Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the showing. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of interesting stories breaking this morning.
Speaker 1: So first of all, we have a poll that has
Speaker 1: really set DC on fire, that has Trump up by
Speaker 1: ten on Joe Biden. So we'll break that down for you.
Speaker 1: How much stocks should you put in it? With a
Speaker 1: reaction and all of that, we'll get into that. We
Speaker 1: also have President Biden doing something that we don't think
Speaker 1: any US president has ever done before, which is heading
Speaker 1: to the picket line in support of auto workers into Detroit,
Speaker 1: So we'll break that down for you. We have I
Speaker 1: can't even believe in saying this words, Canada honoring a
Speaker 1: legitimate Ukrainian Nazi, Yes, longtime Lensky from World War Two
Speaker 1: alongside Zelenski. A lot to reckon with there. We've also
Speaker 1: got update on that centaer Bob Menandez who was entitled
Speaker 1: for cartoonish corruption. He has a real excuse for why
Speaker 1: everyone is turning on.
Speaker 3: It couldn't have been.
Speaker 1: The gold bar statue in closet, Sager. It's his identity.
Speaker 1: They're persecuting him. It's all wildly unfair, so we'll get
Speaker 1: into all of that. We also have boomers apparently the
Speaker 1: only ones who are watching TV at this point. It's
Speaker 1: some very interesting content being developed to cater to that audience.
Speaker 1: But before we get to any of that, this is
Speaker 1: also a debate week, so we've got some special coverage plan.
Speaker 2: We've got very special coverage plan. We're going to do
Speaker 2: a very similar format for everybody, a preview, a breakdown,
Speaker 2: We're going to our power panel back all of that,
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Speaker 2: premium subscriber today, you get the show early, all that
Speaker 2: other good stuff and the debate preview in particular you
Speaker 2: will get very early before everybody else. So yeah, just
Speaker 2: in particular and other incentive to do so. Right with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the poll. This poll has a.
Speaker 3: Right for the poll. We had breaking news this to morning, right.
Speaker 1: So the writer strike that has been ongoing in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen for one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty six days. Looks like it may be coming to
Speaker 1: a close. They have reached a tentative agreement. This you
Speaker 1: see on the one side of your screen is an
Speaker 1: email that went out to all Writers' Guild members. They say,
Speaker 1: we've reached a tentative agreement on a new twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three MBA, which is to say, an agreement in principle
Speaker 1: on all deal points, subject to drafting final contract language.
Speaker 1: That deal, of course, will have to go to a
Speaker 1: vote for the membership. They will have to approve whatever
Speaker 1: has been agreed to. Here you also have some comments here.
Speaker 3: We did it.
Speaker 1: We have a tentative deal. Over the coming days, we'll
Speaker 1: discuss and vote on it together as a democratic union.
Speaker 1: But today I want to thank every single WGA member
Speaker 1: and every fellow worker who stood with us in solidarity.
Speaker 1: You made this possible. We don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: details yet about what is contained in this deal. According
Speaker 1: to New York Times, they said that the writers were
Speaker 1: able to achieve much of what they had demanded, including
Speaker 1: increases in compensation for streaming content that was a really
Speaker 1: critical one, concessions from studios on minimum staffing for TV shows,
Speaker 1: guarantees that AI tech will not encroach on writers credits
Speaker 1: and compensation, and that, apparently Sager was sort of the
Speaker 1: biggest sticking point at the end of the negotiations because,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of understandable since the technology is
Speaker 1: so new and the contours of what it's going to
Speaker 1: mean so undefined at this point, that was the piece
Speaker 1: that they had the biggest trouble coming to an agreement with.
Speaker 1: You know, this thing looked like it was going to
Speaker 1: go on forever. There was no movement for a long time.
Speaker 1: Apparently Bob Eyer from Disney got involved, and that helped
Speaker 1: bring the parties back to the table and they were
Speaker 1: able to negotiate. This deal comes at a critical juncture,
Speaker 1: as you saw, you know, some cracks beginning to emerge,
Speaker 1: Drew Barrymore, Bill Maher, others planning to go back and
Speaker 1: then facing backlash and deciding all right, we're going to
Speaker 1: hold off. We're not going to restart our shows. But
Speaker 1: it created kind of a dangerous situation because if you
Speaker 1: had a lot of these shows begin to go back
Speaker 1: on air, that obviously would have dramatically undercut the negotiating
Speaker 1: leverage of the writers.
Speaker 3: So exciting to see this.
Speaker 1: You still have the actors out, so Hollywood continues to
Speaker 1: be in sort of partial shutdown mode. But this is
Speaker 1: a big development and we'll see what the membership thinks
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The next step is that the membership themselves have to vote.
Speaker 2: So they've got eleven thousand or so people who members
Speaker 2: of the guild who will vote to ratify said contract.
Speaker 2: I guess Bill Maher was right though that there was
Speaker 2: movement going on behind the scenes, so maybe he knew
Speaker 2: something that was going on. Doesn't necessarily excuse him since
Speaker 2: he was at WAJ member who was planning on still
Speaker 2: crossing said picket line. But I do think it is
Speaker 2: a very positive development. And as you were getting to
Speaker 2: around the AI, one of the tricks that the studio
Speaker 2: can be like, well, we don't know what the technology
Speaker 2: is going to be, so how do we know that
Speaker 2: we can put it in there. The point though, and
Speaker 2: actually it's very smart of them to demand it right now,
Speaker 2: was to make sure that you get some principles and
Speaker 2: protection before before the technology comes. Because one of the
Speaker 2: problems we've always seen from unions and really workers across
Speaker 2: the spectrum is that as technology creeps, you know, software
Speaker 2: goes exponential, it doesn't move linearly, and so they're trying
Speaker 2: to like move backwards and trying to protect impost protections
Speaker 2: after things have already eaten into them. It's a smart
Speaker 2: move to see something on the horizon. It's almost like
Speaker 2: you can imagine, you know, writers or for newspapers or
Speaker 2: something demanding protections. In ninety four and the verge of
Speaker 2: the Internet, some smart people saw that. But by the
Speaker 2: time people were trying to make demands or renegotiate contracts
Speaker 2: or renegotiate or protect business. But at that point the
Speaker 2: Internet had completely destroyed it. So I think that we've
Speaker 2: learned a lot from the the early days of the Internet,
Speaker 2: and they made the right call by demanding I mean,
Speaker 2: it was one hundred and fifty days. It is a
Speaker 2: long time ago without paying it was a long time
Speaker 2: people losing housing and stuff. It's very tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so a very helpful sign that they were
Speaker 1: able to apparently looks like, achieve a lot of what
Speaker 1: they were looking for here. And you know, when I
Speaker 1: think about the writer's strike, the actors strike, and the
Speaker 1: auto workers, these seem like very desperate, especially the auto
Speaker 1: workers in Hollywood seem very desparate. But at the core
Speaker 1: of all these struggles are actually that future of technology
Speaker 1: and how workers are going to fit into the future
Speaker 1: and be able to secure their own livelihood as technology advances,
Speaker 1: and the auto workers electric vehicles are very much at
Speaker 1: the center of what's going on there and making sure
Speaker 1: that they're going to be able to still have good, union,
Speaker 1: well paying jobs as we transition to electric vehicles. And
Speaker 1: then obviously with the actors and the writers, they were
Speaker 1: concerned about streaming, which is kind of, you know, a
Speaker 1: technology that has already been here that they were behind
Speaker 1: the eight ball on in terms of guaranteeing and securing
Speaker 1: their own livelihoods there and then the future with you know,
Speaker 1: llms and AI being to increasingly substitute for writers that's
Speaker 1: what the studios wanted, and being able to use likenesses to.
Speaker 3: Substitute for actors.
Speaker 1: So they're trying to get ahead of things there, and
Speaker 1: we'll see what the actors are able to negotiate, but
Speaker 1: you know, we'll await details, we'll await reaction from the
Speaker 1: members themselves who have to take a look at this
Speaker 1: and see if it is sufficient. But it all seems
Speaker 1: really encouraging, and another example where labor has been able
Speaker 1: to secure some real gains for themselves through the union process,
Speaker 1: through the strike er potential strike process. Same thing we
Speaker 1: saw with UPS and the Teamsters, which is really different
Speaker 1: from what we've seen most of our lives. All these
Speaker 1: contract negotiations have been workers taking concessions. The fact that
Speaker 1: you have even a handful of instances of things going
Speaker 1: in the other direction is a really stunning and very
Speaker 1: hopeful development.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, all right, So now we'll actually get to the ball, yes,
Speaker 2: all right, So what happened these pulls, the shaking Washington
Speaker 2: to its very foundation, especially over at the White House.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put up there on the screen the
Speaker 2: reason why everybody is paying attention. A twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: national general election poll of registered voters Trump fifty two percent,
Speaker 2: Biden forty two percent, a ten point margin for former
Speaker 2: President Trump in this head head to head race. Now,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of questions actually about this poll and
Speaker 2: the freak out of which we will get to. Let's
Speaker 2: actually put the Washington Post's a tear sheet up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. Who reported this. The very way that
Speaker 2: they reported this, Crystal is one of the most bizarre
Speaker 2: things I have ever seen. The headline out of this
Speaker 2: is very obviously Trump is beating Biden by ten points. Instead,
Speaker 2: what they write is post ABC poll, Biden faces criticism
Speaker 2: on economy, immigration, and height. Now, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: that's definitely a story. They talk about his disapproval rating,
Speaker 2: of which we're going to get to a little bit
Speaker 2: about the favorability of some of the candidates. But you
Speaker 2: have to go almost eighteen paragraphs down in this thing
Speaker 2: before they actually mentioned the ten point margin that Trump
Speaker 2: is beating Biden by in their very own poll. Now,
Speaker 2: let's of course, let's emphasize all of the obvious. It's
Speaker 2: an outlier. You know, do I really think Trump, if
Speaker 2: it comes down to it, if he wins, Do I
Speaker 2: really think he's gonna win by ten points?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: Certainly? You know, an eight hundred and ninety registered voters,
Speaker 2: relatively smaller sample size. You know, are we going to
Speaker 2: treat this as gospel? Are we going to say this
Speaker 2: is an exact snapshot of the race.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 2: What we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the
Speaker 2: overall average, and we're going to look at some of
Speaker 2: the more important factors, like how is approval of president,
Speaker 2: how approval of the job, what is? Things aren't issue
Speaker 2: by issue, which historically have always been important. But we
Speaker 2: still have to lead with the news here. I mean, so,
Speaker 2: what did you think of their decision to basically basically
Speaker 2: bury the biggest lead out of their story. I think
Speaker 2: they were a little bit embarrassed by it, and of
Speaker 2: course they still got the pushback from the Washington establishment
Speaker 2: regardless of their framing on the story.
Speaker 1: I mean, in a sense, I think they should be
Speaker 1: embarrassed because I wouldn't believe a poll that said either
Speaker 1: one of these candidates was winning by double jugeons, Like
Speaker 1: the country is just too closely to use. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be a ten point election, not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So I think I kind of understand their embarrassment with this.
Speaker 1: Nate come to me made the most salient point, which
Speaker 1: is like, listen, I you know, kudos to them for
Speaker 1: even publishing this thing, because they knew they were going
Speaker 1: to get a pile on and all the language about
Speaker 1: like it's an outlier, just so you know, it's an outlier.
Speaker 1: And they dig into the sub groups here and show
Speaker 1: some results that just seem again kind of farcical on
Speaker 1: their face, like voters under thirty five, I think we're
Speaker 1: going for Trump by like twenty points. That's not reality.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no other data that backs that up.
Speaker 1: So he's like, on the one hand, kudos to them
Speaker 1: for publishing this, but on the other hand, this is
Speaker 1: the second poll that they've had in a row that's
Speaker 1: an outlier in this way. So there's clearly something going
Speaker 1: on with your methodology that if you aren't standing behind it,
Speaker 1: you need to fix it or you need to dig
Speaker 1: into what's going on here that's creating these.
Speaker 3: Results that are really different.
Speaker 1: And if you believe the methodology and you think that
Speaker 1: this is the accurate numbers and more accurately reflective than
Speaker 1: every other poll which shows a very different race, you
Speaker 1: know where it's basically, you know, a coin toss between
Speaker 1: the two of them. If you believe that, then stand
Speaker 1: behind it. If you don't, then change your methodology and
Speaker 1: explain what's going on.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well said, that's the thing is, like they're not
Speaker 2: changing their methodology. Clearly they're like a little bit torn
Speaker 2: about it. But I think they should have just led
Speaker 2: with that. The thing is, though, and there's another one.
Speaker 2: NBC News did a deeper poll that actually gets to
Speaker 2: some of the things that the Post was trying to package.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up there on the screen. You can
Speaker 2: actually see some of these graphics. These were the most interesting.
Speaker 2: If the election for president were held today, for whom
Speaker 2: would you vote? Biden forty six, Trump forty six. That
Speaker 2: sounds very much like what it actually looks like. They
Speaker 2: pulled some of the other candidates, Ron DeSantis. They had
Speaker 2: Biden forty six to Santus forty five. This one, I'm
Speaker 2: still trying to wrap my head around. Biden forty one
Speaker 2: Nicki Haley forty six. I think my only hope is
Speaker 2: that America doesn't know enough about Nicki Haley, but they
Speaker 2: actually this was even more interesting. I'm curious what you
Speaker 2: think of this. Look at how they included third parties.
Speaker 2: So there they had Biden thirty six, Trump thirty nine,
Speaker 2: Libertarian candidate five, No Labels candidate five, Green Party candidate four.
Speaker 2: So you can see that actually both candidates lose a
Speaker 2: pretty significant margin to the libertarian and No Labels candidate
Speaker 2: as well, with the Green Party largely likely drawing from Democrats.
