The Realignment: Realignment Discussion + Ask Me Anything: Saagar & Marshall on the GOP Primary, UFOs, a Senate Retirement, and Take Listener Questions (Supercast Exclusive)

and Sagar here. Welcome back to the Supercast Plus edition of our Q&A, AMA, and then discussion.

We're doing something new this year to really compress things and be the most efficient,

but also be able to deliver these at a consistent rate. We're going to merge the

discussion episodes with the Supercast Q&A. So we're going to do some quick discussion,

open to everyone. If you would like to get access to the Ask Me Anything slash Q&A that we're going

to answer at the second half of today's episode, you can go to realignment.supercast.com or click

the link at the top of your show notes to ask questions, upvote, and do more. Sagar,

let's just start by kicking off with the topic you and I have been thinking a lot about,

which is basically the start of the 2024 Republican primary. There was a big piece in

political that we will link in the show notes announcing the Vivek Ramaswamy, who

deep listeners of the realignment will remember from, I think, July 2021. His book,

Woke, Inc., he's 37. He's made a lot of money in the pharmaceutical space. He's basically

announced he's going to run for president. We also then today on the 14th saw Nikki Haley,

former South Carolina governor, and then, of course, Trump's first U.N. ambassador,

announcing her campaign, opening, oh, and then last thing, Trump corrected the disaster that

was Ron DeSantimonious. Easily his worst nickname yet, upgraded it to Ron Meatball, which is much

more, I think, accurate. No, Meatball Ron. Meatball Ron, you're right. Much more, I think there's

something more devastating and better to that. What are your opening takes on the Republican

primary? Well, my first disagreement is, I actually thought Ron DeSantimonious was good. I

think DeSantis is actually quite sanctimonious. But it might be two baby words. We'll see.

Meatball Ron is certainly better, but I would defend DeSantimonious. Let's start with Nikki

Haley. I mean, Marshall, I messaged our friends this morning. I said, is Nikki Haley the Tim

Pawlenty or the Scott Walker of 2024? This is a deep cut for people who don't remember. Tim

Pawlenty was the first GOP candidate in the 2012 primary, the former governor of Minnesota,

announces to huge fanfare, make America, you know, like, hopefully, I don't even remember

what a stupid slogan was. And he completely flops. Yeah, he completely flops in Iowa,

completely flops in a campaign, currently at Chakti's, currently the chief lobbyist for the

American private equity industry. So shout out to Tim. Okay, so why does that matter? It matters

because Scott Walker was a gubernatorial candidate, a lot of media hype, but legitimate Tea Party

activist had people behind him. Scott Walker was a legitimate, legitimately popular governor,

somebody who both was beloved by the conservative donor class, but had an actual activist base.

There was a theory of the case. Clearly, Wisconsin ended up being an important state in 2016. And

that was a plausible path to victory. Now, obviously didn't end up working out. But

what happened more with Walker is what I would say was a combination of like,

donorism, but also just running a terrible campaign. Whereas with Haley, I think what

you have is just a completely implausible candidate. You know, I've seen some takes out

there. I wonder what you would say about this. Everyone says Nikki Haley would be the perfect

candidate in 2015. But I don't even agree with that because Jeb Bush lost in 2015. And Jeb,

frankly, had way better of a case for becoming the GOP nominee than Nikki Haley does even today.

I'm trying to think of a single like plausible time when her candidacy would have mattered. And

in almost every case, I can think of a national public figure who was far better suited to that

moment, who either ended up being the nominee or came close or was much bigger of a profile. So

personally, I think this is just an exercise in like insane narcissism and just like the inflated

egos. I mean, look, with the fake, look, out of respect, he's been a guest on multiple shows,

all of that. I think he's a smart guy. That said, I don't think that making a lot of money qualifies

you to be president. You know, I don't think anybody knows what ESG is. I know what ESG is.

Terry Branstad, who apparently the fake did not know, who was in that

profile, yeah, from a governor of Iowa. Sorry, one of the most important. He was also the US

ambassador to China under Donald Trump because he had a deep relationship with Xi Jinping.

He actually, I thought said it best. He's like, I'm not sure if Iowans know what ESG is, but,

you know, we'll take a look at it. So that might be almost the definition of like,

just reading a little bit too much into Fox News and Twitter discourse and thinking that it

translates electorally. But I don't think any of these candidates have a chance, totally willing

to be proven wrong, but by and large, like, this is the other thing with Haley. And no lie,

by the way, I have huge disagreements for their foreign policy and non-economic policy.

