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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to a special pre holiday
Speaker 3: edition of Breaking Points. Crystal, how are.
Speaker 2: You breaking Points at home? That's what we're doing, Breaking
Speaker 2: Points at Home.
Speaker 3: It's for that extra flavor of authenticity. Contra morning Joe,
Speaker 3: as we discussed.
Speaker 2: You, that's exactly right. We're taking a page out of
Speaker 2: their books. So I want to roll in here a
Speaker 2: little bit later. My eyes a little bit more red,
Speaker 2: my takes a little bit more cringe, all of those things,
Speaker 2: and later I'm going to make a trip down to
Speaker 2: mar A Lago and see if Donald Trump will be
Speaker 2: nice to.
Speaker 3: Me and then we can get married. That would be
Speaker 3: the perfectly appropriate next step.
Speaker 2: There you go as a good start this morning.
Speaker 3: Yes, Spainer Mary, Soccer is still on his autymoon, but
Speaker 3: this will be the last show. This is the last
Speaker 3: Girls show. We did indeed set a record yesterday, as
Speaker 3: I predicted for length. But Soccer will be back here
Speaker 3: with everyone after the holiday, and I know he's very
Speaker 3: much looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: It's crazy we went so long because I genuinely tried
Speaker 2: to talk less. I really genuinely did, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to try to do that again today and probably fail.
Speaker 2: So in the show today, we actually have a lot
Speaker 2: of news. Donald Trump making a lot of news yesterday
Speaker 2: with regard to announcing major tariffs against Canada and Mexico
Speaker 2: and also increasing tariffs on China. We also want to
Speaker 2: have this conversation that's been kind of floating around online
Speaker 2: about whether Trump is akin to a Republican Obama in
Speaker 2: his sort of like unique political skills. Obviously stylistically they're
Speaker 2: very different, but they both seem to have been able
Speaker 2: to put together coalitions of voters that no other politician
Speaker 2: really seems to be able to do so, we'll dig
Speaker 2: into that and some of the data that may back
Speaker 2: up or may refute that claim. We've got Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: planning her future. Apparently, Emily she's seeing out running for
Speaker 2: president again in twenty twenty eight. I'm sure what could
Speaker 2: go wrong. She's such a political phenom that this seems
Speaker 2: like a really great idea for the future of the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: I think she's got this in the bag. She's tan
Speaker 3: restling and ready.
Speaker 2: Ready to go, fired up, ready to go. We've got
Speaker 2: some details about the Democratic response to Trump this time around.
Speaker 2: The resistance has been notably quiet. What does that mean?
Speaker 2: We have Lindsay Graham kind of spilling the beans on
Speaker 2: what's really going on with regard to our involvement in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: We have some interesting gen Z views of the world.
Speaker 2: The amount of money that they feel that they need
Speaker 2: to be able to make to be financially successful is
Speaker 2: really quite something. Also a big divide in terms of
Speaker 2: media consumption across generations that won't be surprising to you guys.
Speaker 2: And then we're taking a look at you know how
Speaker 2: much it's going to cost you get that turkey this
Speaker 2: year for Thanksgiving?
Speaker 3: Surprisingly good News.
Speaker 2: Yes, we had to do a little bit of cringy
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving morning show style content, otherwise it wouldn't be a
Speaker 2: pre holiday show.
Speaker 3: I wanted to cook together, but such.
Speaker 2: As life imagine, we tried to do that like separately
Speaker 2: at our home. So we said a disaster.
Speaker 3: That a great idea. This is a fine substitute.
Speaker 2: Before we jump in, we do have a little bit
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Speaker 3: Truly. I have had so many people of the course
Speaker 3: so last year ask about.
Speaker 2: The sweatshirts, so I do love the design.
Speaker 3: They're awesome.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go and jump into the show. Donald
Speaker 2: Trump making some big news yesterday that I'm really interested
Speaker 2: to get your thoughts on. Emily can put this up
Speaker 2: on the screen. Announcing some major tariffs against Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 2: Mexico is our largest trading partner, so that's quite significant.
Speaker 2: Also announcing some increased tariffs on China. This is the
Speaker 2: announcement about China. These all came out on true Socially,
Speaker 2: says I've had many talks with China about the massive
Speaker 2: amounts of drugs, in particular fentanyl being sent to the US,
Speaker 2: but to no avail. He goes on to say, until
Speaker 2: such time as they stop, will be charging China an
Speaker 2: additional ten percent tariff above any additional tariffs on all
Speaker 2: of their many products coming to the US. Of a
Speaker 2: thank you for your attention to this matter. And then
Speaker 2: the next one is the announcement with regard to Canada
Speaker 2: and Mexico. He says, as everyone is ware, thousands of
Speaker 2: people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing crime and
Speaker 2: drugs at levels never seen before. Right now, caravan coming
Speaker 2: from Mexico, composed of thousands of people seems to be
Speaker 2: unstoppable in its quest to come through a currently open border.
Speaker 2: On January twentieth, as one of my many first executive orders,
Speaker 2: I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and
Speaker 2: Canada a twenty five percent tariff on all products coming
Speaker 2: into the US and its ridiculous open borders. This terrif
Speaker 2: will remain in effect until such time as drugs, in
Speaker 2: particular fentanyl and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of
Speaker 2: our country. So Emily. A few things that are noteworthy.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, Trump was very insistent his
Speaker 2: entire time on the campaign trail that he wanted to
Speaker 2: have significant, across the board tariffs on all imports. This
Speaker 2: would be a huge step in that direction because taken collectively,
Speaker 2: I mean Mexico, Canada, and China make up a majority
Speaker 2: of our foreign imports, so this would be incredibly safe, magnificant.
Speaker 2: There is no doubt that it would increase prices. Mexico
Speaker 2: is responsible for some like seventy percent of our fresh
Speaker 2: produce imports. RFK Junior not wouldn't be too happy about
Speaker 2: that one. Canada really significant in terms of actually crude
Speaker 2: oil and also building supplies. Obviously, there are all kinds
Speaker 2: of things we get from China, and there's already significant
Speaker 2: tariffs on some segments of the Chinese economy to begin with.
Speaker 2: But you know, a few other things to note here.
Speaker 2: Number one, the framing in terms of fentanyl and illegal
Speaker 2: immigration seems to me significant in terms of a sort
Speaker 2: of legal rationale because typically tariff programs such as this
Speaker 2: would have to go through Congress. But the Trump administration
Speaker 2: has been looking at ways that they could circumvent that
Speaker 2: by you know, declaring this relevant to national security, So
Speaker 2: that justification seems to me important. You know, the courts
Speaker 2: have typically given presidents pretty wide lattice when it comes
Speaker 2: to terrors in the name of national security, so that's significant.
Speaker 2: And then the other big question mark, as always with
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, is is this a serious position or is
Speaker 2: this a negotiating tactic here out of the gates, Because
Speaker 2: if it's serious, I don't think there's anyone that would
Speaker 2: deny that this will have a gigantic impact on the
Speaker 2: economy and will undoubtedly spike gas prices, grocery prices, construction prices,
Speaker 2: and a lot of other things at a time when
Speaker 2: Americans are saying that inflation is their number one issue.
Speaker 3: And that's what goes into these negotiations, is Claudia Scheinbaum
Speaker 3: going to look at Donald Trump and say there's no
Speaker 3: way you're implementing this, whereas Donald Trump is coming in
Speaker 3: and saying I will. That's obviously the big question because
Speaker 3: we've seen him do this. I mean, we've seen him
Speaker 3: do this many times as a starting point in negotiations.
Speaker 3: I think this is probably a starting point. But would
Speaker 3: he then go on the sliding scale, maybe even in
Speaker 3: the middle, even if he met, you know, someone in
Speaker 3: the middle on this, that would be catastrophic in terms
Speaker 3: of like its effect on the economy. I don't I
Speaker 3: shouldn't have used the word catastrophic. I should say consequential, Yeah,
Speaker 3: in terms of the economy, even if he cuts that
Speaker 3: in half to cut some type of deal. So that's
Speaker 3: I mean, because I think it is a starting point,
Speaker 3: and I think it's probably a smart way to get
Speaker 3: Mexico in particular to the table on this. But I
Speaker 3: don't think there's any way who would actually go through
Speaker 3: with that level in half. Maybe, I mean, it's just
Speaker 3: so hard to know.
Speaker 2: With him, Yeah, I'm not so sure, because you know,
Speaker 2: he was very consistent on the campaign trail about his
Speaker 2: commitment to really shifting the entire American economy and revenue system.
Speaker 2: I mean, you talked endlessly about President William McKinley, right,
Speaker 2: and this was like the model for him, and obviously
Speaker 2: our economy and the world wildly different from at that time.
Speaker 2: I mean, now tariffs make up a completely inconsequential amount
Speaker 2: of the federal revenue to back up our budget. At
Speaker 2: that time, it was you know, there was no income
Speaker 2: tax at that time, so it was a wildly different scenario.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he does
Speaker 2: go through with it. You know, Wall Street and a
Speaker 2: lot of his Wall Street backers, first of all, they
Speaker 2: were kind of relieved when he picked Chargery Secretary Scott Bessant.
Speaker 2: There was a sense of like, Okay, this is like
Speaker 2: one of us. He's not going to do anything too crazy.
Speaker 2: And then the very you know, just a few days later,
Speaker 2: he's announcing this tariff program, which again would be incredibly
Speaker 2: I mean, catastrophic could be one word for it, but
Speaker 2: certainly consequential. Jeff Stein is tweeting about just how significant
Speaker 2: just this piece against these three countries would be. We
Speaker 2: can put this up on the screen to get a
Speaker 2: sense of the size that we're talking about here. He says,
Speaker 2: Trump threatens twenty five percent teriffs on all Mexico imports.
Speaker 2: And now again, this is just Mexico. The US imported
Speaker 2: four hundred and seventy six billion dollars from Mexico last year,
Speaker 2: more than any other country. A twenty five percent tariff
Speaker 2: on the imports would translate into a roughly one hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollar annual tax, or about one trillion dollars over
Speaker 2: the next decade. The back of the envelope calculations I
Speaker 2: saw people floating economists floating on Twitter, was that this
Speaker 2: would likely amount to about one thousand dollars increase in
Speaker 2: costs for every American household. So again, quite significant at
Speaker 2: a time when Americans are saying that inflation is their
Speaker 2: number one issue. So, you know, is he overreading his
Speaker 2: mandate here or you know. I've also seen some on
Speaker 2: the left say, you know, what, people might be able
Speaker 2: to might be willing to put up with some increased
Speaker 2: economic pain if they feel like, if they're convinced that
Speaker 2: it's in service of something that will benefit them. I'm
Speaker 2: skeptical of that logic, but I do want to, just
Speaker 2: like playing Devil's advocate, put that out there.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's worth mentioning because we saw
Speaker 3: that with his China tariffs in his first administration, or
Speaker 3: remember you would have all of these like kind of
Speaker 3: do wee be mainstream media reporters going to talk to
Speaker 3: farmers in the Midwest and asking them, you know, they
Speaker 3: regret supporting Trump because of the tariffs, And what they
Speaker 3: would say is, no, we actually are okay with a
Speaker 3: little bit of pain. We want to see a light
Speaker 3: at the end of the tunnel, Like we hope that
Speaker 3: this isn't going to last all that much longer, but
Speaker 3: we understand the kind of end goal and we support
Speaker 3: the end goal. So that though on a mass scale
Speaker 3: affecting you know, all of these different products so significantly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a little different. It is though. I think also
Speaker 3: we're saying Scott Bessen was reportedly chosen over Howard Lutnik
Speaker 3: because Donald Trump was worried about spooking the markets too much.
Speaker 3: And that's what gives me a little bit more reason
Speaker 3: to believe he's this is a starting point in negotiations.
Speaker 3: But again, a starting point doesn't mean that there isn't
Speaker 3: somewhere else he lands on that's still significant for some
Speaker 3: period of time. So I mean, I think it's absolutely
Speaker 3: like Jeff says this over and over again, it's absolutely
Speaker 3: true that Trump is dead serious about using tariffs this way.
Speaker 3: I think it's just a matter of how and how much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, just to go over some of the
Speaker 2: key categories here. Crude oil, so gas prices, especially in
Speaker 2: the Midwest. That's where a lot of the crude oil
Speaker 2: for the Midwestern refineries comes from Canada. So gas prices
Speaker 2: would almost certainly go up. Grocery prices on a lot
Speaker 2: of fresh fruits and vegetables undoubtedly would go up. Building materials.
Speaker 2: Another key thing that a significant amount of which comes
Speaker 2: from Mexico and also some from Canada are auto parts,
Speaker 2: so you know, goes into the assembly factories here for
Speaker 2: cars and the major American automakers, so a lot. I mean,
Speaker 2: Mexico is our number one trading partner, so obviously this
Speaker 2: would be very significant. We're also getting some details from
Speaker 2: what is the term for it, Attorney General nominee. I guess,
Speaker 2: Pam BONDI, let's put this up on the screen. She's got.
Speaker 2: We were asking the question yesterday Emily like who should
Speaker 2: be worried under the Trump administration with regard to the
Speaker 2: Department of Justice, Pam Bondi giving us our first indication. Here,
Speaker 2: she says to Nancy Pelosi, salaries one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: five K, yet she has a net worth of two
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars plus. I will investigate and prosecute to
Speaker 2: the fullest extent of the law. Number one. Good, but
Speaker 2: just go after everybody who's insider trading, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: you may also want to look at Tommy Tubberville, who's
Speaker 2: disclosed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in futures trading wheat, corn, soil,
Speaker 2: and cattle while he sits on the Senate Committee for Agriculture,
Speaker 2: as one example, that's from unusual Wales. The other thing
Speaker 2: is like, unfortunately, this kind of congressional insider stock trading
Speaker 2: is perfectly legal. So I don't know if you actually
Speaker 2: have the legal capability to go after any of these
Speaker 2: people because Congress has of course insulated themselves from the
Speaker 2: consequences of their own actions.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, which she would essentially have to be investigating
Speaker 3: is violations of the Stock Act, a bill that Nancy
Speaker 3: Pelosi kind of hilariously championed after being caught in the
Speaker 3: It was like the late aughts doing some of this
Speaker 3: or her husband doing some of this, and you would
Speaker 3: just be investigating is basically whether or not they filed
Speaker 3: on time. Like that's we've seen like late files like
Speaker 3: people do that, and it actually seems it sucks, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you.
