Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 3: Good morning, Ryan Grim. This is so great to have
Speaker 3: your hair, cris. If people are listening to this, they're like,
Speaker 3: that's not very funny. You're just talking to Ryan Grim.
Speaker 3: But no, I'm indeed joined today by the one and
Speaker 3: only Crystal Ball.
Speaker 4: Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2: I would be happy to download Ryan's brain, but I
Speaker 2: know I'll do my best here.
Speaker 3: So we're going to start with updates this morning, Crystal.
Speaker 3: In the case of Kilmara at Brego Garcia, we have
Speaker 3: a lot to get to that happened over the last
Speaker 3: twenty four hours. We're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about some of the movement in the markets and developments
Speaker 3: in the trade war, also development in potentially an upcoming
Speaker 3: hot war. Hopefully not, but Iran intentions continue to escalate
Speaker 3: with Iran. There are so there were some moves taken
Speaker 3: here in DC towards Trump administration officials who may not
Speaker 3: be on board with the administration's plan just yesterday, who
Speaker 3: ended up on administrative leave.
Speaker 4: Will dive into all of that, Crystal.
Speaker 3: The story of the IVY leagues in the second Trump
Speaker 3: administration is heating up. Harvard is now pushing back on
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, and you will be shocked to learn that
Speaker 3: the Dems are in disarray.
Speaker 2: Dare I say, maybe I don't know there? Yeah, I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: they're always in disarry. But there's some interesting emerging data
Speaker 2: about how, first of all, the Trump two point zero
Speaker 2: era plus sort of centrist capitulation has really shifted the
Speaker 2: Democratic base both against their leadership and also for the
Speaker 2: first time that I can certainly recall, a majority are
Speaker 2: saying they actually want the party to be more progressive,
Speaker 2: and AOC is, according to one new poll, really rising
Speaker 2: in the esteem the Democratic base as like an actual
Speaker 2: potential national leader. So a lot of shifts happening there.
Speaker 2: And then we have Brian Goldstone on written a really
Speaker 2: important Wroten. Oh, this is going to be a great show,
Speaker 2: written a really important new book about you know, we
Speaker 2: talk so much about the working poor. He digs into
Speaker 2: the working homeless, which is increasingly a reality. People who
Speaker 2: are doing everything they can, working full time, but because
Speaker 2: housing and rent is so expensive, they still cannot afford
Speaker 2: a home. And he specifically tells the story of a
Speaker 2: number of families in and around Atlanta. So I'm really
Speaker 2: looking forward to talking to him about this because obviously
Speaker 2: housing is just a central issue to everyone in the
Speaker 2: entire country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that as well. Crystal.
Speaker 3: Let's start with developments in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Yesterday,
Speaker 3: the judge in that deportation case said that she was
Speaker 3: going to demand information from the government. Judge quote, we
Speaker 3: have to give process to both sides, but we're going
Speaker 3: to move There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or
Speaker 3: grand standing. Now, we have a clip here of Abrego
Speaker 3: Garcia's wife speaking ahead of the hearing that happened yesterday
Speaker 3: in Green Belt Maryland, so actually not too far from Washington, DC.
Speaker 4: We can go ahead and roll this clip. It's a one.
Speaker 5: You will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive, Kilmar.
Speaker 5: If you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn't forgot
Speaker 5: her about you. Our children are asking when would you
Speaker 5: come home? And I pray for the day I tell
Speaker 5: them the time and date that you'll return. As we
Speaker 5: continue through Holy Week, my heart aches for my husband, Whoshia.
Speaker 5: I had been here leading our Easter prayers. Instead, I
Speaker 5: find myself leading with the Trump administration and the Bugel
Speaker 5: administration to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar.
Speaker 5: Our family is torn apart during the scary time, and
Speaker 5: our children's missed their dad so much so.
Speaker 3: Crystal at the district judge in this case, ordered administration
Speaker 3: officials I'm reading from NBC News here to quote turn
Speaker 3: over evidence of their efforts to help bring him back
Speaker 3: to the US, and she first ordered them to quote
Speaker 3: facilitate his return, saying the government had not shown her
Speaker 3: anything of note on that front. I've got nothing, she said,
Speaker 3: I've gotten no real response and no real legal justification
Speaker 3: for not answering, adding that if the admin is not
Speaker 3: going to answer questions quote, then justify why that's what
Speaker 3: we do in this house. And many people read that
Speaker 3: as a sign that she was waiting weighing contempt charges
Speaker 3: in this case, which would get incredibly interesting. It's already
Speaker 3: quite an interesting case, but that would make it even
Speaker 3: more interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So just to as a refresher for people, I know,
Speaker 2: you guys probably know already some of the contours of
Speaker 2: this case. And we actually, Emily, you and I and
Speaker 2: Ryan had a chance to interview one of his lawyers
Speaker 2: and get some of the specifics about the timeline.
Speaker 6: Of how all of this ultimately unfolded.
Speaker 2: But the Trump administration at least initially admitted that this
Speaker 2: was an error. He had a court order saying you
Speaker 2: cannot deport this man to El Salvador, and they deported
Speaker 2: him to El Salvador and specifically do this notorious torture
Speaker 2: dungeon in El Salvador. So they acknowledged that they had
Speaker 2: made a mistake, both in court filings and also in
Speaker 2: their presentation in court. And their position was we screwed up,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to do anything about it.
Speaker 6: You can't make us and.
Speaker 2: That's been their official position now over the past several days,
Speaker 2: led by Stephen Miller, they are now reversing course and
Speaker 2: claiming that no, actually this wasn't a mistake.
Speaker 6: This is the place where he should be.
Speaker 2: So they've had a rhetorical shift, but in terms of
Speaker 2: their court posture, the things that they said previously and
Speaker 2: attested to previously remain that this was a clear cut
Speaker 2: error that he had in order barring his removal to
Speaker 2: El Salvador, and the administration screwed up when they sent
Speaker 2: him to this torture dungeon. So now where we are
Speaker 2: is the Supreme Court says you have to facilitate his return.
Speaker 2: They say, we want a clarification on this term effectuate
Speaker 2: that came from the District Court because it could potentially
Speaker 2: conflict with the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive So
Speaker 2: we want a clarification there. The district court judge said,
Speaker 2: you know, just facilitates good enough. I'm just going to
Speaker 2: take that word effectuate out. Then she ordered the government
Speaker 2: to on a daily basis, provide an update about his
Speaker 2: well being and status and about every step they are
Speaker 2: taking to facilitate his return. The Trump administration has at
Speaker 2: this point done nothing to facilitate the return those filings
Speaker 2: which are supposed to come in I believe at five
Speaker 2: pm every day. They've been late with them. They have
Speaker 2: not been sufficient in terms of what they are supposed
Speaker 2: to provide. They frequently know. One of them just said, like,
Speaker 2: he's alive and he's in the sovereign custody of l Salvador. Basically,
Speaker 2: so this judge has been for a little while now
Speaker 2: sort of building a case for potential contempt is certainly
Speaker 2: what it looks like. And if we put a five
Speaker 2: up on the screen, this is the headline from Politico.
Speaker 2: Yesterday's hearing really was kind of a coming to a head,
Speaker 2: kind of a moment after Trump had hosted Kelly himself
Speaker 2: in the White House and they played this little game
Speaker 2: with Trump saying I can't bring him back, and but
Speaker 2: Kelly saying, oh well, I don't can't release him.
Speaker 6: Both of them.
Speaker 2: Acting like they're powerless, which obviously is utterly absurd. Politico says,
Speaker 2: the judge is now launching an inquiry into the Trump
Speaker 2: administration's refusal to seek the return of this wrongly deported man. Again,
Speaker 2: this is really directly in convention of a nine to
Speaker 2: zero Supreme Court ruling, saying you have to help to
Speaker 2: facilitate this man's return. And so what the judge is
Speaker 2: saying is, Okay, you've got two weeks. We are launching
Speaker 2: an intensive investigation. She even said, cancel your vacation plans.
Speaker 2: I don't want any messing around, no gamesmanship. She's giving
Speaker 2: the the uh, She's giving them a chance to depose
Speaker 2: the government witnesses, people who have specific knowledge, to get
Speaker 2: them specifically on the record about what they know. And
Speaker 2: then it does seem like potentially this is building up
Speaker 2: to a finding of contempt. You know, we have had
Speaker 2: many instances at this point, Emily of this administration either
Speaker 2: really taking liberties with how they're interpreting judgments, with trying
Speaker 2: to escape by of not really complying with judicial orders
Speaker 2: but giving themselves some sort of rhetorical cover. And I
Speaker 2: think we've all been wondering when does this come to
Speaker 2: a point where there is a direct clash between the
Speaker 2: courts and between the Trump administration, And I think this
Speaker 2: is the case that is heading to that point. The
Speaker 2: last thing I said, I'll say, and this is going
Speaker 2: on a bit of a tangent, but the reason this
Speaker 2: case is important is because and the reason why the
Speaker 2: administration is fighting so hard on this case is because
Speaker 2: the moment you open the door to being able to
Speaker 2: bring people back from that prison, then it ruins their
Speaker 2: plan to be able to send people there whoever they want,
Speaker 2: including apparently American citizens, with no due process. If the
Speaker 2: courts have any sort of say over what happens in
Speaker 2: that prison, then it screws up what they have been
Speaker 2: wanting to do, which is to use the Alien Enemies
Speaker 2: Act and whatever provisions potentially the insurrection or whatever they
Speaker 2: want to do with regard to US citizens, where they
Speaker 2: feel like, if we can just get them on the
Speaker 2: planes fast enough, then we don't have to deal with
Speaker 2: the court system. We don't have to go through due process,
Speaker 2: they don't get to have their say in court, and
Speaker 2: we can just say, oopsie, they're already there. There's nothing
Speaker 2: we can do. The moment that you are able to
Speaker 2: bring kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States and
Speaker 2: they are forced to do that, that plan is completely undermined,
Speaker 2: which underscores that even though you know, we've talked a
Speaker 2: lot about the specifics of the case, the specifics of
Speaker 2: the case certainly matter. All that is important, but this
Speaker 2: is about much more than this one man. And it truly,
Speaker 2: especially with Trump out there talking about the quote unquote homegrowns,
Speaker 2: truly does have direct implications for the entire population, citizen
Speaker 2: and non.
Speaker 3: Well, let's get to that clip. Actually, control room, I'm
Speaker 3: going to go out of order, but this is a four.
Speaker 3: It was from an interview that Donald Trump, or at
Speaker 3: least aired yesterday evening on Fox and Notesius with Rachel
Speaker 3: Kipo Stuffy.
Speaker 4: So here's Donald Trump a four. Could we use it
Speaker 4: for violent criminals? Our own violent criminals.
Speaker 7: I call them homegrown criminals. I mean the ones that
Speaker 7: grew up and something went wrong and they hit people
Speaker 7: over the head with a baseball bat. We have and
Speaker 7: pushed people into subways just before the train gets there,
Speaker 7: like you see happening. Sometimes we are looking into it
Speaker 7: and we want to do it.
Speaker 4: I would love to do that. So to your point, Crystal,
Speaker 4: that is rather chilling.
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure how the Trump administration envisions that
Speaker 3: process or that execution, but something that we will obviously
Speaker 3: be keeping an eye on. And I want to play
Speaker 3: this clip of Caroline Levitt as we transition into how
Speaker 3: Democrats are now mounting a response. This is a three
Speaker 3: Carolyn Levett Yesterday's White House Press briefing addressing many questions
Speaker 3: on the case of Abrigo Garcia, still going.
Speaker 8: Off the Alfabador questions.
Speaker 9: Yesterday in the Oval Office, administration officials made it very
Speaker 9: clear that Al Salvador is responsible for mister Abrido Garcia.
Speaker 9: Yet Al Salvador's president said, we're not going to do.
Speaker 4: Anything with him.
Speaker 8: So my question is who is responsible for this man
Speaker 8: and where he's going.
Speaker 5: To end up.
Speaker 10: Well, No, first of all, President Bukelli said that he
Speaker 10: is not going to smuggle a foreign terrorist back into
Speaker 10: the United States of America as many in this room
Speaker 10: in the Democrat Party seemingly want him to do. Abrago
Speaker 10: Garcia was a foreign terrorist. He is an MS thirteen
Speaker 10: gang member, He was engaged in human trafficking.
Speaker 11: He illegally came into our country.
Speaker 10: And so deporting him back to El Salvador was always
Speaker 10: going to be the end result.
Speaker 11: There is never going.
Speaker 10: To be a world in which this is an individual
Speaker 10: who's going to live a peaceful life in Maryland because
Speaker 10: he is a foreign terrorist MS thirteen gang member. Not
Speaker 10: only have we confirmed that President Bukelly yesterday in the
Speaker 10: Oval Office confirmed that as well, so he went back
Speaker 10: to his home country where he will face consequences for
Speaker 10: his gang affiliation and his engagement in human trafficking. I'm
Speaker 10: not sure what is so difficult about this for everyone
Speaker 10: in the media to understand.
Speaker 11: And it's appalling, truly appalling that there has.
Speaker 10: Been so much time covering this alleged human trafficker and
Speaker 10: this gang member MS thirteen gang member.
Speaker 11: It's truly striking to me.
Speaker 3: So Crystal, I just this case study. The Trump administration
Speaker 3: picked the dumbest possible fight as it's trying to do
Speaker 3: mass deportations because.
Speaker 4: An I think from your perspective, there's.
Speaker 3: Maybe strategy in it about what they can do with
Speaker 3: deportations to Al Salvador in particular. But it is founding
Speaker 3: how stupid this particular case study is. There are, according
Speaker 3: to the New York Times, there were like eight million
Speaker 3: net new migrants into this country over the course of
Speaker 3: the Biden administration. That is the population of multiple states
Speaker 3: put together. And their case studies are kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Speaker 3: They have very little evidence that he actually is MS thirteen,
Speaker 3: and there were also legal processes in place that they
Speaker 3: did not properly deal with and you have the other
Speaker 3: alleged trend Aragua members, the Venezuelan barber et cetera, as
Speaker 3: Dropsite has reported, and more down in Al Salvador as well,
Speaker 3: and they're trying to do mass deportations, but they keep
Speaker 3: stumbling into the dumbest possible fights, not just for a
Speaker 3: media perspective, but also for the actual substance of doing
Speaker 3: these policies. The execution has really been disaster, and it's
Speaker 3: just like unbelievable how poorly they've handled this situation. It's
Speaker 3: a real like when you're looking back in the last
Speaker 3: four years of the Biden administration. For the Trump administration,
Speaker 3: this is a slam dunk. And I think that's almost
Speaker 3: hurt them because they came into this with so much
Speaker 3: confidence and hubrious and political capital that they've just wasted
Speaker 3: it by not handling these legal processes carefully enough, because
Speaker 3: they thought, ah, it won't matter. People just want others gone,
Speaker 3: so it'll be like a cool Libs on the Libs
Speaker 3: moment to send people down to bu Calae. Now as
Speaker 3: we transition to Democrats, I want to.
Speaker 2: Let me just let me just say, look, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: these people are fascists. They want to be able to
Speaker 2: ship whoever they want to a torture dungeon for life.
Speaker 2: The entire purpose of that prison is so that people
Speaker 2: never leave, never leave. You're talking about this man who
Speaker 2: Caroline Lovitt says alleged human traffic. There is zero evidence
Speaker 2: of human trafficking. No one has ever said that they
Speaker 2: will just make shit up MS thirteen. Bullshit is because
Speaker 2: he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat. That's what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here. We learned about a nineteen year old
Speaker 2: who didn't even have a tattoo, who I said, this
Speaker 2: is the wrong guy. Didn't matter. He is now there
Speaker 2: being tortured in this prison for life. And their position
Speaker 2: is we don't care. It's not that they genuinely think
Speaker 2: these are gang members and they're no. The point is
Speaker 2: to prove they can send anyone you, me, your family,
Speaker 2: your brother, That is the point. So yes, it's a strategy,
Speaker 2: and that's why this fight is so important, because number one,
Speaker 2: you should care about this man who does not deserve this.
Speaker 2: I mean very few people do deserve to be locked
Speaker 2: in this dungeon, which is rife with human rights abuses.
Speaker 6: You barely get fed.
Speaker 2: It's like sixty people in a cell, no mattresses, no blankets,
Speaker 2: no time outside, even none life. That's what they have
Speaker 2: sent these people to do. And again, yes, there was
Speaker 2: a significant backlash against the Biden administration immigration policies, but
Speaker 2: when you ask people even more specific questions about like, hey,
Speaker 2: should we depoor people who've been here for ten years
Speaker 2: and have no criminal record, they're like no. But they
Speaker 2: were convinced that the immigrant population was just rife with
Speaker 2: all sorts of criminals. And that's the other thing with
Speaker 2: this policy that the reason why they can't send off
Speaker 2: the worst of the worst is because, yeah, of course
Speaker 2: there are some number of undocumented immigrants who are criminals,
Speaker 2: much less than the native born population, and so it's
Speaker 2: not so easy to round up planeloads of criminals to
Speaker 2: make your big statement.
Speaker 6: So what do they do instead?
Speaker 2: They round up the gay barber, They round up this
Speaker 2: nineteen year old who's done nothing wrong. They round up
Speaker 2: Kilmar Abrego Garcia who has a court order saying you
Speaker 2: cannot do this, and then they ship them off before
Speaker 2: anyone has a chance to say, well are these gang members?
Speaker 6: Did they commit any crimes?
Speaker 2: We now know ninety percent of the people that they
Speaker 2: sent committed no crimes ninety percent. So that's I want
Speaker 2: to be really clear about what we're dealing with here.
Speaker 2: It's not an optics problem, it's not a strategy problem.
Speaker 2: It is an authoritarian fascism problem. That's that's what it is.
