Krystal and Saagar discuss Nebraska election rule could save Kamala, Trump too old for 2016 rally pace, Trump takes Bernie credit card policy, how CIA propped up Afghanistan drug trade.
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There has been quite a political drama playing out in the state of Nebraska with regard to their electoral college votes. So if you're not a total political geek, you may not know. Nebraska and Maine allocate their electoral college votes in a different way than I think any other state. Instead of doing it as Twitter take all, like you win the state, you get the electoral college votes, end of story, they do it by congressional district. That means that there is a district in Nebraska which is a perennial swing congressional district that is worth one electoral college vote. So there was an effort in the Nebraska legislature to try to change the way that they did their electoral college vote allocation to put it in line with all of the other states that just do win or take all. To put this up on the screen, this is very signific. I'll get into this. It could actually end up being the difference between who wins and who loses. But you had one Republican senator who was a kind of a holdout who yesterday finally issued a statement saying he would not vote for this proposed winner take all system for Nebraska's electoral college votes. He said quote, elections should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live, or what party they support. For decades, Nebraska's try to live up to that ideal by allocating our electoral college votes in a way that gives all Nebraskans an equal voice in choosing our president. For Omaha, the city I love and have called home for fifty eight years, it brings tremendous national attention, is impactful on our local economy, and forces presidential candidates to make their case to all Nebraskans instead of just flying over and disregarding us. In recent weeks, a conversation about whether to change how we allocate our votes has returned to the forefront. I respect the desire to have this discussion, and I have taken time to listen carefully. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, forty three days from election day, is not the moment to make this change. And Sara, you can kind of understand his perspective, because, Yeah, if Nebraska didn't allocate their electoral college votes this way, no politician would ever care about campaigning in Nebraska again, which also just sort of serves to underscore what an absurd system the electoral college system is to begin with, that you only really matter in this election coming up if you live in a handful seven specifically of different swing states plus one district in Maine and one district in Nebraska.
Well, I actually kind of my hot take. I kind of like the congressional allocation. You know, I don't hate the system.
I like it better than the way they do it now because that makes you forces you to campaign work.
I like that idea, especially in Nebraska. Nobody thinks about it's definition of a flyover state. This is basically all they got going for him, So that's what they're taking. Obviously Trump wanted to remove it, but I mean, the main reason, let's go ahead and put C two please up on the screen. Is because of that path to democratic victory. So what you see in front of you is the potential potential If Kamalaw were to win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, with that single electoral vote from Nebraska, she would win two hundred and seventy to two hundred and sixty eight electoral votes.
That would be this is this nail biting as this is zilbiery.
That's very possible scenario, very possible scenario, and so that the polling average is actually is the most possible scenario.
That's true. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, that one.
That's why people have paid so much attention to this, because that one electoral college vote in Nebraska, which right now it is a swing district, but it favors Democrats and the polling that we've seen at this point. You add that to just the three quote unquote blue wall states Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where her poles have tended to be decent, Pennsylvania being the most tenuous of them, she could lose all the Sun Belt states and still win the narrowest of victories. And obviously, like you know, doing the math here, if they changed it was winner take all.
You could end up if you had.
This same map, but it's winner take all in Nebraska, you end up with a two sixty nine and two sixty nine tigh and then as a contingent election, I don't know, Scager, what even happened that goes.
To the House.
Yeah, if it was Tuesday nine twenty nine, it it's contingent election, it would go to the House representatives.
Basically hasn't had.
Nightmare, total nightmare nime of scenario for.
The whole country, but there is will be interesting.
A lot of people have been right.
Actually, I saw Dana bash Now just wrote a book audible for some reason was trying to force it down my throat. But prior to this year, when RFK was in the race, I was doing a lot of eighteen seventy six election righting. And that's the one where the close election in American history. You know, a lot of people do forget if because Harry Enton has been talking about this, this could end up being close selection since nineteen sixty and that is probably more analogus to where we'll end up. A lot of people don't remember, but the margin between Kennedy and Nixon was razor tight, and there were allegations of cheating. Nineteen sixties also where the whole alternate elector scheme came up with.
That's what they did in Hawaii.
So there's some parallels to where we are today for the polling average and where the eventual the eventual result may end up.
Kennedy, it was this close, this close for him to end up.
In the White House.
I mean, I think it's very unlikely that you have a popular vote blowout, you know. I mean it could be like three four points would be the most that would separate the popular vote. But then you know, the electoral college oftentimes all the swing states go in one direction or the other direction. But you'll recall we covered yesterday these New New York Times Siena polls, which are considered very highly rated coming out of the Sun Belt states, and they were not good for Kamala Harris. They showed a lot of try strength. So this that's which is why that makes this Nebraska move even more sign potentially signial.
To your point, Crystal, I mean, just this morning, you know, we were talking about that, and the Time's actually put out a really interesting analysis of its own Arizona polling, and they find that in Arizona that there is a significant split for people who are Diego Trump, so people who don't like Carry Lake but who want to vote for Trump and will vote for a Democrat in the US Senate. They say Trump gets a lyft from Arizona ticket splitters backing a Democrat for Senate. Diego leads in the contest while Kamala Harris trails Donald Trump.
And they point.
Specifically to the fact that Diego is leading Carry Lake by six whereas quote Trump has opened up a five point lead. That means there's an eleven percent electorate somewhere that is Diego Trump. Remember too, split ticket Maybe it's more common in the age of bad candidates, Like there were a decent number of Oz Shapiro voters, which is kind of a crazy thing to say, But in the state of North Carolina, you could certainly envision that there will be a lot of who is it Josh Stein is that rning aainst him? Yeah, there will be a lot of Stein Trump voters. You could see that, certainly.
There would definitely be some but I'm saying the universe huge Trump could win and Stein could also win. That would be nuts.
