Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today. What do we have, ris soul?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of drama to get to you
Speaker 1: this morning. First of all, developments with regard to the
Speaker 1: debt sealing. We will tell you what is likely to
Speaker 1: happen there as best as we can possibly figure as
Speaker 1: we are coming down to the wire. We also have
Speaker 1: some big developments with regard to Jeffrey Epstein and one
Speaker 1: of the banks that was happy to have his business
Speaker 1: for years and years after he'd already been convicted of
Speaker 1: being a sex criminal, So we will talk about that
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 4: And also no Jobski caught in Noo, my man, No,
Speaker 4: I don't even know.
Speaker 3: What to say.
Speaker 2: The book might have to go, Chris, So I'm not
Speaker 2: so sure. I'm not so sure we could keep that behind.
Speaker 4: This not a good look. Let's just say that.
Speaker 1: Also, some really dire numbers with regards to the housing market,
Speaker 1: and some overall economic news, and actually some news about
Speaker 1: just how Americans are doing, like at the core of
Speaker 1: their being that we need to talk through as well. Wholme,
Speaker 1: Meghan and Harry situation in Manhattan that I just it's
Speaker 1: like literally the South Park epite.
Speaker 2: I I've been upset the moment it came out. I said,
Speaker 2: this is fake, calling them the Duke and Duchess of
Speaker 2: small At. I'll make you make You can make up
Speaker 2: your mind for yourself whether you think they're lying or not.
Speaker 3: I don't think my view is all that.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear what happened at this point,
Speaker 1: so we'll give you all those details. Also, there are
Speaker 1: some rumors about what Fox News is going to do
Speaker 1: now that they have Pushtucker Carlson out, how they're going
Speaker 1: to reconfigure their prime time lineup. Also excited to have
Speaker 1: a political reporter in the show that we haven't had before.
Speaker 1: Shelby Talcachi is tracking closely run DeSantis versus Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So we want to get her report from the campaign
Speaker 1: trail as well.
Speaker 2: Old friend of mine, she actually took my job White
Speaker 2: House correspondent. Oh that's right, A call her before me
Speaker 2: and now she works over at sea for she's doing
Speaker 2: a very good job.
Speaker 3: That's outlet the GOP primary, that's right.
Speaker 2: And by all accounts, I mean, she's allowed to do
Speaker 2: what she needs to and she's she's doing a really
Speaker 2: good job of just like beat to beat about DeSantis
Speaker 2: and Trump and all that, and so I'm excited to
Speaker 2: talk to her a little bit about that. So before
Speaker 2: we get to that, though, we just want to say
Speaker 2: thank you to everybody who watched the RFK interview.
Speaker 3: I know that so many of you enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: I guess my only regret about it is that we
Speaker 2: didn't have enough time with the man. He unfortunately had
Speaker 2: to go, But we talked to him about it afterwards, Crystal,
Speaker 2: and he wants to come back, and we've even discussed
Speaker 2: doing a town hall event or something of some kind
Speaker 2: that you can try and organize. So by all accounts,
Speaker 2: you know, we're happy with how that went, and we
Speaker 2: want to make sure that we continue to do more
Speaker 2: of these.
Speaker 1: Oh, one hundred percent. Yes, really enjoyed the exchange with him.
Speaker 1: I think we try to cover as much ground as
Speaker 1: we could the time that he had available. Obviously, he's
Speaker 1: extraordinarily busy here in DC, so you know, grateful to
Speaker 1: him for his time, Grateful to you guys for watching
Speaker 1: engaging with it, and also those of you who signed
Speaker 1: up as premium subs, super super appreciate that as we
Speaker 1: are getting very close to having the new set to reveal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really do appreciate all of you, and you know,
Speaker 2: we're going to have more of these interviews. We're going
Speaker 2: to in the works right now scheduling Maryanne to come.
Speaker 2: We're gonna grill her as well, and I think that's
Speaker 2: something we're committed to. We're gonna grill every single one
Speaker 2: of them whenever they have here. And I do think
Speaker 2: in the future we're going to push for a little
Speaker 2: bit more time in terms of this because, like you know,
Speaker 2: I really don't like whenever people have to go and
Speaker 2: all that, but we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: These are busy folks. Yes, so totally understand. And like
Speaker 1: I said, I think we got a lot of ground
Speaker 1: covered with him in the time that we had available. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: super grateful for him for taking the.
Speaker 2: Time, and thanks for everybody who signed up. And if
Speaker 2: you want to continue support our ability to.
Speaker 3: Do that town hall events, new sets, all of that.
Speaker 2: It's very expensive, so we appreciate you breakingpoints dot com
Speaker 2: to become a premium describer today.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the very latest with regard
Speaker 1: to the debt sealing. Just as backdrop here again, guys,
Speaker 1: we have this really weird and incredibly stupid system where
Speaker 1: Congress votes to spend money and then weirdly, they have
Speaker 1: this separate vote about whether or not they're actually going
Speaker 1: to borrow enough to pay those bills down the line.
Speaker 1: Republicans in particular have decided to use this as a
Speaker 1: point of leverage try to get through things that they
Speaker 1: otherwise could not get passed through the Congress. And so
Speaker 1: now we are coming to a head here. By some accounts,
Speaker 1: June first is kind of the drop dead date we
Speaker 1: are going to go through in a moment if we
Speaker 1: do breach the debt ceiling. What does the potential fallout?
Speaker 1: I mean, the big takeaway is nobody really knows, but
Speaker 1: it looks like it would be really really bad, And
Speaker 1: obviously it is now May eighteenth, So we are inching
Speaker 1: very close to that deadline. Joe Biden's original consistent stance
Speaker 1: had been not going to negotiate it clean debt ceiling
Speaker 1: that I'll accept, not going to negotiate with the hostage takers. Well,
Speaker 1: now he has gone back on what was previously a
Speaker 1: very clear position. He is in fact negotiating with the
Speaker 1: stage takers, although he's trying to parse and pretend like
Speaker 1: he's not. Here's how he is framing things and what
Speaker 1: he is saying.
Speaker 5: We're going to come together because there's no alternative to
Speaker 5: do the right thing for the country. We have to
Speaker 5: move on. And to be clear, this negotiation is about
Speaker 5: the outlines of what the budget will look like, not
Speaker 5: about whether or not we're going to infect para debts.
Speaker 5: The leaders are all agreed we will not default. Every
Speaker 5: leader has said that.
Speaker 1: Well, so all have agreed we will not default.
Speaker 3: I don't know we'll see it.
Speaker 4: I don't know that, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: And then you can see how he's trying to parse.
Speaker 1: He or trying to say, oh, we're not really negotiating
Speaker 1: on the debt ceiling. We're talking about the budget. This
Speaker 1: is all just word games. They are negotiating on the
Speaker 1: debt ceiling, something that you know, I'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about in a moment. I think is a
Speaker 1: dramatic mistake because what does this mean? Even putting aside
Speaker 1: whether you think the GOP demands are good or bad
Speaker 1: or indifferent or whatever. The minute you give into this,
Speaker 1: people guess what. Every time this vote comes up, the
Speaker 1: whole global economy is gonna be held hostage again by
Speaker 1: you know, whoever wants to gain an edge and get
Speaker 1: something through that they could not get through the legislative process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think people need This is also why,
Speaker 2: though I will say Chris, I was actually very frustrated
Speaker 2: several months ago because I'm like, listen, you're gonna negotiate.
Speaker 2: There's no question about it, Like there is no getting
Speaker 2: around this, But where.
Speaker 1: Is getting around it? Like there are other options. There
Speaker 1: are multiple other workarounds. There is a fourteenth Amendment workaround
Speaker 1: what Constitution says like the debt shall.
Speaker 4: Not be questioned.
Speaker 1: You could pursue that, you could mint the coin. There's
Speaker 1: another alternative where you can issue premium bonds.
Speaker 4: So there are other workarounds.
Speaker 1: Otherwise, God, we're just going to go back to this
Speaker 1: same dynamic year after year after year, every time there's
Speaker 1: a Democratic president and Republicans have one or the other
Speaker 1: House recires.
Speaker 2: I meant within the framework that the Biden jugs Joe Biden, Yes, Rich,
Speaker 2: I will say, okay, look on the fourteenth Amendment. So
Speaker 2: I've done a decent amount of research now and I'm
Speaker 2: not even saying that these aren't feasible. Same with mint
Speaker 2: the coin, A lot of it actually does come down
Speaker 2: to whether the market would accept it. So I guess
Speaker 2: we could talk a little bit about that in terms
Speaker 2: of what a breach would look, but you could technically
Speaker 2: mint the coin, and even if the Federal Reserve were
Speaker 2: to accept the coin, and we let that actually is
Speaker 2: not a given, there's actually no guarantee that the markets
Speaker 2: would look at that as a genuine debt ceiling left.
Speaker 2: So part of the problem is, you know, so much
Speaker 2: of our feelings around debt are feelings, and they are
Speaker 2: backed not necessarily by the technical raising of the debt ceiling,
Speaker 2: but by everybody just kind of walking around and just
Speaker 2: being like, yeah, the full faith in credit of the
Speaker 2: United States, it's good, We're cool with it. When that
Speaker 2: starts to come into question, even with the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 2: the debt ceiling, the premium bonds. As you said, that uncertainty,
Speaker 2: you're still looking likely looking at a crash. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just one of those where it's a very complicated situation.
Speaker 2: So I also don't want to take responsibility away from
Speaker 2: the Republicans because I think we should all be honest
Speaker 2: about what they are asking for. And they have decided
Speaker 2: that they want to cut spending and return spending levels
Speaker 2: to six months ago.
Speaker 3: When you put it that way, okay, it sounds reasonable.
Speaker 2: But one of the ways that they want to cut
Speaker 2: spending almost entirely is they don't want to touch the
Speaker 2: military budget at all. They don't want to touch any
Speaker 2: DoD spending or Ukraine spending. They don't want to touch
Speaker 2: entitlement programs. Well, you just took off the two vast
Speaker 2: portions of the entire federal expenditure. So what is left, Well,
Speaker 2: what's left are effectively, you know, you have food stamp programs.
Speaker 2: They've talked about welfare, They've talked about rescinding some of
Speaker 2: the IRS money. I mean, I personally have a problem
Speaker 2: with some of that, but they do have want to
Speaker 2: rescind some of the money taken within the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 2: some of which has already been spent, some future tax credits.
Speaker 2: And my other problem with it is they also don't
Speaker 2: want to raise any taxes. There are actually ten different
Speaker 2: tax loopholes that have could easily be closed.
Speaker 3: We've talked about each.
Speaker 2: One of them on the show Ad nauseum, the private
Speaker 2: equity loophole, the carried interest sloop hole, step up basis loophole.
Speaker 3: There are several other corporate loopholes.
Speaker 2: None of these would ever touch anybody who is including
Speaker 2: people at this desk, because it has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with small business or middle clad. This is all corporate
Speaker 2: or extremely high net worth individuals, which could raise billions
Speaker 2: of dollars, and they've taken that off the tables. I
Speaker 2: want to be very I want to lay out exactly
Speaker 2: what the conversation.
Speaker 4: Here I mean.
Speaker 1: In a sense, like I said, I don't really care
Speaker 1: what their demands are because I think the whole thing
Speaker 1: is economic terrorism, and so even if what they were
Speaker 1: saying was totally reasonable, as a matter of principle, I
Speaker 1: don't think you should negotiate. But the details matter for
Speaker 1: another reason, which is that it really shows how disingenuous
Speaker 1: they are about actually caring about the debt. First of all,
Speaker 1: there is no sign in the markets that we have
Speaker 1: any sort of looming debt issue. Up until very recently
Speaker 1: when the Fed started hiking rates, interest rates have been
Speaker 1: incredibly low. The market has been very stable in terms
Speaker 1: of treasury bonds. Like, there's no indication out there that
Speaker 1: we have this looming debt crisis we have to deal with.
Speaker 1: That's number one. Number two, if you were genuinely concerned
Speaker 1: about the debt, guess what you would put on the
Speaker 1: table the freaking Trump tax cuts for the top one percent.
Speaker 1: You could keep whatever little pit pitdling, you know, pennies
Speaker 1: they gave to like the middle class and the working
Speaker 1: class line, keep that in there. Roll back the ones
Speaker 1: that dramatically benefited Corporate America that they used to engage
Speaker 1: in all their stock buybacks, that added massively to our dad,
Speaker 1: that put a gigantic hole in our budget. Like, if
Speaker 1: you actually cared about these things, that would be on
Speaker 1: the table. And of course they're not interested in that.
Speaker 1: They're not interested in a tax conversation whatsoever, because this
Speaker 1: is an ideological project, and it's a specifically an ideological
Speaker 1: project to appease one part of the Republican caucus that
Speaker 1: you know, extracted their pound of flesh from Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: in order to for him to get his speakership. Let's
Speaker 1: go and put this next piece from Axios up on
Speaker 1: the screen that has some of these details. So they're
Speaker 1: talking about how McCarthy called Biden's bluff as you were
Speaker 1: pointing out sober Biden being a you know, weakned institutionalist. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the writing was kind of on the wall that ultimately
Speaker 1: he would cave and he would negotiate. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: is happening now. They say efforts to peel off vulnerable
Speaker 1: House Republicans failed. None openly opposed mccarthy'strivelege of tying spending
Speaker 1: cuts to a debt ceiling hike. House Rules Committee Chair
Speaker 1: Tom Cole told Axios their negotiating now, and they weren't
Speaker 1: doing it before.
Speaker 4: So again he caved.
Speaker 1: Now the cope here from the Biden side, and this
Speaker 1: is the politics that come into this. They say, if
Speaker 1: Biden conceded to direct one on one negotiations, McCarthy is
Speaker 1: prepared to give ground as well. He's open to a
Speaker 1: deal that lifts the debt ceiling until twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: beyond the next election.