Speaker 2: And so when Trump is out here saying the homegrowns
Speaker 2: are next, you know again they're actually When they've pulled
Speaker 2: even on criminal American citizens being sent to this torture dungeon,
Speaker 2: people have said no, I'm no, no way.
Speaker 6: Like, why would we do that?
Speaker 2: But there is no reason you should have any confidence
Speaker 2: that this administration would truly send the quote unquote worst
Speaker 2: of the worst. Their worst of the worst is Andre
Speaker 2: the gay makeup artist who was applying for asylum. That's
Speaker 2: their definition of the worst of the worst. We know
Speaker 2: the way that they're expanding the definition of terrorism to
Speaker 2: include people who dare say the wrong thing about Israel,
Speaker 2: people who harbor ill sentiment against Tesla's, people who go
Speaker 2: to hands off protest to push back against the insanity
Speaker 2: that they see unfolding in their country. That's who they
Speaker 2: want to use these powers against. To transition to what
Speaker 2: the Democrats are doing and why they've finally somewhat woken up.
Speaker 2: You've got Chris van Holland, who's the Senator from Maryland,
Speaker 2: and kil Marra Brego Garstia, of course was living in Maryland,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know what, I'm going to El
Speaker 2: Salvador to Apparently today, I'm going to El Salvador and
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to figure out what is going on.
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to get access to him. I'm
Speaker 2: going to try to talk to you diplomats or if
Speaker 2: he can, the president of El Salvador himself. There are
Speaker 2: other efforts for other politicians to be able to go
Speaker 2: because they finally realized that this isn't this is part
Speaker 2: of a broader project. This is not just about this
Speaker 2: one man. And guess what the people are on your side.
Speaker 2: There is the when you ask people, do you want
Speaker 2: to and send to a torture dungeon an innocent man
Speaker 2: because of an ad ministry of error and never get
Speaker 2: him back. Guess what you're going to be on the
Speaker 2: right side of those politics. Let's take a listen a
Speaker 2: six to chrispin Holland.
Speaker 12: I saw the comments of President ou Kayley and I
Speaker 12: look forward to meeting with them. I've requested to meet
Speaker 12: with him. I reached out to the ambassador here to
Speaker 12: ask to meet while he's here, but I've also made
Speaker 12: clear if we can't meet here, I do intend to
Speaker 12: go to El Salvador to discuss the release of this
Speaker 12: individual who is illegally detained. First President Trump could have
Speaker 12: just said, you know, bring him home. Of course, he
Speaker 12: could have done that, but this is an administration that
Speaker 12: has lied about mister Brago Garcia, right, the Vice President
Speaker 12: the United States tweeted out that he had a criminal record.
Speaker 5: That was a lie.
Speaker 12: They're just lying. They've gotten caughtline, they don't want to
Speaker 12: admit it, and they have an obligation to bring him home.
Speaker 12: But I will say the President of El Salvador should
Speaker 12: not now take it upon himself to say that he
Speaker 12: is detaining him for one more day, because that is kidnapping.
Speaker 12: I understand that the Attorney General said that we would
Speaker 12: provide a plane to bring him home. So all the
Speaker 12: President of Al Salvador has to do now is hand
Speaker 12: over and release an innocent man and let him come
Speaker 12: home to his family.
Speaker 4: And oh, go ahead, Chrysal.
Speaker 2: I was just going to say, and of course, if
Speaker 2: Trump asked b. Kelly, we need this guy back. He
Speaker 2: would be back.
Speaker 6: If b.
Speaker 2: Kelly went to the prison that he runs under a
Speaker 2: state of exception and said we need this guy, of
Speaker 2: course he would.
Speaker 6: Be able to get this guy back.
Speaker 2: There were some women who we tried to send to
Speaker 2: in a few individuals who are from other Central American countries,
Speaker 2: and but Kelly said, no, we can't take women. We
Speaker 2: can't take these other people. He's worried about his relationship
Speaker 2: with these other Central and South American countries, so he
Speaker 2: sent them back as well. Like they're playing this game
Speaker 2: as if we're idiots and we can't see what's going
Speaker 2: on here.
Speaker 3: So we can put the next element up on the screen.
Speaker 3: Other Democrats are doing what Van Holland is doing a
Speaker 3: horribly including Senator Corey Booker and planning trips down to
Speaker 3: Al Salvador. Trying to plan trips down to Al Salvador.
Speaker 3: This is according to a new report from Axios. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the Trump administration, if we put a seven up on
Speaker 3: the screen, continues to to your point, Crystal Lean very
Speaker 3: firmly into this case.
Speaker 4: Vice President J.
Speaker 3: D Vance was mixing it up with actually zed Jlaanni
Speaker 3: on X yesterday, going.
Speaker 6: Back Richard Hannanian too. I think, oh, really.
Speaker 3: Was he tweeting Hanani? Oh my goodness, Okay, he was.
Speaker 3: He was definitely tweeting back and forth with Zed. In
Speaker 3: this particular exchange, Zed was making the point he said,
Speaker 3: why do you say berger Garcia has no legal right
Speaker 3: to be here when the Supreme Court's at the opposite
Speaker 3: nine to zero. And that was in response to JD saying,
Speaker 3: are you proposing that we invade This is to Michel Jellette,
Speaker 3: we invade Al Salvador to retrieve a gang member with
Speaker 3: no legal right to be in our country. Where in
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court's decision does it require us to do that?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: Obviously, Crystal bou Kelly is an ally of this administration.
Speaker 3: Bu Kelly was sitting next to them in the Oval
Speaker 3: office just twenty four hours before that tweet was posted,
Speaker 3: and would obviously help them facilitate or effectuate the return
Speaker 3: of Abrego Garcia to the United States. But the administration
Speaker 3: is very much leaning into this idea that this is
Speaker 3: a guy MS thirteen.
Speaker 4: He can be sent anywhere.
Speaker 3: And I just want to say the point that you
Speaker 3: were making about El Salvador in particular, it is a
Speaker 3: this is going to be an enormous problem I think
Speaker 3: for the right in the next couple of years, this
Speaker 3: relationship with Boukele this particular prison, because a lot of
Speaker 3: Republicans Democrats are now making the truck down to El
Speaker 3: Salvador or trying to a lot of Republicans have gone
Speaker 3: with Christinome. Republican members of Congress have gone and done
Speaker 3: photo ops inside of that prison. They have done their
Speaker 3: photo ops with Nahebukel. That is anti American. What is
Speaker 3: happening in that prison is anti American. And I get
Speaker 3: that other countries are not accepting their own citizens, and
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: That is genuinely a problem. I agree with JD.
Speaker 3: Vance and Donald Trump on I think that is genuinely
Speaker 3: a problem. Sending them to dungeons in El Salvador is
Speaker 3: not actually going to long term fly with the public.
Speaker 3: If you are also ignoring the legal process is that
Speaker 3: are in place when people have done things, and this
Speaker 3: is what Biden I mean.
Speaker 4: Some of this is through Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Abrado Garcia applied for asylum, and I think he actually
Speaker 3: applied for asylum during the Trump administration. When he first applied,
Speaker 3: I think it was twenty nineteen but there are a
Speaker 3: lot of people because these pathways were open up to
Speaker 3: the Biden administration, and that means the Trump administration has
Speaker 3: to deal with that. It sucks and it's not fair
Speaker 3: in every case, but it does mean that we have
Speaker 3: legal processes in place where you do have to deal
Speaker 3: with those things. Otherwise, to your point, Crystal, everyone else's
Speaker 3: rights get eroded down the line. And the flippancy is
Speaker 3: I mean, it has some conservatives. Andy McCarthy is one,
Speaker 3: Rod Dreher is another, like really freaked out by what
Speaker 3: they're seeing from the Trump administration more than I Honestly,
Speaker 3: I think this is more than I've seen on another
Speaker 3: issue in the second Trump administration. It's been upsetting to
Speaker 3: some people on the right. The only other thing I'll add, though,
Speaker 3: is Democrats need to be really careful because as important
Speaker 3: as I think this is, it's going to make it
Speaker 3: look like they got all up in arms about one
Speaker 3: guy who did legitimately enter the country illegally when net
Speaker 3: eight million people came into the country. They need to
Speaker 3: play this very very carefully. Under the Biden administration, often
Speaker 3: with their support, So I do think they have to
Speaker 3: be careful with how they approach going to Al Salvador,
Speaker 3: which I think, by the way, is legitimately a brave
Speaker 3: thing to do, given how Bugle is likely to try them.
Speaker 4: And respect on that part.
Speaker 3: But they with their own constituents, I mean, Democrats were
Speaker 3: unhappy with the Biden administration and immigration policies, so they
Speaker 3: do need to play that pretty carefully.
Speaker 2: I think some of that is overstated because, like I said, yes,
Speaker 2: if you ask people, okay, should we do mass deportation,
Speaker 2: there's still you know, somewhat of a consensus there. If
Speaker 2: you ask them any of the specifics, the view is
Speaker 2: very different, and no, they are not on board with
Speaker 2: shipping random innocent people to this torture dungeon for life.
Speaker 2: So but also, frankly, even if the politics were bad,
Speaker 2: like sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes it's important, sometimes
Speaker 2: you have to make the case.
Speaker 3: You know this, Yeah, I think they should have done
Speaker 3: that during Biden. I genuinely think that's on the substance.
Speaker 3: They should have done that during the Biden administration, done
Speaker 3: what they should have taken what was happening at the border.
Speaker 3: Much more seriously, during the Biden ad ministries, I've been
Speaker 3: saying Republicans did it for the right reason. But I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it was pretty obvious there was something DISASTERUS.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a whole other conversation because in my view,
Speaker 2: what Democrats did is completely capitulate to the right wing
Speaker 2: immigration hawk framing in a way that was utterly disastrous.
Speaker 2: Now I think there is likely to be a huge
Speaker 2: backlash in the other direction. I mean, immigration expansion has
Speaker 2: ever been more popular than it was during the first
Speaker 2: Trump administration because people were disgusted with the tactics that
Speaker 2: he was using then and it is nothing compared to
Speaker 2: what they're doing now. And also the very clear with
Speaker 2: Trump talking about homegrowns, very clear implication that US citizens
Speaker 2: are going to be next. So last thing, just with
Speaker 2: regard to the specifics of Abrego Garcia, if we could
Speaker 2: put a eight up on the screen, just in terms
Speaker 2: of their supposed proof that he's some hardened MS thirteen
Speaker 2: gang member. Apparently the cop who was the person who
Speaker 2: initially claimed that he had alleged MS thirteen membership based
Speaker 2: on some sketchy confidential informant that are you know, they're
Speaker 2: known to be not particularly reliable. He was fired and
Speaker 2: indicted like weeks later after making this claim for sharing
Speaker 2: case info with a sex worker, and the only other
Speaker 2: evidence that they have that and by the way, the
Speaker 2: confidential informant claim that he was part of MS thirteen
Speaker 2: in a part of the country in New York where
Speaker 2: he doesn't live and like has you know, rarely, if
Speaker 2: ever even been to. And then the only other piece
Speaker 2: of evidence they have is that he was wearing a
Speaker 2: Chicago bulls hat.
Speaker 6: So that's what.
Speaker 2: We're talking about. And then when Caroline Love it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's a human trafficker. No one has ever said that.
Speaker 2: That is completely utterly made up false. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I think Democrats have to fight on this issue both
Speaker 2: you know, I do think they're on solid political ground.
Speaker 2: But even if they're not, Like, you cannot create a
Speaker 2: massive loophole in the law that allows the Trump administration
Speaker 2: to disappear whoever they want, whenever they want, and be
Speaker 2: able to uphold this and we can can't do anything
Speaker 2: once they're there.
Speaker 4: That's that when it's not good for anyone.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the whenever civil liberties are threatened, it's
Speaker 3: you know, always the point. You can tell if people
Speaker 3: are principal defenders of civil liberty by how vehemently they
Speaker 3: defend due process when their enemy's due process is threatened.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean it could very well end up being used by
Speaker 3: a democratic administration down the road if we slide fully
Speaker 3: into Banana Republicanism in a way that hurts Republicans, in
Speaker 3: a way that hurts conservatives, Christians, whatever. You can see
Speaker 3: how it would. Those standards can can very easily slip.
Speaker 3: So we have to before we run on this, Crystal,
Speaker 3: we have to get the next element up on the screen.
Speaker 6: The way we found this.
Speaker 4: Love this Christine Nome.
Speaker 3: It's sort of a funny image if you're watching this.
Speaker 3: The Daily Beasts made a funny image to go along
Speaker 3: with that of Christy Noman, all of her outfits, kind
Speaker 3: of treating herself like a Barbie. And the Daily Beast writes,
Speaker 3: Ice Barbie keeps creating all kinds of headaches for homeland security.
Speaker 3: But actually there was a wash Journal is a long
Speaker 3: while street journal story yesterday that indicated Christy Nomes peers
Speaker 3: are not pleased with her. They think that she, according
Speaker 3: to this report in the Journal, is harming their efforts
Speaker 3: actually to try and do mass deportations. And Crystal, I
Speaker 3: think what this highlights is there are real fractures within
Speaker 3: the administration because doing these mass deportations in a way
Speaker 3: that is actually mass if you're if you're actually going
Speaker 3: to hit the targets that the Trump administration promised to do,
Speaker 3: if you are going to do it without causing these
Speaker 3: protracted legal battles where even the right is divided on
Speaker 3: how legally or how legally dubious your track is in
Speaker 3: that case, and if you're also going to do it
Speaker 3: in a way that is politically.
Speaker 4: Going well, they are not doing that right now.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of internal consternation about how ably this
Speaker 3: administration is approaching it. And it looks like Christy No
Speaker 3: is going to be taking some arrows Charity is in
Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal, But this could bubble to the
Speaker 3: surface for her in a rather problematic way going forward
Speaker 3: that can make all of those bouquele photo ops and
Speaker 3: outfits look really foolish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, she's playing dress up like it's preposterous.
Speaker 2: She's just making herself look utterly ridiculous. Did you see
Speaker 2: the video where her like big ass gun was like
Speaker 2: pointed at some at the dude next to HER's head
Speaker 2: and he like takes a look at where her gun
Speaker 2: is pointed and like backs up sort of subtly. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just she's a ridiculous person. I mean the Barbie
Speaker 2: Moniker is actually accurate here because she has all these
Speaker 2: little like dress up outfits she's taking here herself, swapping
Speaker 2: in you know, Oh, she's doing her coastguard thing. She's
Speaker 2: doing her She's got her ice flat jacket on. I
Speaker 2: mean she had like a freaking ice like the big
Speaker 2: bulletproof vest on in Manhattan, like the streets of New
Speaker 2: York City, Like, girl, where do you think you are?
Speaker 2: It's in with the full extension and the full eyelashes
Speaker 2: and the whole bit. And it's also like, lady, you're
Speaker 2: like fifty something years old. You know, it's I don't know,
Speaker 2: the whole thing is just it is just a part
Speaker 2: of a grotesque spectacle to me. So I'm glad at
Speaker 2: least someone is also noticing and being like, you know what,
Speaker 2: this is kind of gross.
Speaker 4: Well, Megan Kelly went after her. That reminds me.
Speaker 3: Megan Kelly and some others have started, I think and
Speaker 3: Culter have started going after her.
Speaker 4: Sarah Palin went after her. Really, so yeah, she's doing
Speaker 4: taking some eras.
Speaker 6: What did Megan go after her for the outfits? Really? Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 6: It's like embarrassing.
Speaker 3: It really is, like she's a law enforcement officer. It's
Speaker 3: starting to look complete. I mean, I shouldn't say its
Speaker 3: starting to look it looks completely unseerious and ridiculous. But
Speaker 3: I think this is genuinely a problem for the administration
Speaker 3: because this was like their big ticket issue that they
Speaker 3: can't at well. And the economy. The Trump administration has
Speaker 3: some real problems ahead. Let's get to that, because actually,
Speaker 3: what we want to say to start with is this
Speaker 3: sort of Harry Enton on CNN yesterday talking about some
Speaker 3: of the movement for Donald Trump in the in polling
Speaker 3: as this trade war has proceeded.
Speaker 4: So let's go ahead and roll b one here.
Speaker 13: Focus in on Independence here, and Independence feel that Donald
Speaker 13: Trump has vacated the center of the electric catering to
Speaker 13: his base. What are we talking about, Well, let's talk
Speaker 13: about the overall net approval ratings. We're going to look
Speaker 13: at the worst ever at this point in a presidency.
Speaker 13: The old record among Independence for the worst ever was
Speaker 13: Donald Trump back in twenty sixteen, a net approval rating
Speaker 13: of minus sixteen points. While Donald Trump has broken his
Speaker 13: own record here, he now holds, in this particular term,
Speaker 13: the worst ever net approval rating at this point in
Speaker 13: a presidency among independents. At get this, minus twenty two points,
Speaker 13: he is twenty two points underwater with independence. That breaks
Speaker 13: the old record that belonged to Trump. He is set
Speaker 13: the new record. He is come completely underwater with the
Speaker 13: center of the electric k pot.
Speaker 14: And this is overall, this is on all the issues
Speaker 14: now focus on specifically on the economy.
Speaker 13: Yeah, let's focus in on the economy, right, what is
Speaker 13: driving this overall approval rating for Donald Trump among independents
Speaker 13: to go underwater. Let's take a look at the economy,
Speaker 13: and let's take a look at Trump's NOTT approval rating
Speaker 13: on it. And look at the trend line over just
Speaker 13: the last few months. You go back to January, he
Speaker 13: was slightly above water a month with independence at plus
Speaker 13: one point. Look at this drop, Kate, oh my, minus
Speaker 13: twenty nine points. That's a thirty point drop in under
Speaker 13: three months of time. What independents are hearing from Donald Trump?