Speaker 2: Can't slop on the rist. It's like a very small
Speaker 2: fine if you don't file your disclosures on time.
Speaker 3: Right, But to actually prove I mean, she's willing, she's
Speaker 3: welcome to investigate and should investigate absolutely every single one
Speaker 3: of the Republicans that is doing the exact same thing.
Speaker 3: But she won't of course. But you know, if you're
Speaker 3: doing that, it's almost impossible to prove insider trading. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just they're allowed to do so much of this.
Speaker 3: And that's why you if you want to do something
Speaker 3: meaningful on this, you have to chase legislation as attorney general,
Speaker 3: champion legislation. Get if Republicans have the House in the Senate,
Speaker 3: let's go bring it on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not gonna hold my breath on that one.
Speaker 2: M But the other thing is that sometimes just the investigation,
Speaker 2: I mean, no one enjoys being investigated by the FED.
Speaker 2: Like even if you're not ultimately charged. If they're doing
Speaker 2: discovery and they're going through all your stuff and they're
Speaker 2: you know, harassing you for your files, et cetera, that
Speaker 2: can be you know, a weapon in and of itself.
Speaker 2: And it's something that Trump used actually last term to
Speaker 2: go after people like John Carrey and and others that
Speaker 2: he considered to be you know, adversaries and enemies. Going
Speaker 2: back to the economic piece, because this was also very significant. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Trump on the campaign trail promising mass deportations. This was
Speaker 2: one of his most reliable calls. They had the signs
Speaker 2: up at the RNC that said mass deportation. Now some
Speaker 2: of the farm groups that you know, we're big backers
Speaker 2: of his, by the way, are now saying this doesn't
Speaker 2: apply to us. Right when you were saying this whole
Speaker 2: like deport everyone, you weren't talking about our workers that
Speaker 2: we need on our farms, right. So this is from
Speaker 2: Reuter's US farm groups want Trump to spare their workers
Speaker 2: from deportation. The article reads, US farm industry groups want
Speaker 2: present elect to spare their sector for the promise of
Speaker 2: mass deportations, which could up end a food supply chain
Speaker 2: heavily dependent on immigrants in the US illegally. So far,
Speaker 2: Trump officials have not committed to any exemptions. Coordinated interviews
Speaker 2: with farmer worker groups and Trump's incoming borders are Tom Homan.
Speaker 2: Nearly half of the nation's approximately two million farm workers
Speaker 2: lack legal status, according to the Departments of Labor and Agriculture,
Speaker 2: as well as many dairy and meat packing workers. Mass
Speaker 2: removal of farm workers would shock the food supply chain
Speaker 2: and drive consumer grocery prices higher, said David Ortega, professor
Speaker 2: of Food economics and Policy of Michigan State. A Republican
Speaker 2: representative in California Central Valley, said farms in the area
Speaker 2: depend on immigrants in the US illegally and that small
Speaker 2: towns would collapse if those workers were deported. So, you know,
Speaker 2: even if like with the mass deportation, there's no doubt
Speaker 2: they're going to go forward with some level of mass deportation, right,
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any doubt about that, and the
Speaker 2: way they target at what it looks like like those
Speaker 2: details we really don't have a great sense of. But
Speaker 2: even if there's a dramatic show of that sort of
Speaker 2: you know, force and deportation, people going into workplaces, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. You know, that can cause a lot of
Speaker 2: people to go into hiding or flee completely. And while
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's really not good from a labor
Speaker 2: perspective that you have so many workers who are working
Speaker 2: under the table, oftentimes you know, below minimum wage employers
Speaker 2: not following labor law like that is a terrible that's
Speaker 2: a terrible situation for everyone and is something that you know,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, we need to legalize these works to
Speaker 2: bring them out in the shadows. But the fact remains,
Speaker 2: if you have a mass exodus of this immigrant workforce
Speaker 2: that our country at this point really relies upon, it
Speaker 2: will have dramatic economic consequences and ties in with the
Speaker 2: Tarff conversation too, because both of those things would have
Speaker 2: huge inflationary effects actually on food, grocery prices, et cetera,
Speaker 2: which again is what the American people are saying is
Speaker 2: their top concern and priority right now.
Speaker 3: It will it would absolutely be economically consequential. I think
Speaker 3: it's one that is sort of it's such a tell
Speaker 3: to the point you were just making on behalf of
Speaker 3: the business community and Trump, by the way, Republicans overall
Speaker 3: this last cycle got so much money from home builders
Speaker 3: and building companies in general. If you look at the
Speaker 3: industry as a whole, they gave a ton of money
Speaker 3: to Republicans over the course of the last cycle, and
Speaker 3: you could just like, you can see how it's going
Speaker 3: to force them to come out and make more and
Speaker 3: more statements like the ones they gave to Reuters, which
Speaker 3: I see is kind of shameless, being like, yes, we
Speaker 3: have the shadow workforce that we exploit. Please do not
Speaker 3: touch them. It will you know, It's like they're holding
Speaker 3: our economy hostage to their ability to exploit in mass
Speaker 3: millions of workers. And so it's not great for them
Speaker 3: to have to come out and talk about that, and
Speaker 3: I think it would make the public more willing to
Speaker 3: accept some of the economically detrimental consequences that said Crystal,
Speaker 3: they I mean, this would be a big hit to
Speaker 3: the economy. There's there's really no question about it. And
Speaker 3: whether that's sustainable for Trump politically is a different question
Speaker 3: than the sort of substance of whether our economy should
Speaker 3: be built on this house of cards and what to
Speaker 3: do with the workforce. I mean, it's a different question.
Speaker 3: Would you know, let's say, in my perspective. I think
Speaker 3: you would be able to get Americans. This is like
Speaker 3: totally against conventional wisdom in Washington. I think you would
Speaker 3: get Americans stepping up into those jobs if there were
Speaker 3: you know, quote unquote mass deportations. But it would take
Speaker 3: a long time.
Speaker 2: Well, it would take much higher wages.
Speaker 3: Much it would take much higher wages, and it would.
Speaker 2: Take means much higher prices at the grocery store and
Speaker 2: for building as well. We could put you could continue
Speaker 2: to lay on your point, Emily, Well, let's just go
Speaker 2: and put up on the screen. The industries where migrants
Speaker 2: are incredibly significant to the labor force, and you know,
Speaker 2: you can see here is across a wide variety of industries.
Speaker 2: Landscaping they say, private households. I assume that things like
Speaker 2: you know, nannies and housekeepers and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Services to buildings and dwellings. Uh, crop production, you know,
Speaker 2: meat packing, animal slaughtering, and processing. They say. Construction obviously
Speaker 2: very significant. And these are all areas where there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of sensitivity about prices. I mean, the cost
Speaker 2: of building a new house has been a major topic
Speaker 2: of conversation. So when you combine the tariffs on building
Speaker 2: materials coming from Canada and the tariffs on you know,
Speaker 2: agricultural products coming from Mexico with a you know, an
Speaker 2: undermining of the workforce that we really rely on at
Speaker 2: this point for a number of these industries. The immediate
Speaker 2: impacts are going to be felt quite significantly in people's pocketbooks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the only other thing I was going to
Speaker 3: add is that it would take years to adjust to
Speaker 3: a new workforce and there would be a lot of
Speaker 3: economic pain over the course of that time as American workers.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you really want to get American workers
Speaker 3: into those jobs, obviously it's going to require higher wagers,
Speaker 3: and it's also going to require like people being sold
Speaker 3: on those positions and coming from different places in the life.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just a it's a huge societal cultural adjustment.
Speaker 3: It's not just sort of a clickable a wand type thing. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: economic pain either way.
Speaker 2: On that right. Well, And the other thing is that,
Speaker 2: you know, like most Western developed countries, we have an
Speaker 2: aging population. We actually are beginning to see the signs
Speaker 2: that we don't have enough workers for the jobs that
Speaker 2: need to be filled in our society. Birth rate is declining,
Speaker 2: and you know, the unemployment rate. Even if people are unsatisfied,
Speaker 2: they're unhappy with the economy. But the unemployment rate is
Speaker 2: quite low, labor force participation rate has gone up quite significantly.
Speaker 2: The problem, as opposed to previous eras, isn't that there
Speaker 2: aren't sufficient jobs. It's that those jobs aren't well paying enough.
Speaker 2: And so you know, the constricting the labor force and
Speaker 2: having fewer workers doesn't really solve the core problem that
Speaker 2: people are concerned about. It actually could create a new
Speaker 2: crisis where you just genuinely don't have sufficient people to
Speaker 2: be able to fill all of the jobs. Now, does
Speaker 2: that cause salaries to go up? Does that cause wages
Speaker 2: to go up? That's possible, although even that is not
Speaker 2: completely clear cut in terms of the studies that have
Speaker 2: been done. But no doubt, I think you and I
Speaker 2: are agreement. In the short term, it would be very painful.
Speaker 2: It would be quite a shock, an economic shock. If
Speaker 2: anything approaching what he's floating here, actually, you know, comes
Speaker 2: to fruition. And again, you know, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of the business community, obviously the farm industry groups, a
Speaker 2: lot of Wall streeters who really got on board with
Speaker 2: Trump this time. They didn't think he was really serious
Speaker 2: about these things, you know, they fell a I said
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff last time around, I didn't really
Speaker 2: do a lot of it. So he says he talks
Speaker 2: a big game, but when it comes down to it,
Speaker 2: he's not going to do that much. And by the way,
Speaker 2: Congress has to go along with it, and we've got
Speaker 2: our paid off representatives there. We're going to be good. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the people in his orbit have been thinking a lot
Speaker 2: about how they can avoid any of the stumbling blocks
Speaker 2: of last time howping you can avoid having to go
Speaker 2: through Congress for money for mass deportation or for the
Speaker 2: ability to institute a massive new tariff program. They have
Speaker 2: legal theories and justifications ready to go. There's no guarantee
Speaker 2: those all pass muster with the courts, but a good
Speaker 2: many of them will. So, you know, I whether he
Speaker 2: goes through with the full twenty five percent tariff, and
Speaker 2: exactly the contours of this, we don't know. But I
Speaker 2: think that people should take him seriously and take him
Speaker 2: at his word that he plans to have this sort
Speaker 2: of revolutionary style approach to the economy, which will be
Speaker 2: incredibly consequential. And I think it's very different than what
Speaker 2: a lot of the groups that backed him, thought they
Speaker 2: were going to get with him.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and put Scott Pesson in. So that was
Speaker 3: supposed to be the kind of signal to Wall Street
Speaker 3: that it wasn't going to be as wild and wacky
Speaker 3: as maybe it would have been our under Howard Lutnik
Speaker 3: as Treasury. But you know what that actually means. It's
Speaker 3: just so hard to say right now because we've heard
Speaker 3: so little from Bessett, and you know, it's Trump is Trump.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day. You can fire people
Speaker 3: that aren't following what he wants them to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the key connective issue with the people
Speaker 2: he put into place is he thinks they will all
Speaker 2: be loyal to him, meaning they will do whatever he
Speaker 2: wants them to do, and whether it's on tariffs or
Speaker 2: whether it's on like overturning an election. That was the
Speaker 2: primary test for the people he put into place. Just
Speaker 2: one more note on that piece. There are some some
Speaker 2: questions raised about Tulsea Gabbart that might be come up
Speaker 2: during her confirmation hearing. So you can put this up
Speaker 2: on the screen. This was an investigation from Mother Jones,
Speaker 2: but a lot of interesting details here. She's got three
Speaker 2: different packs and one nonprofit, and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: questions about the money that she raised well over a
Speaker 2: million dollars across these three packs and where it went.
Speaker 2: It appears that most of it just went to like
Speaker 2: you know, her aids, different consultants, fundraisers, etc. Very little
Speaker 2: spent on the candidates that she you know, was supposed
Speaker 2: to be endorsing and backing. And then her nonprofit called
Speaker 2: We Must Protect There is no disclosure about where the
Speaker 2: funds that were raised for that, what they actually went to,
Speaker 2: what sort of charitable giving came out of that. So
Speaker 2: in any case, some significant questions raised there about how
Speaker 2: those funds were raised and spent That could become relevant
Speaker 2: in a Senate confirmation hearing, especially because I think with
Speaker 2: Tulsia in particular, you're going to have a lot of
Speaker 2: Republicans who are a little leery of putting her in
Speaker 2: the position maybe looking for, you know, different ways that
Speaker 2: they could spike her nomination, spike her confirmation without like
Speaker 2: sort of directly going at the national security concerns that
Speaker 2: they have with regard to her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you kind of peel the curtain back a
Speaker 3: little bit for like people in media Crystal, we look
Speaker 3: at a story like that. I think it's a story
Speaker 3: that kind of is trying to build. It's kind of
Speaker 3: planning a seed, and then you're trying to maybe get
Speaker 3: other people to come in and be like, yes, I
Speaker 3: have knowledge that X, Y and Z was done wrong
Speaker 3: at this pack in that pack, because right now, it's
Speaker 3: sort of a lot of smoke, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know why somebody needs four packs, to be honest,
Speaker 3: but one of them said that it would be Tulsi's
Speaker 3: like primary vehicle for getting her message out blah blah blah,
Speaker 3: meaning that it probably was like a lot of travel
Speaker 3: and aids helping with communications and all of those types
Speaker 3: of things as she campaigned in twenty twenty four. And
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that the donors would be especially upset
Speaker 3: about that. But four packs is quite it's quite interesting,
Speaker 3: and maybe, you know, I think that was a even
Speaker 3: corn story. Maybe he thinks there's more to kind of
Speaker 3: build off of, but so far, I think there's just
Speaker 3: so much more with Tulsa that'll be contentious with those
Speaker 3: Republican senators who are you know, it's all gonna come
Speaker 3: down to Syria basically, and talking the way she talks
Speaker 3: about NATO, so that I think will be much more significant.