I mean, that would mean tens of thousands of people go to the polls and vote for Democrat and Republican. Very rare in my opinion, in these days. But if you know, crazier things have happened in terms of look in general, just modern politics. I just don't really believe in eleven pointswing, but it is theoretically possible. That's where the polls show. Nobody's really voted that way since two thousand and eight. People don't really vote that way anymore. But you know, I guess you know, rules are meant to be broken.
I'm looking at the real clear politics averages right now, which take all of the polls into account, even some you know, it's controversial. There's been this rise of like right leaning polls that are meant to be almost like messaging polls, and some Polster averages include them and some don't.
RCP includes all of them.
And as of right now, Harris has a very narrow lead in Nevada point four. She's got also a narrow lead in Pennsylvania point six, Michigan one point eight, and Wisconsin one point, and Trump has narrow leads in the three of the sun Belt states Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia. But the you know, the closest margin here for Harris is in that fourth Sun Belt state of Nevada. So again underscoring why this could be such a we could look back at this and be like, oh my god, that was such a consequential decision that ended up happening with regards to Nebraska.
Puts the three up on the screen.
That's the latest poll we got out of Wisconsin, which showed some pretty significant Harris's strength there. It has her up fifty one to forty five when you include all of the candidates fifty three forty six in a two way Tammy Baldwin with a similar margin in the Senate race there.
Fifty two to forty four.
This is the same pole polling outfit mass Inc. That had a Pennsylvania pole that also was good for Harris last week had her up fifty to forty six.
Again.
You know, this ties in with the sense that okay, she's doing a little bit better in those industrial Midwestern states than she is doing in the Sun Belt states for whatever reason. And one other piece of news with regard to the Sun Belt, though, as we covered in depth the new revelations about Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson aka Black Nazi, and we can put C four up on the screen. So the Republican Governor's Association has officially called it quits and thrown in the towel on North Carolina. Adviys and RGA spox says, we don't comment on internal strategy or investment decisions, but we can confirm what's public. Our current media buy in North Carolina expires tomorrow and no further placements have been made. Could be some effect on Trump in North Carolina? Maybe, I mean very hard to say. I don't know that reverse coattails are all that common. But when we talked to Logan Phillips yesterday, it's like election forecast or prognosticator runs one of these, you know, comprehensive election models. He was saying, you know, it's not just Mark Robinson, it's the fact that the North Carolina Republican Party in general, which now has a supermajority there in their legislature, has been governing morelike it's like an Alabama or Mississippi party versus a party in a state that is a swing state, and specifically on the issue of abortion, they've adopted fringe positions and past fringe legislation.
So when you put.
All of that together, does that depress the vote for Republicans a little bit? Does not move a few suburban voters towards Democrats a little bit, question mark. But the fact you've got RGA calling it quits also just means there's going to be less Republican ad dollars going to promote that ticket less coordinated campaign in the state that Donald Trump is a beneficiarrea zero dollars.
They basically have pulled out Democratic they are looking right now the analysis, it's like basically zero of currently being reserved for him through television, no ads on Facebook or Google. Dems meanwhile have twelve point five million reserved in the state through November. The next forty something days are going to be a real doozy. If you lived in North carolina're about to get bombarded. There will be nothing counter on the Democratic side. And you just can't tell me that that's not a problem for Trump. It's obviously for the only question is a degree, It could be a point, and that's basically the.
Margin of what you won last night.
Well, to your point, there's actually a new poll that just came out that I just saw minutes before this segment. That it's a Elon University poll out of North Carolina rated B plus. Polster has come up by a point a single point in the state of North Carolina and has Josh Stein up by fourteen points forty nine to thirty five over Mark Robinson. And I don't know when the polling sample. What this could have predated, Actually the revelation of the whole Black Nazi. I wish I was in the KKK. I wish slavery of slavery's good. Actually, I'd like to own some slaves comment revelation, so it could it could sink even lower than that.
Actually, that's honestly nuts, But it does track its tracks a lot. What is Trump doing? How is he combating this? Is he in it to win it? Well, maybe let's go and put this up there on the screen. Trump is now quote holding far fewer rallies than in past runs, and this data, honestly, that's pretty shocking, especially if you're comparing it to the twenty sixteen campaign. So by the numbers, Trump had seventy two rallies between June and September of twenty sixteen. He has held twenty four in this period this year, with another on the calendar for today. So he will soon ramp up a schedule, quote with multiple rallies per week in the final stretch of the campaign. That's according to his own advisors. But look, in twenty sixteen, he had sixty nine in the entire month of October and in early November, taking the stage as many as five times a day in the stretch.
That is crazy.
And honestly, look, he had did the same thing in twenty twenty, even though it was even though it was literally during the pandemic.
He had forty three in the five weeks leading up to election day.
You and I remember those because what they were is they had that thing where he would arrive in an airplane hangar and he would just get off the plane and he would immediately go to the stage because they would have the stage inside of an airplane hanger. That's probably what they'll continue to do, But the current schedule does not indicate any of that, and that is a real issue now. Of course, he's certainly had a lot more energy back in twenty sixteen because he's coming off of a successful primary run, but he fought for it and he barely won in twenty sixteen. So that is what that is an indication to me. At the same time, his fundraising, it's a problem now versus Kamala Harris. Remember he had a major edge over Joe Biden, but now the Kamala's in the race. Let's put this in there. What we see right now is that there's some one hundred and fifty million dollar shortfall versus Kamala in just the month of August.
I mean, Kamala.
The big money on the Democratic side this time is insane. It's like Obama four million in a single night out of Hollywood. Kamala twenty something million, twenty five million dollar fundraisers were like unheard of, like what five years to go nowther the norm.
They happen all the time.
And she is raising just an absolute ton one hundred and eighty nine million in August, while Trump raises just forty four point five million. Harris shook up was previously a more evenly matched cash raise, where both Biden Biden had two eighty four Trump had two seventeen. At the end of the month in June. That was the totals and the coffers, not what they were fundraising. But he's always been a major fundraising juggernaut online. But come on, she's got a lot of money. There's a ton of major Democratic elite enthusiasm. She will not want for anything going into this, and it might just be the you know, the difference whenever it comes down to it.
