these questions and more can be found in this episode of The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast by Norm Ornstein and Alex Blumberg, and their analysis of the latest polls in the latest RealClearPolitics average of the top five presidential candidates in each party's primary contests. Polling has been tough for Joe Biden in recent weeks, and it seems to be getting worse by the day. But a new poll from the Washington Post/Post-ABC poll over the weekend suggests that's not just bad polling is not an outlier. It's bad polling, it's really bad polling that could have a big impact on both candidates chances of winning the 2020 primary. And that could be bad news for Biden, and a good sign for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race. If Biden s chances of reclaiming the White House in 2020 are not so bad after all, is this a race we re back on track? or is this really a race that needs to be a coronation? The latest polls are not good at all that we re looking at all over the place? -- or are we back in a couple of years too early in 2020 to get back to where we should we really have a shot at winning in 2020 at all the races we know who we should win the nomination? in 2020 or not? And what s going to be the real race for the Democratic nomination in 2020 in 2020, and what s the difference between Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton? What s really going to happen next in 2020 between Biden and Trump in 2020 and Hillary s chances in 2016 and Hillary's chance of winning in 2016 in the midterms? Thanks to our sponsor, CNN/Fox News/Huffington Post Pollster and The New York Times/NBC/WSJ/The Economist/Harper s latest poll? Pollster, Ben Downey? and The Huffington Post/Harvard Poll, and The Washington Post?
00:00:00.000Well, the big argument against Donald Trump as the Republican nominee has historically been that he is unelectable.
00:00:04.000That's been the argument against him because, obviously, he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.
00:00:09.000He didn't win the popular vote against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and squeaked out a win against her in that election cycle.
00:00:14.000And thus, going up against Joe Biden again, he is going to hit the same ceiling that he hit in 2016 and 2020, which was about 46% of the vote.
00:00:22.000But if the polls start to show that Donald Trump actually does not have a ceiling at 46%, instead his ceiling is 50 or 51, The electability argument against Donald Trump goes completely away.
00:00:32.000Well, now we have, for the first time, a poll showing Donald Trump breaking that glass ceiling.
00:00:37.000According to the Washington Post, over the weekend, this poll shows Donald Trump over Joe Biden by 10 points.
00:00:45.000In fact, it's such an amazing poll that the Washington Post has already labeled its own poll an outlier, saying that you can take a poll, this is true, you can take a poll, and sometimes the selection of the people who are in the poll is a little bit weird, and so you get an outlier poll.
00:00:57.000But the problem is this, even if the poll is off by margin of error, five, six, seven points, that would demonstrate that Trump is still running dead even with Joe Biden, which again, undercuts the unelectability argument against Donald Trump.
00:01:09.000According to the Washington Post, Biden and former president Trump appear headed for a rematch of their 2020 contest, although more than three in five Democrats and Democratic leading independents say they would prefer a nominee other than the president.
00:01:19.000But Biden's advisors have argued he's still the strongest Democrat for 2024.
00:01:24.000It seems to me that there is the possibility that all this bad polling for Biden is leading up to an attempt to defenestrate Biden, to get rid of him, to toss him out a window, to find somebody else who can replace him.
00:01:34.000Presumably, that would not be one of the candidates we're currently talking about.
00:01:37.000You could see a situation in which Michelle Obama parachutes in from the rafters in order to sweep up the nomination by a claim.
00:01:44.000One thing is for certain, Joe Biden running this week against Donald Trump is horrible for the prospect of Joe Biden as the actual 2024 nominee.
00:01:51.000According to the Post ABC poll, it shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points.
00:01:56.000But then the Washington Post qualifies to say the sizable margin of Trump's lead in the survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat.
00:02:04.000The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump and Biden's coalitions in this survey, suggests it is probably an outlier.
00:02:10.000Again, this is the Washington Post undermining its own poll.
00:02:12.000Now, I'm not going to do the poll unskewing.
00:02:14.000What I will point out is that this is the second presidential poll in the last three that shows Donald Trump with an actual sizable lead against Joe Biden.
00:02:23.000The last poll before this was an NBC News poll that showed them tied at 46%.
00:02:27.000The poll before that was a poll from The Messenger-HarrisX, which showed Trump up 5%.
00:02:31.000In fact, there is no poll with Joe Biden up more than 1% in the last month and a half.
00:02:39.000Every poll has either Trump up 1% or Biden up 1% or they're tied.
00:02:43.000The Messenger-HarrisX poll has Trump up 5%.
00:02:45.000Now this would suggest there's still a sizable undivided, undecided population that is out there.
00:02:50.000I'm just going to read you the latest polls in this particular matchup.
00:04:31.000Now again, there's some aspects of this poll that are, I would say, very dubious in terms of will they hold up for a general election just because they would be unprecedented.
00:04:40.000Now again, maybe they're real, but if they are not real, that would not be a shock either, because again, a lot of these numbers are quite shocking.
00:04:48.000For example, this poll suggests that Donald Trump only loses minority voters by nine points.
00:04:54.000Now to be fair, Biden won the non-white vote in 2020 by 45 points.
