9/30/26: Dems Surge Ahead Of Midterms, MAGA Abandons Trump, Jack Smith Chaotic Testimony

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Well, Donald Trump was asked yesterday after the big AI meeting we covered earlier in the show if he thinks all this data center support, bear-hugging, will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections.

Here's how he replied.

Mr. President, are you concerned at all that your continued support of data centers could hurt Republicans in the midterms?

I just have to do what's right. All I can tell you is that these big, powerful, very rich, very smart companies are going to be making massive contributions to communities. individual people within the community. And it's going to be really partnership. We talked about it. They're going to be forming partnerships with communities. They're going to have they're going to take something that people don't understand and they're going to let them understand it. But they're going to form partnerships within the communities. That's going to be so good.

For the people.

Okay. Well, meanwhile, it's looking bleak, obviously. We've covered that many times here in the midterm. Maybe that's why it's looking bleak. I don't know. Actually, I sat down for, well, I didn't sit down. It was over the phone.

But I sat down, at least metaphorically, with Dan Osborne for a profile in Unheard that ran yesterday. And one of the interesting things he told me is that He thinks things are changing in rural Nebraska, particularly related to any ag-adjacent communities that are really, really upset about the Argentinian beef imports. And obviously that's just part of the cauldron of things that's making people.

Annoyed with all of this.

But Trump seems to be picking up on exactly what Osborne is picking up on because he's heading to Nebraska. Nebraska, we're talking about practice? No, we're talking about Nebraska in late September.

It's almost October.

The tear sheet we can put up from the Omaha World-Herald is Trump coming to Nebraska next week to rally Republicans for Pete Ricketts. I believe Trump won Nebraska in 2024 by some 20 points, something like that. So this is absolutely devastating for Republicans that you have to be competing in Nebraska against an independent candidate who, by the way, as Osborne pointed out to me in our conversation, has a there's a massive fundraising discrepancy between him and John Ossoff.

Like he's not getting Ossoff levels of money. He's not getting Tallarico levels of money because he's running as and independent. And yes, Ossoff voted for the Lake and Riley Act, as Julian over at Dropsite got him to comment on recently. So Tallarico's obviously tried to walk back some of his cultural positions. They're not like Bernie Sanders, obviously. But at the same time, Osborne's saying, I'm out here not running as a Democrat, and I'm not getting the money that Democrats would get. And even then, the president is having to go to Nebraska, Ryan.

Yeah, polls show that Osborne remains independent. either competitive or ahead of Pete Ricketts. And Trump is going to a very Trump-friendly part of Nebraska. But as you saw, the article ran in the Omaha World-Herald, the whole state's going to know that he's there. You can't just sneak in the super red part of Nebraska and nobody else know.

And it shows... That Osborne's argument that Ricketts is tied at the hip to Trump remains true, that Ricketts is unable to run away from that. I wanted to get your quick take on Osborne after talking to him. And you've talked to a bunch on this show as well. But I like the kind of opening anecdote from Emily's piece she writes about. She asked him about gender identity and Title IX and how it applies to universities. And he's like, what on earth are you talking about?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

So, yeah, what what how do you feel like he kind of meets the kind of cultural moment politically?

That moment I thought was interesting from a cultural perspective, but also really from a media perspective in that, you know, better than I do. It was a pretty basic question about if you're a senator, would you vote to confirm an education secretary that rolled back all of the Trump rollbacks of the Obama era?

Dear colleague letter that said, you know.

Already you've lost like 99% of people.

But we all here know the story, right?

Only because I've been on this show do I know. But it is.

So the education department under Obama, a lot of the bathroom and locker room stuff came because they changed it with a dear colleague letter. And so every time there's an education secretary confirmation over the last 10 years, it's a big question as to whether they say that Title IX, when it says on the basis of sex in Title IX, does it mean sex or does it mean sex plus gender identity? Do you have to read gender identity into sex in Title IX, and that's always a huge thing with education secretary confirmations.

And he just flat out was like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

And I think it's interesting from a media perspective, because again, you and I both know candidates used to be trained to the point where you would never, ever respond.

To a question like that.

They had like the little fact sheets that they'd memorized and they were on a script. And even if they were not aware of like the answer to a question, they would never say like, what the hell are you talking about?

Especially on something like that.

