Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 2: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: What do we have, Crissel, Indeed we do.
Speaker 1: We've got lots of big updates on the dead ceiling,
Speaker 1: but many questions remain, so we will break all of
Speaker 1: that down for you. Also, Ronda Santa is taking his
Speaker 1: strongest shots yet at Donald Trump. Kind of interesting the
Speaker 1: way that he is attacking him, so we will play
Speaker 1: those comments for you as well. Also, some pretty interesting
Speaker 1: revelations about chat GPT and just how it just invents
Speaker 1: stuff all the time, all the time, like way more
Speaker 1: than maybe you thought, certainly more than I thought, so
Speaker 1: we'll dig into that. We also have some new numbers
Speaker 1: about where jobs are moving within the United States, and
Speaker 1: of course workers along with them, and some new comments
Speaker 1: from Jake Tapper about Joe Biden's pull numbers, which are
Speaker 1: kind of astonishing.
Speaker 3: So that is all very interesting.
Speaker 1: But before we get to any of that, this is
Speaker 1: officially our last week in this particular on this particular set,
Speaker 1: in this studio.
Speaker 2: It's sad. It's sad. It's gonna say. It's gonna be
Speaker 2: hard to say goodbye to this desk after we designed
Speaker 2: it ourselves, Crystal and shepherded it, this entire set. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of emotions flying through the studio, but we're
Speaker 2: really excited for what comes next. Thank you to the
Speaker 2: Premium members who've been helping us out. As we've said,
Speaker 2: we recently had got a delivery of the largest television
Speaker 2: that world has ever seen.
Speaker 3: Nobody can relate these genuinely insane.
Speaker 2: I can't even believe looking at these boxes. You guys
Speaker 2: are the ones who are helping us pay for it.
Speaker 2: It's the biggest expense ever in the history of our company.
Speaker 2: So thank you all so so much who are signing
Speaker 2: up and helping support us at this time. It's breakingpoints
Speaker 2: dot com if you're able to, And then of course
Speaker 2: it's also Memorial Day, so don't want to let that
Speaker 2: pass without taking just a moment or something. If you
Speaker 2: know somebody who either lost someone or you actually are
Speaker 2: somebody who lost someone, you know thinking about you and
Speaker 2: that person on this day. So think about that just
Speaker 2: for a bit before you go and enjoy your Memorial Day.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, but also hope that you are enjoying your
Speaker 1: Memorial Day out there.
Speaker 3: So do both of those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So let's get to the very latest
Speaker 1: of what we know about the debt sealing. There is
Speaker 1: a tentative deal that has been reached between Biden and
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 3: I'll give you the details of it and in just
Speaker 3: a moment.
Speaker 1: Important keep in mind, though, that they've got to sell
Speaker 1: this deal to the Democrats and maybe most Dice Lee
Speaker 1: that's not really word, but you guys know what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say to the Republican caucus, number of whom
Speaker 1: have already come out and said like, hell, no, this
Speaker 1: is horrible, this is disgusting, et cetera, et cetera. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen, though, to start with how President Biden
Speaker 1: was selling this deal to the press yesterday.
Speaker 4: Take a listen, and the agreement also represents the compromises
Speaker 4: me as known. Got everything they want, But that's the
Speaker 4: responsibility of governing. Suppose you want to try to make
Speaker 4: it look like I made some compromise in the debt stealing,
Speaker 4: and I didn't.
Speaker 5: I made a compromise on the budget.
Speaker 6: That's what they wanted.
Speaker 4: It is you make a compromise on the budget, and
Speaker 4: that's what you've done, even though you haven't gone as
Speaker 4: far as they wanted. Isn't that sure?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Well, can you think of an alternative? I think he
Speaker 5: negotiated with me in good faith. He kept his word,
Speaker 5: He said what he would do, He did what he
Speaker 5: said he'd do, and I have no idea what to
Speaker 5: have votes I expect he does.
Speaker 1: No idea whether McCarthy has the votes. I expect he does.
Speaker 1: Nobody got everything they wanted. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: cope in there about them being like, you said you
Speaker 1: weren't going to negotiate, and now you're negotiating. He's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't negotiate at all. This is on the budget,
Speaker 1: not the dead's doing. Okay, dude, whatever. So we still
Speaker 1: don't have all the details of this tentative agreement. So
Speaker 1: but we have some of the outlines here top lines.
Speaker 1: Here's Jeff Stein's reporting from the Washington Post. Go and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. So he says, smmary
Speaker 1: of deal, as I understand it, again, important caveats because
Speaker 1: nobody has all of the specifics yet. Debt ceiling raised
Speaker 1: for two years, so it gets Joe Biden passed the
Speaker 1: next election. Domestic programs frozen next year and then up
Speaker 1: one percent in twenty twenty five, so it's an inflation
Speaker 1: adjusted cut that was more along the lines of what
Speaker 1: Democrats were pushing for.
Speaker 3: Joe Biden was pushing for.
Speaker 1: It does lift defense spending and also veterans affairs money.
Speaker 1: There is some tightening of work requirements on TAMP, which
Speaker 1: is which is the welfare program, and SNAP, which is
Speaker 1: food stamps Energy Permitting details to be determined. I think
Speaker 1: Joe Manchin got his pipeline deal in there clawback some
Speaker 1: new IRS dollars, but not as far as Republicans had
Speaker 1: originally floated. He goes on to say work requirement for
Speaker 1: food Stamps moves from age fifty to age fifty four.
Speaker 1: Trying to get more clarity on TAMP. Sorry, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: We'll update when I learn more details. My understanding is
Speaker 1: the energy permitting changes are very minimal. Go ahead to
Speaker 1: the next piece here some additionals a details. Remember one
Speaker 1: of the things that Republicans were pushing for was to
Speaker 1: end the student loan debt forgiveness program. He says, there
Speaker 1: is a student loan provision as well. The agreement, as
Speaker 1: I understand it, codifies into law the administration's existing plan
Speaker 1: to end for barants, so payments will restart. Theoretically, if
Speaker 1: there is another emergency, they could and again enact of moratorium,
Speaker 1: no change to Biden's student debt cancelation program. He goes
Speaker 1: on to say, I'll be watching very carefully to what
Speaker 1: precisely happened to the portion of the federal government that
Speaker 1: covers anti poverty.
Speaker 3: Programs over two years.
Speaker 1: In inflation adjust terms, it could look like a more
Speaker 1: significant cut than flat funding suggests. Interesting, we actually have
Speaker 1: gotten some more details about the snap cuts. In particular,
Speaker 1: it's not even clear that it will be an overall
Speaker 1: cut to the program, because while they are tightening up
Speaker 1: work requirements for people age fifty to fifty four, they
Speaker 1: are eliminating work requirements for people who are homeless and
Speaker 1: also for veterans.
Speaker 3: So you have your sort of just shifting who.
Speaker 1: Is eligible for SNAP without work requirements, So it's not
Speaker 1: even apparent that that is a cut across the board.
Speaker 1: So Mattaglesius, I think had a good analysis and then saga,
Speaker 1: I want to get your view of all of this
Speaker 1: as well. Put this up on the screen from his substack.
Speaker 1: He says, I thought this was maybe the best line.
Speaker 1: If you ignore everything about the circumstances of how this
Speaker 1: came together, it's really not a bad deal. In particular,
Speaker 1: the big GOP win here is they forced Biden to
Speaker 1: agree to flat nominal discretionary spending for one year and
Speaker 1: then a one percent nominal increase the year after that,
Speaker 1: which is a significant cut in inflation adjusted per capita
Speaker 1: or GDP terms.
Speaker 3: But and this is the key point.
Speaker 1: That's something Republicans could and would have gotten through the
Speaker 1: normal appropriations process anyway. He goes on to say, by
Speaker 1: giving Republicans a policy win in this way rather than
Speaker 1: through the normal appropriations that's the budgeting process, Biden has
Speaker 1: validated the debt sealing hostage tactic that meaningfully increases the
Speaker 1: odds of a future substantive disaster either in terms of
Speaker 1: policy concessions or a breach. So overall, as I look
Speaker 1: at this, first of all, it's sort of enraging that
Speaker 1: we have this whole like potential global crisis catastrophe, which
Speaker 1: by the way, has already had real economic impact and
Speaker 1: probably increased our government's borrowing costs and injected all of
Speaker 1: this uncertainty and chaos and disaster, et cetera for something
Speaker 1: they could have gotten through normally made. And so I
Speaker 1: certainly blame the Republicans for using these tactics, which I
Speaker 1: think are disgraceful and should be out of bounds. And
Speaker 1: I certainly blame the Biden administration for giving into these tactics.
Speaker 1: And I think Aglaysias is exactly right here that, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you ignore everything else, you'd be like, it's not
Speaker 1: it could be a lot worse. It could you know,
Speaker 1: could have been much steeper cuts that hurt a lot
Speaker 1: more people and also did harm.
Speaker 3: To the economy.
Speaker 1: But what you're doing is validating this tactic. So you
Speaker 1: can bet two years down the line they're going to
Speaker 1: do the same thing all over again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and right, so two years from now, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll see what happens. But I know on on its face,
Speaker 2: for the quote unquote merits of the deal will save
Speaker 2: some more of this analysis. But this is a huge
Speaker 2: law for Kevin McCarthy and for maybe not Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 2: is a massive loss for the Freedom Caucus members of
Speaker 2: which they are making it known, and on its face,
Speaker 2: like for Joe Biden, this is I think this would
Speaker 2: be a victory for him because he can both look.
Speaker 2: I think we both also know that there is a
Speaker 2: fetishization of like bipartisanship or a lot of voters for
Speaker 2: some reason, they think it's a very good thing. It
Speaker 2: can be, it can't be, depends on how we talk
Speaker 2: about it. On the detail. It's all about the nuance, right,
Speaker 2: So bipartisan rail safety good, bipartisan like bipartisan feigning concern
Speaker 2: about the deficit while you increase military spending in at Ukraine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm just going to go ahead and say that's
Speaker 2: bad and that's what's happened here. But you know, Biden
Speaker 2: gets the rhetorical win of inegotiated. He didn't really give
Speaker 2: away the store. There are not really meaningful cuts. If
Speaker 2: you are a genuine economic libertarian type, this is ludicrous.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're looking at this if you're somebody
Speaker 2: who cares about the debt. Even on the IRS piece,
Speaker 2: which was a huge thing, they are only able to
Speaker 2: claw back apparently some twenty billion or so of the
Speaker 2: forty billion, and that twenty what they're going to do
Speaker 2: is they're just going to defer the spending cuts in
Speaker 2: the future, so they'll still be fully funded for a
Speaker 2: shorter period of time. It actually won't meaningfully change IRS
Speaker 2: enforcement at all. This is another thing I was getting
Speaker 2: so annoyed by, because they are correct in saying that
Speaker 2: the IRS disproportionally targets, you know, people were poor. I've
Speaker 2: done the entire monologues about this. What I've always advocated
Speaker 2: for is that there's actually a simple change in the
Speaker 2: law you can make, which is say, don't use this
Speaker 2: funding go below anybody over one million dollars or so.
Speaker 2: And of course, you know they never want to insert
Speaker 2: these pros, so the entire thing is just ridiculous to me.