Yeah, And she's also had much more success crossrooms fundraising than Biden. That's been one of the primary differences between their fundraising. In particular, It's possible that this is less reflective of a true overall cash disparity and more reflective of a different campaign strategies. So increasingly campaigns are outsourcing a lot of their even field work paid community patients, like what used to be seen as sort of core campaign functions, to outside entities that face fewer restrictions and on you know, the use of their money, and some of them, if they don't directly advocate for a canonic even taken you know, dark money, don't have to.
Disclose it, et cetera, et cetera.
And the Trump campaign seems to have outsource some of those key functions it's actually the strategy remember Ronda Santis used in primary campaign didn't work out that well for him, but could certainly work out fine for Trump, who has demonstrated no issues certainly turning out his folks consistently when it is time for them to show up and pull the lever for Donald Trump. So I just I would take this with a grain of salt. I think it does show I think Kamala Harris is probably doing more fundraisers, working this a little bit harder to me, it's more an indication of Trump kind of you know, he's not doing as much of the work that he used to do. But it's also going back to the rallies point. It was interesting to me the excuses that the campaign gave of the rationale the campaign gave for why he was doing few rallies. They gave three reasons, three primary reasons that he's doing fewer rallies. Number one, they said, he's a known quantity. Campaign feels less need to define him or his candidacy for voters this time around.
True, he is a known quantity. That is true. The Harris people feel, I.
Think the same way about you know, Okay, people already know maybe we need to remind people of who he is and some of those worst laws that they didn't like. But in general, you're not really going to move people that much on what they think about Donald Trump. But it ignores the fact that you also have a chance at these rallies to define Kamala Harris and Tim Walls in a way that you have so far failed to do. And you know, part of the magic of his twenty sixteen strategy is that the rallies fed into a media strategy that allowed him to grab hold of narratives time and time again in a way that ended up being favorable for him, and that drove a message that was, you know, very critical of Hillary, and that really took hold and really landed with the American public.
So that's one.
The second reason they give is that rallies are expensive, which true, but I mean kind of reminds me of remember back in twenty sixteen soccer there was a lot of criticism of the Trump rally strategy and they said things like, oh, rallies are really expensive, and oh crowd sized, it doesn't matter, et cetera, et cetera, And so I don't know, like, obviously you sort of proved that this strategy works for you before now getting cause conscious about it.
That was interesting to me.
There's a human element too, Yeah, everybody, I mean, we're all ignoring Trump has literally been shot at. He got shot in the head also somebody before that. Yeah, you know, he wasn't doing it would.
Be weird not to be afraid to do a rally.
He's doing a rally what is on October fifth and Butler on the site of where the attempted assassination happened. But a lot of people keep pointing that out for the criticisms. They're like, hey, people are shooting at him.
He's are like, I mean, look.
I would be a Frank too, absolutely kill me. And so I mean he can't really put that aside. So that's certainly part of it. I mean, I guess the other one would be.
Well, the other thing they say is he's older and more inclined bast time at mar A Lago, which I think is probably true too, Like he just doesn't want to do it anymore. He doesn't want to do the debate, he doesn't want to do as many rallies.
It's exhausting, and.
The famous reality own body even in twenty sixteen, So he would have a rally in Nevada, and while any other candidate would just pass out in Nevada, he'd get on the jet and go home to New York just to sleep in his own bed.
I sympathize with that. I totally get it.
But you know, sometimes being on the campaign trail, that's not always the most practical thing. And he burned a lot of jet fuel doing that. I remember of reading so many articles about it because people are like, it's just such a crazy way to do business. But really what it means I think this time around he's prioritizing himself. I think he feels a little bit more comfortable per se this time around, more set in his own ways, doesn't feel like he has to fight as much. And look, he may be right, you know, right now, he's got a fifty to fifty shot, and if he does end up winning, then all of his condo will really have been for not and he would have had a pretty comfortable run, so to speak, I guess, you know, putting aside him literally getting shot, but putting all that aside, like he would not have had to have worked as hard for the president's as most people have to their first time around, so I'm actually curious.
I really don't know where it's going to go.
There was one other piece that's been interesting, Oh the Millennia, Yeah, which is Milania is absence. She's totally a campaign she They wanted her.
To speak at the R and C. Apparently they tried to die.
She's like, no, the most I'll do is show up and like, you're lucky I'm doing that. Basically, she's not on the campaign trail at all. She's writing a new memoir about just about herself. She just did this really on a left field video about how like responding to criticism of her nude modeling, which I haven't heard any criticism of her nude modeling in like a decade, but it.
Came out of nowhere. Yeah, and one news cycle she just wrote a book.
Somebody listen.
But anyway, it all feels very like, you know, it's about her and her life and her journey, which I'm sure is interesting in its own regard, but it's very much not really about her husband or his for the White House, et cetera. And there was this news item that is quite curious. So she was apparently paid almost a quarter of a million dollars to speak to the log Cabin Republicans, which is a group of gay Republicans. She delivered speeches at two fundraisers, which is noteworthy in and of itself because again, she's really not doing anything on the campaign trail for her husband. The log Cabin Republican president told CNN his group wasn't the one that paid for her appearance, and the form that revealed this payment to her didn't provide details on the payments, so we actually don't know who put up the cash, which is you know, noteworthy and important in and of itself in terms of transparency, sunlight all of that, but it's also just you know, another interesting look.
I do feel like if you had.
Any other politician out there right, if Kamala Harris's husband, or if Joe Biden's wife or whatever were like pretty clearly didn't actually care that much whether their spouse won or lost, I think it would be more of a conversation. But with Trump, again, it's just one of these things that people are like, Eh, that's just what it is.
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, look, I think it's definitely weird, but you know, it's not like Trump is always at the most normal personal life.
So uh, she look, I covered her. She's an enigma.
That's the only way, Tea. She tried her hand at being a more traditional first lady the whole be Best campaign, which I'll never forget.
I was there.