And he then pivoted to saying, I don't really like, that's not what I think most people care about in my state. He was like, I think he said, it doesn't sound like something I would support. He said, on the other hand, we have all of these people who can't pass basic math tests for plumbing apprenticeships in Omaha.

I think it was what he was talking about. And he was like, the quality of education is what's important to me. I don't think I would support that, but I also feel like we have a massive quality problem that we should be focusing on more. So I even think from a media perspective, You can see how he's just a totally different breed of candidate that we're much more likely to have, I think, be common over the next 10 years. And it's kind of refreshing, to be honest, that he didn't pretend to know the answer and that he wasn't reading off of a script.

He just kind of said what he thought.

And meanwhile, CNN's Manu Raju caught up with his opponent, Pete Ricketts, whose dad founded Ameritrade, and asked him about his... support for the Iran war and what it's doing to people back in Nebraska. Osborne kind of mocked his answers here. We can roll some of that.

Is it time for the president to bring the Iran war to an end? A country that chants death to America cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. What about all the impact on your constituents, higher gas prices.

And all the rest?

There is no doubt that higher gas prices and higher diesel prices are having a big impact on Nebraska families. It's bringing a squeeze on everybody's budget. Certainly our farmers and ranchers are feeling it. A country that chanced death to America cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

So, Emily, I think Pete Ricketts is going to need to do a little bit better than that. Like the rest of the Republican Senate class or the wannabe Senate class like Ashley Hinson in Iowa, Mike Rogers in Michigan, they're all making noises about how the war needs to come to an immediate end. Whereas Ricketts seems a little bit more comfortable than you'd expect from somebody facing such a formidable challenge and such intense headwinds.

Have you noticed– so he also has the companion bill to the House bill that bans stock trades from congressional members.

The Ameritrade guy.

Yeah, the Ameritrade guy, which is hilarious because he's the Ameritrade guy.

But from the Nebraska Examiner here, they report his proposal would ban stock purchases by representatives and senators, spouses, and dependent children while the member is in office and requires 7 to 14 days notice before a stock sale. But, and it creates a financial penalty, quote, tied to any transaction that violates the law, fining the member $ 2, 000 or 10% of the stock transaction's value, whichever is greater, as well as any.

Profit from the sale.

It's not the strongest bill because I think it allows you to keep things in a blind trust, quote unquote blind trust, which is not always the best arrangement. I mean, it's a bare minimum, but It looks like Dems are going to block that. It passed in the House, and it looks like Dems are going to block it today.

It looks like it's their last day. It's going to be their last day in the Senate before the midterms in all likelihood, and they're probably going to block that along with Husted's data center bill, which both are weaker bills than they should be, but that's the nature of the Senate. And so it's interesting because you have these Republicans who are catching up and realizing that maybe being the Ameritrade guy isn't great in a re-election year in an economy like this.

And it's not even– what are you going to do?

There's nothing you can do if you're Pete Ricketts to shift.

Away now on Iran.

Probably something he could do because he's not the former general of the military or anything like that. He probably could do a Mike Rogers on that.

He could try. He could try. He could try.

And so you see a willingness to try on one populist thing but not on another thing.

To me that just says– Probably loves the war. I don't know. That's my guess. My wild guess.

He seems to actually like it. Meanwhile, there was a poll that really shook up Washington yesterday that came out. We put up D7s from the firm Angus Reid, which a couple of months ago, Republicans were pointing to the fact that Democrats were only favored in the generic ballot by two or three points. This poll has them favored by 16 points. Maybe it's an outlier. Maybe directionally, this is where the headwinds are blowing everything. 16 points is unprecedented.

16 points is Angie Nixon is a senator.

Yeah.

For life. Because also she's dope. So if she wins, she's winning re-election too. Senator for life. Or president. Or maybe she's president. She can win Florida.

So if.

If they're catching this accurately... Now, they're also finding that people who voted for Trump in 2024 are telling pollsters that they did not, which is a very common... Actually, I'm not just making fun of Trump people here. It's fairly common that when you vote for somebody and then they suck, when you're asked about that a couple years later and you believe they suck, significant numbers of people will say they did not vote.

Yeah.

There's also a winner thing. Like, people will... It's less now in a polarized environment, but people, pollsters would have a real problem because people would say they voted for the winner. And they would have all these polls and be like, this is impossible. Because the person won by two points, yet our polls all find that they won by seven. Because some people just like to be with a winner and they don't like to be with a loser.

Right.

You know who would do that?

Donald Trump.

