Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2: Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
Speaker 2: and we are so excited about what that means for
Speaker 2: the future of this show.
Speaker 3: This is the only place where you can find honest
Speaker 3: perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
Speaker 3: not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So if that is something that's important to you, please
Speaker 2: go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
Speaker 2: you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
Speaker 2: and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 3: We need your help to build the future of independent
Speaker 3: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 4: Good morning everyone, Happy Thanksgiving week. Crystal grateful for you.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, sam'am, thank you. It was a fun time
Speaker 2: with you here at the desk.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's a blast, and we should probably
Speaker 4: try to beat our record today. Maybe go to like
Speaker 4: four or five hours.
Speaker 5: Be real. I don't know if I have that in me.
Speaker 5: I'm still recovering them seeing Wicked this weekend. That's right,
Speaker 5: you saw Wicked many hours time in the morning in
Speaker 5: front of the movie screen. But it was great, good.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker 5: Big fan.
Speaker 2: I am excited about the show today though, because we
Speaker 2: have some exclusive reporting. We actually sent out producer Griffin.
Speaker 2: He's going to join us in studio to talk to
Speaker 2: some of those AOC Trump voters and get them in
Speaker 2: their words as to why they made the choice to
Speaker 2: vote for Donald Trump and then down ballot vote for AOC.
Speaker 2: Jail partners helped us identify them, So I think you
Speaker 2: guys are going to find this really interesting. I certainly
Speaker 2: found it really interesting.
Speaker 5: We'll bring that.
Speaker 2: To you exclusively. We also have a bunch of updates
Speaker 2: on the Trump transition. His cabinet actually now full complete.
Speaker 2: Not to say there aren't other slots he's got to
Speaker 2: fill that aren't cabinet level, but he has, you know,
Speaker 2: at a very rapid clip, put out his nominees here,
Speaker 2: so we'll bring you some of the most interesting choices,
Speaker 2: including Attorney General nominee now Pam Bondi, who was Attorney
Speaker 2: General of Florida that was, you know, to fill in
Speaker 2: for Matt Gates who had to withdraw his nominations. Emily
Speaker 2: covered that for us last week. Also another really interesting
Speaker 2: one the woman that they chose for Department of Labor.
Speaker 2: So she is a very rare person which is a
Speaker 2: pro union Republican. She was one of the only Republicans
Speaker 2: in the House that supported the pro act, So a
Speaker 2: bit of a surprise there. Tell you what that means
Speaker 2: potentially for the future with labor and unions and a
Speaker 2: bit of a conservative like business friendly meltdown on that
Speaker 2: side of the aisle.
Speaker 5: With regard to.
Speaker 2: That pick, we also have some updates for you with
Speaker 2: regard to last week, we brought you the news that
Speaker 2: the ICC has now issued arrest warrants for bb net Yaho.
Speaker 2: You have Galant and a leader of Hamas. We're taking
Speaker 2: a look at which countries are actually going to bide
Speaker 2: by international law and would arrest b b are saying
Speaker 2: publicly they would arrest be be if he were to
Speaker 2: be on their soil.
Speaker 5: So significant development there.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Elon apparently thinking about buying MSNBC.
Speaker 5: The memes are flying Emily.
Speaker 4: Yes, and many of them are flying from his keyboard.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. Indeed, yeah.
Speaker 4: They range from genuinely funny to very disturbing.
Speaker 2: True, very true as memes do, as memes do. And
Speaker 2: I'm also taking a look at MSNBC. You know, I
Speaker 2: really think even if the network continues in some sort
Speaker 2: of like hobbled form going forward, which are likely is
Speaker 2: going to the role that it is served in terms
Speaker 2: of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 5: It's over.
Speaker 2: I mean they the combination of Trump winning and then
Speaker 2: Joe Amica bending the knee down to mar A Lago
Speaker 2: has completely nuked to that channel. And so you know
Speaker 2: what comes afterwards, you know, will it be? Is that
Speaker 2: a good thing? Is it a bad thing. I'll get
Speaker 2: into all of that in my monologue. I've obviously got
Speaker 2: a lot of thoughts on this one.
Speaker 4: I'm not surprised to learn that you have more thoughts
Speaker 4: on this, Krystal, and I'm very excited to hear them.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, all right, let's go ahead and get to
Speaker 2: We'll bring Gryffin in and reset, and then we will
Speaker 2: bring you that video of AOC Trump voters and why
Speaker 2: they made the choices that they did. So, as I
Speaker 2: was just saying, we have Griffin here in studio with
Speaker 2: us to help break down these conversations that you had
Speaker 2: with people who actually voted for AOC and Trump.
Speaker 5: We had a number of women who we were able.
Speaker 2: To speak with, so set up a little bit for
Speaker 2: us what you ask them and what your general takeaways
Speaker 2: and vibes were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, without giving like too much of a spoiler, it
Speaker 1: was interesting because, like for Trump, the reasons were all
Speaker 1: pretty much the same. It was immigration, it was wars,
Speaker 1: and it was like the economy. With AOC, it seemed
Speaker 1: to be more of her personality or charisma and kind
Speaker 1: of like her like celebrity star status, but also just
Speaker 1: like this feeling that they felt like she was real,
Speaker 1: she was real, and that she actually cared. So that
Speaker 1: was really interesting. It was a range of voters. There
Speaker 1: was some people who were high information, like they've been
Speaker 1: tracking it for about a year, and some people who
Speaker 1: kind of made their decision within like the last day
Speaker 1: or two. But yeah, the range of answers, as we'll
Speaker 1: see in just a second, were pretty similar from the
Speaker 1: majority of the voters.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's go ahead and take a listen
Speaker 2: to what they had to say.
Speaker 1: Why did you vote for both Trump and AOC in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6: Because America needs a role model and I think Donald
Speaker 6: Trump is a role model.
Speaker 7: The border, you know, the people coming to us illegally,
Speaker 7: the martyrs, everything, all the crimes are increasing.
Speaker 8: The Democrats really haven't done anything for us. That actually
Speaker 8: made the situation worse in New York. So I thought,
Speaker 8: this time around, let's just give Trump, you know, a chance,
Speaker 8: maybe you know, he can make things better.
Speaker 9: He's very business minded, and I also feel that being
Speaker 9: that he has these connections with other leaders, it can like,
Speaker 9: you know, prevent war from happening in the future.
Speaker 7: When Trump first came those four years, it was you know,
Speaker 7: ups and downs, but it was nowhere, like you know,
Speaker 7: it was no war. We didn't have any fight with
Speaker 7: other countries.
Speaker 1: How does AOC fit into that picture.
Speaker 6: She's like that sister that will always defend you. She'll fight,
Speaker 6: She'll scream till a bloody pulp if she had to.
Speaker 6: You know, she's truly a fighter.
Speaker 1: Is there a little bit of like a New York
Speaker 1: realness that they both share? Is that what I'm mean?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, definitely so much that they could be like
Speaker 6: brother and sister almost.
Speaker 8: I like that they're very outspoken. They really have I
Speaker 8: think no filter.
Speaker 7: If you look at Joe Biden, there are lot of
Speaker 7: things probably he wouldn't understand about our generation or the
Speaker 7: future generation. And also Donald Trump as well. He's aged too,
Speaker 7: So we need someone above and be on like more
Speaker 7: new generation and would understand more.
Speaker 8: I just voted for her, honestly because the other people
Speaker 8: I don't know about, and her I just always hear about.
Speaker 6: It's like crazy.
Speaker 8: So I thought, you know, she's a familiar name, let
Speaker 8: me just vote for her.
Speaker 10: My mother would like vote for her, So I.
Speaker 1: Was like, Okay, that's that's great, that's that's enough. Listen
Speaker 1: to your mom. Could you compare Kamala and AOC for me?
Speaker 1: What is the difference between the two of them.
Speaker 9: I just feel that Kamala had a position as a
Speaker 9: vice president already and I don't feel like she did
Speaker 9: much in the position that she helped for the.
Speaker 4: Last four years.
Speaker 9: I feel like she used entertainers for promotion and I
Speaker 9: didn't like that at all.
Speaker 8: She doesn't bring anything to the table, even if she
Speaker 8: was a first woman person. She doesn't know what she's doing,
Speaker 8: and she's going to, you know, not give us a
Speaker 8: bad but it's just we're gonna go from bad to
Speaker 8: worse because I feel like our country is doing so
Speaker 8: bad now.
Speaker 6: AOC really tells you what she's gonna do rather than
Speaker 6: come on the worst. She's just more broad. If you're
Speaker 6: going to change your world, if you're gonna run for president.
Speaker 6: Start Now you have the president, you're a vice president.
Speaker 6: Now you can start. Now, tell us what you're gonna do.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about the war in Gaza? How
Speaker 1: do you feel the US and how they've handled it
Speaker 1: And did that affect your vote at all.
Speaker 7: In a big way. Yes, we just don't want any
Speaker 7: war and we don't want innocent lives to be killed
Speaker 7: without any reason.
Speaker 6: It's crazy what's going on there, and we need to
Speaker 6: fix it and needs to stop. And I think Donald
Speaker 6: Trump will be able to maneuver it. I hope he does.
Speaker 9: New York have so many issues here with high rent
Speaker 9: and working all the time. It's like you care about it,
Speaker 9: but you have so many other major important things going
Speaker 9: on in your life that just comes before that, and
Speaker 9: it's just sad to say.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Trump is anti war?
Speaker 5: I'm not sure.
Speaker 6: I don't think President Trump wants to anyone.
Speaker 9: If Trump was in office during that time, we win
Speaker 9: a lot of things that are going on with the migrants,
Speaker 9: the war. I just don't believe a lot of these
Speaker 9: things would be going.
Speaker 8: On if Trump had been president. I really don't think
Speaker 8: it would have gotten this far.
Speaker 1: Would you vote for AOC for president as a Democrat.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Would give it a chance.
Speaker 6: I mean, don't I don't say that women are not
Speaker 6: equal to men. But I think she might need to
Speaker 6: work on her education of worldhods, like her way to
Speaker 6: communicate about it and the policies and everything. She would
Speaker 6: be good.
Speaker 1: Maybe if Trump were to use like the military, Let's say,
Speaker 1: if we were used to use the army to start
Speaker 1: deporting people from cities. Is that something that you would support.
Speaker 9: I would definitely support that because I think that would
Speaker 9: be the only way to get the deportation process started.
Speaker 9: We're talking about criminals, be talking about mob you know
Speaker 9: a lot of gang members, and I mean who else
Speaker 9: would be able to.
Speaker 10: Do that but the military.
Speaker 8: I think it's really a case by case basis. I
Speaker 8: feel like a lot of them just come here and
Speaker 8: get away with things. I don't think the police is
Speaker 8: doing what they should right now. I really don't think
Speaker 8: they care.
Speaker 9: According to Trump, we will no longer have any more
Speaker 9: presidency after him.
Speaker 1: Does that worry you?
Speaker 9: No, not at all.
Speaker 10: We need to get rid of like Congress, the legislation,
Speaker 10: the laws, like everything. You just need to be rewired
Speaker 10: and re you know, re rethought out, let's just start
Speaker 10: this whole thing over again.
Speaker 5: So interesting.
Speaker 2: So to Shina there at the end is like burning
Speaker 2: all down right of all the Congress, like just let
Speaker 2: him do whatever.
Speaker 1: We don't have to work anymore after that, then that's not.
Speaker 5: Nothing else to cover, so we can all retire.
Speaker 2: There was so much that was interesting about that, though,
Speaker 2: I mean surface level, the reasons match a lot of
Speaker 2: what you see in the polls, like oh, immigration was important,
Speaker 2: Oh inflation and the economy was important, But there was
Speaker 2: so much texture there that was really different. And the
Speaker 2: other thing that came across to me in watching these voters,
Speaker 2: and like you said, some of them more like high
Speaker 2: information war tuned in and someone were less engaged in
Speaker 2: the day to day news cycle, which nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 2: But in both respects with Trump and AOC, what they
Speaker 2: really have in common, more than ninething else is star power.
Speaker 5: They've got huge name. I D huge star power. You know.
Speaker 2: So you had the one woman saying like, I just
Speaker 2: hear about IOC all the time. Sure, you know, so
Speaker 2: I feel like she must be doing something because I
Speaker 2: hear her name a lot, And I do think that
Speaker 2: speaks to one of the things that's been absent from
Speaker 2: the Democratic autopsies that are going on is like, Trump
Speaker 2: is a celebrity and controversy has served him, and the
Speaker 2: fact that he's in his name is in front of
Speaker 2: you and in the news all the time. And AOC
Speaker 2: is also this sort of controversial celebrity, and in a
Speaker 2: certain sense that really serves both of them and is
Speaker 2: probably the model for politicians that both parties need to
Speaker 2: follow going forward.
Speaker 1: And not only they're like celebrities, but that they were
Speaker 1: real and they were fighters for the things that I
Speaker 1: kept tearing over and over again. Not only that there
Speaker 1: was like a star status to them.
Speaker 2: But what they were fighting for wasn't that important. It
Speaker 2: was just like, I feel like they're going to get
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're going to do something.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes I would ask them like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I know, AOC and Trump have fight for very different things.
Speaker 1: They have very different opinions on things like immigration. But
Speaker 1: they didn't really care because they knew that both these
Speaker 1: people were passionate and they fought for what they believed in,
Speaker 1: which they just didn't get a sense from people like
Speaker 1: Kamala and other Democrats, and it seemed like they almost
Speaker 1: just respect that more even if it's like not even
Speaker 1: if they disagree on a certain issue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's important. And also what they believe in fundamentally,
Speaker 4: in the minds of especially casual voters who don't spend
Speaker 4: their days thinking about this, is helping the country. And
Speaker 4: to the point that you brought up that could be
Speaker 4: very different things. But if they believe that you have
Speaker 4: their best interests at heart, then they just sort of
Speaker 4: have to put the trust in the candidate that they
Speaker 4: ultimately go with. They're not super partisan or ideology. So
Speaker 4: I thought that was really helpful. Griffin. I wanted to
Speaker 4: get your take on immigration because this is not exactly
Speaker 4: a very white district and that mattered a lot to
Speaker 4: these voters contra the media narrative about how it would
Speaker 4: be turning many many people off and you know, Donald
Speaker 4: Trump would be dead on arrival, especially with non white
Speaker 4: voters because of the immigration issue in New York City.
Speaker 4: You're in New Yorker. That did not at all turn
Speaker 4: out to be the case. What did you hear?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really interesting because it seems very almost
Speaker 1: localized of an issue. You know, I live in like
Speaker 1: Central Brooklyn, and you know we don't really hear a
Speaker 1: lot about the immigration issue. But where AOC's District fourteen is,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of the northern top of Queens
Speaker 1: and then a large part of the Bronx and up there.
Speaker 1: It just really seems like the immigration issue has affected
Speaker 1: them a lot more. And I was really curious after
Speaker 1: talking to all of them, because all of them would
Speaker 1: bring it up as like their number one thing, that
Speaker 1: their streets didn't feel safe anymore. They talked a lot
Speaker 1: about fifty seventh Street, which which I guess it's a
Speaker 1: big intake cetter for immigrants. So I did some research
Speaker 1: and in the last three years almost a quarter million
Speaker 1: immigrants have come through New York City. Currently right now
Speaker 1: as of August, I think three years, in the last
Speaker 1: three years about a quarter million. But currently right now,
Speaker 1: as of August, there's about sixty four thousand in the
Speaker 1: city being housed in like hotels, intake centers. They even
Speaker 1: have like an old airplane runway where they have some
Speaker 1: of them. And Mayor Eric Adams has been trying to
Speaker 1: do a lot to other fighter, Yeah, another fighter, another
Speaker 1: New York real one.
Speaker 4: The Patriot.
Speaker 1: But you know, Eric Adams has been doing all sorts
Speaker 1: of things across the broad Like Eric Adams, he recently
Speaker 1: traveled to Latin America to hand out flyers about how
Speaker 1: expensive New York is so you shouldn't come, and so
Speaker 1: he's trying all sorts of strategy. Yes, absolutely, yeah, some
Speaker 1: geography lessons, but like they also, what I found out
Speaker 1: recently is they have this new rule for sheltering where
Speaker 1: you can only stay in the hotels now for thirty
Speaker 1: to sixty days, and then you have to apply to
Speaker 1: be able to stay in or you get kind of
Speaker 1: dished to the street. And I think that's where we're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of these women, these voters noticing a
Speaker 1: lot more people on the streets now because they're not
Speaker 1: in the hotels anymore because after that thirty days, they're
Speaker 1: now in a tent. But it's a sidewink, and they're
Speaker 1: linking basically anything to those immigrants, any crime, any gang activity,
Speaker 1: they're kind of just immediately linking that to the immigrants.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but it's.
Speaker 4: A sanctuary city, right, so that's where people if people
Speaker 4: are on the streets, right, So if people are on
Speaker 4: the streets, they remain on the streets that unless there's
Speaker 4: like housing to your point that steps up, that's right,
Speaker 4: that which seems to also be frustrating the voters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then to the military deportations part, which I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask them about, you know, because that seemed
Speaker 1: to be just a big kind of national talking point
Speaker 1: about will Trump use the army to bring people in?
Speaker 1: And the core thing to them was they weren't really
Speaker 1: scared of that because they were really sick and tired
Speaker 1: of it. And it seemed to me that it was
Speaker 1: pinned on that they found the NYPD to be incompetent
Speaker 1: and unable to handle these issues, which I kind of
Speaker 1: don't blame them. I mean, as a New Yorker and
Speaker 1: you see these cops on the subways, they're mainly going
Speaker 1: after like ticket fare people and on their tiktoks, you know.
Speaker 2: So it was funny because that's something that you would
Speaker 2: never from a top line analysis, you would never get
Speaker 2: the texture of that, like, oh, they're like anti police, right,
Speaker 2: and that's why they're like, I guess you got to
Speaker 2: bring in the military, because it is true, if you
Speaker 2: you know poll institutions, one of the institutions that has
Speaker 2: the highest level of trust in the country remains the military.
Speaker 2: So that logic is really interesting and not something that
Speaker 2: you would sort of guess from the outside. But does
Speaker 2: you know, from their perspective make some sense. You know,
Speaker 2: the reality of what that might actually look like may
Speaker 2: create a different impression, right, but coming in that's not
Speaker 2: a non starter for them whatsoever. The other thing that
Speaker 2: was really noteworthy and that did not turn up as
Speaker 2: much in the you know, the surveys about why people
Speaker 2: voted the way they did, is that all of these
Speaker 2: women seemed concerned about war. They seemed concerned about Gaza.
Speaker 2: In particular. The one woman who I'm blanking on her name,
Speaker 2: I know when she you first asked the question, she said, like,
Speaker 2: basically peace, that's what I'm most interested in.
Speaker 1: I believe that was Nausea. Yes, Nazia, Yes, most informed.
Speaker 1: She'd been really paying attention to almost all the politics
Speaker 1: for about a year, so she was the most informed.
Speaker 1: But all of the women were aware of this. None
Speaker 1: of them were like, what's Gaza or what's going on there?
Speaker 1: Like everyone clearly has been seeing some glimpse of what's
Speaker 1: happening and not liking it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so if you're you know, the Democratic Party,
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris trying to position yourself as this moral authority
Speaker 2: that really undercuts it, and whether or not as true
Speaker 2: that this wouldn't have happened under Trump. Clearly his talking
Speaker 2: points had broken through with these voters, whether it was
Speaker 2: ascribing all crime to immigrants when you know, the stats
Speaker 2: will tell you that undocumented immigrants actually commit far fewer
Speaker 2: crimes than Native worn Americans, but that talking point had
Speaker 2: landed and connected and was, you know, was being repeated,
Speaker 2: and the talking point about hey, if Trump was there,
Speaker 2: I don't think we would have had all these wars
Speaker 2: that also had clearly landed with them. And it was
Speaker 2: funny to me when you asked them, like do you
Speaker 2: think that Trump is anti war? And the one one
Speaker 2: who's like, I don't know, but you know, maybe it
Speaker 2: would be.
