6/10/26: US Strikes Iran, Inflation Rises As Tech Stocks Fall, Platner Wins In Maine

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, we have an incredible show today in the sense that you're not gonna believe about half of what we're gonna tell you and that's because you're sensible and you probably shouldn't, but we're gonna tell you what people are claiming is going on between Iran, Israel and the United States anyway. And when you say people, you mean the President of the United States? I do mean that. We're called Fox News. We're juggling some breaking news here right now this morning. He just called in a Fox News as we are recording this. So we're gonna bring you the audio of what Fox News, the video of what Fox News says the President conveyed about the downed Apache helicopter on Monday night. He's also been posting all morning on Truth Social about Iran. So we have tons of updates to get to in the Middle East. We're gonna have CPI numbers, so inflation numbers coming out this morning. There's a lot to talk about, especially as the stock market took a real hit yesterday, Ryan, so it was pretty interesting to watch that. Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be much better today. Likely not. I think reality may be finally catching up. We've got election results, South Carolina Governor Nancy Mace will tell you how she did, Graham Platner will tell you how he did. Janet Mills and Nancy Mace, who did better out of the two of them? Mills was at like 19%, what did Mace come in it? It's a good question, but it's also sort of where's the bar, right? Like Janet Mills is the sitting governor of the state. Nancy Mace is Nancy Mace. We're gonna look at a really crazy story that has not gotten the attention that it deserved, and that is the Ukrainian effort to assassinate Vladimir Putin at the end of last year. And we're gonna go through the evidence that has been presented as to whether or not that happened, and which includes apparently, Mr. Zelensky just kind of admitting it recently, and talk about what the potential implications for that could be when it comes to nuclear war. And as this war is, the war in Ukraine, not getting as much attention since Epic Fury started, but that war is an incredibly intense period right now as well, so super important story to get to. Yeah, and we'll also be joined toward the back end of the show by Jane Kim. This is an attempt to rectify our East Coast chauvinism. Big important things happen all the time and on the West Coast. We got Randy Viegas. Yes, we're gonna talk about Randy Viegas. He won. We're gonna talk about May Vang. She won. But Jane Kim on a insurance for all platform won the California insurance race with the backing of Bernie Sanders. It is not often that a statewide candidate wins on a populist message without corporate support in California. And so we're gonna ask her how the heck she did that and what she's gonna do with this very important but overlooked position that she'll have in California, state government. And then friend of the show, Wanda V. Rojas, is gonna be on to talk about a president that actually does seem to be doing stuff for the people that have elected her. That's Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico. You're such a Scheinbaum fanboy. We are. We are here, right? We've generally been pro Scheinbaum here. She's Mexico first. I mean, what can you not love? Truly Mexico first. World Cup obviously beginning with Games in Mexico on Thursday and Pete Hexeth is in Guantanamo today. So I want to feed Rojas is very, he covers all of that very closely. So we have a lot of questions to get to with him. Speaking of questions, Ryan, so many questions raised by President Donald Trump's interview with Fox News this morning. He apparently called Trey Yenks and Trey Yenks reported live on Fox what he heard from the president about that down to patchy helicopter on Monday. Let's take a listen. I want to start with a story the president told me, new details about the downing of this US Army Apache helicopter. President Trump tells Fox News that the Iranian drone lodged in between the two pilots in this helicopter. They were flying very low. And at that point, the drone didn't explode as it had intended to. And so these pilots were trying to take down the helicopter with the drone lodged into this gunship without it exploding. And at any moment it could have exploded, the president told me. And he said it was on fire. There was a lot of heat inside the cockpit of this helicopter. And ultimately these two pilots were able to take it down into the sea where ultimately they were rescued for the first time in US military history by an unmanned sea drone. Now, President Trump also talked about the US strikes last night against Iranian radar systems and air defense sites. He said the Iranians had tried to rebuild during the ceasefire their defensive capabilities, but they were unable to stop these US strikes overnight. And they were hammered by US fighter jets. Now, interestingly, President Trump told me that he is getting close to ordering new strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges. And so another friend of the show, I said, Mohammed Morandi, posted on Twitter in response to this, Trump has just announced on Fox News the death sentence of the Saudi, Qatari, Bahraini, UAE and Kuwaiti regimes as well as the global economy. So to back up, when this Apache helicopter first went down, it was reported as, we don't know why, it just went down. Then it was reported that it was hit by a shy drone. And people were like, that's very odd because these things, like you'd have to be drunk or asleep to get hit by one. Like how does this happen? Like these are not designed to hit Apache helicopters. Now, maybe there's just so many Apache helicopters and so many shy drones flying over the Strait of Ramuz that one of them accidentally collided. Then other people said, well, maybe it was one of these loitering missiles that Iran has that operate similar to drones that are intended to hit aircraft like that. Or it just went down, or none of this ever happened. Like there are all of these different ideas. And then Trump started to say, well, maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. Like maybe it was an accident. And it looked like he was trying to find a way out. Instead, we went all the way with this claim from Trump. Yeah, we didn't have a lot. That the drone is lodged in between the two guys. We didn't have a lot of information for the last couple of days until this bit of information on Fox News. So can we call it information? I don't know what we have to call this. I don't know what we call this. It's a collection of words. Yeah. Coming from the president of the United States. So we did know, part of the information we did have is that the pilots were apparently safe and we don't know how that happened, but now we're told they were rescued for the first time in American history. I believe Yanks said by a sea drone. Autonomous sea drone. According to the president. So this is like some rescue boat that's drone powered that went out. And so according to this, they safely landed the helicopter. Right, because you can't eject from this patchy. So you have to land in the water. There are blades as far as I understand. Yes, yes. That would complicate the ejection of that. Yes, that would be a tough one. So you have to land it either on the land or in the water and then we're able to land in the water and you got the autonomous sea drones coming for you. So they landed in the water. The drone has not blown up yet, but it's on fire. Okay. Then they both get out of the Apache assuming, I guess different doors, because there's a drone in between them, according to Trump. The drone smashed through the window and it's sitting between them. Also, these shy head drones are massive. Like these are not the Hezbollah FPV drones. These are not the ones that you got for Christmas and took to the park and used one time. Don't get Ryan a drone for Christmas. That's what I just spoke from. Oh my son, these things are huge. So how a huge shy drone landed in between the pilots has Trump ever seen one? I don't know if he would tell this story if he had seen one. I know it's our job, but at this point, I don't think it's even make sense for us to try and piece the logic together of the story. Maybe in post we can show up a picture, like a scaled picture of a shy drone. A public shy drone. Compared to an Apache actually. Like they're huge. Anyway. Yeah, there's a lot. Okay, so let's put up A-00. Trump has launched a wave after wave of strike. On Iran, Iran has responded and now we're supposed to be getting more. But so here's what Trump had said after he launched several waves of these attacks. Iran's military. Iran's military is a complete and total mess. How's your Trump? Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force doesn't even exist anymore. They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The bully of the Middle East is the US. They've taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them. Now they will have to pay the price. Your commitment waned about midway through reading the truth. Trump is starting to actually bore me. Even with all this spectacle. Because under normal circumstances, him saying what he said this morning and even to say that they will have to pay the price, obviously it's huge news. If it's not true, obviously it's huge news. It is still what we're leading the show with because it's huge news. But he's done this so many times that what it actually means remains in question unusual for the president of the United States to speak with such strong language historically and us be at an impasse for what actually is happening right now. Yeah, and he even went back to a new, like his all praise be to Allah. He posted this morning, where is the all praise be to Allah? I'm not finding, but he did another one. He's on a complete and total rampage on truth social. It's about Joe Scarborough. And he did it. Again, he did his praise be to Allah, which is. He's Boomer postin. Sorry. Which is to try to put some rationality to it. I think when he does his praise be to Allah nonsense, he's trying to say, I'm crazy. He's trying to do the Nixon. Like I'm so crazy that you better make a deal with me because I'm so crazy. I'm just throwing out random praise be to Allah's. But do you think it's a concerted effort or do you think it is just crazy? I think it's concerted. I think it's him trying to. But not to be meta. That's kind of crazy in and of itself. Yeah, I don't think it'll work. It's silly. Trying to be that crazy. And sounding that crazy. Because you were trying to be that crazy. I think reflects a genuine crazy. Yes, so that in that sense, yes, it's a put on, but it's not. So Iranian foreign minister, Araki posted, we can put up this next element. This was his response to the Apache going down. He said, foreign forces in proximity to our territory are at constant risk on account of their own human errors, plane accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire to reduce risk. Best solution is for them to leave. We prefer language of diplomacy, but speak other languages too. And so here he was, he's being a tough guy, but also leaving kind of an opening for Trump at this point to say, okay, this was an accident. And what he's saying is like, if you don't like these accidents, if you don't want your Apache helicopters crashing into drones and landing in the Strait of Hormuz and then getting picked up by an autonomous C drone, then don't have your Apache helicopters flying over the Strait of Hormuz, like leave, go somewhere else, which there's actually no flaws in that logic. Like if you don't have your helicopters in Iran, they won't be crashing, they won't be crashing in Iran. So the question for Trump is obviously what it has been, how much longer is it worth the Strait of Hormuz being closed? Do you escalate or do you de-escalate and look like you're taking an L, something worse than the JCPOA, risk everybody covering it as being worse than the JCPOA, risk Mark Levin breaking off your beautiful budding friendship, that's where he finds himself to the point that you're making about, well, if there are no Apache helicopters in the Strait of Hormuz, then you won't have any problems in the Strait of Hormuz. So part of what Trump has been trying to avoid is exactly escalatory potential like this. If those pilots had died, what would have come from this week, the week ahead would be very different. Of course it would be very different. It sounds like according to the president's story, that was a rather close call, according to the president's story, we should say. Although as Marandi is pointing out, Trump, and as old Professor Pape always points out, Trump is not actually totally in control of this. He keeps wanting to toggle up and down, and back and forth the level of hostility here, but he also doesn't have the ability to control what's going on. So as Marandi is saying, Iran is planning a massive regional retaliation for what happened overnight now. On the point of the naval blockade, and I found this, I can send this to Mac, Trump says, the fake news media refuses to report how effective the US naval blockade is. The most successful blockade in the history of naval warfare, nothing gets through unless we want it to. It is a steel wall. Iran is doing zero business, not paying their military or any of their bills, and quickly becoming a failed nation. Lots of oil is getting out, praise be to Allah, President Donald J. Trump. And so that's him, again, celebrating his successes, and then adding in a little twist of crazy. So the attacks themselves, actually you wanna talk about A-1 while I send this to Mac? Well, yeah, so actually we're starting with breaking news this morning on the President's comments, but of course what we'd planned to start with is the strikes yesterday. So we can put A-1 up on the screen. This is from Centcom, posted at 5 p.m. last night, US Central Command Forces began launching self-defense strikes against Iran at 5 p.m. Eastern today at the commander in chief's direction. No quote, self-defense strikes, the language there. In response, Centcom went on to say, to yesterday's downing of a US Army Apache helicopter, the mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression. And Ryan, that's language in the last sentence, you've covered this much closer than I have over the years. That's unusual language from Centcom, is it not? To say this is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression. It's very, it sort of reeks of desperation and you're announcing the strikes. You are as Centcom, not the president, not a political group, but Centcom telling you that it is proportional in response to unjustified attacks. Right, they're, right, it's following, it's flowing directly from Trump, where Trump is trying to say, I'm gonna hit you. A shot lodged in between my pilots. And so I'm gonna hit you back, but you shouldn't retaliate significantly. You can do a little bit, go hit Kuwait a little bit. But let's all move on and get back to the deal, get back to the deal making. In fact, we have reports that the Qatari negotiators are on their way right now to Islamabad. And maybe we'll get a deal today, like who knows. But Trump is trying desperately to be the madman, but also remain in control. But he didn't