Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: Welcome to Counterpoints. We're coming to you in the middle
Speaker 3: of an absolutely crazy week. How are you doing, Ryan, Well.
Speaker 5: We haven't gone over the cliff yet, not yet, but
Speaker 5: as Conny has not been blown up, Vladimir's Zelenski and
Speaker 5: chairman she Met spoke on the phone yesterday that could
Speaker 5: be a step toward a Chinese broken piece. Even the
Speaker 5: United States believes that China might be the only one
Speaker 5: you know, that has remotely.
Speaker 3: The credibility to broke or something.
Speaker 5: We're all waiting, I guess for this Spring offensive to
Speaker 5: finish off, which seems kind of seems kind of morbid
Speaker 5: that people seem to know this war has to end
Speaker 5: at some point, but hold on We're just going to
Speaker 5: do a couple more months of carnage and then we'll
Speaker 5: end it, rather than just saying, how about all of
Speaker 5: those people can live, have grandchildren, et cetera.
Speaker 4: And the war now.
Speaker 3: Right, a crazy story that we'll continue to follow because
Speaker 3: to your point, the Chinese intervention here seems to be
Speaker 3: even people in the United States saying, what's going on?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, the after they struck a Middle East
Speaker 5: piece deal between Saudi Rape and Iran.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, absolutely, Well, we're going to start today by
Speaker 3: talking about the debt stand off that's coming to a
Speaker 3: head maybe today. Actually, we're going to talk about some
Speaker 3: developments in the twenty twenty four presidential race. We're going
Speaker 3: to talk about the Supreme Court conflicts of interest stories
Speaker 3: that have come out in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: We're talking about the Abbi Grosberg lawsuit that is coming
Speaker 3: for Fox News. We're going to talk about doctor Fauci's
Speaker 3: recent profile in the New York Times. I'm going to
Speaker 3: tell talk about the United Nations, and Ryan is going
Speaker 3: to talk about Susan Rice. Let's start with the news
Speaker 3: of the day, the debts stand off. President Biden yesterday
Speaker 3: said quote a one here Republican efforts. The Republican legislation
Speaker 3: is a reckless attempt to extract extreme concessions as a
Speaker 3: condition for the United States simply paying the bills it
Speaker 3: has already incurred. Now you have if we put a
Speaker 3: two up on the screen. Chip Roy, he's from the
Speaker 3: House Freedom Caucus. He just wrote this in the Federalist.
Speaker 3: He says, this is the question that Republicans are presented with, quote,
Speaker 3: will we cave to the President, Wall Street, massive corporation,
Speaker 3: swamp lobbyists in the corporate media to continue America's borrow
Speaker 3: and spend death spiral, or will we instead take this
Speaker 3: opportunity to stand up for the American people to demand
Speaker 3: their leaders stop irresponsibly spending money we do not have.
Speaker 3: So that is a preview of what faces Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 3: should he back down on a legislation. Republicans have a
Speaker 3: bill that they want to vote on today. They need
Speaker 3: two hundred and eighteen votes. Kevin McCarthy can actually not
Speaker 3: afford to lose more than what six members of the
Speaker 3: Freedom Caucus, and so in order to work its way
Speaker 3: through the House of Representatives, he needs to please people
Speaker 3: who have the thoughts that Chip Roy has there. Here
Speaker 3: are a couple of quotes though, that members gave yesterday.
Speaker 3: This is Jody Errington. He's the leader of the House
Speaker 3: Budget Committee. He said, Speaker McCarthy's been at the table
Speaker 3: and he has offered to negotiate with the President. Now
Speaker 3: we're going to put our terms on a piece of paper.
Speaker 3: Get two hundred and eighteen Republicans, and we're going to
Speaker 3: put the ball in their court. Ralph Norman, he's a
Speaker 3: member of the Freedom Caucus, says this is the bare
Speaker 3: minimum for me and a host of other people. They
Speaker 3: are going to be quote leaning no until they get
Speaker 3: concessions from McCarthy. So that's a pretty incredible state of
Speaker 3: affairs and balance for McCarthy to strike today as they
Speaker 3: want to push this bill over the finish line. Of course,
Speaker 3: if you've been following this, President Biden said he's not
Speaker 3: negotiating period, because he doesn't think the debt ceiling should
Speaker 3: have to be raised with any.
Speaker 5: Conditions pplicating matters for Kevin McCarthy's it's not just the
Speaker 5: Freedom Caucus that he has to deal with. He also
Speaker 5: has the the Nancy Mace types you know, who don't
Speaker 5: like the idea of voting for kind of draconian cuts. Particularly,
Speaker 5: she doesn't it doesn't She and other modern Republicans don't
Speaker 5: really like voting against some of these kind of green
Speaker 5: tax credits because that won't necessarily play well in a
Speaker 5: swing district.
Speaker 3: I think she has people who manufacture in her in
Speaker 3: South Carolina.
Speaker 5: Right, it's becoming a real industry, like the clean energy
Speaker 5: industry is becoming an industry, and so it's going to
Speaker 5: have jobs associated with it. It's going to have economic
Speaker 5: impact associated with it, and therefore it's going to have
Speaker 5: political economy power. It's going to have people who are like,
Speaker 5: not so sure about this. Equally, you have these Midwest
Speaker 5: and I'm sure you know much more about this than
Speaker 5: I do. You've got all these Midwest Republicans who are
Speaker 5: upset that the Republican bill, in order to save money,
Speaker 5: is pulling back on ethanol subsidies. And to me, what
Speaker 5: do the kids call it? Based good? Good for Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy if we're taking it also, Oh yeah, ethanol subsidies
Speaker 5: are the stupidest possible thing on playing Like what we do.
Speaker 3: The pinnacle of crony capitalism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we take.
Speaker 5: Public money and we pay people to grow corn, and
Speaker 5: then we then turn that corn into ethanol, and then
Speaker 5: we force people to put in gasol and put it
Speaker 5: in their cars.
Speaker 3: Ethanol for different reasons.
Speaker 4: What are we doing?
Speaker 3: No, I think that's great. I think that's great, and
Speaker 3: I mean the freedom cocke should be all over that.
Speaker 3: And this is how the Washington Post describes the Republican
Speaker 3: bill on the table. They say it would quote slash
Speaker 3: federal spending dramatically and unwind some of Biden's priorities, including
Speaker 3: a student debt cancelation and efforts to address climate change
Speaker 3: and exchange. Republicans would agree to increase the debt ceiling obviously,
Speaker 3: the statutory cap on how much the US government can
Speaker 3: borrow to pay its bills. That's from the Post. So
Speaker 3: as Ryan was saying, it does roll back some of
Speaker 3: the bills that have already been passed that by President Biden,
Speaker 3: the Inflation Reduction Act that looks at to target some
Speaker 3: of those things. Obviously, this is not a bill that
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is going to agree to. It is, however,
Speaker 3: a bill that gets really interesting when you kick it
Speaker 3: over to the Senate, if.
Speaker 4: Right, but they don't expect it.
Speaker 5: And also just to be clear, if people expect there
Speaker 5: to be some climate benefit out of ethnol, there isn't
Speaker 5: because it's so resource intensive to grow the corn in
Speaker 5: the first place.
Speaker 4: To then burn it.
Speaker 5: But right, so, Kevin McCarthy's plan here is I'm going
Speaker 5: to show that I have two hundred and eighteen votes
Speaker 5: on this bill. And he's say, I'm not negotiating this
Speaker 5: bill at all, like, this is what we've got, this
Speaker 5: is what we're taking to Biden. You've got some Republicans
Speaker 5: who are saying, and Gates has said this, unless you
Speaker 5: fiddle with the work requirements, unless you makeer higher work
Speaker 5: requirements for federal benefits kick in sooner than I'm out,
Speaker 5: which to me is just not credible because you're threatening
Speaker 5: to blow up the global economy to move work requirements
Speaker 5: from twenty hours to thirty hours, and to move it
Speaker 5: back a little bit close, you know, to implement it
Speaker 5: a little bit faster than it's being implemented in a
Speaker 5: messaging bill that nobody thinks is.
Speaker 4: Going to be passed anyway.
Speaker 5: It'd be like, you know, pass me the prezels where
Speaker 5: I'm gonna cut your head off. No bad deal, No,
Speaker 5: like that's this is not a proportionate response here, Like
Speaker 5: you really think work requirements should be higher, go to committee,
Speaker 5: write a bill, talk to your other members of Congress,
Speaker 5: and then maybe we'll you know, reform work requirements. I
Speaker 5: think it's silly, but okay, let's let's talk about that.
Speaker 5: But you're gonna you're gonna use this leverage that.
Speaker 4: You have to get that.
Speaker 3: The problem with it being a messaging bill is that
Speaker 3: Gates has absolutely no reason to come to the table
Speaker 3: with McCarthy. And then it's McCarthy's test to see what
Speaker 3: he can give to Matt Gates, to Chip Roy, to
Speaker 3: anybody who's demanding concessions from McCarthy in order to build
Speaker 3: their support. This is really what Kevin McCarthy is good at.
Speaker 3: It's what he prides himself in doing. He always points
Speaker 3: back to what he did with Jim Jordan and putting
Speaker 3: him in charge of oversight that this was sort of
Speaker 3: he'd used the carrot not the stick, and it worked
Speaker 3: out really well. So this is like probably the first
Speaker 3: biggest test because really nobody has any any clear reason
Speaker 3: to negotiate because if anything, if Matt Gates won't get
Speaker 3: concessions on that, he knows particularly if he doesn't get
Speaker 3: a concession on that, he can take it to Fox News,
Speaker 3: he can take it everywhere he wants and say, Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 3: you know, wants welfare or whatever, and he's standing up
Speaker 3: to the.
Speaker 4: Swamp right and it hurts McCarthy.
Speaker 5: And so then Gates is in a better position if
Speaker 5: he's still, you know, in a hostile posture vis a
Speaker 5: vis McCarthy, Because if he doesn't get these this package
Speaker 5: through with two hundred and eighteen votes, then McCarthy is
Speaker 5: badly hobbled with Biden. Now people want to say, well,
Speaker 5: but if Gates is the one that hobbled McCarthy, isn't
Speaker 5: it Gates's fault.
Speaker 4: No, people don't pay attention like that.
Speaker 5: They would just see McCarthy as kind of losing in
Speaker 5: a standoff with Biden, which then brings McCarthy's demise kind
Speaker 5: of one day closer, because if he can't get his
Speaker 5: own caucus to agree on a debt ceiling increase with
Speaker 5: all of the cuts that he wants that his caucus wants,
Speaker 5: then how can he go to the negotiating table and
Speaker 5: ask for anything from Biden when it's clear that he
Speaker 5: can't even deliver on this maximalist.