Speaker 13: They hate, they hate what they're hearing from Donald Trump,
Speaker 13: and they are abandoning him in record numbers.
Speaker 3: And Actually, what the Chiron said behind Harry Eton there,
Speaker 3: who I have to imagine is hopped up on ghost
Speaker 3: energy every single day. But what the Chiron said, what
Speaker 3: is like Sager at the DNC, was that was the
Speaker 3: worst for any president, the worst net number with independence
Speaker 3: on the economy. And so that drop in three months time, Chris,
Speaker 3: I can't remember seeing anything like that. Now, that's huge
Speaker 3: on the economy with independence. Now, obviously it's early in
Speaker 3: the midterm election cycle. God forbid we even consider that
Speaker 3: we may be in the midterm election cycle.
Speaker 4: But those numbers are devastating.
Speaker 2: Oh, utterly devastating. And you know, the tariff policy changes
Speaker 2: every day, even if tomorrow he's like just kidding, I
Speaker 2: made amazing deals and the teriffts are off and we're
Speaker 2: back to normal.
Speaker 6: The damage is done.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: It does remind me.
Speaker 2: Of the drop off that Joe Biden unfortunately had during
Speaker 2: while he was doing one of the good things in
Speaker 2: his administration, which is withdrawing from Afghanistan, and the negative
Speaker 2: media coverage and you know, Americans getting killed and the
Speaker 2: chaos of all the Taliban taking back control. Like he
Speaker 2: took a hit to his approval and he never recovered
Speaker 2: and I do think with Trump, the honeymoon is over. Certainly,
Speaker 2: the sense that oh, this is a businessman and he's
Speaker 2: going to be good for me economically, et cetera, like
Speaker 2: that is that is done, and that has always been
Speaker 2: his strength. That has always been the area where he
Speaker 2: has performed the best. You know, as much as we
Speaker 2: like talked about immigrations role in the in the election,
Speaker 2: the economy was the number one issue, inflation in particular,
Speaker 2: and people were never really super psyched about the things
Speaker 2: he was saying about tariffs, but they he also talked
Speaker 2: a lot about I'm going to get prices down, and
Speaker 2: they just sort of assumed. I think, like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it went pretty well last time, like he knows what
Speaker 2: he's doing. We'll do some stuff on the economy that's
Speaker 2: going to be good for me. And no, the reality
Speaker 2: is that he is instituting this massive terror regime. It
Speaker 2: will be if he continues with it, a huge regressive
Speaker 2: tax on working class people. Rather than price is going down,
Speaker 2: they're going to go up. That is what their you know,
Speaker 2: consumers increasingly expect, and huge numbers are already saying that
Speaker 2: what he's doing is making them personally financially worse off.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm actually right now in the process of drifting modelogue
Speaker 2: probably for tomorrow. About as his approval rating falls, I
Speaker 2: think you will see more of these sort of authoritarian
Speaker 2: tactics that are being deployed with regard right now to immigration,
Speaker 2: with regard to crushing descent on college campuses. This ties
Speaker 2: into the Harvard conversation that we're going to have as well,
Speaker 2: because that's what you know, people who have who are
Speaker 2: authoritarians or have authoritarian tendencies, when they're back to into
Speaker 2: a corner, they don't back down. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: what we saw with Trump with January sixth. He didn't
Speaker 2: just say, oh I lost, I guess you know, I
Speaker 2: have to peacefully go away.
Speaker 6: No, they crack down.
Speaker 2: They go further in terms of expanding the police state
Speaker 2: and crushing descent and using whatever weapons they can against
Speaker 2: their ideological enemies too. Yeah, yeah, you know, to make
Speaker 2: sure that they are able to hold their grip on
Speaker 2: power even as they become less and less popular. And
Speaker 2: so I think you know, that's where on the one hand,
Speaker 2: the fact that his popularity is diminishing is going to
Speaker 2: give him less power with regard to Republican politicians some
Speaker 2: of these institutions, like the media and the universities. The
Speaker 2: Democrats are starting to like get a little bit of
Speaker 2: energy because they can see the way that his popularity
Speaker 2: is waning and his plans are being rejected by the public.
Speaker 2: But it also enters us into a sort of like
Speaker 2: new precarious phase in terms of what his reaction to
Speaker 2: that will ultimately be.
Speaker 3: Well, and so I think the way we set up
Speaker 3: this block is really helpful on this note because as
Speaker 3: a sort of anti free trade orthodoxy or like dogma
Speaker 3: type person, the question of short term pain was always
Speaker 3: going to be part of this picture. And that's sort
Speaker 3: of the way the elite set up the system is
Speaker 3: that if you ever want to bring us back from
Speaker 3: relying entirely for national security purposes for pharmaceutical purposes on
Speaker 3: other countries that are on the other side of the world,
Speaker 3: there is going to be short term pain. But the
Speaker 3: question is how short term that pain is going to
Speaker 3: be and if it ever is relieved. And so this
Speaker 3: is we can put the next elpant element. I think
Speaker 3: I just an elephant up on the screen element up
Speaker 3: on the screen, Crystal. This is from Joe Eisenthal, who
Speaker 3: was pointing out quote dismal expectations for the economy and
Speaker 3: the New York FED survey of regional manufacturers. Basically every
Speaker 3: line new orders, employment, et cetera. Is going down, with
Speaker 3: the exception of prices received and paid, which are going up,
Speaker 3: and then control them. Whenever you're ready, you can put
Speaker 3: the next element up on the screen as well. This
Speaker 3: is the outlook for new orders from the New York
Speaker 3: Fed's regional manufacturers literally hit the lowest level in the
Speaker 3: history of the survey. Another Joe Wisenthal post on x
Speaker 3: that he highlighted from these New York Fed numbers, and
Speaker 3: that gets to crystal whether in this push or pull
Speaker 3: there's more that's going to be lost or more that's
Speaker 3: going to be gained. So, even if this is a
Speaker 3: long term battle, even if we accept that there may
Speaker 3: be some short term pain, these numbers over the course
Speaker 3: of the first week have been not great for the administration.
Speaker 3: They are pointing to deals with like Nvidia and other places,
Speaker 3: but it seems like the industrial policy that they want
Speaker 3: to couple this with is one going to be codifying
Speaker 3: a corporate tax cut, which I will say as annoying
Speaker 3: as that is may help with onshoring, but it's not
Speaker 3: industrial policy. And then their second part of their industrial
Speaker 3: policies just Trump calling up these companies and talking to them.
Speaker 4: So far, that's what it looks like the approach is.
Speaker 3: And you can understand then where these Wisenthal number numbers
Speaker 3: are coming from. And let's just get to this element
Speaker 3: from NBC News. This is before United Airlines. Here's the headline,
Speaker 3: gives two twenty twenty five profit outlooks, calling economy quote
Speaker 3: impossible to predict.
Speaker 4: So just the lead of the story.
Speaker 3: United Airlines maintained it's full your forecast on Tuesday, but
Speaker 3: took an unusual step of offering second forecast should the
Speaker 3: US slip into a recession, calling the economy quote impossible
Speaker 3: to predict.
Speaker 4: Either way, it expects to turn a profit.
Speaker 3: NBC Rights But says the carrier warned alongside its first
Speaker 3: quarter earnings that a recession could drive down profits this year,
Speaker 3: but said booking trends are stable, stable for now. And lastly,
Speaker 3: Crystal this next element from Newsweek. This is according to
Speaker 3: Chinese media. I should add, but this is from Newsweek,
Speaker 3: saying that Greenland's foreign minister has set it as seeking
Speaker 3: deeper cooperation with China and potentially a free trade agreement,
Speaker 3: according to China's state news agency Shinha. So all of
Speaker 3: this evidence points to a very if this is a
Speaker 3: period of temporary pain, Crystal, it is going to be
Speaker 3: an enormous period of temporary pain, and the signs that
Speaker 3: there is more onshoring that's going to happen so far
Speaker 3: to offset the people who say we are actually going
Speaker 3: to bet on Tchin, or we are going to bet
Speaker 3: outside of the United States because the United States, you know,
Speaker 3: is not a safe haven for us right now. We
Speaker 3: don't feel confident that we can make long term investments.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense supposed to do that. These are
Speaker 3: these are not great scigns for the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well Trump himself said something like, you know, some
Speaker 2: of these countries, we may have them pick between US
Speaker 2: and China.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's not a hard.
Speaker 2: Choice if I was running in a country, like why
Speaker 2: would you do a deal with this person? He's all
Speaker 2: over the place, Like China is rising power. They have
Speaker 2: been much more strategic in terms of securing like the
Speaker 2: rare earth minerals that they need. Technologically, they are just
Speaker 2: as advanced at least. I think that's actually being charitable
Speaker 2: to the US at this point as we are, like
Speaker 2: they have mass manufacturing capacity. What they have been you know,
Speaker 2: reasonable to work with in terms of the Belton Road initiative.
Speaker 6: Why what do we have going for us?
Speaker 4: We just have lots of customers with a lot of
Speaker 4: disposed boys to come.
Speaker 6: And that's a real thing.
Speaker 2: Like I mean that China has even more customers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just by the numbers, we are, you know, continue to
Speaker 2: be per capita wealthier country and no doubt about that.
Speaker 2: And you know, I don't want to undersell it, but
Speaker 2: you also have a human element to this too, like
Speaker 2: Jade Vance going to Europe and you know, tutting them
Speaker 2: about their supposedly sensoriues practices, which is legit, except then
Speaker 2: he comes back home and they're crushing descent on college
Speaker 2: campuses and being way more authoritarian in terms of their
Speaker 2: like crackdown on any sort of wrong thing on Israel.
Speaker 2: So you know, they haven't exactly endeared themselves to the world.
Speaker 2: Not to mention, China is fighting a trade war against us.
Speaker 2: We are apparently fighting a trade war against the entire
Speaker 2: freaking world. So who do you think has the better.
Speaker 2: You know, they can think strategically just about us and
Speaker 2: making alliances and trying to you know, isolate us. We're
Speaker 2: rapidly isolating our and giving the rest of the world
Speaker 2: a very cular choice in terms of what they you know,
Speaker 2: what direction they would want to go in. And that's
Speaker 2: why Greenland is sort of emblematic here. And you know,
Speaker 2: just a couple two other points that I just want
Speaker 2: to hone in on. I mean, first of all, even
Speaker 2: with the tariffs in their current sort of rolled back state,
Speaker 2: we have one hundred and forty five percent terraffs on China.
Speaker 2: If you are a big guy, you can pay your
Speaker 2: million dollars, you can go to mar A Lago, you
Speaker 2: can get your car ount, you can be Charles Schwab
Speaker 2: in the White House and happen to be you know,
Speaker 2: perfectly timed Trump's announcements, so you can make two point
Speaker 2: five billion dollars in a single day, something that Trump
Speaker 2: bragged about. If you are your average small to medium
Speaker 2: size business which had no choice but to import, usually
Speaker 2: from China, you're screwed.
Speaker 6: You are screwed.
Speaker 2: There is no way you can survive one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty five percent terraff even if you wanted to bring
Speaker 2: manufacturing and build your own factory and do all these things,
Speaker 2: you're not getting any help from the government. The tariffs
Speaker 2: are they're here, Like, it's not like you have any
Speaker 2: sort of runway to be able to figure it out
Speaker 2: or raise capital or do any of that. We don't
Speaker 2: in many instances even have the specialty skills here. So
Speaker 2: you've got to, you know, go over seas to even
Speaker 2: bring the people in who would know how to do it.
Speaker 2: Like it's it is not possible, it's not possible. Instead,
Speaker 2: you're just gonna die. Like your company, your business, your dream,
Speaker 2: your life, it's just gonna go under. Yesterday I highlighted
Speaker 2: this woman. She's a veteran. She founded this company called
Speaker 2: Busy Baby. They make these little mats that you can
Speaker 2: that's actually very cool product. You can put it on
Speaker 2: the table at the restaurant and you can hook the
Speaker 2: baby's like toys onto and so it's clean and the
Speaker 2: baby can't throw the toys down on the ground, which
Speaker 2: is a constant issue.
Speaker 6: And this thing was taken off. She got to go
Speaker 6: on Shark Tank.
Speaker 16: You know.
Speaker 2: Her sales were through the roof Walmart and Target came knocking.
Speaker 2: But she had to take out alone in order to
Speaker 2: finance the expansion into Walmart, and she leveraged her house
Speaker 2: in order to get cure those small business loans. And
Speaker 2: now so not only is she at risk of losing
Speaker 2: her business, she and her dream, which was succeeding and
Speaker 2: which is a product that people genuinely liked, she's also
Speaker 2: at risk of losing her home. I mean, these are like,
Speaker 2: you're messing with people's lives and for what, For what?
Speaker 2: The manufacturing index should tell you everything you need to
Speaker 2: know about whether this is actually going to bring manufacturing
Speaker 2: back Quite the opposite, Quite the opposite, especially if we
Speaker 2: end up in recession.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the problems with those small businesses as
Speaker 3: well is that people are having a harder time getting
Speaker 3: in touch with reportedly. I mean, obviously I haven't tried this,
Speaker 3: but with the Small Business Administration because of cuts, and that's.
Speaker 4: You know, I think, Crystal. We remember with NAFTA.
Speaker 3: I was I still a lot on an interview with
Speaker 3: David Obie recently from like two thousand where he was
Speaker 3: talking about he was on CNN and he was talking
Speaker 3: about how he supported NAFTA and wto because there were
Speaker 3: promises of job training and investment in the communities that
Speaker 3: would be really hard hit, And he said, you know,
Speaker 3: I regret that because I never saw that stuff happen.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a real lesson for the Trump
Speaker 3: administration in that there will be casualties. They know that
Speaker 3: there will be casualties of this adjustment period if it's
Speaker 3: just an adjustment period, by the way, that's assuming it's
Speaker 3: an adjustment period.
Speaker 4: And what are they doing to make up for that?
Speaker 3: What are they doing to help the people who set
Speaker 3: up their businesses around the pre existing system because it
Speaker 3: had existed for years and was the way to turn
Speaker 3: a profit, was the way they were told to be
Speaker 3: productive members of the American economy, small business owners. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is the Republican electorate, by the way, has been
Speaker 3: the Republican elector for a really long time. So they
Speaker 3: need to tread very very carefully. And there just aren't
Speaker 3: a lot of signs that they're taking seriously the need
Speaker 3: to augment. Again, this is taking their argument charitably that
Speaker 3: this is an adjustment period.
Speaker 4: But even then, even if we give them that the
Speaker 4: size that.
Speaker 3: They're augmenting this with serious off ramps for people effective
Speaker 3: I just don't see much there at all.
Speaker 2: No, No, I mean there's been some floating of a
Speaker 2: bailout for farmers again, which you know he did in
Speaker 2: his first administration, but that's it. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think these tariffs are less about economics and more about power.
Speaker 2: I think Trump likes having the companies coming on bend
Speaker 2: and me I think he likes being the person who
Speaker 2: has soul control over like the entire freaking global economy,
Speaker 2: certainly the national domestic economy. I think that's really what
Speaker 2: it's more about. And the last thing I'll say with
Speaker 2: regard to like bringing back manufacturing, something I support for
Speaker 2: a variety of reasons, both in terms of, you know,
Speaker 2: they should be good union jobs. There are certain things
Speaker 2: that we should produce here simply because of you know,
Speaker 2: national security.
Speaker 6: We all learn this during COVID.
Speaker 2: We learned about the fragility of the supply chain and
Speaker 2: the way that put us at rice. Like, I support
Speaker 2: all of that, right, but when Trump is talking about
Speaker 2: bringing manufacturing, when Lutnik is talking about it too, all
Speaker 2: the armies of millions of people or robots screwing in
Speaker 2: the little little screws. First of all, Number one, they
Speaker 2: a lot of it will be robots. It won't be
Speaker 2: human beings. So there's number one, you'll be like, you know,
Speaker 2: you'll have some humans to like service the air conditioning
Speaker 2: to keep the robots cool. That's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that we're talking about. But number two, to the extent
Speaker 2: that you do have human beings. Trump is not talking
Speaker 2: about bringing us back to the nineteen fifties, when we
Speaker 2: were at the peak of post war manufacturing power, at
Speaker 2: a time when somewhere around half of the industrial workforce
Speaker 2: was unionized. He wants to take us back to nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: To William McKinley, that's what he talks about all the time.
Speaker 2: Guess what that was. That was before you had progressive
Speaker 2: era labor reforms. That's before you had even federal child
Speaker 2: labor laws. That's before factory jobs were good jobs. That
Speaker 2: was much more like think of you know, mord Deckenzian,
Speaker 2: think of like you know, Upton Sinclair and the way
Speaker 2: workers were treated in you know, in the jungle, think
Speaker 2: of the triangle shirtwaist fire. That's the era he want
Speaker 2: to bring America back to, where our workers are part
Speaker 2: of the global race to the bottom. That's the era
Speaker 2: that he envisions, So everyone really needs to be really clear.
Speaker 2: There's nothing inherently like good, stable middle class about a
Speaker 2: factory job. You have to have unions and labor power
Speaker 2: in order to secure both the safety and the wages
Speaker 2: and the working conditions to make those jobs good jobs.
Speaker 2: They were in the fifties, They honestly at this point
Speaker 2: they are not great, especially in the South. You know,
Speaker 2: the I saw Matt Burning tweeted out that like Honda
Speaker 2: workers in Alabama make less than McDonald's workers in Denmark
Speaker 2: because of those labor conditions. And so no one should
Speaker 2: fool themselves about the actual era that in his idealized
Speaker 2: world he would be returning us to.
Speaker 4: So I went and looked at this yesterday, just before
Speaker 4: we move on.