Speaker 2: What makes it especially offensive is that they are not
Speaker 2: only increasing military spending, but specifically trying to increase some
Speaker 2: of the backwards a to Ukraine, not the in terms
Speaker 2: of refilling stockpiles and helping with the depreciation costs, and
Speaker 2: they're hiding all these other nonsense provisions in there, which
Speaker 2: are basically just box checks for things that they say
Speaker 2: that they're against on paper, like the irs, and they
Speaker 2: didn't even do that. So overall the deal itself, it's
Speaker 2: not going to change much. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 2: guess it's good for everybody's stock for four oh one ks. Now,
Speaker 2: this is all presumes if it passes, right, because that
Speaker 2: is actually kind of up in the air right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, christ, we haven't yet received word from the
Speaker 2: Progressive Caucus to whether they're going to vote for it
Speaker 2: or not. If they do, this deal might almost get
Speaker 2: one hundred percent Democratic support or somewhere near that, and
Speaker 2: then you don't actually even need that many Republicans to
Speaker 2: support it. Although McCarthy has said I will not bring
Speaker 2: the floor, I will not bring the bill to the
Speaker 2: floor without a majority of the support. Although that's only
Speaker 2: what you know, one hundred or so members out of
Speaker 2: the two I forget the exact number of there. It's
Speaker 2: really not that many people when you consider how many
Speaker 2: defections he could have, which would then be a huge
Speaker 2: internal blow to him for his speakership.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So the reason that he is going to commit to
Speaker 1: and has already committed to we have to have a
Speaker 1: majority of the Republican caucus behind this is because his
Speaker 1: ass would be on the line. And you'll recall, as
Speaker 1: part of the deal that he brokeered in order to
Speaker 1: become Speaker, he made it a lot easier for them
Speaker 1: to toss him out as Speaker of the House. So
Speaker 1: that's in the back of his mind. And you already
Speaker 1: have a lot of House Freedom Caucus members who are
Speaker 1: you know, they're not being subtle about this. I mean,
Speaker 1: they hate this deal, railing against it on Twitter. You
Speaker 1: can bet there's going to be a lot of conservative
Speaker 1: media that is very against the deal. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of incentive to posture as being against this deal in
Speaker 1: terms of support from the grossroots space. So he's in
Speaker 1: a bit of a tricky position, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that he made things easier for himself by saying some
Speaker 1: like relatively nice things about Joe Biden. We may like
Speaker 1: appreciate that level of civility, but there are plenty of
Speaker 1: people within his caucus who will not appreciate that level
Speaker 1: of civility. Let's take us in a little bit of
Speaker 1: what Speaker McCarthy had to.
Speaker 7: Say, the President said he would negotiate with us for
Speaker 7: ninety seven days. He wouldn't even allow us to talk.
Speaker 7: After we passed a bill, we were able to get in,
Speaker 7: but it wasn't until the final two weeks that would
Speaker 7: we really be able to sit down and communicate with
Speaker 7: one another. I do want to thank the President's team
Speaker 7: that he put together, very professional, very smart, very strong
Speaker 7: beliefs that are different than ours, and I think at
Speaker 7: the end of the day can look together to be
Speaker 7: able to pass this in the House and the Senate together.
Speaker 1: So very professional, very smart, is what McCarthy had to
Speaker 1: say about the Biden team. Let's go and put up
Speaker 1: the next piece, though, of some of the House Freedom
Speaker 1: Caucus reaction, which is a little bit different tone from
Speaker 1: what we're hearing from House Speaker McCarthy. There, this is
Speaker 1: just some These are some of the sort of selected
Speaker 1: key players and the way they're reacting to it. You've
Speaker 1: got Ralph Norman saying this quote deal is insanity. A
Speaker 1: four trillion dollars debt dealing increase with virtually no cuts
Speaker 1: is not what we agreed to. Not going to vote
Speaker 1: to bankrupt our country. The American people deserve better. You've
Speaker 1: got Congressman Bob good saying, I'm hearing the quote deal.
Speaker 1: They all put deal in quotations marks for some reason,
Speaker 1: is for a four trillion dollar increase in the debt limit.
Speaker 1: If that is true, I don't need to hear anything else.
Speaker 1: No one claiming to be conservative could justify a yes vote.
Speaker 3: You've got chip Roy.
Speaker 1: I do not like the quote deal as I understand
Speaker 1: it from the cheerleading so far. I will more to
Speaker 1: follow once I see more details. You've got Dan Bishop
Speaker 1: of the eighty billion dollar dollars Democrats appropriate to the
Speaker 1: irs over ten years. The quote deal ver sins one
Speaker 1: point nine billion. You read that right, That's the kind
Speaker 1: of get.
Speaker 3: That's so good.
Speaker 1: McCarthy agreed to increase the debt ceiling for trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: I saw Lauren Bober. There were others who were also
Speaker 1: being highly critical, and Sager chip Roy is a key
Speaker 1: player here, because you know, some of this is so arcane.
Speaker 1: But one of the parts of the deal that McCarthy
Speaker 1: also made to secure his speakership was stacking the Rules
Speaker 1: Committee with some of these hardline House Freedom Caucus members,
Speaker 1: chip Roy being one of them. This thing has to
Speaker 1: get through that committee in order to for it even
Speaker 1: to get to the floor for a vote. It's looking
Speaker 1: right now like the swing vote on that. So it's
Speaker 1: six Republicans four Democrats on there. Usually in recent political history,
Speaker 1: the opposing party on this committee never votes for whatever
Speaker 1: the party in power wants.
Speaker 3: Like never, that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: So the four.
Speaker 1: Democrats are assumed to be a know although they could
Speaker 1: in theory crossover and vote for the thing. You've already
Speaker 1: got a number of Republicans who are on the committee
Speaker 1: who are on the record saying no, I'm not voting
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 3: And so Thomas Massey, who's.
Speaker 1: This sort of like quirky libertarian type out of Kentucky,
Speaker 1: may end up being the swing vote now ideologically on spending.
Speaker 1: At least, he tends to be more aligned with the
Speaker 1: House Freedom Caucus. But he also has been turned into
Speaker 1: somewhat of an ally of McCarthy. He was with him
Speaker 1: from the beginning in terms of the speakership. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of dicey dynamics at play here. Still, I
Speaker 1: think the problems are more on the Republican side. We've
Speaker 1: heard a lot more vocal opposition to the deal on
Speaker 1: the Republican side than on the Democratic side.
Speaker 3: But I guess you never.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah exactly. I mean, look, in terms of whether
Speaker 2: it will pass or not, I genuinely have no idea.
Speaker 2: As people have pointed out the Rules Committee, it's very possible,
Speaker 2: given the gravity of its circumstances on the debt ceiling,
Speaker 2: that the Dems might actually vote, and then that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't even need many of the Republican votes it could
Speaker 2: effect you could have some defections. The other question is
Speaker 2: also even if it does get through the House up
Speaker 2: against a deadline of June fifth, and it's going to
Speaker 2: take a couple of days, we're not going to have
Speaker 2: a vote here on this thing until Wednesday. Then it's
Speaker 2: going to immediately make its way over to the Senate. Now,
Speaker 2: people shouldn't remember that the easiest way to get something
Speaker 2: through the Senate is something called unanimous consent, where they
Speaker 2: waive the thirty hours of debate rule on the floor.
Speaker 2: Senator Mike Lee, who is also a libertarian, has come
Speaker 2: out and said that he wants to do everything possible
Speaker 2: if he doesn't like the deal to slow it down
Speaker 2: on the floor, so all you need is a single
Speaker 2: Senator or Ran Paul for that matter, to object to that,
Speaker 2: and then you're immediately triggering that debate and the amended process, etc.
Speaker 2: And who knows how much longer that could take. So
Speaker 2: we could even be up against a technical default even
Speaker 2: if it does get through both of those chambers. That said,
Speaker 2: Senator McConnell came out with a statement last night and said,
Speaker 2: I support the bill. Le's immediately pass this thing. So
Speaker 2: I don't think it will meaningfully have any problems, but
Speaker 2: there will be some fun intra like intra chamber games
Speaker 2: about committees and objections and all of this stuff as
Speaker 2: to how exactly it makes its way through. But I
Speaker 2: do think the biggest the biggest thing that's up in
Speaker 2: the air right now is will there be a GOP revolt?
Speaker 2: Another question is what about Trump? You know, Trump is
Speaker 2: not an idiot. He's going to be reading Lauren Bobert's tweets,
Speaker 2: He's going to be reading all of these. He's said
Speaker 2: before that Republicans shouldn't give in unless they get every
Speaker 2: single thing that they want. There's no no world where
Speaker 2: McCarthy could spend this as this is everything that I
Speaker 2: got his talking points which you have in front of
Speaker 2: you are are the stupidest thing you can imagine.
Speaker 1: This is okay, So Sahil Kapor got his hand on
Speaker 1: the GOP talking points that they're using to sell to
Speaker 1: their own members.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: First of all, they're calling the Fiscal Responsibility Act a
Speaker 1: little bit of branding there. He says, Republicans will restore
Speaker 1: fiscal sanity and hold Washington accountable. Number one a stop
Speaker 1: out of control inflationary spending. Now, they mentioned cut spending
Speaker 1: year over year, including a rollback of non defense discretionary
Speaker 1: spending because God forbid, we cut the Pentagon to twenty
Speaker 1: two to twenty twenty two levels fully fun via medical limit,
Speaker 1: top line federal spending to one percent annual growth for
Speaker 1: the next six years. Now that's not actually even accurate
Speaker 1: because the deal is only for two years. But there's
Speaker 1: like a theoretical like, yeah, maybe we'll do it for
Speaker 1: a while longer after this, but none of that is binding.
Speaker 1: So even the six year part of this, which is
Speaker 1: what the Republicans wanted and not what the Democratic Democrats wanted,
Speaker 1: is really spin in propaganda.
Speaker 3: Number two, lift more.
Speaker 1: Americans dount of poverty, that's about the work requirements on
Speaker 1: SNAP and on welfare, clawback tens of billions and unspent
Speaker 1: COVID funds. Okay, fine, nobody really objected to that, all
Speaker 1: that much rain in executive overreach, and act into law
Speaker 1: the first ever statutory and administrative pay go to hold
Speaker 1: President Biden accountable for the full cost of executive rules
Speaker 1: and regulations. Cut red tape and streamline energy and infrastructure projects.
Speaker 1: That's that permitting reform, which we still don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of details on. Slash funding for Biden's new IRS agents.
Speaker 1: It's relatively modest. Cut there. Restart student loan repayments while
Speaker 1: they were planning to restart them anyway, Make Congress work again,
Speaker 1: compel a functioning appropriations process by imposing a temporary ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent seur level cap until all twelve appropriations bills
Speaker 1: are enacted. So they're requiring all twelve to go through
Speaker 1: the House. Protect our senior's veterans in Americans national security.
Speaker 1: That's the hike to the Pentagon budget, and block Biden
Speaker 1: and Congressional Democrats demands for new taxes. That was where
Speaker 1: they were like, no, we don't want to close the
Speaker 1: carried interest loophole or you know, tax corporations or the
Speaker 1: wealthy eddy more than we already do.