Speaker 2: So you could see there though that's very reminiscent of
Speaker 2: the nineteen ninety two election, where neither candidate actually won't
Speaker 2: even close to the popular vote. Clinton was only elected
Speaker 2: forty two percent of the vote because Ross pro was there,
Speaker 2: but he of course won an outright majority in the
Speaker 2: electoral college. At George HW. Bush long believed that Ross
Speaker 2: Parrot had cost him the election. But it's interesting though,
Speaker 2: because of course, I mean the No Labels candidate, we
Speaker 2: don't know even if that's going to exist. It's not
Speaker 2: a necessarily on the ballot, but libertarian people, libertarian, Green
Speaker 2: Party are one hundred percent on the ballot, and you
Speaker 2: could see that they're definitely drawing margin from Trump and
Speaker 2: they're definitely drawn margin from Biden. So there is not
Speaker 2: a sizable, but what ten percent or so of the
Speaker 2: overall electorate which is definitely drawing from those two candidates
Speaker 2: in a head to head race. And you know, that's
Speaker 2: a pathetic margin if you're going to have a effectively
Speaker 2: a duopoly where they're only able to garner individually thirty
Speaker 2: six thirty nine percent of what kind of system were
Speaker 2: we living in where these people are getting elected with
Speaker 2: one third of the actual popular welt.
Speaker 1: That's nuts, and where the overwhelming majority of Americans are like, please,
Speaker 1: but not another Biden Trump rematch. And it's like, here
Speaker 1: we go, another Biden Trump rematch. I mean, look, it's
Speaker 1: more data that shows that the third party candidates tend
Speaker 1: to take more from Biden than they do for Trump. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: with label, it's about right, it's about three percentage points.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know the breakdown of I would
Speaker 1: expect libertarian maybe takes more. I really don't know, but
Speaker 1: it's more data that shows the third party candidates tend
Speaker 1: to hurt the Democrats more.
Speaker 3: However, let me say is.
Speaker 1: The ten point marchin for Trump in the Washington Post
Speaker 1: ABC poll accurate. No doesn't mean that they don't have
Speaker 1: an issue here, No, it does not. I mean they
Speaker 1: have bigger problems right now than even worrying about these
Speaker 1: third party candids. They need to fix their own health
Speaker 1: to begin with here, because listen, if Trump is who
Speaker 1: they say is, and listen, I thought the Trump administration
Speaker 1: was horrible on a number of levels. The tax cuts
Speaker 1: for the rich, the chaos during COVID January sixth, and
Speaker 1: trying to steal the election. All of these things were
Speaker 1: hard on as he's facing ninety one charges, ninety one
Speaker 1: criminal indictments, and you're tied, Like that's your best case
Speaker 1: scenario is you're tied with this dude. You need to
Speaker 1: do some real soul searching about your guy and about
Speaker 1: what has gone wrong in this administration that this thing
Speaker 1: could even be close. And let's recall, let's assume the
Speaker 1: state of play is that they're even in terms of
Speaker 1: the polls. That is a way better position than Trump
Speaker 1: has ever been in in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty. Now,
Speaker 1: he ends up losing in twenty twenty, but it was close,
Speaker 1: so yes, they should be deeply concerned, and it is
Speaker 1: insanely pathetic that this should be the state of the
Speaker 1: race right now, given the fact they had for a
Speaker 1: while they had total democratic control of this town. You know,
Speaker 1: they were able to do what they wanted. And I
Speaker 1: really think it comes down to three things. Number one
Speaker 1: is Joe Biden's age, you know, just in terms of
Speaker 1: that instant reaction at the sky or like, I just
Speaker 1: don't even know if he's going to make it the
Speaker 1: next term.
Speaker 3: It's a real problem, Okay.
Speaker 1: I think an even bigger problem is the combination of
Speaker 1: inflation and the fact that you have had all of
Speaker 1: these pandemic error programs that have gone away that have
Speaker 1: left people way more cash strapped than they were at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the administration. So you can imagine how
Speaker 1: people are looking back and going geez. If I think
Speaker 1: about how I was personally doing during the Trump administration
Speaker 1: versus during the Biden administration, I don't know. I you know,
Speaker 1: there may be a lot of things I don't like
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump, but because those programs have all been
Speaker 1: taken away under a democratic administration, as much as they
Speaker 1: may be doing things long term down the road, that
Speaker 1: I like, and I think will be positive for the
Speaker 1: American working class. The reality is today people have less
Speaker 1: money in their bank accounts and are having a harder
Speaker 1: time feeding their families, and that is what is showing
Speaker 1: up in these pools.
Speaker 2: Yes, and actually, you know to the point about the
Speaker 2: outlier and all that, and why part of the reason
Speaker 2: I don't think it even matters. Put this up there.
Speaker 2: This is an average that Harry Entton put out in
Speaker 2: terms of all national polls just from the last month.
Speaker 2: Quinnipiac had by up by one. The Journal had a tie,
Speaker 2: NBC News has a tie, CNN has Trump plus one,
Speaker 2: CBS has Trump plus one, Fox News Trump plus two, ABC,
Speaker 2: Washington Post Trump plus nine. The median of those is
Speaker 2: Trump one and the average is Trump two. But here's
Speaker 2: the thing. Trump won the election in twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 2: he didn't even win the popular vote. I think believe
Speaker 2: he will ask the popular vote by a couple of points.
Speaker 2: So if he's leading by one on average, let's say
Speaker 2: the margin of error on that is two, he could
Speaker 2: easily lose two. He could lose the popular vote by
Speaker 2: an easy margin of one percent. Given California and New York.
Speaker 2: He did absolutely clean up in the electoral college. The
Speaker 2: thing is, and I actually saw some experienced posters say this,
Speaker 2: what you really want for Biden is you can disregard
Speaker 2: any of the outlier pols for Trump. Where are the
Speaker 2: outlier pols for Biden. We haven't seen a single one
Speaker 2: from a national polling company that has come out, from
Speaker 2: any major outlet that has shown you know, remember those
Speaker 2: Hillary era polls Trump Hillary plus sixteen, Hillary plus nineteen
Speaker 2: even I'll never forget, what was it Wisconsin had Biden
Speaker 2: winning by nineteen points that ABC Washington Post pole, I believe,
Speaker 2: I mean, he barely went it by one or two
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. So my point is is that you
Speaker 2: need to see some major outliers to assume some sort
Speaker 2: of strength. Let's give the counter to this. Polls are
Speaker 2: totally wrong in twenty twenty two. We also, you know,
Speaker 2: know that the special elections of which we just covered
Speaker 2: in our last show, they're all trending heavily democratic. We're
Speaker 2: seeing a major Democratic turnout. Abortion is very much, you know,
Speaker 2: some sort of sleeping giant for a lot of Democratic voters.
Speaker 2: It's very likely that a lot of people who never
Speaker 2: voted in the past are definitely going to come out
Speaker 2: to vote this time around, juicing voter participation. A lot
Speaker 2: of people were willing to overlook their economic conditions because
Speaker 2: they hate stop to steal and they hate pro live candidates.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of case. There's also a good
Speaker 2: case I think, to just you know, keep calm and
Speaker 2: carry on if I am the Biden team as pathetic
Speaker 2: as it is, but age is just one they're not
Speaker 2: getting around as we tease, though Washington is very much
Speaker 2: not happy. Go and put these up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Larry Sabateau over at the crystal Ball no relation, he says,
Speaker 2: ignoring the Washington votes. It's a ridiculous outlier. My question,
Speaker 2: how could you even publish a poll so absurd on
Speaker 2: its face? Will be a lingering embarrassment for you. Again,
Speaker 2: from what you can see, it's really really hard to
Speaker 2: release these outline polls. So you've got to give credit
Speaker 2: to the ABC posts. But I do give a major
Speaker 2: quibble here. If you release constructive of outlining poll results
Speaker 2: are seven R ten, you don't get to dismiss your
Speaker 2: own results. I definitely agree with that, and I think
Speaker 2: that the point is that the point is that for
Speaker 2: the freak out. It just shows the underlying insecurity of
Speaker 2: you have an eighty one year old man who's running
Speaker 2: for reelection and you can't see a single one to
Speaker 2: even boost the ego a little bit that has you
Speaker 2: winning by plus ten or plus eleven, which in their minds,
Speaker 2: they deserve to win the election by that much, and
Speaker 2: they should be, in my opinion, they should be running
Speaker 2: scared for where they are right now.
Speaker 3: I think they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It also is not lost on me that this poll
Speaker 1: comes at a moment when there was already a sort
Speaker 1: of collective freak out among elite media about Biden being
Speaker 1: the nominee again and about Kamal Harris being the vice
Speaker 1: presidential nominee again. Do I think, Look, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of speculation like, oh, maybe still going to drop out,
Speaker 1: Maybe they're still going to have like a real primary process.
Speaker 1: I don't expect that, even though I think it would
Speaker 1: be the right thing to do. I think it would
Speaker 1: improve their chances if you were able to have a
Speaker 1: competitive democratic primary process where people could actually evaluate their
Speaker 1: options and maybe get behind a candidate they actually feel
Speaker 1: excited about and actually feel confident is going to make
Speaker 1: it through the next four years. I'm not hopeful that
Speaker 1: that's going to happen, but I'm sure all of that
Speaker 1: pressure around are we really once again going with Joe
Speaker 1: Biden as the nominee is only going to increase which
Speaker 1: is part of why they're such a freak out around
Speaker 1: this pole right now as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all right, that's your takeaway.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So at the same time, we've got some big news
Speaker 1: with regard to the United Auto Workers ongoing strike against
Speaker 1: the Big three automakers. So put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden making a big announcement last week, under pressure
Speaker 1: both from within his own party but also from the
Speaker 1: Republicans and the fact that Trump is going to Michigan.
Speaker 1: He announced that this Tuesday tomorrow, I will go to
Speaker 1: Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity
Speaker 1: with the men and women of UAW as they fight
Speaker 1: for a fair share of the value they helped create.
Speaker 1: It's time for a win win agreement that keeps American
Speaker 1: auto manufacturing thriving with well paid UAW jobs. Put the
Speaker 1: next piece up on the screen. So, as far as
Speaker 1: we know, this is actually the first time that a
Speaker 1: sitting president has ever gone to stand in solidarity with
Speaker 1: workers at a picket line. I was talking to Jeff
Speaker 1: Stein at the Washington Post. He has been talking to
Speaker 1: labor historians to find out if there's any precedent for it.
Speaker 1: No one quite knows one hundred percent for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, that seems to be an indication that
Speaker 1: this has probably never happened before. What they keep saying
Speaker 1: is at least in one hundred years, this hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: Maybe something happened earlier in the history of the Republic,
Speaker 1: but you would think it would have been a big
Speaker 1: enough deal even at that time for there to be
Speaker 1: some sort of news and recording of the event. So,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, this is the first time
Speaker 1: a sitting president has walked a picket line, per Mother Jones.
Speaker 1: They say it's not unusual for politicians to walk a
Speaker 1: picket line. Candidates often make a point of dropping by
Speaker 1: with donuts and coffee. In twenty twenty, but Biden did
Speaker 1: march outside the Palms in Las Vegas with casino workers.
Speaker 1: But no sitting president has ever walked a picket line
Speaker 1: with striking workers. They have historically been much more prone
Speaker 1: to extravagant shows of solidarity with the companies that are
Speaker 1: trying to break those strikes, and they were called that
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety four, where over Cleveland sent two thousand
Speaker 1: federal troops to Chicago to break a railroad strike. Biden
Speaker 1: has yet to announce exactly where in Michigan he will be,
Speaker 1: but they say it's a safe bet that wherever he
Speaker 1: ends up going, the National Guard thankfully will not be
Speaker 1: coming with him. So this is a huge deal, it
Speaker 1: really is. There's no way to sort of oversell this.
Speaker 1: Democrats had increasingly been pushing him to go. You'd already
Speaker 1: had a number of Democratic politicians, including John Fetterman and
Speaker 1: Rocanna and other local Michigan representatives who had shown up
Speaker 1: on the picket line, especially after Trump announced that he
Speaker 1: on debate night is going to give a speech to
Speaker 1: union workers past and present. I think they felt increasing
Speaker 1: pressure that Biden needed to do a little more and
Speaker 1: be a little visible to stake his claim that he
Speaker 1: is the person who was really truly standing alongside these workers.
Speaker 1: And so looks like this is gonna happen, which is
Speaker 1: pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, so, I also looked into it in
Speaker 2: terms of the history. Everyone keeps saying one hundred years.
Speaker 2: But I've been trying to look past and think about
Speaker 2: the major labor era. I also cannot really think even
Speaker 2: the best friends of labor who are in the White House,
Speaker 2: people like FDR. Well, FDR for obvious reason, is not
Speaker 2: gonna be joining a picket line. But you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of issuing statements of support and all that. The
Speaker 2: other reason why politically I think this is a very
Speaker 2: smart move is that there are sixty six thousand UAW
Speaker 2: workers crystal in the state of Michigan. Just in Michigan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's sixty six thousand people who are organized and
Speaker 2: they like to vote. A lot of these union folks.
Speaker 2: So we should not forget. Why did Mitt Romney blow
Speaker 2: Michigan so badly back in twenty twelve because of the
Speaker 2: two thousand and either eight or nine op ed that
Speaker 2: he wrote which has said let Detroit go bankrupt, that
Speaker 2: was plastered all over the state and he lost it
Speaker 2: by a massive margin. And then all of a sudden
Speaker 2: Trump comes around and wins the state by a fraction
Speaker 2: of a point in twenty sixteen. That is one of
Speaker 2: the craziest things that has ever happened. Well, why did
Speaker 2: Trump win it? Because a, a lot of people stayed home,
Speaker 2: a lot of urban voters who did not feel excited
Speaker 2: by Hillary, and he split the union vote by a
Speaker 2: pretty historic margin for a Republican presidential candidate. And it
Speaker 2: was largely on talk of Lordstown. It was talk of GM,
Speaker 2: it was talk of NAFTA, and it was specifically speaking
Speaker 2: to a lot of these people concerned. So one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why I think that this is actually a
Speaker 2: net benefit is we finally have two candidates who are
Speaker 2: recording union workers in the state of Michigan, which is
Speaker 2: a complete inversion from the Obama era. Like I'm kind
Speaker 2: of with you, you know, but I'm still embracing NAFTA,
Speaker 2: free trade and all this other which is screwing you.
Speaker 2: As opposed to Romney, He's like, no, no, I literally want
Speaker 2: to see you die and collapse. So to see that
Speaker 2: inversion is and of course, look it's all in rhetoric,
Speaker 2: but your rhetoric at least precedes something. Usually to see
Speaker 2: that happen, I think is a very benefit to the country.
