Speaker 1: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 1: for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Indeed, we do lots of news breaking, especially in the
Speaker 2: political world, where it looks like current President Biden is
Speaker 2: announcing his reelect tomorrow with a little launch video, So
Speaker 2: we'll tell you everything we know about that, including there's
Speaker 2: some pretty revealing new polls not just about him, but
Speaker 2: also about the Republican primary and potential head to.
Speaker 3: Head matchup, so we'll get into all of that.
Speaker 2: We also finally did get a decision from the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court with regards to what's going to happen in the
Speaker 2: interim with that abortion pill, which was a Texas judge
Speaker 2: said Okay, no abortion pill, We're going to rescind that
Speaker 2: across the country. There was another judge that said, no,
Speaker 2: we have to keep the status quo in place. Supreme
Speaker 2: Court is saying for now, while appeals work their way
Speaker 2: through the system, the current status quote is going to
Speaker 2: remain in place. So we'll break all of that down
Speaker 2: for you. As well as the politics around a porch.
Speaker 2: We have some new numbers there as well. Elon doing
Speaker 2: a million different elon things for the past few days.
Speaker 4: Shrift of our blue techs Crystal.
Speaker 3: Yes, sad day, very sad. It's the end of an era. Truly,
Speaker 3: we're devastated here and.
Speaker 2: Another end of an era, BuzzFeed News now on a business.
Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy. I mean, this was really news
Speaker 2: organization that sort of like defined the twenty tens. They
Speaker 2: were really writing high. They raised like seven hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: I have a lot.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there is a lot to dig into there
Speaker 2: about like the past of news media, the present, the future.
Speaker 2: So we'll get into all of that as well. Before
Speaker 2: we do any of that, though, we have a big
Speaker 2: thank you to everybody who showed up to help us,
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Speaker 2: that we were very excited.
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Speaker 2: All Right, So the big political news this week is
Speaker 2: we had a couple scoops from various news outlets at
Speaker 2: the end of last week. Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: Looks like President Biden is going to be announcing his
Speaker 2: re election campaign next week. Go ahead, a one, put
Speaker 2: this up on the screen, guys. They've targeted Tuesday to
Speaker 2: release an announcement video to coincide with the four year
Speaker 2: anniversary of his twenty twenty campaign launch. Now, there had
Speaker 2: been a lot of speculation about when exactly he was
Speaker 2: going to pull the trigger here, not a lot of
Speaker 2: doubt that he ultimately would, although given his age and
Speaker 2: the concerns that a lot of even Democrats, both elite
Speaker 2: and certainly during in the base, have over his ability
Speaker 2: to effectively run a campaign effectively you know, office of
Speaker 2: the presidency for another four years, given that he is
Speaker 2: already the oldest president in history, there was always a
Speaker 2: little bit of a question mark. So all of those
Speaker 2: questions being put to bed. Now there are every reporter
Speaker 2: who is putting this information out there is saying, listen,
Speaker 2: this is a man who can change his mind right
Speaker 2: up until.
Speaker 3: The last minute. So you don't really know until it
Speaker 3: actually happens. But it looks like this is coming tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So the details that we've got here, and mostly the
Speaker 2: Washington Post had some of the specifics about what this
Speaker 2: is going to look like. They're calling it a soft launch.
Speaker 2: There's not a big speech planned, it's just a launch video.
Speaker 2: He recorded it mostly after he got back from his
Speaker 2: trip to Ireland. They also are planning some sort of
Speaker 2: like a donor meeting, they said, on the heels of
Speaker 2: the planned reelection announcement, Biden will meet with top Democratic
Speaker 2: donors in Washington because that, of course, has got to
Speaker 2: be the priority. At the end of next week. Biden's
Speaker 2: team has invited roughly fifty to one hundred of the
Speaker 2: party's top fundraisers and Butler's to a Friday night event
Speaker 2: with the president with the goal of energizing contributors and
Speaker 2: rallying support.
Speaker 3: Here's more on that.
Speaker 2: Because the you know, Biden is very indecisive and so
Speaker 2: it seems like he decided to pull the trigger kind
Speaker 2: of in the last few days. There was a lot
Speaker 2: of debate whether it's better to go ahead and get
Speaker 2: in and really start the fundraising circuit. Biden doesn't have
Speaker 2: a big grassroots space, so he's got to do this
Speaker 2: traditional go and like have the chicken dinner and give
Speaker 2: the speech and fly around the country, et cetera, or
Speaker 2: whether he should wait. And you know, the case to
Speaker 2: wait was basically like campaigns are really rigorous, and they're
Speaker 2: very difficult, and this is an old man who doesn't
Speaker 2: do all that well when his schedule is super packed
Speaker 2: and when he has to be in front of people,
Speaker 2: in front of cameras. So looks like they're going forward
Speaker 2: with tomorrow. They say that top fundraising officials of the
Speaker 2: DNC scrambled to make dozens of phone calls, frequently ending
Speaker 2: up in voicemails, and inviting top donors for a hastily arranged
Speaker 2: summit with the president to plan events. Other staffers were
Speaker 2: dispatched to build a campaign website that could receive the
Speaker 2: first donations of what some of the party believe could
Speaker 2: amount to a two billion dollar f counting the spending
Speaker 2: of outside groups, so that is what we know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just think it's lame, but it is also
Speaker 1: vintage Biden. I mean, Trump did a big speech, and
Speaker 1: I don't really understand why when you're the president, you're
Speaker 1: the sitting president of the United States, you don't use
Speaker 1: the one thing that you can always have at your
Speaker 1: beck and call the mainstream media. I mean, he can
Speaker 1: call a conference, they have to cover him day in
Speaker 1: and day out. And instead you're behind the scenes, Crystal,
Speaker 1: you're releasing a video, very low energy. Also, then you're
Speaker 1: immediately going to behind the closed door donor conference. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is not the way that these things are traditionally done.
Speaker 1: Whenever Bill Clinton announced his re election campaign, it was
Speaker 1: a big to do. I'm thinking of Trump also, I
Speaker 1: mean he immediately ran for President Barack Obama. It was
Speaker 1: a vague, massive event whenever he announced his re election campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of the benefits of being the
Speaker 1: president of the United States is that you are the
Speaker 1: center of all of attention. On the other hand, maybe
Speaker 1: Biden doesn't want people paying attention to him. And you know,
Speaker 1: given what we're about to talk about, polling wise and
Speaker 1: all that probably smart. It's not like people want him
Speaker 1: to actually run, and the more people see him.
Speaker 4: They're like, that's so sure about that.
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to say is listen, last campaign,
Speaker 2: he was rescued by COVID, both because Trump did such
Speaker 2: a terrible job handling it and people were like, Okay, we.
Speaker 3: Got to get this guy on to here.
Speaker 2: This is a disaster, but also, and maybe primarily, because Biden.
Speaker 3: Really have to campaign.
Speaker 2: And you know what we have seen since he's been
Speaker 2: in office is he's basically continued that sort of basement
Speaker 2: strategy when he is in front of cameras, when he
Speaker 2: is taking questions, it doesn't go well. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: think they are making the smartest decision they possibly could
Speaker 2: given the feeble candidate frankly.
Speaker 3: That they have.
Speaker 2: I mean, listen, I've been thinking a lot about some
Speaker 2: Dianne Feinstein comparisons here, and I'm not arguing that Biden
Speaker 2: has as far gone as she is where she doesn't
Speaker 2: even remember people who have been in her life, you know.
Speaker 3: Her entire career, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But part of how she was able to get real
Speaker 2: is she didn't do debates, she didn't do town halls,
Speaker 2: and so she was able to sort of short circuit
Speaker 2: the workings of democracy by her and her staff hiding
Speaker 2: the fact that she was so at this point incapacitated.
Speaker 2: There is a similar energy here of they don't want
Speaker 2: him to have to do debates. They're not going to
Speaker 2: host primary debates in the Democratic Party, which you know,
Speaker 2: all their talk democracy seems to.
Speaker 3: Fly on the window.
Speaker 2: They have put him in front of the cameras fewer
Speaker 2: than times than any president in modern history, fewer interviews,
Speaker 2: for fewer press conferences, just much less availability to the press. Again,
Speaker 2: in spite of all the rhetoric about oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: the media, democracy dies in darkness. Suddenly, you know, we
Speaker 2: have a president who still isn't in front of the
Speaker 2: cameras and has no interest really in subjecting himself to
Speaker 2: tough interviews. And I'll get to that specific details in
Speaker 2: a moment, but that's clearly.
Speaker 3: Going to be the strategy here.
Speaker 2: They're clearly just betting on not what Biden has done,
Speaker 2: or that Biden is a great candidate, or that Biden
Speaker 2: has a great vision, but they're just betting on Trump
Speaker 2: is worse, or who comes out of the Republican primary
Speaker 2: is worse.
Speaker 3: That's a bet that might pay off.
Speaker 2: But let me show you where Biden sits today in
Speaker 2: terms of his poll numbers. This is from a new
Speaker 2: NBC News poll that was a fairly deep dive on
Speaker 2: both sides of the political aisle. Biden's approval today sits
Speaker 2: at forty one percent approve, fifty four percent disapprove. That's
Speaker 2: not very good. Should Biden run for president in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four they asked? Seventy percent of people said no,
Speaker 2: only twenty six percent. Only a quarter of the country
Speaker 2: said yes. So not great there. And if you dig
Speaker 2: into those numbers. Of the seventy percent who say please
Speaker 2: don't run again, sixty nine percent say that age is
Speaker 2: one reason for them wishing that he wouldn't run again,
Speaker 2: and a majority say that is the number one reason
Speaker 2: why they feel he should not run again. Now, on
Speaker 2: the flip side, here's the record of some of the
Speaker 2: achievements Biden you know, can legitimately run on. Here pass
Speaker 2: the American Rescue Plan. In my opinion, that's one of
Speaker 2: the best pieces of legislation that has passed through the
Speaker 2: Congress and been signed into law in my lifetime. It
Speaker 2: genuinely provided very effective short term support for the American people.
Speaker 2: Of course, those provisions have almost all laps. At this point,
Speaker 2: he withdrew from Afghanistan passed the Chips Act to invest
Speaker 2: in semiconductor production, bringing that back here. We have the
Speaker 2: Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot of clean energy
Speaker 2: tax credits and an effort to transition towards a green
Speaker 2: energy future. We have a student loan debt cancelation. We
Speaker 2: have a new Supreme Court justice Katanji Brown Jackson, and
Speaker 2: we have the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. I don't know why
Speaker 2: we made the choice to capitalize some of those and
Speaker 2: not the other.
Speaker 1: The graphics team they've got Trump, They've got Trump style capitalization.
Speaker 3: Katanji Brown Jackson.
Speaker 1: This is not an endorsement, but we're just leading out.
Speaker 1: We're like, that's probably what he's going to run on.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: don't even think he's really running on policy. He's more
Speaker 1: running on I'm not Trump. And yeah, you may not
Speaker 1: like me. I'm maybe too old that can barely finish
Speaker 1: a sentence, but I'm not the other guy worked out
Speaker 1: for more. When you run the exact same playbook a
Speaker 1: second time, I guess I don't know. I just find
Speaker 1: it so pathetic, Crystal that you're going to announce your
Speaker 1: candidacy as for re election for incumbent president of the
Speaker 1: United States with the greatest megaphone in the history of
Speaker 1: the world, the bully pulpit, and you're going to do
Speaker 1: it as a Twitter video. I mean that just that
Speaker 1: seems nuts to me. But I also think this very
Speaker 1: unique set.
Speaker 3: Of circumstances, it seems intelligibly the best one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, given how people don't want to see this man
Speaker 1: go through it, you know, it's like it really is
Speaker 1: almost a I wouldn't call it revulsion, but people feel
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable every time they seem to be I feel
Speaker 1: the same way every time you watch. It is hard
Speaker 1: to worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you like Biden, I think it's hard
Speaker 2: to watch. And I do think, you know, within certainly
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party, I think a lot also among a
Speaker 2: lot of swing voters, many of whom did decide to
Speaker 2: vote for Biden, they appreciate that he was able to
Speaker 2: defeat Trump. Those who did not like Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: wanted to move on, and they are wishing that we
Speaker 2: could turn the page and have you know, someone who
Speaker 2: has more of a vision, more of an ability to
Speaker 2: articulate that vision more of a sort of projection of
Speaker 2: confidence and competence in terms of just navigating the office.
Speaker 2: And of course, four years down the road, Joe Biden
Speaker 2: is not getting any younger. Neither's Donald Trump, by the way,
Speaker 2: but Biden, you know, I don't think there's any doubta
Speaker 2: But I mean, number one, Trump is a little bit
Speaker 2: younger than him. But also there just isn't that same
Speaker 2: visible degradation in his mental abilities that we have seen
Speaker 2: over the past let's say, decade with Joe Biden. So
Speaker 2: let me get to some of those numbers I was
Speaker 2: alluding to earlier about you know, Biden's basement strategy.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: So this is since he has held office in one
Speaker 2: hundred years, since Calvin Coolidge took office, only Richard Nixon
Speaker 2: and Ronald Reagan held as few news conferences each year
Speaker 2: as the current occupant of the Oval office. They give
Speaker 2: some examples here. He abandoned while he was in Ireland,
Speaker 2: the decades old tradition of holding a news conference while abroad.
Speaker 2: On Thursday, he was meeting with the President of Columbia,
Speaker 2: the two did not hold a news conference together. Another
Speaker 2: practice of his predecessors. After the meeting, the Colombian president
Speaker 2: took questions from reporters alone, and Biden retired I Guess
Speaker 2: to his office, despite his press secretary pledging mister Biden
Speaker 2: would bring transparency and truth back to the government. In
Speaker 2: his first two years, the president granted the fewest interviews
Speaker 2: since mister Reagan's presidency, only fifty four. By contrast, Trump
Speaker 2: gave two hundred and two during the first two years
Speaker 2: of his presidency. Barack Obama gave two hundred and seventy five.