00:05:00.000So you'd have to assume a 36 point change in minority votes between 2020 and 2024.
00:05:06.000Three years ago, Biden won voters between 18 and 29 by 15 points.
00:05:12.000In this poll, Trump wins those voters by 16 points.
00:05:41.000Remember, Donald Trump is one of the single most unpopular politicians in modern American history, and he's running dead even with a guy the media chose and have touted as the next coming of FDR.
00:05:51.000That says something about how bad Joe Biden is as a president of the United States.
00:05:55.000And Democrats are getting ready to hit the panic button.
00:05:58.000Now, they can't say they're hitting the panic button.
00:06:01.000The Democratic Party base does not want Joe Biden.
00:06:03.000Three in five Democratic voters do not want Joe Biden.
00:06:06.000But the Democratic elite understand that what comes next is an all-out war.
00:06:09.000Which is why you have the useless Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, who, again, went on paternity leave for two months and nobody noticed.
00:06:16.000Pete Buttigieg is now attempting to avoid the implications of the poll, which is that Joe Biden probably should step aside if he's competitive with Donald Trump.
00:06:24.000The poll, the vast majority of American people are not happy with President Biden's leadership on a range of topics and issues.
00:06:33.000So what do you say to the 44% of Americans who say they are worse off now than they were before Biden took office?
00:06:42.000Look, we all know the economic pressure that Americans have felt when the president took office.
00:06:54.000That's more than any presidential term in American history.
00:06:57.000And yes, it takes a while for people to feel the full benefits of those results.
00:07:02.000Just like it's going to take a while to build all of the infrastructure that we're now underway on with the president's generational infrastructure bill.
00:08:34.000NBC News reported Monday that Clinton gave the president the warning while she was at the White House for a ceremony alongside First Lady Jill Biden earlier this month.
00:08:42.000Clinton, of course, feels that she lost because Jill Stein was the spoiler.
00:08:46.000Well now, Biden is facing not just Cornel West, or the no-labels candidate, but he's facing down Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's not going to go away and probably runs as a third-party candidate.
00:09:18.000In 2016, it was a referendum on Hillary Clinton because people hated Hillary just that much.
00:09:22.000My assumption, I think the assumption of a lot of other people, is that the referendum in 2024 would be on Trump, not on Biden because Biden is dead.
00:09:28.000Now again, I may still be right on that.
00:09:31.000It may be that as the indictments come in, as the focus shifts back to Trump, as Trump becomes the formal nominee, that all the Democrats come home.
00:09:36.000Right now, what these polls are showing is marked unenthusiasm for Joe Biden.
00:09:40.000It may be that once Trump is the actual nominee, everybody snaps back into place and they say we have to stop Trump.
00:09:46.000That, of course, is what Joe Biden is betting on.
00:09:48.000What's amazing to me, though, is that the Democratic Party is willing to bet on Joe Biden in this race against Donald Trump.
00:09:55.000And there are a bunch of other candidates who are sitting on the sidelines.
00:09:57.000The problem is that that same Washington Post poll shows that there is no consensus backup to Joe Biden.
00:10:04.000If Joe Biden steps out, you got Kamala Harris at like 8%, you got Pete Buttigieg at like 7%.
00:10:09.000There's no one out there who consolidates the base.
00:10:11.000This is why I suggest that the kind of wild, wild card theory is Michelle Obama.
00:10:17.000Coming in from the wings riding a unicorn or something like that.
00:10:20.000That is what Democrats probably are hoping for at this point.
00:10:23.000But again, Joe Biden, he's a desperate candidate and he should be a desperate candidate because he's got problems.
00:10:30.000This is why he's now pulling out all the stops at this point on things like the economy.
00:10:36.000So Joe Biden is trying to shore up his union support.
00:10:38.000He's going to go to the picket lines apparently in Wayne County, Michigan.
00:10:43.000According to CNN, UAW Union President Sean Fain will join President Joe Biden on the picket line Tuesday in Wayne County, Michigan.
00:10:49.000According to a source familiar with the situation, the source provided no specifics about the exact location.
00:10:53.000The UAW, however, is not involved in former President Trump's planned visit on Wednesday, nor have they been in contact with his team.
00:10:58.000So Trump apparently is going to skip that second presidential primary debate in California, which is supposed to happen on Wednesday.
00:11:05.000And he's expected to also head to Michigan to address those union workers.
00:11:09.000Now, this is something that the Trump team worked hard on in 2016.
00:11:13.000They tried to make reach-outs to a lot of the Rust Belt workers, and that meant going and making overtures to many of the private sector unions.
00:11:20.000Not public sector unions, but private sector unions like the UAW.
00:11:23.000Now, to be completely fair to the automakers, what the UAW is asking for in these negotiations is totally wild.
00:11:29.000I mean, asking for a 32-hour work week and defined benefit plans, which is what basically bankrupted the car companies in the first place, is a non-starter.
00:11:36.000But in terms of the pure politics of the situation, Donald Trump, again, this is what makes Donald Trump a formidable candidate, is that Donald Trump is willing to take advantage of any opening, right?
00:11:45.000It does not matter from which direction.