Speaker 3: So they're claiming that as a win.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would claim that as a win,
Speaker 1: especially because obviously that doesn't that goes against their aims
Speaker 1: of reducing the deficit and the debt. So that's the
Speaker 1: way they're selling it. And I mean, it's free week
Speaker 1: t in terms of what the demands of the House
Speaker 1: random Caucus were.
Speaker 2: Look ye on like on any objective metric, and the
Speaker 2: Democrats are silently saying this, we won the House. Republicans
Speaker 2: completely folded. I think ultimately what happened here is that
Speaker 2: it came down to the wire because the Democrats, the
Speaker 2: White House and all of them did have a decent
Speaker 2: amount of leverage as well. They were saying, no, we're
Speaker 2: not going to fold on this. We're not going to
Speaker 2: fold on this. And the business community, as you and
Speaker 2: I know, has been freaking out behind the scenes. And
Speaker 2: I bet you know, we're willing to.
Speaker 3: Bet McCarthy's close with him.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and look, yeah, he is raising money from all
Speaker 2: these billionaires. And if you don't think Jamie Diamond and
Speaker 2: all these other folks don't have his cell phone. They're like,
Speaker 2: you need to get this done. You need to get
Speaker 2: your people in line. And then it just came a
Speaker 2: question of well, who's the smallest minority here. It's the
Speaker 2: Freedom Caucus. And if you have enough Democrats who are
Speaker 2: willing to go along and pass the bill, if he
Speaker 2: can have defections of thirty, forty, even fifty votes get
Speaker 2: this thing through, he will be a hero to the
Speaker 2: business community for all time forgetting this through, which for
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys, that's what they want, right,
Speaker 2: you know, Well.
Speaker 1: Like he secures his most congressional you know, opportunity career
Speaker 1: opportunities working as a lobbyist for these people, or on
Speaker 1: serving on boards or whatever, cashing in whatever way that
Speaker 1: he wants too, similar to what Paul Ryan did after
Speaker 1: he left there go the House as well. I do
Speaker 1: think the Trump factor kind of looms over this, you know,
Speaker 1: does he say anything, does he weigh in? I think
Speaker 1: if he weighs in, he will weigh in against the deal.
Speaker 1: Don It's very likely because that's where the energy on
Speaker 1: the base is going to be. That's where the energy
Speaker 1: and conservative media is going to be. And so the
Speaker 1: question is just you don't have a lot of Republicans
Speaker 1: who are in those districts that are truly swing districts
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden maybe even one or at least that
Speaker 1: were really close, that are particularly worried about their general
Speaker 1: election prospects coming up in twenty twenty four. The overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of the GOP caucus, they're going to be looking
Speaker 1: at their right worried about is this going to sink
Speaker 1: my chances in a primary? Is this going to become
Speaker 1: some sort of like litmus test that is used in
Speaker 1: some sort of Tea party esque fashion to kick me
Speaker 1: out through the GOP primary process. If they start to
Speaker 1: feel like there's a lot of momentum and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of anger against the deal, and conservative media is
Speaker 1: all unified, and of course the learned Boberts and those
Speaker 1: folks are going to be incredibly vocal about their opposition
Speaker 1: to this deal, that's when you could see things start
Speaker 1: to crumble and you're left with things like, you know,
Speaker 1: you could still theoretically have a discharge petition where all
Speaker 1: the Democrats vote for something and you get those five ten. However,
Speaker 1: many actually more moderate Republican members that represent these swing
Speaker 1: districts to join with them. So even if it all
Speaker 1: fell apart, it doesn't necessarily mean the thing is dead
Speaker 1: in the water.
Speaker 3: But that also takes a lot of time.
Speaker 1: So it's looking like they're between the likely strong support
Speaker 1: from the Democratic Caucus and some support from the GUP Caucus.
Speaker 1: It's looking like they're going to be able to push
Speaker 1: this thing through, but there are still a lot of
Speaker 1: roadblocks and you know, a lot of possibilities that it
Speaker 1: could come apart in the next couple days.
Speaker 2: Keep everybody updated on what the updates and all that
Speaker 2: will be. Remember about the seventy two hour period where
Speaker 2: they do have seventy two hours now to actually review
Speaker 2: and to read it. So watch the twitter feeds of
Speaker 2: some of the Freedom Caucus members. One of them is
Speaker 2: Dan Bishop. I think he likes to live tweet what
Speaker 2: he finds in the bills. It actually can be really
Speaker 2: quite informative. Yeah, so I recommend his twitter feed. I
Speaker 2: will be checking appreciate that as well. All right, let's
Speaker 2: speaking of Trump and some possible contrast. Let's get to
Speaker 2: the next part here. Ron DeSantis, of which I now
Speaker 2: have more respect for because he actually came out and
Speaker 2: is the first candidate declared so far not to talk
Speaker 2: in such mealy mouthed terms, although still just a little
Speaker 2: bit and actually take a shot at Trump defend himself
Speaker 2: from the accusations that have been hurled his way. In
Speaker 2: an interview on The Ben Shapiro Show, here's what he
Speaker 2: had to say.
Speaker 8: So, how do you see a difference between your candidacy,
Speaker 8: what you've been trying to do, your record in President Trump?
Speaker 9: Well, I think it's interesting because he's been attacking me
Speaker 9: by moving left. So this is a different guy than
Speaker 9: twenty fifteen. Twenty sixteen. He attacked me for opposing an
Speaker 9: amnesty bill in the Congress. He did support this amnesty,
Speaker 9: this good lat too, two million illegal aliens. He wanted
Speaker 9: to amnesty. I opposed it because that's what America First
Speaker 9: principles dictate that you're opposed to amnesty. Both based COVID
Speaker 9: nineteen and we both responded in the way we did.
Speaker 9: He responded by elevating Anthony Fauci and really turning the
Speaker 9: reins over to doctor Fauci, and I think too terrible
Speaker 9: consequences for the United States. I was the leader in
Speaker 9: this country and fighting back against Fauci. We bucked him
Speaker 9: every step of the way starting in April of twenty twenty,
Speaker 9: whether it's the schools, the businesses, the mandates, and our
Speaker 9: state has never done better as a result. I mean,
Speaker 9: I think the fact that Donald Trump gave Anthony Fauci
Speaker 9: a presidential commendation on Trump's last day in office, that
Speaker 9: was a gut punch to millions of people around this
Speaker 9: country who were harmed by Fauci's lockdowns. I said very clearly,
Speaker 9: you know, if I'm president somebody like Fauci is in
Speaker 9: the government, I will bring them in and I will
Speaker 9: tell them two things. You are fired.
Speaker 2: So I mean, look, Christal, I have to at least
Speaker 2: respect him for prosecuting a case against Trump's literally the
Speaker 2: first person to do so. Now, well, I think it worked.
Speaker 2: We'll see the first part on the amnesty. I think
Speaker 2: it's very interesting rhetorically where he's talking about how Trump
Speaker 2: is attacking him from the left. Obviously, immigration probably the
Speaker 2: number one reason why Trump was the nominee in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: an issue that matters tremendously to the base. The problem
Speaker 2: I see for DeSantis is, well, rhetorically, you know, sorry,
Speaker 2: on policy, you may be right. Rhetorically, can you really
Speaker 2: outdo the Donald whenever it comes to the guy who
Speaker 2: literally created the wall, or at.
Speaker 3: The very least, sure my presumer good people.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be tough, I think, to be able to
Speaker 2: come out against him and to convince people that you're
Speaker 2: the real deal, although if it were to work, this
Speaker 2: is probably the only way. The Faucci thing, I also
Speaker 2: think it is interesting. I'm curious for your thoughts. I
Speaker 2: just feel as if running from running backwards, as in
Speaker 2: reltigating COVID policy from three years ago, is not the
Speaker 2: winner that some of these people seem to think. COVID policy,
Speaker 2: lockdowns and all stuff. It matters a lot to a
Speaker 2: lot of people on the Internet, and it also matters
Speaker 2: a lot to people who are very very online when
Speaker 2: at least in my experience, but normal voters who I
Speaker 2: have seen out, especially interviews as well, whenever they talk
Speaker 2: about DeSantis and Trump, not one of them mentions COVID.
Speaker 2: They say, I like that he doesn't have the drama.
Speaker 2: I like that he kept Florida, or he's made Florida nice. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some of that has to do with COVID, but focusing
Speaker 2: on the COVID piece just seems a little out of
Speaker 2: step where I think some people were going to vote
Speaker 2: for him anyway.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've seen the numbers, like people don't care.
Speaker 1: People have moved on and understandably so we're all moving forward, right.
Speaker 3: So I think in a sort of like rational.
Speaker 1: Sane world, I think some of these attacks may land,
Speaker 1: But I just see no evidence that the GOP base
Speaker 1: is actually that ideological. And Desanta's made this comment in
Speaker 1: that attack where he's like, you know, this is different
Speaker 1: than Trump in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, is it because
Speaker 1: they tried the same line of attack against Trump back then,
Speaker 1: Ty Cruz in particular, it was like.
Speaker 3: He's not a real concern. We're further to the right here.
Speaker 1: You know, he was a Democrat, he was he supported
Speaker 1: a planned parenthood.
Speaker 3: He's not.
Speaker 1: They were trying to attack him from the right and
Speaker 1: say we're the true conservatives and he is this rhino
Speaker 1: and it just didn't work at all. So I do
Speaker 1: remember this does feel like almost another dejent vous moment
Speaker 1: of the type of attacks that they launched him last
Speaker 1: time around, which ultimately fell flat. Now I agree with you,
Speaker 1: like respect to him for at least trying because this
Speaker 1: is at least a lot less humiliating than like Nikki.
Speaker 3: Haley, I'm not kicking sideways, or.
Speaker 1: Even Tim Scott who's like, I love Trump, his his
Speaker 1: time in office was fantastic and it's like, okay, well
Speaker 1: why are you running against him? Then that doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense, or certainly Mike Pence, who's just humiliating that,
Speaker 1: you know, because of Trump, people were running around the
Speaker 1: capitols running to hang him and he can't even come
Speaker 1: out strongly against him even now after all of that.
Speaker 1: So it's a much less humiliating approach, and you know,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I also don't think that
Speaker 1: he's going to pay a huge price for going after
Speaker 1: Trump in this way because it is very policy based.
Speaker 1: Do I think that it's gonna be sufficient?
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 1: And this gets back to like, you know, we were
Speaker 1: being hard on DeSantis about you gotta hit him, and
Speaker 1: you gotta do this, and you gotta do that, and
Speaker 1: I just look at the landscape and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: just not really sure there's anything you alone can do
Speaker 1: yes to knock this guy off. So it's a solid attempt.
Speaker 1: Do I think it's really gonna work?
Speaker 2: Probably not. Yeah, it probably won't work. It's great. The
Speaker 2: point that you brought up, Like Ted Cruz and Rubio
Speaker 2: and Jeb tried this. They're like, he's not a conservative.
Speaker 2: He supports social security and he's like, yeah, I supports
Speaker 2: SoCal security. They're like, he supports universal healthcare. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, everyone will have healthcare under Maya policy. He's like,
Speaker 2: he not supports free trade. He said, Yep, He's right,
Speaker 2: I don't support free trade. In many ways, Trump's moderation
Speaker 2: on policy was a huge net positive to him on
Speaker 2: top of his rhetoric in the twenty sixteen campaign. He
Speaker 2: was extreme on the right issues for the base, and
Speaker 2: then not extreme on the issues that didn't necessarily matter.
