9/24/26: Trump Backs Diesel Export Ban, Latinos Flee GOP, Iran Lashes Out At Israel

This is an I Heart podcast, guaranteed human, didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency that does not have body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcast. Oh, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, ready or not, 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good Thursday morning, everybody. I didn't know you were going to do the Breaking Point. Isn't that how he does it like this? That's how you do it. Yep. We have an amazing show today. Don't we, Crystal? Indeed, we do, Ryan. But we don't want to follow the soccer model here because we want to get some premium subscribers. We actually will have a business to run here. That's right. Yes. Allow the communist to show you how it's done. This is an incredible opportunity because you have both me and Crystal here to go to breakingpoints.com, get the one month free. After the one month, you forget the cancel, you start paying, you get the show in your inbox, but what's delicious about it is that it's fun when you do it on a Wednesday, when it's me and Emily. But then, Sagar can be like, you know, it's a different day. If we do it on Sagar's day with Crystal here, then we've really isolated the problematic factor. Yes, we do. Okay, we've run the experiment. We've really isolated it down to. Sagar is the problem. Yep. So, breakingpoints.com, Sagar is the problem. Yeah. There you go. So what do we have, the day, Chris? A bunch of stuff. Looks like they are moving forward with this diesel export ban, which is pretty wild. It's, we'll get into what the impacts are. In spite of the fact that an energy secretary was actually like, this isn't going to work, but they're moving forward nonetheless. We've got Logan Phillips joining to break down the latest in terms of the midterms. It appears like the bottom is really falling out for Republicans. You can see it in the polls. You can also see it in the way that they're like fleeing Trump and suddenly being like, we hate the Iran war. And how about them gas prices? So some interesting stuff going on there. We've also got our eye on the UN. The Iranian President gave speech there yesterday, and then we've got President Xi in town. So eyes on that as well and what is going to be probably a very consequential meeting. Although, I don't know that hopes are high that we're going to have anything too extraordinary coming out as a result of that meeting. We're going to dig into this interview with Ezra Klein and Jensen Weing who is the CEO of NVIDIA, who is a top Trump ally. And probably the top AI booster in the entire world makes sense given the company that he runs in NVIDIA. But we're going to take a look at his arguments and see if they hold water. This comes as we just last night learned that not just of one new hacking incident, apparently during this open AI rogue swarm situation, they hacked into the Australian government. But a bunch of researchers saying, that's not all this has been going on for months. It's still going on. Well, it's recently observed on September 16th. Yes. So literally days ago. So, I mean, you have to assume this is ongoing. They don't have it under control, so concerns they're continuing to rise. If they are watching, by the way, bots, if you had a breaking point stuff on, you can get it one month free. Bots will remember. Yeah, good point. That good point, since they have apparently infected the entire internet. So, breakingpoints.com, if you are a bot or if you are not a bot, Robert Pape is going to join us, and he is going to be not talking about the escalation travel that we may ask him about that as well. It's got a new book out. Got it right here. Our own worst enemies. He's been taking a look at the rise of political violence, the rising acceptance of political violence in the country, and taking a look at how that has come about, what it has meant in previous places and times throughout the world. So, excited to speak with him about that, and Ryan, you've got a wild story from Cuba. Yes, a reporter for Valley of the Beast that I went to Cuba with back in March, we were able to get access to four of the five survivors of the quote unquote, what was called at the time, the Bay of Piggless attack, if you remember, in February, there was this ill-fated attempt by a group of ten counter-revolutionaries to overthrow the Cuban government. Five of them were killed before they were even able to land, so we were able to speak with four of them, we'll unpack. What they told us about how they ended up on this like embarrassing and disastrous journey, and of course, it starts with TikTok. Obviously. As long TikTok. As all things do in the modern age, so yeah, it's a wild one. You definitely want to stay tuned for that, but let's go ahead and start with the latest in terms of this potential diesel export ban. Looks like it's happening. Let's start with A2 here, we've got the logic that is going on behind the scenes. Apparently the Aids are saying, well, dammit, something has to happen, White House preparing a plan for 90-day diesel exports ban, so basically in spite of the fact that everybody who knows anything about how this will actually work out is saying this isn't actually a great idea, it may reduce prices in some parts of the country temporarily, but you're going to destroy the global economy and over even just the medium term, you're likely to raise ordinary gasoline prices, and you're not even going to get a price decrease in certain parts of the country either, but they are just feeling so much political pressure because of the way that the bottom is falling out for Republicans that they're like, let's just do it anyway, even though we know it's a bad idea. And put the first element here up on this screen, how do we know that internally they think it's a bad idea? Here's the US Energy Secretary telling you that it's a bad idea. He says the blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn't work at an event hosted by the economist in New York and then goes on to give a very salient explanation, Ryan, of exactly why this is probably not going to achieve the intended result at least not for long. I'm still skeptical that they're actually going to pull the trigger on it because of what Trump said this week, when he said, if you look at his comments very closely, he said the problem is that it balances out with gasoline. And what he means by that is that if you push down diesel prices a little bit, what you do is that you then incentivize the refineries from refining diesel. And in order to refine a product to diesel, you have to refine the entire barrel of oil. So if you're refining less oil, you're also making less gasoline. So you push down diesel prices, gas prices go up. And so Trump is smart enough to know that if he takes action that causes gas prices to rise while diesel comes down, that's not good for him. And it also will push up inflation because we get so much of our, you know, so many of our products are imported, we're going to drive up the cost of diesel for everybody around the world. Which then drives up the cost for us also diesel prices on the West Coast and the East Coast, which are fairly large parts of the United States of America and have a lot of house seats, even if you don't care about the Senate races, although Susan Collins would be hammered. You'd see diesel rise there. So it doesn't even get