Donald Trump absolutely would do that. I didn't vote for myself. And so what that does is it might actually mess up the weighting of the polls a little bit and kind of overweight Trump support in a sense, because you're looking for, you want to match people who voted for Harris and people who voted for Trump and get them in the right balance. But if people are lying to you and saying they voted for Harris, but they actually voted for Trump, you're going to wind up with a lot more Trump supporters in your poll, which actually should make the poll more favorable to Republicans. So there's an argument that in some ways, these numbers are even undercounting how bad things are.

Well, let's stick on this point.

And in just one second, we can move to the econ block because there have been a ton of people who are openly identifying as Trump voters calling into that. I say a ton, but a handful every day of people who are openly identifying as Trump voters calling into the Sirius XM show that I do. But before we go to that, I do just want to say, RealCripHolics has this cool tool where they have bar graphs for generic congressional ballot, as we were just looking at their average of the congressional, the generic ballot in the last, since 2010, basically. And if you look at this day, in 2010, 2014, 2022, and 2018, 2026. Right now, RCP has Dems at an 8.4 lead. So that's the highest for Democrats in modern history. It is similar to where

they were in 2018, but it's actually a point higher. So not insignificant at all when you're doing averages of the generic ballot.

And on top of that, what.

It actually looks like is it's right around the same place. Republicans had about that same lead In 2010, when they took 63 seats, 63 seats, nobody is prepared for Democrats to do that kind of damage. And if they do right now, that means they would be eating into the safe Republican seats.

If you look at the Cook Political Report.

And you do that math, what that does, I mean, if you give them all the toss ups, likelies and liens and add in a couple safes. I think what they're probably looking at is a 15 vote margin overall. But if you start saying that this is like 2010 territory because they have a similar generic ballot lead, nobody's prepared for what the House.

Looks like after that.

We have a lot of homework to do between now and election night because we don't want to be constantly being like, wait, who? Who just lost? We didn't even know this race was like on the map. We don't want to look dumb in front of you guys. We have a lot of respect for you guys. You're doing the month three and then you're going to forget and start paying. So we're going to do our homework. We're going to try to find all the races that might surprise you. They shouldn't surprise us. We're the pros at this.

We're still going to be surprised on election night by some Republicans who lose and some Democrats who win. Meanwhile, Trump... The only.

Person who seems to be right now... fighting that trend is Michelle Tafoya. It's very interesting in Minnesota, a very tight race in Minnesota. Now, again, what we're hearing behind closed doors is Republicans believe if you're in a close race, you're losing.

Even if you're winning that little bit, you're losing.

So it would be very surprising if Michelle Tafoya won that, but she's not been bear-hugging Trump by any means whatsoever. And so Susan Collins, Michelle Tafoya, it looks like Susan Collins is, if the weighting in the last, in recent polling in her races is with the Sarah Gideon one in particular as any example, she might be doing okay.

But if it's the opposite and that we're totally missing the picture, that's another story.

We have news on that front. Bernie Sanders has a pretty significant fund of cash and he's dipping into it to back Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Keith Ellison also in Minnesota, and Angie Nixon in Florida. We'll see how substantially he spends, but it is interesting that he feels that it is important to spend for Flanagan, um, and, uh, and also, also Ellison. Um, meanwhile, Trump is using your money to run a bunch more ads and put up D8. Uh, Axios is reporting that, that Trump's use of taxpayer funded advertising, completely illegal. Like you cannot run campaign ads with taxpayer money.

It's completely insane. Uh, it's about to ramp up now. My guess is that these ads make people are a net negative for Trump. Like, I feel like apparently Trump is handpicking these. I feel like Trump has lost his touch. I feel like people are so mad when they see that paid for by the U.S. government following just obvious Trump propaganda slop.

Mm-hmm.

And they're going to hear about it, too. We're going to talk about it on the news. Other people are going to talk about it on their programs. So they're going to know that while you're suffering, Trump is spending your money to run propaganda ads on his behalf. And that's going to make people even angrier.

And the propaganda ads about how he's fixing the economy.

He's stamping out the warmongers. It's insane, baby.

He said he's going to drive... He's going to drive the warmongers out of Washington, which is absolutely incredible. Last last thing, you know, Todd Achilles, I think he's coming on the program next week. Maybe producer Griffin said he's the independent candidate running in Idaho against Jim Risch. Now, Julian dropped sites. Julian Andreoni caught up with Jim Risch in the Senate asking him. We'll actually roll this interesting kind of back and forth between the incumbent Idaho senator, who was former governor, has been in Idaho people's lives, basically their entire lives, and his job is now on the line.