Speaker 2: There's also a noteworthy selection of interviewers. So rather than
Speaker 2: sitting for more adversarial or even with the mainstream newspapers,
Speaker 2: he hasn't sat with the Washington Post or the New
Speaker 2: York Times, which is also very unusual. They pick more
Speaker 2: friendly Drew Barrymore to ask him about like the poems
Speaker 2: he writes for his wife and things like that that
Speaker 2: are just total softball questions. So you know, this has
Speaker 2: been ever since his campaign. Clearly the strategy is to
Speaker 2: keep him away from the cameras, try to as carefully
Speaker 2: control the environments that he's in as they possibly can,
Speaker 2: and hope that in terms of this campaign, the opposition
Speaker 2: is distasteful enough that they're able to get through. You know,
Speaker 2: it goes right back to what ron Klain tweeted about
Speaker 2: when Emmanuel Macron was able to win in France in
Speaker 2: spite of a thirty something percent approval rating. Well, it
Speaker 2: was even though people didn't like him, they felt he
Speaker 2: was better than his opponent. And that's what they're banking
Speaker 2: on here very clearly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think you're right, Christel, and I think
Speaker 1: a five let's go and put that please up on
Speaker 1: the screen, guys, just shows you very much how he's
Speaker 1: underwater on some of the most important issues that are
Speaker 1: before people would pull this from a polo. He's showing you, guys.
Speaker 1: Previously immigration at thirty five percent, the economy thirty seven percent,
Speaker 1: gun policy thirty seven percent, national security forty four percent,
Speaker 1: China relations forty percent, and even environmental policy forty six percent.
Speaker 1: And if you consider, like what's very animating to the
Speaker 1: Democratic base, that's going to be healthcare, the economy, and
Speaker 1: environmental policy. He's underwater on those issues and amongst Republicans
Speaker 1: obviously he's going to be underwater there. But I think
Speaker 1: most importantly, just in general, he is not above on
Speaker 1: almost anything at the same time, though, we have to
Speaker 1: compare those to Trump's numbers, and it's just one of
Speaker 1: those crazy lesser of two evils elections, second time in
Speaker 1: a row, and it's genuinely it's just pathetic. I just
Speaker 1: can't believe, you know, we're looking at that. I'm watching
Speaker 1: the Oval Office basically be used as like some nursing
Speaker 1: home here, and apparently people are cool with that because
Speaker 1: the alternative to many people is also just as bad,
Speaker 1: if not worse. And yeah, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: really know how we got here, but you know, looking
Speaker 1: at all this, there's nothing positive that is happening in
Speaker 1: this campaign, and I think that that is that's really
Speaker 1: sad to just to see and to be able to
Speaker 1: cover this a second time.
Speaker 4: In a row.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, listen, nothing is a Dundale yet, either
Speaker 2: on the Republican side or on the Democratic side. Our
Speaker 2: national history, our political history, is nothing but a lot
Speaker 2: of surprises, a lot of twists and turns, plot twists,
Speaker 2: so you never know how this is going to turn out.
Speaker 2: But yeah, right now you're facing an election between two
Speaker 2: people that the overwhelming majority of the country wish, not
Speaker 2: only do they not want them to be the nominee,
Speaker 2: They don't want them to run at all, and yet
Speaker 2: these are very likely to be the two choices. So
Speaker 2: let's get to what that head to head matchup might
Speaker 2: look like. Go ahead and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is a six if you put Biden up against
Speaker 2: generic Republicans. So you're not you just ask, okay, whoever
Speaker 2: the eventual Republican nominee is, but you're not asking specifically
Speaker 2: Trump or specifically DeSantis. The Republican nominee has a pretty
Speaker 2: significant edge here. You've got Biden at forty one, and
Speaker 2: you've got forty seven percent for that Republican. Now, most
Speaker 2: of the head to heads that I've seen both between
Speaker 2: Biden and DeSantis and Biden and Trump have been quite close.
Speaker 3: Some of them have gone.
Speaker 2: You know, I think DeSantis more consistently has a bit
Speaker 2: of a lead over Biden. With Trump, Biden tends to
Speaker 2: have a bit of a lead over Trump.
Speaker 3: But this is very much.
Speaker 2: A jump ball, and what it may come down to is,
Speaker 2: just like last time around, the people who don't like
Speaker 2: either candidate, they don't like Biden and they don't like Trump,
Speaker 2: who do they decide to hold their nose and vote
Speaker 2: for Last time, that group, which was a sizeable group
Speaker 2: and is going to be probably an even larger.
Speaker 3: Group this time around. Last time, the majority of.
Speaker 2: Them went with Biden, So will that be the dynamic
Speaker 2: that ultimately wins him the reelection? Just to underscore this,
Speaker 2: put this next piece up on the screen. A seven
Speaker 2: sixty percent of respondents here say they do not want
Speaker 2: they do not think Donald Trump should run for president,
Speaker 2: and seventy percent do not think Joe Biden should run
Speaker 2: for president. So comparatively, I guess Trump is doing a
Speaker 2: little bit better on this metric, but not an impressive
Speaker 2: showing for either one of these candidates. Majority of the
Speaker 2: public really wishes we could move on for these from
Speaker 2: these two dudes, but apparently that's not the direction we're
Speaker 2: headed in. And finally, as I just said, in terms
Speaker 2: of the head to head matchups, put this up on
Speaker 2: the screen. Ron DeSantis in the average of polls here
Speaker 2: from Real Clear Politics, has about a two point lead.
Speaker 3: Over Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: I looked at the Trump versus Biden head to head overall,
Speaker 2: and it was actually less different than I expected.
Speaker 3: Trump was leading Biden in this.
Speaker 2: Average of polls by one point three, So one point
Speaker 2: nine percent for DeSantis one point three percent for Trump.
Speaker 2: In any case, even though there is much, you know,
Speaker 2: much hatred towards Trump, much dissatisfaction towards Biden, this is
Speaker 2: likely to be a very close race.
Speaker 3: Hold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important that we
Speaker 1: put all that together. I mean, I just think in
Speaker 1: general though, the weaknesses still remain, and I don't I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are really grappling with that.
Speaker 4: Let's put this up there on the screen right now.
Speaker 1: In terms of the positive and the negative, Biden is
Speaker 1: a thirty eight percent to forty eight percent positive negative,
Speaker 1: which is of course better than Trump's a thirty four
Speaker 1: to fifty three. But in a general election matchup, Biden
Speaker 1: is at forty one percent and a quote unquote Republican
Speaker 1: nominee is at forty seven percent, So the so called
Speaker 1: generic Republican he is losing there pretty significantly. Now, there
Speaker 1: is no such thing as a generic Republican in the
Speaker 1: age of Donald Trump, So all of the negativity and
Speaker 1: the positivity, both base wise and then general election wise,
Speaker 1: is going to stick there with Trump. But it does
Speaker 1: still show you and opening is there, and also that
Speaker 1: he's precarious. I mean, look, who the hell knows what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Like, we're only a year, We're not even
Speaker 1: a year out from this thing. We've got eighteen months
Speaker 1: to go. There could be a full blown recession. We
Speaker 1: have no I mean, we're already in kind of a recession,
Speaker 1: but we could have a full blown catastrophe. I mean,
Speaker 1: let things go south in Ukraine, same thing, everybody just
Speaker 1: wakes up and starts paying attention.
Speaker 4: Gas goes after five.
Speaker 1: I could say the other case on employees beginning to drop,
Speaker 1: real wages are going. Biden could clean this thing up,
Speaker 1: even though you know he's basically basically a walking corpse.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: The tru uncertain Trump cases against him, the indictments really
Speaker 2: weigh him down with the general public. There's a million
Speaker 2: things that could happen between now and then. But the
Speaker 2: way the race starts right now, it's basically a jump ball.
Speaker 2: Whether it's Trump or DeSantis as the nominee, it's basically
Speaker 2: a jump ball. The other thing that we're going to
Speaker 2: get into more of the Republican stuff in just a minute,
Speaker 2: But you know, DeSantis is very untested with Trump. We
Speaker 2: know what it's going to look like. Right, He's gonna
Speaker 2: inspire a lot of hatred, he's gonna inspire a lot
Speaker 2: of loyalty. He's going to drive up turnout massively, and
Speaker 2: it's going to be a game of who is more
Speaker 2: enthusiastic the people who love Trump and come out to
Speaker 2: vote for the people who despise Trump and come out
Speaker 2: to vote against him. It is not going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, love and enthusiasm for Joe Biden, because that
Speaker 2: just hasn't been what he's ever brought really to the table.
Speaker 2: But you know, there's this assumption I think that Ron
Speaker 2: DeSantis would be a stronger under election candidate for the
Speaker 2: Republicans right now the polls, that is what they reflect.
Speaker 2: But that's before DeSantis has been under consistent national scrutiny,
Speaker 2: and I am skeptical that he is actually the more
Speaker 2: election I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let me just say that it's one of the Look
Speaker 1: I don't know, I do think. Look, we have to
Speaker 1: be honest, which is Trump turned off? You know, remember
Speaker 1: that district in Nebraska is like Nebraska two, Yeah, where
Speaker 1: they have their own electoral vote, where it was like
Speaker 1: Biden plus whatever ten, but generic Republican actually or their
Speaker 1: Republican congressman actually one.
Speaker 4: There is a lot of people. There are a lot
Speaker 4: of people in this country.
Speaker 1: Specifically like upper middle class or middle class suburbanites, who
Speaker 1: really really hate Trump, and a lot of them are women.
Speaker 1: And I think that some of those people, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say they're gonna hate Rnonda Santis, but they're probably
Speaker 1: more likely to support him. So from that perspective, like,
Speaker 1: he doesn't turn people off as much. Now, the question though,
Speaker 1: is are you going to drive turnout up the way
Speaker 1: that Trump did that?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you see the Hispanic Revolution nationwide? You know,
Speaker 1: and this has significantly gotten a bunch of Latinos to
Speaker 1: vote for him in you know, in Florida. But you know,
Speaker 1: people in Florida we talk about her all the time,
Speaker 1: Cubans and you know, even people largely for the South America,
Speaker 1: not Mexicans. I mean that we're talking about actual people
Speaker 1: who are largely of Mexican descent in South Texas. They're
Speaker 1: going to go vote for Desantish, Yeah, I vote for Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump brought people out to the polls who had midt
Speaker 1: to the polls in twenty five years. I mean, does
Speaker 1: the same thing exist for DeSantis. I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1: I think it's a trade off on both ends.
Speaker 2: Well, even on the suburban women front, however, I would
Speaker 2: have been inclined.
Speaker 3: To agree with you.
Speaker 4: Well, now our abortion, Yeah, now.
Speaker 2: Abortion, I mean, that's the number one issue, and we
Speaker 2: have some numbers to reflect that that is driving a
Speaker 2: lot of voters, particularly suburban women, and DeSantis is now
Speaker 2: saddled with a very extreme position on that issue, So
Speaker 2: that alone could be highly motivated and motivating and basically
Speaker 2: negate any potential advantage that he had with that particular population. Listen, Obviously,
Speaker 2: I don't know either. It's all a guessing game at
Speaker 2: this point. But I just want to caution that to me,
Speaker 2: it's not so clear cut that DeSantis would genuinely be
Speaker 2: the more electable candidate. So let's go ahead and get
Speaker 2: into some of the Republicans side of the Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Think that's important.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the next part here, please, And I
Speaker 1: think it's very important just to look at the way
Speaker 1: things are going right now for Trump within the Republican
Speaker 1: base outside of the general election. Let's put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen, from the same polls that we
Speaker 1: were discussing here, quote, nearly seventy percent of all GOP
Speaker 1: voters stand behind Trump amid the indictment and the investigations.
Speaker 1: Even more significantly, though, that I found within this poll
Speaker 1: was not only do they stand behind Trump, but they
Speaker 1: also dismiss concerns about electability despite the recent criminal arrests
Speaker 1: and the legal investigation. That's why I thought that the
Speaker 1: statistic was so important. Obviously Trump is a very popular Republican.
Speaker 1: But the people can say that you're popular and that
Speaker 1: they think that something is going to hurt you. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of Republicans here are saying this is
Speaker 1: not going to hurt him in the general election. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some pretty decent evidence to say that
Speaker 1: that's not true.
Speaker 4: But the point was.
Speaker 1: Is that if DeSantis is going to make a case
Speaker 1: around electability, people need to believe that this is going
Speaker 1: to effect his electability, not whether it's objective or not,
Speaker 1: whether you believe it or not. And look right now,
Speaker 1: they do not believe it. And also in terms of
Speaker 1: the lead that he has, it is immense. You know,
Speaker 1: in the same poll, let's go and put the next
Speaker 1: one up there on the screen. Please Trump currently at
Speaker 1: forty six percent, DeSantis thirty one percent, Mike Pence six percent,
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley three, Tim Scott three, h Of Hudsinson three,
Speaker 1: Vivik Ramaswami not even rating there on the pole. So again,
Speaker 1: what are we learning here? This is a two man
Speaker 1: race at the end of the day. The problem for
Speaker 1: DeSantis is this, even if you take all the others
Speaker 1: the people genuinely support and you add it up, still
Speaker 1: doesn't equal forty six percent. So Trump has got a
Speaker 1: lock and the Dysantis coalition to get to fifty one percent,
Speaker 1: fifty plus one, you need the Mike Pence voter, the
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley voter to agree with a formerly pro Trump voter.
Speaker 1: How do you square that? There's just not a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence that you can, you know, looking at this,
Speaker 1: I just think it's so obvious, Like, look, the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: basically as we know it today is a relative cult
Speaker 1: of personality. People can get upset by saying that, but
Speaker 1: I just think it's empirically true by looking at the
Speaker 1: way that people are voting in terms of stop the
Speaker 1: steal in the GOP primary and in their continued support
Speaker 1: for Trump. How do you run against a cult of personality. Now,
Speaker 1: for the rest of the country, it may be true
Speaker 1: that you don't necessarily like that. You see a lot
Speaker 1: of inconsistencies, you find it abhorrent, or it just doesn't
Speaker 1: really like do it for you.
Speaker 4: But for a lot of people, it really does do
Speaker 4: it for them.
Speaker 1: And to watch this, you know, kind of play out,
Speaker 1: I just think a lot of people are not grappling
Speaker 1: with reality here. I mean, it's very clear DeSantis has
Speaker 1: a massive structural disadvantage, which will require a level of
Speaker 1: political jiu jitsu that I just don't see him having
Speaker 1: any real track record of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, And I think on the electability point,
Speaker 2: because this is really important, there were always two questions here.
Speaker 2: Number one, does the Republican base really care about electability?
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of events for that, Okay, that's
Speaker 2: number one. Number Two, it's very hard to make an
Speaker 2: electability case against someone who was already elected president. Yes,
Speaker 2: Remember these Republican voters went through twenty sixteen when the
Speaker 2: entire media class said there is no way this man
Speaker 2: can win the White House, not a chance.
Speaker 3: Hillary is a lock.
