11/5/26: Trump Bends The Knee To Dems, Mississippi Goes Blue, JD Abandons Ship, Dems Warn Republicans To Lawyer Up

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So head over to BreakingPoints.com. You can sign up for the newsletter at the top for free today. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed we do. Yet another midterms-focused show. Of course, as the fallout continues, Trump is reacting, saying, actually, congratulations to the Democrats, and maybe I'm going to work together with them. We will see how long that spirit lasts. We've also got an update on all of the results coming in.

including some stunning numbers coming out of the state legislators across the country. And we've also got an update in Mississippi where it's looking increasingly likely the Democrats will be able to secure that seat. Absolutely insane words coming out of my mouth right now. We're also going to take a look at J.D. Vance, who put out a long post trying to separate himself from the electoral carnage. and set himself up better for 2028. We've got a guest on to do a deep dive into the corruption that ended up in an important backdrop in this entire election. Actually, voters said it was their number one issue going to the polls. So he's had his eye on that and is going to break down for us what happened there.

The GOP crashout continues. Laura Loomer is questioning whether God even exists. Alex Jones has become convinced that Trump is actually a Democrat.

Plant.

So, uh, a lot that's happening there. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis also positioning himself for potential 2028 run. And, you know, started his critique of the party actually before the polls had even closed. So that's an interesting one. And then Ro Khanna is going to join us to talk about what the Democrats should do now. Hakeem Jeffries has announced he is, in fact, running for speaker. What does Ro think about that? Does Ro want to run for speaker?

I know that's something a lot of people would be interested in. We will get to all of that and much more with him and should be a good one.

I'm excited to talk to him, especially at a time like this. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show, breakingpoints.com. We have so many people who have decided to join up for a free month trial. We're so, so happy to have you. If you missed that, you're now just learned about us in election season. You can sign up. Literally costs you nothing. And we'll have some more future contests. By the way, we're working on the fish contest. We'll be contacting some of the people. So premium subscribers, keep an eye on your emails in the coming days. But as Crystal said. Oh, and if you're watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Listening is a podcast, which a lot of you did yesterday. A lot of new people yesterday. So make sure you guys, you go ahead and share that with other people. And it really helps other people find the show. But as Crystal said, let's go ahead and start with Donald Trump. You would expect, actually, Crystal, I have the ignominious honor, I guess. I was the very first journalist to interview Donald Trump After the midterm elections of 2018, I got a call with very little notice from the White House.

They're like, hey, Trump wants to talk to somebody. And he went off with a lot of his thoughts. I was expecting he was very, very angry at the time. So this was several years ago. I was expecting something very similar, having experienced what it's like to see Trump after a midterm defeat. It was a little different this time around. Instead, he decided to hold a press conference at the ballroom, literally, and extolling how great of a construction project it was. Let's take a listen. So this is a special structure.

It's going to be not only one of the biggest, but It'll be the most beautiful ballroom, I think, anywhere in the world.

And they've been trying to get it for 150 years.

And we've beautified it. We've gotten rid of the homeless encampments where they took over all your parks. And we're in the process of redoing all of the grass, brand new grass, everything. And so it'll be graffiti. You see that building right over there? It had graffiti all over it.

It was a disgrace.

You could put as many helicopters as you want on the roof. It's a very powerful ceiling. It's drone-proof. It's missile-proof. It's bullet-proof. The sidewalls, the glass is bulletproof and drone-proof. There's no drone can pierce it. There's no bullet can pierce it, no matter how big. The glass, when you see it, you'll see it coming. It's starting to come now.

It's this thick, and yet it's perfect vision. It's hard to believe you can do that. So it's heavy bulletproof glass. It's also drone-proof and small missile, if you can believe it, small missile. So there has never been anything built like this and it's for the country and it's free.

You got it free of charge.

Thank you very much.

If you guys can believe it, we dramatically cut that down. It went on for 20 to 30 minutes. Many of my friends in the press corps were literally in disbelief. So to set the stage, the White House gives the call, press, everybody gather. Trump wants to talk. Everyone's like, oh my God, here we go. We get to ask Trump about the midterm.

They get ushered into the ballroom And are sitting there, Crystal, or I guess standing, watching Trump extol the virtues of the ballroom for almost half of an hour before he even takes a question on the midterms. And he signs some steel beam, which is then elevated. I mean, can you think of a greater monument to why this man suffered one of the most humiliating midterm losses in modern American history than that scene right there?

No, it's really quite perfect. Extolling the virtues of the very powerful roof of the gilded ballroom that he has spent his time constructing instead of tending to the needs of the American people as gas prices and price of groceries goes through the roof. It is absolutely incredible. And you know what it is giving to me, Sagar? Remember that NATO press conference that Biden did? Remember how the more he declined, the more that he could only talk about like NATO and AUKUS? This is like the equivalent thing for Trump. He just can't stop. Let's not forget that his closing message for the midterms was at the reflecting pool and was all about like algae removal and reflecting pool renovations. This is truly what occupies his mind.

