10/2/26: "BIG MISS" Jobs Report Spells Disaster For Trump, Anthropic BEGS Pope To Declare AI 'Personhood', Narco Rubio

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

The hosts dissect President Trump's Oklahoma rally and his claims of a swift Iran military victory, contrasting them with a disappointing September jobs report that signals economic strain ahead of the

Key takeaways

• Trump claimed to have wiped out Iran's nuclear threat in one night with B-2 bombers, but hosts note US air superiority has degraded due to lost F-15s and drones.
• The September jobs report missed expectations at 29,000 added jobs with a 60,000 downward revision, though markets rallied on hopes for delayed Fed rate hikes.

Main topics

• Trump rally in Oklahoma & Iran war claims
• September jobs report & crypto fundraising dinners

Notable quotes

"I stated numerous times that it would take four to six weeks to get rid of the Iran nuclear threat. And I did it in one night."

Conclusion

The episode underscores a growing disconnect between political branding and material reality, whether

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Speaker 6 (0:02) Guaranteed human. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast? Speaker 8 (0:07) 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. Speaker 6 (0:27) And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or Speaker 8 (0:32) wherever you get your podcasts. you Speaker 1 (0:36) The WNBA playoffs are here and Good Game with Sarah Spain is the only daily podcast that'll keep you up to date on all the action. We'll make sure you're the smartest fan at the bar by bringing you interviews with some of the best minds in basketball, including your favorite coaches and players. No one cares what we did last year. If anything, that's Speaker 2 (0:53) a Speaker 1 (0:53) bigger target on our back. Want to know what's really going on in the WNBA? We got you. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (1:05) Good morning, Breaking Point. It's Friday, October 2nd, 2026. We've got Ryan Grimm. We've got Emily Jashinsky. How are y'all doing? Wonderful. Doing Speaker 2 (1:14) great. Never better. Speaker 5 (1:15) Incredible. All right. We've got a big show, as always. We're going to be looking to the latest job reports. Are they good? Are they bad? And then we're going to also be checking in Emily to church for a second. We're going to be examining the religious and personhood. of artificial intelligence, which has been occurring in San Francisco, which, Ryan, you're about to head over to. Are you going to be doing any religious analysis of Claude while you're over there in San Francisco? Speaker 4 (1:45) I'm sure I'll ponder it. There is actually a Bernie rally in San Francisco at 3 p.m. on Saturday. I think I'm going to go to that. Speaker 4 (1:54) I'll be at the Bay Area Muslim Council banquet that evening. If anybody is there, come say hi. And then back here on Monday. Speaker 5 (2:05) Is Bernie entering into another anti-AI rally here in San Francisco in the belly of the beast? Is that what the plan is? I'm sure there'll be some Speaker 4 (2:15) of that. Speaker 5 (2:17) All right. Very, very cool. And then, Ryan, you've got a final story of the day for us, if you want to tease that. Speaker 4 (2:23) Yes. Remember when we talked a couple weeks ago about Fernando Sarimedo, who was the guy who was the business partner of Brad Parscale, kind of like the Roger Stone, but more powerful down in Latin America. He put out a hit on his pregnant mistress. She was shot three times. She survived. He was arrested. She started spilling all of the beans of his criminal enterprises. He's now being accused of drug trafficking and all sorts of other criminal activity and linked to almost every kind of right wing authoritarian government in Latin America. He's being prosecuted by the Bolivian attorney general yesterday. The Bolivian attorney general appears at the orders of Marco Rubio. was kidnapped basically at a press conference. And a whole bunch of his prosecutors were also arrested. Rubio is saying that the AG is actually the drug trafficker. Now... The truth is probably that they all are. However, the idea that he was arrested for ties to narco trafficking rather than for prosecuting this ally of Brad Parscale and Mago World is is fanciful. It came literally one day after his girlfriend released a photo of Sari Mado with Donald Trump Jr. And like, OK, that's enough. Wrap wrap this up. Speaker 5 (3:52) All right. Well, much to look forward to there. Glad Rubio is getting back in the mix. He needed somebody to keep him busy. But why don't we start with Trump, our president, who made a visit rally to Oklahoma and answered the question, why are you in Oklahoma? Let's take a listen. Speaker 3 (4:16) And to be honest, you know, we do so well in Oklahoma. We don't even have the governor's going to win. He's going to win. He's going to be great. You're going to have your senator candidate is going to win. They're all going to win. And they say, why are you going to Oklahoma? I said, you know what? Because I won Oklahoma all three times with the highest vote total. Speaker 3 (4:38) Ever recorded in the state's history. We got the most votes ever in the state history all three times. And we won all 77 out of 77 counties. Speaker 3 (4:55) So we said every record in the book, but think of it. We won all 77, all three times. And I'm the only one to ever done it. You know who was second? Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Speaker 3 (5:09) And I'm Donald Drang. 56. So we're at 77. So if you think I'm going to skip Oklahoma. Speaker 3 (5:17) But it is true. And you know why I'm here? And the sad part is I think you have 20,000 people outside that can't. Would anybody like to leave and let some of these people in? Speaker 5 (5:28) All right. So Ryan, back on Speaker 2 (5:32) his Speaker 5 (5:32) bullshit. Now, is this a sign of strength for the midterms that he's in Oklahoma, a state that he has won? Speaker 4 (5:40) Yeah, I think if Joe Biden had held a rally in Vermont, everybody would be saying real sign of strength here for the Democrats. Yeah, Trump's in his safe space. He's in his comfort comfort zone. I think that Republicans, if they can keep him out of anything competitive, they're happy. I don't think they're going to be able to. He's threatening that he's going to come to Iowa, Nebraska. Paxton already said that his convention in Texas torched everybody down there. The guy has become George W. Bush, and he's the last one to realize it. Speaker 2 (6:16) Oh, that was very poetic at the end. He's the last one to realize it. Speaker 4 (6:21) Look, there are a lot Speaker 2 (6:22) of Speaker 4 (6:22) and I'm putting this out for free. Speaker 2 (6:25) There are a lot of people in Trump world who will say it's bad for him to not do rallies because it means he loses his touch with the. Like with his own base. So like he apparently picks up what gets really big applause, what doesn't get really big applause, what people seem most excited about or angry about. And so whether or not that's true, it is true that a lot of people in his circles believe that they need to get him out into rallies. Otherwise, he just listens to literally like the CEOs, the AI people. Speaker 4 (6:57) Or just Speaker 2 (6:57) Dario and Sam Altman, whomever, Greg Brockman. And he's not. even getting like the whatever you call that response from this big audience in front of him. And so it wouldn't surprise me if it's also because I don't know if there are any like marquee races in Oklahoma. Ryan, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think part of it is a Speaker 4 (7:19) house race. Speaker 2 (7:20) Yeah, I'm sure that's definitely true. I mean, I think almost every state is going to have competitive house races. If the Mark Halperin analysis is correct, that behind closed doors, they really believe if you're even. tied or up slightly, you're probably losing, according to Halperin. That's what a lot of Republican consultants and strategists are seeing on the ground right now, are worried about on the ground right now. But I also think some of it might be that there are, you know, there are still Bannonites who work for Trump, believe it or not, like people who are original MAGA types who have been horrified by the AI stuff and by his dismissiveness over the economy. the Iran war. And that's why many of them think he needs to be out in front of crowds. So it might not even be about like rallying a red state election so much as it is people around him being like, please, for the love of God, like, go see how big the applause line is. If you mention AI or Iran, just test it out. Speaker 4 (8:14) Well, let's let's see. So he did. And Speaker 2 (8:17) they might be wrong, too. He Speaker 4 (8:18) did mention Iran. So let's all right. So let's hear let me let me play this. Let's see how the Oklahomans appreciated his Iran stuff. Maybe they liked it. Let's get the Speaker 5 (8:30) loudness meter like in a basketball game. Speaker 3 (8:33) And I'm also ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Speaker 4 (8:40) Hey, there you go. Crowd loves it. That's not good news. Crowd loves it. Let's see what he's got next. Speaker 3 (8:50) And I stated numerous times that it would take four to six weeks to get rid of the Iran nuclear threat. And I did it in one night. That was when the B-2 bombers went in there. Speaker 3 (9:04) And they're complaining that, oh, we've been in there for six months. I've been in there for six months. I wiped out. Hey, look, Iran has no anything right now. They want to make a deal. Maybe we'll do it or maybe we won't, because if they're not going to hold it, let's not do it. Let's just finish the job. But. Speaker 4 (9:25) Oklahomaans want to finish the job. There you go. Speaker 3 (9:27) Those beautiful B-2 bombers, they left Missouri. They flew both ways 37 hours. They were refueling up there. We have the greatest tankers. We have the greatest military in the world. They went. Speaker 3 (9:42) From Missouri. Speaker 3 (9:44) And then at one o'clock in the morning with no moon dark as can be these unbelievable machines led by the most incredible pilots in the world. They unloaded every single bomb, went right down airships into this. Ryan, pause it right there. He Speaker 5 (10:03) says every single bomb and he means it. Ryan and