00:11:46.000He will take you from the left, he will take you from the right.
00:11:49.000Because he does not actually have a set of core principles, Donald Trump, this means that President Trump will come at the Joe Biden from the left.
00:11:57.000He will try to edge him out of his union support with the UAW.
00:12:00.000This now has forced Joe Biden to go to the picket lines in Michigan to try and shore up that UAW support.
00:12:08.000According to CNN, negotiations between the striking UAW and Ford remain very active over the weekend and on Monday, but there's still some distance on key issues.
00:12:15.000Meanwhile, the UAW says it's expanding its strike against GM and Stellantis, but said progress in negotiation with Ford means it won't expand the number of Ford workers on the picket lines.
00:12:24.000Now, again, the fact that Biden is headed to the picket lines is pretty shocking for the sitting president of the United States to actively take sides in a labor dispute that he himself has effectively created through his electric vehicle mandates, which is what all these car companies are looking at and freaking out about because they make all the money off gas powered engines.
00:12:41.000And now they're being told they need to go to significantly less economically efficient EVs.
00:12:47.000I mean, these companies are selling 3% of their total gross is EVs right now.
00:12:50.000They're being told they need to shift completely over to EVs in the next few years.
00:12:53.000And meanwhile, they've got the UAW that's pressuring them for a bigger share of the profits, which they're going to need in order to make that EV shift.
00:13:00.000They're stuck between a rock and a hard place created by Joe Biden.
00:13:03.000And now Joe Biden is taking sides with the UAW.
00:13:11.000And the fact that he left the door open to Donald Trump to swoop in and try and grab some UAW support is pretty amazing.
00:13:17.000Now, what's even more amazing is how Joe Biden's economic policies have exacerbated already present serious problems in the American economy.
00:13:25.000The inflationary policy of Joe Biden has already exacerbated a labor shortage that has been generated by the demographic collapse of the West in general.
00:13:46.000Well, good news, so do the folks over at Good Ranchers.
00:13:49.000That's why they've spent years building relationships with local farms to source the best 100% American beef, chicken, pork, and now, wild-caught seafood as well.
00:14:38.000The Joe Biden economic policy is creating serious problems that are already exacerbated by a demographic problem that undergirds the entire West's economic stagnation and has for the last several years.
00:14:51.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.
00:14:52.000economy has been running improbably with an unemployment rate under 4% for nearly two years.
00:14:56.000This isn't just a holdover from pandemic bottlenecks when employers let millions of people go and then struggle to find workers to come back.
00:15:02.000It's a storm that has been brewing for decades, flaring up most recently in the form of worker strikes at automakers and airlines.
00:15:07.000Labor shortages are turning into a long-term labor crisis that could push wages and turnover higher.
00:15:11.000It turns out that when you inflate the currency in the middle of a situation demographically, we're running out of young workers?
00:15:17.000Well, you know what that's going to do?
00:15:20.000Work experts have warned for years the combination of baby boomer retirements, low birth rates, shifting immigration policies, and changing worker preferences is leaving U.S.
00:15:27.000employers with too few workers to fill job openings.
00:15:29.000While the labor market is softening, none of those factors are expected to change dramatically in the coming years.
00:15:34.000Total employment is going to grow about 0.3% a year until 2032, according to the Labor Department.
00:15:38.000That is much slower than the 1.2% rate over the past decade.
00:15:42.000That is largely because of population constraints, and that's going to lead to slower growth in GDP.
00:15:47.000So productivity is probably going to drop because, again, you don't have enough young workers who are coming into the workforce because baby boomers didn't have enough babies.
00:15:54.000birth rate has been falling for decades, declining by about half since the 1960s.
00:15:58.000So, when you inflate the currency in the middle of a worker shortage, what you end up with is wage spirals, which means price spirals, which means wage spirals, which means economic stagnation.
00:16:09.000All of this has been exacerbated by, again, the garbage policies of the Biden administration.
00:16:16.000As I've been saying for a while, I don't think that inflation is actually the long-term threat to the American economy.
00:16:20.000Stagnation is the long-term threat to the American economy.
00:16:23.000This, by the way, is one of the reasons you would imagine why Joe Biden is actually very Laissez-faire about our borders.
00:16:29.000Because when you realize America has a demographic problem, that we don't have enough young workers, and when you realize that the solution to that demographic problem would be to, for example, raise the retirement age, that the solution to that demographic problem would be to stop inflating the currency, that the actual solution to all these demographic problems is to increase productivity by allowing the innovative people in the United States to actually innovate and make money off of it, as opposed to regulating them out of existence on behalf of government redistributionism, When you realize that you wouldn't have to have an open border, but if you are going to keep all those bad policies in place, you need a fresh supply of workers.
00:17:01.000Where are you going to get that fresh supply of workers?
00:17:02.000Well, Joe Biden and company, they know where, and the answer is south of the border, which presumably is why the Customs and Border Patrol has told Fox News that there were approximately 11,000 migrant encounters at the southwestern border in the last 24 hours, marking the single highest day in recent memory.
00:17:20.000They're now pictures emerging from the southern border of small children crawling through barbed wire to get into the United States.