Speaker 4: And there it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the real trump card that the Republicans have,
Speaker 1: is they can hold out to him like, we'll make
Speaker 1: these economic problems for you go away. All you have
Speaker 1: to do is like throw poor people under the bus, basically,
Speaker 1: and we'll make this go away until after the next
Speaker 1: election so that we don't have some sort of global
Speaker 1: financial catastrophe that is going to hurt you in your
Speaker 1: re elect bid.
Speaker 4: And so that's what this comes down to.
Speaker 3: And he actually spoke a little bitbout on CNBC yesterday.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: So first of all, there is not going to be
Speaker 6: a tax discussion in this debt seiling. The President admitted
Speaker 6: debt yesterday at the beginning, less curve what we were spending,
Speaker 6: less than we spent last year, go back five months.
Speaker 6: Let's put in things that make us grow, right, permitting reform,
Speaker 6: cut the red tape if you like, renewable energy, be
Speaker 6: able to get the permit to do it, build the roads,
Speaker 6: but also the other energy we talked about. Let's help
Speaker 6: people get jobs again, let's be less dependent upon China.
Speaker 3: I think that's reasonable.
Speaker 6: And sensible, but I didn't think it was reasonable that
Speaker 6: I had to wait one hundred and four days till
Speaker 6: they finally admit they'd come into the room and negotiate.
Speaker 2: I actually do agree with them on permitting reform, but
Speaker 2: on the rest of it, that's always the issue, which
Speaker 2: is it sounds reasonable and then you start looking at
Speaker 2: what's actually being cut. That's why I wanted to lay
Speaker 2: it out for people. You know, listen, if you do
Speaker 2: care about the debt, and there are reasons that you
Speaker 2: you know, maybe should or maybe shouldn't, and there it's
Speaker 2: a multifaceted conversation. But if you would then some there
Speaker 2: are many other things that should be on the table.
Speaker 2: As he said, he doesn't want to have a tax conversation.
Speaker 2: And you know, most Republicans are not against raising taxes
Speaker 2: on corporations or on closing tax loopholes for the financial industry.
Speaker 2: Regular Republican we're talking about actual Republican vote elected. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a dreams of polling on this, Like Republicans don't
Speaker 2: want to touch entitlements, and they don't have any problem
Speaker 2: with raising taxes on corporations and specifically on wealthy tax
Speaker 2: loopholes that only benefit financial billionaires.
Speaker 3: There are many.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is almost where it's like just turn
Speaker 2: it into a culture war thing and be like George.
Speaker 3: Sorrows and all other people, let's tax them. I'd be like, okay,
Speaker 3: let's go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's actually these esg terrorists, which kind of
Speaker 2: true should pay taxes.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know, let's let's go. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: different ways.
Speaker 2: So this is always why I just find the conversation
Speaker 2: very difficult. And you know, look in terms of the
Speaker 2: dead ceiling and all that, as you said, I mean,
Speaker 2: just I think I come back to this. I think
Speaker 2: hardcore Republicans are going to be with them no matter what.
Speaker 2: They like a fighter. They like somebody who's going to fight.
Speaker 2: The question remains, are people really like when they hear
Speaker 2: and understand, let's say your four oh one K drops
Speaker 2: by twenty five percent, and they're like, wait, we're doing
Speaker 2: this for for for work reform, work requirements in the
Speaker 2: food stamp program, regardless of how you feel or not
Speaker 2: about that, Like do you feel enough about that to
Speaker 2: have your retirement portfolio go down by twenty.
Speaker 4: Five the entire global economy or.
Speaker 3: You know, this is another one.
Speaker 2: So let's say that the last time twenty eleven we
Speaker 2: didn't even go over the debt ceiling, we still had
Speaker 2: our debt downgraded, that had significant ramifications for pension funds
Speaker 2: and for t bills, and a lot of it was
Speaker 2: erase the problems for that by very very low interest
Speaker 2: rates and the zero interst rate economy. Well, we don't
Speaker 2: live in that environment anymore, so this actually could only
Speaker 2: further propel us into a recession. Now cynically, though, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is kind of exactly what you want if you
Speaker 2: are a Republican, like if you are politically and cynically,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, Crystal, I do believe
Speaker 2: that in the short term, while it would not be
Speaker 2: good for the Republican Party and they may suffer some
Speaker 2: cost overall, that in the net, having a worse off
Speaker 2: economy is going to be worse off for Joe Bidens
Speaker 2: whenever he becomes present.
Speaker 1: Absolutely psychopathic way for them to look at this, I
Speaker 1: agree with you. That's not named to you, that's not
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, that is psychopathic for them to
Speaker 1: look at it that way. But I think you're right,
Speaker 1: that is the gamble that they're taking because they're playing
Speaker 1: with people's lives here, and so in terms of the
Speaker 1: mechanics of how this is going to work, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of happy talk in DC this week about oh,
Speaker 1: they're going to come to a deal. Maybe, maybe, but
Speaker 1: there's still a long way to go before that actually
Speaker 1: comes together, because you have Democrats who are pissed off,
Speaker 1: Progressives who are pissed off with this up on the
Speaker 1: screen from Jeff Stein. You've got a number of Senate
Speaker 1: Democrats in particular, including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and others,
Speaker 1: who just sent a letter urging Biden to prep that
Speaker 1: Fourteenth Amendment solution again, the fourteenth Amendment saying that the
Speaker 1: validity of the public debt of the United States shall
Speaker 1: not be questioned. Because keep in mind here, what is
Speaker 1: basically happening is Congress is sending the president to conflicting
Speaker 1: sets of instructions. One set of instruction says, spend this money,
Speaker 1: and the other says, don't do what you need to
Speaker 1: do to be able to spend this money. So the
Speaker 1: basic constitutional argument here is you've got the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: which says the debt shall not be questioned, take it
Speaker 1: to the courts and let the Supreme Court make the
Speaker 1: call as to whether they want to be the ones
Speaker 1: that crash the economy. And even though the Court, you know,
Speaker 1: very partisan institution, but it's not clear that you would
Speaker 1: have all of the conservatives like committed to the potential
Speaker 1: chaos that could be unleashed by taking that perspective.
Speaker 4: So progressives are pissed.
Speaker 1: You increasingly getting strong words from them about their upset
Speaker 1: about what the White House is putting on the table,
Speaker 1: the work requirements, the fact that Biden's been opener work
Speaker 1: requirements on any of this stuff, the fact that he
Speaker 1: caved and is negotiating. You're getting an increasing upset there.
Speaker 1: So that's the Democratic side in some ways, though even
Speaker 1: more seriously on the Republican side, there were some pretty
Speaker 1: stringent demands made from the furthest right part of the caucus,
Speaker 1: and it's not at all clear that whatever do you
Speaker 1: Biden and McCarthy would make would be acceptable to the
Speaker 1: Republican entirety of the Republican Caucus. So there's still even
Speaker 1: though there was a lot of happy talk in Washington
Speaker 1: this week about oh, we think they're getting close and
Speaker 1: we think there may be a deal, I'm still skeptical
Speaker 1: that that is really going to ultimately come together, because
Speaker 1: it's not just up. If it was just Joe Biden
Speaker 1: and Kevin McCarthy, Almos said John Bayner, my god, PTSD,
Speaker 1: If it was just Joe Bien Kevin McCarthy, Yes, I
Speaker 1: think they could probably come up with something that both
Speaker 1: of them would be comfortable with because they're both basically institutionalists,
Speaker 1: they're both basically quote unquote moderates. But when you add
Speaker 1: in all these other factors, it makes it a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated to actually get to the finish line here.
Speaker 4: So I think, you know.
Speaker 1: All of the sort of solutions, the workarounds, all those
Speaker 1: things are in sense still on the table, even as
Speaker 1: I have a little confidence that Joe Biden really has
Speaker 1: the spine to pursue any of them.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My thing is, I am increasingly believe that we are
Speaker 2: going to default, at least in some name only, and
Speaker 2: that only after that where we see some sort of deal.
Speaker 3: This part of what I was talking about.
Speaker 2: So I think June one, the likelihood of having a
Speaker 2: deal between McCarthy and Biden which is acceptable to Democrats
Speaker 2: in the Senate and Republicans in the House just seems
Speaker 2: like zero and remember this also McCarthy has what twenty
Speaker 2: something votes or whatever to play with. Well, it's not
Speaker 2: like they have all that many votes on the Democratic
Speaker 2: side to actually get this through. There are many Republicans
Speaker 2: who may not even vote to advance the debt ceiling
Speaker 2: deal out of Congress, out of the Senate for a cloture.
Speaker 2: So you have to put that, you know, in the
Speaker 2: Senate and think about where that comes from. But then
Speaker 2: you have the House of Representatives. Then there's a flipping
Speaker 2: where there's also a clean debt ceiling which is on
Speaker 2: the floor for the House of Representatives, and they the Democrats,
Speaker 2: only need five Republicans to sign on for them.
Speaker 3: So I actually think there.
Speaker 2: Could be a likelihood that we get to June one
Speaker 2: and people are like the markets crash, that's the only
Speaker 2: let's be honest, you know, until Wall Street gets mad,
Speaker 2: that's they don't care.
Speaker 3: They don't care.
Speaker 2: So the Marcus crash, the hedge fund managers and everybody,
Speaker 2: and the banks.
Speaker 3: All blow up the phones.
Speaker 2: And it's certainly possible, given to discharge petition and more,
Speaker 2: that they were able to get a clean debt ceiling
Speaker 2: through because five moderate ish Republicans are like you know what,
Speaker 2: I don't want to deal with this. Let's kick it
Speaker 2: down the road for a month or something like that.
Speaker 2: Then it would go to the Senate. But then there's
Speaker 2: no guarantee that the Senate of the Republicans would vote
Speaker 2: for that. So I'm looking at this on both sides,
Speaker 2: and I just see tremendous amounts of uncertainty. Is it possible,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I don't think that the impetus
Speaker 2: for forcing negotiating power right now is there enough. There
Speaker 2: has to be a crash of some kind for people
Speaker 2: to get serious. I don't say this, but you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want there to be a brass but I
Speaker 2: really don't believe that they will genuinely do anything both
Speaker 2: sides right. There's no way that Elizabeth Warren and John
Speaker 2: Fetterman and all these people are going to vote for
Speaker 2: work requirements unless there's a massive crash. There's also no
Speaker 2: way that a lot of these spending people who are
Speaker 2: like I want to cut the Department of Education. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to vote for anything until that goes through.
Speaker 2: There's no way they're going to vote until unless we
Speaker 2: have a large crash either.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a few Republicans in the House who
Speaker 1: are like, I'm not voting for a debt ceiling increase.
Speaker 4: At all, right, exactly, So it just just to show you,
Speaker 4: like the polarity of the views here.
Speaker 1: So just to type this part of the conversation before
Speaker 1: we get to all right, what could happen theoretically if
Speaker 1: we do breach the debt ceiling, especially for some kind
Speaker 1: of extended period of time. The basic paths that are
Speaker 1: available right now is they are able to strike some
Speaker 1: kind of a deal that is acceptable to enough Republicans
Speaker 1: and enough Democrats in the House and the Senate in
Speaker 1: order for it to actually get through. That is one
Speaker 1: potential outcome, and I think we've laid out how dicey
Speaker 1: a prospect that is, there's what you were referring to, Sager,
Speaker 1: this idea of a discharge petition, which is there is
Speaker 1: a sort of ourcane legislative procedure that if you have
Speaker 1: a majority of members of the House sign on to it,
Speaker 1: you can bring something onto the floor without from House
Speaker 1: Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 4: So that's where you're talking about.
Speaker 1: If you could get five Republicans to join with all
Speaker 1: the Democrats on a clean debt ceiling increase through a
Speaker 1: discharge petition. That is another potential alternative. As you're laying out,
Speaker 1: in some ways, the bigger barrier there is the Senate,
Speaker 1: because you have to get sixty votes in the Senate
Speaker 1: still for that thing to go through. So that's the
Speaker 1: discharge petition, and then you have this raft of workarounds.
Speaker 1: I think the fourteenth Amendment one is the one that
Speaker 1: seems to be considered most most sort of seriously within
Speaker 1: the White House, even though they have expressed to Jefstin
Speaker 1: and others that they're very skeptical of that as well,
Speaker 1: and they're nervous about what it would mean. There are
Speaker 1: other work errounds that are sort of gimmicky, like the mint,
Speaker 1: the coin and other directions they could go there. So
Speaker 1: we'll put that all in the basket of different workarounds.
Speaker 1: And at this point, you know, I can make a
Speaker 1: case against each one of those very clearly, and it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to make an affirmative case for any
Speaker 1: one of them because they all have major risk challenges
Speaker 1: and political you know, uncertainty.
Speaker 4: So that's kind of where we stand with things.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're right. I think we should just
Speaker 2: tell people like, what's going to happen, what's possible?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, those are all the scenarios. Okay, So let's
Speaker 1: talk about if they are unable to come to a
Speaker 1: deal and the Biden administration doesn't employ one of these workarounds,
Speaker 1: and we do, in fact breach the debt ceiling, what.
Speaker 4: Is this going to look like?
Speaker 1: And the truth of the matter is nobody really knows,
Speaker 1: because even though we technically breached it before, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a resolution quickly enough that we didn't get
Speaker 1: to some of the most dire scenarios. Although even in
Speaker 1: that scenario those back in twenty eleven, we lost trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars in household wealth just from that brief breach
Speaker 1: of the debt ceiling. So it shows you there could
Speaker 1: be tremendous consequences. Here go and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen from the Washington Post. The headline here is
Speaker 1: seven doomsday scenarios if the US crashes through the debt ceiling.
Speaker 1: This was written up by Jeff Stein.
Speaker 4: Just at the top.
