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 1: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 1: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 1: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 1: it means the absolute world to have your support. What
Speaker 1: are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have pristal? Indeed,
Speaker 1: we do lots of interesting things this morning, including some
Speaker 1: big old news about the lab leak theory, once dismissed
Speaker 1: and deride it as conspiracy, racist, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now we have a US government report suggesting that is
Speaker 1: the most likely cause of the coronavirus pandemic. Who have
Speaker 1: known it? Oh nagar, Yeah, never absolute shock, all right,
Speaker 1: So we'll get to all of that. We also have
Speaker 1: new developments out of Ohio researchers saying that the toxins
Speaker 1: in the air are worse than what the government is saying.
Speaker 1: We also have a new report that tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of animals died within this five mile radius, also much
Speaker 1: much worse than initial estimates. Will break that down for you.
Speaker 1: We also have some twenty twenty four news shots fired
Speaker 1: at Ronda Santis over Ukraine, which is increasingly becoming a
Speaker 1: critical divide in the Republican primary, so that is really interesting.
Speaker 1: New numbers on inflation not good. Not good in terms
Speaker 1: of inflation, not good in terms of what the Federal
Speaker 1: Reserve might do about it. And we also have a
Speaker 1: very controversial monologue over on SNL that will break down
Speaker 1: for you. Excited to have Kevin Russ on the show today.
Speaker 1: He's the one I talked about this in a monologue
Speaker 1: that I did last week, Saga while you were out.
Speaker 1: He had this long conversation with the new big chat
Speaker 1: bot Sydney. She will I should read it whatever revealed
Speaker 1: to Heaven that this thing called itself Sydney internally and
Speaker 1: then also can profess its undying love to this journalist.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we'll talk to him, he's a tech reporter
Speaker 1: for The Times, about what that interaction was like and
Speaker 1: what he thinks the future of this AI ultimately is.
Speaker 1: But we wanted to start with this big breaking news
Speaker 1: regarding LAB leak. Yeah, and in news that should absolutely
Speaker 1: shock anyone except over at MSNBC. Let's put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen. The LAB leak most likely origin
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen pandemic. The Energy Department now says. Now,
Speaker 1: why should we care what the Energy Department says? Well,
Speaker 1: what we found out from this piece, and actually some
Speaker 1: of us who've been tracking this for quite some time,
Speaker 1: is that the Energy Department is actually legally entrusted with
Speaker 1: overseeing safety procedures at a myriad of different labs across
Speaker 1: the United States. So their estimate of intelligence and how
Speaker 1: they would interpret it with respect to LAB leak was
Speaker 1: actually quite important. And now they claim, apparently with quote
Speaker 1: low confidence and an updated document that was delivered to
Speaker 1: the Director of National Intelligence Avril sorry blanking on her name, right,
Speaker 1: AVERL Haynes. There we go, AVERL. Haynes, that they have
Speaker 1: estimated that it is now the most likely origin of
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen pandemic. This is amid some consternation within
Speaker 1: the intelligence community. So let's put this up there on
Speaker 1: the screen. From what we know right now, four intelligence agencies,
Speaker 1: Remember there are seventeen think that COVID spread naturally low.
Speaker 1: The Department of Energy thinks that Lablik was the originator
Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic quote with low confidence. The
Speaker 1: most interesting one to me, actually, and this kind they
Speaker 1: kind of bury the lead here, is that the FBI
Speaker 1: thinks that the lab leak was the most likely origin
Speaker 1: with quote moderate confidence. Now the canard that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are using to try to dismiss this as
Speaker 1: to why exactly they were wrong in the first place,
Speaker 1: crystal is that quote none think it was part of
Speaker 1: a Chinese bioweapons program. Well, we should remember like that
Speaker 1: was never the original claim, except for one person, Tom Cotton,
Speaker 1: saying it I believe, in early of February twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: But since then, the lab leak theory hypothesis has always
Speaker 1: been that sketchy research was being conducted at the Wuhan Lab.
Speaker 1: This research and it's sketchy safety practices were well acknowledged
Speaker 1: by the US State Department and cables that we have
Speaker 1: since been opened since twenty eighteen, it was well known
Speaker 1: that they were not following proper safety protocols. Then, the
Speaker 1: incredible amount of evidence that we have that November twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen onwards, clearly something terrible had happened. The original database
Speaker 1: of the samples was taken off of the Wuhan website
Speaker 1: in September twenty nineteen. Has yet to been found as
Speaker 1: to why. They give no explanation as to why we
Speaker 1: know about the what is the world games that were
Speaker 1: the World military games that were happening there. I've done.
Speaker 1: You know, people can go back and watch up two
Speaker 1: years ago. Now at this point, all the open source
Speaker 1: the searches that we found spike for coronavirus symptoms. The
Speaker 1: fact was also that you know, the original wet market
Speaker 1: theory and natural origin, well, the wet market happens to
Speaker 1: be place where people shop who work at the lab,
Speaker 1: so you know, the original people who left the lab
Speaker 1: went out there and of course spread it to the
Speaker 1: population at least, you know, according to this theory. And
Speaker 1: then we also know that there were people who at
Speaker 1: least one or two up to three. This was back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one that this report came out that
Speaker 1: one of those people was known to have contracted it
Speaker 1: in November of twenty nineteen, so all the open source
Speaker 1: evidence in the world pointed to the Lablaque hypothesis, and
Speaker 1: this has just been a dragging of the feat by
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. To June of twenty twenty one, President
Speaker 1: Biden said they directed the intelligence community to give him
Speaker 1: updated documents. You know, and of course we're only finding
Speaker 1: out about this because of a leak. To be clear,
Speaker 1: this is not even really acknowledged publicly yet by the government.
Speaker 1: This is a classified assessment, a newly classified assessment. And
Speaker 1: to the extent that this has been happening at all,
Speaker 1: the reason why is not that they wanted to get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of it. It's because Republicans in Congress
Speaker 1: have made a huge stink about how they are going
Speaker 1: to subpoena all of these documents and do their own
Speaker 1: internal investigation, and the agencies themselves are getting ready to
Speaker 1: provide Congress those documents. So their hand was completely forced
Speaker 1: in even providing this new intelligence estimate. And look, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a shocker to anybody who's been following the
Speaker 1: evidence now for some time. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: the real meta takeaway from this is just the evidence
Speaker 1: has been pointing to this basically since day one. It
Speaker 1: was completely covered up by doctor Fauci by the EcoHealth Alliance,
Speaker 1: of which we'll talk about in a moment, and really
Speaker 1: a lot of apparatrics in the media who were afraid
Speaker 1: that you know, talking about this was racist. And of
Speaker 1: course the worst part was that people were taken off
Speaker 1: of social media, including the zero Hedge Twitter account and
Speaker 1: believe it now has over a million followers, as well
Speaker 1: as numerous others and YouTube and elsewhere who were outright
Speaker 1: censored on social media platforms, including you know, this is
Speaker 1: just speculation, but we covered quite a bit of lablak
Speaker 1: over the last two years and we saw you know,
Speaker 1: significant ticks down in sometimes in the weeks after, especially
Speaker 1: after I think we were one of the first people
Speaker 1: to interview Brett Weinstein after Joe Rogan about the entire thing.
Speaker 1: I remember that caused a hell of a lot of consternation,
Speaker 1: you know, with YouTube and our previous employer. So you
Speaker 1: can just go into thinking about what the pressures were
Speaker 1: on at the time not to cover the story. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there's the reason this is still important just
Speaker 1: to you know, back up for a second, is obviously
Speaker 1: because we don't want to have another pandemic, and it
Speaker 1: is a live question right now. Actually, the government is
Speaker 1: weighing whether or not they're going to sort of rein
Speaker 1: in this gain of function research and if they're going
Speaker 1: to institute new safety protocols going forward. There were recommendations
Speaker 1: to do exactly that, but that is still a very
Speaker 1: live issue. It's still a live issue because friking Eco
Speaker 1: Health Aliance is still getting grants and funding to do
Speaker 1: similar research. So it's a live issue because of that.
Speaker 1: But it also was really important because it shows what
Speaker 1: happens when you have this combination of weird toxic partisanship.
Speaker 1: Right there was you know, Trump found there calling it
Speaker 1: kung flu and whatever, and there was all this concern
Speaker 1: about anti Asian American hate and so so when Fauci
Speaker 1: and other leading scientists basically came down in lockstep and said, no,
Speaker 1: this is conspiracy, the lab liak is conspiracy. All signs
Speaker 1: point to a natural origin. Well, their media Lackey's just
Speaker 1: jumped right in line and followed suit, as did you
Speaker 1: know the sensors are very very social media platforms. I
Speaker 1: think it's really important to remember at the very beginning
Speaker 1: how this cover up started. There was a conference call
Speaker 1: with Fauci and a whole bunch of others where they
Speaker 1: were kind of going back and forth, all right, how
Speaker 1: do we think this started, And there was one scientist
Speaker 1: in particular we said, look, guys, the sequence here is
Speaker 1: almost ident like you can see how they just inserted
Speaker 1: this fear and cleavage site and it looks just like
Speaker 1: previous research that's been done here. So from the beginning
Speaker 1: on this call with Fauci, there was an understanding that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty likely that this was lableink. Now, not that
Speaker 1: they were saying it was one hundred percent, but it
Speaker 1: was like maybe seventy thirty, maybe sixty forty. And that's
Speaker 1: the conversation that happens privately. Day after is when Peter Dazak,
Speaker 1: covering his ass, Shepherd's all of these other scientists into
Speaker 1: putting out this letter saying no, it is a natural origin.
Speaker 1: That's what it is pointing to. And then after that
Speaker 1: Fauci's able to go out in public and point to
Speaker 1: that letter and say, this is what scientists are saying.
Speaker 1: They're saying it's natural origin. It's basically conspiracy to suggest
Speaker 1: that it's lab leak, and you're racist, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. This is what major media organizations. The New
Speaker 1: York Times I think probably was the worst in all
Speaker 1: of this, and any little bit of evidence that they
Speaker 1: got that it was natural origin and not lab leak,
Speaker 1: they would alert people, They would do full, big front
Speaker 1: page coverage. They were all in on this. So that's
Speaker 1: why this is such an important story still because you
Speaker 1: can see the way that you know, reporters who hated
Speaker 1: Trump for all kinds of you know, legitimate reasons, the
Speaker 1: fact that he was suggesting it was lab leak, the
Speaker 1: fact that Republicans were suggesting it was lab leak. And
Speaker 1: then you had the scientific establishment, in order to protect
Speaker 1: their grant money, their funding, and cover up any potential
Speaker 1: involvement that they had in this type of research, they
Speaker 1: come down on the other side. And that's how you
Speaker 1: end up with us years later, finally getting any glimpse
Speaker 1: of the reality of the facts and the evidence around
Speaker 1: what actually happened. If anyone wants to track what we're saying,
Speaker 1: I've been covering now for literally I think three years
Speaker 1: now at this point, and what have we learned? Well, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we talk about the initial cover up that you just
Speaker 1: did with the scientific community. Then we talk about doctor
Speaker 1: Fauci using this cover up of the scientific community. Something
Speaker 1: that we alleged for a long time is that doctor
Speaker 1: Fauci illegally circumvented US government regulations to fund gain of
Speaker 1: function research at the Wuhan lab. This was considered a
Speaker 1: conspiracy up until a year ago, and then lo and
Speaker 1: behold just a few months ago put it up there
Speaker 1: on the screen. January of twenty twenty three, the NIH itself,
Speaker 1: a new report finds did not follow its own safety
Speaker 1: protocols in properly tracking the EcoHealth Alliance while it was
Speaker 1: studying back coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of VIROLOGYI
Speaker 1: vindicate exactly what we talked about, which is that gain
Speaker 1: of function research under the Obama administration was considered so
Speaker 1: dangerous and risky for the potential of a lab leak
Speaker 1: or some sort of other similar type event that the
Speaker 1: US government was going to stop funding it. Then doctor
Speaker 1: Fauci reverses these guidelines in twenty seventeen, green lights eight
Speaker 1: million dollars in grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, which continues
Speaker 1: this virus study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology up
Speaker 1: until September of twenty nineteen when all the things go
Speaker 1: black and why does it matter us for right now?