00:17:27.000I don't see Alexander Ocasio-Cortez down at the border protesting the border policies.
00:17:31.000Meanwhile, Jay Johnson, the former Homeland Security Secretary, no right winger, he's out there saying the numbers are going to get higher and higher.
00:17:38.000The administration got a break in May.
00:17:40.000Everyone was expecting large numbers after the end of Title 42, but they emphasized there was a right way and a wrong way to come to this country, have Venezuelans apply in a proper way, use the app, go to regional processing centers, and the migrants and the smugglers have now figured out that those things do not are not able to handle these numbers. And so they're
00:19:30.000There are border patrol agents who work on the border.
00:19:33.000Okay, meanwhile, we're having tens of thousands of encounters, like, pretty much every week.
00:19:38.000And when he says the border is not open, he doesn't mean there's no one actually patrolling the border.
00:19:42.000He means that even people at ports of entry are being given numbers and then released into the interior of the United States as fast as humanly possible.
00:20:04.000And then they fill in the gap in terms of the labor shortage with, wait for it, illegal immigrants.
00:20:09.000By the way, this is how the entire state of California runs.
00:20:11.000If you've ever spent any time in California, what you know is that it's very rich people hiring illegal immigrants to raise their children.
00:20:17.000That is half of Los Angeles do their cleaning.
00:21:27.000That means cozy nights in with the family.
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00:22:58.000Every time Trump is in the news, and the indictment is in the news, he tends to drop in the polls.
00:23:03.000And then every time the indictment is not in the news, people focus in on Joe Biden.
00:23:07.000So, in an election cycle in which he's going to be in court no less than four times on criminal charges, how does he keep the focus on Biden?
00:23:14.000This is the big doubt for Trump going forward, because again, he doesn't have a strong opponent, he has an incredibly weak opponent.
00:23:27.000I remember I visited the White House sometime in, I think it was early 2018, and I was being shown around the White House by a top official there.
00:23:35.000And this top official called me into his office and he said, how do you think we're doing?
00:25:02.000The problem for Trump, again, is going to be himself.
00:25:05.000The only person who can really defeat Trump is Trump, not Biden.
00:25:07.000It was true in 2020, it's true in 2024 as well.
00:25:11.000So, the left is going to try to find reasons to focus on Trump.
00:25:14.000Now, I will say that there is one other benefit that Trump has here, and it's the same benefit he's had since 2016.
00:25:19.000I said that in 2016, there was no way for Hillary Clinton to sully Donald Trump's skirt because he was made of mud.
00:25:27.000So, one of the things about politics is that what you try to do is you try to make your opponent look worse.
00:25:32.000Well, the problem is that That works if you're Hillary Clinton and you're trying to portray yourself as clean as the driven snow, and Donald Trump is throwing mud at you.
00:25:39.000It's all gonna stick and it's gonna show up really, really strongly against the all-white background that you've painted for yourself.
00:25:45.000But Donald Trump never had an all-white background.
00:25:57.000And that as much as Republicans are not bothered by Donald Trump's outsized rhetoric, then moderate independent voters, they may well be.
00:26:05.000So over the weekend, Donald Trump went on Truth Social and he posted this quote.
00:26:08.000They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-sided and vicious coverage by NBC News, and in particular MSNBC, often incorrectly referred to as MSDNC, should be investigated for its country-threatening treason.
00:26:20.000Their endless coverage of the now fully debunked scam known as Russia, Russia, Russia, and much else is one big campaign contribution to the radical left Democrat Party.
00:26:26.000I say up front, openly and proudly, that when I win the presidency of the United States, they and others of the lamestream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.
00:26:36.000Now, this is one of those aspects where I think this is baked into the cake.
00:26:37.000corrupt and dishonest media companies be entitled to use the very valuable airwaves of the USA Free.
00:26:42.000They're a true threat to democracy and are in fact the enemy of the people. The fake news media
00:26:45.000should pay a big price for what they've done to our once great country. Now this is one of those
00:26:49.000aspects where I think this is baked into the cake. I don't think that this sort of rhetoric
00:26:51.000changes things for Trump at all. There are certain things he can say that I think make it worse for
00:26:56.000I think that everybody understands courts in the United States are not going to allow Donald Trump to put Comcast out of business or anything remotely like that.
00:27:02.000I also think the vast majority of Americans don't trust the so-called legacy media further than they can throw them.
00:27:16.000So over the weekend, the White House put out a statement suggesting that Donald Trump was threatening democracy again.
00:27:21.000Quote, on the record from me, President Biden swore an oath to uphold our Constitution and protect American democracy.
00:27:26.000Freedom of the press is a fundamental constitutional right.
00:27:28.000To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law.
00:27:34.000Presidents must always defend Americans' freedoms.
00:27:36.000Never trample on them for selfish, small, and dangerous political purposes.
00:27:39.000Now again, this school-murmuring approach to Trump ain't gonna work.
00:27:43.000The reason this is not going to work is because there has been no president of my lifetime who's been less friendly to the press than Joe Biden.
00:27:49.000You know what else I'll tell you that?