Speaker 2: The Clinton campaign was popping champagne that morning thinking this
Speaker 2: was in the bag. That experience is still very fresh
Speaker 2: and very visceral. So you saying no, no, no, this guy
Speaker 2: he actually can't be elected. It doesn't surprise me that
Speaker 2: they're like, we don't believe you, because he already got
Speaker 2: elective presidents, so definitionally, he clearly.
Speaker 3: Was at least electable.
Speaker 2: And also a majority of them don't believe that he
Speaker 2: lost the twenty twenty election as well. You know, you
Speaker 2: still have a majority of the Republican base that he
Speaker 2: thinks he actually won into twenty twenty. So if you
Speaker 2: are betting the farm on an electability case and you're
Speaker 2: Ronda Santis, I think it fails on multiple levels here
Speaker 2: and then at least to this point, and you know,
Speaker 2: I want to say, look, he's not in the race,
Speaker 2: so he's a little bit handicapped in terms of making
Speaker 2: a direct case against Trump. And we've also seen that
Speaker 2: even when he throws a little bit of like a
Speaker 2: job at Trump, there's overwhelming backlash two, which makes it
Speaker 2: very hard to make a case against him as well.
Speaker 2: I just haven't seen him be able to put together
Speaker 2: an argument that is likely to land with the majority
Speaker 2: of the Republican base. It could change. Listen, there's no
Speaker 2: doubt about it. Things happen, it can be crazy, But
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, there's more support for Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and more commitment and more enthusiasm for Donald Trump
Speaker 2: among the Republican base than there is for Joe Biden
Speaker 2: with the Democratic And.
Speaker 1: Let me also explain this for some of these Republicans.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll try to understand the mindset. The mindset
Speaker 1: is this. We did what we were told. We nominated
Speaker 1: John McCain, you told us to do. We didn't ever
Speaker 1: like the guy actually all that much. He didn't agree
Speaker 1: with us. He wasn't a fighter, you know, he stood
Speaker 1: up for Obama all this stuff. We swallowed our pride
Speaker 1: and we went with it. Then we really hated Obama.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you guys told us, you said we got
Speaker 1: to cut taxes, We got to nominate Mitt Romney and
Speaker 1: Paul Ryan. Again, we didn't agree with Mitt Romney Paul Ryan.
Speaker 1: We didn't like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. We liked
Speaker 1: a whole lot of other people, people like Michelle Bachman
Speaker 1: and all this. But we said, okay, okay, we'll listen
Speaker 1: to you. And then those people all lost. They got
Speaker 1: creamed in the general election. And then we went with
Speaker 1: our heart. We went with Trump, and you guys told
Speaker 1: us it wasn't gonna work out, and you told us
Speaker 1: over and over again, but we backed him because we
Speaker 1: love the guy, and then he won.
Speaker 4: So why should we listen to you?
Speaker 1: I mean, when I put it that way, it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of em easy to empathize, right if you're a
Speaker 1: person who really believes that in Trump, and you're somebody
Speaker 1: who's been wanting to go with your gut for a
Speaker 1: long time but haven't been able to felt restrained by
Speaker 1: kind of the Republican elites in Washington, people like Paul Ryan,
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell and all these figures, and then one time
Speaker 1: that you do go with your heart, you actually win.
Speaker 1: There's pretty good evidence right right there. But then you know,
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election happens. So it's one of those
Speaker 1: where it's more money than I am painting. But I'm
Speaker 1: trying to show you what their internal mindset is on this.
Speaker 2: And to the extent that the Republican primary contest will
Speaker 2: be fought on an issues based landscape, which I think
Speaker 2: is probably minimal at best.
Speaker 3: Trump is in a better position on all the issues.
Speaker 2: I mean, He's in a better position with regard to
Speaker 2: Social Security and Medicare. He's in a better position with
Speaker 2: regard to the Ukraine War and how the GOP base
Speaker 2: feels about that at this point, He's in a better
Speaker 2: position with regard to abortion. Even with respect to the
Speaker 2: Republican base, it is still a minority contingent that once
Speaker 2: the sort of you know, really extreme restrictions like DeSantis
Speaker 2: assigned into law or like a national band like Mike
Speaker 2: Pence wants to push through. So he has positioned himself
Speaker 2: in a much more intelligent place with regard to the
Speaker 2: issue set as well. So again I think it is
Speaker 2: I think the media has this portrait that Trump is
Speaker 2: really vulnerable and that he's on the rocks and his
Speaker 2: power is diminished and anyone could come in with a
Speaker 2: strong challenge and now's the time that they could take
Speaker 2: him out.
Speaker 3: I just don't see it. Again.
Speaker 2: I think he is actually in a better position with
Speaker 2: the Republican base than Joe Biden is with the Democratic
Speaker 2: base based on the numbers that we see and also listen,
Speaker 2: based on the fact you've got seventy percent of public
Speaker 2: that doesn't want Biden to run again, only only sixty
Speaker 2: percent that doesn't want Trump again. So that's the landscape
Speaker 2: as it exists right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, we'll see what happens. I certainly a lot
Speaker 1: of things could. But at the same time, somebody is
Speaker 1: being a little bit rankled by a lot of what
Speaker 1: we discussed. Mister DeSantis is in Tokyo for some reason,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly why, and was asked about his
Speaker 1: declining poll numbers. Had a bizarre response. Here's what he
Speaker 1: had to say, Well, hil you falling behind.
Speaker 3: A Trump things thoughts on that I'm not a candidate.
Speaker 3: We'll see if and when that changes.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on there, Crystal. He seemed okay,
Speaker 1: So here's my thing. A obviously annoyed, b irritated. He also,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of getting to him a little
Speaker 1: bit with the media attention. Look, I could be reading
Speaker 1: into it that said he's usually a little bit more calm,
Speaker 1: poised and collected. But you're also coming off probably your
Speaker 1: worst month yet on a national level, from the abortion legislation,
Speaker 1: which you know, any objective person could admit that that
Speaker 1: was a disaster. I actually was reading this morning in
Speaker 1: interview with Congressman Lance good. And this guy is full
Speaker 1: blown pro Trump. He's one of those people who endorsed Trump.
Speaker 1: Immediately after a meeting with DeSantis, he did an interview
Speaker 1: with The New Yorker and actually he literally said this.
Speaker 1: He goes, Look, I'm from a conservative district. I support
Speaker 1: a national ban on abortion. But DeSantis just signed this
Speaker 1: legislation and strictly politically, that's not popular. Wow.
Speaker 4: So to watch to look.
Speaker 1: At that, you can go read it for yourself. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's incredible, insane quote.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: And really, Christal also got to kind of bad mouthing
Speaker 1: DeSantis for his lack of personal politics that Trump simply
Speaker 1: appears to be at least much more of a master
Speaker 1: of than DeSantis. And it actually highlights a big problem
Speaker 1: that DeSantis faces. Put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: I actually thought this was handled quite well. Maggie Harman
Speaker 1: from The New York Times. She writes, DeSantis faces Republican
Speaker 1: scrutiny on issues, while Trump's gates by Republican voters seem
Speaker 1: to be creating Trump on a curve in his third
Speaker 1: presidential campaign, while Governor Ron DeSantis faces a more traditional
Speaker 1: form of scrutiny.
Speaker 4: And it's true, Let's think about it.
Speaker 1: You know, Trump changes his mind literally every day on Ukraine.
Speaker 1: One day, We're supposed to bomb them and sparkle war
Speaker 1: between Russia and China. The other day, he's like the
Speaker 1: greatest dove that the world has ever seen. DeSantis issues
Speaker 1: like a heavily calculated answer to Tucker Carlson, then faces
Speaker 1: pushed back and then comes out and then changes his
Speaker 1: tune a little little bit. That's actually something Trump does
Speaker 1: all the time, but DeSantis gets hammered for it by
Speaker 1: his political allies in the media and in general, also
Speaker 1: by the conservative press. Let's on abortion, right, same thing
Speaker 1: Trump literally wants us to believe he's not. You know,
Speaker 1: he's more pro choice than Ron DeSantis is, Like, dude,
Speaker 1: you appointed all three of the other or sorry, pro life,
Speaker 1: you appointed all three of the justices to overturn rovers
Speaker 1: Yeah's true. Are who are we kidding here? You can't
Speaker 1: have it both ways, but somehow he manages to have
Speaker 1: it both ways. Now, we do not cut him any
Speaker 1: slack here on the show, but in the mind of voters,
Speaker 1: I think it's just simply impossible. Because Trump is a
Speaker 1: cultural figure DeSantis is a politician. They're simply different. I
Speaker 1: really don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 2: And also at the beginning, Trump has already sort of
Speaker 2: been through the phase of getting covered like.
Speaker 3: Sort of like a normal politician would.
Speaker 2: Where you would, you know, really take his statements and
Speaker 2: they would generate their own news cycles, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: now there's just a lot of fatigue around that, and
Speaker 2: so people just sort of are like, yeah, whatever, that's Trump.
Speaker 2: And even on the attacks against DeSantis, you know, this
Speaker 2: is a phenomenon that we have pointed out here.
Speaker 3: DeSantis does the.
Speaker 2: Little mildt like, you know, I don't really know anything
Speaker 2: about hush money to porn stars. It very freaks out.
Speaker 2: Trump is out here, Colin DeSantis a groomer. I mean,
Speaker 2: now he's saying Florida is like some hellhole. It's just
Speaker 2: he goes all in every single day, and everyone just
Speaker 2: kind of like laughs and chuckles about it and moves on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, including me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it can't help alive, to be honest, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: And part of it is he's a cultural figure versus
Speaker 3: a political figure. Part of it is he's just as
Speaker 3: a skill to pull it off, you know.
Speaker 2: And DeSantis feels like a normal like carefully calibrating judging
Speaker 2: his words, calculating politician. That's what he feels like, and
Speaker 2: so that is the way that he is ultimately great,
Speaker 2: and it makes it so it is impossible to go
Speaker 2: against someone who is being judged on a total different
Speaker 2: grading scale. It's you know, it's it's not going to
Speaker 2: be an easy thing to pull off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I certainly.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be very very difficult there politically.
Speaker 1: And just to reference, like what you're saying, let's put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. This is the latest Trump
Speaker 1: campaign release about Desanta's It's unbelievable.
Speaker 4: I can't help laughing. The real disanted record.
Speaker 1: Desanta's record is one of misery and despair. He has
Speaker 1: left a wake of destruction all across Florida. People are
Speaker 1: hurting because he has spent more time playing public relations
Speaker 1: game instead of actually doing the hard work needed to
Speaker 1: improve the lives of the people that he represents. And
Speaker 1: you know, he actually even issued one last night, which
Speaker 1: is so funny. He is going against the Club for Growth,
Speaker 1: he says, the globalist, China hawking rhino infiltrating Club for Growth,
Speaker 1: which now wants to give backing Ron DeSantis. They realize
Speaker 1: there is no personality or people skills there are beside themselves.
Speaker 1: They don't know what to do. Florida has the sun
Speaker 1: and the ocean was great long before I put Ron there.
Speaker 1: The semi elite no growths are considering sending Ron to
Speaker 1: the Great Walter Reed Medical Center for an emergency personality transplant.
Speaker 1: His poll numbers are collapsing. I mean, I don't really
Speaker 1: know how you deal with that, you know, and Desanti's
Speaker 1: clearly is getting rattled. It reminds me of the way
Speaker 1: that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were in the primary.
Speaker 1: They just didn't know what to do with this guy
Speaker 1: because they were, you know, used to like a cookie
Speaker 1: cutter operating. And I think people who like rond de
Speaker 1: Santas always take this as in criticism of the man. Listen,
Speaker 1: he clearly he won twenty points in the gubernatorial race.
Speaker 1: He's got a talent, statewide talent. No question. Trump is
Speaker 1: simply on another level. And sometimes you just have to
Speaker 1: realize that whenever you're playing a game, you know, there's
Speaker 1: sometimes people are just much more gifted, much more talented,
Speaker 1: have built in advantages that you simply will never have
Speaker 1: as a traditional Yale law school military you know, Desanta's
Speaker 1: is like that guy and student council always want to
Speaker 1: be president, and Trump is just Trump and ended up
Speaker 1: kind of ended up being president. Despy himself. They're just different,
Speaker 1: you know, in the eye of public.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no doubt about it. Santa's. The thing that he
Speaker 3: has been.
Speaker 2: Very effective at is identifying where the like cultural outrages
Speaker 2: in the Republican base are and coming up with some
Speaker 2: sort of strategy to put himself at the center of
Speaker 2: those discussions, using legislation, using press conferences.
Speaker 3: But those are all sort.
Speaker 2: Of planned, choreographed set pieces that he's able to execute
Speaker 2: on very effectively, right with people around him, and coming
Speaker 2: up with his talking points and being able to sort
Speaker 2: of roll this out under his own control. It's a
Speaker 2: very different thing when you are taking you know, live
Speaker 2: fire in real time. It's just a totally different skill set,
Speaker 2: and to me, it appears that Desanta's doesn't really have
Speaker 2: that particular skill set. That's why we're talking about how
Speaker 2: Biden has limited his time with the press because of
Speaker 2: his aging and ERNs from his aides that he's going
Speaker 2: to step in it every time.
Speaker 3: That he gets in front of the camera.
Speaker 2: You know, I think there's a very a similar concern
Speaker 2: around Rond de Santis, who also has been very unavailable
Speaker 2: to the press outside of really friendly you know, becausehy
Speaker 2: Fox News interviews with his best allies over there or
Speaker 2: other ruper Murdoch properties. And we know that Murdoch reportedly
Speaker 2: sat down with DeSantis and his wife even before the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty election told him like, we're going to be
Speaker 2: behind you. So, yeah, those are the quote unquote journalists
Speaker 2: that he sits with for interviews. So to go back
Speaker 2: to that clip that we started with, Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: small moment. You know, you don't want to make too
Speaker 2: much of a big deal of it, but it shows
Speaker 2: a level of irritation and inability to handle like real
Speaker 2: time live fire that could be very difficult for him,
Speaker 2: because you know, this is an obvious question. How are
Speaker 2: you not ready for the most obvious question that you
Speaker 2: know you're going to get asked? Now? Imagine yourself on
Speaker 2: a stage with Donald Trump, who knows what the hell
Speaker 2: that to is gonna throw at you. So if you
Speaker 2: can't handle this like really obvious basic question from you know,
Speaker 2: some random journalists in Japan, how do you think you're
Speaker 2: going to be able to tell that situation.
Speaker 1: I'm not a candidate. I'm really happy to be here
Speaker 1: in Tokyo working for the people of Florida.
Speaker 4: Next question, Yeah, come.