Speaker 3: But maybe there's more here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, could be. We'll see how that all unfolds. I
Speaker 2: think that could be a very interesting one. And then
Speaker 2: the other piece with a report like this is, you know,
Speaker 2: the Senate would have more sort of investigatory powers to
Speaker 2: be able to dig into whether if there's any fire
Speaker 2: there where there's smoke. So I think you're right about it,
Speaker 2: kind of planning a seed and a question mark in
Speaker 2: people's minds to follow the trail for there. All right,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and get to how people are feeling
Speaker 2: about the Trump transition. So I wanted to take a
Speaker 2: look at a pretty interesting CNN segment taking dive into
Speaker 2: how people are feeling about the Trump transition so far.
Speaker 2: Harry Anton breaks down the numbers.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen President Trump's transition net approval. You
Speaker 4: go back to November at twenty sixteen. Look at this,
Speaker 4: it was just a plus one point, just a plus
Speaker 4: one point.
Speaker 3: That is well well well below.
Speaker 4: The historical norm. Look get where we are today, significantly
Speaker 4: higher plus eighteen points at seventeen points higher on the
Speaker 4: presidential transition net approval rating.
Speaker 3: The bottom line is this.
Speaker 4: If eight years ago Americans were lukewarm on Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: at this particular point, they're giving him much more of
Speaker 4: the benefit of the doubt. A lot more Americans are
Speaker 4: in love with this transition. This much more meets the
Speaker 4: historical norms where normally presidents get that boost coming out
Speaker 4: of their victory. And what we're seeing here is Donald
Speaker 4: Trump's presidential transition is getting a thumbs up, And dare
Speaker 4: I say two thumbs up from the American people.
Speaker 2: So, Emily, what do you make of those numbers and
Speaker 2: how significantly different they are from twenty sixteen when it was,
Speaker 2: you know, and people were not really sure what was
Speaker 2: going on with him?
Speaker 3: Harry Anton just pounding that ghost energy clearly day in and.
Speaker 2: Day out, you feeling that hue.
Speaker 3: He So I don't know how much to read into
Speaker 3: what this reflects the sentiments of the American voters, but
Speaker 3: I think where we can focus is the change. I
Speaker 3: do think like seeing twenty sixteen versus twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: is interesting and I wonder crystal again sort of contraconventional
Speaker 3: wisdom in Washington, if it's that, you know, the Robert F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy Junior is not a man of the conservative movement.
Speaker 3: Tulsea Gabbard is now very much in the conservative movement
Speaker 3: that doesn't but does not come from that place. Trump's
Speaker 3: cabinet in twenty sixteen was staffed with like vanilla Republicans.
Speaker 3: I mean, he put Rex Tillerson in there, and I
Speaker 3: guess that was interesting. It wasn't a very drain the
Speaker 3: swamp move to just like pluck the Exon CEO. It's
Speaker 3: one of my favorite Trump moves in terms of like
Speaker 3: actually undermining the drain the swamp messaging, like we'll just
Speaker 3: take the CEO of Exon and put them at the
Speaker 3: State Department and have funny.
Speaker 2: That is like the definition of the swamp right there.
Speaker 3: Yees, it's this is so stupid. But on that note,
Speaker 3: he was pretty much surrounding himself with conventional Republicans, and
Speaker 3: this time around, I can see how a people just
Speaker 3: have hired name recognition maybe and b there coming from
Speaker 3: different places, so you're maybe getting a little bit more
Speaker 3: like for example, Corey Booker has said he'll take RFK
Speaker 3: Junior seriously, and that's maybe one of the most high
Speaker 3: profile cabinet announcements. So it's one that people have heard
Speaker 3: a lot about and I think Bertie Sanders has had
Speaker 3: nice words for Tulsa Gabbard in recent days. So there's something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think I have to go double track, but there's
Speaker 3: something where you've had people reacting in a way that's
Speaker 3: sort of like, Okay, maybe more people are hearing about
Speaker 3: different coalition, different parts of the coalition coming together. That's
Speaker 3: my best guess as to why it's hire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, My best guess is there are three pieces here.
Speaker 2: Number One, Trump is just a fixed your in American
Speaker 2: political life now, So he is you know, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of young people who have only known the Trump.
Speaker 2: He is not this like aberration in American politics at
Speaker 2: this point. So it makes sense that he would enjoy
Speaker 2: this sort of typical honeymoon period that all presidents enjoy
Speaker 2: because now he's sort of like a typical presidential figure,
Speaker 2: even as you know, if you look at historical norms
Speaker 2: and norms and his approach and whatever, obviously he's outside
Speaker 2: of that. But in terms of recent political history, he
Speaker 2: is now just sort of like, this is the norm
Speaker 2: in American politics. So I think there's that. I think
Speaker 2: the second piece, related to what you were saying, is
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party approach has been very different. We're going
Speaker 2: to cover in another block, how the quote unquote resistance
Speaker 2: has gone quiet, Like the vibe from the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: and a lot of corners is more like capitulation than resistance.
Speaker 2: And just as we saw with you know, the numbers
Speaker 2: on immigration, when you had both parties sort of accepting
Speaker 2: the same framework ideological framework around immigration, you saw the
Speaker 2: numbers really dramatically shift. I think it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: If you have both parties basically saying like, well, always
Speaker 2: making some decisions that are I'm okay with and I'm
Speaker 2: open to, etc. Then yeah, you're gonna have a public
Speaker 2: perception that like, oh, this seems to be going pretty well.
Speaker 2: And then the last thing, and I actually think this
Speaker 2: is probably the most important point, is that Joe Biden
Speaker 2: is so feeble and the Democratic Party in general is
Speaker 2: so feeble and incapable of making a decision and taking
Speaker 2: any action. Just the sense of like, oh, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of things happening and like a lot of decisions
Speaker 2: are being made. I think, irrespective of whether those decisions
Speaker 2: are good, bad, or indifferent, just the sense of action
Speaker 2: feels good to people. You know that someone is doing
Speaker 2: something and making decisions and they're bold, and they're controversial,
Speaker 2: and they're taking charge. Now does that last once those
Speaker 2: decisions actually have real work consequences, as we were talking
Speaker 2: about before with the tariffs, in the way that deportations
Speaker 2: may feel in reality versus how you imagine them to
Speaker 2: be in you know, the abstract, that's a very different question.
Speaker 2: But I do think that people are reacting to just
Speaker 2: the sense of like decisions are being made, and they're
Speaker 2: being made quickly, and they're being made decisively, and you know,
Speaker 2: that vibe, especially in contrast to a completely enfeebled Joe Biden,
Speaker 2: is creating a really positive impression.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the point about Biden is a really good one.
Speaker 3: And I think actually what people were recirculating was an
Speaker 3: old Bernie comment about Tulsa. Obviously they used to be
Speaker 3: very close. So I retract that statement. Okay, you know,
Speaker 3: the point remains, it's obviously people who come from different parts,
Speaker 3: since it's not just a bunch of vanilla Republicans who
Speaker 3: are being slotted into these cabinet positions this time around.
Speaker 3: There are of course some Venida Republicans' for sure, that's
Speaker 3: for sure. I think that's very crystal that some of
Speaker 3: it is just a comparison with the Biden administration. And
Speaker 3: the only other thing I was thinking of you as
Speaker 3: you were talking that was interesting is if you remember
Speaker 3: back in twenty sixteen, there was a frenzy every single
Speaker 3: day about all of Donald Trump's tweets, and he just
Speaker 3: posts into the ether on social now, like even sometimes
Speaker 3: on Twitter, and it doesn't they're not making news cycles
Speaker 3: like they used to. There was just this sense of
Speaker 3: horror and norm shattering that you were talking about, how
Speaker 3: he's been normalized and the country's been sort of acclimated
Speaker 3: to trump Ism. But even just the way that could
Speaker 3: be shifting public opinion, because those is worthwhile to think
Speaker 3: about because those individual tweets, I mean, Paul Ryan would
Speaker 3: make a news cycle by his response his non response
Speaker 3: to the tweets back in that time, like twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: And now it's like, we all just understand that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is posting into the ether and that's how it's
Speaker 3: going to be, and we don't have to panic over everything.
Speaker 2: He says, yeah, yeah, you know, my memory is not
Speaker 2: all that great, But I also remember in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: all kinds of like sort of chaotic things happen that
Speaker 2: weird like dinner with Mitt Romney and drama on Kushner
Speaker 2: and Chris Christie, and so I'm sure that also didn't
Speaker 2: feed like the most positive impression of the potence with
Speaker 2: which the transition was unfolding, because I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: think they thought they were going to win, so they
Speaker 2: were really dramatically unprepared to go forward and actually staff
Speaker 2: an administration. And I think that kind of showed. And
Speaker 2: this time around, they did expect to win, and they
Speaker 2: have been preparing to win, and you know, so he
Speaker 2: was ready out of the gates with here's here's what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do, Here's who I want, this is
Speaker 2: how we're going to do it. This is the policies
Speaker 2: we're going to put into place. These are the day
Speaker 2: one executive actions. And like I said, when those things
Speaker 2: actually hit and we see these people leading agencies and
Speaker 2: these you know, executive actions going into place and what
Speaker 2: they actually mean for the country and people's lives, it
Speaker 2: may be a very very different story. But right now,
Speaker 2: in the abstract, it's like, Oh, he's taking action. That's
Speaker 2: what I want him to do.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, Yeah, I think that's true, Crystal.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to get to this, Emily and get
Speaker 2: your thoughts on this, because I think this conversation is
Speaker 2: very interesting and also has really important implications for the
Speaker 2: future of both the Democratic and the Republican parties, which
Speaker 2: is that some people been floating this sense that Trump
Speaker 2: may be kind of a unique figure to the Republican
Speaker 2: Party in terms of the coalition of voters he's able
Speaker 2: to pull together in the same way that Barack Obama
Speaker 2: was a unique figure in the Democratic Party with the
Speaker 2: coalition that he was able to pull together. One of
Speaker 2: the earliest signs of those parallels that obviously we're not
Speaker 2: saying they're like the same ideologically or stylistically, just in
Speaker 2: terms of their sort of political impact, uniquely felt political
Speaker 2: impact and coalition building. One of the earliest indications we
Speaker 2: got of that was after election night, we saw there
Speaker 2: were a significant number of voters who voted for Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and didn't vote for anyone else, left the rest
Speaker 2: of the ballot blank. We saw the way that even
Speaker 2: though Donald Trump was able to obviously be very successful
Speaker 2: for himself and you know, win the popular vote and
Speaker 2: win all the battle ground states, he didn't really have
Speaker 2: big coattails. Most of the Senate Republican candidates in the
Speaker 2: swing states lost. The exception was McCormick in Pennsylvania, where
Speaker 2: it was extremely, extremely narrow. And it was a similar
Speaker 2: thing with Barack Obama. Actually two thousand and eight, Barack
Speaker 2: Obama did have significant cotails, but after that he was
Speaker 2: famously unable to translate his popularity into popularity for the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party. He was not able to confer his popularity
Speaker 2: onto his would be successor, Hillary Clinton, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: so it does raise this question of whether Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is the sort of unique figure in the Republican Party
Speaker 2: and whether moving forward, whether Shady Vance or Ron de
Speaker 2: Santas or whoever is the standard bearer going forward, whether
Speaker 2: they will be able to keep together this very unique
Speaker 2: coalition that has come out for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the trillion dollar question. It's so
Speaker 3: significant because I cannot envision another Republican being able to
Speaker 3: do what Donald Trump did on Rogan, being able to
Speaker 3: do what Donald Trump did on the Oban. JD. Vance
Speaker 3: literally did that, but it was it's not Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: and it's not Donald Trump in Florida getting a significant
Speaker 3: percentage of the vote and getting new demographic ships and
Speaker 3: all of that and then a big chunk of the
Speaker 3: state also voting to legalize weed and trying abortion rights
Speaker 3: in the state constitution. I just don't know if there's
Speaker 3: another Republican waiting in the wings. That Donald Trump is
Speaker 3: a singular and that's in some ways a compliment to him,
Speaker 3: and in some ways it's like Republicans are totally screwed
Speaker 3: after Trump because there's nobody. There's nobody that could do
Speaker 3: the Madison Square Garden rally that has you know, and
Speaker 3: by the way, that having watched the entire thing, like
Speaker 3: was the Tony Hinchcliffe thing helpful? Probably not, but it
Speaker 3: was very like there was something really politically amazing about
Speaker 3: seeing these random people coming together under the banner of
Speaker 3: trump Ism. They don't really care about the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: That's does it significant problem for Republicans right now? I
Speaker 3: don't think it's Don Junior. I just don't know that
Speaker 3: there's anybody that can do what he did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things the
Speaker 2: parallels to between Trump and Obama is obviously Trump is
Speaker 2: a celebrity, right has been known to American public for
Speaker 2: decades as a celebrity. Obama wasn't a celebrity, but in
Speaker 2: a certain sense he kind of was, like he ended
Speaker 2: up being more of a celebrity figure, this sort of
Speaker 2: especially in two thousand and eight, this kind of like
Speaker 2: political rock star figure that people thought it was like
Speaker 2: cool and edgy to associate with. He was only in
Speaker 2: the Senate for how many years before he ran for president,
Speaker 2: so he became more of a cultural figure and you
Speaker 2: see that in his post presidency too, than a typical
Speaker 2: political figure. And so in some ways I think they
Speaker 2: also share that in common. And you know, I don't
Speaker 2: want to like this can sound like cope from the
Speaker 2: Democratic side of like, all right, well we'll just get
Speaker 2: Trump dout and then we're gonna be good again. And
Speaker 2: I don't think that's true. I think the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: has a lot of problems that they have to work through,
Speaker 2: and they also don't have any like Obama level popular figure.
Speaker 2: As we're going to talk about how Kamala Harrison is
Speaker 2: that you maybe she'll run again. They've got a lot
Speaker 2: of work that they need to do, and they need
Speaker 2: to find much more compelling, controversial, like outspoken, charismatic, funny,
Speaker 2: whatever character that can can carry the mantle for the party.
Speaker 2: So they've obviously got a lot of work to do.