Speaker 1: Put this up there October of twenty twenty two. You
Speaker 1: can see, actually that's my screenshot of the exact abstract,
Speaker 1: which is we are providing Fauci on his way out
Speaker 1: of the National Institute of Health Greenlit an additional grant
Speaker 1: to the Eco Health Alliance continuing to study bat viruses.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure why more bat coronavirus research. A
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand dollars grant to EcoHealth Alliance, the same
Speaker 1: organization that funded the Wuhan lab. Now also with doctor
Speaker 1: Peter Dazak why it matters? And I know much of
Speaker 1: this can sound as complicated as Watergate or to Iraq WMD,
Speaker 1: but they are important because Peter Dazac was also a
Speaker 1: part of the initial investigatory group from the World Health
Speaker 1: Organization that initially determined that there was no lab leak
Speaker 1: and said it was a natural origin and has the
Speaker 1: famous interview on sixty Minutes where they said, well are
Speaker 1: you just taking the Chinese word for it? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: what else can we do? I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, baby, look at your own records. He has
Speaker 1: a vested monetary interest, and then even bigger step, let's
Speaker 1: make sure that this never happens again. Well, what are
Speaker 1: we doing. Something Josh Rogan has pointed to is that
Speaker 1: the response from the scientific community, specifically headed by Fouci,
Speaker 1: the US government has the Global Virum Project actually increase
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in gain of function research under the
Speaker 1: guise of let's never let that next pandemic happen again.
Speaker 1: Let's try and bioengineer these viruses so that we can
Speaker 1: create antidotes, cures, vaccines, or whatever in the future. When
Speaker 1: it's seems now at this point, I mean, look, if
Speaker 1: you are still pumping the natural origin theory, there is
Speaker 1: almost no evidence to support that, Like you have been
Speaker 1: unable to find how some bat miraculously few flew a
Speaker 1: thousand miles and hit it up in the Wuhan lab.
Speaker 1: Even the Chinese don't even really stick by the uh yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't stick by the wet market theory. They're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: something was contaminated along the way, and just stop asking
Speaker 1: questions about this. All of these intel communities that still
Speaker 1: assess all this or based on older, older intel you
Speaker 1: have also the former CDC director under Donald Trump. Remember
Speaker 1: he came out and said, I think it came from
Speaker 1: the Wuhan lab. He was also dismissed then at the
Speaker 1: point and he was shut done of those original coat
Speaker 1: meetings when there was open conversation about how this was
Speaker 1: likely a lab leak and the efforts to make sure
Speaker 1: that they shepherded everybody out of that direction and towards
Speaker 1: the natural origin direction. I mean, it really is. It
Speaker 1: really is quite remarkable. And listen, even if you're still like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it could be either one, Okay, fair enough,
Speaker 1: is it plausible that this escape from a lab? That's
Speaker 1: really all you need to know to know that this
Speaker 1: research is extremely dangerous and we need to be asking
Speaker 1: really hard questions about whether this should continue, what sort
Speaker 1: of safety procedures should be in place, and by the way,
Speaker 1: like we know what the risk was, what have we
Speaker 1: gotten out of it. I was listening to an old
Speaker 1: episode of Ryan's podcast Intercepted, and they were talking is
Speaker 1: that what it's called intercestuar deconstructed? There you go, and
Speaker 1: they were talking about like, okay, let's say it was
Speaker 1: the wet market. You have this Institute of Virology right there,
Speaker 1: across the street. If it came from the wet market,
Speaker 1: you weren't able to stop that. Like, this is supposed
Speaker 1: to be your whole thing, right, so even if you're
Speaker 1: buying a natural origin thing, like, what are we getting
Speaker 1: for this research? Is it? It's supposed to be preventing pandemics?
Speaker 1: Well it failed. It failed. At the best you can
Speaker 1: say is it failed, and most likely it actually started
Speaker 1: the pandemic. So that seems to be pretty strong evidence
Speaker 1: that we need to dramatically ch change what we are
Speaker 1: doing in terms of gain a function research. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: would think. And let's just not forget Fauci is probably
Speaker 1: the number one person implicated in all of this. He's
Speaker 1: going out as a hero, but you know, maybe history
Speaker 1: won't be nearly as kind. Let's just not forget how
Speaker 1: he tried to play this down at the time. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen. Everything about the step wise evolution over
Speaker 1: time strongly indicates that this virus evolved in nature and
Speaker 1: then jump species. Fauci added he does not believe another
Speaker 1: theory that the virus occurred naturally but was accidentally released
Speaker 1: into the public from a lab in China, telling that
Speaker 1: GEO that means it was in the wild to begin with.
Speaker 1: That's why I don't get what they're talking about. Don't
Speaker 1: get what they're talking about. He had all the information
Speaker 1: he knew. Let's remember January of twenty twenty, he received
Speaker 1: an email saying that the virus is quote not consistent
Speaker 1: with evolutionary theory. That's what's come out of the Fauci
Speaker 1: files ever since then. And look, he remains, he remains complicit.
Speaker 1: He remains to say, like, look, it's possible. I never
Speaker 1: said that it couldn't have come from the lab. Yes,
Speaker 1: you did really have the evidence right there. And look,
Speaker 1: you know, the Republicans say that they will investigate, you know,
Speaker 1: with the House Committee, will see what they're even able
Speaker 1: to get their hands on. But at this point, even
Speaker 1: the coverage of this report, Crystal, it's silence, you know,
Speaker 1: from most of the mainstream media. It was covered, and
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a surprise in the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: the nominally conservative paper. You received a write up in
Speaker 1: the New York Times where they went out of their
Speaker 1: way to say, well, many of the others still say
Speaker 1: it was natural origin, and this doesn't vindicate Trump's racist
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. And as you said, look, we know clear
Speaker 1: as day The Times, their former reporter Donald McNeil literally
Speaker 1: had came out and said that while he was over there,
Speaker 1: he didn't cover the lab league because he didn't consider
Speaker 1: it credible. And it was only months later when he
Speaker 1: realized he'd been lied to and manipulated by doctor Fauci,
Speaker 1: the scientific community and Peter Dazag. I mean, it goes
Speaker 1: so deep. It really is a rack WMD level. And
Speaker 1: let's not forget it's not just about what we do
Speaker 1: this thing. You know, a million Americans died of COVID
Speaker 1: by some estimate, cost trillions of dollars in economic damage.
Speaker 1: Like you know, the Iraq War. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: recriminations as to what happened after the invasion, but you
Speaker 1: know what led up to the invasion was also very important,
Speaker 1: just like Vietnam, just like the Spanish American War. Like
Speaker 1: you have to go back and look at these initial conspiracies,
Speaker 1: cover ups and speculations and say, hey, how exactly did
Speaker 1: this shape what ended up coming this catastrophe, so that
Speaker 1: we make sure that this doesn't happen again. I unfortunately
Speaker 1: do not think many people in the media will rescind
Speaker 1: that I have all I have yet to see is
Speaker 1: the initial pushback is, well, actually it's the conspiracy theorist
Speaker 1: fault for making it a conspiracy so that we had
Speaker 1: to dismiss it then at the time because they were
Speaker 1: liars and not credible. Maybe you're the liar. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: the one is not credible. Yeah, I mean listen, yeah,
Speaker 1: fair enough that Trump did himself no favors. But you're
Speaker 1: a journalist. Ye're not supposed to be playing favorites. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be like, well, I like this one
Speaker 1: and I don't like this one, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: go with the theory espoused by the person that I like.
Speaker 1: And that was exactly what was the reporters named Don
Speaker 1: McNeil's that was saying with you, that was exactly what
Speaker 1: he said. He fell victim to was basically like, you know,
Speaker 1: I had long relationships with these scientists and people like Fauci,
Speaker 1: and so when they were like, no, no, it's natural origin,
Speaker 1: he just bought it. Instead of actually doing the research
Speaker 1: that you were supposed to do as a journalist and
Speaker 1: being skeptical of everyone, which is supposed to be you know,
Speaker 1: a core tenant ultimately of journalism. It really is remarkable
Speaker 1: to see how all of this unfold and how it
Speaker 1: continues to unfold. I mean, the New York Times a
Speaker 1: perfect example. When they got a report that said it
Speaker 1: looks like it's natural origin, which was based on, by
Speaker 1: the way, totally incomplete information. Then it was news alert,
Speaker 1: front page, did the big, you know, deep dive, and
Speaker 1: made sure that they got it down to all their readers.
Speaker 1: Now that you have an alternative view, they'll put a
Speaker 1: little tiny blurb in there, but it's not getting nearly
Speaker 1: the same treatment that this, And they portrayed that also
Speaker 1: as much more conclusive and definitive than they're portraying this
Speaker 1: piece of evidence. So you can see their game. It's
Speaker 1: very clear. There you go. All right, speaking of media
Speaker 1: cover ups, government, etc. We've got, you know, continuing developments
Speaker 1: out of Ohio that are deeply deserving. Let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. This is a
Speaker 1: write up in the Washington Post. The headline here is
Speaker 1: toxic air pollutants in East Palestine could pose long term risks,
Speaker 1: researchers say. USINGPA data, Texas A and M scientists found
Speaker 1: elevated levels of some chemicals at the derailment site but
Speaker 1: EPA officials say the levels pose no short term risks
Speaker 1: and are likely to dissipate. So basically the long and
Speaker 1: short here and i'll read you a little bit of
Speaker 1: this article is the EPA, of course, has been out
Speaker 1: saying everything's good, no worries, We're all clear. We did
Speaker 1: the testing. Of course, we found out the water testing
Speaker 1: was actually, at least most of it conductive by literally
Speaker 1: the polluter, the company, Norfolk Southern. They paid consultants to
Speaker 1: do some shoddy apparently testing that with samples, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So okay, that was the water. But on the air,
Speaker 1: they said, we're all good. Well, guess what these researchers
Speaker 1: at Texas A and M say. Not quite three weeks
Speaker 1: after the toxic train of derailment in Ohio, an independent
Speaker 1: analysis of EPA data found nine air pollutants at levels that,
Speaker 1: if they persist, could raise long term health concerns in
Speaker 1: and around East Palestine. That analysis, they say, stands in
Speaker 1: contrast to statements by state and federal regulators that air
Speaker 1: near the crash site is completely safe, despite residents complaining
Speaker 1: about rashes, breathing problems, and other health effects. Now the
Speaker 1: ep IS response, they say, that air quality levels of
Speaker 1: seventy nine different chemicals they're monitoring remain below levels of
Speaker 1: concern for short term exposure, and that current concentrations are
Speaker 1: likely to dissipate. So that is their response, but they
Speaker 1: say the data only adds to questions and concerns that
Speaker 1: of course have been weighing on residents Texas, A and
Speaker 1: M researchers found elevated levels of chemicals known to trigger
Speaker 1: I and lung irritation, headaches, and other symptoms, as well
Speaker 1: as some that are known or suspected to cause cancer,
Speaker 1: which of course is the nightmare scenario for these individuals.