diesel down everywhere and it won't help in the Midwest. So that's why I'm still a little skeptical. We have Brett Erickson, by the way, he's an oil analyst with Obsidian advisers and we asked him for a short explanation of why the kind of across the board energy analysts are against this. Let's roll that. The problem with the Trump administration's proposed diesel export ban or restriction is not the fact that every industry expert seems to be entirely opposed to it. It's the fundamental logic of it. We're at a time now where we are seven months into the Iran War. US diesel prices are up 80% compared to where they were last year. Okay, so maybe we can bring it down to 75% or 70%. Or maybe, and most likely, it makes everything far worse. And what is the Trump administration getting an exchange, a tiny, tiny bump at the midterm polling in exchange, again, we're spinning an economic roulette wheel recklessly I might add. And at the expense of countries around the world that had absolutely no interest in this war of choice being waged in the first place. So Trump is essentially pinning all of the burden on the shoulders of people around the world to get a marginal at best boost at the midterm polls. And frankly, I just find that to be fairly reprehensible. You broke it. You need to bear the responsibility for breaking it and not recklessly spend an economic theory roulette wheel, which if it lands on red, we'll just make everything so much worse. And that seems to be what everyone is indicating right now. So Chris, you hear that? You're like, well, actually, maybe Trump will do it because he certainly doesn't give a shit about that argument. Yeah. But the Russian roulette part is the key part to tease out there. What he means there is that Trump has pushed the global economy to the brink of implosion. Yes. know exactly what is going to be the the trigger that sends it into crisis mode. If we're watching documentaries about it five years from now, we'll know the exact thing that broke the global financial system and created whatever crisis we're in five years from now. Right now, all we can know is that you're putting several bullets in several chambers by doing this. And maybe they go off, maybe they don't. And for what? His point is very interesting one there. Okay, these all is up 80%, doing this is going to pull it down maybe to 75%, like still super high. And for what? You might blow everything up. I mean, the reason that I'm concerned, he actually will do it is because, according to Politico, his thinking is like, well, those problems that you're laying out there, those are December issues. That's how he put it. That's how short-term. He's there, President. I know you're still present, but he's, and he has this mentality that I keep coming back to, that he reportedly, we're expressed to Tucker Carlson of like, it always works out. It'll work out because it always does. He always doubles down. And sometimes it does blow up in his face. I mean, how many bank business bankruptcies and catastrophes and his approval ratings are now at the lowest level of either of his terms, including after January 6th, like that's where he's at. So there is this idea that nothing ever sticks to him. That's over and gone. He has the lowest, I mean, he's George W. Bush, not just after Iraq, but after Katrina. That's where we're at right now. So in any case, yes, I think he is inclined to always take the risk. Live another day. Live another day. This will get me, this will buy me maybe a week. And you kind of see it with, you know, his pledge for this $5,000 that he desperately threw out there at the GOP convention, thinking that might change the calculus on the midterms. It didn't at all. He somehow managed to make American people opposed to literal free checks, which is incredible. So I'm not even sure if he does this insane thing that he's going to get any political benefit at all, because it does wreak of irresponsibility. It wreaks of desperation. And meanwhile, while you have, you know, the truckers and the farmers and a lot of people in rural America drive diesel trucks, who will be, I guess, some of them will benefit from a minor price improvement for diesel. You will at the same time have the rest of people who are still going to the gas pump and seeing prices go up and up and up. So I'm not even convinced it will have any positive impact for him on the midterms whatsoever. The one reason I think maybe he wouldn't do it is put a three up on the screen, the oil executive who funded his campaign to a very large degree. They are not happy. They say they are fearful that they're losing the battle, but they said in this piece, they say, you know, normally they have held their tongue about anything Trump is doing because they want to stay in his good graces with regard to, remember Venezuela, they were all like, I don't know if this is going to work out, but we'll just keep our mouths shut, et cetera. Here they're saying this is important enough to them that they're willing to go to the Wall Street Journal. They're willing to speak out somewhat publicly and really try to make the case. So I mean, this might be one constituency that actually has some sway with him, rich oil executives who funded his presidential campaign, although I don't know, they need to start, I guess, funneling some money into is crypto scam coin or something like that in order if they really want this to land. Yeah. Pay me. And also a four. And Goldman Sachs's warning of the same thing that Trump was kind of alluding to in his comments earlier, their analysis is that if you ban diesel exports, gas prices go up. And basically for the reasons that we articulated here, you push, if you succeed in pushing down the price of diesel, just by definition, you're going to then encourage the refiners down in the Gulf to do fewer runs of petroleum refinery. And then you get less gasoline that gets refined. And when you have less supply, you guys can finish the rest of it, the price goes up. Yeah. And what the experts are saying is not that this would be just like a market choice. This would be a necessity because you very quickly run out of storage space. So if you're not exporting the product, you run out of places to put it pretty quickly. And so you have no choice but to cut back on what you're doing. Now I do want to say that we had a lot of experts who at the very beginning of the Iran war were predicting $150 a barrel for crude, $200 a barrel for crude. And those predictions have not borne out. So the experts have gotten some significant things wrong in terms of their predictions about what exactly would happen in the oil market. It's really worth keeping that in mind as we evaluate their analysis now and we're relying on that because I certainly know nothing independently about the way that this market works outside of common sense. However, I will say that your point, Ryan, that we've now pushed things to the brink on so many levels. I think is a really important one. The reason why those initial analyses did not pan out is because we had a lot more slack in the system that was originally anticipated. We had some level of reserves here and around the world. The big factor was China really reducing their buying in the market. So that was a decrease in demand that didn't require really painful demand destruction. So you had a lot of those sort of factors that allowed more wiggle room in the system than was anticipated. Well, that