This is what he's obsessed with. I mean, he just seems so defeated and done. It's a very different vibe than what we have seen from him in the past. So it's quite extraordinary. And it is, you know, you've got the symbolism of the ballroom as both a distraction and also as a symbol of the way that he has used the presidency to enrich himself and line his own pockets. Something we'll talk to Isaac Saul about later in the show. Instead of caring for the American people, getting us into a disastrous war that made life so much worse for literally everyone in the country. And now, even as he faces this absolute reckoning, instead of doing even one second of self-reflection, and this is very Trumpian

on brand, he just blames the Republicans. He says, oh, well, if I was on the ballot, it all would have been fine. So this is really on them, when obviously... This was all a referendum on him, on his failed, disastrous, chaotic presidency. But he doesn't I don't think that he really sees it that way. You know, even as the results were coming in, we're getting all these dispatches now.

I'm sure you've been reading them about like the funeral home type atmosphere in the room as they're watching these results. You know, I don't think it sets into him that this is really about him, that this is the final analysis of his legacy and his doing in the presidency. He just blames it all on the candidates themselves, not looking at the fact that this was a nationwide referendum in every single county in the entire country. We can show the blue map. I think we have it somewhere in this block that we can show the arrows shifting across Towards Democrats everywhere in the entire country. I mean, you are hard pressed to find a single red arrow on that map. And this indicates the shift towards Democrats

that occurred after people got a two years taste of what Republican dominant leadership looked like.

Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, that arrow, by the way, I mean, that map in 2024, you would have been hard pressed to find a blue arrow on that map. And yet this time, the blue arrows are even more striking than the red arrows were in the immediate aftermath of 2024. It also, to your point about Trump really scrambling here and taking a very muted, honestly, reaction. I can tell you, like I said, I was there in the Oval Office with him in 2018. I went back and I read the transcript of that interview. It was defiant.

It was, this had nothing to do with me. I'm going to fight them. You know, I'm not going to work with them at all. This time in the immediate aftermath, a political reporter gets him on the phone and he's like, yeah, maybe I will work with the Democrats. Here it is. This was literally midnight of right after the election. Let's take a listen. A2.

What did you learn, sir?

Curious what you learned. Well, we're going to work with the Democrats to Make sure things go well for our country.

Very important. They've already called and they want to work with me. I have the right to veto everything. But I don't want to be just.

Sitting there for two years vetoing everything.

They want to see things happen too.

I've already spoken to certain leaders of the Democrat Party. And we'll probably have a lot of friends of the Democrats also.

So again, very, very tired, honestly, slow response. I think your Biden analogy is perfect. The more Biden became addled and the worse the American people really felt about him, he just became obsessed with Ukraine and NATO and submarine deals with Australia. It was just ridiculous. To your more point about Trump himself, let's put A4. And I think this is where I really call back to the ballroom is, part of the reason I'm excited to talk to Isaac about it is you can see here this is a national exit sample of over 80,000 people. Government corruption was a 90 percent major crucial issue. Cost of living was 89 percent. So corruption was literally tied with cost of living and actually even beat the Iran war. at 74%.

Immigration was at 73%, and AI and data centers at 56%. When you put that together, this is kind of a meta-analysis and thing I've been thinking of. And even though it would be beneficial, I think, to my worldview to just say, guys, this was just the Iran War, you can't really look at this and tell me that it was just the Iran War. I was thinking about this.

I think the Iran War is the sole reason that South Carolina is Mississippi and Kansas went blue. However, the margin in Texas makes me wonder whether even without the Iran war that these people would have lost. I mean, before I had previously said I was relatively certain. that John Cornyn would have won the election. I do not believe that today. I would have said that before the midterms.

When you lose by 12 and every single statewide officeholder in the state goes Democrat, that is just empirically not true. The Democrat next to the name came to symbolize a rejection, not just of the Iran war, not just of cost of living, but really a lot of what was going on with Donald Trump. And let's not forget that Tallarico and many of the polls that were coming out even during the primary season in multiple head-to-head matchups, which happened before the Iran war, did not spell very good for Ken Paxton. And so now that we know that there was a polling miss in that direction, I think you can say that the Iran war is solely responsible for the blue tsunami. But a blue wave, and obviously, now

that we've seen the data out of Texas, out of Georgia, I mean, again, the story of the night to me is not necessarily Michigan, although that's kind of an inter-democratic party story. At the end of the day, Abdel shifts that by about 10 points. At the end of the day, we're talking about 25 point swings in Texas and in Georgia.

I mean, Derek Thompson noted this. You know, Democrats won Texas in the same march in the Kamala is carrying states like New Jersey.

All right.