Speaker 2: So immigration, though, this is a I think a good attempt,
Speaker 2: and as you go to at least respect somebody who's
Speaker 2: going to fight in the primary. Now, will we be
Speaker 2: able to do that to his face? Is he going
Speaker 2: to continue to keep it up? How we will respond
Speaker 2: to the poll numbers? That is the ultimate question. But
Speaker 2: one part that really stock out to us is actually
Speaker 2: where DeSantis again correctly hits Trump on mail in voting.
Speaker 2: And this was a fascinating part of this interview. It
Speaker 2: hasn't taken as much notice. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 8: Can you talk about your sort of on the ground
Speaker 8: strategy and how that would be different from what President
Speaker 8: Trump did in twenty twenty running against the Democrats.
Speaker 9: I think telling people not to send in a mail
Speaker 9: ballot is a huge mistake, and it ends up reducing
Speaker 9: the pool of prospective voters.
Speaker 3: In Florida.
Speaker 9: We focused on some of these low propensity voters in
Speaker 9: my reelection. They usually vote in presidential they don't always
Speaker 9: vote in midterm, and we converted a lot of them
Speaker 9: to vote. Most of them chose to vote by absentee
Speaker 9: ballot through the mail. That was their choice. If we
Speaker 9: told them you could only vote on election day, some
Speaker 9: of them very well may not have voted. So understand
Speaker 9: the battlefield. It's your responsibility as a can it to
Speaker 9: head off.
Speaker 2: That He's right, It's obvious, he's obviously right. I actually
Speaker 2: loved that he said that. He's the first high profile
Speaker 2: elected Republican to actually say it, because guess what, Trump
Speaker 2: absolutely one hundred percent would have won if he had
Speaker 2: just encouraged mail and voting. That's the funniest thing, you,
Speaker 2: It's the most patriotic way to vote. It's the magaway
Speaker 2: And guess what he would have won Georgia. He absolutely,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, would have won Arizona. And all he
Speaker 2: needed was to flip a single other state and the
Speaker 2: turnout probably would have been even high. Remember, guys, he
Speaker 2: got ten million more votes. He was campaigning against the
Speaker 2: easiest way to vote, like he got ten million more
Speaker 2: when he ran in twenty sixteen. Some what is a
Speaker 2: seventy five million or whatever people came out to vote
Speaker 2: for him. It's just one of those where it's so obvious.
Speaker 2: And the Georgia, if you don't believe me, the Georgia
Speaker 2: Secretary of State has already put out the data where
Speaker 2: if just a number of people voted in the GOP
Speaker 2: primary by mail had done so in the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: election whenever it was Biden v. Trump, Trump wins a
Speaker 2: state he did not lose by all that much. So DeSantis,
Speaker 2: coming on the heels of what I still believe is
Speaker 2: his best strength, I won. I turned this state twenty
Speaker 2: points purple to deep read. I did it because I'm
Speaker 2: a winner. I did it on policy, and I want
Speaker 2: to make America just like what I did down in Florida.
Speaker 2: That's a very compelling message to a certain group of people. Now,
Speaker 2: unfortunately those group are mostly general election voters, not necessarily
Speaker 2: primary voters. But with this I at least have to say,
Speaker 2: once again, respect to the man for at least trying Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's making a good case.
Speaker 1: Well, what's interesting is even Trump has changed his mind
Speaker 1: about mail and voting at Sea Pack. I think it
Speaker 1: was this year he said it's time to change our
Speaker 1: thinking on early and mail in voting. He also touted
Speaker 1: his campaign's plans to encourage quote unquote ballot harvesting, which
Speaker 1: of course had been like you know, derided as practically
Speaker 1: legal even in those in some states it actually is legal.
Speaker 1: By Republicans, he says, we have no choice but to
Speaker 1: be Democrats at their own game. So even Trump at
Speaker 1: this point acknowledges that the mail in voting thing was
Speaker 1: a catastrophe for them certain state of Georgia. We have
Speaker 1: the numbers that if he had just embraced mail and
Speaker 1: voting now he went.
Speaker 2: He wins.
Speaker 3: There's another subtext here.
Speaker 1: Though, which is about, you know, obviously what is a
Speaker 1: hot issue for the Republican base, which is stop the
Speaker 1: steal twenty twenty Was it legitimate or not, And the
Speaker 1: subtext of what Desantas is suggesting here is that it
Speaker 1: was legitimate and the reason you're ass loss is because
Speaker 1: of things like.
Speaker 3: Mail in voting.
Speaker 1: Now this represents, though, another area where you know, to
Speaker 1: this point, Desanta's hasn't really had to be put on
Speaker 1: the spot about what he fully thinks about twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and it's another issue that hangs out there as a
Speaker 1: very difficult, tricky one for him to navigate because, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, you go full crazy, you're in, your
Speaker 1: electability case is going to fall apart because we saw
Speaker 1: what happened to you know, Mastriano and Carrie Lake and
Speaker 1: these other characters who were all in.
Speaker 3: On stop the steal.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of the Republican
Speaker 1: base still thinks that the twenty twenty election was stolen.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the ones that's going to
Speaker 1: be very tricky to navigate. But yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: subtext of what he's saying there is you lost and
Speaker 1: one of the reasons you lost is because you didn't
Speaker 1: embrace bail in voting.
Speaker 2: Here, it's a Gordian Knott, I really is, I really
Speaker 2: don't know how you get yourself out of it. I
Speaker 2: feel for the man to be honest because it's like
Speaker 2: in any rational way or like this obviously should work.
Speaker 2: But you know we don't. As you said, we don't
Speaker 2: live in a rational world.
Speaker 1: So we'll see that's a good Not living in an
Speaker 1: irrational world is a good pivot to the next start
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: That's right. And if you think that was nasty. The
Speaker 2: knives are out for each other between the Trump and
Speaker 2: DeSantis folks online, we've been paying quite a bit of attention.
Speaker 2: There was actually this is this is actually everything this
Speaker 2: Newsmax panel where actually somebody we've had on our show before,
Speaker 2: Josh Hammer, was up against a Trumps surrogate and they
Speaker 2: were going at each other on Trump and DeSantis. Here's
Speaker 2: what it looked like.
Speaker 10: DeSantis's botched campaign announcement proves that he and his team
Speaker 10: are not ready for prime time.
Speaker 3: He proposes a national federal sales tax.
Speaker 10: He voted to cut social Security. He has no plan
Speaker 10: to end the war in Ukraine. President Trump cut taxes,
Speaker 10: secure the border, reinvested in our economy. He is the
Speaker 10: day one leader that America needs.
Speaker 4: Josh.
Speaker 3: Just to wrap it up, He's going to Iowa he's
Speaker 3: got time.
Speaker 6: Look, I mean, Carolyn has the talking points, and that's
Speaker 6: cute and everything. But the reality here is that Republican
Speaker 6: primary voters are ready for a winner. They are sick
Speaker 6: of losing. They are sick of relitigating an election from
Speaker 6: two and a half years ago. They are sick of
Speaker 6: Stormy Daniels and all of the crap this country is
Speaker 6: going to tell in a tan basket, it's time to
Speaker 6: put policy on the agenda and to start winning.
Speaker 10: All right, you're reciting your Democrat talking points. My talking
Speaker 10: points are truth and the pulse.
Speaker 3: Prove it.
Speaker 2: I just kidding started.
Speaker 6: I mean, we got a long way to go here
Speaker 6: until the Iowa caucus is in the very beginning of
Speaker 6: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: You sound like a Democrat. That's what they'll always hit
Speaker 2: you with that. I've seen it too. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's a new school you're a Democrat. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: if that's what qualifies in here.
Speaker 3: An idiot, Yeah, Well that's that's part of.
Speaker 1: The Gurdi and not, as you so abletely, is that
Speaker 1: Republican based voters have been trained to think any attack
Speaker 1: on Trump is a democratic attack. Like anything you say
Speaker 1: about him, doesn't matter if it's from the right, from
Speaker 1: the left, on his car, whatever, especially when you're talking
Speaker 1: about things like he mentioned Stormy Daniels, any of the
Speaker 1: character attacks, you should just forget about it.
Speaker 2: The Republican base is so conditioned to anybody who validates
Speaker 2: that is a Democrat. So actually she's attacking him correctly.
Speaker 2: He is obviously correct on the merits. So it's difficult,
Speaker 2: and this is why I'm like, I don't know how
Speaker 2: exactly you get yourself out of this, you know. At
Speaker 2: the same time, though, the interest sniping too between the
Speaker 2: between the DeSantis camp and the Trump camp has reached
Speaker 2: just very high posting levels. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. You see here, Alex
Speaker 2: Bruce Wist. This guy is like a hardcore Trump person
Speaker 2: online and he's been putting out tweets where he's going
Speaker 2: after Christina Pushaw, who is a form press secretary for
Speaker 2: Desantie's part of the DeSantis campaign. She's been going after
Speaker 2: some of the Trump surrogates online, calling them basically calling
Speaker 2: out Trump both on policy. Then he's like DeSantis's campaign
Speaker 2: argues with this sixteen year old kid over Ukraine and
Speaker 2: botox after actually they accused Christina pushav Bucktocks. Then on
Speaker 2: Friday got Trump supporter Gavin Wax fired Gavin. For those
Speaker 2: who don't know, he's like former New York Republicans head
Speaker 2: and he was actually working for the Babylon Bee, the
Speaker 2: satire Republican site. He actually tweeted what the f is
Speaker 2: wrong with you? Christina Pushaw and then Seth Dillon, the
Speaker 2: CEO of Babylon b actually fired him on Twitter, and
Speaker 2: then he apparently was accused about being part of some
Speaker 2: drug ring. So just to give you an idea of
Speaker 2: what level the discourse is at, let's go to the
Speaker 2: next one there also as well, because as you can see,
Speaker 2: she's going after Robert Barnesy, somebody I believe he has
Speaker 2: a very popular show with another guy on Rumble, and
Speaker 2: they say that, remember who put Fauci in charge of
Speaker 2: COVID response in twenty twenty, Donald Trump did, and he said,
Speaker 2: why delete this? It's true because the DeSantis campaign is
Speaker 2: going after Trump on Fauci and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: warring over COVID.
Speaker 3: Barnes is now what Trump is that.
Speaker 2: Barnes is a Trump guy. Yeah, let's go to the
Speaker 2: next one up here on the screen. Here it's another
Speaker 2: Twitter account who is Christina Pusha From twenty eighteen. She
Speaker 2: worked in Georgia the country by the way, as a
Speaker 2: registered foreign agent for a former Georgian president, Mikhail Sakosphieley,
Speaker 2: who I believe is actually Ukrainian now last time I
Speaker 2: checked it, anyway, I think you about that Sakosphiely. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's an interesting guy.
Speaker 3: I think she worked in Ukraine, too, didn't she.
Speaker 2: I believe that she also did, or at least did
Speaker 2: some work with Zelensky. I want to say, way back
Speaker 2: in the day before she came to work for Rond DeSantis. Anyway,
Speaker 2: what do we learn from this? Knives are fully out
Speaker 2: against each other, and I'm just not sure it's gonna work.