Speaker 1: Trump, in terms of his record as president, as you
Speaker 1: guys know, was a horrific union buster, There's no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. However, I do think the fact that he
Speaker 1: rhetorically approaches these issues in a different at least giving
Speaker 1: sort of like token or symbolic gestures towards the plight
Speaker 1: of the workers, I think has changed public sentiment because
Speaker 1: you know, back under the Obama era, there was a
Speaker 1: really hard to divide about how Republicans versus Democrats felt
Speaker 1: about unions, and there's still a split. I mean, Democrats
Speaker 1: are still way more favorable towards unions, towards labor, towards
Speaker 1: these strikes in particular, than Republicans are. But you no
Speaker 1: consistently have polls that show Republican the Republican base, not
Speaker 1: the elites who still continue to be union busters overwhelmingly,
Speaker 1: but the Republican base showing support for unions and standing
Speaker 1: on the side of striking workers. I think that the
Speaker 1: rhetorical shift, even though again in terms of the record
Speaker 1: it's total bullshit, but in the rhetorical shift, I think
Speaker 1: has opened up a space among the Republican base, combined
Speaker 1: with the fact, I mean, the pandemic changed everything. You know,
Speaker 1: the pandemic really changed the way people are thinking about this.
Speaker 1: We all lived under the specter of seeing these corporations
Speaker 1: making literally record breaking profits and then using excuse of
Speaker 1: inflation just further price gouge everyone. And so you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of changed the way people feel about these
Speaker 1: labor disputes. So not only is it smart because Biden
Speaker 1: is kind of one upping Trump yere in terms of
Speaker 1: what he's actually doing. Trump isn't speaking directly the auto workers.
Speaker 1: There isn't any expectation he's going to walk the picket line.
Speaker 1: All is rhetoric has been on the one hand, like
Speaker 1: I sort of in theory support the workers and screw
Speaker 1: electric vehicles. On the other hand, like this kind of
Speaker 1: anti union union bossed traditional Republican language. So it's not
Speaker 1: only smart from that perspective, but also you know, it's
Speaker 1: not just the union workers who stand on side of
Speaker 1: the union workers. You have something like seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of the public is on the side of the workers
Speaker 1: over the bosses in this dispute. So it is not
Speaker 1: that's why this is so politically safe for him, and
Speaker 1: why it's such an extraordinary moment that created the conditions
Speaker 1: where even someone who's been this lifelong, like you know, centrist,
Speaker 1: demoderate kind of a guy, can do something that again
Speaker 1: is in terms of history truly extraordinary and has, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, literally never happened before.
Speaker 2: One reason I know that the political dynamics have changed
Speaker 2: is back in the twenty tens era, there was an
Speaker 2: entire GOP like media ecosystem dedicated to like attack remember
Speaker 2: the whole Scott Walker thing, Bini Scott Walker. Yeah, attack
Speaker 2: the teachers, teacher pay, all that other stuff. I don't
Speaker 2: see any of that right now. Like in terms of
Speaker 2: Twitter and YouTube and GOP like work, like base media,
Speaker 2: they're not consuming anti union content. It doesn't even exist,
Speaker 2: it doesn't register a I think that's two things. One
Speaker 2: is obviously the base moved long past or they agree.
Speaker 2: You know, in many cases, a lot of these people
Speaker 2: culturally are very much with the Republican Party's look at
Speaker 2: it gets a little you know, queasy if you're trying
Speaker 2: to attack their overall economic demands. But as you said,
Speaker 2: Trump has just moved on from that. He's pushed a
Speaker 2: lot of the people the most MAGA type influencer. I
Speaker 2: have not seen one single individual a Charlie Kirk, Jack Pisobie,
Speaker 2: any of these folks attack the UAW strike. If anything,
Speaker 2: they've posted stuff at Shapiro has se he's different. Shapiro
Speaker 2: is not a Trump guy. He is a og member
Speaker 2: of the Tea Party. The libertarian fact. I mean, remember
Speaker 2: he was attacking Trump for being too liberal back in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. So I would not put it in that way.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying there is still some union busting conservative
Speaker 1: media out there, so it's not like it's all gone.
Speaker 1: But the moment is very different from I mean Scott
Speaker 1: Walker in that moment that.
Speaker 3: Was totally the conservative cause.
Speaker 1: To let Chris Christy came to Republican conservative prominence from
Speaker 1: like yelling at teacher unions and being super anti union
Speaker 1: in the state of New Jersey, and so it was
Speaker 1: a very very different moment energy wise within the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: even as you know, the policy in terms of what
Speaker 1: they actually do when they're and government hasn't changed, but
Speaker 1: the rhetoric, the attitude, what's like the beating heart of
Speaker 1: the Republican movement has in terms of where the online
Speaker 1: energy is has definitely radically shifted. And you know, that
Speaker 1: does create a real opening for working people, which is
Speaker 1: part of what we're seeing in part of again, what
Speaker 1: I think is like one of the most hopeful stories
Speaker 1: in the entire country at this point. At the same time,
Speaker 1: we have the UAW announcing that they are expanding the strike,
Speaker 1: and some of the details here are really quite interesting.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. This is from Jacobin's reporting.
Speaker 1: So as of Friday, they announced five thousand war members
Speaker 1: of the United Auto Workers at thirty eight parts distribution
Speaker 1: centers for Stalantis and GM walked off the job. Those
Speaker 1: facilities spread across twenty states. So you'll note they did
Speaker 1: not increase the strike on Ford, and the reason being
Speaker 1: apparently they've made a lot more progress in their negotiations
Speaker 1: with Ford, where the union enjoys a better RelA relationship
Speaker 1: and there's been more of a give and take, and
Speaker 1: apparently Ford has already met a number, although not all,
Speaker 1: of their demands. So they did not escalate at Ford.
Speaker 1: They are only escalating at Stalantis and GM. So they
Speaker 1: say those five thousand workers joined the thirteen thousand that
Speaker 1: were already out at assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I thought was really interesting
Speaker 1: here and shows the savviness, I guess, of this stand
Speaker 1: up strike strategy that they're using, where instead of everybody
Speaker 1: going out at once, they're picking and choosing and sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping the companies off balance and showing that
Speaker 1: they can extract more pain from the companies if they
Speaker 1: want to and if they're not getting what they need
Speaker 1: at the negotiating table. So they added these parts distribution
Speaker 1: centers to the mix. That is apparently a very profitable
Speaker 1: part of the company's business. They sell after sales spare
Speaker 1: parts and accessories to dealerships. Sean Fayn talked to Labor
Speaker 1: Notes and he said, why strike those parts distribution centers. Well,
Speaker 1: they's several reasons. One of our issues is ending tiers.
Speaker 1: The parts distribution centers are a big example of that.
Speaker 1: Their wages were capped at twenty five dollars some years back,
Speaker 1: during the greatest times in the history of these companies,
Speaker 1: and that's got to change. So that's part of why
Speaker 1: they're going in this direction to make a point about
Speaker 1: the unfairness for the workers at those particular facilities. Let's
Speaker 1: put the map up on the screen so you can
Speaker 1: see how widespread this strike is. So they started with
Speaker 1: just a handful of large scale facilities and now auto
Speaker 1: assembly plans where they actually finished the products. Now you
Speaker 1: have these parts distribution centers, which you can see are
Speaker 1: literally all over the country coast to coast, So you know,
Speaker 1: from you've got Connecticut, you've got DC area, you've got Charlotte,
Speaker 1: You've got Florida, You've got California, You've got Oregon, You've
Speaker 1: got of course a lot in that industrial Midwest, Indiana, Michigan.
Speaker 3: Ohio, et cetera. So that's where they are now.
Speaker 1: We haven't got any updates about if there have been
Speaker 1: additional progress in the talks since they expanded strike, but
Speaker 1: interesting to see the strategy that they're deploying here.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting. Yeah, I mean, I especially enjoy that
Speaker 2: factoid around what was going on with Ford and about
Speaker 2: how they're able to flex up and now. It's actually
Speaker 2: one of the benefits, I believe, of the new strategy
Speaker 2: which you've educated me on versus a stand up strike
Speaker 2: as opposed to this more targeted strike, that you can
Speaker 2: expand and contract and target the particular people that are
Speaker 2: coming to you with different demands contracts in order to benefit.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious, I mean, what do you think in
Speaker 2: terms of the movement, the fact if Ford is being
Speaker 2: much more forthcoming in some of the demands, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe this one won't have to drag one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty day, especially if they're going to ramp up the
Speaker 2: pain like part distribution. We already saw how the Chips
Speaker 2: crisis in twenty twenty one devastated the American car market
Speaker 2: and especially the Big Three. Their inability to import and
Speaker 2: to have the inputs into their cars just destroyed, you know,
Speaker 2: overall the price and a lot of the profits in
Speaker 2: the bottom line that the company was already having. So
Speaker 2: if they're able to do this, I mean, you could
Speaker 2: cripple critical infrastructure so quickly. Yeah, for these for these cars.
Speaker 1: Listen, I have no idea, but if I had to guess,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pressure on these automakers.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 1: You have the fricking president, former and current presidents of
Speaker 1: the United States coming to Michigan, and you know, Biden
Speaker 1: overtly being on the side of the workers. Trump mixed bag.
Speaker 1: But that's a lot of pressure being put directly on
Speaker 1: you if you are a Big Three executive. Now you
Speaker 1: have the news that Ford is offering some significant concessions
Speaker 1: and getting at least part of the way there in
Speaker 1: terms of the worker demands. That applies additional pressure onto
Speaker 1: Stilantis and onto GM and then when you have this,
Speaker 1: you know, this strategy that sort of creates chaos and
Speaker 1: shows that they they can last a long time with
Speaker 1: their strike fund is pretty full. Since they're not going
Speaker 1: on all at once, they can really stretch that strike fund.
Speaker 1: And in a lot of ways, strikes are a game
Speaker 1: of chicken, right who's going to blink first, Who's going
Speaker 1: to say this pain is too great for me? And really,
Speaker 1: you know, have to give way and come to the
Speaker 1: table and give up some concessions. Right now, I think
Speaker 1: the autoworkers have positioned themselves very well. Now, I should
Speaker 1: say there has been some dissent within the union of
Speaker 1: some of the workers really wanted everyone to go out
Speaker 1: at once and have a big show of force and
Speaker 1: really stand in solidarity together. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: Sean Fain was sympathetic to that view, but ultimately decided
Speaker 1: this was the safier tactic. There are risks to the
Speaker 1: stand up strike strategy that is more targeted versus everybody
Speaker 1: going out all at once. The risks are that you
Speaker 1: don't have everybody participating in the same way. There can
Speaker 1: be a breakdown in solidarity. It requires a lot of
Speaker 1: discipline for every worker at every facility to know exactly
Speaker 1: what their part is and what the rules and guidelines
Speaker 1: are and what they're supposed to be doing when so,
Speaker 1: there is like a risk on the other.
Speaker 3: Side of that.
Speaker 1: But so far, I feel like the auto workers have
Speaker 1: a lot more leverage and power in this situation than
Speaker 1: the big three do. So one of the points of
Speaker 1: leverage that automakers and also like CNBC and the Business
Speaker 1: press or whatever are trying to use as this idea
Speaker 1: that all the strike is going to cause car prices
Speaker 1: to go up. Sean Faine not that one down pretty
Speaker 1: easily when he was asked about it.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: Companies chose to put us in this position because they
Speaker 5: had eight weeks to get a contract, and they chose
Speaker 5: for seven weeks to screw around and do nothing. They
Speaker 5: got serious in the last week. This isn't on the
Speaker 5: UAW workers. When bad things happen, and things are happening
Speaker 5: right now, it's all because the companies. They own it.
Speaker 5: It's on their shoulders.
Speaker 2: So you deny that it's going to hurt the consumers
Speaker 2: in the long run.
Speaker 5: What's hurt the consumers in the long run is the
Speaker 5: fact that companies have raised prices on vehicles thirty five
Speaker 5: percent in the last four years, just our wages went
Speaker 5: up six percent. The CEO pay went up forty percent.
Speaker 5: Profits have been into billions, the hundreds of billions they own.
Speaker 1: All of this, that's what's concent I mean, it's pretty
Speaker 1: hard to argue with those numbers. Like, listen, our wages
Speaker 1: are not the problem, because guess what, we've been getting
Speaker 1: screwed on wages ever since basically the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight recession, even before that. Actually put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen from Heather Long. She highlights that US auto
Speaker 1: workers have seen their paychecks plunge further from ninety three
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty three than any other of the one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty SI industries we regularly track. In the
Speaker 1: early nineties, autoworkers with the top paid rank and file workers.
Speaker 1: Now they are middle of the pack. And I think
Speaker 1: the title for that chart there where they say now
Speaker 1: autoworkers just another job, kind of says it all. The
Speaker 1: autoworker used to be the sort of gold standard, rock solid,
Speaker 1: middle class job. It was this iconic industry where the
Speaker 1: understanding was if you worked there and you did the job,
Speaker 1: you were going to be able to have the basics
Speaker 1: of a stable middle class life that has been eaten away,
Speaker 1: and so autoworker wages have suffered more than those of
Speaker 1: workers in any other industry.
Speaker 3: So for them to turn around and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's your fault.
Speaker 1: The car prices are so high when they've been taking
Speaker 1: a haircut, and when their labor makes up a grand
Speaker 1: total of like five percent of the cost of a
Speaker 1: new car, it just doesn't hold water.
Speaker 2: It doesn't hold any water, as you said, And I
Speaker 2: think that the most important point is that these are
Speaker 2: not people who've been getting paid well. They've actually been
Speaker 2: underpaid for more than a decade. They got massive haircut
Speaker 2: after two thousand and eight, and are just trying to
Speaker 2: keep pace with inflation, with any of the demands and
Speaker 2: all the flexibilities and all the things that the white
Speaker 2: collar workforce and many blue collar workers have been able
Speaker 2: to demand. They find themselves as part of an America's
Speaker 2: critical security or critical economic infrastructure and are using you know,
Speaker 2: I mean again, you know, without them the big they
Speaker 2: could have decided not to take the haircut, and they
Speaker 2: would have all gotten completely bussed. Two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: They did the car makers, the Big three, a big favor,
Speaker 2: and don't forget all of us saved the auto industry.