Like that's the world that we lived in on Tuesday. And that is the modal kind of framework that we all need to be. living in right now and to say that, you know, polycrisis is just the best way to describe it. This is not just the Iran war. I would love it to be, but that's what took it from 53 to 56, let's say. But those 53 seats, I think that was a lock for a lot of different reasons. And I think a lot of us really have to think about that.

I think in Texas in particular, the ICE insanity was very important. Some of the biggest shifts in the entire country happened in the Rio Grande Valley. That was certainly a part of it. You know, that's what voters were saying. They were quite horrified by. You had the biggest shifts. Actually, let's put a nine up on the screen because this is a list of the biggest congressional upsets, like the seats that were the deepest red that flipped. You've got 17 seats here that were more than Trump plus 10.

So these are the Trump double-digit seats that all flipped. I mean, this is really astonishing. And they come from a broad swath of the country, but they're really concentrated in the South. North Carolina was a big central point in particular. But a lot of the biggest shifts happened in the Deep South, in places that had large Black populations, very upset over that Supreme Court decision, which I think was really undercovered. in the buildup to the election as a significant factor, that ends up being really important. So to your point, the Iran war is what takes it from a really, really, really bad situation to a historic, this has never happened in our lifetime, holy shit, every state in the entire country was on the table situation.

But there are so many other factors that went into this and just a complete overreading of the mandate, a misunderstanding of what the American people wanted to do, and a complete and utter refusal. I mean, a flagrant, in-your-face, brazen refusal from Trump to acknowledge reality or a just course. How many times did we have a quote for him where we're like, I can't believe you're saying this. I can't believe you're saying you don't care about the financial well-being of the American people. I can't believe you're out there saying like, well, it's tough for you that gas prices are high, but I'm making tons of money. The oil executives are making tons of money. This is the message that was coming out of the White House. So,

you know, it's a reminder that you kick people enough and even hardcore Republicans will say, OK, screw you. Guess what? I am voting straight Democrat, and I'm doing it with glee. And that's also why, Sagar, I think you pick up on how the D by the name became the symbol of resistance. It's not an affirmative embrace of the Democratic Party.

We're going to talk to Roe about this. There's a lot of work to do there, and they have an opportunity, but they have to do a lot more and operate a lot differently than they have in the past. But I do think that is the reason why actual Democrats outperformed the candidates who ran as independents the Dan Osbournes, the Todd Achilles of the world. who thought, oh, my state's too red to win as a Democrat. They should have run as Democrats. I think they would have done better.

I think Dan Osborne was one of the big underperformers of this election because people felt like he was not being straight with them about his political affiliation. And then right next door, you've got Adam Hamilton in Kansas, who's able to win and able to win quite easily, running affirmatively as a Democrat and standing on business. So I think that was one of the things that was surprising to me about this election.

Yeah, you're absolutely. Can we put a five on the screen? Excellent point here from Zachary Danini. Yesterday was a historic night for Democrats, even before accounting for Alaska and Mississippi, where Democrats are favored. They have already flipped more Senate seats in states that the president won by 10 points than all opposition parties combined over the last 40 years.

And that's why, look, I actually do think the word historic is massively overused by the news media. I'm sure I can even fall victim to it. But that's why you have to contextualize these things for people and show that this has really not happened since post Watergate. There are a lot of books behind me. Actually, I was thinking about it. Matt Stoller, his book on populism and on the Watergate babies, I highly recommend it because he has a very good history of what went wrong with the Democratic Party of that time. And it was a very similar circumstance, something I'm excited to talk to row about where they won these historic victories, but they didn't really have a leader and they didn't really know what

to do. And obviously that ends up culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the entire, you know, kind of realignment of American politics on the Reaganite axis. And so the big question is, you know, not just building a, not just having a victory, but building a majority and then a coalition that can govern for 20 years.

That is ultimately a project, a political project that any who does win should actually try to build. And ultimately, of course, that's where MAGA completely shit the bed. I also think we need to talk a lot about candidate quality as well, because this is something where, look, Kamala's loss, I'm sure many Democrats are very upset about. But you know what it did? It showed that the leaders truly didn't have a clue. And by doing that, I think in very similar circumstance to Donald Trump's election in or others, where when the establishment gets knocked off, very ordinary, random people, just like in the Tea Party wave, I mean, famously, you had pizza parlor owners and dry cleaners and other people who just showed up in Washington. That's kind of

what happened. And I'm not comparing them necessarily to political outsiders, but it inspired in a completely new type of thinking. I mean, when I see James Tallarico in his very first interview, as Senator-elect. He's on Fox News. He goes, yeah, I'll work with President Trump on the border, but I'm also going to have to work with him on building millions of new housing units and lowering the cost of housing.

It's a type of rhetoric and a positioning that I just frankly could not see, you know, considering what he said on the border. And he was like, he even said the words, I think that they did better than the previous administration. There's a political entrepreneurship and an opening and a space that I saw in Abdul El-Sayed, I see in Tallarico. And I also saw with Scott Cologne down in Mississippi, who looks very likely to win that race.