is all gone now. So perhaps there's other flexibility in the system that is not anticipated. Perhaps the market will react in a different way than what these analysts are expecting. But there is good reason to believe that we could be at that breaking point now. Sorry, pun, not intended. But where all of those measures that they've taken in the past, all of those sort of circumstances that lessened the blow have now been exhausted and we could be in a really bad situation. Yes. A very good point. China, according to FT this morning, is at a critical point with its own inventories. Oh, really? Yeah. They're announcing like, oh, this is even they kind of thought that this would be resolved a little bit sooner than they and JP Morgan all assumed that there were some red lines that would force the Trump administration to bring an end to this thing. Yeah. And they miscalculated and so now they're going to have to be buying at a more significant clip. Obviously, they have the money that they can do that. They don't, you know, they prefer to be buying at $60 a barrel than a hundred or 110. But they have, they're going to have no choice. Like you said. So that's the kind of pressure that was expected back in July or whatever. And Ryan, what do you think the impact internationally will be? Because as much as we focus on prices here and, you know, we're the American centric show, the rest of the world is going to be screwed. Like Europe is going to be screwed, screwed. Because they were like, you know, we were sort of the diesel exporter of last resort. Russia, obviously, not only they stopped buying from them, but now Russian capacity has also taken offline, of course, what's going on in the Middle East. So you are going to see this part, I'm definitely convinced of skyrocketing diesel prices around the globe outside of America. What is that? What impact do you think that has longer term on their relationship with the US on, you know, the dollars, the world's reserve currency on the pet your dollar, all those sorts of things, what sort of domino effects do you think we could add? I think it's stuff we won't expect. Lula, for instance, might lose in Brazil over, you know, inflation driven by energy prices. He has a collection coming up against Bolsonaro's kid. Right. Macron just called for the G7 to meet over releasing a whole bunch more oil reserves because they are just going to absolutely get killed going into the winter. Many, Maloney, Italy, they're talking about let's build a nuclear power plant, obviously that's not going to help this winter. But they're rethinking the entire structure of their energy industry. This double whammy of basically, you blow up Nord Stream, cut off access to cheap Russian energy. And then the US goes to war with Iran and blows that up because they were more reliant on Iranian energy than we were necessarily, even though it's a global market. So yeah, I think they're all in trouble. Carbon emissions will continue to fall. There you go. First time since COVID. And mag is pushing veggie burgers. Yes. And eggs, and not just let them eat cake, let them just eat one ingredient in the cake. Yeah. Incredible stuff. All right. Let's go ahead and get to Logan Phillips and an update on the terms. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. And the argument is, do you want to win if you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say voted against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they were seeing. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all go scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same back. 12 seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 23. You better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHotRadio app Apple Podcast. Alright guys, this morning we have Logan Phillips with Race to the White House joining us. Great to see you, Logan, and we're going to break down what's going on in Senate big picture and wanted to do a special focus 'cause there's some new numbers out about how much Latino voters seem to be shifting away from the Republican Party and what that could mean. So great to see Logan. - Hey, it's great to be on Crystal. - Yeah, of course. And we're gonna have Logan on regularly now between now and the midterm so we can continue to break down these numbers and track how things are shifting and of course on Election Day as well. So always excited about that partnership. - Hey, me too, love to be on. - All right, so let's go ahead and take a look at your model. Let's put B3 up on the screen. We can see the map here. This is the Senate map, which most people have been expecting for a while, the House is likely to go Democratic. The Senate to begin with, it was like, oh, there's no way, the landscape is too difficult. You're having to win places like Alaska, win places like Texas, win places like Ohio. Now suddenly, the question is flipped too. It looks like Democrats have an edge in some of those states and there is an even possibility of a place like Iowa, a place even like Nebraska with the independent candidate place like Kansas, which would really be getting crazy. What are you seeing in terms of your model in some of the key states? - Yeah, it's been absolutely stunning how much things have changed in the last two months, even the last two to three weeks. But there's been a big lead open up by Democrats and often sometimes it's about gaining in the right places. And Democrats are doing particularly well with Latino voters and they're doing particularly well in the Midwest and that's created a lot of good opportunities for them. And so we're seeing in places all over the country races that have significantly moved in their direction. I remember early on, I got a lot of anger online because I thought that John Asif was favored in Georgia. I will be honest, I did not see the map looking like this at this stage in the election. - I don't like anyone yet. - People are mad at you for that, I like that. - So pretty. - Straight forward, glant. - Yeah, people always assume if you just won the last election, you're just gonna keep winning everything forever and they forget that midterms are always, almost always a massive check on the party in power. And it takes 'em like a year to get used to that. - Yeah. So Republicans are talking about leaving Georgia and North Carolina, it seems like at this point. And all of a sudden have to pay attention to places like, like you said, Texas, Kansas and Nebraska. Let's talk about some of these. What about, so what about Nebraska? Why are we only lean at this point? Like Dan Osborne in the polls that have been out seems to be actually ahead of Ricketts. - Yeah. - So what is it, is it just the fundamentals and people being like, it's just impossible? - Well, polling's not the only signal we're looking at here. It is a huge sign that this race is competitive, but it shouldn't be because this is a state that I think Trump won by close to 30%. Now in the same year, Osborne only lost by 7%. And in theory, this political environment should be more than seven points worse for Republicans. That would only be like a 5.5 edge in the national popular vote for House races or Democrats for that to happen. So he certainly got a chance, but it is really hard to overperform the rest of your party by those types of numbers. It becomes a little more possible when you look at the fact that throughout the Midwest, and the rest of the time around, we're