Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed we do. Let's to get to you this morning.
Speaker 1: We got all your seapack highlights for you, President Trump
Speaker 1: winning the straw poll there quite handily and making some
Speaker 1: noteworthy comments. We also had Steve Bannon sort of declaring
Speaker 1: war on Fox News and new revelations about exactly what
Speaker 1: went down there during the election and stuff to steal
Speaker 1: in all that, which is pretty interesting. Also another train
Speaker 1: derailment in Ohio. This comes as Pete Boodhagge is kind
Speaker 1: of acknowledging that he screwed all of this this amazing
Speaker 1: headline in CNN. He's rethinking how he does his rethinking.
Speaker 1: Oh really, okay, we'll tell you about that DNC rigging
Speaker 1: over the top. They are kind of rejecting democracy in
Speaker 1: terms of the Democratic primary as Mary and Williamson declairs
Speaker 1: for president. Some interesting comments there, interesting coverage on MSNBC
Speaker 1: will break all of that down for you, and Russell
Speaker 1: Brand getting a lot of attention with some comments about
Speaker 1: cable News himself on Bill Maher's show over on HBO.
Speaker 1: We're also excited to have Ryan Graves on the Show's Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a good one. Absolutely. I think the
Speaker 1: UFO people in particular will enjoy. But anybody, he was
Speaker 1: a pilot and he saw a lot of interesting things. Well,
Speaker 1: he's up in there. I'm excited to talk to him. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's start with the twenty twenty four President Trump returning
Speaker 1: to cpack in a marathon hour and forty minute long speech.
Speaker 1: We cut together some highlights for you. The main takeaway
Speaker 1: I am your retribute. You should. Let's take a list.
Speaker 1: We had a Republican party that was ruled by freaks,
Speaker 1: neo khons, globalists, open border zealots, and fools. But we
Speaker 1: are never going back to the Party of Paul Ryan,
Speaker 1: Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush. We're not going back to
Speaker 1: people that want to destroy our great social security system,
Speaker 1: even some in our own party. I wonder who that
Speaker 1: might be that want to raise the minimum age of
Speaker 1: social security to seventy seventy five or even eighty in
Speaker 1: some cases, and that are out to cut medicare to
Speaker 1: a level that it will no longer be recognizable. If
Speaker 1: you look at Ukraine, and we all feel so badly
Speaker 1: about it, but why isn't NATO putting up dollar for
Speaker 1: dollar with us? We put up one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars and they put up just a tiny fraction
Speaker 1: of the China loving politicians, of which there are many.
Speaker 1: You're listening to this, Mitch McConnell a. You're listening. But
Speaker 1: I stand here today and I'm the only candidate who
Speaker 1: can make this promise. I will prevent and very easily,
Speaker 1: World War three, very easily. And for those who have
Speaker 1: been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am
Speaker 1: your retribution. I'm not gonna let this out. I am
Speaker 1: your retribution. Powerful. I guess grievance message I mean fits
Speaker 1: a little bit with American carnage. But the reason the
Speaker 1: media was focusing in on a lot of that one
Speaker 1: Obviously that one's on stop the steal, but the previous
Speaker 1: one's crystal. A lot of that has vient to Trump.
Speaker 1: That is, I'm going to end world I'm going to
Speaker 1: end I'm going to what is it end the war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine in twenty four hours. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how I'm going to do it. No World War three
Speaker 1: on my watch, something that Biden has not yet been
Speaker 1: able to say publicly. And then really I think the
Speaker 1: most important one was the Medicare and Social Security, the
Speaker 1: flaying of Paul Ryan, calling out Mitch McConnell, the establishment, GOP,
Speaker 1: and just saying, look what these people want to do.
Speaker 1: They want to cut benefits for hard working earning seniors.
Speaker 1: I Am not going to let them do that. So
Speaker 1: you put it all together, you have a very traditional
Speaker 1: America First speech that he gave there, sprinkled in with
Speaker 1: the likes a little stop to steel there at the
Speaker 1: end of a very vague reference to all of that.
Speaker 1: Not an accident, I think, though, in order to unite
Speaker 1: the hardcore Trumpers who feel like the election was stolen,
Speaker 1: with a broader economically populist message, which obviously one in
Speaker 1: the White House in twenty sixteen. Overall, I mean, you
Speaker 1: put that together like I think that we did, and
Speaker 1: that's a solid message. It's a solid message in this primary.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I was thinking about, I mean that
Speaker 1: I am your retribution. That has always been the animating
Speaker 1: energy behind the Trump movement, right. It is smart, smart
Speaker 1: wordplay exactly so, even you know, in twenty sixteen, the
Speaker 1: policy pieces loomed a lot larger than at this point
Speaker 1: they do, even as I do think he is taking
Speaker 1: out some important position. But what people really love about
Speaker 1: this guy is that all the people that hate you
Speaker 1: or that you hate, they are livid about Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and so leaning into that. I mean, that reminds people
Speaker 1: why they fell in love with this guy in the
Speaker 1: Republican base the first time around. So, I mean, this
Speaker 1: guy is back. He's much more effective than he was
Speaker 1: during twenty twenty, much more effective than he was in
Speaker 1: the office season. He's sort of back to form. He
Speaker 1: is fully back into form. He's also gave an interview
Speaker 1: with Newsmax to news max is James Rosen right before,
Speaker 1: where he promised that even if he does get indicted,
Speaker 1: I am still running. For everybody who's maintaining a fantasy
Speaker 1: that he won't take a listen to that. Can you
Speaker 1: take this moment to assure your donors and your supporters
Speaker 1: that you're in this race to state no matter what
Speaker 1: happens with those investigations, if you are sure indicted one
Speaker 1: or more times. Sure well they did two of phony impeachments,
Speaker 1: and we won that, and the Republicans stuck together and
Speaker 1: we want as you know, we went up very substantially
Speaker 1: in the polls. These are witch hunts. Hees have been
Speaker 1: going on for a long time. They've weaponized justice in
Speaker 1: our country. It's a disgrace, and I think people are
Speaker 1: very angry about it. Even Democrats are very angry about it.
Speaker 1: So he's absolutely I wouldn't even think about leaving. So
Speaker 1: there you go, he says he'll he's going to run
Speaker 1: even if he does get indicted. For those who are wondering,
Speaker 1: as we have previously shown, Eugene Debs, the socialist candidate
Speaker 1: for president in nineteen twenty while imprisoned in the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Federal Penitentiary, actually received almost a million votes for candidate.
Speaker 1: So there is a precedent. One that you can be
Speaker 1: in prison in a federal prisident actually and still run
Speaker 1: and receive votes for federal office. I guess that would
Speaker 1: be a fun one if it ever came down to precedent.
Speaker 1: But so many indications here about the strength of Trump.
Speaker 1: Put this next one up there on the screen. Trump
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly winning the Seapack primary Strawphole. Now does the Seapack
Speaker 1: primary Straphole matter? I mean not really. Rand Paul has
Speaker 1: won it at certain points. You know other politicians who've
Speaker 1: never ended up having a chance in hell. But when
Speaker 1: I look at this, what I'm looking at are these
Speaker 1: are not only republic These are the faithful, you know,
Speaker 1: the people who will fly from all over the country
Speaker 1: and attend every single one of these And sixty two
Speaker 1: percent in the poll. Crystal DeSantis comes in second at
Speaker 1: twenty percent, and the third place pick at five percent
Speaker 1: was Perry Johnson, a businessman. Yeah, I know, he tried
Speaker 1: to run for the governor of Michigan. I knew his name,
Speaker 1: but I had to go back and look it up.
Speaker 1: Carrie Lake actually received the most support for vice presidential
Speaker 1: candidate with twenty percent DeSantis. He actually beat DeSantis for
Speaker 1: the VP slot once again, does seapac matter? Does a
Speaker 1: primary pole matter? It is not indicative of anything other
Speaker 1: than what the people at Seapack feel. But I can't
Speaker 1: help but parrot with that clip that we played in
Speaker 1: our previous show of Brian kill Me to Fox News
Speaker 1: going to the people in the diner in Florida. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like, hey, guys, who are you all going
Speaker 1: to vote for? All but one says that they're going
Speaker 1: to vote for Trump? And even that one was like
Speaker 1: Trump and Nikki Nikki Haley for vice president. There was
Speaker 1: and she was wearing a Disanta's T shirt. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she wouldn't put disant she was saying. She was saying
Speaker 1: Trump or Dessanta's right, because kill mean came over and
Speaker 1: was like, you've got a Disanta shirt on, you must
Speaker 1: be for Disantas and she was like Trump for DeSantis.
Speaker 1: She ro like cornered into it because she was wearing
Speaker 1: the T shirt. But I mean, listen, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear this is the guy to beat at this point.
Speaker 1: And you know, with regards to him saying he's going
Speaker 1: to run regardless of indictment, I mean, this was always obvious,
Speaker 1: but I think there was a lot of elite Republican
Speaker 1: wish casting that maybe he would just like melt away
Speaker 1: and sort of like implode and self destruct. That's obviously
Speaker 1: not happening, and that's why you see all of this
Speaker 1: cast of characters lining up to try to jockey to
Speaker 1: be the number two choice. Well, number two doesn't count
Speaker 1: for anything if number one is still in there and
Speaker 1: still holding strong. You also, with regard to that, the
Speaker 1: thing from the Trump presidency that Americans really viscerally reacted
Speaker 1: against was uysicks and Stop the Stealer. And I think
Speaker 1: that was really clear in the midterms. Republicans right afterwards,
Speaker 1: they took a shot at criticizing him over it. You know,
Speaker 1: Fox News did, some of his allies did. Mitch McConnell did,
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley did, And then they kind of backed away
Speaker 1: from that. And since they were not able to get
Speaker 1: the Republican base on their side with regard to January
Speaker 1: six and Stop the steal they really aren't armed with
Speaker 1: the most effective potent attack they could possibly have against Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the thing that the American people
Speaker 1: really viscerally rejected about his administration, and so they've taken
Speaker 1: that off the table. If he gets indicted, they're going
Speaker 1: to have to defend him or at least say nothing
Speaker 1: about it and sort of like, you know, be jamiro
Speaker 1: about it. And I think it leads them in a
Speaker 1: really difficult position because other than that, he's in a
Speaker 1: better position vis a vis the base than they ultimately
Speaker 1: are with regard to the positions that he's staking out
Speaker 1: from an issue a perspective. That's why I don't have
Speaker 1: any sympathy for them. It's like, okay, then don't you're
Speaker 1: going to cut social Security and pump hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars into Ukraine. It's actually not difficult to get
Speaker 1: on the right side of the base, but you know, okay,
Speaker 1: they would rather have their elite positions. Well, then you're
Speaker 1: basically guaranteeing yourself. Trump Trump having some fun with Nicki Haley' speech.
Speaker 1: Just put this out there on the screen, putting it
Speaker 1: out saying congratulations to Nicky Haley on drawing such a large,
Speaker 1: crowded seapack. As I told her, Nikki, follow your heart.
Speaker 1: For those who are just listening, it shows not even
Speaker 1: half empty as generous. I'm looking at maybe one quarter.
Speaker 1: Haley also is that she's got to be one of
Speaker 1: the dumbest politicians I've ever seen, because she gave a
Speaker 1: speech immediately after Seapack at the Club for Growth. For
Speaker 1: those who don't know, it's the tea party group. They
Speaker 1: got into a big fight with Trump over the Ohio
Speaker 1: primary when they backed Josh Mandel over jd Vance and
Speaker 1: they were actually attacking President Trump. They want to return
Speaker 1: to a more economically libertarian candidacy primary, etc. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: she spoke at the conference. At the Club for Growth conference,
Speaker 1: She's like, I take great pride in being one of
Speaker 1: the politicians that was invited here. There were some other
Speaker 1: people that weren't invited here as a veiled attack at Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, lady, winning the Club for Growth primary invitation,
Speaker 1: that's definitely how you win a GOP primary, because it's
Speaker 1: not like they haven't lost all the ones where they've
Speaker 1: backed somebody against Trump. Just complete and total idiocy. I mean, all,
Speaker 1: I guess it will show crystals. Yeah, she's gonna have
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of money. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't remember a time when a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of money in a Republican primary with Trump has ever
Speaker 1: mattered at all. And maybe because you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like she was the only candidate who was invited to Yes, well,
Speaker 1: it's not like the DeSantis was there as well, and
Speaker 1: I think maybe, I don't know, some of the other
Speaker 1: ones were there too, but Trump didn't get an invite
Speaker 1: because they have this rift like congratulations you went over,
Speaker 1: you know, a group of wealthy elites within the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe they're auditioning you. Potentially you're going to get
Speaker 1: their support. But yeah, obviously all of these other contenders
Speaker 1: they have at least one billionaire who's willing to back them,
Speaker 1: and so you know, they've convinced themselves that they really
Speaker 1: have a shot. I think they have been imagining somehow
Speaker 1: the Trump problem would just solve itself and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to say anything, wouldn't have to do anything, and
Speaker 1: he would just go away. And I don't know what
Speaker 1: fantasy world they were ultimately living in when they came
Speaker 1: up with that notion. Yeah, look, it's a total fantasy.