stop with that first wave of attacks. We can put up A-1 on. They launched overnight a second and third wave of attacks on the JASC port, Kuimobaric, Dropsite reported fresh explosion sounds, also reported in Syrac, Syrac, and we can talk about the water tanks that were hit there. And Iraqi news sources reported large numbers of US fighter jets flying over Iraq near the Iranian border. Then a third wave of strikes went through near Bhandar Abbas, Kesham Island. So hitting all across the kind of Western, Southern, and you can see Central Iran and hitting Ta-Ran as well. We put up A-2 in Syrac. It was reported that two residential water reservoirs were struck. You also had in another region of Iran water tanks hit, as we just mentioned. So minimum tens of thousands of people affected by this, it is a war crime of the highest order to hit water infrastructure for obvious reasons. Anybody who is smart enough to have been able to click play on this understands why that is. And so if we put up A-3, Iran began retaliating by hitting. So this is so strange. Like what are they doing? They're hitting military targets. I thought you're supposed to hit like, the water reservoirs. But strangely, Iran decides to attack the US fifth fleet base in Bahrain and on other bases across the region. You had attacks reported in Kuwait as well. The Iranian armed forces released in their statement. Multiple US bases in the region were struck by a Iranian army and IRG's forces, quote, "'If the US criminal army repeats its aggression "'against the Islamic Republic, massive and wider strikes "'will be carried out against designated targets "'across the region." That's kind of where we are with Trump threatening further attacks. We can put up A5B actually, Trump threatening further attacks and then the Iranians saying if they continue, like we're prepared to expand this war. Trump says, he tells ABC, quote, "'Somebody's going to have to build all that infrastructure, "'new bridges, new this, new that, new power plants. "'They're talking about a trillion dollars as Iran, "'probably more. "'That's why we'll probably get involved in rebuilding, "'but we'll get half their oil.'" Yep. Okay. So we're gonna get half their oil and then we're gonna rebuild their country. Yep. First we're gonna destroy it. Well, Trump's friends are gonna rebuild their country. Trump's friends. Presumably. Yep. Somehow, the American people just can't see the wisdom of this when we put up A6. What's wrong with you guys? Come on, what's wrong with you? Yes, Trump approval stays near record low. Americans expect higher gas prices. And gas prices have been ticking down a little bit the last few days, maybe weeks, slightly under, what? I think people are bracing for much worse to come. We have been flooding the market with the strategic reserves and drawing down inventories in order to keep prices as low as possible. We can put up A6B just to try to stave off the very worst of this. This is from Dropsite as well. US crude inventories fell sharply last week for a combined draw of about 17 million barrels, according to American Petroleum Institute data. Commercial crude drew down 9.1 barrels while the Trump administration released another 7.9 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is way ahead of the estimates that the oil analysts have been expecting the draw down to go much slower the last couple of weeks. And we're drawing down much faster than they expected. You guys can kind of be the judge of whether or not you think that's a good thing or not. Well, and one thing I wanted to highlight from this Reuters poll, the Reuters write up of a poll, this is a sentence that Trump dreads. Americans are now more dissatisfied with Trump's performance on the issue of cost of living. Then they were of his democratic predecessor in office, Joe Biden, who closed out his term with 29% approval on the cost of living and 63% disapproved. Trump's under that. Trump is at 35% of respondents saying they approve of Trump's performance in the White House overall. Now let's go back to cost of living in particular. Let's see where it is here. 22% of Americans approve how Trump is managing the cost of living for US households compared to 70% disapproval. So again, Biden was at 29% and 63% disapproval. We're not even in margin of error territory. That's a resounding victory for Biden. The people yearn for Bidenomics. Yeah, they'd get it on a back. Given a dose of Trump's. I think we're still getting a little Bidenomics here, to be honest, but. What are the, which part of the Bidenomics are we getting? I think we still have some inflation from overheated COVID spending. And I think probably some greed inflation too. And I think actually what we're probably seeing now, Trump andomics is even more greed inflation when prices went up after Epic Fury. Right, I think, I don't know if that's Biden. Well, none of that is Bidenomics. Well, because the spending was both split between Trump and Biden. Yeah, but the Biden, the two bills that Biden passed were heavy spenders. That's true, but Trump completely slashed the second one. So inflation reduction act, all of that spending was completely withdrawn. The green energy spending. Which was most of it. How's the bulk of it? There was a lot of spending, so though. I'm going with the war. It's clearly the war, to be fair, it's clearly the war. But all I was saying is that there's still some, I think there's still some inflation from Biden spending, although actually we'll have inflation data to talk about in the next block. When Biden left office, inflation was lower than it is now. So Trump gets elected. Again, we're gonna talk about this in a second, but just to round this all out, Trump gets elected on a promise to bring down inflation. Well, it had been going down at a rate until the war that was now lower than what it is post-war. So there's no question that it is primarily the war. But Ryan and I just debated those stupid little quip that I made, so you get a little extra in this block. There you go. All right, let's move on to prices. Let's do it. So we did want to get to this extraordinarily disturbing story emerging out of Israeli occupied territories. You may recall that recently a seven month old baby was killed by IDF soldiers. And actually let's start with, so that people have the IDF's context. Let's start with their statement. A eight, because then we're getting, we now have video of what actually happened. So here's what the IDF had said on June 5th earlier today during operational activity in the area of Hebron. IDF soldiers perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them. Got that? An IDF soldier responded with single shots. We're inventing new phrases here, single shots. Toward the vehicle, as a result, three Palestinians were injured and evacuated for medical treatment. Strongly suggests that the Israeli soldiers had something to do with this evacuation, by the way. An initial inquiry, inquiry is an interesting word, found that those injured were uninvolved civilians. The incident is under review and the findings will be submitted for review by the relevant authorities. The last line is how you know when you're reading these statements, that's something very dark happened. The IDF expresses deep sorrow for any harm caused to uninvolved individuals. Immediately the reports were that they had shot and killed a seven month old baby. Betzalem, the Israeli human rights organization, has since obtained two videos of this attack. And so let's take a look at the footage that Betzalem has obtained. And so there you see the car that was quote unquote, perceived to be accelerating toward them. It's nowhere near them when you see the soldier open