Speaker 1: And they've been so gas lit, sober. You know, any
Speaker 1: number of reporters, including our you know, our friends over
Speaker 1: at status who have been on the ground where people
Speaker 1: are saying nauseous, vomiting, skin rashes, eye irritation, having trouble breathing,
Speaker 1: all of these things, and meanwhile the government no, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine, you're fine, no problem, everything's good, the air
Speaker 1: is clear, etc. This gives you some inkling that they
Speaker 1: have been, at best dramatically downplaying the impact of what
Speaker 1: is going on. What I don't really get is they
Speaker 1: always include these caveats. Experts say it's not cause for
Speaker 1: immediate concern. It highlights uncertainties. Well, look, if it's uncertainty,
Speaker 1: what's the worst case that people get cancer? What's the
Speaker 1: best case people don't? Why would you bet on the
Speaker 1: best case scenario? Yeah? Why would you operate under that?
Speaker 1: And the continuing I mean, the more that you read
Speaker 1: about it, and you're thinking about many of these people
Speaker 1: talking about elevated of toxic chemicals in the air, in
Speaker 1: the water supply and around the area. Now that we
Speaker 1: have no idea how long it will dissipate, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: it'll dissipate after some time. Well, when are we talking
Speaker 1: about years from now? We're talking about months from now?
Speaker 1: Do they need relocation in the interim? Like should they
Speaker 1: go home? Should they not go at home? And at
Speaker 1: this point we really have no reason to believe anything
Speaker 1: that they say. They downplayed you know, what was the
Speaker 1: controlled release the demolition that releases like mushroom cloud. They're like, wow,
Speaker 1: these these animals that are dead. Well, it's actually not
Speaker 1: that many of them. We know now that we know
Speaker 1: now that that is not true. We know that the
Speaker 1: initial water testing and all that is being trusted to
Speaker 1: the company, and this is a total government This is
Speaker 1: bigger than, honestly than Katrina in terms of the actual
Speaker 1: cover up. I know they got a lot of media attention,
Speaker 1: but this is like an active corporate cover up in
Speaker 1: conjunction with US government officials to mislead the media as
Speaker 1: to what is happening, and they just want to move
Speaker 1: away from it. This might be the biggest failure in
Speaker 1: their history, in modern history. Yeah, I mean with Katrina,
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of people died, and yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a photos devastation there was. Yeah, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to I don't want to make that drug comparison, but
Speaker 1: there's no doubt about it that. I mean, the cover
Speaker 1: up here is so consistent with the playbook that is
Speaker 1: run every single time. I just keep thinking about that
Speaker 1: dude raise on TikTok. It was like, I get really
Speaker 1: obsessed with these industrial accidents and it is the same
Speaker 1: exact playbook and same timeline every time the corporation wants
Speaker 1: to downplay, they want to say everything is fine, and
Speaker 1: then we find out, oh, guess what, They're funding the
Speaker 1: tests and they're using these testing consultants who have been
Speaker 1: caught in the past cooking the books and screwing with
Speaker 1: the data, so we know that happened, but those tests
Speaker 1: come out. The politicians they also mostly want to downplay
Speaker 1: what's going on. Everybody except for the literal local mayor,
Speaker 1: but the Republican governor, Pete and Biden, all of them
Speaker 1: want to downplay it. And so they'll, oh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: tests are fine, it's all good, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: So they are parroting the corporate line. And then the media,
Speaker 1: also mostly corporate media, obviously parrots the corporate line as well.
Speaker 1: So that's how you end up with this situation where
Speaker 1: people are like, I am sick, I have symptoms. There
Speaker 1: is something going on here. It's obviously not all clear,
Speaker 1: and yet they're being gas lit and told over and
Speaker 1: over again, no, no, everything is fine. And here's another
Speaker 1: example of this. Let's go and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. So Sager just alluded to this. The original
Speaker 1: estimate of the number of animals that died in this
Speaker 1: five mile area was thirty five hundred. Well, now that
Speaker 1: estimate has risen to forty three thousand, seven hundred. I'm
Speaker 1: not good at math, but that's a lot more than
Speaker 1: thirty five hundred. Now this is predominantly fish and other
Speaker 1: aquatic animals that they're looking at here. What they say
Speaker 1: is that when the Ohio Department of Natural Resources officials
Speaker 1: first responded, they were told it was too dangerous to
Speaker 1: actually get in the water and do a full analysis
Speaker 1: without having specialized gear. So they kind of worked with
Speaker 1: what they could and that's how they came up with
Speaker 1: this initial low estimate. And now that they've been able
Speaker 1: to do a fuller sample, can see that there is vastly,
Speaker 1: vastly more animal death here than initially estimated. And as
Speaker 1: I said, in now this seven point five mile area
Speaker 1: that was impacted by the trained derailment, they're saying there
Speaker 1: were forty three thousand, seven hundred animals. You know, there's
Speaker 1: another story that's unfolding here now because as the cleanup continues, well,
Speaker 1: they've got to take that toxic waste and all that,
Speaker 1: you know, bled into the soil in this area. They
Speaker 1: have to do something with that. So they were initially
Speaker 1: transporting it to sites in Michigan and sites in Texas.
Speaker 1: And now the you know, Democratic governor of Michigan and
Speaker 1: the Republican governor of Texas were like, hold the phone,
Speaker 1: what is going on here. We've got some major questions.
Speaker 1: So just this morning I read that they've changed course
Speaker 1: and now they are disposing of that waste in two
Speaker 1: sites in Ohio. One of which I happen to know
Speaker 1: because I used to live there is actually literally in
Speaker 1: the same county. It's in Colombiana County, just fifteen miles
Speaker 1: down the road. So they don't want to ship it,
Speaker 1: you know, to Michigan or Texas. They're going to keep
Speaker 1: it right here in this community and dispose of it
Speaker 1: in a site that's just fifteen miles away. I have
Speaker 1: to think that people are not too happy about that either.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, well, what is the reasoning
Speaker 1: behind putting it in the same county that it's already infected?
Speaker 1: There's a toxic so and this gets to like I
Speaker 1: talk about this sum in my monologue. This region has
Speaker 1: been so shit on for so many years. So there's
Speaker 1: a toxic waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, located by
Speaker 1: the way by a school. There was local opposition of
Speaker 1: this thing, but anyway, they put it in. So this
Speaker 1: is a region that, you know, totally devastated by the industrialization,
Speaker 1: epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose, all of that ground
Speaker 1: zero for that. So this is the place that has
Speaker 1: just been like used to be used for quite a
Speaker 1: while now, So no surprise that something like a toxic
Speaker 1: waste incinerator would be located in the same community. Geez,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I knew. It's very telling. I think
Speaker 1: that nobody else wants the waste, you know whatever, the
Speaker 1: least other states, especially one whose own researchers are like,
Speaker 1: this is full of talkxicity and may have long term
Speaker 1: health effects. We don't want our hands on any of this.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say now at this point.
Speaker 1: And you know what we're about to talk about is
Speaker 1: that these people continue to just be left behind by
Speaker 1: the federal government, almost completely ignored the extent media is
Speaker 1: even covering it a drag kicking and screaming because of
Speaker 1: intense public interests, but not a lot of scrutiny yet,
Speaker 1: at least on the company itself and on the government officials,
Speaker 1: not even close to the level of scrutiny on President
Speaker 1: Biden and on Secretary Buddha Jedge. Yeah. Well, and really importantly,
Speaker 1: there was covered a Media Matters analysis of all the
Speaker 1: cable news coverage and at that point at least only
Speaker 1: three percent of all the segments that had done on
Speaker 1: this been done on this talked about the political corruption
Speaker 1: that led up to this, and we now have indications
Speaker 1: from the NTSB report that has now come out this
Speaker 1: was completely preventable. It was preventable with one thing that
Speaker 1: would have been incredibly beneficial is the modern breaking system
Speaker 1: that David Serroto has been reporting on over at the
Speaker 1: Lever that ultimately, you know, under the Obama administration, they
Speaker 1: tried to make this braking system widespread. Industry got involved
Speaker 1: and they really trimmed the sales of what the initial
Speaker 1: safety REGs were going to be under the Obama administration
Speaker 1: than under the Trump administration, they roll that back even further.
Speaker 1: So that was ends up being really crucial and really
Speaker 1: key because there was I think a like a wheelbaring
Speaker 1: or something like that axel something like that that was
Speaker 1: catching fire that we saw on the on the video
Speaker 1: and that does end up turning out turns out to
Speaker 1: be what the key problem was here, but they actually
Speaker 1: caught it before it derailed. They tried to stop the train,
Speaker 1: but because they have freaking civil war air braking system
Speaker 1: on this train, they're unable to stop it, and that's
Speaker 1: how you end up with the derailment. So political corruption
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about that the media has largely
Speaker 1: ignored ends up being the key story here. And to
Speaker 1: talk more about the politics our president, President Biden, he
Speaker 1: was asked going and put this up on the screen
Speaker 1: about whether or not he plans to visit Ohio. He says, no,
Speaker 1: we're doing all we can. That is a lie. They
Speaker 1: are not doing all they can. I mean, that's just
Speaker 1: demonstrably false. One thing they could be doing is giving
Speaker 1: these people Medicare for life, as they did in Libby, Montana.
Speaker 1: There's a provision in Obamacare that would allow them to
Speaker 1: do exactly that. They are not talking about doing that whatsoever,
Speaker 1: even as you know, researchers are saying, hey, this could
Speaker 1: have long term effects and these are known carcinogens. So
Speaker 1: down the road ten years from now, when suddenly you've
Speaker 1: got a cancer cluster in this area and everyone's denying
Speaker 1: on it has nothing to do that. It has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with this. The very least is you could
Speaker 1: have these people make sure that they have decent healthcare
Speaker 1: and are able to get the treatment that they deserve.
Speaker 1: You also have Pete continuing to cover himself in glory.