Speaker 1: You know, they've got quotes from a few economists saying
Speaker 1: Mark Zandi, a chief economist at Moody's, says it would
Speaker 1: be a lethal combination, you can see how this thing
Speaker 1: could really metastasize and take down the entire financial system,
Speaker 1: which would ultimately take out the economy. I've seen many
Speaker 1: other economists say this could be way worse than the
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight financial crash if allowed to fester
Speaker 1: firs sufficient period of time. So going through the seven
Speaker 1: scenarios here, I mean number one, the first thing that
Speaker 1: would probably happen as stocks would crash, and you have
Speaker 1: estimates that stock prices could fall by roughly one fifth,
Speaker 1: that's from Moody's analytics. You would have stocks plummeting on
Speaker 1: the expectation of a wider economic downturn. Interest rates would rise,
Speaker 1: investors would pull funds out of the market to preserve
Speaker 1: their access to short term cash, and that piece, I
Speaker 1: think is pretty clear that you would have a rather
Speaker 1: instantaneous stock crash. And you know, we did see sager
Speaker 1: previously in the when there was the coronavirus crash, which
Speaker 1: was so brief that people like apparently forgot that it
Speaker 1: even happened. And by people, I mean like elites who
Speaker 1: weren't paying that close of attention because it galvanized forces
Speaker 1: in Washington actually act. So it is possible if you
Speaker 1: had stocks fall off a cliff, then maybe people will
Speaker 1: get their act together at that point and get something done.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, looking at all of these stocks crashing is
Speaker 2: obviously going to force that couldn't be everything. The sudden recession.
Speaker 2: Federal workers in limbo, I don't think. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: they don't matter, but I am saying I don't think
Speaker 2: a lot of people are going to care. Well.
Speaker 1: I don't want to just write that one off, because
Speaker 1: you are talking about US military personnel, We're talking about
Speaker 1: air traffic controllers, we're talking about food safety inspectors. Federal
Speaker 1: Garment is the largest employer in the whole country. True,
Speaker 1: so that's not enoughing to wave off. And of course
Speaker 1: when you have the largest employer in the whole country basically,
Speaker 1: like you know, not paying their workers, then that obviously
Speaker 1: feeds into much broader economic issues.
Speaker 4: With regard to the instant.
Speaker 2: Recess, the one that really hit me was the Social
Speaker 2: Security so who said that it's possible that we could
Speaker 2: reach a point where sixty million people who get monthly
Speaker 2: Social Security payments would not be getting some of their payments.
Speaker 2: In addition to federal reimbursement for Medicare. I was like,
Speaker 2: that is one which actually would really change things. Now,
Speaker 2: some Republicans have said that the government actually can continue
Speaker 2: to make these payments, but some budget experts are skeptical
Speaker 2: of the Treasury Department will have the ability. The other
Speaker 2: thing is cynically, if the Republicans are like, no, you can,
Speaker 2: and the treasury departments are like, no, we can, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: who has the authority to pay the Treasury Department? Right,
Speaker 2: so they may do it just to try and force
Speaker 2: the hand of somebody. Let's all be honest, like nobody
Speaker 2: really knows how and what to do. Because what happens
Speaker 2: is the Treasury Department will still have incoming revenues. All
Speaker 2: of us will continue to pay taxes business owners. You know,
Speaker 2: we have to pay on a quarterly basis or whatever,
Speaker 2: so we'll pay our quarterly tax estimate. Well, they can
Speaker 2: use that money coming in because it's non congressionally appropriated.
Speaker 2: So then they though have to go and decide what
Speaker 2: to spend it on. But that itself comes to a
Speaker 2: constitutional question of like you shouldn't be making decisions about
Speaker 2: what to spend and whatnot.
Speaker 3: So it's yeah, it is complicated.
Speaker 1: Right, And also you know, think about this choice that
Speaker 1: they would be making. Are you going to pay the
Speaker 1: holders over like the seniors who which is social Security?
Speaker 1: Of course that's what Wall Street wants one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And you know, to make the other side of this,
Speaker 1: there are Republicans who say, oh, we've gone through we
Speaker 1: prioritize how we'd make the payments, so you know, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as dire as what you're laying out. But again,
Speaker 1: this is all completely uncharted territory, and so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of skepticism that, however, it's like billions of payments
Speaker 1: have to go on from the federal government that do
Speaker 1: you really trust the federal government to be able to
Speaker 1: accurately like prioritize those in a way that everybody is
Speaker 1: going to find acceptable. Very likely they would privilege Wall
Speaker 1: Street over like veterans, seniors, et cetera. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important one, and this could
Speaker 1: be a global catastrophe. Why Because more than half of
Speaker 1: the world's foreign currency reserves are held in US dollars.
Speaker 1: Treasury bonds are used as collateral routinely because they're considered
Speaker 1: to be like the safest possible financial instrument. Sometimes they're
Speaker 1: considered like safer than cash. This backstops as collateral transactions,
Speaker 1: major corporate transactions all around the globe. And that's why,
Speaker 1: again it's so hard to predict. Okay, when that stops
Speaker 1: being so certain and becomes instantly.
Speaker 4: This risky asset, what does that do?
Speaker 1: What does it mean in terms of our status is
Speaker 1: still being the world's reserve currency. You already have countries
Speaker 1: that are trying to move in another direction from that,
Speaker 1: so huge and very frightening question marks about what that
Speaker 1: would all look like. I always remember, you know what
Speaker 1: happened in the UK when you had that mini budget
Speaker 1: disastrously released by Liz Trust and it had all of
Speaker 1: these follow on, catastrophic, instant economic impacts that nobody really
Speaker 1: saw coming. Because the global financial system is so intertwined
Speaker 1: and so complex that even the most intelligent and well
Speaker 1: versed economist can't lay out what all of the follow
Speaker 1: on effects are. So that's what makes this so frightening.
Speaker 1: You of course would have the dollar drop. You would
Speaker 1: have us barrowingst sore, which is the opposite of what
Speaker 1: you want if you're worried about the debt. That means
Speaker 1: the debt becomes even more expensive, and we're even in
Speaker 1: a deeper hole. So that's why this is not something
Speaker 1: to play around with. You know, this is not a
Speaker 1: game and it's not something to be casual about. There
Speaker 1: are potentially very dire and very serious consequences here, and
Speaker 1: they're playing with fire.
Speaker 2: So let's go put the next one on there because
Speaker 2: it's important, actually, which is they say the consequences from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg of the debts healing are already here. And what
Speaker 2: they say is that this is even JP Morgan CEO
Speaker 2: Jamie Diamond, the consequences could be catastrophic. One person that
Speaker 2: they quote, the former chief of staff at the Treasury Department, said,
Speaker 2: people get the joke that's going on in Washington. It's
Speaker 2: the strongest economy in the world, the most powerfulmation. If
Speaker 2: it's not going to pay its debts when due, you've
Speaker 2: got to be kidding. And then what they point to
Speaker 2: is that this could cause global financial panic, as you said, Crystal,
Speaker 2: and that's why when you're messing with something which seems
Speaker 2: so ironclad in the global financial system, you really just
Speaker 2: have no idea what's going to happen. They point to
Speaker 2: the fifty trillion dollars capital markets, debt and equity. Any
Speaker 2: hiccups in repo markets that could take those markets off
Speaker 2: course have hundreds of billions of dollars in implications, even
Speaker 2: a couple of percent, you know, both ways, and the
Speaker 2: overnight lending through the banks and financial markets as primary collateral.
Speaker 2: He says, there could be a huge contraction of credit
Speaker 2: and capital markets liquidity that greases the skids of all
Speaker 2: of those markets, as well as a huge liquidity call.
Speaker 2: What's more, corporations with triple A ratings cannot be rated
Speaker 2: more safe than the country that they are hosted in,
Speaker 2: meaning that corporations themselves could face mandatory downgrades and higher
Speaker 2: borrowing costs. That's what I referenced earlier in our show
Speaker 2: whenever we had a debt a downgrade in the way
Speaker 2: that we were. You know, all of these things have
Speaker 2: automatic kick ins for pensions and for higher borrowing costs.
Speaker 2: And if we have higher borrowing costs across not only
Speaker 2: as a government, but for our individual corporations, that bleeds
Speaker 2: into what they're able to do, what they're able to
Speaker 2: borrow money for. So yeah, it's just a real mess
Speaker 2: all around.
Speaker 1: I think that's the only way you could possibly sum
Speaker 1: it up, and let me just say again, look, I
Speaker 1: think Biden has made a catastrophic error here by a
Speaker 1: goring to negotiate, because I think the consequences of this
Speaker 1: are so dire, and I do want to be clear
Speaker 1: on like the fourteenth Amendment work around or whatever. No
Speaker 1: one is saying that would be painless. It would be
Speaker 1: you know, there would be economic consequences to that as well,
Speaker 1: because tagar are what you're pointing to the uncertainty of
Speaker 1: how this will work out within the legal system. And
Speaker 1: was this you know, debt really going to be honored
Speaker 1: in the way that our other debt. That is all
Speaker 1: really true, But we cannot keep having these hostage situations
Speaker 1: year after year after year. We have got to find
Speaker 1: a way to take this thing off the table because
Speaker 1: this is a potential catastrophic disaster for people in this
Speaker 1: country and people around the world in the making, and
Speaker 1: we need to not repeat the errors of the past,
Speaker 1: is what I would say. So we will see how
Speaker 1: this all works out. If it does work out, okay.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next one here, This one all
Speaker 2: Gnome Chomski and just the Jeffrey Epstein story. It never
Speaker 2: really does die, does it? So let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: put this one up on the screen.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's hard to say for somebody who
Speaker 2: is certainly respected the book that we have literally on
Speaker 2: the shelf, which I've always thought was very important, foundational
Speaker 2: to understanding manufacturing consent and media incentives and all that
Speaker 2: by the intellectual Nom Chomsky linguist somebody, you know, I
Speaker 2: still do respect, I guess somewhat intellectual leads respected scholarship.
Speaker 2: I can respect a scholarship that said. We now have
Speaker 2: proof from the Wall Street Journal that Jeffrey Epstein moved
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy thousand dollars for Nom Chomsky and
Speaker 2: paid an addition one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to
Speaker 2: an academic named Leon Botstein. So what the journal says
Speaker 2: is that this transfer between accounts for Noam Chomsky the
Speaker 2: two academics have all been confirmed, both by Chomsky as
Speaker 2: well as financial wreckers that the Wall Street Journal has
Speaker 2: been able to get their hands on, says that Chomsky
Speaker 2: met with Epstein, not just the one time that we
Speaker 2: had previously said, but actually on multiple occasions. Now Chomsky
Speaker 2: says that they quote met occasionally to discuss political and
Speaker 2: academic topics, and in response to those questions, Actually what
Speaker 2: they say is that previously one of the payoffs Fisiness
Speaker 2: to Botstein was one hundred and fifty grand because Epstein
Speaker 2: had donated a sum to bar that year as more
Speaker 2: than a one million dollar donation. A spokesperson then said
Speaker 2: that they did receive this like weird pass through donation
Speaker 2: through Leon Botstein. Not exactly sure what's going on there,
Speaker 2: you know, with Chomsky, he doesn't really have a particularly
Speaker 2: good explanation. He says he received a March twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: transfer of two hundred and seventy thousand dollars from an
Speaker 2: Epstein account. He says, quote, it was restricted to a
Speaker 2: rearrangement of my own funds and did not involve one
Speaker 2: penny from Epstein. He explained he had asked him for
Speaker 2: help quote with a technical matter that involved the disbursement
Speaker 2: of common funds related to his first marriage. He says,
Speaker 2: my wife died fifteen years ago. We paid no attention
Speaker 2: to financial issues. We asked Epstein for advice. The simplest
Speaker 2: way would be a transfer funds from one account in
Speaker 2: my name to another by way of his office. Chomsky
Speaker 2: said he did not hire Epstein. It was just quick
Speaker 2: and a simple transfer of funds.
Speaker 3: Look, I mean maybe, uh.
Speaker 2: You know, his initial response to the question Crystal was
Speaker 2: remember whenever they would deal that he'd met. First response
Speaker 2: is none of your business or anyone. Second is I
Speaker 2: knew him and we met occasionally. So is it possible
Speaker 2: that it's an innocent explanation?
Speaker 3: Maybe?
Speaker 2: But I mean, ever, it boggles the mind to think
Speaker 2: of a true scenario where you need a quarter of
Speaker 2: a million dollar bridge loan from Jeffrey Epstein, Like there,
Speaker 2: we have a legitimate financial system, and we have ways
Speaker 2: to rectify those problems. Why would it make sense for
Speaker 2: you to transfer money from one account to another guy's account,
Speaker 2: who then transfers money to you. If you do need
Speaker 2: to transfer money to yourself, why don't you just wire
Speaker 2: money to yourself or you know what I mean? Like there,
Speaker 2: I'm just like, it's like, there are many ways to
Speaker 2: give money to yourself, very few of them involve me
Speaker 2: sending it to you to send it to me. And
Speaker 2: you know, if we're have a closer relationship, hopefully than
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein and Nomchovsky. So anyway, I think it's a
Speaker 2: little bit odd it just.
Speaker 1: It lines up with so many of these things that
Speaker 1: come out where it's you know, Epstein is doing financial
Speaker 1: transactions for people that you're like, why was this person
Speaker 1: in the middle of this?
Speaker 4: Why were they involved?
Speaker 1: He clearly made himself in the business of like solving
Speaker 1: whatever little issue, whatever little problem that people with power
Speaker 1: or money had, and so somehow I don't understand how
Speaker 1: or why it makes sense to put himself in the
Speaker 1: middle of this just transfer of funds between accounts. I mean,
Speaker 1: we do lots of fun transfers here at breaking points. Yes,
Speaker 1: number once have we been like, let's get this weird
Speaker 1: pedophile to help us with the transaction, Like let's send
Speaker 1: it to him and then send.
Speaker 3: It back to us, just take it out.
Speaker 2: I don't know, we send it to the person we
Speaker 2: own money to right.
