WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 93 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.680 Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:06.400 you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:09.440 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:13.280 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.800 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:17.720 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:19.520 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:28.080 you can make your own decisions. Ah, welcome to it 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:32.239 could happen here a podcast where myself, Garrison Davis and 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.599 James Stout just created a new soon to be beloved 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:40.440 fiction character, Racist Sherlock's Holmes. And don't worry, We're not 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.600 done workshopping at It's not ready to go public yet. 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:46.680 But when this bit drops you people are gonna lose 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.960 your minds. Ah, how's everyone doing today? 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.360 Much better after learning about Racist Shadow comes? 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:57.440 Uh huh? After no, we didn't learn about him. He 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.000 burst fully formed from our heads like Athena from the 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:09.279 brain of Zeus. A good stuff. Speaking of the Greek 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:16.120 and Roman pagan pantheon, James Garrison, you know who does 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:20.280 kind of have the feel of a of a malevolent 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:24.600 spirit in Greek mythology, is Ron DeSantis. 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:30.400 Yeah, not wrong, Sure, Ron, that's what they call him. 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.840 After all my years study studying the papyrie, this is 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:34.959 I can't confirm. 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.040 Yeah, Meet ball Ron, I'm gonna I have a long 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.040 essay on my substack about how meet ball Ron and 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:47.440 the Egyptian deity Maat are are really uh directly related 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:51.400 to one another. But that that that'll, that'll you can 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:55.160 find that on my substack, my Egyptology focused substack. 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:57.840 Yeah, he's not what's his what's the god of the sun, 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.600 the god of the sun disk hm, the one they 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:02.840 tried to do a monotheism for. 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:05.000 Oh yeah, that isn't that raw? Yeah? 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.560 Right, yeah, I can see seeing himself in those terms. 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:14.600 No, Maat like I think, is more of like a 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:15.400 Horus figure. 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:19.799 Actually yeah, I mean no, because Matt here's the thing. 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:25.519 Matt has wings uh and Ronda Santis is currently flying 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:29.280 over us, uh, shading us all in the comfort of 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.560 his of his mighty technicolor wingspan. 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.600 I'm seeing. Let's there's too many colors in these in 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:37.760 these in these wings. 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:39.560 I don't know. I don't know why we got onto it. 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:44.399 Comparing Ronda Santis to this was a mistake. Anyway, Garrison, 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.600 you just last week we closed out on two great 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:53.520 episodes about fash wave and uh, the adoption UH and 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:56.440 kind of reposting of a lot of these aesthetics that 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:00.079 had become popular on the far right via you know, 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.160 the dark brand and memes. And a big part of 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:07.880 that was how Ron de Santis somehow allowed some incredibly 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:11.640 internet poisoned zoomers to make an ad for him that 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.560 was far too online for a presidential campaign ad. And 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:18.360 I felt like it was time to kind of have 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.160 a discussion about meatball Ron because obviously things in Florida 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:26.160 are very ugly right now. As a fascist, which he 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:30.320 definitely is, Ronda Santis is an effective administrator, yeah, which 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:35.160 I mean he's good at twisting the administrative state that 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.520 exists into a weapon to attack marginalized groups. He's been 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.600 effective at that. What's happening legally, you know, in the laws, 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:45.680 you know a lot of the anti trans laws, the 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.240 anti drag laws in Florida is very frightening. What he's 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.320 been doing to the Florida education system, state education system 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.640 is very unsettling, And you know that is all of 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.000 that is worthy of further discussion. But I think because 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.200 the most immediate concern we have is like, is this 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:02.840 guy going to be able to do that on a 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:04.880 national scale? Right, Which is not to say that we 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.520 should just let Florida, you know, sink into the abyss. 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:11.440 I don't believe that. But at the moment, Ron de 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:16.159 Santis is tied for second place against Donald Trump. So 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.400 it kind of it behooves us to ask the questions 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:21.840 purely for the purpose of self defense. Can Ron de 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:26.039 Santis win? Right? Could he actually become not? Even the 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.320 first question is like could he become the Republican presidential candidate? 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.520 Can he beat Donald Trump? And the short good answer 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:34.560 to that is I don't think so. It's not looking good. 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.800 Not looking good for all Meatball. Ron agreed, and I 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:39.440 wanted to get into why and kind of some of 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.159 the fundamental flaws as a guy who is there was 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:44.800 kind of this belief fear, I think a reasonable fear 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:47.000 among a lot of liberals and folks on the left 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:51.320 that because of how effective he's been consolidating and expanding 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:55.800 his power in Florida, and because he's generally seemed like 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.880 less of a like Donald Trump, has certain competences as 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.520 an authoritarian. There's things he's very good at, but he 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:04.320 was not good at being the president. He was not 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:06.760 good at using power. He's not too much of a 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.359 fascist in a lot, He's not an effective fascist, right Like, 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.160 he wasn't good at picking people to like do things 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:13.839 for him. He wasn't good at He was good at 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:15.880 hurting people in a blunt way. But he was kind 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:21.360 of incompetent at rerat like a competent fascist, like Hitler 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:23.800 was a competent fascist, right he was not in there 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:26.640 long in an elected position before he had effectively made 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:32.120 it impossible to oust him without military force. And Trump 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.000 was never good at doing that stuff. And the worry 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:35.960 is that rond de Santis would be The good news 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.039 is that Rondi Santis is incompetent as a politician and 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.080 a political candidate. So I wanted to kind of start 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.240 with why a lot of his the people who do 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.000 form his base, which is quite shrinking at the moment, 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:50.599 he's losing a lot of support, why they thought he 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.080 was capable of winning the primary and the general. And 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.039 when you when you look into kind of why, a 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.280 lot of sort of Republican like legacy Republicans, the folks 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:01.240 who often get called Rhinos. Why a lot of them 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:04.400 decided to back Ron Dea Santis. The best summer you're 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.040 going to get comes from Phil Huffines, who is a 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:10.400 businessman in Texas whose car dealership ran a series of 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:12.919 ads that are like plasted forever in the memories of 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:15.080 everyone who lived in the DFW area in the late 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.680 nineties early two thousands, and in a CNN interview a 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.560 few days ago, he said this, when one looks objectively 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:23.000 at who can beat Biden, it's going to be DeSantis. 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:25.039 We already had a match with Biden and Trump. Trump 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:27.920 turns out Democrats better than anybody. DeSantis will be able 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.600 to articulate more clearly what Republicans stand for, and he's 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:32.479 not going to be bogged down in other stuff that 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:35.640 Trump brings to the election. I don't think that was 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.440 a logical thing to think a year ago, right, because 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:42.200 it is true that Trump turns out the dims. The 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.080 idea that like DeSantis isn't going to get bogged down 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:48.640 and shit has become kind of fundamentally silly. Like he's 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:50.880 gotten bogged down in the fact that a lot of 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.599 his you know, backers are invested in culture warship that 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.960 does not sell well on a national level. This whole 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.599 like anti trans crusade, on the anti woke shit is 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.000 not a big vote getter. It just gets the base 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:06.599 behind you, and like you're never going to beat Trump 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.039 in a race to the base. You know, Trump has 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.600 the core of the hard right Republican party in his 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.920 pocket and they're not gonna like move on from anybody. DeSantis' 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.320 hope should have been like going after independence, people on 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.360 the edge, people who are like unhappy with Biden. And 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.760 I think when you pick this sort of like hate crusade, 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.520 it hasn't worked well. But Huffines decided that, like, yeah, 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:32.559 this guy, this is the dude who has a shot. 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:36.320 I think he can actually like pull it out from Trump. 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:37.960 I think he's got the ability to like get a 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:40.040 lot of people in the middle or close to the middle. 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:44.760 This has been proven kind of absurd over the last 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:48.000 couple of months of stagnating poll numbers. Huffine says that 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:50.760 the governor recently held a meeting with about one hundred 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:53.800 and fifty Texas Republicans in Dallas, where he quote impressed 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.640 them with his stamina, youth, and performance in recent Florida 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.320 state elections and There's a number of reasons think that 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:02.640 this is a bad strategy that like really laying on 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:05.400 his performance in the last Florida election is like a 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:07.680 good way for him to win support. One of these 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:09.920 has to do with the fact that, like Florida is 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:15.040 the national watchword for crazy right, like like the rest. 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:15.440 Of their man. 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:18.400 Yeah, even a lot of conservatives when they're talking about 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:22.200 like madness in America, they talk about Florida like Florida 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.560 man is an archetype and like, yeah, there's a lot 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.000 of right wing culture warriors who like Ron's anti immigrant 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.520 and anti LGBT policies. But moderates and swing voters the 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:34.640 people he has a chance of pulling away from Trump. 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.000 Like if you tell them I want to make New 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.920 Hampshire more like Florida, most swing voters are going to 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:42.360 be like that sounds like hell, I don't want to 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.400 be anything like that place. Like what a horrible What 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.640 a horrible idea. This is a sentiment that you will 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.320 find among Republican thought leaders. Quote. One Republican consultant who 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.280 has worked on presidential campaign said DeSantis was making a 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:59.840 classic governor's mistake by talking extensively about his past accomplishments. 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.480 Put bluntly, people in Ohio or Iowa do not want 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:04.360 to be Florida. They don't care about Florida, and they 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:05.840 are tired of hearing about Florida. 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:09.800 Yeah, because he's he's so reliant on the types of 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:12.840 covered to have come out during the past two years 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.480 of legislative stuff he's done in Florida, and he's I 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.680 guess forgetting the overall view of that people have of 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.680 Florida divorced from his own administrative changes. 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:26.480 Yeah, it's not like people are moving in droves to 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.680 Florida Bay because he's defeated the woke menace and he's 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.280 created a paradise. Like, yeah, he's getting high on his 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:33.720 own supply. 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.120 He's getting high on his own supply. It's one thing. 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.520 There's a degree of his campaign that's focused on like 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:40.880 what he calls like the Florida Miracle, the fact that 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:45.640 Florida economically weathered COVID pretty well. And again, this would 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.559 be a stronger point if like Florida's economy was booming 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:52.800 and everywhere else was bad. But the US economy overall, 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.280 in terms of like the numbers that you know economists 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:58.360 care about allies is like doing reasonably well, and like, 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.080 of the shit that is bad in the US economy, 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.079 it's not any better, Like inflation is not better markedly 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:07.080 better in Florida than it is in Iowa. Right, there's 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:08.960 just not a good case to be made because like 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.480 when you're not when you can't really drive the economic 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:13.360 point home, when you can't be like, look at how 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:15.760 much better Flora is doing than your home. You know, 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.080 it's a it's a fucking paradise compared to the you know, 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:22.040 shitty economy in Ohio. That's an argument you can make 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.520 if there's any evidence for it. But when you're like, 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:27.920 you can't really make the economic argument. It all comes 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.280 down to culture war stuff, and most Americans don't want 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.319 this culture war shit going on in their backyard because 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.680 it's like a gross, weird pain in the ass. So 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.200 right now, the bulk of DeSantis support comes from higher income, 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.720 old guard Republicans, the kind of were lukewarm for Trump 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.520 from the beginning, and the kind to point out rightfully 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:47.360 that he didn't win against Biden and it is time 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:50.760 for new blood. This is true, but current polling indicates 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.439 it's not what most GOP voters want, which is kind 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:56.640 of the big problem the Republicans have is that this 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.439 is why Trump's definitely gonna win, you know, as the 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.400 primary campaign, is that like the hardcore of the GOP 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:08.480 cannot be overcome by the moderates because the hardcore is 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.160 so in lockstep about what they want, and what they 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:15.520 want is Trump. The moderates don't have control of the party, 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:18.520 but the moderates are the ones who can like actually 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:22.640 win a general election. So yeah, it's a tough situation 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:24.960 for them to be in. And one of the things 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.800 that kind of shows how fucked Ron is is that, 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.920 like Ron won reelection in Florida in his last cubernatorial 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:34.120 campaign by about twenty points a year or so ago. 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:38.120 In Florida, Trump currently has a twenty point lead on him. 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.360 Not great, not great, No. 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:43.200 That's a disaster, like because again not only like should 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:45.160 you be able to bring in your home state as 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.400 a sitting governor, but like it shows that Ron is 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.920 not popular because of his legislative achievements. He's popular because 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:55.840 Florida is just that right wing right. Like that's like 0:11:56.120 --> 0:12:00.280 currently like the electoral state or status of Florida is 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.760 very conservative, and so Ron won by an overwhelming margin, 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:06.640 but that doesn't mean people love him. They definitely like 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:10.280 Trump more than they like him. Bad situation to be in, 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.080 and a number of early backers in DeSantis's orbit have 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:15.600 begun to acknowledge this reality. I'm gonna quote from NBC 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.480 News here. Yeah, there are a number of people grumbling 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:20.719 about it, no doubt. A Desantist downer said, there is 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:22.840 an overall sense, including with me, that he just is 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:25.920 not ignited the way we thought he would. And I 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:28.000 find that really interesting because you get versions of that 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.680 a lot that like we were expecting him to really 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.160 take off as soon as he started campaigning, and he hasn't, 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.120 and that was our only strategy. You get this, and 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:39.840 like if you read interviews with like folks who were 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:42.960 in the DeSantis orbit and people because a number of 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:45.880 his early backers have like peeled away and rescinded their 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:48.719 their endorsements and given them the Trump it was this 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.920 hope they had that like once as soon as he's 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:55.720 out in front of America, Americans are going to love 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.000 this guy because he's all the good stuff about Trump 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:00.840 with none of the baggage. And that was just fundamentally 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.040 disastrously wrong. And I think one of the things we're 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:06.960 starting to see is that the Dysantis people didn't have 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.880 another plan for how to get this guy elected. Like 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.400 their plan was that we think that Trump's policies are popular, 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:18.440 but everyone doesn't like Trump, and no, that's actually not accurate. 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:20.720 The opposite of true. Almost like some of them just 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:22.520 like Trumps as a person. 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.080 Yeah, a lot of them don't care about what he's done. 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.000 They like the fact that he owns the Libs, right, 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:27.480 They're not. 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:32.680 Thinking about he's a compelling character. Yeah, DeSantis is a 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:36.440 void of charisma. He is he is not a compelling character. 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.360 He's actually like he's good at being like an administrator 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:43.200 and like like yeah, he's like he's very successful in 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:44.160 doing bad things. 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:46.640 And he's a guy you make your chief of staff 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.000 if you're yeah, yeah. 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.360 He's not like, he's not a compelling character like the 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:52.080 way Trump is. 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.160 No, and it's it's again, it's so fascinating to me. 0:13:57.640 --> 0:13:59.720 It says a lot about like the degree of bubble 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:01.960 all of the political class are in. And when I 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:04.760 say the political class, I mean the people the fairly 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:06.960 small number of people in the left and the right, 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:11.360 liberals and conservatives who work on political campaigns, right, because 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.319 it's actually a pretty small community of people, of the 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:16.720 folks who do the different jobs that are running political 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:19.320 campaigns and that are like working as the age and 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:22.720 legislative assistants and all that stuff for elected leaders. And 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:26.560 because to me, to just a guy sitting out there, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.840 like I'm worried about Ron because what he's doing in Florida. 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:30.760 But from the moment I saw the guy speak, I 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:33.280 was like, well, this man has no charisma whatsoever. And 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:38.120 if you can't think about like how a guy could 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:43.320 attract voters. If there's nothing that seems appealing about a 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.960 candidate to you, if you can't understand their charisma, that's 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.000 probably a good sign that they can't get elected. I 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:51.840 am not mystified by why any president who was won 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.520 in my lifetime won, right. George W. I've been in 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:56.400 a room with George W. Bush and watched him spoke 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.720 to in immediately made sense why people fucking love George W. 0:14:59.760 --> 0:14:59.960 Bush. 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:02.840 He had an attitude, he had an air that put 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:05.800 people at ease. He was good at putting on a 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.360 character that people found appealing in that time and place. 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.640 There's a reason why so many voters who loved him 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:15.320 you know, especially after the first campaign where it was 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.200 kind of a but like, there's a reason why he 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.240 got re elected, Like there's And it's the same thing 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.560 with like Bill Clinton. Right, you watch old videos of 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:26.800 Bill Clinton on the campaign trail before he was president. 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:29.520 You can see the charisma, you can see the way 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.560 he connects to audiences, you can see the things about 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.400 him that people find appealing. There's not a mystery. It's 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.960 not mysterious why Obama got elected. He's a deeply charismatic man. 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:42.400 And you know, Joe needed a little bit of help, 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.760 that's why he lost so many presidential campaigns beforehand. But 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:50.760 next to Donald Trump, he seems like a much more 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:53.960 appealing person. Like, I'm not mystified, and I'm not mystified 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.720 by why Trump got elected. Next to Hillary Clinton, Trump 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:00.000 felt not like a politician, not like the same people 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.840 who would let us down. There was this degree to 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:06.000 which like, you should never be you should if you're 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:08.280 looking at like whether or not someone can win an election, 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:10.400 you should never be like, well, I don't get it, 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.960 but I guess maybe they have. They must have some 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:16.840 sort of charisma because everybody's talking about them as a 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:20.320 serious candidate now Honestly, if you can't see anything about 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.880 appealing about a candidate, then that might be a good 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.200 sign that they're doomed. And I think DeSantis is fucking doomed. 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:29.320 And this is kind of a thing that a lot 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:32.960 of his early backups has started to realize. One DeSantis 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:35.760 aligned operative told NBC, from my understanding, if we don't 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:37.880 see a bump in the polls, we're basically going to 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.320 shut down the idea of a national operation. This is 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:43.920 really something that we're probably going to see. I wouldn't 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:47.160 be surprised if he kind of has a blowout politically 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:51.480 pretty early in the primary season next year, because he 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:53.760 raised a lot of money earlier in his campaign. He 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:56.160 raised about twenty million or so between mid May and 0:16:56.200 --> 0:16:58.480 the end of June of this year, which actually put 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.800 him ahead fundraising wise of Trump by about two million 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:04.919 or so. But the Trump campaign ended last quarter with 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:08.320 twice as much cash on hand as Wrong Alongside is 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.200 still dominating lead in the poll. So Ron has raised 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.359 a lot of money, which kind of speaks to the 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:17.720 number of sort of like Republican you know, institutional backers 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:19.679 who hoped that he could win where Trump had failed. 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:22.440 But he blew all that shit, and it didn't get 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:25.159 him anything right, Like he didn't raise a b Like 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:28.359 he crept up a teeny amount in the polls, but 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:32.360 he's still like tied for second with Donald Trump despite 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.679 blowing all of that money. And I think we're going 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.159 to reach a point pretty quickly where if he doesn't 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:41.240 immediately take you know, a state or two or three 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:45.040 from Trump in the early primaries, any kind of hope 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:48.280 he has for further donations is going to dry up, because, like, 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:50.960 why would you keep wasting that money. We all saw 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:53.280 how much money he got wasted trying to take Trump 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:55.600 out of the primaries in twenty sixteen. I do think 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:57.200 people are going to be a little more gun shy 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.840 this time. There have already been a number of recent 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:04.159 layoffs of major staffers by DeSantis. He's kind of purged 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.080 a big chunk of the people who started his campaign. 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:09.320 One of the things that's a little interesting about him 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:12.560 in his political career is that as a politician, he 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:15.119 has always been kind of noted as kind of weird 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:19.080 within Florida politics because every election he's had, he's had 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:21.960 an entirely new team of people. He does not work 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:24.840 with the same people twice. He does not have like 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:28.440 bring people back for his campaigns, which is really unusual 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.200 in US politics for a successful politicans. When you win, 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:33.159 you tend to bring him back a lot of the 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:35.480 same people who helped you win the last time. And 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:37.920 so the fact that Ron doesn't do that, that he's 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:41.480 got such basically one hundred percent churn in his teams 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.280 suggests a couple of things. One, he's not great to 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:47.280 work with, and two, the people who work with him 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:50.640 and have been successful and are good don't see him 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:54.439 as someone with national potential. Right They don't want to 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:56.560 keep working with him because then they get kind of 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:58.960 trapped in the loop of being a DeSantis guy. They 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:01.439 want to move on somewhere rounse else because they think 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.399 governor is as high as this guy can go. You know, 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:05.960 Like that is kind of one of the things that 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.399 you see when you note this dude has such total 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:12.080 turnover in his fucking teams. Now again, for all of 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.600 the money that he spent, Ron's polling numbers have changed 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:19.000 basically nil from when he announced his candidacy. According to 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.600 New York Magazine, kind of coalated a bunch of this 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:24.960 together in the real clear Politics average of polls starting 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.720 July first, twenty twenty two, Trump had a thirty four 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.959 point lead over Ron DeSantis and fifty two point eight 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.679 percent of the vote in national surveys, with DeSantis at 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:39.600 eighteen point five At present, he's got Trump's lead over 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:41.400 to Santas. So a year ago, Trump had a thirty 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.400 four point lead over to Santis. Now he's at thirty two, 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:47.080 which is not the speed of movement that you want 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:52.320 to see. After a year of effectively campaigning. On the 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:56.240 national surveys, DeSantis has gone from eighteen point five percent 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:58.440 to about twenty one percent, which again is just kind 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:03.200 of like a disaster rate of change. Now this is 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.800 just one pole. There's probably potentially outliers here. I've seen 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:09.760 other polls that show DeSantis at more like twelve percent 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:15.880 and tied with Vivic Ramaswami, who is another GOP candidate. 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:19.480 Like the fact that Vivek, who is not nearly the 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:22.600 kind of national name that DeSantis is, is tied with 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:26.600 him and some polls now is fucking disastrous. He and 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.119 Trump are pretty close in terms of funding. Vivek has 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:32.720 raised only a fraction of what DeSantis has raged so 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:36.440 that's a pretty bad sign kind of a fucking disaster. 