Speaker 2: I Mean, look, a lot of it just seems like drama,
Speaker 2: which is on the internet. But I think what people
Speaker 2: should underscore is that this or should people take away?
Speaker 2: The biggest takeaway to me is the Dishanta's team is
Speaker 2: actually willing to go after him. Yeah, there's no Nikki
Speaker 2: Haley people out there who were prosecuting outside of like
Speaker 2: Liz Cheney Trump's or like Trump is a threat to democracy.
Speaker 2: This is like actual knives out real campaign fighting against
Speaker 2: each other. It will be bitter and we'll obviously going
Speaker 2: to be a long and a hard fought content test,
Speaker 2: but they are willing to actually declare war, and that
Speaker 2: shows that they have some confidence at least in their process. Now,
Speaker 2: is it going to work? We'll see.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of khi vibes among some of these people,
Speaker 1: whether its viciousness so that they mean, I'm personally enjoying
Speaker 1: watching it all unfold greatly, like go go at it,
Speaker 1: let him fight. But yeah, it is definitely it's game on,
Speaker 1: like no holds barred. Clearly, DeSantis's launch has sort of
Speaker 1: open the up the floodgates. People are picking sides. It's
Speaker 1: going to be absolutely brutal and vicious online, and you know,
Speaker 1: we'll see whether he's able to get some traction. I
Speaker 1: do think that this is like you can't just sit
Speaker 1: by and take the attacks and not say anything, because
Speaker 1: ultimately that's just like it's emasculating, it's humiliating. So at
Speaker 1: the very least, even if you don't think your attacks
Speaker 1: are going to land, you got to stand up for yourself.
Speaker 1: You've got to have some level of pushback. You gotta
Speaker 1: have some knife fighters online who are willing to like
Speaker 1: go to the mat for you as well. And you know,
Speaker 1: the other dynamics that are unfolding are everybody else are
Speaker 1: too afraid to go after Trump, and so they're training
Speaker 1: their fire at DeSantis. So if no one is going
Speaker 1: after Trump, say for maybe Chris Christy when he gets
Speaker 1: in the race, he's sort of coming in like a
Speaker 1: you know, guided missile to go directly at Trump and
Speaker 1: try to knock him off.
Speaker 3: So maybe between the two of them.
Speaker 1: You're able to get some traction for some of these
Speaker 1: attacks and able to convince some people that they need
Speaker 1: to take another look. But I do think maybe the
Speaker 1: most revealing part of this whole segment was when on
Speaker 1: the Newsmax panel, the one dude is like launching very
Speaker 1: sort of grounded attacks on Trump and we're done with
Speaker 1: the messiness and Stormy Daniels and all of this.
Speaker 3: Let's back a winner.
Speaker 1: And she's able to very easily dismiss it by you
Speaker 1: sound like a Democrat's that's hard to overcome when you
Speaker 1: have a base that has been really trained to see
Speaker 1: any sort of attack on Trump as coming from bad faith,
Speaker 1: coming from liberals, come from the Democratic Party. I think
Speaker 1: it makes it a very difficult sort of situation for
Speaker 1: them to navigate buble.
Speaker 2: We'll see, well, we'll see. Let's go to the next
Speaker 2: one here. This is just so fascinating. It was first
Speaker 2: the thread was found by our producer Mac. But it
Speaker 2: fits neatly with a story that I've just been obsessed
Speaker 2: with recently. So let's put this up there on the screen. CW. Howell,
Speaker 2: who is a Duke PhD. And a professor, actually assigned
Speaker 2: his students a really interesting assignment. He said that he
Speaker 2: had them all generate an essay, sixty three of his
Speaker 2: students which used a prompt that he gave them for
Speaker 2: chat GPT. Their job was to then grade their essay
Speaker 2: and look for so called hallucinated information and critique its analysis. Now,
Speaker 2: what he points out hallucinated information and stuff we talked
Speaker 2: about here before, fake quotes and fake sources, real sources
Speaker 2: that are misunderstood and mischaracterized. He says that all sixty
Speaker 2: three essays, every single assignment, what he found was that
Speaker 2: the biggest takeaway is that their students learn that chat
Speaker 2: TPT was not really because all of them included some
Speaker 2: sort of hallucinated information crystal, and it shows you that
Speaker 2: chat GPT, at least in its current form and maybe
Speaker 2: for all time. Who knows how difficult this is for
Speaker 2: them to solve. Is that can easily hallucinate and create
Speaker 2: false information. As we have shown previously, it has created
Speaker 2: false sexual assault allegations against people before. People who have
Speaker 2: tried to use it for purposes. Will ask them questions
Speaker 2: that they have deep knowledge about, and then we'll get
Speaker 2: back answers that are set in a very declarative format
Speaker 2: and which are completely wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like page numbers and studies.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? This is literally not what
Speaker 2: it says. And actually thought, I think, by the way,
Speaker 2: I love this assignment because showing people how to it's
Speaker 2: like the real world example where he said the real
Speaker 2: lesson for all my students was, yeah, you can't trust
Speaker 2: your DD for stuff like this, And I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: what a useful thing to actually teach somebody in university
Speaker 2: instead of some stupid essay which they're not even going
Speaker 2: to think about ten years later. Oh, I actually can't
Speaker 2: trust everything that I hear. Wow, it's more complicated, it's
Speaker 2: more nuanced, and it actually fits exactly with the same
Speaker 2: problem of a lawyer. Let's go ahead and put this
Speaker 2: up there. Who it was a lawyer for a man
Speaker 2: suing Avianca Airlines, the Colombian airline. The lawsuit was written
Speaker 2: by a judge, or sorry, by a lawyer who actually
Speaker 2: used chat GPT, and in his brief around the lawsuit
Speaker 2: cited quote a dozen relevant decisions. All of those decisions, however,
Speaker 2: actually could not find the decisions or the quotation sided
Speaker 2: or that were summarized. In other words, they were completely
Speaker 2: invented by chat GPT, and the lawyer who actually created
Speaker 2: the brief had to come before the judge and issue
Speaker 2: an affidavit saying that he had used chat gp to
Speaker 2: do all of his legal research, which he now has
Speaker 2: to admit is quote a source that has revealed itself
Speaker 2: to be unreliable. Yank. Well. It is funny though, because
Speaker 2: there are quite a few tech bros you know, who
Speaker 2: are online being like legal profession is dead. Chat ChiPT
Speaker 2: can passion, MCAT, exam, chat gp chip, you can pass
Speaker 2: a legal a brief or what all that, And it's like, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: you know what else they had to deal with in
Speaker 2: the medical field. It's called liability. And if you let's
Speaker 2: say you're right ninety nine percent of the time. Well,
Speaker 2: if you get it wrong one percent of the time,
Speaker 2: then what has Microsoft now just opened itself up to
Speaker 2: a multi billion dollar lawsuit? And at scale one percent?
Speaker 2: Is actually a lot of people about.
Speaker 1: This lawyer who's now in the New York Times written
Speaker 1: up for like this moron just like outsourced all his
Speaker 1: works at chat GPT and didn't fact check any of it.
Speaker 1: There's a funny exchange in here because apparently he actually
Speaker 1: asked he didn't fact check it himself, like go outside
Speaker 1: of the program to look up these cases and make
Speaker 1: sure that they actually existed. But he asked chat gpt
Speaker 1: if they were real? He said, is Borghesi a real case?
Speaker 3: He typed.
Speaker 1: According to a copy of the exchange, he submitted to
Speaker 1: the judge, yes, the chat but replied, offering a citation,
Speaker 1: adding it is a real case. Then the lawyer dug deeper,
Speaker 1: what is your source? He wrote, According to a filing,
Speaker 1: I apologize for the confusion earlier. Chat GPT responded, offering
Speaker 1: a legal citation. Are the other cases you provided fake,
Speaker 1: mister Schwartz, the lawyer asked, chat GPT responded, No, the
Speaker 1: other cases I provided are real and can be found
Speaker 1: in reputable legal databases. None of that was true, and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, this is eye opening to me
Speaker 1: of how often chat GPT just makes stuff up on
Speaker 1: a whole cloth. Because we had seen some examples of people.
Speaker 1: They asked him a question of, like, you know, what
Speaker 1: is the most cited like economic paper or something like that.
Speaker 1: And what it did is it took two existing economists
Speaker 1: researchers who I think had never worked together or they
Speaker 1: certainly didn't create this paper together, created a fake paper
Speaker 1: with a fake title. But these were real economis. So
Speaker 1: if you look at it, you would think it's got
Speaker 1: sort of like the.
Speaker 3: Semblance of truth to it.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, okay, well just maybe haven't heard of
Speaker 1: that paper before.
Speaker 3: Let me go check it out.
Speaker 1: Totally fabricated, one hundred percent hallucinated. They mentioned in here
Speaker 1: the sort of theory of how and why this happens,
Speaker 1: because again, remember what this thing is, it's a so
Speaker 1: called large language models. The programmers feed it all of
Speaker 1: this text and existing case history and everything that's online
Speaker 1: and books and whatever, and then it uses predictive algorithms
Speaker 1: to come up with what its responses are going to be.
Speaker 3: So what they say.
Speaker 1: In terms of a theoretical explanation for how this happens
Speaker 1: is CHATJPT generates realistic responses by making guesses about which
Speaker 1: fragments of text should follow other sequences based on a
Speaker 1: statistical model that is ingested billions of examples of text
Speaker 1: pulled from all over the internet. In mister mattas that's
Speaker 1: this guy who is the subject of the suit case.
Speaker 1: The program appears to have discerned the labyrinthine framework of
Speaker 1: a written legal argument, but is populated with names and
Speaker 1: facts from a bullya base of existing cases. So it
Speaker 1: used this predictive statistical analysis of what it thought should
Speaker 1: go next to it kind of figured out, okay, this
Speaker 1: is what a legal brief should look like, and then
Speaker 1: it just mashed together a bunch of information that didn't
Speaker 1: wasn't actually real, wasn't actually factually based to generate this
Speaker 1: brief very similar to what these students found when you
Speaker 1: know their professor assigned them this task. Very similar output here,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was interesting what one of the
Speaker 1: students said Sager in terms of her concerns, she wrote,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about AI getting to where we are now.
Speaker 1: I'm much more worried about the possibility of us reverting
Speaker 1: to where AI is. I'm increasingly thinking that's a real
Speaker 1: danger where people do outsource a lot of their original
Speaker 1: thinking to chat, GPT or other large language models, and
Speaker 1: rather than you know, it making us better, it actually
Speaker 1: in a sense sort of dumbs us down and you know,
Speaker 1: waters down our thinking in a sense. You already see
Speaker 1: this in a lot of the culture. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's related to technology or what it's related to,
Speaker 1: but how many of our movies are recycled, how much
Speaker 1: of our music is just like taking beats from like
Speaker 1: when I was in high school that were popular and
Speaker 1: dumping it into a new song and putting some.
Speaker 3: New words to it.
Speaker 1: I already feel like there is such a degrading of
Speaker 1: creativity and lessening of creativity, and I think part of
Speaker 1: that is like the capitalist system, but I could see
Speaker 1: AI play an increasing role in all it has to
Speaker 1: draw on is like the things we've done in the past.