Speaker 1: Different to that point, Like these women, like you know,
Speaker 1: some of them are like, oh, Trump's a role model
Speaker 1: and stuff, but they were also very clear eyed about
Speaker 1: who Trump is and the likelihood of him fixing all
Speaker 1: these problems.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Essentially, how they saw it was they knew Kamala was
Speaker 1: like a known quantity, and they knew she wasn't going
Speaker 1: to do anything to fix these problems. They weren't sure
Speaker 1: if Trump was really going to fix these problems, but
Speaker 1: they knew Kamala wasn't, so they're like, well, let's just
Speaker 1: roll the dice again. Just funny because like Trump has
Speaker 1: been president before, you think he'd be more of a
Speaker 1: known quantity. But to them still he was the dice,
Speaker 1: roll gamble of maybe something different, but none of them
Speaker 1: were sure.
Speaker 4: Well, and I want to ask about that because for
Speaker 4: many people, people voting as soon as like a civic duty,
Speaker 4: you do it even if you're ambivalent about the candidates.
Speaker 4: What sense did you get of why actually some of
Speaker 4: these women chose to vote. I mean we saw your
Speaker 4: name is Margaret with her baby that she was hanging
Speaker 4: out with while you were doing the interview. These are busy,
Speaker 4: I mean people are These are busy people. Everyone is busy.
Speaker 4: They have an option to not vote if they're ambivalent.
Speaker 4: That's something that's totally understandable and common. Like if you
Speaker 4: don't think out of the candidates is great, you just
Speaker 4: set out the election. It sounds like even with some
Speaker 4: of this ambivalence, these mixed feelings about Donald Trump, actually
Speaker 4: went out and voted anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were just desperate I think for change, just
Speaker 1: change in a large sense on a few different issues.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't have a ton of sound bites
Speaker 1: in this footage about the economy because I get sense
Speaker 1: that sometimes people feel a little uncomfortable talking about the economy,
Speaker 1: whether it's kind of a morass of an issue to
Speaker 1: kind of have the right word to describe it. But
Speaker 1: people just felt like things just like weren't working for them.
Speaker 1: Things were getting more expensive. And three of them, I
Speaker 1: believe were actually mothers, And I did ask them all
Speaker 1: about the child tax credit and under Biden that they
Speaker 1: all received, and they spoke with that really fondly, and
Speaker 1: they but at the same time, they were you know,
Speaker 1: they're Republican voters. They didn't want handouts. They just wanted
Speaker 1: things to be more fair.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you hear that alone.
Speaker 2: You got a little taste in there. You asked, Okay,
Speaker 2: would you vote for AOC for Presmasyah? Is that something
Speaker 2: you bead open too? And one of the women had
Speaker 2: this response that was like, well, I'm not saying women
Speaker 2: aren't equal to men, but you know, maybe she needs
Speaker 2: to do a little more work. Were there any comments
Speaker 2: that they made about Kamala Harris and her gender? Was
Speaker 2: that important to them? Was that a positive, was it
Speaker 2: a negative, did not? You know, was it indifferent? What
Speaker 2: was your sense?
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of talk about misogyny, but
Speaker 1: I don't feel like any of them were misogynists. But
Speaker 1: they viewed the foreign policy and working with other foreign
Speaker 1: leaders and them being misogynistic to women, and so that
Speaker 1: it would just be naturally harder for a female to
Speaker 1: be president and deal with all these men of the world,
Speaker 1: which you know, isn't like maybe technically that false, Like
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure there's some misogynistic world leaders.
Speaker 2: They have kind of a clear iyview of the world
Speaker 2: of like, right, well, I'm not sexist, but sexism is
Speaker 2: exulting that exists, right, So maybe you know, we gotta
Speaker 2: have a man in there so that he doesn't have
Speaker 2: to deal.
Speaker 5: With that totally effectively.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think a lot of Democratic primary voters are
Speaker 2: gonna this has been my prediction, is like they're never
Speaker 2: going to nominate a woman again for a similar reason
Speaker 2: of like, well, I'm not sexist, but I think the rest.
Speaker 1: Of the country is it's like a self fulfilling loop,
Speaker 1: right where if you believe it, then you feed into
Speaker 1: it as well. But they also always talked about how
Speaker 1: Trump was so good with world leaders, that world leaders
Speaker 1: just like like to get along with him, and that
Speaker 1: was his like secret sauce to like stopping wars. And
Speaker 1: they all mentioned like there just wasn't that many wars
Speaker 1: when Trump was around, and now there's a bunch of wars,
Speaker 1: and the Democrats don't seem to be anywhere near stopping
Speaker 1: all of them. And there doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: clear reason to these voters why any of them are happening.
Speaker 1: You just think that there's no reason, there's no reason.
Speaker 1: We don't understand why they're happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and interesting, I know this is zeroing in in
Speaker 4: one part of New York that's not like a lot
Speaker 4: of the rest of the country. But in many ways,
Speaker 4: it actually is like a lot of the rest of
Speaker 4: the country, because if you look at that Washington Post
Speaker 4: met that we were covering all night here on election night,
Speaker 4: you saw movement towards Trump in many many places. Now,
Speaker 4: Trump still lost a lot of counties, but there were
Speaker 4: big swings in places like New Jersey and places like
Speaker 4: New York, And there was also a lot of tickets
Speaker 4: putting even places like Florida where the abortion referendum. It
Speaker 4: didn't hit the sixty percent threshold, but it got really close.
Speaker 4: It was like at fifty six percent. So you had
Speaker 4: a lot of people voting for Donald Trump and voting
Speaker 4: for abortion to be in the constitution of the state
Speaker 4: of Florida. That happened all over the country. So I
Speaker 4: think Griffin is just important to say that, Yes, well
Speaker 4: a lot of the country looks at New York in
Speaker 4: particular as the sort of like alien world, like it's Mars.
Speaker 4: This is something that happened with voters everyewhere else.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, And you know, none of these voters are
Speaker 1: like white men, you know, the like three proper. These
Speaker 1: were mothers. They were all working class women between their
Speaker 1: thirties and forties. And yeah, they.
Speaker 5: Just none of the bros wanted to talk to you.
Speaker 1: None of the bros all shay for the bros Alpha,
Speaker 1: But yeah, like these women were you know, although some
Speaker 1: of them had some things that you might not agree
Speaker 1: with Trump about whether he was a role model and stuff,
Speaker 1: they were just all very clear eyed that you know,
Speaker 1: why not, we'll see what happens because right now things
Speaker 1: just aren't working for me. And I thought it was
Speaker 1: just so interesting when they talked about like Kamala versus AOC,
Speaker 1: because they just felt like Kamala just didn't really stand
Speaker 1: for pretty much anything. They just were they were open
Speaker 1: to thinking about her and just seeing like what she
Speaker 1: had to say, but they couldn't remember or think about
Speaker 1: like what she was all about in the way they
Speaker 1: felt that way about AOC. And I think it's a
Speaker 1: test onto It's like I think they could vote for
Speaker 1: a Democrat at some point they were, and even if
Speaker 1: they didn't agree with all the same issues, could seemed
Speaker 1: to be like a core thing of like respect, like
Speaker 1: I respect that you care about things, that you're passionate,
Speaker 1: that you're not hiding who you are, and those things
Speaker 1: seem to surmount like any of the individual issues because
Speaker 1: they all love AOC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's been my thing is like I think
Speaker 2: that a lot of times liberals look at politics in
Speaker 2: the wrong way, like thinking that you can just go
Speaker 2: down and checklist stuff, like our issue set is more
Speaker 2: popular if you pull it than their issue set. When
Speaker 2: that sense of like this person's a fighter, this person
Speaker 2: stands for something. This person's isn't just like pandering to me.
Speaker 2: They're going to get in there and they're going to
Speaker 2: mix things up. Those personality traits and that energy and
Speaker 2: that celebrity Frankly, I think is also really important is
Speaker 2: kind of the common thread that connects why you would
Speaker 2: vote for Donald Trump and then check the ballot for AOC.
Speaker 2: Great job with these Griffin is Cheney though, Oh well,
Speaker 2: I mean that's a uniter across the board, right, should have.
Speaker 1: Left that in the cut.
Speaker 4: Also, I live when you come on the show. And
Speaker 4: for people who know producer Griffin, follow producer Griffin. He's
Speaker 4: doing sort of a Ron Burgundy look today.
Speaker 1: He's watch out. You're gonna start dating yourself with that reference,
Speaker 1: an old millennial reference.
Speaker 4: It's an elder millennial rot. But we don't often see
Speaker 4: you in a tie, And out of respect for Sager,
Speaker 4: it was important for you to put the tie on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't want Sager to be distressed. Well, he's
Speaker 2: not trying to enjoy his honeymoon, so that was very
Speaker 2: kind of.
Speaker 1: Course, absolutely, for I was worried a little too skinny,
Speaker 1: it was a little too RFK Junior maybe.
Speaker 5: But yeah, well we'll get his after action report.
Speaker 11: Yep.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, but yeah, and I really like to thank JLP Partners.
Speaker 1: They're polling. They've done a lot of great pulling for
Speaker 1: us over the last year, and they did the hard
Speaker 1: work of finding all these people for us, and so
Speaker 1: definitely check out them in the video description for this video.
Speaker 5: Awesome, thanks Griffin.
Speaker 2: So at the same time, obviously there's a big soul
Speaker 2: searching autopsy situation going on inside of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 5: What went wrong?
Speaker 2: What do they need to do moving forward to try
Speaker 2: to win back some of those working class voters who
Speaker 2: have been fleeing the party. Bertie Sanders been pretty unvarnished
Speaker 2: in his critique of the Democrats and how they abandoned
Speaker 2: working class voters, and he just recently sent out a
Speaker 2: campaign email that was not one of these normal, just
Speaker 2: like boilerplate fundraising pitches. This was clearly coming directly from
Speaker 2: him and continued that critique of the Democratic Party and
Speaker 2: also opened up some interesting possibilities for what Senator Sanders
Speaker 2: may be doing with his time in the future. Let's
Speaker 2: go and put this up on the screen. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: read this in full, guys, so just bear with me
Speaker 2: so you get the full sense of it.
Speaker 5: He says, I won't do it, and I won't do
Speaker 5: in the Verney voice, rent of time.
Speaker 2: Not that the American people understand that our economic and
Speaker 2: political systems are rigged. They know that the very rich
Speaker 2: get much richer while almost everyone else becomes poor. They
Speaker 2: know that we are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form
Speaker 2: of society. The Democrats ran a campaign protecting the status
Speaker 2: quo and tinkering around the edges. Trump and the Republicans
Speaker 2: campaigned on change and on smashing the existing order. Not surprisingly,
Speaker 2: the Republicans won. Unfortunately, the quote change that Republicans will
Speaker 2: bring about will make a bad situation worse and a
Speaker 2: society of gross inequality even more, more unjust and more bigoted.
Speaker 2: Will the Democratic leadership learn the lessons of their defeat
Speaker 2: and create a party that stands with the working class
Speaker 2: and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special
Speaker 2: interests that dominate our economy, our media, and our political life.
Speaker 5: Highly unlikely.
Speaker 2: They are much too wetted to the billionaires and corporate
Speaker 2: interests that fund their campaigns. Given that reality, where do
Speaker 2: we go from here? That is a very serious question
Speaker 2: that needs a lot of discussion in the coming weeks
Speaker 2: and months. How do we expand our efforts to build
Speaker 2: a multi racial, multi generational, working class movement. How do
Speaker 2: we create a fifty state moves not politics based on
Speaker 2: the electoral college and battleground states. How do we deal
Speaker 2: with citizens United and the ability of billionaires to buy elections?
Speaker 2: How do we recruit more working class candidates for office
Speaker 2: at levels of government? Should we be supporting independent candidates
Speaker 2: who are prepared to take on both parties? How do
Speaker 2: we better support union organizing. How do we put together
Speaker 2: listening sessions around the country that intentionally seek input from
Speaker 2: people who did not vote for Democrats in the last election.
Speaker 2: How do we best use social media to build our
Speaker 2: movement and combat the lies and disinformation coming from the
Speaker 2: billionaire class in bright wing media. How do we build
Speaker 2: sustainable and long term issue based organizing structures that live
Speaker 2: beyond individual campaigns. These are some of the political questions
Speaker 2: that together we need to address, and it is absolutely
Speaker 2: critical that you make your voice heard during this process.
Speaker 5: Not meet us.
Speaker 2: That is the only way way forward in solidarity Bernie
Speaker 2: Sanders So obviously, Emily that's caught a lot of attention
Speaker 2: because it is very critical of the Democratic Party, says
Speaker 2: like are they going to get their act together? Probably
Speaker 2: not going to happen, right, So where do we go
Speaker 2: from here? And you know, one of the things he
Speaker 2: floats is, hey, do we support candidates? He does a
Speaker 2: name check Dan Osborn. We have to think that that's
Speaker 2: somewhere in mind, who ran as an independent but as
Speaker 2: a populist and came very close to winning in a
Speaker 2: Senate seat in Nebraska. How do we get more working
Speaker 2: class people in and the you know, the possibility here
Speaker 2: of a third party movement is also sort of overtly floated,
Speaker 2: So quite noteworthy coming from someone who still holds so
Speaker 2: much sway and so much influence.
Speaker 4: Well, and what he is saying is what we heard
Speaker 4: the voters say in Griffin's segment, which is the big
Speaker 4: theme to take away from that is people voted for change.
Speaker 4: They voted for change. They voted for change, and you
Speaker 4: don't tell people that you are a change agent. Effectively,
Speaker 4: if you are Kamala Harris and you are defending the
Speaker 4: Biden administration's policies. Now we can have a debate about
Speaker 4: whether Donald Trump is actually going to change Washington, but
Speaker 4: he convinces people that he is. That that is his
Speaker 4: overarching message, that he is bringing fundamental change, not as
Speaker 4: Bernie put it tweaking around the edges, are tinkering around
Speaker 4: the edges. That's with different policies. It's not enough to
Speaker 4: talk about a child tax credit. You have talked about
Speaker 4: why the system has created an environment where you need
Speaker 4: a child tax credit, where you need government, the government
Speaker 4: saying oh, here, take a little bit more of your
Speaker 4: own damn money, have a little bit more of it
Speaker 4: back for childcare. Have a little bit more of a
Speaker 4: back to pay for your babies. Like that is the
Speaker 4: problem with the Democratic Party right now, just assuming that's enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And you know I can
Speaker 2: harp on this, but I think Bernie is a model,
Speaker 2: a very unique model in American politics, not in global politics,
Speaker 2: but in American politics in particular, where I would love
Speaker 2: to know what those same ladies would say if we
Speaker 2: ask them, like, what do you think about Bernie Sanders?
Speaker 2: Because I think even though he's stylistically very different from Trump,
Speaker 2: very different AOC also though a New York character, Yes,
Speaker 2: interesting parallel there, but you know that people had that
Speaker 2: same sense of him. This is a fighter. This is
Speaker 2: someone who is focused on me and my life and
Speaker 2: is going to go to war against the forces that
Speaker 2: are rayed against me and my family and are making
Speaker 2: life more difficult than they should be for me and
Speaker 2: for my kids to be able to find success. I mean,
Speaker 2: the immediate question that this race is is okay, Bernie
Speaker 2: Sanders eighty three years old, Like what does this mean?
Speaker 2: What is he planning? And you know, people have floated
Speaker 2: like is he going to launch a third party? Is
Speaker 2: that what this is leading to? I think that's probably
Speaker 2: very unlikely, just given you know, Bernie has been in
Speaker 2: politics for longer than either one of us has been
Speaker 2: alive by decades, right, and he knows that in the
Speaker 2: realities of the American system, Like there's a reason that
Speaker 2: he was able to run as an independent but caucuses
Speaker 2: with Democrats and ultimately ran as a Democrat in the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party, because there are just so many barriers to
Speaker 2: an independent or third party moved men, especially in the
Speaker 2: post Ross bureaux era, being able to find any sort
Speaker 2: of significant success. I mean, if anyone could make it happen,
Speaker 2: it would be Bernie Sanders because he still does have
Speaker 2: that you know, that base and that affection and that
Speaker 2: media and star power, et cetera to command. I personally
Speaker 2: think it's unlikely that at this point in his life,
Speaker 2: he's going to go in that direction. But I am
Speaker 2: curious to see what he has in mind for his
Speaker 2: next deck. I can tell you I saw him speak
Speaker 2: gosh what last week, the week before, I can't remember. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I saw him speak recently, and he's he's still got it.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you.
Speaker 2: There is no like mental decline there going on. You know,
Speaker 2: he is eighty three years old, but mentally he is
Speaker 2: still extremely sharp and extremely powerful. So this could be
Speaker 2: a really interesting development here.
Speaker 4: He should be threatening them with it, even if he's
Speaker 4: not serious. It's like Trump with tarifsts, Like he should
Speaker 4: absolutely be threatening a third party, because someone has to
Speaker 4: put the fear of God into the Democratic elite, and
Speaker 4: they will. I mean, it's the same thing that Republicans
Speaker 4: are dealing with in the Maga age, whereas like Donald
Speaker 4: Trump not so serious about draining the swamp swamp on
Speaker 4: some issues, but like the Department of Justice, Oh, he's
Speaker 4: very serious about throwing a metaphorical grenade into the Department
Speaker 4: of Justice. And so what you see is this internal
Speaker 4: battle over you know, people like Bernie Sanders, who are legitimately,
Speaker 4: legitimately a threat to the Democratic Party establishment, Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: who's legitimately a threat to the Republican Party establishment. Even
Speaker 4: eight years into trump Ism in the Republican Party, it
Speaker 4: is still a tug of war between the establishment like
Speaker 4: RNC type elites that say they own this party, and
Speaker 4: they'll give Trump a little here and there, they'll say
Speaker 4: nice things about him in public, but they're still going
Speaker 4: to battle for it. You know, they're going to protect
Speaker 4: their people at the end of the day. So it's
Speaker 4: obviously not easy, and it's a decade plus long process
Speaker 4: if you really want to reform the party. And who
Speaker 4: knows what happens to the Republican Party after Trump, But
Speaker 4: and who knows even under Trump what happens to the
Speaker 4: Republican Party this next time around. But it's he's right
Speaker 4: to make the threat because if you don't make the threat,
Speaker 4: they have no incentive to do anything. As we're about
Speaker 4: to discuss, yes.
Speaker 2: That is exactly right, And just before I get to that,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, on the one hand, one of
Speaker 2: the things that has always made it more difficult for
Speaker 2: a Bernie Sanders style like left populist movement to succeed
Speaker 2: is that it offers a direct threat to you know,
Speaker 2: billionaire in oligarchic class interests like that's central to the
Speaker 2: vision and the ideology. Trump Ism is less of a
Speaker 2: direct threat, and in fact, they did quite well under
Speaker 2: Trump in the first term, and I think felt very
Speaker 2: comfortable with him going into a second term. So when
Speaker 2: you have not only the democratic establishment forces but sort
Speaker 2: of like uniform capital class a rate against you, that
Speaker 2: obviously creates some more challenging landscape.
Speaker 5: But on the other hand, you know.
Speaker 2: Trump has Trump is a destroyer, this is one of
Speaker 2: the things I'm going to talk about in my monologue.