Yeah, Wow, wild moment.
Remember when she wore that jacket.
I really don't care, do you?
Is that what it's said? Yeah, something like I really don't care, do you? Yeah, that was a big moment. And she eventually just basically retreated into herself and she's like, I don't care about any.
Of this anymore. I can't really blame her.
I mean, in a certain sense, a lot of these politicians' wives, you get dragged to a life that you never wanted.
I mean, it's really sure.
She thought did not think when she was marrying Donald Trump that this was her future.
She thought, I get to be trophy wife.
I get to hang on it, have my dual life mar A Lago and in New York City.
It's pretty good.
Like my son in peace and whatever, and do the little things that I want to do. But that's it, you know.
Yeah, well a lot of them.
It's I mean, it's honestly sad. If you read between the lines of Obama's book and Michelle Obama's book, there's some pretty brutal admissions of Obama being like I'm running for office, and Michelle's like begging him, like please, don't do it, want him, and he just did it, He just and she was like, Okay, then my mom has to live with us. And he's like, no, I don't want that, and she's and she has, she has to lay down the law. She hated being first Lady by most by most accounts.
So I don't know.
Look, that's between them, you know, in terms of the way that they conduct business. But yeah, it's not all that uncommon, I guess to fall into something like this, but it is noteworthy. I mean, I feel bad for her in a certain stance. It's clearly she doesn't want she does not want this life. She doesn't want this life at all.
Yeah, I think that has been made very abundant.
Yes there, let's move on to the credit card. This.
This is interesting, This is enjoyable and actually kind of fun. Okay, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So this all, this debate kicked off in elite circles after Trump floated an idea at his rallies. So what he said this was in September eighteenth, quote, while working Americans catch up, we are going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates.
Quote.
We are going to cap it at around ten percent. We can't let them make twenty five and thirty percent. So this is up there with some OG twenty sixteen kind of Trump populous stuff, things like everybody will have the best healthcare. In the more recent era, we have seen three, I think proposals that really count in this regard. One is saying no tax on tips. That was quickly a proposal also adopted by Kamala Harris. Second is arguably the most consequential for the federal deficit and for the irs, which is that America will not tax Social Security benefits. Third is now this idea that you should cap credit card interest rates. Now the reason why it doesn't sound that crazy and I actually totally agree with the policy, but it would fundamentally change the entire credit card industry overnight, and definitely not to my benefit as one of those guys who plays of the points game. Let's put this up there on the screen. So for example, Lawrence Wright, of course, says quote or sorry. Laurence Summers says, a cap on credit card interest rates is a far more egregious price control than anything democrats have suggested. I am not enthusiastic, to put it mildly, but democratic anti gouging ideas none hold prices more than a few percent away from market levels. That Trump plan would, in many cases constrain credit costs to be seventy percent or more away from market levels. I do not understand with all of his tariffs, price controls, and arbitrary tracks provisions, Candidate Trump is supported by market oriented conservatives. And that is kind of the fun debate here is that even when Trump floats this price control on credit card is that look, we're all, let's all be real.
Like, is this really going to pass to GOP Congress?
No?
All right, but you know the idea I think it is It was actually a decent one, I think, didn't you say?
Is like Bernie Sanders AOC or.
AOC they actually believe they proposed capping at fifteen percent right getting to the left of their proposals.
Well, I mean this is the way for us to explain too.
It's like, okay, and you know that's interesting, right, So wait, how could they not make any money through ten percent? Well, they could, they wouldn't just make as much money as they can at twenty five or thirty percent. And in fact, and this is the sad admission from people like me who take advantage of the points game, the vast majority of these points are paid for by people who are terribly in debt. As in, if you look at the bottom line profits, and they're very open about it, American Express and all these other companies, the vast, vast majority of their income does not come from the two or the three percent processing fee. It comes from balance with high interest rates they're charging twenty five thirty percent. So the reason and the argument from them is that the way that we make credit widely available to the US public is by charging exorbitant and interest rates because we that means that we can eat it to give Sager free flights to Europe whenever another person is doing this. Now, you know, look, I can't change the system, so I'm going to take advantage of it. But if it could change the system, and you could cap it a ten percent, that's not the worst thing in the world, because you've got horrible amounts of credit card balances in debt at an all time high level in twenty twenty four. People are running up balances with very little financial literacy. These credit card companies are also so predatory. I'm not sure about you. I get offers in my email and in my mail every day.
You've been prequalified for ten thousand dollars. What I didn't qualify? I didn't apply for a damn loan.
When you go to shop at a store and they're always trying to sign up to the store credit card and whatever, and yeah, I mean this is like one of the top ways and by the way, credit card debt has sword.
Yeah, it's all the time right now, one of the top.
Ways that people get behind and cannot catch up.
If you're down thirty already, it's like, what do you can do?
It's brutal. It's absolutely brutal.
I mean, if we both agree this is not happening, but let's imagine it did.
Okay, Well, the debate is fun.
Yeah, debate is I mean, let's live in the theoretical reality, right I think you would have an outcome immediately where a lot of people lost access to the you know, the availability of credit card debt that they have now, And I do think it would be you would have to have some sort of transition, because I do think that there would be a difficult transition period if you've got people who have basically, you know, relied on credit cards to be able just to like live their life and get groceries and you know, be able to like afford to if they have a flat tire or some kind of car trouble or whatever. But you know, yeah, in the long run, do I think it would be better if credit card companies were not able to gouge consumers the way that they do now.
Yeah, and the same way.
This is the same argument, by the way that the like free market argument that's being made here by Larry Summers and others. It's the same one that's used to justify payday lenders, Yes, which are some of the most predatory exploited. It like the percentage of you know, the APR, the rate that you pay on that is just loan shark stuff. I mean, it really is insane and so predator and they'll yeah, but people wouldn't use it if they did. Any we're providing a service for you know, for low income and working class consumers, et cetera, et cetera, which you know, I mean, it's just a deeply dystopian system debts throughout history. Not to go too deep here, but it's used, you know, effectively as a tool of like social control and compliance. It forces you if you once you get behind, like you'll do anything to be able. You'll work that second job, you'll work that third job, you'll take the crap from your boss or whatever. Because the alternative of bankruptcy and failure and public shame and all of that is just so immense.