Speaker 3: It is interesting the bien Industrial Policy brought manufacturing jobs
Speaker 3: back to red states with right to work laws overwhelmingly,
Speaker 3: And if you look at the map, it's like basically
Speaker 3: not just red states, but it's states like swing states
Speaker 3: even that of right to work laws, including Michigan until
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four when that was repealed. So it's really
Speaker 3: like the Trump administration wanting to be pro labor, pro
Speaker 3: middle class. There's a complicated puzzle that needs to be
Speaker 3: put in place. And again we're what two weeks into
Speaker 3: the liberation era, but there's just the all of the
Speaker 3: energy right now is to fix this tax bill and
Speaker 3: to figure out this reconciliation bill, which is tax policy basically,
Speaker 3: and I mean that'll probably haven't expanded child tax credit,
Speaker 3: but that's about it when it comes to, you know,
Speaker 3: like relief for middle class, working class families, and there
Speaker 3: are just there's not a lot of policy.
Speaker 4: Momentum at all.
Speaker 3: And again maybe that'll change, but there's not a ton
Speaker 3: of evidence of that right now. Just ask someone on
Speaker 3: the right. I just don't see a lot of energy
Speaker 3: on that right now.
Speaker 4: Crystal.
Speaker 3: We should play this Bill Burr clip because it's really something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: here's Bill Burr on his podcast. David Sarota actually pointed
Speaker 3: this clip out. We can go ahead and roll B six.
Speaker 3: Bill Burr addressing the economy over the course of the
Speaker 3: last couple of weeks.
Speaker 17: This whole idea that other countries stole our jobs, like
Speaker 17: our factory jobs and all that. As far as I remember, that's.
Speaker 18: Not the case.
Speaker 17: There's a little quick history from someone who doesn't read
Speaker 17: a lot in the eighteen hundreds during the what was
Speaker 17: that period called the Industrial Revolution. They had like kids
Speaker 17: working in factories like fucking twelve fourteen hour days, like
Speaker 17: four or five year old kids, in dangerous situations, and
Speaker 17: people weren't making any money and the one guy who
Speaker 17: owned the factory was keeping all the money. The working
Speaker 17: man finally has enough, they start organizing unions. The robber barons,
Speaker 17: hire police, the army, all of these people to come
Speaker 17: in and kill these people in riots, crack their skulls,
Speaker 17: do unbelievable sorts of damage to them to try and
Speaker 17: force them to go back to work for sweatshop wages.
Speaker 17: These people died, were maimed, catastrophic fucking injuries so that
Speaker 17: we could have a decent wage in this country. And
Speaker 17: they had unions and all of that. So then there
Speaker 17: was like a forty to fifty year period where being
Speaker 17: a middle class person, middle class white person, was the dream.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 17: Eventually, these corporations just got sick of dealing with these
Speaker 17: unions and they're hard nosed negotiating all that, and then
Speaker 17: they just said, well, fuck you, then you will here.
Speaker 17: You don't keep your union, keep your factory, we're leaving.
Speaker 17: And they took their factories out side of the US
Speaker 17: and went back to eighteen hundred wages. What the fuck
Speaker 17: you should be making those things here? And then what
Speaker 17: the corporate guy said was, well, you know, we would
Speaker 17: make sneakers here, but if to pay the American work
Speaker 17: and everything, the sneakers would then instead of costing fifty bucks,
Speaker 17: they now cost seven hundred. And I was always thinking
Speaker 17: why it would cost seven on a buy? I can't
Speaker 17: afford that.
Speaker 16: And what it really was was they weren't going to
Speaker 16: lose the profit of sweatshop labor, so if they came
Speaker 16: back to America, we weren't going to work for that,
Speaker 16: so and they weren't going to take They weren't going
Speaker 16: to lose the profit of sweatshop labor, so they were
Speaker 16: going to pass it on to the consumer.
Speaker 4: You's gonna see why Bilberg's popular. Crystal.
Speaker 2: Yes, he needs to run for president. I'm not even kidding, Like,
Speaker 2: have you heard anyone else, any Democratic politician explain it
Speaker 2: as well as him?
Speaker 3: Like we were talking yesterday, and you made such a
Speaker 3: good point that I'm producer Griffin I think mentioned this
Speaker 3: as well, that he just sounds like a normal guy,
Speaker 3: which is something that most like left class critics don't right.
Speaker 6: Said is he doesn't come off as soy.
Speaker 3: Yes, I was going to leave that for someone else
Speaker 3: to say, but what if if we're.
Speaker 4: Attributing it to producer Griffin.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I think that's actually very well said, because
Speaker 3: it's the problem. We're going to run a James Carvell
Speaker 3: clip later in the show. But I do think that
Speaker 3: James Carvell was right about that. Nina Turner has said
Speaker 3: this too. The way democrats talk because so many have
Speaker 3: been sort of funneled through academia, is really academic. It's
Speaker 3: it's quoted in a way that I don't want to
Speaker 3: say feminine because it's not all feminine, but it comes
Speaker 3: across as like very like it.
Speaker 6: Doesn't always connect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that says the thing is it just doesn't frequently
Speaker 2: does not connect. No, he's got a gift for that,
Speaker 2: and he's one hundred percent right. You know, the the
Speaker 2: Trump framing is like all these countries stole are workers.
Speaker 2: No politicians here, collaborate with corporations to create this global
Speaker 2: race to the bottom.
Speaker 6: That's what it is.
Speaker 2: And so you know, the left, people like Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 2: who has been extremely consistent, extremely prescient about the impact
Speaker 2: of NAFTA, the impact of PNTR. It's not that they're
Speaker 2: opposed to trade. They're opposed to trade. That creates a
Speaker 2: race to the bottom where you are just you know,
Speaker 2: where you aren't dealing with labor standards, you aren't dealing
Speaker 2: with wages, and so of course capitalists are going to
Speaker 2: search for the lowest paid labor force they can possibly
Speaker 2: find so that they can endlessly juice their profits. Like
Speaker 2: that is the system that we have. And so you know,
Speaker 2: Bill Burr I think explains it really perfectly there. In
Speaker 2: the post war period, the US in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways was kind of like the only game in town.
Speaker 2: So we benefit of from this unique period of prosperity.
Speaker 2: And then once you get into the neoliberal era and
Speaker 2: they're stripping away of union rights and there there's you know,
Speaker 2: bad trade deals like NAFTA, like you know, then the
Speaker 2: opening up fully of trade to China. Once you have
Speaker 2: those deals and you create the global race to the bottom,
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's how you end up with the
Speaker 2: dynamic that we have now. And to go back to
Speaker 2: my earlier point, Trump doesn't want to reverse those trends.
Speaker 2: He just wants to get American workers back into that
Speaker 2: global race to the bottom. Right, he wants them to
Speaker 2: also or robots, right, also participate in that global race
Speaker 2: at the bottom. And we know that because you know,
Speaker 2: there's relentless attacks on unions from this administration. The Natural
Speaker 2: Labor Relations Board has been gutted as effectively without a quorum,
Speaker 2: unable to operate. That's been a lifelong project and direction
Speaker 2: for him. He's always been a union buster, we see
Speaker 2: with regard to like the labor labor standards, you know,
Speaker 2: just like basic workplace safety and stuff. Even in industries
Speaker 2: where Trump has a particular affinity, like for example, with
Speaker 2: coal miners, they are completely destroyed the health and safety
Speaker 2: measures for coal miners already an extremely dangerous job where
Speaker 2: younger and younger men are getting an incredibly virulent form
Speaker 2: of black lung. The dog just stripping that away, and
Speaker 2: dog just stripping the ability of the government to be
Speaker 2: able to regulate any big business so that even without
Speaker 2: changing the law, they can kind of sort of go
Speaker 2: back to when you could have your sweatshop and you
Speaker 2: could lock people in and you could pay them whatever
Speaker 2: wage you wanted, and you could get away with it.
Speaker 2: So when you couple the tariffs with the direction of Doge.
Speaker 2: That's the picture that you ultimately get. And then you
Speaker 2: add to that the other piece that Bill Burr talked about,
Speaker 2: which is how somehow these billionaires keep being in a
Speaker 2: position to make lots of money on these big market swings.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he
Speaker 2: had to say about that.
Speaker 17: And I don't understand what that whole fucking thing was,
Speaker 17: But all I know is once again the market tanked,
Speaker 17: and a bunch of rich people, right before they turned
Speaker 17: it back on again, went in and made a ridiculous
Speaker 17: amount of money and they're all high fiving.
Speaker 4: With each other.
Speaker 17: And I don't know. This guy told me something a
Speaker 17: long time ago.
Speaker 18: He says, when you.
Speaker 17: Watch the stock market and they go like up two
Speaker 17: billion dollars was lost today, He's like, money isn't lost,
Speaker 17: Like where did it go? That's just how they frame it.
Speaker 17: It isn't lost. It changes hands. All right, that's enough
Speaker 17: of that shit.
Speaker 6: Well, and obviously go ahead him.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I
Speaker 3: do think there are elements of the Trump administration actually,
Speaker 3: even thank Donald Trump himself, who thinks that he is
Speaker 3: somehow like the savior of the American working class and
Speaker 3: all of this, and like genuinely believes that what's happening
Speaker 3: is going in that direction. The problem is his administration
Speaker 3: is infiltrated by billionaires and now a lot of influence
Speaker 3: from Silicon Valley and out the Wall Street for example,
Speaker 3: and to one extent, you can look at what he
Speaker 3: did with the tariffs and all Street freaked out and
Speaker 3: say he just gave them the middle finger. The ten
Speaker 3: percent global tariff is still giving Wall Street the middle finger.
Speaker 4: They absolutely hate that.
Speaker 3: The huge China tariffs, they absolutely hate that. But in
Speaker 3: a way it also does put them in the driver's seat.
Speaker 3: And that's the bond market is what made him. People
Speaker 3: were getting quoe yippie, is what made him walk back.
Speaker 3: And again he hasn't walked everything all the way back.
Speaker 3: We still that massive ten percent global tariff and the
Speaker 3: massive tariffs on China. Nobody in the business community wanted that.
Speaker 3: But what happens next is really critical for ver Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and for people in the administration who want to
Speaker 3: genuinely it's people on the right who say, these are
Speaker 3: our voters now, and you let's just attribute to them
Speaker 3: political motivations and say, we are going to lose these
Speaker 3: voters back to Democrats. We're talking about that later in
Speaker 3: the show. How Dems have taken their fighting the oligarchy
Speaker 3: tour to really really big audiences, increasingly big audiences. So
Speaker 3: even if they're politically motivated and they look at that,
Speaker 3: you have to then step back and say, well, why
Speaker 3: is uh Howard Lutnik behind the scenes the operator here?
Speaker 4: Why that's interesting? He seems to be the one that's
Speaker 4: making the deals. Didn't he just get off the street?
Speaker 4: Has he been a Washington the line?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I mean it wasn't infiltrated by billionaires.
Speaker 2: Trump is himself a billionaire and he brought a bunch
Speaker 2: of billionaires to be around him. I mean, the terror
Speaker 2: policy is clearly all him.
Speaker 4: Clearly definitely, it is absolutely all him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and his that you know, Scott Besten is like
Speaker 2: putting his game face on and going out and defending it.
Speaker 6: And that's his job is to be a sick of fan.
Speaker 2: That's all these people's jobs, to be a sick of
Speaker 2: fan and go out and defend whatever the mad king does.
Speaker 2: But there's no doubt the like Tariff, some penguins and
Speaker 2: this ridiculous formula and the whole chaos of the whole
Speaker 2: situation like that is all one Trump And where I
Speaker 2: thought you were going with the like them being in
Speaker 2: the driver's seat is they're in the driver's seat because
Speaker 2: if you are a well connected CEO oligarch, you get
Speaker 2: to be the one that's you know, the auto part EXE,
Speaker 2: like this is really a problem for us. Or you
Speaker 2: could be in Nvidia and get your examiner, or you
Speaker 2: could be iPhone. I mean think about this, like these
Speaker 2: high tech components that actually we really should have and
Speaker 2: under the Biden administration did have some concerted policy industrial
Speaker 2: policy to reshore here and manufacture here.
Speaker 6: Those are the pieces that are getting the exemptions.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, like you know this lady's busy baby Matt, American
Speaker 2: consumers just will not be allowed to buy it. She's
Speaker 2: gonna look for markets all around the world to sell
Speaker 2: her product because not only could she not make it here,
Speaker 2: she won't be able to sell it here because of
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty five percent tariff yep, so people.
Speaker 15: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then on the insider trading piece, like not
Speaker 2: only did you have the Charles Schwab and some other
Speaker 2: billionaires there the day that Trump sends the market soaring
Speaker 2: with a single tweet and he brags about Charles Schwab
Speaker 2: making two point five billion dollars on the day. Real
Speaker 2: main Street, you know main Street over Wall Street, guys right.
Speaker 4: Posts good time to buy.
Speaker 3: I guess who can make the argument that that's actually
Speaker 3: very egalitarian.
Speaker 4: But yeah, what a day that was.
Speaker 2: And then and then you know, we'll look at Marjorie
Speaker 2: Taylor Green bought a bunch of stock on the day,
Speaker 2: and you just like, okay, when you and this is
Speaker 2: the problem with having one person in sole control of
Speaker 2: this massive economic web, nuclear weapon, you single handedly can
Speaker 2: move the market up and down in huge ways. And
Speaker 2: so then it's okay, well, who knew you were going
Speaker 2: to do that instead to profit? And we know that
Speaker 2: this administration, you know, Trump's got his hitcoin and whatever
Speaker 2: and his development properties all around the world, like they
Speaker 2: are extraordinarily corrupt, nakedly corrupt. So I would be shocked
Speaker 2: if people weren't out there trading and making billions based
Speaker 2: on these like monarchical announcements that are coming down on
Speaker 2: high on a day to day basis. Now some people
Speaker 2: are theorizing that's the whole point of the policy. I'm
Speaker 2: not there, and I think the whole point of the
Speaker 2: policy is more about Trump's power, which I guess is
Speaker 2: like sort of related to that. But I would be
Speaker 2: shocked if there weren't insiders who were trading based on
Speaker 2: knowing like ten minutes ahead of time, an hour ahead
Speaker 2: of time, what was coming down, because you know, that's
Speaker 2: them of this administration, that's what they do well.
Speaker 3: And Trump gave everyone cover with his good time to
Speaker 3: buy post on true Social because it'll be and they
Speaker 3: knew that. I mean, if you're somebody who's really in
Speaker 3: the trading on this, like, it'll be impossible, impossible to
Speaker 3: prove that this was motivated by inside knowledge because it'll
Speaker 3: be impossible to disentangle. Well, here's this vague true Social
Speaker 3: post from the president. I just had the sense that
Speaker 3: when he posted that it really was a good time
Speaker 3: to buy, or it really was there got a bunch.
Speaker 2: There were a bunch of purchases though, betting on the
Speaker 2: markets to go up before like ten minutes before that
Speaker 2: post even dropped.
Speaker 6: But you're right, I mean, are they going to be
Speaker 6: able to track it back?
Speaker 2: Also, we're relying on Trump's sec to track this out, like,
Speaker 2: come on, they're going to get away with whatever they
Speaker 2: want to get away with, but everyone should be clear
Speaker 2: about while you know, small business owners are getting screwed
Speaker 2: and consumers are worried are having to dye potatoes because
Speaker 2: eggs are too expensive, and they're worried about prices, et cetera.
Speaker 2: While all of that is going on, Charles Schwab's making
Speaker 2: two point five billion dollars somehow, somehow, and he just
Speaker 2: happens to be at the White House one day.
Speaker 3: Well, and all the spokespeople for this policy and the administration,
Speaker 3: and this is for all of the dunking on Peter Navarro,
Speaker 3: who is genuinely an odd man. There are other spokespeople
Speaker 3: are billionaires, are multi multimillionaires, and increasingly when I mean
Speaker 3: Trump is one thing, he's obviously like a singular figure.
Speaker 3: He can, you know, wear a multi thousand dollar suit
Speaker 3: and give helicopterids to kids at the Iowa State Fair
Speaker 3: and people will still connect with him more than any
Speaker 3: other Republican politician, even if they roll up their sleeves.
Speaker 3: But these other guys don't have that. It just doesn't
Speaker 3: hit the same way. And that if you're messaging this
Speaker 3: trade war. As you know Wall Street veterans who are
Speaker 3: worth multimillions yourself, it's going to start to wear really thin.
Speaker 3: The public's patients for that is going to start to
Speaker 3: wear very thin already.
Speaker 6: Has I would say yes.
Speaker 3: As the Harryenton polling numbers showed to bring this block
Speaker 3: full circle. Crystal, Let's move on to Iran so we
Speaker 3: can put D I'm sorry, we can put C one
Speaker 3: up on the screen. This is a tear sheet from Axios.
Speaker 3: This is a Barack Revied story. The headliner is Trump
Speaker 3: holds situation room meeting on Iran nuclear deal negotiations. Trump
Speaker 3: reportedly held a meeting yesterday morning in the Situation Room
Speaker 3: about the ongoing nuclear deal negotiations with Iran. The high
Speaker 3: level meeting with all of the Trump Admin's top nat
Speaker 3: SC and foreign policy officials was focused on discussing the
Speaker 3: US position in the next round of talks planned for Saturday,
Speaker 3: according to those sources.
Speaker 4: Now those talks are.
Speaker 3: Being led by special envoids the Moddle East Steve Whitcoff,
Speaker 3: who is somebody that Donald Trump trusts very very much.