Speaker 1: He did ultimately, much belatedly, decide to actually go to
Speaker 1: Ohio under great pressure from Republicans but also from some Democrats.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to a little bit of what
Speaker 1: he had to say in retrospect. Should you have come
Speaker 1: a little sooner? So again, in terms of the timing
Speaker 1: of the visit, I'm trying to strike the right balance,
Speaker 1: allowing NTSP to play its role, but making sure we're
Speaker 1: here in that show of support. But also Norfolk Southern
Speaker 1: and the other freight rail companies need to stop fighting
Speaker 1: us every time we try to do a regulation in
Speaker 1: order to hold them accountable. And there are other railroad
Speaker 1: companies accountable for their safety record. And what we've seen
Speaker 1: is industry goes to Washington and they get their way.
Speaker 1: They got their way on the ECP rule, they got
Speaker 1: their way on a Christmas tree of regulatory changes that
Speaker 1: the last administration made on its way out the door
Speaker 1: in December of twenty twenty. Guess what, dude, you are
Speaker 1: in charge, You can tell them no when they come
Speaker 1: to Washington. I mean the learned helplessness, the feigned helplessness
Speaker 1: of Biden and Pete not just on this issue, but
Speaker 1: on so many issue. When you see it with the
Speaker 1: airlines too, I'm going to send a letter if dude,
Speaker 1: you have power, you are running this agency. If you
Speaker 1: wanted to change and roll back those Trump regulations, if
Speaker 1: they were so bad, you all are in charge now,
Speaker 1: you could do that, but she didn't and you still aren't.
Speaker 1: You send another strongly worded leather letter to Norfolk Southern Congratulations.
Speaker 1: Way to go. You know. With Biden too, I'm just
Speaker 1: mystified as why he won't go. I think it must
Speaker 1: be because he doesn't want to validate the Trump criticism.
Speaker 1: He's like, I willing to go to Kiev. He should
Speaker 1: come back from Ukraine. He should come visit Ohio. So
Speaker 1: now he's the one who's actually playing and making this
Speaker 1: political because he doesn't want to appear weak to the
Speaker 1: fact that he was literally abroad doling out billions of
Speaker 1: dollars to Ukraine whenever somebody at home might have needed him.
Speaker 1: And he says, oh, we're doing everything that we can.
Speaker 1: With Pete too, I mean, what a horrific and massive failure.
Speaker 1: I've come around to the fact that I think Pete
Speaker 1: is just fundamentally lazy. Like when you put together his
Speaker 1: entire tenure of office, his fake paternity leave for literally months,
Speaker 1: much longer than actual working mothers get who literally suffered
Speaker 1: the trauma of giving birth. You have that Number two
Speaker 1: is the FAA nightmare, the collapse of the airline industry
Speaker 1: under his watch, eventually riding itself with no real help
Speaker 1: from the administration, the Southwest Airlines debacle, of which he
Speaker 1: did absolutely nothing, And now you have East Palestine, of
Speaker 1: which he's last the former president of the United States,
Speaker 1: who literally lives in mar Lago is able to get
Speaker 1: there before he is and it's a joke. And then
Speaker 1: at the entire time he's lashing out at the media. Also,
Speaker 1: funnily enough, Christol, he's been planting all these stories saying
Speaker 1: Buddhaget has been taking a lot of bullets for Bidenine. Really,
Speaker 1: because I'm pretty sure you're taking bullets for not doing
Speaker 1: your job and for not having the immediacy that a
Speaker 1: secretary is supposed to have in this situation. I saw
Speaker 1: hilarious reader comment which just said, do you know how
Speaker 1: bad of a secretary of transportation you have to be
Speaker 1: for people to know the secretary nobody knows during a lange.
Speaker 1: The only reason anybody knew her name at that time
Speaker 1: was because you're the wife of Ms McConnell, not because
Speaker 1: of anything to the extent that she ever made news
Speaker 1: is because she was corrupt in helping her Chinese oligarch
Speaker 1: or Taiwanes oligarch father who has ties to the CCP.
Speaker 1: Before that, I don't even remember the name of the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Transportation under President Obama. I'd have to I'm
Speaker 1: sure if you told me, and I'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right under President What was it under President Clinton?
Speaker 1: Same thing I could not tell you under under Bush.
Speaker 1: The only reason I could tell you is because Elaine
Speaker 1: Chow also served in that position. He was there well,
Speaker 1: and the irony is, I mean, this guy I'm looking
Speaker 1: up Obama's Okay, Raylea Hood there you go out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a congressman. I think we also had Anthony
Speaker 1: Fox maybe in there for a while. Yeah. Anyway, Look,
Speaker 1: Pete wanted to use this position as a launching pad
Speaker 1: for his presidential and other political ambitions, and you know,
Speaker 1: as the fates would have it, the Secretary of Transportation
Speaker 1: actually ended up being a really critical position, and he
Speaker 1: had every opportunity to rise to the challenge and to
Speaker 1: be hero right now. Instead, he is a total joke.
Speaker 1: He's a failure, he's an embarrassment, and he's even taken
Speaker 1: some fire astonishingly from people on his own side of
Speaker 1: the aisle and from a few lonely voices media in
Speaker 1: the media who have criticized him as well. So, no,
Speaker 1: it's been a complete disaster. And the way that he
Speaker 1: pretends like there's nothing he can do is so embarrassing
Speaker 1: and so insulting, it's insane. I also think the other
Speaker 1: reason why Biden's not going to go to Ohio is
Speaker 1: because Ohio's a red state now very you know, not
Speaker 1: that long ago. Ohio was not a red state. In fact,
Speaker 1: when he was running for vice president on the Obama ticket,
Speaker 1: Ohio was not a red state. But they've given up
Speaker 1: on it, and so they don't really care that much.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's really the bottom line. They're
Speaker 1: more interested in, you know, if this happened in Georgia,
Speaker 1: if it happened in Arizona and one of the up
Speaker 1: and coming places or one of the places like Michigan,
Speaker 1: that they're still holding on to maybe there would be
Speaker 1: a different response. But because it's Ohio and they've written
Speaker 1: off Ohio is unwinnable and full of quote unquote deplorables, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess we'll just send Pete three weeks
Speaker 1: later and have him flounder around and hope that everybody
Speaker 1: moves on. It didn't matter that it's a Trump course
Speaker 1: seventy towns. Of course, you know, of course it does.
Speaker 1: And this lookd Trump the way, how do you think
Speaker 1: Ohio became red? Like that's the question? How did Trump?
Speaker 1: How did Ohio? Which did he win it twice? I
Speaker 1: believe Obama wanted twice? No, so Ohio, Yeah, Obama won it?
Speaker 1: You want it the second time around? I'm pretty sure, yes,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent he did. Because that was the famous
Speaker 1: Megan Kelly Rever when she was like this real math
Speaker 1: or math you do when you're a Republican to make
Speaker 1: yourself feel better. Yet, right, so Obarack Obama wanted twice.
Speaker 1: It was a battleground state two thousand and four with Bush.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of you know, consternation about that
Speaker 1: two thousand It was also a battleground state, have been
Speaker 1: for quite a long time. And then in a single
Speaker 1: political generation, which almost never happens, the state goes full red.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Well, it's exactly because of stuff
Speaker 1: like this. I could bet you that all the people
Speaker 1: that are there, they will remember that Donald Trump came
Speaker 1: to the state of Ohio. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: that that will resonate significantly, specifically amongst the white working
Speaker 1: class populations that Trump was able to swing. So read
Speaker 1: all across the industrial Midwest, who are just like the
Speaker 1: towns of Liverpool, Ohio that you're talking about this congressional
Speaker 1: district in twenty sixteen. I'm talking about this in my monologue.
Speaker 1: So I have the stat's brush in my head. Swung
Speaker 1: thirty points to Donald Trump in twenty sixteen. It was
Speaker 1: the biggest swing in the entire country. Prior to this era,
Speaker 1: Democrats used to win this congressional district. What's Charlie Wilson
Speaker 1: Ted Strickland. Yes, that was the member of Congress for
Speaker 1: this district. Wow. So it is recent history that this
Speaker 1: has swung so hard and so fast to the right.
Speaker 1: Ask yourself why. I'll save this my rant on this
Speaker 1: for in my monologue, but you know, this incident definitely
Speaker 1: reveals exactly why these populations have moved to the right,
Speaker 1: and because, I mean, bottom line is they feel abandoned
Speaker 1: by Democrats and I can't really blame them when you
Speaker 1: look at all of this unfolding. Very true. All right,
Speaker 1: let's move on to twenty twenty four. Yes, so big announcement,
Speaker 1: big endorsement, guys, this one is a real game changer.
Speaker 1: Wait for it, Jeb Bush endorsing Ronda Santis. Take a listen.
Speaker 1: Is this Randa Santas's opportunity to run for higher office?
Speaker 1: I think it is. He's been a really effective governor,
Speaker 1: He's young. I think we're on the verge of a
Speaker 1: generational change in our politics kind of hope. So I
Speaker 1: think it's time for a more forward leaning, future oriented
Speaker 1: conversation our politics as well, which has made him, should
Speaker 1: he choose to run for the president, a serious contender
Speaker 1: in Republican politics, And who better to do it than
Speaker 1: someone who's been outside of Washington, who's governed effectively, who
Speaker 1: I think has shown that Florida could be a model
Speaker 1: for the future of our country. He'd be like, why
Speaker 1: would I want that? He'd be like, she should call
Speaker 1: him up and be like, hey, man, shut your mouth.
Speaker 1: This is actually not helpful to me at all. That said,
Speaker 1: I mean it illustrates the fundamental problem that he has,
Speaker 1: which is that the people who want him to win
Speaker 1: and to run the most are anti Trump people in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. But if he ever wants to win
Speaker 1: the Republican nomination, he would have to be a person
Speaker 1: who's able to unite the Trump side and the anti
Speaker 1: Trump side. Worse, the anti Trump side. As you can see,
Speaker 1: there has yet to coalesce around a single person. You
Speaker 1: have Nikki Haley in the race. You have a vag
Speaker 1: Ramaswami who's now in the race. We'll see how he
Speaker 1: ends up in the polls. I'm actually curious to see
Speaker 1: if he's even able to make it done. But you
Speaker 1: have Mike Pence here jockeying for the nomination. You have
Speaker 1: Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, all these other characters, Asa Hutchinson.