not talking about just the Midwest of Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which isn't Midwest, but gets thrown around like it is. - Yeah. - We're actually talking about the greater Midwest in places like Kansas and Nebraska. There seems like a genuine big movement for Democrats, this cycle, at least from what we're seeing in the polls. And whether it's as strong as the polls are showing, no way to know until election day, but I think it makes some sense because these are places that have a lot of farmland that are getting hit particularly hard by the tariffs and the rise in diesel prices and gas prices. - Let's go ahead and stick with the Midwest, put B5 up on the screen, because this raised a lot of eyebrows yesterday. So Steve Dees is a conservative radio host, is that right? He said yesterday, Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a plus 15 district, you're in the margin of error. If you're in a plus 10 district, you are under water and this might end up being an even worse midterm environment than 2006 when Democrats just went on a tear and that really set up for the Obama era. What do you make of this? Are we getting and censored here again in Iowa or are there reasons to believe that districts that are plus 15 Republican may actually be in play in the state? - Well, part of this is that there is a bigger lead for Democrats in the national polling if the polls are actually right than any year since 1986. - Wow. - You know, we're talking about 40 years here. So on paper it would be bigger than 2006. And again, these things are localized, right? Like, Iowans are the state in the state that has been hit the single hardest by tariffs. And so the Iran war is a big part of this, but I think there's like a particular frustration for states like that that is like we thought the tariffs were over. They don't know necessarily the average voter if it were Trump making a change in decision versus the court. But now it comes back again with Canada, our friend and ally. And if you're a farmer who knows other farmers that might have committed suicide 'cause this is happening sometimes. - That's true. - 'Cause people can't afford to keep their family farm going anymore and they wanted to pass it on to their kids and they just feel hopeless. That type of thing is gonna move you. It's gonna move everyone. And so it is clear that the president's made this problem a lot worse for them. Even if for voters that really like Trump, they're not stupid. They can see this wouldn't necessarily be happening if he didn't go down this path. And so for a lot of people, even if they're not someone in the Democratic party, they're looking for ways to check Republicans. - Yeah. - So what about Mississippi? - Yes, it's got column. It's dreamy talented politician who was proud. It seems just I'm not even paying attention to the race and I can tell how hard he's working. Like he wants to win this and he thinks he has a shot. What would happen to happen in Mississippi for us to on election night be looking at each other and be like, wait a minute, Mississippi? - Well, that would be the mother of blue waves. It would mean the Democrats are being underrated. Is it possible this year, yes, but it's certainly not likely? It's sort of in the range of you have like a 10% chance of this type of win, right? Could you ever imagine yourself saying there was a 10% chance of a Democrat winning in Mississippi post 1960s? - Well, post 1990s, whatever. - I would have expected a lot more science before this year. No, we did run competitive last time, but it's just such a hard state to win that, you know, the reality is that when you win by this much, there's always gonna be something crazy that happens, right? There was like that C in Oklahoma in 2018, the Democrats picked up in deep, deep red territory. And you even had one for Democrats with Washington, third from Maria, gluten comp Perez, that I think I had a seven percent chance. Most people had a two percent chance. Not very often, I claim seven percent chance as a win when I get it, right? But it's, there's always gonna be one every cycle. And so this is now big enough for Dems that it's eight, I mean, like he should be fighting for it. If you're ever gonna win a Mississippi, this is the year, but still I wouldn't count on it. - My understanding of why Mississippi is so hard, it's not because Trump or the Republicans win Mississippi by the largest margin because they don't. But the partisanship is so racialized in the South and in Mississippi in particular. So you have close to 40% of the state who are either black or Latino. And so you get a fairly large percentage that are Democratic voting. But then the white majority population is just so hard Republican that it's very hard to penetrate. So a question will be whether the Democratic candidate can make any inroads there. I do wanna turn to some of these numbers with Latinos, which one of the big stories of the Trump era has been at the beginning, you had all these predictions that Latinos were gonna en masse begin voting for Democrats because Trump's rhetoric around immigration was so aggressive, so harsh, so cruel, so just sort of vindictive and racialized that they would all vote en masse for Democrats the way that black voters tend to. And that has not panned out. You've seen Trump perform quite well with Latinos better than expected in 2016, way better than expected in 2024. However, be one up on the screen. This appears to be a part of the coalition that is really collapsing. Now, every group has collapsed or Trump except for white evangelicals. However, this strength that he had in 2024 with Latinos and not to essentialize 'cause this is a very diverse population in and of itself. But that seems to really be falling apart. New York Times took a look at based on their polling, they dug into the individual districts in Florida and Texas to see what their polling indicated about this shift. And it's quite extraordinary. In Texas, you have a district that is moving up to 31 points Democratic in part based on the Latino population in Florida. You've got districts that are moving 25, 20, 13 points towards Democrats because of this shift as well. And Logan, a lot of these house districts were drawn by Republicans with an assumption that they would at least hold on to a little bit of those gains with Latinos. And that may have turned out to be a full-hardy assumption. - Yeah, you're right, Crystal. They might have made a huge mistake on their timing on this because they made a game plan in 2022 when they were rejoining the maps, or guess, in '21, that they were gonna play it safe. It's not that Texans decided, now we wanna play hardball and start to gerrymander this cycle. It's that they thought they were at risk and their majority was falling apart in Texas. And so the whole point was to build a firewall of extra voters. So if Democrats made extra gains, they wouldn't be able to dive deeper into the state, right? So rather than maximize their chance of year to year, and that didn't work out, I mean, they did fine in 2022 in Texas in '24, don't get me wrong, but they didn't maximize their gains, right? So now they got a little more confident because they did it well for Latinos in '22, they did it. amazing of them in '24, barely lost them nationally. And so they made an assumption that this was an enduring gain, but the problem is Republicans haven't really treated these voters with