I hadn't seen this video until you guys flagged it of him speaking to Trump supporters, actually, and kind of trying to find common ground with them. So let's take a listen. This is A6. Thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Absolutely. What matters to you as a veteran right now?

Second Amendment rights.

I'm big on that. if you're on the.

Ai from mississippi indiana indiana let me ask y'all what matters to y'all as voters what are your top issues gas prices how do you feel about the one i read get out of it get out of it we don't need to be there it's not our problem let me ask you what do you think about the terrorists are you a fan or not not really how do you feel about flock cameras i'm not a fan of them because i worry about privacy what's your top issues uh mostly just uh Prices of everything. Prices, yeah. Gas price, yeah.

And economy.

Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm running on. Yeah, absolutely. Have you taken any money from APAC? Absolutely not.

You might be asking matters to you as a voter right now? Honestly, well, honesty.

Honesty, gas prices, cost of living. And you can see, you know, no way pack. I mean, he's meeting these guys as equal. You know, the reason I love that video is that that is actually what American politics is supposed to be about, is you just go up to people literally who are supporting Donald Trump. But and you go and you go, hey, man, do we have anything in common here? Anything you can do or say to get your vote? And I was not a believer in this.

I did. I did not believe for a single second that this would work. I just thought that we lived in too far too polarized a country. And clearly I was so dramatically wrong. I mean, that's coming through the South.

That video is very Zoran coded. You know, remember after Trump won and Zoran's just out on the street corner back when nobody knew who he was except us. We had him on breaking points talking to Trump voters saying, hey, you know, what do you think? What are the top issues? And he says that he really used that feedback from voters to inform his campaign platform, which obviously ended up being wildly successful. So successful that. that his central message of affordability and standing up to the billionaires, you can hear it from Scott Colombe in Mississippi, James Tallarico in Texas, Josh Turek in Iowa, Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan. And I think that's the other thing with the Democratic Party piece

of this saga is that there was really a central message around affordability and pushback against the oligarchs. And then there was really an allowance for candidates to moderate on social and cultural issues. That's the recipe for the party that I have long been pushing for, where it is a big tent, but where the litmus tests are around economic issues. And there is some ability, some flexibility to moderate around cultural issues. You heard him there say, oh, I'm big on the Second Amendment. Did you hear anyone complain about, oh, how could you?

How dare you?

No, they're like, it's Mississippi.

Good.

You're winning. That's great. Now come to Washington and let's fuck up these billionaires. So now they've all won. They're coming to D.C. We'll see if they can hang together with an actually unifying message. But I think it's a possibility because whether you were winning in a state like South Carolina, Annie Andrews, Mississippi, Scott Colombe or Abdul or Troy Jackson, actually, when you listen to them, a lot of the central rhetoric is. And the focus is very, very similar. So that's where the opportunity lies. Last one I want to play from Scott Colombe here because this ad, I think, is talk about history. I think this will be remembered as historic and as really hitting the nail on the head and being very catchy and clever of

a way for him to oppose Trump. the Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. She made this comment about like, oh, if you're struggling to afford beef, just there's lots of proteins out there. Just pick a different one. And he took that and ran with it. This is A7. Gone price of beef continuing to go up. You know, you have so many proteins to choose from.

Pick another protein?

Shit, I'd rather pick another senator instead. Pick another protein?

She done lost her damn mind. I'd rather pick another senator. pick another protein. What the?

Pick another cylinder instead. It's so good.

I mean, it's short. It's so memorable. It's almost like catchy, like it just sticks in your head. And then you've got these sort of typical looking Mississippi residents who are delivering the line. It's extraordinary. And, you know, I think Cindy Hyde-Smith was a poor candidate, took the race for granted.

She's like, I'm running in Mississippi. Of course, I don't have to worry about this. And now it looks like they are going to pick another senator.

Yep, that's right. All right, let's get to J.D. Turning now to J.D. Vance, the vice president, with his first reaction yet to the midterm drubbing that the elections took. Let's put B1 up here on the screen. So I'm going to read a lot of this in full. There's a lot going on here. One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was composition, whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win.

Despite polls that showed a Democratic blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story. In some states, turnout was merely okay. In others, it was amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism for our team. Our people were showing up. So then I asked the smartest data guy I know, Does that mean we're going to shock the world? No.

He says we might do better than the poll suggests, but the data is telling us that a lot of Trump vance voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us. That looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up in Florida. The electorate was nine points more Republican than Democrat. A couple points worse in 2024. Undoubtedly, there were places we could have done better, but the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump bans in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what has happened and why that is.