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.840 One major area in which Ron lags behind Trump is 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.520 his ability to draw interest and what amounts to free 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:46.479 advertising from the media. Trump famously got about a billion 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:50.520 dollars in free publicity in twenty sixteen thanks to relentless 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.240 media coverage of his every move, gaff and speech. He 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:55.760 understood it didn't matter if it was negative. It didn't 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:57.560 matter that they were shit talking to me. What matters 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.199 that they're keeping my face out front, right, this is 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.160 a thing that will bring me support, It will bring 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:05.000 me donors, It will make my supporters see me as 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:07.600 like this kind of gladiator fighting for them. He leaned 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:12.360 into this shit. On the surface, Ron and Trump are 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:14.760 kind of the same in their approach to the media, 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:16.480 and that if you go to a Assantis speech, you 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:18.320 go to a Trump speech, they're going to call the 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:20.960 media the enemy of the people or some variant thereof. 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.399 They're going to talk about the need to control the press. 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:27.560 They're going to like support authoritarian measures against like free 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:31.720 you know, the free press. Like again, if you're kind 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:34.080 of just looking on the surface, it seems like they 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.440 have the same attitude towards the media. But the way 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:42.440 they treat journalists is completely different, and that DeSantis has 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.919 no strategy with the media. He just attacks them. If 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:48.080 you're if you're right wing media, if you're some podcaster 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.040 he likes, He'll go on your show, he'll talk to you. 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.160 But he ignores the liberal media. He ignores the mainstream media. 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.119 But that's that's different from having a tactic for dealing 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.159 with them. Trump has a strategy with the media. He 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:02.320 will howl that they're the enemy of the people in 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:05.439 front of crowds. He'll talk about locking up journalists. But 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:07.680 if you like read articles about him after a speech 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:09.919 or whatever, he always gives the press their time. He 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.040 knows a lot of these guys by name. He has 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:15.720 relationships with reporters. He's had relationships with like Maggie Haberman 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.800 of The Times. He's he's able to be like friendly 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:22.639 with these people and social with them, which isn't like, 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:24.480 doesn't make it's not doing that to be a good person. 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:27.600 He's doing it because like he wants them to feel 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:29.920 comfortable around him and cover him. 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:32.040 And like and this is this is the thing that 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:34.399 he's been doing longer than he's been a politician. Like 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:37.199 Trump is primarily like a media guy like he is. 0:22:37.440 --> 0:22:40.399 He is someone who's been able to very successfully manipulate 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:43.200 public image and manipulate media in his favor for years, 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:47.240 especially as like he's not like a good businessman, He's like, no, 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:48.840 he's like a con man who was like really good. 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:50.840 He's a good promoter, so like he knows how to 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:54.560 do this. DeSantis has none of this background, So he's 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:58.479 just trying to copy like the hostile vibe of Trump 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:02.119 without understanding the action like media backing that Trump puts 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:06.600 into his UH, into his like relationship with UH, with 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:10.040 like with like advertising and with having you know, any 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:13.760 any amount of coverage that will get Republicans be like, oh, 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:15.480 this is a guy that's worth voting for. 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:18.400 Yeah, And well also that will the kind of coverage 0:23:18.400 --> 0:23:20.520 that will make independence pay attention to him. 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:20.719 Right. 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:23.080 A big thing part of how a lot of negative 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:25.520 media coverage worked for Trump is that people would just 0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:28.600 see his name in the fucking news, and you know, 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:30.680 so they would wind up reading and listening to a 0:23:30.680 --> 0:23:32.560 lot of what he had to say. And because like, 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:35.639 you know, he's getting so much coverage, and because all 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:38.399 of these media outlets have one to want to present 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:41.840 the image of being unfair and unbiased. Like when Trump 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:43.560 would go out and sit down with the New York Times, 0:23:43.560 --> 0:23:45.560 sit down with the Posted down, he would often get 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:48.560 coverage that like, let him say his piece, let him 0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:51.280 make his case, like they would because they didn't want 0:23:51.320 --> 0:23:53.320 to feel like they were being biased, and he was 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:55.480 giving them some of his time. But when you just 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:57.879 cut the media off like the Santis has done, you 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:00.320 don't get that from them. You don't get any of 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:03.400 like the benefit of this sort of like idea of impartiality, 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:06.359 which cuts down on your ability to actually like reach 0:24:06.800 --> 0:24:09.280 people who might be converted to vote for you. This 0:24:09.400 --> 0:24:11.800 is highlighted particularly well in a segment from a recent 0:24:11.840 --> 0:24:16.400 New York Times article on Dessanta's difficulty getting press coverage. Quote. 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:18.920 Assigned to cover the reelection campaign of Governor Ron de 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:22.200 Santis of Florida, Miles Cohen, a young ABC News reporter, 0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:25.320 found himself stymied. The governor would not grant him an interview, 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:27.919 aids barred him from some campaign events, and interrupted his 0:24:27.960 --> 0:24:31.240 conversations with supporters. When mister Cohen was finally able to 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:34.080 ask a question about the governor's handling of Hurricane Ian, 0:24:34.359 --> 0:24:37.560 mister DeSantis shouted him down, stop stop, stop, and scolded 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:40.840 the media for trying to cast dispersions. The Dessanta's campaign 0:24:40.840 --> 0:24:43.399 then taunted mister Cohen on Twitter, prompting a torrent of 0:24:43.440 --> 0:24:46.360 online vitriol. So on election night, mister Cohen de camp 0:24:46.400 --> 0:24:48.919 to a friendlier environment for the news media mar A Lago, 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:52.280 where former President Donald J. Trump greeted reporters by name. 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:54.760 He came up to us, asked how the sandwiches were, 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:57.800 and took twenty questions. Mister Cohen recalled mister Trump, who 0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:00.440 heckled the fake news in his speech that evening elevated 0:25:00.480 --> 0:25:03.200 media bashing into a high art for Republicans. But ahead 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:06.280 of the next presidential race, potential candidates like mister DeSantis 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:09.680 are taking a more radical approach, not just attacking nonpartisan 0:25:09.720 --> 0:25:14.159 news sources but out ignoring them altogether. And yeah, I 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:16.520 think that kind of like gets at the core of 0:25:16.920 --> 0:25:20.520 what a bad strategy this is. And it shows all 0:25:20.560 --> 0:25:23.280 of the Republicans right now because of Trump's success in 0:25:23.359 --> 0:25:25.520 twenty sixteen, which we do have to remember, was not 0:25:25.640 --> 0:25:29.040 based on converting a majority of Americans. It was based 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:32.440 in part on like the electoral system and just raw 0:25:32.520 --> 0:25:34.639 luck that shit broke the way it did. But they 0:25:34.680 --> 0:25:37.800 are looking at like his success in twenty sixteen and 0:25:38.520 --> 0:25:41.640 trying to copy that. But it's like a cargo cult thing, right, 0:25:41.680 --> 0:25:43.840 they don't actually understand what he did that work. They 0:25:43.880 --> 0:25:46.119 see him bashing the media and his speech is They're like, well, 0:25:46.160 --> 0:25:47.800 I'm gonna be even harder. I'm not going to talk 0:25:47.800 --> 0:25:49.919 to the media at all. And it's like, well, you 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:52.880 have eliminated for yourself the primary benefit that Trump true 0:25:52.920 --> 0:25:53.399 out from this. 0:25:54.640 --> 0:25:56.640 Yeah, I think the corga cult de script is great. 0:25:56.680 --> 0:25:59.120 They're like they're trying to have the appearance of doing 0:25:59.200 --> 0:26:03.320 the Trump thing with now understanding why, yeah, the thing worked. 0:26:03.119 --> 0:26:06.480 And like also importantly, it's not like twenty sixteen anymore. 0:26:06.600 --> 0:26:08.320 As much as it feels like twenty sixteen was the 0:26:08.320 --> 0:26:11.040 here that never ended, Actually a lot has changed and 0:26:11.080 --> 0:26:14.040 also a lot of media has gotten a bit wise 0:26:14.200 --> 0:26:17.520 to the tactics that Trump did. Like they're no longer 0:26:17.560 --> 0:26:19.400 going to be blasting all of his speeches every time 0:26:19.440 --> 0:26:22.119 he says something outrageous because they know that's part of 0:26:22.160 --> 0:26:25.520 his strategy. So, yeah, the same tactics. If de Santis 0:26:25.560 --> 0:26:27.960 thinks heason to get publicity for saying some horrible thing 0:26:28.040 --> 0:26:31.719 in his speech. The media knows what's up now, like 0:26:31.920 --> 0:26:35.600 they've already seen this like playbook get played. It's not 0:26:35.680 --> 0:26:38.560 like it's you can't treat it like eight years ago. 0:26:39.119 --> 0:26:41.000 Yeah. I think a good example of this is in 0:26:41.000 --> 0:26:43.720 twenty sixteen, if it had come out, if Joe Biden 0:26:43.760 --> 0:26:45.320 had been the front writer, say he beats you know, 0:26:45.400 --> 0:26:47.400 Hillary Clinton, but everything else is the same, So he's 0:26:47.400 --> 0:26:51.000 the he's the Democratic primary guy. Say it comes out 0:26:51.080 --> 0:26:54.680 that his son has been smoking crack with prostitutes, and 0:26:54.840 --> 0:26:57.560 like there's pictures of his hog everywhere and he was 0:26:57.600 --> 0:26:59.920 involved in So he gets charges against him for commit 0:27:00.160 --> 0:27:03.359 a couple of crimes that might sink a presidential campaign 0:27:03.400 --> 0:27:07.560 in twenty sixteen, nobody gives a shit about Hunter Biden, 0:27:07.720 --> 0:27:10.480 Like zero moderate it's not a single vote is being 0:27:10.640 --> 0:27:13.040 changed as a result of the Hunter Biden situation in 0:27:13.080 --> 0:27:17.520 twenty twenty or it's a different landscape and these people haven't. 0:27:17.920 --> 0:27:20.920 This is a good thing. I am frightened for when 0:27:21.600 --> 0:27:24.760 a new you know, there's another coup in conservative politics 0:27:24.800 --> 0:27:28.760 and somebody understands that it's a different year. Yeah, but 0:27:29.280 --> 0:27:32.000 we are fortunate at this moment, and you know who 0:27:32.000 --> 0:27:32.920 else is fortunate. 0:27:33.840 --> 0:27:34.920 Who's that robot? 0:27:35.200 --> 0:27:38.359 The sponsors of this podcast, they're fortunate to have great 0:27:38.480 --> 0:27:41.600 pitchmen like James Stout. James, why don't you tell the 0:27:41.600 --> 0:27:45.040 people which meal box subscription will finally cure the gnawing 0:27:45.119 --> 0:27:48.480 pit of anxiety at the center of their life and 0:27:48.920 --> 0:27:52.119 bring them both both peace and the love of Jesus Christ. 0:27:52.720 --> 0:27:55.560 Yeah, absleutely, we're pretty gonna have to uh, we're gonna 0:27:55.560 --> 0:27:58.919 have to bleet some shit out here, but absolutely, I 0:27:59.320 --> 0:28:01.760 personally love been a big chicken wing fam my whole 0:28:01.800 --> 0:28:05.240 life until the baby's arms from the Apron arrived. They 0:28:05.280 --> 0:28:08.720 are delicious, little little fatty arms from freshly harvested babies, 0:28:08.800 --> 0:28:12.000 and I've felt better inside and out since I started 0:28:12.040 --> 0:28:19.639 eating children. Yeah, just remember our motto, nothing's wafficking like 0:28:19.760 --> 0:28:21.000 human trafficking. 0:28:21.440 --> 0:28:21.680 Shit. 0:28:22.240 --> 0:28:26.160 Go to HelloFresh dot com use promo code children Arms 0:28:26.200 --> 0:28:27.920 for a ten percent discount. 0:28:27.560 --> 0:28:31.760 Of blue Apron. Actually cut hell afresh there. They're giving 0:28:31.800 --> 0:28:35.320 us a lot of money. It's blue Apron. We shit on. Ah, 0:28:35.440 --> 0:28:38.760 we're back, and we're thinking about how there's one food 0:28:38.800 --> 0:28:41.880 box company who's been accused of a lot of malfeasance 0:28:41.920 --> 0:28:45.320 and another food box company. Who are I think it's 0:28:45.360 --> 0:28:50.720 safe to say Christ like, you know, honestly and Jesus. 0:28:50.400 --> 0:28:53.440 Jesus inspired to at the very least. 0:28:53.720 --> 0:28:56.960 Yeah, Well, the reason Jesus actually rose from the dead 0:28:57.080 --> 0:28:59.840 was to consume a breakfast. That's right by Blue Apron. 0:29:00.120 --> 0:29:06.080 Mmmmmmmm Jesus, big omelet guy, huge omlet guy. Anyway, I 0:29:06.080 --> 0:29:09.920 don't know, that's not really a joke. So Ron DeSantis 0:29:09.920 --> 0:29:12.960 has long ignored any media not guaranteed to be fawningly 0:29:13.000 --> 0:29:15.880 indulgent of him for political reasons. This worked well in Florida. 0:29:15.880 --> 0:29:18.480 He's been able to get by by attacking centrist in 0:29:18.520 --> 0:29:21.880 liberal media and embracing a constellation of far right podcasters 0:29:21.880 --> 0:29:24.560 and Fox News. But Florida is not the United States, 0:29:24.600 --> 0:29:26.960 and a governor's race is not a federal election. He 0:29:27.040 --> 0:29:29.840 simply can't succeed against Trump with the same tactics that 0:29:29.880 --> 0:29:34.200 worked in Florida's or against Florida's anemic state Democratic Party. 0:29:34.560 --> 0:29:36.840 When he's tried to rebut the naysayers who see his 0:29:36.920 --> 0:29:40.360 cause as largely doomed, DeSantis has tried to publicly downplay 0:29:40.400 --> 0:29:42.800 the significance of national polls. It is one of my 0:29:42.840 --> 0:29:45.440 favorite things whenever people point out, like, your polls have 0:29:45.520 --> 0:29:47.960 not moved in a year, and you've spent millions and 0:29:48.000 --> 0:29:50.920 millions of dollars. He'll be like, I don't trust those polls. 0:29:50.920 --> 0:29:52.840 Those polls don't really matter. You can't trust the poll 0:29:52.840 --> 0:29:56.800 to get how wrong the polls were in twenty sixteen articles. 0:29:56.960 --> 0:29:59.520 I've seen him use that line a lot. Look, yeah, 0:29:59.800 --> 0:30:02.080 how wrong the polls were in twenty sixteen? 0:30:02.160 --> 0:30:05.720 Okay, Ron, Yeah, I don't think they were not off 0:30:05.760 --> 0:30:13.040 by thirty four points. You can see clearly how he's 0:30:13.040 --> 0:30:16.000 making his case currently to donors in private. Because a 0:30:16.120 --> 0:30:17.880 memo that he's sent out to a bunch of his 0:30:17.960 --> 0:30:21.280 high dollar donors leaked recently. There's been a number of 0:30:21.280 --> 0:30:22.880 websites that have written about it, but we have like 0:30:22.920 --> 0:30:25.960 this memo, which is fascinating. It was sent out to 0:30:25.960 --> 0:30:28.040 a bunch of big dollar donors to a superpack. So 0:30:28.080 --> 0:30:29.960 these are the people who are not limited by like 0:30:30.240 --> 0:30:33.600 campaign contributions because it's due a super pack. So these 0:30:33.600 --> 0:30:36.520 are like the thick pockets people. So we get an 0:30:36.560 --> 0:30:39.600 idea of how he is marketing his campaign right now 0:30:39.640 --> 0:30:42.960 that it's in a crisis, and it starts with a 0:30:43.080 --> 0:30:46.480 state of the race update with a subtitle, the ballot 0:30:46.520 --> 0:30:51.440 is very fluid. Early state voters are only softly committed 0:30:51.480 --> 0:30:53.440 to the candidates they select on a ballot question this 0:30:53.520 --> 0:30:57.120 far out, including many Trump supporters. Our focused group participants 0:30:57.160 --> 0:30:58.880 in the Early States even say they don't plan on 0:30:58.920 --> 0:31:01.240 making up their mind they meet the candidates or watch 0:31:01.320 --> 0:31:04.200 them debate. Well, we know Trump's flor is twenty five percent. 0:31:04.440 --> 0:31:06.959 That leaves three quarters of the electorate willing to consider 0:31:07.000 --> 0:31:10.240 other viable options. What has not changed to the candidates 0:31:10.280 --> 0:31:13.040 who are realistically being courted by the electorate. As it 0:31:13.040 --> 0:31:15.120 has been for the last year, Trump and DeSantis remain 0:31:15.160 --> 0:31:17.360 the only viable options for two thirds of the likely 0:31:17.400 --> 0:31:20.400 Republican primary electorate. While Tim Scott has earned a serious 0:31:20.440 --> 0:31:23.080 look at this stage as Bio is lacking the fight 0:31:23.160 --> 0:31:25.640 that our electorate is looking for in the next president. 0:31:25.880 --> 0:31:28.360 We expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate scrutiny. In the 0:31:28.400 --> 0:31:31.120 weeks of HEEAD. We found low to no interest in Vivek, 0:31:31.160 --> 0:31:33.560 Bergham and Nikki, while too many voters will not consider 0:31:33.600 --> 0:31:36.520 Pincer Christie for them to be remotely viable. Now I 0:31:36.600 --> 0:31:39.000 agree about pens and Christie. Neither of those people is 0:31:39.000 --> 0:31:42.440 going to be the primary candidate. But again Vivek and 0:31:42.560 --> 0:31:48.080 some polls is right up there with Ronda Santis. So yeah, 0:31:48.160 --> 0:31:49.520 note that neither of them is gonna win. 0:31:50.160 --> 0:31:50.880 Great scigncet. 0:31:50.920 --> 0:31:51.440 Yeah. 0:31:51.480 --> 0:31:53.640 The mimo goes on to note and to sort of 0:31:53.680 --> 0:31:56.840 admit that their efforts and other primary states have hit 0:31:56.880 --> 0:31:59.640 a wall, and they're basically like, we're given up in 0:31:59.720 --> 0:32:02.360 Iowa and Ohio kind of We're not going to be 0:32:02.360 --> 0:32:04.920 putting new resources into them. We're just going to throw 0:32:04.960 --> 0:32:08.360 everything we've got into New Hampshire. There's a couple of 0:32:08.360 --> 0:32:10.520 reasons for this, but I think it's largely that they 0:32:10.560 --> 0:32:13.320 don't think they can win in those other early states, 0:32:13.360 --> 0:32:15.960 and they know they desperately need an early wind to 0:32:15.960 --> 0:32:20.800 have any hope of building up momentum. Yeah. Language like 0:32:20.880 --> 0:32:25.160 this from the memo has to have experienced Republican politico's nervous. 0:32:25.760 --> 0:32:28.520 While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate 0:32:28.520 --> 0:32:31.920 resources to Super Tuesday. That's slow our momentum in New Hampshire. 0:32:32.080 --> 0:32:35.160 We expect to revisit this investment in the fall. I'm 0:32:35.240 --> 0:32:39.320 sure you will not a great sign, guys, the memo. 0:32:40.200 --> 0:32:42.680 I'm sure you'll be revisiting a lot of things in 0:32:42.680 --> 0:32:43.120 the fall. 0:32:45.640 --> 0:32:49.120 The memo also claims Governor DeSantis and his messager thriving 0:32:49.160 --> 0:32:52.480 in town hall engagements. So basically, when Ron gets in 0:32:52.520 --> 0:32:55.840 front of people, they see his magnetic charisma. They really 0:32:55.920 --> 0:32:57.720 like him once he gets a chance to shine in 0:32:57.720 --> 0:33:00.920 front of them. Now, there's been no evidence in polling 0:33:01.520 --> 0:33:03.600 he's been in front of people quite a bit, and 0:33:03.640 --> 0:33:07.160 he's not very impressive. Most of the social media response 0:33:07.240 --> 0:33:10.160 to his public appearances have been people making fun of 0:33:10.200 --> 0:33:13.440 the way he eats in public. Like there's like six 0:33:13.560 --> 0:33:15.920 or seven different videos out that are him trying to 0:33:15.960 --> 0:33:19.120 eat something and looking like a goober and people making 0:33:19.160 --> 0:33:23.160 fun of him, Whereas like again, Trump has because he's 0:33:23.240 --> 0:33:26.000 actually charismatic. Trump can like sit in a truck and 0:33:26.040 --> 0:33:29.480 look like a dufus playing truck driver and everybody's like, 0:33:29.480 --> 0:33:31.640 look at that guy. Even people who hate him are like, well, 0:33:31.640 --> 0:33:34.040 that's kind of endearing. Look at him. He's hogging the horn. 0:33:34.120 --> 0:33:35.880 He's pretended to be a big truck driver. 0:33:37.560 --> 0:33:37.760 You know. 0:33:37.880 --> 0:33:40.360 Meatball Ron. I mean we call him meatball Ron because 0:33:40.400 --> 0:33:45.120 of a food related gaff. Putting Ron to putting Ron too. 0:33:45.200 --> 0:33:51.040 He's just a disaster in public. There are some useful 0:33:51.040 --> 0:33:53.000 bits in this leaked document. This is the part of 0:33:53.040 --> 0:33:55.680 the document where the Desanta's campaign is like trying to 0:33:55.760 --> 0:33:58.240 lay out what they see as his assets as a candidate. 0:33:58.280 --> 0:34:00.000 And again, the goal of this is to get big 0:34:00.080 --> 0:34:02.520 dollar donors to give him more money. So this is 0:34:02.560 --> 0:34:04.800 them making the case as to why Ron is worth 0:34:05.360 --> 0:34:08.520 further investment. We found that when voters hear about the 0:34:08.520 --> 0:34:11.120 governor's bio, principally as a dad and as a veteran, 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:13.640 they like him and are open to hearing more about him. 0:34:13.960 --> 0:34:16.560 This is to say nothing of his successes on parental rights, 0:34:16.560 --> 0:34:19.640 his leadership bringing Florida's economy back during and after COVID, 0:34:19.840 --> 0:34:23.879 fighting illegal immigration, and ensuring Border Act security. That he's 0:34:23.920 --> 0:34:26.200 not just a fighter, but most importantly a winner. A 0:34:26.239 --> 0:34:29.160 major paid media effort featuring the governor's bio will help 0:34:29.239 --> 0:34:32.959 us to convert three big issues that you know. That's again, 0:34:33.160 --> 0:34:35.840 so the three big issues he's highlighting that he says like, 0:34:35.880 --> 0:34:38.400 these are the things that are going to get voters 0:34:38.480 --> 0:34:41.400 onto us enough of them that we can overcome Trump's 0:34:41.440 --> 0:34:45.600 twenty five percent floor. Our anti immigration stuff. Well, I'm sorry, man, 0:34:45.640 --> 0:34:48.400 Trump's got you beat there. The wall is his right. 0:34:49.400 --> 0:34:51.640 Descentist has tried to go one step further. And if 0:34:51.640 --> 0:34:53.640 you saw his press conference in Texas where he. 0:34:53.680 --> 0:34:56.120 Is the birthrights teamship thing, yeah. 0:34:55.920 --> 0:34:56.920 No to shooting people. 0:34:57.600 --> 0:34:58.919 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:34:58.960 --> 0:35:01.080 I think he said quite drop a few of them. 0:35:01.480 --> 0:35:06.680 Yeah, he's trying to. But again, he just talked about 0:35:06.719 --> 0:35:09.600 what's interesting to me. He opens this memo by starting like, look, 0:35:09.600 --> 0:35:11.839 Trump's got a twenty five percent floor of support, but 0:35:11.880 --> 0:35:13.719 you know there's that other three quarters of people we 0:35:13.760 --> 0:35:16.720 can get. And yet when you are talking about gunning 0:35:16.760 --> 0:35:19.759 people down at the border, you're just trying to take 0:35:19.800 --> 0:35:22.800 that twenty five percent from Trump. You are not reaching 0:35:22.880 --> 0:35:26.799 out to like the people who are less maniac, right, 0:35:27.120 --> 0:35:30.480 he's trying. Like again, it's just bad strategy. It's a 0:35:30.480 --> 0:35:33.960 bad strategy within the context of what his people have 0:35:34.080 --> 0:35:36.799 laid out as a strategy. Right, Like, if the good 0:35:36.840 --> 0:35:38.960 strategy is go for the other seventy five percent of 0:35:38.960 --> 0:35:41.880 the voters, well you probably don't do that by promising 0:35:41.920 --> 0:35:43.360 to be even harder on the border. 0:35:45.280 --> 0:35:50.160 Yeah, and he doesn't really even have like obviously Trump 0:35:50.160 --> 0:35:53.680 didn't have a coherent border policy either, but he had 0:35:53.719 --> 0:35:55.920 a thing, right, Like he had a sort of shiny 0:35:56.000 --> 0:35:56.560 thing that. 0:35:56.600 --> 0:35:59.840 He had three words that were very power build the wall. 0:36:00.440 --> 0:36:03.000 And you know, if desantists thinks Americans are ready for 0:36:03.120 --> 0:36:07.000 shoot them, all right, you can try that. But he's not. 0:36:07.280 --> 0:36:09.719 He's like trying to do this weasel thing anyway. It's 0:36:09.760 --> 0:36:12.160 just not there's just not any evidence of an actual 0:36:12.200 --> 0:36:14.600 tactic there of an understanding of like what people find 0:36:14.640 --> 0:36:18.200 appealing and how to highlight it. He's not doing it yet. 0:36:18.239 --> 0:36:22.640 He's not if you're a donor, he's not exhibiting the 0:36:22.719 --> 0:36:27.160 idea that he knows how to copy what Trump did 0:36:27.239 --> 0:36:29.640 and do it one better, like your goal here at 0:36:29.680 --> 0:36:32.319 if you're running against Trump based on kind of what 0:36:32.360 --> 0:36:34.239 they lay out, is what their strategy needs to be, 0:36:34.280 --> 0:36:36.279 which is get the other seventy five percent of people 0:36:36.280 --> 0:36:38.680 to back us instead of Trump. You need to be 0:36:39.920 --> 0:36:43.279 you don't need to be yes ending you are acknowledging 0:36:43.360 --> 0:36:46.600 by laying that out as the strategy that Trump his 0:36:46.719 --> 0:36:50.279 appeal is. He's got a dedicated base of appeal, but 0:36:50.320 --> 0:36:53.040 it's limited, and so if you are trying to make 0:36:53.080 --> 0:36:55.680 the case that you're more electable than him, you need 0:36:55.719 --> 0:36:59.520 to show how you have a wider base of like 0:36:59.560 --> 0:37:02.120 a whiter repeal than he does. And you don't do 0:37:02.280 --> 0:37:04.800 that by being like, I'm even shittier on the border 0:37:05.320 --> 0:37:09.920 like anyway, just a bad strategy since he doesn't have 0:37:09.920 --> 0:37:12.640 a strong case to make an absolute numbers. Ron's campaign 0:37:12.680 --> 0:37:15.000 has made the call to push heavily on the forgotten 0:37:15.080 --> 0:37:19.280 Man narrative, arguing a soft conspiratorial view that a cabal 0:37:19.360 --> 0:37:23.360 of shady elites is colluding to ruin American greatness. Here's 0:37:23.360 --> 0:37:26.399 another quote from that memo. Equally important, we will offer 0:37:26.440 --> 0:37:30.200 an economic message to disrupt and win economy voters. American 0:37:30.200 --> 0:37:32.719 decline was not an accident. It was a choice. Our 0:37:32.760 --> 0:37:35.279 elites do not consider themselves Americans so much as they 0:37:35.280 --> 0:37:38.360 think of themselves as citizens of the world. Their loyalty 0:37:38.400 --> 0:37:40.120 is not to a discrete nation, but to the bottom 0:37:40.160 --> 0:37:42.319 line on a balance sheet, and the decisions they made 0:37:42.320 --> 0:37:44.200 in leading this country over the past few decades has 0:37:44.239 --> 0:37:47.160 reflected that worldview. They have governed in their interests rather 0:37:47.200 --> 0:37:49.759 than ours. And I do think there's a germ of 0:37:49.800 --> 0:37:53.359 something interesting there. There's this idea of like economic populism, 0:37:53.760 --> 0:37:57.759 which was a factor in Trump's campaign. It's interesting to 0:37:57.800 --> 0:38:01.920 me how close Ron's idea is to like outright anti 0:38:01.920 --> 0:38:09.600 Semitic conspiracy theory language, like, yeah, they don't recognize borders. Uh, 0:38:09.719 --> 0:38:12.239 they're citizens of the world, which is a you know, 0:38:12.800 --> 0:38:14.759 very similar to a lot of the arguments that like 0:38:14.800 --> 0:38:16.560 the Nazis would make about the Jews, is that like 0:38:16.760 --> 0:38:20.000 they're a borderless people who exist within this like financial 0:38:20.040 --> 0:38:25.040 system rather than like our national like co citizens. Right, 0:38:26.440 --> 0:38:28.440 it's interesting to me that he's got that this in 0:38:28.520 --> 0:38:31.440 that memo. Again, I don't think it's a good strategy. 0:38:31.560 --> 0:38:34.759 I think the way Trump, Trump's just better at doing 0:38:34.800 --> 0:38:38.080 this right at like he's made himself like there's a 0:38:38.080 --> 0:38:41.480 lot of people who consider Trump like their kind of guy, 0:38:41.680 --> 0:38:44.600 like a working class dude, even though he's a billionaire 0:38:44.640 --> 0:38:48.279 with a gold toilet. I don't see that DeSantis has 0:38:48.320 --> 0:38:51.520 the ability to like win that kind of support from 0:38:51.520 --> 0:38:52.240 working people. 0:38:52.719 --> 0:38:52.919 Now. 0:38:53.200 --> 0:38:55.759 He tried really hard to go to push his like 0:38:55.880 --> 0:38:59.200 his military record as part of a like, yeah, sort 0:38:59.200 --> 0:39:01.200 of I'm a normal dude kind of think, but it 0:39:01.200 --> 0:39:03.560 doesn't seem to have stuck the landing at all. Again, 0:39:03.680 --> 0:39:06.040 he just yeah, I just did it in a clumsy 0:39:06.200 --> 0:39:07.440 and awkward way. 0:39:08.080 --> 0:39:10.960 Yeah, I mean, in part because like the thing he's 0:39:11.000 --> 0:39:12.840 got to hang on like that he was this fucking 0:39:12.960 --> 0:39:16.920 dude doing sketchy shit at Guantanamo. Isn't like even conservatives 0:39:17.040 --> 0:39:19.120 don't feel great about that, right. 0:39:19.040 --> 0:39:21.880 Yeah, he tried earlier to push like he was a leaguer, 0:39:21.960 --> 0:39:24.959 he was a JAG officer, like attached to a seal team. 0:39:26.080 --> 0:39:27.840 Yeah, he tried to call himself a seal. 0:39:28.120 --> 0:39:28.400 Yeah. 0:39:28.520 --> 0:39:30.839 I think he Like, I think he flew a little 0:39:30.840 --> 0:39:32.920 bit too close to the sun on that one. And 0:39:32.960 --> 0:39:35.719 again like he fucked up and alienated the people he 0:39:35.760 --> 0:39:37.160 was trying to appeal to. 0:39:37.680 --> 0:39:41.759 And I also I do kind of wonder it was 0:39:41.800 --> 0:39:43.920 like sort of taking his red for some time that 0:39:44.000 --> 0:39:48.160 having military experience was like a positive aspect in a 0:39:48.320 --> 0:39:50.200 in a campaign that it would like win you a 0:39:50.200 --> 0:39:53.600 lot of conservative voters and whatnot. I don't know that 0:39:53.600 --> 0:39:58.440 that's really the case. Yeah, see a lot of evidence 0:39:58.480 --> 0:40:01.200 for it, Like people certainly shout it when they serve, 0:40:01.280 --> 0:40:03.120 but I don't know that it really works for them. 0:40:03.520 --> 0:40:03.719 Yeah. 0:40:03.719 --> 0:40:05.520 I think that's more of a like a I don't 0:40:05.560 --> 0:40:06.840 know if I'm using the right phrasing here, like a 0:40:06.840 --> 0:40:10.560 traditional Republican value, not like a post Trump Republican value. 0:40:10.719 --> 0:40:13.040 Because Trump is like on record as being like, no, 0:40:13.120 --> 0:40:16.120 only idiots serve in the military. I'm a smart man, 0:40:16.440 --> 0:40:18.359 and like that didn't seem to hurt him at all. 0:40:20.000 --> 0:40:22.960 But you know who else hates veterans? 0:40:23.840 --> 0:40:27.040 Oh yeah, several of the food box delivery companies. They 0:40:27.040 --> 0:40:29.480 actually they just won't give them food. 0:40:30.640 --> 0:40:33.279 They are they are actively every one of our supporters 0:40:33.360 --> 0:40:38.400 is wiping their ass with whatever flag the Navy uses. 0:40:38.640 --> 0:40:40.080 I assume they have a flag, right. 0:40:40.760 --> 0:40:44.759 Oh definitely yeah, yeaheah, especially navy flag. It works underwater too, 0:40:44.920 --> 0:40:45.360 very special. 0:40:45.560 --> 0:40:47.560 That's good. That's good. And underwater flag that's what we 0:40:47.600 --> 0:40:52.480 need to bring nationalism to the fish. We're back. So 0:40:52.560 --> 0:40:54.239 I wanted to close out by kind of looking at 0:40:54.239 --> 0:40:57.719 a segment of Desanta supporters the find people behind my 0:40:57.760 --> 0:41:03.680 favorite reliable media institution, legal insurrection dot com. Oh good, now, 0:41:03.680 --> 0:41:09.280 this is a kind of libertarian right themed news website. 0:41:09.520 --> 0:41:11.880 They're like, boy, I do want you to look up 0:41:11.960 --> 0:41:14.880 legal insurrection dot com because their website's very interesting, Like 0:41:14.920 --> 0:41:19.080 starts with this like phonetic breakdown of the phrase legal insurrection. 0:41:19.280 --> 0:41:22.440 Like that's their logo that includes like a definition a 0:41:22.560 --> 0:41:26.880 rising up against established authority, rebellion, revolt in conformity with 0:41:27.239 --> 0:41:31.120 or permitted by law. That's a nonsense phrase, because there's 0:41:31.160 --> 0:41:33.520 no such thing as a permitted legal insurrection. We had 0:41:33.520 --> 0:41:36.600 this argument actually, like back in around eighteen sixty and 0:41:37.320 --> 0:41:42.640 guess where it ended. Like, I'm not saying it's bad 0:41:42.680 --> 0:41:45.759 to have an insurrection. I think some insurrections are potentially 0:41:45.840 --> 0:41:49.839 really good, but they're never legal. Otherwise they're not an insurrection. 0:41:50.360 --> 0:41:52.160 Yet the same silly. 0:41:51.880 --> 0:41:53.600 Ideas direction is illegality. 0:41:54.000 --> 0:41:56.359 Yeah, like one way or the other. I think it's 0:41:56.360 --> 0:41:59.879 this idea. These people who like pretend to be libertarians, 0:42:00.040 --> 0:42:02.840 they still have this like sacred sort of reverence for 0:42:02.880 --> 0:42:04.959 the law. They can't just say like, yeah, I believe 0:42:05.000 --> 0:42:07.360 in overthrowing the government. No, no, no, what I'm doing is 0:42:07.360 --> 0:42:10.239 actually obeying the real law. The people in charge are 0:42:10.280 --> 0:42:13.480 obeying laws that are illegal and fake. But like, I 0:42:13.520 --> 0:42:15.520 know the real law. So what I'm not. I'm not 0:42:15.560 --> 0:42:17.879 a criminal? Like, no, man, just be like yeah, man, 0:42:17.920 --> 0:42:19.520 I'm a criminal. I want to I want to overthrow 0:42:19.560 --> 0:42:22.440 the government. You know what's cool is being a criminal 0:42:22.480 --> 0:42:25.200 who wants to overthrow the government. We all love criminal 0:42:25.400 --> 0:42:27.560 This is why Star Wars is the biggest movie series. 0:42:27.680 --> 0:42:30.640 We love criminals who want to overthrow the government. That's 0:42:30.640 --> 0:42:32.360 who the founding fathers of this country. 0:42:32.440 --> 0:42:34.600 War is a very American thing to love. 0:42:35.520 --> 0:42:37.319 You shouldn't have to be like no, but ours is 0:42:37.320 --> 0:42:40.320 a legal and now fuck it, you're a criminal. You're cool, 0:42:40.840 --> 0:42:42.279 You're fucking al Capone. 0:42:42.520 --> 0:42:46.120 Like, yeah, it's very very cooked. 0:42:47.880 --> 0:42:51.080 It is very cooked. Anyway. Here's an article from legal 0:42:51.080 --> 0:42:56.400 insurrection dot com who bafflingly backs Ronda Santis Florida government. 0:42:56.480 --> 0:43:00.000 Rond de Santis is serious about restoring executive branch agencies 0:43:00.080 --> 0:43:02.800 and rebuilding trust with the American people who've been shocked 0:43:02.800 --> 0:43:05.440 and appalled at the weaponization of government by the Biden 0:43:05.480 --> 0:43:09.880 administration and before that, the Obama administration. The federal government, 0:43:09.880 --> 0:43:14.000 specifically the executive branch alphabet agencies, has been completely corrupted 0:43:14.000 --> 0:43:16.960 by the Obama, Biden and now the Biden Harris administrations. 0:43:17.200 --> 0:43:19.320 We all know it, and we're all disgusted and disheartened 0:43:19.320 --> 0:43:22.920 by the myriad ways the Obama administration targeted political opponents. 0:43:23.239 --> 0:43:26.080 That's why Trump's twenty sixteen campaign to drain the swamp 0:43:26.160 --> 0:43:28.200 was so potent. We knew the depth and breadth of 0:43:28.200 --> 0:43:31.320 the corruption. The partisan Banana republic style attacks on political 0:43:31.320 --> 0:43:34.759 opponents and we wanted it stopped. Unfortunately, Trump was not 0:43:34.800 --> 0:43:36.719 able to drain the swamp at all, not even a 0:43:36.719 --> 0:43:39.279 little bit. So when Biden took office in twenty twenty one, 0:43:39.320 --> 0:43:41.440 he just got to work picking up Obama's attacks on 0:43:41.480 --> 0:43:43.960 ascent with a deep state still fully embedded through the 0:43:44.000 --> 0:43:48.200 executive branch, having spent the intervening years openly working as 0:43:48.239 --> 0:43:52.279 the resistance to Trump's the duly elected president's agenda. God, 0:43:52.320 --> 0:43:55.759 it's such, first off, very funny that they're trying to 0:43:55.800 --> 0:44:00.400 like make the resistance to be anything but like Twitter libs. Yeah, 0:44:00.400 --> 0:44:03.560 Like I do find it funny that they're like fucking 0:44:04.200 --> 0:44:05.960 trying to treat this like a boogeyman. 0:44:06.400 --> 0:44:08.839 I'm just yeah, like leading the Maquis through to through 0:44:08.880 --> 0:44:11.720 that I don't know, Forester Siteorgia and blowing up fucking 0:44:11.760 --> 0:44:13.640 train tracks is extremely amusing to me. 0:44:14.160 --> 0:44:15.960 It's just sad, but it does get it something right. 0:44:16.040 --> 0:44:18.879 This attitude among a lot of Republicans, particularly the guys 0:44:18.880 --> 0:44:22.480 who really like DeSantis, that the deep state is really powerful. 0:44:22.680 --> 0:44:27.200 These federal law enforcement agencies are fundamentally like fighting against us, 0:44:27.440 --> 0:44:30.080 and we have to build an ability to compete with them. 0:44:30.360 --> 0:44:33.520 And this is I actually think we've been mostly talking 0:44:33.520 --> 0:44:36.760 about like the weaknesses and the dumb shit about DeSantis's campaign. 0:44:37.239 --> 0:44:43.360 I think a strength he has not maybe capitalized on 0:44:43.520 --> 0:44:47.040 enough is this idea, because this is something Trump proved 0:44:47.080 --> 0:44:50.080 he was unable to do, like he didn't go in 0:44:50.120 --> 0:44:54.080 there and unseat the deep state. And DeSantis has actually 0:44:54.080 --> 0:44:58.480 been kind of effective at resisting the federal government and 0:44:58.520 --> 0:45:04.360 even sidelining some FEA mineral agencies within Florida. And there's 0:45:04.760 --> 0:45:08.640 some actual like potential for strength here with Trump's base. 0:45:08.719 --> 0:45:10.640 I don't know that this gets you moderates, but like 0:45:10.960 --> 0:45:12.840 it's weird to me that he hasn't pushed this harder. 0:45:13.120 --> 0:45:15.439 Part of that maybe the fact that he's, like everything else, 0:45:15.719 --> 0:45:19.920 really bad at it. Kind of His strongest attempt to 0:45:20.640 --> 0:45:24.840 provide sort of a countervailing force to federal law enforcement 0:45:25.719 --> 0:45:31.880 was his activation of the Florida State Guard, which seventeen 0:45:31.960 --> 0:45:34.319 or so states have state guards. It's just kind of 0:45:34.360 --> 0:45:38.480 like a state version of a National Guard. Potentially, Florida's 0:45:38.560 --> 0:45:41.440 had not been active in a while, and he reactivated them, 0:45:41.480 --> 0:45:43.000 claiming that it was going to be a force of 0:45:43.080 --> 0:45:46.200 volunteers who could respond to hurricanes and other public emergencies. 