So I support it.
The The interesting thing that Larry Summers points to that, you know, the one piece of that tweet that he's right about is that you do have a lot of quote unquote free mark conservatives who if this was.
Floated by Commed, they would totally lose their minds.
But they're betting that on this, on tariffs, on any number of those ones in particular are on immigration, they're betting he's they're betting the only part of the Trump economically and that's actually serious is extending the Tax Cutting Jobs Act.
And then, by the way, they're probably right, No.
They're definitely right, except about tariffs.
That's the one thing I'll push back on this because the Commerce Department does have broadly way under.
I forget that was sectioned something I would have to go back and look.
But what Trump was able to do, I mean, effectively imposed almost two hundred fifty billion dollars in tariffs on the Chinese economy with no congressional action. That Congress was definitely pissed about it. They've tried to change the law, they haven't done it. On the rest of it, things like not taxing Social Security. Remember this, it's literally in the constitution. Anything with tax has to come through the US Congress. So that tells us the idea that we would not pass that a GOP Congress of each kind would pass no tax on tips insane.
Almost certainly not going to happen.
And if they did, they would offset it with something in terms of a way to pay for it, which should probably be way.
Worse for people.
Second, there is no way in hell, deficit hawks will ever vote to not tax social Security because that is.
Hundreds of billions of dollars.
Think about how many old people are in this country they get Social Security benefits, Then do the math for the irs for the coffers not gonna happen again. They would have to make that up, would probably very onerous taxes on regular working people, and that would set up a whole contrast between people who are already paying for Social Security and they're not getting any tax, even though I think that's pretty unfair. But then on the price control thing with the credit cards, it would take an act of Congress, and in fact, some of my friends who work in Congress tell me one of the most the piece of legislation they get lobbied on the most is called like the Credit Card Fairness Act. And it doesn't even cap interest rates or any of that. It injects, I leave a little bit more competition into the system. I'm not exactly sure, but it so dramatically threatens the bottom line of Amax, Visa, and MasterCard. They will throw anything at this to protect their monopoly. And that is something where again, look, we have a quasi private system where Visa, MasterCard and American Express not only can hold retailers hostage for the processing fee that they get, they have the payment network of the entire world. They process like billions of dollars of transactions per second, and then on top of that, with all of these reward systems and like you're saying, with shops and all that, people are duped basically into financial contracts that they have no understanding of. So I believe in personal responsibility and all of this, but that presumes financial education. We have zero financial education in America.
Do the math?
Can people do basic math on what thirty percent interest means? Like you were talking about about what financing groceries are? What are you actually agreeing to if you take a personal loan on your American Express card?
Like people don't know.
And so when you have that power and balance the people, we are supposed to advocate for the government, the consumer is supposed to be the government in this case, and that's where what Trump is proposing. It's not a terrible idea, but yeah, it would shrink credit a lot. But again, if you believe in personal responsibility, maybe that's not the worst thing in the world. People shouldn't be floating their entire lives on credit cards.
I mean, it's not like those people want to be in that position.
Well, it's a very convenient thing.
What happens is wages have not kept up, you know, And I'm not just talking about right now with inflation, which is obviously really put a hit on people's real like real earnings and what they can actually buy with their dollar.
But I'm talking over forty years, four years where.
Wages have not kept up with increases in productivity, have not kept up with key you know, the key basics of a middle class life. I'm talking housing, I'm talking education, I'm talking healthcare. And so instead of wages keeping up, instead people have been pushed into this like usury economy, where the only way that they can you know, really make it month to month is by relying on these exploitative credit card issuers. And so yeah, if you if you disrupt that, I mean it is. It is a gigantic disruption, There's no doubt about it. And so in any case, again it's you know, it's interesting to think about how this would play out. It's interesting to think of. Of course, there's the credit card issues where.
Lose their minds.
They would move heaven and earth to make sure that this never saw the light of day. There would be plenty of Republicans and Democrats who would go along with it. Donald Trump has shown no desire or willingness to stand up to the you know, billionaire Glass or Wall Street or whatever. So it's not like we actually expect this to happen, but it is interesting him trying to sound some of those populous notes. But going back to the disparate reaction between when Kamala Harris proposed an anti price gouging law which was left relatively vague.
Which not even relatively quite meg entirely vague detail.
You know, in theory it was supposed to like, you know, mirror some legislation Elizabeth Warren to put together, but the details were never really firmly established. Looks to be very similar to legislation that already exists in something like thirty eight states across the country.
Like not a radical proposal whatsoever.
The level of freak out about that from the Trump side of the equation, including Donald Trump himself, quite different.
Price controls that's been tried in many times, the former Soviet Union Venezuela, even in this country in the seventies was a disaster every time it's been tried, no matter over hundreds of years, not just over hundreds of years, price controls, you end up with no product, you end up with massive inflation, and you end up with the destruction of a How is this and her only idea for solving inflation is to impose Communists inspired price controls which have never worked.
So there you have Trump himself of ag Ramaswami also sounding similar notes, let's take a listen to that.
But their grand economic idea that she unveiled, the Nobel prize winning plan perhaps to control price gouging in the grocery market with price controls. She didn't get a great response to that. That was actually the first thing that burst the bubble of the honeymoon period that Kamala Harris has been in. And so the reality is she kind of learned her lesson. It's like a Pavlovian training teaching her that, Okay, the more you talk about policy, the dog bites back.
You say, you don't want to do that anymore.
Interesting commentary there too, because actually, if you pull the American people there overwhelmingly and supported the plan. But it is true she did get some donor pushback and has not talked much about it since that moment. Ben Shapiro also weighed in on the Kamala price gouging proposal. He could put his tweet up on the screen he says, Kamala's campaign is basically joy and free money and price controls and no questions if Americans vote for this. Well, Mankin was right, to my sees the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. And again her proposal is so modest and very much non revolutionary compared to cap on credit card interest rates.