Speaker 2: But I just remember in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 2: I felt this too, because I voted for Barack Obama,
Speaker 2: actually voted for Hillary in the primary, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of cringe. But anyway, I voted for but she.
Speaker 3: Was running a strong progressive pro union that she was
Speaker 3: doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I thought she was better on she actually
Speaker 2: her healthcare plan was better than him. But anyway, put that,
Speaker 2: we'll put that in the past. That in the past,
Speaker 2: We'll put my cringe Democratic party views in the paths.
Speaker 2: But you know, when he was elected, there was a
Speaker 2: sense of like it's over for the Republicans, Like they're
Speaker 2: never gonna win again. Look at this coalition he but
Speaker 2: look at young people, look at like all these shifts
Speaker 2: towards the Democrats. Look at him winning in Indiana, look
Speaker 2: at him winning in Iowa. Like these groups, the coalition
Speaker 2: of the Ascendant, it's only going to get larger, and
Speaker 2: Democrats are only going to win larger and larger victories.
Speaker 2: You know, there was this sense that it was like
Speaker 2: it was over for Republicans. And it wasn't just Democrats
Speaker 2: that thought that, Like Republicans kind of thought that too.
Speaker 2: They were like, damn, we're kind of screwed right now.
Speaker 2: And then two years later, twenty ten comes around and
Speaker 2: massive shillacking in the mid terms. Obama obviously is able
Speaker 2: to get himself reelected in twenty twelve, just as Trump
Speaker 2: was able to get himself reelected this time around. But
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, guess what, Donald Trump comes to town.
Speaker 2: So I guess the point here is just that the triumphalism,
Speaker 2: the sense of inevitability that exists right now, a lot
Speaker 2: can change in politics. Let's put a nine up on
Speaker 2: the screen that just shows the shifts from twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: which you know, talk about bracing for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Look at the way that since twenty twelve, these are
Speaker 2: the shifts towards Republicans. Black voters R plus nineteen, Hispanic
Speaker 2: voters R plus twenty nine, Asian voters R plus seventeen.
Speaker 2: Other voters are plus seventeen. White no degree are plus thirteen.
Speaker 2: It's kind of funny because that's the group that is
Speaker 2: portrayed as having shifted the most, and they're one of
Speaker 2: the groups that has actually shifted the list. So that's
Speaker 2: kind of an interesting note. But non white with a
Speaker 2: bachelor's R plus twenty one, non white no degree R
Speaker 2: plus thirty seven. So you know, these shifts obviously, if
Speaker 2: they continue, like the Democratic Party is basically dead. But
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, of course, the last time that Barack Obama
Speaker 2: was on the ballot, So it's pretty pretty wild to
Speaker 2: see how much can change in politics just over the
Speaker 2: course of a single decade.
Speaker 3: Well, and again, I just don't think there's anybody who's
Speaker 3: getting the votes of you know, all of these people
Speaker 3: in Florida, for example, that are going to vote to
Speaker 3: enshrine abortion too the state constitution. I don't think Jade
Speaker 3: Vance is getting as many people as Donald Trump is,
Speaker 3: and that's going to matter. Donald Trump looks like he's
Speaker 3: going to win the popular vote, but by a tiny margin.
Speaker 3: So that's I mean, that's a it's not an insignificant thing.
Speaker 3: And if we put a ten up. This is a
Speaker 3: Financial Times analysis that I think is maybe a little
Speaker 3: bit flawed about how Democrat political elites, as they put it,
Speaker 3: have started to diverge culturally from the median voter over
Speaker 3: the course of the last ten years, and what they're
Speaker 3: using as cultural issues. It's a lot of immigration and
Speaker 3: policing in particular, and we've seen this in other immigration
Speaker 3: analysis that it's just been really significant the drift. But
Speaker 3: also one of the things that the Financial Times has
Speaker 3: found in this analysis is that Democrats are as no
Speaker 3: longer being associated with the working class. They are being
Speaker 3: associated more with sociocultural issues than with class and economic
Speaker 3: solidarity than they had in the past. And the only
Speaker 3: other thing worth mentioning here is that the drift on
Speaker 3: cultural issues between elites and your median voter was especially
Speaker 3: acute with minority voters. And so you know that's policing
Speaker 3: is on obvious. Policing and immigration are two very obvious
Speaker 3: issues that would where you would see that divergence. And
Speaker 3: I don't know, Crystal. I think Democrats are probably on
Speaker 3: track to find a better way to have those conversations.
Speaker 3: And I say better politically, I'm not talking about better
Speaker 3: necessarily in substance, but it's that to me doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to be such an incredible sisifian task ahead of Democrats
Speaker 3: to at least message better on those issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes I think that this screen in particular that
Speaker 2: we have up right now, it can be a little
Speaker 2: misleading because you could pull a totally different set of
Speaker 2: issues like you know, abortion with no exceptions, getting rid
Speaker 2: of IVF, still not supporting gay marriage, which are all
Speaker 2: positions that many Republicans in the party today still hold,
Speaker 2: and it will also be dramatically unpopular, dramatically out of
Speaker 2: step with the public, not to mention, you know, stop
Speaker 2: the steal, also dramatically unpopular. So in some sense it's
Speaker 2: a race to figure out which candidate can overcome their
Speaker 2: unpopular positions. And I think the second graph that you
Speaker 2: were talking about gets much closer to the core of
Speaker 2: the problem, which is the issue isn't necessarily there, you know,
Speaker 2: where they pull on this or that issue. It's more
Speaker 2: that they have been successfully because they have abandoned a
Speaker 2: lot of their working class orientation on economics. They become
Speaker 2: associated solely with those cultural positions. So, you know, obviously
Speaker 2: I use the example of Bernie Sanders, but I do
Speaker 2: think it's a really illustrative example. Bernie Sanders is as
Speaker 2: left on any of these issues as you can effectively be,
Speaker 2: and yet he has so much credibility on working class
Speaker 2: issues that people are like, yeah, but I know what
Speaker 2: he's really concerned about, And it has a lot to
Speaker 2: do with me and my family and how we're going
Speaker 2: to get ahead. Andy Wassheer another example of that in Kentucky, Right,
Speaker 2: Kentucky veried very religious and very conservative state, and yet
Speaker 2: he actually vetoed some of the anti trans legislation that
Speaker 2: was coming out of the Republican legislature, knowing that would
Speaker 2: be very unpopular. But people voted for him anyway and
Speaker 2: re elected him in the state of Kentucky because he
Speaker 2: had so clearly delivered from them on affordable healthcare, on jobs,
Speaker 2: on union jobs in particular, attracted a lot of auto
Speaker 2: industry investment into the state, and so they felt like, Okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's you know, I don't agree with him on these issues,
Speaker 2: but that's not really what he's all about. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I think that piece about democrats need to be associated
Speaker 2: first and foremost delivering for the working class, and then
Speaker 2: you can get some leeway, just as Donald Trump does
Speaker 2: on the issues where he is profound saying things that
Speaker 2: are profoundly unpopular, then you can get some leeway on
Speaker 2: those pieces where public opinion goes against you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Trump first of all handled abortion in a way
Speaker 3: that I again cannot see because he's Trump, right, so
Speaker 3: he can say one thing one moment, then say another
Speaker 3: thing another moment, and it just voters see him as like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he just doesn't really care that much about the issue.
Speaker 3: I don't think any other Republican is in a position
Speaker 3: to be able to handle abortion the way that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump has to mitigate some of the electoral fallout, and
Speaker 3: that's a huge challenge for the party going forward. And
Speaker 3: the only other thing I'll add to this, Crystal is
Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders. To your point, I think this actually underscores
Speaker 3: your point. He is one of those people who has
Speaker 3: gone with the elite sort of drift opinion on immigration,
Speaker 3: and people aren't like, oh, Bernie Sanders hates the working class,
Speaker 3: because a lot of Bernie supporters aren't like they may
Speaker 3: disagree with his position on immigration, and for example, he
Speaker 3: one states like Wisconsin, where there are a lot of
Speaker 3: people who would be totally against the Biden policy on immigration.
Speaker 3: That Bernie Sanders has in some ways been supportive of
Speaker 3: asilent policies and those sorts of things, but it hasn't
Speaker 3: been a significant sort of albatross for him during his
Speaker 3: sort of late populist rise, even though it reflects some
Speaker 3: of the drift.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right. All right, Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and get to Kamala's plans moving forward. All right, So,
Speaker 2: Emily Kamala revealing some of her thoughts about the future.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up on the screen. This is incredible
Speaker 2: to me, honestly. Apparently she is thinking of running for
Speaker 2: president again in twenty twenty eight, telling her advisors and
Speaker 2: allies to keep her political options open because no one
Speaker 2: ever learns anything in the Democratic Party. She's also considering
Speaker 2: and this pathway makes more at least electoral sense. A
Speaker 2: potential run for California governor. I think there's a good
Speaker 2: chance she would be successful in amocratic primary, and obviously
Speaker 2: it's a Democratic state, so that's most of the ballgame
Speaker 2: if you get through the Democratic primary. Let me just
Speaker 2: read a little bit from this report and then get
Speaker 2: your reaction. Kamala Harris has been lying low since her
Speaker 2: defeat in the presidential race, unwinding with family and senior
Speaker 2: aids in Hawaii before heading back to the nation's capital.
Speaker 2: But privately, the Vice President been instructing advisors and allies
Speaker 2: to keep our options open, whether for a possible twenty
Speaker 2: twenty a presidential run, or even to run for governor
Speaker 2: in a home state of California in two years. As
Speaker 2: Harris has repeated in phone calls, quote, I am staying
Speaker 2: in the fight. She's expected to explore those and other
Speaker 2: possible pass forward with family members over the holiday season.
Speaker 2: Courty to five people in the Harris inner circle who
Speaker 2: were granted anonymity.
Speaker 3: Emily, your thoughts, I mean, going from vice president to
Speaker 3: governor of California in substance, you arguably have more power.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's not arguable. It's not even close. California's economy
Speaker 2: is the size of many, like large countries. It's extremely significant.
Speaker 3: Officially, it feels sort of embarrassing to go for vice
Speaker 3: president to governor of California. I think she would be
Speaker 3: actually very well positioned to make a run for California governor.
Speaker 3: And you could see how this would be the reset
Speaker 3: politically that she needs to sort of get the stench
Speaker 3: of losing off of her, which is significant with candidates.
Speaker 3: It's actually something Trump had to overcome this time around.
Speaker 3: You know, anytime you lose like that, it's just your mojo.
Speaker 3: You need to go reset and figure out a way
Speaker 3: to deal with that. So I think she would be
Speaker 3: well positioned to maybe go to California to say I
Speaker 3: turned the state's economy around, I solved the crime problem,
Speaker 3: I solved all of these, you know, different issues that
Speaker 3: have been plaguing in California politics. Whether or she's actually
Speaker 3: able to do that is a different question from whether
Speaker 3: or not she could look like she suddenly got very tough.
Speaker 3: And you know, maybe she can say she got tough
Speaker 3: in a very progressive way or she got tough in
Speaker 3: a very conservative way, depending on what lane she decides
Speaker 3: to go through politically going forward. She's an absolute chameleon
Speaker 3: and could choose to go to either path regardless of
Speaker 3: what her actual beliefs are. But you could see how
Speaker 3: that would be something that could position her. And the
Speaker 3: only other thing I wanted to mention here, Crystal, is
Speaker 3: that it is astounding to me. I didn't realize Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris was in Hawaii. We are authorizing use of attack MS,
Speaker 3: our president could literally die at any moment, and Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris was relaxing in California. So that's sort of just
Speaker 3: a nice statement on where the Biden administration is right now.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely the case. Yeah, I mean, in terms of California,
Speaker 2: the two big things she's got going for her are
Speaker 2: name mighty and fundraising capability, Like she has always been
Speaker 2: very effective at fundraising from the two big California like
Speaker 2: pots of money, which is Hollywood and Silicon Valley. So
Speaker 2: you know, from that perspective alone, those two pieces, however
Speaker 2: she wants to position herself and what ideological coach she
Speaker 2: wants to don for this particular campaign, she would be
Speaker 2: well positioned to win a Democratic primary, and whoever wins
Speaker 2: the Democratic primary very likely to be the next governor
Speaker 2: of California. So I do think, just from a like
Speaker 2: what should she do next, the most politically viable path
Speaker 2: for her is running for governor. The president thing to
Speaker 2: me is so crisy, so crazy, although I mean she's
Speaker 2: probably looking at I think we have this poll of
Speaker 2: who Democrats won in twenty twenty eight, which is extremely depressing.
Speaker 2: Just because of her name I D and because she
Speaker 2: just ran for president, she is at the top of
Speaker 2: the list and it's not really particularly close, Like she
Speaker 2: gets forty one percent. Gavin Newsom, her fellow Californian, is
Speaker 2: next at eight percent, Shapiro seven, Pete six, Tim Walls six,
Speaker 2: AOC four, and Gretchen three and then down the list
Speaker 2: from there. I told you, it did give me special
Speaker 2: pleasure to see John Fetterman not even getting one percent
Speaker 2: of the vote. So maybe you should try running in Israel.
Speaker 2: Maybe he'll do a little better there in the polls
Speaker 2: than in the country that he doesn't seem to care
Speaker 2: nearly as much about. But I also think this is
Speaker 2: just a factor of she just ran. That's the name
Speaker 2: that's in everybody's minds. So we've seen the way she
Speaker 2: actually performed when it came down to a Democratic primary
Speaker 2: back in the twenty twenty race. Didn't even make it
Speaker 2: to you know, didn't even make it to the starting
Speaker 2: line ultimately because it was going so poorly for her.
Speaker 2: And then listen, I don't think it's fair to lay
Speaker 2: all the problems for this campaign at her feet, but
Speaker 2: she was the cannon and she does deserve some of
Speaker 2: the blame. This did not go well, and from a
Speaker 2: Democratic perspective, it was really a total and complete disaster.
Speaker 3: So it's a flawless campaign. I was that.