Speaker 3: According to this Axios report quote JD. Vans and Steve
Speaker 3: Whitcoff think diplomacy could lead to a newnuclear deal and
Speaker 3: think the US should be ready to make some compromises
Speaker 3: in order to get it. Other senior members of the administration,
Speaker 3: including Rubio and Mike Waltz, are highly skeptical and support
Speaker 3: a maximalist approach to the negotiations Crystal. Interestingly enough, we've
Speaker 3: started to see the argument, actually, Eli Lakemande this argument
Speaker 3: in the Free Press yesterday that what is emerging from
Speaker 3: the Witcough camp looks a hell of a lot like
Speaker 3: the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration that
Speaker 3: Donald Trump sort of famously scrapped. And I've started to
Speaker 3: see arguments from iron Hawks that are appealing to Donald
Speaker 3: Trump on this basis, saying, do you want to look
Speaker 3: like you are Obama, that you are just copying Barack
Speaker 3: Obama a couple of years later and trying to kind
Speaker 3: of goat him out of the deal that Witcof seems
Speaker 3: to be intent on getting. Witcoff himself walked back his
Speaker 3: comments about nuclear enrichment, saying at one point that Iran
Speaker 3: could do minimal levels, that they would be limited to
Speaker 3: certain levels of nuclear enrichment, and then within I think
Speaker 3: it was like twenty four to forty eight hours saying
Speaker 3: no nuclear enrichment. So there are enormous pressures on the
Speaker 3: administration right now, and that's where I think it's worth
Speaker 3: mentioning C two.
Speaker 4: Just very quickly.
Speaker 3: A couple of top advisors to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Speaker 3: we're put on administrative lead administrative leave yesterday, including Dan Caldwell,
Speaker 3: who was basically hegsas probably still is hegsa's top advisor.
Speaker 3: He was put on an admin leave yesterday and escorted
Speaker 3: from the Pentagon following a quote leak investigation to include polygraphs,
Speaker 3: according to Jennifer Griffin, that was launched by hegsa's chief
Speaker 3: of Staff, Joe Casper on March twenty one. After March
Speaker 3: twenty New York Times story detail plans to allow Elon
Speaker 3: Musk to attend a briefing in the Quote Tank with
Speaker 3: members of the Joint Chiefs to hear about future.
Speaker 4: China war plans.
Speaker 3: Caldwell, Crystal is a guy who comes from skeptical sort
Speaker 3: of coke world that has always been very critical of
Speaker 3: the foreign policy Blob, meaning he has always been critical
Speaker 3: of hawkish, neo conservative approaches to Iran policy. And another
Speaker 3: top advisor to heg Seth seemed to suffer a similar fate.
Speaker 3: According to Jennifer Griffin and other reporters yesterday, Caldwell is
Speaker 3: familiar to a lot of people who cover this stuff,
Speaker 3: but which is why that example stands out. But I
Speaker 3: have a really hard time separating these two developments, Crystal.
Speaker 3: It seems like this pressures is coming from a place
Speaker 3: of uh, it's coming from a frantic place.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it at all.
Speaker 2: I mean, Caldwell, I've never read him personally, you know,
Speaker 2: my understanding of his ideology is that he was one
Speaker 2: of the better and more consistent voices within the entire
Speaker 2: Trump administration. And so you can't look at it as
Speaker 2: an accident that this guy.
Speaker 6: All these people are leaking.
Speaker 2: They're all leaking, but this is the one that you're
Speaker 2: going to point out, Oh, we can't have this guy around,
Speaker 2: come on, right, I mean, if it feels very targeted.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about the other dude that you
Speaker 2: know also got caught up in this, or what his
Speaker 2: ideological inclinations are. But especially as these Iran negotiations are
Speaker 2: heating up.
Speaker 6: In a way, that could be encouraging.
Speaker 2: I mean the fact that there's direct negotiations going on,
Speaker 2: the fact that you have someone who's as pragmatic as
Speaker 2: wit Cough has seemed to be, who also, by the way,
Speaker 2: has come under fire significantly from some of these same types.
Speaker 2: It's pretty clear there's a massive, like internal battle being
Speaker 2: waged here. And just to return to the Iranian nuclear
Speaker 2: deal piece, I mean the Hawks who are trying to
Speaker 2: sink it by saying like, oh, you're what, You're just
Speaker 2: renegotiating Obama's Obamas Deale, I mean, they're not really wrong.
Speaker 2: I do think that the Trump administration is kind of
Speaker 2: realizing that the JCPOA it actually was a good deal.
Speaker 2: Iran was actually complying, and they're not going to be
Speaker 2: able to get something that's a lot better than that.
Speaker 2: Because when Beebe came to town, whole plan was to
Speaker 2: convince Trump like, oh, you need to push the Libya
Speaker 2: model on Iran, which, of course no country in the
Speaker 2: world is going to go for the Libya model. After
Speaker 2: watching what happened to the Libyan leader momark Adavi, who
Speaker 2: was murdered on camera after following the quote unquote Libyum
Speaker 2: out something that Trump has talked about before, by the way,
Speaker 2: when he was trashing John Bolton and saying that he
Speaker 2: was pushing the Libya model for North Korea, so he
Speaker 2: knew at least at one point that that direction was
Speaker 2: a complete non starter. Iran is not going to agree
Speaker 2: to the quote unquote Libya model. But that's what bb
Speaker 2: netnah who was pushing specifically to try to blow up
Speaker 2: these negotiations. Now we're a long way from being there.
Speaker 2: As you're pointing out, there are a lot of very
Speaker 2: sticky issues. There are a lot of internal tensions. There
Speaker 2: are the Miriam Addison's of the world, who contributed a
Speaker 2: whole lot of money to the Trump campaign to try
Speaker 2: to make sure that something like this never happens. Bb
Speaker 2: Netanyahoo frequently gets his way with this administration in every
Speaker 2: other American administration in history. So a lot of big
Speaker 2: question marks, but at least there's a little bit of hope,
Speaker 2: and it will be a ridiculous outcome if Trump blew
Speaker 2: up the Obama deal, one of in my opinion, one
Speaker 2: of the best accomplishments of the Obama administration. Actually, Biden
Speaker 2: had a chance to get back in never did. That's
Speaker 2: on him. You know, he should have right away as
Speaker 2: soon as he was elected gotten back into that deal.
Speaker 2: He never did, so that's his failure as well. And
Speaker 2: then it would be ironic if Trump basically but good,
Speaker 2: do it, Please, please do it. If Trump ultimately gets
Speaker 2: back into the something very similar to the original Obama
Speaker 2: JCPOA deal, I have no doubt he can message it
Speaker 2: as like this is totally different and this is way
Speaker 2: better in art of the deal or whatever. Fine, whatever
Speaker 2: your ego needs, go ahead and do it well.
Speaker 3: And there may be some argument there that the sort
Speaker 3: of regimes, the regime's credibility with its own people, that
Speaker 3: maybe make an argument that the economy is really weak
Speaker 3: and that it's weakened it's the regimes hold over its
Speaker 3: own people, and so maybe it makes more sense now.
Speaker 3: But that's actually the argument that some hawks are using
Speaker 3: the other way around, saying iron is especially vulnerable right now.
Speaker 3: But obviously, I mean, I just there's so much history
Speaker 3: in the opposite direction saying that when countries are vulnerable and.
Speaker 4: Desperate, that's actually really not the time.
Speaker 3: To try to turn the screws on them when they
Speaker 3: are unpredictable and eccentric. So let's put speaking of those
Speaker 3: pressures C four on the screen. This is John Bolton's take.
Speaker 3: I mean, this Bolton post about Witcough is just gross.
Speaker 3: He says Trump black strategy and vision with regard to Iran.
Speaker 3: While we do not know what Trump has the result
Speaker 3: to do, we do know special Ambi Witcough, Special Envoy
Speaker 3: Witcough is busy building trust with the Ayatolas. But the
Speaker 3: ia Tolas aren't to be trusted. They have played us
Speaker 3: for over a decade. Accusing wit Cough of trying to
Speaker 3: just build trust with the Iyatola is foolish, like he's
Speaker 3: some type of idiot. Well, if you're going to make
Speaker 3: any type of deal ever, ever, it is built on trust,
Speaker 3: and that has to be the like predicate for any
Speaker 3: type of negotiation. You can trust and verify, to paraphrase
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan John Bolton. But the idea that you can
Speaker 3: just make a deal with people who don't believe any
Speaker 3: part of the deal is going to be worth the
Speaker 3: paper it's printed on is I don't even know where
Speaker 3: to begin with this.
Speaker 4: Christ.
Speaker 6: I mean, like just Bolton wants a war.
Speaker 2: He doesn't want there to be a deal because I mean, obviously,
Speaker 2: like obviously I do think it's a very negative sign
Speaker 2: that people like Caldwell are being purged right now in
Speaker 2: terms of who's winning those internal battles. I think that's
Speaker 2: a pretty ominous sign.
Speaker 3: And did you know that Jennifer Griffin tweet that this
Speaker 3: was an investigation that came out of March twentieth and
Speaker 3: March twenty first. I mean, it's the timing, I think
Speaker 3: is quite why are you hearing about this now?
Speaker 2: And you know, if he was the one that leaked that,
Speaker 2: like Elon was going to get briefed on our China
Speaker 2: war plans or whatever like that was a genuine public service.
Speaker 2: So thank you, sir if you were in fact the
Speaker 2: one that that leaked that piece of information, because that
Speaker 2: was a crazy, crazy situation and one of many crazy
Speaker 2: situations that's just like, you know, we almost forget that
Speaker 2: it even happened. But but yeah, I think it's ominous
Speaker 2: that whatever forces are trying to purge the more you know,
Speaker 2: frankly America First factions within the Pentagon. I think that
Speaker 2: is troubling. And I think Trump's increasingly perilous political situation
Speaker 2: could be read into different ways. One is he's long
Speaker 2: thought and said publicly you know that he thinks, like
Speaker 2: he thought Obama was going to start a war with
Speaker 2: Iran because it would be good for his reelection prospects.
Speaker 6: For example.
Speaker 2: So he might have this I think totally idiotic mindset
Speaker 2: that a war is good for politicians approval ratings. He
Speaker 2: also may just like, look, he loves using war powers, right,
Speaker 2: He's that's his tear justification is like some national emergency.
Speaker 2: His Alien Enemies Act is martial law. He's exploring whether
Speaker 2: to invoke the Insurrection Act. Obviously, that's also like, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of wartime or rebellion powers. And so he may
Speaker 2: also like just the power that comes with being in
Speaker 2: charge during a war and what that could, how that
Speaker 2: can inorder to his benefit, or perhaps he is intelligent
Speaker 2: enough to realize that if he thinks he's got political problems,
Speaker 2: now good luck. If you start a war with you
Speaker 2: know that almost no one in the entire country, including
Speaker 2: your own base, wants to actually see the American involved.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't mean that, you know, his base, the
Speaker 2: hardest core they'll go along with wherever he goes. But
Speaker 2: the American public overall is not down for this whatsoever.
Speaker 2: They will be absolutely, they will absolutely reject some sort
Speaker 2: of hot war and escalation with Iran.
Speaker 3: So before we run on this block, Crystal, some interesting
Speaker 3: news just hit my end box, which is you know,
Speaker 3: so we mentioned earlier Steve Witcoff is negotiating in Rome
Speaker 3: over the weekend with the Iranian counterparts. Actually, we have
Speaker 3: a press release from the White House that I just
Speaker 3: got that says Vice President jad Vance in the Second
Speaker 3: Family will travel to Italy in India from April eighteenth
Speaker 3: to April twenty fourth, depending on the timing there, it
Speaker 3: looks like Vance will be in Italy during these negotiations
Speaker 3: in Rome that wit Coough is taking part of and Vance,
Speaker 3: according the Barack reviewed report, and just what we know
Speaker 3: of Jade, Vance is clearly aligned with Witcoff on this question.
Speaker 4: Some of the dynamics from that signal chat.
Speaker 3: May be pulled into these discussions about Iran going forward. Actually,
Speaker 3: and that's quite interesting if Vance is sort of dispatching
Speaker 3: himself or maybe he's being dispatched by the White House
Speaker 3: to go in and be a wingman for wit Cough
Speaker 3: during these discussions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right, a lot of dynamics to keep
Speaker 2: an eye on there.
Speaker 3: Well, the Trump administration is escalating its war on Ivy
Speaker 3: League institutions, in particular, let's put d one up on
Speaker 3: the screen. Harvard is now under fire because the Trump administration,
Speaker 3: as everyone likely remembers, just from the last couple of days,
Speaker 3: has sent a letter threatening at least two million dollars
Speaker 3: worth of billion sorry billion, yes, two billion dollars worth
Speaker 3: of funding that could go up to as much as
Speaker 3: nine billion dollars worth of again federal funding to Harvard
Speaker 3: than what you see on the screen if you're watching
Speaker 3: this is MIT put out a letter. This is from
Speaker 3: Sally kornb Both to the President, who said, I write
Speaker 3: to bring you up to date on developments in two
Speaker 3: areas where recent government actions are interfering with the normal
Speaker 3: functioning of miit diminishing our ability both to serve the
Speaker 3: nation and to attract the world's finest talent. One relates
Speaker 3: to federal funding, the other to our international community. They
Speaker 3: say we are responding to certain federal actions by going
Speaker 3: to court. Now, this is all on the heels of
Speaker 3: what the Trump administration did with Columbia University, and they're
Speaker 3: competing reports on Columbia University's willingness to actually comply with
Speaker 3: this list of demands. That the Trump administration has sent
Speaker 3: and said. We'll get into that in the moment, by
Speaker 3: the way, but what those demands are in particular, but
Speaker 3: has said your federal.
Speaker 4: Funding depends on X, Y and Z being done.
Speaker 3: Columbia, there was a leak that said Colombia was assuring
Speaker 3: people privately that it wasn't actually going to comply with
Speaker 3: the administration's demands. Now it looks like Columbia's standing by
Speaker 3: it's a statement that it will comply with the demands
Speaker 3: to keep the funeral funding. But Harvard is pushing back
Speaker 3: hard like we haven't seen other universities do.
Speaker 4: But it seems like it's.
Speaker 3: Actually creating a template for other universities to follow. And Cristal,
Speaker 3: let's just get into this back and forth that Carolyne
Speaker 3: Levitt had with Peter Doocey. Wasn't really much from back
Speaker 3: and forth, but this is what we heard from the
Speaker 3: White House yesterday.
Speaker 14: Follow up on something that you just said, Why do
Speaker 14: Ivy League schools get so much federal footage?
Speaker 10: It's a very good question, and it's a question the
Speaker 10: President has obviously raised in his discussions and negotiations with
Speaker 10: not just Harvard but also Columbia.
Speaker 11: And many other Ivy League institutions.
Speaker 10: We have the Anti Semitism Task Force, which the President
Speaker 10: promised and delivered on. The anti Semitism task forces across
Speaker 10: the government representatives from various federal.
Speaker 11: Agencies who meet on a weekly basis to discuss the
Speaker 11: question that you just raise.
Speaker 10: And I think a lot of Americans are wondering why
Speaker 10: their talk dollars are going to these universities when they
Speaker 10: are not only indoctrinating our nation students, but also allowing
Speaker 10: such a egregious illegal behavior to occur.
Speaker 3: And here's a post from Donald Trump on True Social
Speaker 3: yesterday he weighed once again and perhaps Harvard shall lose
Speaker 3: its tax exempt status to be taxed as a political
Speaker 3: entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological and terrorist inspired
Speaker 3: slash supporting quote sickness. Remember, tax exempt status is totally
Speaker 3: contingent on acting in the public interest, Christal. That is
Speaker 3: separate from the federal funding question. A similar question, but
Speaker 3: it's obviously a different question federal funding. What is being said,
Speaker 3: and maybe it's worth actually just bringing up D six
Speaker 3: at this point. Sorry to skip ahead, control room, but
Speaker 3: this is an argument that has been made for generations
Speaker 3: in the Conservative movement that if you are getting federal funding,
Speaker 3: it is tied to complying with civil rights legislation. And
Speaker 3: this has actually been something that conservatives have pushed back
Speaker 3: on forever, and it was Rufo who really popularized the
Speaker 3: idea a couple of years ago, a few years ago
Speaker 3: now that if Republicans regain power in the White House
Speaker 3: and the dj etc. In the Department of Education, they
Speaker 3: should use that power to turn the screws on these
Speaker 3: Ivy League administrations that have benefited from this sort of
Speaker 3: relationship with the federal government, back and forth relationship with
Speaker 3: the federal government, to punish.
Speaker 4: Those universities for not.
Speaker 3: You know, being as opened conservative ideas as people in
Speaker 3: the right want to be. And it is true, I mean,
Speaker 3: like Harvard is wildly like the faculty of Harvard is,
Speaker 3: it's not a balanced faculty at all. Like I think
Speaker 3: we all know that these institutions lean left. So the
Speaker 3: plan was then to use the Civil Rights regime like
Speaker 3: Title nine is a good example. Conservatives used to be
Speaker 3: against Title nine because it forced compliance with the federal
Speaker 3: government in the schools in ways that would sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: disproportionately hurt men's sports. And we could donate a debate
Speaker 3: whether or not that was righteous and just, but conservatives
Speaker 3: used to be against it because it was using federal
Speaker 3: funding as a carrot in particular ways.
Speaker 4: So that bringsists a D four.