Speaker 2: And I think that was the correct decision back then.
Speaker 2: But you know, one of the things is that they
Speaker 2: have just been able to make fantastic profits, and more importantly,
Speaker 2: the executives, the shareholders have all benefited. The workforce itself
Speaker 2: is the only one who has not since the I
Speaker 2: think GM I believe still owes billions of dollars to
Speaker 2: the US government. So let's all not forget about what happened,
Speaker 2: you know, not that long ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very true, very true.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move on Ukraine. This is the story
Speaker 2: which I have. I couldn't I couldn't believe when I
Speaker 2: first saw it, and the more that we research it,
Speaker 2: the more insane it actually gets. President Zelenski was here
Speaker 2: in Washington with his hand had out asking for twenty
Speaker 2: five billion more from the US Congress. By all accounts,
Speaker 2: they'll probably give it to him, although we might have
Speaker 2: an interim shutdown in the meantime. But after that he
Speaker 2: visited fellow NATO ally Canada. And while he was in Canada,
Speaker 2: justin Trudeau and the Canadian Parliament decided to honor President
Speaker 2: Selensky in a session very much like we had our
Speaker 2: joint session, where they featured a quote Ukrainian freedom fighter.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that that Ukrainian fighter who fought
Speaker 2: in World War Two, as they described it, was a
Speaker 2: literal Nazi. Here's how they described it. Though at the time,
Speaker 2: let's take a listen.
Speaker 7: Lelensky's speech received at least a dozen standing ovations. There
Speaker 7: was also one for this man, a ninety eight year
Speaker 7: old Ukrainian Canadian who fought for Ukrainian independence against the
Speaker 7: Russians during the Second World War.
Speaker 2: Fighting for Ukrainian independence against the Russians in the Second
Speaker 2: World War certainly one way to say it, the other
Speaker 2: way to say it. Let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, our friend yegor Is. It was called the
Speaker 2: SS Division Galicia, which changed its name to the First
Speaker 2: Ukrainian Division in April of nineteen forty five, after already
Speaker 2: losing the war, the same month that Hitler killed himself.
Speaker 2: Calling a quote ninety eight year old SS veteran a
Speaker 2: Ukrainian veteran is like calling Adolf Eichmann an Argentinian farmer.
Speaker 2: This is no joke, Crystal. This was straight up This
Speaker 2: is not like he was a Wehrmached soldier. No straight
Speaker 2: up Waffen SS actual Nazi soldier in the Second World War.
Speaker 2: A division, by the way, the SS Division Galicia implicated
Speaker 2: in several horrific instances during the Second World War, specifically
Speaker 2: targeting the Polish people, who are very much waking up
Speaker 2: to this. The fact this is not a bigger scandal
Speaker 2: in the United States, and really even in Canada, who
Speaker 2: is only just now waking up to this and took
Speaker 2: a long time to even acknowledge or even apologize more
Speaker 2: than twenty four to forty eight hours after this incident,
Speaker 2: is outrageous. Put this up there on the screen. This
Speaker 2: is actually from a university professor historian. There he says, quote,
Speaker 2: these are the photos for those who are watching can
Speaker 2: see of the S Scalicia Division veteran who was given
Speaker 2: standing ovation by the Canadian Parliament. He published these himself
Speaker 2: of his division in training in Germany, standing in the
Speaker 2: middle of the first photo, second on the left. In
Speaker 2: the second photo. If we want to go ahead and
Speaker 2: show that one and without a helmet near the machine
Speaker 2: gun in that photo, I mean one of the things
Speaker 2: is he volunteered in nineteen forty three, okay, in the
Speaker 2: Turnopyl region of western Ukraine, which means he fought and
Speaker 2: served in this division at the exact times when it
Speaker 2: was both commissioned and was implicated in multiple atrocities, as
Speaker 2: I said, in the region. And unfortunately, look, this is
Speaker 2: going to be you already know, this is going buck
Speaker 2: wild in Russia because they're like, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: they literally honored a Nazi. But also raises the uncomfortable
Speaker 2: truth of which many people in the West don't want
Speaker 2: to talk about. Is yeah, there are some Nazi affiliated
Speaker 2: groups in the Ukrainian military who have a complicated history.
Speaker 2: And this is something I've even raised here on the
Speaker 2: show before. I'm glad to even show it. Is a
Speaker 2: lot of people think of the SS and of the
Speaker 2: SS and specifically like the military units as just being
Speaker 2: all German, and it's actually not true because they had
Speaker 2: this entire idea of like an Aryan like race. Himmler
Speaker 2: himself actually decreed that this has to be like the
Speaker 2: Galician Division because they were quote more aryan like than
Speaker 2: other slobs. So that's that's what he served.
Speaker 3: That what we're celebrating here to the Canadian Parliament.
Speaker 2: That's who they celebrate.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Look, I guess to be fair, it's become a big
Speaker 2: enough scandal now that the Speaker of the Canadian Parliament
Speaker 2: as Ad issue apology. To my knowledge at the time
Speaker 2: of this taping, Justin Trudeau has not acknowledged this. But
Speaker 2: the crazy thing is they had a meeting beforehand. The
Speaker 2: granddaughter of this gentleman, if I guess if you can't
Speaker 2: even call him, that was actually posted a photo. And
Speaker 2: it's even more interesting there wasn't. The reason they changed
Speaker 2: their name to the Ukrainian Division is there was an
Speaker 2: entire effort after the Second World War to whitewash they're
Speaker 2: not affiliation and to portray themselves as Ukrainian freedom fighters.
Speaker 2: And actually over a thousands of them emigrated to Canada.
Speaker 2: So this is a very, very disgusting situation where they
Speaker 2: were explicitly used the name to portray themselves as these
Speaker 2: great freedom fighters to gain access to the West. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a long standing thing that a lot of
Speaker 2: people who fought within the ass did. Now look in
Speaker 2: terms of like I don't know if this man served
Speaker 2: in the actual play, but you know, look in terms
Speaker 2: of the whole idea of like the good Nazi and
Speaker 2: all that. He volunteered for a Nazi division in forty three,
Speaker 2: served until the end of the war. He was around
Speaker 2: or the very loose new people who straight up slaughtered
Speaker 2: civilians and were implicated in the death and also the
Speaker 2: liquidation of Jews in the Eastern European theater wort. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's any getting around that. And these are
Speaker 2: not people who we should be celebrating. I cannot believe
Speaker 2: that they honored him, that Zelenski, you know, like you know,
Speaker 2: the other thing is here. Maybe you can forgive the
Speaker 2: Canadians for not knowing. Okay, a lot of these people
Speaker 2: are idiots. They don't know he knew what was going on.
Speaker 2: Do you think Eden know He's like, oh, he fought
Speaker 2: for Ukrainian independence in World War two? People in Ukraine
Speaker 2: they know, they know which side people fought on.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I mean, this is one of the uncomfortable
Speaker 1: realities that was easy for a lot of people to
Speaker 1: acknowledge before the war and has become something that no
Speaker 1: one really wants to talk about anymore. But some of
Speaker 1: the great like heroes of Ukrainian nationalism committed you know,
Speaker 1: incredible atrocities during World War Two fighting against the Russians
Speaker 1: on behalf of the Nazis. So one thing when I
Speaker 1: was talking to Yegor about this is I was trying
Speaker 1: to understand, like you, like, was this an accident?
Speaker 3: Did they know?
Speaker 1: Because when you hear freedom fighter against the Russians during
Speaker 1: World War two, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to
Speaker 1: figure out then, okay, which side were you actually on?
Speaker 1: And one thing that he really wanted to impress upon
Speaker 1: me was that this is not like a one off incident.
Speaker 1: First of all, we have seen numerous times the you know,
Speaker 1: Ukrainian social media accounts posting.
Speaker 3: Photos of their soldiers with all sorts of like.
Speaker 1: Nazi insignia, And I don't want to play into the
Speaker 1: Russian idea that like every Ukrainian is a Nazi.
Speaker 3: That's far from truth, Okay, So we're trying to.
Speaker 1: Be nuanced here and say, listen, there is an element
Speaker 1: and certainly those who were the hard Ukrainian nationalists and
Speaker 1: continue to be the hard right Ukrainian nationalists have a
Speaker 1: lot of very uncomfortable Nazi ties and sometimes have Nazi
Speaker 1: insignia tattoos on their uniforms and tattooed on themselves. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to play into, like, you know, some
Speaker 1: blanket statements. But the other thing he was telling me
Speaker 1: is it's sort of akin to you know, Southerners who
Speaker 1: want to whitewash the Civil War and the Confederacy and
Speaker 1: the Confederate flag and all of that. That there's been
Speaker 1: an ongoing project in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine, in the
Speaker 1: Baltic States to try to whitewash their quote unquote freedom fighters.
Speaker 1: And this has been going on, you know, under the
Speaker 1: radar of people who are and don't want to be
Speaker 1: embarrassed by their like Nazi Grandpa as eeg Or put
Speaker 1: it to me anymore. And so this has been going
Speaker 1: on under the radar. But for them to actually achieve
Speaker 1: this moment of having a legit former Nazi celebrate and
Speaker 1: receive a standing ovation from Trudeau and Zelensky, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a whole other level. And in some ways it
Speaker 1: ends up being useful because it shines a light on
Speaker 1: something that's been going on underneath the surface here that really,
Speaker 1: like Nazi apologias should not be mainstream, it should not
Speaker 1: be allowed to continue, It should be called out for
Speaker 1: exactly what it is, which you can see really clearly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad that he raised then that we're actually
Speaker 2: you know, look, it is a complicated history. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to sit here and just say it was all easy,
Speaker 2: you know. And here's the uncomfortable truth. When the Nazis
Speaker 2: invaded the Soviet Union, a lot of those people were
Speaker 2: cheering them on Ukrainians polls. A lot of these folks,
Speaker 2: you know why, because the hate of the Soviets, I
Speaker 2: get it. A lot of the Latvians of Lithuanians. And
Speaker 2: here's the other uncomfortable truth. The Latvians of Lithuanians, the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians were involved in some of the worst pugroms of
Speaker 2: the early you know what twentieth century. They had no
Speaker 2: love for Jews, and they did not stand in the
Speaker 2: Nazis way, or at the very least they helped him out.
Speaker 2: Some of the highest liquidation rates of Jews in an
Speaker 2: entire like Nazi regime happened in Eastern Europe. And it
Speaker 2: was because in many cases of a willing and a
Speaker 2: compliant and some guy enthusiastic populace. I'm not denigrating the
Speaker 2: people were the descendants of them today. I'm just saying
Speaker 2: though that at that time, you know, their own symbols
Speaker 2: of nationalism. When it's going to be so inextricably linked
Speaker 2: to that time period of World War Two, we should
Speaker 2: be very we should not be uncomfortable to pointing out
Speaker 2: some of the major moral quandaries around this, and to
Speaker 2: also think about who we in the West are siding
Speaker 2: with and are supporting. And I think this is a
Speaker 2: very basic fact. It is of course unjust and horrific
Speaker 2: that the Russians invaded Ukraine, but it is also empirically
Speaker 2: true that US provided in Western provided weapons have gone
Speaker 2: into the hands of straight up neo Nazis in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: It's undeniable. I mean absolutely undeniable. You can decide, you know,
Speaker 2: the lesser of two evils, the end of the enemy
Speaker 2: is my friend, et cetera. But you know, phrasing and
Speaker 2: framing this all and just like democracy and autocracy, you know,
Speaker 2: I see some people being like the front line of
Speaker 2: democracy is in the dun boss, and I'm just like,
Speaker 2: all right, shut up, I'm sorry, Like that's ludicrous. Like,
Speaker 2: first of all, we're talking about one of the most
Speaker 2: corrupt nations in all of Eastern Europe. You should maybe
Speaker 2: go ask some of the people in the dun Boss
Speaker 2: previous to this conflict who they had allegiances to. All
Speaker 2: I'm saying is is messy, is complicated. None of this
Speaker 2: is justification for a horrible invasion, just to show you, like,
Speaker 2: the world is not black and white, it's very gray. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this case it gets.
Speaker 3: In this case, it's a little bit black.
Speaker 2: A little bit this one, well, in this one it
Speaker 2: gets a little Nazi gray in terms of what those
Speaker 2: un warns look like. And I think it's I think
Speaker 2: it's a tragedy. More so also that people in the West,
Speaker 2: they don't they don't want to admit this stuff. Only
Speaker 2: in Canada because they straight up honored him at the parliament.
Speaker 2: But how many people in the US media are talking
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 6: Not one.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen a single media outlet here in Washington
Speaker 2: condemn you know Lensky too. Listen, if you're gonna come
Speaker 2: here and shake your hand asking for money, maybe don't
Speaker 2: be honoring Nazis. Whi're over here.
Speaker 3: Somebody on his stack is not doing him any favors.
Speaker 2: Somebody on his stack again, you can excuse the idiot
Speaker 2: Canadians maybe, although probably not, but they knew. There's no
Speaker 2: way that those people on Zelenski's staff, you know, the
Speaker 2: advanced staff and Zelensky and Stif, There's no way they
Speaker 2: didn't know who this guy was. Right. This is coded
Speaker 2: language in Ukraine for Yeah, they fought on the side
Speaker 2: of the Nazis. You think that was a smart move.
Speaker 2: And then it gets to the uncomfortable question of like, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe they support it a little bit or at the
Speaker 2: very least like tascitly okay with it, as they are
Speaker 2: in their own government and in their coalition. So people
Speaker 2: can think that we're unfair and harping on this, but like,
Speaker 2: you know, look, you know we these are the people
Speaker 2: we're supposedly allied with. These are the people who are
Speaker 2: funding with a blank check. You got to ask questions
Speaker 2: about your friends more so, probably even than your enemies.
Speaker 1: It's also, in a certain sense, like the logical endpoint
Speaker 1: of this black and white Disney version of the war
Speaker 1: that you're gesturing towards saga that it's just like the
Speaker 1: Russians are bad and the Ukrainians are good. Oh, here's
Speaker 1: Ukrainian freedom fighter quote unquote who was fighting against the Russians.