Sagar, you spoke yesterday about the THAAD missile system and how it's virtually all gone. And yeah, we did. We've used every missile. So how are we going to finish the job? Are we going to slap them? Are we going to use paintball guns? Speaker 4 (10:23) The point related to this would be we do still have plenty of bombs that we could stick into the beautiful B-2 bombers. But this was kind of a surprise attack on a moonless night. You know, they got in, they got out. Our air superiority over Iran doesn't exist anymore. Like we because we lost that F-15. We had an F-35 that got clipped. We keep losing MQ-9 drones. And so that has meant that we can't use these beautiful bombers. We've had to send aircraft carriers way back. The bases have been destroyed. And that means we have to then shoot off these 14 million dollar Tomahawk missiles or whatever they cost. rather than the beautiful B-2s. Which he loves Speaker 2 (11:11) so much, he put on the Resolute desk, by the way. Speaker 4 (11:15) So beautiful. And so, yeah, the guy we had, we talked to Christopher Leonard yesterday, people should go watch that segment, really fascinating, about, you know, 10 years, nine years of production of THAAD missiles and ballistic missile interceptors generally have been burned through in 10 months. And Trump... Up on stage there, it doesn't seem like he's ready to wrap this up. Like elsewhere he said, they're going to cease to exist if they don't just make a deal. But what deal he would accept is not clear. Speaker 7 (11:51) All Speaker 4 (11:51) this could be over if we would just release their own frozen money. Speaker 2 (11:55) It's also why I think this theory about putting Trump at rallies is so dangerous because I don't even, I've never even believed it. Like there are some people who will swear by you put him up there and he is gauging what gets more applause and less applause. But if you go to a Trump rally, like people are just applausing like crazy. They're applauding like crazy for everything. Like it's his most hardcore Speaker 4 (12:13) fans. Speaker 2 (12:13) And who's going to a Trump rally Speaker 4 (12:14) at this point in Oklahoma? Yeah, it's Speaker 2 (12:16) a Speaker 4 (12:16) good point. Like, Speaker 2 (12:16) how's Speaker 4 (12:16) hardcore fans? Speaker 2 (12:18) Yeah, it's a good point. Speaker 5 (12:19) That's a good point. Texas oil executives, perhaps. I'm not sure at this point. Landman. You got to check out Speaker 2 (12:26) Griffin's Landman sketch if you haven't yet. Speaker 5 (12:29) And, you know, let's look at the jobs report for a second to check in on that. We got a new jobs report this morning and it's a bit of a disappointment. Speaker 7 (12:38) And the numbers are hitting the wires for the September job jobs report. A bit of a disappointment. Expecting 90,000 comes in at 29,000. And we see revisions, two-month revision down 60,000. 29,000 will be the lightest since July when it was 21,000. Manufacturing, you may recall, our last look was 16,000. That was the best going all the way back to the fall of 2023. It was downgraded a bit to 15,000, but that still doesn't change its historic status. We gave a bit up, comes in close to expectations and up. 9,000. So the renaissance of manufacturing continues. Average hourly earnings. Now, if we take it on a month-over-month basis, this is a big miss, big, big miss. We're expecting up three-tenths. Our last look was up three-tenths. This comes in up one-tenth, and up one-tenth would actually be the lightest of the year, an equal decent of last year. Find a smaller number. You're back in April of last year. Speaker 2 (13:41) Unless you think that's just CNBC and Rick Santelli, there are already videos circulating from Fox News and Fox Business of similar crashes happening. Speaker 4 (13:51) Right. But Trump is very excited by this, though, because this comes as there was an inflation number that was a little bit lower than expected yesterday. And then you have the jobs number lower. So what that does is it signals to the market that, well, maybe the Federal Reserve, instead of. three interest rate hikes over the next year. Maybe there'll only be two or they'll wait a little bit longer to do one. So that's why you saw Dow futures, you know, looking at a 300 plus open because we live in this kind of sick economy where suffering is actually good for capital because it means capital. If workers are suffering, Fed is going to respond by giving capital easier access to money. And so capital is like cool. Like people are suffering. Great. Speaker 2 (14:41) Yep. I feel like you can already see that in some of the coverage here. Now, unemployment rate has been pretty steady. That's one thing. It didn't there was no major jump. But the other went to four Speaker 5 (14:52) point two. Right. Speaker 2 (14:54) I thought it was steady at 4.2. I thought it was 4.2. I could be wrong about that. But the revisions to the prior, I just had it up on my screen and it disappeared. Oh, that's great. One more second. Get it back up here. Because there were revisions, as Ryan mentioned. To the prior reports. So, yeah, this is Nick Tamiros from Wall Street Journal. The three-month average hiring rate initially