Speaker 2: And he has kind of destroyed a lot of the
Speaker 2: liberal institutions that served as a bulwark against a left
Speaker 2: populist movement. I mean, MSNBC is the primary case in
Speaker 2: point here. They were enforcers for establishment democrats, and because
Speaker 2: liberals still had so much faith in these institutions, they
Speaker 2: were very powerful. So when they in twenty twenty said
Speaker 2: Joe Biden is the one and that's it, you have
Speaker 2: never seen the polls shift as rapidly as they did
Speaker 2: in favor of Joe Biden to coalesce behind him to
Speaker 2: defeat Bernie Sanderson that primary. After it look like Bernie
Speaker 2: was headed to a victory after Nevada. I mean in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. Obviously they were all aligned behind Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2: That was also extremely powerful, and that institutional trust with
Speaker 2: liberals has really been broken and degraded, and the institutions
Speaker 2: themselves have really been broken and degraded. So there just
Speaker 2: isn't as much there to block some other left movement.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 2: Do I think that that is what's likely to unfold
Speaker 2: and that the Democratic Party is likely to be taken
Speaker 2: over by left populist movement or third party to rise
Speaker 2: or whatever. I don't think it's likely, but there is
Speaker 2: a possibility that exists now that did not exist in
Speaker 2: the past. And I think that's what Bernie Sanders is
Speaker 2: sensing and seizing on as well, because those bulwark institutions
Speaker 2: within that protected the Democratic Party establishment have been dealt,
Speaker 2: in a sense a devastating blow by their own malfis.
Speaker 2: Is their own failures to grapple with trump Ism and
Speaker 2: effectively defeat Trumpism, which was the central promise that they
Speaker 2: were offering. They weren't authoring healthcare or wages or whatever.
Speaker 2: Their central promise was, we are going to end the
Speaker 2: Trump era. They failed, and that has really been a
Speaker 2: devastating blow for their credibility and their institutional trust. So
Speaker 2: you know, it is a totally new world with new
Speaker 2: possibilities out there than there was before.
Speaker 4: They failed, and they failed even harder. I mean, this
Speaker 4: was the same moment that everyone could recognize in twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen and twenty seventeen and Bernie Sanders recognized at them.
Speaker 4: When you have the former Secretary of State, this huge
Speaker 4: figure for decades in democratic politics, getting beat by the
Speaker 4: host of Celebrity Apprentice. He was hosting celebrit Apprentice less
Speaker 4: than a year before, Like you know what I mean, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess just under two years before. But
Speaker 4: I mean that is it should have been the wake
Speaker 4: up call. And then said they doubled down on Russia
Speaker 4: and bigotry and blaming voters, and so that's a this
Speaker 4: is a there at another one of those crossroads. And
Speaker 4: you know, Bill Clinton seems to be ready to go
Speaker 4: in one down one direction. Bill Clinton, of all people,
Speaker 4: by the way, who was the sounding the alarm in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen about them not leaning into class politics, about
Speaker 4: his own wife's campaign not leaing into class politics, and
Speaker 4: getting their clock cleaned in certain areas that should have
Speaker 4: been problematic to them, and he's you know, he's ready to.
Speaker 2: I thought his answer was kind of interesting. It was
Speaker 2: a little when I listened to it was a little
Speaker 2: different than what I expected from him. So let's go
Speaker 2: and play this exchange with Jonathan kpe Hart and former
Speaker 2: President Bill Clinton, and then we can react on the
Speaker 2: other side.
Speaker 13: And demonizing all establishments and all people were tied like
Speaker 13: me to work and have a good education. We are
Speaker 13: breaking down the legitimacy of not only people who might
Speaker 13: be too sanctimonious and too said in their ways in
Speaker 13: the past, but also people who actually know things that
Speaker 13: are very important for us today and very important for
Speaker 13: our continued growth and prosperity and harmony.
Speaker 2: So it is a little bit of a mask off
Speaker 2: moment there, because Bill Clinton has always positioned himself as
Speaker 2: a populist, even as he embraced an ideology that was
Speaker 2: frankly very technocratic total and I mean that's really is
Speaker 2: at the core of neoliberalism, is an anti populist sentiment
Speaker 2: of just handed off to the technocrats and let us
Speaker 2: handle it. And you know, I do think it's important
Speaker 2: that you have people who are smart and knowledgeable and
Speaker 2: know what they're doing, and you know, done the research
Speaker 2: and all of those sorts of things. But you know,
Speaker 2: here he really is aligning himself as he in reality
Speaker 2: did in his campaign and in his political time with
Speaker 2: the sort of you know, buttoned up credential elites. There
Speaker 2: was another moment where k Part asked him this question
Speaker 2: that I thought was kind of I didn't think the
Speaker 2: question was really fair the framing of it. He says
Speaker 2: to him, Bernie Sanders says, the party wasn't progressive enough.
Speaker 5: Do you agree?
Speaker 2: And Bill Clinton first says like, no, I don't agree.
Speaker 2: And they did the Chips Act and the Infrastructure Bill,
Speaker 2: and this was in red areas. But what I think
Speaker 2: Bernie's talking about is corporate power, and on that he
Speaker 2: basically says, like, I think he's right. And so it
Speaker 2: was kind of interesting to me that Bill Clinton in
Speaker 2: a sense kind of corrected k Part that, like, well,
Speaker 2: his critique and Bernie never says like the party wasn't
Speaker 2: progressive enough. He says the party abandoned the working class
Speaker 2: and did not fight against these oligarchic forces. And Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton's in his own way sort of like, well, there's
Speaker 2: a part of that.
Speaker 5: I do actually agree with.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because if you look at the policies of
Speaker 4: the Clinton administration, I mean, what he talked about this
Speaker 4: all the time, but he ushered in was sort of
Speaker 4: the corporate era of the Democratic Party. Yes, And what
Speaker 4: I think is almost poetic about that is if you
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time around like working working class,
Speaker 4: blue collar people, the point about the suit and the
Speaker 4: buttoned up thing is really fascinating because yes, like soccer
Speaker 4: and I have talked about this before, like it is
Speaker 4: the John Fetterman thing like irks me a lot because
Speaker 4: as much as I see him like kind of the
Speaker 4: what he wears like cosplaying is like a working class dude,
Speaker 4: if you are, if you go to anybody in those communities,
Speaker 4: they'll be like, yeah, you damn well better wear a suit,
Speaker 4: like if you you know what I mean, Like that's
Speaker 4: a sign of like that's what Bill Clinton is reacting
Speaker 4: to that, Like even he grew up, he grew up
Speaker 4: with nothing truly, and that was a sign of respect.
Speaker 4: It was a sign of like you made it. Like
Speaker 4: you should be proud about upward mobility because that means
Speaker 4: you did something right, and it means you worked really
Speaker 4: hard and you like got to where you were, and
Speaker 4: you have respect for the position. And the assumption that
Speaker 4: you know, you have to be walking around in a
Speaker 4: T shirt to you know, impress people in working class
Speaker 4: communities is like insulted.
Speaker 5: That's not what Donald Trump says, right, exactly.
Speaker 4: Exactly right, fair with his rolled off right Brothers shirts.
Speaker 4: Disgust yes, And so Bill Clinton saying that it is
Speaker 4: interesting to me because it gets to this point about
Speaker 4: it's gonna sound like we should have Ryan's Lennon book
Speaker 4: Behind Us Class Traders, where Bill Clinton comes from nothing,
Speaker 4: works really hard and it becomes very successful, becomes the
Speaker 4: president of the United States, and is now looking back
Speaker 4: at why people don't trust guys in ties like Griffin.
Speaker 4: The answer to that is because the guys in ties
Speaker 4: sold them out, like they came from nothing and they
Speaker 4: ushered in this era.
Speaker 5: And that's it was just but then collaborated with the thing.
Speaker 2: The thing that's drives me crazy about Bill Clinton. I mean,
Speaker 2: first of all, the decision to send him to Michigan
Speaker 2: and to you know, make just insane comments about Israel
Speaker 2: and Palestine, and I mean it just like, can we
Speaker 2: retire this man at this point?
Speaker 5: Come on? But the deeper memoir.
Speaker 4: By the way, that's why he was on the.
Speaker 2: Interesting the deeper. Maybe he'll come here, wouldn't that be interesting?
Speaker 2: The deeper problem is that Bill Clinton side NAFTA, Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton pushed panti permanent normal trading relations with China.
Speaker 5: Like you want to talk about what.
Speaker 2: Devastated the working class, you want to talk about what
Speaker 2: cemented the working class shift away from Democrats. You would
Speaker 2: be hard pressed to find two more consequential events in
Speaker 2: that timeline. And so for him to come out now
Speaker 2: and be like, you know, the corporate power thing, maybe
Speaker 2: he's got a point.
Speaker 5: It's like you helped to author.
Speaker 2: You were the primary author in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: of this era of mass inequality and rampant corporate power
Speaker 2: and monopolies. And by the way he helped deregulate Wall Street,
Speaker 2: and by the way he cut the capital gains rate,
Speaker 2: all giant giveaways to the wealthiest among us, that spiraled
Speaker 2: inequality out of control, and that decimated decimated vast swaths
Speaker 2: of the country. Like you were the author of that.
Speaker 2: And there's just never been any real reckoning with that.
Speaker 2: He's still treated as this like brilliant political strategist and
Speaker 2: elder statesmen, et cetera. But you know your point about
Speaker 2: like the class trader piece of that, the suits and
Speaker 2: the you know, the disrespect that that can read as
Speaker 2: sometimes when you're trying to cause play as working class
Speaker 2: by wearing the flannel or whatever. In that book that
Speaker 2: I've referenced a couple times because I've thought it found
Speaker 2: a lot of parallels to the current time. But about
Speaker 2: the back to the Land movement in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: the hippies in this town in Vermont, who had their
Speaker 2: commune and they're doing their whole like we reject hygiene
Speaker 2: and our parents were these stiffs wearing suits and we're
Speaker 2: not going to do any of that. They were trying
Speaker 2: to get a job as school bus drivers in the town,
Speaker 2: and they had maintained pretty good relations with their neighbors,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of them. A lot of
Speaker 2: the people in the community were like kind of okay
Speaker 2: with it, but there was a pushback because they found
Speaker 2: out like, oh, you guys are growing weed and we
Speaker 2: don't really.
Speaker 5: Want your drivers.
Speaker 2: But so there was this town meeting that comes to
Speaker 2: a head where they're coming in to make their case
Speaker 2: for why they should be the school bus driver for
Speaker 2: this little town, and everybody in this little town conservative
Speaker 2: like you know, rural farming community. They all show up
Speaker 2: to this town meeting in their Sunday best because it's respectful.
Speaker 2: And the hippies, who many of them came from these
Speaker 2: like affluent, professional, middle class or upper middle class families.
Speaker 5: There's sort of.
Speaker 2: Downing poverty as like a fashion statement. Show up all
Speaker 2: dirty and muddy and smelly and hair crazy and whatever
Speaker 2: and right, and there was something about that that also,
Speaker 2: I mean that really rubbed people the wrong way of
Speaker 2: like this is not this, it's not cool and earthy
Speaker 2: that you're like this. It's disrespectful, you know, to our
Speaker 2: town and our traditions, and you know, this meeting we
Speaker 2: take really seriously. And so I don't know the fetterman
Speaker 2: caused play thing and the way that us so many
Speaker 2: of these politicians try to cause play something that they're
Speaker 2: not I do think comes off as phony and kendid.
Speaker 5: It's worst, come off as just like.
Speaker 4: Insulting, insulting. Yeah, it's like we believe that this office
Speaker 4: has dignity, don't you. We believe that, And like just
Speaker 4: the superficial signaling via clothing, it's it's Bill Clinton. I
Speaker 4: think the big problem with that interview is him still
Speaker 4: pointing the finger at Republicans for and podcasters. You know,
Speaker 4: that's what he's doing, pointing the finger at them for
Speaker 4: making people distrust the guys in suits, instead of pointing
Speaker 4: his finger at the guys in suits for creating that distrust.
Speaker 4: That's right, the.
Speaker 2: Pod because that would implicate him, right, because he's the
Speaker 2: one that put those guys in suits in the in
Speaker 2: the place to do all of that damage.
Speaker 4: I mean, he's one of them, right, So like the
Speaker 4: guys who and you know, maybe Bill Clinton thought he
Speaker 4: was doing what was right. Let's you know, just hypothetically,
Speaker 4: maybe he thought he was doing what was right and
Speaker 4: it wasn't about you know, serving the class that he
Speaker 4: came to be a part of. But if you are
Speaker 4: still pointing your finger at Donald Trump, the Republican Party,
Speaker 4: disinformation podcasters for making the American people not trust the
Speaker 4: men in suits and ties and the women in suits,
Speaker 4: not usually ties, but the professional class. If you're still
Speaker 4: pointing your finger at Republicans and podcasters and the unwashed
Speaker 4: masses for not trusting them instead of pointing the finger
Speaker 4: at yourself, you do not get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think that's right. All right, let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and get to some of these Trump cabinet picks
Speaker 2: Emily that are quite interesting.
Speaker 4: As of Friday night, in typical Trumpy in fashion, the
Speaker 4: entire cabinet was completed. So Donald Trump's entire cabinet is
Speaker 4: now known to us. You can go ahead and put
Speaker 4: the first element up on the screen. Control room. They
Speaker 4: political describes it as a Friday night flurry, and you know,
Speaker 4: it kind of was. There were a lot of nighttime flurries. Actually,
Speaker 4: the entire naming of the cabinet Crystal, but the big
Speaker 4: one obviously is Pam Bondie. We can go ahead and put
Speaker 4: the next element up on the screen. Arguably the most
Speaker 4: important position in Donald Trump's entire cabinet, with the exception
Speaker 4: of maybe Secretary of State, which is probably most important
Speaker 4: in any cabinet, but given Donald Trump's plans, the attorney
Speaker 4: general position is just absolutely critical. Pam Bondi is slotted
Speaker 4: in after Matt Gates withdrawals. Pam Bondi was the Attorney
Speaker 4: General of Florida, so she then went on to lobby.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to talk about here with the Pam
Speaker 4: Bondi nomination. In particular, I want to show just a
Speaker 4: little bit of a flavor of how Pam Bondy Florida
Speaker 4: has been one of the most important locations for this
Speaker 4: debate over campus anti Semitism versus pro Palestinian activism because
Speaker 4: University of Florida was headed by Ben sass Rondosantas obviously
Speaker 4: wanted to be a big part of that discussion as well,
Speaker 4: and Pam Bondy weighed in once so just as a
Speaker 4: flavor of what could happen from the Department of Justice
Speaker 4: under Pam BONDI, let's go ahead and roll B three Pam.
Speaker 14: Democrats like Alan Dershowitz have sounded the alarm over the
Speaker 14: growing virulent strain of jew haters in the Democrat Party.
Speaker 14: It appears their agents in the unfair press are carrying
Speaker 14: that water. It is dangerous, is it not.
Speaker 15: Yeah, it's very dangerous, Chris, It's extremely dangerous. And you know,
Speaker 15: you look around. The thing that's really the most troubling
Speaker 15: to me these students in universities in our country, whether
Speaker 15: they're here as Americans or if they're here on student visas,
Speaker 15: and they're out there saying I support AMAS, you and
Speaker 15: I have seen that on all of these television shows. Frankly,
Speaker 15: they need to be taken out of our country or
Speaker 15: the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away. When
Speaker 15: they're saying I support Amas, I am a mass that's
Speaker 15: not saying I support all these poor Palestinians who are
Speaker 15: trapped in Gaza. That's not what they're saying. So I
Speaker 15: think their student visas need to be revoked. I think
Speaker 15: we need to reinstate President Trump's travel band immediately. There's
Speaker 15: a lot of things that can be done to stop this. Yeah,
Speaker 15: the anti Semitism that is rampant throughout this country now,
Speaker 15: and it's truly truly heartbreaking to see what's happening to
Speaker 15: all of our Jewish friends in this country. But I
Speaker 15: really just I think a lot of ignorant kids and
Speaker 15: students and people who don't understand that harmas equals terrorism
Speaker 15: even worse at its worst.
Speaker 4: So something I think particularly disturbing about that Crystal is
Speaker 4: she just said ignorant kids don't understand that harmas equals terrorism,
Speaker 4: and so let's just take her at her word hypothetically.
Speaker 4: She then wants to deport kids for ignorance, right, She
Speaker 4: wants to take away people's student even in her own formulation,
Speaker 4: what's happening there, it's you know, your ignorance then gets
Speaker 4: your student visa ripped away or something to that effect.
Speaker 4: And the Department of Justice oversees a lot of these questions.
Speaker 4: So just a flavor of the free speech support from
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's likely incoming Attorney General Pambody is very confirmable.
Speaker 4: She probably won't have issues. But what's interesting about herst.
Speaker 16: Trafficking scandals with this one not that we know not yet,
Speaker 16: but what's interesting about her, and this applies to other
Speaker 16: Trump nominees, but this is someone who we can put
Speaker 16: then ex element up on the screen, actually because.
Speaker 4: It's what I was about to talk about. She has
Speaker 4: a long past as a lobbyist. She's a lobbyed for cutter.
Speaker 4: She worked at one of the firms I think she
Speaker 4: worked actually at one of the firms that Susie Wiles
Speaker 4: worked at. She's similar to Susie Wiles in the respect
Speaker 4: that she's full maga but also has like pretty deep
Speaker 4: is deeply intertwined with the swamp, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: So she's a she's a Fox News favorite. She is
Speaker 4: a lobbyist, and yet she also is she went and
Speaker 4: she she defended Donald Trump during his impeachment trial, like
Speaker 4: was part of his legal team. She's totally loyal Trump.
Speaker 4: She's also intertwined with the swamp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's I mean, and that's that's kind of typical
Speaker 2: in terms of Trump's world, because ultimately it's much less
Speaker 2: ideological than it is about how do you feel.
Speaker 5: About the person of Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: What are you willing to do to stand up for
Speaker 2: the person of Donald Trump when he feels that he's
Speaker 2: being attacked or you know, unfairly targeted, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: so the fact that she represented him in his first
Speaker 2: impeachment trial that has earned her, you know, good graces
Speaker 2: in the the Trump world, you know. And the fact
Speaker 2: that she's a corporate lobbyist for Amazon, GM, Uber, multiple
Speaker 2: finance firms, Corning, Ken Vogel. She's still registered for some clients.
Speaker 2: Not really big deal. The other thing that was pointing
Speaker 2: out on Twitter is the fact that her sister, who's
Speaker 2: also a lawyer, actually represented Elon Musk in his case
Speaker 2: against the Department against the government in terms of the
Speaker 2: Testless Securities fraud allegations, and so as attorney General, she
Speaker 2: would be at a position to quash that ongoing DJ investigation,
Speaker 2: and given how much influence the richest man on the
Speaker 2: planet has in terms of this administration, I don't think
Speaker 2: anyone should be surprised if you see that ultimately happen.
Speaker 2: You know, going back to her comments about deporting pro
Speaker 2: Palestine protesters or at the very least having them be
Speaker 2: interviewed by the FBI, I guess that was her compromise position.
Speaker 2: If we can't kick them all out of the country,
Speaker 2: at least we can harass them with the with the
Speaker 2: deep state. In spite of Republicans positioning themselves as the
Speaker 2: free speech party, obviously there has been a giant, glaring
Speaker 2: exception when it comes to any sort of pro Palestine speech.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I want to talk about
Speaker 2: in my monologue about I'MSNBC and some of the Democrats
Speaker 2: who say they're going to find common ground with Republicans
Speaker 2: and with Trump specifically, this is one of the areas
Speaker 2: where you can fully expect Democrats and they already have
Speaker 2: been finding quote unquote common ground with Trump, with his nominees,
Speaker 2: with Republicans because this you know, witch hunt to snuff
Speaker 2: out anti Semitism and to crack down on speech on
Speaker 2: college campuses has been quite a bipartisan affair, so I
Speaker 2: don't think any of that will be a problem for her,
Speaker 2: certainly with Republicans or with Democrats. And you know, it
Speaker 2: is interesting the sorts of things that are not a
Speaker 2: problem whatsoever when it comes to confirmation. The fact that
Speaker 2: she is a total swamp pick doesn't really matter. I
Speaker 2: think she will be easily confirmed. Is also kind of
Speaker 2: funny that on the one hand, she's like making all
Speaker 2: these noises about shipping out pro Palace had protesters, and
Speaker 2: on the other hand she's lobby's for it.