0:45:46.680 --> 0:45:49.040 But what he was actually doing was trying to create 0:45:49.080 --> 0:45:52.040 a paramilitary organization. He is in the process of attempting 0:45:52.040 --> 0:45:55.400 to do this now these people are undergoing like military 0:45:55.480 --> 0:45:58.719 training and whatnot. He's trying to get them access to 0:45:58.800 --> 0:46:02.600 like weaponry. Like this is potentially kind of concerning, but 0:46:03.080 --> 0:46:05.560 he's really fucking bad at it. There was a really 0:46:05.560 --> 0:46:08.440 interesting New York Times article recently that kind of goes 0:46:08.480 --> 0:46:12.520 into the problems the Florida State Guard have had sort 0:46:12.520 --> 0:46:15.880 of spinning up. And it's a very funny read because 0:46:15.880 --> 0:46:19.040 it's like it's like a little kid's idea about how 0:46:19.040 --> 0:46:23.920 you would build a paramilitary organization. So on paper, the 0:46:23.960 --> 0:46:26.360 Governor's office has said that one of the Guard's missions 0:46:26.360 --> 0:46:29.440 would be quote to ensure FLOYDA remains fully fortified to 0:46:29.520 --> 0:46:32.520 respond not only to natural disasters, but also to protect 0:46:32.520 --> 0:46:35.600 its people in borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest. 0:46:35.960 --> 0:46:38.560 And then the New York Times article continues, the deployment 0:46:38.600 --> 0:46:40.960 this spring has been mired in internal turmoil, with some 0:46:41.000 --> 0:46:43.160 recruits complaining that what was supposed to be a civilian 0:46:43.160 --> 0:46:47.840 disaster response organization had become heavily militarized, requiring volunteers to 0:46:47.880 --> 0:46:51.640 participate in marching drills and military style training sessions on 0:46:51.719 --> 0:46:54.640 weapons and hand to hand combat. At least twenty percent 0:46:54.640 --> 0:46:56.919 of the one hundred and fifty people initially accepted into 0:46:56.960 --> 0:46:59.360 the program dropped out or were dismissed. And if you 0:46:59.400 --> 0:47:03.040 get into this, the people dropping out are like the veterans, 0:47:03.120 --> 0:47:06.080 they're like military officers and stuff who got into this 0:47:06.120 --> 0:47:08.440 thing and then are like, I was in the military 0:47:08.440 --> 0:47:11.120 for twenty years, you know, I did deployments here and here, 0:47:11.440 --> 0:47:13.640 and I came into this thing and it's a bunch 0:47:13.680 --> 0:47:16.160 of civilians dressed as soldiers yelling at me to do 0:47:16.239 --> 0:47:19.439 push ups in march in a field and like trying 0:47:19.480 --> 0:47:21.640 to be an asshole to me because they're angry that 0:47:21.680 --> 0:47:24.480 like I have military experience that they think they know better. 0:47:25.800 --> 0:47:29.200 Like it is like the volunteers said, the training seemed 0:47:29.200 --> 0:47:32.120 poorly structured, with an order to minimum amount of time spent, 0:47:32.200 --> 0:47:35.160 as one of them described it, marching in fields. Some 0:47:35.200 --> 0:47:37.000 of the men said that as veterans with years of 0:47:37.040 --> 0:47:39.480 experience in the military, they were offended when they were 0:47:39.560 --> 0:47:42.440 yelled at by junior instructors acting like drill sergeants who 0:47:42.480 --> 0:47:48.400 disregarded their previous ranks. I find this really fucking funny 0:47:48.640 --> 0:47:50.960 if you guys seen those videos coming out about like 0:47:51.280 --> 0:47:54.200 they're these classes where if you're like a rich or 0:47:54.280 --> 0:47:56.399 you know, upper middle class dude, you can pay like 0:47:56.640 --> 0:47:59.560 ten grand to spend five days doing a fake version 0:47:59.600 --> 0:48:03.920 of the Seals hell weak like you rolling, you're like incredible, 0:48:04.400 --> 0:48:07.239 Like yeah, you're like carrying, like hitting stuff with big hammers. 0:48:08.040 --> 0:48:11.120 You're like crawling on your back through rocks. You're doing 0:48:11.120 --> 0:48:15.440 all these like shitty, painful exercises while like some dude 0:48:15.440 --> 0:48:19.480 who probably fucking got an other than honorable separation from 0:48:19.480 --> 0:48:23.680 the Marine Corps as a private second class like screams 0:48:23.719 --> 0:48:27.000 at you a lot, and it's you know, that's what 0:48:27.080 --> 0:48:31.040 you feel. Yeah, yeah, rolling around on a one wheel 0:48:31.120 --> 0:48:33.239 yelling at you that you're you know, just like making 0:48:33.280 --> 0:48:35.880 a bullshit reasons to be angry at you, because idiots 0:48:36.400 --> 0:48:37.120 honestly have it. 0:48:37.239 --> 0:48:40.359 Like yeah, it sounds like a weird mix of like 0:48:40.640 --> 0:48:44.560 expensive LARPing and like a like a repressed kink thing 0:48:45.040 --> 0:48:46.520 for these guys. 0:48:46.000 --> 0:48:47.080 Like yeah, that's. 0:48:49.800 --> 0:48:54.000 Watched the movie Full Metal Jacket and a number one 0:48:54.440 --> 0:48:57.239 didn't watch all of it because like our Lee Ermie 0:48:57.360 --> 0:48:59.359 or whatever his name was. Character they're like the really 0:48:59.400 --> 0:49:03.640 mean drill star gets murdered after like emotionally abusing one 0:49:03.680 --> 0:49:06.880 of his recruits, like kind of a big part of 0:49:06.920 --> 0:49:12.000 the movie, but just saw him like making fun like 0:49:12.320 --> 0:49:15.560 yelling at people and making up fun insults, and we're like, well, 0:49:15.560 --> 0:49:17.759 that's got to be key to teaching people how to 0:49:17.760 --> 0:49:20.800 fight Garrison. Have you seen Full Metal Jacket? 0:49:21.040 --> 0:49:22.640 I have not seen Full Metal Jacket. 0:49:23.239 --> 0:49:26.080 You'd actually probably like it's good. There's some interesting parts 0:49:26.080 --> 0:49:29.400 of that movie. Well well shot, but yeah, I do 0:49:29.480 --> 0:49:32.640 think it's really funny. Like there's potentially this is one 0:49:32.680 --> 0:49:36.759 of those things potentially very scary to have a far 0:49:36.880 --> 0:49:41.080 right elected leader building his own paramilitary force that is 0:49:41.120 --> 0:49:45.560 answerable only to him. Righteah, that is a frightening thing. 0:49:45.840 --> 0:49:48.839 I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about him trying this, 0:49:49.200 --> 0:49:50.520 but he's so shitty. 0:49:50.239 --> 0:49:52.640 It it's like dictator one oh one. Yeah, yeah, Like 0:49:52.920 --> 0:49:55.520 it makes sense that he would try it. I mean, like, yeah, 0:49:55.840 --> 0:49:57.480 I would never want to be a governor because I 0:49:57.520 --> 0:49:59.560 think that's an a moral thing to do. But if 0:49:59.600 --> 0:50:03.440 I if I was to be, yeah, a romitarian governor, 0:50:04.320 --> 0:50:05.600 my own hit squad. 0:50:05.680 --> 0:50:08.239 Step one, make your own army, and it says a 0:50:08.280 --> 0:50:10.680 lot about Ron number one that of all of the 0:50:10.719 --> 0:50:13.000 different things he's tried to do, this is the only 0:50:13.040 --> 0:50:15.439 one that seems like, Oh, you might actually be able 0:50:15.440 --> 0:50:18.279 to get a lot of Trump voters to switch over 0:50:18.320 --> 0:50:20.279 to you if you promise them I'm going to do 0:50:20.360 --> 0:50:23.479 this nationwide, and you, as a guy who didn't join 0:50:23.520 --> 0:50:25.400 the army but is pretty sure he would have been 0:50:25.400 --> 0:50:29.200 good at it, can like become a militant commander in 0:50:29.280 --> 0:50:32.560 your like state guard thing that I'm going to establish. 0:50:33.000 --> 0:50:34.719 You might get some votes. I don't think you'd win 0:50:34.760 --> 0:50:36.640 a lot of moderates, but you might get the base 0:50:36.680 --> 0:50:37.520 away from Trump. 0:50:37.600 --> 0:50:41.359 Right, it's just so clearly a brown Shirts rip off. Yeah, 0:50:41.520 --> 0:50:44.520 it's just like it's so blatant that it's like it's 0:50:45.040 --> 0:50:48.120 it's like it's like it's like he's like poorly copying 0:50:48.160 --> 0:50:51.600 someone else's homework. Yeah, Like I don't a lot of 0:50:51.640 --> 0:50:54.240 his campaign has that vibe and he's like just poorly 0:50:54.320 --> 0:50:55.840 copying someone else's homework. 0:50:56.280 --> 0:50:57.759 Like, I don't know that this would work, and I 0:50:57.840 --> 0:50:59.640 still think he would have. It would be a long 0:50:59.680 --> 0:51:01.600 shot that he would have any chance of beating Trump. 0:51:01.760 --> 0:51:03.160 But if he were to be like I'm going to 0:51:03.280 --> 0:51:07.160 establish a State Guard where conservatives can get access to 0:51:07.239 --> 0:51:11.040 military grade weaponry and the right to carry their handguns everywhere. 0:51:12.080 --> 0:51:13.880 You might get I don't again, I don't think you 0:51:13.920 --> 0:51:16.120 went a general that way, but you might get the 0:51:16.160 --> 0:51:18.919 base away from Trump with that. It's at least more 0:51:18.960 --> 0:51:21.960 creative than anything else he's tried. Anyway, this is all 0:51:21.960 --> 0:51:23.960 a bad idea. I want to close by reading one 0:51:24.000 --> 0:51:26.600 last anecdote from that New York Times article on Ron 0:51:27.000 --> 0:51:30.520 meetball Ron's attempt to make an army. A fifty one 0:51:30.560 --> 0:51:32.719 year old former Marine captain who had retired from the 0:51:32.719 --> 0:51:35.200 military with a disability and later joined the State Guard 0:51:35.320 --> 0:51:38.439 also clashed with instructors during initial boot camp last month, 0:51:38.719 --> 0:51:41.800 raising concerns about the training. In an assault complaint filed 0:51:41.800 --> 0:51:44.239 with the Clay County Sheriff's office, the man said he 0:51:44.320 --> 0:51:46.480 was accused by the State Guard commander of being the 0:51:46.600 --> 0:51:48.960 leader of the group that had been criticized in the 0:51:49.040 --> 0:51:52.080 organization and its leadership. He was then forcibly pushed into 0:51:52.120 --> 0:51:54.800 a van against his objections and driven to the command boost, 0:51:54.960 --> 0:51:57.520 where he was fired and escorted off base. Of the 0:51:57.600 --> 0:52:00.800 nine original State Guard recruiters and commanders who's months recruiting 0:52:00.840 --> 0:52:04.080 for the organization, Fewer than a third remained. The staff director, 0:52:04.080 --> 0:52:06.319 who had been a proposion of the less militarized version 0:52:06.320 --> 0:52:08.799 of the group, appointed in January, was removed from his 0:52:08.840 --> 0:52:12.200 post just two days before the inaugural graduation. The program's 0:52:12.239 --> 0:52:16.560 personnel director was fired this week. So good. 0:52:16.719 --> 0:52:19.120 Sounds like it's going great over there in Florida. 0:52:19.480 --> 0:52:22.280 Sounds like meatball. Ron knows how to make an army. 0:52:24.440 --> 0:52:27.360 I don't know, folks. That's that's my episode on on 0:52:27.400 --> 0:52:29.400 the Ron de Santis campaign, and now he's doing. I 0:52:29.400 --> 0:52:34.560 hope you all enjoyed this little update. We're done cool. 0:52:34.800 --> 0:52:37.720 Stay tuned for a vveck Ramaswani. 0:52:37.160 --> 0:52:41.239 Episode, yeah, which is just gonna be me making fart 0:52:41.280 --> 0:52:45.520 noises into the microphone. You'll get everything you need on vveck. 0:52:45.560 --> 0:52:45.719 Here. 0:52:45.760 --> 0:52:50.399 Look, it's gonna be Trump unless he dies, in which case, boy, 0:52:50.440 --> 0:52:51.440 that could be interesting. 0:52:51.520 --> 0:52:54.520 I mean, I just like Dessantis could have waited four 0:52:54.600 --> 0:52:57.319 years and then he could have had the backing of 0:52:57.360 --> 0:53:01.680 Trump to help him. I don't he's such a he's 0:53:01.680 --> 0:53:04.400 such a weird little like power goblin because like, yeah. 0:53:04.280 --> 0:53:06.520 I mean, if he was still try to do that. 0:53:06.560 --> 0:53:08.880 Trump has gone back and forth on people in the past. 0:53:08.920 --> 0:53:11.200 But it's such a weird call to like make this 0:53:11.360 --> 0:53:15.000 doomed play at it, to build like this bad, like 0:53:15.360 --> 0:53:22.840 you're gonna piss some people off. Yeah, why yeah, anyway, I. 0:53:23.640 --> 0:53:25.759 Yeah, I remember us doing an episode not so long 0:53:25.800 --> 0:53:27.520 ago about the Santis and being like, well, he'll just 0:53:27.560 --> 0:53:29.399 wait four years until Trump's out to the pit show. 0:53:29.440 --> 0:53:33.759 But no, he fucking defied our expectations by torpedoing his 0:53:33.800 --> 0:53:35.000 own presidential chances. 0:53:35.200 --> 0:53:56.040 Yeah, and uh, that's why I love him. Welcome back 0:53:56.160 --> 0:54:00.000 to It could Happen Here a podcast about things falling apart, 0:54:00.160 --> 0:54:01.920 and you know, when things fall apart, one of the 0:54:01.960 --> 0:54:04.320 few things that can keep you on an even keel, 0:54:04.520 --> 0:54:06.439 you know, keep you feeling like there's something that makes 0:54:06.480 --> 0:54:08.360 sense in the world. It's good TV. 0:54:08.680 --> 0:54:08.840 You know. 0:54:08.880 --> 0:54:11.320 I think we can all agree no job more important 0:54:11.360 --> 0:54:14.840 than making television because it's really, for a surprising amount 0:54:14.880 --> 0:54:17.799 of the population, the only thing keeping them on the 0:54:17.880 --> 0:54:21.920 ragged edge of sanity. And obviously, if you're at all 0:54:21.960 --> 0:54:25.239 aware of the news, both the Writers Guilt the WGA 0:54:25.840 --> 0:54:30.359 and the Actors Guild sag AFTRA have both separately, although 0:54:30.400 --> 0:54:32.160 they are now, you know, on strike. At the same 0:54:32.160 --> 0:54:35.360 time have both kind of independently announced strikes after a 0:54:35.360 --> 0:54:40.640 breakdown in negotiations with the major studios, and to talk 0:54:40.680 --> 0:54:43.840 with me today about what's going on. What's it like 0:54:44.000 --> 0:54:47.920 being a writer on strike? Is my friend and one 0:54:47.960 --> 0:54:49.759 of the people who makes a show that helps keep 0:54:49.800 --> 0:54:52.880 me on the ragged edge of sanity. Sore and Bowie sorin. 0:54:53.440 --> 0:54:54.840 How you doing woo? 0:54:56.360 --> 0:55:01.600 You're simply the best money Hey, you met of. 0:55:01.719 --> 0:55:03.280 Them all the risks. 0:55:03.520 --> 0:55:04.799 Stop it, Tina, stop it. 0:55:05.280 --> 0:55:10.239 Thank you guys, very good, very good. See you are 0:55:10.400 --> 0:55:15.920 my former colleague at cracked dot com dot net backslash aol. 0:55:16.520 --> 0:55:17.600 Don't send anyone there now. 0:55:19.680 --> 0:55:21.560 And you are also, or at least before the strike 0:55:21.640 --> 0:55:24.080 hit where a have been for the last several years, 0:55:24.120 --> 0:55:28.919 a writer on American Dad, one of the most consistently 0:55:28.960 --> 0:55:32.520 funny animated shows of like twenty years now almost it's 0:55:32.520 --> 0:55:33.080 been on the air. 0:55:33.120 --> 0:55:36.000 Stop it stop. Oh, thank you, Robert, Tina, You guys 0:55:36.000 --> 0:55:36.520 are the best. 0:55:37.400 --> 0:55:37.480 Uh. 0:55:37.600 --> 0:55:39.200 That's very nice of you. Thank you very much for 0:55:39.239 --> 0:55:40.120 saying that it did. 0:55:40.000 --> 0:55:41.440 Cost a lot of money to get her in the 0:55:41.480 --> 0:55:43.320 studio today. 0:55:44.560 --> 0:55:47.040 That's very kind of you to say. Yeah, I we 0:55:47.440 --> 0:55:49.799 try very hard, but It also has like a feel 0:55:49.840 --> 0:55:52.160 at the show of like the warden isn't watching, Like 0:55:52.160 --> 0:55:54.240 we're kind of allowed to do what we want, and it's. 0:55:54.160 --> 0:55:58.919 Yeah, you love your job. It's very obvious. I think 0:55:58.960 --> 0:56:02.120 probably everyone there loves writing for that show. Most of 0:56:02.120 --> 0:56:04.319 the people I know who write for TV have the 0:56:04.320 --> 0:56:07.080 same attitude of like, wow, I can't believe I get 0:56:07.080 --> 0:56:10.080 to do this. But that attitude is great and it 0:56:10.120 --> 0:56:13.719 makes life livable. But what doesn't make life livable and 0:56:13.760 --> 0:56:16.840 what makes the enjoyment of the job harder is starving 0:56:16.880 --> 0:56:21.080 to death, which is an increasing reality for a lot 0:56:21.120 --> 0:56:26.080 of writers over the last like ten years. So a 0:56:26.160 --> 0:56:29.000 decade ago, about thirty three percent of TV writers got 0:56:29.040 --> 0:56:30.920 what was paid like the minimum rate, which is kind 0:56:30.920 --> 0:56:33.520 of the minimum rate you get paid to get staffed 0:56:33.600 --> 0:56:37.840 on a union show. And the WGA says that about 0:56:37.880 --> 0:56:41.560 half of TV writers are at that point. Now, writer 0:56:41.680 --> 0:56:45.000 pay has declined about fourteen percent over the last five years. 0:56:45.040 --> 0:56:47.880 And that's with inflation. That's like, if you kind of 0:56:47.920 --> 0:56:51.440 take out inflation, right, everybody's making a yeah with inflation, 0:56:51.480 --> 0:56:54.160 it's like, yeah, about twenty three percent writer producer pay 0:56:54.400 --> 0:56:57.600 over the last decade with inflation factored in so that 0:56:57.960 --> 0:57:01.919 sucks because people aren't why twenty three percent less TV? 0:57:02.120 --> 0:57:04.279 In fact, I think we're watching more TV than we 0:57:04.360 --> 0:57:09.319 ever have before, like so it and I like, if 0:57:09.360 --> 0:57:11.560 you listen to the kind of numbers given by streaming 0:57:11.560 --> 0:57:13.960 platforms about how many people are watching it, sure doesn't 0:57:14.000 --> 0:57:19.400 seem like TV writers have have been gotten twenty three 0:57:19.440 --> 0:57:23.560 percent worse at their jobs. So anyway, there was the 0:57:24.040 --> 0:57:29.280 WGA went into negotiations earlier this year and basically to 0:57:29.360 --> 0:57:32.160 kind of, you know, shorten it, we're asking for more money, 0:57:32.400 --> 0:57:35.680 more money and residuals, more money and upfront pay changes 0:57:35.720 --> 0:57:38.760 to some policies that streamers were using to kind of avoid. 0:57:38.800 --> 0:57:40.960 There's been sort of this effort by streamers for a 0:57:41.000 --> 0:57:43.520 while now to kind of kill the concept of a 0:57:43.560 --> 0:57:45.400 writer's room in a lot of shows, and they have 0:57:45.440 --> 0:57:47.320 a couple of different sort of fucky ways to do that. 0:57:48.080 --> 0:57:51.160 I gotta say, Robert, it is a dream to come 0:57:51.200 --> 0:57:54.320 on your podcast with you, because you do your fucking homework. 0:57:55.840 --> 0:57:57.680 I usually I'm the one who has to explain all 0:57:57.680 --> 0:57:59.480 this stuff, but this is great. I'm loving where this 0:57:59.520 --> 0:57:59.800 is going. 0:58:00.280 --> 0:58:02.080 You're actually right, Can you walk us through kind of 0:58:02.120 --> 0:58:03.920 what's been happened, because that's a thing that I think 0:58:04.000 --> 0:58:05.840 is sort of you miss that on kind of the 0:58:05.840 --> 0:58:08.280 big level sort of like discussions of this is like 0:58:08.320 --> 0:58:11.200 what like what a writer's room is and sort of 0:58:11.240 --> 0:58:13.560 what streamers have been tiny tried to do to change 0:58:13.560 --> 0:58:16.040 that because fundamentally, like one thing people who know what 0:58:16.040 --> 0:58:18.960 they're talking about will point out is that like movies 0:58:19.080 --> 0:58:20.840 are you know, not that scripts don't matter, but it's 0:58:20.920 --> 0:58:23.240 like a director's medium. That's like the big sort of 0:58:23.320 --> 0:58:26.560 like guiding you know, through the vision of like what 0:58:26.640 --> 0:58:29.000 a film is going to be. And TV is a 0:58:29.000 --> 0:58:31.800 writer driven medium. More often you'll at least hear that 0:58:31.880 --> 0:58:33.080 a lot. And I kind of want to talk about 0:58:33.080 --> 0:58:34.720 like what is a writer's room and what has been 0:58:34.840 --> 0:58:37.880 changing in terms of how studios have been trying to 0:58:37.960 --> 0:58:39.080 edge that concept out? 0:58:39.400 --> 0:58:43.240 Great, great question. So so writer's room traditionally, like you 0:58:43.240 --> 0:58:47.120 think back to broadcast television and it's heyday, the way 0:58:47.200 --> 0:58:50.040 writer's room worked is you had probably first of all, 0:58:50.040 --> 0:58:51.920 you're going to have like twenty to twenty two episodes 0:58:51.960 --> 0:58:56.240 a season, and then within that you've got a block 0:58:56.280 --> 0:58:59.360 of anywhere from like ten to almost sometimes twenty writers. 0:58:59.840 --> 0:59:01.800 And the reason that you have so many writers on 0:59:01.840 --> 0:59:04.520 a show like that is because while you're working on it, 0:59:04.520 --> 0:59:07.800 it's also in production, so as stories are being broken, 0:59:08.040 --> 0:59:10.200 and that means that there are rooms where people are 0:59:10.200 --> 0:59:13.280 creating a story together. As that's going on, there's like 0:59:13.320 --> 0:59:15.160 six other things going on, like you're going to have 0:59:15.960 --> 0:59:18.000 they're probably filming during that time. And if that's your 0:59:18.000 --> 0:59:20.360 particular written by episode, like that's the episode with your 0:59:20.440 --> 0:59:22.240 name on it, you might be on set for that 0:59:22.280 --> 0:59:23.920 because you're going to be having to make changes on 0:59:23.920 --> 0:59:26.880 the fly. While that's going on. There's table reads happening, 0:59:27.160 --> 0:59:29.440 there's joke punch ups happening, So there's generally a separate 0:59:29.480 --> 0:59:31.120 room for that. And so you need like a pretty 0:59:31.160 --> 0:59:34.040 big group of people to just make a show, to 0:59:34.120 --> 0:59:38.920 just write a show. And that's that's to keep the 0:59:39.040 --> 0:59:42.600 hours within like to keep them bearable. I mean, it 0:59:42.600 --> 0:59:44.440 doesn't even you wouldn't even turn that into a nine 0:59:44.440 --> 0:59:46.720 to five. Generally, that's still a lot of hours with 0:59:46.800 --> 0:59:50.600 a lot of people, but at least it's bearable for everybody. Now, 0:59:50.800 --> 0:59:54.240 streaming has tried to change that because they're tired of 0:59:54.280 --> 0:59:56.480 hiring so many writers and they're tired of paying writers 0:59:56.560 --> 0:59:59.280 and so with streaming, there's different loopholes that they can 0:59:59.280 --> 1:00:01.920 get into, which is, if you start creating a show 1:00:03.800 --> 1:00:06.720 before it's even technically green lit, you can start having 1:00:06.720 --> 1:00:09.600 writers write episodes, but because it's not green lit, you're 1:00:09.640 --> 1:00:11.920 not beholden to the same rules through the WGA. You 1:00:11.960 --> 1:00:14.600 can start hiring people at their at a minimum even 1:00:14.600 --> 1:00:16.880 if they are should be making more than that. And 1:00:17.760 --> 1:00:20.520 depending on what your position is at as a writer, 1:00:20.680 --> 1:00:22.360 like you start as a staff writer, then you move 1:00:22.440 --> 1:00:24.680 up to story editor, then executive story editor, and you 1:00:24.760 --> 1:00:26.840 move up and up and up from there. Generally, what 1:00:26.840 --> 1:00:29.520 happens is if you leave a show as as an 1:00:29.560 --> 1:00:32.280 executive story editor, you don't then go to another show 1:00:32.320 --> 1:00:34.560 and drop back down to staff writer. You maintain the 1:00:34.600 --> 1:00:36.959 position that you have because you've now learned the trade 1:00:37.080 --> 1:00:39.640 enough that usually you have a skill set that's valuable 1:00:39.720 --> 1:00:42.000 enough that you should be being paid for being an 1:00:42.040 --> 1:00:45.360 executive story editor. So what they're doing is they're making 1:00:45.360 --> 1:00:47.880 sure that people are not being paid for the roles 1:00:47.880 --> 1:00:50.160 that they generally have because they can do that before 1:00:50.200 --> 1:00:52.840 show has been green lit. And then they will say 1:00:52.960 --> 1:00:56.840 we're going to write, like, let's just write twelve episodes 1:00:57.600 --> 1:01:00.000 and that's a lot, like that's a whole season of time, 1:01:00.760 --> 1:01:03.360 but they're doing it before it's green lit. And then 1:01:03.400 --> 1:01:06.520 what happens is you will have these writers who are 1:01:06.680 --> 1:01:09.080 burning the midnight oil trying to get this thing done 1:01:09.080 --> 1:01:10.840 and calling in a lot of favors from friends because 1:01:10.840 --> 1:01:12.600 you have such a small group of writers. You have 1:01:12.640 --> 1:01:15.080 maybe like in a pre green lit room, you've got 1:01:15.080 --> 1:01:17.919 like three or four people trying to write an entire 1:01:18.000 --> 1:01:22.280 season of a show, and as they're writing it, they're 1:01:22.320 --> 1:01:24.120 like they're calling in favors from friends and be like 1:01:24.120 --> 1:01:25.720 will you come edit this and stuff? Because you don't 1:01:25.760 --> 1:01:27.920 have enough people for everything. You have to break all 1:01:27.920 --> 1:01:30.520 these stories simultaneously. You have to know what's going on 1:01:30.600 --> 1:01:33.760 in each individual room, but you don't have enough bandwidth 1:01:33.760 --> 1:01:36.360 for all of that. So you're calling in favors from 1:01:36.360 --> 1:01:38.000 other people. Do we just come and like look at this? 1:01:38.040 --> 1:01:40.160 Will you just take a look? Like we need like 1:01:40.240 --> 1:01:42.720 eyes on this, And so you're calling in favors from friends. 1:01:43.000 --> 1:01:46.400 Students have figured out that they can they can you 1:01:46.440 --> 1:01:48.720 can ask people to do this. Essentially, it's like they 1:01:48.720 --> 1:01:51.320 get a natural part of the writing process. Every writer, 1:01:51.480 --> 1:01:53.720 in every form of writing does a version of this, 1:01:53.840 --> 1:01:55.880 and they're like, what if we did this to help 1:01:56.000 --> 1:01:59.400 to make it easier to starve ye, Yeah exactly, and 1:01:59.480 --> 1:02:01.840 then and then what they would do. There's different tactics 1:02:01.840 --> 1:02:04.760 beyond that, which is like once those are appen, once 1:02:04.800 --> 1:02:09.440 those episodes are written, then maybe the studio will will uh. 1:02:10.000 --> 1:02:11.800 They can kind of pick and choose when they want 1:02:11.840 --> 1:02:14.760 to release that. They don't have like a it's not 1:02:14.760 --> 1:02:17.200 like in broadcast television where everything gets released in the fall. 1:02:17.360 --> 1:02:18.760 It's just like you can choose when you want to 1:02:18.800 --> 1:02:20.320 release it, So maybe you wait a year or whatever, 1:02:20.640 --> 1:02:22.200 you release it, and then you can release it in 1:02:22.240 --> 1:02:24.640 two seasons. So if you have twelve episodes, you can 1:02:24.640 --> 1:02:25.880 cut those into six six six. 1:02:26.520 --> 1:02:29.360 I fucking hate I think this is a little bit 1:02:29.360 --> 1:02:31.880 of a distraction, Like we miss by because we're not 1:02:32.000 --> 1:02:34.680 doing seasons the way they used to. There's so much 1:02:34.800 --> 1:02:37.240 good shit we miss think like half the best episodes 1:02:37.280 --> 1:02:39.800 are star trek. We're just like, we have forty dollars 1:02:39.840 --> 1:02:42.800 to shoot this episode on, Like what can we do 1:02:42.920 --> 1:02:44.560 with like three guys in a room? 1:02:44.880 --> 1:02:45.080 You know? 1:02:45.360 --> 1:02:45.680 I know? 1:02:45.800 --> 1:02:47.800 Like you yeah, you're like you miss out on those 1:02:47.840 --> 1:02:50.320 bottle episodes, those like little ones where you're just like 1:02:50.800 --> 1:02:52.880 or like that. If you think back to Breaking Bad, 1:02:52.960 --> 1:02:55.560 like there's the fly episode episode Yeah, oh, it's like 1:02:55.680 --> 1:02:57.520 the best episode of the show because you've got room 1:02:57.560 --> 1:03:01.480 to stop and breathe and like they'll just characters. Yeah anyway, Yeah, 1:03:01.560 --> 1:03:03.480 it's like you lose out on all that. Then you 1:03:03.480 --> 1:03:05.480 can also because you're breaking it up, you don't have 1:03:05.520 --> 1:03:08.000 to pay people to like advance them to the next 1:03:08.600 --> 1:03:12.000 the next season, and then that would also be released 1:03:12.000 --> 1:03:13.920 over the course of like two years. And so you 1:03:13.960 --> 1:03:18.040 have a writer who's written for maybe like eleven weeks 1:03:18.040 --> 1:03:20.920 on something on a show, and then they don't know 1:03:20.960 --> 1:03:22.960 that they have that job again for another two and 1:03:23.000 --> 1:03:26.000 a half years, and so there's no consistency, there's no 1:03:26.240 --> 1:03:32.040 and nothing is stable, and that makes it very very 1:03:32.040 --> 1:03:35.600 difficult for writers to keep their jobs and maintain a 1:03:35.600 --> 1:03:36.200 writing job. 1:03:36.400 --> 1:03:40.360 It's this really fucked up situation in which I think 1:03:40.440 --> 1:03:45.240 the streaming era in freeing sort of television from some 1:03:45.280 --> 1:03:47.480 of like the way that sweeps used to work, the 1:03:47.520 --> 1:03:48.920 way that a lot of like kind of the way 1:03:48.960 --> 1:03:50.680 that you would have to like run shows and the 1:03:50.680 --> 1:03:52.400 way that they aired when you were you were doing 1:03:52.440 --> 1:03:54.600 it on like fucking cable and they're hand supported. Has 1:03:54.640 --> 1:03:57.800 allowed for kinds of TV shows and structures of shows 1:03:57.800 --> 1:03:59.280 that you never could have had, Right, it was just 1:03:59.480 --> 1:04:01.960 we just watched and The Bear. Probably the standout episode 1:04:02.000 --> 1:04:04.360 of The Bear from season two is this like episode 1:04:04.360 --> 1:04:07.760 about a family Christmas party that's just this absolute, like 1:04:07.960 --> 1:04:11.840 anxious nightmare. That's an hour long episode, twice the length 1:04:11.840 --> 1:04:14.680 of a normal episode, And oftentimes that's kind of a 1:04:14.680 --> 1:04:16.440 mixed thing with TVs, but it works in this one, 1:04:16.480 --> 1:04:18.360 and the fact that it's so much longer actually like 1:04:18.400 --> 1:04:21.240 helps with like trans you could you can only do 1:04:21.320 --> 1:04:23.320 that with shows that work the way they do in streaming. 1:04:23.320 --> 1:04:24.520 That wouldn't have been a thing that you would have 1:04:24.560 --> 1:04:28.640 gotten to do in nineteen ninety three probably. But while 1:04:28.760 --> 1:04:31.440 I think like there's a lot of cool stuff structurally 1:04:31.480 --> 1:04:34.560 that's gotten to come out of that, it's also it's 1:04:34.640 --> 1:04:38.400 it's made the compensation so much worse. It's made the 1:04:38.520 --> 1:04:42.760 job so much less reliable. Like it's it's like it's 1:04:42.960 --> 1:04:46.920 really stark how much more difficult it's become to make 1:04:46.960 --> 1:04:51.760 a living in TV. Yeah, well TV is more popular 1:04:51.800 --> 1:04:52.120 than ever. 1:04:52.320 --> 1:04:54.600 Yeah, Yeah, that's like it's making more money than it 1:04:54.600 --> 1:04:58.520 ever possibly has. In the fast and certainly through streaming. 1:04:58.560 --> 1:05:01.000 Like they're not, these these studios not moving to streaming 1:05:01.040 --> 1:05:04.800 because like they're early adopters of technology, the money is there, 1:05:04.840 --> 1:05:06.840 so they're going to streaming. It's like they're making way 1:05:06.880 --> 1:05:08.960 more through streaming, but writers are getting paid les and 1:05:09.040 --> 1:05:11.880 less because they're finding these like wild West loopholes in streaming. 1:05:12.440 --> 1:05:16.360 Residuals is another one that's like it. The way that 1:05:16.400 --> 1:05:19.360 residuals work is if you have a show that then 1:05:19.360 --> 1:05:24.720 gets played again through syndication or through streaming, you should 1:05:24.720 --> 1:05:26.520 then get a residual check for every time that the 1:05:26.760 --> 1:05:32.000 episode that you wrote shows up on television. And it 1:05:32.040 --> 1:05:34.360 was very easy to track that as it would show 1:05:34.440 --> 1:05:36.720 up on like our show on American Dad. Yeah, I 1:05:36.720 --> 1:05:38.520 know that it's going to get played on Cartoon Network. 1:05:38.560 --> 1:05:39.800 I know that it's going to get played at these 1:05:39.800 --> 1:05:42.120 other spots. The TBS will rerun it at some point, 1:05:42.440 --> 1:05:44.520 and I can I know when those are coming in. 1:05:44.720 --> 1:05:48.280 With streaming, it's much more difficult to determine when somebody 1:05:48.320 --> 1:05:51.560 watched something, not because those numbers don't exist, but because 1:05:52.520 --> 1:05:55.560 all these platforms that are created by studios will not 1:05:55.680 --> 1:05:58.000 give out that information. That information is like in a 1:05:58.040 --> 1:06:00.840 black box where you have no idea how often a 1:06:00.880 --> 1:06:04.160 show gets streamed. There's a couple of reasons, like people 1:06:04.160 --> 1:06:06.120 are speculating as to why that might be. One is 1:06:06.160 --> 1:06:08.880 that either shows are getting watched way more often and 1:06:08.960 --> 1:06:11.160 people are not getting the proper residuals that they should be, 1:06:11.680 --> 1:06:15.240 or that the whole business model doesn't quite work. Yeah, 1:06:15.400 --> 1:06:18.520 it's all yeah, yeah, And if you found out how 1:06:18.560 --> 1:06:22.680 little people were actually watching television, this whole all investors, everything, 1:06:22.680 --> 1:06:25.440 the whole thing would collapse. I don't know which is true. 1:06:25.480 --> 1:06:26.720 I don't care. I just want to know what the 1:06:26.800 --> 1:06:28.880 numbers are. So like a big part of a big 1:06:28.920 --> 1:06:33.200 part of this is is the WJA asking different streaming platforms. 1:06:33.200 --> 1:06:34.840 You got to you got to be more transparent. You 1:06:34.880 --> 1:06:36.800 got to tell us how well our show is doing, 1:06:36.800 --> 1:06:38.640 so that we know if people are getting paid properly. 1:06:39.880 --> 1:06:42.240 Yeah, and it's again, it would be one thing if 1:06:42.320 --> 1:06:46.640 like writers were getting less than ever and TV was 1:06:46.720 --> 1:06:49.440 just like dying as a as a thing, as a 1:06:49.440 --> 1:06:52.240 as a creative thing that people want. But there is 1:06:52.320 --> 1:06:55.040 the money. We know where the money is going. The 1:06:55.200 --> 1:07:00.280 eight major Hollywood studio CEOs in twenty twenty one made 1:07:00.320 --> 1:07:03.440 nearly three quarters of a billion dollars an annual salary, 1:07:03.960 --> 1:07:06.440 which is more than the value of what the WGA 1:07:06.680 --> 1:07:09.680 and sag AFTRA want to take out of them and 1:07:09.760 --> 1:07:13.040 increase compensation for their members. For those eight guys, I'm 1:07:13.040 --> 1:07:16.640 gonna guarantee you Ari Emmanuel the highest compensated of these 1:07:16.680 --> 1:07:20.160 CEOs over at Endeavor three hundred and eight million dollars. 1:07:20.480 --> 1:07:23.840 And like, I don't think he made any of your 1:07:24.000 --> 1:07:26.520 He's not responsible for any of your favorite shows whatever, 1:07:26.600 --> 1:07:28.919 like lying in the Great you know made you made 1:07:28.960 --> 1:07:31.800 you laugh or cry or like whatever, whatever joke from 1:07:31.840 --> 1:07:34.760 American Dad keeps you uh, you know, makes you suddenly 1:07:34.840 --> 1:07:37.480 start like bawling out laughing while you're driving down the highway. 1:07:37.640 --> 1:07:40.240 That was not Ari am manual. Ye, neither the shows 1:07:40.240 --> 1:07:41.800 were Endeavor whatever. You know what I you know what 1:07:41.840 --> 1:07:44.360 I'm trying to do here, right, Yeah, Yeah, Ted Sarandos 1:07:44.440 --> 1:07:50.680 whatever fucking you know, Bob Eiger, all these guys like 1:07:51.120 --> 1:07:54.480 they're they're I mean fundamentally like Bob Iger. One of 1:07:54.520 --> 1:07:57.280 the big things he did was pushed the The Flash 1:07:57.360 --> 1:08:00.880 movie out into theaters, really put a lot of money 1:08:00.960 --> 1:08:02.880 into that thought it was going to be important for 1:08:02.920 --> 1:08:07.080 the brand going forward. Lost so much money lost, like 1:08:07.280 --> 1:08:11.200 probably about as much money as like the Writer's Guild 1:08:11.320 --> 1:08:14.040 is asking for it increased compensation this year, like if 1:08:14.040 --> 1:08:19.920 they just hadn't made that movie. So let's talk you 1:08:19.960 --> 1:08:22.439 guys went on strike. What it's been like two months 1:08:22.439 --> 1:08:23.040 now already. 1:08:23.200 --> 1:08:25.160 Yeah, it's like day eighty four or something like that. 1:08:25.800 --> 1:08:27.920 Yeah, so a little more than two months. How are 1:08:27.960 --> 1:08:30.600 you feeling, Like, what does it mean like physically to 1:08:30.640 --> 1:08:32.920 be on strike, like going out and picketing and stuff. 1:08:34.200 --> 1:08:39.880 Great questions, Robert, Uh, It's it's actually really nice. I 1:08:39.920 --> 1:08:42.320 don't want to say like it's I enjoy it because 1:08:42.360 --> 1:08:44.679 I would rather be getting paid and not being freaking 1:08:44.720 --> 1:08:46.200 out about the fact that I don't have my job. 1:08:46.680 --> 1:08:50.000 But going out it gives me gives me a sense 1:08:50.000 --> 1:08:51.599 of purpose first of all, each day to like get 1:08:51.640 --> 1:08:54.600 up and go out of this to the picket lines. Yeah, 1:08:54.640 --> 1:08:57.280 and you're out there, you're marching around it. You choose 1:08:57.280 --> 1:08:59.960 your studio, like from the majority of the time I 1:09:00.080 --> 1:09:02.280 go to Sony or I go to Amazon, and I 1:09:02.360 --> 1:09:03.960 know the people there. Now it's like going to the 1:09:04.000 --> 1:09:05.599 gym every day where you get to know the people 1:09:05.600 --> 1:09:07.519 there and then you build your community, and so I've 1:09:07.520 --> 1:09:09.320 got this group of people that, like I go there. 1:09:09.640 --> 1:09:11.439 Those are just people that like I happen to talk 1:09:11.479 --> 1:09:14.000 to because like we'd see a truck going and we're like, oh, 1:09:14.400 --> 1:09:17.280 hope that's not teams or truck or whatever. And then 1:09:17.680 --> 1:09:19.639 and then you just like strike up a conversation with somebody. 1:09:19.640 --> 1:09:21.200 You start talking, and then you find out that this 1:09:21.280 --> 1:09:23.799 person like ran Malcolm in the Middle for eight years, 1:09:24.080 --> 1:09:25.759 and you're like, oh, okay, cool. 1:09:26.640 --> 1:09:28.840 You know, people talk a lot about how the last 1:09:28.840 --> 1:09:30.559 writers Strike, which was kind of like right when I 1:09:30.560 --> 1:09:32.160 was getting out of fuck in high school. They're not 1:09:32.240 --> 1:09:35.320 far from that point, like a year or two later. Uh, 1:09:35.479 --> 1:09:37.800 how the last writers Strike was kind of what gave 1:09:37.880 --> 1:09:39.960 us the birth of like a lot of reality TV. 1:09:40.120 --> 1:09:41.920 You could almost argue there was a degree to which 1:09:41.920 --> 1:09:44.200 it like was part of Trump's rise to prominence, right, 1:09:44.240 --> 1:09:46.240 because that's why The Apprentice gets on air, because that's 1:09:46.240 --> 1:09:48.680 the way the studios can get around paying writers. But 1:09:48.760 --> 1:09:51.040 I also wonder on the opposite and like, how many 1:09:51.160 --> 1:09:54.160 shows do we get because of connections people make out 1:09:54.200 --> 1:09:56.240 of the picket line, because like folks meet each other 1:09:56.320 --> 1:09:58.200 and get talking, and like I do I do wonder 1:09:58.200 --> 1:09:59.240 if that's like a thing. 1:09:59.800 --> 1:10:02.400 Yeah, I guarantee it is. I mean it is shocking 1:10:02.479 --> 1:10:05.439 how like how quickly you just chum up with people 1:10:05.560 --> 1:10:09.080 and like, yeah, the the contact I shouldn't call. It's 1:10:09.120 --> 1:10:11.360 like it's not supposed to be a networkating experience, but 1:10:11.400 --> 1:10:13.479 it just ends up being that, Like you can't help it. 1:10:13.720 --> 1:10:15.000 Like you're just talking to people and then all of 1:10:15.000 --> 1:10:16.760 a sudden your jobs come up and you start talking 1:10:16.760 --> 1:10:19.519 about your work and then people are like after li while, 1:10:19.560 --> 1:10:21.680 like well, like send me something, like send me some 1:10:21.680 --> 1:10:24.200 of your writing, and then you just become buddies and 1:10:24.280 --> 1:10:27.680 like you start working on stuff accidentally together. And I 1:10:27.720 --> 1:10:29.880 guarantee that, like by the end of this, there'll be 1:10:30.000 --> 1:10:32.519 writing teams that didn't exist before, and there'll be people 1:10:32.560 --> 1:10:36.440 who want to make stuff together. Plus the studio pipeline 1:10:36.680 --> 1:10:39.120 will be empty, so like they're gonna want to like 1:10:39.160 --> 1:10:41.439 fill it with They're gonna want to fill it. Yeah, 1:10:41.439 --> 1:10:44.200 when the strike ends, And guarantee, there's gonna be people 1:10:44.200 --> 1:10:45.880 from the lines who came up with stuff on the 1:10:45.920 --> 1:10:48.320 lines who are gonna be like we've got lots, like 1:10:48.360 --> 1:10:51.280 there's what about this and be like yes that buy it. 1:10:51.400 --> 1:10:54.639 We'll take that, and I like just kind of in general, 1:10:54.760 --> 1:10:58.360 the fact that like that's sort of the the hope, right, 1:10:58.439 --> 1:11:01.200 Like that's actually the thing that can defeat these giant 1:11:01.360 --> 1:11:05.439 industry colossuses, not just like writing TV shows with other people, 1:11:05.439 --> 1:11:08.559 but like the solidarity, like the fact that you're building 1:11:08.560 --> 1:11:11.360 connections with people, the fact that you there's an understanding 1:11:11.360 --> 1:11:13.840 of shared interest. You're seeing this especially like now that 1:11:14.240 --> 1:11:16.639 like sag After has joined the strike. There's a lot 1:11:16.680 --> 1:11:18.920 of a lot of people who are very famous and 1:11:19.000 --> 1:11:22.520 prominent talking about issues that go well beyond Hollywood. 1:11:22.600 --> 1:11:22.760 Right. 1:11:23.240 --> 1:11:27.639 The the incredible amount that executive pay and compensation has 1:11:27.640 --> 1:11:30.439 increased over the years, The fact that a lot of 1:11:30.560 --> 1:11:33.599 companies that used to do things of value and employee 1:11:33.600 --> 1:11:36.800 people and good jobs have been hollowed out for the 1:11:36.840 --> 1:11:40.280 short term profits of you know, vulture capitalists whose job 1:11:40.400 --> 1:11:43.400 is to you know, fucking suck money out and hand 1:11:43.439 --> 1:11:47.120 it to shareholders, and shit like this is not just 1:11:47.200 --> 1:11:48.519 a you know, a lot of this started in the 1:11:48.520 --> 1:11:52.519 fucking nineties. We've talked about like Jack Welch and ge 1:11:52.800 --> 1:11:54.800 and kind of like how that company was turned from 1:11:54.840 --> 1:11:58.280 something that made stuff to something that produced stock value 1:11:58.320 --> 1:12:02.040 and fired people and you're you're getting that all across 1:12:02.200 --> 1:12:05.519 entertainment right now. And I think this is I think, 1:12:05.640 --> 1:12:08.240 and this is something I think kind of everyone knows 1:12:08.280 --> 1:12:10.880 on some level, this is an inflection point, right, you know. 1:12:10.960 --> 1:12:12.639 AI is a part of it, the fact that we're 1:12:12.640 --> 1:12:15.800 about to see them try to use this technology to 1:12:16.720 --> 1:12:18.559 cut down the number of people they have to pay 1:12:18.600 --> 1:12:22.560 even further. But it's like this is bigger than Hollywood. 1:12:22.600 --> 1:12:25.759 Hollywood is just getting a lot of attention because actors 1:12:25.800 --> 1:12:26.639 know how to get attention. 1:12:26.880 --> 1:12:28.880 Yeah, that is the job. 1:12:29.120 --> 1:12:32.160 Yeah, yeah, that's yeah. Writers are good at building the 1:12:32.240 --> 1:12:34.040 narrative and ractors are very good at getting attention. 1:12:34.160 --> 1:12:34.839 Then exactly. 