Speaker 4: Position, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that's a hugely important point. And for Republicans,
Speaker 3: they obviously need to be strategic about this because if
Speaker 3: they lose Kevin McCarthy again, as we learned in January,
Speaker 3: they really have no plausible backup. It just doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: And he is the one person I'm talking purely from
Speaker 3: a strategic standpoint right now. He's the one person that
Speaker 3: has any hope of bridging all of these different divides
Speaker 3: and navigating all of these different competing interests. And so
Speaker 3: if they push it to the limit on this, especially
Speaker 3: on the messaging the messaging bill, if they push it
Speaker 3: to the limit on the messaging bill, then they could
Speaker 3: be in like serious trouble for the rest of this Congress.
Speaker 3: And I would just add that so far, it does
Speaker 3: look good for McCarthy because the fact that Chip Roy
Speaker 3: and people in the Freedom Caucus are saying like we're
Speaker 3: at our bare minimum. That may seem not good, but
Speaker 3: it actually is pretty good for Kevin McCarthy at this
Speaker 3: point because that was not easy to do. And it
Speaker 3: seems like they're making these arguments in good faith when
Speaker 3: they are taking them to the media, and that is
Speaker 3: positive for him bodes well for today. He probably just
Speaker 3: wants to get a quick vote, get it over with,
Speaker 3: but that could be that could go in a million
Speaker 3: different directions.
Speaker 4: So how would you handicap it?
Speaker 5: Do you think that he will have the Do you
Speaker 5: think he'll put it on the floor today and have
Speaker 5: enough votes to get it passed?
Speaker 3: If I had to bet, I would say it goes
Speaker 3: on the floor today or right after and it does
Speaker 3: get the votes, but I wouldn't put a lot of
Speaker 3: money on that.
Speaker 5: And then if it if it gets pulled, do you
Speaker 5: think he comes back by the end of the week
Speaker 5: with enough votes or do you think he just kind
Speaker 5: of retrenches and continues the game of chicken that I
Speaker 5: feel like he has to lose in order for this
Speaker 5: to wrap up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean I think that's a really good question,
Speaker 3: because we saw he went through how many ballots and
Speaker 3: kept getting concessions and concessions in the speaker race, and
Speaker 3: maybe there's some muscle memory there and back Gates knows
Speaker 3: that he can keep going through putting Kevin McCarthy through
Speaker 3: the ringer time and again and finally get to a
Speaker 3: better place despite all odds. Maybe because they really don't
Speaker 3: have a backup, but it's possible that also blows up
Speaker 3: in everyone's face, and there are relationships that can never
Speaker 3: be relationships broken that can never be repaired. So I
Speaker 3: think that's like the worst case scenario probably.
Speaker 5: And yeah, the Freedom Caucus just seems structurally and fundamentally
Speaker 5: in the same handicap as kind of the Progressive Caucus,
Speaker 5: which is that they have some leverage because they have
Speaker 5: some members of Congress they want a much different governing
Speaker 5: structure than exists, but they don't have a majority right
Speaker 5: to enact.
Speaker 3: That, but they have such the Republicans in general have
Speaker 3: such a slim majority that they have all the power
Speaker 3: and the Freedom Caucus's court or the same thing with
Speaker 3: like the Two Day Group, And we saw this in
Speaker 3: the Pelosi Congress with Justice Democrats, they really did wield
Speaker 3: a lot of power, and I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people on the left would be correct to say they
Speaker 3: didn't always wield in appropriately or as much as they could.
Speaker 3: But the Freedom crowc is has less I think reservations
Speaker 3: about doing that because they already don't have the media,
Speaker 3: so they can't afford to blow things up because they're
Speaker 3: not losing media credibility if they never had it.
Speaker 4: They still have the product, they don't have the votes.
Speaker 5: But we'll see, we'll see if they can out maneuver
Speaker 5: that that handicap. So moving to the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 5: interesting piece in the Washington Examiner by Con Carol, former
Speaker 5: Hill staffer.
Speaker 4: Right, yes, it.
Speaker 5: Is called could be one up here called why Trump
Speaker 5: beat Clinton, lost to Biden and would lose to Biden again,
Speaker 5: which I think actually gets at the kind of unspoken
Speaker 5: truth behind our current politics and the point he's making
Speaker 5: I wanted to get your take on this is that
Speaker 5: there are there's an increasing number of people who hate
Speaker 5: both candidates and hate both parties. Among those people, though,
Speaker 5: and this is where groups like no labels the kind
Speaker 5: of corporate group that is putting its ballot line on
Speaker 5: ballots all across the countries because they keep looking at
Speaker 5: poules saying that look, sixty percent of the country says
Speaker 5: they don't want either of these two parties. They're like boom,
Speaker 5: Therefore they want a corporate back to Joe Manchin Lisa
Speaker 5: Murkowski ticket.
Speaker 4: It's like, no, I don't think they said that.
Speaker 5: I think they said the first thing that they don't
Speaker 5: like either party, that they didn't say they like you.
Speaker 5: And so what Con does is he looks at, well, Okay,
Speaker 5: how are these people actually going to vote in the end,
Speaker 5: Because almost all of the sixty percent of people say
Speaker 5: they don't like either party.
Speaker 4: They have no other choice.
Speaker 5: They vote, and they vote pretty consistently for one party
Speaker 5: or the other. But what Con points to is that
Speaker 5: overwhelmingly of the people who hate both candidates, they hate
Speaker 5: Biden less, yeah, significantly, and they hated Clinton more. And
Speaker 5: that's and that's and it wasn't that Trump, you know,
Speaker 5: was able to capture the hearts of the nation in
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen. It was that people disliked him less than
Speaker 5: they disliked Hillary Clinton. And his argument is that's why
Speaker 5: he lost to Biden in twenty twenty and would again
Speaker 5: for that simple reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Biden's just not as hateable.
Speaker 3: Well, I think there's there's something to that. And it's
Speaker 3: not as though Biden captured the hearts of the nation either,
Speaker 3: That's what is.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, CON's numbers show that Biden is beating
Speaker 3: Trump easily fifty four to fifteen percent among those voters
Speaker 3: that disapprove of both candidates. So then he asks how
Speaker 3: many of them are this time around. Well, he says
Speaker 3: forty seven percent of all voters believe that neither Biden
Speaker 3: nor Trump should run for president in twenty twenty four. Now,
Speaker 3: Ron DeSantis has higher favorable ratings than Biden and Trump.
Speaker 3: That's what con points out. He says, it's not surprising
Speaker 3: them when you look at both national and state poles.
Speaker 3: Both Trump is losing to Biden and DeSantis is beating Biden.
Speaker 3: So that is a really interesting metric, and it gets
Speaker 3: to this question of how many of those voters actually
Speaker 3: decide to go to the polls. So if you have
Speaker 3: forty seven percent of people that don't like either candidate,
Speaker 3: how many of them just set out? How many of
Speaker 3: them actually vote? That's why when I think, you know,
Speaker 3: the pundit class tries to crunch all of these numbers
Speaker 3: in interesting ways, and they get into like beautiful mind
Speaker 3: chalkboard math. It just like there's you can't always predict
Speaker 3: how many of the people who hate both candidates decide
Speaker 3: to show up or not. It's just almost impossible to do.
Speaker 5: Although, you know, since twenty sixteen and because of Trump,
Speaker 5: I think I think it's fair to say we've had
Speaker 5: a surge and engagement, civic engagement on election.
Speaker 3: Day, young people. You've pointed out.
Speaker 5: Young people, women, men in Pennsylvania who hadn't voted it,
Speaker 5: didn't even vote in twenty sixteen. They came out and
Speaker 5: voted in twenty twenty. Like, people are kind of hooked
Speaker 5: into the circus and the drama of it in a
Speaker 5: way that they weren't in like twenty twelve, let's say.
Speaker 5: And so I do think you're going to continue to
Speaker 5: see that. It's going to continue to kind of dominate
Speaker 5: our feeds. And so even these people who hate them
Speaker 5: both are still going to want to participate. They got
Speaker 5: to get their selfie. You know, you got to got
Speaker 5: to make your content. How are you gonna make your
Speaker 5: voting content your civic content if you don't actually participate
Speaker 5: in it. So I think that'll drive drive a significant
Speaker 5: amount of it. But yeah, people, just so the question
Speaker 5: then I have for you is is there any point
Speaker 5: at which the Republican base starts to become pragmatic and says, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: we love our guy.
Speaker 4: But man, how is he losing to Biden in these polls?
Speaker 4: And how is it Santa? It's winning?
Speaker 5: So we're gonna be pragmatic and we're gonna switch over
Speaker 5: to the Santus or no way, Like they look at
Speaker 5: Biden and they're like, that's the most beatable guy in
Speaker 5: the planet.
Speaker 4: I don't care what the Poles say.
Speaker 3: No, because there's a really easy answer is because of
Speaker 3: the flight ninety three election sort of concept that Michael
Speaker 3: Anton sort of famously popularized. That was, of course when
Speaker 3: it was a binary choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 3: But he his thing was like the planes going.
Speaker 5: Ninety three, Yeah, yeah, give him the framework again.
Speaker 3: So he wrote for Claremont that if you if the
Speaker 3: plane is going down, the plane is being hijacked, you
Speaker 3: you put all of your eggs in the one basket.
Speaker 3: That like is going to just be completely dramatic. And
Speaker 3: if so, if the country is going down, the metaphor follows,
Speaker 3: why not just like blow up the government and see
Speaker 3: what happens and.
Speaker 4: Metaphorically grab the wheel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, grab the wheel.
Speaker 4: And if you crash a crash, if.
Speaker 3: You crash a crash, because we're crashing anyway. So like
Speaker 3: that's the calculus. And I think there are a whole
Speaker 3: lot of people it's sort of like what we were
Speaker 3: just talking about with the freedom Caucus, Like, what is
Speaker 3: their incentive to cooperate with Kevin McCarthy, especially on a
Speaker 3: messaging built Well, what is the average voter who might
Speaker 3: not be like a died in the wool Republican but
Speaker 3: really likes Donald Trump Because he said everyone else is
Speaker 3: lying accurate doesn't mean that he's not lying to and
Speaker 3: sort of provided that glimmer of hope saying we're going
Speaker 3: to stop endless wars, we are going to have a
Speaker 3: robust middle class, we're going to bring jobs back, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. He provided a lot of hope for people
Speaker 3: like that. And if your alternative then is Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 3: a guy who has been a politician for a really
Speaker 3: long time and could never be Donald Trump. Nobody can
Speaker 3: never be Donald Trump, then no, you don't have a
Speaker 3: lot of You don't have a lot of incentive to
Speaker 3: play nice with the Republican Party or to be pragmatic
Speaker 3: with the Republican Party. And if we put B two
Speaker 3: up on the screen, I think that's what a lot
Speaker 3: of this gets at. This is a tweet from Ron
Speaker 3: Brownstein where he says a nude PBS News Hour and
Speaker 3: pr Marris poll neatly sums up the Republican situation. Heading
Speaker 3: into twenty twenty four, sixty three percent of Republicans say
Speaker 3: they want a second Trump turn even if he's found
Speaker 3: guilty of a crime, but just twenty one percent of independence,
Speaker 3: twenty four percent of non whites, twenty seven percent under
Speaker 3: the age of forty five, and seventeen percent of what
Speaker 3: does that one say? College? Okay, college whites agree And
Speaker 3: so if you look at that, this is where we're
Speaker 3: balancing these what's the best word like the passions of voters, right,
Speaker 3: So like, if you really love Donald Trump or if
Speaker 3: you don't like either candidate, what does turnout look like?