Speaker 2: On, man, And like he's like a visual case because
Speaker 2: part of if you're only listening, you don't see, like
Speaker 2: his mannerisms are the thing that is very unsettling in
Speaker 2: that club.
Speaker 1: Very much.
Speaker 4: So put the last one up here on the screen.
Speaker 4: I just think it's so funny.
Speaker 1: An x Goop congressman says Rod DeSantis didn't say quote
Speaker 1: a single word to him for two years as they
Speaker 1: sat beside each other during house hearings. Quote He's just
Speaker 1: a very arrogant guy. Now you could say that this
Speaker 1: is one person I'm telling you. I have asked around
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. Everybody says the exact same thing. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about members of Congress, and some of it is
Speaker 1: bleeding into the press. That Congressman Lands good In who
Speaker 1: I reference, same interview, he said.
Speaker 4: Honestly, he was very honest.
Speaker 1: He was like, look, Desanders is a guy who after
Speaker 1: work didn't want to grab a beer and would go
Speaker 1: home FaceTime his wife and his kids. And that's great
Speaker 1: that you want to be a family man.
Speaker 4: But here in Washington.
Speaker 1: Every time that you give up a social engagement, you're
Speaker 1: giving up potential political capital and the ability to make allies.
Speaker 1: I think he's right. At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I think he's true. That's why I do actually think
Speaker 1: being a congressman on a day to day basis sounds
Speaker 1: like a miserable experience.
Speaker 4: But let's put that aside.
Speaker 1: If you are a power hungry drunk, this is a
Speaker 1: great place to be.
Speaker 3: And you know, he doesn't really care about being around
Speaker 3: your kids.
Speaker 1: If you don't like your children, if you don't like
Speaker 1: your wife, this is a fantastic place to be here
Speaker 1: in Washington. You can eat for free for five days
Speaker 1: a week, and you can drink premium liquor on somebody
Speaker 1: else's dime, namely like the aircraft industry or whatever. And look,
Speaker 1: he didn't appear to be interested in that. Now on
Speaker 1: a personal level, I like that. On a insider level, though,
Speaker 1: if you're not going to be Trump like this huge
Speaker 1: large than life figgure, then you do kind of have
Speaker 1: to play that game. Bill Clinton was a master of
Speaker 1: the game. Actually. One of the reasons that Obama was
Speaker 1: not very successful as a president on the legislative level
Speaker 1: is Obama used to say the same thing. He used
Speaker 1: to go home and have dinner with his kids every
Speaker 1: single day at six pm. Again as a father, as
Speaker 1: a family person, I empathized with that, you know, for
Speaker 1: somebody who's doing that. But you know, as a president, yeah,
Speaker 1: well you probably shouldn't just be president whenever you have
Speaker 1: small children, to be honest, you.
Speaker 2: Listen on team with the kids right too, via my
Speaker 2: daughter's soccer game later today.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: But you know the problem for DeSantis, though, is it
Speaker 2: goes beyond him being like family man and just wanting
Speaker 2: to be with his kids and being maybe a little
Speaker 2: socially awkward or natural introvert or whatever. Because what comes out,
Speaker 2: especially in this anecdote that we had up a minute ago,
Speaker 2: about how it wasn't just he didn't say a word
Speaker 2: to this guy. It was that this dude was brand
Speaker 2: new in Congress and DeSantis didn't introduce him, that didn't
Speaker 2: make him feel welcome. His impression certainly was that DeSantis
Speaker 2: is not just socially awkward, that he's an asshole. Like
Speaker 2: that's the impression that he got from these interactions. And
Speaker 2: there's another Rolling Stone piece that has quotes from people
Speaker 2: who used to work for DeSantis and were some of
Speaker 2: his aids and are now on the Trump campaign and
Speaker 2: have made it their explicit mission to destroy him and
Speaker 2: rattle his cage before he ever gets in the race.
Speaker 2: Clearly it's having an impact and having an effect. And
Speaker 2: it's the same thing they say, you know, it was
Speaker 2: an open joke whether or not he even knew our names,
Speaker 2: and these were people that were traveling with him. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think of this with regard to like the media industry.
Speaker 2: There are news hosts out there who they don't know
Speaker 2: their cameraman's name, they don't know the makeup artist's name,
Speaker 2: and everybody hates those people.
Speaker 4: Those pebody.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows who they are. They're total assholes, the total
Speaker 2: arrogant pricks. And by the way, the minute that there
Speaker 2: is an opening to stick the knife in, guess what
Speaker 2: people do. And to me, that's what this flood of
Speaker 2: anti DeSantis and anecdotes looks like right now, Right he's
Speaker 2: fallen off in the polls now that it looks like
Speaker 2: the writing is on the wall. First of all, like
Speaker 2: almost the entire Florida Republican delegation is run into Trump's arms.
Speaker 3: They're leaking all these stories to the press.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they're even willing to put their names on it,
Speaker 2: which is astonishing. That tells me that listen, whether it
Speaker 2: was deserved or not, the impression that a lot of
Speaker 2: people who worked with Rhonda Santis got of him was
Speaker 2: not just he's awkward and he's a family man, like, no,
Speaker 2: we actively dislike this person.
Speaker 1: I think it's I mean, I actually think that that
Speaker 1: traveling anecdote tells you a lot. I've been around these
Speaker 1: types of politicians. You know, you have dinner with somebody,
Speaker 1: they bring their staff and they don't even look or
Speaker 1: acknowledge with them, And I remember being like, are you
Speaker 1: a psycho like this? These people don't want to be here.
Speaker 2: They're like part of your life, more time with them
Speaker 2: than you do your kids in your family.
Speaker 1: And that's actually that's the norm. The people who are
Speaker 1: nice to their staff are you know, they're far and
Speaker 1: few between, and so yeah, anyway, I think it's really
Speaker 1: weird and obvious. And also if you don't have that
Speaker 1: skill set like that we're discussing here, where you at
Speaker 1: least have the ability to charm the people around you
Speaker 1: who are right or whenever you need them, Well, if
Speaker 1: you're both arrogant and you're not you know, at least
Speaker 1: a good like connector people person here in DC. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a tough time. Yeah, And clearly that's
Speaker 1: what's happening here.
Speaker 2: And I think that's important because it's not like Trump's
Speaker 2: not an asshole, Like obviously he's been a prick to
Speaker 2: a million people as well, but somehow, again he gets
Speaker 2: away with it, and he has the charm to sort
Speaker 2: of like smooth things over after the fact. You see
Speaker 2: this with like, you know, he said, like he told Ted.
Speaker 3: Cruz his wife was ugly and whatever.
Speaker 2: But he's able to somehow smooth that over or bring
Speaker 2: Ted Cruz.
Speaker 3: Back into the fold.
Speaker 4: That's what he does.
Speaker 3: I don't know what skill level that is.
Speaker 2: It's you know, sort of a disaster that he apparently
Speaker 2: has that skill set.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that's how I see things there.
Speaker 2: You go, All right, guys, significant decision from Supreme Court
Speaker 2: came down Friday evening, something that we have been previewing
Speaker 2: here for a while. To set the backstory here, you
Speaker 2: guys will recall there were two conflicting federal court decisions
Speaker 2: with regard to this abortion pill called mifipristone. Texas judge said,
Speaker 2: the Fdation of approved this thing twenty years ago. It
Speaker 2: needs to be banned coast to coast California, Texas, everywhere
Speaker 2: in between. There's a Washington State Federal District Court judge
Speaker 2: who ruled on the same day, hours apart, the exact
Speaker 2: opposite thing, that while there are various appeals going through
Speaker 2: the courts about how exactly this abortion pill should be handled,
Speaker 2: the status quo must remain in place. So this made
Speaker 2: it almost certain that the Supreme Court was going to
Speaker 2: have to weigh in on okay, in the meantime, while
Speaker 2: these appeals are playing out, what is going to be
Speaker 2: the law of the land. On Friday, go ahead and
Speaker 2: put this up on the screen. This is from the
Speaker 2: ap They did decide to for the time being, preserve
Speaker 2: access to that abortion pill. Let me read you a
Speaker 2: little bit of this article.
Speaker 3: They say they.
Speaker 2: Preserve women's access to a drug used in the most
Speaker 2: common method of abortion, rejecting lower court restrictions while a
Speaker 2: lawsuit continues. The justices granted emergency requests from the Biden
Speaker 2: administration and New York based Dan Collaboratories as a maker
Speaker 2: the drug myth of pristone. They are appealing a lower
Speaker 2: court ruling that would roll back FDA approval of that drug.
Speaker 2: The Court's action Friday almost certainly will leave access to
Speaker 2: myth of pristone unchanged at least into next year while
Speaker 2: appeals are playing out. Let me give you the details
Speaker 2: of the decision here now, because this isn't like a
Speaker 2: full decision. This is just, you know, whether or not
Speaker 2: to allow these restrictions to go into place or not.
Speaker 2: It's not ruling on the merits of any of these cases.
Speaker 2: None of the justices has to actually put their name
Speaker 2: on it or say how they voted, so we don't
Speaker 2: know how close of a vote this was.
Speaker 3: But we do know that.
Speaker 2: Two of the nine justices, Samuel Alito and who authored
Speaker 2: last year's Dobb's decision overturning Roe versus Wade, and Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 2: they did put their names on a four page descent,
Speaker 2: or at least Thomas said he dissented. Alito put out
Speaker 2: that four page descent. No other justices commented on the
Speaker 2: court's one paragraph order in the Court did not release
Speaker 2: a full vote breakdown, so we know there's at least
Speaker 2: two who wanted the full band to go into place.
Speaker 2: We don't know though, what the full numbers here were
Speaker 2: ultimately in terms of what happens next.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals is already announced
Speaker 2: they're going to hear arguments in this case in less
Speaker 2: than a month. And basically the idea here is it's
Speaker 2: probably going to take a year for this to play out,
Speaker 2: and this will very likely end up once again with
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court having to decide how this is ultimately handled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that it's going
Speaker 1: to have to make its way through the courts. As
Speaker 1: you said, the fact that they did have seven justices
Speaker 1: makes it significant. I also question, though, if this is
Speaker 1: going to make its way through the appeals court.
Speaker 4: I'm curious what you've said. I also asked around.
Speaker 1: Now because the Texas judge ruling was just seen as
Speaker 1: kind of so out there, even amongst conservative legal circles.
Speaker 1: The Texas ones are kind of seen as the like
Speaker 1: the Hawaii Court in the appeals process. Hawaii is always
Speaker 1: the one during the Trump era that would strike down
Speaker 1: basically anything, and then it would get up to a
Speaker 1: different could judge and they would reverse it. This does
Speaker 1: not seem to be like it might make its way
Speaker 1: all the way up to the Supreme Court through the
Speaker 1: appeals process, just because it doesn't seem like a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the legal establishment even necessarily agree with
Speaker 1: the legal process. But however, it has become a political fight,
Speaker 1: so some that might change the way that some conservative
Speaker 1: justices rule in the future. But yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we're talking here about an Amarillo, Texas based judge. Like, right,
Speaker 1: if no one's ever been there, it's like Bible thumping
Speaker 1: and nothing cows and nothing else.
Speaker 2: I mean, this person was very It comes through in
Speaker 2: the decision which I read through. I mean, he uses
Speaker 2: all the language of anti abortion activists. He insists on
Speaker 2: calling you know, unborn baby. He has to call them
Speaker 2: like unborn children instead of fetuses. There's a lot in
Speaker 2: the decision that really pegs him as someone who's clearly
Speaker 2: very ideological. And he and his wife has the history
Speaker 2: of activism.
Speaker 3: On the issue.
Speaker 1: Fine, you know, on a personal level, right.
Speaker 2: But in terms of like the legal how will play
Speaker 2: out from a legal perspective. Another thing you should understand
Speaker 2: is it's not like this case just randomly ended up
Speaker 2: in front of this dude. The people who were behind
Speaker 2: the case, they went judge shopping, and this is very common, right,
Speaker 2: There's a reason why some of those cases ended up
Speaker 2: in Hawaii, and there's a very specific reason why it
Speaker 2: ended up in front of this judge. He is the
Speaker 2: only Amarillo based Federal District court judge. And so if
Speaker 2: you end up on that docket, you know one hundred
Speaker 2: percent it's going to be this dude who issues the ruling.
Speaker 2: And they basically knew that he was their best bet. Now,
Speaker 2: what's going to happen at the as the appeals process
Speaker 2: plays out? I also don't know, because now it goes
Speaker 2: to the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, that is
Speaker 2: the most conservative court of appeals in the country. So
Speaker 2: will they say this guy went too far?
Speaker 3: Maybe?
Speaker 2: Will they have a lot of you know, ideological sympathy
Speaker 2: for his position? They almost undoubtedly will. Now does that
Speaker 2: mean they uphold his ruling or not? Very hard to say.
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure what direction the legal process will
Speaker 2: ultimately go in. But what I think this underscores more
Speaker 2: than anything is Number one, this is this is a
Speaker 2: significant issue. As mentioned before, this is actually how more
Speaker 2: than a majority of women in the country in places
Speaker 2: where abortion is still legal this is the method that
Speaker 2: they choose because this is this is for pregnancies that
Speaker 2: are in the early weeks, and that is when the
Speaker 2: overwhelming majority of abortions actually occur. So that's Number one,
Speaker 2: is there's a very real and very clear impact here,
Speaker 2: and if this ruling were to stand, it it truly
Speaker 2: would create you know, it would upend a lot of
Speaker 2: what is going on in.
Speaker 3: States like California.
Speaker 2: It'd be very highly motivating issue for a lot of
Speaker 2: people across the country.
Speaker 3: That's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, it really shows you like Republicans are desperate
Speaker 2: to move on from the issue of abortion. It's exposing
Speaker 2: all sorts of splits and divides within their own ranks,
Speaker 2: which we're going to get to in a minute. It
Speaker 2: has been a disaster for them electoral I mean, there's
Speaker 2: just no denying that at this point. So they are
Speaker 2: desperate for the question of abortion and how are the
Speaker 2: bands going to be, what are they going to be
Speaker 2: the limits of the law, how's it going to go?
Speaker 3: Is it going to be state by state?