There is no such thing as an independent.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Independent meaning we don't take any of the conglomerate money or have corporate advertisers.

So you don't get paid very well then, I guess.

Julian Andreoni with Dropsite News.

With who? Dropsite News.

What? Who is that?

You don't know Dropsite News?

It's a new independent media organization started two years ago.

50,000 individual donors. That's how we make it. Small dollar donations.

We'll have to get a couple from each one.

I wanted to ask you about mortgage rates with relation to the war. The mortgage rates are up to 7%.

You think I want to do this walking down the hallway?

I don't do this.

You don't do hallway interviews?

No.

No. Not especially on a subject like that. We've done a hallway interview before in this exact hallway.

Oh, yeah.

With you. What was the issue?

It was months and months ago that I caught you right around that elevator. But let me ask you really quickly about Iran. I mean, the Trump administration and a number of the different key congressional allies have basically been signaling that this was a preemptive attack before Iran could hit Israel.

And I'm wondering whether you're comfortable with that.

Not only am I comfortable with it, I know the intelligence behind it, and I agree 100%.

Must have been a memorable event. Anyway, I'm not going to, I don't want to.

Not here. Not now. Okay. Well, the League of Conservation Voters has scheduled two debates coming up. I believe actually one is supposed to be tonight and then another in early October. Rish has not agreed yet, as far as I know, to participate in either of them.

Great questions from Julian. Great questions from Julian.

As usual.

Let's talk about the economy. Some news on the economic front. This is from yesterday. The Kobisi letter said breaking the U.S. 30-year note yield rises above 5.6% for the first time since June 2002. That's another plus 36 basis points this month alone. 8% mortgages will arrive next week. And actually, let's put the next tariff sheet up on the screen as well. This is from the Wall Street Journal. A new report found U.S. consumer confidence fell in September amid elevated oil prices, inflation worries, According to the conference board, that survey was released yesterday. The research group, according to the journal, said its consumer confidence index fell by 6.7 points to 81.9% in September from 88.6 in August. But

you don't actually just have to go by the numbers. You can listen to people themselves.

Some people know this.

I host a radio show on SiriusXM every day where I take callers who are listening to Megan's show.

And wanted to call in and talk about some of it.

And over the last couple of weeks, been getting what seems like a handful of callers every single day who are totally disillusioned by someone, in many cases they say they voted for, Donald Trump. And they're up in the air about how they're going to vote this November. But let's take a listen here to a couple of them.

These are from just the last couple of days. Rob in Michigan, E1. Let's start with him.

I'm so disillusioned with the Republicans right now. I'm just, I'm sick of it. It's costing me $ 1, 300 every other day to pull off my truck to do my job.

Diesel?

Yes.

Mm-hmm. That's a killer.

Kidding.

Yeah, it's hurting my bottom line big time.

And is that what is most disillusioning to you, the economic effects?

Yeah, it costs me more when I go to the grocery store. I feel like it's even costing me more now than it did during Biden.

According to the inflation data, that is correct.

I bought two packs of paper towels yesterday for the truck so I could clean my windows. Six months ago, those paper towels were like $ 1. 35 a pack. When I bought them yesterday, they were almost $ 4 a pack.

Oh my gosh.

This is for a single roll.

That's the type of thing people notice.

Yeah.

This is hurting my bottom line.

And you're in Michigan, Rob.

Yes, I am almost ready to park this truck because I'm getting to the point where I cannot afford to drive.

All right, let's now go to Peter in Pennsylvania.

You too.

Hi, Emily. You know, I'm a registered Republican, but I really don't consider myself a Republican. as much as I do a conservative. And, you know, I'm, I'm totally over Trump, to be frank with you. He just, he, he just ruins any credibility he has by, you know, all of these issues, kind of distracting issues like the Gulf of America and Lake America, all that kind of stuff. So that when, you know, there's an important issue and he, you know, he's not convincing anybody relative to the importance of getting rid of the nuclear weapons in Iran because he's so buffoonish on these other, you know, insignificant things that really, I don't even begin to understand why he, you know, is that supposed to be some kind of

political strategy, you know, to, to distract the public? I don't know. All I know is that, you know, I didn't hear Halperin's interview, but if he said that there's going to be a bloodbath this election, I don't see any way that it isn't going to be. I don't want it to be. I don't gravitate to Democratic candidates because of how liberal they typically are, but what is our choice at this point?