00:28:10.000It's also not going to work, this particular attack on Trump, because again, when you look at how Americans feel about the First Amendment, The reality is that Democrats have a major problem with free speech.
00:28:22.000If you're talking about freedom of the press and free speech, it's Democrats who are consistently attempting censorship.
00:28:26.000It's Democrats who are trying to get shows like this one shut down.
00:28:28.000It's people like Dan Pfeiffer, who, again, was an Obama staffer, going on MSNBC suggesting that shows like this one should not get any listenership.
00:28:37.000They are the ones who do that sort of stuff.
00:28:39.000So the people who are truly threatening the press really aren't on the right, they're on the left.
00:28:42.000If you look at this poll from RealClearPolitics, brand new poll, it shows that nearly one-third of Democratic voters, 34%, more than one-third, say Americans have, quote, too much freedom, compared to only 15% of Republicans.
00:28:54.000Meanwhile, When read the statement, I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, only 31% of Democratic voters strongly agreed, compared to 51% of Republicans.
00:29:05.000Fully three quarters of Democrats believe government has a responsibility to limit hateful social media posts.
00:29:10.000Only 50% of Republicans feel the same.
00:29:14.000Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to favor stifling free speech rights of political extremists.
00:29:21.000So again, when they try to schoolmarm Trump on, oh my gosh, he's a threat to the press and democracy and free speech and all of this, the truth is that it's the left that is constantly a threat to this sort of stuff.
00:30:40.000Again, I don't think that this... Maybe the strength of Donald Trump in all of this is that it's not really possible, in the end, to sully him more than he has sullied himself.
00:30:49.000Which, again, is why only the criminal indictments, I think, can maybe knock him down in general.
00:30:54.000What polling data that I've seen, internal polls have shown, is that independents start to swivel away from Trump.
00:30:58.000If Trump gets actually convicted of anything, independents are going to swivel away from him en masse.
00:31:05.000Now, as far as sort of, you know, other attacks on Trump, I don't think they're going to work inside the Republican Party either.
00:31:10.000So, for example, I think that Trump's language with regard to heartbeat bills lately has just been awful.
00:31:15.000He went on national TV and he suggested that Ron DeSantis did something terrible, horrible, by signing a heartbeat bill in Florida to protect the lives of the unborn.
00:32:53.000But the attacks by the right on him over the abortion issue are likely to fall on deaf ears because of what he does say at the beginning of this post, right?
00:32:59.000He says at the beginning, listen, I appointed three judges to the Supreme Court.
00:33:02.000If I hadn't won, they wouldn't have been conservatives.
00:33:05.000And then Roe versus Wade would not have been overturned.
00:33:07.000So, Mike Pence has been trying to make the principled, conservative argument against Trump on some of these policy matters.
00:33:15.000When Donald Trump ran in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative, and he tapped me to be his running mate, and together we did govern as conservatives.
00:33:27.000We cut taxes, we rebuilt our military, we provided American leadership in the world, and of course we appointed three of the conservatives to the court.
00:33:35.000That overturned Roe vs. Wade and gave America a new beginning for life.
00:33:40.000What I want people to know is that while we governed as conservatives during our years in the White House, Donald Trump makes no such promise today.
00:33:48.000And he and many of his imitators in this race are actually walking away from America's commitment to fiscal responsibility and reform.
00:33:58.000Okay, the problem is that very well may be true.
00:34:00.000He also was completely confusing about abortion before the 2016 election, and then he ended up governing in Mike Pence fashion.
00:34:05.000So I don't think that dog is going to hunt in the Republican primaries either.
00:34:08.000And, you know, on a tactical level, you understand what Trump is doing on abortion.
00:34:12.000He's trying to take it off the table for a general election.
00:34:15.000It's an interestingly pragmatic tactic from Trump, even if I think he's articulating it in immoral fashion.
00:34:21.000In just a second, we'll get to General Mark Milley, who is finally stepping down first.
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00:35:52.000Meanwhile, General Mark Milley, the former Joint Chiefs Chairman, I say former, he is leaving.
00:35:59.000According to the Washington Post, as the warning crane approached its first anniversary, the Pentagon's top officer, General Mark Milley, assessed the carnage that had followed Russia's full-scale invasion.
00:36:07.000With more than 100,000 soldiers likely killed or wounded on each side, he said there was a window of opportunity for the combatants to hammer out a deal.
00:36:13.000Milley told an audience in New York that both parties must recognize victory may not be achievable through military means and compare it to World War I. The declaration was classic Milley, according to colleagues and observers who have worked with him.
00:36:23.000The general, immersed in military history, alarmed by the potential of escalation with Russia, the largest nuclear power in the world, was publicly advocating a position the Biden administration had eschewed as the president and other top advisors sought to project unqualified support for Ukraine's defense.
00:36:37.000So now they're gonna pretend that Milley did a great job.
00:36:48.000He presided over a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
00:36:51.000He openly suggested that after January 6th, he actually called the Chinese to inform them that we weren't going to fire nuclear weapons at them or some such nonsense.
00:37:01.000He suggested that we were in the midst of a fascist takeover on January 6th, which of course is incredibly silly.
