Krystal and Saagar discuss the kickoff of the Iowa fair as GOP candidates attempt to curry favor for the 2024 race.


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Good morning everybody happy Monday we have an amazing show for everybody today what do we have Crystal?

Lots to get to this morning so we are starting with all of the Republican candidates descended on the unsuspecting state of Iowa.

Some really interesting moments that unfolded there.

We're also going to bring in a reporter who was there on the ground to give us all of the juicy details.

We are also keeping track of the very latest in terms of those horrific, deadly wildfires in Hawaii.

I mean, the news just continues to get worse and worse.

And residents getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of government support.

We also have some news in terms of potential new Trump indictments coming down this week and some new revelations about exactly what his team was up to there in Georgia.

We also have more big developments in terms of a potential Big 3 auto shutdown.

Some very revealing moments from 1 of the big executives there.

We're also going to tackle the surprise political hit topping the charts.

Maybe you guys have heard this and guess what guys?

Crypto boy wonder, SBF has landed himself in jail.

So we'll break all of that down for you and more, but we did want to start with what's going on on the ground in Iowa.

It's a shocking and interesting developments.

Not really in terms of how everything went down.

Ron DeSantis took the stage with Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa and was met with chants of we want Trump.

Absolutely brutal, but also indicative of where the situation is.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Iowa State Fair, Let's welcome Governor Kim Reynolds and Governor Ron DeSantis.

We really appreciate you being here as we have the opportunity.

Well, first of all, welcome back to state fair.

So let's give everybody the opportunity to hear our candidates.

But we're all going to have an opportunity to hear from each and every candidate.

So the woman scolding her own constituents is the governor of the state, Kim Reynolds, who clearly, Crystal, if it was up to her, she would endorse DeSantis tomorrow.

She's been playing footsie with him the entire time.

He has constantly kind of been kissing up to her, you know, over many interviews and other things that he has given.

And I just think it's a terrible look, you know, from a performance perspective, even to just give in to the crowd and give them what they want.

Whenever they're shouting, We want Trump.

I mean, yeah, they were loud, but guess what?

You've got the mic, you can at least get it on the record.

But to do the whole call-out thing and Iowa nice, I just, I think it was, it showed a lot of weakness.

To be fair, I mean, DeSantis isn't the 1 that did it, But that's just the last thing that you want happening at your kind of flagship political event in Iowa.

And people need to understand, this is a big thing, the Iowa State Fair.

We'll remember the butter cow with Ted Cruz in 2016.

This is often the site of some of the most famous moments in a lot of primary politics.

Many epic corn dog pictures have come out of the Iowa

They all try to pretend, they don their human suits for like 24 hours.

Try to pretend that they're just like us by eating like a, what, deep fried oreo.

Like I'm gonna wear a flannel and wear jeans.

My personal favorite was a banner that was flying over the Iowa State.

Let's go and put this up there on the screen.

Seems to have been planted by the Trump campaign.

Says quote, be likable, Ron, and puts Ron's logo like Jeb Bush, Ron with a capital exclamation mark.

So Trump, well, pretty much the unambiguous winner of the Iowa State Fair, Crystal, not dominating the event, even whenever he's not on the stage and forcing his only real rival to basically have to shut down his interview with the governor of the state, basically being openly disrespected by her, supposedly her constituents.

I mean, it actually low-key made me feel a little bad for Ron DeSantis.

Brutal, and there's, I mean, what are you gonna do?

There's no good way to deal with that state of affairs.

And there's a couple things, because you have to, in that moment, as you're sitting there on the stage, and you're hearing the crowd, like, jeering

among a Republican base that very recently really loved this guy.

And so you're thinking, geez, did I not only screw myself in terms of this presidential race, but in terms of any political future?

I think that is a very open possibility at this point.

And then in terms of Governor Kim Reynolds, you know, if you are governor of a state and you did well there, I mean, she won by a hefty margin.

She's got a pretty good approval rating, I believe, in the state of Iowa, et cetera.

She's having a realization of just how shallow her support is.

Like, she doesn't command any sort of real, like

she doesn't command any sort of real loyalty from her own constituents.

So I was also thinking about the state of Iowa has been significantly demoted in terms of the political season.

You know, it's still first for the Republican side, but that race is looking all but over, you know, as evidenced by the chance that we show you there.

And then, on the Democratic side, you know, Iowa's been completely demoted, in a lot of ways, for good reasons, because they completely screwed up the caucuses last time around.

But this is so central to that state's identity.

mean, being the first caucus site where the first votes are cast and having this every 4 years pageantry of all the candidates going around from place to place, and they're very used to meeting the presidential candidates in person in these little gatherings, et cetera, and, you know, that era, especially on the Democratic side, is completely over.