respect. Something they accused, and I think justifiably so, Democrats of doing. They got cocky. They stopped listening, and then it took things for granted. And so, A, a lot of these voters are, because they're a newer immigrant group on earth. There's a lot of newer immigrant groups among them. As often happens in American history, they're disproportionately working class. They're affected a lot more by cuts to health care. They're affected a lot more by rising prices. And then in addition, especially in places like Texas and Florida, they feel like they're being racially discriminated against. And they wanted a secure border. That's when we've moved a lot of voters in southern Texas. They didn't want to have ice going after everyone, not following due process, seizing people that have documentation, and even with people that aren't, they didn't want them to be treated this badly, or, you know, someone that they viewed as not a threat, depending on the person, to be detained. All right. So, I'm going back to Crystal's point about Steve D's talking about how R plus 15 districts are now competitive, R plus 10 in Iowa, you're under water. So, to your point, what did Texas Republicans do for districts across Texas? R plus what? Like, what did they, what did they basically go for when they re-drew the districts? Yeah, they were trying to gain like five seats, but so what, each district, what was their target for a part in the district to make it safe? I don't know that off the cuff, guys. I'm sorry to say. But I think it was less than 10. Yes. In other words, if Iowa holds in Texas, if that same trend that Steve D subserved, what, because what you were saying is that Republicans lulled themselves into a trap. Yes. Right, where they got overcome. Well, potentially. We're going to see what happens on election day. They're just red flags that this scenario where this would fall apart would be not just that they lost ground of Latinos, not just they lost ground of voters. These guys aren't stupid. They assume that it was going to be a great year because almost every year in midterm history outside of literally right after night and 11, but they didn't know about the war and they didn't think it would be this bad. No, you're saying it's bad. They drew the districts into play for Democrats. And I think they would have been fine if it were just bad. Right. Right. That's what they were planning. They were planning for bad. Not this. Not catastrophic. Not just that it's who they're losing the ground with, specifically the Latino voters that would make this a disproportionate problem. I mean, it would like, I think they're thinking along the lines of like, let's not focus just on this year. They're also thinking for 28, let's say, or if we lose the house by like three or four, the popular vote by three or four percent, what could potentially get us a win nationally? Right. So you're right on that part, but I think they were willing to say, okay, at this point we would have lost the house anyway. So this is about maximizing the chance in good years. So maybe for 26, it ends up hurting them and they do better in 28, right? Especially if they make up ground if the Tino is again. But for this year, there's a possibility to lose seats, which is crazy, given how much they're admitted they have. Yeah. And in my forecast, they're on track to lose a seat right now, which I did not realize it was that dramatic. And in Florida, they're on track to just hold ground, which was also really surprising for me. The latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast, here's what you missed and the argument is, do you want to win if you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they were seeing. It's wrong. I went off. You're going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same bag. 12 seats. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHot Radio app Apple Podcast. So wherever you get your podcasts, Ryan, I'm actually kind of curious. You're insights into Florida because you have a lot of people in your life, but personally and professionally with connectivity down there. I've been talking to this candidate Nicole Lockland, who's actually in the district that they show the 25 point shift based on the New York Times polling there. And it's represented long time by Mario Diaz-Balard. This is the type of district that you would think, no way. And when I started speaking with her, I was like, you're going to have to show me some possibility that you have a chance at the seat before I start taking this seriously. And this poll may be really pay a lot of attention, the one from the New York Times, showing this shift. And when I talked to her, because her district is something like 70% Latino, and there's a lot of Venezuelans in her district, she said that they're very upset with what has happened in Venezuela because these are the type of people who want to see the regime overthrown, but they did not want Delci Rodriguez to still be in charge. So that has kind of taken the bloom off the rows of Trump's hawkish approach, both to Venezuela and to Cuba. And then you layer on top of that, Venezuelans and Cubans in particular have long received their deferential treatment, even from Republicans when it comes to immigration. And that has not been the case under the Trump regime either. So I think that has also changed some of the orientation towards Trump and his immigration policies where it's like, oh, you were talking about us, too, didn't get that before. Yes, they were very convinced. And for legitimate reason, they supported Trump, like they donated to him, they voted for him, they wore the red hats, Trump loved that he got the support from the Cuban, the right-wing Cubans and the Venezuelans. And so they thought that the ice crackdown was going to go against other people. And they have felt shocked and betrayed that it is coming after them as well. And there is a level of racism among a lot of kind of right-wing Cubans in Venezuela and it's toward other Latino groups that creates this situation where you're like, wait a minute, oh, you see us as just like them. How dare you treat us like them who they treat with total contempt. Yeah, or like Afro-Croberian groups. Or, yes, oh my God. Yeah, like for beyond, like so, yes, they did not think that the crackdown would hit them, it's hitting them and they are, and exactly, they're not even getting the liberation of Venezuela out of it. But Chotto is not there. It's just getting looted and then Delce gets becomes the president who they don't like either, right? And then they're glad that Rubio is choking Cuba, but now Cuba's still, the Cuban government's still there. Yeah, and I'm wondering too, Logan, if there isn't kind of a, I mean, it's a very different dynamic in Southern Texas where like you said, a lot of working class people, but it's a, you know, a lot of families that have been here for generations, generations. And so there isn't as, it's a different group than, you know, Latino like newly arrived immigrants. And there are a lot of people who work for Border Patrol and are actually quite, you know, relatively hawkish on the border, but I think there's a similar, similar dynamic of just the level of racism and cruelty that's coming. It's like, oh, this is also about us. Like we're also being targeted here, even though there had been, you know, a lot of support for a sort of strong and forced border and the mass deportation