Speaker 17: I mean, yeah, I'd love to hear because if she's
Speaker 17: registered to lobby for them on behalf of like human
Speaker 17: trafficking as an issue, because you have to say when
Speaker 17: you register for Pharah what you're doing, and she says
Speaker 17: human trafficking and other issues.
Speaker 4: So I would be curious to hear more about her
Speaker 4: lobbying for Cutter, and I expect some of that will
Speaker 4: come out during her confirmation. But she also came in
Speaker 4: on the tea party wave. That's really where I remember her.
Speaker 4: She started doing a ton of Fox after that. I
Speaker 4: think she got an endorsement from Sarah Palin early on.
Speaker 4: So she comes from that world, which is its own
Speaker 4: kind of part of the conservatives movement. Mattered a lot
Speaker 4: back in twenty I want to say this was like
Speaker 4: around twenty ten.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, that would make sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. It was a big deal to get
Speaker 4: Sarah Palin endorsement back then, and she really rode that
Speaker 4: wave in and so you can understand how being in
Speaker 4: Florida she was able to be pretty friendly in the
Speaker 4: mega circles and then ultimately ends up defending Donald Trump
Speaker 4: as part of his legal team, goes back to lobbying afterwards,
Speaker 4: and now Attorney General.
Speaker 5: Probably, yeah, looking like it, looking very much like it.
Speaker 4: But wait, there's more.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a lot more.
Speaker 4: B five, we can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 4: Scott Besson is the Treasury Secretary. We're going to talk
Speaker 4: about some others too, but this is Elon Musk wide
Speaker 4: in favor of Howard Lutnik in the Lutnik versus Bessant
Speaker 4: race for Treasury Secretary. Lutnick obviously ended up as Commerce Secretary.
Speaker 4: Elon Musk was seemingly suspicious of Bessence as being sort
Speaker 4: of a swampy type of person. That wouldn't be a disruptor.
Speaker 4: He said Lutnik would be a disruptor. He kind of
Speaker 4: went out of his way not to say anything super
Speaker 4: negative about Bessen. Maybe reading the tea leaves on that,
Speaker 4: but I mean he would be right with Besson's background
Speaker 4: to be suspicious of that. The New York Times story
Speaker 4: that you just saw up on the screen is how
Speaker 4: Bessant went from being a Democratic donor to Trump's Treasury
Speaker 4: secretary pick. Which, actually, it's funny they say that because
Speaker 4: that's not unusual in Trump world at all. A lot
Speaker 4: of the people that he's put in top positions are swampy.
Speaker 4: Trump himself was a Democrat and has said that's how
Speaker 4: you got things done. So not surprising.
Speaker 2: Really, what is your sense of Scott Bessent, because I've
Speaker 2: seen different things. I've seen him as going on CNBC
Speaker 2: to basically reassure Wall Street, like, well, Trump's not really
Speaker 2: serious about this hole across the board tariff thing. That's
Speaker 2: more of an opening negotiating position to try to coerce
Speaker 2: people into, you know, making better trade deals with US
Speaker 2: and trying to calm the waters of Wall Street. He's
Speaker 2: very trusted there. I mean, the other thing that's really
Speaker 2: funny about him is he, you know, was worked closely
Speaker 2: with George Soros, made a lot of money working closely
Speaker 2: with George Soros.
Speaker 4: He's described in this New York Times story as a
Speaker 4: protege of George Soro.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, and I think that that is quite accurate.
Speaker 2: So that's the other part about this that is quite funny.
Speaker 2: I mean, he is definitely a Wall Street figure, but
Speaker 2: I do think he's been somewhat open to at least
Speaker 2: some use of tariffs, and you know, sees that as
Speaker 2: a as a path forward, even as he because he's
Speaker 2: such a familiar face on Walsh Street, has been able
Speaker 2: to kind of calm the waters of that of you know,
Speaker 2: business executives and Wall Street executives to say like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's not going to go too crazy with the full
Speaker 2: tear off situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that's really important, I think because part of
Speaker 4: the reporting about how Trump was looking at this decision
Speaker 4: is that he was worried about spooking the markets because
Speaker 4: he takes that as a referendum on the president, right.
Speaker 4: We know that he talks about it all the time,
Speaker 4: and so he was worried that someone completely out of
Speaker 4: the blue would be disruptive to the markets and would
Speaker 4: thus make him look bad. So it's I guess logical
Speaker 4: through that framework of what Donald Trump was thinking for.
Speaker 4: And as The Times reports in recent months, mister Bessntt
Speaker 4: has pitched a quote three three three plan that would
Speaker 4: aim for three percent economic gross growth, reduced the budget
Speaker 4: deficit to three percent of gross domestic product, and increase
Speaker 4: domestic oil production by three million barrels a day. He
Speaker 4: also came up with an idea, and this is interesting,
Speaker 4: that would allow the president to essentially sideline the chair
Speaker 4: of the Federal Reserve. Although he's back down from that
Speaker 4: proposal in the face of opposition, that obviously would be
Speaker 4: music Donald Trump's here, and you can kind of understand
Speaker 4: why Bessett was able to have a great pitch to Trump.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, so that'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Speaker 2: And you know, we've talked to Jeff Stein, great economics
Speaker 2: supporter for the Washington Post. He has been of the
Speaker 2: opinion that, you know, when Trump says consistently we want
Speaker 2: to have across the board tariffs, that you should take
Speaker 2: him seriously at that, and that you know, and the
Speaker 2: implications of that, which would likely raise prices kind of
Speaker 2: across the board and be quite inflationary. But they have
Speaker 2: already been looking at what sort of powers they could
Speaker 2: use just at the executive level without having to go
Speaker 2: through Congress to implement something approaching and across the board tariff.
Speaker 2: So in any case, we'll see how that all plays out.
Speaker 2: But Treasury very significant, very high powered, very influential. So
Speaker 2: that was a really important pick that was made. There
Speaker 2: another one that this one is very kind of like
Speaker 2: under the radar, super powerful and important in government, and
Speaker 2: that's the head of the Office of Management and Budget
Speaker 2: RUSS Vote of Project twenty twenty five. No less has
Speaker 2: been tagged in for that one. We can put B
Speaker 2: six up on the screen. Trump's pick to lead his
Speaker 2: budget off his Mother Jones rights. Wants to use it
Speaker 2: to deliver on Maga's big dreams. Emily, why don't you
Speaker 2: break this one down for us what Russ is all about,
Speaker 2: what his deal is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Verus is also kind of the tea party
Speaker 4: to Maga pipeline. He's someone who I actually as an
Speaker 4: ideological conservative like a lot. But if you're looking at
Speaker 4: the screen the Mother Jones taggling, there is quote, we
Speaker 4: want to put them in trauma. Russ Vote has said
Speaker 4: of federal workers, Yes, that.
Speaker 5: Is Actually he's an ideological warrior.
Speaker 4: Yeah, way way hardcore on some of those questions, and
Speaker 4: has spent actually the last several years he has something
Speaker 4: called the Center for Renewing America figuring out what the
Speaker 4: blueprint for whether it was DeSantis or Trump or someone else,
Speaker 4: what that would look like. And so he did contribute
Speaker 4: to Project twenty twenty five and is among the people
Speaker 4: who were leading this charge that were saying the next
Speaker 4: Republican president as like the rarest opportunity to just go wild.
Speaker 4: Like everything that the conservative movement said that it wanted
Speaker 4: to do in the nineteen eighties under the Reagan Revolution,
Speaker 4: it has never come to fruition. And that is because
Speaker 4: the swamp has like attached itself to the conservative movement.
Speaker 4: So let's just blow it all up, and here's the
Speaker 4: outline to do that. And so Russ is like an
Speaker 4: absolute leader in that movement and a very like hardcore
Speaker 4: ideologue in that movement, which will run a clip in
Speaker 4: just a second getting to that. But yeah, if you
Speaker 4: listen to that as a client show, this was predicted
Speaker 4: by someone at this table crystals.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Well, I mean you weren't buying the Trump has
Speaker 2: nothing to do with Project twenty twenty five and has
Speaker 2: no interest in Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, people like Russ have spent millions of
Speaker 4: dollars over the last couple of years trying to figure
Speaker 4: out what this would look like. He's put tons of
Speaker 4: energy into what this would look like. And if you're
Speaker 4: a federal worker, yes, you should be pretty frightened that
Speaker 4: Russ vote is now in this position because as the
Speaker 4: head of the om B, which he was under Trump's
Speaker 4: first administration, you are in charge of implementing the budget.
Speaker 4: You're in charge of thinking about the budget, implementing the budget,
Speaker 4: and so you're looking, I mean, that's where Doge like,
Speaker 4: that's all of those recommendations, That's where Russ can go
Speaker 4: and implement them. And he has concrete plans that he's
Speaker 4: talked with lawyers about that he's spent time in think
Speaker 4: tank circles conceiving of over the last few years. So
Speaker 4: he's hardcore, very.
Speaker 2: Much, and he's one of the big thinkers behind quote
Speaker 2: unquote Schedule F yes, which would allow which would strip
Speaker 2: a lot of the job protections away from vast loss
Speaker 2: of the federal government, basically making it easier to decimate
Speaker 2: these agencies and you know, fire a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: workers and reinstall loyalists to Trump and loyalists to the agenda.
Speaker 2: We do have this like hidden camera video actually of
Speaker 2: russfo talking about some of his priorities. And this was
Speaker 2: before Trump was elected. So he's also talking about his
Speaker 2: relationship to Project twenty twenty five and saying he says
Speaker 2: actively like, yeah, don't worry about the fact that Trump
Speaker 2: is downplaying this obviously is just a branding issue for him.
Speaker 5: But don't worry. We're in good stead.
Speaker 2: We're in position to implement everything that we want to,
Speaker 2: which you know, anyone with three brain cells could see
Speaker 2: at the time. In any case, let's take a listen
Speaker 2: to a little bit of what Russ has to say
Speaker 2: about what he wants to accomplish.
Speaker 18: He talks about rape, incest in life, and mother all.
Speaker 18: I don't actually believe in those exceptions. I want to
Speaker 18: get to abolition, but I also we got to win elections,
Speaker 18: and so I want to get as far as we
Speaker 18: possibly can.
Speaker 4: His view of who should be an American, So I
Speaker 4: want to.
Speaker 18: Make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation.
Speaker 18: And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be
Speaker 18: Christian nationism. That's pretty close to Christian nationalism. Can we
Speaker 18: if we're going to have legal immigration, can we get
Speaker 18: people that actually believe in Christianity? Is that something or
Speaker 18: do we have to have you know, we're not allowed
Speaker 18: to have ask questions about Sharia law?
Speaker 12: What could we see America looking like?
Speaker 11: I guess I mean in.
Speaker 18: An ideal world, I mean, I think we could save
Speaker 18: the country in the sense of you have the largest
Speaker 18: deportation in history.
Speaker 4: And even pornography.
Speaker 18: We'd have a national ban on pornography if we're good.
Speaker 5: Right, national ban on pornography here we.
Speaker 4: Come, which by the way, he can't do at home.
Speaker 2: You never know, but you know, obviously, as you said,
Speaker 2: I'm only what comes across there is. This is an
Speaker 2: ideological warrior and across the board hard right. You know,
Speaker 2: he says, I get Trump's got to take talk about
Speaker 2: these exceptions for rape, incests of the life of the
Speaker 2: mother when it comes to abortion.
Speaker 5: I don't actually.
Speaker 2: Support those exceptions, but what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: You gotta win elections. You know, he talks about let's
Speaker 2: have the largest deportation in history. Just very very ideological here,
Speaker 2: and you know that is significant when you have someone in,
Speaker 2: like you said, a position that is quite consequential in
Speaker 2: terms of the budget. He's also, I believe, correct me
Speaker 2: if I'm wrong. I'm only ben of the thinkers who
Speaker 2: has supported this idea that even if Congress appropriates funds,
Speaker 2: there's no obligation for the executive to spend them. Yes,
Speaker 2: that means that you would have unilateral ability to cut
Speaker 2: whatever you want. So contrary to this notion that what
Speaker 2: Elon and Vivik are doing is like this make work project.
Speaker 2: On the contrary, if there actually is the power for
Speaker 2: the executive unilaterally to cut you know, slash those safe
Speaker 2: safety net programs and everything in between, you know, Russ
Speaker 2: would be we would expect Russ to be very involved
Speaker 2: in helping to implement those cuts throughout the federal government.
Speaker 2: So having someone like that in this position is quite
Speaker 2: const Council.
Speaker 4: That is such an important point. This is becoming a
Speaker 4: really raging debate on the right because people are starting
Speaker 4: to realize that they actually have the power to do this.
Speaker 4: It's not like an abstract conversation anymore about whether the
Speaker 4: president can override congressional expenditures or congressional prescriptions for spending.
Speaker 4: Basically because of the separation of powers. So can the
Speaker 4: president say this is a congressionally passed mandate, we're not
Speaker 4: doing it though, that that's an enormous power. And just
Speaker 4: to put a like bow on this conversation, russ vote
Speaker 4: is not just like a Pambonde type person who understands
Speaker 4: the temperature and will go along with the temperature.
Speaker 5: She's a finger in the wind type exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's an architect of this on an ideological level,
Speaker 4: and you know most of his philosophy that he'll be
Speaker 4: able to implement and that what was like really guiding
Speaker 4: him be super against DEI spending. He'll be super against
Speaker 4: like the waste, fraud and abuse that you hear Elon m.
Speaker 4: Vivek talking about like he's a a Tea Party kind
Speaker 4: of limited government guy he was around in those times
Speaker 4: and like that informs it. But he's now very maga
Speaker 4: as well. So it's about the sort of reforming the
Speaker 4: American government along the lines of what the conservative movements
Speaker 4: like fantasy has looked like because they feel like they've
Speaker 4: never had the power and the will to actually implement it,
Speaker 4: so hugely consequential appointment, to your point, like a little
Speaker 4: under the radar, but a very consequential appointment for Trump loyalists.
Speaker 2: And I think to me, what we're seeing taking shape
Speaker 2: is a very different Trump administration than what we saw
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, even as Russ was in the similar
Speaker 2: position last time. He was in the same position last
Speaker 2: time around. But in the off season, you know, they
Speaker 2: have been preparing, They've been thinking about, Okay, what what
Speaker 2: did we learned last time? What stood in our way
Speaker 2: of accomplishing our most maximalist goals? And even though you know,
Speaker 2: Trump didn't even get fifty percent of the vote, he
Speaker 2: feels that he has this overwhelming mandate to blow everything up.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I think contrary to a lot
Speaker 2: of the analysis that you saw from from Wall Street
Speaker 2: and even from you know, some Trump allies, even from
Speaker 2: his own transition Coachair Howard Lutnik, that like all these
Speaker 2: things he's saying, like he's not really going to put
Speaker 2: RFK junior at ages, he's not really going to do
Speaker 2: across the board tariffs, He's not really going to blow
Speaker 2: up the federal bureauercy. He's not really going to get
Speaker 2: rid of the Department of Education. I think that the
Speaker 2: things he said on the trail, including you know e
Speaker 2: lun Musk saying I'm going to cut two trillion dollars
Speaker 2: from the budget. Now, is he going to be able
Speaker 2: to cut two trillion when that is more than all
Speaker 2: of the discretionary budget in the entire federal goverment budget.
Speaker 5: Probably not.
Speaker 2: But I think you should take seriously the things the
Speaker 2: maximalist plans that Trump laid out on the campaign trail,
Speaker 2: because there have been people like russ Vote out there
Speaker 2: in the off season thinking about, Okay, if we get
Speaker 2: another chance next time around, what are we going to
Speaker 2: start with. An emblematic of that is, you know, they
Speaker 2: didn't start going down this schedule F path until the
Speaker 2: very end of Trump's term last time run, so there
Speaker 2: wasn't really time to like get it spun up and
Speaker 2: get it implemented. This time, they're coming out of the
Speaker 2: gates with the Matt gates, perhaps withal No coming out
Speaker 2: of the gates with those plans in place, and have
Speaker 2: thought a lot about, okay, what can we do where
Speaker 2: we don't even need to consult Congress, What can we
Speaker 2: do to make sure that any institution, whether it was
Speaker 2: the you know, the military, or the Senate or the
Speaker 2: dog that stood in our way last time around, what
Speaker 2: can we do to make sure those roadblocks are out
Speaker 2: of the way this time? And you know, I think
Speaker 2: we should take seriously the things that Trump said on
Speaker 2: the campaign trail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, just the last point on the whole
Speaker 4: rest vote thing is we talked about this last week.
Speaker 4: I do think that there's going to be an impulse
Speaker 4: to overreach because you know the sense that there's a
Speaker 4: mandate and the Aract and people are all on board
Speaker 4: with gutting the bureaucracy. In the abstract, that may be true,
Speaker 4: I mean, and maybe like people just got to go
Speaker 4: and shake up Washington and drain the swamp. But when
Speaker 4: it's actually playing out, yeah, you know, that'll be another story.
Speaker 4: And again, I think people like russ vote, and I
Speaker 4: know people that are like in that orbit, they are
Speaker 4: stealing themselves for just like making those hard decisions that
Speaker 4: won't necessarily be responsive to public pressure or public opinion.
Speaker 4: And Donald Trump He's another story. I mean, to the
Speaker 4: extent he interferes with what's happening at omb. You know,
Speaker 4: he'll make sure that they're doing what they want to do.
Speaker 2: But he also doesn't have to run for reelections Act anymore,
Speaker 2: so he doesn't really even have to care at all
Speaker 2: about public opinion. And you know, I mean we saw
Speaker 2: this last time around as well. After he's elected in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen and tries to implement, you know, some of
Speaker 2: the aggressive anti immigrant policies that he had run on,
Speaker 2: there was a huge backlash and actually being pro immigration
Speaker 2: was like never more popular than it was under Donald
Speaker 2: Trump because when people saw what this meant in reality,
Speaker 2: when they saw kids, you know, crying and separated from
Speaker 2: their parents and orphaned and just the human cruelty that
Speaker 2: that entailed, the public had no stomach for that. So,
Speaker 2: you know, it's one thing to to theoretically, you know,
Speaker 2: it sounds good, Okay, get the waste road and abuse
Speaker 2: sound of government, all right, that sounds good. Who doesn't
Speaker 2: support that? But when it's like, oh, and now you
Speaker 2: know you don't have a with budget to be able
Speaker 2: to feed baby's formula, then it turns into a very
Speaker 2: different matter.
Speaker 5: When the rubber hits the road.
Speaker 4: Speaking of the rubber hitting the road, we couldn't do
Speaker 4: the show today without giving you a little taste of
Speaker 4: what Matt Gates has been up to in the last
Speaker 4: I don't know, Crystal seventy two hours. He's a busy man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, moves fast on the next thing.
Speaker 4: Mossas on the next thing. Immediately after withdrawing basically from
Speaker 4: the Attorney General confirmation process, he joined Cameo, as one
Speaker 4: does in.
Speaker 5: The scenario in these times.
Speaker 4: Yes, because he will not be returning to the House seat.