Speaker 1: As you can see from that speech, Trump is fully back.
Speaker 1: Party faithful at the very least remain with him, and
Speaker 1: it really remains his race to lose. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: to this second part here, this is some other very
Speaker 1: interesting stuff with Ron DeSantis. DeSantis increasingly has been in
Speaker 1: a tough position. How do I differentiate myself from Trump? First,
Speaker 1: he said, quote it's silly season, which might be the
Speaker 1: lamest possible comeback that I've ever seen. But I actually
Speaker 1: thought this was a revealing one. He is asked what
Speaker 1: whether or not a Trump endorsement matters for him, and
Speaker 1: you can just see him contort and become extremely uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: He blinks like sixty one times in thirty seconds. As
Speaker 1: the person who flags this for us, everybody, just take
Speaker 1: a listen. For those who are are those who are listening,
Speaker 1: We're going to describe it to you on the other
Speaker 1: side in twenty twenty three. How much do you believe
Speaker 1: a Trump endorsement matters in American Republican politics today? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I think our voters always
Speaker 1: make their own decisions, and they consider obviously endorsements, and
Speaker 1: at that time when he was president, was the big Enchilada.
Speaker 1: But our voters want to look at you and size
Speaker 1: you up, and they take this the responsibility very very seriously.
Speaker 1: So look he's blinking there, He's like uh uh, and
Speaker 1: clearly did not take well to ask answering that question
Speaker 1: very Also, body language is very uncomfortable. I've been claimed
Speaker 1: paying close attention to DeSantis and look, he does not
Speaker 1: open himself up for a lot of interviews. Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 1: apparently loves Ron DeSantis and so he's been calling him
Speaker 1: all the time and convincing him to do interviews. So
Speaker 1: Desanta's did this print interview with the Times of London.
Speaker 1: It's like a conservative paper that Murdock owns, and he
Speaker 1: gets real testing whenever you press him on the specifics.
Speaker 1: One of them was on Ukraine and they were asking
Speaker 1: him like, okay, do you agree with the Trump position
Speaker 1: on Ukraine? And he basically cut him off and was like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and move on here now. To one extent,
Speaker 1: look all politicians do that whenever they get uncomfortable. But
Speaker 1: also is showing a little bit that whenever it gets
Speaker 1: into the weeds, he's not comfortable just passing these things around. Now. Look,
Speaker 1: he is a governor, so he doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: have an answer on these but you know, you need
Speaker 1: to show a little bit more of a backbone whenever
Speaker 1: you're in these interviews. If you're going to want to
Speaker 1: be a presidential candidate and have a real lane outside
Speaker 1: of where Trump is right now, He's just trying to
Speaker 1: have it all both ways. I'm not comparing Ronda Santis
Speaker 1: to the political capabilities of Kamala Harris. However, I will
Speaker 1: say that prior to her running for president, the word
Speaker 1: in political circles was that she was very cautious and
Speaker 1: even with potentially friendly media personalities, she was very careful
Speaker 1: about what interviews she did. She had to be fully prepared.
Speaker 1: She's one of these that always the aids would be like,
Speaker 1: all right, what specifically are you going to ask her
Speaker 1: about before she got in there. And I think in
Speaker 1: part because she didn't get that practice of mixing it
Speaker 1: up with the press or was incapable, I think really
Speaker 1: of being able to mix it up with more adversarial questioning.
Speaker 1: It made her a very brittle political figure where the
Speaker 1: only thing she could really do was if she had
Speaker 1: like a set piece that she'd practiced and talking points
Speaker 1: that she'd practiced, she could deliver them. But outside of that,
Speaker 1: if you had an actual give and take where you
Speaker 1: have to think on your feet, which is a skill
Speaker 1: that you develop like any other skill. She is very, very,
Speaker 1: very bad, and we've seen that particularly on display during
Speaker 1: this presidency e A. Lester Hold interview ors she's talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the border situation, et cetera. So I think
Speaker 1: that Ron DeSantis is doing himself a disservice by not
Speaker 1: taking some calculated risks here of getting the practice of
Speaker 1: mixing it up with more media figures, including some who
Speaker 1: may be more adversarial, because it's better to have some
Speaker 1: flubs and some screw ups. Now when the stakes are
Speaker 1: a little bit less high, you think you're going to
Speaker 1: be able to mix it up with Donald Trump if
Speaker 1: you can't handle a Fox News question here. So the
Speaker 1: fact that he is so careful and cautious and pre
Speaker 1: planned and selective about the interviews that he does, I
Speaker 1: think it's a telling sign. And it also, like I said,
Speaker 1: I think does him a disservice in terms of the
Speaker 1: practice that he needs to be able to handle a
Speaker 1: presidential primary. Absolutely right, And at the same time, you've
Speaker 1: got one of the other potential rivals. I'm putting rivals
Speaker 1: in quotes here because it would have been more of
Speaker 1: a Meati creation. But honestly, I want to give the
Speaker 1: man props. Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland, saying I
Speaker 1: will not be a candidate in the GOP primary. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen to what he said. I think I
Speaker 1: can continue to contribute toward getting the Republican Party back
Speaker 1: to a more traditional, big tent party that can win
Speaker 1: elections again without causing being part of a train wreck
Speaker 1: that might repeat history, and just allow us to nominate
Speaker 1: Donald Trump as our nominee, because I think that would
Speaker 1: be bad for the party and bad for the country. Really,
Speaker 1: I just don't believe that he was the right person
Speaker 1: to lead the party, and we've proven that and we've
Speaker 1: lost the last three elections in a row. So look,
Speaker 1: it gives a case there on why, hey, entering would
Speaker 1: just make it more likely that Trump would win. And
Speaker 1: you know what, let's respect the man. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't agree with Larry Hogan on a lot, but I
Speaker 1: think that his calculus is correct. You know, one of
Speaker 1: those where he's not letting his own narcissism get the
Speaker 1: better of him. He's like, I think there's probably another
Speaker 1: candidate we could probably all unify around him visa v. Trump,
Speaker 1: and then that person has a more realistic chance of
Speaker 1: taking him down. If you don't want Trump to win,
Speaker 1: that's the best possible case that you could make. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have seen that narcissism is pretty significant of a
Speaker 1: personality disorder amongst the Mike Pompeo's and the nicky Hales
Speaker 1: and them of the world. I don't get it, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't see their case. This is so obvious to
Speaker 1: anyone with the brain. And so I actually think we
Speaker 1: should take time to praise the politicians who are realistic.
Speaker 1: Thank you, you know you won in Maryland. Congratulations. The
Speaker 1: idea though, that you would ever win a GOP primary,
Speaker 1: it's a complete and total fantasy. So let's give them
Speaker 1: props whenever they step out. Listen, it's very clear that
Speaker 1: the chance they have of defeating Trump as if everybody
Speaker 1: who's in the Trump skeptical or never Trump faction of
Speaker 1: the party unites behind one candidate. And if you have
Speaker 1: you know, if Larry Hogan drop jumped in and he
Speaker 1: got let's say five percent of the vote, that's five
Speaker 1: percent that's not going to Ron DeSantis that he could
Speaker 1: potentially pick up. And all of that is going to
Speaker 1: be absolutely critical when you are mounting at this point
Speaker 1: a real come from behind campaign to try to take
Speaker 1: out the guy who is the former president and the
Speaker 1: current clear leader of the Republican Party. He wrote an
Speaker 1: obed about this too. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. From the New York Times. He said,
Speaker 1: in part, Larry Hogan, I'm not seeking the Republican nomination
Speaker 1: for president. I believe the tides are finally turning. Republican
Speaker 1: voters are growing tie of the drama, are open to
Speaker 1: new leadership. And while I'm optimistic about the future of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, I'm deeply concerned about this next election.
Speaker 1: We cannot afford to have mister Trump as our nominee
Speaker 1: and suffer defeat for the fourth consecutive election cycle. To
Speaker 1: once again be a successful governing party, we must move
Speaker 1: on from mister Trump. There are several competent Republican leaders
Speaker 1: who have the potential to step up and lead, but
Speaker 1: the stakes are too high for me to risk being
Speaker 1: part of another multi car pile up that could potentially
Speaker 1: help mister Trump recapture the domination. I think all of
Speaker 1: that is very well. I would say I think the
Speaker 1: I believe the tides are finally turning part is maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit of wishful thinking. But in terms of
Speaker 1: the strategic calculus here, it's very clearly thought out and
Speaker 1: I think very obvious that you know, the best chance
Speaker 1: that they have is to night behind one person. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just in favor of people being realistic here, Like
Speaker 1: with all of these you know politicians, they all everybody
Speaker 1: tries to look at the Obama campaign of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight has come from behind. Obama, first of all,
Speaker 1: was an hour ady sitting senator. He was coming up
Speaker 1: against Hillary. He had a a lot of money and
Speaker 1: also an organic actual base of the party that wanted
Speaker 1: him to run. He used that to differentiate himself from
Speaker 1: Hillary and able to win those come from behind campaigns.
Speaker 1: But he was starting off almost from a dessantist level
Speaker 1: of support before he ended up winning that primary. You
Speaker 1: have to have much more name recognition. You can't be
Speaker 1: one of these one percenters. In fact, I went back
Speaker 1: and looked, there is not a single candidate who's won
Speaker 1: a major party nomination who started off at one or
Speaker 1: two percent. Almost every single one of them had massive
Speaker 1: name id The only example you might be able to
Speaker 1: point to is a Bill Clinton. But even Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: had been a governor for twelve years, he was the
Speaker 1: head of the committee, He'd given major speeches at the
Speaker 1: Democratic Committee whenever that type of stuff mattered, and he
Speaker 1: was pulling at what ten fifteen percent? He got thirty
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire. Eventually was able to come back and
Speaker 1: win in the New York primary, But even he did
Speaker 1: not start off from even close to the handicap that
Speaker 1: a lot of these people would be starting off from.
Speaker 1: So there's no historical basis for a lot of these
Speaker 1: people's candidacy. Give me one thing, you know, it is
Speaker 1: a different time now, social media whatever like it would
Speaker 1: be one thing if these weren't individuals who had already
Speaker 1: long been on the national scene. When I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, et cetera, et cetera. Right, but
Speaker 1: the American people kind of know who you are, they
Speaker 1: kind of seen you in action, and theyre aren't supporting
Speaker 1: you yet. So what are you going to put into
Speaker 1: a campaign that is going to dramatically ultimately shift that.
Speaker 1: So I think, especially for the folks who have been
Speaker 1: in the political world, on the political scene for a
Speaker 1: long period of time, and they're still pulling at you know,
Speaker 1: five seven, ten percent. Sometimes in the case of Mike Pence,
Speaker 1: I think it is unlikely that you were going to
Speaker 1: shift that dynamic, especially when listen, they maybe had a
Speaker 1: chance to kind of, you know, stick the knife in
Speaker 1: Trump right after January sixth, he was very vulnerable. The
Speaker 1: American people were absolutely disgusted some of his media allies,
Speaker 1: some of his top allies, and they backed away from that,
Speaker 1: and you're never going to get that opportunity back. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Also in the wake of the midterm elections, that was
Speaker 1: when he was kind of at his weakest. It was
Speaker 1: really clear he was an electoral liability, especially his election
Speaker 1: and conspiracies. In terms of the midterm results. DeSantis had
Speaker 1: a great night ultimately in Florida, and you know, nobody
Speaker 1: really moved into action to try to take him ount then,
Speaker 1: either because they're all dealing with this prisoner's dilemma of
Speaker 1: they know whoever goes after him is likely to get nuked,
Speaker 1: so they're just hoping that somebody else is going to
Speaker 1: do their dirty work for them, and ultimately no one is.
Speaker 1: They're not going to come to your rescue. If you
Speaker 1: want to take out Trump, you have to be able
Speaker 1: to make a cogent case against him that is going
Speaker 1: to land with the Republican base. I have yet to
Speaker 1: see any evidence that any of these people are up
Speaker 1: to the task that I agree with. All Right, so
Speaker 1: this is another little nugget from Seapac. Steve Bannon was
Speaker 1: there and he basically declared all out war on Fox News.
Speaker 1: Take a listen, Okay, Murdoch, here's the way it's going
Speaker 1: to be. Brother. You've disrespected Donald J. Trump long enough. Okay,
Speaker 1: he goes to Palestine and gets a Biden administration. It's
Speaker 1: a global news event and you don't cover it live.