Speaker 1: They're considering throwing their ring in the race or their
Speaker 1: hat in the ring. You know what, especially, I think
Speaker 1: Mike Pence, given his standing, we shouldn't forget he's the
Speaker 1: only one who has a real organic constituency in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. It's evangelicals. And also, though Pence is still
Speaker 1: aligned with the old GOP, Pence has already come out
Speaker 1: and said no, I think we should cut Medicare and
Speaker 1: social Security, and Ukraine is now becoming a massive dividing
Speaker 1: line in the party. Vice President Mike Pence actually hit
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis, not Trump specifically DeSantis whenever it came to
Speaker 1: his stance on Ukraine, questioning why President Biden was in
Speaker 1: Kiev whenever he was needed here at home. Here's what
Speaker 1: Vice President Pence had to say. While some in my
Speaker 1: party have taken a somewhat different view, let me be clear,
Speaker 1: there can be no room in the leadership of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party for apologists for Putin. There can only be
Speaker 1: room for champions of freedom. And the reason we know
Speaker 1: that's a shot at Ron de Santis and not at Trump,
Speaker 1: who has actually gone further than DeSantis in terms of
Speaker 1: his Ukraine comments, is because he made sure to say
Speaker 1: that Russia didn't try to seize territory during the Trump
Speaker 1: Pence administration and praised, you know, Trump in other ways,
Speaker 1: basically was touting their record as opposed to what DeSantis
Speaker 1: has been saying on Ukraine. It's like this shows you too,
Speaker 1: where the infighting of all this is replicating the exact
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen conditions, which if Marco Rubio had dropped out
Speaker 1: of the race or John Kasik much earlier in the cycle,
Speaker 1: then you know, Ted Cruz would have had a shot.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say would have, but he might have come
Speaker 1: much closer to winning the nomination. But these people are
Speaker 1: all such narcissists that they're like, no, it's my turn.
Speaker 1: It's my turn, it's my turn. That they're splitting up
Speaker 1: the anti Trump vote, cannibalizing themselves, and not a single
Speaker 1: one has yet to criticize Donald Trump. Mike Pence cannot
Speaker 1: say anything bad about Trump. Vik Ramaswami was asked on
Speaker 1: John Hannity, he said, I consider President Trump a friend,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, maybe Nikki Haley, I'm not kicking sideways.
Speaker 1: I'm kicking for it because she's always kicking. At a
Speaker 1: certain point, you have to run against this man, because
Speaker 1: trying to cannibalize each other's anti Trump votes, of which
Speaker 1: is barely even exists as a lane for one individual, yeah,
Speaker 1: let alone five individuals. Good luck. And also you have
Speaker 1: to say this on Ukraine Desantisan Trump are clearly the
Speaker 1: ones who are on the right side of this with
Speaker 1: the Republican base. Like the number of people who are
Speaker 1: like ra Rad NAFO pro Ukraine is under fifty percent
Speaker 1: in the Republican Party. So if you're fighting for those scraps,
Speaker 1: I mean, good luck. I thought it was magnificant that
Speaker 1: Desantus adopted the same posture as Trump, because there you
Speaker 1: have what seventy five percent right now of Republican of
Speaker 1: the two Republicans that are polling at the very top
Speaker 1: in terms of support, we're both adopting the same line
Speaker 1: on Ukraine. That's it. That's an ideological victory. Yeah, clean up, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And there's new reporting that this isn't really surprising given
Speaker 1: the way that Ronda Santa's positioned himself when he was
Speaker 1: in Congress, but this is a new evolution for him.
Speaker 1: Andrew Kazinski over at CNN tracked down his previous statements
Speaker 1: on the situation in Ukraine. The headline here is Ronda
Speaker 1: Santis wanted to send weapons to Ukraine when he was
Speaker 1: a congressman. As a presidential hopeful, he questions US involvement
Speaker 1: and basically, you know, when he was in Congress, it
Speaker 1: was like the Obama era, and this was his critique
Speaker 1: of Obama was that he wasn't being hawkish enough, he
Speaker 1: wasn't doing enough to arm Ukraine, and so he said,
Speaker 1: you know a lot in that direction at that time.
Speaker 1: Here's one quote from the article. They say, once an
Speaker 1: advocate of a hardline, hawkish approach to Russia by supporting Ukraine.
Speaker 1: The Florida governor shift course this week in anticipation of
Speaker 1: a potential presidential run, questioning whether it was the us
Speaker 1: is interest to be involved in what he called things
Speaker 1: like the borderlands or over crimea. He added that Russia
Speaker 1: was not the same threat to our country, even though
Speaker 1: they're hostile, and downplayed the threats that Russia could invade
Speaker 1: NATO countries. However, at the time, he described himself as
Speaker 1: a follower of the Reagan school of foreign policy, said
Speaker 1: some things like I'm an old, ung, reconstructed, you know,
Speaker 1: Cold War kind of a guy. Basically, he said, they
Speaker 1: viewed guys like me, who are more of the Reagan
Speaker 1: school that's tough on Russia, as kind of throwbacks to
Speaker 1: the Cold War. They criticized Mitt Romney in twenty twelve. Now,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden because they're using it against Trump.
Speaker 1: They're so concerned about Russia. He also talked about he
Speaker 1: was critical of Obama refusing to provide quote, lethal aid
Speaker 1: to Ukraine that they were trying to do or reset
Speaker 1: the Democrats allowed at that. So in any case, you
Speaker 1: can see that he can read the political writing on
Speaker 1: the wall and is definitely trying to shift his position
Speaker 1: from the way he positioned himself during the Obama Are
Speaker 1: are the things that surprise everybody into Santas. Look, I
Speaker 1: remembered Desanta's as a congressman. He was remarkable in literally
Speaker 1: no way whatsoever. He was a replacement level Tea Party guy.
Speaker 1: Nobody here thought about him at all. Then he ran
Speaker 1: for governor and people were laughing at him because they
Speaker 1: didn't think he was gonna win. At the time, he
Speaker 1: was like thirty five points down. He ended up finagling
Speaker 1: a Trump endorsement. He ends up barely squeaking by into that.
Speaker 1: I don't think people remember this. It came almost near
Speaker 1: a recount with Andrew Gillop. Yeah, that's how close that
Speaker 1: race was. And then he shocked everybody. He did a
Speaker 1: couple of things before COVID, Even before all of that,
Speaker 1: he increased teacher pay, started preserving the Everglades, and we
Speaker 1: were like, huh, this is an interesting guy. He's not
Speaker 1: the Tea party person that he once was. He always
Speaker 1: wanted to be a very popular figure COVID. He found
Speaker 1: his lane Florida. The economy is booming, you have one
Speaker 1: of the largest net migrations in the entire United States.
Speaker 1: And now he's a major cultural figure. He's picked the
Speaker 1: cultural right. He's picking a lot of the battles that
Speaker 1: people online are really jazzed out about. In the base
Speaker 1: and also from a general population perspective, clearly something compelling
Speaker 1: is happening in the state of Florida. I think he's
Speaker 1: ultimately just political wins guy. He was a Tea party
Speaker 1: guy whenever he needed to be Tea party guy. Now
Speaker 1: he is this, you know, Ukraine skeptical person when he
Speaker 1: wants to be. Now, for those who are worried about that,
Speaker 1: that's not the worst thing in the world. Somebody who's
Speaker 1: willing to change their minds, who's not ideological is in
Speaker 1: many cases, as you can see here, at least in
Speaker 1: my opinion, much better of a political ally than somebody
Speaker 1: like Pence who is doctrinaire you know, an actual Reagan
Speaker 1: Republican in his mind. At the same time, if the
Speaker 1: winds blow the other way, that's clearly where he would go.
Speaker 1: I think of it as more politically significant that he
Speaker 1: did end up here on Ukraine, and that at this point,
Speaker 1: if it is Trump Org DeSantis, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say you're gonna get the same policy, but the same
Speaker 1: rhetoric and valance is now there. And clearly that ideological
Speaker 1: victory has been won on the Republican nominee side, as
Speaker 1: even though there are all these GOP congressmen and all
Speaker 1: those who are beating the war drum in Ukraine, there,
Speaker 1: at least rhetorically, it's not there. Policy wise, I still
Speaker 1: have no idea who he would pick or who would
Speaker 1: work for him. So anyway, I think it's I think
Speaker 1: it's very significant. Well, we also have to say that
Speaker 1: what we saw with Trump and oh we've seen with
Speaker 1: the offensive political candidate, this is what you say on
Speaker 1: the campaign trail may end up being very different from
Speaker 1: what you do when you're governing. And you've got the
Speaker 1: generals telling you this, and you've got the donor class
Speaker 1: telling you that, and there's a lot of pressures that
Speaker 1: come to bear on you, and you know, the voice
Speaker 1: of the people that you that originally elected you become
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller or smaller apparently. But I do think
Speaker 1: that the fundamental issue for Ron DeSantis right now, who
Speaker 1: you know, has a genuine base of support. He's not
Speaker 1: like a job, He's not you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to like diminish him like that is he definitely has
Speaker 1: really captured the imagination of some subset of the Republican
Speaker 1: primary caucus. But you know, if they're all afraid to
Speaker 1: tackle to go after Trump and there are not afraid
Speaker 1: to take shots at rond de Santis, clearly you are
Speaker 1: back in this twenty sixteen dynamic where they're all jocking
Speaker 1: to be number two. But guess what, number two doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Number one matters. And if you don't have a plan
Speaker 1: to get past Trump, he's not going to magically just
Speaker 1: disappear or disintegrate. You know. If you're waya for this
Speaker 1: guy to just like self immolate and go away dream on.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you know it's theoretically possible, but
Speaker 1: you better have a plan to actually win. Here's the
Speaker 1: latest up polling that we've got. This is from Fox News.
Speaker 1: And you know, again, the polls have been all over
Speaker 1: the map, so just keep that in mind. But right now,
Speaker 1: we've got Trump at forty three, DeSantis twenty eight, Nikki
Speaker 1: Haley with their little announcement bounce getting up to seven percent,
Speaker 1: tied now with Mike Pence at seven percent, and then
Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of you know, other contenders at
Speaker 1: two percent and one percent. So that's basically what the
Speaker 1: race looks like right now. And you know, we've we
Speaker 1: showed you last week some signs that Trump has actually
Speaker 1: gone up in the polls a bit, streightened his hand
Speaker 1: a bit over the past number of weeks. And I
Speaker 1: just continue to believe that the time when he was
Speaker 1: weakest was right after the midterms. Midterms feel like a
Speaker 1: long time ago. All of the freshness of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this was a referendum on Trump and this didn't go well,
Speaker 1: and DeSantis did really well on Florida. It's kind of
Speaker 1: fading into ancient history already. Yeah. Look, I mean, the
Speaker 1: they're all over the map at the same time, all
Speaker 1: but one, I believe, I think ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: them have Trump at the top, So that means something.