Speaker 2: I mean the fact that listen, I know there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of discussion about like should she have gone
Speaker 2: on Rogan And I think the fact that it probably
Speaker 2: was the right decision for her not to go on
Speaker 2: Rogan because she would be unable to handle just like
Speaker 2: a normal person. Three hour conversation tells you that you
Speaker 2: not the political actor that people are looking for in
Speaker 2: this moment, like that should be the bare bones qualification
Speaker 2: is that you're able to just go and shoot the
Speaker 2: shit with a podcaster for a couple of hours and
Speaker 2: not come off as like terrified or a freak or
Speaker 2: you know, stilted or caught off guard or whatever. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any chance she would actually succeed
Speaker 2: if she jumped into the presidential primary, whether she But
Speaker 2: the piece of this, Emily is that, like you know,
Speaker 2: any of these political candidates, they have a whole coterie
Speaker 2: of people around them who get rich off of their
Speaker 2: presidential campaigns. I mean, the Kamala Harris consultant group are
Speaker 2: going to cover this in a bit. You know, they
Speaker 2: get made millions of dollars off of this campaign even
Speaker 2: though they lost, So they have an incentive to tell
Speaker 2: her like I'll look at you in the polls, look
Speaker 2: at your your prime for success, Like nobody blames you.
Speaker 2: It is just this crazy set of circumstances and it's
Speaker 2: because of bi and it's because of this anti incomment bias.
Speaker 2: You'll get them next time around. She may be inclined
Speaker 2: to believe that well.
Speaker 3: And one reason why we put B three up on
Speaker 3: the screen in California is especially a good arena for
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris to make this comeback. Now, Caitlyn Jenner was
Speaker 3: flirting and I would say maybe trolling yesterday on X
Speaker 3: with the idea of potentially running against Kamala Harris if
Speaker 3: she jumped into the gubernatorial race. Caitlyn Jenner said, if
Speaker 3: I ran and it was ultimately against Harris, I would
Speaker 3: destroy her. And since a couple of tweets along those lines,
Speaker 3: But the California Republican Party, you know, it's amazing that
Speaker 3: Democrats keep winning in California, given how the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: has handled the state of California. But one of the
Speaker 3: reasons for that is the Republican Party in California is
Speaker 3: an absolute disaster. And so if it's Kamala Harris versus
Speaker 3: Caitlyn Jenner, you can see where Kamala Harris is, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of slotting herself and to start looking or take
Speaker 3: a job that it's a lot easier for her to
Speaker 3: sort of make her own narrative and you know, be
Speaker 3: her own person and start making a political comeback. Now,
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris is I think a uniquely bad politician, even
Speaker 3: among politicians. This is a person who didn't even make
Speaker 3: it to the Iowa caucuses despite having a truly absurd
Speaker 3: amount of money behind her, as you guys covered support. Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, they did it. Didn't even make it
Speaker 3: to the Iowa caucuses. So she's a uniquely bad politician.
Speaker 3: But that's where you know, California is the place where
Speaker 3: she's at home, because you can be a uniquely bad
Speaker 3: Democrat in California and actually succeed over and over again.
Speaker 2: The machine, that California Democratic Party machine really does actually
Speaker 2: matter in the state, and I think she would have
Speaker 2: a lot of institutional support behind her. So do you
Speaker 2: think Caitlyn Jenner is serious about this?
Speaker 3: By the way, Yeah, because Kate and that long shot run.
Speaker 3: I forget what was like two years ago.
Speaker 2: I kind of forgot about that.
Speaker 3: I know I did too, but you know.
Speaker 2: Talk about like not even making it to the starting line,
Speaker 2: I forgot it even happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, I mean, on that note, if it's something
Speaker 3: that's sort of plotted early enough and is actual like
Speaker 3: the California Republican Party gets behind the money, gets behind
Speaker 3: the campaign. It could it could happen if it looked
Speaker 3: more like a traditional campaign. But obviously there's a primary
Speaker 3: and there's a process, and there will be other people
Speaker 3: who probably seem more serious than Caitlyn Jenner. But Kaitlyn
Speaker 3: Jenner has been hanging around mar A Lago recently, does
Speaker 3: a lot of Fox News. I mean, there's a world
Speaker 3: in which it's possible that Kaitlyn Jurder gets the primary nomination.
Speaker 2: So California, don't they have the jungle primary system where
Speaker 2: it's like the top two vote getters. I mean think
Speaker 2: there have been some campaigns where Republican doesn't even make
Speaker 2: it to the general election. We have two Democrats, yeah,
Speaker 2: against the data for the general election.
Speaker 3: Right, and that's where it's like, I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: I don't know how Calen general would be able to
Speaker 3: also somebody with a different political background, but a fairly
Speaker 3: conventional not like an RFK different political background, like a
Speaker 3: fairly conventional boomer Republican conservative, to be honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well we'll keep your eye on it.
Speaker 2: And see see just how delusional Kamala is about after
Speaker 2: political prospects moving forward. So Emily, we were talking earlier
Speaker 2: about how the resistance to Trump this time around is
Speaker 2: uh not as heated. It's a very different approach than
Speaker 2: it was last time, and wanted to dig into that
Speaker 2: a little bit more, but just as a reminder, you know,
Speaker 2: this was the after Trump gets elected and there's all
Speaker 2: these thoughts like Russia inter feared, and Trump's never been
Speaker 2: present before, and no one knows what this is going
Speaker 2: to look like, and there was this just vociferous reaction
Speaker 2: against him and tons of energy among liberals that you know,
Speaker 2: the early culmination of which was the Women's March, which
Speaker 2: occurred in you know, January, after he's inaugurated. Just to
Speaker 2: remind people what that energy was like, let's take a
Speaker 2: look at a little news clip of that Women's March
Speaker 2: from the time.
Speaker 5: The day after Donald Trump became their president. They chanted,
Speaker 5: they urged.
Speaker 2: Regat this keep on coming.
Speaker 5: They shouted, and they waived every insult they could, mustard
Speaker 5: pussy caps mocking Trump for comments he's made about women,
Speaker 5: reinforced in as many ways they could think of hundreds
Speaker 5: of thousands of Americans enraged by the man voted into
Speaker 5: office by millions of other Americans.
Speaker 2: Now there is a People's March plan for January, but
Speaker 2: there are concerns that the term now will be significantly
Speaker 2: less than the Women's March. And just to give you
Speaker 2: a sense of how the approach and the energy is
Speaker 2: very different this time around, you even had on the
Speaker 2: view Whoopy Goldberg, who of course has been a vociferous
Speaker 2: Trump critic all of these years, saying, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: wait and see what he does once he gets into office.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Speaker 6: I understand all the things you want to see him be.
Speaker 6: I understand all the things that he promised he would
Speaker 6: be and he wasn't. And now that he has been
Speaker 6: given carte blanche, I'm not going to waste a lot
Speaker 6: of time on what he might do. But I'm gonna
Speaker 6: I'm gonna wait because I need to see what he
Speaker 6: will do so that I know what I'm going.
Speaker 7: To do that I'm not gonna wait and see. I mean,
Speaker 7: this guy's.
Speaker 6: Like, there's nothing to be done until you know what
Speaker 6: you're fighting. It's it's listing and the wind doesn't help
Speaker 6: you just get away from.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying is.
Speaker 7: I have no false expectations that at seventy eight he's
Speaker 7: going to all of a sudden turning. I spent weeks
Speaker 7: telling people that he was apocalyptic.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to change now.
Speaker 2: It can treating every single thing.
Speaker 3: I think that's when.
Speaker 7: We lose credibility.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 6: You lose credibility in many different ways. If you don't
Speaker 6: know what you're talking about, and you accuse him of something,
Speaker 6: then then they're going to blow it back. That's why
Speaker 6: I say we need to wait and see exactly what
Speaker 6: you're going to do.
Speaker 3: So Jeoh, I should put dramatic music like that. When
Speaker 3: we start to get.
Speaker 2: Liked, Griffin can start trying to play us out to break, Like, okay, y'all,
Speaker 2: I've been talking for a long time. Let me just
Speaker 2: start to play some music. Play you off stage. That
Speaker 2: was what was going on there. But so there's a
Speaker 2: few things I think Whoope's comments well less dramatic than
Speaker 2: like Joe Amica going down to bar a Lago. I
Speaker 2: think in some ways they should be seen as a
Speaker 2: similar reaction. I think you can all so put them
Speaker 2: in a vein with Jeff Bezos deciding to not have
Speaker 2: The Washington Post endorse before the fact of Sindhar Pachai,
Speaker 2: of Mark Zuckerberg, of Tim Cook, all of these people
Speaker 2: going being like, let's make nice because this is the
Speaker 2: new reality. And you know, part of that is out
Speaker 2: of a desire to suck up to power as always,
Speaker 2: and part of that is out of like this kind
Speaker 2: of fear of retribution. I think from what be Goldberg's perspective,
Speaker 2: it's also her sense of like, Okay, well what we
Speaker 2: did last time didn't really work, so what can we do.
Speaker 2: That's a different approach my own personal her reaction is
Speaker 2: kind of the polar opposite because I don't have last
Speaker 2: time around, we didn't know what he was going to do,
Speaker 2: so then to me it did make sense to be like,
Speaker 2: all right, well, let's see how this goes this time around.
Speaker 2: This man was president before we know what he said
Speaker 2: on the campaign trail, we know who he's putting in
Speaker 2: place and what he is planning to do, and whether
Speaker 2: it's you know, mass deportations or I'm in support of
Speaker 2: some terrorists, but putting terraces across the entire economy that
Speaker 2: spikes inflation would be an utter disaster, the two trillion
Speaker 2: dollar cuts from you know, letting Elon Musk the richest
Speaker 2: man on the planet basically like drive government policy and
Speaker 2: run it to his own personal benefit. Like these are
Speaker 2: things he's already putting in place that he has argued
Speaker 2: for on the campaign trail, that he has some track
Speaker 2: record of being in favor of from last time around,
Speaker 2: even though he was diming in these certain ways, like
Speaker 2: I feel the polar opposite of what be Goldberg. I like,
Speaker 2: we already know who this person is. So in some sense,
Speaker 2: it's been it's been very frustrating to me to see
Speaker 2: the lack of concerted, like smart policy driven resistance to
Speaker 2: him this time around, even as last time, like you know,
Speaker 2: I found the Women's March in these sorts of things
Speaker 2: kind of like you know, liberal and cringey, But this
Speaker 2: time there just seems to be such an area of
Speaker 2: capitulation and if you put the shoe on the other foot,
Speaker 2: like Republicans never approach things this way of like, oh
Speaker 2: maybe maybe Barack Obama and Joe Biden, maybe Kamala Harris,
Speaker 2: maybe we're gonna like what they had no they from
Speaker 2: the beginning now a forceful, clear cut, aggressive opposition, and
Speaker 2: there's a reason why they do that. It's because it's
Speaker 2: politically successful.
Speaker 3: It's pretty wild. I mean, first of all, to disentangle
Speaker 3: the layers of that cacophony. From the view, it was
Speaker 3: like they were making these different arguments that weren't even
Speaker 3: against each other. Like you had Alyssa far Griffin on
Speaker 3: the end of the table saying you can't treat everything
Speaker 3: like a five alarm fire. She was agreeing with on
Speaker 3: a Nabarro. She was like, he is the same guy,
Speaker 3: but if you treat everything like it's an emergency, people
Speaker 3: tune out. And Anna Navarro is sort of puzzled by
Speaker 3: that and saying and same thing. She's puzzled by Whippy
Speaker 3: Goldberg because she's been sitting at that table for years
Speaker 3: where they do treat everything as a five alarm fire,
Speaker 3: and she's I think actually right to call their bs
Speaker 3: on that and saying, Okay, so are you telling me
Speaker 3: that I should just pull my fire even though I
Speaker 3: think something is like dire and serious? It does Actually, Chris,
Speaker 3: I totally think it's like Joe and Mika.
Speaker 2: You know that in one thing, he's Hitler and he's
Speaker 2: a fascist, Like, yeah, well, let's find some common grounds,
Speaker 2: like these two things can't coexist, right.
Speaker 3: You know, It's like, did you believe that he was
Speaker 3: Hitler if you're now saying that that he was literally Hitler,
Speaker 3: or that he was actually a fascist or a diarthlet
Speaker 3: through republic, if you are now saying, let's give him
Speaker 3: a chance. So in that sense, I give him the
Speaker 3: first time in my life. I yeah, the first time
Speaker 3: in my life. I am sympathizing. I'm agreeing with the
Speaker 3: lovely at Navarro there. But the Joe Amica point, I
Speaker 3: don't think this applies to Whoopie Goldberg. But Chrystal I
Speaker 3: was working on a story yesterday about why DC seems
Speaker 3: so quiet. I mean, the Women's March was the pinnacle
Speaker 3: of the resistance. It was, you know, the snowball starting
Speaker 3: to roll down the hill of the resistance. And Ryan
Speaker 3: writes about this in his book, a very organic, genuinely
Speaker 3: bottom up way. But it also, I mean, the quote
Speaker 3: unquote resistance, the hashtag erstence was robust. It wasn't just
Speaker 3: the Women's March. Women's March was a powerful part of it,
Speaker 3: but everyone remembers it was so frenzied in DC. It
Speaker 3: was frenzied. People were hyperventilating, and I was working in
Speaker 3: a story about why that doesn't seem to be the
Speaker 3: case right now, and a longtime Republican lobbyist told me
Speaker 3: on the phone yesterday that everyone is quote scared to
Speaker 3: death and not saying anything. It is like the angel
Speaker 3: of death is hovering over their doors and they just
Speaker 3: want fucking Lamb's blood on their door. And they're hoping
Speaker 3: that the Trump administration has too many fish to fry
Speaker 3: they don't end up being one of the fried fish.
Speaker 3: And so Ryan is right that the women's merch was
Speaker 3: very much a bottom up type of thing, but there's
Speaker 3: really nothing coming from the top down. And this gets
Speaker 3: to the Whoopi Goldberg and Joe and Mika point, because
Speaker 3: people understand that Trump is going to come into office
Speaker 3: without the need to run for reelection again, and they
Speaker 3: understand he's coming into the office with these off season
Speaker 3: plans ready to go, and they're trying to avoid, needlessly
Speaker 3: after all of this time, putting themselves in the crosshairs.