And Vivek Ramaswamy decided to warm up the crowd with a rendition of Lose Yourself by Eminem, donning his old persona, Davek, from back in the days whenever he was in college.

run out, time's up, overflows, and back to reality, oh, it goes back, and he opens those back, he's so mad, but he won't give up, there is no...

So apparently what happened, Crystal, is that's his open song, And he asked Kim Reynolds, he said, do you know this song?

And so he said, well, I'll show you the song.

know, boomers are people in their own right.

I'm sorry, boomers who are a paying audience.

I think, what I actually found kind of funny about the whole thing is that, you know, 20 years ago, that would have been 1 of the biggest stories in the whole country.

Like the whole Howard Dean scream, which I think, wasn't

But yeah, so it was like something like, or you know, Bill Clinton, I still remember, you know, like reading about how Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on what is it, Arsenio Hall, was like a landmark moment for

I remember reading that and being like, what, that's so stupid.

But this is just 1 of those that goes like a semi-viral-ish on Twitter and then everybody just kinda moves on.

Maybe that's probably for the good, so that people don't see their lowest moments, but I just thought it was funny, you know, to show all of this.

But I think that we have to come back to Trump.

Trump was the central figure at this thing.

He dominated every single event, even when other candidates were there.

Kim Reynolds was doing the rounds at almost every turn.

It was we want Trump, we want Trump and he got the biggest audience at the entire thing.

I would argue that at this point Vivek and DeSantis are basically even in terms of being quote unquote Trump's top rival.

Trump doesn't really have a top rival at this point.

I'm also going to give you a little bit of a hot take on the DaVeik moment there.

that you are actually willing to like publicly humiliate yourself to that degree.

Whereas if I, I mean just even thinking about doing something like that makes me want to curl up in a ball and die.

The other thing I would say is you're talking about how all these candidates like they don their human suits and try to be like, see, I'm just like you people.

I mean, at least Vivek is doing something that is true to his genuine pre-political personality.

And it reminds me a little bit, I mean, this is like a wild comparison, but it reminds me a little bit to Trump's first foray at the Iowa State Fair.

Instead of him, let me put on the jeans and the button, like the flannel or whatever, he showed up as he does.

I remember he was giving people rides on I think his private helicopter.

And I do think that's 1 of the things that's like an enduring appeal of Trump.

He sets the standard for like who he is, how he's going to approach this, what he's going to say, and you know, people unfortunately, better or worse, can't get

That is such a good point that actually just hit home.

Trump never pretended to be anything but himself.

He didn't ever want to spend the night in Iowa.

He always liked to come home and sleep in his own bed in Trump Tower.

And then he would get the hell out of there.

And I remember because we were covering it at the time, it would be Ted Cruz doing the butter cow and Marco Rubio and everybody would be in their jeans and Trump was just in a full suit, he just didn't care.

And it was just 1 of those where he's like, this is me and people loved him for it.

And if I was looking back at the polls, it's right around now when Trump started to dominate every single Republican primary poll, actually less so than he is even right now, which just gives you a good example.

I think it was Harry Enten, the polling analyst, said that No candidate has ever led this much in a primary this early in the race and not gone on to be the eventual nominee.

So barring some black swan event or something like that, things are looking pretty clear.

And Iowa clearly, even at the grassroots level, where Ted Cruz did have a lot of success.

Still doesn't seem to be manifesting for any of Trump's opponents.

Trump himself gave a little bit of a answer on Stop the Steal at Iowa, showing us that he very much is the exact same man that he always has been.

President Trump, did you intend to overturn the 2020 election?

If you didn't hear, that was, do you intend to overturn the 2020 election?

Listen, once again, we come back to, he has never really told us that he, he has never presented himself as anything other than what he is.

And I think that is what the primary voters in particular appreciate the most about him.

And you know, even every answer, it's just vintage Trump.

He looks exactly the same as whenever he was there, what, 7 something years ago?

And it's just, you know, in the same flashback of just how well it appears he's gonna be doing this race.

And yet the lack of sort of drama and interest in the Iowa State Fair, I mean, this is really a blip on the radar.

It is a sign of just how little competition there is and how much of a foregone conclusion both of these primaries feel like.

And, listen, I mean, when you have an incumbent president, you know, that's fairly typical, right?

They're very likely to get the nomination on the Democratic side.

But, you know, what isn't typical on the Democratic side is the total ambivalence of the Democratic electorate towards their guy who is in the presidency.

I mean, you know, Barack Obama, even at his lowest point, the Democratic base loved this guy, still loves this guy.