He talks a little bit about a pollster, and here then he lists the top four answers accounting for all of the responses. This is from Trump voters who who voted for Democrats, was end the war, focus on cost of living and inflation, put America first, and change our relationship to Israel. Our voters showed up. The above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. And then here it is, the most damning line, quote, the reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years is worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, at least be honest. But everyone knows why we lost, and any

honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. And Crystal, that was beyond a doubt the most searing kind of reaction yet from the White House. It is also a very obvious 2028 setup to try and distance himself there. from the Iran war. Donald Trump Jr. chimed in, quote, every word of this 100, obviously also trying to boost the vice president in his chances. The big question mark is, I mean, it's one thing for an outside observer, someone like me, I can be like, yeah, it was the war.

It's kind of another whenever you're in the situation room and you're actively making decisions and having defended the war I mean, don't forget, this is the same man in the cabinet room who said that the Iran war was kind of like having a man wearing a suicide vest and you can't wait for the suicide vest to go off. Literally, like they said with Iraq that literally J.D. said that I will never forget it. Let's also not forget that in the months leading up to the election, he even said, quote, I wouldn't call it a war whenever it came to the Iran war and has consistently defended the president himself.

on Iran as well. And yet now, this is kind of an intra-GOP neocon factional fight, which we'll get to. And obviously, of course, we hate the neocons. But this is just a very difficult political position for him. And, you know, our interview with Isaac we're about to do, which is, for you, you're about to see it, but we already recorded it. He made a good point where he's like, you know, corruption, which was number one in the exit polls, is entirely missing From that analysis. And don't forget, J.D. had to give that interview with Mark Halperin where he said, didn't he say, quote, like, I have not seen a single instance involving the president.

Not a shred of evidence, something like that.

Yeah.

How can you run in twenty twenty eight? and say those types of words, right? Yeah.

I mean, it's ridiculous. Yeah. And look, here's the thing. There's a lot of games being played right now. There are new leaks to the Wall Street Journal about how, oh, he really has opposed the Iran war, blah, blah, blah, obviously coming from his camp. There have been an endless number of these stories. It's notable to me, J.D. Vance and Don Jr., they're both Tucker Carlson friends. And Tucker put out this post earlier this week worried about Trump dropping a nuclear weapon and also framing J.D. as the one brave anti-war voice within the administration. I'm sorry. You are part of this administration. You are not going to be able to run in 2028 and pretend like you had nothing to do with this and you were just

some innocent outside observer. It's not going to work. It's not going to work on the Iran war. It's not going to work on the ICE brutality. It's not going to work on cost of living. It's not going to work on corruption. It's not going to work on any of this because you are integral. You are sent off out often to make the case and defend the indefensible in the eyes of the American people. So while you can see very nakedly what is happening here, where he's trying to establish himself as, oh, I was the one sounding the alarm and I was the one trying to be different. It would have been so much worse if I wasn't in the room. Do we really think that when it comes to it in twenty twenty eight that

voters are going to buy that this guy is totally separate and distinct and just an innocent bystander to the horrors of the Trump administration? Absolutely not.

Yeah, I mean, I just think that's kind of by the way, I forgot there was another interesting line in that about enforcement. Let me find that on immigration. He said, here it is. I am will I'm open to the idea we should change enforcement by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor. But everyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. I mean, that is another kind of tacit admission that a lot of the ICE stuff, which again, he defended and was kind of the front face for, where he's like, oh, well, you know, I'm open to the idea of doing what, by the way, I've said that they should have done from the first place. Not that anyone listens to me. But let's also then take a look here at B3 of Trump reacting to J.D.

's statement. But here it is.

Vice President wrote a very lengthy post about how the war impacted the results last night.

Did you know he was going to do that? I knew he was, I know how he feels about it.

I think it was fine.

I thought it was good. We knew that. I knew that when I went in.

And we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon and they.

Will never have a nuclear weapon. So he says, you know, J.D. statement, I thought it was good, but we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon. Also, you know, look, we haven't even covered what's happening yet with Iran. Literally today on the same day that J.D. is saying in the postmortem, oh, you know, it was the Iran war. Scott Besson is continuing economic D-Day and sanctions. Uh, You know, massive amounts of new Treasury shanks were put on Iran. The blockade remains in place. And by the way, Wall Street Journal put out a story that over the last three weeks that the United States has been secretly bombing Iran behind the scenes. And the reason why they didn't make it public is because they thought it would damage the Republicans'

chances in the midterms, in case you're wondering how that all worked. You know, what I also think is kind of fascinating, though, is the and this really J.D. 's post was not just for the American people. I would say primarily it was an intra GOP fight, because let me give you some examples. Put B5 up here on the screen. Here's Joel Pollack, former, I think, Breitbart guy, if I recall, a big, big time neocon. In reaction to J.D. 's saying what he did, he says, I'd like to personally apologize personally to the Jewish community. community for defending his J.D. Vance on Israel. This is weak.