And finally, let's go to Mike in Connecticut.

Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I voted for Donald Trump, and I got to be honest with you and tell you, you know, we didn't get a wall. We didn't get the lockup Hillary. We didn't get to drain the swamp. We didn't get affordable health care. We didn't get to eliminate the national debt with Doge. Remember, we were looking, and they only raised it from $ 36 trillion to $ 40 trillion, okay?

We didn't get the Epstein-Files accountability. I think Pam Bondi probably got fired because she released some of them and wasn't supposed to. We didn't get a Doge check of five grand. We didn't get a $ 2, 000 tariff check. OK, we didn't get lower interest rates. We didn't get nothing but lied to. And like I said, I voted for the guy. But this guy is the big, he should be selling used 67 Cadillac Coupe de Ville at some used car lot because all we've gotten is garbage. Iran, Iran, Iran. OK, the price of oil comes down. His big buddies are the rich buy. Price of oil goes up because we buy them. They sell, sell, sell. The whole thing is a sham. Well, he's selling watch. Could you imagine if Barack Obama was selling watches, sneakers and all kinds of stuff?

We'd be going nuts.

I'm sorry.

I would never vote for this man again. And you know what? Sometimes things got to get worse before they get better, but there is no America first with president Trump. I'm sorry. Thanks for the call. Thanks for taking my call.

It was just raw.

Yeah. Yes.

And I think that sentiment right there, that, that things have to get worse before they get better. So from his perspective, voting for Democrats is going to make things worse.

Hmm.

But he's going to do it anyway because he's so angry at Trump and he feels like Trump has to feel some pain.

Another woman called in recently and said the exact same thing.

Yeah, that that is you're seeing 50 to 55 percent of people strongly, quote unquote, strongly disapprove. That is euphemistic for how those people feel about him. Strongly disapprove is being generous. They hate this MFR and they are OK with. if in their minds that we suffer a little bit more because we put Democrats in office, if it brings some pain to Trump because they hope that Trump feels the pain and reverses some of his policies. Now, paper towels, by the way, tariffs on Canadian wood and the pulp that comes out of that wood are a central factor.

But also think about how expensive it is to ship paper towels. They're not heavy, but they're very bulky. So you need an enormous amount of space to ship them around. And so energy costs play a huge part in the, in the price that you're going to pay. Plus, you know, the petroleum wrapper, the plastic wrapper going on, those costs straight up hormones, you're getting out a lot of the crude, but you're not getting all the refined products and the cost of these refined products, like, like the, the wrapper around the paper towel. So those three elements, the tariffs, the energy and the, plastic that's why you're paying so much for paper towels and paper towels have gotten like insanely expensive and what would be nice if we used

fewer paper towels more rags you need to go back um but.

You can get those big packs of microfibers like costco just throw them in the wash.

Yeah do that this is that's the the equivalent of um the agriculture secretary's telling people, you know what? Beef. Who needs beef anyway?

We've got tofu.

We're doing the Brooke Rollins here.

Yeah, we have tofu. We have salmon, she said. I was like, bro, salmon? You think salmon's cheaper than beef?

If you can't afford beef, treat yourself to some salmon.

Amazing.

Have some tuna steaks.

Amazing.

Well, right, before we wrap, should we dig into the wild Jack Smith hearing yesterday? Yes.

Oh, and also, so I'm not being biased here, Inflation data came out this morning. It was cooler than expected. Economy is going to like that. That makes it less likely we'll get as many interest rate hikes. Of course, wait until they're revised down the road because, you know, Doge really did a number on our government's ability to get these things right. And it was never that great to begin with.

Yeah.

And the response rates are apparently higher. bottoming out according to people i talked to in the bureau of labor statistics it's very hard to get businesses to respond to them nowadays.

I also should mention it's not like a representative sample or anything it's just broadly right of center slash independent audience like half truckers half like kind of affluent suburban people right these are republicans but mostly mostly right of center yeah yeah all right let's talk about jack smith Well, Special Counsel Jack Smith, former Special Counsel Jack Smith, testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, and Missouri Republican Senator Eric Schmidt thought he had Smith in a perjury trap, thought he had him dead to rights. There was a very viral moment where he thought he was catching, as I was just saying, Smith in a perjury trap about potentially colluding with Fannie Willis, who was obviously The

person who brought the RICO case against Trump in Georgia is a similar case to the one Jack Smith ultimately brought about the days leading.