Speaker 1: There, you put on a wire like it's not really
Speaker 1: that already you can do it online these days. So
Speaker 1: that yes, And at the same time, there's some additional
Speaker 1: news about some of the banks and their relationships with Epstein.
Speaker 1: So he was originally a JP Morgan Chase customer for
Speaker 1: many years, and they're in trouble over that, and they're
Speaker 1: facing discovery over their relationship. Jamie Diamond's been subpoena and
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things.
Speaker 4: So that happened.
Speaker 1: Then after JP Morgan, Chase was like, all right, I
Speaker 1: think we'd better be done with this dude.
Speaker 4: Then Deutsche Bank picks up where.
Speaker 1: They left off, and they had this relationship with Epstein
Speaker 1: for years after he was already convicted. So there's really
Speaker 1: no excuse, and they've been in a lot of hot
Speaker 1: water for ignoring what were like really obviously suspicious transactions
Speaker 1: that were going on. So put this next piece up
Speaker 1: on the screen. We now have Deutsche Bank paying seventy
Speaker 1: five million dollars to victims of Jeffrey Epstein. This is
Speaker 1: a proposed court settlement closes, they say, another chapter in
Speaker 1: the German bank's relationship with the disgraced financier, which began
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen and continued up until.
Speaker 4: Late twenty eighteen. So this was to.
Speaker 1: Settle a potential class action lawsuit charging that this financial
Speaker 1: institution facilitated his sex trafficking ring. According to lawyers who
Speaker 1: sued the bank on behalf of alleged victims, you had
Speaker 1: a woman who was listed anonymously as Jane Doe in
Speaker 1: court papers who filed this suit last year in New York,
Speaker 1: and this was on behalf of herself and other accusers
Speaker 1: of Epstein. So you know, they want to make this
Speaker 1: go away. And I would say for a gigantic financial
Speaker 1: global financial institution like Deutsche Bank, seventy five million dollars
Speaker 1: to them, it's nothing.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're right, And Deutsche Bank has long had problems
Speaker 2: and links to Jeffrey Epstein. They were one of the
Speaker 2: originals that were cited by the New York Financial Department
Speaker 2: for some of the activities that they had taken on
Speaker 2: behalf of them. And what was revealed actually in the
Speaker 2: Deutsche Bank complaint and the complaint by them by from
Speaker 2: the New York Financial Services Department is basically that they
Speaker 2: knew that he was involved in sketchy transactions, They knew
Speaker 2: he was a sex offender. They never kicked him off
Speaker 2: of their client list. Despite the fact that they knew
Speaker 2: all of what was going on, they continued to pursue
Speaker 2: him for business transactions. And really some of the most
Speaker 2: troubling was that they were facilitating transactions which would be
Speaker 2: illegal in any or not or which would be flagged
Speaker 2: to federal authorities by any other client So, for example, Christal,
Speaker 2: if you or I were to go to our bank
Speaker 2: and we were to ask this question, how much money
Speaker 2: can we withdraw without alerting the feds?
Speaker 3: They're supposed to alert the feds.
Speaker 2: He asked that question, and then after they told him
Speaker 2: the answer, he would take out basically up until one
Speaker 2: dollar in cash. For all of that, his assistants would
Speaker 2: say that it was for tips. They also were wiring
Speaker 2: all kinds of crazy amounts of money to Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: for potential sex trafficking, you know, potential like sex trafficking purposes.
Speaker 2: There was some financial behavior where's no normal person would ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 2: ever get away with, and that they knew was sketchy
Speaker 2: because they were flagging it internally and continue to do
Speaker 2: business with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's exactly right. And so you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't want any sort of discovery with regard to this.
Speaker 1: They didn't want any of their dirty laundry to be
Speaker 1: aired publicly. And so, like I said, I think seventy
Speaker 1: five million dollars is them getting off really easy here.
Speaker 2: Oh it's easy as hell, because I mean, somebody who
Speaker 2: even knows they might have made more than that just
Speaker 2: in the fees that they had from banking with him.
Speaker 2: I mean they certainly paid a fine there, but even reputationally,
Speaker 2: as you said, like to expose the level of safeguards
Speaker 2: that they didn't have in place while this was happening,
Speaker 2: which these banks all supposedly do have.
Speaker 3: Again, you know, for you and.
Speaker 2: Me, for somebody who has let's say somebody fell on
Speaker 2: hard times and declared bankruptcy or something, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: then the bank has all these regulations about how they
Speaker 2: can and can't do posinis. But if you are literally
Speaker 2: convicted sex offender and you have a proven track record
Speaker 2: of moving money around for trafficking purposes, apparently that's all
Speaker 2: good as long as you bring in enough money.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's all take to be a client for
Speaker 3: one of these people.
Speaker 1: It's so dirty, It really is so dirty. I mean
Speaker 1: this is this unrelated to Epstein, but Wells Fargo, which
Speaker 1: has been yeah, really bad actor. And they claim they
Speaker 1: had that whole fake account scandal. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys remember that, but it was just they were
Speaker 1: opening up accounts and people's names that they never asked for.
Speaker 1: They were creating fake accounts just routinely as part of
Speaker 1: their culture and they just had an issue where their
Speaker 1: shareholders are accusing them of lying about that they had
Speaker 1: things under control and that they had cleaned up their
Speaker 1: act et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, these are so
Speaker 1: many of these institutions, if not all of them, are
Speaker 1: just so incredibly dirty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, dirty as hell.
Speaker 1: All right, As we said, we had some big and
Speaker 1: very disturbing news about the housing market. How Americans are
Speaker 1: feeling about the housing market right now, let's put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen from Gallop. You now have views
Speaker 1: of the US housing market reaching new depths, a new
Speaker 1: low in the US say it is a good time
Speaker 1: to buy a house. Leaves us up on the screen
Speaker 1: for a little bit, just so people can take in
Speaker 1: the trend here. You know, back in nineteen eighty you
Speaker 1: had about fifty percent of people who said a little
Speaker 1: bit more than fifty percent, a majority saying Okay, it's
Speaker 1: a good time to buy a house. That continues to
Speaker 1: go up until right about the time that you have
Speaker 1: the financial crash, it dips down to about fifty percent.
Speaker 1: Then after the financial crash around twenty ten, things pick
Speaker 1: back up, and now you've been on a basically consistent
Speaker 1: decline over the past decade, reaching.
Speaker 4: A new loan.
Speaker 1: Now where only twenty one percent of Americans feel like
Speaker 1: it's a decent time to go out and buy a house,
Speaker 1: seventy eight percent say it is a bad time to
Speaker 1: buy a house now. It will be no surprise the
Speaker 1: viewers of this program. Why that is you have the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve hiking interest rates that has had a dramatic
Speaker 1: impact on mortgage interest rates that is made already unaffordable
Speaker 1: housing even more wildly unaffordable. Now as home prices have
Speaker 1: just started to fall around the country. You've got a
Speaker 1: median of four hundred and thirty six thousand dollars is
Speaker 1: the median home price in twenty twenty three, and you
Speaker 1: do have fewer Americans expecting home values in their area
Speaker 1: to rise in the coming year. So it's not that
Speaker 1: prices are like continuing to skyrocket, but because of mortgage rates,
Speaker 1: it's so wildly unaffordable.
Speaker 4: And of course, housing prices have.
Speaker 1: Been going up and up and up and up even
Speaker 1: before we started this whole conversation about inflation. Inflation within housing, healthcare,
Speaker 1: and education has been out.
Speaker 4: Of control four years.
Speaker 1: So this basic building block of middle class stability has
Speaker 1: become out of reach for most people who are you know,
Speaker 1: even college educated professionals who are earning decent salaries, if
Speaker 1: they live in a major metro area, they're screwed. If
Speaker 1: they don't have a cash handout for mommy and daddy
Speaker 1: to put down you know, major cash upfront, they're screwed.
Speaker 1: And they've only become more screwed from the mortgage interest rates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that the mortgage interest is the
Speaker 2: biggest problem in terms of affordability, because you know what
Speaker 2: people do is they're saving up, they look at their
Speaker 2: down payment, they think, okay, great, I can make this happen,
Speaker 2: and then they go and they play with one of
Speaker 2: those tools and they're like, wait, so two years ago,
Speaker 2: definitely I could have made that happen, but now I
Speaker 2: can't because the interest payments are sky high. And then
Speaker 2: even if you can afford the interest, here like do
Speaker 2: I really want to be paying more than half my
Speaker 2: paying or do I really want to be paying so
Speaker 2: many thousands of dollars per year to the bank. And sure,
Speaker 2: you know it's tax deductible and all of that, but
Speaker 2: you know, why would you spend you know, why throw
Speaker 2: away a dollar so that you can save twenty five
Speaker 2: cents or whatever whenever it comes to your taxes. And
Speaker 2: that's always one of the like stupidest ways that people
Speaker 2: can think about it. The other one, as appointed to here,
Speaker 2: is that when you have a decrease in the housing market,
Speaker 2: and in views of the housing market, yeah, it restricts
Speaker 2: the further supply of housing because home builders and new
Speaker 2: homes of.
Speaker 3: Which we are desperately in need of. We really do
Speaker 3: need a lot of new housing.
Speaker 2: And that is a whole other conversation about how you
Speaker 2: balance neighborhood hoods and all that other stuff, which I'm
Speaker 2: sympathetic to, you know, to some respect. But the question
Speaker 2: is like, at the very least the ones that are
Speaker 2: getting built need to continue. Many home builders are simply
Speaker 2: dropping their projects or putting them on pause because they
Speaker 2: a cannot afford the building materials and b they do
Speaker 2: not feel that they will be able to sell at
Speaker 2: their current rate. Or and we have this right here,
Speaker 2: let's put this up there on the screen. The housing
Speaker 2: market is now so unaffordable. Builders say, quote, they have
Speaker 2: no choice but to build smaller homes. Now, again, that's
Speaker 2: not necessarily a bad thing, because in some cases, we
Speaker 2: kind of do need more starter home invatory because some people,
Speaker 2: you know, not everybody has to buy a four thousand
Speaker 2: square foot house. I'm not really sure where this came from,
Speaker 2: but let's put that aside. The idea, though, is that
Speaker 2: by building smaller, one of the things that they're finding
Speaker 2: is that it's going to just deeply cut into their
Speaker 2: profit margin, which would only mean that they will continue
Speaker 2: to build less and less, or they may just not
Speaker 2: they may abandoned the project altogether. So there's just like
Speaker 2: all within the chain of custody. I guess of all
Speaker 2: this is it's just a really bad outlook. We'll have
Speaker 2: less housing and then we'll only have even more expensive payments.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And one of the problems too is people
Speaker 1: who already own a home who might have been interested
Speaker 1: in moving, which would open up their house to be
Speaker 1: sold and you know, some new buyer to be able
Speaker 1: to come in. They don't want to move because they
Speaker 1: have really low mortgage interest rate. They don't want to
Speaker 1: have to take out a new mortgage that's going to
Speaker 1: have a much higher interest rate. It makes no sense
Speaker 1: because they're not going to be able to afford even
Speaker 1: the house that they already have given the way that
Speaker 1: mortgage interest rates have gone up. Now they have come
Speaker 1: down a little bit from their peak, but is still
Speaker 1: significantly higher than where it was before. And as you're
Speaker 1: referring to soccer, in terms of the builders, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a worst of all worlds for them because on
Speaker 1: the one hand, inflation has made materials very expensive for
Speaker 1: them in terms of building. On the other hand, even
Speaker 1: though the Fed has been hiking rates, you know, it
Speaker 1: hasn't combated that inflation in terms of their materials and
Speaker 1: their expenses, but it has jacked up also their borrowing costs.
Speaker 4: So that's an issue for them as well.
Speaker 1: One of the things things that frankly, we weren't about
Speaker 1: very early in the Federal Reserve program of hiking interest
Speaker 1: rates because it has constrained supply of housing and it
Speaker 1: has made the housing situation even that much more difficult.
Speaker 1: So you have low housing stock, you don't have enough homes,
Speaker 1: you certainly don't have enough affordable homes. You have decades
Speaker 1: of prices going up and up and up, making housing
Speaker 1: unaffordable to start with. Then you layer on top of
Speaker 1: that the mortgage interest that is just absolutely killing people,
Speaker 1: and that's how you come to this place where so
Speaker 1: few Americans feel that it is a decent time to
Speaker 1: buy a house, record low feeling like it's a decent
Speaker 1: time to buy a house. And you know, we talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the housing market here, and the reason
Speaker 1: we do is because it is so central to building
Speaker 1: basic wealth and prosperity. I mean, that is the real
Speaker 1: divide increasingly in America is between asset owners and particular
Speaker 1: homeowners and people who do not own assets and do
Speaker 1: not own wealth. And as Sober you cover in your
Speaker 1: monologue the other day, those problems are only going to
Speaker 1: get worse as boomers hand down their inheritances to their
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: Lucky children.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a growing divide between those who
Speaker 1: can ever dream of getting onto the you know, home
Speaker 1: ownership ladder versus those who are going to be Listen,
Speaker 1: if you love renting and that's your thing. I'm not
Speaker 1: like there's no judgment here whatsoever, But a lot of
Speaker 1: people want to have a home, have that stability, be
Speaker 1: able to build well through it. And it is increasingly
Speaker 1: impossible for people to be able to do that last
Speaker 1: piece with regard to housing. You know, just to show
Speaker 1: you how much the mortgage rates here matter put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen from Politico. They had a piece
Speaker 1: a little while ago that said how the Fed's rate
Speaker 1: hikes helped drive up mortgage payments. You can see the
Speaker 1: average monthly mortgage payment for a typical US home has
Speaker 1: grown fifty percent since January thirty one, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: So basically, in a year, the average monthly mortgage payment
Speaker 1: has gone up by fifty percent. Just let I mean,
Speaker 1: let that soak in. And so that's why people who
Speaker 1: already have a home and have a lower mortgage interust rate,
Speaker 1: they're definitely not interested in selling if they can at
Speaker 1: all avoid it. They want to stay put until things
Speaker 1: come back down. If you're trying to get in to
Speaker 1: the market, this has made it so that what you're
Speaker 1: able to obtain is going to be so much less
Speaker 1: than what it was before, and in some cases, in
Speaker 1: many cases, it's just going to be completely off the
Speaker 1: table altogether.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's why that graphic is just
Speaker 2: so poignant about the fifty percent increase over two years,
Speaker 2: and really sad part is you probably just won't ever
Speaker 2: go back. I saw a graphic going around that if
Speaker 2: you were able to get a less than two percent
Speaker 2: or two point five percent interest rate on your mortgage.