fire on it. And there you can see the father holding his murdered son in the street and then in the hospital and here is Sam. This is young Sammy before he was killed. The IDF has since told Israeli media that these were young Israeli soldiers. Another thing, as if that somehow exonerates what's going on, another thing you notice in that video is the complete lack of assistance. What you immediately notice of course is a soldier opening fire into a car with a family, a mom, a dad and a baby and killing the baby, which has to reflect an extraordinary amount of dehumanization going on between the people on either side of that wall. The fact that there was no attempt to help them immediately, like you don't, did you see any Israeli paramedics, Israeli soldiers anywhere near the baby as his life bled out of him? No, you did not. They just kind of kept it moving. There have been no arrests made here. For up to me, everyone in the chain of command would be under arrest and held without bond, top to bottom involved with this. This is five days ago. They knew this happened. I made the point also that Israeli, American police forces, I don't know that they've killed a seven month old baby in forever, but when they kill, when American police officers or ICE officials or CBP, if they kill an American citizen, there are enormous protests in the streets. 2020 saw riots across the country or the killing of a grown man. These Israeli forces kill a baby and there are a handful of people that you'll see protest, perhaps one or two, maybe we're standing together. But where's the outcry? Like your country does this and you're okay with it? Your country does this and doesn't arrest the people involved and you're okay with that. Well, yeah, I think that's actually the critical point is you can make the argument that tragic mistakes happen. They could be making that argument. Let them make it in court. Right, exactly, right. And again, you can make the argument that we took all the precautions, we followed all of the relevant salient relevant statutes and just this tragic, tragic error happened and what did they say after Shireen Abu Akhla was killed? Well, different things, yeah. Eventually, after it took a long, long time, eventually I think they said something like they were conciliatory in one way or another, but nobody's actually being, and actually it's somewhat similar in that case, but here it looks like disciplinary proceedings so far. No, no, nothing. And Hebron is the famous town where Americans go there all the time and come back deeply radicalized by what they've seen. It's one of, because there are checkpoints everywhere and Jewish Israelis are allowed to move around to different areas that Palestinians are not allowed to move around to. There are homes where you're only allowed to enter from one direction. The doors are barred on the other side. There are homes where, there are entire streets where the Jewish Israeli homes are on top. And the Palestinians have had to put netting up along all of their alleys because to stop, to catch the trash, that they're just constantly throwing trash. It's this deeply militarized occupied area. And so these soldiers are not remotely at risk at any way because the place is so thoroughly locked down in such a dystopian way that, like I was saying, people go there and going there is the thing. That's where Tanasi Coates went and described, like having the veil lifted, performing this is completely insane. So that's where this was. They're not at risk from anybody there, let alone from a seven month old baby and his parents driving slowly in the street. These soldiers clearly felt they could do this and get away with it. And we'll see, so far, looking like that's possible. And more bad news, we should take a look here at the economy because CPI number just dropped, Ryan. The much awaited CPI inflation number just dropped. We have it for you here, we can put the new element up on the screen. Inflation, according to CNBC, accelerated in May as rising energy costs contributed to pain for consumers, though underlying pressures were less intense. The consumer price index, which as CNBC is describing here is abroad, gauge of goods and services costs across the US economy rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 4.2%. According to the BLS report that was released this morning, both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus, CNBC adds, inflation climbed above 4% for the first time in three years. Where does that put us? Right back in the pandemic era, Ryan, and CNBC says the increased met expectations amid concerns over how much the surge in energy prices would impact the economy. The level was the highest since April, 2023 and above the 3.8% level from April. I just can't put into words the depth of my hatred for Trump at this point. He did this 150% on his own. Like he inherited an economy that was improving. Yeah, absolutely. He inherited inflation that was coming down. Interest rates were coming down, mortgage rates were coming down. Stock market doing well. Stock market is still doing well. It won't be great today probably. And he just did this for no reason. Or for Netanyahu, whatever. Yeah. Future is sliding as we speak. And so the times right up of this has some other... Like it's bad, the top line is bad, you go even second, third line, fourth line, they're all bad. They finish their kind of blog post update. The main factor, keeping a lid on prices. So it would be much worse. Consumers who have by now spent their tax refunds and have lately seen smaller increases in their paychecks. So just to explain what they mean by that. So the main thing keeping prices down from where they would otherwise be, is that you don't have any money. And because you don't have any money, you can't pay these high prices. So businesses can't charge the prices that they need or want to keep up with the pressures that they're under. So a bunch of them are just gonna go under. Some of them won't be able to do their greedflation as much as they would like to otherwise. But this is what's known in economics as quote, demand destruction by saying one way to keep inflation down is to make sure that there are more poor people. And because there's more poor people, there's fewer people in line at the shop, fewer people in line at the shop, shopkeeper can't raise their prices as much as they want. So when Trump took office, CPI was at 3%. So January, 2025, 3%. Heading down. Heading down. So it goes down, it jumped a little bit after quote, liberation day, but really only back up to 2.7 and 2.9%. January, 2026, CPI is at 2.4%. 