Speaker 2: Is it going to be a nationwide They're desperate for
Speaker 2: all of these questions to go away. This is going
Speaker 2: to be playing out for at least another year this
Speaker 2: particular case, and there are going to be many more
Speaker 2: challenges that are working their way through the courts. Like
Speaker 2: this is not going away anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, yep, I think you're right. There's no way
Speaker 1: getting out of it. On a political level, it's very
Speaker 1: very difficult to work your way through. And then for
Speaker 1: also for the GOP candidates, watching them twist and turn
Speaker 1: is really something else.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of that, there was a big Iowa summit
Speaker 2: of the religious right that a number of twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four Republican hopefuls were speaking at. Trump spoke there by
Speaker 2: video link. And you know, it's interesting because he has
Speaker 2: taken a lot of heat from the activists, the anti
Speaker 2: abortion activist wing of the party because he's basically, you know,
Speaker 2: ruled out a national ban he really wants. He's been
Speaker 2: very clear that he wants to keep things at the
Speaker 2: state by state level. There have been all sorts of
Speaker 2: reports out about his private private comments basically being like, listen,
Speaker 2: we got to not talk about this issue because this
Speaker 2: is a disaster for us. There's it appears that he
Speaker 2: understood that as soon as the Dobbs decision came down,
Speaker 2: maybe more than anyone else. He got immediately how this
Speaker 2: was going to up end the political landscape and be
Speaker 2: a really big problem for Republicans. So there have been
Speaker 2: all sorts of quotes coming out from anti abortion activists
Speaker 2: about just how upset with Trump they are right now,
Speaker 2: even though of course he's the person who put those
Speaker 2: justices on the court that made that Dobb's decision overturning
Speaker 2: Roe versus.
Speaker 3: Wait.
Speaker 2: So Trump spoke at this summit, and he was trying
Speaker 2: to remind them of what he has done for the
Speaker 2: pro life movement to try to calm the water's there.
Speaker 2: Take a listen a little bit of what he had
Speaker 2: to say, you.
Speaker 6: Take a look at the right to life issue. So
Speaker 6: there was I put on three Supreme Court judges, over
Speaker 6: three hundred judges. Our whole court system is different than
Speaker 6: it was. Look at the Ninth Circuit, but just so
Speaker 6: different than what it was, and three great Supreme Court judges.
Speaker 6: And because justice is and because of the fact that
Speaker 6: I did that, you have a whole new world out there.
Speaker 6: And you know, very few people have done what I've done,
Speaker 6: and very few people, very few administrations have made the
Speaker 6: impact that the Trump administration made.
Speaker 3: Suger how do you think that those comments will end
Speaker 3: with this guy.
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure. I mean, I think what he
Speaker 1: the case he's trying to make is I did it,
Speaker 1: I did it before. I'm your best bet. If anything,
Speaker 1: I think this is tough. You almost have to make
Speaker 1: an electability argument to evangelicals who don't necessarily believe in
Speaker 1: electability or never really have. So you have to say, look, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who got it done. I'm the greatest
Speaker 1: hero in the history of the pro life movement. But
Speaker 1: also you got to know where to stop, and you
Speaker 1: also need to have you're one of your guys in
Speaker 1: the White House. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you got to stick with me because I'm somebody who
Speaker 1: will get it at the best I possibly can without
Speaker 1: suffering the elect disaster.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's kind of how.
Speaker 2: I read it, you know, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: even though listen, there will be some small percentage of
Speaker 2: really ideological activists that you know prefer Mike Pence, for example,
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk about some of his comments
Speaker 2: on the same issue. I mean, he really has sort
Speaker 2: of positioned himself as the traditional.
Speaker 3: Religious right candidate.
Speaker 2: He has been he immediately came out in favor of
Speaker 2: a national abortion ban after Dobbs came down. So you'll
Speaker 2: have some small percentage that, you know, this is truly
Speaker 2: their issue, They're truly committed to it, and they go
Speaker 2: with a candidate like Mike Pence or someone else who
Speaker 2: is more to their liking on the issue.
Speaker 3: But we saw evangelical.
Speaker 2: Voters sort of twist their previous positions into notts to
Speaker 2: support President Trump back in twenty sixteen. You know, it
Speaker 2: used to be very core to that group that like
Speaker 2: the personal values and personal morality and personal religiosity of
Speaker 2: the candidate was really important. And obviously, you know, Trump
Speaker 2: didn't have all of those pieces for them, and they
Speaker 2: still figuring on a way to justify supporting him. So
Speaker 2: the evangelical right has been Trump's strongest and most consistent
Speaker 2: base since he took office. I don't think that that's
Speaker 2: going to change, even if he isn't exactly where they
Speaker 2: would prefer him to be on the issue of abortion.
Speaker 2: I think that they will justify to themselves exactly the
Speaker 2: way he Trump is justifying to them, of.
Speaker 3: Like, well, he's the guy who actually got it.
Speaker 2: Done, so of course we're going to be behind him,
Speaker 2: and of course we're going to support him.
Speaker 1: It all comes back to how they will actually look
Speaker 1: at issues and electability. Let's put the next one up
Speaker 1: there on the screen because this is important. Penn says
Speaker 1: he wants to see the entire pill quote off the market.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the abortion pill, MIF and pristone here
Speaker 1: and also has come out for that national abortion band.
Speaker 1: The real question is is that how many people actually
Speaker 1: believe in the issues. How many people believe in some
Speaker 1: sort of gradation. He's got six percent right now in
Speaker 1: a national GOP primary. Not great, but that's about exactly
Speaker 1: right for people who are like full on for a
Speaker 1: national book like this is the is is my issue?
Speaker 1: As opposed to like this is issue number three? I
Speaker 1: care about it, but you know, not willing to go
Speaker 1: all the way for it. So, you know, I think
Speaker 1: we're actually seeing a lot of this in our polling
Speaker 1: data about how people show their preferences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is the polling Abortion has become really a top
Speaker 2: issue for the electorate. Sixty one percent of the electorate
Speaker 2: say that it is an eight, nine or ten in
Speaker 2: terms of importance. So they ask them like, okay, on
Speaker 2: a scale of one to ten, how important is this
Speaker 2: issue actually for you? And that's a very it's a
Speaker 2: very good way of doing polling because a lot of
Speaker 2: times people will say like, oh, yeah, I care about
Speaker 2: this or I care about.
Speaker 3: That, but they don't really and then don't really vote
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: But you have forty three percent of voter saying it's
Speaker 2: actually a ten.
Speaker 3: For them, like this is so important to them.
Speaker 2: And I think that's been borne out by the election
Speaker 2: results that we've seen. I mean, just recently in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: the ultimate swing state, you had a liberal potential state
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justice who ultimately wins because she leaned into
Speaker 2: the issue of abortion, and she won by more than
Speaker 2: ten points.
Speaker 3: It wasn't even close.
Speaker 2: So you see the way that this has completely upended
Speaker 2: our politics in a way that I truly didn't necessarily anticipate.
Speaker 2: So this has become central and it has truly exposed
Speaker 2: a divide within the Republican Party too. They are scrambling
Speaker 2: to figure out what is their position.
Speaker 3: How are they going to deal with this?
Speaker 2: That six percent or so for whom this is their
Speaker 2: number one issue, they have always punched above their weight electorally,
Speaker 2: especially within the Republican base, because they are highly organized
Speaker 2: and so it's been a very important key block to
Speaker 2: affiliate yourself with. And prior to Row being overturned, it
Speaker 2: was very easy for candidates to do that because number one,
Speaker 2: they could pass something at the national level, and they
Speaker 2: did pass some theoretical bands at the national level, and
Speaker 2: there were no stakes because it wasn't real It wasn't
Speaker 2: actually going to change the landscape of abortion in most
Speaker 2: places across the country. So it was enough to just
Speaker 2: like Trump be you know, in favor of overturning Roe
Speaker 2: versus Weight, and you didn't have to say a lot
Speaker 2: more than that. But now that you're sort of having
Speaker 2: to outline the specifics of okay, how far do we go,
Speaker 2: it has exposed a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: I actually think that the nine out of ten, the
Speaker 1: eight to nine out of ten, for a lot of voters,
Speaker 1: that's the greatest defeat for the pro life movement because
Speaker 1: for a long time pro lifers weren't that they're not
Speaker 1: that many of them, but it was their number one
Speaker 1: issue or number two, you know, And now to make
Speaker 1: it so that that now is the number one or
Speaker 1: number two issue for people who are against you, that's
Speaker 1: kind of their apathy based on the status quo is
Speaker 1: kind of what was letting them float, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of their electoral importance. Yeah, if you're going to
Speaker 1: go head to head, you're obviously going to lose. I mean,
Speaker 1: I always thought that I didn't think it would ever
Speaker 1: go to a nine or ten, you know, in general,
Speaker 1: always thought the economic issues would count. But you know, look,
Speaker 1: it's clear, like you don't really don't want to screw
Speaker 1: with existing things, And I think that's a it's a
Speaker 1: tough thing for people to wrap their heads around. Like
Speaker 1: if you go back and look at Obamacare, Like everyone
Speaker 1: hated the American health care system, but by not like
Speaker 1: really fully fixing it and just kind of trying to
Speaker 1: tweak you made it actually way worse. And you, by
Speaker 1: screwing with existing people's health care and then not also
Speaker 1: even really delivering a lot of upside to the people
Speaker 1: who don't have health care, you got the worst of
Speaker 1: all worlds. I kind of look at it this almost
Speaker 1: the same way where you know, whenever you have a
Speaker 1: system that was largely in place, people were mostly cool
Speaker 1: and refined with it. You take that away, people are
Speaker 1: going to get really upset.
Speaker 2: A sense of loss is a very powerful political force,
Speaker 2: That's true. This is a lot of Actually what animates
Speaker 2: the Republican base is a sense of loss, a sense
Speaker 2: of loss of cultural position, a sense of loss of
Speaker 2: you know, the vitality of their towns, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: so I think, you know, this is created a real
Speaker 2: sense of loss of rights that people thought they could
Speaker 2: take for ranted among a large portion of the electorate.
Speaker 2: So it has become highly motivating. And you're right that
Speaker 2: it used to be that that energy was on the
Speaker 2: other side that yeah, you had the numbers where a
Speaker 2: sort of slim majority would think of themselves as pro choice.
Speaker 2: Most people were never in the camp of we want
Speaker 2: to ban all abortion at all times or with very
Speaker 2: very limited exceptions. But now that group has become very
Speaker 2: highly motivated, and you know, it has completely shifted the
Speaker 2: dynamics of this issue.
Speaker 3: And who has the upper hand here?
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, it's one of those where it opened up
Speaker 1: a Pandora's box. That and I actually, look, I will say,
Speaker 1: at least to our credit, we did often say that,
Speaker 1: you know, in the months before, said hey, you know,
Speaker 1: in June, this case is coming. We don't know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen now in terms of the way that
Speaker 1: it showed up in the polling and all that certainly
Speaker 1: you know was not weren't able to predict, But like
Speaker 1: the idea of a Pandora's box being opened was certainly
Speaker 1: I think one that we tried to feel here for
Speaker 1: many months and you know, almost a year out before
Speaker 1: it eventually dropped.
Speaker 4: So there you go, Pat myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go ahead and move on to Elon Musk
Speaker 1: As I said Crystal and I, it's over the era.
Speaker 1: Let's put it up there on the screen. We lost
Speaker 1: the Blue checks people we did not subscribe to Twitter.
Speaker 4: Blue don't have any intention currently.
Speaker 2: I'm not looking for ways of public humiliation. YEA, quite
Speaker 2: enough of those in my life already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, outside of the public humiliation, which I
Speaker 1: do actually agree. I said this on the red Scare podcast.
Speaker 1: Just I'm sorry, I can't explain why. I just personally
Speaker 1: do think it is cringe. But what are the benefits, like,
Speaker 1: what are the actual benefits we're talking about tweet amplification,
Speaker 1: we're talking about supposedly better services like longer tweets. First
Speaker 1: of all, I should barely tweet as it is. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I would need longer tweets, third longer video. Now,
Speaker 1: I think for some content creators that probably is something
Speaker 1: that you would want. But at the very least, you know,
Speaker 1: for breaking points and all. This the only reason that
Speaker 1: either of us subscribe to this if it wasn't going
Speaker 1: to help our business. We have never seen any conversion
Speaker 1: in terms of our paid or even our public YouTube
Speaker 1: channels only. Honestly, all Twitter is really good for is
Speaker 1: like publishing an announcement and then taking a screenshot of
Speaker 1: it and posting it on Instagram, where people actually are
Speaker 1: and seem to engage with our content. Crystal, I'm just
Speaker 1: explaining on a personal level. People were like, oh, why
Speaker 1: didn't you guys subscribe? You guys have a paid business model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean whenever we ask people to help us out
Speaker 1: for our paid subscription, Ay, we offer you a service.
Speaker 1: You know, we're giving you some benefit. But also, really
Speaker 1: what it's about is like, do you support our work?
Speaker 1: And you know, look, I support free speech.
Speaker 4: All of that, but I'm not going to lie to you.
Speaker 1: I do not really have a lot of confidence in
Speaker 1: the way that Twitter is being run, right, now just
Speaker 1: because of the sheer amount of chaos, like this is
Speaker 1: not really a mission that I personally want to buy into.
Speaker 1: Let's put the next one up there on the screen
Speaker 1: to just really show you exactly why. At the very
Speaker 1: same time that Elon was like, Okay, well I'm rolling
Speaker 1: out Twitter Blue. Only people will have blue checks who
Speaker 1: pay for them. Well, all of a sudden, accounts like
Speaker 1: Lebron James Stephen King remained having blue checks, and people.
Speaker 4: Have started asking questions. They're like, well, why is that.
Speaker 1: Well Elon came out and said, oh, well, I came
Speaker 1: out and I personally paid for their subscription. And yet
Speaker 1: we have now had hundreds of accounts that have over
Speaker 1: one million followers who it says in their check mark
Speaker 1: that they had subscribed to Twitter Blue and had verified
Speaker 1: their phone number. Yeah, and they're like, I didn't pay
Speaker 1: for this. And it appears that many accounts with over
Speaker 1: a million followers had their blue checks reinstated for no
Speaker 1: discernible reason. Maybe it was meant as a troll to
Speaker 1: make it look like they had paid for Twitter Blue,
Speaker 1: but more likely through some digging of our team and others.