Speaker 2: It may be the single best trade that you'll ever
Speaker 2: make in your entire life. Wow, just through you know,
Speaker 2: fortuitous circumstances. For those who did it, God bless you.
Speaker 2: Although I guess you can't really leave. But for those
Speaker 2: who like.
Speaker 4: Your house, you'll be there forever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I hope you like it because you're not leaving.
Speaker 2: But you know, for those who didn't get who did
Speaker 2: missed out on that, just as a matter of circumstance,
Speaker 2: it's still not fair.
Speaker 3: So we got to fix it something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm kind of kicking myself because I started
Speaker 1: the process of refinancing my mortgage at the time when
Speaker 1: it was like Atith Lewis, and then I like dropped
Speaker 1: the ball and didn't get my shit together and then
Speaker 1: the rates started going up.
Speaker 2: I have a friend who's got a one point out
Speaker 2: Crystal one point nine.
Speaker 3: Wow. Wow, man, you you lucked out, so good for him.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, there's another piece that you know. It tracks
Speaker 1: with the dire views of the housing market. It tracks
Speaker 1: with you know, people's just sense of hopelessness. It tracks
Speaker 1: with the fallout from the pandemic. God put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. I mean, this is in some ways
Speaker 1: one of the worst metrics of how the country is
Speaker 1: doing that I've seen in a long time. US depression
Speaker 1: rates have reached a new high. So people who have
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with depression, who have ever had depression, who
Speaker 1: are currently being treated for depression, both of those metrics
Speaker 1: have reached an all time high, so twenty nine percent.
Speaker 1: That's a nearly ten percentage point hike since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: So we're not talking about a long time ago, but
Speaker 1: we've had a ten point hike in the percentage of
Speaker 1: Americans who currently have or are being treated for depression.
Speaker 1: That's at seventeen point eight percent. That's up about seven
Speaker 1: points over that period, highest recorded by Gallop since they
Speaker 1: started measuring depression. You have higher rates among women, so
Speaker 1: over one third of women thirty six point seven percent
Speaker 1: now report having been diagnosed at some point in their lifetime.
Speaker 1: That's compared to twenty point four percent of men. Their
Speaker 1: rate has also risen at nearly twice the rate of
Speaker 1: men since twenty seventeen. You've got young people who also
Speaker 1: have seen significant increases, So those aged eighteen to twenty nine,
Speaker 1: they're at thirty four percent. Those who are aged thirty
Speaker 1: to forty four, they're at thirty five percent, and their
Speaker 1: depression diagnosis rates have been among the ones that have
Speaker 1: spiked the most. Now in some of this is, you know,
Speaker 1: for example, the difference between men and women. I wonder
Speaker 1: how much of that is there's actually different differing rates
Speaker 1: of depression between men and women, and how much of
Speaker 1: it is women feel more comfortable admitting this and seeking help,
Speaker 1: And because you have the image of like, you know,
Speaker 1: masculinity and the strong, silent type of whatever, if there's
Speaker 1: more of a stigma there around seeking help and admitting
Speaker 1: you've been diagnosed or admitting you've struggled with depression, I
Speaker 1: genuinely don't know. I'm just putting that out there for
Speaker 1: people to consider. But the other thing they point to
Speaker 1: here is not going to be surprised, which is that
Speaker 1: you know, COVID nineteen and the social isolation and lockdowns
Speaker 1: and the fact that people were just at their home
Speaker 1: alone or with just their close nuclear family that has
Speaker 1: really exacerbated what was already a crisis in terms of depression.
Speaker 1: It's also contributed to significant substance abuse. So, and you know,
Speaker 1: mental health in this country. Mental health care in this
Speaker 1: country is really poorly lacking, so that contributes to this
Speaker 1: picture as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I actually think I'm most concerned about the
Speaker 2: percent change because the percent change has gone up by
Speaker 2: eight point four percent in the last eight years. For men,
Speaker 2: it's gone up by five point seven. For women, it's
Speaker 2: gone up by ten point five. For those who are
Speaker 2: eighteen to twenty nine, it's gone up by thirteen point nine,
Speaker 2: thirty to thirty four, twelve point six, forty five to
Speaker 2: sixty four, or five point seven sixty five. On older
Speaker 2: it's only gone up by two percent. So the net
Speaker 2: increase specifically amongst people between eighteen to twenty nine and
Speaker 2: thirty to forty four just comes from a general sense
Speaker 2: of malaise and also your inability to think that you
Speaker 2: can get out of your current circumstances. And I think
Speaker 2: that is probably the toughest single thing, and it's also
Speaker 2: explains a lot of our social ills. It's why people
Speaker 2: are angry so much, a lot of violence right now.
Speaker 2: It's just people are pissed. They're like they're popping off
Speaker 2: for literally no reason. Ask anybody who works in law enforcement. Also,
Speaker 2: the amount of rage road rage incidents is sky high.
Speaker 3: I actually witnessed two or three today.
Speaker 2: Wow, well, you know what you just want to You'll
Speaker 2: be like, I want to be in the brain of
Speaker 2: somebody who thinks it's okay. I do not want to
Speaker 2: be in that brain. No, I'm just want to be
Speaker 2: like a horrible place to explain it to me. Explain
Speaker 2: to me why you're more important than five hundred other
Speaker 2: people who are in line. Well, what's happening inside of you?
Speaker 2: It's like how were you raised to get to this point?
Speaker 2: And then also you know what happened on this particular day.
Speaker 3: Everybody has bad days.
Speaker 2: It's okay, but we're having a lot more bad days
Speaker 2: on average than good days.
Speaker 3: And then that's the question of like why how does
Speaker 3: this all happen? And I think, you know.
Speaker 2: It's COVID lockdowns. It just accelerated it, Like it's not
Speaker 2: the answer. I was also looking at, you know, not
Speaker 2: only the team depression rate, it's also it's been on
Speaker 2: the rise now for quite a long time, and I
Speaker 2: think I have to go back to the phone analysis
Speaker 2: a lot of it as you see a huge spike
Speaker 2: in depression between eighteen to forty four year olds.
Speaker 3: That happened right around twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: And the reason why twenty eleven or twenty twelve is
Speaker 2: a pretty good benchmark is because that is when mass
Speaker 2: availability of smartphones, not just when the iPhone came out,
Speaker 2: but whenever I am massive iPhone four. It really was a
Speaker 2: jump off for a lot of people. The move from
Speaker 2: the BlackBerry to the smartphone, and also the rise of Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 2: and Instagram and all of these other apps kind of
Speaker 2: right hits that on. Now. You know, can you live
Speaker 2: without them? No, wouldn't literally it wouldn't be here without them.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's complicated, but it's very complicated. It's
Speaker 2: complicated that said, I mean, we got to find some
Speaker 2: sort of balance and I you know here and we
Speaker 2: see it a lot from people. People feel very not
Speaker 2: optimistic about starting a family, about even getting in a relationship.
Speaker 2: Everything's kind of been gamified, smartphoneified. And again, you know,
Speaker 2: you can't go back from where we are right now,
Speaker 2: but I think acknowledging it at the very least is important.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, you know, it should open up a lot of
Speaker 2: discussion Gristle about SSRIs. We have covered all those stories
Speaker 2: about whether SSRIs even work, you know, relative to all
Speaker 2: of the downsides, how exercise itself seems to have the
Speaker 2: exact same level of upside without any of the risk.
Speaker 2: I'm totally open now having watched Michael Pollin's documentary and
Speaker 2: book about the use of potential you know, psychedelics in.
Speaker 3: A clinical setting.
Speaker 2: But more importantly, it's like we have to pursue all
Speaker 2: options with a vigorous I think, and yeah, with a
Speaker 2: vigorous attitude.
Speaker 1: I do want to point out to that, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the trends that we track here are really
Speaker 1: unique to the US. This one is actually not. This
Speaker 1: is actually pretty consistent with global rates of depression and anxiety,
Speaker 1: which I think also would fit with the idea that
Speaker 1: you know, the smartphone has been a major contributor, because
Speaker 1: obviously that's not a US specific phenomenon, so it's it's
Speaker 1: very multifaceted. I also agree with you that COVID was
Speaker 1: an accelerant of trends that were already existing. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think this is a major crisis just in terms
Speaker 1: of oftentimes the only way that the US, the US government,
Speaker 1: media pundits know how to track well being in the
Speaker 1: US is like by money or the unemployment rate, or
Speaker 1: you know, or the stock market, which is a particularly
Speaker 1: poor indicator of how the country is doing. But to me,
Speaker 1: core issues like you know, whether people feel like they'll
Speaker 1: ever be able to buy a house, how they're feeling
Speaker 1: about themselves day to day, how much of a struggle
Speaker 1: it is for them to get through their day. You know,
Speaker 1: the levels of depression, anxiety, self reported loneliness. Loneliness can
Speaker 1: be really devastating, and it's under discussed as well. These
Speaker 1: are the sort of core metrics that I think really
Speaker 1: make up a healthy society and unfortunately we're failing on
Speaker 1: a lot of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, it's one of those where at the very
Speaker 2: least people need to take it seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the most important thing.
Speaker 2: Speaking of mental illness and things that are you know,
Speaker 2: really out of whacking that turn for a while, people
Speaker 2: who have been maybe displaying narcissistic behavior now for years.
Speaker 2: There was a fascinating incident that happened yesterday, So we
Speaker 2: began the day. There was a statement that was put
Speaker 2: out by the Duke and Duchess, the Duke and Duchess
Speaker 2: Harry and Megan that we may call them here in
Speaker 2: the United States. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: They put out a statement, they say, last night, the
Speaker 2: Duke and Duchess of Sussex and missus Raglan that's the
Speaker 2: mother in law, were involved in a near catastrophic car
Speaker 2: chase at the of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi.
Speaker 2: This relentless pursuit, lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple
Speaker 2: near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians, and
Speaker 2: two NYPD officers. While being a public figure comes with
Speaker 2: a level of interest from the public, it should never
Speaker 2: come at the cost of anyone's safety. Disseminations of these images,
Speaker 2: given the way in which they were obtained, encourages a
Speaker 2: highly intrusive practice that is dangerous to all involved.
Speaker 3: Hmm.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have a couple of questions here immediately
Speaker 2: about this. Obviously, you know we can we should have
Speaker 2: some empathy for Prince Harry. His mother literally died in
Speaker 2: an incident where well, maybe we're racing away from paparazzi. Okay,
Speaker 2: so at least that's the official narrative. Maybe that's what
Speaker 2: he believes. So if so, maybe he's going to be
Speaker 2: sensitive about that. All right, so let's break some of
Speaker 2: it down. So first and foremost, what are we all
Speaker 2: asking about?
Speaker 3: Two hours?
Speaker 2: Yeah, two hour near catastrophic car chase in the middle
Speaker 2: of down mid Town Manhattan. That's pretty interesting for anybody
Speaker 2: who's ever lived there, who's ever spent any time there.
Speaker 1: You guys, Now, Midtown is like Times Square.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Times Square, So we're this place has bump bumper
Speaker 2: traffic like twenty four to seven, especially at the time
Speaker 2: that they were leaving, So that's kind of crazy. How
Speaker 2: do you have a near catastrophic car chase? Then they
Speaker 2: say that it had near collisions with other drivers on
Speaker 2: the road, pedestrians and two NYPD officers. So immediately, of course, okay, well,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe this happened. Let's talk to the NYPD.
Speaker 2: So here's what they had to say. Let's put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. Here's what they say. On
Speaker 2: Wednesday evening May sixteen, the NYPD assisted the private security
Speaker 2: team protecting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They were
Speaker 2: numerous photographers that made their transport challenging. The Duke and
Speaker 2: Duchess arrived at their destination and there were no reported collisions.
Speaker 2: Summons says injuries, arrest in regard. Oh so no collisions,
Speaker 2: no summons says, no injuries, no arrests in regard, no
Speaker 2: officers were put at risk as were originally claimed. So
Speaker 2: already we have some questions here about the two hour thing.
Speaker 2: Now the NYPD basically says that's actually not what happened
Speaker 2: at all. Then Mayor Eric Adams, who presumably also had
Speaker 2: been read in a little bit on the incident, he
Speaker 2: poured cold water on the entire thing.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to what he said.
Speaker 8: I would find it hard to believe that there was
Speaker 8: a two hour high speed chase. That would be I
Speaker 8: find out hard to believe. But we will find out
Speaker 8: the exact duration of it. But if it's a ten minutes,
Speaker 8: a ten minute chase is extremely dangerous in New York City.
Speaker 2: Ten minute chase is extremely dangerously right And unfortunately though
Speaker 2: for them and their version of events, it doesn't even
Speaker 2: look like even that ten minute chase happened.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there.
Speaker 2: On the screen because the taxi driver that they got
Speaker 2: into a taxi he says, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think I would call it a chase.
Speaker 2: He says, I never felt like I was in danger,
Speaker 2: they were quiet, they seem scared.
Speaker 3: But it's New York. It's safe.