Speaker 1: It's not capable of creating something new. So for increasingly
Speaker 1: relying on this chat, GPT and other large language models
Speaker 1: that are just drawing and regurgitating and recycling and mashing
Speaker 1: together things that are from our past. Does that stultify
Speaker 1: our creativity even more than.
Speaker 3: Where we're already at.
Speaker 2: I agree one hundred percent. There's an elegance to the
Speaker 2: human One of my favorite scenes in movies from The
Speaker 2: Wolf of Wall Street where Leo DiCaprio is surrounded by
Speaker 2: his friends and John Bernhal is one of the actors
Speaker 2: and he's like, sell me this pen, and he hands
Speaker 2: it to one of his friends and the guy starts
Speaker 2: going like, oh, well, this pen is beautiful. He's like,
Speaker 2: now that's not going to work. And he has one
Speaker 2: of the other guy who is his favorite salesman, and
Speaker 2: Burnhal and he's like, sell me this pen. He's like, hey,
Speaker 2: can you write something down for me? He's like, no,
Speaker 2: I can't. He said, yeah, exactly, that's why you need
Speaker 2: this pen. And it's there's such an elegance to that.
Speaker 2: And I just actually tried it with chat GPT because
Speaker 2: it reminded me of this. I've seen this experiment before
Speaker 2: and it falls for that lowest common denominator of are
Speaker 2: you tired of ordinary pens? They're feeling lackluster, you know,
Speaker 2: like trying to describe, but it doesn't create the demand.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have that like understanding of the human dynamic
Speaker 2: of what's actually going on here. And I feel like
Speaker 2: all chat GPT is done is increase the lowest common denominator,
Speaker 2: so like it's better now for the lowest of low
Speaker 2: effort work. I think, Okay, I mean that's not a
Speaker 2: bad thing whenever it comes to white collar but people
Speaker 2: really underestimate, you know, how much little minute decision makings
Speaker 2: and creativity and things that require human beings to do.
Speaker 2: Can you automate all that? Maybe? But I always think
Speaker 2: about Noam Chomski's op ED where he taught and yeah,
Speaker 2: NOME right now, very complicated feelings on Noome after the
Speaker 2: whole Epstein thing, but this area of expertise on linguistics,
Speaker 2: what he wrote is that what lllms failed to understand
Speaker 2: is it's just literally not how the human human mind
Speaker 2: or language evolved. It's not about amalgamating a bunch of
Speaker 2: stuff and then spitting it out. You can never capture
Speaker 2: how language actually came to be in the way that
Speaker 2: communication really works, which I thought was a really cool
Speaker 2: way of putting it.
Speaker 1: But I could easily see us falling into the you know, trap,
Speaker 1: the laziness trap of let me just use chat GPT
Speaker 1: to do my first draft. Yeah, oh yeah, and how
Speaker 1: much of you know, I mean, we write a lot
Speaker 1: for this show. We write monologues, you know, all week
Speaker 1: every week, and so much of my thinking comes from
Speaker 1: having to actually sit with the blank paper and grapple
Speaker 1: with it. Yes, and I come up with new and
Speaker 1: size that I hadn't thought of before. As I'm in
Speaker 1: the writing process. Sometimes it starts I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is weak, Like I need to change what I'm
Speaker 1: doing here, I need a different angle or whatever. If
Speaker 1: you're outsourcing even just that first draft to this automated technology,
Speaker 1: you really are losing some of the like spark that
Speaker 1: is unique to human beings. And I could easily see
Speaker 1: us falling down that path where all we're doing is
Speaker 1: having this machine regurgitate and mash up for us things
Speaker 1: that already exist, and you know, it dulling the sort
Speaker 1: of creativity and joy and variability of the human experience
Speaker 1: within our culture. So that's what this really underscored for
Speaker 1: me is actually some of the perils not of like
Speaker 1: I do think the concerns about like what's it going
Speaker 1: to do and how smart's it going to get and
Speaker 1: what how is it going to I think those are
Speaker 1: legitimate concerns, but this underscored for me the opposite concern,
Speaker 1: which is, rather than taking over, it just makes all
Speaker 1: of it like drags us down.
Speaker 2: It makes this Dummer very good point. All right, let's
Speaker 2: go to the next one here. This is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2: We've been keeping our eye on these metatrends. Put it
Speaker 2: up there, please, about domestic offshoring or sometimes called interra shoring,
Speaker 2: sometimes called like inside shoring. Nobody really knows how exactly
Speaker 2: to look at it, but I think it's really important
Speaker 2: because this is about how cities which we have seen
Speaker 2: have domestic migration, in migration and cities that have lost
Speaker 2: places are all not only following where people want to live,
Speaker 2: but also low wage jobs out of some key cities.
Speaker 2: So when we talk about low wage jobs, we're thinking
Speaker 2: about call centers. That's one of the ones that they
Speaker 2: show here. Basically jobs that don't pay enough to cover
Speaker 2: the cost of housing in cities like New York, Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. San Francisco have now been moving at a
Speaker 2: very fast paced in the last couple of years to
Speaker 2: less expensive places like Orlando, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. And
Speaker 2: what's really crazy about this, Crystal is this data is
Speaker 2: only as recent as twenty twenty one, so we have
Speaker 2: two full years that have completely changed since this has happened.
Speaker 2: They also actually point to the fact that this increase
Speaker 2: in domestic on shorings or interest storing, as I've said,
Speaker 2: has led to a huge increase in the number of
Speaker 2: jobs that specifically not only low wage but in some
Speaker 2: cases also executive jobs in Austin, Denver, San Jose, San Diego, Dallas,
Speaker 2: Fort Worth, Saint Louis, Missouri, and then Phoenix, Arizona. And
Speaker 2: so what they point to is that within a lot
Speaker 2: of these places you are seeing a huge increase. It
Speaker 2: also kind of fits with what we've talked here about
Speaker 2: where millions of people flee New York, San Francisco, Chicago,
Speaker 2: they're all going to the Sunbelt. The sun Belt just
Speaker 2: seems to be booming in a way that I don't
Speaker 2: think a lot of people are understanding, or they're going
Speaker 2: to places where it's a lower tax environment while still
Speaker 2: in the time zone where you're able to do business
Speaker 2: for remote work. I've talked about Boise before. Phoenix is
Speaker 2: another good example. Obviously everyone knows about Austin, but that's
Speaker 2: not the only city in Houston that's growing. You've got Houston,
Speaker 2: and you've got Dallas, all of the suburban area Florida, obviously, Georgia.
Speaker 2: Atlanta right now is absolutely hot. But you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of other areas in the Sun Belt as well,
Speaker 2: which has seen a major increase. And I think this
Speaker 2: is really going to reshape the entire US economy. And
Speaker 2: are you really are politics? Because if capital starts leaving
Speaker 2: these big cities, it lessens their political importance, and it
Speaker 2: lessens the concentration that made these cities important and all
Speaker 2: that stuff in the first place. One of the biggest
Speaker 2: things that they're talking about here is how the only
Speaker 2: thing that keeps the Washington, San Francisco, New York City
Speaker 2: and all these cities still high prestige is that they
Speaker 2: are where quote unquote high end jobs are the most concentrated,
Speaker 2: so the highest earners and all the executives. DC is
Speaker 2: number one, San Francisco number two, New York City is
Speaker 2: number three. Surprise DC is up there is number one.
Speaker 2: Probably has to do with government.
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Again we are the legal capital of the world. So
Speaker 2: there you go.
Speaker 1: Well, what they talked, speak to here is a further
Speaker 1: sort of sorting and bifurcating of our economy, where you know,
Speaker 1: what really makes the place sort of healthy and vibrant
Speaker 1: is that you have an array of people, different cultures,
Speaker 1: different income levels. Crucially, and we've already had this sorting
Speaker 1: happening in some of the largest cities.
Speaker 3: I think San Francisco it's the most.
Speaker 1: Clear, where you have very highly paid tech executives and
Speaker 1: other tech knowledge workers, and then you have you know,
Speaker 1: people who are you know, really struggling, and you have
Speaker 1: this vast inequality and it leads to a true hollowing
Speaker 1: out where if you're a middle class person like you
Speaker 1: can't live in San Francisco, there's a handful of them
Speaker 1: like hanging on there by their fingertips because they just
Speaker 1: love the place so much. But what this is pointing
Speaker 1: to is that that sort of hollowing out of those
Speaker 1: middle tier jobs and them leaving, you know, the jobs
Speaker 1: themselves leading the city and the workers along with them.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's coming for a much broader array of society.
Speaker 3: They say.
Speaker 1: As workers quit expensive cities, they leave behind a smaller
Speaker 1: workforce that's heavily concentrated with executive decision makers other people.
Speaker 3: Who are highly paid.
Speaker 1: They write in this report, this growing economic and geographic
Speaker 1: divide threatens to limit opportunity for people in lower cost
Speaker 1: regions and could have social and political consequences. As America's
Speaker 1: high end labor becomes concentrated and so called superstar cities,
Speaker 1: those living elsewhere could experience less social and economic mobility.
Speaker 1: I think this says a lot about where once opportunities lie.
Speaker 1: If you're a customer service rep or working in that realm,
Speaker 1: you'll find most of your opportunities away from those coastal
Speaker 1: cities that will influence your life, who your peers are,
Speaker 1: and the opportunities your children have. So it's a sort
Speaker 1: of further stratifying of American society, which, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a really good part of this, which is workers remote work,
Speaker 1: being able to work in cities where it's affordable for them,
Speaker 1: and being able to leave these cities that have been
Speaker 1: you know, have a terrible quality of life and they're
Speaker 1: just wildly unaffordable. But the more that we sort ourselves,
Speaker 1: the more that we stratified, the more you're also vulnerable
Speaker 1: to that sort of like coming apart phenomenon that we've
Speaker 1: already seen and has now been accelerated by COVID trend.
Speaker 1: You'll have cities that are the superstar like almost.
Speaker 3: Like luxury goods for the very.
Speaker 1: Wealthiest among us, and then you'll have like the rest
Speaker 1: of the country and big divides.
Speaker 2: We talked about it before, but they're basically openly admitting
Speaker 2: that the only way to save Manhattan is to turn
Speaker 2: it even more so into a rich person's playground. They're like,
Speaker 2: we got to make sure the bars never close, we
Speaker 2: got to destroy all the commercial real estate. We just
Speaker 2: got to turn this into like a Dubai like play
Speaker 2: like Playboy haven for the richest people in the world.
Speaker 3: Which was Bloomberg's vision for the way.
Speaker 2: It actually will work.
Speaker 3: Great task.
Speaker 2: That's the gross part is it will work. It also
Speaker 2: probably will destroy any of the last like cool things
Speaker 2: still that remain about New York City, but economically probably
Speaker 2: the right thing to do. I've seen it in so
Speaker 2: many places like the South of France, for example. Any
Speaker 2: charm in the South of France has long disappeared after
Speaker 2: like all the richest people in the world decided to
Speaker 2: come in buy it all up. Their whole hit neighborhoods
Speaker 2: of London which are basically not British anymore, and they
Speaker 2: belong to the golf are of states. This is it's
Speaker 2: not a critique. It's just like being there. You might
Speaker 2: as well be in Dubai and it's all like the
Speaker 2: ritzy you know, stuff all all around you, and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: all the history from this is basically gone. Any of
Speaker 2: the original you know people, This is all just you know,
Speaker 2: basically serving money, which is just gross like whenever you
Speaker 2: see it. And yeah, I mean that's what they want
Speaker 2: New York, I guess to become. It probably is the
Speaker 2: endgame for most of these cities, but it will lead
Speaker 2: to a further coming apart phenomenon that you're pointing to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's not a good thing.