But you know it really for.
Me, Sager exposes the fact that it's such a damn shame that Trump isn't who he said he was in twenty sixteen, because all of these partisan hacks will go along with whatever he says, like they Ben Shapiro and Vivek Ramaswami and.
You know, Bill Ackman whatever.
The billionaires are behind him at this point, Like if he gets behind a policy, somedly they forget all their like price control bles because it is a cult of personality, and the downside of the culture personality is that no one dessends. And the upside of the cult of personality is that you can force through things that otherwise would not be possible. But he shows zero interest in actually effectuating most of their you know, a few exceptions that I will grant you, but the overwhelming majority of the populist leanings that he gave voice to in twenty sixteen, that's not what is sitting on the shelf. That's not what's easy to get through Congress. That's not what's easy to pass muster with the donor set and so buy and large. These just get floated at a rally and then just like how you're going to have great universal health care, never end up actually having.
The lesson is really about what your priority is when fighting with Congress, And in twenty seventeen you just didn't fight, basically, just did whatever they wanted to do, and that's how you got TCJA. Now, whenever he had full authority, like on something you really believed in, like tariffs, it was a different story. And that's why you know on immigrations a few other places where you have it's a full executive authority, or in foreign policy, yeah, you should really pay attention and listen because that's what you actually can do. But whenever it comes to this, anything to do with tax, anything to do with a capping credit card interest in all that, the president basically is it's impossible to unilaterally act and the lobbyist and all that know that. Because listen, if Visa, MasterCard and all of them were really taking this seriously, you would see a hell of all oh yeah donations. But they're laughing all the way to the bank because they know how to work the CongressI Like I said, if you can't even get whatever the Credit Card Fairness Act through Congress, good luck getting a ten percent cap on interest rates.
It would never happen.
Yeah, you would have to make this the fight of your for your life life.
By the way, it would also be like ninety percent popular. I would guarantee you if you were to be like eighty.
Nine hugely popular. That's the you know.
I mean, this is the interesting thing about the American public is when you ask them about these people, they're like, socialism, let's do it.
But I wouldn't call that socialism.
There's been many print controls. Then let's do it.
Credit card interest rates are by this is the other woo. Let the free market decide. Do you know how highly regulated credit card interest rates are? And about all the number of consumer protection the Bureau and the Treasury Department, and the way the government subsidies and all these companies get so I just cut me break whenever we're talking about that.
All right, Let's get to our guest. Seth harp is great standing.
By joining us now is Seth Harpy is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and is the author of the forthcoming book The Fort Bragg Kartel in July of twenty twenty five.
We're excited to see him. Thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely so.
The reason we booked you is not only because of your forthcoming book subject, but because of a graph that really caught our eye. Let's put this up there on the screen. A lot of perhaps counterintuitive depending on what you thought about the US presence in Afghanistan, but according to the Financial Times, poppy in poppy growing in Hellman Province, Afghanistan has fallen ninety nine percent since the US withdrawal. So, Seth, considering the title of your book, considering a lot of discussion over the last twenty years about opium and the US role and cultivation poppy and heroin, what do you make of that graph and considering what you're writing about, what can you shed light on some of the background of why that is?
Well, it's really stunning and it's only now that the Taliban has been in control of Afghanistan for several years that were able to fully judge what the true history of the heroin trade in Afghanistan really was. In its significance from two thousand and one to twenty twenty one, during the twenty years of US occupation, before the Taliban took over and completely eradicated the country's entire poppy prop it was kind of difficult to say who was responsible for that drug production. But actually what the Taliban have just done in twenty twenty two was an exact repeat of something that they did in two thousand and one, which was to eradicate all drug production from Afghanistan, poppy cultivation and the synthesis of heroin laboratories. And in the process of writing the book, I learned a lot about the heroin trade in Afghanistan and compiled basically of facts that I think every American citizen should know about their government support for international drug cartels, which actually goes back to the nineteen eighties. So I'd be happy to run down or if you guys just want to ask questions in general about.
The subject any us what you got.
Like, I said, us intervention. Excuse me. US support for drug traffickers in Afghanistan goes back to the nineteen eighties when the Soviet Army occupied Afghanistan, and a lot of people are familiar with the so called Charlie Wilson's War, the America's covert war in Afghanistan to drive out the Soviet occupiers by arming and bunding certain warlords to wage guerrilla war in that country against the Russians. And it's also pretty well known that a lot of these people were radical Islamis and that this covert program led to the formation of al Qaeda and the events that led to nine to eleven are contributed to it. That was in the background of it. But it's less well known that those same Mujahadeen as are often called, many of them were deeply involved in the drug trade. This is something that we don't hear much about, although it is out there in the open. I think that Steve Cole, writing for the Washington Posts in the early nineties, was one of the first to describe this googleding. Heck Winzar and nasieing Akrunzada were two of the biggest recipients of CIA cash and arms and both of them were two of the biggest narcos in Afghanistan. And once the Russians had successfully been driven out, they set about transforming Afghanistan essentially into the world's largest poppy plantation, because the geography and climate of Afghanistan are very advantageous for the cultivation of poppy, and through their brutal methods, they forced a lot of Afghanistans peasantry into conditions of essentially narco serfdom and allated people to plant poppy when in the past they've been planting food crops or fruit. And so the nineteen nineties in Afghanistan is a kind of forgotten interlude. But there was a drug war there essentially the same as there was a drug war in Columbia and there is one in Mexico today. And the Taliban actually emerged as a reaction to the infighting between these warlords. And you know, we hear a lot about the Taliban's wicked ideology and their refreshion of women and how they don't allow music and kites and things like that, but we never hear about their anti narcotics agenda. But that was actually fundamental to their ideological identity from the very beginning. The Taliban, as you might imagine, being such a conservative movement, didn't look kindly upon the production of drugs or the consumption of drugs either. And as I alluded to a moment ago, once they had consolidated control of Afghanistan's major population centers after a civil war or in the nineteen nineties, they completely eradicated all of the heroin production that was taking place in Afghanistan in two thousand and one, that was. That eradication effort was completed in the summer of two thousand and one, and some experts at the time described it as the most dramatic event in the history of drugs markets. They completely had the history of illegal drug markets. They completely decimated the world supply of heroin, eliminated something like ninety five percent of heroin from the global black market. That was, as I said, in the summer of two thousand and one.