Speaker 3: What does your motivation to actually vote for somebody look like?
Speaker 3: What does your motivation to give look like? If Bernie
Speaker 3: and Trump get a bunch of small dollar donors like
Speaker 3: that actually can really make a difference. So I think
Speaker 3: that's one of the big questions here is who has
Speaker 3: the passion on their side among their voters.
Speaker 5: So the Republican hope, it sounds like, is that the
Speaker 5: Biden supporters won't be passionate enough to come out on
Speaker 5: election day as maybe they were in the past, or
Speaker 5: Trump supporters would be, and as a result, then Trump
Speaker 5: will be able to eke it out. The cold water
Speaker 5: I would throw on that potential. I think it's possible,
Speaker 5: and maybe he doesn't even live to the election. But
Speaker 5: the cold water I would throw on it is that
Speaker 5: it's not that Democrats support Biden with any passion, but man,
Speaker 5: do they not like Trump?
Speaker 4: And so they will.
Speaker 5: Crawl overs They crawl over Glass in twenty eighteen to
Speaker 5: hit the Women's March in twenty eighteen, to go to
Speaker 5: the midterms in twenty twenty to throw him out of
Speaker 5: the White House, and they'll crawl over glass again in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: I think to elect anybody. Kim Jong un.
Speaker 5: Not born in the United States, so not constitutionally eligible,
Speaker 5: But you know what I mean, they would vote for anybody,
Speaker 5: and they would crawl over Glass to vote for anybody
Speaker 5: other than him. That so that that's my guess, because
Speaker 5: we're a culture and a politics of fear and hatred
Speaker 5: rather than hope, and so that's what's motivated people.
Speaker 3: Well, and yeah, I mean I think there's there's also
Speaker 3: this question of, you know, the difference between Hillary and Biden,
Speaker 3: as con points out, I think really accurately, is that
Speaker 3: one is less unlikable, and so if you have Joe
Speaker 3: Biden versus another candidate, I think that's also a really
Speaker 3: interesting question because Biden is sort of you know, you're
Speaker 3: able to kind of project different things onto him, and
Speaker 3: he does that intentionally. You know, he doesn't sort of
Speaker 3: stake out a hard claim to the progressive base or
Speaker 3: the centrispace. He does a bunch of it and lets
Speaker 3: people just kind of be He's everything to whatever anybody wants.
Speaker 3: But Joe Biden can be, or he tries to, I think,
Speaker 3: use that strategy, and so that I think does allow
Speaker 3: you to be a little bit less unlikable than Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton and get some more votes than than Trump.
Speaker 5: Yes, and speaking of not having any hope, can we
Speaker 5: put a B five, which is the the This is
Speaker 5: Bernie Sanders. So after after Biden announced his bid for
Speaker 5: presidency on two Day Day with his video, Bernie Sanders
Speaker 5: kind of in the it's not surprising but shocking kind
Speaker 5: of development, came out and endorsed Biden immediately. I say
Speaker 5: not surprising because he's been signaling for the last year
Speaker 5: or longer that if Biden is running, he's gonna he's
Speaker 5: not gonna run, and he's gonna endorse Biden, so we
Speaker 5: knew this was going to happen, but it's still jarring,
Speaker 5: I guess would be the better word to see the
Speaker 5: kind of independent democratic socialist Canada who twice ran just
Speaker 5: immediately endorsing Joe Biden, which I think goes to my
Speaker 5: other point that people are not getting behind Biden because
Speaker 5: they have some hope that he's going to bring kind
Speaker 5: of fundamental transformational change that the working class needs to
Speaker 5: this country, but that they just want to beat Trump.
Speaker 5: Bernie in his book, his most recent book, he talks
Speaker 5: about why he immediately why he dropped out so quickly
Speaker 5: and then immediately basically endorsed Biden, saying that he didn't
Speaker 5: want anybody to be able to blame him, and he
Speaker 5: didn't want to feel any sense of personal responsibility for
Speaker 5: doing anything that could have helped Trump, because in twenty
Speaker 5: sixteen he waited all the way until the convention to
Speaker 5: support Hillary Clinton and spent the next several.
Speaker 4: Years getting blamed by that.
Speaker 5: And it sounds like, from the way he's writing in
Speaker 5: his book that maybe even kind of blaming himself a
Speaker 5: little bit.
Speaker 3: I was going to ask, is that the implication that
Speaker 3: he thinks those Chargers had any marriage.
Speaker 5: I feel like he some of them stung a little
Speaker 5: bit because he didn't think I think just trying to
Speaker 5: you know, mind read through his book. He didn't think
Speaker 5: that Trump was going to win and he's and he
Speaker 5: did not want to endorse Hillary Clinton and dragged it
Speaker 5: out as long as possible, and I think some of
Speaker 5: it stings sometimes.
Speaker 4: I think I think he does.
Speaker 5: Some of it does resonate with him, and I think
Speaker 5: that helps to explain why he capitulated so quickly this
Speaker 5: time around.
Speaker 3: Well, and now Joe Biden has competition in the form
Speaker 3: of both RFK Junior and marian Williamson. But let's put
Speaker 3: this next element. I think it's b three up on
Speaker 3: the screen where you see Maggie Haveraman putting out that
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is threatening to skip debates. That's gonna be
Speaker 3: a question for both of the top candidates, it seems,
Speaker 3: because Joe Biden hasn't signaled any interest in debating Mary
Speaker 3: Williamson or RFK Junior, although I think the fact that
Speaker 3: now both of them are in the race has ratcheted
Speaker 3: up the pressure on Biden to debate. I do think,
Speaker 3: especially given where Marianne is on TikTok. Honestly, that an
Speaker 3: RFK Junior. I think it has a pretty.
Speaker 5: Like fourteen percent or something. Yeah, and that's he's got
Speaker 5: a great name.
Speaker 3: So he does have a great name. He's got that
Speaker 3: going for him, and he seems to be running at
Speaker 3: least a pretty strategically smart campaign so far. I think
Speaker 3: that does heighten the pressure on Biden actually to debate.
Speaker 3: We'll see actually where that goes from from here.
Speaker 4: And I love Trump just laying out all of his
Speaker 4: politics in.
Speaker 5: This truth social post where he basically says, look, I'm
Speaker 5: so far ahead, why would I debate? So maybe DeSantis
Speaker 5: and Marian Williamson and RFK Junior can debate.
Speaker 3: Oh, that would be fun.
Speaker 4: That'd be a good one.
Speaker 3: I would watch that.
Speaker 4: Everybody would watch.
Speaker 3: That for Chris Christian see what happens.
Speaker 5: Absolutely Chris Christie is welcome to Trump also makes the
Speaker 5: point that Fred Ryan, who was formerly the CEO of
Speaker 5: Politico is now publisher of The Washington Post, is the
Speaker 5: chairman of the Reagan Library. He was Reagan's chief of
Speaker 5: staff after Reagan was president, and so he's saying, there
Speaker 5: no way biased can't go to the Reagan Library. How
Speaker 5: does it feel to have the front running Republicans say
Speaker 5: that he can't participate at a debate at the Reagan
Speaker 5: Library because it would be unfair to him.
Speaker 3: Reignan Library has a lot of problems with the conservative movement,
Speaker 3: does it? I think increasingly? Yeah, I mean they hosted
Speaker 3: List Cheney.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, how do you leave that out? Maybe character
Speaker 5: character limit?
Speaker 3: Maybe well, we should probably move on now to the
Speaker 3: increasing conversation about ethics on the Supreme Court. Ryan, there's
Speaker 3: a new intercept report on Harlan Crow's citizenship.
Speaker 5: Yes, this was a story that Ken Klippenstein did with
Speaker 5: Jason Palladino in a partnership with the Project on Government Oversight.
Speaker 5: If we're gonna put this this first haear sheet up here,
Speaker 5: but essentially that we got leak documents that show that
Speaker 5: Harlan Crowe purchased citizenship from Saint Kitts, what's called Saint
Speaker 5: Kitts and Nevis one of you know. So there are
Speaker 5: there there are these corporate slash sovereign structures around the
Speaker 5: world that have managed to kind basically incorporate themselves into governments,
Speaker 5: calling themselves places like Saint Kitts, which then have this
Speaker 5: this allegedly the sovereign powers of a government and what
Speaker 5: they then do. It's Cyprus being kind of one of
Speaker 5: the famous ones over and a couple others over in
Speaker 5: the EU. You can kind of like what's basically what
Speaker 5: you do is you can buy your way into citizenship.
Speaker 5: It's very expensive in the sense that it costs to
Speaker 5: what to you and me would be an extraordinary amount
Speaker 5: of money, but in relative terms to a billionaire is
Speaker 5: like nothing, which is similar to how kind of the
Speaker 5: Bahamas like makes so much money, or Delaware actually does
Speaker 5: the same thing.
Speaker 4: That it costs a between fifty.
Speaker 5: Dollars and five hundred dollars to like incorporate your your company,
Speaker 5: your tax shelter in Delaware or in the Bahamas with
Speaker 5: not a lot not a lot of money in absolute terms,
Speaker 5: but it adds up to you know, millions and billions
Speaker 5: for these for these countries and so quote unquote countries,
Speaker 5: and so a place like Saint Kitts then has a
Speaker 5: new citizen, Harlan Crowe, who can then park his money
Speaker 5: there and if he has the cleverest tax attorneys, he
Speaker 5: can get around the he can get around you know,
Speaker 5: taxes that he owes here in the United States, and
Speaker 5: so it's just hilarious.
Speaker 4: You know, it's just too much.
Speaker 5: It's like, also the guy's name is Harlan Crowe, which
Speaker 5: is hilarious. Like all of it is just a complete
Speaker 5: kind of caricature of an oligarchy that that you would
Speaker 5: have a Supreme Court justice who presents himself as this
Speaker 5: guy who loves to ride around the country in his
Speaker 5: RV and go to NASCAR races, who is also taking
Speaker 5: you know, global yacht trips with this billionaire who is
Speaker 5: such an American patriot that he has purchased citizenship elsewhere
Speaker 5: so he can not perform his civic obligation of like
Speaker 5: paying his fair share.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're in the upper echelons of American politics,
Speaker 3: whether it's on the left of the right, you're going
Speaker 3: to end up on a mega yacht and you're gonna
Speaker 3: end up pealing around with somebody who has dual citizenship
Speaker 3: tax haven US. I mean, it is, like, I think
Speaker 3: that's the sad reality of the said truth. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying it's a good thing, but I do think it
Speaker 3: really is where the country is right now that you're
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're in the upper echelons of American politics.