Speaker 3: He must be good.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like the logical endpoint of this really silly,
Speaker 1: childlike version of events that we've been fed by the media,
Speaker 1: and so in that regard, it's actually not surprising that
Speaker 1: you would end up with something that is this egregious,
Speaker 1: just like, you know, literally celebrating a Nazi to own
Speaker 1: the Russians kind of makes sense as a logical conclusion
Speaker 1: of the direction that we've been heading in with all
Speaker 1: of this. So absolutely shorny, we should say, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of Canadian Jewish groups obviously understandably
Speaker 1: very upset about this state of affairs and wondering, like
Speaker 1: we are, what the hell were you thinking?
Speaker 3: And how can you let this happen?
Speaker 1: So Trudeau and Parliament under a lot of pressure now
Speaker 1: to make amends for this state of affairs. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in terms of US media, pretty much silent.
Speaker 2: Where's the ADL huh Adl, who's willing to call anybody
Speaker 2: an anti semi for anything anybody says about Israel or
Speaker 2: anything anybody ever says even about them. They haven't put
Speaker 2: out a single statement about this. Wow, this is the
Speaker 2: probably I mean, let's think about it. Since Operation paper Clip,
Speaker 2: this is probably the most prominent celebration of a literal
Speaker 2: Nazi in the West in decades throughout all of the West.
Speaker 2: And these people don't have a word to say. They're
Speaker 2: complete and utter tools. So let's just keep that very clear.
Speaker 2: Let's move on now and talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: a government shutdown. We put it into the Ukraine block
Speaker 2: because I guess there's some elements about Ukraine. We want
Speaker 2: to make sure everybody stays updated about what's going on.
Speaker 2: There was a fascinating fight between Congressman Matt Gaetz is
Speaker 2: one of the leaders of the shutdown movement, with Maria
Speaker 2: Bartrioma over on Fox Business. It was a clash of
Speaker 2: too Kevin McCarthy of Kevin McCarthy ideology and the Gates ideology.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: I'm glad I get to respond to your monologue because
Speaker 6: if you're saying that I'm standing in the way of
Speaker 6: all the Republican wins, I'd love you to enumerate them.
Speaker 6: Watching my friend and mentor Jim Jordan, it was quite
Speaker 6: pay because he started by saying we should only pick
Speaker 6: one fight the border, but then as the interview went on,
Speaker 6: he said, well, we should pick a second fight. Jack
Speaker 6: Smith and by the time the interview rounded out, he
Speaker 6: was saying that we shouldn't be funding Ukraine without a plan,
Speaker 6: and yet the very continuing resolution that you and Jim
Speaker 6: Jordan seemed to before continues to have three hundred million
Speaker 6: dollars more for Ukraine. So I think we ought to
Speaker 6: fight on all fronts. I think the border is very important.
Speaker 6: Kevin wants it in one big up or down vote.
Speaker 6: Keep the government open, shut it down. I'm saying, single
Speaker 6: subject spending bills. It's the only way to break the
Speaker 6: fever and liberate ourselves from this out of control spending.
Speaker 4: Well, he's doing the four bills next week.
Speaker 6: So because we're making him, because we're making.
Speaker 4: You're doing it, so to push now to blow up
Speaker 4: all of the wins that you all have had.
Speaker 6: Now, which wins, please enumerate that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, how about the fact that he has set
Speaker 4: up a Weaponization committee to investigate the DOJ whether they're involved.
Speaker 3: In a cover up.
Speaker 6: I do not see any of the January sixth gears
Speaker 6: using full straight.
Speaker 4: Now indirectly working with Democrats, because you are going to
Speaker 4: allow Chuck Schumer to come up with a continuing resolution
Speaker 4: next week to fund the government that's what your actions
Speaker 4: are doing. That's why some people feel this is a
Speaker 4: personal vendetta you have against the speaker.
Speaker 6: No, my vendetta is against a Washington system that allows
Speaker 6: corruption to put the interests of lobbyists and pacts above
Speaker 6: the interests of the American people. Kevin McCarthy facilitates that system,
Speaker 6: and I do deeply resent that.
Speaker 2: So there it is. That's the fight with Maria and
Speaker 2: Matt Gates. Now, to be clear, Ukraine is part of
Speaker 2: the story that will be voted on. But just to
Speaker 2: explain in senatees or Congression leans, because I know this
Speaker 2: is complicated. A continuing resolution is a giant bill that
Speaker 2: funds the government. Once upon a time, before Obama was president,
Speaker 2: and when the Congress kind of ish worked, they used
Speaker 2: to pass individual appropriations bills for each part of the government,
Speaker 2: which were reported out of committee and sent to the floor.
Speaker 2: So the Department of Agriculture had one bill, the Department
Speaker 2: the Defense had one bill, the Department of the Treasury
Speaker 2: had one bill. Within these bills, there would be a debate,
Speaker 2: a line item debate. As he was saying about it's
Speaker 2: called the normal procedure. It hasn't been the normal procedure
Speaker 2: now in Washington. Basically since two thousand and nine, and
Speaker 2: especially since twenty thirteen, Gates and the Freedom Caucus have
Speaker 2: demanded a return to that, although Kevin McCarthy the Senate
Speaker 2: and all these others have decided that they want to stick.
Speaker 2: Hence the showdown that's happening right now now. In terms
Speaker 2: of the demands that are being made here, Ukraine is
Speaker 2: one of those demands, but it's not one of the
Speaker 2: most prominent ones. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: One of the things that the House GOP wants to
Speaker 2: do is they want to cut spending, but they have
Speaker 2: decided to rule out over ninety percent of the federal budget,
Speaker 2: meaning entitlements and defense, so that leaves discretionary spending, which
Speaker 2: is only about seven percent of the overall federal budget.
Speaker 2: That includes cuts to twenty seven percent of what they
Speaker 2: were advocate for the Social Security Administration, nutrition assistance for newborns,
Speaker 2: money to ensure our drinking water is safe, most federal
Speaker 2: education money, federal cancer and stroke research. So Crystal, I
Speaker 2: personally think, look, I actually do think a return to
Speaker 2: a normal order would be a good thing. Maybe you know,
Speaker 2: conceptually that said, what people are demanding here is crazy
Speaker 2: and actually would be. Look, it's always ridiculous. Yeah, look,
Speaker 2: we could cut spending. Let's let's take a freaking axe
Speaker 2: to so much to the Pentagon. But they don't want
Speaker 2: to touch it. Never they don't want to. And that's
Speaker 2: where Look, I'll give Gates credit because Gates actually would
Speaker 2: touch Pentagon spending, but the rest of them they refuse,
Speaker 2: and so the whole thing just becomes this crazy farce
Speaker 2: effectively about cutting to the bone. You know, any existing
Speaker 2: you know, welfare programs which you have, which by the way,
Speaker 2: many of these are as means tested if anybody is
Speaker 2: you know, worried about that, but you know, many of
Speaker 2: these existing programs are not you know, exactly like cash that.
Speaker 3: People are living high on the hogs.
Speaker 2: That type of welfare doesn't even exist in the United States. Like,
Speaker 2: that's what people don't understand. If you're not working, you
Speaker 2: actually can't get welfare. Is even if you're unemployed, you
Speaker 2: have to you can't just have no job, like you
Speaker 2: have to a paid in the unemployment insurance or to
Speaker 2: get unemployment insurance. I just don't think a lot of
Speaker 2: people understand that. So a lot of the cuts that
Speaker 2: we're talking about are silly. That said, on the Ukraine side,
Speaker 2: I'm one hundred percent with them. But the problem is is,
Speaker 2: from a political perspective, if McCarthy does fold, and it
Speaker 2: does look like he's going to to individually bring these
Speaker 2: bills to the floor, the vast majority of the House
Speaker 2: of Representatives does support Ukraine eight. So it's not like
Speaker 2: it's not going to pass. But that's the issue that
Speaker 2: I really have with this.
Speaker 1: Well, and even that so the expectation, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is also in the weeds, and I know, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I apologize, but it really does matter because we are
Speaker 1: coming down to the wire here and it looks we're
Speaker 1: adding towards the government shutdown almost totally because there's just.
Speaker 3: Not even time.
Speaker 1: If they were going to do some other sort of
Speaker 1: complicated discharge petition process, there's just not even time to
Speaker 1: get that done. So here's what the state of play is.
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy is going to try to pass through the
Speaker 1: House these individual bills like you're talking about to appease
Speaker 1: the Matt Gates of the world. Okay, that's going to
Speaker 1: go nowhere in terms of the Senate. Meanwhile, the Senate
Speaker 1: is trying to pass their own continuing resolution, which would
Speaker 1: be comprehensive, which Kevin McCarthy, because he values his position
Speaker 1: as Speaker of the House, is not going to put
Speaker 1: forward in the House. So you have this impass between
Speaker 1: the two chambers. What it looks like maybe we're going
Speaker 1: to end up with is a situation where they use
Speaker 1: this kind of workaround called a discharge petition that doesn't
Speaker 1: require a speaker to bring something to the floor that
Speaker 1: you can get a majority of members which would be
Speaker 1: some combination of probably mostly Democrats and a few Republicans
Speaker 1: to bring something like what the Senate is going to
Speaker 1: pass to the floor.
Speaker 3: But again that's.
Speaker 1: Going to take some time, and there's no guarantees about
Speaker 1: that either, because the Matt Gates faction says even that
Speaker 1: would be a real betrayal if anything passes through the
Speaker 1: House that uses Democrats to get across the finish line,
Speaker 1: So it's a complete impass. You know, their demands are
Speaker 1: really extreme, as we show there, and extraordinarily ideological. Even
Speaker 1: if you like we are sympathetic to their demands on
Speaker 1: Ukraine on everything else. I mean, it's just really trying
Speaker 1: to take a hatchet to these already threadbare social safety
Speaker 1: net programs which have been cut and cut and cut
Speaker 1: by the way during the COVID era, in which they
Speaker 1: already extracted a pound of flesh over the last debt
Speaker 1: ceiling freaking negotiations. They got a lot of what they
Speaker 1: wanted there too, which it's easy to forget about. So
Speaker 1: I think what was notable mostly about the Maria Barbaroma
Speaker 1: Matt Gates clip there is just how how ugly it was.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is bringing into the open and
Speaker 1: I think Maria, you could just basically assume those are
Speaker 1: like coming directly from Kevin McCarthy. I mean, that is
Speaker 1: really the divide here, and it's quite it's quite something.
Speaker 2: From a pure entertainment perspective. Here's my ideal solution. The
Speaker 2: Republicans do team up with the Democrats to pass it,
Speaker 2: and then McCarthy loses the speakership just because I would
Speaker 2: enjoy it. I mean me personally, I like to say
Speaker 2: people lose their jobs, you know, I like to see
Speaker 2: a little bit of chaos. That's what the House is for.
Speaker 1: But the problem, like people, this is the same issue
Speaker 1: they had at the beginning of the Kevin McCarthy speakership fight,
Speaker 1: like they don't have an alternative, yeah, unfortate that can
Speaker 1: unite the caucus, and so they.
Speaker 2: Won't have a speaker. You know, there's actually there's an
Speaker 2: interesting rule. You don't have to remember the House representative
Speaker 2: to be speaker. Yeah, you could be a normal.
Speaker 3: People always Oh, let's make tre don't speak thouse.
Speaker 2: I mean I would enjoy it. I would enjoy it,
Speaker 2: Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: The one thing that I did think that Matt gets
Speaker 1: was right on when he was like Mario was like,
Speaker 1: and we can continue with all the wins, and he's like,
Speaker 1: what wins, because he's pointing to the fact, I mean,
Speaker 1: in fairness, like I said, they did win some of
Speaker 1: their like hard ideological goals through the debt ceiling fight,
Speaker 1: so those in their view would be wins. I would
Speaker 1: consider them losses, but they would consider them wins. But
Speaker 1: in terms of all their like you know, their Weaponization
Speaker 1: Committee and they're like impeachment investigation or whatever, he's pointed
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is all just like bullshit
Speaker 1: virtue signaling without any real teeth at this point. And
Speaker 1: he's not wrong about that.
Speaker 2: No, he's not. Because McCarthy is not given them the
Speaker 2: powers and the subpoenas, stuff that they actually want for
Speaker 2: the Commons. It's very interesting. And again, I know there
Speaker 2: were boring people with the weeds, but you know, if
Speaker 2: you learn a little bit about the procedure and you
Speaker 2: start to speak some of this language, you're like, you know, look,
Speaker 2: you can conceptually understand why it would definitely be better
Speaker 2: to move away from these giant crs, these continuing resolutions,
Speaker 2: because they're just packed full of junk. Nobody ever knows
Speaker 2: what's going in there, and never debated, they're never you know,
Speaker 2: marked up and effectively. The real problem is this undemocratic
Speaker 2: because it means that only three people are making the law,
Speaker 2: the President, the leader of the Senate, and the Leader
Speaker 2: of the House. They write those bills and then they
Speaker 2: released two thousand pages and they go look up or down.
Speaker 2: There's no debate, nothing. Oh, you're going to lead to
Speaker 2: a government shutdown. It's basically a blackmail situation invented, like
Speaker 2: I said, by John Bayner and Paul Ryan and all
Speaker 2: those other people, all going back all the way back
Speaker 2: to the Obama administration. So getting away from it would
Speaker 2: be great, but listen, I'm not going to hold my breath.
Speaker 2: That thing is rule in Washington. It has now they
Speaker 2: love it. You know that the establishment loves that because
Speaker 2: they can chock full of you know, Ukraine, a disaster relief.
Speaker 2: Oh you want to vote against Waii. Remember the whole
Speaker 2: the two thousand dollars check thing. McConnell held it up
Speaker 2: because he refused to put it on the floor as
Speaker 2: a single item. He would only put it up against
Speaker 2: government spending and went ahead and killed it. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of reasons why this really does hurt you
Speaker 2: as an individual citizen to pass laws this way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the problem there's just too much dysfunction for
Speaker 1: them to be able to and has been now for
Speaker 1: over a decade, for them to be able to actually
Speaker 1: like you know, run the government and the way.
Speaker 3: That the government is supposed to be run.
Speaker 1: So not that I'm really like longing for those days
Speaker 1: of bipartisan consensus around you know, cutting off the social say.