Speaker 2: By the way, whenever he says that, what he's actually
Speaker 2: saying is it's midtown Manhattan, that it's safe. And look,
Speaker 2: I think that that is very obviously true. Now, furthermore,
Speaker 2: there's actually been even more reporting since we put these together, Crystal,
Speaker 2: And in fact, according to police sources who are countering
Speaker 2: this claim, not only was there no car chase all
Speaker 2: of that, but they say that this entire episode lasted
Speaker 2: only twenty minutes and did not involve the amount of
Speaker 2: paparazzi that they claim. In fact, the cops who escorted
Speaker 2: Harry and Megan out of the event and to their
Speaker 2: home or wherever they were staying, they say they.
Speaker 3: Were home twenty minutes after leaving the event.
Speaker 2: This entire thing appears to be, based on the full
Speaker 2: availability of the evidence as it currently exists, does not
Speaker 2: appear to have happened in the way that they said, Crystal,
Speaker 2: And we can say that from the taxi drivers on record,
Speaker 2: from the NYPD, from the mayor, from the police sources
Speaker 2: that have all put this out, a.
Speaker 1: Lack of video, the lack of video, this is Mintown, Manhattan.
Speaker 1: There's people with cell phone cameras everywhere.
Speaker 4: The video arps do anything.
Speaker 2: Come out from people who showed the paparazzi around the
Speaker 2: car out of red light by the way, doing anything wrong?
Speaker 2: Then a cop car was coming, except the cop car
Speaker 2: wasn't escorting them. He just came through and he turned right.
Speaker 2: He didn't go in the same direction. So even their
Speaker 2: version of events on that one is total BS. So look,
Speaker 2: I mean, looking at all of this, it is very
Speaker 2: clear that this did not happen that the way that
Speaker 2: they said it did, based upon their recollections and all
Speaker 2: the stuff that is in the public domain at this moment.
Speaker 2: And it's just a further part of the we want
Speaker 2: Privacy tour.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know how many of you watched the
Speaker 1: South Park episode. Yeah, Harry and Meghan that they were
Speaker 1: suing them over right, the whole.
Speaker 3: Well, they could, they considered it. They considered it.
Speaker 4: Oh they didn't.
Speaker 3: There's a thing.
Speaker 2: They're in America, Sorry, Harry and Meghan. You're not in
Speaker 2: your BS country where you can just sue people for
Speaker 2: no reason and may impossibly win.
Speaker 3: In America, we have much better laws.
Speaker 1: So in the South Park episode, the whole central core
Speaker 1: of the plot is that Harry and Meghan are going
Speaker 1: on people who look like Harry yea bear some resemblance
Speaker 1: to them, are going on a worldwide privacy tour where
Speaker 1: they go and they decide they're going to move to
Speaker 1: South Park to like get their privacy, and they're out
Speaker 1: like picketing, like we just want to be left alone,
Speaker 1: and everyone's like, we're trying to leave you alone, like
Speaker 1: please leave us alone. And this is almost literally like
Speaker 1: it is literally the South Park episode, Like you, okay,
Speaker 1: there were some paparazzi. I don't think anyone is going
Speaker 1: to be shocked by that. Paparazzi can be aggressive. I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody, including yourselves, are going to be shocked
Speaker 1: by that either. But by wildly overstating this, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are trying to leave you alone, but you just
Speaker 1: keep putting yourself at our faces.
Speaker 4: Do I want to cover Harry and Meghan?
Speaker 1: No, not really, but like this is just too absurd
Speaker 1: to not talk about. In the direct contradiction from the police,
Speaker 1: from the mayor, from like everybody who had anything to
Speaker 1: the taxi driver, for anybody who had anything to do
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: It's the reason I feel compelled to debunk this and
Speaker 2: to talk about this is because I know that this
Speaker 2: will just be regurgitated by the page sixes and all
Speaker 2: of these other people. In fact, the funniest thing is
Speaker 2: in Britain they think that Harry and Meghan are a
Speaker 2: joke and they are reviled. The only people who believe
Speaker 2: her and anything that she says are idiots in America.
Speaker 3: Who are like, oh my god, it's a real life princess.
Speaker 2: And that's the issue is like we are the suckers,
Speaker 2: our media are the life.
Speaker 1: How much of that sentiment still exists in this way?
Speaker 1: I'm genuinely asking, because I have my sense is that
Speaker 1: everybody is like, please go away.
Speaker 2: That's words, you're around the normal people. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of girls out there who love Megan. They think
Speaker 2: that she told the truth in her OPRAH interview, even
Speaker 2: though there's not a lot of evidence to say that
Speaker 2: she told the truth in her OPRAH interview. I mean,
Speaker 2: and look, you can hate the royal family if you
Speaker 2: want to, that's fine, but like that doesn't mean you
Speaker 2: have to believe a complete narcissist. And like that's it's
Speaker 2: very clear what her game has been too normal folks
Speaker 2: like us, but not everybody feels that way. And the
Speaker 2: point is is that, you know, looking at the way
Speaker 2: that her claims were reported, immediately was as truth. They
Speaker 2: were like, oh my gosh, this is terrible, catastrophic all
Speaker 2: that not one ounce of skepticism, except again from the
Speaker 2: Brits and you know, Megan Kelly, people like me and
Speaker 2: a few others who are like, yeah, I don't think so, man,
Speaker 2: this whole thing doesn't really add up.
Speaker 1: I don't want to a smirch page six, which I
Speaker 1: think does some phoenomenal report.
Speaker 3: Right, you're right, I'm sorry I did not go after that.
Speaker 2: They're only doing what they're told, I guess just you know,
Speaker 2: technically their entire job.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we may trade in gossip, that's what they do.
Speaker 1: But you would think that there would be a moment
Speaker 1: of like, two are car chase in midtown men? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: That's my thing is, how do you say with a
Speaker 2: straight face, but you had a car chase in midtown
Speaker 2: Manhattan for two hours. Most of that time you'd be
Speaker 2: sitting in traffic, and all of the evidence that came
Speaker 2: out from it is people sitting in traffic So there
Speaker 2: you go. All right, let's talk about Fox News and
Speaker 2: let's put this up there on the screen. This is
Speaker 2: big news being reported by Matt Drudge over at the
Speaker 2: Drudge Report. Fox News is currently denying it, but Drudge
Speaker 2: Report says that Sean Hannity appears to be ready to
Speaker 2: replace Tucker Carlson in a major shakeup.
Speaker 3: Now here's what he says from Drudge.
Speaker 2: He says, world exclusive, Fox News sets a new schedule.
Speaker 2: So Drudge is claiming that the new primetime gigs will
Speaker 2: both go to Sean Hannity, to Jesse Waters, and to
Speaker 2: Greg Guttfeld to stack the primetime lineup. Seven PM currently
Speaker 2: is where they might move him too, because Guttfeld is
Speaker 2: currently on at eleven PM and also on the five
Speaker 2: PM show called The Five. The reason why that this
Speaker 2: is a big deal is not only would they say
Speaker 2: that Hannity, their current higher rated host, is just going
Speaker 2: to slot in and take over Tucker Carlson's timeslot, It's
Speaker 2: that it would also involve a drop of Laura Ingram. Now, again,
Speaker 2: as I said, let's put this up there. Fox is
Speaker 2: denying that any of this is the case. They say
Speaker 2: no decision has been made on a new primetime lineup,
Speaker 2: and there are multiple scenarios under consideration, not really a
Speaker 2: full scale de Nile, because all Drudge is saying is
Speaker 2: a major shakeup is happening, and the main thing that
Speaker 2: he is reporting is that Sean Hannity is going to
Speaker 2: the eight pm hour. It's certainly possible that it doesn't happen,
Speaker 2: you know, I guess it's possible it doesn't. Drudge though,
Speaker 2: generally pretty good whenever it comes to internal news. I
Speaker 2: guess you could say of the Fox News channel because
Speaker 2: he was very tight and has a lot of sources there.
Speaker 3: He actually used to work there. You know.
Speaker 2: Now at some point the real question is, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: will lor Ingram get the boot? And then second, this
Speaker 2: only only codifies so much of what I've talked about
Speaker 2: here is there. If they're not even gonna try and
Speaker 2: replace Tucker, they're just going to slot in Sean Hannity yea,
Speaker 2: and move in there, that's an admission of failure.
Speaker 3: It's a huge admission.
Speaker 1: It's such it's very consistent, Yeah, with MSNBC's approach to
Speaker 1: not even trying to replace Rachel Mack, really putting in
Speaker 1: Alex Wagner, who's just like a you know, sort of
Speaker 1: standard issue news host. It's consistent with CNN just moving
Speaker 1: Caitlyn Collins to primetime. I mean, does anyone really expect
Speaker 1: she's Maybe they're deluding themselves and I'm thinking she's going
Speaker 1: to be some good luck star, but you know, to me,
Speaker 1: she's just another sort of like standard issue news hosts
Speaker 1: like many of the other ones. So it is consistent
Speaker 1: with a pattern of effectively managed to climb that is
Speaker 1: quite evident at every one of these networks. We have
Speaker 1: a non denial denial about the Laura Ingram thing as
Speaker 1: well that we can report. So a network spokesperson said,
Speaker 1: this is kind of funny. Reports based on various tweets
Speaker 1: by left wing activists are wildly inaccurate.
Speaker 4: Since when did Drudge become a left wing activist?
Speaker 1: Okay, Laura Ingram, the top rated woman in cable news,
Speaker 1: is now and will continue to be a prominent host
Speaker 1: and integral part of the Fox News lineup. Doesn't say
Speaker 1: she's going to remain in primetime though, does it? Yeah? No, So,
Speaker 1: I mean it is interesting what is being omitted, and
Speaker 1: you can bet very intentionally so from these little statements
Speaker 1: that they're putting.
Speaker 3: Out yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that's actually the big takeaway for me is like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, so clearly something is going on over there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just think, look, if you're going to
Speaker 2: slot in Hannity, that is the biggest admission of fail.
Speaker 2: Whenever O'Reilly left the network, Hannity stayed in his nine
Speaker 2: PM slot and they tried out a bunch of different stuff.
Speaker 2: I forget exactly what the drama was because, like Megan
Speaker 2: Kelly was leaving, so they replaced her, and then Tucker
Speaker 2: was moved APM hour. Eventually that's where he found his success.
Speaker 2: But they're only keeping existing talent. They're not even hiring
Speaker 2: anybody new. Tucker was actually brought in new to the network,
Speaker 2: at least to the primetime here to.
Speaker 1: Primetime before that, he had been hosting I think weekend.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, he's only on weekend Fox and Friends.
Speaker 2: Just completely not the same thing at all. So look,
Speaker 2: I mean, what you could say around all of this
Speaker 2: is that what you can say is that this has
Speaker 2: managed decline at its absolute finest. And I don't think
Speaker 2: anybody could say that Sean Hannby is in any way
Speaker 2: in the same caliber. I mean, he is just like
Speaker 2: You can accuse Tucker of many things, but with Hannity,
Speaker 2: he is just like copy cut like cookie cutter. Whatever
Speaker 2: Republican talking point of day is, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Like a wind up doll, like freedom and low taxes
Speaker 1: is just it's very predictable. That's what I would say,
Speaker 1: is he's very predictable. He's always going to be on
Speaker 1: the side of like whatever is the Republican thing of
Speaker 1: the day, He's going to be on the talking points
Speaker 1: like it just is. You know, it is what it is.
Speaker 1: So you're not going to break a lot of ground there. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he's had a lot of success at the network for
Speaker 1: a lot of years. I think he's been there the
Speaker 1: whole like the whole time since the launch of the network.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he was there at the very beginning,
Speaker 3: but he's.
Speaker 1: Been there a long time, and you know, he's held
Speaker 1: down a stable core of audience. But as we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: there were only a couple people in cable news who
Speaker 1: really were a magnet to draw viewers in, and then
Speaker 1: much of the cable news game is trying to hold
Speaker 1: on to whatever you get in terms of audience. That
Speaker 1: carries over from the last host so you know, Rachel
Speaker 1: Baddow was a tent pole at AMSNBC, and Tucker was
Speaker 1: a tent pole over at Fox News, and you know,
Speaker 1: they clearly don't have anyone to replace him with in
Speaker 1: terms of that sort of like tent pole draw. What
Speaker 1: do you make of the Laura if we're taking this
Speaker 1: Laura rumor at face value, which frankly, the Fox News
Speaker 1: statement just to me almost like confirms that she's being
Speaker 1: moved down in prime time. She was also caught up
Speaker 1: in some of the Dominion revelations. You know, I can't
Speaker 1: remember specifically that, but I know there were texts or
Speaker 1: messages between her producers and some people who were involved
Speaker 1: with Stop the Steal. You know, do you think that
Speaker 1: that could be related to why she's being moved down
Speaker 1: in prime time?
Speaker 3: As possible.
Speaker 2: It's certainly possible that she's that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that she got moved out of primetime. It's also you know,
Speaker 2: her ratings, not me, may not be the best. They
Speaker 2: also could I mean, look what they may want to
Speaker 2: try and develop talent, Like they've given her several years
Speaker 2: there and she hasn't made it into some Gangbusters thing.
Speaker 3: You know, it's also hard to work with.
Speaker 2: I mean, ten pm is not a great time to
Speaker 2: be on television, and you know, in general, she's hard
Speaker 2: to work with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, I know, behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: she's not be loved.
Speaker 3: That's what the people say. Yeah, allegedly according to a
Speaker 3: rumor mill.
Speaker 2: So you know, it could be. It's probably just a
Speaker 2: combination of factors. The real thing is, if you move
Speaker 2: gut Failed into primetime, you were taking effectively was one
Speaker 2: of your biggest stars in the network and somebody who's
Speaker 2: found success in the eleven pm hour, and you're just
Speaker 2: going to bet on him to try and do that,
Speaker 2: to bring some comedy or something new, you know, for
Speaker 2: that Waters, I mean, listen, Waters, I think he's very
Speaker 2: much in the same league Hannity and all that. But
Speaker 2: all of these people, this has just managed to climb,
Speaker 2: you know, at its very least. It definitely would be
Speaker 2: bad for Laura Ingram though, if that's what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just looking at what her involvement was and
Speaker 1: the like what came out in the Dominion thing. Apparently
Speaker 1: she and Tucker had been privately discussing Sidney Powell. Tucker
Speaker 1: called her a nut and said a bunch of other stuff,
Speaker 1: and then like that very the very next day where
Speaker 1: Laura is agreeing that basically Sidney Powell is an unhinched lunatic.