Speaker 3: That's people that are just naturally going to be in
Speaker 3: your circle, the Thomases. And in full disclosure, I very
Speaker 3: much admired Clarence Thomas. He grew up dirt poor. I
Speaker 3: think he has an incredible story. He was in the
Speaker 3: sort of fringe left when he was in college and
Speaker 3: you know, sort of change his life, turned his life around.
Speaker 4: Here's in Cinema quite like Kierson Cinema. Well, yeah, she
Speaker 4: was fringe left.
Speaker 3: I feel like he was even fringier.
Speaker 4: Though maybe I don't know she was out there, she
Speaker 4: was up there.
Speaker 5: But I think that some of these folks who are
Speaker 5: active with the with the fringe left come away with
Speaker 5: it with the most contempt you could possibly have for
Speaker 5: the fringe left right. And that's probably true on the
Speaker 5: fringe fringe right in the way, because if if you're
Speaker 5: a fringe character, you're you're probably not that fun to
Speaker 5: be around, probably annoying in meetings, probably not fun to
Speaker 5: do your little cell block activity with you. And then
Speaker 5: you come out and you think that everybody on the
Speaker 5: left is like that. And I think that I think
Speaker 5: Cinema has has some of that that her time with
Speaker 5: with the Green Party, with the Black Block. Their anarchist
Speaker 5: protesters made her think that everybody was like the people
Speaker 5: that are in her little block, and so she's taking
Speaker 5: it out on the world as a result. And I
Speaker 5: could see that maybe the same is true for Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 5: that he just.
Speaker 4: Was like, Wow, I actually hate you people.
Speaker 3: I don't know. There's some his obviously, his autobiography is
Speaker 3: really a popular book and an excellent book. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the intercept story, I think grace is this question of
Speaker 3: whether Crow being a dual citizen has any implications for
Speaker 3: his his giving and any implications for disclosures that would
Speaker 3: need to be made.
Speaker 5: He's still, you know, since he still has his American citizenship.
Speaker 5: He's looks like he's good even though. But yeah, like
Speaker 5: the wealth that he has, a significant portion of it
Speaker 5: is still in his possession because of his other citizenship.
Speaker 5: If he had maintained only American citizenship, he would have
Speaker 5: less of it would have gone to you and me
Speaker 5: and the rest.
Speaker 4: Of the public.
Speaker 5: We could democratically just what to do with it, Send
Speaker 5: it to Ukraine, do whatever we wander with it. So
Speaker 5: if put up this second element over at Insider, you
Speaker 5: now have journalists combing through past Supreme Court decisions and
Speaker 5: cases trying to fact check Harlan Chlorow's claim that he
Speaker 5: never had or Clarence Thomas claim that Harlan Crow never
Speaker 5: had business before the Supreme Court. Anybody who's a billionaire
Speaker 5: is going to eventually have some business, probably some business
Speaker 5: that they are connected with, is going to appear before
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court. Bloomberg's got him busted here with Trammel
Speaker 5: Crow Residential. It's a case that made it Supreme Court
Speaker 5: in two thousand and five. Clarence Thomas did not accuse
Speaker 5: himself from this one, as our ethics rules would suggest,
Speaker 5: or do they have rules as our ethics kind of
Speaker 5: norms suggest that he ought to have.
Speaker 3: It's funny, though, because so on that case, I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: and this is totally a one about, but I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of how Elena Kagan was the Solicitor General for Obama
Speaker 3: during Obamacare and then voted Bamacare and the Obamacare case,
Speaker 3: And it's like, I mean this stuff the Supreme Court, Like,
Speaker 3: like you said, if you're a billionaire, you're going to
Speaker 3: end up having a case before the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 3: if you're really powerful, you're going to end up hanging
Speaker 3: out with billionaires, you're going to end up being in
Speaker 3: the solicitor general in an extremely high profile case. And
Speaker 3: so again, I think we talked about this last week.
Speaker 3: I'm completely in favor of tighter ethics rules for the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court. I think this speaks to a deeper problem
Speaker 3: and a lot of these reports now, like Politico utterly
Speaker 3: botched a hit on Neil Gorsich, I mean just botched it.
Speaker 3: And even some of the Thomas stuff was like the
Speaker 3: original Thomas reporting had some it was in pro publica,
Speaker 3: had some misses in it. And so I just think
Speaker 3: this would all be a lot more credible if they
Speaker 3: were doing it across the board, because now there seemed
Speaker 3: to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to get
Speaker 3: even like Borsich without even realizing that no Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 3: My colleague David Harsani went and looked and her big
Speaker 3: complaint in that political political story is that he tried
Speaker 3: to conceal a transaction of a land transaction because quote
Speaker 3: he did not report the identity of the purchaser. And
Speaker 3: David said, that's true, but he went back and looked
Speaker 3: at all the disclosure forms of Supreme Court justices in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, and none of them made a notation in
Speaker 3: that box for any transaction. So she's acting as though
Speaker 3: this is highly unusual in suspect none of them did that.
Speaker 4: So, but the others had sold property, let.
Speaker 3: Me check, but let's see financial none of them had
Speaker 3: filled that out in financial disclosures.
Speaker 4: For previous for previous home sales.
Speaker 3: You mean not just for home sales, but for financial
Speaker 3: like their financial transactions.
Speaker 4: I see, so right.
Speaker 5: Well, I think one thing that's going on here is
Speaker 5: that there has been a kind of social contract that
Speaker 5: the public has had with the Supreme Court, right, which
Speaker 5: is that, look, we you wear black robes, you're you're
Speaker 5: not on TV when you make.
Speaker 3: Your You don't clap at the City of the Union,
Speaker 3: you don't clap.
Speaker 4: The State of Union. You're just out there.
Speaker 5: You're making the decisions, and we're going to trust that
Speaker 5: you're making them, uh, you know, somewhat barely, and we're
Speaker 5: going to we're going to honor those decisions. We're going
Speaker 5: to mostly likely leave you guys alone and think of
Speaker 5: you as somewhat separate from the democratic process and from
Speaker 5: the political process. And I think overturning row for a
Speaker 5: lot of people broke that social contract. He said, all right,
Speaker 5: you know what, you guys want to play politicians, you
Speaker 5: want to lead a political movement. We're going to treat
Speaker 5: you like politicians, and we're going to examine your conflicts
Speaker 5: of interest. And I think that because of this social contract,
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court justices have been rather lazy about their
Speaker 5: kind of adherence to ethical guidelines and their their financial
Speaker 5: their financial disclosure reporting because nobody really cared. It's like
Speaker 5: your Supreme Court was a different thing. It was a
Speaker 5: black box with black robes. But now that there are
Speaker 5: people are lifting the lid, I think you're going to
Speaker 5: find a lot of things like where you're going to say, well,
Speaker 5: you know what, it's not okay that none of them
Speaker 5: filled this out. Yeah, Like we don't trust any of
Speaker 5: you anymore. Like you want to be politicians, you want
Speaker 5: to be political figures. You want to you want to
Speaker 5: mess with my daily life like this, all right, Well,
Speaker 5: now you're going to have to abide by the same
Speaker 5: standards that we hold everybody else to.
Speaker 3: And I love that. I am completely not just okay
Speaker 3: with that, but like eager for that conversation to happen.
Speaker 3: But when you have pro publica saying, for instance, that
Speaker 3: Thomas he criticized like a Chevron related case, meant that
Speaker 3: he had a quote newly popular on the right that
Speaker 3: would limit government regulation philosophy that is absurd, Like that
Speaker 3: was in the Pro public original report, which also said
Speaker 3: that he needed to disclose the yacht because it counted
Speaker 3: as transportation in the same way that you know a
Speaker 3: bus would or a plane would the plane transactions. I
Speaker 3: think we're the plain disclosures I think really should have
Speaker 3: been made. All this is to say, I'm completely fine
Speaker 3: with having a conversation about ethics on the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: What's happening right now is completely, from my perspective, one sided,
Speaker 3: when this needs to be a much broader, deeper conversation,
Speaker 3: and the media acting like these are uniquely terrible problems
Speaker 3: for Neil Gorsich and Clarence Thomas while turning a blind
Speaker 3: eye to the Let's say that the Kagan thing, nobody
Speaker 3: was concerned about that when it happened, except for people
Speaker 3: like conservative bloggers at the time. I just think it's
Speaker 3: it's really unhelpful. Overall.
Speaker 4: We're getting get a lot more of it.
Speaker 3: I hope, sir, I mean I hope we get more
Speaker 3: about the ethics conversations, because yeah, I don't think it's
Speaker 3: great to have independent jurists you know who are we
Speaker 3: don't know are really good friends with billionaires and spending
Speaker 3: a lot of time with it. I think it's helpful
Speaker 3: to know that.
Speaker 5: Of course, moving on to Abbie Grosberg. So the Ammi
Speaker 5: Grosberg is the former looking producer executive booking producer over
Speaker 5: at the Tucker car over at Tucker Carlson's show.
Speaker 4: She appeared on MSNBC last night.
Speaker 5: If we put up this first element here, she is
Speaker 5: suing Fox News and Tucker Carlson, claiming a culture of
Speaker 5: what's the toxic work environment at his.
Speaker 3: Show, hostile, indiscriminatory.
Speaker 5: Hostile, in discriminatory work environment. There's all sorts of kind
Speaker 5: of theories about what the role of her suit has
Speaker 5: been in Tucker Carlson's firing on Monday, and so she
Speaker 5: appeared with Nicole Wallace. Let's play a little bit of
Speaker 5: that from last night.
Speaker 6: Where are all of those recordings now? Did Dominion ultimately
Speaker 6: get them?
Speaker 4: I still have.
Speaker 1: I have several recordings that I'm still going through that
Speaker 1: we've recovered from all of the phones. There are ninety
Speaker 1: that we have. I don't know what Fox turned over.
Speaker 1: I do know based on what I've read, that they
Speaker 1: did hand over those Sydney and Rudy tapes to them.
Speaker 1: Fox should have everything. They really should do You have.
Speaker 6: You been contacted by Smartmatic? Yes, and you've shared all
Speaker 6: the odder recordings of them or whatever.
Speaker 3: I've been subpedent.
Speaker 1: We haven't shared anything.
Speaker 6: I've begun the discovery process.
Speaker 3: Are you.
Speaker 5: So she also talked, we'll run let's run through these
Speaker 5: clips too. So she also talked about the culture that
Speaker 5: this is her, specifically describing the culture at Tucker's show.