1:12:34.920 --> 1:12:38.160 Yeah, it's like it was a it's a worst case scenario, 1:12:38.240 --> 1:12:41.200 want to say, for like for the studios, and just 1:12:41.200 --> 1:12:44.280 because it's no coincidence the UPS is going on strike 1:12:44.320 --> 1:12:45.840 that all these companies are going on strike right now, 1:12:45.840 --> 1:12:48.040 because the same thing's happening across the board where it's 1:12:48.040 --> 1:12:51.000 like this consolidation of power and then consolidation of money, 1:12:51.040 --> 1:12:53.599 and then it's just like all that you are behold 1:12:53.720 --> 1:12:55.639 to when you are at the top of these companies 1:12:55.720 --> 1:12:57.960 is the shareholders and like getting them money and so 1:12:58.000 --> 1:12:59.760 whatevery way you can do that, you do it, and 1:12:59.800 --> 1:13:01.280 a lot of times the way you do that is 1:13:01.280 --> 1:13:04.439 that you just fuck everybody at the bottom and figure 1:13:04.439 --> 1:13:06.800 out how to carve out money from them and bring 1:13:06.840 --> 1:13:10.040 it rise it to the top. And so yes, I 1:13:10.040 --> 1:13:13.759 think that it's what happened was the WGA went on strike. 1:13:13.800 --> 1:13:17.240 The WGA is a very strong, good guild, good union 1:13:17.280 --> 1:13:21.519 that like does not blink, and and everyone saw that, 1:13:21.600 --> 1:13:24.080 and immediately people were on the side of the WGA 1:13:24.160 --> 1:13:26.760 in a way that I think no one anticipated that. 1:13:27.280 --> 1:13:30.320 All everybody else in unions is like, no, this is wrong, 1:13:30.439 --> 1:13:32.400 like we should. We were dealing with the exact same stuff, 1:13:32.800 --> 1:13:35.880 and universally everyone seems to be on the side of 1:13:36.000 --> 1:13:38.599 unions right now. Then that's like we should use that, 1:13:38.640 --> 1:13:40.840 like we should, we should ride that wave a little bit. 1:13:41.760 --> 1:13:44.559 And absolutely they should, because there's there's so many things 1:13:44.600 --> 1:13:47.280 that are systemically broken right now just happens to be 1:13:47.280 --> 1:13:50.160 the entertainment industry is the only one that I have it. Yeah, 1:13:50.240 --> 1:13:51.320 I have skin in the game on. 1:13:51.840 --> 1:13:54.759 We had this moment about a week or so ago where, 1:13:54.920 --> 1:13:57.599 you know, a couple of weeks ago that it came 1:13:57.640 --> 1:14:01.559 out that like some anonymous UH Studio executive told a 1:14:01.600 --> 1:14:04.599 writer at I think it was Deadline that their plan 1:14:04.840 --> 1:14:07.560 was to the wja's demands were unreasonable and we're just 1:14:07.600 --> 1:14:09.400 going to kind of wait out until they lose their homes, 1:14:09.479 --> 1:14:11.519 right until we're on the street, and then well then 1:14:11.560 --> 1:14:14.000 we can get them to accept it. And you know, 1:14:14.040 --> 1:14:16.400 this is right around when SAG was, you know, deciding 1:14:16.400 --> 1:14:18.479 to strike and Ron Pearlman gets on and makes a 1:14:18.479 --> 1:14:21.080 little video where he basically says, you know, we can 1:14:21.120 --> 1:14:23.360 burn your houses down, Like there's more than one way 1:14:23.439 --> 1:14:26.880 to lose a house. And I thought the important thing 1:14:26.920 --> 1:14:29.400 about sharing that because one of the ways you know, 1:14:29.520 --> 1:14:33.120 media works is that there's people let the things that 1:14:33.120 --> 1:14:35.360 people are willing to listen to and that can like 1:14:35.400 --> 1:14:38.720 affect them and change their minds is partly dependent on 1:14:38.840 --> 1:14:41.280 the situational context at the time. This is why so 1:14:41.360 --> 1:14:43.400 many of like the journalist, much of the journalism have 1:14:43.439 --> 1:14:46.120 done the far right, Like has been articles that I 1:14:46.240 --> 1:14:47.840 felt like I had to get out within an hour 1:14:47.960 --> 1:14:49.960 or two of a shooting because people will pay attention 1:14:50.040 --> 1:14:52.200 to these these things that are problems that are important. 1:14:52.439 --> 1:14:54.080 They won't lead if I do a deep dive on 1:14:54.160 --> 1:14:57.320 how this specific kind of radicalization works normally, but if 1:14:57.320 --> 1:14:59.200 somebody has just been shot, they'll listen, you know, And 1:14:59.240 --> 1:15:01.800 that's like a fortunate but that's the way people are. 1:15:01.920 --> 1:15:06.639 And there's this I thought. What I thought was important 1:15:06.640 --> 1:15:09.559 about that is that not that you know, Ron Pearlman 1:15:09.640 --> 1:15:11.599 threatened to burn down a guy's house, that's just kind 1:15:11.640 --> 1:15:13.840 of funny, but what he was doing there that's really 1:15:13.920 --> 1:15:16.599 valuable that I think more people need to think about 1:15:16.800 --> 1:15:20.280 is accepting that when you're saying something like, well we 1:15:20.360 --> 1:15:22.280 just need to wait for writers to lose their homes, 1:15:22.880 --> 1:15:27.120 that's a violent threat. That is a threat to harm 1:15:27.200 --> 1:15:30.639 somebody for your own personal gain, and we shouldn't view 1:15:30.680 --> 1:15:33.080 that as like fundamentally morally different than saying I want 1:15:33.080 --> 1:15:35.000 to go rob a guy with a thirty eight, right 1:15:35.240 --> 1:15:37.080 like I don't. I don't feel like there's a big 1:15:37.120 --> 1:15:39.240 moral gap between them. And you can get people to 1:15:39.280 --> 1:15:41.960 actually kind of who maybe wouldn't think about that, to 1:15:42.000 --> 1:15:43.680 think about that this way. And I think that's an 1:15:43.720 --> 1:15:46.240 important thing to transmit in this time. 1:15:46.560 --> 1:15:48.800 Oh Man, one hundred percent. Yeah, the fact that that 1:15:49.680 --> 1:15:52.559 what it gives you real context for what they're actually 1:15:52.560 --> 1:15:53.920 saying when they say we just got to wait them 1:15:53.920 --> 1:15:55.360 out till they don't have any more money, and like 1:15:55.360 --> 1:15:58.960 it really starts to hurt their health and well being, 1:15:59.439 --> 1:16:01.200 Like yeah, you have somebody else being like, oh I 1:16:01.200 --> 1:16:03.920 can hurt your health and well being and be like okay, 1:16:03.920 --> 1:16:07.040 I get how those are the same thing, but but 1:16:07.040 --> 1:16:09.080 but that's not what the way I was saying it was. 1:16:09.080 --> 1:16:11.599 It was more removed, you see, And so you're absolutely right, 1:16:11.600 --> 1:16:13.400 like having hell Boy come out and be like there's 1:16:13.400 --> 1:16:15.679 lots of ways to lose a house, it's like, oh. 1:16:15.439 --> 1:16:19.640 Shit, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a there's like potential 1:16:19.880 --> 1:16:23.240 right now that I'm glad to see recognized. How are 1:16:23.240 --> 1:16:26.080 you doing, like just in general with this because it 1:16:26.120 --> 1:16:27.840 is you know, we've talked about all the good parts. 1:16:27.880 --> 1:16:30.400 There's a lot that's good. This is like, this is 1:16:30.439 --> 1:16:35.160 a stressful time, Like I'm wondering like when you wake 1:16:35.280 --> 1:16:36.439 up and like you hear. 1:16:36.520 --> 1:16:39.880 For acknowledging that, Yeah, that's it's like how you be. 1:16:40.720 --> 1:16:40.840 Uh. 1:16:41.120 --> 1:16:44.080 It sucks. It sucks really bad. It sucks particularly badly 1:16:44.160 --> 1:16:46.680 because I loved my job. Yeah, I when I talk 1:16:46.720 --> 1:16:49.799 about all these things, a lot of this wasn't happening 1:16:49.800 --> 1:16:52.240 at my job. My job was a I had working 1:16:52.280 --> 1:16:54.720 for an animated show that ran twenty two episodes a 1:16:54.720 --> 1:16:58.080 season that was it would get We knew when we 1:16:58.080 --> 1:17:01.880 were getting our pickups generally, uh. And it was a 1:17:01.920 --> 1:17:04.960 system that worked. And I was really really enjoying it 1:17:05.000 --> 1:17:08.439 and very happy at my job. I was getting paid well, 1:17:08.520 --> 1:17:10.680 like I liked everything about it. I felt like it 1:17:10.720 --> 1:17:13.200 was financially stable and I was getting what I deserved, 1:17:13.200 --> 1:17:16.439 and I was just happy. And that's not what's happening 1:17:17.200 --> 1:17:19.840 across like eighty percent of other shows right now. And 1:17:19.880 --> 1:17:23.280 so like we left, we left our show in solidarity 1:17:23.280 --> 1:17:25.240 of other writers because at some point, you know this, 1:17:25.840 --> 1:17:27.840 I maybe won't have this job anymore and I'll have 1:17:27.880 --> 1:17:29.880 to go get another job. And also for all the 1:17:29.920 --> 1:17:32.479 people who are working those other jobs, and it's really 1:17:32.479 --> 1:17:34.600 really struggling right now to even make ends meet. We 1:17:34.680 --> 1:17:36.920 know they're watching, they're working on three different shows a year, 1:17:37.240 --> 1:17:39.280 like they came and pay their rent, like we're working 1:17:39.360 --> 1:17:42.559 on behalf of them, but more importantly, like we're striking 1:17:42.560 --> 1:17:45.240 on behalf of all of the other writers who are 1:17:45.280 --> 1:17:47.200 going to come along after this, Like the fact that 1:17:47.200 --> 1:17:49.599 the two thousand and eight strike happened was the reason 1:17:49.600 --> 1:17:51.679 that my show is so good and has such good 1:17:51.720 --> 1:17:55.439 benefits and like why the show is is comfortable for 1:17:55.479 --> 1:17:58.000 writers because they fucking went to work and like they 1:17:58.040 --> 1:18:01.080 got what they needed from the studios even though it 1:18:01.120 --> 1:18:02.680 was hard and it was bitter and a lot of 1:18:02.680 --> 1:18:04.679 them lost their jobs over it. And so now it's 1:18:04.760 --> 1:18:07.519 just like even though it sucks and I'm not happy 1:18:07.520 --> 1:18:09.840 about it, it's it's our turn to do it. It's 1:18:09.880 --> 1:18:11.799 like our turn to make sure that everything works. 1:18:12.520 --> 1:18:14.679 Yeah, it's such an important detail that like a lot 1:18:14.720 --> 1:18:17.320 of the people striking, there's been this kind of like 1:18:17.439 --> 1:18:19.400 bad faith theme I've seen. I've seen some people on 1:18:19.439 --> 1:18:21.680 the left do it online where like they'll post some 1:18:21.800 --> 1:18:24.200 video of like an actor, you know, talking about why 1:18:24.240 --> 1:18:26.280 they're doing the striking, like this person's net worth is 1:18:26.320 --> 1:18:28.200 this many millions of dollars And it's like, yeah, well 1:18:28.200 --> 1:18:31.840 they're not striking for them, Like Ron Peerlman is going 1:18:31.880 --> 1:18:34.320 to be okay. Ron Pearlman is not going to be 1:18:34.360 --> 1:18:37.599 forced out of his home. Like that's not why they're 1:18:37.640 --> 1:18:40.040 doing this, because I mean, yeah, that. 1:18:40.040 --> 1:18:41.920 You can have a you can you can have a 1:18:41.960 --> 1:18:44.120 good job, but also have a sense of the bigger 1:18:44.160 --> 1:18:47.480 picture and like a greater a greater good. 1:18:48.160 --> 1:18:51.840 You can just like care about the art form. You know, 1:18:52.200 --> 1:18:55.360 we're watching journalism get fucking eaten alive right now, and 1:18:55.479 --> 1:18:58.519 AI is gonna has been a part of like people 1:18:58.520 --> 1:19:00.519 have already lost their jobs because they and like the 1:19:00.520 --> 1:19:02.240 thing that keeps getting brought up to me when I'll 1:19:02.439 --> 1:19:04.920 I'll talk about it to like family or whatever, it's like, well, 1:19:04.920 --> 1:19:07.120 you know, they're using it to replace these low level jobs, 1:19:07.160 --> 1:19:09.479 you know, summing up sports articles or like you know 1:19:09.520 --> 1:19:11.240 this kind of coverage or that kind of coverage. Like 1:19:11.439 --> 1:19:13.080 it's not the kind of stuff you do. It's not 1:19:13.160 --> 1:19:15.280 like investigation. You can't have a machine do that. And 1:19:15.280 --> 1:19:16.880 it's like we have, but how do you think people 1:19:16.960 --> 1:19:18.920 learn to do what I do? Like part of it 1:19:18.960 --> 1:19:21.479 is like doing the like that's the feed or right, 1:19:21.560 --> 1:19:23.240 it's part of what you're saying about like TV writing. 1:19:23.240 --> 1:19:25.040 It's like they're trying to kill the way in which 1:19:25.439 --> 1:19:30.559 people learn how to continue this art for Yeah. 1:19:30.680 --> 1:19:33.439 No, it's there's so many parallels between this and what's 1:19:33.439 --> 1:19:36.080 happening with journalism in terms of like is turning it 1:19:36.200 --> 1:19:38.679 essentially into a gig economy, which is exactly what destroyed 1:19:38.720 --> 1:19:41.360 the news yeah, or is destroying the news, but like, yeah, 1:19:41.400 --> 1:19:43.719 it's it's the same thing. And when you talk about AI, 1:19:44.000 --> 1:19:46.519 like you if you were to write an episode of 1:19:46.520 --> 1:19:48.080 a show and you ever written by credit on it, 1:19:48.120 --> 1:19:50.600 you get a script fee for that, and ultimately, like 1:19:50.680 --> 1:19:53.719 what the studios want is to just have a piece 1:19:53.760 --> 1:19:56.439 of shit AI written script to begin with, and then 1:19:56.439 --> 1:19:58.280 they're not paying a script fee to anybody, and then 1:19:58.320 --> 1:20:01.800 writers just fix that and so like, yeah, it's it's 1:20:02.000 --> 1:20:05.280 all these differently cost saving measures then ensure that no 1:20:05.320 --> 1:20:07.559 one will ever come up through this industry again and 1:20:07.640 --> 1:20:08.719 learn all the things. 1:20:09.040 --> 1:20:11.800 Yeah, there will still be people who become writers, but 1:20:11.840 --> 1:20:13.960 there'll be people whose parents are rich and so they 1:20:13.960 --> 1:20:16.559 can afford to work for free for forever. And then 1:20:16.760 --> 1:20:20.760 and then you know what, we don't get the bear? Yeah, 1:20:20.800 --> 1:20:25.680 the bear and it's curiously jacked leading man, Where's where's 1:20:25.680 --> 1:20:28.080 he get the time? When's he putting down the protein? 1:20:28.120 --> 1:20:30.639 We're not saying him jug a protein shake every twenty minutes. 1:20:30.800 --> 1:20:32.960 You complained about this on Twitter, and I agree with you. 1:20:33.439 --> 1:20:36.880 The structure that requires the like to get a body 1:20:36.960 --> 1:20:39.320 like that, the structure you need in your life, and 1:20:39.360 --> 1:20:41.880 like the regiments that you need to follow, need to 1:20:41.880 --> 1:20:44.559 be like to a tee every single day. And there's 1:20:44.640 --> 1:20:46.600 just he's too spontaneous. There's too much going on in 1:20:46.640 --> 1:20:48.559 his life. He doesn't have tis enough two hours to 1:20:48.560 --> 1:20:50.240 carve out to go to the gym every day. 1:20:50.360 --> 1:20:52.920 No, this is my only issue, Like, this is what's 1:20:52.960 --> 1:20:55.599 really threatening my support of the WGA. I just needed 1:20:55.560 --> 1:20:58.880 an episode of the Bear where all it is is 1:20:58.920 --> 1:21:01.559 going through his workout routine. He's in the back room. 1:21:01.600 --> 1:21:03.160 He's doing some pearls, you know. 1:21:04.880 --> 1:21:07.320 Yeah, he's got bags of rice back there and he's 1:21:07.320 --> 1:21:10.880 doing squats with him on his shoulders. I even I 1:21:10.880 --> 1:21:12.559 want to see him at three am in the morning 1:21:12.560 --> 1:21:14.120 and I'll buy it. I'll be a five at three 1:21:14.120 --> 1:21:16.280 am in the morning and he's like going to it anytime, 1:21:16.320 --> 1:21:18.360 fitness or fucking whatever, and he's like work it out 1:21:18.360 --> 1:21:19.880 a little bit. I could be like, Okay, there it is, 1:21:20.080 --> 1:21:22.000 that's what he's doing it there, we got tonefits it in. 1:21:22.120 --> 1:21:24.760 Let me see him get his BCAAs you know, have 1:21:24.920 --> 1:21:28.479 fucking ritchie, be like you've taken your pre workout today. Yeah, 1:21:28.600 --> 1:21:30.720 give it, give me a little bit, you know. Yeah, 1:21:31.240 --> 1:21:33.840 all right, Soren, you got it out here. Do you 1:21:33.880 --> 1:21:36.720 have anything you want to plug before like perhaps a 1:21:36.760 --> 1:21:40.080 podcast with our with our other former colleague, Dan O'Brien. 1:21:41.160 --> 1:21:45.280 No, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, I got a show called 1:21:45.320 --> 1:21:48.120 a Quick Question with Dan and Soorn No, Soren and Dan, 1:21:48.240 --> 1:21:50.760 oh got him a headliner. Uh yeah, Quick Question with 1:21:50.800 --> 1:21:52.800 Soren and Daniel. You can check that out anywhere you 1:21:52.840 --> 1:21:55.080 listen to podcasts. It's basically just Dan and I catching 1:21:55.120 --> 1:21:57.360 up because we live on opposite coasts and we're good buddies, 1:21:58.439 --> 1:21:59.920 and uh that's about it. 1:22:01.200 --> 1:22:05.439 Yeah, excellent, check out Quick Questions with Soren and Dan 1:22:06.120 --> 1:22:10.080 special show. Just a thank you. It's a wonderful time. Soren, 1:22:10.400 --> 1:22:13.479 Thank you so much, and you know, good luck out 1:22:13.479 --> 1:22:16.479 there on the picket line. To you, to all of 1:22:16.479 --> 1:22:18.880 the other writers, and to everybody at SAG after it. 1:22:19.400 --> 1:22:19.760 Thank you. 1:22:30.320 --> 1:22:33.800 This is Mia from the very very Near Future. We 1:22:33.960 --> 1:22:37.200 found out as we were live recording this episode that 1:22:37.280 --> 1:22:40.880 Teamster's leadership has cut a tentative agreement with UPS to 1:22:40.960 --> 1:22:44.400 try to revert the strike. So we've we've decided to 1:22:44.479 --> 1:22:47.280 leave this in and you're gonna hear us find this 1:22:47.360 --> 1:22:49.360 shit out. Literally in the middle of an interview of 1:22:49.400 --> 1:22:51.880 what we thought was going to be a really, really 1:22:51.920 --> 1:23:02.679 really large strike starting so enjoy it. Strike season here 1:23:02.680 --> 1:23:06.240 at I could happen here the podcast where things fall 1:23:06.280 --> 1:23:09.479 apart and sometimes you put them back together again. And 1:23:09.560 --> 1:23:12.799 as you probably have noticed, presumably from the last interview, 1:23:12.840 --> 1:23:15.120 maybe from reading the news, maybe from like talking to 1:23:15.120 --> 1:23:18.440 people who are in unions, we are in a genuinely 1:23:18.600 --> 1:23:21.800 historic period of labor militancy in this country. That is 1:23:23.080 --> 1:23:26.479 effectively we are now we are. We are now entering 1:23:26.479 --> 1:23:28.960 the second phase of the hot Summer of twenty twenty three. 1:23:29.800 --> 1:23:31.800 We used to have hot summers all the time. People 1:23:31.840 --> 1:23:33.640 do what that meant, so now it just means like 1:23:33.760 --> 1:23:36.840 global warming. But long ago in the galaxy, far far away, 1:23:37.080 --> 1:23:39.240 there are these things called hot summers when everyone would 1:23:39.280 --> 1:23:42.120 fucking go on strike and there'd be you know, sort 1:23:42.120 --> 1:23:44.960 of masters just as a capital estate. And yeah, we're 1:23:44.960 --> 1:23:48.679 fucking going back. There's talk with me about the next 1:23:48.760 --> 1:23:52.519 series of massive private sector strikes that we're about to get. 1:23:52.960 --> 1:23:55.360 Is Rehee Smith and Oliver Rose, who are rank and 1:23:55.400 --> 1:24:00.439 file ups workers and teamsters doing the standard disclaimer. These 1:24:00.479 --> 1:24:03.160 individuals do not represent the union or the positions of 1:24:03.160 --> 1:24:06.519 the union. They are speaking as individuals. Yeah, we have 1:24:06.640 --> 1:24:08.920 this is this is the disclaimer for the lawyers, it 1:24:09.000 --> 1:24:13.920 is also true. Yeah, but recent Oliver, welcome to the show. 1:24:14.439 --> 1:24:15.760 Hey, yeah, thanks for having us. 1:24:16.240 --> 1:24:17.160 Yeah, thank you much. 1:24:17.560 --> 1:24:19.519 Yeah, I'm really really glad we can talk to you. So, 1:24:20.439 --> 1:24:23.760 all right, the day this is going out, it'll be 1:24:23.840 --> 1:24:28.360 six days before the teamsters are potentially going to go 1:24:28.400 --> 1:24:32.720 on strike and the current contract runs out. Can I yeah, 1:24:32.760 --> 1:24:36.320 can we talk a little bit about what? Okay, who 1:24:36.479 --> 1:24:39.000 is who is going on strike and what do they do? 1:24:40.600 --> 1:24:43.040 Yeah, so there's going to be three hundred and forty 1:24:43.120 --> 1:24:46.519 thousand UPS workers going on strike, and that's going to 1:24:46.600 --> 1:24:50.160 be you know, the inside warehouse workers, and that's going 1:24:50.240 --> 1:24:56.120 to be the delivery drivers and also the theater drivers 1:24:56.479 --> 1:24:58.760 and the twenty two fours, like all of them. 1:25:00.160 --> 1:25:03.280 Could you explain what oh are? 1:25:03.920 --> 1:25:04.160 Yes? 1:25:04.479 --> 1:25:10.200 Yeah, So twenty two four's is a classification of worker 1:25:10.360 --> 1:25:14.639 where they're kind of half inside and half driving. 1:25:15.200 --> 1:25:15.400 Uh. 1:25:15.439 --> 1:25:17.720 Something that the union has told us is that there's 1:25:17.720 --> 1:25:20.280 already been a tentative agreement that that classification is not 1:25:20.360 --> 1:25:21.519 going to exist anymore. 1:25:21.600 --> 1:25:22.599 It was kind of. 1:25:22.560 --> 1:25:25.479 A really raw deal for people that found themselves in 1:25:25.520 --> 1:25:31.719 that position. Shit, what was the other one that I mentioned? Twos? 1:25:31.760 --> 1:25:33.240 I think theater drivers? 1:25:33.400 --> 1:25:39.040 Yes, so feter drivers are not your regular package delivery drivers. 1:25:40.280 --> 1:25:44.080 They drive the big semis that you see from like 1:25:44.200 --> 1:25:46.639 hub to hub and whatnot, and that's how they deliver. 1:25:47.640 --> 1:25:51.479 Uh So those are the last two classifications that I mentioned. 1:25:52.200 --> 1:25:55.320 And yeah, we're all going to be going on strike, 1:25:55.400 --> 1:25:59.519 and well, we are potentially going to be on strike, 1:26:00.960 --> 1:26:03.479 and if we are, UPS is kind of going to 1:26:03.479 --> 1:26:06.080 be in a world of hurt because it is very 1:26:06.120 --> 1:26:09.800 hard to replace three hundred and forty thousand workers and 1:26:10.560 --> 1:26:13.719 what economists have told me is a tight labor market. 1:26:14.600 --> 1:26:17.400 So yeah, it's going to be very exciting. 1:26:18.439 --> 1:26:21.439 Yeah, it's I'm excited, like I don't know, you know. 1:26:21.560 --> 1:26:25.040 It was funny so when when SAG officially walked off 1:26:25.040 --> 1:26:27.000 and joined the WGA strike, that was that was the 1:26:27.080 --> 1:26:30.400 largest strike since hilariously, the team Stirs went on strike 1:26:30.439 --> 1:26:34.680 in the like the year I was born, like ninety seven, 1:26:34.880 --> 1:26:38.120 And hilariously, that is a title that if this happens, 1:26:38.120 --> 1:26:40.479 they're going to hold that title for like one month 1:26:40.880 --> 1:26:44.040 before this, UPS striker places is the largest strike in 1:26:44.040 --> 1:26:45.160 the US is the nineties. 1:26:46.120 --> 1:26:48.559 Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be wild if we go on strike. 1:26:48.680 --> 1:26:51.599 While you know, sag Afra is on strike, and while 1:26:51.600 --> 1:26:54.240 the Writers Guilder are on strike, that's going to be 1:26:54.240 --> 1:26:57.439 over half a million workers on strike in this country 1:26:57.560 --> 1:27:00.519 at this time, and that is just going to you know, 1:27:00.520 --> 1:27:02.080 it's gonna be fucking historic. 1:27:01.840 --> 1:27:04.200 Right yeah. And there's and there's a chance, depending on 1:27:04.200 --> 1:27:05.760 how long these strikes drag out, that we get to 1:27:05.800 --> 1:27:09.799 like September, the big the Big three Auto, the UAW 1:27:09.920 --> 1:27:12.000 goes on strike, and if that happens, that that will 1:27:12.040 --> 1:27:13.880 be like the most number of people who've been on 1:27:13.880 --> 1:27:17.320 a strike in this country since like the fifties, which 1:27:17.400 --> 1:27:20.200 is wild especially, you know, because this is supposed to 1:27:20.240 --> 1:27:23.800 be a sort of like, I don't know, I think 1:27:23.800 --> 1:27:25.760 that's sort of the especially interesting thing about this, right 1:27:25.840 --> 1:27:28.639 is that actual union density is really low and hasn't 1:27:28.680 --> 1:27:31.200 been increasing that much. On the other hand, like everyone 1:27:31.200 --> 1:27:33.599 seems to lake unions and everyone wants to go on strike, 1:27:34.360 --> 1:27:36.320 and I don't know, it's a it's a really interesting 1:27:36.360 --> 1:27:38.559 sort of set of conditions right now. 1:27:40.120 --> 1:27:46.680 Oh yeah, oh yeah. I'm very heartened by, you know, 1:27:46.720 --> 1:27:50.080 the support that unions have garnered, because, as you mentioned, 1:27:50.120 --> 1:27:52.840 you know, we are at a low union density. There 1:27:52.920 --> 1:27:55.360 was like that labor decline that happened, you know, since 1:27:55.400 --> 1:27:59.680 the fucking like seventies and eighties, right, like the backlash 1:27:59.680 --> 1:28:05.920 to org nice labor. I am very hopeful that this uh, 1:28:06.200 --> 1:28:09.280 this strike wave can kind of turn that around, right Uh. 1:28:10.040 --> 1:28:13.400 You know something that I've been thinking about a lot 1:28:13.680 --> 1:28:18.439 is uh you know, it's like ups is A is 1:28:18.479 --> 1:28:23.160 a major, major company in a whole logistics sector, right yeah, 1:28:23.200 --> 1:28:26.400 and like we can set that standard for that logistics 1:28:26.640 --> 1:28:30.200 company or like a piece of shit company like Amazon can. 1:28:30.840 --> 1:28:33.280 So if we win, and we win big, that could 1:28:33.360 --> 1:28:38.240 absolutely encourage more organizing in those other sectors, leading to 1:28:38.320 --> 1:28:42.760 an increase of union density. So hopefully that's like the 1:28:42.800 --> 1:28:45.600 way forward past all these strikes. 1:28:46.240 --> 1:28:49.040 It'd be great. It's sorely needed, sorely. 1:28:48.640 --> 1:28:54.360 Needed, absolutely, and and even beyond you know, the logistics industry, 1:28:54.600 --> 1:28:56.800 you know, I think we can show that you know, 1:28:56.920 --> 1:29:00.400 any you know company or corporation that you know, a 1:29:00.479 --> 1:29:04.479 year after years making these record break and profits, you know, 1:29:04.600 --> 1:29:08.720 while meanwhile there's poor wear conditions or even unsafe ware conditions. 1:29:09.040 --> 1:29:13.360 You know, there's hey that does not you know allow 1:29:13.439 --> 1:29:15.639 you know us to pay rent but food on the table. 1:29:16.080 --> 1:29:18.600 You know that we can just show that. Okay, you know, 1:29:19.080 --> 1:29:21.800 we're done. You know, with giving all of the wealth 1:29:21.840 --> 1:29:24.200 that we're creating to the company and now it's going 1:29:24.240 --> 1:29:25.400 back into our hands. 1:29:26.920 --> 1:29:27.160 Yeah. 1:29:27.200 --> 1:29:31.479 And UPS fucking created thirteen billion dollars in profits last year. 1:29:32.000 --> 1:29:35.400 Yeah yeah, and that's up from I was just reading 1:29:35.400 --> 1:29:38.160 an article this morning and U and Jacobin written by 1:29:38.200 --> 1:29:42.719 a fellow UPS team star, and that's up from six 1:29:42.760 --> 1:29:46.519 point five billion in uh twenty nineteen. 1:29:47.120 --> 1:29:48.280 And they're also giving. 1:29:48.040 --> 1:29:50.320 Doubled the profit. They've over doubled the profits in like Tree, 1:29:50.520 --> 1:29:50.920 they were. 1:29:50.800 --> 1:29:52.040 Doubled their profits. 1:29:52.080 --> 1:29:55.320 And they keep trying to tell the union that, oh, no, 1:29:55.400 --> 1:29:58.080 I'm just a poor popper. We don't have money for 1:29:58.160 --> 1:30:01.720 your demands, Like we're just we're just so poor, and 1:30:01.760 --> 1:30:03.960 it's like there. Meanwhile, you know, they're given their fucking 1:30:04.080 --> 1:30:07.960 like CEO and shareholders like dividends and stock buybacks and 1:30:08.000 --> 1:30:10.519 all of that in addition to the profits that they 1:30:10.520 --> 1:30:13.200 are reaping, right, because profits is just the cream of 1:30:13.240 --> 1:30:17.320 the crop, right, Like that's everything past business expenses, what 1:30:17.360 --> 1:30:20.839 they're paying out like salary, so that's not even being touched. 1:30:21.680 --> 1:30:24.880 And yeah, no, it's time for us to say we 1:30:24.960 --> 1:30:25.439 want that. 1:30:25.520 --> 1:30:26.519 We created that. 1:30:27.280 --> 1:30:29.240 So I think that leads it to sort of the 1:30:29.240 --> 1:30:31.559 next thing I want to ask about, which is, can 1:30:31.520 --> 1:30:33.920 you talk a little bit about what the sort of 1:30:33.960 --> 1:30:38.640 specific grievances were that kicked this off. I'm assuming there 1:30:38.640 --> 1:30:42.840 are a lot, because you know, this sucks, you. 1:30:42.800 --> 1:30:46.040 Know, and there is a wide range of conditions because 1:30:46.280 --> 1:30:49.880 you know, for a long time, you know, the contract 1:30:49.880 --> 1:30:53.920 hasn't kept up with both like economic and non economic 1:30:54.040 --> 1:30:57.840 side of things, you know, and we have kind of 1:30:58.160 --> 1:31:02.240 two two dynamics where there's you know, well over a 1:31:02.280 --> 1:31:04.840 majority of like part time workers who aren't getting enough 1:31:04.840 --> 1:31:09.000 payer hours you know, to afford to live. And then 1:31:09.040 --> 1:31:11.519 we also have you know, the full time workers who 1:31:11.880 --> 1:31:14.719 inside warehouse could be working you know, ten twelve hour shifts. 1:31:15.040 --> 1:31:16.720 You know, we have drivers who are doing you know, 1:31:16.800 --> 1:31:19.680 twelve hour shifts and you know even up to like 1:31:19.720 --> 1:31:22.719 fourteen hours you know, every day, and then also getting 1:31:22.880 --> 1:31:25.519 you know, uh contacted to come in you know on 1:31:25.560 --> 1:31:28.080 their day off, have to do six day weeks. 1:31:29.280 --> 1:31:29.400 Uh. 1:31:29.640 --> 1:31:29.840 You know. 1:31:29.920 --> 1:31:32.160 Of course on the driver's side, you know, we have 1:31:32.320 --> 1:31:36.320 these escalating temperatures and meanwhile there's you know, no air 1:31:36.360 --> 1:31:40.360 conditioners in the vehicles and same you know thing in 1:31:40.400 --> 1:31:44.559 the warehouse because personally, you know, I work in side 1:31:44.560 --> 1:31:47.519 warehouse as a loader. So I'm spending you know, virtually 1:31:47.600 --> 1:31:51.320 all my shift in the trailer loading boxes. You know, 1:31:51.400 --> 1:31:55.360 there's no airflow, those things, you know, can you know, 1:31:55.560 --> 1:31:57.920 be five to ten degrees hotter, you know, like at 1:31:57.920 --> 1:32:02.360 a minimum than the yeah, ambient temperature last summer, like 1:32:02.400 --> 1:32:05.320 on a mid ninety day, I recorded one hundred and 1:32:05.320 --> 1:32:09.120 eight degrees you know inside the trailer. So you know, 1:32:09.479 --> 1:32:13.200 there's not necessarily any kind of protections currently for that. 1:32:14.080 --> 1:32:17.000 So you know, that's one big lack in the contract 1:32:17.200 --> 1:32:20.200 is having those kind of you know heat heat protection 1:32:20.600 --> 1:32:22.400 and you know that is. 1:32:22.960 --> 1:32:24.360 Yeah, I mean that could just kill people. And we've 1:32:24.360 --> 1:32:26.360 talked about on the show before people who've died like 1:32:26.439 --> 1:32:29.640 working conditions like that because you know it was it 1:32:29.680 --> 1:32:31.559 was too hot. But their bosses were like, fuck you, 1:32:31.560 --> 1:32:33.599 we don't care, like keep uploading this stuff. 1:32:34.040 --> 1:32:36.080 Yeah, and it's absolutely tragic. I know we had a 1:32:37.120 --> 1:32:42.000 you know, ups teamster I believe in California who died 1:32:42.040 --> 1:32:46.280 due to the extreme heat conditions last summer. And also no, 1:32:46.960 --> 1:32:48.760 you know, there was another case where I think a 1:32:48.880 --> 1:32:51.760 driver stopped at like a convenience store to buy a 1:32:51.840 --> 1:32:55.280 drink and you know was fire for making you know, 1:32:55.320 --> 1:32:57.760 an off route stop, even though they tell us, you know, 1:32:58.040 --> 1:33:00.679 take breaks when you need it, but they don't actually 1:33:00.720 --> 1:33:00.960 mean it. 1:33:01.560 --> 1:33:02.000 Yeah. 1:33:02.120 --> 1:33:04.680 Yeah, because obviously, you know, you want to be being 1:33:04.680 --> 1:33:05.679 disciplined or fired. 1:33:08.040 --> 1:33:09.880 One of the things that I saw was part of 1:33:09.880 --> 1:33:12.639 the negotiations that UPS had offered to be like, oh, well, 1:33:12.640 --> 1:33:15.960 put in air conditionings in all new vehicles. And I 1:33:16.000 --> 1:33:17.160 was looking at this and I was like, this is 1:33:17.240 --> 1:33:19.320 this is the Clean Air Act loophole. I remember this. 1:33:19.600 --> 1:33:22.360 If you only specify new vehicles, I'll just never replace 1:33:22.400 --> 1:33:23.840 the old ones. Mm. 1:33:25.760 --> 1:33:28.320 Absolutely, And you know with these companies, they're going to 1:33:28.400 --> 1:33:31.080 be looking for those loopholes, right Yeah. 1:33:31.120 --> 1:33:33.400 And like, I don't know. 1:33:33.360 --> 1:33:38.400 That I've seen a vehicle that looked new when I'm 1:33:38.880 --> 1:33:43.280 at my hub. I'm also inside worker and yeah, they 1:33:43.360 --> 1:33:45.679 all look like they've been around, been around a while, 1:33:45.840 --> 1:33:48.919 and I don't know that they've been spending the capital 1:33:49.200 --> 1:33:53.960 to get those new vehicles. So that's absolutely something that 1:33:54.040 --> 1:33:58.600 we're gonna, you know, keep their feet to the fire on, 1:33:59.040 --> 1:33:59.639 so to speak. 1:34:00.640 --> 1:34:00.840 Yeah. 1:34:00.880 --> 1:34:04.760 And then in terms of other conditions that are like 1:34:04.800 --> 1:34:08.040 really leading up to this right now, there is a 1:34:08.080 --> 1:34:12.280 big problem with MRAs and no, not the MRAs, you 1:34:12.720 --> 1:34:16.400 all might be thinking of, this is a market rate adjustment, 1:34:17.320 --> 1:34:21.960 and both are bad. Both are bad. We are staunchly 1:34:22.000 --> 1:34:27.960 against both MRAs. And essentially what an MRA does is 1:34:29.920 --> 1:34:31.800 it sounds good at first, you know, it gives the 1:34:31.840 --> 1:34:36.760 company leeway to, you know, potentially increase our pay right 1:34:37.800 --> 1:34:41.400 beyond what's just stipulated in the contract. However, when you 1:34:41.520 --> 1:34:44.240 kind of get late into the contract, like you know, 1:34:44.360 --> 1:34:47.639 towards the expiration date, the base pay that was agreed 1:34:47.680 --> 1:34:51.599 on for the last contract is no longer acceptable. And 1:34:52.000 --> 1:34:55.120 while it gives them the leeway to increase our rate wage, 1:34:55.479 --> 1:34:58.400 they can always go back down to the lower wage 1:34:58.720 --> 1:35:02.719 should they choose to. And last year at the hub 1:35:02.720 --> 1:35:07.280 that I worked at, it was right after peak, in 1:35:07.360 --> 1:35:09.920 peak season. We were hired on at twenty seven dollars 1:35:09.960 --> 1:35:17.400 an hour. And come February, you know, we're all walking 1:35:17.439 --> 1:35:21.040 into the job and there's one of the supervisors there 1:35:21.120 --> 1:35:23.519 who is frankly looking like she's not having a good 1:35:23.560 --> 1:35:26.280 time having to stop to talk to each of us 1:35:26.320 --> 1:35:29.160 to explain, oh, yeah, so we are going to be 1:35:29.200 --> 1:35:32.400 bringing your pay down to fifteen fifty an hour. 1:35:32.600 --> 1:35:33.880 Jesus, But don't. 1:35:33.600 --> 1:35:35.840 I know, I know but don't worry. Don't worry. There's 1:35:35.880 --> 1:35:37.600 an attendance bonus. 1:35:38.160 --> 1:35:41.439 There's an attendance bonus of one hundred and twenty dollars 1:35:41.520 --> 1:35:46.479 if you make all your shifts, and that really fucking sucked, 1:35:46.640 --> 1:35:50.400 like if you get like if you get sick, like okay, 1:35:50.439 --> 1:35:52.040 So like at this hub that I work at, I 1:35:52.080 --> 1:35:53.920 work at one of the few hubs that don't have 1:35:54.000 --> 1:35:55.760 what's called the hourly guarantee. 1:35:56.520 --> 1:35:58.040 Most hubs have an hourly guaran. 1:35:58.120 --> 1:35:59.719 If you're a part time worker, you have an hourly 1:35:59.720 --> 1:36:02.000 guarantee of three and a half hours a day. So 1:36:02.080 --> 1:36:03.880 if they say that there's no work to be done, 1:36:03.920 --> 1:36:06.160 you can say I want that hourly guarantee, and they 1:36:06.200 --> 1:36:08.240 either find you more work to do or they pay 1:36:08.280 --> 1:36:12.000 that out. And then for full time workers, that's eight hours. 1:36:12.840 --> 1:36:15.000 I work at one of the few hubs that doesn't. 1:36:15.040 --> 1:36:17.840 It's a classification related to the type of hub that 1:36:17.920 --> 1:36:23.519 I am at, And so I'm only like at this hub, 1:36:23.560 --> 1:36:26.559 I work maybe twelve hours a week if I'm lucky, 1:36:27.080 --> 1:36:29.519 So this is twelve hours a week at fifteen fifty 1:36:29.520 --> 1:36:33.040 an hour with an attendance bonus. But if I get 1:36:33.120 --> 1:36:36.559 sick one of those days, that means I have a paycheck, 1:36:36.600 --> 1:36:39.240 a weekly paycheck that is going from roughly two hundred 1:36:39.320 --> 1:36:44.080 dollars to like maybe roughly eighty and that is just 1:36:44.320 --> 1:36:48.639 it's totally totally unacceptable the way that they can kind 1:36:48.680 --> 1:36:52.080 of like, yeah, with the plague going on, yes, being 1:36:52.160 --> 1:36:57.000 sick is highly likely right now. And yeah, no, they're 1:36:57.040 --> 1:36:59.479 just kind of able to like yo yo us around 1:36:59.560 --> 1:37:04.360 on these ages like whenever they want. And so a 1:37:04.400 --> 1:37:09.040 demand that is being circulated in the grassroots of the union. 1:37:09.840 --> 1:37:14.240 Leadership hasn't really talked about it to my knowledge, but 1:37:14.520 --> 1:37:16.920 there is, you know, a petition going around to have 1:37:17.000 --> 1:37:20.559 a starting wage of twenty five dollars an hour, and 1:37:20.720 --> 1:37:23.680 you know, right now that would only be because right 1:37:23.720 --> 1:37:26.479 now this year, I'm making twenty four and they didn't 1:37:26.520 --> 1:37:29.600 do that bullshit. I think kind of an anticipation of 1:37:29.640 --> 1:37:31.640 the strike coming. They didn't want to make us, you know, 1:37:31.760 --> 1:37:34.160 more angry, and so that would only be a dollar 1:37:34.200 --> 1:37:37.400 increase for me, but also it would prevent them from 1:37:37.439 --> 1:37:40.639 doing that in the future, right Yeah. 1:37:40.680 --> 1:37:46.320 So yeah, I like Reese, you know, also was affected 1:37:46.320 --> 1:37:49.559 by the MRA, but luckily not as severe. You know, 1:37:49.640 --> 1:37:52.679 my pay went from twenty six down to twenty three 1:37:53.080 --> 1:37:57.679 an hour, and of course, you know what ten eleven 1:37:57.680 --> 1:38:00.920 percent pay cut also same time goes up, you know, 1:38:01.000 --> 1:38:05.200 ten percent. Uh, that was very difficult enough, let alone 1:38:05.240 --> 1:38:08.599 having you know, your pay getting dropped almost by fifty percent. 1:38:09.080 --> 1:38:12.080 You know, there's multiple hubs in the area, and they're 1:38:12.080 --> 1:38:14.280 all just on different pay scales, you know, for the 1:38:14.320 --> 1:38:18.280 same kind of you know, same same area, doing the 1:38:18.320 --> 1:38:21.600 same work, and we had just have these like fluctuating 1:38:21.640 --> 1:38:23.840 pay scales, you know, I know for us, it was 1:38:24.000 --> 1:38:26.439 you know, right after peak season, and they're like, oh, 1:38:26.479 --> 1:38:30.320 thanks so much for the most successful peak season ever. 1:38:30.760 --> 1:38:33.400 We made record breaking profits. We couldn't have done this 1:38:33.520 --> 1:38:36.400 without you. By the way, we're cutting all of your 1:38:36.439 --> 1:38:40.320 pay and now, of course you know we're getting paid 1:38:40.360 --> 1:38:44.760 above twenty five and hey, that helped their profits. So 1:38:44.960 --> 1:38:47.479 you know, it's absolutely absurd to say, oh, well, you know, 1:38:47.800 --> 1:38:53.160 we can't afford you know, these higher wages when they can't. 1:38:54.000 --> 1:38:58.000 Yeah, they don't, exactly, they do hold their fucking profits, 1:38:58.200 --> 1:39:02.240 Like are you kidding me? Like Jesus Christ, it's like 1:39:02.280 --> 1:39:05.200 they think we're fucking dumb. It's like, no, like our 1:39:05.400 --> 1:39:11.280 work bar exceeded what you're paying us, Like an unimaginable amount. Yeah, 1:39:11.320 --> 1:39:16.120 and you guys like it was earlier on in the complo, 1:39:16.200 --> 1:39:18.719 not earlier on. I think this happened maybe late June 1:39:18.800 --> 1:39:23.360 early July. It was they leaked, it got leaked their 1:39:23.400 --> 1:39:27.920 economic proposals for us, and they had the part timers 1:39:28.080 --> 1:39:34.160 starting at seventeen dollars an hour seventeen and like, I 1:39:34.240 --> 1:39:36.120 just I don't think that's affordable anywhere. 1:39:37.000 --> 1:39:38.840 That's just think I'm going to mention that I think 1:39:38.960 --> 1:39:41.840 is I think it's really important, but isn't particularly well nursed. 1:39:41.920 --> 1:39:43.120 So you know, if you go back to like the 1:39:43.160 --> 1:39:48.000 original fifteen campaign, right wage like that wage which was 1:39:48.040 --> 1:39:51.519 already like kind of nonsense in like twenty twelve, like 1:39:51.680 --> 1:39:56.360 with inflation that's like nineteen thirty now, Yeah, so this 1:39:56.439 --> 1:39:59.080 is you know, this is this is how much like 1:39:59.120 --> 1:40:01.639 inflation has sort of deteriorated wages and that, and that's 1:40:01.760 --> 1:40:04.720 just sort of like you know, the economic terms, like 1:40:04.760 --> 1:40:06.960 inflation is like the bundle of goods, right, and that 1:40:06.960 --> 1:40:09.600 that's not accounting for the fact that, for example, the 1:40:09.640 --> 1:40:11.720 increase in housing prices has been way higher for the 1:40:11.760 --> 1:40:13.920 sort of like avig rated inflation. Right. Healthcare costs are 1:40:13.960 --> 1:40:16.879 increasing higher from the sort of quote unquote Aviatrade inflation, 1:40:17.560 --> 1:40:19.160 and so like, yeah, it's like, yeah, this sounds like 1:40:19.200 --> 1:40:22.559 a lot of money. It's fucking not like no, simply 1:40:22.680 --> 1:40:22.920 is not. 1:40:23.720 --> 1:40:27.680 Like Yeah, I heard at a at a rally not 1:40:27.800 --> 1:40:30.720 too long ago from one of the speakers for you know, 1:40:30.800 --> 1:40:33.680 it was a it was a team's rally that you know, 1:40:33.720 --> 1:40:35.599 we're getting our members hyped and all that, and one 1:40:35.640 --> 1:40:39.679 of the speakers mentioned that for our city, a minimum 1:40:39.760 --> 1:40:43.160 wage that could be livable would be twenty six dollars 1:40:43.200 --> 1:40:47.200 an hour. And I'm just like, yeah, that seems about right, 1:40:47.240 --> 1:40:49.920 and that's like the bare minimum. That's like, Okay, I 1:40:49.960 --> 1:40:53.240 can eat enough, I can pay my rent, and I 1:40:53.360 --> 1:40:55.759 probably don't have a whole lot leftover. 