Speaker 3: What is the Trump administration threatening Harvard over? Well, some
Speaker 3: of it is civil rights, but Michael Tracy points out
Speaker 3: that one of the bullet points, among the many bullet points,
Speaker 3: and the Trump administration's letter to Harvard that kicked all
Speaker 3: of this out off, is titled reforming programs with egregious
Speaker 3: records of Anti Semitism or other bias. Chris le, I'm
Speaker 3: going to kick it to you on that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't want to hear from
Speaker 2: Christopher Rufo or any of these people again about supposed
Speaker 2: like woke wokeness. This is the most woke authoritarian shit
Speaker 2: you could possibly imagine, including effectively. What they want from
Speaker 2: Harvard is some sort of like mega affirmative action program,
Speaker 2: both in terms of the students coming domestically and abroad
Speaker 2: and in terms of the professors they also. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's just all kinds of ridiculous demands here, and the
Speaker 2: demand that you get rid of DEI does not sit
Speaker 2: easily with the demand that you also do everything to
Speaker 2: combat anti Semitism. Like the whole thing is just the
Speaker 2: specifics of it are almost less important than the fact
Speaker 2: that this is about the Trump administration, just as they
Speaker 2: have with media, just as they have with lawyers, just
Speaker 2: they have with the courts, trying to bring to heal
Speaker 2: in institutions that they see as ideological adversaries and potential
Speaker 2: alternative power centers. It is also a very classic authoritarian playbook,
Speaker 2: right They want to be able to have to ultimately
Speaker 2: control what is taught, who teaches it, and what students
Speaker 2: get into the school. Now to zoom out, because the
Speaker 2: Columbia thing is I think important. Harvard was seemingly planning
Speaker 2: to kind of comply. They got an initial list of
Speaker 2: demands from the Trump administration, things like banning masks, that
Speaker 2: they were like, yeah, I can probably live with that.
Speaker 2: Then they got a more elaborate list from the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: you know, the one that Michael Tracy is referencing there,
Speaker 2: and they saw that when Columbia tried to comply with
Speaker 2: what the Trump administration wanted, It's not like the Trump
Speaker 2: people like, Okay, you're good to go, thank you.
Speaker 6: We've art of the dealed it. We're good to you.
Speaker 2: Know, all no harm, no foul, no Colombia's capitulate only
Speaker 2: led to more and more demands. Now the federal government
Speaker 2: is seeking a consent decree with Columbia that would give
Speaker 2: them direct power over, you know, over that university and
Speaker 2: specifically have taken into like have taken over the Middle
Speaker 2: Eastern Studies department.
Speaker 6: Harvard is extremely wealthy.
Speaker 2: I think it is one of, if not the wealthiest
Speaker 2: school in the country in terms of it has like
Speaker 2: a fifty billion dollar endowment. If anyone was going to
Speaker 2: stand up and fight, it was Harvard. And so I
Speaker 2: think watching the way that things went down with Columbia,
Speaker 2: they realized that there was no choice but to stand
Speaker 2: up for themselves. And the fact that MIT then rapidly
Speaker 2: follows in their footsteps, I think it's an indication that
Speaker 2: you will see more of a united front from the
Speaker 2: university system in trying to stand up to what are
Speaker 2: you know, ultimately like insane and like peak woke kind
Speaker 2: of authoritarian demands coming from the Trump administration. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I think those are kind of the dynamics that are
Speaker 2: playing out here, is that they realized they were not
Speaker 2: going to make them go away by attempting to comply
Speaker 2: with the things that they ultimately wanted. And you know,
Speaker 2: last thing on this question of like, oh well, why
Speaker 2: do they even get federal funding? Right, A lot of
Speaker 2: this is like research grants. You know, Harvard does a
Speaker 2: lot of medical research. They run a bunch of hospitals,
Speaker 2: a lot of the larger nine billion dollars that would
Speaker 2: be threatened, that's like funding that goes to a number
Speaker 2: of these hospitals. I know there were some researchers who
Speaker 2: already were I think one that was researching tuberculosis, if
Speaker 2: memory serves correctly, like their grants are already being pulled.
Speaker 2: So that's the sort of thing that a lot of
Speaker 2: this money is ultimately going towards. In case people were wondering,
Speaker 2: it won't be easy for Harvard to make up the
Speaker 2: multi billion dollar gap because their endowment comes with certain
Speaker 2: restrictions about how the money can be spent, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But I think they feel like they have
Speaker 2: the firepower to be able to fight this, and that frankly,
Speaker 2: they really don't have much of a choice.
Speaker 3: I mean, some schools take the funding and put in
Speaker 3: lazy rivers, which is genuinely a serious problem. They take
Speaker 3: the research funding and then they have these big endowments,
Speaker 3: and they keep using tuition jacking tuition up for stupid
Speaker 3: stuff that gets them up on the US News and
Speaker 3: World Report list and attracts more students or doesn't attract
Speaker 3: more students. But I think the Trump administration's definition of
Speaker 3: anti Semitism is obviously woke, and it is obviously undermining
Speaker 3: what listen as a conservative I think is a very
Speaker 3: righteous cause, which is to scare the living daylights out
Speaker 3: of these universities that have done, I think, a very
Speaker 3: poor job preparing people to enter our society after four
Speaker 3: years of education at supposedly the best institutions in the world.
Speaker 3: Ruvo is right like he's run down these examples of
Speaker 3: where Harvard in particular has engaged in actual discrimination by
Speaker 3: the definition in our civil rights legislation and in our
Speaker 3: court system. And that is something that again was used
Speaker 3: repeatedly during the Title nine battles of roughly the last
Speaker 3: ten years the Obama administration. We don't have to get
Speaker 3: into all of this, but this has been going on
Speaker 3: for generations. Used federal funding as a way to get sports,
Speaker 3: to change their policies about men's and women's schools, to
Speaker 3: change their policies about men's of women's athletics and locker
Speaker 3: rooms and bathrooms and all of that, which I think
Speaker 3: brought conservatives to their sort of boiling point.
Speaker 4: And that's where you saw this.
Speaker 3: New momentum come from to actually do these things. I
Speaker 3: think that's you know, Rufo has pointed out a lot
Speaker 3: of DEI coming from all of this, and DEI can
Speaker 3: be used in a way that is not in compliance
Speaker 3: with federal discrimination laws. So again, like schools like Hillsdale
Speaker 3: have had to operate without federal funding forever so that
Speaker 3: they didn't get the ideological coercion, I always think that
Speaker 3: that's the best model, even if it's sad that we
Speaker 3: can't fund public universe in a way that's ideological. I
Speaker 3: mean maybe we can't, but ideologically beneficial to everyone. But anyway,
Speaker 3: all of this is to say, the woke definition of
Speaker 3: anti Semitism is like undermining I think a pretty legitimate
Speaker 3: conservative policy argument here, because you end up scooping people
Speaker 3: like os Turk off the streets of suburban Boston and
Speaker 3: then claiming the moral high ground on free speech. It
Speaker 3: is just completely stupid on by the way, a generational
Speaker 3: opportunity to flip the script on the left and actually
Speaker 3: like get some genuine concessions out of schools. I'm not
Speaker 3: talking about like quotas and affirmative action for conservatives, but
Speaker 3: just like scaring the living daylights out of them to
Speaker 3: like just using the money that they have in a
Speaker 3: way that is actually beneficial to the public.
Speaker 4: That's all great.
Speaker 3: I think that's fantastic, but this is completely You do
Speaker 3: not have the moral high ground when you're scooping kids
Speaker 3: off the street for op eds and it's just stupid.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and I mean a lot of the like the
Speaker 2: lazy river and the fancy dorms and athletic facilities or whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean, we know what that's about. That's about attracting
Speaker 2: rich students. It's that's what it's about. It's a market
Speaker 2: capital kind of a situation where yeah, who can not
Speaker 2: only pay filled tuition, but are then going to be
Speaker 2: in a position them and mommy and daddy to help
Speaker 2: to continue to fund the endowment. The direction I would
Speaker 2: go in is, you know, public funding for colleges and
Speaker 2: making tuition for or at least much more accessible but
Speaker 2: you know, certainly the cost of education is a big issue.
Speaker 2: This has nothing to do with the cost of education.
Speaker 2: And even on the DEI piece, like you know, this
Speaker 2: is specifically about these these Ivy League universities, although there's
Speaker 2: some I think the number is sixty universities across the
Speaker 2: country that have gotten similar letters. They're not all you know,
Speaker 2: Ivy League. I know the school I went to, University
Speaker 2: of Virginia, was one of the people who got these
Speaker 2: letters of like you know, threatening them. Basically you have
Speaker 2: to do X and Y and Z in order to
Speaker 2: continue to receive your federal funds. So it's not just
Speaker 2: the elite, but they like picking the fight with the
Speaker 2: elites very publicly because they feel like they're on solid
Speaker 2: more solid ground there in terms of their kind of
Speaker 2: ideological framing. But you know, these broader executive orders about
Speaker 2: DEI something that you know, I am in certain ways
Speaker 2: sympathetic to because I do believe in like a color
Speaker 2: blind meritocracy. Well I don't really believe in meritocracy, but
Speaker 2: I do believe in color the color blind aspiration, and
Speaker 2: I think that the you know, the sort of like
Speaker 2: extremes of wocism with the as emblematically Abramax Kenny and
Speaker 2: these sorts of people went too far. But also these
Speaker 2: executive orders read it could be interpreted to ban the
Speaker 2: teaching of things like redlining, the history of redlining, you know,
Speaker 2: the accurate history of reconstruction, the accurate history of slavery
Speaker 2: and Jim Crow. And that is a tremendous step backwards.
Speaker 2: And it's also you know, this is part and parcel
Speaker 2: of playbook of like, you know, wanting to control history.
Speaker 6: History is always contested.
Speaker 2: Wanted to control the narrative that we're allowed to tell,
Speaker 2: the story we're allowed to tell about ourselves, and to
Speaker 2: erase how central the battles over race and racism have
Speaker 2: been in this country. And so you know, this is
Speaker 2: a little bit removed from the Harvard example, but I
Speaker 2: see all of these things ads connected to an attempt
Speaker 2: to you know, they'll use language about, oh, we want
Speaker 2: it to be neutral. No, you want a certain narrative
Speaker 2: to be taught. You want certain students to be allowed
Speaker 2: to attend. You want like Maga affirmative action, both in
Speaker 2: terms of the students and the professors. You want to
Speaker 2: control these This is not about academic freedom.
Speaker 6: This is the polar opposite of that.
Speaker 2: This is about this administration specifically wanting to control these
Speaker 2: institutions in terms of what they can teach, how they
Speaker 2: can teach it, and who they can teach it to,
Speaker 2: even including you know, they wanted they wanted to. One
Speaker 2: of the demands from Harvard was that they should be
Speaker 2: vetting all international students for quote unquote anti American sentiment. Well,
Speaker 2: what does that mean? What does that mean? You know,
Speaker 2: are you allowed to be, you know, have a critique
Speaker 2: of the Iraq war? Are you allowed to have a
Speaker 2: critique of Tesla? You know, are you allowed you know, certainly,
Speaker 2: are you allowed to have a critique of our policy
Speaker 2: means of eve the Middle East? That's those are the
Speaker 2: sort of like authoritarian, woke demands that were laid at
Speaker 2: the feet of Harvard, and you know, I the last
Speaker 2: point I'll make about this just zooming out from education
Speaker 2: is I do think as Trump has become more unpopular
Speaker 2: and as there has been a visible grassroots movement in
Speaker 2: the streets to push back against him, et cetera, I
Speaker 2: do think it has bolstered the courage. You're starting to
Speaker 2: see a little bit more galvanized resistance from these you know,
Speaker 2: cultural institutions, whether it's Harvard, the media is being a
Speaker 2: little bit more outspoken. There's still a lot of problems there.
Speaker 2: Some of the law firms are now getting together and
Speaker 2: fighting back. You see, certainly the courts are starting to
Speaker 2: take a harder line. Democrats are getting a bit of
Speaker 2: a spy and that's you know, we're about to talk
Speaker 2: more about the Democrats in.
Speaker 6: The next block.
Speaker 2: So you do see some of these elite institutions getting
Speaker 2: their act together to push back a little bit. And
Speaker 2: I guess you could say that with regard to like
Speaker 2: some of the business institutions on the tariffs too.
Speaker 4: Huh. Yeah, that's an interesting point.
Speaker 3: I mean, if people want to read a good book
Speaker 3: on this age of entitlement by Christopher Caldwell is a
Speaker 3: short read and it was hugely influential. I mean, I've
Speaker 3: seen some people point to the book Richard Hannania wrote
Speaker 3: a couple of years back, but Caldwell is the book
Speaker 3: that really was influential on the right at kind of
Speaker 3: mapping out how civil rights legislation and then it's I
Speaker 3: guess it's process of moving through the courts. So over
Speaker 3: the course of decades allow the federal government to use
Speaker 3: a lot of that for ideological purposes. And what you're describing,
Speaker 3: Crystal is the Trump administration saying, all right, screw it,
Speaker 3: we're not going back to neutrality, which is what a
Speaker 3: lot of or quote unquote neutrality. There's such thing as
Speaker 3: real neutrality, but sort of this pro American, pro Western
Speaker 3: civilization sense of consensus in society that used to exists, whether.
Speaker 4: Or not that's good or bad.
Speaker 3: That is the that was the aspiration of a lot
Speaker 3: of critics of this, actually on the left and on
Speaker 3: the right, mostly on the right for a long time.
Speaker 3: But this is the Trump administration saying.
Speaker 4: Screw it.
Speaker 3: This is about I guess our agenda items. And that's
Speaker 3: where I think this definition of anti Semitism is dragging
Speaker 3: down what is a great project overall. And it is
Speaker 3: a real I mean, it's a huge unforced error. I
Speaker 3: don't know who in the administration is pushing this so
Speaker 3: forcefully without listening to any of the feedback on it.
Speaker 3: I actually like, again, I agree with what a lot
Speaker 3: of Christopher Caldwell at Lines and Age of Entitlement, But man,
Speaker 3: I don't know how you.
Speaker 4: Can approach this issue.
Speaker 3: As you know, it's it's like we were talking about
Speaker 3: earlier the shows Jadie Vance going to Munich and then
Speaker 3: being the vice president for and talking to the UK
Speaker 3: about speech policies and EU about speech policies, and then
Speaker 3: being the vice president of an administration that is defending
Speaker 3: scooping kids off the street for op eds against Israel.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just.
Speaker 3: This is like a generational opportunity for people on the
Speaker 3: white on the right, on the white's that'll immuse some people,
Speaker 3: but on the on the right that is being like
Speaker 3: utterly squandered. And I do think by the way that
Speaker 3: the way that civil rights bureaucracy has been wielded by
Speaker 3: the left has been intentional in some cases, not in
Speaker 3: every case, but I do think, you know, there there
Speaker 3: were abuses of it that were for ideological purposes over
Speaker 3: the course of the last however many decades. Uh, that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that the right thing to do is do
Speaker 3: it yourself like it's just it's stupid whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's I mean, anti Semitism is the cudgel
Speaker 2: that's being used to you know, embrace it's truly authoritarian tactics.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what we're talking about here, both, I mean,
Speaker 2: and I'm not just talking about with regard to you universities,
Speaker 2: but certainly with the snatching up these kids off the
Speaker 2: street and you know, cracking down on speech and descent,
Speaker 2: forcing universities to you know, either kick kids down school
Speaker 2: who are American citizen. Isn't just about immigrants either, the
Speaker 2: actions that have been taken, and so they've adopted this
Speaker 2: like the most hyper woke language you could possibly imagine
Speaker 2: about like safe spaces and microaggressions.
Speaker 3: Sciences anti Semitism, that is what I mean. We saw
Speaker 3: this argument made at a Senate hearing recently from a rabbi.
Speaker 6: It's right.
Speaker 4: Matt Walsh pointed.
Speaker 3: Out, actually of all people that this is exactly what
Speaker 3: Abrams Kendy has argued. You know, Natalie Winters, I was
Speaker 3: talking to her yesterday from Bannon's war room.
Speaker 14: She makes a.
Speaker 3: Great point that like the and you would still disagree
Speaker 3: with it, Crystal, but like anti Americanism would have been
Speaker 3: politically a better framing for the administration than anti this
Speaker 3: definition of anti Semitism that is also anti Zionism. Now
Speaker 3: where you and I might disagree with that is okay.
Speaker 3: Now that you have defined anti Semitism as anti Zionism,
Speaker 3: I'm going to need to see you outlining exactly what
Speaker 3: you think anti Americanism is, because I'm not sure that
Speaker 3: I trust that definition at the point. So if they
Speaker 3: want to do anti Americanism, which they are trying in
Speaker 3: like some different ways that aren't as I think Front
Speaker 3: centers the anti Semitism point, then they should enumerate exactly
Speaker 3: what they're looking for when they are when they're telling
Speaker 3: schools to screen for anti Americanism. I would be very
Speaker 3: curious to see that because, you know, personally, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe you shouldn't bring people here who hate the United States,
Speaker 3: and there are people who hate the United States, But
Speaker 3: what are you going to do to screen for that?
Speaker 3: Is it gonna be people who didn't like the Iraq War?
Speaker 3: Is it going to be people who don't like Israel
Speaker 3: and the way that it's treated pass?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like, who aren't a fan of
Speaker 2: Elon Musk? Who you know South African board. You know,
Speaker 2: I personally would like to screen this administration for anti
Speaker 2: American sentiment, given that they want to turn us into
Speaker 2: El Salvador. Yes, and apparently are not acquainted with the
Speaker 2: First Amendment and freedom of speech or you know, whatever
Speaker 2: it requirements for due process either.
Speaker 4: So devs can do that. As soon as they get
Speaker 4: the power back, they can do it again. Right. But
Speaker 4: that's really like, that's part of this.
Speaker 3: I mean, if if you want to write the template
Speaker 3: for to be exploited in terms of deportation and all
Speaker 3: of that, here's the template for devs.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk about dems and what's going
Speaker 2: on with them, because there are a lot of interesting developments.
Speaker 2: Let me go and start with this. So AOC and
Speaker 2: Bernie have been doing this stop oligarchy tour and they've
Speaker 2: been going to all these like super red places I'm
Speaker 2: talking about, like Idaho and Utah and getting insane crowds,
Speaker 2: insane crowds, bigger crowds than Bernie ever got in his
Speaker 2: either of his presidential runs. And he you know, he
Speaker 2: was also famous like Trump for attracting significant crowds. Let's
Speaker 2: just take a look at a little bit of one
Speaker 2: of their recent rallies and some of the way he's
Speaker 2: interacting with AOC and also the energy the crowd.