Speaker 4: He actually won reelection, so he technically could have he
Speaker 4: resigned from this Congress, but not from the next Congress,
Speaker 4: so he technically could have taken a seat back, and
Speaker 4: we wanted to, but he doesn't want to, Maybe because
Speaker 4: he wants to run for Florida governor. Or maybe because
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty four in the United States of America,
Speaker 4: it's way more fun to be on cameo, so.
Speaker 5: More fun to be an influencer.
Speaker 4: Take a look at Matt Gates talking to a longtime
Speaker 4: patriot on Cameo.
Speaker 19: Hey, Lisa Kovak, it's your favorite former Congressman, Matt Gates.
Speaker 19: I just wanted to thank you for being a longtime patriot,
Speaker 19: for supporting President Trump through thick and thin, and I
Speaker 19: know you were bummed out with the news broke that
Speaker 19: I wouldn't be the next to Church General. We did
Speaker 19: get a great replacement in Pambondy. She's going to do
Speaker 19: an awesome job. You have nothing to worry about, but hey, listen,
Speaker 19: I'm still going to be in the fight for you
Speaker 19: and your family. And I know things are tough right
Speaker 19: now dealing with your car and Bruce, and I wish
Speaker 19: him a very speedy recovery. So next time you visit Florida,
Speaker 19: as everyone should do very frequently, make sure to pay
Speaker 19: a visit with your lovely aunt Kathy. Stop buy and saylo.
Speaker 19: Also salo to your mother Carol for me, and have
Speaker 19: a merry Christmas, have a great Thanksgiving, enjoy your family.
Speaker 19: And this is just such an exciting time to be
Speaker 19: an American. We've got the House, we've got the Senate,
Speaker 19: We've got Donald Trump and the presidency. We're going to
Speaker 19: actually fix the problems. We're going to secure the border,
Speaker 19: clean up our streets, get the economy roaring again.
Speaker 1: So we've got a lot.
Speaker 4: To be thankful for. I think he sons going it's
Speaker 4: five hundred dollars plus. That's what's listed as the price
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 2: It was originally two point fifty. You know, I guess
Speaker 2: demand surged and he had up the price.
Speaker 12: There.
Speaker 4: He has a twelve review all five stars, so he's
Speaker 4: he's most popular for a pep talk and roasts. So
Speaker 4: roath if you're if you're interested Matt Gates and you
Speaker 4: have five hundred plus dollars lying around. One of the
Speaker 4: funny things I think is is him being excited about
Speaker 4: the Pam Bondi pick, because one of the things we've
Speaker 4: talked about this before that Matt Gates is actually very
Speaker 4: good on is like swampiness. He's completely consistent on like
Speaker 4: congressional stock trading, on foreign entanglements, on all of those
Speaker 4: like serious and important things that nobody else wants to
Speaker 4: talk about. Are it takes seriously. Pambondi of course is
Speaker 4: now coming from work as a cutter lobbyist, and Matt
Speaker 4: Gates is like, excellent pick. It's just you know, that's
Speaker 4: that's maga world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that is maga world.
Speaker 20: No.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think with Pam Bondy in there, any
Speaker 2: hope that there's going to be like increased anti drust
Speaker 2: action where like that's definitely not happening.
Speaker 5: Whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Maybe on tech, it's possible. It's possible that on like
Speaker 4: Google or something something.
Speaker 2: Where the scene is like an ideological adversary.
Speaker 5: But even there, because even Bill Barr did that.
Speaker 2: Even there, though you know all the tech people also
Speaker 2: bet the NITA Trump like, they also have done what
Speaker 2: they need to do to get in his good graces.
Speaker 2: So I don't expect it there either, but you never
Speaker 2: know what direction they'll ultimately go in. I did think
Speaker 2: it was Notewhether. I'm curious your thoughts, Emily. I did
Speaker 2: think it was noteworthy that Gates decided to pull out
Speaker 2: of this process and basically was like, look, Trump. According
Speaker 2: to the reporting, Trump came to and was like, look,
Speaker 2: you just don't have the votes.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: Why is that significant? Well, because it's an indication that
Speaker 2: they're not just going to go to the mat and
Speaker 2: try to do recess appointments for all of these picks.
Speaker 2: And you know, Gates is not the only one who
Speaker 2: could potentially face trouble getting confirmed. RFK Junior I think
Speaker 2: is a question mark, although I think there's decent chance
Speaker 2: he'll get through. Heag Seth is the other one that
Speaker 2: I would say is a question mark at this point,
Speaker 2: there may be others as well. In fact, actually the
Speaker 2: Department of Labor head who's pro union Republican might be
Speaker 2: weirdly enough.
Speaker 5: Might weirdly enough be a problem.
Speaker 2: Though I suspect that enough Democrats would cross vote for
Speaker 2: her that that would mitigate any problem that she might
Speaker 2: have from the right wing with regard to her confirmation.
Speaker 2: But you know, it was noteworthy to me that it
Speaker 2: was effectively a sign of backing down from their most
Speaker 2: aggressive posture of basically like, you're going to accept whatever
Speaker 2: nominees we're going to put up, you're going to vote
Speaker 2: for him, and if you aren't willing to vote for him,
Speaker 2: we're just going to shove him through in a recess appointment.
Speaker 2: So I found that to be an important indication of
Speaker 2: how these things are going to play on.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I think that's a good point. And with Gates,
Speaker 4: I think it really underscores that the reason. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's true he didn't have the votes. This was not
Speaker 4: forty chess to the extent that I can tell, It
Speaker 4: wasn't like this brilliant plot to get Matt Gates in
Speaker 4: a better position to run for Florida governor. We can
Speaker 4: actually put b nine on the screen. This is Matt
Speaker 4: Gates's resignation letter to Mike Johnson, saying basically, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to take the oath of office for the same
Speaker 4: position in the one hundred and nineteenth Congress, so that
Speaker 4: would be when that happens in January. So I don't
Speaker 4: think that this was, you know, an attempt to set
Speaker 4: him up and say, you know, we're just gonna we
Speaker 4: know he's not going to get through, but we'll elevate
Speaker 4: him and then he can have a glide path to
Speaker 4: some other position.
Speaker 2: Well, the other theory was also like, oh, he'll take
Speaker 2: the heat off the other ones and make it easier
Speaker 2: for them to get confirmed.
Speaker 4: Which I think actually may partially be part of the calculation.
Speaker 4: I don't know. To me, it makes sense that, like
Speaker 4: they realized it would be a really tough one. You know,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump would love to have Matt Gates as Attorney General,
Speaker 4: There's no question about it. And I think part of
Speaker 4: it was he wanted to smoke out the senators and
Speaker 4: sort of see where certain people like Mitch McConnell is
Speaker 4: a really good example. Reportedly one of the people who
Speaker 4: would not have been voting for Matt Gates. There's no
Speaker 4: surprise about that at all. But I think Trump partially
Speaker 4: wanted to like test, first of all, John Thune in
Speaker 4: his first like literal week as a Senate majority leader
Speaker 4: or he will be well, yeah, a Senate majority leader.
Speaker 4: And so he partially wanted to test the waters on that.
Speaker 4: He wanted to see what Gates could do if it
Speaker 4: was possible. But then also he now can say, oh,
Speaker 4: Mitch McConnell, you weren't voting for Matt Gates. Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: And I know guys coming in in Utah was another
Speaker 2: Curtis right, who's replacing Mitt Romney in the Senate, was
Speaker 2: another one who reportedly was not going to vote for
Speaker 2: Matt Gates.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this important piece of information for the Trump people
Speaker 5: to know.
Speaker 4: And I think the other thing to just cap that
Speaker 4: is and the point that you're making is this is
Speaker 4: the most important position that Donald Trump sees it. Like
Speaker 4: if if this was the State's apartment, I think Donald
Speaker 4: Trump and his allies might have kept going, even though
Speaker 4: that's a hugely consequential position because they want to have
Speaker 4: everybody in place at the Department of Justice on day one.
Speaker 4: They do not want there to be any time wasted
Speaker 4: with the DOJ. That is the one agency that they
Speaker 4: are laser focused on more than any other, because that
Speaker 4: is when Donald Trump says, I am your retribution, that
Speaker 4: is firmly directed at the DOJ. So my sense of
Speaker 4: this is that they realized it would be uncertain what
Speaker 4: would happen with Gates through the holidays and then into January,
Speaker 4: and just like, this is not worth our time at all.
Speaker 4: We need to have somebody who will be confirmed and
Speaker 4: can start saying I'm hiring this person, this person, this person,
Speaker 4: this is what we're going to do on day one,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et ceter So, yeah, they want to go.
Speaker 5: I think it's also worth noting.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think Gates as a human being genuinely sucks,
Speaker 2: but he does it does actually have some more heterodox
Speaker 2: positions when it comes to, certainly to anti trust economics
Speaker 2: in these things. Pam Bondi has none of them. And
Speaker 2: so the fact that Trump found each of these people
Speaker 2: to be sort of like equally worthy candidates for attorney
Speaker 2: general tells you that it has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: how they think about corporate power or whatever. It has
Speaker 2: to do with one thing, and one thing alone. Are
Speaker 2: they loyal to Donald J. Trump, right, are they going
Speaker 2: to do what he wants them to do in that position?
Speaker 2: That was always and will always be the only qualification,
Speaker 2: the only thing that really matters to him in terms
Speaker 2: of putting in this position when he says, I will
Speaker 2: be your retribution, Like, who if you were out there
Speaker 2: in the world and you've been a Donald Trump adversary,
Speaker 2: critic whatever, like who should be worried right now?
Speaker 15: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I would say the DOJ is probably anyone who's like
Speaker 4: a career at the DOJ. They've been there for decades
Speaker 4: and we're working on indictments against Donald Trump, where people
Speaker 4: who were working on like Face Act stuff against anti
Speaker 4: abortion protesters like that stuff is going to be very
Speaker 4: clear gimid retribution in terms of also like where.
Speaker 5: They investigations aggress so will be targeted.
Speaker 4: I bet? I bet? I mean, well, it's kind of
Speaker 4: interesting because some people have said there'll be more scrutiny
Speaker 4: on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden's relationship with Hunter Biden,
Speaker 4: but then Trump has he has this weird thing where
Speaker 4: he didn't go.
Speaker 5: After remember, and I kind of doubt that, to be
Speaker 5: honest with you.
Speaker 4: It's interesting though, I mean, I don't know. It's also
Speaker 4: the other place I would have said is the tack leaders, who,
Speaker 4: to your point have kind of bent the knee. Well,
Speaker 4: a lot of what Trump World would have wanted to
Speaker 4: do in twenty twenty one twenty twenty two was go
Speaker 4: after those tach leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg has
Speaker 4: said he regrets listening to the former FBI people and
Speaker 4: the FBI people. Mark Zuckerberg famously met with the FBI
Speaker 4: and had this conversation before the Biden laptop drops. Hunter
Speaker 4: buying laptop drops is saying, you know, expect something that's
Speaker 4: going to look like and we now know they already
Speaker 4: had the laptop, but that's going to look like Russian disinformation.
Speaker 4: And Zuckerberg was like, oh okay. So when the laptop
Speaker 4: story broke, he was eager.
Speaker 5: To subcribe to see it that way, right.
Speaker 4: And so that previously, I mean, there would have been
Speaker 4: investigations of those guys, there's no question about it. But
Speaker 4: I think instead is what you're going to see, these
Speaker 4: investigations of people who were involved in Russia collusion. And
Speaker 4: even though some of those people have already been investigated,
Speaker 4: I think you'll see even more scrutiny anybody who, like
Speaker 4: anybody who was leaking to the press during that, you know,
Speaker 4: Peter Struck, Lisa Page. I know those are old names
Speaker 4: and it sounds like but I think that's like these
Speaker 4: random people that were parts of that. I think is
Speaker 4: especially going to be room for targeting.
Speaker 2: And what about Alvin Braggle Sitia, James, Fannie Willis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, probably all of the above. And Fannie Will
Speaker 4: seems to have the most spotted record of all of
Speaker 4: them in terms of like soft corruption, So that'll be
Speaker 4: a lot of fun for them.
Speaker 2: I think what you're pointing to as well, and what
Speaker 2: we're discussing with, you know, Google Zuckerberg, et cetera, bending
Speaker 2: the knee in advance, and you know he saw a
Speaker 2: similar dynamic.
Speaker 5: With Jeff Bezos of the Washing Post, like oh, we're.
Speaker 2: Not gonna we're not gonna endoor, You're you're all good here,
Speaker 2: and actually even getting in a little Twitter exchange back
Speaker 2: and forth where Elon had suggested that Jeff Bezos was
Speaker 2: saying negative things about from potential victory and Bezos jumps on, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: that's not true. Yes, and you know also fits with
Speaker 2: Joe and Mika making their trek down tomorrow. Lago and
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon had said, Now whether this has any veracity,
Speaker 2: we don't know, but he had said that the DJ
Speaker 2: is going to go after MSNBC hosts. He named specifically
Speaker 2: Ari Melburg. But you would think that, you know, Joe
Speaker 2: and Mika could potentially be at the top.
Speaker 5: Of that list.
Speaker 2: And so I think a lot Ari Melburg I was
Speaker 2: a random one to be it that, Like, I don't
Speaker 2: know why.
Speaker 4: I feel like ur he covers a lot of the.
Speaker 2: The legal stuff, like that's his beat. He's you know, former,
Speaker 2: he like goes in on that. And I think he's
Speaker 2: even had I want to say, he's had Bannon on
Speaker 2: the show and they've like fall with each other. Anyway,
Speaker 2: apparently Steve Bannon has a grievance, particularly.
Speaker 5: With Ari Melburn whatever.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think a lot of the work
Speaker 2: is already done in terms of just having you know,
Speaker 2: the threat of Matt Gates, the threat of a Trump
Speaker 2: loyalist out there to go after people with investigations or
Speaker 2: to hurt their businesses in the case of Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 2: who has a lot of business with the government. You know,
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of sort of like compliance in
Speaker 2: advance to try to get on Trump's good side and
Speaker 2: try to avoid the worst of the federal government being
Speaker 2: weaponized against you. So in any case, obviously that position
Speaker 2: will be really consequential.
Speaker 5: I did.
Speaker 2: The other piece that I was curious about is whether
Speaker 2: Hegseth seems to me like he would be the other
Speaker 2: one that would be difficult potentially to get confirmed. Also, reportedly,
Speaker 2: Trump was pissed that Hesth hadn't been upfront with him
Speaker 2: about not only the specifics of the allegations, the sexual
Speaker 2: assault allegations against him, but also the fact that he
Speaker 2: had paid some undisclosed some to the woman who accused
Speaker 2: him of rape. Pete denies the charges and put out
Speaker 2: his side of the story. But let me go ahead
Speaker 2: and play for you. You know, this is getting a
Speaker 2: lot of attention on CNN Dana Bash going back and
Speaker 2: forth with Senator Mark Wayne Mullet about the Pete Hegseeth allegations.
Speaker 2: Go ahead and take a listen to that.
Speaker 20: I want to just make sure our viewers know what
Speaker 20: that report said that the woman said that when she
Speaker 20: tried to leave Hegseeth's hotel room, he blocked the door
Speaker 20: ended up on top of her and performed a sexual act.
Speaker 20: She also said that she don't remember saying no to
Speaker 20: a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, go ahead, Dana.
Speaker 21: If we're going to get into that, let's talk about
Speaker 21: the whole police report. Now, I know if you read it,
Speaker 21: and I have definitely read it. First of all, the
Speaker 21: police report, if you look at it, it's very clear
Speaker 21: that what Pete was saying, the attorney was saying was accurate.
Speaker 5: There was no case here.
Speaker 21: He was falsely accused. If you go back and you
Speaker 21: read the report, there was two eyewitnesses said that she
Speaker 21: was being the aggressor. Pete wasn't even flirting with her,
Speaker 21: He was flirting with a different girl, and the other
Speaker 21: girl was trying to flirt with Pete. The Jane Doe
Speaker 21: here that is unmentioned. They also said that she was
Speaker 21: holding his arm as they were leaving, and that Pete
Speaker 21: was intoxicated and the Jane Doe was not. They obviously
Speaker 21: said multiple people said that she was aggressively, to the
Speaker 21: point of aggressively use the word aggressively, flirting towards him
Speaker 21: when they were in the court.
Speaker 5: Senator, Senator, the hotel staff. Senator, Well, I'm just saying
Speaker 5: that this wasn't.
Speaker 20: I wasn't done. I wasn't done. I wasn't done. You're
Speaker 20: giving his side, and it was definitely. The police report
Speaker 20: is definitely what she said and what he said. You're
Speaker 20: absolutely right. I hadn't gotten there. But I appreciate you
Speaker 20: giving that other side for me. So I guess that
Speaker 20: just kind of answers the question, which is from your perspective,
Speaker 20: you believe his part of the story and not hers.
Speaker 21: I absolutely do. He wasn't charged. He wasn't even kind
Speaker 21: of charging this. There was no crime committed. The police
Speaker 21: dropped everything there. It's what's unfortunate in today's world. You can
Speaker 21: be accused of anything, and then if especially if it's
Speaker 21: something like this, you're automatically assumed to be guilty. If
Speaker 21: you read the police report from cover to cover, which
Speaker 21: I have and I know every reporter has two, it
Speaker 21: is clear there is nothing there.
Speaker 2: So he's obviously prepared to vote for Pete haag Sath,
Speaker 2: but may not be representative of the entirety of the
Speaker 2: Republican caucus.
Speaker 5: What is your sense there?
Speaker 2: Only because not just because of these allegations, but in addition,
Speaker 2: I mean, Pete Hagsath is also very ideological guy said
Speaker 2: that like, for example, womentioned Serman combat Roles, and I
Speaker 2: can imagine there being at least a few Republican Senators
Speaker 2: who may take issue with that.
Speaker 4: You take issue that because you know senators obviously aren't
Speaker 4: not for election every two years. But you can imagine
Speaker 4: being Susan Collins and voting to confirm somebody like Pete
Speaker 4: Hegseth and then having to run for the election and
Speaker 4: answer for it. Yeah, maybe even not when you're running
Speaker 4: for reelection, but even when you're just back in Maine
Speaker 4: talking to constituents that you know, it's not going to
Speaker 4: be super easy for somebody like Susan Collins, and he
Speaker 4: can afford to lose a few votes. But you know,
Speaker 4: if you have a masked affection, or even if you
Speaker 4: have like five to ten, that's not good enough.
Speaker 2: You can't get there's there will be no Democrat who
Speaker 2: would vote for Pete heag Seth's and you're not going
Speaker 2: to get any crossovers.
Speaker 4: There, no, no, not at all. And let's also remember
Speaker 4: that you know, Pete Hegseth is firmly opposed in some
Speaker 4: good ways and in some ways that both of us
Speaker 4: would probably disagree with, but in some good ways firmly
Speaker 4: opposed to this, like entrenched bureaucracy at the Pentagon, and
Speaker 4: poses a major threat to a lot of that. And
Speaker 4: he's somebody who's from the outside that the defense contractors
Speaker 4: are not familiar with and not comfortable with. He has
Speaker 4: positions on Ukraine that they're definitely not comfortable with, and
Speaker 4: to that extent, I think there's going to be a
Speaker 4: ton of pressure on people again like Susan Collins, like
Speaker 4: Mitch McConnell, who's not going to want to shake up
Speaker 4: the Pentagon bureaucracy. He's now staying in the Senate specifically
Speaker 4: to keep the money flowing to Ukraine. Like that is
Speaker 4: how he has positioned himself. Instead is going to be
Speaker 4: his legacy. So it's not just this. This is something
Speaker 4: that's going to make it a lot more difficult. But
Speaker 4: that pressure is going to be enormous. And I know
Speaker 4: that he kind of has normally conservative positions on things
Speaker 4: like Israel and even on of course different questions, but
Speaker 4: he's he's from outside the Pentagon, and that makes him very,
Speaker 4: very uncomfortable, And so the lobbyist will be out in
Speaker 4: full force pressuring people unless they think unless they decide
Speaker 4: they think they can work with the guy, or that
Speaker 4: you'll be easily manipulated. That doesn't seem to be the
Speaker 4: case so far. It seems like everyone's pretty opposed to him.