Speaker 1: Early on, they had Andrew Tate on the show, and
Speaker 1: I raised my hand and I said, we have to
Speaker 1: be very mindful that this is two white males together.
Speaker 1: And I use the example of Gail King and r
Speaker 1: Kelly saying that she could go in a different direction
Speaker 1: with that interview that I felt Tucker couldn't.
Speaker 3: And they weren't happy about.
Speaker 1: That because they wanted to be a bro fest. They
Speaker 1: were all laughing about how fun it would be to
Speaker 1: go to Romania and hang out with him.
Speaker 2: They liked his messaging.
Speaker 1: So whenever I said something like that, it put a
Speaker 1: target on my back, and gradually I was shut out
Speaker 1: of meeting, I was mocked, I was eventually demoted. That's
Speaker 1: how it played out for me. And it got worse
Speaker 1: and it got worse, and it got worse every time
Speaker 1: I spoke out.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you have thoughts there plenty.
Speaker 5: Let's let's produce some even deeper thoughts with this last one,
Speaker 5: because this kind of builds on the earlier point. This
Speaker 5: is this is her talking about basically her reaction to
Speaker 5: some of the January sixth covers and her involvement in
Speaker 5: some of it.
Speaker 1: When the January sixth tapes were coming out, Tucker was
Speaker 1: very set on finding an FBI person who was implanted
Speaker 1: in the crowd and spinning this conspiracy that they were
Speaker 1: ultimately the ones responsible for the capital attack, not Fox
Speaker 1: News as they're about to go into the dominion trial,
Speaker 1: that it was really, you know, the FBI that set
Speaker 1: up this thing, not Fox telling the American people that
Speaker 1: the election was rigged and the voting machines did it.
Speaker 1: And when I went back to them and said, look,
Speaker 1: there's no conspiracy theory here, I called this attorney that's reper.
Speaker 1: He's setting one of the proud Boys and he flat
Speaker 1: out told me on two occasions there is no conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Get away from this stuff. This is dangerous. Tell talker
Speaker 3: to stop. Oh, I'm sure that's exactly how it happened.
Speaker 3: This woman worked for Maria Bartiromo for a long time,
Speaker 3: who obviously is named in the dominion suit and probably
Speaker 3: the Smartmatic one as well, and then joined Tucker Show
Speaker 3: in September of last year, quickly after that, testified in
Speaker 3: the dominion suit, and is now claiming this like total
Speaker 3: ideological pivot, is being totally fetted by the media. Given
Speaker 3: all of these interviews and treated by Nicole Wallace there
Speaker 3: and by others, you could say we had the element
Speaker 3: from The New York Times, given these photo shoots, as
Speaker 3: something of a hero, as entirely credible because she's speaking
Speaker 3: out against Fox News, when of course all of the
Speaker 3: incentives in corporate media right now are to speak out
Speaker 3: against Fox News. So I would take everything that she
Speaker 3: says with a giant grain of salt. I have a
Speaker 3: lot more thoughts that I could run through, But Ryan,
Speaker 3: what do you make of her conversation with Wallace?
Speaker 5: It's it's just kind of jarring to hear a kind
Speaker 5: of progressive language try attempt to be applied, or social
Speaker 5: justice language attempt to be applied to a Tucker Carlson newsroom.
Speaker 4: It's like, as if the problem.
Speaker 5: With an Andrew Tate interview on Tucker Carlson Show is
Speaker 5: that it's too many men.
Speaker 3: The guys were excited about it.
Speaker 5: Any more jender diversity in your celebration of Andrew Tate
Speaker 5: like like, I don't even know where to go with
Speaker 5: stuff like that. Yeah, it's like it's like diversifying the
Speaker 5: raytheon boardroom. In some ways, it's like, this is still
Speaker 5: Andrew Tate. Where do you think you're going with this?
Speaker 5: So I have no problem believing that Tucker Carlson's newsroom
Speaker 5: is worse than a locker room.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't like if I'm on that jury. If you're
Speaker 5: watching the show, you're like, and she said, I don't
Speaker 5: think she said it these clips, but she said elsewhere
Speaker 5: she said the people that worked for him were true believers. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but she said that as an insult, right, I know,
Speaker 5: which is well, I.
Speaker 4: Don't like their true beliefs.
Speaker 5: However, what are you saying, ue that you want people
Speaker 5: who spew the kinds of things they spew on the show,
Speaker 5: but don't believe them, right, what does that just doing
Speaker 5: it cynically for money and ratings, Right, that's the world
Speaker 5: that you think is appropriate.
Speaker 4: You're radical.
Speaker 3: That is really the key statement from her, because that's
Speaker 3: why she's being trodden out into Nicole Wallace to show
Speaker 3: New York Times MSNBC, because she's not a true believer.
Speaker 3: Because she sat there and took what we know she
Speaker 3: has like ninety recordings, and she released one of Ted
Speaker 3: Cruz and Maria Barbiromo yesterday that was pretty thoroughly on interesting.
Speaker 3: Ted Cruse saying that twenty twenty should have a board
Speaker 3: like they.
Speaker 4: Did, said it on the Senate floor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said that on the Senate floor. But if
Speaker 3: you are deplicitous and not deplicitous enough to take a
Speaker 3: paycheck from somebody, record things, pretend to be on the
Speaker 3: same team for literally years and at least when it
Speaker 3: comes to Tucker, then no, you're not a true believer.
Speaker 3: You are taking money and power to further a cause
Speaker 3: that you're uncomfortable with, which is quite a statement in
Speaker 3: and of itself for the media then to not be
Speaker 3: like questioning her as so, what did you ever believe
Speaker 3: what do you believe now? And why did you book
Speaker 3: on these shows that you say are evil for so
Speaker 3: many years?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: I just don't see how it's better that you're promoting
Speaker 5: this stuff not believing in it.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm, Well I don't think or like I don't.
Speaker 5: It's who cares whether you believe it or not, Like
Speaker 5: what the product you're producing is what matters anyway. Just yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just rather extraordinary to hear that hear that claim
Speaker 5: being made that like the problem, that the real problem
Speaker 5: was that they that they actually believe the things that
Speaker 5: they were saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God forbid well and can I just like the
Speaker 3: there's a really big swath of this country that like
Speaker 3: unfortunately enjoys watching Andrew videos. And if you have followed
Speaker 3: what Tucker has been doing over the last couple of years,
Speaker 3: I don't think he would dispute that he runs a
Speaker 3: newsroom that is comparable to a locker room in some ways.
Speaker 3: Maybe it would be different when you're actually subpoenaed in
Speaker 3: a courtroom, you would have to describe your newsroom a
Speaker 3: little bit differently. But I don't think he would dispute
Speaker 3: that it's like a masculine environment because a lot of
Speaker 3: what he talks about is that we've you know, overly
Speaker 3: feminized places, and he truly, truly believes that that men
Speaker 3: don't have the same outlets for their like natural impulses
Speaker 3: that they used to. And you can disagree with that
Speaker 3: or not, but he does really believe that his team
Speaker 3: really believes that.
Speaker 4: On TV.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he definitely believes that.
Speaker 4: And if you would, she's saying that he really does, right, yes,
Speaker 4: and I mean.
Speaker 3: He absolutely does. And it's like consistent of his work
Speaker 3: over the course of years. And that's why he's interested
Speaker 3: in Andrew Tait, because Andrew Tate talks about those things.
Speaker 3: It's not to say he like, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: didn't watch the Andrew Tate thing. It's not to say
Speaker 3: that he's completely endorsing Andrew Tait, and I would disagree
Speaker 3: with that if he did. But the point is it's
Speaker 3: consistent with his beliefs, and those beliefs are not completely
Speaker 3: out of touch with the with a chunk of people
Speaker 3: in America who have zero voice in media. Everyone in
Speaker 3: media says this is evil. You know, Andrew Tate bad.
Speaker 3: You're bad. If you ever watched Andrew Tit, if you
Speaker 3: ever looked at Andrew Tate, you're also a bigot and
Speaker 3: the sexist. And if you have one voice in all
Speaker 3: of the media who's willing to engage with Andrew Tate
Speaker 3: and do an interview with him, acting like that's the
Speaker 3: end of the world, I think is silly and it's
Speaker 3: funny to see her just get treated like this by
Speaker 3: the corporate press.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I think Andrew Tates is deplorable. Figures
Speaker 5: you can have. He's facing credible charge. Don't disagree with
Speaker 5: rape and sex trafficking out in Romania. Even to get
Speaker 5: charged with sex trafficking in roman almost impossible. He even said,
Speaker 5: like out loud, like when he was going there, like
Speaker 5: he was there because of the loose laws around that,
Speaker 5: so you have to have really done something. It's like
Speaker 5: getting speeding on the autubn So good lord, Well, we
Speaker 5: can't even imagine what he was what he was up to.
Speaker 5: But the idea that like it would be okay to
Speaker 5: platform promote that type that that type of ideology without
Speaker 5: kind of rebutting it. I think if you want to
Speaker 5: rebut it, yeah, then then I think people should do
Speaker 5: that because obviously the alternative isn't working, Like he has
Speaker 5: spread like wildfire around around the entire world. But the
Speaker 5: idea that the only thing you really need to do
Speaker 5: is make sure you have gender sensitivity and gender diversity
Speaker 5: in the platforming of it, to me, is just mind boggling.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I agree on that, and totally agree that if
Speaker 3: you're if you're going to interview him, give him an
Speaker 3: extremely tough interview and ask all of the questions that
Speaker 3: need to be asked. But this idea that just to
Speaker 3: engage with him at all, even though he's like very popular,
Speaker 3: surgingly has a surging popularity at the time of that interview,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's absurd and out of the sort of
Speaker 3: spirit of journalism.
Speaker 5: And I think what I mean about not having a
Speaker 5: hard time believing that there's a toxic work environment in
Speaker 5: his office is that if you take the standard corporate
Speaker 5: HR definition of a of a toxic work environment and
Speaker 5: you just say the things that he says on his show,
Speaker 5: like his show, like the things that we know he
Speaker 5: said in public on his show, would land any manager
Speaker 5: in HR reviews like any day of the week at
Speaker 5: almost any company in this country. So the idea that
Speaker 5: like that there was a work environment that a normal
Speaker 5: HR apart would classify as toxic.
Speaker 4: Seems to me rather easy to demonstrate.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that point,
Speaker 3: because I would argue that's says more about the normal
Speaker 3: HR department than right.
Speaker 5: Right, But you would agree that it would violate the
Speaker 5: HR totally like the current understanding of what a toxic
Speaker 5: work environment would be.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, I think that would probably not be a
Speaker 3: terribly difficult.