1:40:56.640 --> 1:41:00.400 So yeah, especially when we have you now, like average 1:41:00.400 --> 1:41:04.200 rent you know for one bedroom you know, around like 1:41:04.240 --> 1:41:07.360 fifteen hundred dollars you know these days, and so many 1:41:07.439 --> 1:41:11.240 landlords want, you know, want three times you know that 1:41:11.280 --> 1:41:13.840 rent and income. So you know, I was actually just 1:41:13.920 --> 1:41:17.160 kind of yeah, writing you know or you know, doing 1:41:17.160 --> 1:41:19.200 the math last night, I was just like, oh, okay, 1:41:19.280 --> 1:41:21.920 so in my hours, I would actually need forty three 1:41:21.960 --> 1:41:23.320 dollars an hour. 1:41:25.320 --> 1:41:25.800 Just to. 1:41:27.720 --> 1:41:31.000 You know, be making three times the average monthly rent. 1:41:31.439 --> 1:41:34.599 Yep. Yeah, yeah, so. 1:41:34.560 --> 1:41:37.320 That's definitely why you know, twenty five dollars you know 1:41:37.360 --> 1:41:41.840 an hour is the minimum. You know that, you know, 1:41:42.360 --> 1:41:44.240 I think we can settle for. I would love to 1:41:44.280 --> 1:41:47.160 see it higher, but I also recognize, you know, well, 1:41:47.200 --> 1:41:50.280 you know, maybe twenty five is still not quite cutting it, 1:41:50.439 --> 1:41:52.599 you know, in a more urban area. But you know, 1:41:52.640 --> 1:41:54.600 there's going to be a lot of people that's you know, 1:41:54.800 --> 1:41:57.880 significant gains are going to help so much, you know, 1:41:57.960 --> 1:42:02.599 to meet their material needs. You know, definitely have to 1:42:02.760 --> 1:42:05.320 you know, consider this as you know, big picture, this 1:42:05.360 --> 1:42:08.600 is a national agreement, and you know, we got to 1:42:08.640 --> 1:42:11.919 get that really solid foundation and then we can expand 1:42:11.960 --> 1:42:12.519 from there. 1:42:13.240 --> 1:42:18.240 Yeah. Well, what the sorry as as as you were talking, 1:42:18.280 --> 1:42:20.799 I got a thing saying that the teamsters have settled. 1:42:21.920 --> 1:42:24.320 What all right? 1:42:24.479 --> 1:42:24.959 Think? 1:42:26.680 --> 1:42:29.080 Oh my gosh, what the fuck. 1:42:29.000 --> 1:42:31.480 They're they're back at the table. 1:42:31.479 --> 1:42:33.040 At the negotiation table. 1:42:34.160 --> 1:42:35.000 Jesus Christ. 1:42:35.120 --> 1:42:38.760 They've only been at the negotiation table for like four hours. 1:42:39.200 --> 1:42:45.000 Yeah, okay, okay, I signal shots here, Yeah, Jesus Christ. 1:42:45.000 --> 1:42:46.840 Well all right, I don't know if we're gonna leave 1:42:46.880 --> 1:42:49.400 this in, but yeah, we've discovered live on air that. 1:42:51.280 --> 1:42:57.040 Yeah, teamsters win historic ups contract. Uh oh, we'll see. 1:42:58.080 --> 1:42:59.800 Yeah, I'm also looking at this and see what. 1:42:59.800 --> 1:43:05.120 I'm Yeah, I'm at the teamster dot org website where 1:43:05.160 --> 1:43:06.280 they have an update on it. 1:43:08.840 --> 1:43:12.040 Yeah, and at least, you know, speaking of wages, at 1:43:12.120 --> 1:43:15.880 least the first thing that I'm seeing is existing part 1:43:15.880 --> 1:43:18.439 timers will be raised up to no less than twenty 1:43:18.479 --> 1:43:22.439 one dollars per hour immediately. Part time seniority workers earning 1:43:22.520 --> 1:43:25.519 more under a market right adjustment would still receive all 1:43:25.560 --> 1:43:27.000 new general wage increases. 1:43:27.960 --> 1:43:32.480 Yeah, yeah, this is uh, I'm not stoked on those wages. 1:43:33.200 --> 1:43:34.800 Yeah. 1:43:35.080 --> 1:43:38.519 Yeah, No, I'm definitely I am twenty five or bust 1:43:38.840 --> 1:43:39.280 on this. 1:43:39.960 --> 1:43:41.120 Yeah. 1:43:41.160 --> 1:43:44.759 All right, so that does that will change things. 1:43:44.760 --> 1:43:49.120 That definitely changes the timeline because this still has to 1:43:49.160 --> 1:43:52.360 be sent out to be voted on and approved by membership. 1:43:52.840 --> 1:43:55.600 Yeah, and what we learned. 1:43:57.240 --> 1:44:00.360 At the there was a call not too long ago 1:44:00.400 --> 1:44:02.240 where they kind of explained the process of it. So 1:44:03.000 --> 1:44:05.160 in the event that they would reach at tentative agreement 1:44:05.680 --> 1:44:08.000 that gets sent out to us, we vote from home 1:44:08.160 --> 1:44:11.080 and it takes about three weeks for it to ratify. 1:44:11.800 --> 1:44:15.840 There is still a possibility that membership could vote to 1:44:15.840 --> 1:44:17.800 reject it, in which case they would be going back 1:44:17.840 --> 1:44:22.840 to the bargaining table and we could potentially be going 1:44:22.880 --> 1:44:26.680 on strike then. But this does set it back by 1:44:26.760 --> 1:44:36.320 now three weeks. It'll be interesting to see what the TDU, 1:44:36.439 --> 1:44:39.240 which is the Team Service for a Democratic Union, which 1:44:39.280 --> 1:44:44.120 is a reform caucus inside our union. It'll be interesting 1:44:44.200 --> 1:44:50.880 to see what their line is on this. So, oh 1:44:50.960 --> 1:44:54.040 my gosh, what a what a bomb drop to get 1:44:54.040 --> 1:44:55.800 in the middle of a podcast about this. 1:44:58.360 --> 1:45:03.040 Yeah, unfortunately can't even speak to it since gimmed a 1:45:03.120 --> 1:45:03.760 little bit of it. 1:45:06.360 --> 1:45:08.479 Yeah, yeah, it. 1:45:08.840 --> 1:45:11.599 Do they actually have the full agreement out or are 1:45:11.600 --> 1:45:13.360 they just do they just have this stuff? 1:45:14.040 --> 1:45:17.599 They will not have the full agreement out. Something that 1:45:17.640 --> 1:45:21.360 we've been having a little bit of frustrations with within 1:45:21.439 --> 1:45:24.799 our union is that we do not have open bargaining. 1:45:25.600 --> 1:45:27.719 So bargaining happens. Yeah. 1:45:27.840 --> 1:45:33.240 Yeah, bargaining happens behind closed doors, and they occasionally give 1:45:33.360 --> 1:45:36.519 us updates about what's happening, but we don't really get 1:45:36.520 --> 1:45:39.200 to see the full picture until we're going to be 1:45:39.240 --> 1:45:39.920 voting on it. 1:45:40.000 --> 1:45:45.040 And uh, I obviously think this is bad for a 1:45:45.120 --> 1:45:46.000 number of reasons. 1:45:46.160 --> 1:45:52.560 Yeah, one and a big primary one is these contracts 1:45:52.560 --> 1:45:56.880 that are negotiated. I was about to go get my 1:45:57.120 --> 1:45:58.880 copy of the contract I could show you, and then 1:45:58.880 --> 1:46:00.720 I remember this is a podcas asked, and that's not 1:46:00.800 --> 1:46:03.400 actually going to be helpful for Hey. 1:46:03.240 --> 1:46:06.559 We do, we do. We do visual bits on this 1:46:06.600 --> 1:46:08.360 podcast all the time. It's fine. 1:46:08.840 --> 1:46:12.559 So the size of our pok our contract is about 1:46:12.600 --> 1:46:16.200 the size of a pocket Bible Jesus it is. It 1:46:16.280 --> 1:46:20.080 is very very big, and it's you know, it's written 1:46:20.160 --> 1:46:22.080 in that legal ease and stuff like that, and so 1:46:22.120 --> 1:46:26.800 it's not very accessible to most of our most of 1:46:26.800 --> 1:46:31.240 our members. And so you know, if we had open 1:46:31.240 --> 1:46:35.680 and bargaining, if we had consistent like updates where like 1:46:36.040 --> 1:46:38.680 you know, our union leadership would be like, all right, 1:46:38.720 --> 1:46:40.720 so this is what we've agreed upon so far, this 1:46:40.760 --> 1:46:41.760 is what we've rejected. 1:46:41.760 --> 1:46:42.920 This is what it all means. 1:46:44.000 --> 1:46:46.040 You know, in the lead up to like whether or 1:46:46.080 --> 1:46:48.240 not you vote no, membership could have a far more 1:46:48.280 --> 1:46:54.080 comprehensive understanding of what is in the contract instead of 1:46:54.880 --> 1:46:57.679 waiting until the very end as we got little bits 1:46:57.760 --> 1:47:02.040 pieces and snippets and then being like, okay, well read 1:47:02.080 --> 1:47:05.080 this and decide how you feel. 1:47:06.000 --> 1:47:07.840 Yeah, I mean, that's just I don't know if if 1:47:07.880 --> 1:47:09.640 it feels like it's just a much just kind of 1:47:09.640 --> 1:47:14.800 designed to like railroad people into signing whatever contract negotiators 1:47:14.840 --> 1:47:18.280 agree to. Yeah, it's kind of a disaster. 1:47:19.000 --> 1:47:22.200 And without that transparency, I mean, you know, you know, 1:47:22.240 --> 1:47:24.280 all of us rank and file members are you know, 1:47:24.400 --> 1:47:27.759 essentially being removed from the process, you know, being involved 1:47:27.840 --> 1:47:32.760 in the decision making, uh, you know, stipulating what's going 1:47:32.840 --> 1:47:34.840 to do it, you know, to meet our needs? What 1:47:34.840 --> 1:47:37.519 what do we need? You know out of these you know, 1:47:37.960 --> 1:47:42.040 five year contracts, and you know, I think it was 1:47:42.160 --> 1:47:44.000 just you know, a few days ago, got you know, 1:47:44.080 --> 1:47:46.519 get an update from the local you know, basically a 1:47:46.560 --> 1:47:52.000 week before you know the contract ends, you know, and 1:47:52.000 --> 1:47:54.360 they're you know, talking about this is like one of 1:47:54.439 --> 1:47:57.960 the most transparent contracts there's ever been. There's all these 1:47:58.040 --> 1:48:00.160 updates and you know, there's more rank and file, all 1:48:01.000 --> 1:48:03.880 you know, members involved in the bargaining. And it's like, well, 1:48:03.880 --> 1:48:05.880 that's great, you know that shows you know how far 1:48:06.680 --> 1:48:09.400 you know, we've come, I guess, but also it's still 1:48:09.560 --> 1:48:13.040 just it's kind of sad to think that you know, this, 1:48:13.040 --> 1:48:16.080 this process that's all banned by NDA is the most 1:48:16.120 --> 1:48:18.120 transparent transparent it's been. 1:48:18.320 --> 1:48:20.479 And and also the fact the fact that you're fighting 1:48:20.520 --> 1:48:24.559 this out live on air from like their press release 1:48:24.840 --> 1:48:26.880 that they put out on Twitter, it's like. 1:48:27.080 --> 1:48:36.120 What yeah, yeah, oh my gosh, absolutely absolutely absurd. Yeah, 1:48:36.160 --> 1:48:39.840 so it seems like this is a this is an 1:48:39.880 --> 1:48:43.519 agreement that is going to be pushed by union leadership 1:48:43.600 --> 1:48:46.880 as a vote to vote yes on UH, which is 1:48:46.920 --> 1:48:47.760 a kind of a. 1:48:47.680 --> 1:48:51.160 Far cry from earlier in UH in July. 1:48:51.120 --> 1:48:53.479 When you know, you when the team stories were telling 1:48:53.560 --> 1:48:57.360 ups you need to present us with either an agreement 1:48:57.439 --> 1:49:00.000 that we like actually agree with or present your life 1:49:00.280 --> 1:49:02.600 best final offer by July fifth. 1:49:02.520 --> 1:49:07.160 Right, Yeah, and yeah, yeah. 1:49:07.040 --> 1:49:07.280 So. 1:49:08.680 --> 1:49:15.080 Yeah, we'll we'll see how how the rank and file react. 1:49:15.800 --> 1:49:22.000 In the twenty eighteen contract. I know that the TDU 1:49:23.000 --> 1:49:30.200 tried to UH organize a vote no campaign and they 1:49:30.240 --> 1:49:34.799 did get a simple majority of the membership to vote no. However, 1:49:35.000 --> 1:49:37.040 at the time and this has now been changed, but 1:49:37.360 --> 1:49:43.960 at the time, in our constitution, it would require a 1:49:44.080 --> 1:49:47.640 two thirds majority to have rejected it, and goes to 1:49:47.680 --> 1:49:49.200 strike Jesus Christ. 1:49:51.200 --> 1:49:51.680 Was it was? It was? 1:49:51.680 --> 1:49:51.760 That? 1:49:51.880 --> 1:49:52.040 Was that? 1:49:52.080 --> 1:49:53.680 Because it was was that? Because it has one of 1:49:53.680 --> 1:49:56.320 those weird like electoral college systems or was it like 1:49:56.360 --> 1:49:57.400 you need two thirds to project? 1:49:57.720 --> 1:49:59.439 It was a it was a you need two thirds. 1:50:00.520 --> 1:50:05.759 That has been changed when when Sean, when the Reform 1:50:05.800 --> 1:50:09.240 slate was elected and they had their Teamsters convention, they 1:50:09.320 --> 1:50:13.040 changed the constitution so that it would be a simple majority. 1:50:14.560 --> 1:50:18.600 So yeah, well we'll see what TD the line that 1:50:18.680 --> 1:50:25.280 TDU wants to take, and yeah, yeah, we'll see. This 1:50:25.920 --> 1:50:29.120 certainly puts a wrinkle in things. I'm gonna be honest, 1:50:29.240 --> 1:50:32.280 I was actually really looking forward to strike pay because 1:50:32.320 --> 1:50:34.080 my strike pay would have paid more than my. 1:50:34.160 --> 1:50:39.120 Actual job does. Yeah, And I mean, I think there's like, 1:50:40.000 --> 1:50:41.559 I think there's a few things that we can sort 1:50:41.560 --> 1:50:45.320 of immediately talk about from this. One is that it 1:50:45.320 --> 1:50:48.679 doesn't like nothing they've put out here from what I've 1:50:48.680 --> 1:50:50.759 read so far, I'm reading, I mean literally, I'm reading 1:50:50.760 --> 1:50:53.960 from the Teamsters website says you're doing anything about market 1:50:54.000 --> 1:50:54.920 rate adjustments at all. 1:50:55.720 --> 1:50:56.120 Mm hmm. 1:50:57.240 --> 1:51:01.040 And the second thing is that you know, we we 1:51:01.120 --> 1:51:02.800 you know, we were talking earlier before we knew that 1:51:02.800 --> 1:51:04.519 there was a strike about sort of the impact of 1:51:04.560 --> 1:51:07.280 this on the entire class. And it really looks like 1:51:07.400 --> 1:51:11.960 both the Teamsters and ups, like you know, really wanted 1:51:12.000 --> 1:51:14.639 to cut a deal as you know, part of part 1:51:14.680 --> 1:51:16.720 of this attempt to keep everything going and to keep 1:51:16.720 --> 1:51:19.679 this stuff from happening, which I mean I think makes sense, 1:51:19.800 --> 1:51:22.280 right if you're you know, if if you're UPS, you 1:51:22.320 --> 1:51:25.880 don't act like we're we're having an actual sort of 1:51:25.960 --> 1:51:29.679 like workers and surgaency like having having having a summer 1:51:29.760 --> 1:51:32.960 this hot like isn't good for like, it isn't good 1:51:33.000 --> 1:51:36.640 for UPS. It's arguably not good for some of the 1:51:36.680 --> 1:51:38.160 more sort of like some of the more sort of 1:51:38.160 --> 1:51:42.120 conservative union leaderships either who do who unlike a lot 1:51:42.120 --> 1:51:44.240 of workers do not want to be on strike because 1:51:44.840 --> 1:51:46.640 that like that cut that cuts into the sort of 1:51:46.640 --> 1:51:48.439 war chest of capital that they have to manage. 1:51:48.920 --> 1:51:49.880 Mm hmmm hmm. 1:51:50.760 --> 1:51:57.080 Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Uh, they're you know, they're just recently 1:51:57.120 --> 1:52:01.120 on Twitter or excuse me, x it's now, but just 1:52:01.160 --> 1:52:03.040 recently on Twitter there was a fair amount of a 1:52:03.360 --> 1:52:07.839 strike discourse, and there was like you know, labor activists 1:52:07.880 --> 1:52:11.200 and stuff saying that, you know, like it's good, it's 1:52:11.240 --> 1:52:14.200 good for you know, if they reach a tentative agreement 1:52:14.320 --> 1:52:19.360 that you know, so yeah, yeah, if they reach a 1:52:19.400 --> 1:52:22.479 tentative agreement that you know, makes those material gains, it's 1:52:22.520 --> 1:52:25.720 better to not go on strike. And like, I I know, 1:52:25.880 --> 1:52:28.880 I know, like and to me that's like a little 1:52:28.880 --> 1:52:31.840 bit wild because one there is so much and we 1:52:31.880 --> 1:52:35.559 could demand so much more. But also like you know, 1:52:35.720 --> 1:52:39.880 collective action, you know, in order to be consistent, to 1:52:39.920 --> 1:52:43.519 be good at it, it requires you to undertake it, 1:52:44.160 --> 1:52:49.000 right Like, and you know, when I think about like 1:52:49.120 --> 1:52:54.200 how our local is, they have a very service model 1:52:54.439 --> 1:52:59.760 orientation to unionism as opposed to an organizing model, and I, 1:53:00.080 --> 1:53:02.240 you know, I was really under the impression that this 1:53:02.640 --> 1:53:06.040 potential strike could have kind of like you know, lit 1:53:06.080 --> 1:53:08.200 a fire under their ass and like kind of got 1:53:08.240 --> 1:53:12.559 back into like the organizing aspect of unionism, right uh. 1:53:12.960 --> 1:53:15.320 And like they weren't that great at that. 1:53:15.520 --> 1:53:19.120 I swear sometimes we would talk to them about like, hey, so, 1:53:19.320 --> 1:53:21.280 like have you tried like mobilizing members. 1:53:21.320 --> 1:53:23.439 Have you tried like showing up the gates? Have you? 1:53:23.600 --> 1:53:27.200 Like you know you can like there's like programs out 1:53:27.200 --> 1:53:29.920 there where you can text your entire membership about like 1:53:30.479 --> 1:53:32.800 you know, come to this like contract update. And it's 1:53:32.880 --> 1:53:36.479 like we were just speaking a different language. Like they 1:53:36.560 --> 1:53:39.559 just had no idea, Like they had no idea, and 1:53:39.600 --> 1:53:43.200 they would look at our union meetings where like you know, 1:53:43.280 --> 1:53:47.200 we represent like I think over like a like I 1:53:47.200 --> 1:53:50.000 think well over like one thousand workers. I don't have 1:53:50.040 --> 1:53:51.360 the numbers on that, so I'm not going to get 1:53:51.360 --> 1:53:54.800 more specific, uh, but like well over that. And they 1:53:54.800 --> 1:53:57.240 would look at our union meetings where we have maybe 1:53:57.320 --> 1:53:59.720 fifty to seventy people, and they're just kind of like, well, 1:53:59.760 --> 1:54:01.960 this is just as good as it's going to get. 1:54:02.880 --> 1:54:05.160 Yeah, and that's nonsense, Like it's nonsense. 1:54:05.240 --> 1:54:08.320 It's nonsense, like you know, like back in the fucking 1:54:08.479 --> 1:54:11.400 like you know, from like the tens to the fifties, 1:54:11.760 --> 1:54:14.360 union meetings would bring in just so many people and 1:54:14.360 --> 1:54:17.720 they don't have anywhere near the like technological advance advantages 1:54:17.760 --> 1:54:21.640 that we have now. And it was just it's very 1:54:21.720 --> 1:54:25.479 much like, yes, you tell us about your grievances, we 1:54:25.560 --> 1:54:28.080 get those filed, and we do make those like wins 1:54:28.080 --> 1:54:31.720 for you, and like that's that's good. Like you know, 1:54:31.760 --> 1:54:35.520 there are some unions that barely do that much, and 1:54:35.560 --> 1:54:36.960 the fact that they do that is great. 1:54:37.800 --> 1:54:40.000 But like you know, at my hub, I. 1:54:40.000 --> 1:54:44.240 Remember I was I was talking to my carpool and 1:54:44.640 --> 1:54:47.240 he didn't even know who his steward was. And I'm 1:54:47.280 --> 1:54:50.200 like the only person that gives him updates about what's 1:54:50.240 --> 1:54:52.600 going on in the union. Yeah, and that's just because 1:54:52.680 --> 1:54:55.400 like when I started working at UPS, I was just like, yeah, 1:54:55.440 --> 1:54:57.680 I'm going to go to these fucking union meetings. I'm 1:54:57.680 --> 1:54:59.800 gonna find out what's going on. I want to be 1:54:59.840 --> 1:55:02.440 in involved. And most people, you know, it's just a 1:55:02.520 --> 1:55:05.000 job for them, and they don't know all the things 1:55:05.000 --> 1:55:08.440 that a union can provide for them or how a 1:55:08.600 --> 1:55:12.280 union can back them up. And part of that's because 1:55:12.320 --> 1:55:16.400 you know, union leadership, you know, has decided that that's 1:55:16.680 --> 1:55:20.480 not something they really they don't need to be as 1:55:20.520 --> 1:55:22.280 engaged with the members as they could be. 1:55:22.600 --> 1:55:22.800 Yeah. 1:55:22.800 --> 1:55:25.520 Well, and there's there's a second thing there too, which 1:55:25.600 --> 1:55:29.480 is like, okay, if you are like you know, if 1:55:29.600 --> 1:55:31.960 if if if, if you are someone you know, if 1:55:31.960 --> 1:55:33.600 you were in a position of leadership, and you're in 1:55:33.640 --> 1:55:36.800 your position of leadership. Because there's incredible base, there's like 1:55:36.840 --> 1:55:39.839 really really lowd attendance for union elections, right, really load turnout, 1:55:39.840 --> 1:55:42.360 which is which is usually true, right like union union 1:55:42.440 --> 1:55:46.480 election turnout tends to be just atrocious. You don't actually 1:55:46.520 --> 1:55:49.240 want more people being involved because the more people that 1:55:49.280 --> 1:55:50.680 are involved, the more likely is it a bunch of 1:55:50.680 --> 1:55:52.280 people are going to show up in the election. Someone's 1:55:52.280 --> 1:55:53.640 good and you know when someone's gonna look at one 1:55:53.640 --> 1:55:54.880 of the deals you cut and it's gonna be like, 1:55:54.880 --> 1:55:57.480 what the fuck are you doing? Right, So there's there's 1:55:57.520 --> 1:55:59.560 there's a lot of sort of perverse intensive structures in 1:55:59.640 --> 1:56:02.560 terms of like just to sort of the basic organizational 1:56:02.600 --> 1:56:06.360 electoral structure that gets you, you know, like people cutting 1:56:06.400 --> 1:56:09.040 deals and culling and you know, like trying to cut 1:56:09.040 --> 1:56:11.000 off the sort of like hot summer and its knees. 1:56:11.960 --> 1:56:14.800 Yeah, I have something funny that's kind of related to that. 1:56:15.000 --> 1:56:19.000 So when we were voting to authorize a to authorize 1:56:19.000 --> 1:56:21.680 a strike, right, you know, we did it and all 1:56:21.720 --> 1:56:24.640 of that, and you know, Sean O'Brien announced that there 1:56:24.680 --> 1:56:28.760 was going to be voting at the gates and our local. 1:56:31.840 --> 1:56:33.800 Initially it was like, oh no, we're just going to 1:56:33.880 --> 1:56:37.280 have people come to the hall between the hours of 1:56:37.320 --> 1:56:40.640 eight and ten on two specific days and we'll do 1:56:40.720 --> 1:56:43.400 voting that way. Eventually they did change it after they 1:56:43.440 --> 1:56:46.560 got pressure I think probably from up top and below. 1:56:46.680 --> 1:56:50.640 But one of the members who is involved was like, 1:56:50.920 --> 1:56:54.160 oh no, no, no, no, like it'll be better if it's 1:56:54.280 --> 1:56:57.560 just the people that are motivated enough to go, because 1:56:57.600 --> 1:56:59.480 they're the ones that are going to like vote the 1:56:59.520 --> 1:57:03.200 thing on through. And that was just that was wild too, 1:57:04.120 --> 1:57:07.240 seeing that sort of perspective, because if we you know, 1:57:07.400 --> 1:57:09.680 if the union is there, if like you know, our 1:57:09.800 --> 1:57:12.080 union reps, our business agents, if they're there, if they're 1:57:12.080 --> 1:57:15.880 constantly engaging membership, then we will all be on the 1:57:15.920 --> 1:57:19.240 same page. Like they're the ones that have all of 1:57:19.280 --> 1:57:22.400 the like you know, the like technical information. They're the 1:57:22.400 --> 1:57:24.760 ones that can really talk to they can talk to 1:57:24.800 --> 1:57:28.080 people about you know, like this is how much UPS 1:57:28.160 --> 1:57:30.720 is making and profits, this is like what they're paying 1:57:30.760 --> 1:57:32.000 our CEO, this is. 1:57:32.000 --> 1:57:33.960 All of this. You deserve more and we're going to 1:57:34.000 --> 1:57:34.520 fight for it. 1:57:35.040 --> 1:57:38.320 And if they had those constant interactions, you would all 1:57:38.360 --> 1:57:39.880 be on the same page and we wouldn't have to 1:57:39.880 --> 1:57:43.520 worry about, well, if there's increased voter turnout, it might 1:57:43.560 --> 1:57:46.200 make the vote kind of iffy, you. 1:57:46.200 --> 1:57:50.320 Know, like, yeah, there's definitely you know, that's been one 1:57:50.320 --> 1:57:53.560 of my biggest scripes is around uh, you know, communications, 1:57:53.800 --> 1:57:57.640 particularly you know from the local which is kind of 1:57:57.680 --> 1:58:01.680 practically non existent, and you know, it's there's so many 1:58:01.800 --> 1:58:05.320 even like between new hires and you know, even people 1:58:05.400 --> 1:58:07.360 have been there a few years. A part timers like 1:58:07.960 --> 1:58:12.680 don't know their rights under our contract and you know 1:58:12.920 --> 1:58:17.080 it was only because of organizing and you know, talking 1:58:17.080 --> 1:58:19.440 with people that I know those rights and can you 1:58:19.480 --> 1:58:24.480 know then share that you know knowledge with other you know, teamsters. 1:58:25.160 --> 1:58:28.040 But it's kind of like, well, why why are we 1:58:28.160 --> 1:58:31.520 having to do this? And I mean, of course internal organizing, 1:58:31.600 --> 1:58:34.480 you know, knowledge is super important, but it'd be nice, 1:58:34.600 --> 1:58:37.880 you know why, you know, why isn't there a you know, 1:58:38.040 --> 1:58:41.280 like a welcome packet. Why are there you know, not 1:58:41.520 --> 1:58:45.160 more maybe not like full meetings, but at least something 1:58:45.200 --> 1:58:49.120 where you know, our union officials can meet with rank 1:58:49.160 --> 1:58:51.160 and file members. And I think I'm partly you know, 1:58:51.240 --> 1:58:53.640 speaking to that because you know, the shift I work 1:58:53.920 --> 1:58:58.440 is during union meetings, so you know, attending those is 1:58:59.280 --> 1:59:02.760 not you know, not quite feasible, uh, you know for 1:59:02.840 --> 1:59:05.440 me or other people on my shift. And I know 1:59:05.480 --> 1:59:07.440 that's also kind of seems like it's led to this 1:59:07.600 --> 1:59:10.560 like some contempt for part timers like oh, we're not involved, 1:59:11.240 --> 1:59:13.920 you know, we don't care, but it's like we don't 1:59:14.080 --> 1:59:18.520 you know, we don't necessarily know you know about the meetings, 1:59:18.680 --> 1:59:21.120 or that you know, there's the scheduling conflict, or you know, 1:59:21.160 --> 1:59:23.640 again talking about like we don't even know what our 1:59:23.800 --> 1:59:27.760 you know, basic rights are you know under our contract. 1:59:29.040 --> 1:59:31.200 Well, it's like a like you can't you can't not 1:59:31.520 --> 1:59:34.240 explain to people. You can't not onboard people and then 1:59:34.240 --> 1:59:37.600 complain that they're not onboarded, Like come on, this. 1:59:37.640 --> 1:59:41.400 Is a sad self fulfilling prophecy there. You know, you're 1:59:41.440 --> 1:59:44.360 creating the outcome that you think you know already exists 1:59:44.360 --> 1:59:46.600 because you're not engaging members. 1:59:47.400 --> 1:59:48.880 So there was no other thing that I wanted to 1:59:48.920 --> 1:59:50.880 talk about, which is that there's been a lot of 1:59:51.600 --> 1:59:55.880 like I don't know, I've been seeing this in sort 1:59:55.880 --> 1:59:59.200 of various places in the discourse talking about the strike, 2:00:00.000 --> 2:00:04.360 which is that there's a lot of people who basically 2:00:04.440 --> 2:00:06.960 are holding onto the notion that a people don't want 2:00:06.960 --> 2:00:09.560 to strike and b that like striking is bad and 2:00:09.560 --> 2:00:11.320 that you should want to do it as little as possible. 2:00:12.400 --> 2:00:15.440 And you know, this pisses me off for like a 2:00:15.440 --> 2:00:17.160 lot of reasons, one of which is that, like my 2:00:17.160 --> 2:00:18.880 grandma was a teamster and she was a she was 2:00:18.920 --> 2:00:21.200 a union punch card operator. Like back in like the 2:00:21.240 --> 2:00:26.360 seventies and eighties, and you know, my grandma is like 2:00:26.360 --> 2:00:29.800 like not like a leftist, right like, we have to 2:00:29.800 --> 2:00:32.040 stop her from giving money to the Fallen Gong. Like 2:00:32.200 --> 2:00:34.480 she's so you know, this is this is the kind 2:00:34.520 --> 2:00:36.800 of thing super dealing with you, right, But like she 2:00:37.040 --> 2:00:39.720 loved going on strike, right like. And that's the thing 2:00:39.720 --> 2:00:42.160 that like my family who's not like particularly sort of 2:00:42.240 --> 2:00:44.120 labor friendly or like, oh yeah, no, we love going 2:00:44.160 --> 2:00:46.400 on strike. Because that's that's why she has insurance, right 2:00:46.600 --> 2:00:48.560 because because the team shirts were going with any eighties 2:00:48.600 --> 2:00:51.560 teams just go on shrike, and I you know, and 2:00:51.600 --> 2:00:52.960 I think I think that's an everything that's like this, 2:00:53.040 --> 2:00:55.400 you know, this kind of well okay, then there's two 2:00:55.400 --> 2:00:57.000 ways to look of it at it. One is that 2:00:57.040 --> 2:00:59.920 it's a fundamental misreading of the situation that's happening right now, 2:01:00.320 --> 2:01:03.000 which is, no, people absolutely love going on strike. People 2:01:03.040 --> 2:01:05.400 are really excited to go on strike. People who people 2:01:05.400 --> 2:01:08.320 whose politics are not like, you know, people whose polities 2:01:08.320 --> 2:01:10.200 are not aligned with the left, really like going on 2:01:10.280 --> 2:01:12.800 strike and are really excited about it. And this is 2:01:12.840 --> 2:01:15.520 something that's happening sort of irrespective of this, there's been 2:01:15.520 --> 2:01:17.480 a bunch of wildcat strikes. This is something that's been 2:01:17.480 --> 2:01:20.400 happening sort of irrespective of like actual union membership, as 2:01:20.440 --> 2:01:21.960 people want to do this. We've also seen sort of 2:01:22.000 --> 2:01:24.760 the great resignation over the last few years of you know, 2:01:24.840 --> 2:01:26.720 what is effectively a massive like part of the reason 2:01:26.760 --> 2:01:29.160 the conditions for labor are like this strong right now 2:01:29.720 --> 2:01:33.000 is because there's been this massive informal strike of people 2:01:33.080 --> 2:01:35.040 just sort of of people, you know, walking off the job, 2:01:35.200 --> 2:01:38.200 like deciding their job fucking sucks and quitting, and that's 2:01:38.240 --> 2:01:41.480 been putting a lot of pressure on employers and you know, 2:01:41.560 --> 2:01:43.600 and as simultaneous this, you know, I think I think 2:01:43.640 --> 2:01:46.440 the reading of this that's more sort of cynical is that, like, 2:01:46.800 --> 2:01:48.960 these people know this, right, they know that people want 2:01:48.960 --> 2:01:51.160 to go on strike, and they're looking at it and 2:01:51.160 --> 2:01:54.320 they're terrified, and their conclusion is like, we have to 2:01:54.360 --> 2:01:57.320 fucking stop, you know, we have to stop with this 2:01:57.360 --> 2:01:59.560 wave of labor militancy before it gets going. Because if 2:01:59.560 --> 2:02:01.840 it gets going, and you know, if you're like, if 2:02:01.840 --> 2:02:04.440 you're you know, like a sort of centrist liberal politician, 2:02:04.520 --> 2:02:07.560 or if you're like a conservative union bureaucrat, like that's 2:02:07.680 --> 2:02:10.760 terrifying for you, then there's you know, there's there's a 2:02:10.800 --> 2:02:13.760 lot of people who have a lot to lose if 2:02:13.960 --> 2:02:17.120 if you know, like if really sort of a president 2:02:17.320 --> 2:02:19.160 wave of labor militancy gets going. 2:02:20.400 --> 2:02:22.880 Yeah, absolutely absolutely. 2:02:23.720 --> 2:02:26.600 You know, when I think of, you know, people in 2:02:26.680 --> 2:02:28.960 wanting to go on strike, I guess I'll touch on 2:02:29.000 --> 2:02:31.760 two things here, which is that you know, at my hub, 2:02:31.760 --> 2:02:34.920 whenever we talk about going on strike there, you know, 2:02:35.560 --> 2:02:37.800 there is a sense that, yes, people really want it, 2:02:37.840 --> 2:02:42.960 and also they're really worried that they aren't going to 2:02:43.000 --> 2:02:46.280 be able to that. Like, you know, we're going to 2:02:46.320 --> 2:02:48.880 get this kind of agreement that most people will want, 2:02:49.080 --> 2:02:52.280 and it's not going to happen, and we've had all 2:02:52.280 --> 2:02:55.040 of this build up and you know, it's kind of 2:02:55.120 --> 2:02:59.160 kind of you know, fall flat. And then you know, 2:02:59.200 --> 2:03:02.839 also I've a fair amount of time on picket lines 2:03:02.880 --> 2:03:06.760 as like a community supporter, and you know, there is 2:03:06.840 --> 2:03:11.480 something incredibly magical about being on strike, you know, like 2:03:11.760 --> 2:03:16.120 there's often just this outpouring of community support for the workers, 2:03:16.280 --> 2:03:20.840 right and workers get to see that their labor is 2:03:21.000 --> 2:03:25.800 extremely valued by the larger community, and I think that 2:03:25.920 --> 2:03:29.440 is really important. I think that builds bonds of solidarity, 2:03:29.480 --> 2:03:31.920 and you get to see the other unions who come 2:03:31.960 --> 2:03:33.880 out and support of your strike, and then you know, 2:03:34.000 --> 2:03:36.840 you go and support them, and then it creates Yeah, 2:03:36.880 --> 2:03:42.600 it creates these bonds that you know aren't really they 2:03:42.680 --> 2:03:47.720 can be achieved without it, but it's just so much 2:03:47.760 --> 2:03:49.680 more bonding. I guess I'm going to use the term 2:03:49.720 --> 2:03:53.120 bonds a lot, but and there really isn't a substitute 2:03:53.200 --> 2:03:56.920 for it. And you know, and then people also they 2:03:56.920 --> 2:04:01.000 get to experience the power that they have as you know, 2:04:01.200 --> 2:04:05.200 as labor right like they be can they realize it's 2:04:05.240 --> 2:04:09.320 like oh wait, no, Like I'm on strike and this 2:04:09.400 --> 2:04:13.600 company is like the shit is hitting the fan for 2:04:13.680 --> 2:04:16.760 them because they don't have us who know how to 2:04:16.840 --> 2:04:21.720 do our jobs in there doing them right. Like you know, 2:04:21.920 --> 2:04:25.440 I was at a picket line for this other company 2:04:27.120 --> 2:04:30.160 a few years back, and like the workers there on 2:04:30.200 --> 2:04:34.000 the line were constantly giving the updates. They'd be like, yeah, man, 2:04:34.120 --> 2:04:37.320 it's wild I heard in there that like, you know, 2:04:37.440 --> 2:04:40.040 the managers are trying to do our jobs and like 2:04:40.720 --> 2:04:43.240 none of what they make is edible and they're throwing 2:04:43.280 --> 2:04:47.720 it all away and like breaking the machines are breaking 2:04:48.000 --> 2:04:51.600 like yep, and so they're one they're seeing that, yes, 2:04:51.760 --> 2:04:55.520 their labor is specific, it has value, it is necessary 2:04:55.640 --> 2:05:00.680 and crucial, and they are getting that community support and 2:05:01.240 --> 2:05:04.640 you know, there's not a lot of other opportunities for 2:05:05.200 --> 2:05:07.160 those realizations to happen. 2:05:08.120 --> 2:05:10.080 So yeah, and I mean this is something that like 2:05:10.360 --> 2:05:13.160 I've literally seen this, like our teachers union. We've talked 2:05:13.160 --> 2:05:14.520 about this a bit on the show, but like our 2:05:14.760 --> 2:05:18.400 local teachers union in Chicago, like got you know, they 2:05:18.400 --> 2:05:20.680 got to reform caucussy and they're not perfect, but you know, 2:05:20.720 --> 2:05:22.880 they're they're much better than what was happening before. And 2:05:23.480 --> 2:05:24.920 you know, and one of the things they do is 2:05:24.960 --> 2:05:26.880 they've they've been on strike a lot of times. Go 2:05:26.920 --> 2:05:28.880 to last about Deck, like decade, a decade, bit over 2:05:28.920 --> 2:05:32.640 a decade, and it changed the city. Like Chicago is 2:05:32.680 --> 2:05:37.000 a you know, was for i mean decades, decades and decades. 2:05:37.040 --> 2:05:42.880 This just like interminable machine run like neoliberal hellhole. And 2:05:43.040 --> 2:05:44.160 you know, I mean I'm not going to say like 2:05:44.240 --> 2:05:46.360 Chicago's like some kind of like you know, like beacon 2:05:46.400 --> 2:05:49.200 of the Left or whatever, but like the city is 2:05:49.320 --> 2:05:51.440 just different after it. And it was just the one 2:05:51.480 --> 2:05:53.520 truck they kept they kept going on Shrek and they 2:05:53.560 --> 2:05:55.840 kept going on the Shrek, and you know, you can 2:05:55.920 --> 2:05:57.680 you can look at the quality of their wins and 2:05:57.720 --> 2:05:59.640 you can sort of like you know, like I mean 2:05:59.680 --> 2:06:00.960 there's a like I know, I mean, like I know 2:06:01.000 --> 2:06:03.200 people who like have quipbals with sort of like exactly 2:06:03.200 --> 2:06:06.120 what happened in the contract negotiations, but like you know, 2:06:06.320 --> 2:06:08.880 they they went on strike multiple times and they won 2:06:09.520 --> 2:06:12.280 and that really and then you know, the every thing 2:06:12.320 --> 2:06:13.880 happened is the thing you were talking about, right, is 2:06:13.920 --> 2:06:15.880 like suddenly you're at these pickets and like the entire 2:06:15.920 --> 2:06:18.000 community is showing up, like everyone's showing up with food, 2:06:18.040 --> 2:06:21.760 Like it changed, it changed the city, and you know, 2:06:21.880 --> 2:06:23.360 and I think this guess is an everything I think 2:06:23.400 --> 2:06:25.680 is important here about and what's you know, sort of 2:06:25.680 --> 2:06:28.800 the potential that being averted is. The interesting thing about 2:06:28.800 --> 2:06:31.080 this strike wave is that we've had a number you know, 2:06:31.080 --> 2:06:33.320 we've we had like the whole we had sort of 2:06:33.360 --> 2:06:35.480 the wildcat teacher strikes in twenty seventeen. We've had a 2:06:35.560 --> 2:06:37.360 couple of a couple of waves of teacher strikes, but 2:06:37.440 --> 2:06:39.240 like most of the strikes that have been happening at 2:06:39.240 --> 2:06:42.760 public sector unions, we haven't had these giant strikes other 2:06:42.840 --> 2:06:46.000 than basically, I mean there's been some right, there's there's 2:06:46.000 --> 2:06:47.640 there's been a lot of strikes in the healthcare sector. 2:06:47.720 --> 2:06:49.960 We haven't had a strike like at this scale in 2:06:50.000 --> 2:06:54.120 the private sector in you know outside basically like the 2:06:54.400 --> 2:06:57.200 Team series and is like the Team Series and like 2:06:57.320 --> 2:06:59.640 the Guild are like the only two big unions on 2:06:59.680 --> 2:07:03.760 that who go on strike like even kind of regularly. 2:07:03.800 --> 2:07:05.640 Even that's like that's like a once in like twenty 2:07:05.720 --> 2:07:09.920 year thing, right, And so I don't know, like I think, 2:07:10.000 --> 2:07:13.640 I think just sort of the the potential of what's 2:07:13.680 --> 2:07:17.200 being lost here is enormous if if what happens is 2:07:17.240 --> 2:07:21.640 that this deal, which is like I'm not great from 2:07:21.640 --> 2:07:23.640 when I've seen it from the initial things. Although again, 2:07:23.760 --> 2:07:25.920 like we still don't fucking know what's in this deal, 2:07:25.960 --> 2:07:28.800 and we're not going to for like a bit at 2:07:28.840 --> 2:07:30.560 like at least until they fucking release the thing. 2:07:31.320 --> 2:07:31.720 I don't know. 2:07:32.920 --> 2:07:34.920 Yeah, I mean obviously, you know, we'll we'll we'll have 2:07:35.080 --> 2:07:39.040 to see, you know, what's what's in that agreement. Yeah, 2:07:39.120 --> 2:07:42.000 but you know, at least just you know, for you know, 2:07:42.080 --> 2:07:45.000 my own views, you know, it's any you know company 2:07:45.280 --> 2:07:47.680 you know that's paying you poverty wages, or you know, 2:07:47.720 --> 2:07:51.440 there's unsafe work conditions and just seems like, well, on principle, 2:07:51.800 --> 2:07:54.920 there needs to be a work stoppage, like that's you know, 2:07:55.400 --> 2:07:57.320 if you're going to treat people that way, that's just 2:07:57.360 --> 2:07:58.080 the result. 2:07:59.000 --> 2:08:01.600 Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. 2:08:01.720 --> 2:08:04.280 Something that I'm like kind of thinking about right now 2:08:04.680 --> 2:08:09.200 is like, so, like the twenty one uh seventy five 2:08:09.240 --> 2:08:11.720 I believe it is for part time workers. You know, 2:08:11.760 --> 2:08:14.960 that is a significant increase from the fifteen fifty, but 2:08:15.000 --> 2:08:17.400 we're just at the beginning of our five year contract. 2:08:17.800 --> 2:08:18.080 Yeah. 2:08:18.280 --> 2:08:20.720 Yeah, you know, like I. 2:08:20.680 --> 2:08:23.400 Feel like, you know, like it's being viewed as like, oh, well, 2:08:23.400 --> 2:08:28.760 that's like okay for right now. It's you know, kind 2:08:28.760 --> 2:08:31.480 of not but it's really just not going to be 2:08:31.520 --> 2:08:35.080 okay in five years when we have to have these 2:08:35.120 --> 2:08:40.040 contract negotiations again. And because we're not starting out with 2:08:40.160 --> 2:08:44.040 a solid twenty five dollars an hour, we're going to 2:08:44.120 --> 2:08:47.080 be playing catch up to what is not really okay 2:08:47.160 --> 2:08:52.960 right now. Like it's just gonna like it's like it's 2:08:53.040 --> 2:08:55.840 just going to keep happening. You know, by the time 2:08:55.880 --> 2:09:00.520 we get to twenty twenty eight, you know, probably get 2:09:00.600 --> 2:09:02.960 up to twenty five dollars an hour. Maybe, but by 2:09:03.000 --> 2:09:05.720 that time, you know, who knows what we're actually going 2:09:05.760 --> 2:09:09.200 to need in order to survive in this economy. Yeah, so, 2:09:09.840 --> 2:09:11.720 you know, I feel like that wage is just not 2:09:12.080 --> 2:09:14.560 it's not proactive enough for what we're going to need 2:09:14.600 --> 2:09:20.000 in the coming years. And you know, in there there 2:09:20.080 --> 2:09:22.880 is stuff about like, you know, wage increases for like 2:09:23.040 --> 2:09:25.760 you know, however long you've been there and stuff like that. 2:09:27.880 --> 2:09:33.160 But yeah, I you know, you know, like I graduated 2:09:33.160 --> 2:09:36.440 from high school in like two thousand and eight, and 2:09:36.520 --> 2:09:39.440 I just feel like the my entire life, the economy 2:09:39.480 --> 2:09:42.200 has just been fucking shitty. And when they tell me 2:09:42.240 --> 2:09:45.720 the economy is great, my finances are still fucking shitty. 2:09:47.280 --> 2:09:50.600 And you know, this is one of the old twenty 2:09:50.640 --> 2:09:54.120 eleven slogans that like, well don't I guess it's also 2:09:54.120 --> 2:09:56.000 two thousand and eight slogan that like, people need to 2:09:56.000 --> 2:09:58.760 fucking remember that when the bank takes your house. GDP 2:09:58.920 --> 2:10:03.840 goes up. The economic indicators that we have are are 2:10:03.880 --> 2:10:06.560 you know, they're they're bushw economic indicators right like they 2:10:06.560 --> 2:10:10.480 are they are. They are designed to measure how well 2:10:10.560 --> 2:10:12.240 capital is being extracted from you. 2:10:12.760 --> 2:10:15.160 Mm hmm, yep, yep, yep, yep. 2:10:17.200 --> 2:10:20.560 Definitely no reflection on our actual you know, day to 2:10:20.640 --> 2:10:24.960 day lives, you know what what our needs are. Yeah, 2:10:25.040 --> 2:10:27.280 and hey, some people made money off of your labor, 2:10:27.400 --> 2:10:31.240 so things are good unless you know you're the labor. 2:10:32.040 --> 2:10:34.920 Yeah, And like you know, I think, I think, and 2:10:34.960 --> 2:10:37.800 everything that happens a lot is like yeah, like you know, 2:10:38.080 --> 2:10:40.320 it is entirely possible that a bunch of people who 2:10:40.320 --> 2:10:42.520 are you know, making like seventy thousand dollars a year 2:10:42.520 --> 2:10:43.400 are fucking doing. 2:10:43.240 --> 2:10:45.160 Great right now, and it's like, well, bully for them, 2:10:45.480 --> 2:10:46.800 like we're fucking not. 2:10:49.080 --> 2:10:52.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, and speaking to you know, 2:10:53.000 --> 2:10:55.360 to the you know what the things you know, look 2:10:55.640 --> 2:10:58.840 five years out, which you know, it seems like, you know, 2:10:58.920 --> 2:11:01.120 things just kind of get exponentially worse. 