Speaker 3: It's like, Okay, good good luck at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and the other thing is like part of
Speaker 2: there's no examination of what the resistance ended up focusing
Speaker 2: on in terms of, you know, figuring out why it
Speaker 2: didn't work. They're sort of viewing it through the lens of, well,
Speaker 2: we were aggressively opposed to Trump last time and that
Speaker 2: didn't work, so this time, maybe we should be less
Speaker 2: aggressively opposed to Trump. And it's like, well, instead of
Speaker 2: that analysis, maybe you shouldn't have like indulged in this
Speaker 2: elaborate Russiagate hoax conspiracy that just turned out to not
Speaker 2: be true. Maybe if you had opposed him on the
Speaker 2: overt corruption, which was clear cut from day one. Maybe
Speaker 2: if you had opposed him on how he turned out
Speaker 2: to be a fraud when it came to his working
Speaker 2: class promises and his primary accomplishment was passing a tax
Speaker 2: cut for a bunch of rich people, maybe you should
Speaker 2: have opposed him more aggressively on the fact that, you know,
Speaker 2: his healthcare plan was an absolute disaster and he lied
Speaker 2: when he said he was going to get everyone healthcare coverage. Like,
Speaker 2: maybe the problem wasn't that you aggressively opposed him. Maybe
Speaker 2: it was that you opposed him on things that were
Speaker 2: like fundamentally not really factual or accurate or connecting to
Speaker 2: people's day to day Lives. Maybe that was the problem there,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, I do think that there is
Speaker 2: there's a very consistent elite like capitulation. You see it
Speaker 2: with Jared Poulis, who's like, oh, maybe RFK Junior would
Speaker 2: be great on this, even as you're like, yeah, but
Speaker 2: he also wants to like get rid of the measles vaccine.
Speaker 2: So you know, sure, okay, let people drink raw milk whatever.
Speaker 2: It's not really on far with opposing the measles vaccine.
Speaker 2: But you see that, you see Corey Booker, you know,
Speaker 2: you see Joe and Mika, you see whoopee here. You
Speaker 2: see a very different approach from democratic elites and MSNBC overall,
Speaker 2: very different approach, and I don't think that that is
Speaker 2: reflective of where a lot of the democratic bases. And
Speaker 2: I think that's why you're seeing so many people abandon MSNBC,
Speaker 2: why you're seeing like Kyle's channel is actually going through
Speaker 2: the roof right now, because people are looking for alternatives
Speaker 2: that are on the left, Like all these MSNBC refugees
Speaker 2: are flooding YouTube and podcasts right now looking for voices
Speaker 2: that are still going to be honest and credible to them.
Speaker 2: So I think they're gonna love Kyle. They are gonna
Speaker 2: love Kyle. I love Kyle obviously, so so I think
Speaker 2: there's a bit of a misread of the energy here
Speaker 2: at the same time, I mean, of course, people are
Speaker 2: kind of exhausted, like the elicit C three up on
Speaker 2: the screen. This is an article from Axios, The Resistance
Speaker 2: goes quiet. Democratic voters were just as disappointed, they write,
Speaker 2: but less shocked, and perhaps that's part of the reason
Speaker 2: for a different reaction. They also say they're concerned that
Speaker 2: this people's March, which is kind of, you know, inevitably
Speaker 2: going to be compared to the Women's March, that it
Speaker 2: may not have the same level of turnout that we
Speaker 2: saw eight years earlier. So you know, I guess part
Speaker 2: of it too is that he is instantly a lame duck,
Speaker 2: So that could also factor into the equation here of
Speaker 2: how people are viewing this residency.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's true. And you know, there's also
Speaker 3: lists of a freak out on the right, which is
Speaker 3: interesting because the never Trump guys, I mean, they were
Speaker 3: a kind of big part of the frenzy back in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen and the hysteria back in twenty sixteen twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: and they sort of sort of settled into their own
Speaker 3: like niche rhythm, and Scarborough is kind of one of
Speaker 3: them to some extent. But they're just I mean, what
Speaker 3: do they have to offer anymore? It's not novel that
Speaker 3: you have. Liz Cheney was rebuked I think pretty thoroughly
Speaker 3: as the numbers come in, so the media can't totally
Speaker 3: go along with that either.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, that's a good point. And the last piece
Speaker 2: we have here is, you know, part of the dynamic too,
Speaker 2: is that even the consultants who lost this race for
Speaker 2: the Democrats like, they're going to be fine. They made
Speaker 2: millions off of this race. They're going to be continue,
Speaker 2: very likely continue to be welcomed in elite democratic circles
Speaker 2: and maintain their racket at the DNC. I mean, these
Speaker 2: are things that myself and others should are and should
Speaker 2: fight against, but that's most likely path forward. And so
Speaker 2: for them a loss to Donald Trump isn't alarming. They're
Speaker 2: not going to be the ones who are, you know,
Speaker 2: suffering the brunt of the consequences they have. You know,
Speaker 2: if grocery prices spike, if there's mass deportations like they're
Speaker 2: not going to be the ones in the camps. They're
Speaker 2: not going to be the ones who are unable to
Speaker 2: pay their bills at the end of the month if
Speaker 2: those things come to pass. So, you know, they they're
Speaker 2: they're fine with a Donald Trump victory because they still
Speaker 2: get to move forward and get their multimillion dollar consulting
Speaker 2: contracts and get their you know, CNN hits where they
Speaker 2: can explain what we're wrong, even though that they're the
Speaker 2: ones that like caused the things that went wrong.
Speaker 3: There's some upwards failure on the right. But I was
Speaker 3: talking to a Democratic consultant a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 3: about how they're so much on the in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: It's just you can fail upwards so easily. And that's
Speaker 3: what's going to happen to like all of these kmmal
Speaker 3: consultants in all likelihood is you can run a quote
Speaker 3: unquote flawless campaign and because joy Reid thinks that it
Speaker 3: was a flawless campaign and people like her, the ones
Speaker 3: that are hiring you, just those checks will just keep coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also appoint that torre made with us, which
Speaker 2: kind of landed with me. Is like, you know, anyone
Speaker 2: who was at all associated with the Obama campaign is
Speaker 2: kind of treated as the political genius. But are they
Speaker 2: really because it's like, Okay, you were able to get
Speaker 2: Barack Obama elected, who anyone on the right of the
Speaker 2: left would acknowledge is like this generational political talent, Like
Speaker 2: did you really need to be a genius to pull
Speaker 2: that off? Or did you just happen to back the
Speaker 2: right horse at the right time, Because seem to be
Speaker 2: able to admit Romney have any right have any real
Speaker 2: success after that one moment in time, and yet they're
Speaker 2: still treated as these like, you know, unassailable political geniuses
Speaker 2: within the party.
Speaker 3: I mean, we forget how incredibly unpopular George W. Bush was,
Speaker 3: like when people went to the polls in November two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, how unpopular Republicans were, how bad the
Speaker 3: economy was. I mean, honestly, it wasn't that heavy of
Speaker 3: a lift when you have someone like Barack Obama. So
Speaker 3: that's a great point, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it turns out Hillary Clinton also not a
Speaker 2: great candidate, So yeah, not like Obama. Again, Barack Obama
Speaker 2: this extraordinary political figure. You know, even as we have
Speaker 2: ideological disagreements with him, Both of us do. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so they just continue to get these gigs and be
Speaker 2: treated like stage wisdom, and it's like, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: you all should move it along too, because you are
Speaker 2: also partly responsible, quite responsible for the loss of the
Speaker 2: country to the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: Thanks pop Ros. Senator Lindsay Graham had some predictably useful
Speaker 3: honesty to share about the ongoing and escalating conflict in
Speaker 3: Ukraine on Fox News recently. Let's take a listen to
Speaker 3: this club.
Speaker 8: Ukraine is still standing. This war is about money. People
Speaker 8: don't talk much about it, but you know, the richest
Speaker 8: country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine.
Speaker 8: Two to seven trillion dollars worth of minerals that are
Speaker 8: rare earth minerals very relevant to the twenty first century.
Speaker 8: Ukraine's ready to do a deal with us, not the Russians.
Speaker 8: So it's our interest to make sure that Russia doesn't
Speaker 8: take over the place. It's the bread basket of really
Speaker 8: the developing world. Fifty percent of all the food going
Speaker 8: to Africa comes out of Ukraine. We could make money
Speaker 8: and have an economic relationship with Ukraine to be beneficial
Speaker 8: to us with peace. So Donald Trump's going to do
Speaker 8: a deal to get our money back to enrich our
Speaker 8: sales with rare earth minerals, a good deal for Ukraine
Speaker 8: and US, and he's going to bring peace and Biden's
Speaker 8: been a disaster when it comes to containing bad guys.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, that was Lindsay Graham on the on Sean
Speaker 3: Hannity Show just in the last several days. We can
Speaker 3: put actually D two up on the screen. So as
Speaker 3: you're listening to us talk about Lindsey Graham, if you're
Speaker 3: watching this, what you're going to see is footage of
Speaker 3: Russian ICBM missile strikes against a knee pro which is
Speaker 3: in Ukraine. So as Lindsay Graham is going on Sean
Speaker 3: Hannity to sell Republicans on this war being quote about money,
Speaker 3: and that's something that's you know, you hear it from
Speaker 3: Lindsay Graham and Lindsay gram types Mitch McConnell every once
Speaker 3: in a while. But what he said, I think is
Speaker 3: probably the most explicit bit of candor crystal that we've
Speaker 3: actually seen in a long time about where the heads
Speaker 3: of the people who are selling this war are at again.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to read the quote this war is
Speaker 3: about money. The richest country in all of Europe for
Speaker 3: rare earth minerals is Ukraine, two to seven trillion dollars worth.
Speaker 3: So don Trump's going to do a deal to get
Speaker 3: our money back to enrich ourselves with rare minerals. Meanwhile, Crystal,
Speaker 3: as we know, Ukraine is having a terribly difficult time
Speaker 3: recruiting its own people to fight this war. Well, Instagram
Speaker 3: is an air conditioned studio talking about getting our money
Speaker 3: back enriching ourselves with their rare earth minerals.
Speaker 2: Yep, you know, this is the sort of thing that leftists,
Speaker 2: you know, have been saying about this war and the
Speaker 2: real motivations for it from the beginning, and are treated
Speaker 2: as like, oh, you know, conspiratorial and cynical and whatever.
Speaker 2: But this explanation makes a hell of a lot more
Speaker 2: sense in terms of our involvement versus like, oh, freedom
Speaker 2: and democracy, given how clearly hypocritical we are about human rights,
Speaker 2: freedom and democracy around the world, just given, you know,
Speaker 2: just based on how we feel about that particular conflict,
Speaker 2: in the particular actors in the conflict. So this explanation
Speaker 2: makes a hell of a lot more sense than what
Speaker 2: has been fed to the American people, which is I
Speaker 2: think part of why your support for continuing to our
Speaker 2: Ukraine has really fallen off. And obviously, you know, we've
Speaker 2: come to a place where even Joe Biden couldn't really
Speaker 2: explain what the path forward is. Even the greatest supporter
Speaker 2: or started question whether this makes sense as an endless
Speaker 2: obligation moving forward because there is no path to victory
Speaker 2: at this point. You mentioned the ICBM missile. I mean,
Speaker 2: one of the things that's really significant about that is
Speaker 2: it just demonstrates like Russia has not used all of
Speaker 2: the capabilities that they have. There are more cards that
Speaker 2: they could put on the table, and there are not
Speaker 2: a lot more cards that Ukraine could ultimately put on
Speaker 2: the table. So I think that's really significant. At the
Speaker 2: same time, you know, those who have been felt that
Speaker 2: Trump is just going to, you know, unilaterally back out
Speaker 2: of this conflict, some of his advisors are singing a
Speaker 2: very different tune, and they're sort of indicating that actually
Speaker 2: his plan is to offer Ukraine vastly more weapons in
Speaker 2: order to coerce Russia to come to the table and negotiate.
Speaker 2: So Seb Gorka, who is now going to be a
Speaker 2: top advisor making this case. Michael Tracy clip this, and
Speaker 2: I think it's really important to listen to what he's saying.
Speaker 2: And Gorka has always been big into like we got
Speaker 2: to defend Ukraine. That's been one of his big things.
Speaker 2: What he is explaining Donald Trump's plan actually is, let's
Speaker 2: take a listen to that.
Speaker 9: I'll give one to a way that the President has mentioned.
Speaker 9: He will say to that murderous former KGB keronel, that
Speaker 9: thug who runs the Russian Federation, you will negotiate now,
Speaker 9: or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus
Speaker 9: far will look like peanuts. That's how he will force
Speaker 9: those gentlemen to come to an arrangement that stops the bloodshed.
Speaker 2: He says, the aid that we have given to Ukraine
Speaker 2: so far will look like peanuts. And Mike Waltz, who
Speaker 2: has been selected as the next National Security Advisor, has
Speaker 2: made very similar comments. He said Russia can be pressured
Speaker 2: to come to the negotiating table via increased energy sanctions
Speaker 2: combined with taking the handcuffs off. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: rhetoric that you've heard from Republicans this whole time of
Speaker 2: like the problem with the Biden administration is that they're
Speaker 2: doing too little for Ukraine. They need to do more
Speaker 2: for Ukraine. They need to take the handcuffs off Ukraine
Speaker 2: and allow them to win. And so it was really
Speaker 2: noteworthy to hear Gorka and Waltz kind of marry that
Speaker 2: with Trump's comments that, oh, I'm going to end this conflict.
Speaker 2: But apparently the mode that he's planning to end the
Speaker 2: conflict with is by offering Ukraine. We're threatened to give
Speaker 2: Ukraine vastly more capabilities than they've already been given at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: And against the backdrop of if we put B, if
Speaker 3: we put D three up on the screen, this is
Speaker 3: what's happening and unfolding over the last couple of days.
Speaker 3: We showed the vo earlier. We're watching what was happening.