Very different set of affairs with Joe Biden.

And then on the Republican side, You know, this should have been really contested.

There was a lot of media hype about the challenge to Trump and all of this, and it looks like just as much of a foregone conclusion on the Republican side as it does on the Democratic side.

The fact that the governor of the state basically threw in for DeSantis and no 1 cares whatsoever, that you had a bunch of evangelical leaders, including some in the state of Iowa, who signaled they wanted to move on from Trump.

Also didn't matter, even a state that, you know, where the religious right has always historically been very important and, you know, liked people like Mike Huckabee, like people like Rick Santorum, like people like Ted Cruz.

It just shows you that whatever drama is gonna come in this primary season has not manifested itself yet, let me say, and may have less to do with who the eventual nominees are and more to do with some of the legal battles that we're going to be talking about in a bit.

All right, we've got a great guest standing by, Shelby Talcott.

We're going to put her in the show now because she was on the ground in Iowa.

She's going to give us a little bit of an insight.

Hey guys, if you liked that video, go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium subscriber, and help us build the best independent media organization on the planet.

That's right, we're subscriber funded, we're building something new, we wanna replace these failing mainstream media organizations.

So again, to subscribe, it's breakingpoints.com.


Speaker 0: Good morning everybody happy Monday we have an amazing show for everybody today what do we have Crystal?

Speaker 1: Indeed we do. Lots to get to this morning so we are starting with all of the Republican candidates descended on the unsuspecting state of Iowa. Some really interesting moments that unfolded there. We're also going to bring in a reporter who was there on the ground to give us all of the juicy details. We are also keeping track of the very latest in terms of those horrific, deadly wildfires in Hawaii.

I mean, the news just continues to get worse and worse. And residents getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of government support. So we'll break all of that down for you. We also have some news in terms of potential new Trump indictments coming down this week and some new revelations about exactly what his team was up to there in Georgia. We also have more big developments in terms of a potential Big 3 auto shutdown.

Some very revealing moments from 1 of the big executives there. We're also going to tackle the surprise political hit topping the charts. Maybe you guys have heard this and guess what guys? Crypto boy wonder, SBF has landed himself in jail. So we'll break all of that down for you and more, but we did want to start with what's going on on the ground in Iowa.

Speaker 0: Yeah, that's right. We got to start with Iowa. It's a shocking and interesting developments. Not really in terms of how everything went down. Ron DeSantis took the stage with Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa and was met with chants of we want Trump.

Absolutely brutal, but also indicative of where the situation is. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen of the Iowa State Fair, Let's welcome Governor Kim Reynolds and Governor Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 3: They're hanging in there with us. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you being here as we have the opportunity. Well, first of all, welcome back to state fair. Ron, it's great to have you here.

So welcome back.

Speaker 2: No, it's great to be here. We're really excited to see everybody. We appreciate. Hey, you know what? You know what?

We're in Iowa

Speaker 3: and in Iowa where Iowa nice. So let's give everybody the opportunity to hear our candidates. So we'll stop. We'll stop until you do. But we're all going to have an opportunity to hear from each and every candidate.

That's what we've been doing. So, okay.

Speaker 0: What a savage moment. So the woman scolding her own constituents is the governor of the state, Kim Reynolds, who clearly, Crystal, if it was up to her, she would endorse DeSantis tomorrow. She's been playing footsie with him the entire time. He has constantly kind of been kissing up to her, you know, over many interviews and other things that he has given. And I just think it's a terrible look, you know, from a performance perspective, even to just give in to the crowd and give them what they want.

Whenever they're shouting, We want Trump. I mean, yeah, they were loud, but guess what? You've got the mic, you can at least get it on the record. You should just pretend not to notice. But to do the whole call-out thing and Iowa nice, I just, I think it was, it showed a lot of weakness.

To be fair, I mean, DeSantis isn't the 1 that did it, But that's just the last thing that you want happening at your kind of flagship political event in Iowa. And people need to understand, this is a big thing, the Iowa State Fair. We'll remember the butter cow with Ted Cruz in 2016. This is often the site of some of the most famous moments in a lot of primary politics.

Speaker 1: Many epic corn dog pictures have come out of the Iowa

Speaker 2: State Fair.

Speaker 0: Yeah, go-karts, basketball. They all try to pretend, they don their human suits for like 24 hours. Try to pretend that they're just like us by eating like a, what, deep fried oreo.

Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna wear a flannel and wear jeans.

Speaker 0: There you go. Yeah, exactly. I can't stand it. My personal favorite was a banner that was flying over the Iowa State. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.