Speaker 4: But the pressure is going to be enormous not to
Speaker 4: confirm Pete haag Seth.
Speaker 2: So a very interesting pick by Donald Trump for Department
Speaker 2: of Labor. He found one of the only in existence
Speaker 2: somewhat pro union Republicans. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 2: on the screen. So some moderate congresswoman she just actually
Speaker 2: lost narrowly re election in the state of Oregon. Her
Speaker 2: name is Lori chav As de Raymer. I might be
Speaker 2: saying that wrong. I'm sorry if i am, but basically
Speaker 2: I had never heard of her. The one thing that
Speaker 2: makes her noteworthy is she did actually vote. She was
Speaker 2: one of very few who voted in favor of the
Speaker 2: pro Act, which is pro union legislation in the House.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that is noteworthy about her is
Speaker 2: that Sean O'Brien, who is the president of the Teamsters union,
Speaker 2: who spoke at the RNC and decided to keep his
Speaker 2: union out of the endorsement game whatsoever, which was taken
Speaker 2: as a huge victory by Trump and his side. This
Speaker 2: is the candidate that he was ultimately pushing for this job.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's quite a remarkable, you know, quite
Speaker 2: a remarkable shift to have for Trump specifically, who has
Speaker 2: been a union buster his whole life, to have someone
Speaker 2: who's remotely pro union put into this position. And you know,
Speaker 2: I think it's sort of like a payoff for Sean
Speaker 2: O'Brien who was tweeting about this.
Speaker 5: Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: He says, thank you Donald Trump for putting American workers
Speaker 2: first by nominating Lori Chaves Dereimer for US Labor Secretary.
Speaker 2: Nearly a year ago, you joined US for Teamsters round
Speaker 2: Table and pledge to listen to workers and find common
Speaker 2: ground to protect and respect labor in America. You put
Speaker 2: words into action, now let's grow wages and improve working
Speaker 2: conditions nationwide. Congratulations on your nomination, etc.
Speaker 5: Etc.
Speaker 2: So he's certainly taking a victory lap with this, and
Speaker 2: you know, for me, Emily, it's both really consequential listen
Speaker 2: for the labor movement, which you guys know is one
Speaker 2: of my key priorities. The labor union used to have
Speaker 2: bipartisan support, like in the New Deal era and still does.
Speaker 2: If you go into state legislatures in places that are
Speaker 2: more like pro union friendly. You know, I can speak
Speaker 2: to the Kentucky legislatures still had at least last I
Speaker 2: checked some Republicans who would be pro labor, pro union.
Speaker 2: So it is a flavor that it exists. But you know,
Speaker 2: it is better for the labor movement when you have
Speaker 2: bipartisan support because one of the problems with the union
Speaker 2: movement is that since Republicans became just like one hundred
Speaker 2: percent ideologically aligned against it, you had a raft of
Speaker 2: legislation that was passed in states that made it more
Speaker 2: and more difficult to organize. You had an effort to
Speaker 2: paint unions as just being sort of like plants for
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party. So overall, it's really good to have
Speaker 2: some bipartisanship within the union movement. But I also don't
Speaker 2: want to overstate what this means, because you know, if
Speaker 2: you were really serious about advancing labor rights in the
Speaker 2: way that the Biden administration actually was, you would keep,
Speaker 2: for example, Jennifer Abruzzo in as general counsel at the
Speaker 2: National Labor Relations Board. You would reverse some of the
Speaker 2: incredibly hostile actions that the Trump administration took last time
Speaker 2: they were in office, the Biden administration they ramped up
Speaker 2: their enforcement minimum wage, overtime, worker safety. Trump has been
Speaker 2: on the other side of many of those and when
Speaker 2: the most most consequential pieces is that the Biden administration
Speaker 2: has pushed to make it easier to classify contractors like
Speaker 2: those Amazon drivers as employees, which has really aided union
Speaker 2: drives specifically that apply to the team stirs. And there's
Speaker 2: no real indication that the Trump administration plans to continue
Speaker 2: in that direction. So while it is significant, I also
Speaker 2: don't want to make too much of it, because ultimately
Speaker 2: it matters what this Department of Labor does once the
Speaker 2: rubber hits the road.
Speaker 4: This is truly significant. I mean, there's just no other
Speaker 4: way to look at it, because as some of these
Speaker 4: cabinet nominations have come out, there's been tons of pressures,
Speaker 4: you know, on Sean O'Brien, people saying, look at this,
Speaker 4: you bet on the wrong horse, and here's what you're getting.
Speaker 4: Because various of these nominees have come from, you know,
Speaker 4: the conservative movement, somebody like russ Vote, for example, who
Speaker 4: maybe you know, think differently about Union's publish Trump, but
Speaker 4: definitely before Trump, we're not in favor of any of
Speaker 4: this at all, and we're much more aligned openly, proudly
Speaker 4: with the business community than with Union. And so this
Speaker 4: could have been somebody. I mean, remember Donald Trump's first
Speaker 4: nomination for his first labor secretary was Alex Acosta, the
Speaker 4: guy who approved the deal for Jeffrey Epstein, Right, I mean,
Speaker 4: like this could have been someone that was very, very
Speaker 4: hostile to organize labor. No matter what Donald Trump said
Speaker 4: on the campaign trail, it's just the selection of people
Speaker 4: to go from. It's just very, very difficult to actually
Speaker 4: align yourself in that way. And for him to align
Speaker 4: himself with Sean O'Brien here, I mean, this is massive.
Speaker 4: This is truly massive. The Labor secretary is in charge
Speaker 4: of so much policy. It's not just what goes through Congress, like.
Speaker 4: The Labor Secretary is extremely consequential for the day to
Speaker 4: day policies or the day to day practices of what
Speaker 4: happens in the business world. This is a huge, huge
Speaker 4: deal for Republican president.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm no doubt about that. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: you know, there are many contradictory signs in terms of
Speaker 2: the postures sports union within this administration. We can put
Speaker 2: this next piece up on the screen. So one of
Speaker 2: the biggest problems Rocanna here tweeting what could be a
Speaker 2: bigger betrayal working class voters than to dismantle an FDR
Speaker 2: created agency that be the National Labor Relations Board that
Speaker 2: protects unions and workers from exploitation, and he links to
Speaker 2: watch it post article here about the efforts by Elon
Speaker 2: Musk and supported by many Trump allies, to deem the
Speaker 2: National Abor Relations Board unconstitutional, which would be kind of
Speaker 2: a death blow for union organizing. So Elon has been
Speaker 2: very involved in this Amazon SpaceX. They've all argued in
Speaker 2: federal court, Starbucks, they've all argued in federal core that
Speaker 2: the NLRB is unconstitutional. They also write in this article
Speaker 2: that Trump's presdential administration is poised to oversee major cuts
Speaker 2: to the powers of the National Labor Relations Board and
Speaker 2: firing the democratic members of that board. And I know
Speaker 2: this can see really in the weeds, but we've covered
Speaker 2: it extensively here. So if you've been watching the show
Speaker 2: for a while, you'll know some of this this wave
Speaker 2: of grassroots union organizing that we've seen at places like Amazon,
Speaker 2: at places which is represented by parts of the organizing
Speaker 2: driver being led by the teamsters. At places like Starbucks,
Speaker 2: the workers get all the credit for doing the you know,
Speaker 2: doing the work and taking a risk and all of that.
Speaker 2: But it also was really dramatically enabled by a pretty
Speaker 2: aggressively pro worker National Labor Relations Board, the general counsel
Speaker 2: of which her name is Jennifer Arbruzzo. She is very
Speaker 2: likely to be fired by the Trump administration. I don't
Speaker 2: think there hasn't been the whole like you know, Lena
Speaker 2: Khan conversation. She hasn't been conversation conversation. She hasn't been
Speaker 2: made central to this, but she really should be, because
Speaker 2: if you actually care about expanding union rights, this is
Speaker 2: someone who has done incredible work. The Biden administration, which
Speaker 2: Jennifer Bruzzo has also worked to ban these meetings that
Speaker 2: they force workers to go in to to hear like
Speaker 2: anti union propaganda. There have been very important decisions made
Speaker 2: about even the way in which the Starbucks organizing could unfold,
Speaker 2: and so that's been super consequential. And with Elon Muskin here,
Speaker 2: as I mean, this is the guy that Brian brags
Speaker 2: about firing striking workers. That Trump was like, Yeah, way
Speaker 2: to go. Good job with Elon Muskin here as an
Speaker 2: incredible influence who thinks unions should just basically be illegal.
Speaker 2: It's still still if you're a labor supporter, as I am,
Speaker 2: I don't think you should be resting easy by the
Speaker 2: fact that they picked, you know, the scygressoonman who supported
Speaker 2: the pro Act to head the agency. There's still a
Speaker 2: lot of huge questions about what the orientation is actually
Speaker 2: going to be. And of course, in the first Trump
Speaker 2: administration he was aggressively anti union, which fits with his
Speaker 2: business career in which he also was a notable union buster.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is one of the questions that I asked
Speaker 4: my friends who are sort of working in the people
Speaker 4: who have seen these negotiations behind the scenes in the
Speaker 4: off season, as you put it earlier in the show,
Speaker 4: to see what a a new Republican administration with their
Speaker 4: fantasy policies in place. I've asked them like, do you
Speaker 4: have enough people to staff a potentially pro labor labor
Speaker 4: department under Donald Trump? Like those all of those middle positions, right,
Speaker 4: which are also extremely consequential, who are you going to
Speaker 4: put in them? That's not from the like Coke world truly,
Speaker 4: that didn't grow up like in that time. It doesn't
Speaker 4: come with some of those predispositions, And I don't know
Speaker 4: that that can happen, And so you just it means
Speaker 4: that maybe a lot of careers will be protected at
Speaker 4: the Labor Department.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe, But you know, the other thing
Speaker 2: is like, okay, so you you give Sean O'Brien what
Speaker 2: he wants here, and you have Elon and Vive coming
Speaker 2: in to basically take an axe to the whole agency.
Speaker 4: Although they don't have any power, but they'll want.
Speaker 2: To Yes and Russ's vote and others have the theory
Speaker 2: that you can make unilateral cuts without having to go
Speaker 2: through Congress. So you know, I think it's very possible
Speaker 2: that you have her at the head of what ends
Speaker 2: up being sort of a skeleton agency that, even if
Speaker 2: it wants to, doesn't.
Speaker 5: Really have the power.
Speaker 2: Already, the Department of Labor in the National Labor Relations
Speaker 2: Board does not have sufficient staffing to be able to
Speaker 2: handle worker grievances and disputes and elections in a timely manner.
Speaker 2: Like it's already stretched incredibly thin, especially as there's been
Speaker 2: a significant increase in union organizing activity, So it's entirely
Speaker 2: possible you end up with a figurehead overseeing what's effectively
Speaker 2: like a skeleton agency that you know, basically gives gives
Speaker 2: a nod to the union voters and to Sean O'Brien
Speaker 2: and people who supported Donald Trump, but isn't actually effectively
Speaker 2: able to protect workers rights because that does take bureaucrats
Speaker 2: and people in positions who can you know, do the
Speaker 2: work to make sure those rights are protected.
Speaker 4: Somehow, the bureaucrats at the NLRB had enough time to
Speaker 4: subpoena me over a joke tweet that my.
Speaker 5: Then, are you serious five years ago?
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe i'll tell the story about that one time,
Speaker 4: but it's been reported it was. Yeah, it was like
Speaker 4: a joke tweet about like whether employees at the Federalist
Speaker 4: would unionize. You could google it, but they did just
Speaker 4: subpoena the women, and they somehow found the time to
Speaker 4: do that. It's really fun.
Speaker 5: They're protecting you.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, you're right. But we can put this Dan
Speaker 4: Maren's tweet up because I think it's really interesting. And Chris,
Speaker 4: so I know you and I disagree in this. I've
Speaker 4: always been frustrated about the pro Act itself being sort
Speaker 4: of the litmus test. This is kind of conservatible freaking
Speaker 4: out about the Shaves de Raymer nomination because, as Dan
Speaker 4: points out in one of his posts, even some Democrats
Speaker 4: have issues with the pro Act forcing companies to treat
Speaker 4: all gig workers as employees. And we could debate that.
Speaker 4: I think maybe we have, like a couple of years ago,
Speaker 4: but it's significant even that, as some Democrats have issues
Speaker 4: with the pro Act. This one Republican was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: I'm getting on board with the pro Act even though
Speaker 4: I'm like, even the corporate Dems are uncomfortable with the
Speaker 4: pro Act.
Speaker 2: Well, at the Senate level, I think every Democrat except
Speaker 2: for Mark Kelly and Garson Cinema Cinema supported it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, those pretty Amaus. And then once Mark.
Speaker 2: Kelly started getting floated for being the vice presidential pick,
Speaker 2: he also was like, I support the pro Act, but hey, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm happy to go back to car check, which was
Speaker 2: what was being pushed, the Employee Free Choice Act, which
Speaker 2: was what was being pushed under the Obama administration.
Speaker 5: We can go ahead.
Speaker 2: Forward with some of these tweets a week and show
Speaker 2: there's you know, real freak out happening here. You say,
Speaker 2: a Republican labor secretary supports the anti worker broad would
Speaker 2: be a very bad star for Trump. Arguably the worst
Speaker 2: bill in Congress, anti freelancer, anti franchise, the anti secret ballot,
Speaker 2: anti worker. Can go ahead to the next one. If
Speaker 2: you think union leadership is in step with the union
Speaker 2: rank and file, you've learned absolutely nothing. Union members didn't
Speaker 2: vote for Trump to end right to work and empower
Speaker 2: teachers unions.
Speaker 5: They just wanted lower prices.
Speaker 2: So this is an interesting argument that one of like, no,
Speaker 2: they knew that Trump is anti union and they voted
Speaker 2: for him. Anyway, That's an interesting that's an interesting take.
Speaker 5: And maybe correct on it partially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then this one, this person says Lori Chavez
Speaker 2: Durymer cosponsor the pro Act. That's all I need to know.
Speaker 2: I don't think they mean that as a positive family so.
Speaker 4: So many people like that though, I mean truly like
Speaker 4: this is the Koch brothers were the engine of the
Speaker 4: let's say, the labor nonprofit movement on the right. And
Speaker 4: it's not as the people needed to be paid by
Speaker 4: the Koch brothers to have anti union positions. It was
Speaker 4: just that the Conservative movement was reflectively in supportive business
Speaker 4: over organized labor. Yeah, it was part of the ideology
Speaker 4: that we trust the business more than we trust the government.
Speaker 4: And I mean, it's just it's baked into the cake here,
Speaker 4: and so I don't most of the people in the
Speaker 4: conservative movement who focus on labor issues have those takes.
Speaker 4: And there are some people like Orange Casts who have
Speaker 4: been toiling in the trenches and getting trashed by guys
Speaker 4: like that to come up with a slightly more pro
Speaker 4: worker policy agenda for the Republican Party. And even when
Speaker 4: they step a little bit out of line, they get
Speaker 4: you see Sager get it, I get it, Like it's
Speaker 4: not a big deal. But for people like Oron, who
Speaker 4: are the figureheads of this, like they make it impossible
Speaker 4: to get money from people who want the conservative movement
Speaker 4: to have like a slightly more pro worker agenda. If
Speaker 4: you take any money from the left, you'll just get trashed.
Speaker 4: And so it's that's that reaction. The pressure is going
Speaker 4: to be on. There's just no question about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she'll get confirmed because I think quite a number
Speaker 2: of Democrats will actually vote for her too, because of
Speaker 2: the available choices like you are not going to get
Speaker 2: a more pro labor Department of Labor head than she is.
Speaker 2: But it'll be interesting whether there are any Republicans who
Speaker 2: vote against her. You know, the super business like Chamber
Speaker 2: of Commerce types are going to be under pressure, probably,
Speaker 2: although maybe they don't really even apply pressure because they
Speaker 2: know it's a bit of a lost cause with Democrats
Speaker 2: being willing to vote for her. So I'll just say
Speaker 2: for my part, you know, I do think it's obviously
Speaker 2: noteworthy and an important break from the Trump administration last
Speaker 2: time around, and from Republican orthodoxy in general. I think
Speaker 2: is incredibly positive for the labor movement. If there are
Speaker 2: some Republican bipartisan support for unions, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to need to see a lot more before
Speaker 2: I'm convinced that Donald Trump is going to be remotely
Speaker 2: good for labor organizing, given his personal history and given
Speaker 2: the way the first administration unfolded, and given that probably
Speaker 2: the most powerful person advisor to Donald Trump right now
Speaker 2: is Elon Musk, who is vehemently opposed to unions even
Speaker 2: like existing in the world.
Speaker 4: It's an entirely fair point, and the one thing that
Speaker 4: I always say to people on the right about this
Speaker 4: as I grew up in a split household. My dad
Speaker 4: is a union and my mom worked in HR, so
Speaker 4: it was like.
Speaker 5: A little bit funny.
Speaker 4: But my point is you, basically, if you don't trust corporations,
Speaker 4: if you think that there's like a moral vacuum in
Speaker 4: corporate America and that these executives are bad and that's
Speaker 4: what was driving a lot of DEI, will imagine how
Speaker 4: they actually treat their workers. Imagine, like, take that and
Speaker 4: apply it. You know what, if they are suddenly adopting
Speaker 4: all of this DEI bullshit and it's reflective of them
Speaker 4: having bad character and being cynical corporate losers, then imagine
Speaker 4: how they treat their workers. Like just take that and say,
Speaker 4: if you believe this is reflective of moral rot insteade
Speaker 4: of corporate America, then imagine working for Amazon.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's really simple. Yeah, translates right across the board.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so such a great point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we've got another great guest standing by
Speaker 2: an activist who has been pushing to try to implement
Speaker 2: a weapons embargo against Israel.
Speaker 5: Let's go and get to that.
Speaker 2: Very happy to be joined this morning by Mohammad Nabulsi
Speaker 2: of the Palestinian Youth Movement movement has been engaged in
Speaker 2: some very interesting activism. We're hoping you would break down
Speaker 2: for us here on the show.
Speaker 12: Welcome Mohammed, thank you for having me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, we have seen how the US, in particular about
Speaker 2: other countries as well, primarily the US though, has been
Speaker 2: reluctant to follow our own laws, let alone international laws.
Speaker 2: And so you a Palestine and youth movement have decided
Speaker 2: to take some actions to put pressure on shipping Maresk
Speaker 2: in particular regards to shipping weapons to Israel. To break
Speaker 2: down for us a little bit about your organization and
Speaker 2: what you all are up to.
Speaker 22: So yeah, the Pastaanian Youth Movement is an organization of
Speaker 22: Arab youth in the diaspora, primarily located in the West
Speaker 22: and in North America and Britain. And we've been organizing
Speaker 22: over the last year and a half since the start
Speaker 22: of this genocide to place pressure specifically on the Biden
Speaker 22: administration to relent in its support of this ongoing genocide.
Speaker 22: And so the main demands obviously have been ceasefire, but
Speaker 22: as the war proceeded, the demand of an arms embargo
Speaker 22: became more central because we started to recognize that first
Speaker 22: that the Biden Harris administration was able to co opt
Speaker 22: the language of ceasefire to say that they wanted to
Speaker 22: cease fire while also doing nothing to actually bring it
Speaker 22: about beyond just empty platitudes in front of podiums. And
Speaker 22: so an arms embargo became the central demand because we
Speaker 22: recognize that that is the only way we'd.