Speaker 18: Now I want to say a word about my daughter, No,
Speaker 18: I want to say a word about Alexandria and why
Speaker 18: why what she's doing is so important. And here's the story.
Speaker 18: Six years ago, six years ago, what were you doing
Speaker 18: for a living? She was a waitress, but she looked
Speaker 18: around her and she saw a society that was fundamentally
Speaker 18: unjust and in many ways ugly to the people in
Speaker 18: the community in which she lived in New York City.
Speaker 18: She stood up and took on one of the most
Speaker 18: powerful people in the House of Representatives. And she started
Speaker 18: with almost no money against the guy who had unlimited funds,
Speaker 18: and she'd beat him.
Speaker 19: Okay, we saw it just happen with Trump's corrupt and
Speaker 19: disastrous and rushed tariff scheme. We saw Marjorie Taylor green
Speaker 19: by that dip. I dont question for her, how much
Speaker 19: did you make? How much did you.
Speaker 11: Make off of people's despair?
Speaker 19: How much did you make off that panic? How much
Speaker 19: did you make off of that suffering? No more, we
Speaker 19: can't accept it.
Speaker 2: And I think, Emily, what you've seen as Bernie and Aose,
Speaker 2: they were first out of the gates. They launched this tour.
Speaker 2: They've been all over the country. They're attracting these just
Speaker 2: absolutely blockbuster crowds everywhere. They're putting up a fight. They
Speaker 2: have a strategy. And then you see the Centrists like
Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer who are completely adrift, have nothing to say,
Speaker 2: out of touch with the moment, putting up no fight,
Speaker 2: capitulating the Republicans in the one moment that they have leverage,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And watching this dynamic play out has completely
Speaker 2: shifted the Democratic base in ways that we have not
Speaker 2: seen before where they are disgusted with their own leadership,
Speaker 2: very different from last time Trump was in office, where Nance,
Speaker 2: Bloci and Adam Shift and all these four heroes.
Speaker 6: And now that.
Speaker 2: Is also being reflected in who they see as the
Speaker 2: leaders of the party and in what direction they want
Speaker 2: the party to shift. So this is one of the
Speaker 2: fascinating dynamics is playing in. I think what was important
Speaker 2: about that clip where Bernie says, you know my daughter Alexandria.
Speaker 6: Yes, Like, first of all, he clearly loves her.
Speaker 2: He is not a like warm and cuddly guy like
Speaker 2: to have that level of affection from Bernie Sanders, that's
Speaker 2: very telling.
Speaker 20: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And number two, you know people have been asked you like,
Speaker 2: who's Bernie's successor who's he gonna you know, annoint for
Speaker 2: to lead this movement going forward? Like I think we
Speaker 2: have our answer. He's he has picked AOC like that
Speaker 2: is the person he is elevating, and I think very
Speaker 2: likely will be the person he pushes forward in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. And actually we teased the segment.
Speaker 3: I tease this segment earlier in the show by saying
Speaker 3: Dems are in disarray, and I still stand by that,
Speaker 3: but both parties are always in disarray.
Speaker 4: The reason I stand by that here though.
Speaker 6: And should be by the way they should be in
Speaker 6: disiroy totally ruth.
Speaker 3: But the reason I stand by this here is, you know,
Speaker 3: what Bernie and Alexandria Casio Kortez are doing here is
Speaker 3: showing the establishment of the like. This is as much
Speaker 3: a message to all of those people in the crowd
Speaker 3: and to people who support them as it is to
Speaker 3: democratic elites who really, really really don't want to hear this,
Speaker 3: but it's going to get hard for them not to
Speaker 3: hear it. And I know this is going to be
Speaker 3: a little bit out of border. But the reason I
Speaker 3: want to kick to James Carvill actually now that i'm
Speaker 3: thinking about it, Crystal, is because he's proposing that the populist,
Speaker 3: the economic populist Deems break away from the sort of
Speaker 3: he wouldn't use this phrase centristems, but I think that
Speaker 3: has to be accurately described as centrist stems. What he's
Speaker 3: talking about, he's sort of saying the third way Dems
Speaker 3: should own the Democratic Party and everybody else should beat
Speaker 3: another party.
Speaker 4: And Alexandra A.
Speaker 3: Cosio Kortez has said herself, you know, if we were
Speaker 3: in Europe, Nancy Pelosi and I would not be in
Speaker 3: the same party, and that.
Speaker 4: These two poles. Krvil is just proposing a toll divorce it.
Speaker 3: And the reason I want to tick it to this
Speaker 3: with that, and I'm curious for your thoughts, is that
Speaker 3: is not even good for the movement he wants to succeed,
Speaker 3: Like you're just asking for everyone to agree on pronouns
Speaker 3: and neoliberal economics. So anyway, let's rule carvel and then
Speaker 3: we can get into some of those.
Speaker 15: At most of the things at the faculty lounge that
Speaker 15: Dynasty Left wants eighty five percent of them. I want
Speaker 15: to we like to expand opportunity to people. We'd like
Speaker 15: to expand people that to have health care. We'd like
Speaker 15: to do more to help young voters. We think that
Speaker 15: environmental problems are totally crushing every phrase. We want solutions there.
Speaker 15: We think income inequality is a terrible thing, and we've
Speaker 15: got to do certain things to address it, like, okay,
Speaker 15: we be around, raise taxes on incomes over four and
Speaker 15: thousand dollars here, raise them in wage the the things
Speaker 15: that we can work on. I don't think we can
Speaker 15: work together on pronoun politics. I don't.
Speaker 4: I think that you're not.
Speaker 15: This election did not teach you how damaging that is.
Speaker 15: I don't think there's anything that I can tell you.
Speaker 15: And you say, this guy is stuck in another century,
Speaker 15: not another decade, and he represents nothing to do with
Speaker 15: the future of our movement. I can accept that you're
Speaker 15: not really going to hurt my feelings. So maybe we
Speaker 15: could have a kind of amicable split here and we
Speaker 15: go to post in twenty twenty six, because you don't
Speaker 15: have a run again. They never run against a Republican, Okay,
Speaker 15: all they do is run against other Democrats. Don't quite
Speaker 15: understand why you're so anxious to have the word democrat
Speaker 15: in the description of what you do. But we can
Speaker 15: have a amical split here.
Speaker 3: Chrystal, this is a very bad time for James Carvel
Speaker 3: to be making this argument because the split screen is
Speaker 3: AOC and Bernie Sanders drawing record crowds in red states.
Speaker 2: Right, and you want them out of your coalition? Like
Speaker 2: what are we talking about?
Speaker 3: You're in a message of economic populism, quote fighting oligarchy.
Speaker 2: Right, Because here's the thing is, like previously AOC would
Speaker 2: have been the emblem of that like faculty lounge language
Speaker 2: that he talks about. Okay, she sounds there like Marjorie
Speaker 2: Taylor Green's insider training and stop oligarchy, and they're comming
Speaker 2: for your social security and your medicare Like she is
Speaker 2: fully on the economic populist message, and you know Bernie
Speaker 2: always has been more or less fully on the economic
Speaker 2: populist message. So talk about being out of touch and
Speaker 2: missing the moment. And also, by the way, if you're
Speaker 2: like setting up your tent pole of who wants to
Speaker 2: come over the James Carvel version of the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: versus the AOC and Bernie Party, I gotta tell you
Speaker 2: there ain't gonna be a lot of takers on your
Speaker 2: side because even people like MSNBC Nicole Wallace, I'm here
Speaker 2: and things coming out out of their mouth that I
Speaker 2: never in my wildest dreams would have imagined, because they,
Speaker 2: I think were chastened by the fact that Joe Amiga
Speaker 2: made their trip to mar A Lago and there was
Speaker 2: such a massive backlash and the network was sort of
Speaker 2: like cratering, and they took their cue of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we have to at least align with the part of
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party that wants to stand up and fight
Speaker 2: back against Trump because otherwise, what like what are we
Speaker 2: even doing here? Like why do we even exist? And
Speaker 2: we will have zero people watching us and they will
Speaker 2: all hate us. So they've followed the ratings and the
Speaker 2: people who are demonstrating, as you said, how to fight
Speaker 2: and putting on the class for all of the Democratic
Speaker 2: elites are AOC and Bernie. So you even have people
Speaker 2: like Nicole Wallace, who is out there former George W.
Speaker 2: Bush spokesperson, Cole Wallace out there freezing the Bernie and
Speaker 2: AOC stop oligarchy to artagalism.
Speaker 20: And we should say AOC and Bernie Sanders have been
Speaker 20: traveling the country and generating crowds that size Christie all
Speaker 20: over the place, and not just in Democratic strongholds. There
Speaker 20: is an appetite for economic populism that there hasn't been
Speaker 20: in many years.
Speaker 3: And here comes AOC. We have the next element we
Speaker 3: could put on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is a poll.
Speaker 3: Look who's catching up in the like these numbers are.
Speaker 3: It's obviously early, but look who's catching up In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty eight Democratic primary poll numbers from Yale. We've got
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris at twenty eight percent, AOC at twenty one percent,
Speaker 3: twenty one percent. So Crystal's your point. If Bernie chooses
Speaker 3: Alexander A. Kaser Cortes as his heir man, things are
Speaker 3: going in quite a good direction for populists on the left.
Speaker 3: We can put the n pole. This is the next element.
Speaker 3: We can put this next poll up on the screen.
Speaker 3: Among Democrats, here are the net favorables. AOC is up
Speaker 3: sixty two percent plus sixty two percent, Harris plus fifty
Speaker 3: nine percent. So that's close. But Harris right now probably,
Speaker 3: I mean she's just getting off a presidential run. So
Speaker 3: that's even a failed presidential run with name recognition and
Speaker 3: all of that.
Speaker 2: It's it's just kind of like the default. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but then you see is there at the bottom. See
Speaker 2: it is with friend John Patterman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But anyway, the argument that, and I will say
Speaker 3: Bernie and AOC I think have learned from the last
Speaker 3: four or five years in politics and are not leading
Speaker 3: with identity messaging in a way that I think AOC
Speaker 3: genuinely did struggle with Ryan documents that in some book
Speaker 3: like that really was a stumbling block for some left populace.
Speaker 4: But I think and maybe the right is underestimating this
Speaker 4: they have learned from that. And James jamesting that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently I'm like, the who are you talking even
Speaker 2: talking about? Like the pronouns are out of the bio
Speaker 2: you won, Like that's you know, go look at who
Speaker 2: is the emblem of that politics. And she's touring the
Speaker 2: country getting massive crowds, many of whom were not Bernie supporters,
Speaker 2: talking about how we're going to fight back against oligarchy and.
Speaker 4: Probably Trust supporters.
Speaker 3: By the way, Yeah, I mean to some of those
Speaker 3: people there probably are Trump voters.
Speaker 6: That's very possible.
Speaker 2: Possible if you're going to Idaho, there's going to be
Speaker 2: some likely Trump supporters there. And you know the thing
Speaker 2: that to me is even more noteworthy because you know
Speaker 2: it's one poll whatever, who knows other poles have said
Speaker 2: other things, et cetera. But the thing to me that
Speaker 2: was even more noteworthy is if you could put the
Speaker 2: last element up here on the screen. As long as
Speaker 2: I've been following these polls, when you ask Democratic base
Speaker 2: do you want the party to move to the left,
Speaker 2: to move to the right, or to stay the same,
Speaker 2: they generally say they should be more moderate. Now, I've said,
Speaker 2: usually people's version of moderate is like they should increase
Speaker 2: social security and they should increase the minimum wage. It's
Speaker 2: like very economically populous. But you know, maybe that was cope.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 2: So in January end of January of this year, that
Speaker 2: continued to be the trend. Forty five percent of Democratic
Speaker 2: base voters said they want the party to be more moderate,
Speaker 2: only twenty nine percent said more liberal. Now, in a
Speaker 2: new poll, things have completely shifted. Now you have a
Speaker 2: majority fifty percent who say they want the party to
Speaker 2: be more progressive, twenty four percent who say that it
Speaker 2: should stay the same, and only eighteen percent that say
Speaker 2: it should become more moderate. Now, again, I think these
Speaker 2: terms are very squishy. The one pole says liberal, the
Speaker 2: other says progressive. Maybe for us is better branding, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But when you see this big of a shift.
Speaker 2: I do think it signifies something going on here because again,
Speaker 2: who are the people that they're seeing who are actually fighting.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is all the Democratic base ones they
Speaker 2: want people to fight back against Trump, and who is
Speaker 2: fighting back against Trump. It's the progressives. So they're like, yes,
Speaker 2: we need to do that more. And I think that
Speaker 2: is what is causing this real sea change within the
Speaker 2: Democratic base and their conception of who their leaders are,
Speaker 2: who their leaders should be, and the way that the
Speaker 2: party should orient itself going forward.
Speaker 3: James Carvel got Bill Clinton elected so we could get
Speaker 3: on the path to wto I mean.
Speaker 2: It's just like well, and not to mention Emily, his
Speaker 2: whole thing like oh they only run against Democrats. DLC
Speaker 2: was all about taking over the Democratic Party and like
Speaker 2: kicking out the establishment of Democrats.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so, like, you know, there's a lot there.
Speaker 3: The last thing I'll say is this just reminds me
Speaker 3: so much of what happened on the right in twenty
Speaker 3: twelve after Mitt Romney lost the Republican National Committee. At
Speaker 3: this time, under Wright's previous if I'm remembering correctly, put
Speaker 3: out what is known infamously in Republican circles as the.
Speaker 4: Autopsy, and that autopsy called.
Speaker 3: For the Republican Party to quoteunk moderate on issues like immigration,
Speaker 3: social stuff, and you could. I mean, if you read
Speaker 3: it now, you can tell it's just sort of dripping
Speaker 3: with anger over kind of tea party voters. And what
Speaker 3: that missed is Republican voters. To the exact point that
Speaker 3: you were making, Actually, some of this popular stuff is
Speaker 3: moderate to voters. It's not moderate to d C because
Speaker 3: it's really radical for the clients of many people in Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. And the influences in Washington, d C. It's
Speaker 3: radical to their bottom lines and to the way that
Speaker 3: they do business. But most people would be like, oh,
Speaker 3: campaign finance reform, that's not radical.
Speaker 2: It's totally everybody having healthcare that seems moderate, you know,
Speaker 2: like that seems like something we should reasonably do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, Washington is just completely out of
Speaker 3: touch when it thinks that something that is like the
Speaker 3: dumbest statement in the world because it's so obvious at
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 4: But when it thinks that.
Speaker 3: Tune into breaking points for these stellar insights about how
Speaker 3: Washington is out of touch but in all serious is
Speaker 3: like they never learn and that's what we can do.
Speaker 4: Like, this pattern just doesn't stop.
Speaker 3: And James Carvill should look at what Republicans did in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve when they said the only way to win
Speaker 3: presidential elections is to moderate on immigration and social stuff.
Speaker 4: And then Donald Trump beats Hillary.
Speaker 3: Cutting on a platform of like political incorrectness and building
Speaker 3: a wall. I mean, they're so stupid, They're so stupid,
Speaker 3: and they can't stop being stupid. And isn't it isn't
Speaker 3: it Carville's statement, it's the economy stupid?
Speaker 4: Isn't that? Like him? Yeah, that's him?
Speaker 2: I just I mean, and this has been the case.
Speaker 2: This has been the case since the advent of you know,
Speaker 2: the rise of the Bernie movement. You see the energy
Speaker 2: for this guy. You see how powerful this is. I
Speaker 2: mean the number of people who gave him ten twenty
Speaker 2: dollars whatever they could. Yeah, the agenda that they rallied around,
Speaker 2: that they would show up, they would knocked doors, they
Speaker 2: would do anything for him.
Speaker 6: And you want that out of the.
Speaker 2: Party, Yeah, Like, I mean not really is a big
Speaker 2: part of where they want went sideways. Instead, you're going
Speaker 2: to foist on as Hillary Clinton. You're going to foiste
Speaker 2: on as Joe Biden, like Joe Biden even more so
Speaker 2: than Hillary Clinton, because she did have some genuine like
Speaker 2: supporters are excited, first woman president, etcetera, etcetera. Joe Biden
Speaker 2: had none of that. And then you're like, oh, why
Speaker 2: aren't we cool anymore? Why doesn't anyone want to talk
Speaker 2: to us? Why did all these you know bros that
Speaker 2: we spent years maligning as being toxic and spearing relentlessly?
Speaker 2: How come they don't want to support us anywhere? Oh gee,
Speaker 2: I wonder, I wonder, wonder what caused them to shift
Speaker 2: away from you? And so once again here you have
Speaker 2: just very clear example of where the energy is in
Speaker 2: the party, and you still have people like James Carvill
Speaker 2: and I would say also like the Ezra Cline abundance
Speaker 2: movement thing like no, not that thing, that thing which
Speaker 2: is garnering massive amounts of energy in which people are
Speaker 2: responding to in real time. No, that can't be the
Speaker 2: message of the party. It's like, you know, sometimes you
Speaker 2: have to put the think tankers side. Sometimes you have
Speaker 2: to even put you know, some of the like focused
Speaker 2: group tested popularism stuff aside and just see where's energy,
Speaker 2: what works? And you know, the Democratic base is going
Speaker 2: to have a say in the future direction of the party,
Speaker 2: and it's very clear right now what direction they are
Speaker 2: heading in.