Speaker 2: But the way that made those laws genuinely was good,
Speaker 2: especially forty fifty years ago, it was good. Great. The
Speaker 2: way that they used to really take it seriously. Think
Speaker 2: about the committee, the way that you would have witnesses
Speaker 2: come and testify. They would truly. I mean, go back
Speaker 2: into one of my personal favorite instances of American history
Speaker 2: is the tax bill by John F. Kennedy, the way
Speaker 2: that was reported and thought about and then eventually passed
Speaker 2: by Lyndon Johnson, The amount of work that went into
Speaker 2: that bill, which ended up being one of the best
Speaker 2: things ever happened to the US economy. People should really
Speaker 2: go back and think about the debates around income tax
Speaker 2: and about how corporations and it's set up for a
Speaker 2: lot of prosperity in the sixties. So I don't want
Speaker 2: to go on too much of a tangent, but it
Speaker 2: really was interesting and there is there is, you know,
Speaker 2: a good thing to be for good order, but it
Speaker 2: requires a lot of other stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, the reason that it's impossible now is because the
Speaker 1: parties have completely ideologically diverged. So, you know, used to
Speaker 1: be that there was actually over ideological overlap between the
Speaker 1: parties and that just doesn't really exist anymore.
Speaker 3: Now. It's theoretically, I mean, you.
Speaker 1: Could imagine a scenario where you ended up with you know,
Speaker 1: I mean you start to see glimmers of Okay, there's
Speaker 1: a few Republicans who are serious on antitrust and there's
Speaker 1: some Democrats that.
Speaker 3: You would start to see, yeah, the railway.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a few little glimmers, but there's not
Speaker 1: anything like the type of actual like cross parts and
Speaker 1: ideological overlap that used to enable that sort of working.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if we'll ever get back to that.
Speaker 1: Speaking of dysfunction in Washington, as you guys know, Senator
Speaker 1: of Menendez of New Jersey, Democratic of New Jersey was
Speaker 1: indicted on stunning allegations of corruption last week. I mean, truly,
Speaker 1: the details here are cartoonishly mind blowing, Like they found
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in this guy's house,
Speaker 1: stuffed into what it was like a jacket that literally
Speaker 1: had his.
Speaker 3: Name on it, gold gold bars.
Speaker 1: And the allegation here is that this was that he
Speaker 1: got this cash and the gold bars and like a
Speaker 1: luxury car for his wife and house payments and all
Speaker 1: this other stuff in exchange for doing favors for these
Speaker 1: Egyptian businessmen and also doing favors, by the way, for
Speaker 1: the Egyptian government. This is a man who was, until
Speaker 1: this all came out, head chair of the Senate Foreign
Speaker 1: Relations Committee. So the fact that he's doing favors on
Speaker 1: behalf of a foreign government. And by the way, this
Speaker 1: is the second time he's been indicted over corruption charges.
Speaker 1: Is just absolutely stunning. Perhaps even more stunning, though, has
Speaker 1: been his response. You would think someone would have a
Speaker 1: little bit of shame about this, but nope, not at all.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So he had the goal to respond to calls for
Speaker 1: his resignation with a new statement saying it's not lost
Speaker 1: on me.
Speaker 3: How quickly some are rushing to.
Speaker 1: Judge Aino and push him out of his seat. I
Speaker 1: am not going anywhere. And by the way, he's expected
Speaker 1: to give a press conference this morning in which he
Speaker 1: announces his re election days after these indictment charges come down.
Speaker 3: Will wait and see what he actually says.
Speaker 1: But the goal to claim some sort of identity based
Speaker 1: persecution over what are absolutely cartoonish a caricature of corruption
Speaker 1: in terms of the allegations is just absolutely stunning. And
Speaker 1: by the way, it is quite the opposite, because again,
Speaker 1: this is the second time this man has been indicted
Speaker 1: on corruption charge. Now the other one's got thrown out,
Speaker 1: and so let's say, in essentil proven guilty all of that.
Speaker 1: But you would think that perhaps after the first corruption
Speaker 1: indictment charges, maybe at the very least they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: made him chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Speaker 2: Don't forget Crystal. It wasn't that they're thrown out. It
Speaker 2: said it was a hung jury. It wasn't that, you know,
Speaker 2: it was just a mistrial. So it was one of
Speaker 2: those where at least some jury they thought he was guilty.
Speaker 2: He was never declared in is I mean, look, you're
Speaker 2: guilty before innocent, of course in the American justice system.
Speaker 2: But I encourage everybody to go and read that original
Speaker 2: indictment of mister Menendez because it was shocking in twenty seventeen. Now,
Speaker 2: the of course, cash isn't the only thing he's got
Speaker 2: in that jacket pocket. He's got the race card that
Speaker 2: he's got to go ahead, that's all right. And my
Speaker 2: favorite thing is that after he got the gold, allegedly
Speaker 2: he googled how much is a kilo of gold worth?
Speaker 2: On his phone. That's the most boomer thing you can do.
Speaker 2: They also found the DNA of the people bribing him
Speaker 2: on that wad of cash. Just by the way, I look,
Speaker 2: allegedly from the DOJ all of that. So he gives you.
Speaker 3: There's a perfectly innocent exploration for the ones of for
Speaker 3: those who wanted dumbars.
Speaker 2: Sixty six thousand dollars is a kilo of gold and
Speaker 2: he had two of those. So that sounds nice. What
Speaker 2: a nice life that two bricks of freaking gold. It's
Speaker 2: like out of a Bond movie that you were seeing
Speaker 2: this gentleman. But there have been some people could have
Speaker 2: been coming out to yeah.
Speaker 1: So actually the New Jersey delegation has turned on him
Speaker 1: pretty hard, not across the board, but put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. The most critically,
Speaker 1: the new Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who is also a Democrat,
Speaker 1: called for Menandez's resignation. You had a New Jersey representatives
Speaker 1: Democratic New Jersey representatives including Mikey, Cheryl Bill, Pascal Pascaral Junior,
Speaker 1: and Josh S. Goottheimer Show favorite calling for him to leave.
Speaker 1: So far, his senate colleague there, Corey Booker, has been silent,
Speaker 1: although last time around with the corruption charges, Corey actually
Speaker 1: came out and affirmatively supported him, So I guess his
Speaker 1: progress from some direction. You have Representative Don Bayer of Virginia,
Speaker 1: who's co founder of the Egypt human rights caucus and
Speaker 1: critic of the current government's human rights record. He said
Speaker 1: Menendez should step down. You actually have another Democrat representative,
Speaker 1: Andy Kim, who has jumped into the Democratic primary to
Speaker 1: directly challenge Menendez in a primary fight for that Senate seat.
Speaker 1: So Andy cam what he said is that after Culture
Speaker 1: resign Center, Menandez said, I'm not going anywhere. As a result,
Speaker 1: I feel compelled to run against him. By the way
Speaker 1: I looked in Andy Kim is sort of just like
Speaker 1: very standard issue Democrat more or less.
Speaker 3: He's voted with Joe.
Speaker 1: Biden one hundred percent of the time. He hasn't distinguished
Speaker 1: himself in all that many regards. But anyway, he's just sort.
Speaker 2: Of like not corrupt. So it seems like or at
Speaker 2: least as we know it, as far as we do, as.
Speaker 5: Far as we know.
Speaker 3: This is New Jersey after all.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as far as we know, he hasn't been
Speaker 1: indicted over corruption charges, as Menandez has put this. So
Speaker 1: we also had to the point of the identity based
Speaker 1: persecution here. We had very prominent Latina Alexandria Cossio Cortez
Speaker 1: coming out and also calling for him to resign.
Speaker 3: List, Take listen.
Speaker 8: Centaer Bob Menandez of New Jersey, as you know, has
Speaker 8: just been indicted on bribery charges.
Speaker 3: Should he resign?
Speaker 8: And what do you think of his statement that it
Speaker 8: has to do with him being a Latino.
Speaker 9: Well, you know, I think it's the situation is quite unfortunate,
Speaker 9: but I do believe that it is in the best
Speaker 9: interests for Senator Menendez to resign in this moment. As
Speaker 9: you mentioned, consistency matters. It shouldn't matter whether it's a
Speaker 9: Republican or a Democrat. The details in this indictment are
Speaker 9: extremely serious. They involve the nature of not just his
Speaker 9: but all of our seats in Congress. And while you know,
Speaker 9: as a Latina there are absolutely ways in which there
Speaker 9: is systemic bias, but I think what is here in
Speaker 9: this indictment is quite clear, and I believe this is
Speaker 9: in the best interest to maintain the integrity of the seat.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't agree with our LATINX colleague AOC all the time,
Speaker 2: but you know, first of all, happy she said Latina.
Speaker 2: At least LATINX appears to have died so far in
Speaker 2: the lexicon, but she called out him to resign, So
Speaker 2: you know, props to her. And you know, it's not
Speaker 2: like it doesn't take actual courage for Democratic lawmakers. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's no joke. In the Senate, he by all accounts,
Speaker 2: is going to remain the Senate Foreign Relations chairman Schumer
Speaker 2: has anything. You know, many of these other senators don't
Speaker 2: want to cross him, because if you have a single
Speaker 2: individual thing that you want done, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: He can straight up block it through committee.
Speaker 1: So so far there has been one senator Democratic senator
Speaker 1: who has called for him to resign. As John Fetterman
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen, he says, Senator Menendez
Speaker 1: should resign. I mean, this should be so easy, right,
Speaker 1: He's entitled to the presumption of innocence, but he cannot
Speaker 1: continue to wield influence over national policy, especially given the
Speaker 1: serious and specific nature of the allegations. I hope he
Speaker 1: chooses an honorable exit and focuses on his trial. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Centaer Fetterman for saying the most obvious, basic thing that
Speaker 1: everyone should literally be saying, and is actually worse than
Speaker 1: Schumer not saying anything. He did put out a statement
Speaker 1: in which he praised Menendez's service to New Jersey and
Speaker 1: said he is entitled to a fair trial and innocent
Speaker 1: until proven guilty. Now he has stepped down from being
Speaker 1: chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. But Schumer, who is
Speaker 1: the most critical voice probably in all of this, declining
Speaker 1: to call on him to resign, along with again literally
Speaker 1: every other senator Democratic senator save for John Fetterman. Here
Speaker 1: is Dick Durman, who is another powerful United States Democratic Senator,
Speaker 1: declining to call for him to step down the stake.
Speaker 10: Lisson, let me tell you, Dana, this is a very
Speaker 10: serious charge, There's no question about it. But it bears
Speaker 10: reminding us of what I've said about the indictments against
Speaker 10: Donald Trump, equally serious charges. These are, in fact indictments
Speaker 10: that have to be proven. Under the rule of law,
Speaker 10: the person who is accused is entitled to the presumption
Speaker 10: of innocence, and it's the responsibility of the government to
Speaker 10: prove that case. I said that about Donald Trump, will
Speaker 10: say the same thing about Bob Menendez in terms of resignation.
Speaker 10: That's a decision to be made by Senator Menendez and
Speaker 10: the people of New Jersey.
Speaker 1: So he's trying to sound very serious or whatever they're
Speaker 1: but the bottom line is he won't call on him
Speaker 1: to resign.
Speaker 2: So apparently he called for al Frankin to resign the photo.
Speaker 2: That was enough for Old Dick to come out and
Speaker 2: say that you got to go. But a straight up
Speaker 2: federal incitement over corruption is not enough.
Speaker 3: I mean, which directly impacts his job.
Speaker 1: I mean al Franken allegedly, you know, grabbing someone's boobs,
Speaker 1: right that doesn't even have your job as a senator
Speaker 1: right right, This is you are literally trading your power
Speaker 1: and influence to do favors for a foreign government. And
Speaker 1: you people can't bring yourselves to say, hey, maybe this
Speaker 1: guy is the right one for the job right now
Speaker 1: while there's an ongoing Democratic primary process. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's absolute insanity. And Republicans are of course getting excited
Speaker 1: because Menendez is up for reelection in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and they're thinking, hey, maybe we got a shot at
Speaker 1: the seat if it's especially if it's Menendez who ends
Speaker 1: up being the nominee. He's probably the only Democrat in
Speaker 1: this era who could lose the New Jersey Senate seat.
Speaker 1: And yet you know, they're apparently willing to take the
Speaker 1: risk on him.
Speaker 2: Look, this time around, you got a Democratic governor already
Speaker 2: came out and said he should resigned. So it's not
Speaker 2: even an incident. But apparently, you know, as you were saying,
Speaker 2: he's got a press conference. I think he's going to
Speaker 2: run for reelection. Everybody thinks that. In the press conference
Speaker 2: from today, he says he's gonna run.
Speaker 3: That's the expectation.
Speaker 2: And you know that's the expectation. And guess what he
Speaker 2: won last time. He's still won despite the fact that
Speaker 2: he was look in my opinion, he was guilty as
Speaker 2: hell based on the indictment, my own personal opinion of
Speaker 2: reading of the twenty seventeen original indictment against Menendez. But
Speaker 2: he beat it at trial in terms of a mistrial.
Speaker 2: This time around, who knows, you know, who knows? With
Speaker 2: a new Jersey jury, he has nothing but confidence though
Speaker 2: walking into this he's going to go and fight it
Speaker 2: in court and he very well could win, just like
Speaker 2: he did last time.
Speaker 1: Well, and here's the thing too, and I'm doing this
Speaker 1: in my monologue, like the Supreme Court has so limited
Speaker 1: the definition of corruption, which he used before with Bob
Speaker 1: McDonald and to cover their own corrupt.
Speaker 3: Behavior, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So you know, he'll try to use every trick in
Speaker 1: the book, But I mean, this seems like a pretty
Speaker 1: difficult one to wiggle your way on when you got
Speaker 1: the literal gold bars in the closet, I thought the.
Speaker 2: Same thing about the last one about the private jet travel. Yeah,
Speaker 2: basic quid pro quote, and he still got off.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, amazing, Yeah, absolutely amazing. All right,
Speaker 3: So this is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So we've got, you know, in the new TV season
Speaker 1: or whatever, I think, I guess it's about to drop.
Speaker 1: And so catching Eyes is a new red of The Bachelor,
Speaker 1: but with the twists.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So it's called The Golden Bachelor Looking for Love and
Speaker 1: f hickel Bob partner and I actually, unironically, I actually
Speaker 1: genuinely love this. So this man's name is Jerry Turner.