Speaker 1: You know, here's an example, like somebody like Monica Lewinsky
Speaker 1: put it up there on the screen about how she
Speaker 1: also has her blue check and it actually is a
Speaker 1: tear sheet that she referenced. Elon is gifting to blue
Speaker 1: check to celebrities who quote don't even want one. They
Speaker 1: list several others, but there's no evidence that he's actually
Speaker 1: personally like eating the cost or personally paying for all
Speaker 1: of these other accounts that remain and have their blue
Speaker 1: check with over a million followers. It appears again appears
Speaker 1: that one of the reasons why it put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen is because quote unquote block the
Speaker 1: blue was trending on Twitter. Now, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why you would may want to make sure that accounts
Speaker 1: with over a million followers or so remain and have
Speaker 1: a blue check or are not blocked in order to
Speaker 1: try and reduce the amount of people who are doing
Speaker 1: the blocking is because those people with a million followers
Speaker 1: produce some of the most viral tweets and some of
Speaker 1: the most viral engaged content on the platform, which is
Speaker 1: what keeps you there, hence why they have a million
Speaker 1: followers in the first place. Well, what they point to
Speaker 1: is that by giving like former Legacy check mark holders
Speaker 1: who have over a million followers their blue check. It
Speaker 1: kind of disrupts the quote unquote block the blue movement,
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't want to block somebody who is somebody
Speaker 1: who you engage with quite a bit. But they also
Speaker 1: show crystal that it appears with the whole block the
Speaker 1: blue thing that the would have in a normal circumstance,
Speaker 1: it should have been trending in terms of the overall
Speaker 1: trending number of topics, it would have been number three,
Speaker 1: But it seems that Twitter artificially nuked that from their
Speaker 1: trending algorithm. So there's a lot of chaos going on,
Speaker 1: and you know, like, why would I pay for a
Speaker 1: product when you're also giving it away for free to
Speaker 1: other people. Now I have a new tab. Here's a
Speaker 1: fun one in my Twitter account that I was looking
Speaker 1: at verified organization. So let's say we wanted a VP
Speaker 1: account and we wanted to verify it. They want to
Speaker 1: charge us one thousand dollars a month, and for every
Speaker 1: additional affiliate account is fifty dollars, So a thousand bucks
Speaker 1: a month for me, you and the rest of the team.
Speaker 1: We will not go ahead and say yeah exactly, I mean,
Speaker 1: look at the end of the day, this is not
Speaker 1: our money. This is your hard earned money that you
Speaker 1: guys happen to help us out with our showy believe
Speaker 1: in our mission. We're not gonna be thrown this around
Speaker 1: like willy nilly when we got cameras, sets and lights
Speaker 1: to build. Sure, it may not be that much, but
Speaker 1: at this point it's about the principle don't pay for
Speaker 1: a service unless the service is useful.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, he managed to listen. If you're trying to
Speaker 2: sell a product, you how do you want a position?
Speaker 2: You want to make it like cool. You wanted something
Speaker 2: people want to associate themselves with. You want it to
Speaker 2: be a brand that they want to post about that
Speaker 2: they want to like associate their own personal you know,
Speaker 2: being in their own little personal brand building exercise with
Speaker 2: Elon has made.
Speaker 3: The Twitter blue thing.
Speaker 2: Truly, unless you're just like a total Elon stand, he
Speaker 2: really has made it a mark of shame. So not
Speaker 2: only were people not paying for Twitter Blue, people were
Speaker 2: like offloading Twitter blue because they didn't want to be
Speaker 2: harassed and bullied for having it on his own platform,
Speaker 2: And it was not inevitable that it would go that way,
Speaker 2: you know, but because the decision making has been so
Speaker 2: radic and because you know the benefits you get for
Speaker 2: it are certainly not worth it, and because it's not
Speaker 2: like the previous verification regime was flawed in a million Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying it was fair cool like I didn't,
Speaker 4: but actually.
Speaker 2: It didn't mean it was useful in a sense because
Speaker 2: you did actually know for some small subset that like,
Speaker 2: this really is this person, this really is this organization.
Speaker 2: Now it's completely meaningless except as a badge that you
Speaker 2: are so desperate for clout you're willing to pay for it.
Speaker 2: That's all that this indicates now, And that's why it's
Speaker 2: so that's like the core of why it's so embarrassing,
Speaker 2: because you are advertising to the world like I am
Speaker 2: so desperate for people to retweet me or like my
Speaker 2: tweets or like pay attention when I have to say
Speaker 2: that I'm willing to pay this person in order to
Speaker 2: make that happen. So then you add on top of that,
Speaker 2: why do I think that he is giving out these
Speaker 2: checkmarks to big accounts whatever some of it is because
Speaker 2: he is trying to mitigate the sense of shame that
Speaker 2: comes with having the blue check mark. At this point.
Speaker 2: So if you've got Lebron James, you got these you know, drill,
Speaker 2: these big accounts that have the blue check mark, then
Speaker 2: maybe he's hoping it will make it a little bit
Speaker 2: more socially acceptable because like the big cool guys have it,
Speaker 2: so I guess it's okay for other people to have
Speaker 2: it as well. But then in other instances, and I
Speaker 2: have to go Chrissy Teagan, who I don't necessarily give
Speaker 2: a lot of creditude often, but she.
Speaker 3: Made a great point.
Speaker 2: He's like he's giving them out his punishment, which tells
Speaker 2: you exactly how most people feel about the blue check mark.
Speaker 2: So people like Matt Binder, who's been reporting on all
Speaker 2: of this stuff, who I think he has like one
Speaker 2: hundred some thousand Twitter followers, he was given a blue
Speaker 2: check mark because he's been very adversarial towards Elon and
Speaker 2: he was basically given a blue check mark that he
Speaker 2: is unable to take off of his account as a
Speaker 2: sort of punishment.
Speaker 3: So imagine what.
Speaker 2: That says about the product that you are selling that
Speaker 2: not only do people not want to buy it, like
Speaker 2: they would go to great lengths to avoid having it,
Speaker 2: and you're dishing it out yourself as a mark of shade.
Speaker 1: It's also not necessarily any evidence that it's working. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead, guys, throw up D seven please, this is
Speaker 1: an important tweet. I mean, what we can see here
Speaker 1: is that for the day before the purge, nineteen four
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine of legacy verified accounts had Twitter Blue.
Speaker 1: The day after that blue accounts were taken off, only
Speaker 1: twenty eight increase on a net level of nineteen four
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety seven had joined. Now, this was just
Speaker 1: simply based on API by looking at it from an
Speaker 1: independent analysis. We don't have the current version, but that
Speaker 1: was the first update the day after the overall purge
Speaker 1: of people like Crystal and iiz account And look.
Speaker 4: I want to say this.
Speaker 1: It's tough because do I exist as a elon Tesla
Speaker 1: SpaceX fan outside of Twitter, Like, dude, do we exist
Speaker 1: people who are like I support Tesla. I think it's
Speaker 1: a cool company. I think SpaceX is a cool company.
Speaker 1: You know, the Starship thing launch, undenial it was awesome.
Speaker 1: But you can put those aside, but then also be like,
Speaker 1: what's happening here with tw or is a disaster. If
Speaker 1: we will all recall, here's what I'm begging you on
Speaker 1: to do. Abide by the poll results that we all
Speaker 1: voted in where we said we did not want you
Speaker 1: to be the CEO of Yeah. It was like, please leave,
Speaker 1: go back to the companies that you're actually good at running.
Speaker 4: Why did you do this? Well, why are you doing this?
Speaker 2: I think the fact that you feel the way you
Speaker 2: do about Listen. I'mm not a Elon fan and haven't
Speaker 2: been right, but the fact that you would have been
Speaker 2: open to this if you saw some benefit to it,
Speaker 2: Like there was another universe where this thing was run differently. Frankly,
Speaker 2: there was another universe where if he had truly stuck
Speaker 2: to like, this is going to be a public town square,
Speaker 2: and this is going to be run not by market
Speaker 2: principles but by free speech principles. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: stick to my guns the way like Substack has been
Speaker 2: run in a way that I really admire and appreciate.
Speaker 2: There was another world where he persuaded me and overcame
Speaker 2: my doubts about his potential leadership of this company. We
Speaker 2: do not live in that world. I think that has
Speaker 2: become very clear. And that number that there were only
Speaker 2: a net twenty not twenty eight hundred, not twenty eighth
Speaker 2: twenty eight additional Twitter Blue subscribers among legacy verified accounts.
Speaker 3: I mean that tells you everything too. From a business.
Speaker 2: Perspective, this is just a disaster. And you know, I
Speaker 2: use Twitter less and less, not because I'm trying to
Speaker 2: make some like principled stand and I'm going to master
Speaker 2: it or whatever. I just find it sort of moribund.
Speaker 2: I find it's sort of dead. I find it's sort
Speaker 2: of sad. There's way too many frickin' ads in my
Speaker 2: timeline these days, and I just don't find it as
Speaker 2: useful and vital as I used to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will say I hate my for you page.
Speaker 1: I think it's awful. I keep trying to default to
Speaker 1: my follower page. I follow people for a reason. I
Speaker 1: do not want to learn how to get into real
Speaker 1: estate investing. I'm sorry, you know, I've been listening to
Speaker 1: Christly you know this. I've been on a big Dave
Speaker 1: Ramsey kick. I've like thirty hours of Dave Ramsey. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry people, As he says, the tic tac generation will
Speaker 1: not teach you how to win in real estate. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't really know what's going on.
Speaker 1: My warrior page is awful, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: you're it's a good point. I actually pay for a
Speaker 1: ton of substacks and patroons.
Speaker 4: I was going through my subscriptions.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about like hundreds of dollars a year, which
Speaker 1: is probably not a wise decision, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them are people like Taibi and Glenn Greenwald or even
Speaker 1: Brianna Joy Gray the Red Scare pot. I pay these
Speaker 1: people because I support their work. I like them, I
Speaker 1: support their mission. I don't even agree with some of
Speaker 1: the people that I pay for. I just think that
Speaker 1: they're doing cool stuff, and I just like, we have
Speaker 1: this stuff for business. I try to do people like
Speaker 1: Ethan Strauss House of Strauss over sports subste I don't
Speaker 1: even like sports, but I like the guys, so I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll go pay now. Part of the reason
Speaker 1: why I do that again is because it's mission based.
Speaker 1: Now Here with the Twitter like yeah, look I support
Speaker 1: free Spook, but you got to actually do it, you know,
Speaker 1: on a practical level. I didn't agree with the Kanye
Speaker 1: Ben I don't agree with the capriciousness. I didn't agree
Speaker 1: with those initial suspension of those journalists. I think so
Speaker 1: much of what's happened is chaos, even the removal of
Speaker 1: the check marks chaos because now the million it's like,
Speaker 1: now you're devaluing my product. I pay for this, but
Speaker 1: if all I had to do was get six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand more followers, and you know I could do that, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't I just do that? You know? So it's
Speaker 1: one of those where obviously that's out of reach for
Speaker 1: somebody's got two thousand followers, but you know, you and
Speaker 1: I combined have about a million followers. If we engage more.
Speaker 1: We don't even tweet that much we wanted to, it
Speaker 1: probably could. So it's one of those where anyway, I
Speaker 1: think you put it all together and I don't see
Speaker 1: it compelling narrative or a case yea for really paying
Speaker 1: for this.
Speaker 2: Even the okay you can post longer videos, like why
Speaker 2: would I do that when I'm going to pay you
Speaker 2: to post a long video? When when we pay post
Speaker 2: a long video on YouTube? Guess what, there's monetization because
Speaker 2: they actually value the creators.
Speaker 3: You know, I got issues with.
Speaker 2: Issues we've made, but they actually understand that the creators
Speaker 2: on the platform are what gives the thing lifeblood, whereas
Speaker 2: Elon has just made himself totally antagonistic even to some
Speaker 2: people like that Tybee, who were you know, supportive and yeah,
Speaker 2: and so it's like, okay, if you're going to just
Speaker 2: be an asshole to all the people who actually make
Speaker 2: Twitter an interesting place to be, then you know, obviously
Speaker 2: your products is going to be somewhat less useful here because,
Speaker 2: as you said, Sager, what we've really realized in running
Speaker 2: this business is, yeah, we make sure, you know, we
Speaker 2: do an ama for the premium subscribers. We're going to
Speaker 2: give them first look at the new set, right because
Speaker 2: we value you. But full show, full show, all those things.
Speaker 2: I know those things are important. But what a lot
Speaker 2: of people come here for is because they believe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they just believe it.
Speaker 1: That's it's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not a lot of people believe in the
Speaker 2: Twitter mission. At this point, I would.
Speaker 4: Say, well, good luck.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you can turn around. We'll see.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm doubtful. All right, let's go to BuzzFeed.
Speaker 1: I have a lot to say about this interesting, a
Speaker 1: fascinating case study. I try not to dance on anybody's grave,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's difficult sometimes when you particularly despise
Speaker 1: a certain news organization. Let's go to put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen. Here is the memo that was
Speaker 1: sent by Jonah Peretti, who was the CE of BuzzFeed,
Speaker 1: to all of his staff, and in it he announces
Speaker 1: that BuzzFeed News is going to be shutting down. For
Speaker 1: those who don't know, BuzzFeed News was the original, I
Speaker 1: would say, the demarcation point for news on the internet. Ye,
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed in two thousand and nine. In twenty ten was booming.
Speaker 1: It was everywhere. It was all over Facebook. People were
Speaker 1: taking which Harry Potterhouse or you quizzes When I was
Speaker 1: in college, very cringe in retrospect, but that was taking off,
Speaker 1: and they said, we have all this traffic, We've got
Speaker 1: all these advertising dollars. You know what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: We're going to start a news organization. They decided to
Speaker 1: try and treat news the way that tech companies had
Speaker 1: treated tech. In other words, get big fast. So what
Speaker 1: did they do. They hired tons of journalists, all of
Speaker 1: these legacy with other people like Ben Smith, who will be
Speaker 1: having it on the show.
Speaker 4: Actually it just wrote a book.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk to him a little bit about
Speaker 1: this because he was the editor in chief. He brought
Speaker 1: on all these journal they won a Pulitzer Prize, and
Speaker 1: all of it was bilt on the idea that you
Speaker 1: can do award winning journalism at a new online outlet
Speaker 1: and you can completely change the game and you can
Speaker 1: replace the New York Times.
Speaker 4: Well what happened. They just got shut down. They went
Speaker 4: out our business.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is that Peretti references
Speaker 1: in that memo where he sent out is they're cutting
Speaker 1: costs fifteen percent across the board. But really what he
Speaker 1: admits is I should have been more responsible with our finances.
Speaker 1: And I think what I have always thought about BuzzFeed,
Speaker 1: about Mike dot Com, about Bustle, about all of these
Speaker 1: or you know these places which are you know has
Speaker 1: beens and you don't even think about it anymore, is
Speaker 1: they were mainstream media repackaged as what people who are
Speaker 1: executives wanted news from millennials to look like. Here's the truth,
Speaker 1: you know what news from millennials really wanted. You're watching it.