2.4%. And what happened in February? What did Trump do in February? Yeah. Oh yeah, that's right, he bombed Iran. Yep, 2.4% in February, 2026. January, 2026. By March, it's climbing to 3.3. Right now, 4.2. As a reminder, 3% is where it was when President Trump took office in January of 2025. This is, as CNBC noted, the highest since April of 2023, which is right as we were coming down from the pandemic high in June of 2022. CPI was at 9.1%. So climbing back up, but actually if you go historically, without the pandemic, the CPI hasn't been at 4.2%. Again, excluding the pandemic for a very, very, very long time. I'm going back here to post recession. It's looking like, yeah, middle of the recession, we got up to 5%. June, 2008. The other thing that the report makes clear is that Trump's other policy, which is to just flood money to AI, is also driving up prices all over the place in the obvious way, driving up your utility bills, your electric bills. But also for decades, what we've experienced as consumers is the cost of technology going down. TVs come out, like, wow, that's cool. I can't afford it. I'll wait a year or two until the price of that comes way down. That's been what's going on. But because the AI build out is putting such pressure on chips, the price of the chips that underline all of these consumer products is going way up. And so now, according to this report, you're seeing that one thing we'd kind of come to say, all right, everything sucks. Like, and this is what you hear from like the Matty Glacias of the world, that yes, okay, a lot of things are bad, but you've got like a 55 inch TV and you didn't pay much for it, isn't that cool? Even that is going away. Because the price of the chips inside that 55 inch TV are driving up the price of that TV. So even the little treats they give you to try to compensate for the collapse of everything else, those are going up. Yeah, and let's put up on the screen the Apple dip yesterday. This is going to be B2. So Apple reveals, actually an anthropocrevealed fable yesterday, Apple reveals its new Siri AI, also much awaited, and Apple shares were sliding according to CNBC yesterday. It's sort of a dud people felt like, but it was a reminder, Ryan, that some 30% of the S&P 500 is based on Mag7 stocks. And we've had Rahid Chopra on to talk about this from our head of the CFPB. This is a really, really, really shaky economy. And to this question of the Trump administration's accelerationism on AI, I was at a pen and pad with Senator Rick Scott earlier this week. And he was expressing, people were asking him about AI. He was wearing a pin on his lapel that said jobs. So he was getting asked questions by the other journalists in the room about if he's worried on that AI will cause a huge wipeout of jobs. He said he thinks that's all kind of alarmist and that technology always creates jobs. It all comes out in the wash, that sort of thing. And so I then asked him, aren't we in a trap then? So if this is such a huge part of the market that's predicated on Dario Amadeus basically promised to take out 50% of white collar jobs in the next several years, are we either in for mass layoffs or a stock market crash? And he said, quote unquote, there's no logic to the explosion in AI stocks. So I said, is Trump putting us further into the bubble? He said, quote, I think the difference is probably I wouldn't be talking about it. In my life, I can talk about jobs, right? I can talk about schools and talk about something I can measure. The fact that the market's trading at all time highs, I'm going to say, man, I'm not doing that. Did not make me feel any better whatsoever about the state of the economy. He goes, I ran a public company. Your stock is tied to what people think it's worth, not necessarily what it's worth. Now as an investor, I can put a value on it until comfortable over a period of time. I can make money. I'm not buying something at 50 times earnings. How many things really keep growing at 50 times earnings? Not many. So SpaceX is going to be worth $1.8 trillion, right? I think the revenues are like $4 or $5 billion in revenues and we could get into that. And who is this again? Rick Scott. Rick Scott. Who has been bringing in some of these tech giants to talk to Republican senators and get them to ask questions back and forth of one another? So has been studying the issue, we'll say. And so while energy prices are surging, I wanted to highlight one thing. Put up before here. This is a new report out this morning from the Solar Energy Industries Association, which is the trade group that represents the solar industry. As you know, Biden put tons of money into the clean energy market, kickstarted that thing. Trump ripped it all out saying, no, like he doesn't like clean energy. He wants, he likes the dirty stuff. That's America's future is in oil and gas. And that is going to be our critical advantage against these other countries like China that are run by dummies who have been fooled by this clean energy thing. So ripped away all of the subsidies. So it's a straight up just market question of how much, what is utility? What is a residential home? What does a company want to do when it comes to building out energy? So let's see if the dummies were right or wrong. Well, we do see indeed a 27% decline year over year in installation of solar and a 42% decline compared with Q4 of 2025. Okay, so solar installation is going down. But what do we see? 91% of all new electricity generating capacity added in the first quarter was solar. That's crazy. So people are getting what I'm saying here, right? So they stripped away all the subsidies. They succeeded in harming the industry such that we are installing much less solar than we would be otherwise and that we were when there were credits and other incentives to do it. Yet we're still not doing anything but solar because solar is cheaper. And I don't know what part of this Trump doesn't understand. This is the first quarter, by the way, which you read the numbers off. Inflation was low. We were not at war with Iran. We entered war with Iran in the final month of the first quarter, but for most of it we were not at war with Iran. We had not destroyed the fossil fuel industry. Even then, 91% of new electricity was solar. And that's solar and battery storage. So it's not just solar, but the battery storage is related either to wind or solar effectively. And so I would imagine that the second quarter is gonna see 98%. Like who out there is like, you know what we need to do? We need to invest deeply in building out our fossil fuel infrastructure at this point. So great job, Trump. Crazy. Bang up job. Great. I mean, nobody's talking about that. Super interesting. I ran into this solar person at the event that you sent me to last night. It sounds like something that someone was like, hey, you should look into this indeed. Ryan looked into it. Emily and I were supposed to meet up at a right wing sub-stack event last night. It was not right wing. No, it wasn't. We determined this. We were fighting for the top. I assumed it was right wing because they didn't invite me. I just crashed. And I was like, you can have Thomas Payne. Yeah. But your job site crew was there. And I know, I assumed it was right wing too, but it was not. Anyway, this is the solar. The founding father impersonator. You usually say, oh, this has got to be right wing. But it was actually, it was kind of like a Georgetown set. Unusual scene for us. None of us. Saw, met Jacob from TMZ. That was very cool. Love that. Love Jacob. I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. But also met the solar person who I'd known before, but she's like, hey, we have this report coming out tonight. If you want to see it. There you go. Like just wild. This is why we go to these things. That's right. And we do it for you. We do it for you. We drink the free beer for you. All right. Let's move on to the election results. Oysterman and combat veteran, Graham Platner trounced sitting governor, Janet Mills, in the main election last night, winning the Democratic primary. With most of the votes counted at this point, Platner is sitting at 72% of the vote against Mills with 20% who had suspended her campaign and also ran candidate, picked up 8% as well. Graham Platner with a rather energetic speech last night, I think you could call it. It's a banger. It was filled with bars. Went hard at Susan Collins, who will be his Republican opponent and also addressed some of his controversies. Let's listen to a little bit of Platner here last night. I am a son of rural Maine. I was a kid who picked blueberries under the July sun. And then one day, I was a kid who signed up and left to fight for his country. And when I returned, I carried with me the weight of forever wars and the struggle and the