I don't even think this is about policy. This is about baseline talent as a politician,

the ability to fulfill the number one criteria for a GOP primary, which is

you have to be hated by the establishment, you have to be hated by the media. And like,

here's the truth, like she's, that's not her thing. It's never been her thing. So that's why

I just don't think it's going to work. Yeah, a million things to respond to there. So number one,

I'd say Nikki Haley isn't running to be Tim Plenty. She's not running to be Scott Walker.

She's running honestly to be Kamala Harris. Because the key thing, this is why I actually

don't think this is an act of like rank narcissism. That is out of all the people.

Mike Pompeo is not going to be anybody's vice president.

Yeah. Nikki Haley is one of the few Republican candidates who can quote unquote win by losing.

Unlike Kamala, because remember Kamala actually, if you're sitting in 2019, you could see you're

having a path to the presidency. Kamala unleashes a massive attack against Joe Biden with the school

busing 1970s critique. This is where she very aggressively on stage. Basically, then back to

her prosecutor background was like Joe Biden, you were opposed to school busing. I was one of the

first kids to get bused in California, making a very aggressive, you're out of stuff with the

Democratic Party in 2019 argument. I think Nikki Haley is not going to even do that.

Nikki Haley is going to run. She's going to be inoffensive and she's going to push out a very

straightforward narrative, which is I don't scare off suburban women. I am positive and I am

basically someone who show that they could succeed in a Trump administration. So if you're looking

at the perspective of let's say a Ron DeSantis, if you're looking at the perspective of someone

like Trump, who honestly, as you and I both experienced very viscerally, he goes back and

forth on people, I think this is actually a pretty logical step for her. And she's just genuinely

one of the few people who if she just does this race, says statements, goes pretty straightforward.

It's like, yeah, you've got a path here because she just, when it comes to frankly,

it's just her racial background, where she's coming from in the country. And then also just

the fact that she was a UN ambassador, she's actually pretty positioned to actually get something.

And the fact once again, I suspect like suburban white women in Georgia are not off court by her

in a way that a Trump or frankly, any other candidate is going to run to an issue around

there. So I think that's good for number two, the Vivek issue and look like Vivek is 37. So

I think it's interesting to look at him because he's one of the first young candidates who are

coming into the race and talking about these issues. I think the big thing that, you know,

I hope to have Vivek on the show to like ask him about this. So I'm not just like,

I'd leave like talking crap here. But if there's one thing I think you and I both agree, Joe Biden

was able to do in 2020 is he was able to accurately read what the American public wanted. So Obama

thought he shouldn't run. Everyone thought he should not run in the 2020 election because

you're not heavy on policy. You're too old. You're not with like the young left of the party.

You're not on Twitter. You're going to get canceled. All was different arguments are made.

And Joe Biden, this is all in all of the reporting. This isn't just me conjecturing. You can just

read any book on the 2020 election. It'll tell you this. Joe Biden said, actually, the American

people want normalcy. They want straightforward. They care about the democracy question for not

going to vote for people to judge over me because he's younger and they're not going to vote for

Kamala Harris because I'm white and she's black. He entirely read that correctly. So his skill

was he understood the country. Vivek thinking that the read on the country in 24 being that we

want to debate the culture wars and we want to debate ESG and Wilkism is just totally inaccurate.

I think that's a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible read. I think the advantage that Ron

DeSantis is going to have another question for Vivek is going to just basically be at a deep

level. What can you do that Ron DeSantis can't do? Yeah, Ron DeSantis banned ESG. He is waging

a war on Wilkism if that's like a big issue for you. So you really have to say like, what can you

do that Ron DeSantis can't do? What Ron DeSantis will also do that Vivek can't do is we both know

in 2024 if Ron DeSantis makes it to that primary, he's not just going to fight a war over Wilkism

if he's going against Joe Biden because Ron DeSantis being good at politics knows if there's

one attack that does not stick to Joe Biden, Republicans learned this during the 2022 midterms,

the socialism thing doesn't stick and also the Wilkism thing doesn't stick because EOD that's

just not him. Does he appoint people who believes in those things? Yes, most likely, but voters

it just doesn't translate. Instead, Ron DeSantis is going to say, hey, I raised teacher pay,

I care about the environment, he's going to pivot to the center and have a tangible record there.