Speaker 4: To press play on this show.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's move on to doctor Fauci, who
Speaker 3: did a sat for a very long interview in the
Speaker 3: New York Times that was published this week. He said
Speaker 3: had some interesting things to say. One of my favorites
Speaker 3: is he says, when people say, quote Fauci shut down
Speaker 3: the economy, it wasn't Fauci, referring to himself as the
Speaker 3: third person. The CDC was the organization that made those recommendations.
Speaker 3: I happen to be perceived as the personification of the recommendations.
Speaker 3: But show me a school that I shut down, and
Speaker 3: show me a factory that I shut down. Never, I
Speaker 3: never did. I gave a public health recommendation that echoed
Speaker 3: the CDC's recommendation, and people made a decision. Based on that.
Speaker 3: All right, let's actually just roll right into the SOT.
Speaker 3: We have e two here. You can make your own
Speaker 3: decision up based on what Fauci just said there and
Speaker 3: what Fauci says here.
Speaker 7: I recommended to the president that we shut the country down,
Speaker 7: and that was very difficult decision because I knew it
Speaker 7: would have serious economic consequences.
Speaker 3: All right, So technically not mutually exclusive there he's saying,
Speaker 3: I recommended to the President that we shut the country down.
Speaker 3: But you can see how he's much more eager to
Speaker 3: take credit for having a pivotal voice in those recommendations,
Speaker 3: for being one of the recommenders that actually mattered and
Speaker 3: convinced Donald Trump to shut the country down. And then
Speaker 3: when it's not convenient for him to take credit for
Speaker 3: he said, well, I I was just one of the
Speaker 3: many people making recommendations that would echo the CDC.
Speaker 5: Ron De Santas if he actually does end up running,
Speaker 5: will love to make hay out of that distinction. Oh say,
Speaker 5: actually it wasn't Fauci, it was shut down Trump. I'm
Speaker 5: still want to shut down the economy because he was
Speaker 5: you know, he had Anthony Fauci in his ear, couldn't
Speaker 5: stand up to five foot five Anthony Fauci.
Speaker 3: As Desanta's referred to him as an elf that needed
Speaker 3: to be chucked into the Potomac. And further he there
Speaker 3: are they're actually already fighting about this about the shutdown timeline,
Speaker 3: and Desantas isn't even a declared candidate.
Speaker 5: There you go, right, just to have just that intuitive
Speaker 5: sense of what these Republicans are going.
Speaker 4: To go out of, there you go. But to me,
Speaker 4: Fauci should just own it.
Speaker 5: Trying to make a distinction between Okay, yes, we can
Speaker 5: all agree that Fauci was not a dictator in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty and was not able to just buy his own
Speaker 5: pen kind of dictate American policy. There was a process
Speaker 5: that was involved in Anthony Fauci's kind of public policy
Speaker 5: ideas becoming the policy ideas that we all followed, and
Speaker 5: that involved, you know, him talking to the President, him
Speaker 5: talking to the CDC, and him talking to the media
Speaker 5: and becoming kind of the face of the COVID response.
Speaker 5: So it would to me, it would just be so
Speaker 5: much more helpful as we're thinking through our response to
Speaker 5: the pandemic if he would just say, yeah, these were
Speaker 5: my recommendations. Here's how I think about them in hindsight,
Speaker 5: and he can even say, like, look in like in
Speaker 5: the moment, you're never going to get every single call
Speaker 5: correctly in an unprecedented scenario. Here's the here's the information
Speaker 5: that I had, and here's why I made the decision.
Speaker 5: Here's the reasons I think it was a good decision.
Speaker 5: Here's the reasons I think it wasn't. Instead, he's going
Speaker 5: to get all tangled up in well, look, man, I
Speaker 5: was just spitballing.
Speaker 4: It was it was Trump that really kind of you know,
Speaker 4: ran the show.
Speaker 3: Or blame the CDC. He keeps like blaming the CDC,
Speaker 3: acting as though that his why did you make the
Speaker 3: recommendation if it didn't matter, doctor Fauci, Go ahead, right.
Speaker 5: He wants to blame the CDC, except when he doesn't
Speaker 5: want to defer to them when it comes to the
Speaker 5: origin of the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, so no, of course not. And let's put
Speaker 3: E three up on the screen. He got into masking
Speaker 3: as well, and this really I saw some people reacting
Speaker 3: to this rightfully with a lot of anger. He says,
Speaker 3: from a broad public house standpoint. At the population level,
Speaker 3: masks work at the margins, maybe ten percent He goes
Speaker 3: on to say that if you wear like a properly
Speaker 3: fitted Canaan and ninety five, you know they really do work.
Speaker 3: That's his take. But again, and it's just he's so
Speaker 3: flippant about saying these things that a couple of years
Speaker 3: ago were really affecting the daily lives of many, many,
Speaker 3: many Americans. And here's another one, Like to your point, Ryan,
Speaker 3: he sort of toes the line, like he creeps up
Speaker 3: to the line of taking some blame and accountability. He
Speaker 3: says when asked by The New York Times, this is
Speaker 3: actually a pretty tough interview, and Fauci at a couple
Speaker 3: points gets upset with the interviewer. I think also reflects
Speaker 3: an incredible sense of entitlement. But he says, we probably
Speaker 3: should have communicated better that the clinical trials about the
Speaker 3: vaccines were only powered to look at the effect on
Speaker 3: clinically recognizable disease symptomatic disease, So saying, you know, we
Speaker 3: should have communicated better that the vaccines weren't going to
Speaker 3: function like vaccines that people think of when they think
Speaker 3: of the definition of what a vaccine is. So he
Speaker 3: sort of flirts with taking some accountability. He says, we
Speaker 3: probably should have communicated better, and then goes into this
Speaker 3: like dense medical language. And also, here's another quote from
Speaker 3: the interview. Did we say that the elderly one much
Speaker 3: more vulnerable?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Did we say it over and over and over again, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3: But somehow or other, the general public didn't get that
Speaker 3: feeling that the vulnerable are really really heavily weighted toward
Speaker 3: the elderly. So again he continues to blame the public.
Speaker 3: You see this over and over in the interview, where
Speaker 3: he's completely saying, listen, we did what we were supposed
Speaker 3: to do, but the public is just so dumb and angry.
Speaker 3: He continues to blame divisiveness. He invokes that word over
Speaker 3: and over again, as though it's a totally detached phenomenon
Speaker 3: from him, that he would have nothing to do with
Speaker 3: that divisiveness, even though he changed his tune on masks,
Speaker 3: even though he changes tune on a number of different
Speaker 3: issues lap League, for instance, we have emails that show
Speaker 3: he's saying things differently in public and in private. He
Speaker 3: is not willing to grapple with any of that. Instead,
Speaker 3: what he does is continue to just sort of use
Speaker 3: this language that superficially admits some minor mistakes here and there,
Speaker 3: but then blames it on the public for being too
Speaker 3: dumb and too divided to really understand what he was saying.
Speaker 5: I do think that so many people experienced the pandemic
Speaker 5: personally that it did break through that the elderly were
Speaker 5: much more vulnerable than others.
Speaker 4: And also.
Speaker 5: The morbidly obese was the was the comorbidity that was
Speaker 5: so tightly associated with it, which everybody kind of stayed
Speaker 5: away from, including Fauci, for I think sensitivity reasons that
Speaker 5: were backfired on.
Speaker 4: You know, for a lot of people.
Speaker 5: But I do think that that gets to his kind
Speaker 5: of his fundamental flaw, which was a lack of trust
Speaker 5: in the public and a misunderstanding of the kind of
Speaker 5: government's ability to influence public opinion in an era of
Speaker 5: social media and divided kind of media loyalties. And so
Speaker 5: I think what he felt like was, I'm going to
Speaker 5: air on the side of fudging. I'm going to say that,
Speaker 5: you know, the herd immunity is this much closer than
Speaker 5: it really is, because I don't trust people will reach
Speaker 5: the goal of heart immunity, I might say, where it
Speaker 5: is like he has said that he was wrong about that,
Speaker 5: or that he lied about that.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: He admitted that he lied about masks early on because
Speaker 5: he said he was nervous that the public would panic
Speaker 5: and would go out and buy up all the masks,
Speaker 5: and so he kind of lied about their affectiveness early,
Speaker 5: undermining his his own authority.
Speaker 4: And I think he's he didn't lean into the.
Speaker 5: Vulnerability of the elderly population more because he's saying he
Speaker 5: regrets it, but he didn't do it because he was
Speaker 5: nervous that if he said that that some people would
Speaker 5: read it as a well, that population is more vulnerable,
Speaker 5: therefore I'm less vulnerable. Therefore I'm not going to care
Speaker 5: about any of these precautions. And so he went overboard,
Speaker 5: and he aired on the side of telling everybody that
Speaker 5: they're they're they're more vulnerable than they than they actually
Speaker 5: might have been. And then that ends up undercutting his
Speaker 5: his authority and the eyes of a lot of people.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the reasons, I think one
Speaker 3: of the reasons that he people interpreted them as not saying,
Speaker 3: you know, the elderly were the most vulnerable over and
Speaker 3: over again is because the guidelines that he recommended that
Speaker 3: the CDC put out treated everybody as though they were
Speaker 3: just as vulnerable as the elderly, and locked everyone down
Speaker 3: and didn't do a whole lot of like isolating vulnerable
Speaker 3: populations for in some cases sensitivity reasons. But anyway that
Speaker 3: basically everybody was limped into that category. We do have
Speaker 3: one more on one of Ryan's hobby horses here from
Speaker 3: the interview of.
Speaker 4: Josh Rogan's tweet here, Yeah, this is E four.
Speaker 3: He started talking about the lamp League Facchi says, there,
Speaker 3: I guess quote is actually really fun funny. He agrees
Speaker 3: that it was not. He says all Intel agencies quote
Speaker 3: agreed that this was not an engineered virus. He says
Speaker 3: the D and I assessment says quote most assessed with
Speaker 3: low con confidence quote, probably not engineered. He also says
Speaker 3: if it escaped a lab, even if it did escape
Speaker 3: a lab, quote, that ain't a lab leak. What did
Speaker 3: you make of that?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: So his argument is that if somebody went to a cave,
Speaker 5: you know, a couple hundred or a couple thousand miles
Speaker 5: away from wuhan collected bat samples, got infected doing that work,
Speaker 5: came back to the lab, left the lab, went to
Speaker 5: went around Wuhan and spread the virus. That that that's
Speaker 5: not a lab leak. I think what he means by
Speaker 5: a lab leak, which is actually disturbing. If this is
Speaker 5: where his mind goes, because it means that it's something
Speaker 5: he's thought a lot about. I would hope so he
Speaker 5: was funding it, But then right, why why are you
Speaker 5: continuing to fund it? What he would what he seems
Speaker 5: to think of as a lab leak is that you
Speaker 5: are specifically engineering a kind of very highly pathogenic virus
Speaker 5: and then that leaks out, right, rather than you're collecting
Speaker 5: viruses doing work.
Speaker 4: On them and because of poor.