Speaker 1: Is there that much happening on Fox News at two
Speaker 1: in the afternoon that you can't cover him live? He
Speaker 1: hasn't been on Fox News since he announced for presidency.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, any guy that brought peace to
Speaker 1: the world for four years until Chinese let off a
Speaker 1: bio weapon, right, wouldn't you think to have respect for
Speaker 1: the audience, you would have him back up here to
Speaker 1: talk about the geopolgus. What if you had respect for people,
Speaker 1: would you do that? They don't respect you. Read the depositions,
Speaker 1: the deposition. They have a fear, a loathing and contempt
Speaker 1: for you. He's actually right about that last part. That
Speaker 1: was one of my takeaways from the deposition. Now, he
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it the way I do. The way I
Speaker 1: mean it is like they're willing to lie to their
Speaker 1: audience for readings and money. His view was like, oh,
Speaker 1: they weren't willing to go along with the stop the
Speaker 1: steal conspiracies. And you know that he takes sort of
Speaker 1: the opposite approach in terms of his conclusion that they
Speaker 1: have contempt for their own viewership. But I do think
Speaker 1: that that is a logical conclusion from the depositions and
Speaker 1: all of the text messages that came out during that time.
Speaker 1: I do agree that there's a lot of contempt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, and in a way they almost realize their
Speaker 1: own power. They're like, wow, you know, people really believe
Speaker 1: a lot of what we say, and they're not even look,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're like all these people are totally captured.
Speaker 1: But I do think that he isn't wrong, which is Look,
Speaker 1: you know, with Fox, they have had a yo yo
Speaker 1: on Trump from the beginning. They were against him than
Speaker 1: they were formed whenever he was good for ratings. And
Speaker 1: do any of us have any real like confidence that
Speaker 1: after he wins a nomination that they won't be covering
Speaker 1: him and going to bat for him, and of course
Speaker 1: they will, So just stop the game. Stop pretending. That's
Speaker 1: actually what I find most disgusting, like in general, with
Speaker 1: all of these just treat everybody fairly. You know, they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be blocking him off. Also, I guarantee you that's
Speaker 1: not what his audience wants either. So they're trying to
Speaker 1: have it both ways where they're an active influence in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, but then they also bow to their
Speaker 1: viewers whenever the time comes. So you really do need
Speaker 1: to pick one. Just give people what they want, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what those people want. I think we're
Speaker 1: going to I'm going to tell you a little bit
Speaker 1: more about you know, what's what was revealed in the
Speaker 1: depositions and all of that going on behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: because I do think it is a fascinating look at
Speaker 1: the way these cable news outfits actually operate and what
Speaker 1: they actually care about. But a really clear takeaway here
Speaker 1: is that you know, all of the idea of Okay,
Speaker 1: Fox News determines what the Republican base cares about, and
Speaker 1: Fox News tells the Republican base who they're going to
Speaker 1: vote for and who the right candidate is. That may
Speaker 1: have been the case at one point, maybe two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, maybe that was the case at one point.
Speaker 1: It is really not the case anymore because they wanted
Speaker 1: to push back on the Stop the Steal conspiracies, and
Speaker 1: ultimately there was such a revolt from their own audience
Speaker 1: and like instantaneous, especially over the Arizona Call, that they
Speaker 1: changed the way they were operating, and they sort of
Speaker 1: gave some of their primetime hosts, in particular, free reign
Speaker 1: to indulge the most insane of the conspiracy theories with
Speaker 1: regard to stop the Steal. So the idea that they
Speaker 1: are going to be to have control over the Republican primary,
Speaker 1: and that since Ronda Santis is their guy, they're going
Speaker 1: to be able to push Ronda Santis on the Republican base.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, maybe the Republican base chooses Ronda Santis.
Speaker 1: That is certainly still a possibility. I don't want to
Speaker 1: rule it out, but it's not going to be because
Speaker 1: Fox News decided this is the candidate. Because they have
Speaker 1: lost control of the Republican base to the extent that
Speaker 1: they ever had them And I do think it is
Speaker 1: really obviously, like blatantly biased that they've been having Desantas
Speaker 1: on for all kinds of like puff pieces and softball
Speaker 1: interviews and going down to Florida and all of this,
Speaker 1: And we track this even before the midterms, they started
Speaker 1: in this direction. They would put together these pieces like
Speaker 1: cherry picking voters that would say, oh, I love Rhonda Santis.
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis is great. And Trump reportedly is on a
Speaker 1: soft ban at the network he has not been on
Speaker 1: since he announced his candidacy, and neither have any of
Speaker 1: his family members and children I think are also on
Speaker 1: the same soft ban. So it's really clear what side
Speaker 1: they have come down on. They definitely preferred to Santis
Speaker 1: to Trump. Is that ultimately going to matter? I kind
Speaker 1: of don't really think so. Yeah, I don't think so either.
Speaker 1: I mean, why don't we go to the deposition? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So go ahead and put this. This is a deep
Speaker 1: dive from the New York Times about some parts of
Speaker 1: this deposition. This is all with regard to the dominion
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Fox News. I have no insight into whether
Speaker 1: this lawsuit is ultimately going to succeed, but I can
Speaker 1: say that what has come out of it has been
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. So the headline here is inside the panic
Speaker 1: at Fox News after the twenty twenty election. If we
Speaker 1: hadn't called Arizona, said Suzanne Scott, who's the networks chief executive.
Speaker 1: According to a recording reviewed by The New York Times,
Speaker 1: our ratings would have been bigger. Yeah, and the whole article.
Speaker 1: I'll give you some of the specific details here, but
Speaker 1: that's basically the whole tenor of what was going on
Speaker 1: at Fox News behind the scenes after they called Arizona, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, they were right about. They had developed
Speaker 1: their own proprietary system to predict and accurately call races
Speaker 1: across the country. That's why they were ahead of the
Speaker 1: game on Arizona, something that news networks would typically be
Speaker 1: very proud of. But there was such a massive backlash
Speaker 1: they actually ended up firing the two key people who
Speaker 1: were involved in making that correct decision because there was
Speaker 1: such a fewer backlash. And then, and this is also,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really astonishing, they debated internally how
Speaker 1: they should handle ultimately calling the race for now President
Speaker 1: Biden because they knew they were likely to be first
Speaker 1: because their system was better than all of the other networks,
Speaker 1: but they did not want to be first, so they
Speaker 1: decided to actually sandbag it and wait for the other
Speaker 1: networks to call, even though they had gotten the official
Speaker 1: call from their own election desk like a day earlier.
Speaker 1: But they want They waited intentionally to try to take
Speaker 1: the heat off, and then, like I said, the two
Speaker 1: people who were involved in making those accurate, correct calls
Speaker 1: first of any of the networks get fired for it.
Speaker 1: So let me read you some of this. The details
Speaker 1: here they say a little more than a week after
Speaker 1: television networks called the twenty twenty presidential election for Biden,
Speaker 1: top executives and anchors at Fox News held an after
Speaker 1: action meeting to figure out how they had messed up.
Speaker 1: Not because they'd gotten the call wrong, but because they'd
Speaker 1: gotten it right, and they'd gotten it right before anyone else. Typically,
Speaker 1: it's a point of pride for news network to be
Speaker 1: the first to project election winners. But Fox is no
Speaker 1: typical network, and in the days following the twenty twenty vote,
Speaker 1: it was besieged with angry protests not only from President
Speaker 1: Trump's camp but from its own viewers because it had
Speaker 1: called the battleground state of Arizona for Biden. Never Mind
Speaker 1: the call was correct, Fox executives worried they would lose
Speaker 1: viewers to hardwright competitors like Newsmax, and so On Monday,
Speaker 1: November sixteenth, Zan Scott, who was the head of the network,
Speaker 1: and Jay Wallace, the network's president, convened a zoom meaning
Speaker 1: for an extraordinary discussion with an unusual goal, how to
Speaker 1: keep from angering the network's conservative audience again by calling
Speaker 1: an election for a Democrat before the competition. They floated
Speaker 1: a bunch of different ideas. Maybe Fox executives use they
Speaker 1: should abandon this sophisticated new election projecting syste which Fox
Speaker 1: had invested millions of dollars, and go back to a worse,
Speaker 1: less accurate model they had been using before. Or maybe
Speaker 1: they should base calls not solely on numbers but how
Speaker 1: viewers might react. Or maybe they should delay calls even
Speaker 1: if they were right, just to keep the audience in
Speaker 1: suspense and boost viewership. Here's a quote. Listen. It's one
Speaker 1: of the sad realities. If we hadn't called Arizona those
Speaker 1: three or four days following the election day, our ratings
Speaker 1: would have been bigger. Suzanne Scott said. The mystery would
Speaker 1: have still been hanging out there. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: more like that. And by the way, Brett Baarr and
Speaker 1: Martha McCallum, who were held out is like, you know,
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of their news gathering whatever. They were deeply
Speaker 1: involved in this, and they were on the same side
Speaker 1: of like, hey, let's wait, because they were the ones
Speaker 1: getting a lot of the pushback from viewers. They didn't
Speaker 1: like taking the heat, and so they were also in
Speaker 1: favor of let's sandbag, let's let the other networks make
Speaker 1: the call, even though we are likely to know ahead
Speaker 1: of everybody else. Yeah. Look, I mean, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things we always try and emphasize here is
Speaker 1: how bad all three of these cable networks are. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at that. This how much contempt that they have.
Speaker 1: They are willing to abandon their proprietary system just because
Speaker 1: they're afraid of what their core viewer base may think.
Speaker 1: That's outrageous. I mean, they are willing to abandon their
Speaker 1: actual factual calls on the state of Arizona and others
Speaker 1: based on the millions of dollars that they spent on
Speaker 1: the system. And supposedly, we're very proud of all because
Speaker 1: it goes against the editorial direction of the network. It
Speaker 1: just shows you that, like literally the feelings do trump
Speaker 1: facts over yes, and at all of these I really
Speaker 1: do feel that less the money fast overall, right, oh,
Speaker 1: our ratings would have been higher, I mean, and then
Speaker 1: going and firing some of the people that were involved.
Speaker 1: It's just totally ridiculous the way that they handle themselves.
Speaker 1: And that's why they need to pick. You can either
Speaker 1: go editorially, can go facts. You can't do both. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of back in twenty twelve when it was
Speaker 1: becoming they had really sold to their audience leading up
Speaker 1: to twenty twelve election presidential election that any a toaster
Speaker 1: could be Obama, any buddy could beat Obama. He was
Speaker 1: completely hated, you know, Mitt Romney was a shoe in.
Speaker 1: And so then when election night comes and the results
Speaker 1: are not turning out that way, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of panic and meltdown on the network,
Speaker 1: and in particular Carl Rove was they had called Ohio
Speaker 1: and Carl Rove was like, no, no, no, this is
Speaker 1: too early. I'm talking to people. This county's out, that's
Speaker 1: county still out. And Megan Kelly famously said to him like,
Speaker 1: is this real math or is this just math you
Speaker 1: do as a Republican and make yourself feel better, And
Speaker 1: it led to an extraordinary television moment where she actually
Speaker 1: they took the camera, she walked down the hall to
Speaker 1: the decision desk they live on air, justified why they
Speaker 1: made that call, et cetera, and didn't back down. And
Speaker 1: that was in the pre Trump era, when I think
Speaker 1: they still felt a lot more confident with their position
Speaker 1: visa via the Republican base. Now they don't have that
Speaker 1: same level of confidence that they can, you know, stick
Speaker 1: to the facts when it comes to something as black
Speaker 1: and white as did the President win this state or not.
Speaker 1: They clearly don't feel that same level of comf evidence
Speaker 1: and they are terrified that their viewer base is going
Speaker 1: to abandon them in droves. But I think it really
Speaker 1: is an extraordinary window into not just Fox News, but
Speaker 1: CNN and MSNBC. I mean, they have these same business incentives. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it is not about facts. It's not about journalism. You
Speaker 1: could see this certainly in the Russia Gate coverage for example.
Speaker 1: Over at MSNBC. It's about feeding an audience. The things
Speaker 1: that they want to see and feeding them the things
Speaker 1: that they can tell are going to juice ratings, regardless
Speaker 1: of whether they are the most important stories or whether
Speaker 1: those stories are ultimately accurate. So I think that's why
Speaker 1: these texts and these internal meetings are so extraordinary to
Speaker 1: actually watch it laid out in black and white, like
Speaker 1: on their own voices. These are all recordings from the
Speaker 1: Zoom meeting explaining that the thing they cared the most
Speaker 1: about is the ratings, and that they're terrified of their
Speaker 1: own audience. There's one more piece of this that I
Speaker 1: think is worth getting into. Rupert Murdoch admitted, as part
Speaker 1: of his deposition, go and put this next piece up
Speaker 1: on the screen, guys, that some Fox News hosts had
Speaker 1: endorsed Trump's false election fraud claims. He acknowledged this in
Speaker 1: unveiled question answers from his deposition. He was asked if
Speaker 1: he was quote now aware that Fox endorsed at times
Speaker 1: this false notion of a stolen election. Murdoch responded, quote
Speaker 1: not Fox, meaning not the network. No, not Fox, but
Speaker 1: maybe lou Dobbs, maybe Maria Bartiroo as commentators. He went
Speaker 1: on to say, some of our commentators were endorsing it.