So if Vivek just shows up magically having won the primary and him just saying, hey,

I'm like young and Joe Biden is old, that's not going to work. So Vivek needs to have a better

and I think just much more comprehensive theory of the case, what the electorate wants,

because I'm already bored of Wilkism. I think most of you are bored of Wilkism. This is like

my last thing on this, how you know, there's always books coming out about January 6th,

because you commissioned books like two years before they actually happened. Republicans thinking

that people are going to want to debate Wilkism and CRT in 2024 are making the same narrative

mistake. Yeah, I mean, that's more of a primary thing. I want to return to Nikki Haley though,

because one of the reasons I don't even agree with that is that Elise Stefanik already has

that unlock that what you're talking about, the ability to go establishment, but also

with Trump, this is what I'm talking about with baseline talent. Like Elise is much better

at being the like traditional GOP politician and also kissing Trump's ass. Like I don't even,

I don't see any scenario where running for president for Nikki Haley doesn't end up disastrous for her,

because even if she does the cookie cutter and all of that, she is still not willing to kiss

Trump's ass enough to be then selected for the vice president. And then it's not like you weren't

in the running for a cabinet position anyway, if Trump wins. So I don't see any upside here

for her whatsoever. I think you're presuming that Trump went, whether you're presuming that

Trump wins. Yeah, I am. But I'm okay. Oh, you mean presuming he wins the nomination? My point

wasn't that she's running to be Trump's VP. I think she knows that's out. She's running to be

DeSantis' VP. DeSantis would never pick her. Like this is my thing with DeSantis. Like first of all,

DeSantis is actually a talented politician. There's no way in hell that he would pick somebody

who was like that. Also, this also comes from a more of a party decides type of mentality,

which that doesn't exist in the GOP, like that level of pushing Kamala Harris and those

institutional factors. Actually, if anything, if DeSantis won, let's say he does prevail in a

primary against Donald Trump. Well, what you actually need to do is pick Marjorie Taylor-Green

to make sure that you have MAGA on your side or Lauren Boebert or somebody who is like that.

The last person that you would want to pick is somebody who is splitting the anti-Trump

vote for you. So I don't see any electoral calculus where this works out for her. I think

she's going to humiliate herself on the national stage. Trump is going to cut. Trump is going to

do one of two devastating things. A, he's not even going to pay attention because he doesn't give a

shit, which probably is the correct one. Or B, he's going to humiliate her on the stage and be

like, she kissed my ass when it was convenient, then she denounced me, then she came to me.

And I said, sure, Nikki, go ahead and run again. And it's because I knew that you were never a

serious threat. So look, you know, if Paul Singer wants to light his money on fire, be my guest.

He's spent money on dumber things. Go for it, Paul. So this is the next topic. UFOs. You've

got broad thoughts on this. I do not have broad thoughts on this. I think my take is hyper

conventional wisdom. What is your take? Push the push the button. Well, what do you think is what

do you think is conventional wisdom? What does that mean? The conventional wisdom? Yeah, no,

no, that's so funny. Okay. I'm hyper CNN Marshall. The hyper CNN New York Times take is that the

Biden administration knows that it miscalculated with letting the initial Chinese spy balloon it.

I think they thought it was fine. They thought that there wouldn't be much political backlash.

They were not ready for how viscerally the American political system reacted to seeing the

Billings, Montana video in the news. So now that that happened, they are reacting in the

opposite direction. So now they've raised the standards for what they couple for what they

think constitutes a violation of airspace. They are paying much more attention to things like

for example, I think of a bunch of these like balloons, objects or whatever had gone over

the US or entered American airspace like over, you know, in the Great Lakes and like, let's say

2021, nothing would have happened and it definitely wouldn't have made the news. So now their status

quo policy is if anything at all crosses over, we're interdicting we're sharing an airspace,

we're shooting it down until basically like the moves the news cycle moves on. That is a CW take

that I actually just entirely believe. Well, no, no, so I don't even disagree with any of that.

I think that's all true. So let's take a step back. Oh, but I don't think it's aliens is my point.

That's that's why you might see that I thought it was aliens. I'm saying I think your Twitter,

your Twitter, your Twitter has made some implications is what I'll say.

Here's my thing. I'm open to the possibility. And look, for people who are interested in UFOs,

I talk about I've been talking about this for a long time. I know it sounds crazy. You can think

I'm a crank. If you want to, I did an entire monologue today about the history of Roswell

about the cover up about the Robertson panel going all the way back to 1947. Here's my point

that I would say UFO people, by the way, have been saying this for the entire time. They don't

agree. They don't disagree with anything you said. In fact, I've been saying that for a long time.