Speaker 1: I mean millions of people watch the show, the vast
Speaker 1: majority of them are millennials and younger, and I think
Speaker 1: what it was is a removal from that kind of
Speaker 1: mainstream not only packaging, from the mainstream narratives on all
Speaker 1: the things that come through legacy people inside of media.
Speaker 1: You're looking at, you know, shows like I mean across
Speaker 1: the ideological spectrum. If you are a young Republican today,
Speaker 1: are you watching Fox News or are you watching Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro or the Tim Poole Show. Already know the answer,
Speaker 1: you know, And cause I talk to these people, you
Speaker 1: know they would care much more about what those two
Speaker 1: had to say, any of the Daily Wire crowd, the
Speaker 1: Tim Poole Show, Stephen Crowder, any of these folks. If
Speaker 1: you're a young Democrat today, let's say you're a young
Speaker 1: neo lib Democrat, you're not watching MSNBC. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the crooked media folks, yes over pod Save America. And
Speaker 1: if you're a lefty birdie person, you know you're watching
Speaker 1: Kyle Kolinski or Jimmy Dore or any of these folks
Speaker 1: our show in some cases, and you know, on the
Speaker 1: Republican side, we see many young Republicans who watch the
Speaker 1: show as well. You are not consuming this type of
Speaker 1: packaged nonsense. And I think that that's really where they
Speaker 1: went wrong, both on a business level but on a
Speaker 1: narrative level. They were just wrong. Young people did not
Speaker 1: want to consume the news that way.
Speaker 3: I think there was there were a lot of failures.
Speaker 2: Number one, there is an element of the like go woken,
Speaker 2: go broke thing, because they really twenty ten's you know, bustle,
Speaker 2: like they really leaned into that, like girl boss feminism,
Speaker 2: can they they leaned into that that moment. And I
Speaker 2: think there was also a failure to evolve, right. I
Speaker 2: mean since the launch of Rising, which is much more
Speaker 2: recent than the launch of BuzzFeed, you know, we have
Speaker 2: always been trying to think about what's going to make
Speaker 2: the show relevant in the moment, right, And so when
Speaker 2: COVID hit and we're like, okay, you know what we're
Speaker 2: doing is about to totally change. When the Ukraine War happened,
Speaker 2: like there was another big, big shift. You know, we've
Speaker 2: leaned more into hard news than we used to lean
Speaker 2: So we've tried to evolve for what the what our
Speaker 2: audience may need for the moment. And BuzzFeed had this
Speaker 2: initial inside but inside BuzzFeed news that you could put
Speaker 2: like real news and real journalism, which did happen at BuzzFeed.
Speaker 2: By the way, there were a lot of truly you know,
Speaker 2: solid journalists who got their start at BuzzFeed News. We
Speaker 2: can package that alongside these like listicles and the Harry
Speaker 2: Potter quizes and whatever, and you know what, at the moment,
Speaker 2: that actually worked. It did drive a lot of traffic.
Speaker 2: It was successful in bringing in eyeballs. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of viral content. Apparently, their biggest day in the
Speaker 2: entire cump history of BuzzFeed News was that day of
Speaker 2: like the dress, you know, when people were looking at
Speaker 2: that dress and like trying to arguing what color it
Speaker 2: was and remember those.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I'm just like.
Speaker 2: That was the sort of but that was the sort
Speaker 2: of stuff they were like.
Speaker 3: Prime to capitalize on, you know.
Speaker 2: So there was a failure to shift in terms of
Speaker 2: the type of content and make it relevant for the
Speaker 2: current day and for what their their audience was looking
Speaker 2: for at that point in their lives, or bringing in new,
Speaker 2: younger audience or whatever.
Speaker 3: So there was that.
Speaker 2: There was also a failure of business model, which I
Speaker 2: think is really core to this.
Speaker 3: You know, they took in so much money, Yeah, we
Speaker 3: have that actually yeah, put what is that E go to.
Speaker 1: Go mean, Yeah, Look, they raised seven hundred.
Speaker 3: Million dollars and that was true Mike too.
Speaker 2: I mean, Mike was this new sex all millennial, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. They raised tons of There were a bunch
Speaker 2: of these startups at the time that basically off of
Speaker 2: the success of BuzzFeed were getting huge valuations, huge raises,
Speaker 2: all this money in and they were betting the farm
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases on social media distribution and monetization.
Speaker 2: The first big shoot to drop was when Facebook changed
Speaker 2: their algorithm, and that killed a lot of these I mean,
Speaker 2: that is what killed Mike, and it killed a whole
Speaker 2: lot of other places. And I know BuzzFeed was a
Speaker 2: little more diversified in terms of their like social media
Speaker 2: distribution and monetization strategy, but I know it hammered them
Speaker 2: as well, and I don't think they were ever able
Speaker 2: to recover. Ben Smith, who you mentioned, was editor in
Speaker 2: chief and really responsible for a lot of building up
Speaker 2: BuzzFeed to what it was at its peak. He put
Speaker 2: out a sort of analysis of what he went wrong,
Speaker 2: and that was one of the things that he really
Speaker 2: kind of pointed to here and at his new organization,
Speaker 2: which is Semaphore. It's funny because some of the organizations
Speaker 2: that are thriving now it's almost like a.
Speaker 3: Throwback, like newsletters on substack.
Speaker 2: Many of them are very successful, right, But the core
Speaker 2: piece now is you can't rely on YouTube, you can't
Speaker 2: rely on Facebook, you can't rely on any of these
Speaker 2: platforms because not only is the monetization all over the place,
Speaker 2: but they can nuke you like that in an instant
Speaker 2: and you will never recover. So you have to have
Speaker 2: some way of actually investing your audience in what you're
Speaker 2: doing and providing them something that they're actually will believe
Speaker 2: in and are willing to pay for. And if you're
Speaker 2: not doing that, then I think in this current landscape,
Speaker 2: it it's going to.
Speaker 1: Be game K.
Speaker 4: You're dead. And actually that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I'm very thankful for the exist since of BuzzFeed, Mike
Speaker 1: and all these other failures Bashable, I could go on
Speaker 1: Bustle all at Gawker, Jes, I keep going. It's not
Speaker 1: like I enjoy this or anything. The point was is
Speaker 1: that when you and I were building this business, what
Speaker 1: is the number? We're like, we have to mitigate all risk.
Speaker 1: If YouTube goes down tomorrow, we will be completely fine.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying it wouldn't suck, but we completely Yeah.
Speaker 1: If we get banned by Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as
Speaker 1: has happened to certain people, okay, we'll still be completely
Speaker 1: fine if you even if the payment processor or something,
Speaker 1: we have mitigation techniques all built into the very fabric
Speaker 1: of the business. At the end of the day, we
Speaker 1: have the direct payment relationship with you. We don't even
Speaker 1: need supercats who we love, you know, our processor, who
Speaker 1: are happy to be a partner with. But let's say
Speaker 1: that they decided to kick us off. Fine, we have
Speaker 1: our direct customer relationship. We insisted on that from day one.
Speaker 1: We have email. Nobody can ban you them from that. Basically,
Speaker 1: all you really need is an email client. So outside
Speaker 1: of an ISP level ban on breaking points, we will exist.
Speaker 1: We can crawl our way through it, and financially we
Speaker 1: will survive. You know, even what would really be like
Speaker 1: a nuclear attack in terms of being completely banned off
Speaker 1: of that, and it was built into the fabric. That's
Speaker 1: also why at the top of our show what are
Speaker 1: we ask for? We always talk about premium subscriptions because
Speaker 1: we know that that is the lifeblood of any business
Speaker 1: which is flirting in any way with something which is risky,
Speaker 1: which media is, and they decided not to do that.
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed died because of Facebook, but also it died because
Speaker 1: of the hubris and the foolishness of people like Jonah
Speaker 1: Peretti who believed that that you know, was going to
Speaker 1: sail at the end of the day. How many YouTube
Speaker 1: ebbs and flows have you and I been through in
Speaker 1: just a couple of years. You'd be an idiot to
Speaker 1: build your business just off of the same in the podcast.
Speaker 1: You know right now we're booming on the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: not stupid. I know one day it'll go down, and
Speaker 1: so are you. You know, we're like and then when
Speaker 1: you plan for it. You know, that's one of those
Speaker 1: things where these were what business owners have long dealt with.
Speaker 1: They raised money based on a false dream. And actually,
Speaker 1: what I think is more cruel is they hire a
Speaker 1: lot of people. You know, they're paying out full Benny's
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff which they could not afford
Speaker 1: to pay. And that's wrong, you know, when you hire
Speaker 1: people on a false promise. And I just saw a
Speaker 1: tweet on my timeline some lady who's five months pregnant.
Speaker 1: She's just got fired, you know, because you were an idiot.
Speaker 4: As a boss.
Speaker 1: That's wrong, you know. And look, maybe she knew what
Speaker 1: she was getting into, although I doubt it. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of people just want to get a job,
Speaker 1: and so you know, once again, I can cheer for
Speaker 1: the death of the organization, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: you know, some five month old lady or five month
Speaker 1: pregnant lady.
Speaker 3: That's not right. No, absolutely, absolutely terrible.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think the overhead is another piece, like
Speaker 2: you just have to be so much more nimble, and
Speaker 2: our overhead, because we care a lot about the production
Speaker 2: value and abilities.
Speaker 3: Very high, is a lot higher than.
Speaker 2: A lot of other you know, similar sort of positioned
Speaker 2: products that are out there. But that's something that you
Speaker 2: know has always been core and really important to you all.
Speaker 2: But still compared to BuzzFeed, compared to all the amount
Speaker 2: of money, what was the name of that other video
Speaker 2: play that just went under that had raised.
Speaker 1: Like Auzie, Well, Ozzy is another one.
Speaker 3: But wasn't this like a Hilman or help rund was?
Speaker 4: Oh the recount?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the recount?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they raised thirty million.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And again I'm.
Speaker 7: Like, yeah, thirty million, what are you doing with thirty
Speaker 7: million dollars? And basically all they were doing was like
Speaker 7: clipping newsreels and stuff. I'm like, how does this cause
Speaker 7: you so much fun? That level of overhead unjustifiable. And
Speaker 7: so there's basically two business models that work right now.
Speaker 7: Number One, people believe in what you're doing. They're willing
Speaker 7: to pay some amount of month. Or number two, you're
Speaker 7: doing like an insider tip sheet that lobbyists and you
Speaker 7: know and people in DC are willing to pay big
Speaker 7: bucks for to get a little edge on like what's
Speaker 7: coming down from the Transportation Committee or whatever. Those are
Speaker 7: the two models that really work right now. And yeah,
Speaker 7: the newsletter it is sort of a throwback because email
Speaker 7: is something they can take away from you that you
Speaker 7: have control over. And that's the model that is really succeeding.
Speaker 3: At the moment.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, please take a look at on the eve.
Speaker 2: Of Joe Biden's reelection announcement, one thing has become incredibly clear.
Speaker 2: The media does not want you to think you have
Speaker 2: any other options. In article after article they declare that
Speaker 2: Biden has no quote serious primary opponent, as if that
Speaker 2: is up to them to decide. Their Democratic primary polls
Speaker 2: reflect laundry lists of candidates who have no intention of running,
Speaker 2: while leaving the actual declared candidates off of the list,
Speaker 2: and sometimes the media they just outright lie, all in
Speaker 2: service of making sure that as much as the Democratic
Speaker 2: primary base wants to move on from Biden, they are
Speaker 2: not allowed to even evaluate the existing alternatives. The very
Speaker 2: same tactics they used against every anti establishment Democratic candidate,
Speaker 2: from Bernie to Yang to Tulsi.
Speaker 3: They are all back with a vengeance.
Speaker 2: The media and the Democratic Party have spent the last
Speaker 2: eight years waxing poetic about democracy, but at every turn
Speaker 2: they show their contempt towards voters and the actual democratic process.
Speaker 2: No one has been more smeared and erased in this
Speaker 2: process than Maryan Williamson. Has no accident that this effort
Speaker 2: has escalated, just as she's begun to show a bit
Speaker 2: of real momentum. In recent weeks, Marianne is pulled as
Speaker 2: high as fourteen percent in battleground states, ten percent nationally,
Speaker 2: over twenty percent with young voters. This enthusiasm of young
Speaker 2: voters has become particularly visible on their platform of choice,
Speaker 2: That would be TikTok as Ryan Grimm documented Williamson has
Speaker 2: become an outright sensation there. Her videos and fan accounts,
Speaker 2: they rack up millions of views sharing her comments on politics,
Speaker 2: on life and her critique of Joe Biden and the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party. The enthusiasm for Marianne by anyone on any platform, though,
Speaker 2: simply can't be tolerated by the Biden team and their
Speaker 2: allies who dare to call themselves journalists.
Speaker 3: Take a look at this article that was flagged by
Speaker 3: Katie Halper.
Speaker 2: Writers wrote an entire piece that was supposed to be
Speaker 2: just a completely neutral listing of the current and potential
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four contenders on both the Democratic and Republican sides.
Speaker 2: It's titled fact Box twenty twenty four US Presidential Election,
Speaker 2: Who was in, who is out, and who is still
Speaker 2: thinking about it? But this so called fact contains the
Speaker 2: opposite of facts. They included everyone from Asa Hutchinson, who
Speaker 2: pulls at zero percent, to Chris Sinunu, who pulls at
Speaker 2: zero percent, to Mike Pompeo, who pulls at zero percent
Speaker 2: and has already said he is not running. To my surprise,
Speaker 2: they actually did include RFK Junior, although they.
Speaker 3: Weirdly didn't bowld his name the way that they did.
Speaker 2: All the other candidates, for some reason conspicuously left off
Speaker 2: this list altogether. However, was Marian Williamson, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that she is pulling higher than the vast majority of
Speaker 2: contenders that they did bother to name. I simply cannot
Speaker 2: believe that someone who calls themselves a political journalist doesn't
Speaker 2: know who Mariann Williamson is. She's been in public life
Speaker 2: for decades. She was a candidate last time around as well.
Speaker 2: The only realistic explanation of this omission is that it
Speaker 2: was an intentional lie, motivated either by arrogant contempt towards
Speaker 2: Marian or to curry favor with the Biden regime. Now,
Speaker 2: Mary and herself replied to this so called journalist on Twitter,
Speaker 2: asking are you under the impression I do not exist
Speaker 2: or that I am not running? Under pressure, Reuters was
Speaker 2: forced to do a stealth edit of the article to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that Mary Williamson does in fact exist and is
Speaker 2: in fact running for president. As if it isn't enough
Speaker 2: that they ignore Marian unless they're smearing her. Of course,
Speaker 2: the media's most damaging tactic is their acceptance and propagation
Speaker 2: of an anti democracy status quo, especially when it comes
Speaker 2: to the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: If the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: Was planning to have no debates and just simply to
Speaker 2: annoint Donald Trump all of these supposed guardians of democracy,
Speaker 2: they would be rending their garments and melting down about
Speaker 2: authoritarianism and fascism. But when the DNC breaks the primary
Speaker 2: states for Biden plans zero debates, they just accept this
Speaker 2: as a matter of course.