Speaker 1: They endorsed, so an acknowledgment there of you know what
Speaker 1: was kind of plainly obvious to anyone who was watching
Speaker 1: this all unfold at the time. All I would say
Speaker 1: is this is a sign of a dying organization. You know,
Speaker 1: whenever you're dying, one of the ways that you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that you're not a precarious spot is
Speaker 1: to get to some tipping point where you may tip
Speaker 1: you over to the point where you're just ultimately going
Speaker 1: to fail. The twenty twenty twelve that's when their ratings
Speaker 1: are much stronger. They had a much better hold on
Speaker 1: linear TV, they didn't feel as under threat by newsbacks,
Speaker 1: by Oan and all these others were no real competitors.
Speaker 1: You know what the irony is to all of this,
Speaker 1: This whole thing is IDEOC might cost them a billion
Speaker 1: six in a settlement with domin at the end of
Speaker 1: the end, not to mention the reputational damage of all
Speaker 1: the depositions that now Steve Bannon, your enemies from the
Speaker 1: left and the right are using against you, So not
Speaker 1: playing it straight may actually cost you even more in
Speaker 1: the long run. Yes, an idiot move. From the very
Speaker 1: beginning the last thing I want to say about this
Speaker 1: because we see this in independent media as well. In fact,
Speaker 1: you see it in some ways more often in independent
Speaker 1: media because cable news networks, I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: their pay comes from advertisers from other corporations, from the
Speaker 1: cable news carry rates. Ratings are actually kind of secondary
Speaker 1: in terms of their profit and business model. But audience
Speaker 1: capture is very real. And if you go down the
Speaker 1: path of consistently just leaning into feeding your audience whatever
Speaker 1: it is you think that they want to hear, this
Speaker 1: is the place you're going to end up in where
Speaker 1: you have backed yourself into a corner where you increasingly
Speaker 1: compromise your own ethics, morals, and integrity to try to
Speaker 1: guess what the audience really want wants to hear, versus
Speaker 1: cultivating an audience that expects to be challenged at times,
Speaker 1: that expects that sometimes they're going to disagree with you,
Speaker 1: and is not going to have like a panic attack
Speaker 1: and freak out and melt down run away the minute
Speaker 1: that that happens. So listen, they've walked themselves up to
Speaker 1: this ledge over many, many years, and it's no surprise
Speaker 1: at this point they feel like they can't possibly back
Speaker 1: away from it. Sometimes you got to take the hit.
Speaker 1: Maybe one day we'll tell you about how much money
Speaker 1: we lost on Afghanistan and on your crate. Maybe one
Speaker 1: day we'll reopen the wounds of what it costs to
Speaker 1: actually just tell you what we really thought about Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I have no regrets about that entire situation. Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, guys, let's turn back to Ohio.
Speaker 1: Is the story we do not want to stop focusing on.
Speaker 1: And we've got some news this morning, which is there
Speaker 1: was another Norfolk Southern train derailment in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and take a look. This is some
Speaker 1: extraordinary video are going to put up on the screen.
Speaker 1: You can see someone is recording this from their car.
Speaker 1: They're at a train crossing. The train starts to come
Speaker 1: off the tracks. It's hitting like the sign posts there
Speaker 1: that tells you you need to stop for the train.
Speaker 1: Cars starts backing up. I mean, probably needs to turn
Speaker 1: around and get the hell out of there. Absolutely terrifying
Speaker 1: to watch this unfold, and ultimately about twenty cars of
Speaker 1: this cargo train derailed. As they point out in this article.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. This is the second
Speaker 1: derailment obviously of the company's trains in Ohio in a month,
Speaker 1: unlike the February third derailment. Now, they did initially respond
Speaker 1: with has matt you know, with first responders and has
Speaker 1: Matt suits, just to make sure there was nothing toxic
Speaker 1: aboard this train. Apparently there were no hazardous materials aboard
Speaker 1: this train. According to the Columbus Dispatch, it had no passengers.
Speaker 1: It derailed about five pm on Saturday by State Route
Speaker 1: forty one near the Clark County Fairgrounds, and they asked
Speaker 1: residents initially within a small radius about a thousand feet
Speaker 1: of the derailment to shelter in place, but they did
Speaker 1: not issue you formal evacuation orders. Once again Sager highlighting
Speaker 1: just how common derailments are in this country, and again
Speaker 1: this is not something that is a global phenomenon. Specifically
Speaker 1: a problem here because of industry capture and the fact
Speaker 1: that we have rolled back so many safety regulations that
Speaker 1: are designed to try to prevent terrifying incidents such as
Speaker 1: this one. Well, yeah, five thousand residents had to a vacuum.
Speaker 1: It's not a joke, right, I mean people are terrified. Obviously,
Speaker 1: a specially shelter in places, all the shelter in place,
Speaker 1: and they didn't know exactly what they were going to do.
Speaker 1: People are still afraid of what's happening with the toxic chemicals.
Speaker 1: They don't have any response. They don't have any confidence
Speaker 1: right now in the government over their handling of the crisis,
Speaker 1: and I mean, really, why should they. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we're almost over a month now into this entire thing.
Speaker 1: It's beginning to move and slightly out of the headlines.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we're learning is that there's
Speaker 1: almost a thousand train derailments a year in this country.
Speaker 1: And everyone's like, see, why are you focusing on I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on a second. So how many are in the
Speaker 1: rest of the developed world. Oh, we're orders of magnitude
Speaker 1: higher than everybody else. Okay, America is a big country.
Speaker 1: You certainly have more rail lines, mileage, et cetera. Than
Speaker 1: many others, maybe China and a few others that might
Speaker 1: even come close. But why does this keep happening here?
Speaker 1: And look in those countries. You know, there's pluses and
Speaker 1: minuses to any system, but over there they have much
Speaker 1: more stringent regulation and bigger fines and bigger punishment for
Speaker 1: anybody who has caught breaking the rules like this, Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly right. At the same time, pretty extraordinary interview with
Speaker 1: our friend Pete Footagage, Secretary of Transportation. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. This was a CNN
Speaker 1: interview that he gave. I presume thinking that he was
Speaker 1: going to get a softball friendly treatment here. The headline
Speaker 1: is just incredible. Pete Footagage starts to rethink how he
Speaker 1: does his job in wake of Alio trade disaster. Oh really,
Speaker 1: oh really, Pete, it wasn't enough, you know, the supply
Speaker 1: chain crisis wasn't enough, the airline crisis, the fact that
Speaker 1: we've had, you know, multiple issues and catastrophes in terms
Speaker 1: of air travel as well. It took to you till
Speaker 1: this moment to realize maybe that you weren't handling things
Speaker 1: and quite the right way by being completely absentee and
Speaker 1: seemingly only caring about like ribbon cutting ceremonies, something that he,
Speaker 1: by the way, admits to in this peace. This is
Speaker 1: what I find so extreme because we've been saying this
Speaker 1: for a while, Like obviously he wanted this job because
Speaker 1: he wanted to be Transportation secretary. Sea could dole out checks,
Speaker 1: fly around the country, take pictures with mayors, take pictures
Speaker 1: with governors, do the ribbon cutting ceremonies. He actually acknowledges
Speaker 1: in this piece that that is precisely what he wants
Speaker 1: to do. It's astonishing, he says. Boodhaj just says what
Speaker 1: he'd rather be doing his trips, like what he did
Speaker 1: on Monday, opening the first new airport terminal in Kansas
Speaker 1: City since Vice President's Bureau Agnew was there for a
Speaker 1: ribbon cutting. Buddhaja derived Lake Curcei being stuck on his
Speaker 1: own delayed Southwest Airlines flight lol, celebrating the groundbreaking on
Speaker 1: a record busting four billion dollar electric vehicle battery plant,
Speaker 1: and just odo of Kansas and talking transportation programs with
Speaker 1: students at the University of Missouri. So openly admits here
Speaker 1: that is the sort of thing that he would rather
Speaker 1: be doing as opposed to holding corrupt industries like the
Speaker 1: airline industry and like the rail industry to account. He
Speaker 1: does acknowledge he should have gone to East Palestine, Ohio earlier.
Speaker 1: He said he failed to anticipate the political fallout from
Speaker 1: the toxic train derailment. Despite months of transportation problems like
Speaker 1: mass flight cancelations and air traffic control system shutdown that
Speaker 1: left many Americans frustrated. But he also punched back at critics,
Speaker 1: arguing that many of the problems he's being blamed for
Speaker 1: are only partially connected to his portfolio and mostly out
Speaker 1: of his direct control. So, once again, Sagur, it's not
Speaker 1: his fault. He's powerless. He can't really do anything. This
Speaker 1: is in his portfolio, and he only cares that he
Speaker 1: didn't go to East Palestine, Ohio earlier because it became
Speaker 1: a political problem for him. That's pretty obvious from his commons.
Speaker 1: We just had another near miss on the tarmac. The
Speaker 1: FAA is in a complete disaster. You know, I think
Speaker 1: we'll probably cover it tomorrow. There's a major conference being
Speaker 1: called about these terrible safety events, and with the shutdown,
Speaker 1: the FAA is in bigger shambles, and it's been in
Speaker 1: a long decades actually, according to the pilots and the
Speaker 1: regulators themselves. What are you doing? You know, you can
Speaker 1: claim all day that you didn't have responsibility, but you
Speaker 1: do now. You were the Secretary of Transportation. And really,
Speaker 1: when he says that, he's saying, I don't want to
Speaker 1: do my job. I don't want to get intimately involved.
Speaker 1: You know, people who are in positions of power like this,
Speaker 1: they wrangle the troops, they cut through the red red tape,
Speaker 1: and they try and deliver. And I also found it
Speaker 1: was extraordinary, as you said at the top of it,
Speaker 1: just knowing what he really admits is yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: expect that I would have to work this hard. That's right.
Speaker 1: I think he's absolutely fundamentally lazy, having come from the
Speaker 1: corporate world and being a small town mayor of where
Speaker 1: it's you know, plot twist actually didn't do that good
Speaker 1: of a job. We covered some of the transportation and
Speaker 1: infrastructure failings that he had while he was the mayor
Speaker 1: of South Bend. He was completely unqualified and worse, now
Speaker 1: that he's in this position, he is using his allies
Speaker 1: in the media to do little puff pieces like this,
Speaker 1: where even this like moderately strong piece. You know. The
Speaker 1: other thing that drove me crazy is he tried to
Speaker 1: conflate criticism him with people online who were criticizing the
Speaker 1: boots that he was wearing. Maybe there was I didn't
Speaker 1: see it. I didn't even know. I didn't see much
Speaker 1: of that commentary. What I did see or people saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it's bs that you didn't come here for
Speaker 1: days and that you're not taking responsibility. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: it's bullshit that it's the idea that he went there
Speaker 1: because Trump had already gone there. It was apparently already
Speaker 1: on the books. I don't know if I believe that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I believe that at all. I think
Speaker 1: Biden probably called him said you need to get your
Speaker 1: asked East Palatine right, listen. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was specifically because of the Trump visit, but it was
Speaker 1: one hundred percent because of the political pressure and the
Speaker 1: fact that this became very hot. And yes, the right
Speaker 1: picked up on this and you know, wanted to use
Speaker 1: it as a cudgel, no doubt about it. Although I
Speaker 1: want to give a lot of credit to the Republican
Speaker 1: senators who have signed on to a bipartisan bill that
Speaker 1: would actually do something real about real safety. We'll see
Speaker 1: if that goes anywhere in the Republican House or as in,
Speaker 1: Biden just endorsed it, So that's a big deals Bright
Speaker 1: and endorsed it. That is all. That is all genuinely
Speaker 1: positive to see that kind of progress. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: right picked up on this, but it wasn't only the right,
Speaker 1: I can promise you it was not only the right.
Speaker 1: Blendy people on the left and even a few members
Speaker 1: of his elected members of his own party were critical
Speaker 1: of this response as well. And his takeaway from this
Speaker 1: piece too. What he lays out is he doesn't feel
Speaker 1: that the actual actions that he took with regard to
Speaker 1: his job, he doesn't feel like that's where he messed up.
Speaker 1: He feels like he messed up on the optics. Why
Speaker 1: does he feel that way, because optics are all this
Speaker 1: man really genuinely cares about. That's a good point, and
Speaker 1: it's not the optics. I mean him going to East Palestine.
Speaker 1: It does matter when you have government officials show up
Speaker 1: and make it clear that we are focused on this.