As a political matter, pro-Israel Republicans were a core part of the MAGA coalition that brought Vance to office. He is repaying that debt by scapegoating Israel. Ugly. Let's go to the next one. John Podhoretz of Commentary. Here he says, what does he say? It was, and I mean, his memorandum of understanding that caused the halt in the war, that is. As in, we should have gone and harder against Iran And that's the reason why all of this happened, because we didn't finish the job. Real Iran war has never been tried is basically the line.

And that's the message coming out of a lot of these guys. And then you also have like Mark Thiessen talking about how Trump was so brave because he did the right thing on Iran, even though he knew he'd pay a political price, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's just incredible. To see because five seconds ago, of course, these guys were like, oh, no, the Iran war is going to be popular. This election is not going to be about the Iran war. Don't worry about it. So, yeah, their new line is that actually the problem was the brief memo of understanding that, you know, brought some hope that the war might actually end before it, you know, instantly and completely crumbled because Trump couldn't hold the L.

And what the pollsters and the analysts are saying from within the Trump camp and linking to the New York Times and other places that all are out with their postmortems is that the moment that you had any relief in gas prices, the moment you had that memo of understanding signed, you saw Republican fortunes recover at least somewhat.

You know, the bottom was being lifted back into the boat when you had those things going on. So, I mean, it's just the most ridiculous cope. That you've ever seen. I do want to say one other thing about J.D. Here's the other problem for him is Trump, I hate the guy. I hate him. I think he's evil. I think he's monstrous. I think he's been a disaster for the country and the world. Part of what people have liked about him and made him such an effective political player is that he did have this sense of he's his own guy. He's saying the shit he really thinks.

It's this bizarre thing where he both can be lying, but also you get the sense like, no, this is really who he is. And he's letting it all out there. J.D. Vance, like he was the never Trump guy when he thought that was the thing. And Trump might be America's Hitler. And then he changes his stripes because he sees the writing on the wall for where the MAGA coalition is going and how central Trump is and sucks up to him and gets the endorsement and gets into the Senate.

And then he's the bulldog in the administration, you know, cheering on the ICE abuses and the being sent out in interviews to defend the, you know, insane things that are going on. And now he's trying to shift. Oh, well, no, no, I don't really agree with this. This isn't the direction I would go in. And I've always been the anti-war voice and the one who wanted us to moderate on these different issues within the administration. Like people just aren't going to buy J.D. Vance 5.0 that we're on it, that we're on it this time. You know, I think that's one of the big issues for him. And so he's trying to shape shift once again, and it's not going to work. He's going to have to own everything that was done under the Trump-Vance administration, whether he wants

to or not. And so, yes, it's going to be an impossible landscape for him. It's going to be an impossible landscape for any Republican. And Sagar, you laid this out better than anyone that you're going to have this kind of damned if you do, damned if you want. Trump is going to continue to be this completely toxic, unpopular figure. And he's also going to continue to hold tons of power and have a significant hold within the Republican Party. And that's going to be the tripwire for Vance and Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis and whoever else wants to make a go of it next time around.

Yeah, I mean, I really, I don't know. I mean, I was there for some of that. I can tell you, I thought it was sincere. A lot of his never Trump to where he became kind of in 2022. But I think what gives a lot of people pause is especially a lot of this stuff with the war where you, yeah, I mean, by the way, it is true that he did push diplomacy. It is true that he spoke out in the Situation Room. But how much does that matter whenever you're also in public telling the American people something different?

And if anything, maybe it makes it worse, right? Because there's an element of political showmanship, which a lot of people can accept. However, I think it's very difficult to say, I stood against the war privately, but I defended it publicly. And that just, I mean, that doesn't hit. And that's part of the reason why I don't think anybody who is connected to this administration in any way could win the presidency in 2028 after what happened. Now, given, by the way, I could be dead wrong considering how two years after Trump wins a popular vote, Democrats just won Senate seat in Mississippi. So evidence that nothing is static in America and that literally people change their minds all the time and will even vote for another party if

things get battered. So if you put it all together, I think you can just say the 2028 primary has truly begun. Here is J.D. Vance's opening pitch in the midst of a disastrous midterm. Later on in the show, first we're going to talk about corruption, and then we're going to talk about how Ron DeSantis is positioning himself and some other delicious meltdowns that we see.

So in addition to the cost of living crisis and the Iran war and the ICE insanity, one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest issue, top of mind for voters in this election was the mass amount of corruption in your face brazenly from this administration all the way up to the president every single day. Isaac Saul, founder of Tangle News, has sacrificed his mind and body to cover every detail of the Trump adjacent and Trump direct corruption for Tangle News. Actually, let's go ahead and put his article as the third element in this block, guys, up on the screen. The headline here is the corruption is still the story. This was from just shortly before Election Day. You say I spent five months tracking every

Trump corruption story. Here's what I found. And Isaac Saul joins us now.

Welcome. Great to have you. Thanks for having me. Always glad to be here.