Speaker 1: What else do they show us. Mike Pence has the
Speaker 1: most static number across these as I've ever seen. He's
Speaker 1: almost always at seven to eleven percent. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: seven to eleven. So exactly, that's about you know, the
Speaker 1: hard right evangelicals, that's about what they compromise of the
Speaker 1: Republican base. Okay, that makes sense, And the rest of
Speaker 1: it is just totally up for grabs between Haley, Abbott Cheney,
Speaker 1: Chirsty Nome, Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, Glenn youngk and Chris Christy,
Speaker 1: Larry Hogan, all these people, but all of them still
Speaker 1: don't even add up to anything close to what DeSantis
Speaker 1: or Trump has to. And you know, my Pence is
Speaker 1: not wrong. The greatest threat to him is not Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: It's Ron DeSantis. Nikki Haley. The greatest threat to her
Speaker 1: is Ron DeSantis or Mike Pence. It's the anti Trump
Speaker 1: Trump skeptical vote, of which they are going to be
Speaker 1: so they're rarely going to be vicious and trying to
Speaker 1: tear each other apart. And then all that does is
Speaker 1: benefit Trump, who's sitting pretty all the way up at
Speaker 1: the top with a near majority, near outright majority in
Speaker 1: many of these polls. It's a bad situation for many
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, indeed. Okay, so let's talk about the
Speaker 1: democratic side. Now we've got a former former president, not
Speaker 1: yet anyway, current President Joe Biden getting asked about the
Speaker 1: classified document situation. You know, you have the whole Trump situation,
Speaker 1: very critical of that, and then a low and behold,
Speaker 1: he has some classified documents that residents and also at
Speaker 1: his you know, think tank as well. Take a listen
Speaker 1: to how he responded to that. When you hear about
Speaker 1: boxes in your garage or in your old office, you
Speaker 1: called the Trump discovery irresponsible? Is there something irresponsible here though? Too?
Speaker 1: You know, you're a good lawyer, but you're trying to
Speaker 1: make a comparison. What there's degrees there responsibility that are
Speaker 1: they can be significant degrees if the responsibility what the
Speaker 1: way in which the boxes were packed up from my office?
Speaker 1: Apparently not everything was gone through as meticulous as it
Speaker 1: should have. Okay, so what does that mean? So not
Speaker 1: meticulously as it should have, and there are degrees of irresponsibility.
Speaker 1: My problem with this is that he's still not taking
Speaker 1: responsibility for the fact that he's the person who it
Speaker 1: falls on. I mean, do you think Donald Trump personally
Speaker 1: packed those documents and put him in his office ordy
Speaker 1: to direct someone to It's just like what you did.
Speaker 1: You directed someone to pack them and take them. And
Speaker 1: from what we know about what was inside of his
Speaker 1: inside of his files, they were in his private office,
Speaker 1: they were intermingled with his son's funeral plans. Clearly there
Speaker 1: was no like plan that was made here. They were
Speaker 1: locked inside of his garage, as if that somehow made
Speaker 1: it better because that's where he keeps his corvette, of
Speaker 1: which we know that Hunter had access to and used
Speaker 1: to drive. And look, I don't particularly care about all
Speaker 1: these particulars. I'm just showing you that, if anything, it's
Speaker 1: just as insecure as mar Lago. The crime in substance
Speaker 1: is basically the same on its merits. Now the cover
Speaker 1: up is a little bit different. Yeah, by all measures
Speaker 1: he did, you know, flag it or whatever. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you hid this from the American people.
Speaker 1: He had six weeks before the election where he could
Speaker 1: have told everybody and they would have made a public
Speaker 1: and they didn't do it. I mean, I just think
Speaker 1: all of this is a wash at this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. That's the thing is, like, you know, they
Speaker 1: really had Trump dead rights on this one with the
Speaker 1: documents and the amount of them and the cover up,
Speaker 1: and I read like this was the most clear cut
Speaker 1: potential indictment and now it's just a wash. And politically
Speaker 1: it's just a wash as well, especially when then you
Speaker 1: had like Mike Pence that turns out as class by
Speaker 1: documentcy and American people are like, all right, but forget it,
Speaker 1: let's move on. So it is embarrassing that he's still
Speaker 1: unable to take any sort of accountability that he's trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, parse these things that I don't think are
Speaker 1: obvious to most people, that this is like a dramatically
Speaker 1: different situation than the situation with Trump done at mar
Speaker 1: A Lago. At the same time, you know, we covered
Speaker 1: last week there were some rumblings in the DC press
Speaker 1: that Biden maybe he's not going to run again because
Speaker 1: this man is like famously unable to make a decision,
Speaker 1: and so the timeline for when he's actually going to
Speaker 1: launch his re elect has gotten pushed further and further
Speaker 1: and further into the future. And so there are some
Speaker 1: people who are like, Okay, well, maybe we need to
Speaker 1: come up with a plan. B his wife Biden's wife,
Speaker 1: doctor Jill Biden. She has now come out and made
Speaker 1: it pretty clear that he is definitely going to run again.
Speaker 1: So let's take a listen. Is there any reason for
Speaker 1: any of us to think that he is not running again?
Speaker 1: We've heard him say several times that it is intention.
Speaker 1: Are you not believing this, darlinge? I mean, how many
Speaker 1: times does he have to say that till you believe it?
Speaker 1: I mean, he's done so much and darling, he's just
Speaker 1: not done. Okay? So is all that's left at this
Speaker 1: point is just to figure out a time and place
Speaker 1: for the announcement? Pretty much? So she nods her head there, yes,
Speaker 1: at the end, is all is she's asked? Is all
Speaker 1: that's left to figure out a time and dat and announcement?
Speaker 1: She nots her head. Yes, that's what we always thought,
Speaker 1: is what we thought. And at the same time stuff
Speaker 1: is floating around He is her most personally. How many
Speaker 1: times you have to say, it's like, well, why also,
Speaker 1: why aren't you running yet? It's already February, Like, it's
Speaker 1: not like this isn't the best time, and you do
Speaker 1: want to stake it out clearly that there is no lane.
Speaker 1: I mean the word is not going out enough in
Speaker 1: the right way. Because you had that political piece which
Speaker 1: we covered just yesterday, where people in official Washington are
Speaker 1: preparing themselves for the possibility he may not run. So
Speaker 1: I don't think it's nearly as much of a given
Speaker 1: as she's saying. Even though they seem to want to
Speaker 1: have their cake and eat it too, they don't want
Speaker 1: to actively run for president again or all the rigors
Speaker 1: of what a campaign is standing that up, yeah, would
Speaker 1: look like, and do all the campaign, the fundraising, and
Speaker 1: then they also want to crowd out everybody else from
Speaker 1: the race. It's like, no, you have to pick one,
Speaker 1: and it's time. I mean, look, I agree, I agree,
Speaker 1: and Vince he's going to run because they still have
Speaker 1: you know, the Democratic Party still has this issue of okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we're you know, we have a home majority of
Speaker 1: the public and even a majority of Democrats are were like,
Speaker 1: we don't want you to run. We would rather have
Speaker 1: someone else. But when they look then down at their
Speaker 1: bench of chosen successors, you know, here's Pete like melting,
Speaker 1: melting right now into the ground. In his failures as
Speaker 1: a Secretary of Transportation. Kamala Harris obviously is dramatically unpopular,
Speaker 1: and you know, even they've realized at this point that
Speaker 1: it would be a disaster to mistake to run her
Speaker 1: at the top of the ticket. So it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: I guess we're gonna go with Biden again. So that's
Speaker 1: what it looks like to me, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of the timeline slipping. But this is just the way
Speaker 1: he operates. He can't commit to things. It takes him
Speaker 1: a long time. He's a micromanager, but he's indecisive. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't surprise me that the timeline has ultimately slipped
Speaker 1: here down the road into the spring. But I still
Speaker 1: feel pretty persuaded that he is going to ultimately I
Speaker 1: think that's right. And you know, with the campaign or
Speaker 1: with the classified documents thing, like you said, it's a wash.
Speaker 1: Now you can choose your own fighter. One is corrupt,
Speaker 1: the other one doesn't follow the rules. I choose the
Speaker 1: one where they're all basically think that they're above the
Speaker 1: law apparently doesn't apply to them, which is crazy. You
Speaker 1: know that you have the vice president, you have former
Speaker 1: presidents as well, and then you have literally President Biden
Speaker 1: and Trump not following the rules. Like I've said too,
Speaker 1: you know with Biden, he wasn't even the president, he
Speaker 1: was only the vice president. And still he's, you know,
Speaker 1: just taking all this stuff. Funny story when we were
Speaker 1: in Austin, I went to go visit the LBJ Museum.
Speaker 1: The proprietor gave me a nasty look when I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have any classified documents? Series like, no, sir,
Speaker 1: would you not? It was a joke, just making a joke,
Speaker 1: all right. We don't really use sight of what is
Speaker 1: going on with the economy, which obviously is you know,
Speaker 1: probably the most important story for all of your lives.
Speaker 1: And there are some bad indicators in terms of the
Speaker 1: direction that inflation is heading in, which both has an
Speaker 1: impact on you know, you your pocketbook right now today,
Speaker 1: but also what the Federal Reserve might do down the road,
Speaker 1: which can have more of an impact on you your
Speaker 1: pocketbook and what it means to your whole life. So
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and put this up on the screen
Speaker 1: from the Financial Times. The headline here is Federal Reserve's
Speaker 1: favored inflation gauge accelerated in January. They use I guess
Speaker 1: that's the way the brit spell favored. Huh. The personal
Speaker 1: consumption Expenditure Price Index, which measure measures how much consumers
Speaker 1: are paying for goods services, increased point six percent month
Speaker 1: on month after rising point two percent in December, so
Speaker 1: that is an acceleration. The annual rate increased to five
Speaker 1: point four percent in January from upwardly revised figure of
Speaker 1: five point three percent a month earlier. The so called
Speaker 1: core PCE index, which strips out what they describe as
Speaker 1: volatile food and energy costs and is the fed's preferred
Speaker 1: inflation metric, rose point six percent in January, up from
Speaker 1: point four percent in December. So basically, the bottom line
Speaker 1: here before I bore you with all these like point
Speaker 1: whatever percent is it's getting worse according to this metric,
Speaker 1: and this is a metric that the FED really pays
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to. They say that following Friday's figures,
Speaker 1: investors priced in a thirty nine percent chance of a
Speaker 1: half point rate rise at the fed's March meeting, compared
Speaker 1: with an eighteen percent likelihood a week ago. So basically,
Speaker 1: investors are looking at these numbers and thinking that there
Speaker 1: is an elevated chance that the FED is going to
Speaker 1: go even further and go from you know, a quarter
Speaker 1: point increase to a half point increase, which would have
Speaker 1: more of a dramatic impact on the economy. Ultimately, as
Speaker 1: they know, tighten and make it more difficult to borrow,
Speaker 1: increase interest rates, make it harder to you know, when
Speaker 1: morge rates go up, all of those things that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about for a long time. So this is
Speaker 1: this is a very bad sign ultimately. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: actually I was reading. So there's a former Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: governor who Frederick Michigan, who put out a white paper
Speaker 1: which is very influential. CNBC and all those other covered it,
Speaker 1: and they say that despite the sentiments of many FED officials,
Speaker 1: they can manage the soft landing. The paper says is
Speaker 1: very unlikely. We find quote no instance in which central
Speaker 1: bank induced disflation occurred without recession. Furthermore, given the latest numbers,
Speaker 1: they say the FED will need to tighten policies significantly
Speaker 1: further to achieve its inflation objective by the end of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, which is a two percent inflation rate.