Speaker 1: This is a priority. We care, we see you, we
Speaker 1: understand the pain. He even says himself. Being there, seeing
Speaker 1: the twisted metal and spelling the chemicals in the air,
Speaker 1: it is much different than reading some report, some sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, arms length distance reports, sanitized about
Speaker 1: what's going on in the ground. So it matters being there,
Speaker 1: But what matters a hell of a lot more is
Speaker 1: what you did up to this point and what you're
Speaker 1: going to do moving forward from this point. And he
Speaker 1: continues in this piece to just pretend like, Huh, this
Speaker 1: isn't really my fault and I really can't do anything
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, he's crazy, congenitally is unable to take responsibility. Correct,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent correct. At the same time, still a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about what is in the air, what
Speaker 1: is in the water, is it actually safe in this town?
Speaker 1: And are there going to be long term health impacts
Speaker 1: from this quote unquote controlled release of toxic, cancerous chemicals.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up on the screen. From the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: the EPA has now what a month later, ordered testing
Speaker 1: for highly toxic dioxians at the Ohio derailment site. The
Speaker 1: agency ordered rail company Norfolk Southern to test the Ohio
Speaker 1: Derailment area for dioxists. Is a dangerous and persistent class
Speaker 1: of pollutants. I don't know why the hell they're asking
Speaker 1: Norfolk Southern to do it too. By the way, just
Speaker 1: go do it yourself, my god, Like, why are we
Speaker 1: trusting the polluters to be the ones that are handling
Speaker 1: these critical tests? Do you really think that residents are
Speaker 1: going to feel confident in tests that were paid for
Speaker 1: and managed by Norfolk Southern, the very people that cause
Speaker 1: this catastrophe. Putting that aside, they say here, after weeks
Speaker 1: of questions about contamination associated with this Traine derailment, they
Speaker 1: ordered rail company in Norfit Southern to tests area for dixins.
Speaker 1: That's a dangerous classic plutance that is created when plastic
Speaker 1: is burned. The train, of course that crash was carrying
Speaker 1: chemicals that were used to make plastics. They go on
Speaker 1: to say, a course of academics, environmentals and residents have
Speaker 1: been raising alarm about potential dioxide contamination because days after
Speaker 1: the derailment, authorities who were seeking to avoid explosion, purposely
Speaker 1: released and burned chemical vinyl chlorid that is a key
Speaker 1: component of PVC plastics. EPA officials say it's a low
Speaker 1: probability of dioxid and contamination, but they want to go
Speaker 1: ahead and test to make sure, just so you can
Speaker 1: know a little bit more about what dioxins are, because
Speaker 1: this wasn't something that I think was broadly known before
Speaker 1: this situation. They're produced when you burn anything from wooden
Speaker 1: fossil fuels to municipal waste and cigarettes, combustion releases chlorine
Speaker 1: stored in those substances. It reacts with other compounds to
Speaker 1: form dioxins. The plutans are a particular concerned when plastic
Speaker 1: is burned because chlorine is a key element of plastics.
Speaker 1: They are linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, and
Speaker 1: immune system damage. They're particularly troublesome because they are slow
Speaker 1: to break down in the environment. They build up in
Speaker 1: the food chain, and that EPA said that most human
Speaker 1: exposure dioxins in the US is tied to releases that
Speaker 1: occurred decades ago. They didn't respond to questions about why
Speaker 1: it was Norfolk Southern who was tasked with conducting these tests.
Speaker 1: Why are they the ones who are conducting the test,
Speaker 1: Why do the APA wait so long to conduct this test?
Speaker 1: And at one point we got to wonder, are they
Speaker 1: waiting for stuff to dissipate? Like how does that work?
Speaker 1: Why do they wait a month in order to order
Speaker 1: this They should have ordered it within the first week.
Speaker 1: So still a lot of question and who knows, you know,
Speaker 1: what if that test does pop positive, and if North
Speaker 1: Southern is even going to give you proper data, you
Speaker 1: know you can't trustworthy custodian of data. And has a
Speaker 1: direct financial interest in terms of fines and in future
Speaker 1: regulatory authority to hold them accountable for making sure that
Speaker 1: they don't have to pay as much as possible. This
Speaker 1: is total craziness. I don't understand why they waited so long.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why you would use Norfolk. Well, I
Speaker 1: do understand. It's because they want this all to go away.
Speaker 1: That's the reason. Okay, let's not be clulas there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they wanted to go away, so they put it off
Speaker 1: as long as they could. But there have been too
Speaker 1: many people, and not just like ran people like us
Speaker 1: who don't know anything about chemicals on TV talking about it.
Speaker 1: Actual researchers who deal with this stuff are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you got to check this out and make sure. Maybe
Speaker 1: you think there's a low probability, but you have to
Speaker 1: make sure because we're talking about serious long term issues
Speaker 1: for the residents of this town who need to know
Speaker 1: whether it is safe for them to continue to live
Speaker 1: there or not. And of course, you know, if this
Speaker 1: is declared a public health emergency, if it's declared basically
Speaker 1: you know this town is now toxic to live in.
Speaker 1: That's obviously going to have major implications for the government
Speaker 1: for Norfolk Southern and so that's why they have tried
Speaker 1: to jamp down on all of this. But we are
Speaker 1: certainly going to keep our eye on it absolutely, all right, guys.
Speaker 1: So we officially have one Democrat in the race. Remember
Speaker 1: Joe Bidens. It hasn't officially announced yet, alto most people
Speaker 1: think that he's going to run, but best selling author
Speaker 1: Mary and Williamson, who ran last time around as well,
Speaker 1: she announced she is officially running for president, seeking the
Speaker 1: Democratic nomination. In a speech at Union Station over the weekend.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listener to a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: This system is intrinsically corrupt. We can see it in
Speaker 1: the broken windows. We can see it in the shadowed
Speaker 1: shadow factories. We can see it in the addiction addle
Speaker 1: brokenness of our fellow citizens. We can see it in
Speaker 1: the despair. We can see it in the addiction. We
Speaker 1: can see it in the anxiety. We can see it
Speaker 1: in the depression. And people in this town, if they
Speaker 1: will not care enough to fit to solve the problems
Speaker 1: that produces all that despair, half the people in this
Speaker 1: city don't even notice it. They are so buffered from
Speaker 1: the ravagers of human suffering. They don't even mis the
Speaker 1: word poor. They don't even mention the word poverty, much
Speaker 1: less address its deeper causes. So some people in this
Speaker 1: city just don't even seem to care. Some people in
Speaker 1: this city, with some very brave exceptions, apparently don't have
Speaker 1: the spine or the moral courage to fix it. Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, let me in there. I will so democrats,
Speaker 1: fresh off the heels of lots of grandiose rhetoric about
Speaker 1: how much they care about democracy, how committed they are
Speaker 1: to the people having a voice, how's that going? How
Speaker 1: are they responding to this? Obviously with complete contempt and dismissal.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put this up on the screen from
Speaker 1: the hill. The headline here is Democrats brush off Mary
Speaker 1: and Williamson's twenty twenty four primary challenge. And there are
Speaker 1: some incredibly smug and condescending quotes here. Matt Bennett, co
Speaker 1: founder of the centrist think tank Third Way, he said,
Speaker 1: I hope and expect they will completely ignore it. She
Speaker 1: is not a credible candidate in any respect. She certainly
Speaker 1: isn't going to be challenging to win the nomination. If
Speaker 1: that's the only primary challenge he faces, Joe Biden can
Speaker 1: rest very easy until the general election, an aid to
Speaker 1: Congressman Don Bayer said on Twitter high AP in response
Speaker 1: to an AP article calling her a major Democrat. Marian
Speaker 1: Williamson is not a major Democrat. Thank you for your
Speaker 1: attention in this matter, and listen, whatever you think of
Speaker 1: Marian and her chances here. Number one, again, she is
Speaker 1: actually unopposed at this moment. She's the only Democrat who
Speaker 1: is in the race. Number two, It's up to the
Speaker 1: voters to decide. Democrats have already effectively rianked the primary
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden by putting South Carolina first. They're saying
Speaker 1: they don't even want to do any debates, so all
Speaker 1: of their rhetoric about how much they care about democracy
Speaker 1: and they're obviously total hypocrites when it comes to them
Speaker 1: maintaining their own grip on power. And I would also say,
Speaker 1: your guy here is going to be closer to ninety
Speaker 1: than he is to eighty by the end of his term.
Speaker 1: Give a majority of Democrats and an overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: the country who are like, please don't run, so save
Speaker 1: me your like smug and ary about how solid he
Speaker 1: is in terms of his standing visa VI the American people,
Speaker 1: not just that. I mean, look, Mary Anne was able
Speaker 1: to get to the debate stage as a Democratic candidate
Speaker 1: at a time when senators like Corey Booker and many
Speaker 1: others were not able to. This is a person who
Speaker 1: was able to raise the requisite number of funds and
Speaker 1: to actually hit the requisite two percent in polling to
Speaker 1: get there. Trump, I mean, right now, Biden is actually
Speaker 1: acting weaker than Trump. Trump is actually willing to have
Speaker 1: these Republican candidate debates. We have GOP primary debates which
Speaker 1: are already being negotiated with the major cable news networks,
Speaker 1: where we would anticipate in Nikki Haley, I aveak Ramaswami
Speaker 1: or any of these people if they do qualify to
Speaker 1: head up against him. So why don't you put yourself
Speaker 1: up in the same way. Jimmy Carter actually famously won
Speaker 1: his challenge while he was president in the debate stage
Speaker 1: against Ted Kennedy. And you know, the Carter campaign says
Speaker 1: that he was worse off for it. I'm not so sure,
Speaker 1: because it actually got him in some fighting spirit when
Speaker 1: he was able to go up against Raigan, now obviously lost,
Speaker 1: Mick Carter didn't need any help losing. No lost, he
Speaker 1: lost it, right Onda. It's a good point, and I
Speaker 1: am just generally of the opinion. Do you remember the
Speaker 1: first debate between Obama and Mitt Romney where Obama lost?
Speaker 1: He was terrible. And one of the reasons that came
Speaker 1: forward is Obama was in a bubble for four years.
Speaker 1: He had not debated anybody, whereas when he was the
Speaker 1: actual candidate into he had did like seventeen eighteen primary
Speaker 1: debates in two thousand and eight that made him sharp
Speaker 1: and ready to take on McCain. So even a challenge
Speaker 1: where you presume that the candidate is going to win anyways,
Speaker 1: it's actually very good for them by and large to
Speaker 1: actually go through some competitive process. This is what we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier with Ron DeSantis, and he's doing
Speaker 1: himself a disservice by keeping himself away from any potentially
Speaker 1: adversarial media and being very careful and very cautious about
Speaker 1: the interviews that he takes on because you need practice. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: you really need practice in order to be able to
Speaker 1: effectively compete in an election. I mean, and Biden didn't
Speaker 1: really get any last time around because of COVID that
Speaker 1: essentially rescued him and he could kind of hide in
Speaker 1: the basement for most of the general election. He does
Speaker 1: very limited and very you know, cautious media appearances as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he could use that blade sharpened, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. If that's even possible at this point. And
Speaker 1: if they were not, you know, if they really felt
Speaker 1: secure about their position Feza VI Joe Biden, then they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be worried about Mary and Williamson, you know, like
Speaker 1: I said, Look, she dropped down before the voted, you know,
Speaker 1: after Iowa last time around. Yeah, she made it to
Speaker 1: the debate stage, but she wasn't a huge factor. Like
Speaker 1: this is fine, We're not worried about it. The fact
Speaker 1: that you've had this incredibly fragile response to her, I
Speaker 1: think is really interesting. And they have a big problem
Speaker 1: on their hands in New Hampshire in particular, those people
Speaker 1: are pissed about the rewriting of the primary calendar because
Speaker 1: you have effectively stripped all of the sort of power
Speaker 1: and relevance of you know, that entire state and especially
Speaker 1: of the party faithful within the state of New Hampshire
Speaker 1: who you have openly come out, including a sitting member
Speaker 1: of Democratic Member of Congress and said we want primary
Speaker 1: challengers to Biden. We welcome primary challengers to Biden. We
Speaker 1: think he's going to have a problem in this state.
Speaker 1: Wasn't just these quotes in the Hill though, of course,
Speaker 1: MSNBC handling Marian in a very similar way. Let's take
Speaker 1: a listen to their coverage of her announcement. I don't
Speaker 1: consider Marion Williamson to be much of a threat. She's
Speaker 1: a spiritualizer and a twenty twenty all Storan who may
Speaker 1: not even make the debate stage. Let's be honest. I
Speaker 1: think in best way to handle her is not to
Speaker 1: address her at all, because I don't think many people
Speaker 1: consider her to be a major Democrat in ages is
Speaker 1: a concern for some for Biden. But she's seventy years old,
Speaker 1: so she doesn't exactly represent a new generation and leadership either.