Speaker 1: No, it's not a good thing. So it's a real
Speaker 1: mix bag. I mean, I really cheer for workers to
Speaker 1: have a lot more flexibility. And the other part of
Speaker 1: this is certain jobs that are white collar jobs but
Speaker 1: are more mid tier level, they can be relocated to
Speaker 1: you know, a whole variety of other cities. People can
Speaker 1: live wherever and do those jobs. People who are you know,
Speaker 1: picking up your trash, who are serving you coffee, like
Speaker 1: those service sector jobs don't have that same luxury, and
Speaker 1: so that's how you'll end up with this. You know,
Speaker 1: cities that look like San Francisco, where it's the haves
Speaker 1: and the have nots, there's not a whole lot in between,
Speaker 1: and that's just not a healthy, healthy ecosystem for anybody whatsoever.
Speaker 1: We were pretty astonished to see some very critical commentary
Speaker 1: of President Joe Biden based on some new poll numbers
Speaker 1: over on CNN from Jake Tapper, who really did not
Speaker 1: pull any punches here. Take a listen to what he
Speaker 1: had to say about these new poll results, and we're back.
Speaker 3: With our twenty twenty four lead.
Speaker 11: Horrible news, horrible for Joe Biden and our new CNN Paul.
Speaker 11: While the president leads as Democratic competitors by a huge margin,
Speaker 11: two thirds of all of the American people surveyed, sixty
Speaker 11: six percent of the public say that a Biden victory
Speaker 11: would either be a setback or a disaster. I mean,
Speaker 11: when it comes to how voters see Joe Biden and
Speaker 11: another presidential term, I mean, those are some bad numbers.
Speaker 12: Well, I mean just your basic favorability, favorable opinion, or
Speaker 12: unfavorable Joe Biden. Look at how Americans are rating him, Jake,
Speaker 12: I mean, thirty five percent favorable. That is remarkably low.
Speaker 12: Fifty seven percent have an unfavorable rating. Well, look at
Speaker 12: this decline among independents from December thirty five percent favorable
Speaker 12: rating in December. He's now down a twenty six percent
Speaker 12: favorable with independence critical voters in the electorate.
Speaker 2: Jake. That's a big warning sign.
Speaker 11: And David, how do Biden's numbers here compare to those
Speaker 11: of the Republican front runner Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 12: Well, you hear Joe Biden say all the time, compare
Speaker 12: him to the alternative, not the Almighty, And basically they're
Speaker 12: both not looking good, Jake.
Speaker 1: They're both basically equivalent there Trump and Biden's feasibilities. And
Speaker 1: I think this is a hard thing for Democrats to
Speaker 1: reckon with because we understand the very negative emotions that
Speaker 1: a lot of people have about a majority of people
Speaker 1: have about Donald Trump and feel it would be a
Speaker 1: disaster for him to be back in the White House.
Speaker 1: How do you grapple with it that people feel a
Speaker 1: lot of the same ways and a lot of the
Speaker 1: same numbers about Joe Biden. So to hear this laid
Speaker 1: down so starkly on CNN was really something. I mean,
Speaker 1: just to go over some of those numbers again, forty
Speaker 1: one percent of Americans.
Speaker 3: Believe it would be a disaster if Biden.
Speaker 1: Won in twenty twenty four. Twenty six percent said it
Speaker 1: would be a setback. Meanwhile, very similar numbers for Trump
Speaker 1: a little bit more forty four percent say a victory
Speaker 1: for Trump would be a disaster, twelve percent, so lower
Speaker 1: numbers say it would be set back, showing the sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, with Biden, people feel a little
Speaker 1: less strongly about them in either direction. But the fact
Speaker 1: that we have these two guys that overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: Americans do not want that a plurality say this would
Speaker 1: be a disaster if they got back in there, And
Speaker 1: this is what we're likely to face in twenty twenty four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about like the decline of culture, and our
Speaker 1: chat GPT segment is this is as stark a sign
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 3: Decline of this country as I can imagine.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, And it's reflecting the poll. Put that up
Speaker 2: there on the screen where you can see. In the
Speaker 2: Democratic primary, Biden has only got sixty percent of the
Speaker 2: people who are affirmatively voting for him. RFK Junior is
Speaker 2: a twenty percent. Maryan Williamson's at eight percent, someone else
Speaker 2: also at eight percent. I mean, look, that's powerful stuff.
Speaker 2: And actually that puts Biden right around where Jimmy Carter
Speaker 2: ended up in nineteen eighty. Now I think he's probably
Speaker 2: better off because Trump also has such high negative ratings.
Speaker 2: But it really reveals to you, like in an alternative
Speaker 2: universe where the GOP is not twisted itself into notts.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's easiest lay up election really of all time.
Speaker 2: Like if they were able to pull themselves out of it,
Speaker 2: they could have, and if they had some Reaganesque type
Speaker 2: figure gal I mean, I honestly think like Glenn youngin
Speaker 2: somebody like very milk toast or anything, and get like
Speaker 2: fifty four or fifty five percent of the vote easily
Speaker 2: by just being like I'm not crazy and I don't
Speaker 2: like that guy, and neither do you. Everyone be like, okay, sure,
Speaker 2: I absolutely And that's one of those where the GOP, though,
Speaker 2: always finds a way to shoot himself, as in the
Speaker 2: foot Obama. You know, he wasn't as weak as Biden,
Speaker 2: but he was pretty weak. I think going into twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: I wish they acknowledged they were actually somewhat afraid and
Speaker 2: Romney got acted, They're like, oh we got this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They very is easy.
Speaker 1: To their credit, though they also ran a very effect
Speaker 1: absolutely brutal. Romney brutally like you know, set the stage
Speaker 1: early for the caricature.
Speaker 3: Of him that they wanted to prosecute.
Speaker 1: He stepped in it with his like infamous forty seven
Speaker 1: percent comments. But you know, I just think also one
Speaker 1: thing I have to quibble with in terms of the
Speaker 1: Jake Taper commentaries, he goes out of his way to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, he's very, very far ahead of his
Speaker 1: primary opponents, and it's like yes and no. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're the sitting incumbent president and you're only getting sixty
Speaker 1: percent of the.
Speaker 3: Vote, and those members are not all that different.
Speaker 1: From what Trump is garnering in the Republican primary, and
Speaker 1: you wouldn't go out of your way to be like,
Speaker 1: he's very far ahead and he doesn't have any you know,
Speaker 1: any challenge whatsoever in the GOP primary. So and this
Speaker 1: is with you know, the media completely shutting out both
Speaker 1: RFK and Marian and doing everything they can to try
Speaker 1: to convince the public, like always got no serious primary conteeries.
Speaker 1: Practically the nominee already like it's just you know, a
Speaker 1: matter of time and he's going to be anointed, and
Speaker 1: no one real has stepped up against him him. Clearly
Speaker 1: there is a real hunger for there to be some
Speaker 1: alternative to him. And maybe the most stark numbers that
Speaker 1: I've seen recently is that you have an actual majority,
Speaker 1: it's fifty to fifty that think that Biden will even
Speaker 1: be the Democratic nominee, which shows you the lack of
Speaker 1: confidence that even Democratic voters and certainly the electric overall
Speaker 1: has in the current precedent. So you know, it's a
Speaker 1: grim landscape. Neither of these dues, as we've talked about,
Speaker 1: to have any intention of debating, Like, you know, the
Speaker 1: political calculus for them is that they're not going to
Speaker 1: pay a price if they don't actually engage in democratic process.
Speaker 1: And it's just very sad. So it was kind of
Speaker 1: nice to see a little bit of a little bit
Speaker 1: of unvarnished truth there slipped through on CNN.
Speaker 2: Every once in a while, the trip the truth.
Speaker 3: Actually breaks in, all right, sy weally looking at it, well.
Speaker 2: It seems every month these days is dedicated to some
Speaker 2: so called marginalized community. I have no idea where it
Speaker 2: all came from, because when I was a kid, it
Speaker 2: was just Black History Month, and that seems fine. But
Speaker 2: as May comes to an end, we are suddenly seeing
Speaker 2: the last chance and goodbyes to AAPI month. API Month
Speaker 2: for the uninitiated is Asian American and Pacific Island Heritage Month. Now,
Speaker 2: as someone who is technically within that group, the term
Speaker 2: has always bothered me. What do I have in common
Speaker 2: with someone who was South Korean, And what do they
Speaker 2: have in common with somebody of Cambodian descent, and what
Speaker 2: do they have in common with literal Polynesians. It collapses
Speaker 2: on a rudimentary analysis. Yet almost everywhere you look these days,
Speaker 2: if someone was to classify me in some corporate America structure,
Speaker 2: it's where I would fall. I always was just annoyed
Speaker 2: by it by it, but didn't actually think much until
Speaker 2: my friend Richard Hanania put out a very informative thread
Speaker 2: that tells us a lot about modern racial politics. Per
Speaker 2: Richard's telling, the origin of the term Asian American Pacific
Speaker 2: Islander actually has its roots in the US government. After
Speaker 2: the Office of Management and Budget put out Directory of
Speaker 2: Number fifteen in May nineteen seventy seven and created modern
Speaker 2: racial and ethnic categories for census purposes. These include American,
Speaker 2: Indian or Alaskan, Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic,
Speaker 2: and white. Now, leaving aside how nebulous Hispanic also is
Speaker 2: as a term, consider that the only reason they did
Speaker 2: five is because that was the minimum and they didn't
Speaker 2: want to do more. From there, things actually got even
Speaker 2: more interesting, per his telling, after the creation of the
Speaker 2: Asian American term, it came time to include Asians in
Speaker 2: the Small Business Act so that they could give grants
Speaker 2: to minority contractors. Since we had a new minority, they
Speaker 2: had to be included because the previous law only covered Blacks,
Speaker 2: Hispanics and Native Americans. Here, Congress took a stab at
Speaker 2: deciding which Asians count as disadvantage. They landed on Cambodians, Chinese, Guam, Japan, Korea, Laos,
Speaker 2: the Northern Mariana Islands, Philippines, Samoa, Taiwan, and Vietnam. That
Speaker 2: was it for Then there's a lot going on, so
Speaker 2: not much in common with each other, of course, and
Speaker 2: already stupid, but actually gets much stupid stupider. From that
Speaker 2: point forward, other Asian races so called I guess got
Speaker 2: upset because they were not included, so they slowly included
Speaker 2: the places like of India, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, Bhutan,
Speaker 2: and at that point basically anyone even peripherially connected to
Speaker 2: the Asian land mass or the Pacific Ocean scrambled to
Speaker 2: get in because if they didn't, they couldn't take advantage
Speaker 2: of the tax benefits. Here, though, is where things get
Speaker 2: even funnier. By the nineteen nineties, Pacific Islanders inclusion with
Speaker 2: the AAPIs began to cause problems because for the Pacific Islanders,
Speaker 2: with the rise of affirmative action, racial regimes and college admissions,
Speaker 2: they were competing against Asians when getting into college. This
Speaker 2: presented a problem. The federal government then created a new
Speaker 2: category called Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders just to make
Speaker 2: sure that they could get into college easier. So, as
Speaker 2: Richard so absolutely puts it, quote in contracting, AAPI are
Speaker 2: united in being disadvantaged and in getting benefits from the
Speaker 2: government in college admissions, they are separated so that the
Speaker 2: few pis in the country don't have to compete with
Speaker 2: Korean and Chinese students. It's just all so absurd and
Speaker 2: too much to make up. But it has real as
Speaker 2: you can see from the chart that he put together.