Up to January 6th.

Trump's effort to allegedly subvert the election results or to interfere to obstruct the certification of the electors. And it did not go as Eric Schmidt seemed to think.

That it would. Let's take a look.

Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3rd, 2024?

I'm sorry. Could you say that again?

Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3rd, 2024?

What city would that be in?

Atlanta.

No.

Okay.

So your testimony today is that you did not go to a Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024. Is that correct?

I have no recollection of that. Okay.

Is it your testimony that you were.

Not in Atlanta on February 3rd, 2024?

Let me let me just give you a little context the day before fannie willis came clean with her affair with the prosecutor you know the atlanta prosecutor that was also trying to get trump the next day were you in atlanta i do not believe so okay did you ever go to atlanta during your time as special counsel.

I really don't think so. It's possible I flew through the Atlanta airport on the way to Florida, but I do not have a recollection of going to Atlanta. I definitely did not go to a Hawks game.

I'm sure of that.

Did you ever meet Nathan Wade or Fannie Willis in your time at special counsel?

No.

What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game, On February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair. I don't think you know that we have this stuff. So I'll give you a second to process it so you don't, you know, perjure yourself.

You just took it down really quick.

If I could look at that again. Okay. Mr. Chairman, can we give the witness a copy so he can see what's being read to him?

Well, I think you've already sufficiently answered.

I want to run through.

We'll put it in a follow-up. You can respond. I think you've already perjured yourself in the famous words of the chief of the secret police under Stalin of show me the man, I'll show you the crime. You may think you're a hero in this story, but let me tell you something. You're the villain. You've done so much damage.

As a former prosecutor, I can say there's so much damage to the trust and faith people have in our system. You have weaponized the Department of Justice. against political enemies to an extent that has never happened in the history of this country, you will go down as a total dirt bag. I yield my time.

You're going to be able to allow the witness to see this fast poster board that we saw? Is that going to be included then in the, so the witness can look at that at some point here before the hearing's over? Because we couldn't see what it said. And I'm a former prosecutor too, and I have never seen anyone just say, what do you think of this? And put it down. We need a copy of the actual text.

Can you give the witness the courtesy of giving him a copy of that?

And for some extra fun, check out this cut of the slow zoom on Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt's face as Eric Schmidt's case crumbles.

In front of him.

I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing right around that time, and the Marshal Service was there with me. You could check if that was the exact date. It was Maryland playing Iowa, I think, February of 2024. But again, you could check that out if that's what we're talking about.

Is it the Hawkeyes?

Yes.

Could.

Could it then be that the University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes? Could that be it? And maybe before we show this kind of thing?

Well, it's probably fair for Republicans to be a little pissed at Eric Schmidt because the Jack Smith debate is a much more serious one than I think it gets credit for being, to be honest. Something we learned yesterday, documents that were released by Senate Judiciary, the majority, the Republican majority, Let's put this next hair sheet up on the screen from The Washington Times. Jack Smith's Trump investigation scooped up communications from major media.

And it's true.

According to these documents that were released, communications between the White House, the Associated Press, 60 Minutes, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, and actually The Federalist, where I worked at the time, were swept up when the National Archives reported got subpoenaed by Jack Smith, and released these White House communications that included media communications straight to Jack Smith's team.

Part of what is a problem here for Jack Smith is that he said, now there's a lot of parsing to do here, but he said basically that at one point, pulling up the exact wording in questions, this was earlier this summer, he said, he was asked, did you seek warrants for the content of any of the telephone calls The content relates mostly to text message. Did you seek a search warrant for the content of any text messages from members?

Smith asked for members.

Whoever was asking this question said, yes, this was in the house. And he said, no, I don't recall that. Then the person said it was just toll records. So the response could be, was Jack Smith just saying he didn't get a warrant for the content of the toll records? Or because the question said the content of any text messages from members, does that then mean he was asked about cover something much more broadly? He did not get a warrant to sweep up those congressional documents. communications with the White House. He didn't have a warrant for the media communications. Whether it's technically illegal is an open question. But, Ryan, we might disagree on the entire Jack Smith thing. But just as a basic principle, I find it a little

bit disturbing that journalists are more freaked out by the fact that he issued direct subpoenas for media communications with Jamestown associates. I mean, the breadth of his investigation, which I think he had a case in a narrow sense. Like when you read through the indictment, what you see are examples of Trump being told something by people who would know and then doing things as though he had not just been told that his facts were incorrect, meaning he had knowledge that something he was.