Speaker 1: And she has no platform to speak of other than
Speaker 1: some nebulous Department of Peace, and so she's not a
Speaker 1: threat to Biden. Okay, Number one, you don't get to
Speaker 1: decide whether she's major Democrat. The idea is that people
Speaker 1: get to decide, and that you know, we'll have their verdict.
Speaker 1: Number two, the parth actually really pissed me. Off was
Speaker 1: her saying she doesn't have a platform, because that is
Speaker 1: just factually, that's just completely utterly false. She has a platform.
Speaker 1: Whether you like her platform or not, you can look
Speaker 1: at it, you can disagree with it, but she's been
Speaker 1: very clear and very specific about what she stands for. Well, also,
Speaker 1: seventy is a hell a lot different maybe two, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean like on a scale, but seventy is actually
Speaker 1: younger than every single other person all of democratic leadership. Well,
Speaker 1: and not to mention, not defending it, I'm just saying
Speaker 1: not to listen. Yeah, watch Marian's speech, no teleprompter, no notes,
Speaker 1: and it was electric. People in the room were clearly
Speaker 1: really loving it and really enthusiastic about it. They do
Speaker 1: not want so they've already said they aren't going to
Speaker 1: have a debate. We'll see if they're able to hold
Speaker 1: to that, if there's enough public pressure to force it.
Speaker 1: But they don't want that comparison because all elderly people
Speaker 1: are not the same. Right Trump, I can't stand the man.
Speaker 1: He's still clearly got it, and he's still got a
Speaker 1: lot of energy. A boggle's mind, given how unhealthy his
Speaker 1: lifestyle is, his weight, his age, all the rest. But
Speaker 1: you know, not everybody has created equal people obviously go
Speaker 1: through you know, life transitions and phases and sundowning at
Speaker 1: different points in time, and so I just will hold
Speaker 1: that out for you. Lastly, Marian had an interview with
Speaker 1: ABC News over the weekend where she got asked some
Speaker 1: questions about exactly these topics. Y'll take a listen how
Speaker 1: she responded, This is a democracy. This is not about
Speaker 1: what I think is wrong. Obviously, I believe the American
Speaker 1: people should be offered an agenda for genuine fundamental economic reform,
Speaker 1: and it should be the voters who decide. It should
Speaker 1: not be the DNC that decides. It should be the
Speaker 1: voters who decide. That is what a democracy is. Do
Speaker 1: you expect that Biden will debate you? He certainly should
Speaker 1: debate me. It's called democracy. And I'm running as well.
Speaker 1: And what about this notion of taking New Hampshire out
Speaker 1: out of its position as first you're going to New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that New hampshireots happy about that,
Speaker 1: the fact that so will you be competing in the
Speaker 1: Newmpshire primary? Though, this is the democracy, This is the
Speaker 1: thing the DNC should not be rigging this system. They
Speaker 1: don't even pretend anymore. They're not even covert about their
Speaker 1: they're swaying the primary season. They're very overt about it.
Speaker 1: They're going to get that's what's going on, is they're
Speaker 1: rigging the system for Biden. They even admit that. John, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, she's not wrong. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it comes down to what she said, which is
Speaker 1: it's up to the voters to decide. And yeah, the
Speaker 1: New Hampshire point I think is very important. As you said,
Speaker 1: people are really pissed off in New Hampshire that they
Speaker 1: got dinged. At the same time, though, it can't help
Speaker 1: but just say like they have rigged the primary so well,
Speaker 1: and good for Biden. I just don't know if it's
Speaker 1: possible there. But listen, the reason they have gone to
Speaker 1: such extraordary links is because they can read the polls.
Speaker 1: They see that there is a majority of Democrats who were, like,
Speaker 1: we would really like some other options. Marian's the only
Speaker 1: option that has stepped up. So it's very likely to
Speaker 1: be a one on one race here. New Hampshire is
Speaker 1: kind of welcoming her in with open arms. It's not
Speaker 1: the first primary anymore, but it is an early state,
Speaker 1: and so they have to be worried about appearing vulnerable
Speaker 1: at the very least, even if they aren't worried about
Speaker 1: him ultimately winning the nomination. And again, he's not even
Speaker 1: in the race yet. So right, we'll see when he
Speaker 1: actually gets in. We'll see what happens. As Trump used
Speaker 1: to famously say, all right, let's move on. Russell brand
Speaker 1: he's here in the US, fresh off the Joe Rogan podcast,
Speaker 1: stops by the Bill Maher Studio. An extraordinary confrontation with
Speaker 1: John Hyloman, a famous game change of fame in a
Speaker 1: confrontation over whether cable news MSNBC is just as bad
Speaker 1: as Fox News. A very smug response from Hyloman, a
Speaker 1: lot of good points that Russell brings up. Let's take
Speaker 1: a lesson, John. I've not known you long, but I
Speaker 1: love you already. But I have to say that it's
Speaker 1: disingenuous to claim that the biases they're exhibited on Fox
Speaker 1: News are any different from the biases exhibited on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to suggest that these corporations operate as anything
Speaker 1: of than mouth pieces for the affiliate owners in Black
Speaker 1: Rock and Vanguard. I've been on that MSNBC, mate, it
Speaker 1: was propaganda's nut crackery. That's not a fad called Morning Joe.
Speaker 1: It was absurd the way they carried Morning Joe. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. It wasn't morning. There
Speaker 1: was no one called Joe. There's no one concentrate. They
Speaker 1: didn't understand the basic geners of jun journalism. No one
Speaker 1: was willing to stick up for genuine American heroes like Edwards. No,
Speaker 1: then no one was willing to talk about Julian Assange
Speaker 1: and what he suffered trying to bring real journalism to
Speaker 1: the American people. I'd like to hear a specific example,
Speaker 1: approved specific example of an MSNBC corseponding her anchor being
Speaker 1: on television saying something they knew was false, and we're saying,
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, two people, this is I'd love to
Speaker 1: go out. We know that, we know that the election
Speaker 1: wasn't stolen if it were safe, for example, but I
Speaker 1: will go but I will go out. I will go
Speaker 1: out on television and saying the opposite though about bias,
Speaker 1: it's a posible say because you don't actually know anything
Speaker 1: about any of these stories that you're talking about. You
Speaker 1: don't NMSBC one big fucking deal, my dad. It was
Speaker 1: more big fucking deal. You've been on MSNBC once. You
Speaker 1: know what I actually found insane about Howlman's response here
Speaker 1: is in actually even the way that we treat Hioman today,
Speaker 1: I don't know people know this. Horloman started a media company.
Speaker 1: It was called The Recount and it was a massive failure.
Speaker 1: Outside of a Twitter account where they literally clip what's
Speaker 1: going on, they raised like thirty million dollars. They tried
Speaker 1: to start their own show all of that, and it
Speaker 1: failed so precipitously that people barely even wrote about how
Speaker 1: much of a joke it all was. Russell Brand you
Speaker 1: can like him or not. He has a very successful
Speaker 1: show on Rumble. He has a very successful YouTube show.
Speaker 1: Many of the numbers that he gets he talked about
Speaker 1: this on Rogan are far more than anybody on cable
Speaker 1: and it's because he's willing to discuss and talk about
Speaker 1: issues of exactly where the cable news system fails. And
Speaker 1: you can also see the smugness in the way that
Speaker 1: Hyloman is confronted with the idea He's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we never went on and intentionally said something that we
Speaker 1: know not to be true. We have how many times
Speaker 1: we need to play the Russia Gate coverage from MSNBC.
Speaker 1: Shall we play once again the Donald Trump was a
Speaker 1: kgb asset from nineteen eighty seven clip. How many madout
Speaker 1: clips do you guys want about rushing attacks on energy?
Speaker 1: All bullshit, complete bullshit. They will never grapple with that.
Speaker 1: I almost wish that Russell hadn't brought up not just
Speaker 1: the Ivermectin thing, because that was more then it was MSNBC.
Speaker 1: Although Mattout did get in a little bit with the retweet.
Speaker 1: I think Russia Gators we have them dead to write,
Speaker 1: dead to right have the same spot. And I don't
Speaker 1: know whether the hosts at MSNBC really believed this stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it's possible that they did or deluded themselves
Speaker 1: into thinking that this was a real possibility. But it
Speaker 1: really doesn't matter whether they technically, like really believed it
Speaker 1: or not. They clearly were engaged in the same thing
Speaker 1: that Fox News was engaging with and stop the steal.
Speaker 1: They saw what their viewers wanted to hear, and so
Speaker 1: night after night after night they spun elaborate tales of
Speaker 1: Russian It was a Russian spy novel. Extraordinaire. Of course
Speaker 1: people wanted to watch it. It was action packed, it
Speaker 1: was unbelievable. Ye had cliffhangers all the rest. They knew
Speaker 1: what their audience wanted to hear. They cared about ratings,
Speaker 1: and that's the bottom line here. Look, could you quibble
Speaker 1: and say, I think the one thing that you could
Speaker 1: say is a little bit different about Fox News versus
Speaker 1: MSNBC is that Fox News was explicitly set up to
Speaker 1: be an organ of the Republican Party, effectively into boost
Speaker 1: Republican conservative candidates. Emma's NBC was just a a money play,
Speaker 1: just a business venture. They stumbled into liberalism and went
Speaker 1: from there. But the bottom line for both at this
Speaker 1: point is the bottom line. They need to make money,
Speaker 1: they need to justify their existence. They need to feed
Speaker 1: their audiences that they've cultivated and lied to exactly what
Speaker 1: they continue to want to hear, and so on that
Speaker 1: basic level, it's silly to quibble over which one is worse,
Speaker 1: but ultimately they're both cancerous, they're both infotainment, they're both
Speaker 1: terrible for the American people, and they will both willingly
Speaker 1: lie to their audiences when it serves their financial needs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it gets to exactly what we were
Speaker 1: talking about in the box news block where they have contempt.
Speaker 1: MSNBC just has as much contempt. They're willing to put
Speaker 1: outrageous lives on their primetime networks just because they knew
Speaker 1: that that's what their audience wanted to hear, deceive them
Speaker 1: all the way up until the day of the mall report,
Speaker 1: and then continued to spin well with the after the
Speaker 1: Malla report. That's maybe the most important point, because maybe
Speaker 1: you could persuade yourself like, oh, they really believed this stuff.
Speaker 1: No they didn't too. Okay, well, now we know that
Speaker 1: there was no there there did they go back and
Speaker 1: here's where we got it wrong. Here's how that's what
Speaker 1: you would do if you made an honest mistake and
Speaker 1: you had respect for your audience and like some self
Speaker 1: respect for your supposed credentials as a journalist or an analyst. No,
Speaker 1: they didn't do any of that. If you live in
Speaker 1: the MSNBC bubble, none of what they were spinning was
Speaker 1: ever disproven. It was all just oh Muller failed or
Speaker 1: whether they have all kinds of cope rationalizations for why
Speaker 1: it never actually the pe tape never actually came out
Speaker 1: and that shows a high level of contempt for their audience,
Speaker 1: same as was revealed in those Fox News text messages.
Speaker 1: Absolutely correct, Crystal, what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 1: Way back in twenty seventeen, before we had any idea
Speaker 1: that a pandemic would up end the world, killing millions
Speaker 1: and reordering both work and play, Jeff Bezos announced a
Speaker 1: little contest. Amazon, he said, was building a second headquarters,
Speaker 1: which he dubbed HQ two and classic sleek tech jargon.
Speaker 1: This wasn't to be just any old office park. HQ two,
Speaker 1: he said, would be a full equal to their Seattle headquarters,
Speaker 1: maybe even larger. The temptation proved irresistible to cities and
Speaker 1: states alike. After all, Bezos was dangling a promised fifty
Speaker 1: thousand jobs and billions of dollars in investment. Such a
Speaker 1: massive infusion. It could jolt a struggling city to life.
Speaker 1: It could surge a mid tier city into the world class,
Speaker 1: could help a superstar city push out even more of
Speaker 1: its working class residents in favor of the coveted, affluent,
Speaker 1: creative class that our politicians seemed to almost uniformly prefer.
Speaker 1: And so, in a nationwide contest, of public humiliation. Locations
Speaker 1: across the country competed to debase themselves in offering the
Speaker 1: largest grab bag of taxpayer funded goodies to a company
Speaker 1: that is already among the richest and most powerful in
Speaker 1: the entire world. It was kind of a municipal squid
Speaker 1: game where cities, desperate for the vitality that had been
Speaker 1: robbed them by free trade market fundams medalism, competed in
Speaker 1: a race to the bottom in order to delight the
Speaker 1: overlords at Amazon, the beneficiaries of that very free trade
Speaker 1: market fundamentalism. The whole situation was already a pathetic commentary
Speaker 1: on the corporate capture of our entire nation. Rather than
Speaker 1: corporations being shaped by government to serve the needs of
Speaker 1: the people, government was falling all over itself to bend
Speaker 1: to the rapacious desires of our largest corporations. According to
Speaker 1: tech Crunch, the city of Stonecrest, Georgia, offered to rename
Speaker 1: the town and make Jeff Bezos its permanent mayor should
Speaker 1: the company select it as the site for the new office.