Speaker 5: Because of poor kind of ppe that you get infected
Speaker 5: and then you and then your workers leave. That that's
Speaker 5: somehow not a lab leaku, which is that's That's one
Speaker 5: of the most frightening things I've heard, because if he's like,
Speaker 5: if public policy officials and politicians are coming to him
Speaker 5: and coming to the NIH in general and saying, look,
Speaker 5: we want to make sure that there are no lablaks
Speaker 5: going on when it comes to the work that you're
Speaker 5: doing around here, and his mind goes to a place, Oh, no,
Speaker 5: don't worry, there's no labliks. Just maybe a couple of
Speaker 5: researchers getting infected and spreading viruses that they're working on
Speaker 5: and producing pandemics.
Speaker 4: But that's not a lablak.
Speaker 5: And if you don't know how his mind is working,
Speaker 5: you don't know to ask that follow up question.
Speaker 4: All you hear is, oh, we're good.
Speaker 3: It's a incredible because he even talks in this interview
Speaker 3: about his back and forth with Rand Paul on gain
Speaker 3: of function the definition of gain a gain of function,
Speaker 3: and it's the same tactic. He's doing the same thing
Speaker 3: with the lab Liak definition that he did with a
Speaker 3: gain of function definition. He tries to exhaust the interviewer
Speaker 3: by filibustering with these completely abstruse medical definitions of what is,
Speaker 3: what isn't and like how this is, you know, really
Speaker 3: semantically not technically a gain of function, not technically a
Speaker 3: lab leak, and all of it is just like this
Speaker 3: incredible cover for things we don't we still don't have
Speaker 3: answers from him about And for him to just sit
Speaker 3: there and say, you know, if anything, what all we
Speaker 3: did wrong was underestimate the idiocy of the American public,
Speaker 3: I just think is like unbelievable. And if I were
Speaker 3: anyone close to doctor Facci, I would I would recommend
Speaker 3: that he stopped doing interviews at this point because the
Speaker 3: more he talks, the more fodder there is. To just realize,
Speaker 3: the well that this is springing from is one that
Speaker 3: is very much and I understand like he's been attacked
Speaker 3: more than anyone, I think for some good reason, but
Speaker 3: just psychologically, you're going to feel like you're in trench
Speaker 3: warfare and you have to lash out at everyone. It's
Speaker 3: not a good.
Speaker 4: Look, right, not even look at all.
Speaker 5: A new report from Michael Schellenberger. If you put this
Speaker 5: first element up here called United Nations, Harvard and Facebook,
Speaker 5: Google launch push for censorship worldwide, Emily, this is something
Speaker 5: you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 4: You what do you find in here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we have a lot of conversations about the
Speaker 3: dangers of exporting classical liberalism from the Western world elsewhere.
Speaker 3: And I can't think of a better example of that
Speaker 3: in How that Happens in twenty twenty three than the
Speaker 3: Schollenberger story that broke as we were preparing yesterday's show.
Speaker 3: Let me just read from his lead here. He writes,
Speaker 3: the United Nations is training people worldwide to demand censorship
Speaker 3: by social media platforms of their fellow citizens for quote
Speaker 3: potentially harmful content. At least one US government funded group,
Speaker 3: the Atlantic Council, is involved. Now. This UN program, at
Speaker 3: Shallenberger reports, is hilariously called quote social Media for Peace,
Speaker 3: with the number four not actually spelling out the word.
Speaker 3: I guess that makes it a little bit more hip.
Speaker 3: It's a pilot program for pro censorship activist based in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Colombia, Indonesia,
Speaker 3: and Kenya. So those countries are like their test cases
Speaker 3: that the UN and UNESCO are all using social media
Speaker 3: four piece again four piece to export. It's also funded
Speaker 3: by the EU. According to the ENESCO website, it had
Speaker 3: some online meetings for these censorship workers in Kenya and
Speaker 3: Colombia both this week and last week. According to Shallenberger's report,
Speaker 3: the UN effort, as he continues to emphasizes research and
Speaker 3: quote monitoring, but as in the US, the explicit goal
Speaker 3: is to pressure social media platforms to censor disfavored voices.
Speaker 3: I actually went and looked on the website for this
Speaker 3: effort to pull some quotes for myself, because it's as
Speaker 3: bad as you would expect. It sounds right like some
Speaker 3: of this stuff is really legitimate, And Matt Tayeedi this
Speaker 3: week actually published a very good long essay by somebody
Speaker 3: who worked reasonably in this disinformation space for a very
Speaker 3: long time, but has come to be disillusioned with the
Speaker 3: efforts to actually track disinformation because it's turned into a weapon.
Speaker 3: The ruling sort of class has turned it into a
Speaker 3: weapon to marginalize people who disagree with everyone else, who
Speaker 3: disagree with their perspectives on economics, on everything from A
Speaker 3: to Z, by increasing that definition, inflating that definition of
Speaker 3: what constitutes misinformation and disinformation simply to alternative facts, facts
Speaker 3: that they disagree with. And so there is a really
Speaker 3: there's a right way of course to combat propaganda, and
Speaker 3: on global scale. Absolutely, there's nothing wrong with helping people
Speaker 3: do that. That's not what this is. That's not what
Speaker 3: the entire censorship industrial complex is doing. They're able to
Speaker 3: couch it in really friendly language, but listen, this is
Speaker 3: from their website. Social media are increasingly used as an
Speaker 3: information source in electoral processes. This means that while they
Speaker 3: enable greater access to information, they can also be used
Speaker 3: to distort the information ecosystem in a divisive manner and
Speaker 3: influence voters with manipulative or deceptive messages, all right, manipulative
Speaker 3: or deceptive that is doing a whole lot of work.
Speaker 3: That can range from somebody doing what is actually manipulative
Speaker 3: and deceptive. For instance, who's the I forget the name,
Speaker 3: Robert Mackie, the guy who just I think was wrongfully punished,
Speaker 3: overly punished for putting out a meme saying that you
Speaker 3: can vote for Hillar Clinton by texting this number, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Listen, I think that is terrible. I think
Speaker 3: that's exactly the kind of thing that we should crack
Speaker 3: down on. Do I think it's as big of a
Speaker 3: deal as his sentence. No, I think that's disproportionate with
Speaker 3: its harm. But I do think that stuff is legitimately harmful,
Speaker 3: And you could content you could consider that quote manipulative
Speaker 3: or deceptive, as Zesco's language says here. But you can
Speaker 3: also talk about how we were told the Hunter Biden
Speaker 3: laptop was manipulative and deceptive in the wake of it
Speaker 3: being reported by The New York Post in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: and then turning out to be true. For the most part,
Speaker 3: everything has been confirmed from that laptop, the reporting on it.
Speaker 3: So I think this is just a great case study
Speaker 3: in how now this center left, the elite center left,
Speaker 3: has co opted these institutions and is using them to
Speaker 3: spread these classically liberal Western values which have now been
Speaker 3: distorted into outright censorship. If you take the American pride
Speaker 3: in our First Amendment, which Prince Harry for instance, has said,
Speaker 3: oh and he helps like the Aspen Institute on censorship issues,
Speaker 3: it said like, well, in America, you have this weird
Speaker 3: thing called the First Amendment. If you take things like
Speaker 3: the First Amendment and our longtime pride in the First
Speaker 3: Amendment and the fact that you used to have, you know,
Speaker 3: the old school ACLU types having a decent voice in
Speaker 3: the American media, and go to where we are today,
Speaker 3: what we are taking and sending to other countries, because you,
Speaker 3: of course, remember the US is the top funder of
Speaker 3: the United Nations billions of dollars a year. It's like
Speaker 3: a fifth of their annual budget is from money that
Speaker 3: was given by the United States. So we're funding this,
Speaker 3: We're funding this exportation of values abroad that used to
Speaker 3: sound really great to people and to the Blob in particular.
Speaker 3: But this is just a great example of how badly
Speaker 3: it has gone wrong, that we are now going to
Speaker 3: be paying for and training people in other countries to
Speaker 3: crack down on speech that threatens power in other countries.
Speaker 3: This is going to go south really quickly. It's going
Speaker 3: to go wrong in a number of ways. I predict
Speaker 3: we'll be back here talking about how it's gone wrong
Speaker 3: in a number of ways in places like Kenya not
Speaker 3: too far from now. But the point remains that there's
Speaker 3: this instinct a mid populist uprisings in the West to
Speaker 3: say elites have a responsibility to crack down and control.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what really is off putting to
Speaker 3: people about everything they hear at Davos and out of
Speaker 3: the mouth of Klaus Schwab, because there's a lot of
Speaker 3: anxiety among elites. There's a lot of anxiety among populists
Speaker 3: or people who share populist sentiments because the world feels
Speaker 3: like a really dark place right now. Those instincts could
Speaker 3: be channeled in more democratic ways, or those instincts can
Speaker 3: be channeled in more authoritarian ways. And what we're seeing
Speaker 3: right now is an exploitation of the good democratic infrastructure
Speaker 3: of the West into for authoritarian purposes. So Ryan You've
Speaker 3: been following this stuff obviously for years. When I talk
Speaker 3: about like the exportation of a Brian you're about to
Speaker 3: talk about, I think, some of the biggest news of
Speaker 3: the week, despite the fact that it hasn't gotten much
Speaker 3: attention in the media. The president resigned. By that, I
Speaker 3: mean the shadow president, Susan Rice, what have you got?
Speaker 5: And so Susan Rice will be will be in her
Speaker 5: role as director of the Democratic Policy Committee for the
Speaker 5: next month. But that means that the president is in
Speaker 5: the process. She actually announced that she was stepping down
Speaker 5: on the same day that Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson
Speaker 5: were fired. And I think, you know, when it comes
Speaker 5: to kind of historical consequence, her departure will actually have
Speaker 5: much more meaning and significance.
Speaker 4: Down the road, probably than either of theirs.
Speaker 5: Because you know, we've seen plenty of people like leave
Speaker 5: Fox News, they build their own platforms, Fox News finds
Speaker 5: new people. CNN will be CNN without Don Lemon. But
Speaker 5: the choice of you know, who directs Biden's democratic policy
Speaker 5: over the remaining eighteen months of his of the back
Speaker 5: half of his first term is going to determine everything
Speaker 5: from immigration policy, you know, gun control, the implementation of
Speaker 5: the Climate Provisions and the Inflation Reduction Act, expanding access
Speaker 5: to abortion services for people who are in states where
Speaker 5: it's where it's banned. Infrastructure rollout, like there is an
Speaker 5: unprecedented really amount of money kind of in the pipeline
Speaker 5: that can be directed, you know, toward pursuing a Biden agenda,
Speaker 5: but it's insanely difficult to do in this country.
Speaker 4: Like you would not.