Then pursuing was not true.

On the other hand, Members of Congress, for example, should be protected to be wrong about whether they're certifying electors. This is something that's happened in recent years, 2016. Democrats did it. If you are pursuing your lawmaking duties, the speech and debate clause totally covers that. And you should not be getting warrantless taps of your records, period, because Jack.

Smith— Although if there's a subpoena, that's a warrant, right?

It's technically different. It's technically different. It's authority.

And that's a question then for the National Archives as to whether they should have complied with a subpoena.

But they were supposed to have a filter team in place.

Doesn't the judge have to approve the subpoena?

Yes, absolutely.

And the DOJ did have a filter team in place. And the subpoena may have been based on having a filter team. That's a good question. But you can see in the email records that Grassley released yesterday that They just dump the documents and then it's forwarded straight from Smith's assistant to the broader team with no filter to see if there was attorney client privilege in question or speech and debate clause in question. But certainly, again, in principle, he issued subpoenas to Jamestown and other groups for media communications, CBS media, like it wasn't just conservative media and swept all of that up in this probe.

So.

I don't know.

Yeah, in general, I want government officials to keep their noses out of the media communications. None of your business. First Amendment's very clear. Jefferson was clear. Better to have newspapers and no government than government without newspapers. So, F off.

It's source communications with the White House.

It's like, then the FBI had information about who these reporters were in contact with at the White.

House and what they were saying. Yeah, you shouldn't need that to make your case. Also, this guy was handed an open and shut case and just flubbed it, so.

I think it's, yeah.

Speaking of, Eric Schmidt.

Yeah.

Yes.

And but just to put a fine point on that, it also was revealed yesterday he got tons of these small dollar donor checks. If you go through it, like you can literally see the scans of the small dollar donor checks, none of which ended up being mentioned in the case, all of which had personal details of people who gave Trump like 100 bucks. And it's like 5000 of them to say that was necessary. But I think it is an enormous stretch. to say that was necessary to build this case against Trump. And it's a good example of how sometimes the case has been right there, especially pre-2024 for Democrats, like the case is right there or for anti-Trump folks. And then it gets broadened to something that's too sloppy and Trump slips through, evades and

ends up becoming president again because there was no way to secure conviction.

With all of this. So I feel like Dems, I don't know what you think of it.

I feel like Dems have kind of learned from some of those lawfare misses, not that Trump.

Yeah, I think so. Meanwhile, we can't leave this thing without, I think it was Benny Johnson and some other influencers. Did you see this?

They put up dunk tweets.

They had pre-written dunk tweets, so clearly they are coordinating ahead of time with Eric Schmidt. And so they have these dunk tweets written that are like, oh my god, Eric Schmidt just caught Jack Smith in this incredible perjury. He claimed he wasn't at the Atlanta Hawks game, but Eric Schmidt just proved he was. Didn't wait for the entire exchange to play out. They just posted the slot that they'd been given from the Republicans and then had to later delete it when it turned out that the Hawks are not the Iowa Hawkeyes. Horrifyingly embarrassing for everybody involved, but it also is a window into just how much coordination there is between these nominally independent Republicans Journalistic figures,

you could call them like they're supposed to be, but who are in fact operating as operatives in coordination with Republican senators. Guys, just wait till the exchange is over before you post.

Don't even schedule it. Don't schedule it. It's dangerous to schedule.

Don't do it. RIP.

Yeah.

Couldn't leave without bringing those videos to the audience. But anyway, that does it for us on today's super long edition of Breaking Points. Appreciate everybody for tuning in. Make sure, Ryan, to subscribe on Orion Day.

It's very important.

Which I think is me and Sagar tomorrow.

It's a bro show.

I don't know what to say.

Wow.

About whether to subscribe or not.

You're going to spend the next 24 hours thinking about.

It, though.

I guarantee.

Good question. Anyway, I'll see you guys tomorrow.

Sounds good.

See you then.

Bye.

9/30/26: Dems Surge Ahead Of Midterms, MAGA Abandons Trump, Jack Smith Chaotic Testimony

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