alienation that came with it. But I'm also a lucky one who found his way back, who found a living on the sea and a home and a community that offered love and redemption. Redemption is not just some simple or easy destination. It's a journey. I've made mistakes in my life, mistakes that I regret that I live with and that I continue to learn from. And I'm still far from perfect. But every day, I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little bit kinder than I was the day before. And if you give me the chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I will stand up for you in against billionaires and greedy corporations. Yeah! Yeah! I will serve you the people of Maine, not some lobbyist or party boss. I will be the champion for your dreams as if it were my own, no matter the challenge or the expense. I will fight for you. All right. All right. All right. I have been willing to die for my country. There is nothing that I will not do for the state of Maine. All right. All right. And another point, Emily. But first of all, has nobody used that line before? That is a bar. Which one? I am. I will be a senator for people who cannot afford to buy one. That was the, I thought that was the best line too. What a line. It's fantastic. He also talked a lot about Susan Collins, how her husband, who was a lobbyist, and she have gotten extraordinarily wealthy. And then he had this refrain where he said, it rhymes with what Trump has said on the campaign trail, which is that the mainstream media keeps looking for that one story, that one headline that is going to take him out. But he said, they have spent so much time trying to figure me out. What they don't understand is that it's not about me. Yes. It's about all of us. Which is Trumpian, by the way. The other thing that Trumpian is, they're not coming after me, they're coming after you, but I'm standing in the way. Exactly. Right. It's a similar, but it's a little more us. Like, interestingly, it's like Trump is a little more right-coded than me and the you, and he's a little more left-coded with the us. Right. But otherwise, it's the same concept. Yes, the point is, you see me as a vehicle to advance your interests, not corporate interests. So do they, and that's why they're coming after me. Exactly. I'm essentially a pawn in the effort to take you down, to undermine you. And so the NRC, the National Public and Senatorial Committee, put out a memo that looks like they gave it to Politico this morning saying that Maine is now the linchpin. That is the quote they use. Maine is the linchpin. They say Democrats cannot win the majority without it. That's not necessarily true. They could potentially do Ohio. They could potentially do Texas. They could run the deck in a crazy way. Yeah. Probably they could do Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, which is not out of the question at all, and Nebraska, but that would be unusual. So yeah, they probably do need Maine. Not impossible without it. But again, NRC this morning saying that this race is the linchpin. Quote, Grant Platter is the most left-wing Senate nominee Maine has ever seen. That might be true. His platform aligns directly with national progressives featuring Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Universal Basic Income, government-funded universal childcare free college, and a wide-open pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. You can see what in this race they're now pivoting to, which is not Nazi stuff. Now they are talking about the kind of nuts and bolts, which they were not before. I think it signals that they're pretty scared of Grant Platter at this point. I was always most concerned when it came to his chances of exactly that, that he actually is. He's just like super populist and progressive. Yeah, he is far left. It's fair to say. And so that would have been, to me, the smart line of attack. From Mills. Yeah, from Mills, from Collins, from Republicans. Instead, they've spent the last several months calling him an abuser, a Nazi, a fake working class guy, going after... And a lot of the arguments, particularly calling him a Nazi, cut against that he's a left winger. So, main voters are like, wait a minute, you spent the last several months telling us he's a Nazi. A bunch of your online people are still calling him a Nazi and are going to call him a Nazi for months to come. But he's also too far left wing. You say he hates women, but he's too far left wing. Right. So, their attacks, their inconsistent contradictory attacks, cut against them being able to marshal a straightforward message. Plus, yes, like he's backing that kind of list of Bernie Sanders things and Bernie Sanders backs him. When he talks, he talks in economic populism. Yes, yes. And he talks in cultural, like, whatever you want to call it. He pivots cultural issues, which I think will be difficult for him because the trans participation in sports has been a big issue in Maine. I think there's currently a bill in Maine on that. Bill's going to have to answer... Bill's going to have to run on that. Right, because she took on Trump over the issue as she saw it. And so, it's going to come up. I don't know that Susan Collins necessarily wants to lean into it either. Susan Collins shies away from those issues for the most part. But he'll be asked about it and he always pivots... He actually has good lines that I disagree with, but I think they're good lines, pivoting it back to the economy. Every time culture comes up, he says, literally, billionaires are the reason you're asking me this question. Right. When reporters ask him the question, which is a very good line of deflection. Disgrives it, but it is very good. Let's take a look at AOC and... Although, before we get to that, let's get to the Mills Mafia. The Mills Mafia. The Mills Mafia without the force at the polls. Jumping on tables. Nathan Bernard, dropside correspondent, went to two different polling locations, one in Augusta, one in Waterville. He actually talked to 121 voters. Impressive. And just for fun, we did an exit poll and he nailed it. It's kind of wild. We didn't call it scientific because it's only two different polling locations and you've got to do the whole state. You've got to do a bigger sample. But his numbers were within the margin of error of what the actual voters across the state did. Here's one of his interviews with a... He talked to a decent number of Janet Mills voters. But here's one of them and I think we forget that this is how a decent number of Americans kind of approach voting. Let's roll C5. Senate... That was Platner and Mills. Oh, okay. Thank you. I need that. Mills and Platner. So you ranked Mills first? Yes. Okay. And then for Governor, do you remember? Governor of the lists again. That was Narav Shah. You had Troy Jackson. You had Chely Pingary. I mean, Hannah Pingary. Hannah Bellows. Hannah Shah and Troy Rass. So when people look at the 20% that Mills took home, some people who hate Platner are going to look at that and be like, see, she dropped out and she still got 20%. Right. She's the sitting governor. And like just through inertia, you're going to get some set of people voting. And the reason he named them both is that Maine has ranked choice voting. So he ranked Mills first and then Platner second. The Platner doesn't vote, doesn't count because he's more than... Well, actually, I guess in the ranked choice voting that will count because she finished under 50%. It sucks. Sorry. We should have that debate sometime. I stand with him. We had it interesting. Yeah. Anyway, so you were saying AOC. Yeah. Let's take a look here at AOC. This is C3. Here's how she reacted amidst all of the controversies of the last several