2:11:01.200 --> 2:11:04.120 You know, I don't know what you know, the environment, 2:11:04.160 --> 2:11:05.720 you know what our climate's going to be. I don't 2:11:05.720 --> 2:11:08.640 know what you know, inflation or food costs, you know 2:11:08.680 --> 2:11:11.840 it's going to be and you know so far, you know, 2:11:11.880 --> 2:11:13.800 i'd need to see the you know what the Tenet 2:11:13.880 --> 2:11:16.600 Agreement has on that market rate adjustment. And then there's 2:11:16.600 --> 2:11:21.360 also the cost of living adjustment too, which at least 2:11:21.560 --> 2:11:23.440 what I believe is, you know it doesn't kick into 2:11:23.480 --> 2:11:25.960 like you've been there for five years, so I guess 2:11:26.160 --> 2:11:29.160 you just aren't living for those first five years. I 2:11:29.200 --> 2:11:29.960 don't know. 2:11:30.920 --> 2:11:34.040 You know that my utilities and my rent waives my 2:11:34.120 --> 2:11:36.960 bills for the first five years that I worked for UPS. 2:11:37.360 --> 2:11:40.400 Someone someone someone, So someone also like, go find the 2:11:40.440 --> 2:11:43.000 statistics on how many people get fired at four years 2:11:43.040 --> 2:11:47.080 and eleven months, Like yeah. 2:11:46.480 --> 2:11:49.400 And that's yeah. I mean that's also when the pension 2:11:49.760 --> 2:11:53.720 uh minimum investment investment time is five years. You know, 2:11:53.760 --> 2:11:55.880 that's also something I've thought about, Well, what happens on 2:11:55.920 --> 2:11:59.240 a four years and eleven months is that when you know, 2:11:59.440 --> 2:12:02.640 now even got a bigger target on my back, it's 2:12:02.680 --> 2:12:04.120 like already a thorn on their side. 2:12:05.320 --> 2:12:07.480 They did the thing I said they were going to do, 2:12:07.520 --> 2:12:10.440 where it says UPS will equip in cab a c 2:12:10.600 --> 2:12:14.320 in all large delivery vehicles, sprinter vans and packaged cars 2:12:14.320 --> 2:12:18.160 purchased after January first, oh, twenty twenty four. Fans are 2:12:18.200 --> 2:12:20.680 getting cars getting two fans in an induction event in 2:12:20.680 --> 2:12:24.560 the cargo compartment, which is good, but also not air conditioning. 2:12:24.960 --> 2:12:27.680 It's not air conditioning and it gets very hot in 2:12:27.720 --> 2:12:31.600 those trailers. And yeah, no, it's like yeah, and all 2:12:31.720 --> 2:12:34.880 large except you know, all things purchased after January first, 2:12:34.880 --> 2:12:35.760 twenty twenty four. 2:12:36.080 --> 2:12:38.720 Yeah, so it's just like, you know, yeah, it's like 2:12:38.720 --> 2:12:41.680 they will start purchasing cars again in like twenty ninety four. 2:12:42.480 --> 2:12:42.839 Yeah. 2:12:43.000 --> 2:12:48.000 Yeah, nothing in there about retrofitting those cars. 2:12:48.600 --> 2:12:50.760 Well I think interesting cars. 2:12:51.320 --> 2:12:54.760 I think they're well, okay, I don't know. This is 2:12:54.800 --> 2:12:57.440 another thing, like it's it's unclear to me exactly what 2:12:57.520 --> 2:13:00.320 a lot of this means because we you know, like 2:13:00.360 --> 2:13:03.520 we we were like we we can't get the actual contract, 2:13:03.880 --> 2:13:11.080 which is yeah, like yeah, so this is we need 2:13:11.120 --> 2:13:13.120 to I guess also like prefaces like this is what 2:13:13.200 --> 2:13:15.520 we're not doing legal analysis of this. This is our 2:13:15.560 --> 2:13:18.600 speculation based on what we're reading. This is this none 2:13:18.640 --> 2:13:25.640 of this constanity's finding legal advice. Yeah, but yeah yeah, 2:13:26.320 --> 2:13:26.680 hey I. 2:13:26.760 --> 2:13:27.320 Just work here. 2:13:28.320 --> 2:13:28.960 Yeah. 2:13:29.000 --> 2:13:33.240 Another thing that I'm like noticing in this contract. So 2:13:33.400 --> 2:13:39.120 another big grievance that was had was the lack of 2:13:39.160 --> 2:13:43.360 full time positions and so like if you want to 2:13:43.360 --> 2:13:46.240 get a full time inside job, you know there is 2:13:46.280 --> 2:13:49.920 a seven to ten year wait list for that, right. 2:13:50.520 --> 2:13:53.040 So this us, this tenetive. 2:13:52.720 --> 2:13:57.480 Agreement stipulates that there will be a creation of seventy 2:13:57.560 --> 2:14:00.480 five hundred new full time teams or jobs that ups 2:14:00.720 --> 2:14:05.200 and the fulfillment of twenty two thousand, five hundred open positions, 2:14:05.880 --> 2:14:08.760 but it doesn't specify if that's going to be for 2:14:08.920 --> 2:14:13.560 inside work or for uh, you know, more more drivers. 2:14:13.720 --> 2:14:17.040 And you know, I have I have epilepsy, So I 2:14:17.080 --> 2:14:21.880 Am not going to be a driver. That's just doesn't 2:14:21.920 --> 2:14:26.200 seem ideal for me. And yeah, I would I would 2:14:26.240 --> 2:14:30.080 like to see some numbers on so that wait list 2:14:30.320 --> 2:14:34.880 is that going down, like, because that's like what I'm 2:14:34.880 --> 2:14:38.280 waiting for is to be able to you know, snag 2:14:38.320 --> 2:14:42.720 one of those full time inside positions, but I don't know. 2:14:42.760 --> 2:14:44.920 And like when you think about, you know, seventy five 2:14:45.040 --> 2:14:48.960 hundred full time positions, it's also worth to keep in 2:14:49.000 --> 2:14:53.160 mind that ups employees three hundred and forty thousand people. 2:14:54.600 --> 2:14:58.480 So it's like yeah, wait, so yeah, so that's a 2:14:58.600 --> 2:14:59.160 two percent. 2:15:00.200 --> 2:15:04.760 Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like two percent. And like admittedly, 2:15:04.920 --> 2:15:07.640 like you know, forty percent of that workforce is already 2:15:07.800 --> 2:15:10.800 like they're full time drivers, but so that's like sixty 2:15:10.800 --> 2:15:14.080 percent of that is part timers. And you know, I'm 2:15:14.080 --> 2:15:18.640 not going to make anyone do more math but seventy 2:15:18.640 --> 2:15:21.560 five hundred for sixty percent of three hundred and forty 2:15:21.600 --> 2:15:22.760 thousand people. 2:15:23.040 --> 2:15:23.280 Is. 2:15:25.120 --> 2:15:28.280 It's not as exciting as just seeing that number. 2:15:28.240 --> 2:15:33.560 Yeah, right, which is like a shook, Like. 2:15:35.320 --> 2:15:38.800 And this goes into something you know I've noticed, you know, 2:15:38.960 --> 2:15:42.480 with you know, coworkers, which is always talking about you know, 2:15:43.200 --> 2:15:45.880 like you know, we need more hours and that you 2:15:45.880 --> 2:15:49.120 know that that is true to a degree. You know, 2:15:49.200 --> 2:15:52.600 really though it's like, well we need more pay, you know, 2:15:52.760 --> 2:15:54.920 I you know, I think that's you know, would be 2:15:54.920 --> 2:15:56.720 a sign you know, when it can be you know, 2:15:56.840 --> 2:15:59.840 like a really strong union is that you know, we 2:15:59.840 --> 2:16:02.880 can even to say, yeah, you know what, maybe people 2:16:02.920 --> 2:16:05.880 shouldn't be working seventy hour weeks. Yeah no, maybe we 2:16:05.880 --> 2:16:09.000 should cap that at thirty with you know PT pay 2:16:09.600 --> 2:16:13.040 that you know pays like full time. But of course 2:16:13.040 --> 2:16:14.880 you know we're not there. You know, we need these 2:16:14.960 --> 2:16:17.840 jobs that can actually provide you know, definitely not going 2:16:17.880 --> 2:16:20.160 to knock that, but you know, would definitely like to 2:16:20.200 --> 2:16:22.560 see that overall shift kind of just you know in 2:16:22.600 --> 2:16:25.640 our culture of you know, we don't need to work 2:16:25.840 --> 2:16:27.960 more to have our needs met. 2:16:28.720 --> 2:16:31.080 I think it's also sort of important to understand about 2:16:31.640 --> 2:16:34.520 ups jobs. It's like you're fucking destroying your body. So 2:16:34.600 --> 2:16:36.520 especially if you're like if you're if you're if you're 2:16:36.560 --> 2:16:39.360 one of the people shorting packages like you are lifting, 2:16:40.160 --> 2:16:43.800 like you were lifting like thousands of packages a day. 2:16:44.040 --> 2:16:46.720 These things can weigh up to like eighty fucking pounds. 2:16:47.160 --> 2:16:48.840 They can weigh up to one hundred and fifty. 2:16:48.800 --> 2:16:50.119 One hundred fifty Jesus Christ, never. 2:16:50.120 --> 2:16:53.800 Mind, Okay, one fifty is the other limit. Seventy pounds 2:16:53.840 --> 2:16:59.520 is where you know you can do team lift. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 2:16:59.560 --> 2:17:02.199 I know. Talking to a feeder driver recently was talking 2:17:02.200 --> 2:17:04.560 about having a you know, two of those trailers hooked 2:17:04.640 --> 2:17:08.039 up and weighing in at something like seventeen thousand pounds 2:17:08.040 --> 2:17:11.680 on the scale. Jesus Obviously you know that's the cabin 2:17:11.879 --> 2:17:14.879 engine included, I believe, but you know, that's not my world. 2:17:14.879 --> 2:17:17.320 I'm kind of completely unfamiliar with that side of things. 2:17:17.320 --> 2:17:20.640 But still, yeah, it's like a lot of weight, you know, 2:17:21.240 --> 2:17:25.879 because we're carrying so many packages every day. Yeah, it's 2:17:25.879 --> 2:17:27.600 a lot of wear and tear on the body. 2:17:28.120 --> 2:17:31.359 And management is always pushing you to move faster too. Yeah, 2:17:31.480 --> 2:17:37.480 Like I had a u a worker who is a 2:17:37.480 --> 2:17:40.680 feeder driver for another hub, and she was telling me 2:17:41.000 --> 2:17:45.360 that a supervisor there was telling newly hired part time 2:17:45.400 --> 2:17:49.320 employees that it's actually safer to work faster. 2:17:49.080 --> 2:17:50.119 Instead of slower. 2:17:51.200 --> 2:17:55.480 What. Yes, Yeah, that makes no fucking sense, no fucking 2:17:55.520 --> 2:17:58.080 sense at all. And like one of the reasons they 2:17:58.080 --> 2:18:00.440 have an incentive to make us work really fast, which 2:18:00.480 --> 2:18:02.959 is that the full time soups get a parts per 2:18:03.000 --> 2:18:08.800 hour bonus, uh, depending on how fast we go. So 2:18:09.400 --> 2:18:12.879 you know, they will harass you into working faster even 2:18:12.920 --> 2:18:15.560 though you know we're moving these thousands of fucking packages. 2:18:16.040 --> 2:18:19.840 They'll harass us to move faster so that they get 2:18:19.879 --> 2:18:24.800 a bonus off of the packages that we handled and moved. 2:18:25.840 --> 2:18:27.720 I mean, like this last week in the you know, 2:18:27.800 --> 2:18:30.160 I think it was like mid nineties outside or something. 2:18:30.760 --> 2:18:32.560 You know, we're not getting Oh do you need water? 2:18:32.600 --> 2:18:34.960 Do you need to rest? It was, oh, you're not 2:18:35.320 --> 2:18:38.280 working fast enough. Like your packages per hours you know, 2:18:38.400 --> 2:18:41.120 too low. You know, it's that kind of constant you know, 2:18:41.680 --> 2:18:44.920 harassment or you know maybe sometimes like you know, I know, 2:18:45.000 --> 2:18:47.600 my supervisor is a little bit more subtle about it, 2:18:47.720 --> 2:18:51.120 you know, versus you know outright being like, oh, you 2:18:51.240 --> 2:18:53.440 need to work faster because That's the thing is in 2:18:53.480 --> 2:18:56.240 our contract. You know, there's no kind of productivity quota. 2:18:56.640 --> 2:18:59.640 You know, we work safe, we follow the methods. That's 2:18:59.680 --> 2:19:02.520 something I really try and you know, really focus on 2:19:02.560 --> 2:19:05.320 because you know, ideally, yeah, I want to you know, 2:19:05.360 --> 2:19:09.080 I would like to be here longer. Yeah, silly enough 2:19:09.480 --> 2:19:12.680 as that is for a job with terrible conditions, but 2:19:13.240 --> 2:19:17.160 you know, also it's a job that and that Yeah, 2:19:17.160 --> 2:19:19.600 that's the big thing. And it's like, I don't you know, 2:19:19.640 --> 2:19:22.160 what's a pinch you're going to do if you know, 2:19:22.280 --> 2:19:25.080 I'm you know, have some kind of you know, grave 2:19:25.160 --> 2:19:31.320 injury from from the job pension but still, yeah, you're 2:19:31.360 --> 2:19:32.240 dead with heat exhaustion. 2:19:32.360 --> 2:19:33.879 Like's like, well a pension doesn't pay out, Like. 2:19:35.400 --> 2:19:41.680 Yeah, it's just it's just yeah, it's wild. It's wild, man. 2:19:41.800 --> 2:19:44.760 I am going to be really excited to see how this, 2:19:45.080 --> 2:19:46.040 how this smoke goes. 2:19:47.160 --> 2:19:49.280 Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting day at work. 2:19:50.200 --> 2:19:55.240 Yeah yeah, yeah, I'm sure that I'll have those people 2:19:55.320 --> 2:19:57.280 that know that I know about the union come up 2:19:57.280 --> 2:19:58.920 and talk to me to ask me what I think 2:19:58.959 --> 2:20:02.720 about it U because I'm the only person they know 2:20:02.840 --> 2:20:05.240 that knows anything about the union. Because as we talked 2:20:05.240 --> 2:20:11.519 about earlier. Union reps just are barely ever there. Yeah, 2:20:11.760 --> 2:20:17.240 and yeah, we'll see, we'll see. Man, that's I'm just 2:20:17.280 --> 2:20:19.880 now really thinking about that. Seventy five hundred full time 2:20:20.000 --> 2:20:24.520 jobs three percent, two or three percent, depending on the 2:20:24.560 --> 2:20:25.680 metric that you're looking at. 2:20:26.520 --> 2:20:29.080 Yeah, absolutely, I mean not enough. 2:20:29.600 --> 2:20:37.400 No, no, no, wild wild, And now that addis is 2:20:37.400 --> 2:20:40.920 a at best, a delayed opportunity for a strike to 2:20:40.920 --> 2:20:45.160 build those as we talked about earlier, those necessary, necessary 2:20:45.240 --> 2:20:47.000 muscles that need to be exercised. 2:20:47.160 --> 2:20:50.920 Yeah, and that's at best. You know, we might have 2:20:51.080 --> 2:20:57.000 we might have missed it. Yeah, yeah, well we'll see, 2:20:57.080 --> 2:20:59.440 we'll see. 2:20:59.680 --> 2:21:02.000 Yeah that that fucking sucks. 2:21:03.959 --> 2:21:07.680 Yeah, what a curveball to get for the podcast. 2:21:10.760 --> 2:21:12.600 Well, honestly, unless you have anything else you want to 2:21:12.600 --> 2:21:14.959 talk about. Yeah, I actually going to wrap up this 2:21:15.040 --> 2:21:18.280 incredibly chaotic episode that it could happen here, in which 2:21:18.480 --> 2:21:22.040 we discovered the chaos of a not open bargaining process 2:21:22.240 --> 2:21:24.320 and what that looks like life what air? 2:21:25.720 --> 2:21:28.640 Yeah? Yeah, exciting times. 2:21:28.800 --> 2:21:31.760 But yeah, I think I think I'm good. I feel 2:21:31.760 --> 2:21:34.680 like I hit all my notes and some that I 2:21:34.720 --> 2:21:37.960 wasn't even planning on hitting because we had this new information. 2:21:38.160 --> 2:21:40.720 So right, good lord. 2:21:40.879 --> 2:21:43.480 I was like, it couldn't have been like an hour earlier, 2:21:43.600 --> 2:21:58.160 so I could have at least oh my gosh, Well, 2:21:58.200 --> 2:22:00.640 you know you can join us next for the live 2:22:00.680 --> 2:22:03.760 analysis of the over three hundred page contract. 2:22:04.480 --> 2:22:09.119 That we got, like just the highlights of Oh. 2:22:09.320 --> 2:22:11.320 Yeah, but thank you to you both for thank you 2:22:11.320 --> 2:22:14.600 both for coming on. And yeah, I guess I guess 2:22:14.600 --> 2:22:16.240 if the strike happens, we can talk to you again 2:22:16.440 --> 2:22:18.520 or maybe also if it doesn't, I don't know. 2:22:19.440 --> 2:22:25.200 Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely thank you for having us on. Yeah, 2:22:25.200 --> 2:22:27.240 I love to stay in contact to talk about if 2:22:27.240 --> 2:22:29.760 we do go on strike or you know, if we don't, 2:22:30.280 --> 2:22:32.520 would love I would absolutely be open to a follow 2:22:32.600 --> 2:22:32.959 up on that. 2:22:33.160 --> 2:22:35.840 And yeah, okay, so where can people go if they 2:22:35.879 --> 2:22:39.680 want to support like the strike or also potentially the 2:22:39.760 --> 2:22:42.200 rake and file workers who are trying to like make 2:22:42.240 --> 2:22:44.920 sure it happens. Yeah, I would say. 2:22:44.760 --> 2:22:51.440 That a good place to follow, or like a good 2:22:52.879 --> 2:22:56.520 source I guess to follow would be to follow the 2:22:56.840 --> 2:23:00.520 Team Service for a Democratic Union. If there is going 2:23:00.560 --> 2:23:04.480 to be any movement that is in the union that's organized, 2:23:04.520 --> 2:23:07.720 it's going to be coming from them most likely, So 2:23:07.800 --> 2:23:10.680 they are the better version. I would say to follow 2:23:10.800 --> 2:23:14.760 on that front. And of course you can still follow 2:23:15.440 --> 2:23:20.600 the regular uh teamsters page and stuff like that to 2:23:20.640 --> 2:23:25.280 see what's going on. But yeah, yeah, it's gonna be weird. 2:23:25.040 --> 2:23:27.200 I don't know what the TDU line is going to 2:23:27.520 --> 2:23:30.200 is going to be on this, so it's like. 2:23:30.200 --> 2:23:33.039 We'll see and you know, hopefully, you know, if we 2:23:33.120 --> 2:23:36.960 can strike obviously, Yeah, come out to yeah, support your 2:23:37.000 --> 2:23:40.600 fellow workers, and you too will also be able to coordinate, 2:23:40.800 --> 2:23:46.000 you know with rank and file on union reps. You 2:23:46.040 --> 2:23:47.840 know what kind of needs there might be out on 2:23:47.840 --> 2:23:49.119 the picket line. 2:23:49.360 --> 2:23:49.600 Yep. 2:23:50.200 --> 2:23:52.959 Yeah, also, and yeah, thank you very much for for 2:23:53.080 --> 2:23:53.760 having us. 2:23:54.320 --> 2:23:56.760 Yeah, thank you for coming on. Yeah, this has been 2:23:56.840 --> 2:24:01.480 nicking happen here, go on strike. Don't let your leadership 2:24:01.520 --> 2:24:04.440 tell you not to go and strike. Simply do the 2:24:04.600 --> 2:24:07.280 thing and organize so you could do it again. 2:24:23.120 --> 2:24:27.840 Ah, it could happen here. A podcast that is right 2:24:27.879 --> 2:24:31.600 now happening in your ear. It could happen a year. 2:24:31.680 --> 2:24:34.800 That's what we should call it. Garrison. We're changing the name. 2:24:35.800 --> 2:24:41.640 We're rebranding our valuable valuable titles, uh completely moving moving 2:24:41.760 --> 2:24:45.280 overnight to a whole new thing based on a whim you. 2:24:45.240 --> 2:24:47.240 Know, gam bitzer. 2:24:49.760 --> 2:24:52.440 Uh yeah, this is a this has been a fun week. 2:24:52.480 --> 2:24:54.560 We're all laughing a little bit at Elon Musk. But 2:24:54.600 --> 2:24:57.600 we have something serious to talk about today, and that 2:24:57.920 --> 2:25:03.480 is everybody's favorite fascist governor, Ron DeSantis. Garrison. You and 2:25:03.520 --> 2:25:06.640 I spent just way too much time last week talking 2:25:06.680 --> 2:25:10.480 about meetball Ron, and now now we're back. Now we're 2:25:10.480 --> 2:25:14.080 back because he's he keeps meatballing meetball. Ron is is 2:25:14.120 --> 2:25:14.959 ballin and meeting. 2:25:16.120 --> 2:25:19.440 Yeah, so we wrapped up like a like a two 2:25:19.480 --> 2:25:25.320 part episode on Ron Desandres's use of Fashi rave asthetics, 2:25:25.720 --> 2:25:29.120 and then like two days later, the funniest thing happened, 2:25:31.160 --> 2:25:35.320 uh where he just decided to basically basically post Son 2:25:35.400 --> 2:25:38.240 and Rounds. So we're gonna we're gonna get to that. 2:25:39.120 --> 2:25:41.119 But first there's a whole bunch of other information that's 2:25:41.160 --> 2:25:44.560 come out these these past like really three days that 2:25:44.640 --> 2:25:47.120 have kind of that are actually giving more context to 2:25:47.240 --> 2:25:50.920 what's going on at the DeSantis campaign because stuff doesn't 2:25:50.920 --> 2:25:52.840 look too good. Actually, you know, he he kind of 2:25:52.879 --> 2:25:57.360 looks like he's losing everything as he slowly watches it 2:25:57.400 --> 2:26:02.280 all crumble. So let's see, let's start by talking about 2:26:02.280 --> 2:26:05.760 everyone's favorite topic campaign finances. I know this is what 2:26:06.120 --> 2:26:07.800 everyone tunes in to listen to. 2:26:08.400 --> 2:26:10.519 Yes, we love campaign finances. 2:26:10.840 --> 2:26:14.279 Yeah, so last week the public finally got a glimpse 2:26:14.320 --> 2:26:19.000 at DeSantis's campaign finances. The financial disclosures showed that DeSantis 2:26:19.040 --> 2:26:22.959 had about twice as much staff as Donald Trump and 2:26:23.640 --> 2:26:24.560 as of last week. 2:26:24.680 --> 2:26:27.520 Yeah, Morrison, you just said that, and I imagine in 2:26:27.560 --> 2:26:29.320 my head for a second that you were referring to 2:26:29.360 --> 2:26:32.360 the amount of staff infections he's had versus Donald Trump. 2:26:32.440 --> 2:26:35.400 That's not true, though, Trump's definitely had more staff. 2:26:35.640 --> 2:26:38.040 There's almost no way, yeah, that Trump is not leading 2:26:38.080 --> 2:26:41.560 in the staff infections category. Please, I'm sorry to itterrrupt. 2:26:42.800 --> 2:26:47.119 But as of last week, the Florida governor had already 2:26:47.200 --> 2:26:51.840 spent about forty percent of the twenty million dollars fundraised 2:26:51.879 --> 2:26:56.400 from April to June of twenty twenty three, So the 2:26:56.440 --> 2:27:00.280 campaign's suspending rate was averaging more than two hundred hundred 2:27:00.320 --> 2:27:03.560 and twelve thousand dollars per day, which is an astronomical 2:27:03.640 --> 2:27:07.480 cost for a campaign for someone like running for president. 2:27:07.560 --> 2:27:08.840 Basically for the first. 2:27:08.680 --> 2:27:13.200 Time this far out too from the season proper hit. 2:27:13.360 --> 2:27:18.119 Yeah, it's absolutely absurd. The inflated number of staff heavy 2:27:18.240 --> 2:27:21.160 use of private jets and luxury event venues has his 2:27:21.280 --> 2:27:25.840 campaign essentially just burning through cash and with very little 2:27:25.879 --> 2:27:28.279 seeming to come of it in terms of positive poll numbers. 2:27:28.879 --> 2:27:30.840 So another thing that they've. 2:27:30.640 --> 2:27:33.520 Gained maybe a point or so on Trump over the 2:27:33.600 --> 2:27:34.439 last year. 2:27:34.800 --> 2:27:39.200 Yeah, after spending two hundred thousand dollars per day for 2:27:39.280 --> 2:27:42.720 the past like four months. Another thing that these financial 2:27:42.720 --> 2:27:48.280 disclosures exposed is DeSantis's heavy dependence on high contributors. So 2:27:49.080 --> 2:27:53.080 just just about fifteen percent of fundraising contributions came from 2:27:53.080 --> 2:27:56.200 donors who gave less than two hundred dollars, and the vast, 2:27:56.320 --> 2:28:00.200 vast majority of DeSantis's money has come from donors who 2:28:00.200 --> 2:28:03.480 gave the legal maximum of three three hundred dollars in 2:28:03.520 --> 2:28:06.240 the primary, which also means that those who gave that 2:28:06.560 --> 2:28:09.640 can cannot contribute any more money either. So he's running 2:28:09.680 --> 2:28:12.520 out of people that are actually able to fund his operation. 2:28:13.200 --> 2:28:16.080 Yeah, and it's worth noting he does have a super pack. 2:28:16.160 --> 2:28:18.039 You are not limited in how much you can donate 2:28:18.080 --> 2:28:21.760 to a super pack, but super packs cannot spend money 2:28:21.840 --> 2:28:25.360 on the same things as general campaign funds, right, Like, 2:28:25.680 --> 2:28:27.959 there are limitations in what you can use that on. 2:28:28.000 --> 2:28:30.920 So this is actually a logistical problem for him that 2:28:31.000 --> 2:28:32.920 he has maxed out his donor base. 2:28:33.560 --> 2:28:37.400 Yeah, and The New York Times has reported that future 2:28:37.720 --> 2:28:41.800 like large prospective donors have been spooked by DeSantis' sliding 2:28:41.800 --> 2:28:44.800 poll numbers and they may be less willing to invest 2:28:44.920 --> 2:28:49.000 in what's looking like a losing battle. So to combat 2:28:49.080 --> 2:28:53.520 these swelling campaign expenses, including two hundred and seventy nine 2:28:53.560 --> 2:28:58.080 thousand dollars at the four seasons in Miami, DeSantis's Tallahassee 2:28:58.080 --> 2:29:02.240 based campaign has began undercoing massive cuts to campaign staff 2:29:02.320 --> 2:29:06.760 this past week. Previously, DeSantis had upwards of ninety people 2:29:06.800 --> 2:29:10.480 on payroll, but just this month they've eliminated thirty eight 2:29:10.640 --> 2:29:13.880 jobs in a variety of departments, cutting more than one 2:29:14.080 --> 2:29:18.520 third of his payroll. DeSantis' cutbacks are nearly equal to 2:29:18.600 --> 2:29:22.800 the size of Trump's entire twenty twenty four campaign staff. Dessentus' 2:29:22.920 --> 2:29:26.440 campaign manager Grenera Pek said in a statement I believe 2:29:26.920 --> 2:29:31.120 late last week quote following a top to bottom review 2:29:31.160 --> 2:29:35.000 of our organization, we've taken additional aggressive steps to streamline 2:29:35.040 --> 2:29:38.080 operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to 2:29:38.160 --> 2:29:41.959 win this primary and defeat Joe Biden. So that was 2:29:42.240 --> 2:29:45.400 their little statement accompanying the news of firing almost forty 2:29:45.440 --> 2:29:48.879 people from their campaign. According to The New York Times, 2:29:48.920 --> 2:29:53.400 advertisers are quote promising to reorient the DeSantis candidacy as 2:29:53.480 --> 2:29:57.560 a quote unquote insurgent run and remake it into a 2:29:57.640 --> 2:30:02.760 quote unquote leaner, meaner operation. So this is the new 2:30:02.760 --> 2:30:05.560 strategy that they're trying to do, is instead of having 2:30:05.680 --> 2:30:09.960 ninety people on staff in a largely ineffectual strategy, have 2:30:10.160 --> 2:30:12.720 a more insurgent run with a smaller number of people. 2:30:14.000 --> 2:30:16.520 But in addition to the dozens of staff members who've 2:30:16.520 --> 2:30:19.880 been let go this July, to senior advisors have also 2:30:19.959 --> 2:30:24.320 departed this month to work for an outside pro DeSantis nonprofit. 2:30:24.840 --> 2:30:28.039 One of these senior advisors, who was supposed to oversee 2:30:28.080 --> 2:30:32.680 the campaign's television messaging, voluntarily left quote as the reality 2:30:33.040 --> 2:30:37.199 of a disappearing advertising budget set in. So these these 2:30:37.240 --> 2:30:42.440 two more more kind of seasoned Republican advisors saw what 2:30:42.480 --> 2:30:45.560 was happening in the campaign, and they're still pro DeSantis, 2:30:45.600 --> 2:30:48.520 but they believe they can be more effective by working 2:30:48.560 --> 2:30:53.119 from outside of the actual campaign. That's so funny, which 2:30:53.160 --> 2:30:57.160 is not a great sign for DeSantis's internal internal team 2:30:57.200 --> 2:31:00.480 here if you have people like who's still like you, 2:31:00.560 --> 2:31:02.920 but they just can't work for you because you're doing such. 2:31:02.800 --> 2:31:03.440 A bad job. 2:31:05.480 --> 2:31:08.400 Uh so decidus. His team is now telegraphing a plan 2:31:08.440 --> 2:31:11.880 to engage with mainstream media that in the way that 2:31:11.920 --> 2:31:15.640 they have not previously done because they've he's so far 2:31:15.800 --> 2:31:18.439 kind of scornfully avoided it, as we've talked about previously. 2:31:19.280 --> 2:31:23.320 And they're calling this new strategy the DeSantis is Everywhere approach, 2:31:23.640 --> 2:31:27.480 which is a good Jesus Christ bad name for strategy. 2:31:28.800 --> 2:31:33.120 The part of the problem, Garrison, I don't know how to, like, 2:31:33.160 --> 2:31:35.320 I can't like prove this the way that we prove, 2:31:35.400 --> 2:31:37.840 you know, when we're when we're tracing back the ideological 2:31:37.920 --> 2:31:40.039 roots of like a lot of our modern fascists. But 2:31:41.200 --> 2:31:43.440 what I what I believe in my heart is that 2:31:43.720 --> 2:31:46.879 so many of these very young people on the extreme 2:31:46.959 --> 2:31:50.959 right who are who are driving this campaign like just 2:31:51.160 --> 2:31:54.400 want to be villains from a bad late nineties early 2:31:54.440 --> 2:31:56.960 two thousands movie. They want to be they want to 2:31:57.000 --> 2:32:00.000 be the bad guy in like the fucking super villain 2:32:00.280 --> 2:32:03.640 hero movie. Right, Like that's you don't you don't say 2:32:03.640 --> 2:32:05.960 that about a guy who's good like this. You wouldn't 2:32:06.080 --> 2:32:07.880 like the Biden campaign. If they came to Joe and 2:32:07.879 --> 2:32:10.120 we're like, we want to do a Biden is everywhere thing, 2:32:10.200 --> 2:32:12.400 he'd be like, now that sounds kind of creepy. Guys 2:32:12.440 --> 2:32:13.880 like I already got a little bit of a problem 2:32:13.920 --> 2:32:15.840 with that, what with a hair sniff, and I don't 2:32:15.840 --> 2:32:18.520 really want to really want to jump on that train. 2:32:18.840 --> 2:32:20.920 You know, Like it definitely has the vibes of like 2:32:21.040 --> 2:32:24.120 zoomers who grew up watching like late nineties animated and 2:32:24.160 --> 2:32:26.600 superhero cartoons who are trying to like it. 2:32:26.680 --> 2:32:28.160 Yes, we're trying. 2:32:27.959 --> 2:32:32.120 To emulate that for some reason. There is one one 2:32:32.200 --> 2:32:34.680 really funny quote from The Times that that I will 2:32:34.720 --> 2:32:39.000 read because because it quotes like internal sources that that 2:32:39.000 --> 2:32:42.360 I don't have access to. But anyway, quote one person 2:32:42.480 --> 2:32:46.119 close to mister DeSantis, who requested anonymity to speak candidly 2:32:46.160 --> 2:32:49.200 about a candidate whom the person still supports, said the 2:32:49.200 --> 2:32:53.000 governor had experienced quote unquote a challenging learning curve that 2:32:53.040 --> 2:32:55.920 has left him quote unquote a little bit jarred. 2:32:58.040 --> 2:33:01.800 So does sound like a six year old who's like 2:33:02.320 --> 2:33:05.360 not quite progressing fast enough. In the reading where they're 2:33:05.360 --> 2:33:07.440 like maybe we need to try teaching him another way, 2:33:07.840 --> 2:33:10.199 Like we'll get out the different colored books. 2:33:10.080 --> 2:33:15.200 Like, yeah, so's he seems to have a rough adjustment 2:33:15.240 --> 2:33:18.920 period to campaigning in just more than one state and 2:33:18.959 --> 2:33:23.160 having an actual like opponent to go up against. Also 2:33:23.200 --> 2:33:25.520 like an opponent who's like actually a good who's like 2:33:25.720 --> 2:33:30.560 good at being like a politician. Yeah, so yeah, a 2:33:30.680 --> 2:33:31.760 challenging learning curve. 2:33:31.800 --> 2:33:33.720 Indeed, I might I. 2:33:33.720 --> 2:33:37.240 Might specify I think actually DeSantis is a lot better 2:33:37.280 --> 2:33:41.240 as being a politician than Donald Trump. But that's not 2:33:41.360 --> 2:33:42.480 what the competition is. 2:33:42.760 --> 2:33:47.119 Yeah, Destus is better at being like an effective like governor. 2:33:47.760 --> 2:33:49.360 H He's better. 2:33:49.520 --> 2:33:53.320 He's better at the machinery of politics, yes, whereas Trump 2:33:54.080 --> 2:33:57.599 is better at holding power within the GOP. 2:33:57.720 --> 2:33:59.119 Yeah, and being like a showman. 2:33:59.680 --> 2:34:01.320 Yea, we will. 2:34:01.320 --> 2:34:04.560 We will talk more about some uh some actually relatively 2:34:04.600 --> 2:34:06.800 breaking news regarding the de Santas campaign. 2:34:07.200 --> 2:34:09.959 Shortly for this, I just saw this before we got. 2:34:09.800 --> 2:34:14.680 On short shortly after this at break. Okay, we are 2:34:14.720 --> 2:34:17.160 we are back. So a lot has happened the past 2:34:17.240 --> 2:34:20.040 two days, A lot has happened the past two hours actually, 2:34:21.160 --> 2:34:23.160 but we're we're gonna have to work our way there. 2:34:24.400 --> 2:34:29.280 The first bit of news that was kind of both 2:34:29.800 --> 2:34:35.360 It was both confirming my suspicions and in very a 2:34:35.440 --> 2:34:37.280 very interesting piece of news in the first place, is 2:34:37.320 --> 2:34:41.240 that that fast Wave inspired kind of homophobic Pride Month 2:34:41.320 --> 2:34:45.240 video that we talked about in our last Dysantis fash 2:34:45.280 --> 2:34:50.280 Wave episode. It turns out to be slightly more self 2:34:50.320 --> 2:34:53.800 inflicted than what than what at least I said in 2:34:53.840 --> 2:34:55.720 the episode, because I didn't want to make claims that 2:34:55.720 --> 2:34:59.520 I couldn't back up. Because we have we have some 2:34:59.680 --> 2:35:03.080 new new information regarding this video. I'm gonna I'm going 2:35:03.160 --> 2:35:07.280 to quote from this this article in the Times quote 2:35:07.520 --> 2:35:11.800 a Dissanta's campaign aid had originally produced the video internally, 2:35:12.240 --> 2:35:14.920 passing it off to an outside supporter to post it 2:35:15.000 --> 2:35:18.560 first and making it appear as if it was generated independently. 2:35:18.800 --> 2:35:22.600 According to a person with knowledge of the incident, so 2:35:23.080 --> 2:35:25.879 this video turned out to be actually be made in house. 2:35:26.040 --> 2:35:28.600 This actually was made by someone who was working for 2:35:28.920 --> 2:35:34.400 Rondasantis as as we speculated it initially, but we couldn't 2:35:34.400 --> 2:35:36.360 really like say for sure because it was it was 2:35:36.400 --> 2:35:39.560 posted first on a third party account. 2:35:39.400 --> 2:35:41.879 Specifically the guy who was the one who shared it 2:35:41.920 --> 2:35:42.920 as the dude who made it. 2:35:43.560 --> 2:35:45.520 No, that is that is for this next video we're 2:35:45.520 --> 2:35:49.800 going to talk about. Yeah, the the homophobic one was 2:35:49.800 --> 2:35:53.119 was shared by this this this proto Santas account called 2:35:53.160 --> 2:35:57.080 Proud Elephant, who had a corresponding telegram channel. This was 2:35:57.120 --> 2:36:00.720 the guy who posted the first homophobic meme one. But yeah, 2:36:00.760 --> 2:36:03.680 so we found out Sunday night that it was actually 2:36:03.959 --> 2:36:06.640 made by someone at the Dasantas campaign, which kind of 2:36:08.600 --> 2:36:14.039 justified a lot of our suspicions about DeSantis employing staff 2:36:14.040 --> 2:36:16.360 of zoomers who don't actually understand how to win a 2:36:16.360 --> 2:36:19.720 political election and are more interested in just creating fascist memes, 2:36:21.320 --> 2:36:23.680 which is seems to be not a very effective strategy 2:36:23.720 --> 2:36:29.400 for DeSantis so far. So again, just the day that 2:36:29.480 --> 2:36:32.360 this news broke that that the video was actually made 2:36:32.400 --> 2:36:35.680 in a house, another fash wave of inspired video, but 2:36:35.800 --> 2:36:40.080 with much much more overt Nazi imagery, was shared online 2:36:40.160 --> 2:36:44.960 by a Dysantis campaign staffer. I'm Robert. Have you seen 2:36:44.959 --> 2:36:45.360 this video? 2:36:46.360 --> 2:36:49.119 Yes? Okay, so I'm the Sun and Rad video. 2:36:49.400 --> 2:36:51.800 Yes, so we don't. We don't have to watch it here, 2:36:51.840 --> 2:36:55.200 but I will. I will give a description of it 2:36:55.280 --> 2:36:57.800 for for the people listening, because also we should probably 2:36:57.800 --> 2:37:00.360 shouldn't be sharing these things like everywhere on on like 2:37:00.400 --> 2:37:02.520 Twitter and stuff anyway, Like it's not it's not a 2:37:02.520 --> 2:37:04.920 great idea. 2:37:03.080 --> 2:37:03.160 But. 2:37:04.959 --> 2:37:07.360 It's not going to make you happier help you in 2:37:07.400 --> 2:37:11.360 any way. To see this, it's just like it's surprising. 2:37:11.560 --> 2:37:13.840 I will say that I was surprised to see how 2:37:13.879 --> 2:37:17.879 fascy it was, to see how like explicitly accelerationist mash 2:37:17.879 --> 2:37:21.120 shooter fascy it was. Yes, this is like christ Church 2:37:21.240 --> 2:37:21.840 kind of Yes. 2:37:22.640 --> 2:37:24.880 Yeah, so we're not going to share it, but it 2:37:25.280 --> 2:37:27.440 is useful to know what's in it. So I did 2:37:28.040 --> 2:37:30.720 write a pretty in depth description of this video here. 2:37:30.800 --> 2:37:33.920 So this video was posted on Sunday, July twenty third. 2:37:34.040 --> 2:37:38.199 It's about seventy seconds long. It plays over a Meg 2:37:38.360 --> 2:37:42.280 Myers cover of the song Running Up the Hill, which was. 2:37:42.240 --> 2:37:44.240 Made you know recent Wait, isn't that the one that 2:37:44.320 --> 2:37:47.320 was the one that the new season of Stranger Things 2:37:47.320 --> 2:37:50.000 a while back, like it brought back to the main. 2:37:50.080 --> 2:37:53.040 Possibly it's it is It is a Kate Bush original. 2:37:53.320 --> 2:37:55.920 This one is is a more like electronic cover of 2:37:55.959 --> 2:37:58.640 the song. Yes, it's talking about like you know, like 2:37:58.680 --> 2:38:03.039 a like a trying to like ask God to help 2:38:03.080 --> 2:38:05.760 you with certain things. Blah bla blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway, 2:38:06.320 --> 2:38:09.600 it starts with the doomer wojack sitting at a computer 2:38:09.720 --> 2:38:13.440 looking at headlines about the ineffectiveness of Trump's border wall, 2:38:13.640 --> 2:38:19.240 unfulfilled anti immigration policies, and Trump's pro COVID vaccine statements. 2:38:19.280 --> 2:38:22.280 So I guess we should probably talk about what a 2:38:22.320 --> 2:38:25.600 wojack is in case someone is unfamiliar. If you've ever 2:38:25.640 --> 2:38:27.680 spent any amount of time on the Internet, you've probably 2:38:27.720 --> 2:38:31.720 seen memes with kind of crudely drawn like human faces 2:38:31.760 --> 2:38:36.199 and heads. These are called wojack memes. They're very popular 2:38:36.959 --> 2:38:40.760 in like political spheres. They kind of kind of rose 2:38:40.800 --> 2:38:43.560 to prominence on four Chat and spread spread out from there. 2:38:43.959 --> 2:38:47.720 Everyone kind of uses them. Nowadays they're pretty common, but 2:38:48.280 --> 2:38:51.480 there's a few specific like wojack characters, like the chad 2:38:51.640 --> 2:38:54.200 is one. One of the more popular ones is the 2:38:54.400 --> 2:38:59.760 doomer wojack, which is someone who has taken the black pill, 2:38:59.800 --> 2:39:02.840 so to speak. They've they've they've looked at modern society 2:39:03.320 --> 2:39:06.200 and have decided that it's not worth engaging in. Now 2:39:06.240 --> 2:39:08.520 there's this. There's doomers on the right, there's dumers on 2:39:08.600 --> 2:39:11.640 the left. There's doomers who look at like climate change 2:39:11.720 --> 2:39:15.680 and the acceleration of like of of of capitalism and 2:39:15.760 --> 2:39:18.520 just decide, hey, this is this is too far gone. 2:39:18.560 --> 2:39:20.240 So they become a doomer, and they're on the left. 2:39:20.240 --> 2:39:22.880 There's also doomers on the right who are like looking 2:39:22.920 --> 2:39:26.320 at gay marriage and the acceptance of trans people, being like, oh, 2:39:26.400 --> 2:39:30.200 this is so socially degenerate. It's the society is too 2:39:30.200 --> 2:39:33.080 far gone, and then they become a doomer. But they're 2:39:33.080 --> 2:39:35.080 on the right. So it's it's it happens on. It 2:39:35.120 --> 2:39:39.160 happens on both sides, and both both sides use doomer memes. 2:39:39.640 --> 2:39:42.240 Uh yeah, this one is because we're talking about it 2:39:42.280 --> 2:39:44.520 in this context of fash wave. This is obviously a 2:39:44.560 --> 2:39:48.320 fascist doomer meme. But that's that's kind of what I 2:39:48.360 --> 2:39:51.080 mean when I say there's there's a doomer wojack sitting 2:39:51.200 --> 2:39:53.080 sitting at a computer. It's like it's like a guy 2:39:53.080 --> 2:39:55.640 with a beanie, like a scruffy beard. He looks like 2:39:55.760 --> 2:39:59.760 very depressed and tired, that sort of thing. So as 2:40:00.040 --> 2:40:05.000 as these kind of headlines about Trump's not conservative enoughness 2:40:05.040 --> 2:40:08.160 are flashing on this computer, the dumer Rojack is looking 2:40:08.160 --> 2:40:12.800 increasingly disillusioned and apathetic. Then there's the clip of Trump 2:40:12.840 --> 2:40:16.240 holding up a Pride flag that plays right before we 2:40:16.280 --> 2:40:19.320 see Trump signing the First Step Act, the twenty eighteen 2:40:19.360 --> 2:40:23.959 Criminal Justice Reform Bill. Then headlines flash about violent criminals 2:40:24.000 --> 2:40:27.640 being released into the streets, that sort of thing. So 2:40:27.920 --> 2:40:30.520 the dumer BoJack is looking at all these things about Trump, 2:40:30.720 --> 2:40:34.640 looking more and more depressed, when suddenly a doorway appears 2:40:34.760 --> 2:40:38.840 with an almost angelic light pouring in from behind, and 2:40:38.879 --> 2:40:41.800 as the door opens, we see a silhouette of Ron DeSantis. 2:40:42.440 --> 2:40:45.680 More short clips of Ron play, and now the wojack 2:40:45.760 --> 2:40:49.640 is looking happy, almost like exuberant, seemingly kind of random. 2:40:49.640 --> 2:40:54.360 Images of outer space, volcanoes, rocket launches, surfing and the 2:40:54.400 --> 2:40:59.160 beach flash quickly on screen with with like glitchy silhouettes 2:40:59.200 --> 2:41:03.680 of Ronda Santis looming above coastal ocean side cities that 2:41:03.720 --> 2:41:07.240 are lit up by a sunset. A don't tread on 2:41:07.280 --> 2:41:11.320 Florida Alligator flag spins onto screen like it's a fucking 2:41:11.400 --> 2:41:16.840 like MS paint like edit, and then the the video 2:41:16.879 --> 2:41:20.400 flashes more clips of DeSantis wearing sunglasses standing in front 2:41:20.400 --> 2:41:25.200 of American flags as the sunset. Happy Woejack fades in. 2:41:25.720 --> 2:41:29.680 So this is another wo shack meme of somebody almost 2:41:29.680 --> 2:41:33.760 like tearied eyed with like contentment, staring into the horizon 2:41:33.800 --> 2:41:37.360 as like a sunset is behind their head. It kind 2:41:37.400 --> 2:41:39.920 of it kind of reminds me of like the that 2:41:40.000 --> 2:41:43.480 guy who who stole that plane in Seattle. 2:41:43.440 --> 2:41:45.439 And yeah, crash it. 2:41:46.000 --> 2:41:48.400 Yeah, very sad story if you're not aware of it. 2:41:48.680 --> 2:41:50.920 A man hijacked I believe it was an Alaska Airs 2:41:50.959 --> 2:41:53.080 flight a couple of years back. It was empty, like 2:41:53.160 --> 2:41:56.000 he he worked at the airport. He just took the 2:41:56.040 --> 2:41:58.520 plane and he got up into the sky and then 2:41:59.280 --> 2:42:00.640 like he was just kind kind of a dude who 2:42:00.720 --> 2:42:03.960 was sort of suicidal. There's very sad audio of him 2:42:04.000 --> 2:42:07.480 talking too, because he gets on with air traffic control 2:42:07.600 --> 2:42:10.000 and he makes sure that he's not going to hurt 2:42:10.040 --> 2:42:12.840 anyone else, and like then the plane goes down, you know, 2:42:12.879 --> 2:42:15.640 he goes down in it, and it's it's very bleak. 2:42:15.680 --> 2:42:17.120 He was not a man who wanted to hurt anybody. 2:42:17.160 --> 2:42:20.520 It's just this kind of like exist. I found it 2:42:20.640 --> 2:42:23.120 set to a lot of vapor wave tracks. Actually, like 2:42:23.200 --> 2:42:26.120 the audio the conversation between them, because he's kind of 2:42:26.360 --> 2:42:28.560 I think a lot of people identify with his sense 2:42:28.600 --> 2:42:31.480 of like I don't really know why I was ever here. 2:42:31.680 --> 2:42:32.320 I don't really know. 2:42:32.879 --> 2:42:37.240 Yeah, it's someone who was dealing with like postmodern absurdity, 2:42:37.680 --> 2:42:39.120 but in a way that like he doesn't want to 2:42:39.280 --> 2:42:41.120 hurt anybody about it, but he just doesn't know what 2:42:41.200 --> 2:42:42.240 to do with existence. 2:42:42.400 --> 2:42:45.440 Yeah, he had part of he had like the ten 2:42:45.480 --> 2:42:47.959 percent of what a mass shooter has, which is exactly 2:42:48.120 --> 2:42:50.359 go out and I want to do something. But thankfully 2:42:50.400 --> 2:42:52.320 he was also a good person and didn't want to 2:42:52.400 --> 2:42:54.039 like murder strangers. 