Speaker 12: Be able to actually achieve a ceasefire. And so.
Speaker 22: After that sort of recognition took place, we also saw
Speaker 22: that the Biden Harris administration was reluctant to do anything
Speaker 22: in the way of arms and bargo despite sort of
Speaker 22: the global pressure to bring that about. And we've launched
Speaker 22: this campaign mask off Mirsk in May of this year,
Speaker 22: and we began by recognizing or understanding that Merk, this
Speaker 22: Danish company, one of the largest, if not the largest
Speaker 22: logistics and supply chain company in the world that's responsible
Speaker 22: for basically taking goods, products, military cargo from the US
Speaker 22: from everywhere really and transporting it across the globe. And
Speaker 22: so mask off Merk was meant to unveil the role,
Speaker 22: exposed the role that Mirk is playing in sustaining this
Speaker 22: genocide against the Palatine people in Gaza. We published a
Speaker 22: report more recently, and I'm happy to discuss the details
Speaker 22: of that report because there have been major developments in
Speaker 22: response to the publishing of the report, the coverage by
Speaker 22: the Intercept and by Spanish media resulting in the Spanish
Speaker 22: government banning or preventing the docking of two MARSK ships
Speaker 22: on its shores.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I was going to say, please tell us
Speaker 4: more about the response, because you know, it may sound
Speaker 4: like one company, but MRSK is an incredibly consequential company
Speaker 4: in the global economy. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: more about what's happened, and maybe even specifically a little
Speaker 4: bit more about how MRK, like the ships themselves are involved.
Speaker 4: As the report outlines, in some of this.
Speaker 12: Activity absolutely so.
Speaker 22: We basically documented and this is from publicly available information
Speaker 22: reviewing the actual shipments that have taken place. From September
Speaker 22: of last year, twenty twenty three, MERSK has shipped millions
Speaker 22: of pounds of military goods military cargo to the Israeli
Speaker 22: Ministry of Defense from the US. And these are the
Speaker 22: US manufactured military cargo paid for by the US, paid
Speaker 22: for really by US taxpayers shipped across two thousand shipments,
Speaker 22: and these shipments included hulls, engines, specialized parts for armored
Speaker 22: personnel carriers, tactical vehicles, specifically a vehicle that I think
Speaker 22: your audience and a lot of people would recognize, the
Speaker 22: Oshkosh tactical vehicle where you might have seen the photo
Speaker 22: of Palestinians blindfolded, stripped, rounded up in place in the
Speaker 22: back of this truck essentially being carried off to be
Speaker 22: either tortured, imprisoned, or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so these.
Speaker 22: Ship these RSK ships basically the way that it operates.
Speaker 22: They're called transshipment vessels, and they're picking up goods from
Speaker 22: the Port of Houston, taking them to the Port of
Speaker 22: Elizabeth in New Jersey and then they drop off their
Speaker 22: cargo in Spain at their transshipment pubs. And as you
Speaker 22: can imagine, MARKS leases essentially controls terminals at multiple ports
Speaker 22: at the entry of the Mediterranean, and so for MARK
Speaker 22: these vessels they drop them off in Spain and from
Speaker 22: there MARK ships that are responsible they're smaller in size,
Speaker 22: are responsible for basically doing a loop around the Mediterranean
Speaker 22: where they pick up the goods from Spain and then
Speaker 22: drop them off either in port said and Egypt and
Speaker 22: Turkey or directly towards the actual port in Haifa. And
Speaker 22: so these vessels are they need to drop off their
Speaker 22: goods at this entry point. Now, with Spain basically issue
Speaker 22: implementing an arms embargo them spelves, the Spanish government has
Speaker 22: spoken extensively about the fact that they're not going to
Speaker 22: allow any weapons to be shipped to Israel, either from
Speaker 22: them directly or through their ports. And so Spain, following
Speaker 22: the reporting from the intercept covering our report, essentially it
Speaker 22: was forced to respond and as a result, they BANNEDMMERK
Speaker 22: from docking these ships at its port. Now MRSK itself responded.
Speaker 22: They first stated that they don't ship any weapons or
Speaker 22: ammunitions to Israel or conflict zones more broadly, and that
Speaker 22: they take care of sort of humanitarian concerns, all of
Speaker 22: this sort of jazz. But you have to be really
Speaker 22: like specific about the language here. So MERSK says we
Speaker 22: don't ship weapons in ammunitions, and this.
Speaker 20: Is a.
Speaker 22: It's really a way for them to get around what
Speaker 22: they're actually doing. Weapons here refers to you know, assembled parts,
Speaker 22: like actual assembled weapons or ammunition, meaning live ammunition involving
Speaker 22: gunpowder or things of that nature.
Speaker 12: Basically, what MRSK is doing is shipping everything but that, right.
Speaker 22: It's so so for example, they say, well, we're shipping
Speaker 22: the body of a tank, the engine of a tank,
Speaker 22: the armor of a tank, but we're not shipping the tank, right,
Speaker 22: but that is the tank, it's being assembled in Israel itself.
Speaker 22: So the same thing they're doing about like bullets, they'll
Speaker 22: ship the bullet casing, they'll ship the actual body of
Speaker 22: the bullet, and the same for the rockets. They'll ship
Speaker 22: the body of a rocket, they won't ship the actual ammunition.
Speaker 22: And this is because, first of all, it's much more
Speaker 22: costly to do so, and it involves higher wages for
Speaker 22: workers at docks to be able to actually carry because
Speaker 22: this is really hazardous material and dangerous material.
Speaker 12: So they send everything but that.
Speaker 22: And what we've seen, I mean, if anybody's followed this
Speaker 22: war so extensively, which is obviously one of the most
Speaker 22: documented war on social media, you know these exact vehicles
Speaker 22: you know the name or armored personal carrier, which is
Speaker 22: what they're responsible for sort of transporting all of these
Speaker 22: things are what they're transporting, and they use this turn
Speaker 22: of phrase, this technical word, to avoid basically conceding that
Speaker 22: they are shipping actual weapons. And you know, at least
Speaker 22: in a layman understanding or in everyday person's understanding of weapons,
Speaker 22: these are weapons. And for the Spanish government, that's how
Speaker 22: they understood it as well, and so they've banned them.
Speaker 22: And now as a result of that, as a result
Speaker 22: of banning them from being able to dock in Spain,
Speaker 22: they've moved to Tangier. It's another terminal they essentially control.
Speaker 22: Tangier is located in Morocco. Morocco has obviously normalized relations
Speaker 22: with the State of Israel, and now the fight has
Speaker 22: shifted to Morocco because the population there, the actual.
Speaker 12: People of Morocco, are up in arms over this.
Speaker 22: And we've seen several dock workers walk off the job,
Speaker 22: they've resigned. We've seen multiple leaks from within, you know,
Speaker 22: these are essentially mersed employees because they work at this
Speaker 22: terminal that's leased by Mark leaking photographs from CCTV footage
Speaker 22: they've leaked, you know, essentially a bunch of a ton
Speaker 22: of information to media locally, and there's been a mobilization
Speaker 22: across Morocco and specifically at the support in Tangier. Now
Speaker 22: I'll end here because I know I'm talking on for
Speaker 22: a while, But the main point I want to say
Speaker 22: is that you have to understand this is an extremely
Speaker 22: important area for MIRSK to be able to operate the Mediterranean.
Speaker 12: We know what's occurred essentially through the Red Sea and
Speaker 12: Yeman in.
Speaker 22: Terms of you know, the port of Iliat in the south,
Speaker 22: and we know that MIRSK needs to ship to drop
Speaker 22: off these goods at these specific ports. They have really
Speaker 22: two options Morocco and Spain. If Spain is shut off,
Speaker 22: Morocco shut off, where are they going to go? And
Speaker 22: you have to understand that the cargo that these ships carry,
Speaker 22: the military cargo, is just a small component of a
Speaker 22: much broader cargo, most of it consumer goods, and so
Speaker 22: this is a small aspect. You're jeopardizing this broader, your
Speaker 22: broader ability to ship throughout the terranean for something very
Speaker 22: small on your ship in terms of the.
Speaker 12: Space it takes up.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 12: So these developments have been really important for the campaign.
Speaker 2: And something that we all learned in the pandemic, and
Speaker 2: I think activists have known for many, many years, is
Speaker 2: how critical these supply chains are and how when they
Speaker 2: get mucked up, it becomes very difficult to operate and
Speaker 2: do the things that you're trying to do. I'm sure
Speaker 2: Israel is quite keenly aware of that, Muhammed. While we
Speaker 2: have you, I wanted to also get your reaction to
Speaker 2: last week, we you know, got the long awaited news
Speaker 2: that the ICC was in fact issuing arrest warrants for
Speaker 2: Bib Natna, who Yoav Galant and also a leader of Hamas.
Speaker 2: The US is, you know, not a party to the ICC,
Speaker 2: and we actually have something called the Hague Invasion Act
Speaker 2: that threatens war against the Netherlands were they to do
Speaker 2: anything that we don't want them to do. A US
Speaker 2: Senator Tom Goddon already threatening to invoke the Hague Invasion Act,
Speaker 2: but many other countries around the world said no, we
Speaker 2: will abide by these arrass warrants and if Bibe Natanya
Speaker 2: who comes here, he will be arrested. Justin Trudeau of
Speaker 2: Canada was one of the world leaders who made comments
Speaker 2: to that effect.
Speaker 5: Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Speaker 23: Now that the ICC has issued warrants for Prime Minister
Speaker 23: Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense minister joof Gallant, Canadian
Speaker 23: law enforcement is obligated to arrest them should they come
Speaker 23: to Canada. Will you allow that to happen or will
Speaker 23: you step in to prevent an arrest?
Speaker 11: First of all, as Canada has always said, it's really
Speaker 11: important that everyone abide by international law. This is something
Speaker 11: we've been calling on from the beginning of the conflict.
Speaker 11: We are one of the founding members of the International
Speaker 11: Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. We stand up
Speaker 11: for international law and we will abide by all the
Speaker 11: all the regulations and rulings of the international courts.
Speaker 2: Trudeau is not alone there. I can put this tear
Speaker 2: sheet up on the screen. There are one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty four member nations of the International Criminal Court. We
Speaker 2: don't know that they will all comply, but quite a
Speaker 2: number of them have said that they will. This is
Speaker 2: a map showing those countries that have responded thus far.
Speaker 2: They include Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Lithuania, Canada, Ireland,
Speaker 2: South Africa, Turkey, Jordan, Norway and Sweden. How significant, Muhammad,
Speaker 2: do you think that we should we should find.
Speaker 5: All of this to be.
Speaker 22: I mean, it's going to really depend on the actual implementation.
Speaker 22: I do think that the formalization of arrest or warrent
Speaker 22: allows for greater capacity for popular pressure to actually exact
Speaker 22: pressure on governments to end their responsibility or role in
Speaker 22: this genocide. And so I think, for example, if you
Speaker 22: look at more recently that the European Union's Foreign policy chief,
Speaker 22: Joseph Barrell, he stated, this is just a few days
Speaker 22: ago that EU member states cannot pick and choose which
Speaker 22: warrants they execute, and so this is going to create
Speaker 22: pressure on European Union member states. And I think it's
Speaker 22: also going to create pressure on companies, multinational companies that
Speaker 22: are sort of bound by EU law to recognize that
Speaker 22: complicity in this you're essentially aiding and embetting a war criminal.
Speaker 12: Right, it's very direct.
Speaker 22: It's one thing for people to accuse Israel of genocide
Speaker 22: or accuse Israeli leaders of war crimes. It's another thing
Speaker 22: for an international institution that countless countries are bound by,
Speaker 22: bound by their decisions, bound by their prescripts, to actually
Speaker 22: be then bound formally.
Speaker 12: To implementing these types of sort of rulings.
Speaker 22: And so I think it's going to be important for
Speaker 22: us to be able to use this more so than
Speaker 22: it is to see what happens because at the end
Speaker 22: of the day, I think you all know and your
Speaker 22: audience knows that the US is likely to intervene in
Speaker 22: one way or another, whether it's through political or economic
Speaker 22: pressures on these countries. We've seen that in the way
Speaker 22: that it's happened through is the US's prevention of them,
Speaker 22: prevention of the United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolutions, or
Speaker 22: whether the pressure placed on the ICJ, the threatening of
Speaker 22: sanctions coming from Congress against the ICC prosecutor all of
Speaker 22: these things. Will see how they're able to weather them.
Speaker 22: But I think for companies like MRSK for example, it's
Speaker 22: a Danish company operations throughout Europe, now unnoticed that weapons
Speaker 22: that it's shipping directly to y'all of galant in the
Speaker 22: Ministry of Defense are going towards aiding and ambtting war crimes.
Speaker 22: So they can't run away from this, and they might
Speaker 22: be potentially legally complicit in the same way with the
Speaker 22: other countries.
Speaker 12: And the genocide.
Speaker 22: And that's why the genocide sort of ICJ probability ruling
Speaker 22: right the US, US officials, various other officials across the globe,
Speaker 22: they could be found they could be themselves found to
Speaker 22: be complicit in a very direct way.
Speaker 5: I think those are all really important points. Mohammad. Tell
Speaker 5: people where they can find and support the work that you're.
Speaker 22: Doing, absolutely, I think so you can Palacini and youth
Speaker 22: movement across social media, especially on Instagram. Maskofmersk dot com
Speaker 22: is where you can follow the campaign, and then you
Speaker 22: also have if you're a.
Speaker 12: Worker, a doc worker, if you work for MIRSK, if you.
Speaker 22: Have any important information related to Mersk and it's dealings
Speaker 22: with the Israeli genocide, you can email us at maskofmersk
Speaker 22: dot proton dot me. I think it's important for people,
Speaker 22: your audience to know that you know, this is a
Speaker 22: campaign that's built on popular power. It's about implementing on
Speaker 22: arms people's arms embargo. We heard from seven labor unions
Speaker 22: sent a letter to to President Biden telling him urging
Speaker 22: him to implement on arms in Bargo. And we're building
Speaker 22: a campaign through labor, through the student movement, with a
Speaker 22: strategic target, one that has specific role in this genocide, MERSK,
Speaker 22: one that is vulnerable because of where it is in
Speaker 22: friendly countries with powerful unions.
Speaker 12: One that is also.
Speaker 22: Has an incentive to change has an incentive to its
Speaker 22: complicity because of the small part that this cargo plays
Speaker 22: and its overall operations, and so you know, we're gonna
Speaker 22: we're trying to target ethical investment screens and get those
Speaker 22: implemented and added verse to it. And so you know,
Speaker 22: if you're a union, if you're a member of union,
Speaker 22: if you're a doc worker, if you're a student, you
Speaker 22: can become involved in this campaign. You can reach out
Speaker 22: to us and talk to us. I think what's going
Speaker 22: to be important is for us to organize democratically through
Speaker 22: the sectors, through these popular institutions like trade unions, to
Speaker 22: actually end this genocide, because I think I was listening
Speaker 22: to your show last week and there was an Israeli
Speaker 22: journalist on and he said he believes this war is
Speaker 22: going to last for a few years. The occupation of Goza,
Speaker 22: the starvation of an entire people is going to last
Speaker 22: for a few years. And I think it's on us
Speaker 22: people to implement this in arms and bargo, because it's
Speaker 22: not going to come from the US, and these rulings
Speaker 22: in the ICC or wherever are only as effectual as
Speaker 22: we make them, and so that's what our role will be.
Speaker 22: So I look forward to, you know, coming back on
Speaker 22: this show, sharing with you the developments as the mask
Speaker 22: off Meerce campaign continues to grow, and hopefully next time
Speaker 22: we talk it'll be about how MRSK ended its complicity
Speaker 22: in this genocide.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really important movement. Muhammed, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for your time, and we definitely definitely stay
Speaker 2: in touch with us and keep us updated about what's
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 12: Thank you, I appreciate you our pleasure.
Speaker 4: Crystal's going to be talking about the future of MSNBC,
Speaker 4: but I guess Crystal, this is a rare moment of
Speaker 4: agreement between you and Elon Musk because he is also
Speaker 4: really not confident that MSNBC is going to be able
Speaker 4: to sustain itself in this corporate restructure and the spinoff
Speaker 4: of properties that Comcast is doing right now, which leaves
Speaker 4: the fate of MSNBC hanging in the balance and also
Speaker 4: some other companies.
Speaker 2: Is not just MSNBC, but Kyle's very invested in the
Speaker 2: future of the Golf Channel is actually tied up in this.
Speaker 4: I'm not surprised to learn about that.
Speaker 20: Now.
Speaker 4: They didn't decide to spin off Bravo, which is huge
Speaker 4: news for that right, disruption to the housewif Kyle.
Speaker 2: Said, if they take away the Golf Channel, he's doing
Speaker 2: his own January sixth, it's on the record with that.
Speaker 4: But at Promcast headquarters, like he's in midtown with the
Speaker 4: brows and they're just taking their.
Speaker 5: Nine hours in a bunch of seventy year olds.
Speaker 4: Actually, that's exactly what would happen.
Speaker 5: And maybe you but that's a key Donald Trump base
Speaker 5: right there.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 17: Point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Trump loves the Golf Channel. The Golf Channel would
Speaker 2: come out fine.
Speaker 4: So Musk, though is appears to be you can never
Speaker 4: quite tell, but it appears to be flirting with a
Speaker 4: purchase of MSNBC. I'm not sure exactly how that would
Speaker 4: play out, but let's go ahead and put this first
Speaker 4: element up on the screen. The memes were relentless over
Speaker 4: the course of the weekend. So Donald Trump Junior said, Hey,
Speaker 4: Elon Musk, I have the funniest idea ever, in response
Speaker 4: to a post that said Comcast is putting MSNBC up
Speaker 4: for sale, CNN just announced massive playoffs coming. Maybe the
Speaker 4: new owners will figure out that lying NonStop to your
Speaker 4: audience is a lousy business model. Elon replies, how much
Speaker 4: does it cost? And then we can put the next
Speaker 4: meme on the screen, which is what greeted me as
Speaker 4: I was scrolling Twitter on Saturday morning. It says, if
Speaker 4: you're listening to this, you're missing on on a hell
Speaker 4: of a visual and lead us not on some temptation
Speaker 4: dot dot dot And it is a monk with the
Speaker 4: caption Elon mush trying not to buy, and a woman
Speaker 4: with the MSNBC logo obscuring her. Noother regions, just classy,
Speaker 4: Just make America classy again. And then I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just this has just been blowing up all weekend. Joe
Speaker 4: Rogan jumps in and says, if you buy MSNBC, I
Speaker 4: would like Rachel Maddow's job. I will wear the same
Speaker 4: outfit and glasses and I will tell the same lies.
Speaker 4: And Elon replied, deal with a fire emoji, a rocket emoji,
Speaker 4: and a laughing crying emoji. Crystal, as a resident MSNBC expert, Yes,
Speaker 4: how on a scale of love it to really love it?
Speaker 4: How much are you supporting Ela Musk BBC.
Speaker 2: I honestly feel like it's kind of irrelevant because, as
Speaker 2: I'm about to go into in depth, MSNBC like you
Speaker 2: did it already. It's already dead. Like, it's not going
Speaker 2: to occupy the same position. It may you know, hobble on,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, but they won't have the NBC
Speaker 2: News journalistic resources behind them. So then they're just you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of like not that interesting talking heads and
Speaker 2: their whole theory of the world has been destroyed by
Speaker 2: Donald Trump winning and by then Joe Amica going and
Speaker 2: like bending the knee. So like, if you're not about
Speaker 2: Trump resistance, what are you exactly? And you know, they
Speaker 2: face the same business trends that all the cable news
Speaker 2: nets face. Fox News is in a better position simply
Speaker 2: because they have a larger audience, but these are all
Speaker 2: aging demographics declining year over year. People are moving to
Speaker 2: the podcast world. You know, this is the podcast election.