days. C3. When it comes to the substance of this reporting, obviously there's a lot in that behavior that's really challenging. It's hard to stomach, you know, in some of it. But, but at the end of the day, I think that this is a choice. If that choice on the balance between that and a senator who's voted to take health care away from millions of Americans, that's the situation that we have to weigh. What's your view, Ryan? Well, the body language there is interesting. She's sort of like physically recoiling at the thought of Platner, it seems like. Yeah. That was an interview with CNN, I don't know how to say it outside the Capitol. And, you know, so she has not endorsed in this race. And so I guess she can't endorse in the primary. Clearly, what she's saying there is she didn't even come out and say she would support Platner against Collins. She implied that she would. And she's like, I guess this is what we have to do. It's a little reminiscent of the fascinating interview that Crystal did with Chris Rabb, the DSA, Justice Democrats backed Democrat who's going to represent Philadelphia. If people haven't watched that, they should go watch it. We don't like our candidate interviews. If you go to YouTube in particular, interviews with candidates will get like 70% less audience. Yeah, because it feels localized. Then typical. So the algorithm probably didn't show that one to you. So go find it. It's a really interesting and a lot of people were dunking all over Chris Rabb for it. I actually think it, I think this is an important and needed conversation to have. That's one reason that I'm glad that Platner's in the race because he's forcing this conversation. And you can't, I don't think you can kind of force people, you can't force it back in, but what you can do is have that conversation. And talk to people like why are people so passionately supportive of Platner? Tease it out. Yeah. And then get from people like why do you hate him so much? Because for Rabb, and for I think a lot of others, it's just aesthetics. It's like that he looks like somebody they don't like. I think that's correct. I mean, that's why I want that conversation because I feel like we can maybe break through. It's a great conversation for you in particular to have because we've been talking about this for a long time. It's a flip side of back in the early 2010s and 2000s when the gay rights movement was gaining steam. The Barney Frank argument? What people discovered is that you've got a gay uncle. You actually, once people started coming out of the closet. The Andrew Sullivan argument. Yeah, once people started coming out of the closet, like oh, that guy's gay, I love that guy. He's great. And my life is fine around him. This is the reverse for liberals. It's like this is a white guy and he's actually pretty nice. A big burly combat vet. A big burly combat vet. Someone you can see with Joe Rogan. He's fine. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared. The current cultural divorce between kind of progressives and white men is so stark that it is just culturally, morally, ethically wrong, but also just pragmatically from a political perspective. You can't build a national party. Yeah. If you assume every white guy, or every white guy with a deep voice as a combat vet or whatever, is like out to get you. Or if you talk about him in a way that implies he does have sort of built in problems. Right. So. Just inherent toxicity or something. Yeah, whether you're talking about racism or sexism, yes. And if you believe that, you can point to a lot of things he said in the past. You're like, oh, I can't deal with that. Rogan, though. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. Because it's interesting to do the contrast with AOC and Rokana, actually. Because there's also a theory here that maybe there's rumblings in DNC-type circles that Moore is coming out on Platner or that he's going to be used as an albatross and other races, which I honestly doubt. I think that might be true with Talarico. I don't think it's true with Platner. But just be careful because you don't want to have to answer for him everywhere you go. Oh, you want to endorse Platner? Oh, you like Platner? Okay, so tell me why you like sexual assault, constantly following you around the campaign tour. Even though he hasn't been accused of that. Right. But you know that's how people are taking it, of course. And so that's the question that'll follow if you endorse. Here's Rokana leaning all the way in, C4. If the Democratic Party is going to exist, it needs to become the anti-war party. I fucking love this place. I don't know why you want to go to the Senate. I think a lot of people in this country would like to see more regular people in politics. And most people in this country have gone through some form of transformation throughout their lives. They've not been living perfect lives. What do you say to someone that says, oh, Rok, I agree with Graham's policies. I'm glad you're going there. But you know, after the stuff coming out, I just, my granddaughter, what do you say to someone like that? If you believe in transformational politics, you need to believe in the ability for people to transform. And I came out of the infancy at a time where like, you sucked it up. Were you getting help or no? No, God no. Which is why I was self-medicated. Right. And this was the point of my life where I didn't believe that PTSD was real. Do you ever have flashbacks? It really just manifested its like deep depression and anxiety. Intense combat sort of changes your brain. Do you now, seeing where you are, say, hey, I could have been a better person in terms of how I was? I had, frankly, witnessed the most awful things a person can witness and see. And it was all done in the service of seemingly nothing. Oh my gosh, just hearing the boats bump up against the dock and the wall. That was a very well done video. It took you right to Sorrento, Maine, where it was filmed. It did. And I said earlier, like, that there's a particular problem that Democratic liberals kind of have with white guys. And it is particular to white guys. It's also all guys. Yes. Yes. Black and Hispanic men went for Trump. He made real inroads with black and Hispanic men for a reason. And I also think people don't fully internalize. They hear him say that he did four combat tours. They hear him say that. I don't think they internalize what that means. And in particular, what it means to have been a Marine and Ramadi in Fallujah. You could just go Google like Ramadi Marines 2005, 2006. There's movies about it. But there's also lots of like real time footage that has been captured of and it Ramadi in particular at the time that he was there and the unit that he was with is understood to be. It was the most violent place on earth and his unit saw extraordinary numbers of casualties. Yeah. And on a daily basis, he his job was a machine gunner. Like his job. Yeah. Was to put out the suppressing fire as the unit is moving through moving house to house and block to block. And now I also understand people on the left who are like, you know what, anybody who did that. You're out. I don't want to hear from you. I think that's idealistic. And kept doing it. In the Marxist sense, it's it misunderstands for the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. You're going to get that without disaffected soldiers. You'll be like, hey, did you want that? Did you ban that somebody? Like, I don't want I don't want you out in the streets. Like that it was soldiers, peasants and workers that led the revolution. Like disaffected soldiers are are are critical to any kind of workers movement. You're really arguing now in Leninist terms. Well, because