Speaker 3: By the way, some of those bro podcasters, Rogan for example,
Speaker 3: support universal health care. Maybe, I mean, that's why Bernie
Speaker 3: sat down with him. I mean, it's just it's such
Speaker 3: a mess and it's their solution is exactly what the
Speaker 3: Republicans was in twenty twelve. Trump woke the Republican Party
Speaker 3: up to what their base actually wanted. So that's what
Speaker 3: AOC and Bernie Sanders are trying to do in a
Speaker 3: less Trumpian way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 3: Let's move on Crystal to housing, speaking of things Democrats
Speaker 3: struggle with, and get to our guest.
Speaker 2: So one of the issues we've really tried to consistently
Speaker 2: cover on this show because it is so central to
Speaker 2: literally everyone, is the issue of housing. And with that
Speaker 2: in mind, we are really happy to be joined by
Speaker 2: an author, Brian Goldstone, and journalist who's just put on
Speaker 2: a fantastic new book called There Is No Place for Us,
Speaker 2: Working and Homeless in America that takes a look at
Speaker 2: a number of families in and around the Atlanta area
Speaker 2: who are working doing everything right and yet still because
Speaker 2: of the cost of housing, find themselves homeless a much
Speaker 2: undercovered And I guess we could talk to Brian about
Speaker 2: whether or not it's a new dynamic. But Brian, I'm
Speaker 2: great to have you, welcome.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much, Crystal, it's great to be with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, just tell us share if you would,
Speaker 2: the inspiration for the book, and also a little bit
Speaker 2: about just one of these families and how they end
Speaker 2: up in this situation.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 14: So I first got launched into the subject when my wife,
Speaker 14: who's a nurse practitioner, was working at a community health
Speaker 14: center here in Atlanta where we live, and she was
Speaker 14: just stunned by this trend that she was seeing where
Speaker 14: you know, pats who were working at like Walmart or
Speaker 14: McDonald's or driving for Uber and Lyft when they finished
Speaker 14: their shifts, they weren't going to an apartment. They were
Speaker 14: going to shelters or living with others, or sleeping the
Speaker 14: very cars they had just done, you know, an airport
Speaker 14: run in for Uber and Lyft.
Speaker 8: So as she told me about that, I was shocked.
Speaker 14: I was like, I haven't in all of the reading
Speaker 14: I've done about homelessness, I've never seen this sort of
Speaker 14: discuss this phenomenon of the working homeless, and so I
Speaker 14: ended up writing a magazine story for The New Republic
Speaker 14: about it. And even when that was over, I felt
Speaker 14: like I had only scratched the surface. And you know,
Speaker 14: one of one of the families who I profile in
Speaker 14: the book, who I followed, I think their story really
Speaker 14: illustrates this trend, this this dynamic where families aren't falling
Speaker 14: into homelessness, they're really being pushed this one family, Celeste
Speaker 14: is the parent's name. She Her story begins in this
Speaker 14: really dramatic way with her her rental home burning down.
Speaker 14: But as the reporting shows, it wasn't this dramatic house
Speaker 14: fire that pushed her family into homelessness. It was the
Speaker 14: fact that months later, after the house burned down, she
Speaker 14: realized that the private equity firm that owned her home,
Speaker 14: who was her landlord, had filed an eviction on her
Speaker 14: on a home that was no longer standing, that was uninhabitable,
Speaker 14: and her credit score was tanked, this three digit number
Speaker 14: that has come to determine whether millions of Americans have
Speaker 14: access to something as basic as a place to live.
Speaker 14: Her credit was destroyed, and that is what forced her
Speaker 14: and her children into homelessness?
Speaker 3: And what are some of the common I mean, how
Speaker 3: I'm sure every story is unique, but what are some
Speaker 3: of the commonalities throughout the families and the.
Speaker 4: People that you talked to? What are some of the
Speaker 4: common themes?
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, each of the five families who I
Speaker 14: followed over several years, you know, to write this book,
Speaker 14: they all have really singular, really distinctive stories and journeys.
Speaker 14: But I think what comes through really clearly is the
Speaker 14: common denominator that the reason so many people are becoming
Speaker 14: homeless in this country is because they don't have access
Speaker 14: to housing they can afford. And you know, the term
Speaker 14: working homeless really demands that we confront not just the
Speaker 14: homeless side of that equation, but the working side as well.
Speaker 14: These are people who are working and working and working
Speaker 14: some more. And it's not just that their wages are
Speaker 14: too low, although they're certainly that as well. It's that
Speaker 14: the very nature of work has changed for millions of Americans.
Speaker 14: It's become ever more volatile, insecure. People don't know how
Speaker 14: many hours they're going to be working from one week
Speaker 14: to the next. Celeste, that woman who I just talked
Speaker 14: about who's house burned down. She was later diagnosed with
Speaker 14: ovarian and breast cancer and she was having to choose
Speaker 14: do I go to my warehod house job or do
Speaker 14: I go to my chemo treatment, because if I miss
Speaker 14: a shift at work, I don't get paid, and then
Speaker 14: me and my kids go from being the squalid extended
Speaker 14: stay hotel room to being on the streets. So that
Speaker 14: it's not just wages, it's not just rents, it's not
Speaker 14: the nature of work, and really the nature of housing,
Speaker 14: a lack of basic tenant rights and tenant protections that
Speaker 14: has caused homelessness to rise to the highest level in
Speaker 14: recorded history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's really a perfect storm that spells
Speaker 2: disaster for these families because you have years of wage stagnation,
Speaker 2: years of attacks on unions, you know, and fits in
Speaker 2: with the conversations we've been having about de industrialization, and
Speaker 2: you know the fact that it is so difficult to
Speaker 2: earn a living wage in this country, and then you
Speaker 2: add to that skyrocketing rents, skyrocketing housing costs, and you
Speaker 2: have utter disaster for so many families that are trying
Speaker 2: to do everything right. You know that are they're working hard,
Speaker 2: they're trying to, you know, follow the playbook of how
Speaker 2: you get in a head in America, and it just
Speaker 2: doesn't work for so many people. Now, you know, I
Speaker 2: was curious as I was reading the book. I'm sure
Speaker 2: you've been watching some of the discourse about the abundance agenda,
Speaker 2: and you know how one of the factors that has
Speaker 2: led to housing on affordability is too many owners, zoning
Speaker 2: regulations and the way that's limited construction or made it
Speaker 2: so that it's you know, there's less affordable housing available.
Speaker 2: I just was curious, based on your reporting with these
Speaker 2: individuals and the dynamics that go into the housing market,
Speaker 2: how much of a fix some of that you think
Speaker 2: really would be.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 14: I mean I take a kind of ecumenical approach to
Speaker 14: solutions and how we can finally solve this this mounting catastrophe.
Speaker 8: I think we need a kind of both and approach.
Speaker 14: But I do think that simply like deregulating the market,
Speaker 14: letting the market do its thing, cutting the red tape
Speaker 14: and really allowing the private market to sort of, you know,
Speaker 14: provide for the housing needs of Americans who need it,
Speaker 14: is not adequate.
Speaker 8: I think what some of that discourse maybe leaves.
Speaker 14: Out is power, the question of power, who has it,
Speaker 14: who doesn't have it, the immense power asymmetry that exists
Speaker 14: in this country between the renter class and those who
Speaker 14: are fortunate enough to own property and to be landlords.
Speaker 8: And also I think what's missing is just.
Speaker 14: How incredibly profitable all this insecurity has become, not just
Speaker 14: for you know, nimby homeowners who don't want an affordable
Speaker 14: housing complex built near their you know, neighborhood, but how
Speaker 14: profitable it's become for some of the most you know,
Speaker 14: influential and powerful Walsh Street firms in this country. I
Speaker 14: was absolutely shocked to discover that at every step in
Speaker 14: these families journeys, the five families who I follow in
Speaker 14: this book, there were entire business models designed to capitalize
Speaker 14: on their precarity. And that's not only the private equity
Speaker 14: firms like Celeste Landlord who are buying up vast swaths
Speaker 14: of America's rental housing and really making that housing much
Speaker 14: much more insecure, pushing people out through these automated eviction
Speaker 14: systems and algorithms that determine, you know, that someone just
Speaker 14: gets an eviction filing if they're two days later on
Speaker 14: their rent and there's no human to interact with, not
Speaker 14: only pushing people out of their housing, but increasingly buying
Speaker 14: up the very sites and places where families and individuals
Speaker 14: are pushed into once they become homeless. And nowhere is
Speaker 14: that truer than with this phenomenon of extended stay hotels.
Speaker 14: It's an entire world of homelessness that we're not seeing.
Speaker 14: And you know, during the pandemic, Blackstone and star Ward Capital,
Speaker 14: these two private equity giants, they saw that that Extended
Speaker 14: Stay America was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 14: while all other hotels were at like zero occupancy, and
Speaker 14: they spent six billion dollars buying this because they saw
Speaker 14: that these hotels are concentrated in areas of our country
Speaker 14: we're working people are most likely to become homeless and
Speaker 14: to lose stable housing. And so you have entire business models,
Speaker 14: very powerful business models, that are actively exacerbating and really
Speaker 14: profiting off of this this insecurity.
Speaker 3: Are there examples of communities or policies that have dealt
Speaker 3: with this in a constructive way? Are there, you know,
Speaker 3: things that we can point to and say, you know, look,
Speaker 3: this does work, this community used it.
Speaker 4: You know, to some success. What do you make of that?
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, I think as far as like if
Speaker 14: we really open the lens on this crisis. And you know,
Speaker 14: one of the big things I'm trying to show in
Speaker 14: the book is that the official numbers on homelessness, as
Speaker 14: bad as they are, and again we had over the
Speaker 14: last two years the highest level of homelessness on record.
Speaker 14: As bad as those official numbers are, the reality is
Speaker 14: actually much much worse.
Speaker 8: It's exponentially worse.
Speaker 14: And I estimate that it's that the actual number is
Speaker 14: roughly six times that of the official number. And the
Speaker 14: reason I say that is because once we get a
Speaker 14: sense of the true severity and magnitude and crucially the
Speaker 14: actual root causes of this homelessness catastrophe, we realize that
Speaker 14: that the kind of nibbling around the edges solutions that
Speaker 14: are often floated will simply not be enough. And a
Speaker 14: huge thing is keeping people in the homes.
Speaker 8: They already have.
Speaker 14: And you know, I think I've been disabused in the
Speaker 14: process of reporting this book of the notion that, like,
Speaker 14: if this is solved, it's going to be because some
Speaker 14: policy maker in Washington or at state level wakes up
Speaker 14: and is like, I'm going to he's the suffering for
Speaker 14: these people. Some of the most promising trends that we're
Speaker 14: seeing is the emergence of a really powerful and vibrant
Speaker 14: tenant rights movement across the country, people organizing in their buildings,
Speaker 14: in their run properties and saying this is intolerable, We're
Speaker 14: not going to stand for it. And in cities like
Speaker 14: Kansas City, we had the emergence of casey tenants over
Speaker 14: the last several years that has demanded large scale policy shifts.
Speaker 14: And I think that's the most promising thing we have
Speaker 14: right now that this is going If solutions come, they're
Speaker 14: going to come from those who are closest to the
Speaker 14: problem and those who are directly impacted and their neighbors
Speaker 14: who simply say, you know, like, we're not going to
Speaker 14: allow millions of people to be the casualties of our
Speaker 14: city's renaissance, of our city's success and growth, Because that's
Speaker 14: another dynamic. All of these people are losing their housing
Speaker 14: not in the midst of like poverty, but in the
Speaker 14: midst of mounting prosperity in cities like Atlanta, Nashville. So
Speaker 14: that's really what I see as most right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you have this mass inequality too, where you know,
Speaker 2: in these cities you need the people who are going
Speaker 2: to work at McDonald's, who are going to do the
Speaker 2: uber eats or the door dash you need, you know,
Speaker 2: given that's the economic system system we apparently have. You
Speaker 2: need that working class, but you increasingly have completely priced
Speaker 2: the amount of housing and then you don't have you know,
Speaker 2: I know, Atlanta's notorious for not having sufficient public transit
Speaker 2: also so that people can actually you know, conveniently commute
Speaker 2: in and you know, speaking to some of that gentrification aspect,
Speaker 2: one of the families I'm blanking on the name of
Speaker 2: the woman that you focus on. One of them had
Speaker 2: lived previously and grown up in Atlanta in a public
Speaker 2: housing project and actually have very fond memories of that
Speaker 2: public housing project and what life was like there. Those
Speaker 2: were demolished and then I believe what happened is they
Speaker 2: built some replacement that was like mixed income housing, but
Speaker 2: never sufficient to replace the number of units that it
Speaker 2: previously been lost. And so I wonder what we can
Speaker 2: learn from that dynamic and the way that you know,
Speaker 2: this kind of like well intentioned reform movement ultimately exacerbated
Speaker 2: the issue of a housing crisis for people in the city.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 14: I mean, I think through Britt's story, Britt is the
Speaker 14: name of the person that you were just referencing. Through
Speaker 14: her story, I mean, you kind of get American housing
Speaker 14: policy in the life of one one single family, one
Speaker 14: single individual. And like you said, she grew up in
Speaker 14: public housing. She was determined to make Atlanta her home,
Speaker 14: to make a home for herself and her kids in
Speaker 14: the city. And she has this line like this city
Speaker 14: is just mine, as is just as much mine as anyone's,
Speaker 14: Like I'm not going anywhere. But the title of the
Speaker 14: book comes from Britt, there is no place for us,
Speaker 14: because she realizes that the city that she's.
Speaker 8: Given everything to.
Speaker 14: You know, Brett works at the airport when the book begins,
Speaker 14: she's working at, you know, a place that's like the
Speaker 14: pride and joy of Atlanta's economy, the busiest airport in
Speaker 14: the world.
Speaker 8: And I think it's important.
Speaker 14: To note that one of the most perverse things that
Speaker 14: this book documents is that the working homeless, these are
Speaker 14: not people on the fringes of society. They are the
Speaker 14: people whose labor, whose bodies are powering the very growth
Speaker 14: that again, perversely is not just pushing them out of
Speaker 14: the neighborhoods they grew up in, but pushing them out
Speaker 14: of housing stable housing altogether. And you know, the policies
Speaker 14: that emerged in the in the absence of public housing.
Speaker 14: Once all the public housing in Atlanta was demolished because
Speaker 14: Atlanta was the first city in the country to build
Speaker 14: public housing in the thirties, and it was the first
Speaker 14: city in the country to sort of undertake this neoliberal
Speaker 14: experiment in demolishing it, demolishing public housing and turning to
Speaker 14: the private market through vouchers and through other you know,
Speaker 14: incentivizing private development to fill that need. And Britt's story
Speaker 14: is are really tragic example of how how much that
Speaker 14: promise has failed, and ultimately her story is an example
Speaker 14: of how we need just a radical paradigm shift in
Speaker 14: how we think about housing in this country. Like housing
Speaker 14: is as it's currently conceived, it's just auctioned off to.
Speaker 8: The highest bidder.
Speaker 14: We've you know, one caseworker in the book refers to
Speaker 14: it as the housing Hunger Games. And what we've done
Speaker 14: is we've said this essential human need is going to
Speaker 14: be you know that people are just going to be
Speaker 14: at the mercy of a market that may or may
Speaker 14: not have an incentive to keep them housed. And if
Speaker 14: rents skyrocket past the rate of inflation, so be it.
Speaker 14: We need a different approach where we start to treat
Speaker 14: housing the way we do like public education, where we
Speaker 14: just say this is a basic part of being in
Speaker 14: this country. We're going to guarantee it for everybody. And
Speaker 14: there was a time when we had that vision as
Speaker 14: a country, and there are pure nations who have implemented
Speaker 14: that vision. It's not this utopian, you know, radical ideal.
Speaker 6: That's that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Well, the book it will break your heart if you
Speaker 2: read it, will absolutely break your heart. But I really
Speaker 2: recommend it to people because you have so many examples
Speaker 2: of you know, people who they win what they consider
Speaker 2: as like the lottery, they get the voucher to be
Speaker 2: able to help them afford you know, housing, and just
Speaker 2: how that process is all but you know, fraught with
Speaker 2: insecurity and no guarantees and creates this housing hunger game
Speaker 2: situation you're talking about. You go through some of that
Speaker 2: history and just the dynamics that that people are really
Speaker 2: dealing with on a granular scale, very much reminded me
Speaker 2: of the work of Barbara Aaron Reich, so highly recommend
Speaker 2: it to people. And Brian, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: taking some time both to explore this issue, which I
Speaker 2: do think that is there's a complete blind spot in
Speaker 2: society for and also to join us today and help
Speaker 2: us understand your work.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much. It's really meant a lot to
Speaker 8: talk to you.
Speaker 6: Our pleasure, Crystal.
Speaker 3: That was depressing, but I think a very important discussion.
Speaker 3: Thanks for bringing my guest to us and for being
Speaker 3: here today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my pleasure as always. And yeah that I really
Speaker 2: genuinely recommend the book, even though it will absolutely break
Speaker 2: your heart multiple times as you read it, but it's
Speaker 2: so important to understand what's going on in this country.
Speaker 2: And Emily, always a pleasure to get to chat with you.
Speaker 2: And guys, I'll be in like normal with Sager tomorrow
Speaker 2: in the studio, so I will see you then. And
Speaker 2: then oh, one last thing, we made it official. Friday
Speaker 2: Show is now every week every Friday. We're committing to it.
Speaker 2: We're doing the thing so and with a bonus second
Speaker 2: half that's just for premium subscribers. So thank you guys
Speaker 2: so much for supporting us and making that possible.
Speaker 3: We'll see if Sager decides to show up fingers crossed.
Speaker 2: Well, as everybody learned, he's got some things going on
Speaker 2: right now, so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he is more than forgiven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the two of us are always happy to
Speaker 3: slum it with Ryan. So we will see everyone on
Speaker 3: Friday for that show. Breakingpoints dot com for a premium
Speaker 3: membership if you want that second half otherwise
Speaker 4: We'll be back here with more tomorrow