The whole point has been this, you have I brought something to show you ever watched

the hunt for red October? Yeah, or read it. Okay. So you remember when Jonesy initially runs the

caterpillar soft caterpillar noise through a software and a software says what it's deep sea

noise? Your sensors are only as good as what you're looking for. So previous sensors, NORAD

specifically and radar, it was designed to look for incoming missiles and enemy aircraft. Anything

smaller than that, not paying attention, not even not paying attention. We had no idea. That's why

they came out and admitted that those balloons that came over on the Trump administration,

they didn't even know about it until later because they had to go through and backfill

all of the data. Well, this is the same thing. Here's what happened. And they already admitted

this on the record. So you can go fact check this if you want to the NORAD radar was recalibrated

after the Chinese balloon to include anything that is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle or bigger.

Then all of a sudden they're like, Oh, shit, we're with three different things

that are transversing our airspace. What a lot of UFO people has been saying, including myself,

has been, we have no idea what's going on out there. And actually, I think that was totally

vindicated, which is miscalibration of our radar systems made it so that this has been happening

for years and years. Go and look at all of the senators comments after the classified briefing.

Senator John Kennedy even said that he goes, really, what took away is that this has been

going on up there for a long time. A lot of the UFO interested congressmen, including Mike Gallagher,

by the way, Mike Gallagher is very into into this topic, Mike Gallagher, Kirsten Gillibrand,

Marco Rubio, all of them, their initial interest in UFOs had nothing to do with aliens. It was,

we are hearing from pilots that they are having encounters in our airspace that are not being

taken seriously by the military and are not being flagged. Maybe it's a balloon. Maybe it's a drone.

We have no idea what's happening. So all it really did was vindicate what a lot of us have been

saying, which is that the idea that airspace is secure is ridiculous is actually not secure at

all. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, in terms of what's happening with these UFOs,

we okay, the news already came out today. In all three instances, they are telling us that, oh,

these are not going to be able to recover. We're not, these are unrecoverable. All right, so let's

break them down. One only one of those is believable, which is the Alaskan one. And the reason why is

that the Alaskan UFO was shot over the Aleutian Islands, it landed on sea ice. It's also it's

in the middle of winter in Alaska. The weather there is genuinely terrible. If you say that that

one was unrecoverable, because maybe it fell through the ice and sank to the bottom of the ocean.

Okay, maybe, but you know, we still have undersea submersibles, we could make an effort, blah,

blah. All right, let's put that one to the side. Number two was the Yukon UFO. The Yukon UFO was

shot down by USF 22 at the command of Justin Trudeau. So they've come out and they said, oh,

you should prepare yourself or we're never going to find it. And I was like, why? And they're like,

actually, we have a 3000 mile radius. I'm like, oh, that's, that's pretty weird. Okay, 3000 miles,

because that's actually not what the traditional debris field for aircraft would look like. Also,

we have an exact geographic coordinate where this happened. It was shot down at 40,000 feet,

presumably, which is about the height of a commercial jetliner. This really shouldn't be

that difficult. But again, you know, deciding weather conditions, territory, all right, we could

make, let's find third one is Lake Huron. And this is where everything is total bullshit.

The Lake Huron UFO was shot down two days ago now at this point where you and I are recording. So

the very next day I put out the weather and I was like, Hey, it's 48 degrees and sunny. I'm like, so

there's no weather explanation for why you can't go get this thing. So then representative Elise,

no, Alyssa Slotkin, who used to work for the CIA, she comes out, this is her district, she comes out

and she's like, Oh, we can't get it today because we have choppy waters on the lake. So I did check

that. It's true. There was some choppy waters. Okay. So when are we going to go and get it? Well,

now they're like, No, we can't get it. It's too deep. I checked the max depth of depth of Lake

Huron is 754 feet. We are literally the US Navy is on the record having recovered debris from

literally all over the world at much, much depth, larger depths. So a, maybe it's true and they let

it sink and we're just not going to go get it. But the idea that you can't go get it because it's

too deep is just frankly, totally ridiculous. I have no idea what these things are. What I do know

is I think that we're being totally lied to about what's happening. And if you look and you parse

the language, the most honest person in this entire conversation has been the NORAD commander.

NORAD general came out and he said two very specific things. Everybody's like, Oh, they're

just balloons. Well, he has specifically said multiple times, I'm not using the word balloons

for a reason. These have no visible means of propulsion. We have no idea what they are.