Speaker 1: HQ two Birmingham, Alabama, plastered fake Amazon boxes across the
Speaker 1: city and created a marketing campaign called bring a to
Speaker 1: b to woo the quote Everything store. Albany, New York's
Speaker 1: take was apparently so pathos inducing that it was actually
Speaker 1: eviscerated and mocked by the onion. But the whole contest
Speaker 1: was a complete sham from the very beginning. After inducing
Speaker 1: all these cities to spend time and resources putting together
Speaker 1: these humiliating gimmicks and billions in tax incentives and bend
Speaker 1: the knee to their lord and savior, Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Speaker 1: didn't pick one city but two, New York City and
Speaker 1: Northern Virginia, and they happened to be the two cities
Speaker 1: where Bezos already had second homes and which were already
Speaker 1: major hubs of tech, media and government power, revealing that
Speaker 1: the whole thing was always a farce and the results preordained.
Speaker 1: While these two cities did offer grotesquely large tax incentives,
Speaker 1: they actually paled in comparison to the giveaways that were
Speaker 1: offered by a lot of other locales. In the end,
Speaker 1: every single participant was completely played, including the media that
Speaker 1: of course eagerly did Amazon's pr work for them. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a contest, It was a scam designed to extract
Speaker 1: the largest possible goodie package from the places which Amazon
Speaker 1: was always going to go to all along. Now, the
Speaker 1: New York City locale and queens was immediately controversial. When
Speaker 1: residents and progressive politicians found out just how much then
Speaker 1: Governor Cuomo had promised to Amazon and tax incentives, they
Speaker 1: were apoplectic. After all, New York had reportedly given about
Speaker 1: a billion dollars more in incentives than in Virginia. Had
Speaker 1: also that they could price out longtime residents and further
Speaker 1: strain in already crumbling infrastructure system. After a local uproar,
Speaker 1: Amazon backed out, but there was a lot of exuberants
Speaker 1: in northern Virginia where local leaders and developers, construction companies,
Speaker 1: they all started planning for this big new influx of
Speaker 1: office workers ready to shop and dine and to live,
Speaker 1: which brings us to the final cruel twist in this
Speaker 1: sordid tail, Bloomberg got the scoop here. Amazon pauses construction
Speaker 1: on second headquarters in Virginia as it cuts jobs. So
Speaker 1: after all that sham contests the press around the sham
Speaker 1: contests the build up expectation locally, they are all but
Speaker 1: pulling the plug, halting construction on the largest portion of
Speaker 1: this project. Now We've been covering the post pandemic tech
Speaker 1: sessions here, so you probably know that, like a lot
Speaker 1: of other tech companies, Amazon ratically overestimated their staffing needs
Speaker 1: for post pandemic realities. They recently announced layoffs, impacting some
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand workers, and the entire world of corporate office
Speaker 1: space has been turned upside down by remote and hybrid work.
Speaker 1: The whole concept of an eight two to anchor a
Speaker 1: company in a new city has kind of been rendered
Speaker 1: obsolete by a pandemic that scattered white collar workers across
Speaker 1: the country in search of more affordable housing and a
Speaker 1: better quality of life for a region that insede an
Speaker 1: anticipatory boom. This was really a harsh blow, a renigging
Speaker 1: on the promises that were made, and also at great expense.
Speaker 1: Of course, Amazon stock surged on the news that they
Speaker 1: were pulling the plug. As always its heads, Amazon wins
Speaker 1: and tails, everyone loses. Now you might be tempted to think, well,
Speaker 1: the pandemic did change everything. Who could have known, what
Speaker 1: choice do they have, etc. But I will remind you
Speaker 1: this is far from the first time when politicians gave
Speaker 1: way the store to huge corporations got big promises and
Speaker 1: ended up with nothing but big disappointment. There was the
Speaker 1: fox Con debacle in Wisconsin, where the company promised thirteen
Speaker 1: thousand jobs in exchange for three billion dollars in incentives.
Speaker 1: President Trump called it the eighth Wonder of the World. Instead,
Speaker 1: the most optimistic estimates say now that the long stalled
Speaker 1: project might create fifteen hundred jobs and in destroyed the
Speaker 1: credit of the surrounding region, which invested a billion dollars
Speaker 1: in infrastructure for this insulting outcome. Amid a lot of hype,
Speaker 1: Lordstown Motors got a deal on a shutter GM plant
Speaker 1: in Ohio to build electric trucks. Well, they overstated their
Speaker 1: orders and the first prototype that they put out caught
Speaker 1: fire when they actually took it out for a spin.
Speaker 1: Now you're ready for this one. Fox Con is said
Speaker 1: to buy the factory, So good luck with that one, guys.
Speaker 1: A new Panasonic battery plant in Kansas promised in exchange
Speaker 1: for eight hundred and twenty nine million dollars in incentives.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty good on its face, but the deal
Speaker 1: required no commitments on jobs and no commitments on pay
Speaker 1: pretty glaring emission, leaving Kansons on the hook for a
Speaker 1: big paym regardless of whether the company ever actually delivers
Speaker 1: on a single solitary job. So what should we take
Speaker 1: from all of this? Listen, I actually have no problem
Speaker 1: with a national strategy of industrial policy. It uses incentives
Speaker 1: to drive investment in key areas like microchips or evy batteries,
Speaker 1: or to pursue other goals in our national interest, which
Speaker 1: may include creation of good paying union jobs. But this
Speaker 1: state versus state, city versus city competition to give away
Speaker 1: the sweetest deals to the biggest companies. This is a
Speaker 1: loser's game for everyone but the giant multinationals, who routinely
Speaker 1: break all of their promises and laugh all the way
Speaker 1: to the bank. The Onion with typical trench and satire
Speaker 1: wrote this a while back about the Amazon HQ two contest. Quote.
Speaker 1: You are all inside Amazon's second headquarters, Jeff Bezos announces
Speaker 1: to horrified Americans as massive dome envelops nation. We're proud
Speaker 1: to welcome all three hundred and twenty five million new
Speaker 1: employees to the Amazon team, said Bezos. Now please begin working,
Speaker 1: all of you, Bezos added, as a dark cloud of
Speaker 1: buzzing drones appeared on the horizon, pausing uniforms, orientation packets,
Speaker 1: and a pile of boxes to sort on the doorstep
Speaker 1: of every American home. This race to the bottom mode
Speaker 1: of desperately begging for jobs shows just how backwards our
Speaker 1: country has become, where we all expected to scramble to
Speaker 1: serve the interests of corporate overlords rather than organizing the
Speaker 1: economy to serve the interests of the people. Our politicians
Speaker 1: have allowed Amazon to treat us in our communities as
Speaker 1: playthings to pick up and throw away as it serves
Speaker 1: them ASQ two is just the latest scamp. Sager and
Speaker 1: I have a personal stake in this one. And if
Speaker 1: you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become
Speaker 1: a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. All right, Sager,
Speaker 1: we are looking at it well. The recent release of
Speaker 1: CDC study on Youth Risk Behavior Survey of American teenagers.
Speaker 1: It's ignited a firestorm in our political discourse. Teengirl depression
Speaker 1: is going up. No way, all youth depression is skyrocketing?
Speaker 1: Well is it? The smartphones is a general social paranoia.
Speaker 1: You can basically pick your poison when it comes to
Speaker 1: these takes. It won't surprise you what angle of mainstream
Speaker 1: media has gone with You would think that the only
Speaker 1: story in ed of these data is that teengirl depression
Speaker 1: has gone up. In fact, I could not find a
Speaker 1: single mainstream outlet that didn't lead with the CDC framing
Speaker 1: exclusively about teen girls. Interesting writers, though, have dug into
Speaker 1: not only the teen girl data, all of the data,
Speaker 1: and then come away with better conclusions that are more nuanced.
Speaker 1: So let's focus on the major takeaways that most of
Speaker 1: the media is ignoring right now. But it's very glaringly
Speaker 1: obvious the ubiquity of smartphones amongst all teenagers and its
Speaker 1: solid entrenchment into their everyday lives. Blogger Noah Smith notes
Speaker 1: that teen girls, suicide, anxiety, self poisoning, and major depressive
Speaker 1: episodes all began to skyrocket in twenty eleven, and they
Speaker 1: hit escape velocity in twenty thirteen. What changed? As NOA notes.
Speaker 1: While those who don't want to blame the smart form
Speaker 1: often point out it came out in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: why did it take so long? But the actual mass
Speaker 1: adoption of smartphones amongst teenagers happened in wait for it,
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, Basically the exact same mirar that these symptoms
Speaker 1: began to take off. Now we have had over a
Speaker 1: decade with the smartphone, and it's basically inseparable from teenage life.
Speaker 1: At this point, we have all kinds of crazy data
Speaker 1: to back this up and what it's actually done. Face
Speaker 1: to face interaction between teenagers has plummeted all starting in
Speaker 1: twenty ten, right around the mass adoption of the smartphone.
Speaker 1: It continues to hit record lows with teenagers but boys
Speaker 1: and girls reporting fewer friends than ever before. Social isolation
Speaker 1: with mimicked communication online is no substitute now for actual friendships,
Speaker 1: as we all found out the hard way during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Another illuminating chart from researcher Gene Twinch is even more clearcut.
Speaker 1: Adolescence with depression of low well being report many more
Speaker 1: hours on their smartphones, with the most depressed reporting some
Speaker 1: five to six hours a day of screen time. Now,
Speaker 1: is it the cause? Maybe? Maybe not? What's the good indication?
Speaker 1: Our friend Richard Hannania also did a systematic review of
Speaker 1: all of the data, not only from the US, but
Speaker 1: from around the world, and he came away with this quote. Overall,
Speaker 1: we find strong evidence of declines and teenage mental health
Speaker 1: over the last decade or so, based on government data
Speaker 1: with large sample sizes not only in the US, but Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Sweden, Norway,
Speaker 1: and the UK. He adds, quote overall, this makes an
Speaker 1: extreme strong case that the problem goes way beyond the
Speaker 1: United States or even English speaking countries. But if you
Speaker 1: look a little closer, as Richard points out, there are
Speaker 1: very interesting anomalies to consider. In Hungary, the Netherlands, and
Speaker 1: South Korea, we don't see the corresponding rise in teenage
Speaker 1: mental health issues. Richard knows that these countries may not
Speaker 1: be as culturally similar to the United States. Thus they
Speaker 1: may have something within them to resist the same poll
Speaker 1: that has brought nearly every other developed country down. But
Speaker 1: there's another take here, which is also important. Is it
Speaker 1: really the phones or are we just freaking out because
Speaker 1: they're new? As venture capitalists Mark Andresen observed, quote, we
Speaker 1: did not live in a calm, placid, rational, happy world
Speaker 1: before smartphones. People have been bananas forever. On most metrics,
Speaker 1: people were more bananas in the past than they are now.
Speaker 1: If anything, technology may be calming people down instead. He
Speaker 1: pauses the simplest explanation for whatever the hell that we're
Speaker 1: going through is some kind of secularized great Awakening where
Speaker 1: transformation societal change is taking place. It's not unprecedented at
Speaker 1: all in Western history. The last great way in US
Speaker 1: history was only fifty years ago, the rise of militant
Speaker 1: evangelical Christianity, the decline of mainline Protestantism, the modern pro
Speaker 1: life movement, much of a political orientation of the American
Speaker 1: South is traced right back to that. But how does
Speaker 1: this compare. A possible explanation is that social trends like smartphones, atomization,
Speaker 1: combined with what can be best described as empty woke catastrophizing,
Speaker 1: is leading to its own great awakening, awokening as we've
Speaker 1: referred to it in the past. Writer Matthew Gleasy's actually
Speaker 1: dug into some of that data and he found something
Speaker 1: that's actually astonishing. Focusing on teen girls completely misses the point.
Speaker 1: When you look at the comprehensive studies that control for
Speaker 1: gender and for political ideology, you get a different view.
Speaker 1: It's young liberals who are actually especially depressed, with liberal
Speaker 1: teen boys outpacing conservative teen girls in depression. So let's
Speaker 1: discuss why one theory came from Jill Philipovich, who Iglesias
Speaker 1: highlights writing, quote, I am increasingly convinced there are tremendously
Speaker 1: negative long term consequences, especially to young people, coming from
Speaker 1: this reliance on the language harm and accusations that things
Speaker 1: one finds offensive are quote deeply problematic or if they
Speaker 1: even violent. She continues, quote, just about everything that researchers
Speaker 1: understand about resilience and mental well being suggests that people
Speaker 1: who feel like they are the chief architects of their
Speaker 1: own life are vastly better off than people whose default
Speaker 1: position is victimization, hurt, and the sense that the life
Speaker 1: simply happens to them and they have no control over
Speaker 1: their response. So it could be that victimization and politics
Speaker 1: itself is to blame, smartphones aren't at all, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's both. Who really knows. What I do know is
Speaker 1: we have a big problem. As to the solution, it's
Speaker 1: anyone's guests, and the best thing is to look at
Speaker 1: the problem from all angles as they're attempted here, instead
Speaker 1: of a myopic explanation, so that we can eventually try
Speaker 1: to do something about it. And in the meantime, you've
Speaker 1: got to take care of each other because it seems
Speaker 1: to be something that we are doing less and less
Speaker 1: of as a society. So I thought it was really interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, something they have focused here and if you
Speaker 1: want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a
Speaker 1: premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. A lot of
Speaker 1: discussion here on Breaking Points about the balloon, about UFOs,
Speaker 1: and we've been trying to talk to the actual experts here.