That's let me pause you for one second, because I have a question about that piece that also connects with today. Yeah, what sort of tactics did they use to have this level of complete eradication.
That's a good question. As far as I can tell, they just went around telling people hey, you can't do that anymore. They didn't, really, they didn't don't pesticide from airplanes. They didn't use any of the be handed eradication methods that the US and proxy forces or client states that use in countries like Columbia for example, you know, very low tech methods using sticks to beat down the plants or tractors to uproot fields.
And were people just afraid of the consequences of not listening to the Taliban?
That's a good question. I'm not sure, I suppose so. I mean, the obvious answer is yes, the Talibans the government has monopoly on the use of force there, and people didn't disobey when told to stop growing poppy. So sure, here the consequences. But I'm not able to find very many reports of violence in this latest eradication campaign. A few sporadic shootings between you know, traffickers that resisted, but for the most part, yeah, they seem to have just asked people nicely.
And so when we invade Afghanistan, what is our relationship to the cultivation of poppy?
Well, so the US invaded Afghanistan just five months after they completely eradicated poppy from Afghanistan, and that invasion force was led by the CIA, backed by Jasog and Delta Force, and they immediately teamed up with many of the same narco warlords that had taken refuge in the north of the country, which was the only part of Afghanistan where heroin productions was still taking place. And we called that group of militias and warlords the Northern Alliance. And not all of that. I don't want to say that every single one of the individuals that was part of the effort was involved in drug trafficking, but many of them, especially the Tajik and Uzbek warlords, you know Rashi Dost them, I think chief among them, were deeply involved in the international heroin trade, and the CIA knew it. And when they installed the new Afghan government led by Hamed Karzai, one of the government's first actions was to legalize poppy cultivations, the fact that went almost entirely unremarked in the American press. Within a single year, heroin production in Afghanistan was back to pre Taliban highs of production. There were known narcotics traffickers in control of all of Afghanistan's major heroin producing areas, including the Helman Narangahar, Condahar, Jalalabad, all these areas where either poppy was cultivated or heroin was traffick internationally, and within eight years Afghanistan was producing ten times more heroin than the rest of the world combined. It was the largest drug output. It was the largest production of heroin or any drug in world history. I mean, I really want to emphasize the scale of this heroin in Afghanistan. The production of it was around topped out and stayed at the level of about one thousand metric tons of pure heroin per year for almost fifteen to twenty years on. And that's double the global demand for heroin. So they're producing twice as much heroin as the entire world can absorb. Mexico is the second place producer, only puts out about fifty tons of heroin a year, Colombia twenty tons of heroin. The only other country that's even on the map is me and more and I think they produced like one or two tons.
Wow.
And again Afghanistan producing one thousand tons of pure heroin per year.
So seth to stick with then the title of your book, what is the ren role of our own government in not only the cultivation. I know at one point we were actively wanting to create cultivation of poppy. In fact, in preparation for the segment, I found criticism of the Taliban from the US Institute of Peace by some Afghan scholar who was like, why the Taliban shutting down opium production is bad for Afghanistan. I was like, what, I mean, this seems a little bit too naked here, So is the cynical take correct? I mean, what exactly was going on in terms of our own government, our military in helping stoke this production.
It's very hard to understand what these people were thinking in allowing this. They didn't talk about it very much during the war, and to the extent they did, it was very much in line with that article that you just referenced by the US Institute for Peace, basically implicitly saying, hey, this is good for the economy. This is a wave REPP.
Like a jobs program.
Yeah exactly. Yeah. But at the same time, we always heard during the war that the Taliban were responsible for this, and that the insurgency and all the drug production were really two sides of the same coin, from our politicians, from our most prestigious and trusted institutions. In media, we always heard that the Taliban were basically where narco terrorists was the term that I think was invented in the early two thousands to describe this. And anytime we heard about the drug production that was going on in Afghanistan, which was very much soft pedaled, very much not in the new but to the extent it was, we always heard the Taliban were responsible. Now and looking into this, I found that there's no evidence to support it at all. And I don't claim that my research skills are exhaustive, but if there's anyone out there who can find a case of a named Taliban individual who was as are apprehended or convicted, or it was otherwise shown for a fact that they were producing or trafficking drugs, please get in touch, because I wasn't able to find a single case of that. And you know, you don't have to take my word for it, because in twenty eighteen, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction SIDEGARD, they put out a report, a Retrospective on Narcotics in Afghanistan. And this is a US government publication, so you know, they kind of couch it in delicate terms, but It's very clear from reading that report that their conclusion that they came to was that there was never any evidence at all to back up the idea that the Taliban were either profiting from the direct participation in drug production or we're even taxing it as we sometimes heard. The best I think you could say is that at times some groups that were called Taliban, which is actually more diverse coalition than we realize, some of those groups at times in certain places may have levied attacked on other drug traffickers. But that's beyond that. There's no reason to think that the Taliban participated in the drug trade. It also goes against you know there, as I mentioned before, their original ideological identity of being a force, it was against narcotics. The Taliban would occasionally put out edicts that that bans their own fighters from using drugs or or participating at all in the drug trade. We never gave them any credit for that, but in fact it seems to be pretty consistent on their part now and was response.
To the economic point.
Afghanistan obviously a poor country under sanctions by the US, that we also withheld a significant chunk of their central bank reserves, you know, post after we left, there was a sort of economic free fall, at least for a certain period of time. So what has been the economic impact of the total eradication of poppy production when it was so central to the agricultural economy.