Speaker 3: Of course they would do this. The Washington Post turned
Speaker 3: in a perfect.
Speaker 2: Example of this with their big article about Biden getting
Speaker 2: set to announce his reelect.
Speaker 3: In it, they assert, with zero.
Speaker 2: Judgment that quote, the National Democratic Party has said it
Speaker 2: will support Biden's reelection and it has no plans to
Speaker 2: sponsor primary debates. They go on to offer the standard
Speaker 2: line about how Biden faces no quote serious challenge. This
Speaker 2: total shutdown on public debate is even more detrimental to democracy.
Speaker 2: Since Biden has sat for far fewer interviews and held
Speaker 2: fewer press conferences than any president since Ronald Reagan, he
Speaker 2: remains in hiding from the American people and the press.
Speaker 2: They just accept it. Democracy dies in darkness, right, guys.
Speaker 2: When Marianne does get coverage. It shows why the press
Speaker 2: and the Biden team are so desperate to hide her
Speaker 2: very existence. In a recent cable news appearance, one of
Speaker 2: the rare times she was actually invited on since launching
Speaker 2: her bid, she had a lot to say about elite
Speaker 2: democratic failures.
Speaker 3: Take a listen.
Speaker 5: I think that one of the things we've talked about
Speaker 5: here already is that things are not okay. We have
Speaker 5: thirty nine percent of Americans who now report, forty four
Speaker 5: percent of millennials that they have skipped meals in order
Speaker 5: to pay their rents. We have one in four Americans
Speaker 5: who live with medical debt. We have sixty four percent
Speaker 5: of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck, sixty percent
Speaker 5: of Americans who could not absorb a four hundred dollars
Speaker 5: unexpected expenditure. Look at those facets that I just talked
Speaker 5: to about, and you talked to me about mental health.
Speaker 5: We talk about the mental health crisis. We need to
Speaker 5: talk about what's at the root of that, and to
Speaker 5: talk about how much of that comes from chronic economic anxiety.
Speaker 1: We have a political class.
Speaker 5: We have a political class that is not planning any
Speaker 5: fundamental economic reform. And I'm running for president I'm running
Speaker 5: as a Democrat because incremental change is not enough when
Speaker 5: you have a lack of universal health care, although we
Speaker 5: have it in every other advanced democracy, every other danceing
Speaker 5: democracy has tuition free college, you know, which we had
Speaker 5: until the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm old enough, Allison.
Speaker 5: There was a time in this far away land called
Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies when the average American there was a
Speaker 5: thriving middle class. The average American worker had decent benefits,
Speaker 5: could afford a home, could afford a car, could afford
Speaker 5: a yearly vacation, could afford to send one parent to
Speaker 5: keep one parent could stay home if they wished, and
Speaker 5: they could afford to send their kids to college. So, no,
Speaker 5: people are not okay. And I'm running for president because
Speaker 5: we need a fundamental economic return, not just incremental change.
Speaker 5: People need to have health care in this country, need
Speaker 5: to be able to go to college. People need the
Speaker 5: bandwidth to thrive. And if all a politician can say
Speaker 5: is I'll help you survive an unjeal system in the
Speaker 5: richest country in the world, something wrong. We need someone
Speaker 5: from outside that system to say the system should not
Speaker 5: be unjust. We need an economic return and that's what
Speaker 5: I will do if I'm elected president.
Speaker 2: Now that clip has already racked up hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of views on TikTok, so you won't be surprised to
Speaker 2: learn Biden team trying to silence her there as well.
Speaker 2: According to Mariyan campaign volunteer Tim Cox, TikTok moderators have
Speaker 2: banned at least two Maryan supporter accounts, Mary and Williamson
Speaker 2: for Pres and Lefty Takeover. These accounts had tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of followers, no terms of service violations, but they
Speaker 2: were spammed by Biden supporters mass reporting them, according to Cox. Now,
Speaker 2: I spoke with the woman who runs the Mary and
Speaker 2: Williamson for Press account and she confirmed that this had
Speaker 2: indeed happened.
Speaker 3: She told me that quote.
Speaker 2: The account is still banned, and I have not heard
Speaker 2: a single peep back from TikTok on why they took
Speaker 2: my account down.
Speaker 3: I broke no rules.
Speaker 2: These heavy handed tactics reveal a Biden team much more
Speaker 2: nervous than their public bluster.
Speaker 3: What have you believe?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Look, no one's going to deny it.
Speaker 2: Is exceptionally difficult to oust any incumbent president. However, this
Speaker 2: one does have some real vulnerabilities. Don't take my word
Speaker 2: for it, just ask the voters. Seventy three percent of
Speaker 2: voters wish the current president would not run again. That
Speaker 2: includes a majority of Democrats. Only one third of voters
Speaker 2: believe Biden deserves to be re elected, and majorities disapprove
Speaker 2: of his handling on every major issue that was tested
Speaker 2: in a recent CNN poll. Majorities say he is not honest,
Speaker 2: does not care about people like them, and cannot work
Speaker 2: effectively with Congress. But while Americans might be dissatisfied with
Speaker 2: Biden across a range of issues, the biggest questions are
Speaker 2: about his basic capacity to serve in the office at all.
Speaker 2: Sixty five percent say he doesn't inspire confidence, and sixty
Speaker 2: seven percent say he doesn't have the stamina and sharpness
Speaker 2: to serve effectively as President of the United States. Who
Speaker 2: can blame them for wondering if the oldest US president
Speaker 2: in history is really up to the task.
Speaker 8: So thank you all, God bless you all.
Speaker 5: Let's go, let's go, let.
Speaker 1: The world must get it done.
Speaker 8: Representative Jackie, you here, I think to be here more
Speaker 8: than half the women in my cabinet, more than more
Speaker 8: than half to be with my cabin. More than half
Speaker 8: of the women on the in my administration are women.
Speaker 8: How either of you're Rowland Egger being the you know,
Speaker 8: the guy who's.
Speaker 2: Pushing them out, and so Biden scronies don't want to
Speaker 2: contrast with anyone who can articulate a perspective and who
Speaker 2: is unafraid to expose the failures.
Speaker 3: Of the elite political and media class.
Speaker 2: I am reminded that Diane Feinstein was able to hold
Speaker 2: on for her last reelection by avoiding interviews, debates, town halls,
Speaker 2: anything that would expose her to constituents. Just how unable
Speaker 2: to do the job she really was. The Biden camp
Speaker 2: here is similarly desperate to hide their guy and persuade
Speaker 2: everyone that there is no actual contest. Whatever you think
Speaker 2: any of these candidates Biden, rfk Junior and Marianne at
Speaker 2: the very least, we deserve actual debates, demand that the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party live up to the bare minimum of their
Speaker 2: pro democracy rhetoric, and Sager, it's just amazing to me
Speaker 2: that the feel so entitled to decide for themselves who's
Speaker 2: a serious candidate that they just leave around entirely and
Speaker 2: think that's totally fine.
Speaker 3: Don't include her and.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 3: All right, Sager, what you're looking at.
Speaker 1: Something that I always try and do on the show
Speaker 1: is understand where people are coming from, even if I disagree,
Speaker 1: Actually even more so when I do disagree, because otherwise
Speaker 1: things just evolve into something unhelpful. And I will admit
Speaker 1: that's certainly harder when it comes to certain topics, but
Speaker 1: I do my best, and that's why I really want
Speaker 1: to delve into a topic that I have been spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time on recently, the rise of affirmative
Speaker 1: action America. Now, on its face, affirmative action America is
Speaker 1: built on an idea I do agree with. Our institutions
Speaker 1: are unfair, corrupt, and they do penalize the poorest amongst us,
Speaker 1: who are made up of poor whites, poor blacks, poor Latinos,
Speaker 1: and many others. We should fix that right now. American
Speaker 1: society is probably more nepotistic and oligarchic than at any
Speaker 1: point in our history since the Gilded Age. But how
Speaker 1: we fix that is the big disagreement. It comes back
Speaker 1: to the concepts that I brought up here earlier. Do
Speaker 1: you strive for equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?
Speaker 1: Equality of opportunity is the goal in which everyone starts
Speaker 1: off from the same place, and then when they end
Speaker 1: up in different ends of the income or societal spectrum,
Speaker 1: you can at least have relative faith they deserve quote
Speaker 1: unquote to be there, with the caveat that nobody ends
Speaker 1: up destitute. Equality of outcome effectively means that a person's
Speaker 1: outcome is predetermined by quotas and other normalizing efforts to
Speaker 1: make sure that all races, all creeds come to the
Speaker 1: same place, regardless of disparities and effort. Now, unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: left establishment in this country has made their choice post
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. They're going for equality of outcome, otherwise known
Speaker 1: as equity, a key pillar of the so called diversity,
Speaker 1: equity and inclusion religion founded in affirmative action. I've already
Speaker 1: discussed here the San Francisco Algebra for non experiment how
Speaker 1: it penalized black and Hispanic students while also penalizing high
Speaker 1: achieve in Asian and white students. It is likely the
Speaker 1: future of American higher education, and at the very least,
Speaker 1: though that was a local story. The one today, though,
Speaker 1: is worse because it actually affects the entire country, and
Speaker 1: it too is rooted in inequality of outcome mandate by
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. This is a bombshell. News actually came
Speaker 1: in the form of a very small notice press release
Speaker 1: from the Federal Housing Finance Agency regulates Fanny May, Freddie
Speaker 1: Mack and the federal home loan banks. It's agency created
Speaker 1: after two thousand and eight to ensure another financial collapse
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. But like all institutions, now they've departed their
Speaker 1: original mission. I don't now focus on quote equity in housing.
Speaker 1: The new rule actually does sound nice. The press release
Speaker 1: says it aims to increase housing ownership amongst minorities, But
Speaker 1: it takes a little bit of reading some complicated spreadsheets
Speaker 1: that they release to get to the truth. The way
Speaker 1: that they want to increase home ownership amongst minorities is
Speaker 1: by targeting lower credit score applicants for mortgages. The new rule,
Speaker 1: through something known is the loan level price adjusted matrix,
Speaker 1: will lower fees to those with lower credit scores. Now,
Speaker 1: how does it lower those fees by increasing them on
Speaker 1: people with higher credit scores? Under the new rules set
Speaker 1: to go into effect on May first, for mortgage lenders
Speaker 1: across those entire countries, buyers with the score ranging from
Speaker 1: six to eighty to seven eighty will have an increase
Speaker 1: in their overall mortgage cost than before. The most insane
Speaker 1: thing is that buyers who are responsible actually put down
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty percent will have the largest increase in fees.
Speaker 1: Consider someone who has saved up for years. They have
Speaker 1: paid off their loans, they worked hard, they didn't go
Speaker 1: out to eat, they drive a crappy car. Let's say
Speaker 1: that person has a seven to forty credit score is
Speaker 1: able to put down fifteen to twenty percent. That person
Speaker 1: will now face an overall one percent surcharge and fees
Speaker 1: as compared to the old fee of point twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: Now put that in perspective, it doesn't sound like a lot.
Speaker 1: But if you take out a four hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: loan with a six percent mortgage rate, the buyer would
Speaker 1: then expect their monthly payment to increase by forty dollars
Speaker 1: per month. Again, you can say that sounds small, forty
Speaker 1: dollars over thirty or mortgage is fourteen thousand dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: say that you have a credit score of under six
Speaker 1: seventy and you're only putting down five for you, your
Speaker 1: fees actually get cut in half. Now, once again, this
Speaker 1: is backwards. A person who is putting down less cash
Speaker 1: with worse credit is getting basically a thank you from
Speaker 1: the government. Now even crazier is that this is a
Speaker 1: moderate proposal actually put forward by the Admin. They have
Speaker 1: an even worse one that is set to go into
Speaker 1: effect in August. The new rule limits fees and considerations
Speaker 1: of brokers on those who have debt to income ratios
Speaker 1: of over forty percent. Think for one second, we're talking
Speaker 1: about making it easier for someone who has a debt
Speaker 1: to income ration of forty percent to increase the amount
Speaker 1: of mortgage death that they have. Does that make any
Speaker 1: sense at all? Or does it sound like a two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight type disaster where people can't afford homes,
Speaker 1: get into them anyways, and then we have an overall
Speaker 1: collapse where they're later on destitute. I want people to
Speaker 1: understand this. I am not being callous. I believe it
Speaker 1: is a crime. Many poor people in this country don't
Speaker 1: have a fair shake and don't have access to homes,
Speaker 1: and it manifests in a lot of racial ugliness.
Speaker 4: The way to.
Speaker 1: Solve that is not to penalize responsible home buyers or
Speaker 1: simply lift the cap on debt to income ratio. The
Speaker 1: way is not through this affirmative action nonsense. It's universal policy.
Speaker 1: The price of a home in the US right now
Speaker 1: is higher than ever in all major metropolitan areas, over
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars. That's a problem for the middle
Speaker 1: class and the poor alike. By reducing the cost of
Speaker 1: building and more starting homes, voila, you made housing cheaper
Speaker 1: for everyone instead of pitting people against each other on
Speaker 1: a limited basis. Or maybe that's too ambitious. Let's just
Speaker 1: look why do poor people have such awful credit in
Speaker 1: the first place. Maybe it's because a man named Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: when he was a senator from Delaware, became the greatest
Speaker 1: friend of the credit card industry in Congress. Loosen regulation,
Speaker 1: increased interests, not didn't restrain their marketing tactics, flooded the
Speaker 1: poor and middle class with junk consumer debt products, and
Speaker 1: then strip them the ability to file bankruptcy or not
Speaker 1: even get into it in the first place.
Speaker 4: After they lost their job.
Speaker 1: You want to fix this, we got to go way
Speaker 1: deeper than credit scores. We have to nuke the entire system,
Speaker 1: the profiteers, the barriers for everyone, instead of trying to
Speaker 1: make rearrange the deck tears on the Titanic and make
Speaker 1: more equitable. I mean, he said, Crystal, this has sparked
Speaker 1: a lot of outrage.
Speaker 2: I think understand, and if you want to hear my
Speaker 2: reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 2: breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you all so much, to everybody, all the existing
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