2:42:54.440 --> 2:42:58.200 So this became very popular on the Internet, including on 2:42:58.240 --> 2:43:01.199 redda and four chan. This he was he was dubbed 2:43:01.240 --> 2:43:06.000 sky King, and there's there's footage of him basically crashing 2:43:06.000 --> 2:43:08.360 this plane as the sun is setting, and there's there's 2:43:08.400 --> 2:43:11.760 footage of him flying around in sunset played often played 2:43:11.959 --> 2:43:14.840 with vapor Wave with his conversation with attracktic control that 2:43:15.000 --> 2:43:19.480 this is very popular. The sunset happy Roe Jack is 2:43:19.959 --> 2:43:24.480 very similar. I've seen people post this image in threads 2:43:24.520 --> 2:43:27.400 about sky King before, and I think a lot a 2:43:27.400 --> 2:43:29.960 lot of people to understand it's like this this act, 2:43:30.160 --> 2:43:32.720 that this this Skyking thing, that this has more in 2:43:32.760 --> 2:43:36.640 common with like accelerationist like terrorism than what most people 2:43:36.640 --> 2:43:39.880 can like really understand about like between like shooting a 2:43:39.959 --> 2:43:44.039 random person for like violent crime and this like this, 2:43:44.040 --> 2:43:47.000 this is more this, This is closer to why people 2:43:47.120 --> 2:43:52.280 do accelerationist like terroristic acts. But this guy was like 2:43:52.480 --> 2:43:55.280 not actually a monster, so he didn't do that. He 2:43:55.640 --> 2:44:00.000 like explicitly didn't want to hurt anybody. He explicitly didn't 2:44:00.080 --> 2:44:02.359 want to try to land the plane at the airport 2:44:02.360 --> 2:44:03.960 because he thought he might hurt somebody. 2:44:04.640 --> 2:44:07.200 Yeah, and presumably since he worked at an airport, he 2:44:07.240 --> 2:44:10.600 had some knowledge of how easily that could go wrong. 2:44:10.959 --> 2:44:14.840 Yeah, so this anyway, these two images are kind of 2:44:14.959 --> 2:44:17.760 linked often on the Internet. So anyway, we we we 2:44:17.800 --> 2:44:21.600 see we see the video getting like more hopeful with 2:44:21.600 --> 2:44:26.280 with with Rona Santis, you know, having stupid fash wave, 2:44:27.200 --> 2:44:31.560 having stupid fashwave imagery. Is this sunset happy Woejack fades 2:44:31.600 --> 2:44:34.039 in as like as the dumer is now has like 2:44:34.200 --> 2:44:37.320 contentment and then this this, then this is followed by 2:44:37.400 --> 2:44:41.000 very quick flashes of dysantis and more. 2:44:40.320 --> 2:44:42.640 More more beach imagery. 2:44:42.680 --> 2:44:45.879 There's a lot of beach in this video. Yeah, there's 2:44:46.000 --> 2:44:49.280 like this like rotating sheet of stickers that read make 2:44:49.320 --> 2:44:52.920 America Florida. Then we get this shot of a small 2:44:53.000 --> 2:44:56.600 yacht zooming through the water with DeSantis campaign events played 2:44:56.680 --> 2:44:59.360 over top of the water. And during this shot we 2:44:59.440 --> 2:45:04.120 have another jack holding a rifle wearing Camo military fatigues 2:45:04.200 --> 2:45:07.760 that slides onto screen. He has a patch of the 2:45:07.800 --> 2:45:10.959 flag of Florida on his plate carrier and his helmet. 2:45:11.640 --> 2:45:14.880 We get more shots of beachfront cities and rocket launches, 2:45:14.920 --> 2:45:18.200 followed by headlines about Dysantis on a variety of topics, 2:45:18.200 --> 2:45:22.600 including his anti immigration actions, his use of Florida's National 2:45:22.640 --> 2:45:27.600 Guard in other states, DeSantis's anti diversity initiatives, his anti 2:45:27.720 --> 2:45:30.800 education bills, his anti drag bills, the cancelation of pride 2:45:30.800 --> 2:45:33.840 parades in Florida, and in general just kind of how 2:45:33.879 --> 2:45:37.960 DeSantis has been pushing Florida further right. So after this 2:45:38.080 --> 2:45:41.480 barrage of headlines, we get to the most mask off 2:45:41.480 --> 2:45:44.280 from a moment of the video. The flag of Florida 2:45:44.360 --> 2:45:47.600 fills the screen with two lines of armed troops at 2:45:47.640 --> 2:45:51.879 either side marching towards the flag. A still photo of 2:45:52.000 --> 2:45:55.520 Dysantis is center frame, with his head right in the 2:45:55.560 --> 2:45:58.560 middle of the seal of Florida, which is on the 2:45:58.600 --> 2:46:01.800 center of their state flag. The head in front of 2:46:01.840 --> 2:46:05.879 the seal creates this almost like halo effect around Desantas's head, 2:46:06.360 --> 2:46:09.000 and then the seal turns into a spinning son and 2:46:09.080 --> 2:46:12.440 rad as we zoom into the symbol as troops march 2:46:12.560 --> 2:46:15.600 into center, and then the video ends. The sun and 2:46:15.680 --> 2:46:19.760 Rad is on screen for about ten seconds. So this 2:46:19.920 --> 2:46:23.600 was a pretty upsetting thing to see on Twitter. 2:46:24.080 --> 2:46:27.480 Yes, upsetting is one way to phrase it. Yeah, and again. 2:46:27.520 --> 2:46:30.320 The son and Rad has a long history. It's kind 2:46:30.320 --> 2:46:37.080 of a specifically a cultic version of the swastika it reached. 2:46:37.160 --> 2:46:39.280 It has been around for quite a while, but it's 2:46:39.400 --> 2:46:41.880 most recent. The kind of thing that brought it into 2:46:42.000 --> 2:46:45.400 modern prominence was the christ Church shooter chose it as 2:46:45.480 --> 2:46:49.520 the cover of his manifesto and also wore a son 2:46:49.520 --> 2:46:50.959 and rad. I believe it was on the chest of 2:46:51.000 --> 2:46:53.040 his plate carrier when he carried out his massacre. He 2:46:53.080 --> 2:46:54.240 also had a couple on his gun. 2:46:54.280 --> 2:46:58.240 I think, yeah, so it's very clearly Nazi symbol. I 2:46:58.240 --> 2:47:02.160 know there's some people of making it make jokes about 2:47:02.160 --> 2:47:04.920 how this must have just been an azof Battalion reference. 2:47:05.480 --> 2:47:06.440 Deeply unserious. 2:47:06.959 --> 2:47:08.600 No, you can see some of these on a I 2:47:08.640 --> 2:47:12.200 mean again, this is a Nazi thing. They wear this too. Yeah, 2:47:13.280 --> 2:47:14.240 azof uses it. 2:47:14.360 --> 2:47:17.240 There's people trying to excuse the use of the sun 2:47:17.280 --> 2:47:19.959 and rad by saying, oh, it's just an azof simple 2:47:20.080 --> 2:47:24.000 it's not a hot sea thing, which is bad, which 2:47:24.040 --> 2:47:28.120 is a deeply unserious thing to say. So Yeah, this 2:47:28.200 --> 2:47:31.600 video was shared by at least one campaign staffer. It's 2:47:31.640 --> 2:47:34.959 a very short video, but it plays into a strain 2:47:35.120 --> 2:47:40.280 of like accelerationist propaganda tropes that even the previous Fashionay 2:47:40.360 --> 2:47:43.200 video didn't didn't even really have in many of the 2:47:43.240 --> 2:47:46.040 same ways, like like all of all of like the 2:47:46.120 --> 2:47:50.040 dooomer wojack slowly becoming like happy and content than putting 2:47:50.040 --> 2:47:53.200 on military fatigues to go fight for Ron de Santis, 2:47:53.280 --> 2:47:57.280 who's now in the center of like a haloed son 2:47:57.320 --> 2:47:59.760 and rad like it's it's it is emulating a type 2:47:59.800 --> 2:48:03.160 of meme that both gained popular in order to specifically 2:48:03.240 --> 2:48:06.520 like inspire mass shootings to happen, and also to like 2:48:06.920 --> 2:48:11.039 to get young depressed males to channel their depression into 2:48:11.120 --> 2:48:14.879 like fascism. It has a whole bunch of tropes like 2:48:14.920 --> 2:48:17.440 it's it's it's it's really just like playing by the playbook. 2:48:18.600 --> 2:48:22.119 So the video was first posted on the Twitter account 2:48:22.640 --> 2:48:30.240 Ron DeSantis fancams, which is a horrible sentence. Yeah, the 2:48:30.320 --> 2:48:33.080 account is a few months old, but its visible posts 2:48:33.240 --> 2:48:37.840 only go back to June. They post a lot of videos, 2:48:37.879 --> 2:48:40.680 all in a very similar style, which leads you to 2:48:40.680 --> 2:48:43.440 believe that whoever operates the account must be making the 2:48:43.520 --> 2:48:47.400 videos themselves. One video from the account plays clips of 2:48:47.480 --> 2:48:51.280 people describing Dasantis as fascist, edited together with clips of 2:48:51.720 --> 2:48:56.480 DeSantis deploying National Guard and calling for civilian state military 2:48:56.520 --> 2:49:00.240 force under his control, all sliced together next to footage 2:49:00.320 --> 2:49:03.880 of Nazis and Mussolini played over an upbeat e d 2:49:04.040 --> 2:49:06.920 M track. So it's all like explicitly fascist stuff like 2:49:06.920 --> 2:49:10.720 like like it's people like rev like it's like a proud, 2:49:11.000 --> 2:49:16.440 proudly embracing the fascist label. So this style of video 2:49:16.720 --> 2:49:20.360 is almost identical to the homophobic Pride Months video that 2:49:20.360 --> 2:49:24.440 we discussed last week. And considering the recent news that 2:49:24.520 --> 2:49:27.680 the other video shared by the Dasantas Warham account was 2:49:27.800 --> 2:49:31.600 secretly made by a campaign staffer, that led myself and 2:49:31.640 --> 2:49:34.560 others to assume that this son and Red video was 2:49:34.600 --> 2:49:39.000 most likely made by the same person inside DeSantis's campaign 2:49:39.360 --> 2:49:43.199 and was operating this DeSantis fancam account as a sock puppet. 2:49:44.640 --> 2:49:47.920 But you know, I could not prove this myself, really, 2:49:48.080 --> 2:49:50.200 I it's just it's it's a it's a hard thing 2:49:50.280 --> 2:49:53.240 to kind of backtrack this. I this account was pretty 2:49:53.280 --> 2:49:55.160 clean in terms of like I tried to like, you know, 2:49:55.320 --> 2:49:58.400 do do pretty pretty basic osin on this account, But 2:49:58.440 --> 2:50:00.760 it's it was, it was I could not find out 2:50:00.840 --> 2:50:06.200 much about it. But the campaign staff member that first 2:50:06.280 --> 2:50:08.959 shared this sun and Red video to his own Twitter 2:50:09.000 --> 2:50:15.520 account was former National Review writer Nate Hakman. We will 2:50:15.720 --> 2:50:20.920 we will talk about Nate Hawkman's exploits shortly shortly after 2:50:21.160 --> 2:50:25.360 this this hat break. All right, we are back and 2:50:25.400 --> 2:50:29.440 in a much better position currently than twenty five year 2:50:29.440 --> 2:50:30.400 old Nate Hawkman. 2:50:31.160 --> 2:50:35.360 Yes, so really was a tragically was a promising career. 2:50:35.400 --> 2:50:38.200 You know what, Let's give them another chance. Garrison, reach 2:50:38.240 --> 2:50:40.080 out to Nate. We can bring him on the team, 2:50:40.160 --> 2:50:42.320 you know, have him start making some videos for us. 2:50:42.680 --> 2:50:47.039 Yeah, I'll build an invoice to Nate Hawkman's address. Yeah, 2:50:47.160 --> 2:50:50.440 I'll see where he lives. So, twenty five year old 2:50:50.480 --> 2:50:52.920 Nate Hawkman has been working as a speech writer for 2:50:52.959 --> 2:50:57.280 DeSantis's campaign. After rising to prominence among young conservatives for 2:50:57.400 --> 2:51:02.240 his online references and willingness to entertain outside the Overton window. 2:51:03.040 --> 2:51:07.880 Uh Hawkman hosted a Twitter space late last year centered 2:51:07.879 --> 2:51:11.280 around the question of if white supremacists like a Nick 2:51:11.320 --> 2:51:14.520 Fuentes should have a place in the modern conservative movement. 2:51:15.240 --> 2:51:19.119 Funtes himself appeared in the Twitter space, and Hawkman thanked 2:51:19.160 --> 2:51:22.920 him for radicalizing children by saying, quote, You've gotten a 2:51:23.000 --> 2:51:26.039 lot of kids based and we respect you for that. 2:51:27.520 --> 2:51:30.720 And he also said that Fuentes quote is probably a 2:51:30.720 --> 2:51:34.000 better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might 2:51:34.080 --> 2:51:41.040 otherwise be conservative unquote. So Hawkman has retweeted the Dysantis 2:51:41.760 --> 2:51:45.280 fancam account at least six times before he shared this 2:51:45.320 --> 2:51:48.600 on and rata video this past Sunday. But he's not 2:51:48.720 --> 2:51:52.680 the only Dysantis linked account to share these videos. The 2:51:52.760 --> 2:51:56.600 campaign's war room Twitter account and the pro DeSantis Never 2:51:56.720 --> 2:52:00.240 Back Down superpack have also shared videos from this Rond 2:52:00.240 --> 2:52:04.320 Dessanta's fancam Twitter account. By using this fancam account to 2:52:04.360 --> 2:52:09.240 post videos and then by retweeting on Nate's account, someone 2:52:09.440 --> 2:52:12.240 was certainly testing the waters to see how close the 2:52:12.280 --> 2:52:16.880 Dysantas campaign can get to just doing explicit Nazi shit, 2:52:17.840 --> 2:52:21.080 and considering the New York Times, who Hawkman has written for, 2:52:21.160 --> 2:52:24.280 by the way, basically confirming that the person who made 2:52:24.360 --> 2:52:27.480 the Pride Month video was secretly employed by Dysantis and 2:52:27.520 --> 2:52:29.800 posted the a third party to get some distance from 2:52:29.800 --> 2:52:33.880 the official campaign. This led many to suspect that Hawkman 2:52:34.080 --> 2:52:37.640 was secretly the person behind this fancam account due to 2:52:37.680 --> 2:52:41.080 the similarities in video styles and his frequent boosting of 2:52:41.120 --> 2:52:44.280 the account. The sun and Ride video was deleted the 2:52:44.280 --> 2:52:47.160 same day was posted, and the fancam account has not 2:52:47.320 --> 2:52:51.160 posted since then. But then suddenly, just a few hours 2:52:51.160 --> 2:52:54.440 ago as of time of recording, news dropped that Nick 2:52:54.520 --> 2:52:57.800 Hachman has been fired from the Dasantis campaign, and the 2:52:57.840 --> 2:53:01.439 sources at Axios confirmed that he has in fact secretly 2:53:01.480 --> 2:53:05.640 been making these Fashway videos. So it was it was 2:53:05.680 --> 2:53:09.240 Hawkman on all along. This is what happens when you 2:53:09.520 --> 2:53:12.720 hire a twenty five year old Groypewer to work on 2:53:12.840 --> 2:53:15.840 your to work on your presidential bid. 2:53:16.080 --> 2:53:18.480 Your very serious presidential campaign. 2:53:18.879 --> 2:53:21.959 Yeah so uh. 2:53:22.120 --> 2:53:25.560 The Dessentant's campaign officially has only said a few words 2:53:25.600 --> 2:53:29.480 on the subject quote, Nate Hawkman is no longer with 2:53:29.560 --> 2:53:32.320 the campaign and we will not be commenting on him further. 2:53:34.959 --> 2:53:37.520 Not that easy, guys, But other. 2:53:37.440 --> 2:53:40.280 Anonymous sources have confirmed to news outlets that it was 2:53:40.320 --> 2:53:43.400 Hawkman who was making these videos. So this is weird 2:53:43.440 --> 2:53:46.760 because like this hasn't been a great move for DeSantis 2:53:46.840 --> 2:53:50.480 hiring Hawkman, having Hawkman do all this like behind the 2:53:50.520 --> 2:53:53.800 scenes like Scooby Doo shit of like you're posting fasci 2:53:53.959 --> 2:53:57.280 fascist videos on sock wepons to then get reboosted by 2:53:57.320 --> 2:54:00.400 Desanta's campaign like it's it's all. It's all very like 2:54:00.879 --> 2:54:04.920 dark but like comical, like it's it's silly, like uh, 2:54:05.240 --> 2:54:07.480 similar to the Descentus video we talked about in the 2:54:07.560 --> 2:54:11.480 last Adventures in Fashionate episode. This video it was not 2:54:11.600 --> 2:54:16.280 meant to like convince older Trump supporters to vote for Dissantis, right, 2:54:16.320 --> 2:54:18.720 like that, that's not the intention of posting this video. 2:54:19.000 --> 2:54:22.879 No, this new bid trying. They are first off, going 2:54:22.920 --> 2:54:27.120 for the zoomer vote. Always a mixed bag anytime. Yeah, 2:54:27.120 --> 2:54:28.800 anytime you're going for the youth vote. This is like 2:54:28.879 --> 2:54:32.680 famously a difficult thing. It kind of sometimes works for 2:54:32.720 --> 2:54:37.200 the dims because the youth tend to be pretty progressive 2:54:37.200 --> 2:54:41.080 and the Republicans are terrifying. Yeah, but going for the 2:54:41.280 --> 2:54:45.680 trying to base your campaign as a Republican presidential candidate 2:54:45.720 --> 2:54:49.080 on the youths is uh quite a move. Yeah, Like 2:54:49.160 --> 2:54:51.120 it's let's see how it pays off for him gotten. 2:54:51.440 --> 2:54:54.440 Yeah, because like this new video is almost more chronically 2:54:54.520 --> 2:54:58.200 online than the last one, Like, not even considering the 2:54:58.280 --> 2:55:02.280 Nazi imagery, it's it's heavy use of BoJack memes is 2:55:02.360 --> 2:55:06.320 just like cartoonish to the median voter. What this video 2:55:06.440 --> 2:55:09.640 is trying to do is signal to self describe fascists 2:55:09.760 --> 2:55:14.600 that Dysantis is their guy, and trying extremely desperately to 2:55:14.720 --> 2:55:17.400 create another like meme magic moment like we had in 2:55:17.440 --> 2:55:20.720 twenty sixteen to recruit a slew of teenage Nazis to 2:55:20.800 --> 2:55:25.520 try and meme another based president into office, which isn't 2:55:25.560 --> 2:55:28.280 gonna work this time around, because it's not twenty sixteen anymore. 2:55:28.320 --> 2:55:32.200 Like we we've we've already been we've already been inoculated 2:55:32.400 --> 2:55:36.600 to some degree to this, to this style of of 2:55:36.720 --> 2:55:39.760 campaign tactics, all of all of the all the people 2:55:39.760 --> 2:55:42.200 in like like four chan. Isn't the thing that it 2:55:42.320 --> 2:55:43.959 used to be. It is, it is, It is a 2:55:43.959 --> 2:55:48.560 shell of its of its former self. But like what 2:55:48.600 --> 2:55:51.680 we have here on like the DeSantis side is like 2:55:52.200 --> 2:55:55.200 in terms of hiring people like hackmen. Right, these are 2:55:55.240 --> 2:55:58.480 like seasoned gropers who grew up and are now like 2:55:58.520 --> 2:56:01.920 getting into their twenties. Uh, you know, they're taking jobs 2:56:01.959 --> 2:56:05.600 at National Review and as and as campaign staffers. But 2:56:05.840 --> 2:56:09.600 due to their isolated, niche political upbringing, they have deluded 2:56:09.600 --> 2:56:12.400 themselves into thinking that there's like a mythical far right 2:56:12.520 --> 2:56:15.680 youth voting block that just like quite simply doesn't exist. 2:56:16.040 --> 2:56:19.160 So you can spend all day making and retweeting these 2:56:19.240 --> 2:56:22.800 meme heavy videos with Nazi imagery that really only succeed 2:56:22.840 --> 2:56:28.200 in turning off the reliable boomer Republican voters. Now, like, 2:56:28.400 --> 2:56:31.560 there's a few other you know, future scenarios here. If 2:56:31.600 --> 2:56:34.440 these if these like up and coming gropers continue to 2:56:34.480 --> 2:56:37.080 like grow up, polish their act, take more jobs as 2:56:37.080 --> 2:56:40.600 staffers or on Capitol Hill, and like slowly grow in 2:56:40.680 --> 2:56:43.080 numbers as they learn to like hide their power level 2:56:43.160 --> 2:56:47.360 like hea like hide their amount of racism, then we 2:56:47.440 --> 2:56:49.280 might have a problem. If they like actually like put 2:56:49.320 --> 2:56:52.240 like intentionality into a long term strategy to like put 2:56:52.320 --> 2:56:57.680 more of these young freaks into positions in Washington, but 2:56:57.959 --> 2:57:00.640 we're simply not there yet. Like in the case of Hawkman, 2:57:01.040 --> 2:57:04.160 he kind of just like he blew up the spot 2:57:04.320 --> 2:57:09.360 right like he went like he went too hard, too fast, 2:57:09.400 --> 2:57:11.760 and then he got fired because they don't want that shit. 2:57:12.640 --> 2:57:15.120 Yeah, the olds are going to watch this and go like, 2:57:15.200 --> 2:57:18.279 what the fuck is this? This does not look serious, 2:57:18.360 --> 2:57:21.960 This is not speaking to my issues. This is just 2:57:22.000 --> 2:57:25.440 like off putting, in strange, and most young people are like, oh, 2:57:25.440 --> 2:57:28.000 it's some brain poisoned four channer. That's who this guy's 2:57:28.080 --> 2:57:31.680 running as the four chan candidate. Yep, all right now. 2:57:31.720 --> 2:57:36.640 Like so the other fear is that they'll shift from 2:57:36.760 --> 2:57:40.120 like this electoral focus and try to just use this 2:57:40.200 --> 2:57:42.720 type of video propaganda to initiate another wave of like 2:57:42.840 --> 2:57:47.560 Nazi mass shootings like in twenty eighteen. The halo effect 2:57:47.560 --> 2:57:51.080 around DeSantis's head is certainly cause for concern, but there's 2:57:51.080 --> 2:57:52.960 a lot of other factors that go into that sort 2:57:52.959 --> 2:57:54.720 of thing, and that is kind of just more of 2:57:54.720 --> 2:57:57.960 like an ever present fear that anti fascists have, and 2:57:58.240 --> 2:58:00.360 you know, people do a lot of work and trying 2:58:00.400 --> 2:58:03.279 to catch these guys before they actually do mass shootings 2:58:03.320 --> 2:58:05.480 and try to try to isolate the spread of this 2:58:05.600 --> 2:58:10.440 style of propaganda for that very reason. So yeah, I mean, 2:58:12.480 --> 2:58:15.480 it's it's certainly an interesting trajectory. When I started, like 2:58:15.560 --> 2:58:18.480 finishing this episode earlier today, I had no idea that 2:58:18.959 --> 2:58:21.440 Hawkman was going to get fired, had no idea that 2:58:21.480 --> 2:58:23.720 it was going to be confirmed that Hawkman was the 2:58:23.720 --> 2:58:26.640 one making making these videos. So that's kind of some 2:58:27.360 --> 2:58:29.920 breaking news on our side. It's it's been a few days. 2:58:29.959 --> 2:58:31.720 If you're if you're listening to this, at the end 2:58:31.720 --> 2:58:33.880 of the week, I'm going to read out one tweet 2:58:33.920 --> 2:58:37.160 from this guy, a double Doink, who is a stupid, 2:58:37.280 --> 2:58:40.440 stupid handle no offense, but he made a made a 2:58:40.600 --> 2:58:42.720 made a made a pretty good point here I quote. 2:58:43.080 --> 2:58:46.360 I think DeSantis's real problem isn't just that he's racist, 2:58:46.720 --> 2:58:50.240 It's that his campaign is racist in the same way 2:58:50.520 --> 2:58:55.480 a really annoying teenager is your average xenophobic suburbanite dad 2:58:55.720 --> 2:58:59.200 looks at a son and rad roejack ad like his 2:58:59.400 --> 2:59:02.560 son crack his car. A lot of people are arguing 2:59:02.600 --> 2:59:05.119 that your average fifty six year old Trump supporter isn't 2:59:05.160 --> 2:59:08.920 as racist as your average DeSantis supporting Zoomer, but that's 2:59:08.920 --> 2:59:11.640 not the point. Putting weird blood and soil shit in 2:59:11.680 --> 2:59:16.000 your ads smells it's deeply uncool to the exact people 2:59:16.000 --> 2:59:18.959 that you want to impress unquote, and I'll add it's 2:59:19.000 --> 2:59:21.119 it's it's deeply uncol to the exact people you want 2:59:21.120 --> 2:59:23.720 to impress if you want to win at being president 2:59:23.760 --> 2:59:26.800 and like are trying to move over Trump voters. It's 2:59:26.840 --> 2:59:30.879 just it's just it's just not going to play. So 2:59:31.640 --> 2:59:34.320 this is this is the state of the de Santa's campaign. Now, 2:59:34.360 --> 2:59:38.200 they've they've shed almost forty people from their staff. The 2:59:38.240 --> 2:59:40.760 guy that was supposed to lead their television ads has left. 2:59:42.120 --> 2:59:44.480 They seemingly just have no idea what the fuck to 2:59:44.520 --> 2:59:47.680 do They They tried to have this guy do this 2:59:47.840 --> 2:59:52.879 like backdoor nazi video sock puppet strategy that has also 2:59:53.080 --> 2:59:56.440 resulted in not very good things for this for the 2:59:56.480 --> 3:00:01.880 Desanta's campaign. So I guess we'll we'll see how their 3:00:01.959 --> 3:00:04.400 how their campaign develops, if they if they continue this 3:00:04.520 --> 3:00:08.040 sort of like fash wave rhetoric and style. I kind 3:00:08.040 --> 3:00:10.000 of doubt it now that now that now that Hawkman 3:00:10.080 --> 3:00:13.760 is out. But yeah, it's been a certainly certainly an 3:00:13.760 --> 3:00:17.400 interesting interesting few months here, or a few weeks here 3:00:17.560 --> 3:00:22.080 rather in terms of in fashwave videos resurfacing again for 3:00:22.120 --> 3:00:24.360 the first time in quite a while. In terms of 3:00:24.400 --> 3:00:25.800 like mainstream of political use. 3:00:26.360 --> 3:00:29.520 Yeah, I'm kind of suspecting that this might be the 3:00:29.640 --> 3:00:33.320 death knell of that as a at least for a spell, 3:00:33.480 --> 3:00:37.320 as a as a relevant form of propaganda. 3:00:38.280 --> 3:00:41.280 Yeah, I mean it's it's been in some ways, like 3:00:41.800 --> 3:00:45.320 internally rejected at the Disanta's campaign, and he is arguably 3:00:45.360 --> 3:00:49.320 the most fascist mainstream candidate that they that we like 3:00:49.400 --> 3:00:51.119 have right now, nothing. 3:00:50.840 --> 3:00:54.440 Puts a stink on stuff like this like failure, right, 3:00:54.840 --> 3:00:58.120 you know, these guys, these guys are not anarchists, and 3:00:58.280 --> 3:01:02.240 the anarchists are we nearly always lose, So there's this 3:01:02.840 --> 3:01:05.879 like because things fail, you know that, Like there's a 3:01:05.879 --> 3:01:08.760 lot of Spanish Civil War, you know, iconography and stuff 3:01:08.800 --> 3:01:11.520 that's still very relevant on that chunk of the left. 3:01:12.800 --> 3:01:16.560 But with the right, it is all about power, and 3:01:16.920 --> 3:01:20.800 when something like this fails, when it actually weakens a campaign, 3:01:20.840 --> 3:01:23.680 when it weakens the insurgent right, when it makes them 3:01:23.760 --> 3:01:27.840 less able to exert power. Yeah, I kind of feel 3:01:27.879 --> 3:01:31.840 like we may have seen the last of this, as 3:01:31.879 --> 3:01:34.640 a thing that matters. Right, Yeah, I'll. 3:01:34.520 --> 3:01:36.400 Definitely be watching these next few months. But I think 3:01:36.400 --> 3:01:39.240 that's that's definitely a very a very fair assessment at 3:01:39.240 --> 3:01:42.560 this point. Lastly, I just want to clarify one thing 3:01:42.760 --> 3:01:46.240 about our last episode due to some viewer feedback. So 3:01:46.560 --> 3:01:49.720 last time we were talking about how the Biden administration's use 3:01:49.760 --> 3:01:53.280 of dark branded memes had like inadvertently led to fast 3:01:53.280 --> 3:01:55.640 way of taking a big body blow. Now, I think 3:01:55.680 --> 3:02:00.400 some people misinterpreted our discussion as downplaying anti fascists and 3:02:00.480 --> 3:02:03.520 leftists attempt to disrupt dark Mega and fash wave in 3:02:03.560 --> 3:02:08.360 general by like proliferating the satirical dark branded memes. So 3:02:09.080 --> 3:02:12.359 in the episode, we talked about the methodology behind this, 3:02:12.360 --> 3:02:16.600 this this strategy of like normies seizing onto memes and aesthetics, 3:02:16.640 --> 3:02:19.400 thus making them cringe and unattractive to the niche groups 3:02:19.440 --> 3:02:24.120 that they that that once enjoyed using them with Dark 3:02:24.160 --> 3:02:26.560 brand And there were certainly an attempt from anti fascists 3:02:26.640 --> 3:02:30.160 and leftist posters to appropriate fash waves aesthetics with the 3:02:30.200 --> 3:02:33.400 hope that if spread widely enough, it would disarm some 3:02:33.440 --> 3:02:37.560 of fashwaves more dangerous and inspirational aspects. But you can't 3:02:37.560 --> 3:02:42.040 really force mainstream like virality. This kind of thing works 3:02:42.080 --> 3:02:45.280 best when it appears natural, and for the majority of 3:02:45.360 --> 3:02:48.040 Dark Branded posters, they were just doing this shit for 3:02:48.240 --> 3:02:51.120 like shits and giggles like that. That was the primary factor, 3:02:51.200 --> 3:02:55.000 is that it was funny, and no effort to damage 3:02:55.360 --> 3:03:00.800 fash waves legibility would really be successful without mainstream spread. 3:03:01.160 --> 3:03:04.000 A small group of leftists could mean like eternally, but 3:03:04.160 --> 3:03:06.400 until it breaks through that bubble, it would have little 3:03:06.440 --> 3:03:10.680 to no effect. Now, because of how Twitter's algorithm worked 3:03:10.760 --> 3:03:13.680 during the summer of last year, after a few months, 3:03:13.959 --> 3:03:17.960 Dark Branded did in fact break through to the liberal mainstream. 3:03:18.400 --> 3:03:20.960 But I've seen nothing to suggest that the White House 3:03:21.080 --> 3:03:24.840 staff had any intention of trying to damage fash Wave's 3:03:24.920 --> 3:03:28.280 legibility by sharing laser I memes in August to twenty 3:03:28.320 --> 3:03:28.760 twenty two. 3:03:29.440 --> 3:03:31.200 I think the key here is that you were not 3:03:31.320 --> 3:03:36.680 saying this was purely the result of liberals accidentally like 3:03:36.840 --> 3:03:41.480 jumping on to this, but that the primary like success 3:03:41.640 --> 3:03:44.120 was achieved, Like, the part of the success that was 3:03:44.120 --> 3:03:46.680 achieved as a result of this going like mainstream among 3:03:46.720 --> 3:03:49.840 Biden supporters was accidental. Yeah, it was the part that 3:03:49.920 --> 3:03:53.320 was key, not saying that the people who recognize this, 3:03:53.440 --> 3:03:55.560 and we're putting in the background work to try to 3:03:55.560 --> 3:03:59.160 push this stuff and make it, you know, eventually go viral. 3:03:59.200 --> 3:04:02.120 That was certainly not accidental, but correct. The part that 3:04:02.160 --> 3:04:05.240 the liberals played was an accidental part in killing this 3:04:05.440 --> 3:04:06.760 That's that's the point. 3:04:06.520 --> 3:04:09.200 Yes, Because what I mean by accidental is that when 3:04:09.280 --> 3:04:12.480 dark Brandon started in March of twenty twenty two, there 3:04:12.520 --> 3:04:14.760 was no way to guarantee that four months later the 3:04:14.800 --> 3:04:17.959 White and like the White House and blue Wave liberals 3:04:18.240 --> 3:04:21.240 would be sharing these memes on mass Like I remember 3:04:21.280 --> 3:04:25.160 conversations I had like last August when liberals were seemingly 3:04:25.200 --> 3:04:29.680 like ruining the funny dark branded memes. But like me, 3:04:30.240 --> 3:04:33.320 like myself and research colleagues during this time, like that 3:04:33.480 --> 3:04:37.280 was when we realized that if, like if liberals keep 3:04:37.320 --> 3:04:39.680 sharing these cringy memes, we might actually have a shot 3:04:39.680 --> 3:04:42.400 at killing off a fash wave. So yes, this was 3:04:42.440 --> 3:04:44.800 to not discount the efforts of anti fascists or others 3:04:44.800 --> 3:04:47.640 who pioneered the spread of dark Brandon and their attempts 3:04:47.640 --> 3:04:50.480 to insert it into greater public consciousness. But I think 3:04:50.520 --> 3:04:53.520 to frame this as like a meticulously planned siop from 3:04:53.520 --> 3:04:58.160 the very start, is also kind of inaccurate in like 3:04:58.200 --> 3:05:00.280 a very like spotlighted way like this was. This was 3:05:00.280 --> 3:05:03.360 a collaborative effort with with the with the liberals not 3:05:03.440 --> 3:05:08.120 realizing the degree that their collaboration played in this larger 3:05:08.200 --> 3:05:12.560 game of trying to disarm fascist aesthetics and like meme styles. 3:05:12.600 --> 3:05:15.760 So yeah, that's one one clarifying note as we hopefully 3:05:16.240 --> 3:05:20.200 wrap up this dysantis fashwave sega for the time being, 3:05:20.400 --> 3:05:22.800 because I definitely did not plan on making this episode 3:05:23.280 --> 3:05:26.200 when I when I finished recording last week with you. 3:05:26.480 --> 3:05:33.920 So here we are cool, all right, that's the episode. 3:05:34.000 --> 3:05:49.400 That's the episode. 3:05:51.160 --> 3:05:54.680 It's happening here. The thing that's happening here is fucking 3:05:54.800 --> 3:05:55.520 child labor. 3:05:55.640 --> 3:05:55.959 I am. 3:05:56.120 --> 3:06:00.320 I am deeply angry this episode. This is see get 3:06:00.400 --> 3:06:02.760 up here. I'm your host, Mio Wong and with me 3:06:02.920 --> 3:06:04.520 Sharen Hi Mia. 3:06:05.160 --> 3:06:08.039 I'm so glad to join you on this really uplifting episode. 3:06:08.600 --> 3:06:12.560 Yeah, it's gonna be great. So yes, all right, as 3:06:12.560 --> 3:06:14.880 anyone who studied like even a little bit of labor 3:06:14.959 --> 3:06:18.720 history dos, the fight over child labor is very very old. 3:06:18.840 --> 3:06:20.480 It is. It's one of the first causes that sort 3:06:20.520 --> 3:06:23.400 of liberal reformers to capitalism took up nearly eighteen hundreds. 3:06:23.440 --> 3:06:26.120 Like it's like in the Communist Manifesto is one of 3:06:26.160 --> 3:06:27.800 the things. It's actually it's one of the things people 3:06:27.840 --> 3:06:29.560 point out. It's like, oh, we've done all the things 3:06:29.600 --> 3:06:32.760 that was in the original Communist Manifesto, and it's like, no, no, 3:06:33.160 --> 3:06:36.240 we never got rid of this, you know. It's it's 3:06:36.240 --> 3:06:37.480 also one of the things that like you get these 3:06:37.520 --> 3:06:40.080 sort of like capitalist triumphalist accounts that like, oh, we 3:06:40.120 --> 3:06:42.200 eliminated child labor. This is like this is proof the 3:06:42.200 --> 3:06:46.360 system works. No, this, the battle over child labor is 3:06:46.360 --> 3:06:48.720 a battle that we are in the middle of losing, 3:06:49.320 --> 3:06:53.280 and we are losing it in worse and worse ways 3:06:53.320 --> 3:06:58.840 every day. So okay, so why why are we Why 3:06:58.840 --> 3:07:01.520 are we dealing with a new resurgence of child labor 3:07:01.560 --> 3:07:05.480 in this country. There's there's a lot of reasons. One 3:07:05.480 --> 3:07:07.720 of the big problems is that vast swaths of the 3:07:07.800 --> 3:07:12.160 US sees child labor is morally good. You know, they 3:07:12.160 --> 3:07:14.119 see something like oh, this is like you teach your kids. 3:07:14.120 --> 3:07:15.560 It's like how you yeah. 3:07:15.680 --> 3:07:18.240 Like how they grow up and get responsible and. 3:07:18.440 --> 3:07:19.800 Yeah, and then this and this is true in a 3:07:19.840 --> 3:07:22.280 lot of parts of the world. It's also completely and 3:07:22.520 --> 3:07:28.120 absolutely bonkers. It is just it's just nuts, Like people 3:07:28.280 --> 3:07:32.840 shouldn't think like this. It's incredibly weird. And the other 3:07:32.959 --> 3:07:34.280 thing that you get a lot is like there's you know, 3:07:34.320 --> 3:07:39.840 there's sort of like different versions of like more or 3:07:39.959 --> 3:07:42.640 less socially acceptable child labor. Right, So, like I think 3:07:42.680 --> 3:07:46.680 most people agree if you're not running the business that 3:07:46.840 --> 3:07:49.879 like children shouldn't be working in like slaughterhouses or whatever. 3:07:50.400 --> 3:07:52.600 But you know, there's like lots of things that people 3:07:52.640 --> 3:07:54.400 are like, oh, no, kid working in a restaurant, like 3:07:54.400 --> 3:07:57.560 that's completely fine. Like oh, it's like a like a 3:07:57.600 --> 3:08:01.160 fourteen year old is like doing farm work on a farm, 3:08:01.240 --> 3:08:02.080 Like that's fine. 3:08:02.480 --> 3:08:04.880 But it's a slippery slope, right because it's starting to 3:08:05.440 --> 3:08:08.760 farm work and then down. 3:08:08.920 --> 3:08:12.200 Also, like I would argue that that's also not fine, 3:08:12.200 --> 3:08:15.320 because what's what's essentially happening here is that there's this 3:08:15.520 --> 3:08:19.760 basically like this sort of family loophole to people's understanding 3:08:19.760 --> 3:08:22.600 if child labor were like as long as child labor 3:08:22.680 --> 3:08:26.039 is being done by like the family is an economic 3:08:26.120 --> 3:08:30.640 unit instead of like capitalists directly, yes, it's fine. It's 3:08:30.640 --> 3:08:33.760 like no, no, it's not. It's actually not fine, to 3:08:33.840 --> 3:08:36.560 be working people like be a child and then working 3:08:36.560 --> 3:08:38.600 for a living for your family, Like that's not. 3:08:40.320 --> 3:08:42.440 I think there's a difference between. I think there's a 3:08:42.480 --> 3:08:46.520 difference between like child labor and like working in a 3:08:46.560 --> 3:08:49.640 field for your family versus like a chore, you know 3:08:49.680 --> 3:08:52.120 what I mean, Like, yeah, yeah, it's I think I 3:08:52.160 --> 3:08:55.760 think that line gets blurred and people see their kids 3:08:55.760 --> 3:08:57.600 as much more mature than they are and like able 3:08:57.600 --> 3:09:00.920 to like no, I don't understand what you're saying. And 3:09:00.959 --> 3:09:02.280 I think I agree that I. 3:09:02.280 --> 3:09:06.879 Agree, yeah, and it's I don't know it. It sucks. 3:09:07.040 --> 3:09:08.840 This has a lot of sort of knock on effects. 3:09:09.080 --> 3:09:10.600 One of the big knock on effects his house. And 3:09:10.600 --> 3:09:11.800 this is this has been a thing for like the 3:09:11.920 --> 3:09:14.840 entire history of child labor, right, is that like capitalists 3:09:14.959 --> 3:09:16.920 use children as a way to write down wages for 3:09:16.959 --> 3:09:18.600 everyone else. And this is you know, if you ever 3:09:18.600 --> 3:09:20.800 listened to argue to someone about the minimum wage, right, 3:09:21.120 --> 3:09:23.160 one of the big arguments about the minimum wage is 3:09:23.200 --> 3:09:26.000 that like, oh, well, it's like it's like kids get 3:09:26.000 --> 3:09:28.440 the minimum wage, so like it's fine. It's like one, 3:09:28.560 --> 3:09:31.520 it's not like children are not morally worth less and 3:09:31.560 --> 3:09:34.279 their labor is also not worth less than an adult, 3:09:34.520 --> 3:09:37.240 like like if if you're gonna exploin them like this. 3:09:37.280 --> 3:09:40.160 Like, yeah, things are the same price for everybody. It's 3:09:40.200 --> 3:09:41.400 not like less for a child. 3:09:41.560 --> 3:09:43.240 Yeah, it's not. It's not like like a kid is 3:09:43.240 --> 3:09:45.560 like somehow less of a human being than an adult, 3:09:45.640 --> 3:09:49.520 right like this is this is this sucks, but you 3:09:49.560 --> 3:09:52.560 know it's used to sort of hold down wages directly 3:09:52.600 --> 3:09:55.200 through things like like opposing minimum wage increases. Used to 3:09:55.240 --> 3:09:58.440 hold you know, hold down wages sort of indirectly because 3:09:58.480 --> 3:10:01.360 and this is another reason like capitalists love child labor 3:10:01.480 --> 3:10:05.760 is that children are you know, like they're physically smaller 3:10:05.760 --> 3:10:08.879 than adults, they're easier to control, they have less social power, 3:10:10.200 --> 3:10:12.640 and because you know, because of that, you can pay 3:10:12.680 --> 3:10:17.520 them less. And because of you know, because because people 3:10:17.720 --> 3:10:20.960 just in our society don't fucking like kids, and because 3:10:20.959 --> 3:10:25.560 of that, it's so it's just socially accessible to just 3:10:25.600 --> 3:10:26.920 pay them less. 3:10:26.640 --> 3:10:29.480 All those reasons you listed are absolutely terrifying though, like 3:10:29.520 --> 3:10:32.879 oh they will listen, Oh they're smaller, Oh they're like 3:10:33.840 --> 3:10:37.199 cheap or whatever it is that they're all like terrible 3:10:37.640 --> 3:10:40.160 reasons to justify child labor. 3:10:40.959 --> 3:10:45.480 No, they're not good. They're not good. And yet however, Comma, 3:10:46.240 --> 3:10:50.280 it still persists, it has resisted. It's very old. I'm 3:10:50.280 --> 3:10:52.560 going to read something from the Bureau of Labor Statistics 3:10:52.760 --> 3:10:58.440 about this fucking kid who was working in a mine. 3:10:58.600 --> 3:11:00.280 What okay? 3:11:00.480 --> 3:11:04.400 This is from the early nineteen hundreds. One boy touchingly 3:11:04.440 --> 3:11:07.240 recounted his attitude towards facing the day at the mind 3:11:07.280 --> 3:11:10.400 this way. I'll always think of my poor blind father 3:11:10.480 --> 3:11:12.880 and my mother at home, but I won't never play 3:11:12.920 --> 3:11:15.560 with the boys at all, and then the cracker boss 3:11:15.600 --> 3:11:17.440 won't have to beat me like he does the others. 3:11:17.800 --> 3:11:20.560 This boy was nine years old. While stories like these 3:11:20.640 --> 3:11:23.560 produced outrage in many quarters, in the cold producing regions, 3:11:23.560 --> 3:11:26.280 there is no such concern the view that quote the 3:11:26.320 --> 3:11:29.280 little devils like it, as one cold boss put it, 3:11:29.320 --> 3:11:32.520 seemed to be the prevailing sentiments. Child labor wasn't discussed 3:11:32.560 --> 3:11:35.240 these regions because it wasn't seen as an issue. So 3:11:35.520 --> 3:11:38.160 this is like nineteen hundreds of American view, like early 3:11:38.240 --> 3:11:41.080 nieten hundreds of American view on this right, like people, 3:11:42.120 --> 3:11:44.160 my people, I mean capitalists, and also people who are 3:11:44.160 --> 3:11:46.320 incredibly desperate and don't have enough money to get by 3:11:46.680 --> 3:11:50.760 like love child labor. There's you know, it takes a 3:11:50.800 --> 3:11:53.199 long time for like an actual series anti child labor 3:11:53.200 --> 3:11:56.120 campaign to like get started in the US. And of 3:11:56.120 --> 3:11:59.200 course the exact people who you would expect to oppose 3:11:59.240 --> 3:12:02.840 banning child or posed banning child labor. I'm gonna read 3:12:02.920 --> 3:12:06.480 this from the also from the bar laboristics. The chairman 3:12:06.560 --> 3:12:10.000 of the National Association of Manufacturers said about a law 3:12:10.040 --> 3:12:13.760 to abolish child labor. Quote this union, this labor union 3:12:13.800 --> 3:12:17.200 plot against the advancements and happiness of the American boy, 3:12:18.120 --> 3:12:21.280 is a ploy. Is also a ploy against individual industrial 3:12:21.360 --> 3:12:25.600 expansion and prosperity in this country. So this is what 3:12:25.720 --> 3:12:29.320 their thing is. Their argument is that is that children 3:12:29.400 --> 3:12:32.520 don't oppose child labor. This is this is being foisted 3:12:32.640 --> 3:12:37.279 upon them by outside agitated labor unions. And also if 3:12:37.280 --> 3:12:39.240 we're not allowed to use child labor, and if we're 3:12:39.240 --> 3:12:40.680 not allowed to have a nine year old be put 3:12:40.680 --> 3:12:44.360 in a mine, the entire American economy will collapse and 3:12:44.400 --> 3:12:45.800 every manufacturer will go broke. 3:12:46.320 --> 3:12:50.000 It's like making you like being like child labor because patriotism, 3:12:50.080 --> 3:12:51.600 Like that's basically what that means. 3:12:51.800 --> 3:12:55.640 Yeah, it's it's it's genu widely terrible. Like I I 3:12:55.640 --> 3:12:57.080 I don't know, it's so ghoulish. 3:12:57.480 --> 3:13:00.360 Like companies today have figured out how to do this 3:13:00.440 --> 3:13:03.720 pr thing of like, oh, we don't condone child labor. 3:13:03.800 --> 3:13:06.080 We crack down on it very seriously. We also hire 3:13:06.160 --> 3:13:08.800 children literally all the time. But it's fine, We're just 3:13:08.800 --> 3:13:10.920 we're gonna like you know, but back in like nine hundreds, 3:13:10.920 --> 3:13:12.680 they hadn't really figured that out yet, and so you know, 3:13:12.920 --> 3:13:14.920 there's there's this sort of reform movement that happens. And 3:13:14.920 --> 3:13:16.560 one of the sort of key moments of this reform 3:13:16.640 --> 3:13:20.480 thing is the Laurence Textile Strike. And this strike is 3:13:20.520 --> 3:13:24.480 probably most famous today for popularizing the slogan we want 3:13:24.520 --> 3:13:27.920 bread and roses too, which is, you know, like wrung 3:13:28.040 --> 3:13:30.400 down the halls of labor and socialist histories, like the 3:13:30.480 --> 3:13:33.640 names of newspapers, songs, poems, and also like being the 3:13:33.680 --> 3:13:38.680 namesake of a truly dogshit DSA caucus. We're not going 3:13:38.760 --> 3:13:42.000 to talk about this strike enormously. Here the short, the 3:13:42.080 --> 3:13:44.000 very very short version of this strike, and this is 3:13:44.000 --> 3:13:46.959 a nineteen twelve strike. The short version of it is 3:13:46.959 --> 3:13:49.000 that there's a law pass in Massachusetts that would have 3:13:49.080 --> 3:13:52.440 reduced like the number of hours that you could have 3:13:52.480 --> 3:13:55.640 women and children work from a blistering fifty six hours 3:13:55.640 --> 3:13:57.800 to a leisurely fifty four hours a week. 3:13:58.080 --> 3:13:58.879 Oh my god. 3:14:00.280 --> 3:14:04.440 This prompted the local capitalist to get so mad that 3:14:04.640 --> 3:14:08.080 they did this like massive like industrial speed up, so 3:14:08.120 --> 3:14:10.800 they forced everyone to work faster and then also doctor 3:14:10.840 --> 3:14:14.480 everyone's paid for it. And this this set off a strike, 3:14:14.959 --> 3:14:18.920 which's relevant for like our stories that the workers at 3:14:18.920 --> 3:14:20.840 this plant. You know, there's there's lots of coverage of 3:14:20.879 --> 3:14:22.879 the fact that like most of these workers are immigrant women, 3:14:23.080 --> 3:14:26.039 like from a bunch of different places. The part of 3:14:26.040 --> 3:14:27.600 it that's not talked about as much is that another 3:14:27.680 --> 3:14:29.520 huge person of the workers we're is fucking. 