reported at 71,000 for August is now revised to 51,000. So that jumped down 20,000. And the three-month average hiring for September was also 51,000. The picture is similar for private sector employment, which was plus 54,000 for September, up from a downwardly revised plus 48,000 in August. Speaker 4 (15:39) Right. So, yeah, combined 60,000 fewer jobs than initially reported over the Speaker 2 (15:44) past Speaker 4 (15:44) couple of months, which also the market will also like. Hey, more jobless people, easier money. Speaker 5 (15:53) Well, Trump is laser focused on the economy and the way that he has decided to stimulate things right before the midterms is, of course. Another exclusive dinner, a new crypto dinner that he is offering that Jeff Stein flagged here. And I just want to share some of the details with you guys. He's hosting the most exclusive dinner for the top 185 purchasers of his meme crypto buying $1 million or less worth of Trump coin should get you in November 22nd. Hey, maybe we can do a little fundraiser. I'd love to. I'd love to get a little steak. But some more details on this. This is, of course, a very real image of Trump here. And some of the perks are you get VIP seating, a Trump 18K gold watch access. to three legends that are to be named later. They don't have the legends booked yet, but they can assure you that whoever does show up, they will be legendary and you will get access to them. And of course, an evening that you will talk about. forever. So very, very exciting for that. Justine also flagged a little anecdote here from one of the crypto investors that went to a past dinner. This is Nick Pinto, a 26-year-old crypto investor, said he invested... 450,000 in the Trump meme coin and the value of his investments is down to roughly 50,000. He said he was disappointed by the first dinner last year as Trump was there for no more than 20 minutes and did not take photos with the crypto holders. The steak was only five ounces and not something you'd get at a steakhouse in New York. You wouldn't even get that at like Ruth Chris. Speaker 5 (17:44) Pinto also said that if it was an option, he could see himself voting for Trump again. He plans on attending the upcoming dinner. I hope the food is better this time. So just an incredible spring of the tunnel. Speaker 2 (17:57) That was a great report from Jeff Stein. I mean, this is actually one of the most controversial decisions that Trump ruled. I don't think it's Trump himself, but he's agreeing to all of it. So it's his decision at the end of the day. But one of the more controversial positions his people put him in was hosting that dinner. where you're paying for access, which it's one thing during a campaign. He's not on the ballot right now. He's president of the United States. And it's not surprising from Trump. But, you know, of course, we don't want to get numb to it. So the fact that they're doing it again in the midterms shows, I think, a shamelessness in Trump's personal operation that's probably different from the political operation, which is starting to freak out. So to me, it kind of suggests they don't have good control. I mean, we already know this because, you know, they're freaking out. He's over with Zoran Mamdani as half the candidates are running against who they're trying to frame as, you know, Kansas' Zoran Mamdani or Nebraska's Zoran Mamdani. And there's Trump, like, with Zoran Mamdani. So obviously he doesn't, like, the political operation doesn't have a lot of control over him. But this is another example of, like, how clearly he doesn't really care about the midterms. Or ethics, obviously, too. Speaker 5 (19:07) Or steaks, five ounces. That's rough. He doesn't care about the Speaker 2 (19:11) bros. Speaker 5 (19:12) Doesn't care about the bros. How much steak do you buy with $400 Speaker 4 (19:17) ,000? Speaker 2 (19:19) In this economy, you could buy, how much is a banana, Michael? $10? Speaker 5 (19:24) Even in Speaker 4 (19:25) this economy. Speaker 5 (19:26) It is hard to have sympathy for someone that can invest half a million dollars into a meme coin. And then and still be, you know, in the game. I Speaker 4 (19:39) think that guy's doing fine. Yeah. Yeah. Fake money to him. And it literally it is fake money. So, yeah, Speaker 2 (19:45) it's fake money to everyone. That's the good news. Speaker 4 (19:47) It's by definition, fake money. Speaker 2 (19:49) Not good news. But yet, Griffin, I also wanted to point out while we're talking about this, there's a great New York Times piece by the right of center poll poster, Kristen Soltis Anderson this week, who find, I think, found in her work a point that we've been making over and over again here, which is that. Trump got away with the corruption when people felt like the economy was getting better or going to get better. And people have lost hope in that now. So the corruption stuff sticks when gas is $4 a gallon. It becomes much more offensive to people. And so she wrote in The New York Times that. A second issue has been, quote, rising in my polling, ranking below the cost of living, but ahead of other concerns. It's not just the economy. It's the corruption, too. Voters don't think the