00:37:07.000He waded over and over into sort of hot button issues.
00:37:09.000You'll remember that that Milley is the guy who talked about how we needed to look into white rage in the military.
00:37:15.000So good riddance to bad rubbish in terms of General Mark Milley's tenure at the at the Pentagon.
00:37:22.000Donald Trump put out a statement saying Mark Milley, who led perhaps the most embarrassing moments in American history with his grossly incompetent implementation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan costing many lives, leaving behind hundreds of American citizens handing over billions of dollars of the finest military equipment ever made, will be leaving the military next week.
00:37:36.000There will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate.
00:37:39.000This guy turned out to be a woke train wreck who, if the fake news reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China.
00:37:43.000To give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States, this is an act so egregious that in times gone by the punishment would have been death.
00:37:49.000A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act to be continued.
00:37:54.000So everybody, of course, went totally nuts on Donald Trump's suggestion.
00:37:57.000How dare he suggest that death penalty... Donald Trump says a lot of stuff, as I've been saying for literally almost a decade at this point.
00:38:04.000Donald Trump is a man who says a lot of bleep.
00:38:07.000And that is a lot of stuff that he says.
00:38:10.000And, um, and so does anyone take seriously his threat to, you know, put Millie up on charges of treason?
00:38:31.000He was constantly straying into political territory.
00:38:34.000Millie is an excellent example of something a lot of my soldier friends talk about, which is that the top levels of the Pentagon brass are political actors.
00:38:41.000The American public sees them as predominantly soldiers, but that's not true.
00:38:44.000You become a political general very often by being a good politician.
00:38:47.000That is how you rise through the ranks in pretty much any army.
00:38:50.000Because again, any bureaucracy incentivizes particular behavior to get to the top of the bureaucracy.
00:38:55.000And that is particularly true with regard to Milley, who very often did shift with whichever way the winds were blowing.
00:39:02.000And meanwhile, The United States Senate just continues to be Mos Eisley.
00:39:07.000I said before the United Nations is Mos Eisley, but apparently the U.S.
00:39:16.000We have John Fetterman, who is not functional.
00:39:19.000We have Dianne Feinstein, who is dead at this point.
00:39:23.000We have Bob Menendez, who apparently was taking bribery in the form of gold bars.
00:39:29.000That is actually beyond parody at this point.
00:39:31.000According to the Associated Press, Bob Menendez of New Jersey was charged on Friday with secretly aiding the authoritarian government of Egypt and trying to thwart the criminal prosecution of a friend in exchange for gold bars and cash under a corruption indictment that accuses him of using his foreign affairs influence for personal gain.
00:39:46.000Menendez was forced to relinquish his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
00:39:50.000He said he is not going to resign from Congress.
00:39:53.000The indictment is the second in eight years against the 69-year-old senator, and it alleges an illegal commingling of Menendez's obligations to advance U.S.
00:40:00.000priorities and his private interest in cultivating relationships with wealthy businessmen.
00:40:03.000It also includes his charges against his wife and three New Jersey businessmen, who authorities say showered the couple with money, gold, and a luxury car in exchange for official favors.
00:40:11.000Wow, I mean, like, imagine if the President of the United States had a son who was trafficking with Ukraine, China, Romania, and other countries, picking up sacks of cash, and his father was Vice President of the United States presiding over policy in many of these... that would be truly bad.
00:40:27.000A previous indictment of Menendez stemming from different allegations ended in 2017 with a deadlock jury.
00:40:32.000Now again, this is the second attempt to get Bob Menendez on similar charges.
00:40:37.000According to this indictment, from at least 2018 to about 2022, Menendez and his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes ranging from gold bars to a Mercedes-Benz from three businessmen to protect and enrich them and benefit the government of Egypt.
00:40:49.000The last time Menendez was indicted in 2015, he was charged with receiving gifts and $660,000 in campaign contributions from a Florida eye doctor, Salomon Melgen, that helped him get re-elected to the Senate in 2012.
00:40:59.000Menendez was accused of using his office to promote Melgen's business and personal interests with officials of President Barack Obama's administration.
00:41:07.000Menendez said that the money and the gifts, like luxury travel, stem from their friendship rather than a criminal relationship.
00:41:15.000So, jurors are going to have to decide whether Menendez, according to USA Today, can separate the gifts and payments from any actions he took, according to legal experts.
00:41:23.000So, the argument is going to be that he was just taking gifts from friends and had nothing to do with his actual policy.
00:41:30.000However, the timing of the gifts are pretty conspicuous in this case, apparently.
00:41:34.000They're going to have to prove that all these payments basically were in return for things or promises to do things.
00:41:41.000Menendez, for his part, is saying he is not going to go.
00:42:00.000If you live long enough, then everybody just forgets about all this.
00:42:03.000So here's Menendez claiming the prosecutors get it wrong and this is one of those cases.
00:42:07.000The court of public opinion is no substitute for our revered justice system.
00:42:13.000We cannot set aside the presumption of innocence for political expediency when the harm is irrevocable.
00:42:22.000To those who have rushed to judgment, you have done so based on a limited set of facts framed by the prosecution to be as salacious as possible.