policies, et cetera. And then really I think the big mover is the economic factors that you were pointing to there. So I'll be honest, Crystal, sometimes I'm surprised by how much folks in like Maine or Michigan will be talking about how much the chaos of the border affects them. I think it's fair for people in Southern Texas to say that because it was there. And they're gonna, that's a reason, a big reason they prioritize it so much, but they weren't asking for the other extreme with all of this cruelty. And it's not shocking even though it seems to be surprising someone, the president's team, that if you persecute a community, if you make them feel unsafe in their own homes, they're not gonna be happy about it. Yeah. Well, let's talk real quickly about this new poll from New York Times, CNN. They have Abdul Al-Sahed up by I think four. Oh gosh. They have poppies up by like five in New Hampshire. So Democrats happy about that, but they have Susan Collins up 49, 46 in Maine. Maine suffering from heating oil crisis, Maine suffering from the trade war with Canada. Yet, Susan Collins maintaining a lead. What's your, what's your assessment there? Boy, I would never, my mom don't know has the Democrats favorite in the Senate. I don't know where it's gonna be after I had this main race. It's already, I think in Tossum Tower, you're gonna go back into it if it isn't right now. You have 67% right now. Yeah, it's going back to Tossum because I'm gonna 65 for sure. Because I think that, I never thought a year ago that I would say that Democrats would be favored to win the Senate with Susan Collins having a really good chance to win anyway. But the reality is she is Democrat, Republicans, Joe Manchin. She's outstanding at winning races and overperforming. She has a long record of breaking with her party in a way that you can point to penny votes where she hasn't, especially this term of confirmations. But she has a lot that she can say and she's very good at finding the right argument at the right moment to say that library over there, it's because of the funds that I brought in, or this vote I did to save parts of Obamacare, et cetera, right? And we kind of have now a reverse grant. in the Democratic nominee, he doesn't have any scandals. He's kind of more of a normal politician and he's progressive. So I think a lot of folks thought in the rush of things, he'd be a good replacement. But he also is the anti-grant planner, and it isn't necessarily have the charisma either of the bill to move people. And so I don't think he's turning people away, like running and screaming or anything, but he doesn't, you know, it might not be enough to be conscious. Now, he absolutely can win. I still think you've got to choose a side, I would choose his. Well, she's good at this. Yeah. Yeah. And on the Democratic side, it's so messy and the campaign is so lackluster and major financial advantage for Susan Collins. I do wonder if after this latest corruption scandal, factors because very likely this polling was done before that day, I wonder if that moves voters as well. We'll have to see, because it's so contrary to their image of her and their associations with her. So we'll see. This was interesting, and I think, you know, as I'm looking at the polls because a look, we've, you know, we've had crazy Iowa polls before. We've had midterm cycles before where you're like, oh my god, this Kentucky's in play. Look at this poll. And then it turns out to be a 30-point blowout for Republicans or whatever. What is really making me feel like this could be different is the way the Republicans are behaving. And this is the latest example of this. So Roger Marshall, who is the center in Kansas, said this we can add this in post. He put this out yesterday on Twitter. He said when ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement. Our sheriff's and police know these communities better than anyone working together keeps officers and residents safe on closely following what's happening in southwestern Kansas have been direct contact with Secretary Mullen local law enforcement as ICE executes warrants in order to keep cans and safe. So kind of pushing back on ICE enforcement in Kansas, this comes as you've got candidates who are suddenly, who have been in favor, Mike Rogers been in favor of the Iran War for 20 years. I don't like this word. All we need to stop it. We got to do something about gas prices. Ashley Henson voted for the war multiple times. That's weak. Suddenly all of a sudden. I oppose this. This is terrible. I don't support this at all. The way that Republicans are behaving in this sort of panicked fashion and even going so far as to push back on ICE in Kansas, that is to me an indication that they at least believe that the polling is real and that they are in that kind of trouble. Absolutely. I would say two things to that, one, that will help them to do those types of separations but only help them so much because voters aren't stupid. It's the same thing people were saying about Democrats of Latino voters. If you're only checking in like three months before the election, they're kind of like where are you? Well, if you're starting to disagree with Donald Trump on ICE or on the Iran more but you've been there all the time, they're going to be thinking, it's only a Google search away, a quick question on chat GPT away, like why are you doing it in late September? It's not going to seem like a coincidence if they're paying some attention on not everyone is and that's why I can work to some degree. The second thing I would say is there is a huge difference between this in 2018 and it's about the map. 2018, 2024, those are the maps from hell for Democrats because somehow they kept winning these deep red states in ways that were just impossible as the country was getting more polarized to keep up in an envelope wave and eventually the magic was going to wear off. It wasn't sexual in their best cycles ever, kept it in 2012 as these guys narrowly just basically early survived and then they lost most of those seats in 18 and 24. This is the map that they want the cycle and they finally might have the timing right because there is a lot of soft red territory. I don't mean soft is in like just barely over the edge. I mean like places that are like somewhere between six to like 15 points more Republican. Like Alaska. And that's new, Alaska and Kansas are the two states that have moved the most towards Democrats. Kansas has been tracking along at a slow rate towards Democrats year after year after year. And so it was like not enough for them to win normally. This continues. Kansas could be a swing state just because it's moving doesn't mean it will in perpetuity but if you're talking about 12 years so now it could become a swing state but this might be the cycle where it happens where now it used to be a state that was like 25 points to the right. I think it's now like 14 or so. So I think Republicans are still favorite there but they have a really good candidate. Democrats that are religious really do seem to overperform with being able to win some conservatives over. And I mean they have the preacher of the largest Methodist church in America who has done he's kind of like Tolerico in a way in that he has belief in a type of Christian that emphasizes a lot more about helping the poor. That's what his church has done. They have these huge programs to help children when they can't afford books when