Speaker 2: Independent media is only going to grow. Gear garantee that
Speaker 2: landscape is superior by the way to the one that
Speaker 2: we already have. But I just don't know why you
Speaker 2: would buy this asset at this point, no matter who
Speaker 2: you are, when it's already effectively been neutralized in terms
Speaker 2: of the ideological warfare space.
Speaker 4: Well, this is also the entire kind of conversation surrounding
Speaker 4: X and Elon Musk's buying X was that these sort
Speaker 4: of old media properties are dead compared with places like
Speaker 4: social media, and he's he brought Tucker onto X for example,
Speaker 4: because it's exactly it's more powerful than Fox News in
Speaker 4: theory if you're able to have a massive audience, and
Speaker 4: it's more sustainable in the long term if you're able
Speaker 4: to have a massive audience. Now, I think CNN has
Speaker 4: recently gotten sort of smart about how their off ramp
Speaker 4: could look. They do big numbers on YouTube, Like there's
Speaker 4: there's some recognition at some of these old sort of
Speaker 4: dinosaur businesses that there's something they can kind of transfer,
Speaker 4: they can do both at the same time. For now.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's actually case, but they're trying.
Speaker 4: MSNBC is not one of those places. And I don't
Speaker 4: know why it would be worth it for Elon Musk, even,
Speaker 4: I mean, he clearly thinks it would be worth it
Speaker 4: just for the memes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess maybe.
Speaker 2: I guess that'd be the only thing that'd be worth
Speaker 2: worth of work, because I mean, you already have plenty
Speaker 2: of conservative, ideological, conservative pro Trump media out there, like
Speaker 2: adding one more to the list I don't think is
Speaker 2: really going to particularly help their cause. Much savvier in
Speaker 2: terms of the ideological project was buying Twitter. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if he's serious about this stuff or not,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 4: Well, you know what's interesting is CNBC is also being
Speaker 4: spun off and Donald Trump apparently really likes CNBC, is
Speaker 4: like newly in love with CNBC, And so, I mean,
Speaker 4: there's something I think that's actually kind of interesting. If
Speaker 4: there's something that could potentially be done with someone, I
Speaker 4: don't think it would be Elon Musk, but like you
Speaker 4: would have to have someone a quote unquote disruptor who
Speaker 4: recognizes that the future of cable news is not super
Speaker 4: sustainable at the level that it's at, and that would
Speaker 4: require like really dramatic you might have to actually do
Speaker 4: a n plus because as ridiculous as it sounds, that's
Speaker 4: always my least popular take of the last several years
Speaker 4: is that CNN plus was not the dumbest thing in
Speaker 4: the world. It was implemented in the dumbest possible way,
Speaker 4: but like they were they saw what Fox Nation was doing,
Speaker 4: which was getting people to subscribe because that ad money.
Speaker 4: The ad revenue for cable is going to dry up,
Speaker 4: so you just need to be looking at different revenue streams.
Speaker 4: And so if you have someone that's actually going to
Speaker 4: do it, maybe you can turn it around. But the staff,
Speaker 4: the hosts. Part of the reason, I guess is like
Speaker 4: the Morning Joe hosts are making tons.
Speaker 5: Of money, oh tons, I mean that's fun.
Speaker 2: And not just the host, but the operation there is
Speaker 2: so much larger, right, the number of production staff, the
Speaker 2: overhead of the you know, the sets and the design
Speaker 2: and the hair and the makeup and all those things.
Speaker 2: It's just like the business model does not business anymore.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense, you know when especially you no
Speaker 2: longer have news gathering resources. Okay, then just in the
Speaker 2: hot take game, like you know Rando on YouTube with
Speaker 2: a microphone and a camera, who is spending nothing on production.
Speaker 2: So none of these people, I shouldn't say none, very
Speaker 2: few of these people have their own organic audiences that
Speaker 2: will follow them to wherever. I think Rachel Mattow is
Speaker 2: an exception to that. There may be a few others,
Speaker 2: but by and large people watch because you were on
Speaker 2: this network.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 2: And so if you pull them out of that space,
Speaker 2: and they're trying to make it in the wild West
Speaker 2: with all the rest of us, like good Luck.
Speaker 4: They have a couple of big podcasts, by the way,
Speaker 4: that's one thing that always gets overlooked about MSNBC. They've
Speaker 4: been sort of successful in that space.
Speaker 5: But Rachel has a podcast that does well right right now.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's actually an MSNBC or an
Speaker 4: NBC product though, because she has distinction.
Speaker 2: And she has her own production company, I don't know
Speaker 2: if the podcast is like her thing in collaboration with
Speaker 2: MSNBC or what.
Speaker 4: I don't really it's a greatquestion, but I mean.
Speaker 2: Former MSNBC head Phil Griffin runs her production company for
Speaker 2: like her long form stuff.
Speaker 4: Oh, this is actually an MSNBC production production. And that's again,
Speaker 4: like this is all relevant because to your point, so
Speaker 4: much of what was MSNBC. I know you're going to
Speaker 4: talk about this in a second, but it's based on
Speaker 4: the relationship with NBC News and so much of the
Speaker 4: resources comes from NBC News. So much of it is
Speaker 4: like a house of cards. It's like built on the
Speaker 4: foundation of NBC News. Without that, you're in trouble.
Speaker 2: So MSNBC appears to be in total free fall as
Speaker 2: ratings decline. Comcast announces a spinoff, and we've just learned
Speaker 2: their biggest star, Racil Mattow, is taking a multi million
Speaker 2: dollar pay cut. Things are so rough that, as we
Speaker 2: were just discussing, Elon Musk is even joking question Mark
Speaker 2: about buying the network outright. It's hard to see what
Speaker 2: the point of that would be, though, since there isn't
Speaker 2: much left of the place to catch and kill. An
Speaker 2: article from Lachlann Cartwright on the Ankler Substack lays out
Speaker 2: the state of panic and chaos that has grow uped
Speaker 2: the network post election. In addition to getting the scoop
Speaker 2: about Mattow accepting a salary cut from thirty million to
Speaker 2: twenty five million. I know, poor thing right, Lachlan also
Speaker 2: scoops that multiple anchors, including Rubber Al Sharp and Jonathan
Speaker 2: K Park, could be on the chopping block entirely, apparently
Speaker 2: in a tense meaning. With the new spinoff company leadership
Speaker 2: Mark Lazarus, there were more questions than answers about how
Speaker 2: the network would operate and what the future held for
Speaker 2: the network's talent, especially those people like Peter Alexander who
Speaker 2: pulled double duty over.
Speaker 5: At NBC and MSNBC.
Speaker 2: They mused about whether perhaps the network could partner with
Speaker 2: an outlook like maybe the Washington Post to handle news gatherings,
Speaker 2: since NBC's journalistic resources would be staying with the parent company, Comcast.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is a giant cluster, and the details
Speaker 2: are pretty interesting, but ultimately maybe not all that important,
Speaker 2: because while the network might continue for some time in
Speaker 2: some form or another, it may look and feel something
Speaker 2: like what MSNBC has been. That previous network is now dead.
Speaker 2: It's gone, and it wouldn't surprise me if the whole
Speaker 2: thing actually just collapsed, as surely as neoliberalism has been
Speaker 2: dealt a final crushing blow by Trump's victory. One thing
Speaker 2: is for sure. MSNBC will no longer serve the role
Speaker 2: that it once did as perhaps the most significant space
Speaker 2: of liberal consensus making. Here, like nowhere else, consent was
Speaker 2: manufactured among the Democratic Party's liberal base with a worldview
Speaker 2: and tactical philosophy that was dictated by the party's elites.
Speaker 2: No more, with its worldview and credibility shattered, it will
Speaker 2: now at best be one among many competing ideological spaces
Speaker 2: alongside riffraffle like yours truly, and many others in the
Speaker 2: alternative media space. And you know what's funny, It wasn't
Speaker 2: actually Donald Trump who put the final nail in MSNBC's coffin,
Speaker 2: though he certainly held pace in their decline. The crushing
Speaker 2: blow came from some of the network's biggest stars, Joe
Speaker 2: Scarborough and Mika Brazinski. With a single act of cowardly
Speaker 2: self preservation and capitulation of Donald Trump, they revealed to
Speaker 2: the entire MSNBC liberal audience what a bunch of spineless
Speaker 2: frauds they actually are when they decided to turn on
Speaker 2: a dime. From calling Trump Hitler st voyaging to Marl
Speaker 2: I go to kiss the ring, they knoked not only
Speaker 2: their credibility, but that of the entire network, exposing in
Speaker 2: a single act, how their entire cosplay a brave resistance
Speaker 2: over eight years was really just for show and for
Speaker 2: personal benefit. Last week for Crystal Colin Fronts, I interviewed
Speaker 2: a former Morning Joe regular, Steve Schmidt, and he was
Speaker 2: scathing in his assessment of what that pair had become.
Speaker 5: Take a listen, and.
Speaker 24: There's additional reporting and I wrote about it today from
Speaker 24: Puck News that the.
Speaker 12: Motivation, of course for this is fear.
Speaker 24: They're terrified, and they went down tomorrow Lago and they
Speaker 24: did what they had to do to cover and protect
Speaker 24: their asses, which is not the thing to do if
Speaker 24: you hold a seat which you hold with importance in
Speaker 24: the hierarchy of American journalism. So Mika justified this by
Speaker 24: saying it's a big new Brazenski a poll. The Jimmy
Speaker 24: Carter era National Security Advisor would have appreciated this because
Speaker 24: he was a diplomat, and he would have processed this
Speaker 24: as a diplomatic act nonsense. He would have regarded it
Speaker 24: as a capitulan act. He would have seen it for
Speaker 24: exactly what it was. And it has created a profound
Speaker 24: crisis of credibility at MSNBC, which actually won't exist for
Speaker 24: very much longer at all as we enter into the
Speaker 24: early hours of the Trump administration.
Speaker 5: Crisis of credibility.
Speaker 2: Let me just take a little bit of time to
Speaker 2: explain why Joan Mika's act was so devastating, because that
Speaker 2: matters for what is going to happen next. So MSBC
Speaker 2: had a particular ideology and worldview in the Trump era
Speaker 2: which was very tightly controlled. This worldview had two central tenants.
Speaker 2: Number one, opposition to Trump is everything. Every issue position
Speaker 2: is defined in reaction to Trump. Every candidate is analyzed
Speaker 2: in relation to how they feel about Trump. This is
Speaker 2: how you end up with a bizarre world which Liz
Speaker 2: Cheney's a hero because she hates Trump, and white working
Speaker 2: class men writ large our villains because they tend to
Speaker 2: vote for Trump. Number two, the way to defeat Trump
Speaker 2: runs through establishment democratic politicians in collaboration with never Trump resistors.
Speaker 2: Any candidate or issue set that colors outside the lines
Speaker 2: of Clinton's style triangulation is to be rejected as unsafe
Speaker 2: and unseerious for the task of defeating Donald Trump. If
Speaker 2: he didn't agree with those two central tenants that Trump
Speaker 2: was everything and that the way to defeat Trump was
Speaker 2: established with Democrats, you would not last long on that network,
Speaker 2: to the extent that you made it there at all.
Speaker 2: In this calculus, Nicole Wallace, who cheered for the Iraq War,
Speaker 2: was a hero and welcome ideological fellow traveler, and someone
Speaker 2: well maybe like me who thought the way to defeat
Speaker 2: fascism was through social democracy, just as FDR did, was
Speaker 2: a villain. The one two punch of Trump winning and
Speaker 2: Joe and make us capitulation to Trump detonated both of
Speaker 2: those pillars which were holding up the entire MSNBC universe.
Speaker 2: So their theory for how to beat Trump was totally
Speaker 2: broken and their posture as brave resistance to Trump was
Speaker 2: utterly shattered. Trump destroyed their theory that establishment Democrat politics
Speaker 2: was the way to win, the key to electability. Kamala
Speaker 2: ran the platonic ideal of that MSNBC campaign. She ran
Speaker 2: to the center, She bragged about her glock, She pivoted
Speaker 2: hard ride on immigration, She even buried her own popular
Speaker 2: price gouging proposals, and ran around the country with the
Speaker 2: likes of Liz Cheney, Bill Clin and Richie Torres. And
Speaker 2: the corporate tists can run around all they want trying
Speaker 2: to blame the left for this campaign, but this was
Speaker 2: their candidate and their campaign, their tactics, their consultants, their media.
Speaker 5: Approach, all of it. They own it.
Speaker 2: And their theory that this establishment approach was the way
Speaker 2: to defeat Trump was so incontrovertibly destroyed that even people
Speaker 2: like Chris Murphy and David Brooks have been forced to admit,
Speaker 2: you know what, maybe, just maybe Bernie had a little
Speaker 2: bit of a point. Joe and Mika's decision to run
Speaker 2: to Trump to bend the knee provided the death Now
Speaker 2: for the other pillar of the MSNBC worldview that resistance
Speaker 2: to Trump is everything. If the network is no longer
Speaker 2: about opposing Trump, what is this network about at all?
Speaker 2: The whole thing, including the universe of heros and villains,
Speaker 2: and which issues matter and which don't. All of that
Speaker 2: dependent on Trump as the ultimate final boss of politics.
Speaker 2: It's what could unify Joy Reid and Chris Hayes are
Speaker 2: more or less left liberals with Republicans like Nicole Wallace
Speaker 2: and Joe Scarborough. Now Joe and Mika are running around
Speaker 2: talking about working on common ground with Donald Trump. What
Speaker 2: common ground could there be with a man that weeks
Speaker 2: ago they were calling literal hitler. Unfortunately, as Adam Johnson writes,
Speaker 2: there are actually plenty of various where Joe and Meeka
Speaker 2: and other establishment Democrats may be happy to collaborate with
Speaker 2: Trump in all of the worst ways possible. After all,
Speaker 2: Morning Joe was as deranged as any program when it
Speaker 2: came to cracking down on pro Palestine protesters, marring them
Speaker 2: as antisemitic, demanding crackdowns on speech. Some Democrats already happily
Speaker 2: handing Trump power to dismantle any nonprofit group he deems
Speaker 2: to be supporting terrorism. Already, of course, we've seen Democrats
Speaker 2: except the Trumpian worldview that pins the nation's ills on
Speaker 2: immigrants and seeks a brutal crackdown on migration. I'm sure
Speaker 2: they'll be happy to find common ground as well on
Speaker 2: social safety netcuts of the type contemplated by Elon. After all,
Speaker 2: Morning Joe is the same show that slabberd all over
Speaker 2: Paul Ryan and treated him like the golden boy of politics.
Speaker 2: I am quite confident Joe and Mika will also be
Speaker 2: happy to cheer lead the next war as well, since
Speaker 2: they've i think literally never seen a war they didn't
Speaker 2: think we should endlessly fight. And of course they can
Speaker 2: find common ground in their obsession with power Trump in
Speaker 2: having it, Joe and Mika in orbiting, flattering and groveling
Speaker 2: at its feet. Now whether their show even continues in
Speaker 2: the new post spinoff world in order to explore all
Speaker 2: of this copious common ground, and that's another question, since already,
Speaker 2: even as the shows continue in truth, only rubble remains.
Speaker 2: After the ideological underpinnings have collapsed. Now, if MSMBC was
Speaker 2: actually a liberal outlet, I would experience its.
Speaker 5: Death as a loss.
Speaker 2: After all, liberalism as an ideology has plenty of failings,
Speaker 2: but also some strengths. Liberal journalism has continued to make
Speaker 2: important contributions in the Trump years, and in the absence
Speaker 2: of anything approaching a mainstream anti capitalist media, liberalism serves
Speaker 2: an important role as an adversarial force towards Trump himself
Speaker 2: and trump Ism as an ideology. Sometimes too genuinely brave
Speaker 2: commentary did also slip through the cracks. On MSNBC, for example,
Speaker 2: is the only place where you could find any significant
Speaker 2: criticism of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. But MSNBC's goal
Speaker 2: was not to advance a liberal ideology. It was to
Speaker 2: advance and protect a corrupt Democratic Party elite. And that's
Speaker 2: the reason why there is very little to moar in
Speaker 2: their death. It's bitterly ironic that the very network most
Speaker 2: centered around defeating Trump did the most to grease the
Speaker 2: skids for his ascent by blocking the Bernie left populist
Speaker 2: movement most equipped to actually rival Trump's ideological project. They
Speaker 2: wanted to beat Trump and protect their executive's class interests.
Speaker 2: Those two goals were mutually exclusive, and when it came
Speaker 2: down to it, the goal of protecting their class interests
Speaker 2: was vastly more important to them than the goal of
Speaker 2: defeating Trump. Now the pathword for media to me kind
Speaker 2: of mirrors that of the country at large. Most likely
Speaker 2: everything is just going to continue to get worse. That's
Speaker 2: most likely outcome the gutting of mainstream mountlets round leading
Speaker 2: to some flourishing a vibrant, honest, courageous independent media instead
Speaker 2: leads to a bunch of even more shamelessly corrupts, the
Speaker 2: cathantic slop as liberals brush themselves off and look around,
Speaker 2: they could easily be consumed by a liberal version of
Speaker 2: the same deranged conspiracy nonsense and partisan cheerleading that right
Speaker 2: wing influencers find so much money and success pedaling. As
Speaker 2: trust in mainstream institutions faded, Charlatan's poured in, it feels
Speaker 2: like we're plunging deeper into a post reality world, and
Speaker 2: liberals gave us a preview and Russiagate of how easily
Speaker 2: they could be swept up by fantasy and delusion. But
Speaker 2: Trump's win has also created a possibility for something new
Speaker 2: and better that wasn't there before without the liberal establishment
Speaker 2: media enforcers. What could grow organically left of center that
Speaker 2: might effectively rival trump Ism? What would that look like,
Speaker 2: What candidates could gain traction, what issues could be champion,
Speaker 2: what media outlets could gain purchase traction? Genuine sway. MSNBC
Speaker 2: was the central weapon for convincing liberals the caring about
Speaker 2: things like, well, I don't know, healthcare, unions, wages, housing,
Speaker 2: that all of that was a luxury, that wanting a
Speaker 2: genuinely democratic process to select a candidate was pure frivolity,
Speaker 2: all distractions which could hobble the party in their quest
Speaker 2: to defeat the ultimate bad guy Trump. Now, as it
Speaker 2: turns out, delivering for people materially and modeling a commitment
Speaker 2: to democracy were critical in that fight for democracy against Trump.
Speaker 2: If not for msmec's years of gaslighting and manipulation, pretty
Speaker 2: sure that would have been obvious, and now perhaps it
Speaker 2: will be. Although in Trump's business career he was a builder,
Speaker 2: in politics, he really knows how to destroy. Might something
Speaker 2: better be built in the rubble. We've got no choice
Speaker 2: now but to find out, and Emily it really is.
Speaker 3: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue.
Speaker 3: Become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you guys so much for watching. If you're able
Speaker 2: to support us over at Breakingpoints dot com, that would
Speaker 2: be amazing. Help us do more things like the cool
Speaker 2: focus group with AOC Trump voters.
Speaker 5: Getting to talk to them. Really I got a lot
Speaker 5: out of that. I hope you guys enjoyed that as well.
Speaker 2: And if you cannot subscribe or you're already a subscriber,
Speaker 2: please like and share our videos on YouTube because that
Speaker 2: really helps us out a lot. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of people searching for new media locations at this moment,
Speaker 2: and we would love to be one of those destinations.
Speaker 2: So Emily thank you as always, and Emily will be
Speaker 2: back in tomorrow for another pre Thanksgiving show, so we
Speaker 2: will see you guys then