3:14:29.360 --> 3:14:34.480 Children, and it seems to get glossed over. 3:14:35.000 --> 3:14:38.000 Yeah yeah, And it's like, I, I, you know, I 3:14:38.000 --> 3:14:39.960 don't know, maybe maybe maybe we should go back to 3:14:40.000 --> 3:14:42.640 talking about that part because it's really important for like 3:14:43.520 --> 3:14:46.039 the stuff we're going to talk about later in this episode. 3:14:46.080 --> 3:14:49.360 That made me so angry, I was like physically punching 3:14:49.400 --> 3:14:52.960 my pillow. What happens next is that the police crackdown 3:14:52.959 --> 3:14:55.640 on the strike. It's more and more violence, and as 3:14:55.680 --> 3:14:58.920 this goes on, the workers at like the adult workers 3:14:58.920 --> 3:15:01.120 at this plant decide, Okay, we're gonna like send the 3:15:01.200 --> 3:15:03.160 children who are both like both the child workers and 3:15:03.200 --> 3:15:06.560 also like just people's kids to New York to keep 3:15:06.600 --> 3:15:08.800 them safe and also to make a political point. But like, hey, 3:15:08.800 --> 3:15:11.200 look they're they're running our children out of town, and 3:15:11.320 --> 3:15:13.000 this goes great. The first way is just go great 3:15:13.040 --> 3:15:14.360 for the children. Like a bunch of people in New 3:15:14.440 --> 3:15:16.280 York show up are like yay, hey, we'll take care 3:15:16.320 --> 3:15:20.400 of these kids. Like and this makes like the officials 3:15:20.400 --> 3:15:23.480 in Lawrence be like, you have to stop this. It 3:15:23.480 --> 3:15:27.680 looks really bad for us. And so they they like 3:15:27.800 --> 3:15:30.879 assembled outside of the next train that was trying to 3:15:30.959 --> 3:15:34.640 leave and tried to stop them. Oh my god, so 3:15:34.760 --> 3:15:38.160 she shouldn't be really brististics Again, When the next group 3:15:38.160 --> 3:15:40.480 of children prepared to depart the train station, they were 3:15:40.520 --> 3:15:43.440 met by police and soldiers. The police refused to let 3:15:43.480 --> 3:15:45.879 them board the trains and launched an attack on the group. 3:15:46.280 --> 3:15:48.160 A seven year old was given a black eye when 3:15:48.200 --> 3:15:50.360 she was picked up and thrown into a patty wagon 3:15:50.400 --> 3:15:54.680 by police. Another witness. Another witness testified to children being 3:15:54.720 --> 3:15:56.200 thrown around like rags. 3:15:57.040 --> 3:16:01.480 Oh my god, like yeah, thin blue live baby, let's 3:16:01.480 --> 3:16:02.039 fucking go. 3:16:02.600 --> 3:16:03.400 This is this is the thing. 3:16:03.480 --> 3:16:06.800 The cops or the thin blue line ordering chaos that 3:16:07.000 --> 3:16:11.560 sevy little girls. Yeah's not gonna throw herself around, right, 3:16:11.720 --> 3:16:13.879 Like someone has to beat up this children. 3:16:14.280 --> 3:16:16.280 And for that there is the few, the proud, the 3:16:16.320 --> 3:16:17.240 American police. 3:16:17.440 --> 3:16:19.280 But they were scared for their lives, you know what 3:16:19.320 --> 3:16:20.760 I mean, Like there're seven. 3:16:20.600 --> 3:16:23.760 Year olds that that seven year old girl looked at 3:16:23.800 --> 3:16:25.320 me really aggressively. 3:16:25.440 --> 3:16:27.960 Yeah, I was scared for my life. That's what they said. 3:16:28.480 --> 3:16:31.879 It's it's you know, it's this is bad. And like 3:16:31.920 --> 3:16:35.800 you know, the the nineteen hundreds police can get away with, 3:16:35.920 --> 3:16:37.959 like nineteen hundred police. We've tked about another episodes, like 3:16:38.080 --> 3:16:40.400 they could get away with just like shooting people right, 3:16:40.440 --> 3:16:42.920 like the like they could show up to like a 3:16:43.040 --> 3:16:45.240 strike and just open fire into the crowd and it 3:16:45.240 --> 3:16:50.800 doesn't do anything throwing around a bunch of children like rags. Finally, 3:16:50.840 --> 3:16:53.040 it turned out was the thing that was bad enough 3:16:53.040 --> 3:16:55.160 that it like started a congressional investigation. 3:16:55.680 --> 3:16:57.160 Wow, I guess that's good and bad. 3:16:57.240 --> 3:16:59.520 But yeah, so. 3:16:59.520 --> 3:17:02.280 There's a call launched this investigation, and there's like this 3:17:02.320 --> 3:17:06.080 fourteen year old immigrant girl named Kamela Tielli testifies about 3:17:06.080 --> 3:17:08.280 how she was working at the mill when a machine 3:17:08.480 --> 3:17:14.039 caught her hair and tore her scalp off. The police 3:17:14.040 --> 3:17:17.320 promptly and this is going and okay, the police promptly 3:17:17.400 --> 3:17:19.960 arrested her dad. Didn't do anything to the company, arrested 3:17:19.959 --> 3:17:22.800 her dad for lying about her age. Oh my god, 3:17:22.879 --> 3:17:27.360 what now this hold that wood in your fucking mind, 3:17:27.440 --> 3:17:29.480 because we're gonna come back to that shit, do I 3:17:29.600 --> 3:17:33.320 have to? Okay? Unfortunately, because it's gonna get so much 3:17:33.320 --> 3:17:38.240 worse when Tyler's episode is over. So the product of 3:17:38.280 --> 3:17:40.400 this is that there starts to be like a really 3:17:40.440 --> 3:17:42.680 mainstream push against child labor, which is, you know, a 3:17:42.760 --> 3:17:45.240 thing you would have thought would have started earlier, because again, 3:17:45.520 --> 3:17:49.160 we're on like century two of child labor in the 3:17:49.240 --> 3:17:51.240 US by this point, right like in the in an 3:17:51.360 --> 3:17:55.879 entity called the United States. But you know, apparently it 3:17:55.959 --> 3:17:58.520 takes this to actually make people go, wait, maybe this 3:17:58.560 --> 3:18:02.280 is bad. And the product of this is you get 3:18:02.280 --> 3:18:06.240 this thing called the Kenning Owen Child Labor Act nineteen sixteen. Now, 3:18:06.280 --> 3:18:08.320 as we sort of talked about earlier, right, the weakness 3:18:08.360 --> 3:18:11.240 of this law is that it, you know, it allows 3:18:11.360 --> 3:18:13.840 kids to be used as laborers, like inside of the 3:18:13.879 --> 3:18:16.400 family unit. So like if you're on a family and 3:18:16.400 --> 3:18:18.600 this is a very very broad category. Right, so it's 3:18:18.640 --> 3:18:20.480 you know, you can you can force your child to 3:18:20.520 --> 3:18:23.240 work as long as like you're their parents, right, you're 3:18:23.280 --> 3:18:24.840 the one making the money off of them, and not 3:18:25.040 --> 3:18:30.039 like a capitalist. But even this, even this is considered 3:18:30.240 --> 3:18:33.160 too strong of a law. And in nineteen eighteen, the 3:18:33.200 --> 3:18:36.800 Supreme Court rules and it's unconstitutional to ban child labor. 3:18:37.720 --> 3:18:43.600 Wait what Yeah, they do it the uiple times, multiple times. 3:18:43.640 --> 3:18:46.560 And we really cannot emphasize this enough on this show. 3:18:46.720 --> 3:18:49.720 The Supreme Court is and has always been just one 3:18:49.760 --> 3:18:51.480 of history's greatest monsters. 3:18:51.959 --> 3:18:55.680 Like, yeah, wait, I was right then, child labor does 3:18:55.720 --> 3:18:59.240 equal patriotism. That's basically what's so. 3:18:59.320 --> 3:19:03.040 Eventually FDR gets into this giant fight with Supreme Court, 3:19:03.240 --> 3:19:05.720 and the first child labor law we get in federal 3:19:05.800 --> 3:19:10.640 child labor law that gets that sticks. I like doesn't 3:19:10.680 --> 3:19:14.560 happen till nineteen thirty eight when FDR threatens to pack 3:19:14.640 --> 3:19:18.640 the court if the Court refuses to fucking stop stop 3:19:18.720 --> 3:19:20.840 saying that that that the state, that the state doesn't 3:19:20.840 --> 3:19:23.200 have the government doesn't have the power to regulate child labor. 3:19:24.120 --> 3:19:26.600 Wow, it's like literally less than a century ago. That is, 3:19:26.680 --> 3:19:28.600 like yesterday, you. 3:19:28.560 --> 3:19:30.959 Know, but but but you know, and this actually works, right, 3:19:31.120 --> 3:19:33.840 but but and this is a real problem. And this 3:19:33.920 --> 3:19:35.440 is a problem that we're gonna we're gonna talk about 3:19:35.480 --> 3:19:38.800 later in this fucking episode. In the modern day, those 3:19:38.879 --> 3:19:43.039 child labor laws don't get enforced. It doesn't that act, 3:19:43.160 --> 3:19:46.360 that actual the nineteen thirty eight Fair Labor Act, like 3:19:47.040 --> 3:19:51.119 basically doesn't actually do shit to like reduce the amount 3:19:51.120 --> 3:19:54.160 of child labor in the country. And here's the thing, 3:19:54.280 --> 3:19:57.680 like even now, even before all the horror show stuff 3:19:57.680 --> 3:19:59.560 that we're about to get to that's happening right now, 3:19:59.640 --> 3:20:02.840 like not kids, like we never actually dealt with child 3:20:02.879 --> 3:20:06.800 labor through like the law. Like we just basically outsourced, 3:20:06.840 --> 3:20:08.800 you know, Okay, we we had to find someone whose 3:20:08.840 --> 3:20:12.240 labor is cheaper than like an American child, and we did. 3:20:12.320 --> 3:20:17.000 It's either like mechanization other immigrants who like don't have 3:20:17.120 --> 3:20:21.840 legal citizenship status, or just outsourcing. And then you know, 3:20:22.240 --> 3:20:24.600 our kids still fucking do work, you know, like are 3:20:24.800 --> 3:20:27.080 like they're like it's very common for ten and twelve 3:20:27.120 --> 3:20:28.640 year olds to work. It's just that it's usually like 3:20:28.720 --> 3:20:32.600 babysitting or like bowing lawns. And we've we've decided that like, no, 3:20:32.720 --> 3:20:34.680 this is actually fine, Like it is actually fine to 3:20:34.760 --> 3:20:36.760 fucking put twelve year olds in a labor market. 3:20:38.280 --> 3:20:41.039 Yeah. I mean I think most people today anyway, I 3:20:41.040 --> 3:20:44.760 think the common person thinks that child labor happens like 3:20:45.160 --> 3:20:47.800 in other countries over there, you know what I mean. 3:20:47.879 --> 3:20:52.080 I don't think they think America is still that archaic 3:20:52.120 --> 3:20:52.680 and stupid. 3:20:53.080 --> 3:20:56.720 But yeah, and oh my god, yeah, so we need 3:20:56.760 --> 3:20:59.760 to take an ad break. And then I'm not even 3:20:59.800 --> 3:21:03.000 gonna make a joke about our sponsors and child labor because, 3:21:03.000 --> 3:21:05.760 like Jesus fucking Christ, this is good about to be 3:21:05.760 --> 3:21:11.360 it so bad? But yeah, here's what ads. Okay, So 3:21:12.120 --> 3:21:15.680 you know, we never really got rid of child labor, right, 3:21:16.080 --> 3:21:21.160 what we did basically was, to some extent, we've been 3:21:21.160 --> 3:21:24.879 able to successfully decrease the severity of it. And you know, 3:21:24.959 --> 3:21:27.400 in the last twenty years, there'd been a decline in 3:21:27.520 --> 3:21:30.600 what economists and I really cannot emphasize enough this is 3:21:30.640 --> 3:21:34.320 the actual phrase they use, is child participation in the 3:21:34.400 --> 3:21:35.760 labor markets. 3:21:36.360 --> 3:21:40.600 Wow, so vanilla of a way to say that. 3:21:41.120 --> 3:21:44.320 So return to present day, present day. The thing that's 3:21:44.320 --> 3:21:46.760 been happening in the last few months is that in 3:21:46.840 --> 3:21:51.600 a five week span in this country. Three children died 3:21:51.959 --> 3:21:53.760 or I, you know, I would actually argue we're killed 3:21:53.760 --> 3:21:59.160 by their employers on the job. Wow, five children in 3:21:59.560 --> 3:22:03.920 three building in five weeks. So sixteen these there, these 3:22:03.959 --> 3:22:07.199 kids were all sixteen. Sixteen year old Duven Thomas Perez 3:22:07.240 --> 3:22:10.879 got killed by machinery, had a conveyor belt. Sixteen year 3:22:10.879 --> 3:22:13.520 old Will Hampton died working at a landfill, and sixteen 3:22:13.560 --> 3:22:16.480 year old Michael Schulz died working for a logging company. 3:22:17.840 --> 3:22:21.600 There have been other child labor deaths recently. Those are 3:22:21.640 --> 3:22:25.039 just sort of the most recent ones. And I want 3:22:25.040 --> 3:22:29.280 to get in to this shit that's been happening because 3:22:29.320 --> 3:22:33.720 in the last really in the last been under like 3:22:33.760 --> 3:22:37.039 eight years, things have gotten you know, like the til 3:22:37.120 --> 3:22:38.920 labor situation in the US was never good, and we'll 3:22:38.920 --> 3:22:42.360 talk about that later, but like things have gotten so 3:22:42.520 --> 3:22:47.120 much worse. There's been almost a factor of four increase 3:22:47.200 --> 3:22:50.760 in twenty fifteen in kids working illegally and hazardous jobs. 3:22:51.000 --> 3:22:54.000 It's actually probably well, it's unclear to me whether the 3:22:54.080 --> 3:22:56.480 numbers are actually worse than that. I don't know, because 3:22:56.480 --> 3:22:59.000 I think almost all of this these districts are being 3:22:59.080 --> 3:23:03.840 undercounted like dramatically because those numbers are just like violations 3:23:03.879 --> 3:23:06.640 that are caught and go into that a bit later. 3:23:07.240 --> 3:23:12.320 But meanwhile, like right now, Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, 3:23:12.360 --> 3:23:14.760 and Vermont have already passed laws in the last two 3:23:14.800 --> 3:23:17.160 years that weakened restrictions on child labor, and bills are 3:23:17.200 --> 3:23:19.640 appearing like across the country to do fucking more of 3:23:19.720 --> 3:23:22.360 the same stuff, like they want to allow fourteen year 3:23:22.400 --> 3:23:28.680 olds to serve alcohol in bars. It's you know, it is. 3:23:28.720 --> 3:23:31.160 It is truly horrific, and it's being driven by restaurant 3:23:31.240 --> 3:23:33.520 business associations across the country who want to, you know, 3:23:33.760 --> 3:23:37.600 use child labor. And that's bad. The fact that there's 3:23:37.600 --> 3:23:40.080 more stuff that's that you know, is on the horizon 3:23:40.440 --> 3:23:44.199 is not good. But for an enormous number of people, 3:23:44.600 --> 3:23:47.959 regardless of what the law says, the situation is absolutely intolerable. 3:23:49.400 --> 3:23:52.000 Here's from the New York Times. In many parts of 3:23:52.000 --> 3:23:55.240 the country, middle and high school teachers in English language 3:23:55.320 --> 3:23:58.160 larder programs say it is now common for nearly all 3:23:58.240 --> 3:24:00.560 of their students to rush off to law long shift 3:24:00.560 --> 3:24:04.560 after their classes end. They should not be working twelve 3:24:04.600 --> 3:24:08.440 hour days, but it's happening here, said Valeria Lindsay, an 3:24:08.560 --> 3:24:12.320 arts language arts teacher at Homestead Middle School near Miami. 3:24:12.760 --> 3:24:15.600 For the past three years, almost every eighth grader in 3:24:15.640 --> 3:24:19.160 her English learner program, about one hundred students, was also 3:24:19.240 --> 3:24:27.800 carrying an adult workload. So there's been a massive surge 3:24:27.840 --> 3:24:32.560 since twenty twenty one in unaccompanied minors entering the US. 3:24:32.640 --> 3:24:37.840 And this has been driven by a lot of sort 3:24:37.879 --> 3:24:40.920 of you know, it's been driven by pandemic driven poverty, 3:24:41.240 --> 3:24:43.400 a massive obseration of violence in a bunch of countries 3:24:43.440 --> 3:24:45.720 in Central America, a lot of which has to do 3:24:45.879 --> 3:24:49.040 with a like you know, the the US back to 3:24:49.120 --> 3:24:54.320 q Andel, Southador about a decade ago. You know, there's 3:24:54.320 --> 3:24:56.440 a lot of stuff going on. It's all very bad, 3:24:57.120 --> 3:25:01.000 and it's been pushing people here. But you know, like 3:25:01.080 --> 3:25:04.720 the situation for immigrants getting into the US is never good, 3:25:05.360 --> 3:25:09.480 but Biden specifically has managed to make it worse because 3:25:09.520 --> 3:25:13.720 Biden's sort of like Biden's immigration policy has been resting 3:25:13.760 --> 3:25:16.760 on getting kids out of shelters as fast as humanly 3:25:16.800 --> 3:25:19.800 possible and just like throwing them at literally anyone who 3:25:19.800 --> 3:25:24.920 claims to be a sponsor, right, And you know, this 3:25:25.000 --> 3:25:27.320 has gone about as well as you would expect it 3:25:27.360 --> 3:25:29.640 would when someone like starts to you know. One of 3:25:29.680 --> 3:25:31.920 the I think was the New York Times was talking 3:25:31.959 --> 3:25:34.160 about this woman who's working. You quit working in a 3:25:34.360 --> 3:25:37.600 health human services like office because they had a quota 3:25:37.640 --> 3:25:39.320 of getting rid of twenty percent of their kids a 3:25:39.360 --> 3:25:43.040 week and if they didn't do it, they would get dated. Yeah, 3:25:43.080 --> 3:25:44.960 they had a quota for we need to get twenty 3:25:45.000 --> 3:25:46.840 percent of the kids out of the shelter every week. 3:25:47.600 --> 3:25:48.040 Wow. 3:25:48.400 --> 3:25:51.000 In the last two years they have lost track of 3:25:51.040 --> 3:25:53.000 a third of the kids they send out, which is 3:25:53.520 --> 3:25:56.760 again in the last two years alone, at least eighty 3:25:56.800 --> 3:26:00.959 five thousand children. They've just lost fucking know who they are. 3:26:01.920 --> 3:26:04.440 Here's some New York Times again. It's getting to be 3:26:04.480 --> 3:26:07.640 a business for some of these sponsors. And yet Pasilaqua, 3:26:07.680 --> 3:26:10.120 who left her job as a caseworker in Central Florida 3:26:10.200 --> 3:26:13.640 last year. Miss Pasilachua said she saw so many children 3:26:13.680 --> 3:26:16.320 put to work and found law enforcement officials so unwilling 3:26:16.360 --> 3:26:21.240 to investigate these cases that she largely stopped reporting them. Instead, 3:26:21.320 --> 3:26:23.560 she settled for explaining to the children that they were 3:26:23.720 --> 3:26:25.640 entitled to lunch breaks in overtime. 3:26:27.000 --> 3:26:27.480 Wow. 3:26:29.760 --> 3:26:33.240 Wow, And you know, I want to make really clear 3:26:33.680 --> 3:26:36.400 what we're talking about here, right, This is not you know, 3:26:36.480 --> 3:26:40.359 like I don't think like you know, whatever your position 3:26:40.520 --> 3:26:43.400 is on like whether like a twelve year old or 3:26:43.400 --> 3:26:45.680 a fourteen year old should be working any job at all. 3:26:46.120 --> 3:26:49.200 We are talking about twelve year olds working on factories. 3:26:49.200 --> 3:26:52.120 We were talking about thirteen year olds cleaning up the 3:26:52.200 --> 3:26:56.280 floors of slaughter the kill floors of slaughterhouses. We are 3:26:56.320 --> 3:27:01.240 talking about like, we are talking about fourteen year olds 3:27:01.560 --> 3:27:08.680 who are like literally making food that like you are eating. Yeah, 3:27:08.680 --> 3:27:11.520 and we're still right, So this is this is happening 3:27:11.520 --> 3:27:13.200 in a large part because there's been a sort of 3:27:13.520 --> 3:27:16.200 like a giant surgeon on a company of miners. Well, 3:27:16.200 --> 3:27:17.720 it turns out a lot of those miners are on 3:27:17.760 --> 3:27:20.920 a company because the Biden administration wouldn't let their fucking 3:27:21.040 --> 3:27:26.800 parents into the country. And this is where this is 3:27:26.800 --> 3:27:28.840 where we need to get into the fucking like the 3:27:28.879 --> 3:27:31.920 whole sort of like sex trafficking panic, right because you know, 3:27:32.040 --> 3:27:34.480 one of the things that that this panic, specifically about 3:27:34.480 --> 3:27:37.840 sex trafficking, has covered up is that most human trafficking 3:27:38.080 --> 3:27:42.080 is not sex trafficking. It's almost all labor trafficking. Almost 3:27:42.080 --> 3:27:45.000 also too strong a word, but it's mostly by volume. 3:27:45.440 --> 3:27:49.040 Most of it is is labor trafficking, which nobody gives 3:27:49.040 --> 3:27:51.720 a single shit about because you know, there's no you 3:27:51.760 --> 3:27:55.360 can't you can't have a moral panic around like you 3:27:55.360 --> 3:27:58.119 can't have a moral panic around labor trafficking like people 3:27:58.160 --> 3:28:02.200 who aren't white. And simultaneously, all the business groups who 3:28:02.200 --> 3:28:05.199 would normally fund these panics like love this shit because 3:28:05.680 --> 3:28:08.080 you know, all all of these capitals ghouls drinking a 3:28:08.120 --> 3:28:11.119 thousand dollars bottles of wine, un they're thirty million dollar yachts. 3:28:12.800 --> 3:28:14.800 All of that shit is paid for by child labor, 3:28:14.840 --> 3:28:16.240 so of course they don't give a shit about it. 3:28:16.240 --> 3:28:18.920 In fact, they love it. And the you know, the 3:28:18.920 --> 3:28:20.680 product of this is you have a bunch of fucking 3:28:20.720 --> 3:28:23.920 twelve year olds who are effectively in debt bondage, working 3:28:23.920 --> 3:28:26.080 twelve hours a fucking day in a slaughterhouse or a 3:28:26.080 --> 3:28:30.800 paper bill. I'm gonna read another thing for the New 3:28:30.879 --> 3:28:35.160 York Times, which is, I don't know, so many of 3:28:35.200 --> 3:28:38.440 these things are so depressing, but like I think this 3:28:38.520 --> 3:28:44.080 is the most depressing thing I've read in this entire 3:28:44.160 --> 3:28:48.879 I don't know, like in ages, I didn't get how 3:28:48.920 --> 3:28:52.400 expensive everything was, says thirteen year old Jose Vasquez, who 3:28:52.400 --> 3:28:55.039 works twelve hour shifts, six days a week at a 3:28:55.040 --> 3:28:58.000 commercial egg farm in Michigan and lives with his teenage sister. 3:28:58.520 --> 3:29:00.840 I'd like to go to school, but then how would 3:29:00.840 --> 3:29:06.440 I pay rent? Thirteen thirteen? You know? And of course 3:29:06.520 --> 3:29:08.480 one of you know, like the everything about this, right 3:29:08.640 --> 3:29:12.520 is these these are people dealing with the fucking American 3:29:12.520 --> 3:29:15.920 housing market. Right. The American housing market is intolerable to 3:29:16.120 --> 3:29:19.440 adults who work full time, who work like full time 3:29:19.560 --> 3:29:23.680 jobs or multiple part time jobs. Right, this is a 3:29:23.720 --> 3:29:26.720 thirteen year old. How the fuck is a thirteen year old? 3:29:26.720 --> 3:29:27.960 It's supposed to be paying rent? 3:29:29.120 --> 3:29:29.280 Right? 3:29:31.040 --> 3:29:33.480 And you know, and every every sort of additional thing 3:29:33.560 --> 3:29:35.560 just makes it worse because the more the more of 3:29:35.600 --> 3:29:37.360 these kids. And one of one of the things is 3:29:37.360 --> 3:29:40.000 happening is these kids are getting funneed into very specific areas, 3:29:40.240 --> 3:29:43.240 right because they're getting they're getting funneled to like specific towns, 3:29:43.240 --> 3:29:46.400 because those specific towns have a bunch of like have 3:29:46.480 --> 3:29:49.120 a bunch of companies who specifically want to hire these 3:29:49.200 --> 3:29:52.160 migrant kids. And when they do that, that fucking continually 3:29:52.240 --> 3:29:54.400 drives out the price of housing. Because all of these 3:29:54.400 --> 3:29:58.720 people are competing for the same like fucking one Vedroe 3:29:58.800 --> 3:30:02.720 apartment for sixteen time dollars a months, right, And so 3:30:02.800 --> 3:30:05.400 every everything just sort of spirals in on each other 3:30:06.640 --> 3:30:09.560 and until you get you get a fucking thirteen year 3:30:09.600 --> 3:30:13.560 old working, working, fucking this is this is nine ninety six. 3:30:13.600 --> 3:30:15.320 This is the fucking like thing I talked about in 3:30:15.360 --> 3:30:18.160 China is at nine am, nine pm, six days a 3:30:18.200 --> 3:30:23.120 week at a fucking egg farm in Michigan. In you know, 3:30:23.400 --> 3:30:26.959 in any just world, people would die for this. In 3:30:27.040 --> 3:30:29.680 this world, and you know, people have fucking died for this. 3:30:29.840 --> 3:30:31.879 It's a bunch of children who are dying on their 3:30:31.920 --> 3:30:36.800 fucking jobs in this world though. The people, you know, 3:30:36.840 --> 3:30:38.959 the people who die for this are children. And the 3:30:38.959 --> 3:30:43.720 Biden administration again is actively aiding fucking human traffickers by 3:30:43.959 --> 3:30:46.039 kicking all these kids out to their families, like they're 3:30:46.080 --> 3:30:48.080 kicking all these people out to just like fucking anyone 3:30:48.080 --> 3:30:50.520 as soon as humanly possible, and not allowing these people's 3:30:50.560 --> 3:30:54.120 families into the country, and then doing literally nothing at 3:30:54.160 --> 3:30:56.000 all to ensure that like the people who are fleeing 3:30:56.040 --> 3:30:59.680 into this country like have a place to live, or 3:30:59.760 --> 3:31:02.600 like any kind of reasonable job or any way to 3:31:02.640 --> 3:31:05.480 support themselves, you know, and we could, we could fucking 3:31:05.560 --> 3:31:07.879 like there are there are individual people in the US 3:31:07.920 --> 3:31:10.320 who benefit from this child labor who you could fucking 3:31:10.879 --> 3:31:13.640 like throw into a box tomorrow, take all of their money, 3:31:13.640 --> 3:31:17.200 and you could fund this entire program or individual people. Right, 3:31:18.200 --> 3:31:20.120 No one will fucking do it. They will let these kids. 3:31:20.120 --> 3:31:22.279 They will let every single one of these kids die 3:31:22.440 --> 3:31:25.080 before a single billionaire has to fucking spend a single 3:31:25.200 --> 3:31:32.600 cent taking care of these kids. Meanwhile, the actual child 3:31:32.760 --> 3:31:36.960 laws that exists in this uh uh you know that 3:31:37.080 --> 3:31:39.480 that exists in the US are completely useless because regulatory 3:31:39.520 --> 3:31:42.400 agencies are taking one of two approaches. Either they do nothing, 3:31:43.120 --> 3:31:45.200 or they spend some time investigating so they can get 3:31:45.240 --> 3:31:47.160 a cut of the child labor money by issuing a 3:31:47.200 --> 3:31:47.920 fine to the company. 3:31:49.720 --> 3:31:53.000 Are you fucking kidding me? It gets worse. 3:31:53.879 --> 3:31:57.560 Now, And and this is the fun part. Merely taking 3:31:57.600 --> 3:32:00.440 a cut of the child labor money or doing nothing, 3:32:00.720 --> 3:32:04.160 those are those might arguably be the best case scenarios. 3:32:04.160 --> 3:32:06.240 Because the other thing that happens, and the Washington Post 3:32:06.280 --> 3:32:08.520 has been talking, you did a very good report about this, 3:32:09.160 --> 3:32:12.720 is the other thing they do is you know, either 3:32:13.000 --> 3:32:15.439 they effectively enter the rev share agreement with the contractors 3:32:15.440 --> 3:32:19.920 who are hiring these fucking human traffickers, or they do raids. 3:32:20.400 --> 3:32:22.800 And the product of these raids is you put is 3:32:22.800 --> 3:32:25.080 they put the families of the kids who are doing 3:32:25.080 --> 3:32:29.280 the child labor in prison or deport them, and then 3:32:29.440 --> 3:32:31.560 they do nothing about the actual you know, so a 3:32:31.600 --> 3:32:33.880 lot of what's happening is happening to contractors, right, so 3:32:33.920 --> 3:32:36.840 they'll find the contractor the parent company. Nothing will fucking happen. 3:32:37.080 --> 3:32:39.840 And the parents of these kids, who also like cannot 3:32:39.879 --> 3:32:42.320 fucking survive and in a lot of cases are doing 3:32:42.320 --> 3:32:44.680 this because literally they do not have enough money to 3:32:44.680 --> 3:32:48.040 pay rent or buy food for their kids. Those people 3:32:48.520 --> 3:32:51.959 are getting fucking sent to prison. Are the only people, 3:32:52.000 --> 3:32:54.160 by the way, again, the only even even though all 3:32:54.160 --> 3:32:56.760 of these companies are systematically hiring children, they are getting 3:32:56.800 --> 3:33:00.160 children killed, the only people going to prison are the 3:33:00.200 --> 3:33:01.640 families of the fucking kids. 3:33:04.600 --> 3:33:07.360 I none of it makes sense, and it makes me 3:33:07.680 --> 3:33:12.240 I mean, I can't really recover from any of this episode, 3:33:12.520 --> 3:33:16.959 and I and I shouldn't. That is the reality, But 3:33:17.000 --> 3:33:21.600 I just I don't know. It's it doesn't feel like 3:33:21.640 --> 3:33:28.040 billionaires uh will ever lose it. I guess capitalism. 3:33:29.280 --> 3:33:31.560 My analysis of this is that any world that allows 3:33:31.640 --> 3:33:34.160 us to happen is intolerable once we've burned to the ground. 3:33:35.280 --> 3:33:38.440 I agree, Oh, I agree. I think we're ready for 3:33:38.480 --> 3:33:41.039 the rapture. But by that I just mean like the 3:33:41.080 --> 3:33:43.520 sun exploding into us and everyone dying. 3:33:44.879 --> 3:33:45.080 Yeah. 3:33:45.080 --> 3:33:47.560 I'm going to read a bit more, because you know, 3:33:47.959 --> 3:33:51.880 the horror, the horrors never end. Here's in the Washington Post. 3:33:52.320 --> 3:33:54.960 The Grand Island teens had been hired to scour blood 3:33:55.000 --> 3:33:58.560 and fat from slippery kill floors using high pressure hoses, 3:33:58.600 --> 3:34:01.720 scalding water in a dusty foams and assets. According to 3:34:01.720 --> 3:34:06.040 the Labor Department in federal court records, they sanitize electric knives, 3:34:06.080 --> 3:34:09.120 fat skimmers, and one hundred and ninety pounds saws used 3:34:09.120 --> 3:34:13.199 to split cow carcasses. According to court records, some students, 3:34:13.200 --> 3:34:15.400 and again when they say students, they're not talking about 3:34:15.440 --> 3:34:18.240 college students. They're talking about middle and high school students, 3:34:19.200 --> 3:34:21.880 suffered chemical burns. And we're so sleep deprived after working 3:34:21.959 --> 3:34:24.320 their night shift, they dozed off in classes, according to 3:34:24.400 --> 3:34:29.039 a local prosecutor in court records when asked about the children, 3:34:29.600 --> 3:34:31.640 like the actual kids who are supposed to be you know, 3:34:31.680 --> 3:34:34.039 the ones being saved by these by the fucking Department 3:34:34.080 --> 3:34:36.720 of Labor raids. The Department of Labor pulled a it's 3:34:36.760 --> 3:34:40.240 not my departments, and we're like, yeah, fuck it, we 3:34:40.240 --> 3:34:42.200 don't know what happen to these kids. Hope they're okay, 3:34:42.200 --> 3:34:47.440 have fun. And there's one more part of this Washington 3:34:47.480 --> 3:34:51.360 Post article that I want to read just to sort 3:34:51.360 --> 3:34:55.400 of like, I don't know. I think the big problem 3:34:55.480 --> 3:34:58.039 with all of this coverage is that it's treating this 3:34:58.120 --> 3:35:00.840 problem as if it's new. Yeah, this is sort of 3:35:00.920 --> 3:35:02.760 like a unique product of like, oh, it's a tight 3:35:02.800 --> 3:35:04.920 labor market in the pandemic. It's like, no, no, it's not. 3:35:07.200 --> 3:35:10.039 Here's what the Washington Post. We have never in my 3:35:10.160 --> 3:35:12.760 memory found the types of violations that are being found 3:35:12.760 --> 3:35:16.120 on hazardous occupations that David wheel a professor of social 3:35:16.120 --> 3:35:19.440 policy and management at Brand's University who was a top 3:35:19.520 --> 3:35:24.040 labor official in the Obama administration, it's outrageous. Now, this 3:35:24.280 --> 3:35:29.039 is bullshit, dreaming Wheels Obama administration, there was absolutely a 3:35:29.040 --> 3:35:32.640 shit ton of migrant workers and my specifically migrant children 3:35:32.720 --> 3:35:35.800 workers doing a bunch of incredibly dangerous and hazardous work. 3:35:36.040 --> 3:35:38.360 It's just that they were mostly in agriculture. I mean 3:35:38.400 --> 3:35:40.200 some of them were also in slaughterhouses, right, Like, some 3:35:40.240 --> 3:35:42.440 of the shit was already happening as nobody paid attention 3:35:42.480 --> 3:35:44.920 to it, and it's gotten worse. But again, they were 3:35:44.959 --> 3:35:48.400 also just a shit ton of kids fucking like picking 3:35:48.400 --> 3:35:51.400 tomatoes in like one hundred and ten degrees in California. 3:35:51.520 --> 3:35:54.640 That was always happening. It was always fucking happening. Obama 3:35:54.800 --> 3:35:58.440 specifically made it worse because one of again, one of 3:35:58.440 --> 3:36:01.480 the things about using immigrant child labor is that you like, 3:36:01.800 --> 3:36:04.000 if if you commit a labor violation against one of these, 3:36:04.000 --> 3:36:07.039 against against against again someone someone who is undocumented in 3:36:07.080 --> 3:36:09.680 a child, what the fuck are they gonna do about it? Right? 3:36:09.680 --> 3:36:11.320 They can't go to the government. They go to the government, 3:36:11.320 --> 3:36:11.959 they get deported. 3:36:12.640 --> 3:36:17.680 Yeah, and Obama, Yeah, the employers know that, I mean employers, yeah, 3:36:17.840 --> 3:36:21.960 but like they know that they're control of the situation. 3:36:22.560 --> 3:36:22.800 Yeah. 3:36:22.800 --> 3:36:25.720 And Obama fucking helped them do it because he deported 3:36:25.720 --> 3:36:29.120 so many people like Obama and this fucking guy probably 3:36:29.160 --> 3:36:33.240 also too directly, was helping literally the worst abuses of 3:36:33.280 --> 3:36:35.680 this system happen over and over and over again. They 3:36:35.680 --> 3:36:38.440 were they were using you know, immigration, one of the earlier. 3:36:38.520 --> 3:36:40.320 Things you can notice about these stories is that if 3:36:40.320 --> 3:36:42.760 you if you look at the locations right, most of 3:36:42.760 --> 3:36:44.400 the places with these not all, but a lot of 3:36:44.400 --> 3:36:47.280 the places where these are happening are very very anti 3:36:47.320 --> 3:36:50.840 immigrants southern border states in the Southern states and border states. 3:36:50.840 --> 3:36:53.520 And the reason or or or places or some places 3:36:53.560 --> 3:36:56.760 in the Midwest like Kansas or Nebraska, and a lot 3:36:56.800 --> 3:36:58.720 of the reason why this stuff happens here, right is 3:36:58.760 --> 3:37:03.000 you know, if you're if if you're like, uh, if 3:37:03.040 --> 3:37:05.760 you're a politician, right, and you know and your your 3:37:05.760 --> 3:37:08.520 allies are local business owners, you get you get you 3:37:08.600 --> 3:37:10.200 get to play this sort of like you get you 3:37:10.240 --> 3:37:12.840 get to play both sides of the of the fucking spectrum. Right. 3:37:14.120 --> 3:37:15.520 On the one hand, you get to you get to 3:37:15.600 --> 3:37:18.000 keep hiring a bunch of mon documented immigrants, and on 3:37:18.040 --> 3:37:20.360 the other hand, you whip up this like enormous social 3:37:20.440 --> 3:37:22.760 hystoria about them so that all these people you know, 3:37:22.840 --> 3:37:27.080 can can be more effectively disciplined and crushed. Right, And 3:37:27.400 --> 3:37:29.880 everyone fucking knows how this game works, right, like all 3:37:29.879 --> 3:37:32.080 the all the people with any real power like actually 3:37:32.160 --> 3:37:36.120 understand this. It's it's why, it's why, Like the Justice 3:37:36.160 --> 3:37:38.120 Department or like you know, all of all the immigration 3:37:38.120 --> 3:37:40.280 agencies never go after the companies you hire people, They 3:37:40.320 --> 3:37:42.320 only ever go after the actual workers themselves. 3:37:44.600 --> 3:37:48.000 Just so upsetting because like the most in their mind, 3:37:48.280 --> 3:37:54.000 like the most helpful like useful person is the person 3:37:54.040 --> 3:37:55.680 that has like the most to lose, and they know 3:37:55.760 --> 3:37:57.920 that and use it against them for that reason. Yeah, 3:37:57.920 --> 3:38:01.320 it's just so it's just fucked up in every possible way. 3:38:02.200 --> 3:38:04.440 I don't know. Yeah, it's also just a little silly, 3:38:04.480 --> 3:38:07.840 like you said to just like I think this just happened, 3:38:08.000 --> 3:38:10.520 Like this is something that has clearly been building to this, 3:38:10.680 --> 3:38:12.160 you know what I mean. I think anyone with a 3:38:12.160 --> 3:38:15.640 brain can figure that out, because this kind of intricate 3:38:16.760 --> 3:38:18.960 system doesn't just like pop up in a year or 3:38:19.000 --> 3:38:21.959 two out of nowhere. It's been building it on itself. 3:38:22.600 --> 3:38:23.120 I don't know. 3:38:26.360 --> 3:38:31.360 Yeah, it's like it yeah, Like you're definitely right, it's 3:38:31.360 --> 3:38:33.200 not just like yeah, it's been building for ages like 3:38:33.280 --> 3:38:35.160 it was just it was deliberately designed by those white 3:38:35.160 --> 3:38:39.879 people who like make a bunch of fucking money from it, right, 3:38:40.200 --> 3:38:42.800 they make slightly more money if they fucking force a 3:38:42.800 --> 3:38:45.920 twelve year old to clean the floor of a slaughterhouse. 3:38:46.560 --> 3:38:49.520 Than they do if they force like a twenty two 3:38:49.640 --> 3:38:54.480 year old to do it, and so they do, and. 3:38:54.800 --> 3:38:55.760 The last is so mad. 3:38:56.280 --> 3:38:58.560 Yeah. And the last thing that I want to sort 3:38:58.560 --> 3:38:59.920 of mention about this, right is that a lot of 3:39:00.080 --> 3:39:01.800 these a lot of the states where this stuff is happening, 3:39:02.000 --> 3:39:03.640 a lot of the states that are passing these laws 3:39:03.640 --> 3:39:06.680 are also states that are like simultaneously passing like enormous 3:39:06.760 --> 3:39:10.360 rass of anti trans legislation, like as part of their 3:39:10.360 --> 3:39:12.920 show called like Protect the Kids thing, And you know, 3:39:12.959 --> 3:39:14.800 you can talk about the hypocrisy of it, right, but 3:39:14.920 --> 3:39:16.800 I think the important thing to understand here is that 3:39:16.840 --> 3:39:19.720 Protect the Kids was always racialized, Like they don't give 3:39:19.720 --> 3:39:21.920 a shit about the kids dying and meatpacking plants because 3:39:21.920 --> 3:39:24.920 they aren't white, right, They're immigrant kids who these freaks 3:39:24.959 --> 3:39:26.879 want to fucking kill anyways, And if those kids die 3:39:26.879 --> 3:39:32.280 in the job, nobody gives a shit, right, So. 3:39:33.240 --> 3:39:37.720 It makes it's upsetting also because the majority of these kids, 3:39:37.800 --> 3:39:39.120 I don't want to say majority, I don't want to 3:39:39.160 --> 3:39:41.120 speak for anybody, but I feel like these kids also 3:39:43.120 --> 3:39:45.720 they need to work in their minds, you know what 3:39:45.760 --> 3:39:47.879 I mean, Like they're like, I have no other choice, 3:39:48.040 --> 3:39:50.840 No one's helping me. This is the only option I have, 3:39:51.800 --> 3:39:54.800 and it just becomes this like snaky in its own 3:39:54.800 --> 3:39:57.800 tail bullshit where it's just I don't know, there's no 3:39:58.120 --> 3:40:01.200 there's no good out for them because no one's fucking 3:40:01.240 --> 3:40:04.080 helping them and their family's not there and they need 3:40:04.120 --> 3:40:06.480 to fucking survive. So it's this thing where it's like 3:40:07.400 --> 3:40:10.600 they're consenting to it in a in a sick way, 3:40:10.640 --> 3:40:12.720 like not because they not, because they're consenting to it 3:40:12.760 --> 3:40:15.200 because they want to because they need to to survive. 3:40:15.920 --> 3:40:20.680 And the people that are in power know that and 3:40:20.760 --> 3:40:23.120 take advantage of it. And I don't know, the lack 3:40:23.120 --> 3:40:27.080 of empathy across the board is just inhumane and disgusting 3:40:27.080 --> 3:40:27.720 and I hate that. 3:40:28.760 --> 3:40:31.240 I don't know. That's that's all I have, other than 3:40:31.280 --> 3:40:36.480 a general exportation that like every single part of the 3:40:36.520 --> 3:40:39.200 system that produces this, the entire border regime, the US 3:40:39.280 --> 3:40:41.879 labor regime, the regime, the sort of family regimes and 3:40:41.920 --> 3:40:44.440 this stuff relies on, like all of it needs to 3:40:44.480 --> 3:40:47.520 fucking go, and we need to do it before another 3:40:47.600 --> 3:40:49.560 kid gets fucking killed on a factory floor. 3:40:51.400 --> 3:40:55.000 Yeah, I have a hard time not feeling like it's 3:40:55.040 --> 3:40:58.520 too big and it's I'm too helpless and there's nothing 3:40:58.560 --> 3:41:01.480 to do. But I think stuff just raising awareness and 3:41:01.480 --> 3:41:04.879 not pretending this doesn't happen here or just started happening. 3:41:05.160 --> 3:41:07.720 I think that's a good step in the right direction. 3:41:09.160 --> 3:41:09.560 I don't know. 3:41:10.360 --> 3:41:12.120 I think one way to look at it is that 3:41:12.959 --> 3:41:17.280 like there there there have been regimes that are a 3:41:17.360 --> 3:41:21.959 lot more powerful and a lot sort of a lot 3:41:22.000 --> 3:41:27.200 more willing to kill, that have been brought down and 3:41:27.280 --> 3:41:31.480 have collapsed don't exist anymore. So, you know, as as 3:41:31.600 --> 3:41:34.960 as bad as everything looks on any given day, right, 3:41:35.200 --> 3:41:37.720 like people people have done this before, they'll do it again. 3:41:38.720 --> 3:41:41.840 And you know it's at some at some point they're like, 3:41:41.959 --> 3:41:44.440 we will hit a point where it's fucking too much, 3:41:45.240 --> 3:41:49.119 it will cease to be You're right, and our responsibility 3:41:49.280 --> 3:41:51.519 is to get everyone to that point. 3:41:52.360 --> 3:41:58.359 Yeah. I think it takes longer when the like insidiousness 3:41:58.440 --> 3:42:00.760 or the evilness is more subtle. Quote you know what 3:42:00.840 --> 3:42:03.360 I mean, Like when it's not so outright in your face. 3:42:03.840 --> 3:42:06.560 It's almost like it really takes longer to burn out. 3:42:06.680 --> 3:42:13.280 And yeah, we're just in that burning out phase. Yep, well, 3:42:14.680 --> 3:42:16.160 glad I enjoyed you. 3:42:16.280 --> 3:42:20.760 Yeah, yeah, this is to make it up here wage 3:42:20.840 --> 3:42:25.200 war against the capitalist system and the people who kill 3:42:25.280 --> 3:42:27.120 children for money. 3:42:29.720 --> 3:42:32.879 Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week 3:42:32.959 --> 3:42:34.840 from now until the heat death of the universe. 3:42:35.440 --> 3:42:37.959 It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. 3:42:38.040 --> 3:42:40.720 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 3:42:40.720 --> 3:42:42.959 cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the 3:42:43.000 --> 3:42:46.439 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 3:42:46.800 --> 3:42:48.920 You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated 3:42:49.000 --> 3:42:53.080 monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.