you're arguing with you're making it to people who would have left here. But whatever, there's not a lot of them and may and they're against him. It's more that's more of a national conversation. But is that a real conversation like DSA world? Oh, absolutely. And I get it. I've seen some of it. I get it. Like it like. I think it's very hard for people to put themselves in a in his frame of mind where he wanted to go to war. And he basically rebuked most of what he did. And that's a really critical difference. Right. Right. But so as a machine gunner, you are going house to house every single day. If you mess up, your comrades die. Yeah. If you don't mess up, you kill a bunch of people. Yeah. Some now it's combat. But to then later come to terms with the fact that you were fighting for nothing means that you killed those people for nothing. You killed those people to save your own men's lives and women's lives. But they shouldn't have been there in the first place you realize and he has realized. So to witness that, to take part in it, to come to terms with what you did and that it all it all being for nothing. Is that is the thing that produces so much depression, anxiety and terror in combat veterans. Yeah. This understanding that what you did was for nothing what your friends died for. And reckoning with it on these scattershot Reddit posts for years. It's actually kind of an interesting window into the mindset. And I think just that's why I say people hear him say he did two combat tours. Four. But I think it's impo... well, two combat tours in Iraq and then four total. Yeah. But it's very hard to internalize what that does to your soul. And to have somebody who's processing that and then to come back and have an opportunity to go to the United States Senate to fight against sending more people to do that. Yeah. It's just extraordinarily powerful. He said in one of our first interviews that his hero is Smedley Butler, who committed far more atrocities than... Oh, yeah. Than maybe anybody. Good Lord. Yeah. Like Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti. China, Philippines. China, on and on. Across the world. Yeah. And then wrote War is a Racket in the 1930s, which really birthed a real piece in the anti-war movement. But he was a general. To have a grunt come to the Senate and talk about that, I think would be extremely powerful. Also would love to see him interrogating like the top brass in the military. Fascinating. Like they are... they do not want to hear that from a grunt. No. That's gonna... but that would be... that would be amazing to see. So I just think it's such an important voice to have, whether it's Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever. And that experience and to bring it to bear at the national level is something that this country really needs, I think, to reckon with what we've done and what we continue to do. 70% of voters agree with Ryan in the main Democratic primary. So now it comes down to Susan Collins. Honestly, I could talk about this for the whole show because it's such an interesting race. And I know we're gonna keep talking about it. We should probably take through some of the other wins. Randy Viegas, Ryan. Yes, we can put up C6. Democrats in the House are absolutely livid at the DCCC for spending a bunch of money and teaming up with DMFI, Democratic Majority for Israel, in trying to elect Jasmine Baines, trying to get her into the top two. Instead... yeah, this is a Jewish insider, their headline is anti-Israel Democrat Viegas declares victory in California House of Primaries. This is Randy Viegas. You may remember from his interview he did here a couple weeks ago. So he'll go on to take on the Republican incumbent, which makes this a very important race for kind of the left side idea that you can have populist policies. This is a... he's a community college professor and owns a... or like runs a garage in Bakersfield to have somebody like him running on a Bernie platform up against the Republican. Like the left's argument has been that you can win with that. And if you win with that, you will then deliver for people and then people will reward you. Democrats have really not gotten to try that basically since the New Deal. So it's the other attempt to do that, well, it's slightly different attempt to take on an incumbent seems to be going quite well. Justice Democrats and WFP backed Mae Vang, who's also... remember she was on the program a week or two ago, put up C7. Doris Matsui, longtime incumbent, she and her husband have held this seat for 40 plus years. She spent a fortune trying to boost that guy down at the bottom, Zach Woods, Republican college kid. And I kept saying, she better be careful. It's not guaranteed she's going to be the number one seed here in this tournament. And Mae Vang has now overtaken her. And so Doris Matsui is... she will make the top two, but she almost kind of ran after way out of into the number three position. Which would be... Brutal. That would have been the funniest thing. You spend all this money and you boost this guy Woods. It would have been pretty funny. Past yourself. It would have been pretty funny. She's cooked though because Sacramento, like news media has turned against her. I don't see how the Republicans who voted for Woods are going to then shift to Matsui. Because if you're a Republican there, Matsui's been your representative for decades. I think you'd probably just... even if the person's further to the left, you'd probably just like to get rid of her. We'll see. That'll be an interesting one. So tell us about... Yeah. And Steyer has conceded he's not going to make the top two. Yeah, just a reminder, Tom Steyer spent about $200 million. He didn't even make the top two. $200 million after about $300 million trying to run for president. His net worth is estimated at about $2.4 billion. So fabulously wealthy man. He's not Jeff Bezos rich. And he's spent now half a billion dollars of a $2.4 billion estimated net worth trying to be an elected official. Never trust anybody who wants to be an elected official to the tune of half a billion dollars. That's insane behavior. That's like Joker style behavior. So he could have run for House somewhere or something. Yes, exactly. He's conceded... By a House seat. C9. Yeah, that would have been fine. But yes, he did concede. It looks like Steve Hilton is going to make the run off. Now, the other thing that happened last night is Lindsey Graham took about 58% of the vote. He's looking like right now. He always has a primary challenger one time, including from Southern Charm. You may remember that season, but it did not work out well for Lindsey Graham's primary opponents this time around. He ended up over 50% easily. The Southern Charm guy. Nancy Mace goes down in the gubernatorial primary. Fifth. Fifth. She finished lower than Ralph Norman. Trump candidates were the favorites in that race, but Nancy Mace couldn't even get top three, let alone top two, let alone a win. 12% finishes at five. 12% of the vote, yeah, 12% of the vote. So really a brutal result there for Nancy Mace, who definitely felt like she had momentum and winded at her back for a while. And, you know, maybe the momentum stalled. Listen, I don't think Nancy Mace was going to win this election. I do think probably she lost some momentum when Trump got upset over people pushing further, further, for more and more Epstein disclosure. And Nancy Mace was certainly a part of that. Yeah, so the number of casualties from Epstein, certainly very few men who are actually implicated in the Epstein ring. But so far, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey, Nancy Mace, are casualties of it. Interesting how that works out.