Speaker 1: And then the very next day she's saying she believed
Speaker 1: the election was rife with problems and potential frauds, So
Speaker 1: very different what she was saying behind the scenes beside
Speaker 1: what she was presenting to her viewing audience. So was
Speaker 1: that a factor? You know, who knows who knows what's
Speaker 1: going Only time will tell, right, Yeah, I may never.
Speaker 3: Know, Crystal, What do you take a look at?
Speaker 1: Wow, mass surveillance is class warfare. That is the major
Speaker 1: takeaway from a new Washington Post report about how facial
Speaker 1: recognition and surveillance cameras are being used to strip the
Speaker 1: rights and the dignity from poor residents of public housing projects.
Speaker 1: So here's that report. The headline is Eyes on the
Speaker 1: Poor Cameras, Facial recognition watch over public Housing, and it
Speaker 1: tracks how public housing projects are increasingly using surveillance tech
Speaker 1: to track every little movement of residents, weaponizing the technology
Speaker 1: to evict residents over really minor infractions. According to Post,
Speaker 1: this is happening in small, rural communities and major metro
Speaker 1: areas alike. Just take a look at this graphic. It
Speaker 1: shows the number of cameras installed per resident in public
Speaker 1: housing projects from New York City to Rolette, North Dakota.
Speaker 1: Some of these places have more cameras per person than
Speaker 1: the Louver and the and many casinos, which are famous,
Speaker 1: of course, for sophisticated player surveillance. There is no tracking
Speaker 1: of how many residents have been evicted based on these
Speaker 1: monitoring systems, but evidence suggests that the number is significant
Speaker 1: and rising. So first of all, overall, evictions have skyrocketed
Speaker 1: in public housing post pandemic. Princeton's Eviction Lab tracks a
Speaker 1: portion of these public housing projects. They found that evictions
Speaker 1: in the ten States and thirty four cities that they
Speaker 1: monitor have doubled since the end of the pandemic era moratoriums,
Speaker 1: rising to five thousand, five hundred seventy six in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. That was a faster rate of increase than
Speaker 1: evictions from other housing units across the country. What's more,
Speaker 1: interviews with advocates suggest that these newly installed high tech
Speaker 1: camera systems have been crucial in trying to push people out.
Speaker 1: The Post spoke with numerous residents who had been tracked, harassed,
Speaker 1: and kicked out for violating rules about guests, or about
Speaker 1: smoking too close to the building, or even for removing
Speaker 1: a cart from the laundry room. They interviewed one single mom,
Speaker 1: Tanya Akabu, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, who is trying to
Speaker 1: balance childcare with her day job. She's a bus driver
Speaker 1: and she's also going to night school training to be
Speaker 1: a lab technician. From the sound of things, she was
Speaker 1: trying to do everything right, trying to educate herself so
Speaker 1: she could get a higher paying job to better support
Speaker 1: herself and her kiddos, but given the expense of childcare
Speaker 1: in this country, she had to rely on her ex
Speaker 1: husband to help care for her kids while she was
Speaker 1: at work and while she was at school. The building
Speaker 1: accused him of actually living at the apartment, violating their rules,
Speaker 1: and they used the surveillance tech to make their case.
Speaker 1: The housing authority actually used software to place a digital
Speaker 1: marker next to a Kabu's front door and told the
Speaker 1: system to retrieve every moment when motion was detected near
Speaker 1: the marker. Documents in interviews show going from the post
Speaker 1: here when her property manager suspected that a Kabu's ax
Speaker 1: was leaving through the back door. She set up a
Speaker 1: portable camera in the backyard pointed directly at that door.
Speaker 1: It's according to housing authority officials and a review of
Speaker 1: the surveillance video obtained and verified by the Post, it
Speaker 1: got to the point where it was like harassment. A
Speaker 1: Kabu thirty three said, they really made my life hell.
Speaker 1: She says she presented evidence to the building that her
Speaker 1: ex was not in fact living there, that he had
Speaker 1: another different residence, but they didn't believe her and she
Speaker 1: still was evicted. Now, another sixty eight year old woman
Speaker 1: was evicted when cameras caught her smoking too close to
Speaker 1: the building and allegedly getting into disputes with the other residents.
Speaker 1: After being forced down in public housing, she landed on
Speaker 1: her sister's couch, desperately searching for some other stable living situation.
Speaker 1: Just once she thought that she had caught a break
Speaker 1: with another building accepting her rental application, she's back to
Speaker 1: square one after they talked to the public housing management
Speaker 1: and decided they did not want her in their building
Speaker 1: after all. It shows you how a single eviction can
Speaker 1: really derail an entire life. So what is behind the
Speaker 1: rise of this level of surveillance. Now in part, the
Speaker 1: installation is reaction to entirely justified concerns about crime, violence,
Speaker 1: and theft. Residents and management alike. They want these complexes
Speaker 1: to be safe and calm, of course, not dens of
Speaker 1: drug use or gang infighting. A pandemic crime surge is
Speaker 1: hit poor neighborhoods such as these particularly hard and public
Speaker 1: housing projects don't have the resources to do much of
Speaker 1: anything other than apply a clumsy surveillance band aid to
Speaker 1: a gaping national social problem.
Speaker 4: The problem goes back further too.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty nine, at the height of the crack epidemic,
Speaker 1: federal legislators passed one hundred million dollars in funding to
Speaker 1: provide a wide range of social services, drug rehab, and
Speaker 1: enhance security to public housing. That funding was stripped under
Speaker 1: the Bush administration and replaced with a much smaller grant
Speaker 1: of just ten million dollars to install security features things
Speaker 1: like cameras, doors, carbon monoxide detectors, and the like. So Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: while it's pretty clear the cameras have been intrusive to
Speaker 1: residents and have turned their entire lives into police state nightmare,
Speaker 1: there is no real evidence that they've been successful in
Speaker 1: combating crime that residents would want them to. In rural
Speaker 1: Scott County, Virginia, their algorithm base surveillance system has only
Speaker 1: turned up a single match for an individual who is
Speaker 1: banned from the complex. And these bandlifts list our in
Speaker 1: and of themselves actually controversial since people can end up
Speaker 1: on them without ever having been charged with or convicted
Speaker 1: of a crime. The person this system match too, had
Speaker 1: been accused of domestic violence, the charges were never filed.
Speaker 1: In this story, we kind of see the perfect storm
Speaker 1: of societal ills that were gropped with all across the country.
Speaker 1: You've got a mistrust of and contempt for the poor
Speaker 1: that justifies dehumanizing treatment.
Speaker 4: You've got a post pandemic.
Speaker 1: Crime spike that has disproportionately victimized the poor. You've got
Speaker 1: a response to that crime spike that lacks resources and
Speaker 1: will to deal with root causes and instead just further
Speaker 1: emiserates the poor.
Speaker 4: A tech search that is.
Speaker 1: Increasingly penetrating even the most intimate of spaces for everyone,
Speaker 1: and looming over all of it, a housing affordability crisis
Speaker 1: that squeezes everyone except the wealthy, and constantly threatens the
Speaker 1: working poor with outright homelessness. People don't need Big Brother
Speaker 1: watching them. They need healthcare, a living wage, childcare, and
Speaker 1: perhaps above all, decent affordable housing. All the cameras in
Speaker 1: the world are not going to fix what ails us.
Speaker 1: And that's the Rubsager is a lot of these rests.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 4: All right, Saga, what are you looking at?
Speaker 2: Well, it's time to check in with the cable ratings. Yes,
Speaker 2: I know it can seem gratuitous my honest answer. Maybe
Speaker 2: you're right, but sometimes I can not help myself. And
Speaker 2: the more that we remind everyone just how pathetic and
Speaker 2: badly they are doing, the better. One of the big
Speaker 2: predictions we've made here here after Tucker Carlston's departure from
Speaker 2: Fox News comes true is that this time it really
Speaker 2: is different. Fox would have a very difficult time recovering
Speaker 2: their primetime lineup and has given the median age of
Speaker 2: their viewers it is now mid seventies, they just don't
Speaker 2: have that much time to get it right. Already, that
Speaker 2: prediction is bearing fruit MSNBC, for the first time in years,
Speaker 2: is now consistently beating Fox in primetime across the board,
Speaker 2: and MSNBC averaged one point eight million viewers between eight
Speaker 2: to eleven. Fox averaged one point seven million, CNN average
Speaker 2: four hundred and eighty five thousand, Newsmax four hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty thousand. Now, of course, at least on their face,
Speaker 2: MSNBC and Fox numbers sound impressive, and CNN, though, is
Speaker 2: in another league of pathetic. But once again, consider the
Speaker 2: number of viewers that they have in their key demographic.
Speaker 2: Even here, MSNBC may beat Fox, but they're still only
Speaker 2: getting one hundred and eighty eight thousand viewers below the
Speaker 2: age of fifty four. Fox is only able to get
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy four thousand, CNN one point seventeen,
Speaker 2: News Max forty four terrestrial and old TV. Cable TV
Speaker 2: is truly the last home of the boomer. I recently
Speaker 2: was told by an insider, and I swear I am
Speaker 2: not making this up, is that one reason Fox News
Speaker 2: is not too worried about losing its overall audience is
Speaker 2: because their audience is so old they quote have difficulty
Speaker 2: physically handling the remote and changing the check. I swear
Speaker 2: that's a true story, directly told to me by someone
Speaker 2: with knowledge.
Speaker 3: That is a direct quote.
Speaker 2: But even with the last holdout of Boomers over our
Speaker 2: mass culture, here too, there are signs of big trouble.
Speaker 2: CNN has lost out to Newsmax and its overall number
Speaker 2: of viewers in primetime on Friday night, and they were
Speaker 2: only able to pull some three hundred and thirty five
Speaker 2: thousand viewers on average throughout the eight eight to eleven
Speaker 2: PM hour. Ten PM, Chris Wallace was actually able to
Speaker 2: pull in only two hundred and sixty three This put
Speaker 2: Anderson Cooper's show also behind Eric Bowling over on Newsmax.
Speaker 2: Consider how crazy all of this is when you think
Speaker 2: about these people's salaries. Cooper is supposedly a household name,
Speaker 2: a literal Vanderbilt. Surely he should be able to get
Speaker 2: some people to watch show, yet year after year to
Speaker 2: do so and still command some twelve million dollars per year.
Speaker 2: Chris Wallace, same thing, supposedly a household name, famous dad.
Speaker 2: Huge coup for CNN, plus after leaving Fox News is
Speaker 2: making millions at CNN to do the lowest rated show
Speaker 2: on cable TV and get beaten by Newsmax. None of
Speaker 2: it really makes any sense at all, and it's why
Speaker 2: I can't stop talking about it, because the absurdity of
Speaker 2: it all eventually has to catch up to reality. So
Speaker 2: many people inside the system are so captured by it
Speaker 2: they will pretend to be surprised when it all crumbles down.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Over in sports media, though, something
Speaker 2: very interesting indeed is happening. Sports media is important to
Speaker 2: watch because many of the trends that end up happening
Speaker 2: in political media start over there. Pat McAfee, the sports jruggernaut,
Speaker 2: in a shocking move, is going to air his show
Speaker 2: on ESPN.
Speaker 3: But here's the deal.
Speaker 2: He's walking away from one hundred and twenty million dollar
Speaker 2: deal with FanDuel for sponsorship of his current show. Instead,
Speaker 2: he will be now airing all three hours of his
Speaker 2: show on ESPN ESPN Plus. But what's surprising here not
Speaker 2: the dollars, it's the terms of his contract. All reporting
Speaker 2: indicates all McAfee had to really give up was the
Speaker 2: ability to say the F word during his show. His
Speaker 2: show will remain streaming live for free on YouTube. He
Speaker 2: will maintain editorial control. His deal is more like a
Speaker 2: licensing agreement than a full blown acquisition. Think about what
Speaker 2: it means. Pat McAfee is so valuable now to ESPN
Speaker 2: and to Disney they are willing to pay him upwards
Speaker 2: of ten million dollars a year, probably more, just to
Speaker 2: have his stuff on their program while you can continue
Speaker 2: to watch it for free on YouTube. No network deal
Speaker 2: in history has ever been more friendly to somebody on
Speaker 2: the Internet.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The only caveat I'm going to give is if Pat
Speaker 2: thinks he's getting away just so easy as to stop
Speaker 2: saying the F word, probably has another thing coming.
Speaker 6: Just out.
Speaker 2: Yesterday, for example, a news broke that ESPN had dropped
Speaker 2: a documentary about the Chinese American tennis star Michael Chang,
Speaker 2: who won the nineteen eighty nine French Open as a
Speaker 2: young man and was inspired by the Tanaman Square masaker.
Speaker 3: And guess why they dropped it.
Speaker 2: I'm just sure it has editorial had nothing to do
Speaker 2: with Disney's parent company's relationship to the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 2: But the broader point that I am making is that
Speaker 2: a network acquiring a streamer and letting him continue to
Speaker 2: stream where he continued to own his IP is crazy.
Speaker 3: That's how desperate that they.
Speaker 2: Are just to squeeze even a few more people watching
Speaker 2: their dwindling channels. Now rest assured, that is not going
Speaker 2: to happen over here, nor do we want it to.
Speaker 2: It is only just a big sign of how things
Speaker 2: are going in the opposite direction from the arrogance and
Speaker 2: the confidence which the mainstream media consider their role in
Speaker 2: our society. And it's very fitting since Tucker's departure, the
Speaker 2: only person who's been able to pull real numbers on
Speaker 2: MSNBC Rachel Maddow. She only works one day a week
Speaker 2: on MSNBC, yet she still continues to petter her nonsense.