And then second, he was asked specifically, like you said, Marshall about extraterrestrial life

aliens. And he's like, look, I'm not ruling anything out. The Biden administration, the Canadian

government on background keeps telling everybody it's probably a balloon, but the military doesn't

actually have any, they are more confident than the actual military. So maybe they know something

that we don't, but they didn't say any of that in a classified briefing to the Senate. And I just

think that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. All I'm pointing to is I think that

there's a tremendous amount of, what I think is that there's a conspiracy of silence, because I

think on this topic from the very beginning, they don't want to admit the truth, which they have no

idea what's going on. That's why they never adjusted the radar up until we had a literal Chinese

balloon that forced their hand. Like pilots have been talking about this for 25 years in the modern

era and really 75 if you go all the way back to Roswell. So anyway, that's, that's my general

take. Does that make sense? No, I think that does make sense. And it's like, once again, I think

the kind of point here is to fill in the space from the tweets different different formats. So

last quick, my tweets are just meant to, let me clarify, my tweets are just meant to get people

asking questions, which is like, you shouldn't believe this. Like you really believe, Marshall,

we have had the capability for 20 years to put a hellfire missile in the passenger side of a car.

You really want me to believe that you can't use a drone over what drones don't work in a

Alaska? That drones don't work in the Yukon Peninsula? That's bullshit. And same with Lake

Huron, the US Navy has a dive team on call available 24 hours a day to anywhere on earth,

capable of using submersibles and other diving teams to specifically to recover

lost munitions, anything of interest to the US military. Lake Huron ain't that far away.

They've had multiple days. They're prepping us for saying we have no idea. Oh, we're very likely

it's none of them are going to be able to be recovered. By the way, I actually think they

probably are balloons. But my point is, is that by asking these questions, I want people to open

their eyes to the point I was making about the hunt for red October. Christopher Mellon,

who is the Assistant Secretary of Defense, he's a big UFO advocate, and he's seen a lot more

shit than any of us have because he's seen some of the classified intel. He was talking about this

too. He said, for example, you know, one of the reasons, uh, you know, everybody thinks that we

might know if a alien spaceship were to show up in outer space. Here's the truth. We wouldn't know.

You know why? Because our radar systems detect what from outer space meteors. That's all they're

designed to, there's all they're designed to detect. You can only detect what you're actually

looking for. And so if we opened the amount of raw data that we were looking at and all that,

I'm sure we would have caught those balloons in 2021. That's, there's a reason why they overflowed

and we simply had no idea. And here's who knows what else you're going to find out there. That's,

that's all I'm saying. No, I think that's fair. And like, this is just not a topic that I've like

focused on. So my general rule, when I don't know about something is I am not going to speculate,

not accusing you or anything is like, this is something you've followed very aggressively.

But I could just, I could just basically, I'm going to, I don't think this is the most pressing

thing ever. So I'm going to be fine waiting a few weeks. It's not like something where it's like,

okay, no, like you have to make a judgment call, right? Like that's just like my general take.

But I think you do at this point qualify as a person who's known for covering this space.

So I am going to expect you to have a take ready for the podcast. So I think we're being

lied that that's my broad take is you are not getting full story. I don't know what the full

story is. I would like to know. I really would. You know, Marshall, this is the first time in

American history, the objects ever been shot down over US airspace ever has never happened before

in a hundred years of air flight over our, over our country. So we will say hit pause,

not you, soccer, but for the audience, probably expect to hear more from all the various spaces

that we discussed this. And then last but not least, I'll just give a quick 30 second on this one.

Obviously, Diane Feinstein has announced her intention to retire. She is in her late 80s,

very clearly reported that she was no luck. This isn't just like with Joe Biden, where it's like,

okay, like occasionally he speaks poorly in public and he's not as like, let's say like

loquacious or there as he was back in the 2000s or the Obama administration, like actually just

reported like Diane Feinstein is like legitimately like not there in private. She was effectively

and successfully forced out of the race. Because she was most likely going to run for reelection,

but a variety of Democrats announced early to basically force her hand. So this is a big deal

just in the sense that a broad theme you and I have covered in all of our various podcasting

products is the idea that there's a generational shift happening. That's what that actually looks

like. And the actual difference here is that unlike Joe Biden, this one just actually is not

defensible. And that's why this went down the way it went down. And unlike Joe Biden, she just

doesn't genuinely have like a constituency beyond just the fact that she's been in office since

literally the year we were born in 1992. Okay, now we are going to get to the Supercast Q&A.

If you are not a subscriber, you can get access to this section by going to

realignment.supercast.com or clicking the link in the show notes.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.