00:42:32.000Remember, prosecutors get it wrong sometimes.
00:43:32.000and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.
00:43:37.000Now, this may seem old-fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings account based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years.
00:43:49.000Oh, so, by the way, that doesn't speak as highly of governance in New Jersey as you would think it would.
00:43:54.000He's literally saying that he hid bars of gold in his house because he was afraid that the authorities were going to come bursting into his room in the middle of the night to take away his money like they would in Cuba.
00:44:05.000You sound, honestly, a lot like Cuban Republicans, actually, at this point.
00:44:10.000That's why you would vote for a smaller and less intrusive government.
00:44:12.000It's not why you would be a New Jersey Democrat who allegedly took bribes.
00:44:17.000This sort of stuff, by the way, has pretty significant ramifications for 2024.
00:44:20.000Because I remember 2006, and I remember there was a Republican named Mark Foley, and Mark Foley was messing around with some of the mail pages, and it ended up having significant ramifications.
00:44:29.000For Democrats' electoral victory in the 2006 congressional elections, a generalized perception of corruption inside the Democratic Party ranging from the Hunter Biden scandal to Bob Menendez is going to have severe ramifications for Democrats across the scale, which is probably why Democrats are starting to say that Menendez has to go.
00:44:49.000If that were a Republican governor, which it almost was, I assume many fewer of them would be calling for him to go.
00:44:54.000Meanwhile, a humiliating visit to Canada by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
00:45:01.000Zelensky has been stepping on a lot of toes.
00:45:03.000And because he thinks that he has the moral high ground with regard to Russia, and I think that he does, but because of that he thinks he apparently has unlimited ability to say pretty much anything about anybody.
00:45:12.000Remember, A year ago, he was ripping on the Israelis and suggesting they were not doing their moral duty by not shipping Iron Dome to Ukraine as though it was Israel's duty to defend Ukraine.
00:45:22.000And he was ripping on America for not providing enough support in the Republican Party because, obviously, it's America's duty to defend Ukraine.
00:45:30.000I agree that the world should mobilize on behalf of Ukraine in the initial term in order to protect the territory that they already had.
00:45:36.000I don't understand why it is the duty of the world to continue to fund a World War I stalemate that does not seem to have any solution and then to basically suggest that Zelensky can negotiate his own ticket here.
00:45:48.000I've been saying the same thing for a year on this war.
00:45:50.000The thing that I've been saying for well over a year on this war, like a year and a half at this point on this war, is that there is no reason Why exactly Zelensky should be the one making the negotiation here?
00:46:34.000That's the only way this is going to end anyway.
00:46:36.000And yet Zelensky is, you know, again, my sympathy for Zelensky on a personal level is starting to wane as he becomes more and more brazen about his willingness to simply randomly call out countries as though they owe him something.
00:46:50.000So he got himself in all sorts of hot water in Poland recently.
00:46:53.000Zelensky had offered a veiled criticism of Poland at the UN General Assembly saying that the dispute was political theater between Poland and Ukraine and some of our friends in Europe have made a thriller from the grain.
00:47:05.000Apparently, it's because there was a ban on Ukrainian grain that was put in place by several EU nations to protect the livelihood of local farmers.
00:47:11.000They were worried about being undercut on the economy by the low price of Ukrainian grain.
00:47:15.000The EU announced plans to suspend the ban last week, but Poland, alongside Hungary and Slovakia, said it would stick with the ban, sparking protests from Ukraine.
00:47:21.000They filed lawsuits against the three countries, and then Zelensky spoke about it at the UN.
00:47:25.000Poland immediately condemned Zelensky's comments at the UN, and its foreign ministry summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to convey its strong protest.
00:47:32.000Hours later, the Polish Prime Minister said in a blunt social media statement, the country, quote, would no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland.
00:47:40.000He said, we just mean we're not going to give like the brand new weapons to Ukraine.
00:47:42.000We'll still give them our old weapons.
00:47:44.000Meanwhile, Hungary is warning that new sanctions against Russia are not needed.
00:47:48.000He's saying they're causing more harm to Europe than Russia at this point.
00:47:51.000So there are a bunch of Eastern European countries who are deeply worried about the continuation of this war.
00:47:55.000There's been a pretty disastrous trip, honestly, West for Vladimir Zelensky.
00:48:01.000He went to Ottawa, Ontario, and during a speech at the House of Commons in Canada, apparently the Speaker of the House of Commons stood up, his name is Anthony Rota, and he introduced a person named Yaroslav Hanka.
00:48:22.000He introduced him as a Canadian-Ukrainian war hero from his political district.
00:48:25.000And he said, quote, we have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today.
00:48:33.000Even at his age of 98, he's a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero.
00:48:40.000We have here in the chamber today Ukrainian-Canadians, Ukrainian-Canadian world veteran from the Second World War who fought the Ukrainian independence against the Russians.
00:48:53.000And continues to support the troops today, even at his age of 98.
00:48:57.000He's a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.
00:49:45.000So that's an embarrassing gaffe at the very, very least here.