Speaker 1: He is the Bachelor. He's in his seventies. It's going
Speaker 1: to be you know, a group of women who are
Speaker 1: between sixty and seventy.
Speaker 3: Five who were all vying for his.
Speaker 1: Affection here in the traditional bachelor style. They say in
Speaker 1: this New York Times piece that they include divorcees, widows, mothers,
Speaker 1: and grandmothers. They were talking to the producers of this
Speaker 1: show and they said that at first, when they brought
Speaker 1: the contestants into like the Bachelor manch or whatever. I've
Speaker 1: never watched The Bachelor, but this is my understanding of
Speaker 1: how the villa works.
Speaker 3: Generally familiar with the product.
Speaker 1: But they brought them into the Bachelor mansion and they
Speaker 1: were looking around at the bedrooms and everything, and it
Speaker 1: was a sort of like typical Bachelor reaction, yelling off
Speaker 1: the balconies hanging, and they said, Okay, this feels like
Speaker 1: The Bachelor. And then they came down to the kitchen
Speaker 1: and had mimosas they were doing toasts, and we said, okay,
Speaker 1: this also feels like the Bachelor. And then one woman said,
Speaker 1: let's toast to Social Security, Like, all right, that's not
Speaker 1: the Bachelor.
Speaker 3: That's different.
Speaker 1: But apparently this is no accident in programming choices.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Also for The New York Times, TV network's Last Best Hope,
Speaker 1: Boomers viewers have fled primetime lineups for streaming outlets, with
Speaker 1: one notable exception people over sixty. So basically the only
Speaker 1: people who are left watching regular TV programs like The
Speaker 1: Bachelor are all over sixty, and so you know, reading
Speaker 1: the room, Television networks are increasingly programming for this older audience.
Speaker 1: Let me and they point specifically to the Golden Bachelor
Speaker 1: as like case in point of this.
Speaker 3: But here's some of the numbers. This was stunning to me.
Speaker 1: Just nine years ago, the median age of most top
Speaker 1: rated network entertainment shows range from the mid forties to
Speaker 1: the early fifties. Just nine years ago, not even a
Speaker 1: decade ago. It was forty five for the sitcom How
Speaker 1: I Met Your Mother, fifty two for Big Bang Theory.
Speaker 1: Some shows like Brooklyn nine nine I had a median
Speaker 1: viewer as young as thirty nine. Now in the recent
Speaker 1: most recent network television season, which ended in May, median
Speaker 1: viewer was older than sixty median including The Voice sixty
Speaker 1: four point eight, the Mass Singer sixty, Gray's Anatomy sixty four,
Speaker 1: Young Sheldon sixty five plus the highest range that Nielsen provides.
Speaker 1: And so it's not just the Golden Bachelor. They're bringing
Speaker 1: back Law and Order, starring the eighty two year old
Speaker 1: Sam Waters.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe that when I saw that photo. I'm like, Sam, retirement, man,
Speaker 2: I've been on TV before I was born.
Speaker 1: So they're bringing back Quantum Leap, which actually as a kid,
Speaker 1: I used to love watching Quantum Leap.
Speaker 3: You should not be Magnum Pi.
Speaker 1: CBS is resurrecting Matt Locke show. They say the Simpsons
Speaker 1: used to lampoon for its older fan base. Last year,
Speaker 1: NBC found a surprise hit in night Court, another like
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties era, eighties early nineties era show that I
Speaker 1: also watched as a child, and they talked about how
Speaker 1: they intentionally tried to avoid computer screens and other quote
Speaker 1: trappings of modern life. We really intentionally want a night
Speaker 1: Court to feel like a place a bit frozen in time,
Speaker 1: was the idea, and apparently it worked for their viewing
Speaker 1: audience because it was a breakout success the revamped night Court,
Speaker 1: which I never would have expected.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, it's fascinating. And the reason why it
Speaker 2: matters above all is that this is what props up
Speaker 2: linear television. I've talked a nauseum about cable carriage fees
Speaker 2: and all that other stuff, but the bedrock, the beating
Speaker 2: heart of linear TV, of network TV for years was
Speaker 2: the serialized show The Modern Families. The you know, I'm
Speaker 2: talking more of my era, Like you said, Law and Order,
Speaker 2: What is an NCIA. I think that's what it's called NCIS. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think so NCIS, which has various different ones, Law
Speaker 2: and Order, you know, Law and Order, SPU, the various
Speaker 2: spinoffs of all that. They were the bedrock of television.
Speaker 2: It's what kept America interested. It really peaked, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: with Lost back in two thousand and four. It was
Speaker 2: really like the height of their powers when they were
Speaker 2: demanding huge amounts of money. But people don't forget this.
Speaker 2: Lost launched and actually was helped by the Internet. It
Speaker 2: was one of the first forum board TV shows where
Speaker 2: people would talk on forums about what was going on
Speaker 2: with Lost, and that really presses the eventual move to
Speaker 2: streaming television and really a collapse of the funding model,
Speaker 2: because the thing is that these shows and the whole
Speaker 2: anchor you know that they present at these big conferences,
Speaker 2: helped prop up an entire advertising scheme which came in
Speaker 2: the middle of commercial breaks. And now almost a decade
Speaker 2: into the Netflix, HBO, Peacock and all these other eras,
Speaker 2: a lot of that has really gone. You know, even
Speaker 2: the ads that we watched on those streaming services, if
Speaker 2: you're ad supported, they're like fifteen second spots for some
Speaker 2: idiot state farm ad. You know, it's not the original
Speaker 2: ads that demand the premiums that once were. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a do you remember that you
Speaker 2: ever watched The West Wing is? Yeah, so like The
Speaker 2: West Wing for example, one of the reasons why it
Speaker 2: went on for seven seasons was that it was one
Speaker 2: of the only shows that got rich people to watch
Speaker 2: network TV. And so even though the audience wasn't that big,
Speaker 2: it was like doctors and lawyers and the intellectual class.
Speaker 3: That's the whole business, CNBC business.
Speaker 2: And they were able to NBC at that point was
Speaker 2: printing money off of The West Wing Er for example,
Speaker 2: was another long serialized one. And look, I enjoyed some
Speaker 2: of these shows, you know at the time and all that,
Speaker 2: but I think they died, you know, a good death
Speaker 2: for reason. And I think it's very sad actually, the
Speaker 2: fact that it is now effectively an elderly market. We
Speaker 2: already saw this fight that just happened with ESPN Disney
Speaker 2: with the what was it, the I forget who the
Speaker 2: cable carric Charter Communications. That's right, this is the future.
Speaker 2: I mean, very soon you're gonna move to an era
Speaker 2: where the cable bundle is diminishing, like nobody's business. Once
Speaker 2: sports goes fully online, it is dead, absolutely dead, and
Speaker 2: with that will come the collapse of NBC Nightly News,
Speaker 2: ABC World twenty twenty or whatever these programs are, and
Speaker 2: the Today Show, a lot of these things. I mean,
Speaker 2: these programs were hundreds of million dollars. At one point,
Speaker 2: Matt Lauer was single handedly responsible for almost a billion
Speaker 2: in ad revenue for what was going on over I mean,
Speaker 2: what are they making today, maybe one hundred mil. And
Speaker 2: then you know, I'm talking. You know, obviously that's a
Speaker 2: lot of money, but that's like one tenth of what
Speaker 2: they used to make over there, So you got to
Speaker 2: think about it that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the business piece is really fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: And I mean the sad reality that's increasingly coming into
Speaker 1: view is, you know, the thought was alwould be better
Speaker 1: for consumers once you weren't paying for the whole cable
Speaker 1: news bundle, But increasingly people are paying more for like
Speaker 1: eighteen different streaming services and getting less. So it hasn't
Speaker 1: worked out for consumers the way that one might hope
Speaker 1: that it.
Speaker 2: I think we'll get there. We're in a chaos era.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, we'll see, but you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of the cultural representation piece though, like with the
Speaker 1: Golden Bachelor and whatever, I'm actually here for it.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I was Kyle watching golf all the time.
Speaker 1: It's always onto the background and the golf channel, and
Speaker 1: he watches TV like he's an old band. It's like
Speaker 1: Golf channel and Weather Channel. It's like eighty year olds
Speaker 1: and Kyle are watching these channels. But anyway, they played
Speaker 1: this senior women's golf tour on the channel, and actually
Speaker 1: really appreciate it because so much of representation of older
Speaker 1: women in particular, it's like very limited.
Speaker 3: In terms of television.
Speaker 1: I feel like older men, you know, the Saltan Pepper
Speaker 1: like demonair, older guy like that's been a thing for
Speaker 1: a while. But to see these older women, many of
Speaker 1: whom just look like a regular old grandma out there
Speaker 1: doing these incredible athletic feats and like, you know, they
Speaker 1: were amazing on the golf course. It was kind of cool.
Speaker 1: And so I'm for the Golden Bachelor. I'm excited to
Speaker 1: see what this is all about. Like these the dude
Speaker 1: is less interesting to me than the fact that they're
Speaker 1: actually going to have women who are age appropriate to
Speaker 1: him right, who are vying for his attention. So I'm
Speaker 1: kind of here for the cool old grama representation that
Speaker 1: this new era could represent.
Speaker 2: I agree. I just think though it's an example of
Speaker 2: the original age of the mass market TV show, which
Speaker 2: could appeal to tens of millions.
Speaker 3: Absolutely that's gone.
Speaker 2: I mean I lost, yeah, And.
Speaker 1: That's the thing with you know, boomers, this has been
Speaker 1: their whole life has been centered around like when I
Speaker 1: get home and in the primetime shows, like we sit
Speaker 1: down as a family, and like the TV is central,
Speaker 1: and so they're just that habit is not going to
Speaker 1: break because it's been a lifelong habit whereas for younger generations,
Speaker 1: you know, they've they've evaluated the landscape and switched over
Speaker 1: more readily and more easily. And the other issue that's
Speaker 1: a problem for the networks in terms of the business
Speaker 1: model is it's still what they call the key demo,
Speaker 1: which I think like twenty five fifty four where advertisers
Speaker 1: that's what you sell your ad revenue based on because
Speaker 1: that's the group that is most lucrative that advertisers really
Speaker 1: want to reach. So when all of your audiences are
Speaker 1: like freaking say, sixty five years old. I mean that's
Speaker 1: the other issue for them in terms of the advertising model.
Speaker 2: Some of the numbers you guys won't even believe, Like
Speaker 2: I just looked it up. The season three premiere of
Speaker 2: Loss got eighteen point eight million US viewers. That is
Speaker 2: so that's like one tenth of the adult population. And
Speaker 2: I remember it as a communal experience as I still
Speaker 2: love that show. But you know that those days they
Speaker 2: are long long gone. So you're going to see more
Speaker 2: of the golden Batcheler's and hey, more power to them.
Speaker 2: But from a funding and a business point of view,
Speaker 2: in a mass market, mass cultures point of view, that
Speaker 2: thing is that's a ship sale. That is a white
Speaker 2: flag surrender for what they're doing. Indeed, Chris al Woad,
Speaker 2: you take a look at.
Speaker 1: In a single day, two instances of absolutely cartoonish corruption
Speaker 1: were revealed among some of America's most powerful elites. Senator
Speaker 1: Bob Menendez, chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, was
Speaker 1: indicted again once again. The senator stands accused of accepting cash,
Speaker 1: gold bars, house payments, a luxury vehicle, and other gifts
Speaker 1: in exchange for doing favors for Egyptian businessmen and the
Speaker 1: Egyptian government. And at the same time Pro Publica dropped
Speaker 1: their latest investigation into the brazen corruption of Supreme Court
Speaker 1: Justice Clarence Thomas, who has arguably arguably become the most
Speaker 1: ideologically influential justice on this conservative court. In this latest piece,
Speaker 1: they detail how Thomas was groomed by conservative billionaires over
Speaker 1: years attending ultra elite Bohemian grove retreats. These ties not
Speaker 1: only result in all of those luxury trips in private
Speaker 1: school tuition and payments for his mother's home for millionaire
Speaker 1: Harlan Crow, but also led to a relationship with the
Speaker 1: most influential big money network in the entire country, the
Speaker 1: Coke Network. Justice Thomas went on to flagrantly disregard any
Speaker 1: conflict of interest concerns by raising money for the Cokes
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that they routinely have cases
Speaker 1: in front of the court. Of course, none of this
Speaker 1: objectly corrupt behavior was disclosed to the public, in what
Speaker 1: appears to be a clear violation of federal ethics laws. Now,
Speaker 1: these stories may seem kind of unrelated, different parties details ideologies,
Speaker 1: but they hold in common quite a lot. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, from their grotesque betrayal of public trust to
Speaker 1: the code of silence and complicity among leads that enables
Speaker 1: such absolutely outlandish behavior. Both stories of corruption stand out
Speaker 1: for their direct impact on policymaking at the very highest levels.
Speaker 1: As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Menendez's
Speaker 1: influence on our nation's foreign policy was second only to
Speaker 1: the President himself, and all the while he has apparently
Speaker 1: been available for what, in the grand scheme of foreign governments,
Speaker 1: was a cheap price. Egyptian businessmen were allegedly able to
Speaker 1: buy this guy for a few hundred thousand dollars of bargain.
Speaker 1: Considering the power that he wields and the favors he
Speaker 1: was able to allegedly provide, the impact of Clarence Thomas's
Speaker 1: corrupt dealings with the Cokes and other libertarian billionaires is,
Speaker 1: if anything, even more far reaching. The Cox looks set
Speaker 1: to win one of their longtime goals in this upcoming
Speaker 1: Supreme Court term, stripping federal agencies of much of their
Speaker 1: power regulate anything from clear air and water to labor
Speaker 1: rights to consumer protections. This issue, the so called Chevron deference,
Speaker 1: is a libertarian billionaire obsession and lo and behold. As
Speaker 1: Thomas has been fetted and lavish with gifts by the
Speaker 1: very businessman most influential in pushing the end of Chevron,
Speaker 1: his position on this issue has totally flipped. Thomas once
Speaker 1: authored a major defense of Chevron and the ability of
Speaker 1: federal agencies to regulate in areas where congressional intent is ambiguous,
Speaker 1: but his billionaire buddies appear to have successfully changed his mind.