Seems to have been planted by the Trump campaign. Says quote, be likable, Ron, and puts Ron's logo like Jeb Bush, Ron with a capital exclamation mark. So Trump, well, pretty much the unambiguous winner of the Iowa State Fair, Crystal, not dominating the event, even whenever he's not on the stage and forcing his only real rival to basically have to shut down his interview with the governor of the state, basically being openly disrespected by her, supposedly her constituents.

Speaker 1: I mean, it actually low-key made me feel a little bad for Ron DeSantis. I felt bad for him too, that's hard. Brutal, and there's, I mean, what are you gonna do? There's no good way to deal with that state of affairs. And there's a couple things, because you have to, in that moment, as you're sitting there on the stage, and you're hearing the crowd, like, jeering

Speaker 0: you

Speaker 1: among a Republican base that very recently really loved this guy. And so you're thinking, geez, did I not only screw myself in terms of this presidential race, but in terms of any political future? I think that is a very open possibility at this point. And then in terms of Governor Kim Reynolds, you know, if you are governor of a state and you did well there, I mean, she won by a hefty margin. She's got a pretty good approval rating, I believe, in the state of Iowa, et cetera.

She's having a realization of just how shallow her support is. Like, she doesn't command any sort of real, like

Speaker 0: —

Speaker 1: she doesn't command any sort of real loyalty from her own constituents. Nothing. No 1 in the party compares to Trump. That's just the bottom-line situation. So I was also thinking about the state of Iowa has been significantly demoted in terms of the political season.

You know, it's still first for the Republican side, but that race is looking all but over, you know, as evidenced by the chance that we show you there. And then, on the Democratic side, you know, Iowa's been completely demoted, in a lot of ways, for good reasons, because they completely screwed up the caucuses last time around. But this is so central to that state's identity.

Speaker 0: I

Speaker 1: mean, being the first caucus site where the first votes are cast and having this every 4 years pageantry of all the candidates going around from place to place, and they're very used to meeting the presidential candidates in person in these little gatherings, et cetera, and, you know, that era, especially on the Democratic side, is completely over.

Speaker 0: Yeah, you know, you're right. And Vivek Ramaswamy decided to warm up the crowd with a rendition of Lose Yourself by Eminem, donning his old persona, Davek, from back in the days whenever he was in college. Let's take a listen. Now the clocks

Speaker 2: run out, time's up, overflows, and back to reality, oh, it goes back, and he opens those back, he's so mad, but he won't give up, there is no...

Speaker 0: So apparently what happened, Crystal, is that's his open song, And he asked Kim Reynolds, he said, do you know this song? She said, no, I don't know the song.

Speaker 2: And so he said, well, I'll show you the song.

Speaker 1: How do you exist and not know that song? Listen, you

Speaker 0: know, boomers are people in their own right. And they've got interesting tastes. I guess let's just put it that way. I'm sorry, boomers who are a paying audience. We love you guys.

Don't worry. I just like to make fun of you. That said, it was an interesting move. I think, what I actually found kind of funny about the whole thing is that, you know, 20 years ago, that would have been 1 of the biggest stories in the whole country. Like the whole Howard Dean scream, which I think, wasn't

Speaker 1: that at the Iowa State Fair?

Speaker 0: Or it was a similar event.

Speaker 1: It was after Iowa didn't do well, yeah.

Speaker 0: But yeah, so it was like something like, or you know, Bill Clinton, I still remember, you know, like reading about how Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on what is it, Arsenio Hall, was like a landmark moment for

Speaker 2: the country.

Speaker 0: I remember reading that and being like, what, that's so stupid.

Speaker 1: It's hard to wrap your head around.

Speaker 0: Listen, monoculture was a crazy thing. But this is just 1 of those that goes like a semi-viral-ish on Twitter and then everybody just kinda moves on. Maybe that's probably for the good, so that people don't see their lowest moments, but I just thought it was funny, you know, to show all of this. But I think that we have to come back to Trump. Trump was the central figure at this thing.

He dominated every single event, even when other candidates were there. Kim Reynolds was doing the rounds at almost every turn. It was we want Trump, we want Trump and he got the biggest audience at the entire thing.

Speaker 1: I would argue that at this point Vivek and DeSantis are basically even in terms of being quote unquote Trump's top rival. Trump doesn't really have a top rival at this point. I'm also going to give you a little bit of a hot take on the DaVeik moment there.

Speaker 0: I kind

Speaker 1: of like, I mean, I respect

Speaker 0: the fact

Speaker 1: that you are actually willing to like publicly humiliate yourself to that degree. Whereas if I, I mean just even thinking about doing something like that makes me want to curl up in a ball and die. So respect for that. The other thing I would say is you're talking about how all these candidates like they don their human suits and try to be like, see, I'm just like you people. I mean, at least Vivek is doing something that is true to his genuine pre-political personality.