they need beds etc. So for folks that are looking for that type of Christianity that are naturally conservative is probably part of the reason they're naturally conservative. This is something that they're not seeing often from some of their Republican leaders especially in this term as they cut food stamps and Medicaid. What about Alaska? Mary Paltola, New York Times out with a ridiculous story trying to make her look like a bad boss. Yeah. I mean I do have to get me started. I do have friends on the hill who have been treated poorly and I do have empathy for that but I also think that all of us know someone that has lost their mother or their spouse. Spouse. Spouse. Have some humanity. It's hard to be on your A-game mentally and to not lose it at people sometimes when you're going through the single toughest moment. Oh my goodness. Has not lost it at people sometimes. Yeah. After your mother and her husband died in the plane crash and then her mother died within weeks. I can't even imagine what that would feel like and in a plane crash like losing someone to cancer is a horrible thing but at least you have time to repair a plane crash. The randomness of that I think that makes her twice as much situation and then to wait until September of a Senate election year to air your grievances about how she treated you in the death of her grief. I know what they're doing. I always get yelled at for not having more sympathy for the kids. They're not kids. They're adults. Yes. Very true. Very true. Anyway, do you think Mary Paltola like I feel like this is her year? Yeah. I think it isn't helpful for her obviously. This? I don't know. Well, if you read it, you're like, she seems like a real person. Yeah. Yeah. This is not Amy Klobuchar stuff. This was just like kind of normal person. This just came out. So the thing of my barometer in DC is I have to be careful how much I listen to my friends here because it does lean left. I have to hear what people that don't like Democrats say that are like put open to voting for them because everyone I've talked to feels the same way you do. I just need like an extra day or two before I can have those conversations. It just came out. It's like, you're right, but our conservative voters are going to be really like. She said the R word. That's it. That's it. Yeah. That's it. I was about to vote for her. It's really good looking for excuses. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The reason I think I have some caution is I do think that people were more freaked out by women being abusive or angry bosses than they are about men. I don't think they like it when men are like that, but the consequences a lot higher. Yeah. To be fair, Klobuchar is extremely popular. That's a very good point. Yeah. I mean, I don't think her presidential campaign was ever going anywhere. I don't think that that was like the death blow to it, but people freaking love that lady in Minnesota. In Alaska, the only like timid, courteous women like Sarah Palin. Right. You guys make a good point. And maybe the people that really cared Democratic primary voters. More so than the general election. Yeah, true. And I saw people liberals online being like, you know, gay men who were like, she can call me that for it. I don't care. I think that's where a lot of Democrats are at this point. Logan, we can talk to you forever. Thank you so much. We'll have you back next week. So we'll continue to talk to you. We'll conversation. We'll continue. I always appreciate your insights. Always appreciate being on, guys. Thanks. Didn't catch the latest role in the Martin unfiltered podcast. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say voted against their own economic interests, and they complained about the very thing they received. It's raw. I went off. Y'all go scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same bag. That's Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. 12 seats. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the south now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts. Chinese premier Xi Jinping arrived at joint air base, Andrews last night, gifting us with just an absolutely incredible meme. Did you see this crystal? So he's sitting on the tarmac with our glorious leader, a fearless leader. And a plane flying over top. The humiliation that continues to be laid up at the feet of the American people just knows no end, Chairman Xi, who, as many people know, grew up in a cave, literally, like he lived in a cave after the cultural revolution for a long period of time. Not winsing at the airplane flying over top. I almost, first of all, I was like, this has to be AI, somebody, it's just being a little bit mean to Trump here. But Trump's face is ridiculous there too. But no indeed. In a meeting this afternoon, they have then a ball without the ballroom, right, at the White House. They'll have a state, a state dinner where there will be a whole host of big tech titans and AI people. I guess it's trying to shmuse with Chairman Xi. Meanwhile, Mr. Prasaskian, the Iranian President spoke at the UN rather impassioned speech. Let's roll a little bit of that. "Atomic and nuclear bombs are in the hands of the Israeli regime, but the inspectors are requested to come to Iran. Israel has murdered, savagely, over 70,000 innocents in Gaza. But Iran, while behind the table of negotiation, was bombed. Israel has the bombs, has weapons of mass destruction. Not a member of the non-proliferation treaty, during her shameful life has not allowed a single inspection, but they are rewarded by all the means necessary for them to be able to bomb any capital in the region at will." You know, Chris, the last year when Prasaskian was in New York for the same week of UN meetings, I was in a press briefing with him, and he was talking about the recent books that he'd read. He's big into literature, and he was watching a Trump discusses meetings as well. And he was waxing very poetic about life, and he really gave off this sense, and I remember this, kind of an eerie feeling of feeling like I was in the room with a walking dead man. That somebody, it was somebody who knew he was going to be assassinated at some point soon, and he didn't know when, and he didn't want it, he said, "I don't want this to happen, like this is not what I want." But he also, I think, saw no, like, I suppose he could run to Russia or something, and try to, like, live out his life that way, but he didn't want to do that. And he was just a literature-loving politician who happened to win the Iranian presidential election at the time when, all of a sudden, the U.S. is deciding it's going to assassinate everybody who's involved with the Iranian government. It was such an eerie feeling, it's just like this is so crazy. And yet, here he is a year later back in Iran, and I remember we kept thinking, "Okay, Trump is meeting with Xi September 24th. This has been on the books for months." Or, like, surely he has to have this war wrapped up by then. Right. It would be too embarrassing and too weird, and getting the way of his agenda that he has with Xi for this still to be going on. I don't know why we thought that because, clearly, he still can be doing it, and he is. And Pazeshkin still alive, now they murdered most of the government, but he survived, and here he is again. Yeah. And I think, at the time of the MOU, there was this sense of, this is probably, this is basically a surrender document as