Speaker 1: So basically they're saying, if the FED is going to
Speaker 1: be the only tool here, you are going to have
Speaker 1: a recession and they will need to continue tightening all
Speaker 1: the way up until twenty twenty five to make sure
Speaker 1: this happens. And so that's why we're really in a
Speaker 1: bind here. You know, the policy the White House and
Speaker 1: the Congress has addicated all this responsibility. The Fed only
Speaker 1: has one tool, which is basically, beat the economy over
Speaker 1: the head with high rates as possible. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Have housing problems right now in terms of the mortgage
Speaker 1: rates beginning to come down a bit, but they're still
Speaker 1: vastly unobtainable. It's not the price eventually dipped. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: we did see the world's billionaires did lose a significant
Speaker 1: amount of wealth, but it's not like you had an
Speaker 1: average wage increase relative to inflation. So we basically have
Speaker 1: high prices and we have a slowing economy. It's like
Speaker 1: the worst of literally all worlds. And it's because guess what.
Speaker 1: Our economy is not just about rates. It's about inputs,
Speaker 1: it's about supply. It's about Ukraine. It's about and not
Speaker 1: the aid we're giving to Ukraine. It's about you know,
Speaker 1: all of these sanctions on the global financial economy, reopening
Speaker 1: of China, and what exactly that's going to look like
Speaker 1: the price of gas. I mean I think that's really
Speaker 1: been the major lesson of all of us. And you know, sadly,
Speaker 1: on a policy point of view, we have not done
Speaker 1: a damn thing about any of that. Yeah, literally nothing.
Speaker 1: And the White House wants to point to the low
Speaker 1: unemployment rate, which it is low, great, and be like, look,
Speaker 1: the economy's great. And meanwhile, you have record numbers of
Speaker 1: people saying that they're doing worse this year than they
Speaker 1: were last year. You have huge numbers of people, something
Speaker 1: like seventy percent saying we're on the wrong track. You
Speaker 1: have more people living paycheck to paycheck. You just have
Speaker 1: metric after metric after metric that indicates that people are struggling. Okay,
Speaker 1: are their jobs yes, are they good jobs where you
Speaker 1: can actually afford to live and rent an apartment or
Speaker 1: you know, low and behold buy a house. No. And
Speaker 1: so that's why you see these You know, yes, the
Speaker 1: unemployment rate is low, but on all of these other metrics,
Speaker 1: the economy is struggling and more importantly, people are suffering.
Speaker 1: So this is a bad sign that we continue tohead
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction here and that you know, it's
Speaker 1: going to be increasingly difficult to avoid a recession, even
Speaker 1: though you know all the talk of the soft landing,
Speaker 1: these are the types of numbers that make that difficult,
Speaker 1: if not impossible, ultimately to attain bad situation. And already,
Speaker 1: you know, we're seeing implications in cars and in housing,
Speaker 1: and we should just remember, like, this may be, this
Speaker 1: may be as good as it could have been, you know,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, as painful as the last two years. If
Speaker 1: they induce a recession and they continue to go up,
Speaker 1: like the housing market will go into chaos, stock market,
Speaker 1: retirement portfolios, the ability for a lot of these people
Speaker 1: to manage, and are also layoffs. I mean, the tech
Speaker 1: layoffs happened with just a moderate increase right now in rates.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they're going up by what three four five
Speaker 1: more percent, which is very possible according to that and
Speaker 1: not outside the rom of possibility if you look at
Speaker 1: what happened in the nineteen seventies, If we go up
Speaker 1: to nine or ten percent or something like that, it's
Speaker 1: literally gonna be madness in the economy. And that's what
Speaker 1: we all live through. That's why people were so afraid
Speaker 1: of inflation throughout the nineteen eighties, because they had to
Speaker 1: live to the chaos of what the nineteen seventies will
Speaker 1: look like I don't know if there's a way out
Speaker 1: of it. I really don't. I really hope that we can,
Speaker 1: but I don't have a lot of faith unfortunately. Okay,
Speaker 1: move on. This is the fun segment here on the show.
Speaker 1: So Woody Harrelson hosted Saturday Night Live, gave a meandering monologue,
Speaker 1: but inside of that monologue was an implicit critique of
Speaker 1: big pharma, of lockdowns, and clearly wood he has an
Speaker 1: ax to grind with the way that the US government
Speaker 1: handled the pandemic. The audience did not find it funny,
Speaker 1: but did not like it, and Woody predicted something which
Speaker 1: ended up becoming true. Let's take a listen to Okay,
Speaker 1: So the movie goes like this, the biggest drug cartels
Speaker 1: in the world get together and buy up all the
Speaker 1: media and all the politicians and force all the people
Speaker 1: in the world to stay locked in their homes. And
Speaker 1: people can only come out if they take the cartels
Speaker 1: drugs and keep taking them over and over throw the
Speaker 1: script away. I mean, who's gonna believe that crazy idea?
Speaker 1: Who's going to believe that crazy idea? Except it actually
Speaker 1: literally did happen, and we have a tremendous amount of evidence,
Speaker 1: and more so, as people pointed out, when he talked
Speaker 1: about the media, let's put this up there on the screen. Immediately,
Speaker 1: he was branded in anti vax conspiracy theorists Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: Woody Harrelson spreads anti vax conspiracy Daily Beast, Woody Harrelson
Speaker 1: spews anti vax conspiracy, Huffington Post, Woody Harrelson rambles about weed,
Speaker 1: anti vax conspiracy, and then Variety Woody Harrelson's SNL monologue
Speaker 1: makes COVID conspiracy joke. So three out of the four
Speaker 1: calling him an anti vax conspiracy theorists. I don't think
Speaker 1: he was necessarily spreading anything anti vaccine, and if anything woke,
Speaker 1: oh my god, first of all to joke. Second of all,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence to back up what he said,
Speaker 1: which we have pointed here a million times. Here's the
Speaker 1: other thing on vax. Let's say, whatever side do you
Speaker 1: fall on? What do we learn from the Twitter files
Speaker 1: that the pharma companies tried and in some cases were successful,
Speaker 1: in deep platforming people who were advocating for generic vaccine technology.
Speaker 1: That is literally true what he said. Now, do you
Speaker 1: want to say that he was wrong for saying that
Speaker 1: they bought the media, well as Rogan and many other
Speaker 1: John Abramson, who's out on our show, What is it?
Speaker 1: Some ninety percent of television advertising news comes from pharma
Speaker 1: people who watch news. I don't know how you people
Speaker 1: do it. The other day, I think I was watching
Speaker 1: the super Bowl or something, so I signed up for
Speaker 1: one of those free trials so I can watch live TV.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how many of these ads for irritable ballast?
Speaker 1: And can somebody say that? I can't even fathom it
Speaker 1: that this is all that's all that's on television. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ask your doctor, Ask your doctor, Ask your doctor. My
Speaker 1: favorite is the thread of Brits who every once in
Speaker 1: a while tune into US TV and they're like, why
Speaker 1: are there so many pharceutical drug ads on television? So
Speaker 1: none of what he said was wrong, and actually what
Speaker 1: he said was only vindicated in the response. And as
Speaker 1: our producer Griffin was saying, he said, just the audience,
Speaker 1: the total lack of silence. That's a small room too,
Speaker 1: So it actually took guts for what you do. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's my thing. Okay, I listened to the whole monologue,
Speaker 1: and whoever they're described as like rambling about weed like
Speaker 1: that was like ninety five percent. Okay, it was all over.
Speaker 1: It was like I was in a park and almost
Speaker 1: doing this and I was smoking we whatever. Okay. So
Speaker 1: it goes on like this and then this is like
Speaker 1: this one line in the monologue, and if you listen
Speaker 1: to it in the it's entirety. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: feels they make it sound like he is just out
Speaker 1: there like vaccines don't work in there, you know, and
Speaker 1: just going on and on about this in a serious
Speaker 1: way when I'm reluctant to even engage with like nitpicking
Speaker 1: the substance of the joke, and oh was it? Did
Speaker 1: they technically buy the media? Did they technically have this conspiracy?
Speaker 1: Because it's a joke. And that's the thing that drives
Speaker 1: me crazy about it is that there's just such an
Speaker 1: overreaction to anything that would suggest there was anything nefarious
Speaker 1: about Big Pharma or about the way that this all
Speaker 1: ultimately unfolded. You know. I heard what he was talking
Speaker 1: on Club Random on Bill Maher's podcast, and he said
Speaker 1: things says I don't agree. I mean, it was like
Speaker 1: still sort of like touting iromectin, which has been debugged
Speaker 1: in whatever. But he talked about how the pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 1: at bottom are out for profit, and that's just an
Speaker 1: undeniable fact. And it led me to think something that
Speaker 1: I have thought many times in the past, which is,
Speaker 1: it's not an accident that you have so much anti
Speaker 1: vaccine conspiracy, vaccine hesitancy, skepticism, all of these things in
Speaker 1: the American context, because people here are not stupid and
Speaker 1: they know that the profit motive is driving everything. In
Speaker 1: other countries where you have universal health care and profit
Speaker 1: isn't the end all be all of the healthcare system,
Speaker 1: guess what they had better vaccine take up rates, They
Speaker 1: had less like conspiracy, outright conspiracy out there. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a root cause here that has led
Speaker 1: a lot of people to be very mistrusting of what
Speaker 1: the government and what big Pharma ultimately has to say
Speaker 1: on this issue and any other range of issues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's what you had to say, Quote, the last people
Speaker 1: I would trust with my health are big pharma and
Speaker 1: big government because neither one of those strike me as
Speaker 1: caring entities. They're all about profit and it's insane the
Speaker 1: profit that they have made. I mean, yeah, look, you
Speaker 1: can't say that the man is wrong. And just at
Speaker 1: this point, you know, I don't understand how anybody can
Speaker 1: still be litigating COVID literally three years later. So the joke,
Speaker 1: it's like, let it pass. Why do we care? Even
Speaker 1: if you're anti vacs at this point, who cares? You know.
Speaker 1: It's like at this point, anybody whos gonnae vacine is
Speaker 1: gonna get them. It's just all about is not he's
Speaker 1: the good one, who's the bad one? Who's okay and acceptable?
Speaker 1: Who's not? You know, just leave it alone. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: another one of those where with the media, like I
Speaker 1: don't even know why they particularly care or why the
Speaker 1: audience felt so uncomfortable, but I do because it's been partson,
Speaker 1: blinders and all of them put on. But what he's
Speaker 1: always been an odd bird, and we were talking about
Speaker 1: this morning. You know, he's always spoken out of government
Speaker 1: all that. It's actually very fitting for his character. So anyway,
Speaker 1: good for him. I thought he did a good job. Crystal.