Speaker 3: But just reading from Reuter's here, Russia fire to hypersonic
Speaker 3: intermediate range ballistic missile at Ukrainian city of de Nepro
Speaker 3: on Thursday, in response to the US and UK's allowing
Speaker 3: Kiev to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons and
Speaker 3: a further escalation of the thirty three month old war. Putin,
Speaker 3: in a televis address, said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military
Speaker 3: facility with a new medium range tripersonic ballistic missile known
Speaker 3: as a Rashnik, and warned that Moore could follow. He
Speaker 3: said civilians would be warned ahead of further strikes with
Speaker 3: such weapons. So this is sort of old news by now,
Speaker 3: but I think it's worth remembering in the context of
Speaker 3: Graham's comments and the context of what Crystal just showed
Speaker 3: from somebody we now know is going to be a
Speaker 3: senior advisor to Donald Trump. Now, there are going to
Speaker 3: be people around Donald Trump who disagree bitterly with what
Speaker 3: Gorka just said. That who would laugh frankly at what
Speaker 3: Gorka just said. But if we put the next element
Speaker 3: on the screen, this is going to be D four.
Speaker 3: It's a tweet from k File, who was digging through
Speaker 3: a new CBS pole. It shows, by a fifty one
Speaker 3: to forty nine percent margin, Americans think we should no
Speaker 3: longer send weapons to Ukraine, per a CBS pole and Crystal.
Speaker 3: That's not in any way surprising at this point, and
Speaker 3: part of the reason is because people like Lindsay Graham
Speaker 3: are doing such a god awful job of continuing to
Speaker 3: sell the war to the American people. That's not to say,
Speaker 3: you know, if they were doing a great job selling
Speaker 3: the word to the American people, it would be you know,
Speaker 3: suddenly everyone would be like, yes, we must fight, this
Speaker 3: is about democracy and freedom. It is to say, though,
Speaker 3: that the decline is because people I can see past
Speaker 3: some of the spin, and the spin has gotten I think,
Speaker 3: especially desperate. That's what the Lindsay Graham clip looks like
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, I think that's true. And I do think
Speaker 2: that Gaza has really undercut there any sort of credibility
Speaker 2: that they care about democracy, human rights, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: You can't have that split screen and have people really
Speaker 2: feel like, oh, yeah, we're the good guys. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: sure that's what we're that's what we're in there for.
Speaker 2: It's just because we are so concerned about international law, Like,
Speaker 2: give me a break, it's preposterous at this point. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: you know, tell me how you feel about the ICC
Speaker 2: arrest warrants. Tell me how you feel about the ICJ
Speaker 2: saying is plausible they're committing a genocide. Tell me how
Speaker 2: you feel about even you know, the lack of enforcement
Speaker 2: of our own laws that say that we should not
Speaker 2: be shipping military weapons to a country that is blocking
Speaker 2: humanitarian aid, which every independent organization around the world says
Speaker 2: clearly Israel Is and has been doing. So it's hard
Speaker 2: to be like, yeah, we're the good guys, we're the
Speaker 2: noble saviors of the world and enforcers of the international
Speaker 2: order on the one hand, when in another conflict, it's
Speaker 2: so clear that we are on the opposite side of
Speaker 2: any of that. So, you know, just you know, my
Speaker 2: final thought in terms of Gorka's comments, what was significant
Speaker 2: to me about what he said. Isn't him holding that
Speaker 2: view per se, although that is also noteworthy because he
Speaker 2: is going to be in a key advisory position, But
Speaker 2: he is claiming that what he is saying he is
Speaker 2: speaking for Donald Trump. He's claiming that this is Trump's
Speaker 2: plan that he's laying out. And Trump has been extremely
Speaker 2: cagy about any sort of questions about how you would
Speaker 2: resolve this conflict. He always goes back to what it
Speaker 2: wouldn't have happened under me, which you know, who knows.
Speaker 2: But some of the things that he did, actually, some
Speaker 2: of the hawkish behavior he had towards Russia, which was
Speaker 2: under covered by the media because they wanted the like
Speaker 2: Russia Gate narrative. Some of that was used by Putin
Speaker 2: as part of his justification for invading Ukraine. Obviously the
Speaker 2: fault lies on Putin. I'm not, you know, denying his responsibility,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But anyway, I don't want to get too
Speaker 2: far a field with all of that. But he falls
Speaker 2: back on wouldn't have happened under me? And you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to solve it. I can't tell you how,
Speaker 2: because you know, I don't want to. I don't want
Speaker 2: to show my hand. So that's to me. What's so
Speaker 2: important about Gorka's comments here is he purports to be
Speaker 2: representing some of what Donald Trump actually plans to do here.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think it's quite quite significantly different from
Speaker 2: what opponents of this war thought that Trump's plan would
Speaker 2: be going in, Like they were not thinking, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's gonna he's going to escalate, to de escalate effectively.
Speaker 3: Well, and what happened in the in Congress in the
Speaker 3: spring is that Republicans tried to tie border funding too,
Speaker 3: and this was I think strategically smart, but to increase
Speaker 3: Ukraine aid. And so when people like Marco Rubio and
Speaker 3: Mike Waltz voted against Ukraine aid. They had that kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know if fig leaf is the right word,
Speaker 3: but they sort of had that excuse that it was
Speaker 3: because they couldn't get the Swamp to agree to you know,
Speaker 3: creasing border security and so you can't be sending more
Speaker 3: to Ukraine without securing the American border. But that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean they weren't in favor of sending more to Ukraine, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: So it's it's sort of a how much have some
Speaker 3: of these Republicans actually evolved on the war. Is it
Speaker 3: further in line with where the public has evolved on
Speaker 3: the war? I don't know, because it's actually sort of
Speaker 3: Trump gives everyone a nice kind of cover with this. Again.
Speaker 3: I actually think this is sort of a political stroke
Speaker 3: of political genius from Trump. But he's the only one
Speaker 3: that can get away with it just saying, hey, we'll
Speaker 3: make a deal. We'll make a deal. You know, there's
Speaker 3: nobody else who could just do that, who could just
Speaker 3: say that and have that either position on Ukraine people.
Speaker 2: I feel like, all right, maybe, yeah. It's also I
Speaker 2: always point this out too. Trump is about relationships. He
Speaker 2: likes Zelensky, he likes Selensky, He's always likes Zelensky. Zelenski
Speaker 2: was the other partner on the perfect phone call. He
Speaker 2: appreciates that he didn't throw him under the bus, and
Speaker 2: you know when that all drama was unfolding, that he
Speaker 2: sort of like stood by his side. Zelenski made the
Speaker 2: truck down tomorrow lago they had a little photo op
Speaker 2: together whatever, And so that relationship dynamic can be underestimated
Speaker 2: in this situation either. So, Emily, we got a little
Speaker 2: zoomer news for the publics. This chart just caught my eye.
Speaker 2: I'm curious what you make of this. Let's put this
Speaker 2: up on the screen. They ask people, Okay, how much
Speaker 2: money do you need to consider yourself financially successful? Okay,
Speaker 2: And this is what it looked like by the numbers.
Speaker 2: So overall people say, Okay, if I had two hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy thousand dollars that I was making a year,
Speaker 2: I would consider myself financially successful. Was a lot of money.
Speaker 2: If you look at millennials, they say one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty K. If you look at gen X, they say
Speaker 2: two hundred and twelve. If you look at boomers, they
Speaker 2: say just under one hundred k. If you look at
Speaker 2: gen Z. They say almost six hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 2: year is what they would need to he considered to
Speaker 2: consider themselves financially successful, and the dynamic is similar when
Speaker 2: they think about net worth as well. Gen Z feels
Speaker 2: like they would need a net worth of almost ten
Speaker 2: million dollars to consider themselves financially successful. What do you
Speaker 2: make of this, Emily, Where do you think that this
Speaker 2: comes from?
Speaker 3: I have no idea. I looked at the methodology of
Speaker 3: the survey and it was an online poll of people
Speaker 3: who were over the age of eighteen, and so, I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know if part of this is just gen
Speaker 3: Z is younger and in a demographic where it's like
Speaker 3: hard to assess what.
Speaker 2: They don't really know, right. I would almost think that
Speaker 2: that would argue in the other direction though, because I
Speaker 2: feel like, until you start paying bills, you don't realize
Speaker 2: how much everything costs and how expends it, how much
Speaker 2: money you need to make in order to like have
Speaker 2: a house and have healthcare and whatever. But I don't know,
Speaker 2: I feel like it's all like their favorite YouTubers TikTokers Instagram,
Speaker 2: the life that's depicted is very luxurious. I agree, So
Speaker 2: If that's considered like this is, you know, living like
Speaker 2: to use a really stereotypical example, but like living like
Speaker 2: mister Beast is like what it looks like to be
Speaker 2: financially successful, then yeah, you probably do need to make
Speaker 2: like six hundred thousand dollars a year to be able
Speaker 2: to afford that level of like travel and the beautiful
Speaker 2: home that's always on display, and the very curated life
Speaker 2: and the products that are being pitched to you on
Speaker 2: TikTok et cetera.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's where I still think maybe this is
Speaker 3: the best explanation is is youth And maybe the inverse
Speaker 3: way that you were talking about is they don't understand
Speaker 3: how much life costs, so they just like grossly overestimate
Speaker 3: it's going to cost because they're told over and over again, rightfully,
Speaker 3: that the cost of living is going up, that it's
Speaker 3: increasingly harder to be successful in the United States. All
Speaker 3: that is true, but I wonder if that, like dumerism,
Speaker 3: just made them totally overestimate, combined with like the luxury
Speaker 3: new standard of what it looks like to be quote
Speaker 3: unquote successful, if you're inundated with TikTok influencers and Instagram
Speaker 3: influencers over and over again. Instead of like this definition
Speaker 3: of success being like the two kids white picket fence,
Speaker 3: sending them to college, whatever that most other generations are
Speaker 3: raised on that's been shattered, like post nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: If you grew up post nine to eleven, that's just
Speaker 3: not what you consider financial success anymore. You're totally in
Speaker 3: a different You're swimming in very different waters and influencer culture.
Speaker 3: So that's my best guess as to why it's such
Speaker 3: an outlier, but it's quite bizarre.
Speaker 2: The gult between Millennials and Gen Z also very interesting
Speaker 2: there because Millennials had some of the more modest outside
Speaker 2: of boomers. They had the most modest expectations of like
Speaker 2: what financial success would look like, which I do think
Speaker 2: also makes sense for millennials being the youngest like generation
Speaker 2: that is fully adult, right, some Zoomers are adult, but
Speaker 2: some are not fully adult yet. But also given that
Speaker 2: we came of age during the financial crisis and that
Speaker 2: set back a lot of expectations for what was possible
Speaker 2: and you know, what was achievable and what you needed
Speaker 2: to be able to make do with, so that also
Speaker 2: makes sense to me. But yeah, I think I think
Speaker 2: for zoomers there's a sense of like, financial success means
Speaker 2: you're going to have a you know, beautifully pristine designed home.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be able to order Uber eats whenever you want,
Speaker 2: like you know, Uber eat sushi whenever you want, and
Speaker 2: not have to worry about it. You're gonna be able
Speaker 2: to like, you know, buy the things that your favorite
Speaker 2: creators like wear or try to sell to you, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And they're not wrong that to do all of those
Speaker 2: things would take quite a significant amount of money every year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no question about that. Now for some I think
Speaker 3: even worst news Crystal, if we put the next element
Speaker 3: up on the screen, this is E two gen z
Speaker 3: is not only are they financially completely out of whack,
Speaker 3: they're just not watching TV, Crystal. And for me, that's
Speaker 3: wrong with this incredibly disturbing. As this excuser who posted
Speaker 3: this says, Americans aged eighteen to thirty four watch less
Speaker 3: than five hours of TV per week. That is insane.
Speaker 3: Those aged sixty five and older watched more than forty
Speaker 3: hours per week. I actually guess, Christal, I'm not looking
Speaker 3: at this. I am in the eighteen to thirty four
Speaker 3: craphic and let me tell you, I watched way more
Speaker 3: than five hours.
Speaker 2: Oh really, I watched like.
Speaker 3: Five hours of TV a day.
Speaker 2: Not actually, I mean I sort of going ways with
Speaker 2: it right at the moment. I don't really watch any TV,
Speaker 2: to be honest with you. Like, I mean, Kyle always
Speaker 2: has like Eve of the golf channel or the Weather
Speaker 2: channel on in the background because he's the ten year
Speaker 2: old man trapped in the thirty year old man's body.
Speaker 3: But I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of Weather Channel on at our house.
Speaker 2: It's pretty funny. He's into it. But in terms of
Speaker 2: me like sitting down and watching a show, I yeah,
Speaker 2: not so much. It's part of why I'm so pop
Speaker 2: culturally ignorant. I guess, well, no you're not.
Speaker 3: I mean, Christly, you're the one who knows about the
Speaker 3: influencer selling the crazy clothes on.
Speaker 2: The time that's only vicariously through my sixteen year old.
Speaker 3: Well, this is like, this would be really I think
Speaker 3: this would be really great news if it wasn't the
Speaker 3: substitute being something that I think is much actually worse
Speaker 3: than TV's, which is phones. And this is like an
Speaker 3: obvious point. I don't need to be the one to
Speaker 3: say this but obviously the reason that younger people aren't
Speaker 3: watching as much TV as older people is because they're
Speaker 3: literally watching social media videos that are extremely entertaining but
Speaker 3: are also scientifically chemically addictive to your brain in a
Speaker 3: way that TV obviously isn't. TV is not algorithmic. It
Speaker 3: may be really harmful in terms of creating sedentary lifestyles
Speaker 3: that have contributed to chronic disease, but it's it's not
Speaker 3: actually like gamified into casino level addictiveness like social media is.
Speaker 3: It's such a powerful, powerful tool. So I would be
Speaker 3: excited about, you know, people watching less TV, even though
Speaker 3: I love TV and TV's life, if if it weren't
Speaker 3: being replaced by the phone screens, which by the way,
Speaker 3: the content is come on, there's so much good stuff
Speaker 3: on TV. I mean, it just makes me so sad,
Speaker 3: Crystal that people don't have the linear cable experience of
Speaker 3: like flipping through the channels and watching you know, the
Speaker 3: middle of Happy Gilmore and then.