Yeah, of course. So let's put these polling numbers up on the screen here. You know, when voters were asked what their top issues were in this election and how crucial they were to their vote, government corruption came in at 90% as being crucial or major as a factor informing their vote. Why do you think that this broke through in this way? Because I can tell you, you know, as people who try to cover the ins and outs of this administration every single day, Sometimes it was hard to keep track because there was so much going on in the land of corruption. And sometimes it felt like maybe voters aren't even going to really care about this.

Maybe this isn't sinking in. But it ended up being quite the contrary here, Isaac.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, first of all, it's worth noting we got some signals about this before the election. I mean, I in that piece that you guys had up on the screen, I cited a Fox News poll showing that government corruption was the number one most potent issue ever. for the American public. It was the thing that they were saying they were more concerned about than any other issue when asked by Fox News pollsters, which I thought was remarkable going into the election, given how little coverage it's gotten in terms of the threat to the GOP Senate majority and the Trump administration power. And as you said, now we have these exit polls, 80,000 Americans, 90% of them saying government corruption had something to do with

their vote. I mean, it's very clearly hitting home for people. And I think there's two things. One, it's the brazenness, like you said. I mean, Trump had more stock trades in a single day before announcing his tariffs than Nancy Pelosi had in the last 15 years she was in Congress.

Like, it is crazy. It is like.

compared to the stuff that we worried about two years ago, the Pelosi, you know, stock trading trackers, the Hunter Biden paintings or deal with Burisma or whatever, we have the Trump children getting deals with the Pentagon through companies that they're invested in now. I mean, we've never really seen anything like this. So I think the brazenness. And then two is just the cost of living stuff, I honestly think is tied to it. Like, It hits a little differently when you're struggling and you're reading stories about the president's net worth quadrupling in two years. That story, you know, if you're making a bunch of money hand over fist and you're having an easy time getting a job and your salary is going up and your wages are outpacing inflation,

maybe seeing some administration officials getting wealthy too doesn't piss you off quite as much. But I think in this environment, it's particularly salient.

Oh, obviously. I mean, we've learned that from many authoritarian regimes over the years. If everybody else is doing fine, you can pilfer the state. But when we start needing some bread and you're eating, you know, like 10 course dinners like Herbert Hoover did in the White House, it's a little bit differently. Let's put C2 up here on the screen. This is from the incoming oversight chairman, Robert Garcia.

He says, lawyer up. That is his one Statement, he says, following his win, he will become the chairman. He has vowed to take on the Trump crime family. I love that. Biden crime family is now the Trump crime family. Corporate corruption, DHS and ICE abuses, the cover up of the Epstein files. Lawyer up was his. single message. So because you have looked systematically at all of these, which do you think are the top targets for the Democrats? And which do you think will be some of the most, you know, rife for investigation and potential criminal charges?

Yeah, look, I mean, I think the there's some sacrificial lambs who I suspect we're going to see before Congress pretty soon. People like Kristi Noem or Kimberly Guilfoyle who have already been kind of forced out of the administration. And we have reporting from places like the Wall Street Journal and even Fox News that's just basically rock solid on what they're doing. I mean, text messages obtained where they're asking people to eliminate paper trails and send them $ 100, 000 so they can help them shed an IRS investigation.

I mean, it's about as clear cut as it gets. So I suspect Democrats will want to put those people before the American public. ASAP and really hammer that home. But I think there's going to be a lot of questions for folks like Jared Kushner, who, you know, isn't doing something that we necessarily right now can pin down with hard paper trail evidence. But everything he's doing has the kind of appearance of corruption. You foreign wars and settlements in foreign wars with countries while he's also negotiating investments in his firms with those same countries across the Middle East. And I think Kushner will be a particularly helpful face for this for Democrats because the Iran war is so unpopular and The cost of living is such

a big issue right now. And a lot of people peg that to gas prices, which people know and understand the Iran war is in part responsible for. So bringing someone forward like him to ask him questions about, you know, why does somebody from the Saudi Arabian government have this massive stake in this investment company that you have? And how are you navigating that stake while you're negotiating an end to a war that the Saudis want to continue?

I mean, that's going to show up, I think, on people's televisions and it's going to land for a lot of Americans. So I suspect that'll be the direction we see Democrats go. And then, you know, we're already hearing rumors of Pete Hegseth getting impeached. So I think he's the kind of guy who they're going to want to drag before the American public, too.

Isaac, how about Elon? No one has thrown in as hard with the Trump administration as Elon Musk. In this election, he basically set half a billion dollars on fire in backing candidates that almost across the board all ended up losing. Of course, he was given this extraordinary opportunity. a perch to take over vast swaths of the federal government in the early days of the Trump administration. There's still been very little accounting of what was done during that time period.

You know, do you think that's someone that the Democrats are likely to want to look into?

Yeah, definitely.