Well, it's hard to say. Probably not good for the farmers that have immediately lost out on their poppy revenue that they were making. But Afghanistan has really serious economic problems as a result of the krushing international sanctions that are on them and the fact that the US basically just stole all the money that was in their bank by freezing it. So Afghanistan is in the terrible economic situation right now, which makes it all more remarkable that the Taliban was willing to eliminate what had been the majority, you know, their genep. It really shows that they were determined to eliminate this trade from Afghanistan.
Yeah, I mean, I think what's shocking about this is that it turns a lot of stuff on its head. Like you said, Seth, I worked in that space for a long time, covered the Pentagon during the Afghan War. We heard constantly narco terrorists that these people were involved in drug production, that they were much more drug lords and they were this, But then it's a little bit counter if all of that gets shut down the moment that they actually take over the country, you would presume that the inverse would happen. That when you have total control over state resources, you would ramp opium production up. So then if they weren't producing the opium, somebody was, and somebody was profiting. I've been sure you don't want to give away too much, but to what role can you speak about from your own book to the deep involvement of the US military forces and perhaps not only officially sanctioning this, but getting involved in the actual like moving and selling of drugs.
Well, that's same Sigar report that I mentioned a moment ago is unequivocal about this. The US backed Afghan government, at every level and at every every geographic region of Afghanistan was either directly involved in producing drugs or was profiting from it uh in the form of bribes or taxation. All of the major warlords who comprised the US client state, you know, under Ahmad Karzai originally and under Ashraf Ghani later were known narcotics traffickers. You know, Fahim Khan was Humid Karzai's defense minister. He was a big time drug trafficker. Humid Karzai's half brother, Ahmed Wali. Ahmed Wali Karzai was the kingpin of Kandahar who had this, as they would say in Mexico, the direcho episo over the entire helman the ability to charge drug traffickers, the commission to move drugs through Kandahar. I mentioned Rashi Roshid DoSM Rashid Dosum a moment ago up on the border of Afghanis, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. He was in major drug lord. The CIA worked closely with him. Hazarat Ali and Jalalabad another big time drug trafficker controlling the drug trade from Afghanistan to India, which was sorbed a lot of the heroine during this time. And these are all people who have names, whose role is known, and the way that it was done out in the open, it is really kind of jaw dropping. And it's not just the people at the top. It's as the Saga report said, people at every single level and every department of the Afghan government were directly involved in the drug trade. And if you ask any grunt who served in Afghanistan Marine whatever. They'll tell you that the security forces of these people under these four lords, they use drugs constantly and were often too stoned on hashish or opium to even go out and patrol. So the Afghan client state was the world's biggest drug cartel, and it was directly backed at all times by JASAG, the CIA, and the whole of the US government. And past instance is like CIA complicity in the drug trade that we're familiar with, pale in comparison, you know, there's the whole Dark Alliance thing. The reporter Gary Webb revealed in the nineties that the CIA knew that the Nicaraguent contras or trafficking cocaine from Columbia through Mexico into the United States at the time of the Crack Room. I mean, that was significant, but there's just no comparing the scale of this. As I mentioned before, for twenty years, Afghanistan innovated the entire world with extremely cheap, extremely potent, and extremely high quality heroin. It was available everywhere, and that changed. I mean, that had a huge impact on history, an extremely deleterious effect on the social fabric of many countries that directly surround Afghanistan, including Iran, had a terrible heroin quiet crisis during this time. China as well had to really crack down on heroin trafficking through g and Jang, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, in the WEE or occupied part of the part of China. Russia suffered a terrible heroin crisis during this time, all of Europe and of course America, and it was all the result of having a huge glut of very high quality and very cheap product it was available.
That's my last question for you, is intentionally naive one. How does this square with the US's relatively draconian anti drug policies.
Well, when you say relatively draconian anti drug policies, I guess you're referring to the criminal penalties that are available to punish traffickers that are caught here in the US. Well, it just goes to show that, you know, the government really kind of instead of fighting a drug war, it's more that they pick winners and losers in the game and say who can who is allowed to traffic drugs internationally. If the DA at any point had wanted to look Afghanistan and say, you know, sometimes when they say describe a drug trafficking organization in Mexico, Let's say and create like an organization chart and put this guy at the top and say these guys are as lieutenants. A lot of that, there's there's some you know, there's some artistic license that goes into that these groups are not as coherent as you might think. My point is that if if at any point they had wanted to look at Afghanistan and describe what was going on there as a cartel and create like an organization chart, they it easily could have been portrayed as you know, this is the most uh, this is the most profitable, productive, and dangerous drug trafficking organization in the entire world. And it's it's inundating the United States with heroin because the heroin crisis of the United States perfectly coincided with this time period. And there's endless reports from the early two thousands from medical professionals and others, especially county sheriffs, talking about how they were seeing a much increased supply of heroin in the most remote rural counties in the United States. It's not just the cities. The whole country was saturated by heroin that was white, in color, high quality, high potency. Now as a caveat, the DEA says that none of this came from Afghanistan. They say that the United States, alone in the world, is the only country untouched by Afghan heroin. And that's a claim that you see sometimes repeated in mainstream media accounts during this time, and in my book I'm going to go into all the reasons why I don't think that's true at all. I think that that all of that supply, or the great majority of that supply that directly caused the heroin crisis in America was the consequence of the war in Afghanistan.
I can't wait to read it.
Yeah, well that Yeah, We're going to let you now get back to writing that book because we're now all dying to read it and see what else you have to say. And I hope you'll come back on when the book is published, if not before, and explain in detail your additional findings there. Thank you so much for joining us today though it's been eye opening, absolutely eye opening.
Thanks man, appreciate it definitely, Thanks for having me our pleasure. Thanks so much for watching, guys, We appreciate it. If you can become a premium subscriber. You want that exclusive content, you can breakingpoints dot com. Otherwise, great Counterpoints show for everybody tomorrow