Speaker 3: Thomas has since.
Speaker 1: Repudiated his previous position and looks set to help end Chevron,
Speaker 1: granting his billionaire benefactors their fondish wish and recapping the
Speaker 1: ability of the federal government to protect the rights of
Speaker 1: ordinary Americans. But it's not just their powerful impact on
Speaker 1: our democracy that unites. These two instances of corruption at
Speaker 1: the very highest level. Both stem from the very same
Speaker 1: rotten roots. In fact, no institution has done more to
Speaker 1: legalize and normalize corruption than the Supreme Court. David Sorrotov
Speaker 1: Lever News has been making this point very powerfully. He writes,
Speaker 1: if proven true, the sordid details of the indictment of
Speaker 1: center of Menendez reflect a country whose billionaire owned Supreme
Speaker 1: Court has been explicitly telling politicians that flagrant grotesque corruption
Speaker 1: will now be considered perfectly legal. In twenty sixteen, justices
Speaker 1: unanimously overturn the corruption conviction of former Virginia Governor MacDonell,
Speaker 1: essentially saying gifts may be exchanged for certain government favors.
Speaker 1: Menendez weaponize that to fight a past indictment, and will
Speaker 1: likely try to do so again. Scotis justices now have
Speaker 1: a personal motive to try to protect Menendez from prosecutors.
Speaker 1: Justice's own acceptance of gifts from those with businesses before
Speaker 1: the court mimics the alleged scheme detailed in the Menande's indictment.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justices will likely be personally averse to criminalizing
Speaker 1: the same behavior we now know that they themselves routinely
Speaker 1: engage in. Now this is just the most explicit, codified
Speaker 1: way in which elites enable corruption. Just behold the silence,
Speaker 1: though from most corners surrounding these new stunning developments. In
Speaker 1: response to Menendez once again facing indictment for insane levels
Speaker 1: of corruption. As of this writing, one of his Senate
Speaker 1: Democratic colleagues has called for his resignation. Just one kudos
Speaker 1: to John Fetterman for doing that and this code of
Speaker 1: silence and protection comes all the way from the top.
Speaker 3: Majority leader. Schumer not only.
Speaker 1: Declined to call for Menendez to step down, but took
Speaker 1: this opportunity to praise him as a dedicated public servant
Speaker 1: who is quote always fighting hard for the people of
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Of course, according to the indictment, he was
Speaker 1: in reality fighting hard for some shady Egyptian businessmen, not
Speaker 1: so much for the people of New Jersey. Meanwhile, Chief
Speaker 1: Justice John Roberts, who supposedly cares so deeply about the
Speaker 1: institution of the Court, has done nothing but stonewall any
Speaker 1: attempts at real reform. Remember, the Supreme Court, alone among
Speaker 1: federal courts, has no code of ethics, allowing justices to
Speaker 1: engage in whatever twisted, brazen levels of corruption that they
Speaker 1: could justify to themselves, because they don't have to justify
Speaker 1: it to us. None of Thomas's fellow justices have spoken
Speaker 1: a single critical word against his enrichment by a powerful
Speaker 1: network of billionaires and conservative activists. And the reason why
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. Because so many elite politicians are guilty
Speaker 1: of some level of corruption, even if not as cartoonish
Speaker 1: as Menandez or Thomas. There is a sort of principle
Speaker 1: of mutually assured destruction that ends.
Speaker 3: Up reigning supreme.
Speaker 1: They all keep their mouths shut and the status quo
Speaker 1: locked in because their own hands are not clean. That's
Speaker 1: why stock trading remains. That's why anti corruption laws are loosen,
Speaker 1: and even when politicians and their aids are indicted, they
Speaker 1: frequently get let off. These men believe the rules do
Speaker 1: not apply to them, and unfortunately, too often they are correct.
Speaker 3: And that is what enables it.
Speaker 2: Because you have and if you want to hear my
Speaker 2: reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 2: Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: All right, sorry, were looking at.
Speaker 2: Of all the causes that I've been early to, perhaps
Speaker 2: the call I'm most proud of to be attached to
Speaker 2: is calling critical race theory and many of the huckster's
Speaker 2: complete grifters from the beginning. Nobody much cared in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen about critical race theory or emerging con
Speaker 2: artists like Nicole Hannah Jones and Ibram Kendy, but I
Speaker 2: had my eye on them. Those who want to see
Speaker 2: can go back and watch rising coverage from at that
Speaker 2: time of me calling them out if you're interested. I
Speaker 2: saw them clearly for what they were, nothing more than
Speaker 2: modern day race hosters, capitalizing on the guilds of white
Speaker 2: liberals to both enrich themselves, advance their careers, and destroy
Speaker 2: any social fabric left in this country that is not
Speaker 2: obsessed with race. Jones, Kendy, Robin DiAngelo. They had one
Speaker 2: single mission, convinced the elites in this country there is
Speaker 2: one source for all of our problems and nothing else race.
Speaker 2: This is reductive and a false view of history, but
Speaker 2: it was successful. Ultraliberals on campuses were beginning to be indoctrinated,
Speaker 2: slowly but surely. In Infrastructure was built up all throughout
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen and nineteen for the perfect moment, and luckily
Speaker 2: for them, it came with the BLM riots of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: White liberals and corporations suddenly began playing Olympics to see
Speaker 2: who could outwoke or out virtue signal each other, and
Speaker 2: these people were happy to take their money. Kendy, especially Kendy,
Speaker 2: is unsurprisingly the dumbest and yet the most successful amongst them.
Speaker 2: He has written several books about quote anti racism. He
Speaker 2: advocates for such ideas as a constitutional anti racist amendment,
Speaker 2: literal race discrimination in favor of blacks, and brainwashing children
Speaker 2: from a young age about his view of race. Every
Speaker 2: genderquer bookstore in this country has his book bury at
Speaker 2: the front row, and billionaires have flooded this man with
Speaker 2: money to continue his important work. He decided to use
Speaker 2: that money in conjunction with Boston University to create a
Speaker 2: new center and henceforwarth In twenty twenty, the Center for
Speaker 2: Anti Racist Research was born. It sounds as smart as
Speaker 2: the Zoolander one, now endowed with tens of millions of
Speaker 2: dollars and a new mandate to research and promote the
Speaker 2: anti racist cump. Three years later, though, it turns out
Speaker 2: the entire thing was as much of a grift as
Speaker 2: a con as I thought from the very beginning. More
Speaker 2: than half of the employees of the center were abruptly
Speaker 2: fired just recently after Kenny has apparently burned through much
Speaker 2: of forty three million dollars. In that time period. They
Speaker 2: have produced no real research, applied for and given grants
Speaker 2: with no work output, no real original work to speak of.
Speaker 2: In fact, one professor at the university said Kenny quote
Speaker 2: had a pattern of amassing grants without any commitment to
Speaker 2: producing the research obligated, adding that, to the best of
Speaker 2: my knowledge, there is no good faith commitment to fulfilling
Speaker 2: funded research projects. She wrote that in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: instead of thanking her, the university retaliated against her, refusing
Speaker 2: to even renew her affiliation. The grift is now so
Speaker 2: obvious Boston University has had to launch an official inquiry
Speaker 2: into Kendy's leadership. They note that originally the center was
Speaker 2: supposed to track racial disparities nationwide, have a graduate degree program,
Speaker 2: a media enterprise, and research teams on semic racism. Only
Speaker 2: one of those projects ever came to fruition, a half
Speaker 2: assed media project, the so called Racial Data Tracker, did not,
Speaker 2: which was supposed to be the centerpiece for all their
Speaker 2: work and their funding. As for the graduate degree programs, nope,
Speaker 2: nowhere to be seen. In fact, it turns out that
Speaker 2: Kendy for the last several months, has been on leave
Speaker 2: from his own center that he was supposed to be running,
Speaker 2: why to work on things like his podcast, his new
Speaker 2: ESPN Plus series about racism and sports called Skin in
Speaker 2: the Game, And while he's rolling in corporate cash and
Speaker 2: enriching himself. The people who worked there saw him quote
Speaker 2: as a tool of capitalism, and would often exploit them
Speaker 2: and their label labor. One professor called it a colossal
Speaker 2: waste of millions of dollars and noted that Kenny's work
Speaker 2: was thought to even be influenced by many of the
Speaker 2: billionaire donors who had backed him and the university, including
Speaker 2: rolling out the red carpet for big pharma executives. It
Speaker 2: would all be funny if millions of people had not
Speaker 2: bought this idiot's book and shoved it down their children's throat.
Speaker 2: The media had not celebrated him with some modern, modern
Speaker 2: day Frederick Douglass for a while in this country, as
Speaker 2: I said, you couldn't even go into a bookstore or
Speaker 2: Barnes and Noble without seeing how to be an anti
Speaker 2: racist or anti racist baby prominently displayed. You couldn't turn
Speaker 2: on the TV or watch a movie without having this
Speaker 2: racialism at the center. And how many of us couldn't
Speaker 2: even open social media without seeing his signature quote. It's
Speaker 2: not enough to not be racist, you must be actively
Speaker 2: anti racist. It was everywhere. The collapse of the Kendy Center,
Speaker 2: the wasting of millions of dollars it's the latest casualty
Speaker 2: of the BLM movement. Who can forget the BLM executive
Speaker 2: coccused of stealing ten million dollars of donor funds who
Speaker 2: use them as a quote personal piggybank, or the multi
Speaker 2: million dollar mansions that were purchased by these groups leaders.
Speaker 2: I am hard pressed really to think of a single
Speaker 2: major figure in the so called movement who got prominent
Speaker 2: after Ferguson, who hasn't turned out to be a grifter
Speaker 2: rather than one who is honest. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: end with this. The billionaires and the frankly rich white liberals,
Speaker 2: they owe only themselves to blame. These people were never
Speaker 2: hidden who they are. Nicole Hannah Jones famously appeared in
Speaker 2: a so called racial justice movement sponsored by Shell Corporation.
Speaker 2: Anti racism has always been a tool of the billionaire
Speaker 2: class to distract and to divide the populace. It is
Speaker 2: not an accident that it was the prevailing thought after BLM,
Speaker 2: and is certainly not an accent that despite all these revelations,
Speaker 2: all of us know this. Kendy's going to get away
Speaker 2: with it. ESPN the podcast. He'll still be called for
Speaker 2: commentary during the next racial incendiary moment. The grift is
Speaker 2: the point. The only thing we can do is not
Speaker 2: buy into it next time. I mean, Crystal, it's been
Speaker 2: it's I mean, I know you're no fan of Ibram Kennedy,
Speaker 2: but he was the perfect person. You know. I have
Speaker 2: a funny story. I was in a book club and
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen I think that was Stamped by Racism.
Speaker 2: That was a stamp by race or whatever it was called.
Speaker 2: It was the first time I remember this is the
Speaker 2: It was a trash book. But one of the guys
Speaker 2: in charge was I'm not going to give away the name.
Speaker 2: He was like a dean of a liberal arts college,
Speaker 2: and he's like, I think this really speaks to to me.
Speaker 2: And I brought up some of the class concerns, even
Speaker 2: at that time, before I even started the show with you,
Speaker 2: and it was like I was speaking gibberish to this ma.
Speaker 2: He said, no, no addresses that in the book. All class
Speaker 2: concerns are downstream of race. And I was like, well, okay,
Speaker 2: hold on a second here. Now, we would be fools
Speaker 2: to say that it's not deeply intertwined. But the causality
Speaker 2: and then the things that they reach for as their
Speaker 2: solutions are obviously very much at odds for a lot
Speaker 2: of what we believe in here at this show.
Speaker 1: I mean this times in perfectly with Freddie Debor's latest
Speaker 1: books that we interviewed him about how elites hijack the
Speaker 1: social justice movement as I think what it's called. And look,
Speaker 1: capitalism has created a class race stratified society very intentionally,
Speaker 1: and there is no doubt that black people, starting with
Speaker 1: slavery and throughout our history have been completely screwed by
Speaker 1: our system. And so what really discussed me about people
Speaker 1: like Kenny is that they use these moments when there's
Speaker 1: a genuine desire.
Speaker 3: To do better.
Speaker 1: There was, I mean, there was a collective outpouring of
Speaker 1: grief and concern and desire to change and all of
Speaker 1: these things in the you know, during the BLM moment
Speaker 1: after George Floyd was murdered. And so when you had
Speaker 1: people like you know, Kendy and people like the you know,
Speaker 1: the BLM leaders who sucked up all of these millions
Speaker 1: of dollars and activist energy and then channeled them into
Speaker 1: things that oftentimes, I mean Kenny's programs were found at
Speaker 1: the corporate level to actually exacerbate racism, like you took
Speaker 1: this I'm going to say, you stole this.
Speaker 3: Money and did nothing with it at this center.
Speaker 2: Anybody worse.
Speaker 1: And it's no surprise because of course, like any this
Speaker 1: is the way, this is the way capitalism works. Right,
Speaker 1: You have this moment of what could have been a
Speaker 1: real reckoning that could have really transformed things in a
Speaker 1: better way for everyone, and most of all for black
Speaker 1: people who have been oppressed for far too long. And
Speaker 1: so they look at that not as like, oh, how
Speaker 1: can we make things better, but like.
Speaker 3: How can we turn a profit?
Speaker 1: How well can we you know, put up our Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter banner on our website? How can we hire
Speaker 1: this anti racism consultant and do a little dance like
Speaker 1: we're so virtuous and like we really care about these
Speaker 1: issues without actually really changing anything. And so lo and behold,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened, and no one should be surprised
Speaker 1: when this is the ultimate outcome of his you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote Think Tank or Center or whatever the hell
Speaker 1: is thinking and.
Speaker 2: The words of the great Eric Hoffer. Every great cause
Speaker 2: begins as a movement, becomes a business, eventually degenerates into
Speaker 2: a racket. There you go, sad to say. All right, guys,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have a great show for everybody tomorrow. We've
Speaker 2: got special debate coverage planned as we said, so go
Speaker 2: ahead and become a premium member today if you are able. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: we're excited to see you all tomorrow and it's gonna
Speaker 2: be a fun week Here of the show.