00:49:48.000And of course ties into a lot of the Russian talk about how the Ukrainians are dominated by Nazis.
00:49:52.000That of course ties into a lot of Russian propaganda about how it was the Russians who are responsible for the end of World War II because they are the ones who truly defeated Hitler, ignoring the fact that it was the Russians who actually allowed Hitler to begin his invasion of Poland in the first place by essentially guaranteeing his eastern flank.
00:50:07.000In any case, the support for the war in Ukraine is fading and that is Not a shock.
00:50:11.000Again, I've been saying for a long time, the war in Ukraine, you weren't going to keep up this level of interest or this level of funding indefinitely.
00:50:17.000It wasn't going to happen because people get tired of it.
00:50:20.000That's going to be exacerbated by a new report from 60 Minutes showing that it's not just military support going to Ukraine.
00:50:24.000We're funding pretty much everything else as well.
00:50:27.000American taxpayers are financing more than just weapons.
00:50:33.000government's buying seeds and fertilizer for Ukrainian farmers.
00:50:38.000And covering the salaries of Ukraine's first responders, all 57,000 of them.
00:50:45.000That includes the team that trains this rescue dog, named Joy, to comb through the wreckage of Russian strikes looking for survivors.
00:50:56.000And the US also funds the divers, who we saw clearing unexploded ammunition from the country's rivers to make them safe again for swimming and fishing.
00:51:07.000Russia's invasion shrank Ukraine's economy by about a third.
00:51:12.000We were surprised to find that to keep it afloat, the U.S.
00:51:15.000government is subsidizing small businesses.
00:51:18.000Okay, so again, there's a case to be made that in the middle of an invasion you have to keep the economy running, you don't want it to go completely defunct.
00:51:25.000But the American public should be made aware of that sort of stuff by its own politicians.
00:51:29.000If the case for Ukraine is we need to keep this war going indefinitely, even though we have no prospect of actual long-term battlefield victory in Donbass or Crimea, Then you have to wonder, like, why are we paying all their bills?
00:51:39.000It's one thing to say we have to pay for the reconstruction because we want to help prop them up against further Russian invasion or all the rest, but in the absence of an endgame here, what exactly is the endgame?
00:51:49.000Joe Biden has never spelled out the endgame.
00:51:50.000In fact, he has studiously avoided spelling out the endgame.
00:52:08.000Your goal is presumably to just drag this thing out.
00:52:10.000No wonder even independents are turning against the American funding, because when you don't have an end goal, Americans get real tired of it real fast.
00:52:17.000Alright, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:52:37.000I will say that there is something to the idea of a religious backdrop to any country that I think is good.
00:52:44.000This is why I've suggested for a long time that everybody in America should go back to church, synagogue, mosque.
00:52:48.000America ought to re-root itself in Judeo-Christian values, particularly Christian values in America.
00:52:55.000Because there can be no country without a social fabric.
00:52:58.000And the social fabric in Israel and Yom Kippur is obvious.
00:53:02.000The synagogue that I went to, actually the president of the country, Isaac Herzog, was at that particular synagogue, showed up with his security, and then he stayed literally all day praying.
00:53:11.000Not like a grip and grin that you normally see by politicians in the United States where they show up to church for like 7 minutes and then they say a couple prayers and then they leave.
00:53:19.000He was there literally from 8.30 in the morning until 12.30 in the afternoon and then he came back for Mincha Ne'ilah Marev, which is like the late afternoon services, evening service.
00:53:28.000He was there from like 4.30 in the afternoon until 7.00.
00:53:31.000And the entire country basically shuts down, including many of the secular areas in Israel.
00:53:36.000If you go to Tel Aviv, which is a very secular area in Israel, everybody is still riding bicycles.
00:53:40.000Social fabric is really, really important.
00:56:06.000The streamer has imported six seasons of Naked Attraction, a game show that promises you start where a good date often ends, naked.
00:56:12.000In each episode, a single chooser critiques and eliminates six potential dates standing on stage by scrutinizing their fully nude bodies, which are gradually revealed one part at a time, faces revealed last.
00:56:21.000When only two potential dates remain, the chooser strips out of their own clothes too, giving the remaining two contestants the opportunity to critique them.
00:56:27.000The final couple then go out on a date with their clothes on.
00:57:25.000When that was the case, you had to fully appreciate the person sitting across the table from you as a fully-fledged human being with thoughts and values and ideas.
00:57:35.000Now, you get to the sex first, and everything else is kind of by the wayside.
00:57:39.000There's been this big argument going on online, this really weird argument that's been going on, including some sort of anti-feminist on the right, suggesting marriage is bad because no-fault divorce has led to most divorces being initiated by women, which means it's risky for men to get into a marriage.
00:57:52.000My answer to that is, not if you marry the right woman.
00:57:55.000And the way that you know that you're marrying the right woman, or at least have pretty good security, is if you date in the right way.
00:58:01.000Not all marriages are created equal in terms of their quality.
00:58:04.000And not all partners are created equal in terms of their quality.
00:58:07.000This is why it's very important when you are dating to not do the naked attraction version.
00:58:12.000The first date, get in the sack, see how it goes from there.