Speaker 2: The term did not exist in the United States until
Speaker 2: the government created it out of sheer laziness and nepotism.
Speaker 2: Now it is some full blown fake cultural phenomenon. Reading
Speaker 2: Biding's executive order declaring AAPI month, you can't help but laugh,
Speaker 2: he says. Quote. This year, I was proud to launch
Speaker 2: the first ever national strategy to advance equity, justice, and
Speaker 2: opportunity for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities.
Speaker 2: The new national strategy, ironically, is actually supposed to promote diversity,
Speaker 2: equity inclusion by actually collecting accurate census data on each
Speaker 2: individual subgroup. In other words, by getting more accurate data,
Speaker 2: they are admitting that the entire thing is not representative
Speaker 2: of any group of people and that the current data
Speaker 2: and term is useless. AAPI, to me, best signifies the
Speaker 2: diversity Olympics that people who aren't white in America are
Speaker 2: subject subject it to despite none of us ever asking
Speaker 2: for it. My own personal annoyance outside of being lumped
Speaker 2: in with Asian American is when people call us South
Speaker 2: Asians as if Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshi's all have so
Speaker 2: much in common with each other. If they did, then
Speaker 2: they would be their own country. Why not just refer
Speaker 2: to people as Americans first, then if you reference prior
Speaker 2: toscent you can use nationality if that's what that person prefers.
Speaker 2: Consider the absurdity that Koreans, Japanese and Chinese are all
Speaker 2: supposed to be lumped together. It's almost as if bureaucrats
Speaker 2: who came up with the term, or the people who
Speaker 2: think about lumping them together as respectful don't know that
Speaker 2: in actual Asia, these countries individually have very complex relationships,
Speaker 2: in some cases despise each other or have centuries of
Speaker 2: intra warfare and conquests. By the way, as our previous
Speaker 2: discussion on Hispanics revealed, that term too collapses under the
Speaker 2: most basic of scrutiny alongside Latino. And finally, let me
Speaker 2: take this opportunity to speak to my fellow AAPIs the
Speaker 2: biggest conival by the diversity equity inclusion folks is to
Speaker 2: try to get us to go along with their nonsense
Speaker 2: while they simultaneously have architected an entire affirmative action regime
Speaker 2: designed to preference their admission to the cultural and financial
Speaker 2: elite at our expense. When they are forced to compete
Speaker 2: on merit, they fail miserably, so they are literally fighting
Speaker 2: tooth and nail to make sure it is harder for
Speaker 2: us to get in and easier for them. They are
Speaker 2: also targeting the professions that Asians in America have traditionally
Speaker 2: excelled at, like doctors and lawyers, to reduce merit based
Speaker 2: criteria and allow other groups an easier shot. Asians are
Speaker 2: minorities when they are convenient, and oppressors when they are not.
Speaker 2: An easier way is to just simply consider people as
Speaker 2: individuals with their own story. After all, the reason that
Speaker 2: most Asians came to the United States was opportunity and
Speaker 2: to be freed of the suffocating social constructions of traditional
Speaker 2: Asian cultures in America. You can be anything. We should
Speaker 2: keep it that way. Now. I hope you all have
Speaker 2: a good AAPI month. It's crazy that it was created.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today. At breakingpoints, Dot com.
Speaker 3: You take a look at Well, guys.
Speaker 1: As you all certainly know, Ron DeSantis struggled last week
Speaker 1: to launch his presidential campaign alongside billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk
Speaker 1: on Musk's personal social media platform that would be Twitter.
Speaker 1: Didn't go all that well. The attempted launch was beset
Speaker 1: by some catastrophic technical failures that has lasted nearly half
Speaker 1: an hour. Once functioning, half the audience was gone, the
Speaker 1: audio was still horrendous, the content so stilted and fawning
Speaker 1: that Megan Kelly, who agrees with DeSantis on a lot
Speaker 1: of his cultural takes, declared it provda esque in its obsequiousness.
Speaker 1: Of course, this all made for unintentionally amazing schadenfreud to content,
Speaker 1: but the deeper applications of the incestuous relationships between politicians
Speaker 1: and their chosen billionaires those are anything but amusing. Literally,
Speaker 1: the day after DeSantis launched with Elon Musk, he signed
Speaker 1: into law a gigantic giveaway to one of Musk's companies
Speaker 1: that would be SpaceX. This new bill that DeSantis just
Speaker 1: signed in law protects SpaceX and other commercial space flight companies.
Speaker 3: From any leadlegal liability if a.
Speaker 1: Crew member or passenger is injured or killed due to
Speaker 1: the company's negligence, except in certain extreme circumstances, so participants
Speaker 1: now mussign a waiver which reads quote warning. Under Florida law,
Speaker 1: there is no liability for an injury to or death
Speaker 1: of a participant or crew in a spaceflight activity provided
Speaker 1: by a spaceflight entity if such injury or death results
Speaker 1: from the spaceflight activity. Injuries caused by spaceflight activities may include,
Speaker 1: among others, injury to land equipment, persons, and animals, as
Speaker 1: well as the potential for you to act in a
Speaker 1: negligent manner that may contribute to your injury or death.
Speaker 1: You are assuming the risk of participating in the spaceflight activity.
Speaker 1: As long as a waiver assigned SpaceX and all the
Speaker 1: other spaceflight companies, they're in the clear. Such protection from
Speaker 1: lawsuits is even more relevant for must Space Exploration right now,
Speaker 1: given the company's most recent disaster. So about a month ago,
Speaker 1: the company launched the largest rocket ever built, got off
Speaker 1: the ground, but not before exploding the launch pad, curling
Speaker 1: giant hunks of concrete with rebarred to the ocean and
Speaker 1: dangering offshore fuel storage tanks, and after mere minutes of flight,
Speaker 1: the whole thing blew up mid air. Unfortunately, no people aboard,
Speaker 1: but plenty of people on the ground did suffer. The
Speaker 1: launch and the subsequent explosions caused particulate matter, including sand,
Speaker 1: ash and heavier materials that were kicked up by the
Speaker 1: launch to.
Speaker 3: Rain down on a large area.
Speaker 1: Residents as far away as Port Isabel, that's a community
Speaker 1: about six miles away, were inundated.
Speaker 3: With this type of material.
Speaker 1: Researchers are worried that breathing the stuff in could cause
Speaker 1: long term respiratory issues. They're still researching that. And as
Speaker 1: if that wasn't enough, the launch pad explosion also start
Speaker 1: a wildfire that spread across three and a half acres
Speaker 1: of state park land. Now, according to environmental and cultural
Speaker 1: heritage nonprofits, which are now suing the government over all
Speaker 1: of this, all of these impacts were predictable and should
Speaker 1: have been revealed by an environmental impact assessment. They say
Speaker 1: the FAA violated the National Environment Policy Act by green
Speaker 1: lighting the launch of the heaviest rocket in history without
Speaker 1: engaging in this legally mandated thorough review. SpaceX, it turns out,
Speaker 1: successfully persuaded the FAA to use a less stringent process,
Speaker 1: which allowed them to piggyback off of approvals for their
Speaker 1: much smaller Falcon nine rockets. That's according to substacker Esghound,
Speaker 1: this process led SpaceX and the government to wildly underestimate
Speaker 1: the impact and potential destruction of this launch on nearly
Speaker 1: every level. Such of the swantastic results when government and
Speaker 1: industry are way too cozy, a disgusting American tradition, which
Speaker 1: apparently Governor DeSantis happily continues in Florida today. So Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: of course, he stakes a good bit of his political
Speaker 1: career on a fight with corporate giant Disney. He frames
Speaker 1: this battle in almost leftist terms as a noble stand
Speaker 1: against corporate power, and on that level, he actually has
Speaker 1: a point. Disney has for decades in Florida, received huge
Speaker 1: tax breaks been able to run its own government. But
Speaker 1: the launch with Musk and goodies to Musk revealed that
Speaker 1: DeSantis clearly doesn't have a problem with unaccountable corporate power
Speaker 1: so long as it's his ben factors and partisan allies
Speaker 1: who ultimately benefit. Now, DeSantis taking on Disney has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with principle and everything to do with political ambition.
Speaker 1: In fact, more than anything, the DeSantis Twitter campaign launch
Speaker 1: revealed just how little the governor actually cares about his
Speaker 1: supposed principles. He might stand up to Disney, but he's
Speaker 1: putty in Elon Musk's hands. He might decry social media
Speaker 1: censorship of conservatives on free speech grounds, but he will
Speaker 1: enthusiastically team up with a guy who just brazenly censored
Speaker 1: journalists in Turkey on behalf of a right wing government.
Speaker 1: DeSantis and other Republican partisans feigned deep concern about government
Speaker 1: power teamed up with social media oligarchs, but somehow see
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with the current governor and top presential contender
Speaker 1: receiving overt support from their own social media oligarch. They
Speaker 1: are rightly outraged by censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop
Speaker 1: story under Jack, but apparently have zero interest in how
Speaker 1: the platform could be manipulated under Elon to benefit his
Speaker 1: chosen favored candidate. It is telling that Desant has felt
Speaker 1: no shame signing Elon Musk giveaway bill one day after
Speaker 1: his Elon Musk sponsored launch. He doesn't expect the media
Speaker 1: to particularly notice, and he doesn't expect the Republican base
Speaker 1: to particularly care when all the world is a culture
Speaker 1: war principles really don't matter, only who is on what side.
Speaker 1: And with Desanta's gamely accepting utter humiliation on Twitter and
Speaker 1: promptly handing over a giant gift to SpaceX Elon, will
Speaker 1: have no doubt that DeSantis is firmly on his side,
Speaker 1: and that is he's having his.
Speaker 3: Way with Florida.
Speaker 1: He would have his way with the whole nation or
Speaker 1: DeSantis to ascend to the White House.
Speaker 3: And I think what really got me, Sager is the reason.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Thank
Speaker 2: you guys so much for watching, and thank you to
Speaker 2: all the premium subscribers supporting us helping us build out.
Speaker 2: So it'll be sad to say goodbye to the desk,
Speaker 2: but we're ready to move on. I think I think
Speaker 2: we're ready to move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we see if we have an emotional reaction to
Speaker 1: the removal of the brick wall.
Speaker 2: New stuff is so cool, it makes it, it makes
Speaker 2: it easier. I think say goodbye.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: We've got a lot of great stuff in the work
Speaker 2: for everybody, and we will see you all tomorrow.