And it reminds me a little bit, I mean, this is like a wild comparison, but it reminds me a little bit to Trump's first foray at the Iowa State Fair. Instead of him, let me put on the jeans and the button, like the flannel or whatever, he showed up as he does. I remember he was giving people rides on I think his private helicopter. So he showed up as himself. And I do think that's 1 of the things that's like an enduring appeal of Trump.

He sets the standard for like who he is, how he's going to approach this, what he's going to say, and you know, people unfortunately, better or worse, can't get

Speaker 0: enough of it. That is such a good point that actually just hit home. Trump never pretended to be anything but himself. He didn't ever want to spend the night in Iowa. He always liked to come home and sleep in his own bed in Trump Tower.

He would rocket in on Trump Force 1. He would come in on Trump Force 1. He'd land in the Trump helicopter. He would roll around. He'd put on a big show.

And then he would get the hell out of there. And I remember because we were covering it at the time, it would be Ted Cruz doing the butter cow and Marco Rubio and everybody would be in their jeans and Trump was just in a full suit, he just didn't care. And it was just 1 of those where he's like, this is me and people loved him for it. And if I was looking back at the polls, it's right around now when Trump started to dominate every single Republican primary poll, actually less so than he is even right now, which just gives you a good example. I think it was Harry Enten, the polling analyst, said that No candidate has ever led this much in a primary this early in the race and not gone on to be the eventual nominee.

So barring some black swan event or something like that, things are looking pretty clear. And Iowa clearly, even at the grassroots level, where Ted Cruz did have a lot of success. Still doesn't seem to be manifesting for any of Trump's opponents. Trump himself gave a little bit of a answer on Stop the Steal at Iowa, showing us that he very much is the exact same man that he always has been. Let's take a listen.

He has to win

Speaker 2: the fairway. He's way down on the ball. President Trump, did you intend to overturn the 2020 election?

Speaker 0: You know the answer. If you didn't hear, that was, do you intend to overturn the 2020 election? Trump, quote, you know the answer. What does that mean? Well, I mean, yeah, I think we do know

Speaker 1: the answer.

Speaker 0: Listen, once again, we come back to, he has never really told us that he, he has never presented himself as anything other than what he is. And I think that is what the primary voters in particular appreciate the most about him. And you know, even every answer, it's just vintage Trump. He looks exactly the same as whenever he was there, what, 7 something years ago? And it's just, you know, in the same flashback of just how well it appears he's gonna be doing this race.

Speaker 1: And yet the lack of sort of drama and interest in the Iowa State Fair, I mean, this is really a blip on the radar. It is a sign of just how little competition there is and how much of a foregone conclusion both of these primaries feel like. And, listen, I mean, when you have an incumbent president, you know, that's fairly typical, right? They're very likely to get the nomination on the Democratic side. But, you know, what isn't typical on the Democratic side is the total ambivalence of the Democratic electorate towards their guy who is in the presidency.

I mean, you know, Barack Obama, even at his lowest point, the Democratic base loved this guy, still loves this guy. Very different set of affairs with Joe Biden. And then on the Republican side, You know, this should have been really contested. There was a lot of media hype about the challenge to Trump and all of this, and it looks like just as much of a foregone conclusion on the Republican side as it does on the Democratic side. The fact that the governor of the state basically threw in for DeSantis and no 1 cares whatsoever, that you had a bunch of evangelical leaders, including some in the state of Iowa, who signaled they wanted to move on from Trump.

Also didn't matter, even a state that, you know, where the religious right has always historically been very important and, you know, liked people like Mike Huckabee, like people like Rick Santorum, like people like Ted Cruz. It just shows you that whatever drama is gonna come in this primary season has not manifested itself yet, let me say, and may have less to do with who the eventual nominees are and more to do with some of the legal battles that we're going to be talking about in a bit.

Speaker 0: You are absolutely right. All right, we've got a great guest standing by, Shelby Talcott. We're going to put her in the show now because she was on the ground in Iowa. She's going to give us a little bit of an insight. Let's get to it.

Speaker 1: Hey guys, if you liked that video, go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium subscriber, and help us build the best independent media organization on the planet.

Speaker 0: That's right, we're subscriber funded, we're building something new, we wanna replace these failing mainstream media organizations.

Speaker 1: So again, to subscribe, it's breakingpoints.com. You

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DeSantis HUMILIATED By Trump Fans At Iowa Fair | Breaking Points