Speaker 5: Believe how hard it is to just spend money, like
Speaker 5: for you know, the Tea Party and Freedom Coccus types
Speaker 5: probably think that, well, it's just drunken sailors just throwing
Speaker 5: it off the boat, like cash into the water. But
Speaker 5: because of the overlapping jurisdictions and competing interests involved with local, state,
Speaker 5: and federal agencies, actually doing things in this country is
Speaker 5: getting increasingly difficult and it and is something that kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, Tucker Carlson would talk about on his show
Speaker 5: that like it's a country that has a hard time
Speaker 5: doing things anymore. And when you travel abroad and you
Speaker 5: see other infrastructure, other airports, other other other ways that
Speaker 5: kind of developed to developed countries have managed to actually
Speaker 5: build things, You're like, what are we what's going on
Speaker 5: in the United States, and one of the main things
Speaker 5: going on is that nobody cares about policy anymore, and
Speaker 5: so who he puts in this position is going to
Speaker 5: be extraordinarily important. This isn't the kind of thing, uh
Speaker 5: that a lot of people on YouTube are going to
Speaker 5: like go crazy about sharing.
Speaker 4: That's a nice thing about how we're only putting a
Speaker 4: couple elements up.
Speaker 5: We can we can do things that actually matter to
Speaker 5: people and not worry about how much, you know, how
Speaker 5: much they're going.
Speaker 4: To click on YouTube.
Speaker 5: So so we can we I'll just run through some
Speaker 5: of the some of the candidates that I've been hearing
Speaker 5: from people kind of in and out of the White House,
Speaker 5: who are who are being considered. The one who is
Speaker 5: kind of campaign the hardest for it so far is
Speaker 5: your old buddy near A Tandon, kind of who is
Speaker 5: one of the most polarizing figures in in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 7: She was.
Speaker 5: She was nominated to run omb former you know, Hillary
Speaker 5: Clinton loyalist for ran Capp Center for American Progress. She
Speaker 5: was nominated to run the OMB, but ran into bipartisan
Speaker 5: resistance in the Senate. One of the only well, I
Speaker 5: think it was maybe the first Biden appointee not to
Speaker 5: get Senate confirmed. They found her a job anyway as
Speaker 5: an advisor to the White House. She was recently promoted
Speaker 5: to staff secretary, which is a kind of lame sounding
Speaker 5: name but is actually very influential position. You're in you're
Speaker 5: in basically every every meeting, and you're controlling kind of
Speaker 5: the paper flow, and so that gives you an enormous
Speaker 5: amount of power over the over the agenda. And so
Speaker 5: she is said to be the one that is kind
Speaker 5: of pursuing this the hardest, which can all so could
Speaker 5: also cut against her because this is a city where
Speaker 5: like filled with like super ambitious people who are supposed
Speaker 5: to pretend that they're not and if you don't mask that,
Speaker 5: people don't like that, and so the kind of try
Speaker 5: too hard aspect might under my mind. Also, the job
Speaker 5: of DBC director is to kind of build coalitions for
Speaker 5: policy agenda and then implement it.
Speaker 4: And in order to.
Speaker 5: Build coalitions, you have to be able to kind of
Speaker 5: work well with people, and she has an enormous number
Speaker 5: of supporters, she has a enormous number of detractors, so
Speaker 5: that may be that may end up hurting her. So
Speaker 5: second candidate who's being kicked around Tom Perez, who was
Speaker 5: former Obama Labor Secretary then became chair of the DNC.
Speaker 5: This is so heavily a kind of managerial and executive
Speaker 5: role that you would think his handling of the DNC
Speaker 5: and also of the Iowa caucuses could come back to
Speaker 5: haunt him.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 5: He bungled the Iowa caucuses so badly Democrats don't do
Speaker 5: an Iowa CAUCUSUS anymore.
Speaker 4: It was that bad.
Speaker 5: If you remember, they had these these crony contractors come
Speaker 5: in and build an app. App completely melted down. Nobody
Speaker 5: had any idea who won. Pete Bootage just goes on
Speaker 5: stage and declares that he won.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: Tom Prez is nowhere to be seen. He just kind
Speaker 5: of tries to blame Iowa. Iowa folks blamed Tom Perez.
Speaker 5: Just a complete nightmare. So he thought about running from
Speaker 5: Maryland governor, didn't, so he's so he's in he's in.
Speaker 4: Line for that. Uh uh.
Speaker 5: Tar mcguinnis who is also somebody from CAP, but she
Speaker 5: was on the kind of political side of CAP, so
Speaker 5: you know there's a line between the C three and
Speaker 5: the C four. She was somebody who is kind of known.
Speaker 5: She worked with Jeff is it sience or zenes, I
Speaker 5: can never think of science. So she worked with Jeff
Speaker 5: Science to try to write the ship when Obamacare blew up.
Speaker 5: You remember when they launched that, they launched their marketplace,
Speaker 5: and so she and she and Jeff Zience kind of
Speaker 5: worked hand in hand, you know, fix fixing that and
Speaker 5: getting getting that moving. And out of her experience, she
Speaker 5: wrote a book about kind of technology and government and
Speaker 5: how to make how to make government actually work. And
Speaker 5: so because Science has worked so closely with her, you know,
Speaker 5: he has you know, he understands what she's capable of.
Speaker 5: And so I think that she might be kind of
Speaker 5: a dark horse candidate for this because if the Biden
Speaker 5: decides what I actually want is for my agenda to
Speaker 5: actually be implemented, for the money to go out the
Speaker 5: door efficiently and quickly, and rather than it get tangled
Speaker 5: up in scandal and kind of palace intrigue, then he
Speaker 5: would go with somebody like a Tara McGinnis, because she
Speaker 5: likes her reputation watching is it's not flashy, but she's
Speaker 5: going to like really get the job done. Another one
Speaker 5: who's similar to that is a woman named Anna O'Leary
Speaker 5: who but who since the Clinton administration has been kind
Speaker 5: of this kind of powerhouse policy person from the Clinton world.
Speaker 4: She was Gavin Newsom's chief of staff.
Speaker 5: You might have seen her fighting publicly with him now
Speaker 5: because she is the lawyer for Walgreens, which was trying
Speaker 5: to write its policy for how they were going to
Speaker 5: give out the kind of abortion medication, and Gavin Newsom
Speaker 5: started attacking her publicly kind of weird like his old
Speaker 5: chief of staff. She was trying to, like it sounded
Speaker 5: like she was trying to get Walgreens like to just
Speaker 5: follow the law, but also get medication abortion out completely completely.
Speaker 5: That's a complete side note. People don't think that she
Speaker 5: would want to move to DC for this job, but
Speaker 5: if Biden was looking for somebody who's like good at
Speaker 5: doing stuff, that'd be somebody. And the last one Week
Speaker 5: can talk about is is Sarah Bianki. So she's the
Speaker 5: deputy US Trade Representative and they're sort of I think
Speaker 5: this rule exists on the Republican side too, But the
Speaker 5: rule is that if you have a good kind of
Speaker 5: director of an agency who is in line kind of
Speaker 5: with the base of the party, then you also need
Speaker 5: a corporate flunky underneath them to sort of like babysit
Speaker 5: and watch them and make sure that like they're not
Speaker 5: really going to do all these things that they say
Speaker 5: they're going to do. And so Catherine Tie, the US
Speaker 5: Trade Representative, is very good, and so Bianchi the deputy,
Speaker 5: is somebody who's who feels like comes from more of
Speaker 5: a corporate background. She was literally the lead lobbyist for Airbnb.
Speaker 5: So Biden talks about being the kind of most pro
Speaker 5: labor president in history. And I think it would be
Speaker 5: tough if he had a gig company lobbyist running his
Speaker 5: domestic policy. But that doesn't mean she's out of the running.
Speaker 5: So but we'll say so these are the kind of folks.
Speaker 5: There are a couple others, but I don't think there
Speaker 5: is I'll have a story on this in the intercept
Speaker 5: later today. Probably I don't think there're as much in
Speaker 5: the running as these ones.
Speaker 3: Who do you think is like, probably isn't near a
Speaker 3: ta near.
Speaker 5: It's probably what everybody says is that Nira has the
Speaker 5: inside track, that she's been gunning for this for a
Speaker 5: couple of years.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And the only question is is she too polarizing?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 5: I mean the answer is yes, But does Science and
Speaker 5: Biden think that she's too polarizing for the role.
Speaker 3: I mean, after what happened with the O and B nomination,
Speaker 3: you'd think that would be completely glaringly obvious to them.
Speaker 3: You would think, I can't believe she's even in that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can't believe she's in the ring because
Speaker 3: she comes with so much clout in democratic circles in Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. But and so therefore she has a lot
Speaker 3: of people who will lobby on her behalf and say,
Speaker 3: I'd love to work with Nira, like bring Nara in,
Speaker 3: and you know you don't necessarilyn't not upset near, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, But man, that would be interesting. I actually
Speaker 3: hope that she is it because I would love to
Speaker 3: watch that. Like from the outside, that sounds hilarious.
Speaker 5: That it could be some could be some fun drama,
Speaker 5: could be some fair rudra. Yeah, and there's and maybe
Speaker 5: the White House thinks that that putting a thumb in
Speaker 5: the eye of the of the left is like a
Speaker 5: good thing electorally to kind of show their should their independence.
Speaker 5: We're not Bernie might have endorsed us, but don't worry
Speaker 5: about that. We don't care anything about Bernie.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a good point. If they're if heading into
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, that's the direction that they think they
Speaker 3: should tack in that will be most beneficial to them.
Speaker 3: Then near Tandon is your gal.
Speaker 4: There you go, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's that's one to follow. I know
Speaker 3: I'll be following for the shadenfreude, because Lord knows, we're
Speaker 3: giving you plenty of it from the right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think from the right that's probably the
Speaker 5: best case scenario if you're two, because then if you
Speaker 5: get caught up in a lot of palace intrigue, then
Speaker 5: less of the IRA money's going to go out, less
Speaker 5: the infrastructure, like less of the Biden kind of agenda
Speaker 5: agenda that was passed through Congress then ends up getting implemented.
Speaker 4: So I guess that would be a win for you guys.
Speaker 3: I mean, depends on what happens, what gets stalled.
Speaker 5: Busir Nancy Mason, you've got a clean energy factory in
Speaker 5: your district that you actually want the stuff to get out.
Speaker 3: To you need those votes. That's funny. Well, thank you
Speaker 3: so much for tuning into today's edition of Counterpoints. In
Speaker 3: the middle of this absolutely insane week. We appreciate everybody watching,
Speaker 3: We appreciate everybody listening. There's so many stories that will
Speaker 3: continue to follow up on because they aren't going anywhere soon.
Speaker 3: So if you're in the media and you're watching this,
Speaker 3: just cross your fingers and hope you aren't fired this week,
Speaker 3: because it's coming for everyone. There you go, We'll see
Speaker 3: you back here next Wednesday.