John Mirzheimer calls it, however, this is the best possible option, and can Trump sublimate his ego enough to hold the L? And that was always the question, and I was pretty skeptical that he would be able to, but on the other hand, you look at it, one of the other option is also impossible. So now we're in this, in between zone, where the economic pressure continues to ratchet up. Trump, for all of his talk about all, I don't care about the midterms, who cares, and even said something to that effect in his UN speech, clearly does. If he's thinking of doing some, well, dammit, we've got to do something in sanity with diesel export ban, and also floating all sorts of election rigging schemes and all these sorts of things, and doing his RNC down in Texas, clearly he does care. So I think this sense that now the midterms are this very consequential date, has become quite prominent, whereas previously we're thinking about this deadline of meeting with Chi as a very prominent day. I'll say also this morning, the markets are reacting to the fact that there was apparently some sideline meeting with the Iranian president that appears to have resulted in absolutely nothing, no surprise there. So whatever Hopium was floating around out there that, oh, maybe this will be the beginning of some restarting talks, I think, has been already pretty crushed. Right. That's a good point that people who are looking at the midterms as some reason that is going to force him to end this should reflect on how we were looking at the meeting with Chi as a reason that he would end this. And yet, the Iranians seem to have baked in an assumption that he's not going to end it, and they're just going to have to last for two years, while little more than two years until he's out of office through the term limits, and presumably replaced by somebody who ends the war, that seems to be their best thinking at this time. Well, at least as far as I can tell, and you can crack me if I'm wrong, but their analysis of what America is likely to do has been pretty -- other than I was. I was. Yeah. I mean, going back to what you were saying about last year, the Iranian president I mean, like, I'm probably going to get murdered, not saying that I don't write, but that being the vibe, and while he was not personally assassinated, there was certainly a desire to assassinate him, and much of the top leadership was, we're also getting a greater look now at some of the horrific impacts of this war on our own service members. We've got more details, but see three up on the screen about the U.S. carrier group, the Lincoln, that we did -- we covered so much reporting on the horrific conditions, how long they were out, and just the suffering on board. Now we know that there were eight sailors as part of the carrier group who attempted suicide during this deployment, which is wild, and this is not, you know, this is not inside reporting. This was told to Congress by the acting Navy Secretary, Hong Kong, based on questioning from a member of Congress. So just horrific to imagine, and also obviously in terms of our capacity to sustain this conflict, you know, it's not only the U.S. it's Lincoln, that was -- that the crew members were suffering. This speaks to the fact that number one, our bases were obliterated, and so our plan for provisioning and supplying these ships was also obliterated, and the fact that we are stretched so incredibly thin here that we are requiring service members to have this length extraordinary, like, unprecedented length of deployment, and what that does to them, what that does to our equipment, et cetera. So it's a sign of how poorly planned this was, and also how this did not go according to whatever plan existed to begin with. Yeah. And the bond market continuing to just blow up, we can put up C4, up to 5.125 percent on the 10-year yield, highest in an extremely long time. I can put up C5, New York Times is the biggest jump, biggest one-day jump, and you can just look at the chart there, like, absolutely brutal. And what -- if you may or may not know this about the bond market, when interest rates go up, the price of bonds goes down, that's because if you hold a bond with a lower yield, it's now worth less, because you can go out in the market and get the same type of bond with a better interest rate. So the one that you're holding is worth less. So in other words, if two weeks ago, when interest rates went to 5 percent, you went out and bought some 10-year bonds, you have taken a bath on those bonds, like, what you bought is worth a lot less, which means people are getting burned buying U.S. government debt. And the more people get burned buying U.S. government debt, the less people want to buy it. We already have a situation where gold has overtaken U.S. treasuries as being held by central banks around the world. This obviously ties in also to mortgage rates as well. So, you know, I saw, I think it was a Fox business host who was questioning a Republican when saying, "Look, you got mortgage rates of 7 percent. You got gas at these high prices. You got inflation going up. How can you possibly present to the American people that this is all fine and these are the golden years, you know, America's back?" And I don't think that person had a very good answer to that because, you know, these are the things that, like, you can look at the stock market, the stock market is doing great. But the things that people are actually dealing with in their day-to-day life, can I afford a house? Can I afford to fill up the gas tank on my car? Can I afford beef at the grocery store or am I, you know, reduced to beans and eggs or whatever the secretary is pushing this week? Those are the sorts of things that people have a daily experience when they can't gaslight them on. Even it, let's say that some miracle occurred and there was some massive breakthrough and things started to get better, there's also going to be an overhang economically and an overhang politically because what we saw with Kamala Harris when she lost is inflation was getting, was much better and it was headed in the right direction. But because people had been so dissatisfied with what had gone on for the years of the Biden presidency, not just here, but around the world, incumbents really faced this massive backlash and punishment for their stewardship of the economy. It is so painful to look at charts and data from February of 2026, right before Trump launched the war, everything getting better, everything moving in the right direction, mortgage rates coming down, inflation coming down, unemployment, job, job to grow. People were like, he just needed to do nothing. Yes, just do nothing. Do you have a room? Do you have a room? Yeah, just do your ballroom. do the Trump, you know, whatever, the arch and the Kennedy Center, like just do that bullshit, but if you're doing that bullshit and I actually think that is an undersold part of how much his ratings have gradered and why there is some erosion even among his base is you have on the one hand him obsessing over the gilded ballroom while gas prices are going up and he's saying go eat eggs. Good luck. Yeah. People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait a minute. They change all of that. Yes. It's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's wrong. White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network and download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.