Speaker 3: Nonetheless, though people love that nonsense.
Speaker 2: She's basically the very last of her breed capable of
Speaker 2: doing that. Tucker and Rachel, in my opinion i've said before,
Speaker 2: probably the very last to play the game at this level,
Speaker 2: and even their numbers poultry compared to the ten years ago.
Speaker 2: As I've showed you all before, the total collapse of
Speaker 2: the cable news business now decade is all but assured,
Speaker 2: but it also will not stop a Feinstein level of
Speaker 2: delusion from remaining on here. The only question is about
Speaker 2: power and whether they wake up to how much the
Speaker 2: world is changing every year and every day. I thought
Speaker 2: the McAfee deal is actually the most important.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagres's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: Joining us now, old friend of mine, Shelby Talcotch. He's
Speaker 2: a political reporter over at Semaphore's rich.
Speaker 3: To see you.
Speaker 1: Nice to be here.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Shelby, you've been all over the GOP primer
Speaker 2: or I guess the not technical primary yet but officially
Speaker 2: probably primary that's happening right now. We were just talking
Speaker 2: about news drawn DeSantis very likely set to launch his
Speaker 2: campaign either next week or sometime within that.
Speaker 3: You wrote a new piece. Let's put it up there
Speaker 3: on the screen.
Speaker 2: The real twenty twenty four campaign started in Iowa this weekend.
Speaker 2: Desant is giving us a little bit of a preview
Speaker 2: of what he's going to be doing. Tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about what you learned what this primary is
Speaker 2: going to look like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's been obvious that DeSantis is running
Speaker 7: for a long time, but this was the first speak
Speaker 7: and that I really noticed him kind of branch out
Speaker 7: of his Florida focused rhetoric, and so I'm sure you
Speaker 7: guys saw over the past few months when he was
Speaker 7: doing his book tour, it was very Florida focused. This
Speaker 7: time he started branching out and he started giving kind
Speaker 7: of indirect jobs over at at Trump he did the
Speaker 7: you know, handshaking and the flipping the burgers for the
Speaker 7: for the press. He didn't give a press he didn't
Speaker 7: speak to the press, which was notable because Congressman Fiinstra's
Speaker 7: people were really pushing his team to do so, and
Speaker 7: they essentially, from my understanding, were telling his team, well, hey,
Speaker 7: this is this is how we do things every year,
Speaker 7: and this is you know, your your WoT to launch.
Speaker 1: R presidential campaign. This is how things have to be.
Speaker 7: But by and large, it was really the first indication
Speaker 7: I felt like that things are heating up.
Speaker 1: He's about to announce, got it.
Speaker 4: So how did he do?
Speaker 1: In terms of the knock on him has been like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's not very personable, he's not very comfortable around people.
Speaker 1: He doesn't do like the glad handed handling a piece
Speaker 1: of politics very well. And there have been some indications
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, there was, you know, the one
Speaker 1: member of Congress that he met with and then directly
Speaker 1: afterwards endorsed Donald Trump. You had stories coming out about, Hey,
Speaker 1: I sat next to this dude for years, we served
Speaker 1: on the same committee, and he didn't even learn my name.
Speaker 1: Do you see any evidence of that on the nascent
Speaker 1: campaign trail thus far.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Listen, I think and I've talked to people close
Speaker 7: to him, and they acknowledge that it is not his
Speaker 7: bread and butter.
Speaker 1: He prefers to be at home.
Speaker 7: With his family, which I think is completely fine, but
Speaker 7: for presidential campaign you have to kind of branch out.
Speaker 7: So I'm seeing evidence that he is taking those criticisms
Speaker 7: and trying to apply them, but I'm also seeing evidence
Speaker 7: that it is not natural for him. You know, in Iowa,
Speaker 7: there was a clip of him as he was talking
Speaker 7: to prospective voters that went viral among the Trump team
Speaker 7: where he was like laughing really aggressively, and so, yeah,
Speaker 7: it's a little it's a little bit of awkwardness.
Speaker 2: The egregious part to me was the guy who was like,
Speaker 2: I drove two hours to come you, and he was
Speaker 2: like thanks and just turned around. I was like, oh, dude,
Speaker 2: I didn't even sav was not it was part of
Speaker 2: the same clip, but that one.
Speaker 3: I was like, that actually might be worse. Whenever you
Speaker 3: make people.
Speaker 2: Feel that way, tell us about the actual infrastruction of
Speaker 2: the campaign.
Speaker 3: Been covering now for quite some time.
Speaker 2: One of the you know things that we saw was
Speaker 2: that Trump canceled this event and des Moines and Everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, de Santa's going to go in on Iowa.
Speaker 2: He's going to try and make the early stage part
Speaker 2: of his strategy. How would you assess the strength of
Speaker 2: their relative campaigns. I guess, you know, at the starting
Speaker 2: line right now.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's early on.
Speaker 7: He certainly had a really tough month last month, and
Speaker 7: the Trump team was really on point. And you know,
Speaker 7: when he came out to Washington, d C. They announced
Speaker 7: a whole slew of Florida enforcements right in his backyard.
Speaker 7: And I think it was a little bit difficult for
Speaker 7: him because he's been of the mindset. Desanta's has been
Speaker 7: of the mindset that we're going to keep everything really
Speaker 7: locked down until we officially announced. I don't know if
Speaker 7: that's a missed up by his team, given you have
Speaker 7: Trump so aggressively for so long, kind of taking a
Speaker 7: beating on him.
Speaker 1: But as for Iowa.
Speaker 7: I actually think his team showed a lot of political
Speaker 7: savviness in you know, after they stayed on the ground
Speaker 7: first of all, in Iowa when there was a tornado watch,
Speaker 7: which I was in the state and it was a
Speaker 7: little bit rainy, but it was fine, fine. And then
Speaker 7: you know, they after the second event, they went and
Speaker 7: they posted up right in the backyard of where the
Speaker 7: Trump rally was supposed to be, and I thought that
Speaker 7: was that was really smart. And they were outside, you know, indicating,
Speaker 7: you know, what a beautiful night. So, yeah, there is
Speaker 7: political savvy there. A lot of his team, his official
Speaker 7: campaign team is going to be comprised of people who
Speaker 7: have been around him for a long time. Now, how
Speaker 7: that ends up expanding, I don't know. I know that
Speaker 7: Deshantis has been historically very focused on you know, he's
Speaker 7: very insular. It's him, it's his wife, and those are
Speaker 7: the two main people. And he's going to have to
Speaker 7: expand that a lot and figure out kind of new
Speaker 7: hires that he can trust. And I think that's going
Speaker 7: to be a really big test for him because he's
Speaker 7: never had to do that before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, what is their theory of case of
Speaker 1: the case about how to or weather even to go
Speaker 1: directly at Trump, because this is one of the things
Speaker 1: we've been talking about here. There's there's really double stareing.
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump has been saying all kinds of crazy
Speaker 1: stuff about to say he like basically said he's a groom,
Speaker 1: or I mean like just unleashing a slew of attacks
Speaker 1: against Ron DeSantis. DeSantis will make this little like sort
Speaker 1: of side job like I don't know anything about payments
Speaker 1: to porn stars, and people will freak out about it.
Speaker 1: So it's a very different standard he's held to. It
Speaker 1: may not be fair, but that's reality. Donald Trump gets
Speaker 1: away with a lot more than other politicians do and
Speaker 1: basically every sphere of his life and his political campaigns.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, DeSantis, I think, is going
Speaker 1: to have to make some sort of cojin argument against
Speaker 1: Trump that would land with a Republican base in order
Speaker 1: to supplant him, as you know, the Republican nominee. So
Speaker 1: how are they thinking about how to navigate that challenge?
Speaker 7: Yeah, So the big thing, and you noted it, it's
Speaker 7: not just Dysantis who's kind of sidestepping these attackskins Trump.
Speaker 7: It's virtually the entire twenty four.
Speaker 1: Field and Nikki Haley's not kicking.
Speaker 7: But there's like a legitimate I think there's a legitimate reason.
Speaker 7: Whether or not it should be a legitimate reason. It
Speaker 7: is when you go on the ground and talk to
Speaker 7: these voters, even the ones who don't want Trump to
Speaker 7: be president again also don't want to vote for someone
Speaker 7: who's directly attacking him.
Speaker 1: They like, they like.
Speaker 7: His record, They feel defensive because of the media, and
Speaker 7: so it's this like constant what line do can we
Speaker 7: cross without alienating the voter?
Speaker 1: Price?
Speaker 7: But I think, you know, I think Desantage is from
Speaker 7: people I've spoken to. His argument for the case against
Speaker 7: Trump is going to be look at my Florida record,
Speaker 7: and he's going to try to get to the right
Speaker 7: on Trump on almost every issue.
Speaker 1: We've already seen it.
Speaker 2: So tell us about that then, So you were on
Speaker 2: the ground with voters, the voters, the old people that
Speaker 2: actually matter, not any of our So what do you
Speaker 2: hear from them about people who are for DeSantis?
Speaker 3: What are they saying? What do they look? Are they
Speaker 3: college educated? Are they normal?
Speaker 2: Iowa voters like, who are these people? What do they
Speaker 2: want from the man? And why do they like him
Speaker 2: over Trump?
Speaker 1: I think there's a mix.
Speaker 7: It's certainly and I read an NBC article a few
Speaker 7: weeks ago that is one hundred percent accurate that even
Speaker 7: with Desanti's struggles the past month, he's still getting huge
Speaker 7: numbers of people to his events, like they're having to
Speaker 7: the Fiendstra event, I think was the most RSVPs that
Speaker 7: they've ever had. The second event, the GOP County Dinner,
Speaker 7: they had to like extend invites like he's he's people
Speaker 7: are very interested in him, and I think it's a
Speaker 7: mix of people, but they like him because they're by
Speaker 7: and large they're tired of the drama, yes, from the
Speaker 7: Trump administration. And that's what I'm hearing consistently is they're like,
Speaker 7: we like Trump, he did a great job, but we're
Speaker 7: just tired of the drama. We want someone younger, like
Speaker 7: Ronda Santis in Florida has been like really tight with
Speaker 7: his messaging. There's no you know, drama, there's no leaks,
Speaker 7: and they really like that. So really, the big thing,
Speaker 7: in my opinion from talking to voters is just they're
Speaker 7: tired of drama.
Speaker 1: What about What do you think of the attempt to
Speaker 1: get to Trump's right on certain issues? I mean, the
Speaker 1: two that come to mind are abortion and entitlements, because
Speaker 1: on the one hand, those for the right positions may
Speaker 1: certainly land with a significant portion of the Republican base.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, they kind of undercut his other
Speaker 1: argument that he would be more electable than Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all see the way that the abortion
Speaker 1: issue has been devastating for Republican candidates who who have
Speaker 1: taken extreme positions. We've certainly seen the way that you know,
Speaker 1: it's touching entitlements in any way is really off the table.
Speaker 1: And Ronda Santis talked about that certainly in the past,
Speaker 1: that he was open to cuts to social Security and medicare.
Speaker 1: So how are they looking at those challenges? How are
Speaker 1: voters seeing those And we've also had reports that some
Speaker 1: donors were upset by comments, especially on Ukraine and abortion.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think in terms of how voters are looking
Speaker 7: at it, they still view him as more electable than Trump.
Speaker 1: Just because of the messiness.
Speaker 7: They view him as being less messy, yes, and so
Speaker 7: for them, And whether that's accurate or not, I've heard
Speaker 7: from the you know, Democratic operatives who are texting me saying,
Speaker 7: oh Ron DeSantis said this about abortion, Like we're going
Speaker 7: to use this in the future, like this recent comment
Speaker 7: about hitting Trump over the abortion thing. They said, this
Speaker 7: is going to be a talking point for us. So
Speaker 7: it is going to be a struggle, like how far
Speaker 7: right can you go before you lose some of those
Speaker 7: independent voters or some of those people who are maybe
Speaker 7: a little bit more moderate socially particularly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I mean that's the you know, the real
Speaker 2: problem I think that he has.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, whenever you okay, let's let's flip to the
Speaker 2: Trump side, you know, whenever you talk not surely the
Speaker 2: Trump campaign, the voters that you actually see on the
Speaker 2: ground that love Trump, why do they want to stick
Speaker 2: with him and not DeSantis? What do they say about DeSantis?
Speaker 2: I like the guy, but I love Trump? Like what
Speaker 2: does it look like?
Speaker 7: The big message I hear is I like DeSantis, but
Speaker 7: it's not his turn? Yes, right, But but the thing
Speaker 7: with the Trump based when I go to Trump events,
Speaker 7: it's different than any other candidate that I that I.
Speaker 2: This is hard to explain to people. Can you explain
Speaker 2: that because I've been to events like this.
Speaker 7: Is it's like you go to a Disanta's event and
Speaker 7: there's kind of like normal voters who are looking into
Speaker 7: the fields. They're not necessarily committed to any one candidate.
Speaker 7: They're just you know, kind of you know, they like
Speaker 7: being courted. It's Iowa, okay, I'm sure. And then you
Speaker 7: go to these Trump events and these Trump valleys, and
Speaker 7: these are like it's like fans. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 7: yes exactly, and so it's very different talking to them
Speaker 7: versus talking to voters at some of these other events.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, well I always tried to handle that home
Speaker 3: to people. It literally is.
Speaker 2: Like nothing else in politics, and I haven't seen it
Speaker 2: in a long time.
Speaker 3: Shelby, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks you coming.
Speaker 2: It was great talking to you. Thank you guys so
Speaker 2: much for watching. We appreciate it. Thanks for all of
Speaker 2: your support breakingpoints dot com if you're able otherwise, we
Speaker 2: will see you all next week.