Speaker 2: Going to channel that is the last time, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Especially around this time of year, this will be a
Speaker 2: good transition into like the Thanksgiving conversation. This is the
Speaker 2: time of year when all of those like whatever the
Speaker 2: movies are that they bought the rights to. They're just constantly,
Speaker 2: you know, on TV, whether it's like, what was it
Speaker 2: the like the Charlie Brown Christmas movie would be on
Speaker 2: that one with the Little Boy with the Big co
Speaker 2: with that Christmas movie the Christmas is called Christmas Story
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 3: Oh you're talking about Christmas Story.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, great, Yeah that was a classic Happy Gilmore
Speaker 2: that was one that was on in heavy rotation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there were a bunch of them that just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you were like, oh, I'll watch the last forty minutes
Speaker 2: of this movie that.
Speaker 3: I already automobiles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, putting it on the on TV now it's the
Speaker 2: destruction of It is the destruction of the monoculture. You know,
Speaker 2: there are very few sort of cultural touchstone points now
Speaker 2: that everyone can reference, which is part of why there's
Speaker 2: still so much reference to like millennial culture, because that
Speaker 2: was the last time when there was anything approaching a
Speaker 2: kind of like significant monoculture. You do have some things
Speaker 2: that break out of that, like Barbie and Oppenheimer or
Speaker 2: the classic example. They're trying to make Wicked and Gladiator
Speaker 2: to kind of like a similar energy, but yeah, it'll
Speaker 2: never be what it was, Emily.
Speaker 3: No, and cable was the stepping stone away from monoculture,
Speaker 3: which is funny. So I we're kind of like waxing
Speaker 3: nostalgic over it now because it was like the it
Speaker 3: was breaking up the you know, broadcast networks, which were
Speaker 3: even less choice. You had even less choice. We were
Speaker 3: all watching way more similar content before cable. But it's
Speaker 3: it's still just you know, the TikTok is so algorithmic,
Speaker 3: and niche a fied and so it was Instagram. There's
Speaker 3: some stuff that rises above Barbie Oppenheimer, particularly viral memes,
Speaker 3: but we I don't know, we gained a lot from
Speaker 3: you know, being forced to watch the same like five
Speaker 3: things at the same exact time before you could record things.
Speaker 2: And yet here we are on YouTube being the ones
Speaker 2: to benefit from the shattering of the monoculture.
Speaker 3: I know, I was gonna say, it's it is a
Speaker 3: total double edged sword. There's some good, there's some bad,
Speaker 3: but you know, for example, I could only watch all
Speaker 3: of Dawson's Creek after DVR came out because TBS would
Speaker 3: play it every morning while I was at school. I'd
Speaker 3: set the DVR and then it would come home. It
Speaker 3: would be there before my parents got home. Sorry, Mom
Speaker 3: and dad. And that's how I was able to watch it.
Speaker 3: So technology can be good, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. That is true, double edged sword. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, back at the advent of TV, there is
Speaker 2: a lot of concern about what it would do to us,
Speaker 2: and people cite that a lot as justification for like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe we're overly concerned about social media and new media
Speaker 2: and what it's doing to our kids' brains. But my
Speaker 2: view is that they were probably right about TV being
Speaker 2: bad for us. Yeah, just we've grown accustomed to it,
Speaker 2: and we are probably also right about social media and
Speaker 2: the shortened attention spans and the way that that gamification
Speaker 2: and the algorithm and what that is doing to our brains.
Speaker 2: We're probably also right about that being bad. And we're
Speaker 2: probably also find a decade from now, people will just
Speaker 2: not even talk about it anymore because it'll be so normal.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, I mean, we could have an hour
Speaker 3: long conversation. I just think social media is so much worse,
Speaker 3: but that's probably the millennial bias talking.
Speaker 2: Crystal could be all right, So you ready for some
Speaker 2: good holiday news?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 2: I can put this up on the screen from CNBC
Speaker 2: or NBC one of the two anyway. Apparently, according to them,
Speaker 2: the cost of this year's Thanksgiving dinner is They describe
Speaker 2: it as historically affordable. So they say the cost of
Speaker 2: this year's holiday feast, estimated at fifty eight dollars for
Speaker 2: a ten percon gathering or five dollars in eighty one
Speaker 2: cents a head, dropped five percent since last year, and
Speaker 2: that is the lowest level since twenty twenty one, according
Speaker 2: to a nationwide survey of grocery prices. They go on
Speaker 2: to say, if your dollar had the same overall purchasing
Speaker 2: power as a consumer in nineteen eighty four, this would
Speaker 2: be the least expensive Thanksgiving meal in the thirty nine
Speaker 2: year history of this Thanksgiving serve that survey. Outside of
Speaker 2: the pandemic outlier of twenty twenty, Thanksgiving food prices are
Speaker 2: up nineteen percent since twenty nineteen. However, household wages have
Speaker 2: grown by about twenty five percent during the same period.
Speaker 2: What's more, they say, the average American also has to
Speaker 2: work fewer hours to buy the same meal than in
Speaker 2: previous years. So I'm sure Emily Trump will already take credit.
Speaker 2: He's already solved our economic woes, Thanksgiving is already historically affordable.
Speaker 2: All we had to do was vote Donald Trump back
Speaker 2: into office.
Speaker 3: I saw some people really dunking on this article on
Speaker 3: X this NBC claim, and there are a lot of
Speaker 3: other outlets who have done the same sort of look
Speaker 3: at the basket of goods. And it's not surprising at all, Crystal,
Speaker 3: because we've seen we obviously have seen inflation decreasing. But
Speaker 3: why it probably is getting dunked on is that as
Speaker 3: inflation decreases, it's not going to where it was yet
Speaker 3: before the pandemic, so it still feels really high to
Speaker 3: a lot of people. And did a survey and if
Speaker 3: the Linden Tree survey found that costs would be up
Speaker 3: nineteen percent from a year ago, So they're saying that
Speaker 3: costs are up. But what was interesting about this survey
Speaker 3: is that ask people what they plan to spend, and
Speaker 3: when you're just doing the kind of basket you know,
Speaker 3: people are like, oh this the NBC one doesn't even
Speaker 3: include pies, blah blah blah. So it's kind of interesting
Speaker 3: to look at what people say they plan to spend,
Speaker 3: and apparently people are if you're hosting, people say they
Speaker 3: plan to spend four hundred and thirty one dollars on food, drinks,
Speaker 3: and core foror the celebration. That's an average of two
Speaker 3: to sixty five just for food and drinks, and they
Speaker 3: expect to host on average eleven guests. So kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: Inflation was on the minds of sixty percent respondents sixty
Speaker 3: percent of respondents who said it has impacted their plans
Speaker 3: for celebrating the holiday, with twenty seven percent saying they'll
Speaker 3: change food choices, twenty six percent turning to more coupons,
Speaker 3: and nine percent declining to host do to costs. And
Speaker 3: is actually not surprising to me at all, Crystal, because honestly,
Speaker 3: for the media, I think it's really dangerous to write
Speaker 3: stories like this and then bury in the NBC report
Speaker 3: all the way down at the end. I mean, this
Speaker 3: is like at least more than halfway through the story.
Speaker 3: And indeed, well, Thanksgiving food prices are up ninety since
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, according to the same data, our household wages
Speaker 3: have been growing by twenty five percent during the same period.
Speaker 3: It's like, that's at the end of your story.
Speaker 2: Well, the other thing is, you know, on average, wages
Speaker 2: have grown that much but you may not be one
Speaker 2: of those people who participated in the wage growth that
Speaker 2: is higher than what inflation has been. So the picture
Speaker 2: may be very uneven depending on where you are, and
Speaker 2: you know how significant these food costs are obviously to
Speaker 2: your overall budget. But I've to say, when I saw
Speaker 2: fifty eight dollars for a ten person gathering, that seems
Speaker 2: really like that would be difficult to achieve, you know,
Speaker 2: for ten people to feed them for fifty eight dollars
Speaker 2: if you're you know, all the traditional Thanksgiving fixings that
Speaker 2: you think about, like, I feel like that wouldn't even
Speaker 2: come close to being able to really meet the mark.
Speaker 2: They went through some of these different like holiday deals
Speaker 2: that they're having at Walmart, and I think was another
Speaker 2: one where they'll give you some bundle of goods, and
Speaker 2: I think that's part of what they built into their
Speaker 2: affordability calculus here. But yeah, I don't think that most people,
Speaker 2: if you just ask them, is this going to be
Speaker 2: the most affordable Thanksgiving in history? I don't think that
Speaker 2: they would really be feeling that.
Speaker 3: No, And I get why the stories get written this way,
Speaker 3: but you know, in them, it was it was sort
Speaker 3: of like the people have Trump nostalgia line that we
Speaker 3: heard a lot of Democrats using during the course of
Speaker 3: the campaign, which people didn't understand, like the It's like, well, no,
Speaker 3: people do understand. It's just they remember in very recent history,
Speaker 3: before the pandemic, when there when their financial health was better,
Speaker 3: and they're comparing the last several years to that. So
Speaker 3: inflation can come down, but it's not enough for people
Speaker 3: who remember the economy before all of these totally corporate
Speaker 3: corrupted supply chains exploded and government shut down businesses, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and how this ripple effect on the economy that they're
Speaker 3: still feeling today. It's just it's a huge part of
Speaker 3: the story that you know, the media will write about,
Speaker 3: they'll cover it, they understand it intellectually, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: quite penetrate the same way it does for average Americans.
Speaker 2: So, Emily, I wanted to ask you, what are your
Speaker 2: favorite Thanksgiving side dishes or main dishes? What do you
Speaker 2: look forward to?
Speaker 3: Crystal? What an insufferable.
Speaker 2: Question, cringe morning show.
Speaker 3: Thanks, We'll do it, but I'm going to call you
Speaker 3: out on it. I don't know. I like my potatoes
Speaker 3: and gravye.
Speaker 2: Good go to would you say pumpkin pie.
Speaker 3: I like a pumpkin pie person.
Speaker 2: I mean, I actually think I'm more of a pecan
Speaker 2: pie person, which even the pronunciation of which is controversial,
Speaker 2: Pecan versus pecan. Kyle's a pecan guy, I'm a pecan person.
Speaker 2: This is a source of strife in our marriage. I
Speaker 2: think I'd have to say so. I look, we're going
Speaker 2: to Kyle's family this year. We're gonna be at his
Speaker 2: mom's house. But the two dishes that I love the
Speaker 2: most are there's no offense to Kyle's mom and her cooking.
Speaker 2: I'm just not, as you know, I didn't grow up
Speaker 2: with it, so it doesn't have quite the same emotional
Speaker 2: resonance for me as my own mother's cooking. My mom's stuffing.
Speaker 2: And my sister makes this sweet potato casserole that is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It's got like it's you know, so much better, so
Speaker 2: much brown sugar, and then the like, you know, the
Speaker 2: pecans on top. Oh my god, it's so good. It's
Speaker 2: so good. It's always the first thing to go.
Speaker 3: That's that's what I usually make when I'm home, and
Speaker 3: it's the Trisha Yearwood sweet Potato Flet recipe and it's insane.
Speaker 3: It's insane. It's like a it's a cake, but you're
Speaker 3: just like putting it on your plate basically right, so
Speaker 3: turkey and it's totally fine. It's a one day a
Speaker 3: year where it's totally fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My mom also makes a great cranberry relish that's
Speaker 2: like really nice and tartan, like goes perfectly with everything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's that's like she only makes it at Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: you know, so it's like you get excited for it.
Speaker 3: Stuffing right, like good stuff. First of all, you only
Speaker 3: eat stuffing on Thanksgiving, and technvelve when it's good. It's
Speaker 3: really good.
Speaker 2: Okay, but I want to normalize eating stuffing year round
Speaker 2: because even just the like stovetop like easy, so simple,
Speaker 2: low budget, and it hits like it hits, it's good.
Speaker 2: I think it does. You can go any time. Do
Speaker 2: I eat it year round?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: This is the first person I've ever heard. I'm sure
Speaker 3: will be flooded with comments of people saying I do
Speaker 3: that too. Crystal made me feel so much more secure
Speaker 3: in my own skin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, stovetop is delicious. It's not my mom's stuffing,
Speaker 2: but stovetop is delicious, and if your junior wants to
Speaker 2: take that away from me, there will be hell to pay.
Speaker 3: He does, I'm sure he. I can imagine what's in
Speaker 3: that stuff.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing is like, you know, it's all
Speaker 2: well and good to be, like, oh, we should eat
Speaker 2: healthy or whatever. When you start trying to take away
Speaker 2: people's like free do's and you know, hosts cupcakes or whatever,
Speaker 2: I think there's going to be a very different reaction.
Speaker 2: Remember the freak out over Bluey to take away the sodas.
Speaker 3: Yes, take it from my cold dead hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a national outrage. People were furious and
Speaker 2: it wasn't even like you can't have soda. It was like,
Speaker 2: if you want to have a giant soda, you're gonna
Speaker 2: have to have it in multiple cups. And it was
Speaker 2: a pure fury across the nation. So I don't know
Speaker 2: if he's ready for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who else wants to take it away from you?
Speaker 3: Is Sager?
Speaker 2: True?
Speaker 3: True?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 3: I think I mentioned this story the other week. But
Speaker 3: when I was in London recently, my friends and I
Speaker 3: went and they bought like sour Patch kids or something,
Speaker 3: and they were really excited about it and started eating
Speaker 3: the Star Patrick Kids and didn't realize that you couldn't
Speaker 3: use like half the ingredients that you use in US
Speaker 3: R Patrick Kids in the UK and they spit them
Speaker 3: out really interesting. Yeah, so again there's some good and
Speaker 3: there's some.
Speaker 2: Bad indeed, indeed, all right, well, happy Thanksgiving to you, Emily,
Speaker 2: and thank you to everybody out there so much. We
Speaker 2: are so grateful for your continued support and trust in
Speaker 2: the show. And it's going to be really interesting times
Speaker 2: moving forward. There's not going to be any shortage certainly
Speaker 2: of things to talk about. So thank you guys out there,
Speaker 2: very grateful for you, and we will see you guys
Speaker 2: back here next week.