Speaker 1: One of them is the former lieutenant in the US Navy,
Speaker 1: Ryan Grave, So let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: He writes, in political quote, we have a real UFO
Speaker 1: problem and it's not balloons. And Ryan recounts some of
Speaker 1: his own interactions with anomalousts, aircraft or objects, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call them, that we're up in the air.
Speaker 1: And he's been trying to draw attention to this increasingly
Speaker 1: on his own podcast and in the public. So we're
Speaker 1: very happy to have you on the show, sir, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us. It's my pleasure, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me here. So, Ryan, what did you want
Speaker 1: to accomplish whenever you were writing this article, whenever you
Speaker 1: started your podcast trying to bring as much attention to
Speaker 1: the UAP phenomena. You've been one of the most outspoken
Speaker 1: former pilots who's actually interacted with some of these things.
Speaker 1: Why are you choosing to do so? Why do you
Speaker 1: want to be in the public eye. Oh well, I'll
Speaker 1: push back and say I don't necessarily want to. But
Speaker 1: this was an issue that just wasn't getting the attention
Speaker 1: that it deserved. When I saw the twenty seventeen New
Speaker 1: York Times article come out with the videos of various UAPs,
Speaker 1: I recognize those videos. I recognize them. I heard the
Speaker 1: voices on them, and I was like, hey, I was
Speaker 1: there for those I also realized at that point that
Speaker 1: this was an issue that was still ongoing. I didn't
Speaker 1: reached back to my squadron mates who are still flying
Speaker 1: on the East Coast and this was still an everyday
Speaker 1: aviation safety hazard for them, And I realized the proper
Speaker 1: mechanisms weren't being but in place to resolve this issue.
Speaker 1: It was just a matter of time until there was
Speaker 1: a midair ran. Can just for people who aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with you and the videos that you're referring to, can
Speaker 1: you just explain what you experienced and what you saw, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd be happy to. So I was an F eighteen
Speaker 1: Fox Trot super Hornet pilot, which means I was attached
Speaker 1: to the East coast of the United States, and I
Speaker 1: would operate off the Eastern seaboard for a number of
Speaker 1: years in basically a training environment, not really a comma environment. However,
Speaker 1: while we were there, we started noticing objects when we
Speaker 1: upgraded our radars that weren't there, you know, just even
Speaker 1: on the previous flight with the older radar. And so
Speaker 1: eventually we started flying close enough to these objects for
Speaker 1: them to be picked up on our optical for looking
Speaker 1: infrared camera system, and we started to gain visuals within
Speaker 1: the jet itself on those systems of those videos that
Speaker 1: you see such as the Kimbal video and Go Fast.
Speaker 1: Eventually we saw these objects with our own eyeballs, and
Speaker 1: at that time we didn't have an explanation for what
Speaker 1: they were. They just simply looked like a black cube
Speaker 1: inside of a clear sphere. These objects would be up
Speaker 1: there all day. They would be either maneuvering around point
Speaker 1: six to point eight moc, which is around at the
Speaker 1: high end three hundred and fifty knots, or they would
Speaker 1: be completely stationary against the whim. When you're up there,
Speaker 1: it's like being in the ocean. Everything is moving. So
Speaker 1: when you have objects that are stationary against high winds
Speaker 1: for very long periods of time and then begin maneuvering,
Speaker 1: it's just something that we're not used to seeing, right,
Speaker 1: And we were almost hitting these objects. We had them
Speaker 1: flying very close to our aircraft that we're requiring a
Speaker 1: basi of maneuvering. Wow. Yeah, I mean, this is your testimony,
Speaker 1: you know, before Congress and just publicly has been so
Speaker 1: important for highlighting how frequent of an interaction that this is.
Speaker 1: And it's almost more stunning that we, like you said,
Speaker 1: we haven't had an accent or that we haven't had
Speaker 1: more pilots come forward. One of the things that you
Speaker 1: write about, Ryan in the Politico article is that the
Speaker 1: President did not talk about UAPs that exhibit advanced performance
Speaker 1: capability set. You say, where is the transparency and urgency
Speaker 1: from the administration in Congress to investigate highly advanced objects
Speaker 1: and restricted airspace that our military cannot explain? And you
Speaker 1: talk about a new organization that you are starting and
Speaker 1: an initiative to try and gather as much data as possible.
Speaker 1: You want to talk a little bit about that absolutely,
Speaker 1: and so that's a natural progression of the work that's
Speaker 1: been going on trying to bring attention to this seeing
Speaker 1: that one of the main movers of attention on this
Speaker 1: topic is on Capitol Hill with the centers and congress
Speaker 1: people that have been mandating action from the Department of
Speaker 1: Defense to investigate this topic, and within the aviation ecosystem,
Speaker 1: I'll say with the United States, it really does take
Speaker 1: an Act of Congress to move anything. So I founded
Speaker 1: the Americans for Safe Aerospace, which is a very simple organization.
Speaker 1: We think that we should know what's above our heads,
Speaker 1: and those are going to likely fall into two different categories.
Speaker 1: They're either going to end up being some type of
Speaker 1: adversarial threat platform and it's a national security issue. We
Speaker 1: have the systems to prosecute those targets, or if we
Speaker 1: don't know what they are, it's a matter for scientific curiosity.
Speaker 1: And I bet when we start narrowing down that bucket
Speaker 1: of anomalous objects, more security threats could fall out. But
Speaker 1: we'll continue to make that bucket smaller to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what these objects are. American for Safe Aerospace
Speaker 1: is going to be looking to push policy and legislative
Speaker 1: action to ensure that air and pilots, both military and commercial.
Speaker 1: I feel comfortable of reporting this so that we can
Speaker 1: continue to expand the conversation and ran, what did you
Speaker 1: make of these recent objects that were shot down? Obviously
Speaker 1: one of them was a Chinese spy balloon, don't really
Speaker 1: know what the other ones were. Maybe potentially one of
Speaker 1: them was just like a hobbyists balloon. No debris has
Speaker 1: been recovered, and they seem to have abandoned any attempts
Speaker 1: to recover whatever debris there was from these shootdowns. What
Speaker 1: did you make of all of that? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very confusing series of events, which is what
Speaker 1: led to me writing that political article. Back to the
Speaker 1: first question, there just seems to be a very confusing
Speaker 1: narrative around these objects. First, you know, if we think
Speaker 1: of how this proceeded, there was a visual confirmation of
Speaker 1: an object of a balloon that it appeared by civilians
Speaker 1: in the United States. That kind of ramped things up,
Speaker 1: and this is public knowledge. Now we seem to have
Speaker 1: slowed down the speak gates on some of our censors,
Speaker 1: at least brought to attention based off of the siting
Speaker 1: of that balloon, what other slower speed objects could be
Speaker 1: in our airspace. However, the communication was very clear that
Speaker 1: the first quote unquote Chinese by balloon was a Chinese
Speaker 1: by balloon, and the other three objects are still unidentified
Speaker 1: objects at this point. What was communicated was that they
Speaker 1: appeared to be more or less drifting in the wind,
Speaker 1: which is not consistent with what we were seeing off
Speaker 1: of the Eastern seaboard. But I think whatever the object
Speaker 1: end up being, I think it just goes to prove
Speaker 1: the point that there are objects up there that were
Speaker 1: not aware of. Some of them are going to fall
Speaker 1: out and be adversarial programs, some of them might be
Speaker 1: completely prosaic, and there are another category of them that
Speaker 1: we can't necessarily call prosaic due to the behaviors that
Speaker 1: they're exhibiting. And I wrote that article to ensure that
Speaker 1: that wasn't lost in the fray, so that we didn't
Speaker 1: start assuming that everything unidentified in our airspace ends up
Speaker 1: being a balloon. But to that point, for those hard
Speaker 1: skeptics that like to say, well, they're probably just balloons,
Speaker 1: I think now the American people see that that's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty serious issue as well. Both from National security
Speaker 1: and for aviation safety, and you know it goes all
Speaker 1: the way to the top. So we just can't be
Speaker 1: complacent with what's above our heads. And the ASA is
Speaker 1: going to push for action to ensure that's the case good.
Speaker 1: And one thing I want to get with you, Ryan,
Speaker 1: I hear this from the critics all the time, which
Speaker 1: is is pilot error. These guys, you know, they have
Speaker 1: no idea what they're seeing up there. They're mistaking it
Speaker 1: for you know, reflection or something like that. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about you join the Navy in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: lay out for the audience how much training, familiarity with
Speaker 1: your equipment, familiator, familiarity with normal objects in the sky
Speaker 1: that you encounter, and your ability to determine what is
Speaker 1: anomalous and what is not while you are flying at
Speaker 1: aircraft you've probably flown for thousands and thousands of hours. Certainly,
Speaker 1: so these these aircraft, you know, I'll even not even
Speaker 1: refer to F eighteen and as an aircraft, it's a
Speaker 1: weapons system designed to do very particular mission sets. And
Speaker 1: those mission sets are really based around two objectives. One
Speaker 1: is to be able to identify what's out there and
Speaker 1: be able to tell who's friendly and who's not, and
Speaker 1: also to identify the ones that we're not certain about
Speaker 1: and work to identify whether they're friendly or not, and
Speaker 1: then to prosecute the targets that are not friendly. And
Speaker 1: we prosecute those targets that are not friendly primarily by
Speaker 1: flying close enough to be within weapons range and also
Speaker 1: far enough away that we're not too much in their
Speaker 1: weapons range. So controlling the distance off the nose of
Speaker 1: our aircraft and knowing who's who is essentially the primary
Speaker 1: responsibilities of our job. Everything else is mechanics to prosecute
Speaker 1: those targets. We call that correlation while we're flying up there.
Speaker 1: So the suggestion, you know, and so all our tools
Speaker 1: to go to your point. So our training is to
Speaker 1: learn how to use the incredible tools that we have
Speaker 1: in those in those weapons systems, and those weapons systems
Speaker 1: tools include radar, electro optical cameras, other electronic warfare systems,
Speaker 1: and electrical tools for understanding electromatic netek spectrum around you.
Speaker 1: And we take that information and we share it, and
Speaker 1: that information gets pumped out and we get a combined
Speaker 1: image of what's in the area. And so when we
Speaker 1: say we see something out there, whether it be on
Speaker 1: our radar or our electroloptical systems or some other device,
Speaker 1: that information is being correlated across multiple sensors, and all
Speaker 1: that technology that we have and that we've trained to
Speaker 1: use is telling us that can't be identified. And not
Speaker 1: only can't be identified using the interesting mechanisms we have,
Speaker 1: but also it's not behaving in a way that we recognize. Yes,
Speaker 1: so all these things are telling us they're wrong, and
Speaker 1: yet these are the things we most highly trained to do,
Speaker 1: is to maintain the distance off our nose and to
Speaker 1: identify things, and those are unfortunately two of the largest
Speaker 1: arguments used to say we're incorrect. Very important. I'm sure
Speaker 1: if that answers your question or not, but oh, it
Speaker 1: answers it very very well. Ryan. Congratulations that started the
Speaker 1: new organization. We'll have a link down there to all
Speaker 1: the description to your new podcast as well so people
Speaker 1: can find out about it. And you're welcome back on
Speaker 1: the show anytime to the discuss a topic. Really appreciate
Speaker 1: you joining us, Ryan, absolutely, Thank you guys so much
Speaker 1: for watching. Really appreciated fund developments here. Thank you for
Speaker 1: everybody who's been helping us out with the premium subscriptions.
Speaker 1: They really help out as we plan the future. Some
Speaker 1: big stuff that's coming down the pipeline. I think that
Speaker 1: you guys will enjoy. Chrystal, I've been looking at mock ups.
Speaker 1: Can't say yet of what. Some of them are a
Speaker 1: little creepy. We'll just say that anyway. We'll reveal some
Speaker 1: of that at the time and the place. Thank you
Speaker 1: all so much for those whose supporters have got a
Speaker 1: great show for you tomorrow, Counterpoints on Wednesday, and then
Speaker 1: the show on Thursday. So we'll see you all later.
Speaker 1: Love you guys, See you tomorrow.