And I mean, God, nobody's had a worse week than that guy. I mean, spending that amount of money to watch statewide races in Texas basically get swept. I suspect that the Doge stuff will be the center. You know, I know I spend a lot of time on Twitter like the rest of us and social media, and I know a lot of people have given a lot of attention to what happened with Starlink and turning off the power, the service for Ukrainian soldiers. And there's been a lot of questions about Elon's role in thumbing the scale for Republicans in the election through social media algorithms and all this stuff. The Doge stuff is where it's going to go because Democrats. whatever you think of them, they care about the government functioning and they at least attempt to

pursue good governance. And they obviously often want big government. And they have seen their employees across federal agencies get furloughed, get fired by these 22-year-old tech programmers who didn't know anything about government and swooped in. And that was only a year or two ago. Some of those people still don't have jobs. They haven't forgotten. And they have direct lines to Democratic offices. and people on committees in Congress who have the power now to subpoena somebody like Elon Musk. So, you know, Doge was a total shit show and a lot of things went wrong and they did not actually save us much money. And I think there's a lot of people who are still really pissed off about that, even if the American public has moved on. So, yeah,

I suspect Elon will at least get subpoenaed. The question is what he does, A, and B, you know, you got to be a little careful if you're the Democrats. We've seen them overreach before. We've seen them you know, open the door for Trump to victimize himself and, and play the, I'm a victim game. And I'm being persecuted game.

And in some cases he had a really good point. So somebody like Elon still has a lot of purchase with the American public. And he has this image as a capitalist businessman. He's creating all these jobs. He's got Tesla. He's got Starlink. They just have to tread carefully. And if they want to bring him before Congress, I think they better have the goods basically is, is my advice.

I will disagree with that, even as I see your point, Isaac. I think part of the centrality, one of the key messages in this election was a class war message, was a pushback on the tech oligarch billionaires. And he's literally the richest man on the planet. So I think one of the things people want to see is for someone like Elon Musk and the other AI oligarchs to be subpoenaed and dragged before Congress and held to account. I actually think that is part of and you can see it in the numbers around, you know, data centers and that also being an important part of the pushback here.

Trump surrounded himself with these guys and handed over important parts of economic policy to them. And so, yeah, I think I think actually if you're focusing on real issues, this is exactly the sort of thing that the American public wants to see.

Yeah, I mean, one interesting element of this election, if you really take a step back, you watch candidates like Gina Hinojosa winning in Texas or even James Tallarico, Amy Acton in Ohio. If you go listen to the way those politicians are talking, they sound a lot like Trump did in 2016 or 2018.

They sound like Bernie.

That's who they sound like. They sound like Bernie in 2016.

Yeah.

They are winning on an affordability, you know, populist message. And it's one that Trump used to be able to speak the language of. And it's definitely one that Bernie has always spoken the language of. And I agree. I mean, I think that that is an advantage for Democrats. I just think the risk is you drag him before Congress.

He has a huge megaphone through X. He has a lot on his side in terms of the jobs he creates and the company he's running and the capital he adds to the United States. And, you know, he's got a lot of resources, so he's going to be able to fight back. And I think they just need to have a coherent and consistent and simple message if they want to win that from a purely political perspective. And, you know, Elon is no pushover. He's he's not going to just come before them and bend the knee and they need to be ready for that.

I think I see what you're saying, Isaac, which is that don't do it on petty stuff. It's like you have to have the goods. I agree with you. But I do– I side more with Crystal here just based on I think people are really going to want to see this be done. And I mean the point I assume you're trying to make is you can't do– who was that idiot who confused the restaurant or something? He like said– Eric Schmidt. Is that right? Like he confused a NBA team, uh, that some prosecutor had with the Hawkeyes. Yeah. Yeah.

We just can't be seeing that, I guess is more, uh, the point that I think you're trying to make. Um, all right, Isaac, uh, any other big corruption stories that you detailed that you think, will be very eye-opening or that you would tug on more that perhaps people are not aware of?

Well, look, Sagar, this one you'll appreciate. There's a lot of people who have been clearly making a lot of money on these platforms like Polymarket and CalSheet with huge bets and huge movement right before these big announcements from the Trump administration. And, you know, those I think it's a jump ball on where the American public is going to go on the question of these gambling websites and apps.

And I think Democrats have a really clear, obvious message that these platforms are not just the kind of places where middle-class Americans are going to ruin their lives and destroy their finances, but also the kind of places that politicians and people with power are going to make a buck off the American public. And they could do something about that. I mean, there are a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of really, really weird big whales coming in two minutes before tariffs are off and then on again, or the war in Iran's over and then on again or whatever else. And I'd like to know some answers about what happened and who's making those bets behind the scenes. And Congress has the power to subpoena

those companies or subpoena Trump administration officials and ask those questions. And I think they should.

Agreed. Totally agree. All right, Isaac, thanks for your time, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me, guys.

Thanks, Isaac.

11/5/26: Trump Bends The Knee To Dems, Mississippi Goes Blue, JD Abandons Ship, Dems Warn Republicans To Lawyer Up

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