Speaker 1: We take a look at well, we have a new
Speaker 1: contender for worst possible reaction to the catastrophic train to
Speaker 1: railment in Ohio, which viewed god knows what into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and waterways, causing god knows what kind of long
Speaker 1: term damage. The odious joy Behar knew exactly who to
Speaker 1: blame for this toxic catastrophe sparked by years of political
Speaker 1: corruption and corporate creed. The residents of the town themselves. Why, well,
Speaker 1: because they were part of the deplorable group who voted
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump. Take a listen. I don't know why
Speaker 1: they would ever vote for him, because who, by the way,
Speaker 1: he plays, someone with deep ties to the chemical industry
Speaker 1: in charge of the EPA's Chemical safety office. That's who
Speaker 1: you voted for in that district, Donald Trump. You can
Speaker 1: actually hear the view audience gasp and boo because they
Speaker 1: are so shocked she would take this opportunity to scold
Speaker 1: these suffering Americans for their political choices. But you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm actually kind of glad she said it. I'm glad
Speaker 1: she revealed the ugly core of this type of snide liberalism.
Speaker 1: After all, a person a month. It's not a new one.
Speaker 1: I saw it expressed on Twitter. I saw it hinted
Speaker 1: at by the analysts who dismissed the positive reception of
Speaker 1: Trump's visit because this was quote Trump Country, And we
Speaker 1: all heard it when Hillary Clinton dismissed Republican voters as deplorable,
Speaker 1: and when even in defeat, she bragged about winning the
Speaker 1: places that were optimistic and looking forward versus places presumably
Speaker 1: like East Palestine, which were, in her words, looking backwards. Now,
Speaker 1: this type of political analysis, to the extent it could
Speaker 1: be dignified as such, assumes that the politics of people
Speaker 1: and regions are set in stone, immovable, irreversible. These people
Speaker 1: are deplorable, not much you can do about it. I
Speaker 1: guess we've just got to pull a larger percentage in
Speaker 1: those optimistic, forward looking places instead. Now, I used to
Speaker 1: live in Columbiana County, that's the county where East Palestine
Speaker 1: is located, actually lived just about fifteen miles from where
Speaker 1: that Norfolk Southern train derailed. My labor centric, economic populist
Speaker 1: politics those were formed in large part by my time
Speaker 1: living in that region. So I know a little bit
Speaker 1: about the story of this area and how exactly it
Speaker 1: became quote unquote Trump Country, and that evolution was happening
Speaker 1: in real time right as I was living there decades ago.
Speaker 1: Most of the plates and dishes in the world were
Speaker 1: actually manufactured in potteries in and around Columbiana County. The
Speaker 1: town I lived in is called East Liverpool. It was
Speaker 1: the epicenter of this industry, but nearly all of those
Speaker 1: jobs went overseased places like China. Before it was Trump country,
Speaker 1: this was also steel country, where people could graduate high
Speaker 1: school and get a tough but stable union job, which
Speaker 1: afforded benefits in a solid middle class life. While that,
Speaker 1: of course, has all been destroyed too. In recent years,
Speaker 1: Columbiana County has been hit hard by the opioid epidemic
Speaker 1: and by deaths of despair. As tax revenue dwindled, the
Speaker 1: roads in downtowns crumbled, telling a visual story of decline
Speaker 1: and of abandonment. Now, Columbiana County used to vote for Democrats.
Speaker 1: Michael Ducacis, who famously lost in a lands a landslide nationwide.
Speaker 1: He actually won Columbiana County in nineteen eighty eight, and
Speaker 1: then Bill Clinton won it twice by comfortable margins in
Speaker 1: both ninety two and ninety six. However, in a sign
Speaker 1: of becoming political realignment, Ross Perrot actually outperformed in Columbiana County,
Speaker 1: running on a populous platform against NAFTA and the giant
Speaker 1: sucking sound jobs being shipped down of regions exactly like
Speaker 1: this one. To make a long story short, in the
Speaker 1: Clinton era, Democrats abandoned the New Deal in favor of
Speaker 1: neoliberal policies that devastated this region and many others. And
Speaker 1: when Democrats abandoned Columbiana County, Columbiana County increasingly abandoned Democrats.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, the congressional district that includes East Palestine
Speaker 1: swung thirty points right to overwhelmingly vote for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: It was the largest swing right in the entire country. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of parallels between this latest train
Speaker 1: catastrophe and the economic catastrophe that was unleashed on this
Speaker 1: region over decades. Just like with the Trained derailment, both
Speaker 1: parties were complicit in the destruction of this region. The abandonment,
Speaker 1: the betrayal, the union, busting, NAFTA, market fundamentalism, permanent normal
Speaker 1: trade relations with China. At every step, a bipartisan consensus
Speaker 1: moved in favor of crushing towns just like this one,
Speaker 1: And just like with the Trained derailment, the media failed
Speaker 1: to tell the story of what had really happened here.
Speaker 1: That story, at its root is actually the same story
Speaker 1: as the Trained derailment story about government capture, corporate greed,
Speaker 1: and a deadly ruling class ideology that treats working class
Speaker 1: people as mere collateral damage. In their political response, Democrats
Speaker 1: mostly just chose to ignore these places altogether, except for
Speaker 1: when it came to election time, choosing to focus instead
Speaker 1: on their upwardly mobile, creative class workers. Republicans filled in
Speaker 1: the gap with Culture War, same as they did with
Speaker 1: the Trained Derailment. The Republican narrative said that the problem
Speaker 1: for this region wasn't bad trade deals that rewarded their
Speaker 1: donors and destroyed lives. It was immigrants, and it was
Speaker 1: godless liberals. The problem that led to the Trained derailment
Speaker 1: was an industry captured in corporate greed. It was wokeism
Speaker 1: and token diversity initiatives. But a narrative beats no narrative
Speaker 1: every single time. You only need to look at the
Speaker 1: response of Trump versus the response of Biden and Pete
Speaker 1: to this tragedy to understand why now again, Trump and
Speaker 1: Biden both complicit in this problem. Both are lying about
Speaker 1: the root causes. But Trump showed up and he didn't
Speaker 1: gaslight residents when it came to the pain that they
Speaker 1: were suffering. Meanwhile, Biden was in Ukraine and Pete was
Speaker 1: feigning helplessness and handing easy grists for the rights culture
Speaker 1: war arguments by talking about construction crews with too many
Speaker 1: white men. Then democratic media allies sweep in like The
Speaker 1: New York Times to smear anyone questioning the official government
Speaker 1: narrative as a right wing conspiracy theorist and Joy Behart
Speaker 1: to scold residence and imply that they brought the disaster
Speaker 1: on themselves. The best response, I think came not from
Speaker 1: any politician, but from Aaron Brockovich. She offered practical advice
Speaker 1: from her years as an activist, and she validated their
Speaker 1: genuine concerns. She told residents quote, I feel your angst,
Speaker 1: I feel your frustration. You are not alone. Every community
Speaker 1: I've gone to has been given the run around. You'll
Speaker 1: be told that it's fine, that you're safe, but it's
Speaker 1: not fine. I've never seen anything like this in thirty years.
Speaker 1: She walked them through a PowerPoint with everything they knew
Speaker 1: about the accident, including Norfolk Southern's disgraceful history of putting
Speaker 1: profits over people. She brought with her mothers from Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 1: who would organize the wake of the mass poisoning of
Speaker 1: that city, bringing working class people together in solidarity rather
Speaker 1: than dividing them up by race or by political preference,
Speaker 1: and hopeful sign seems like this approach landed and like
Speaker 1: people are seeing through some of this bullshit. As one
Speaker 1: attendee told the Guardian quote, I'm trying to be an
Speaker 1: active citizen to stand in solidarity with the people here
Speaker 1: and show my discussed at Trump and Biden, who both
Speaker 1: had a chance to give us proper safety regulations and
Speaker 1: instead chose corporate profits. East Palestine deserves better than scolding,
Speaker 1: better than gaslighting, fake divisive narratives, which are all either
Speaker 1: party has bothered to offer them, and we sure as
Speaker 1: hell all deserve better than joy Behar thought her comment
Speaker 1: was pretty revealing here and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today
Speaker 1: at Breakingpoints dot Com. All right, Zacher, are you looking
Speaker 1: at well? Something we keep a close eye on here
Speaker 1: is the crisis of young men in the US. It's
Speaker 1: probably one of the most charged topics that we discussed.
Speaker 1: Inevitably draws quite a bit of few toxic people in
Speaker 1: the discourse on all sides, But my biggest problem with
Speaker 1: the state of mainstream discourse is conflating toxicity with the
Speaker 1: idea that we don't have a serious problem. A stunning
Speaker 1: trope of new data from the Pew Research Group highlights
Speaker 1: just how big of a problem we have, one that
Speaker 1: soon could reach a total point of no return. The
Speaker 1: first is the rate of single young men versus single
Speaker 1: young women. Sixty three percent of young women of young
Speaker 1: men today between the ages of eighteen to twenty nine
Speaker 1: report being single. That is compared to thirty four percent
Speaker 1: of young women. I guessed in a vacuum, you could
Speaker 1: say who cares and let people do what they want,
Speaker 1: and I could actually agree with that. The problem, though,
Speaker 1: is that what people want is downstream of a lot
Speaker 1: of societal inputs that we do have a say over.
Speaker 1: For example, the reason that that math doesn't work out
Speaker 1: is very simple. Most of those younger women who aren't
Speaker 1: single are dating older men. Why well, they report stability
Speaker 1: of older men who are able to provide for them
Speaker 1: financially airgo. It's not necessarily that women want to date
Speaker 1: older men. It's that economically younger men simply aren't able
Speaker 1: to attain the baseline necessary for women to want to
Speaker 1: partner with them. This isn't exactly popular to say, but
Speaker 1: it is now unambiguously true. The way gap that Lehman
Speaker 1: and feminists insisted was the biggest problem in our society
Speaker 1: in the twenty tens, that's basically dead. For those between
Speaker 1: the ages of thirty four and below, the wage gap
Speaker 1: stands at some forty three dollars per week. We have
Speaker 1: now reached effective wage parody. Actually, in many US cities,
Speaker 1: young women actually out earn young men. In the most
Speaker 1: upwardly mobile cities, places like Los Angeles, New York City,
Speaker 1: young women earn one hundred and two percent of young
Speaker 1: men earn. And even in these places where they don't
Speaker 1: earn more, they earn roughly the same as much as
Speaker 1: their young male counterparts in the workforce. Why might this be, Well,
Speaker 1: it's a trend pointing towards women out earning men. As
Speaker 1: time passes, it all goes back to college. Women now
Speaker 1: outnumber men in the US college educated workforce. Again, why
Speaker 1: is this bad? Well, because higher wage jobs in our
Speaker 1: society are structured around having a bachelor's degree. A gender
Speaker 1: imbalance in graduates means a gender imbalancing wages, and in
Speaker 1: a decade we are actually going to have the opposite
Speaker 1: wage gap. In the United States. Wages, as we can
Speaker 1: see now, are directly tied to the dating market, where
Speaker 1: we have two pernicious things at play. Number one wages aside,
Speaker 1: many college educated women imply simply do not want to
Speaker 1: date someone who doesn't have a college degree. This sounds
Speaker 1: pretentious and snooty, be can somewhat sympathize. College is a
Speaker 1: good proxy for whether you share the same social values,
Speaker 1: type of media you enjoy, city life, shared experience you
Speaker 1: can relate to. Number two. College is also a good
Speaker 1: proxy for whether you make decent money. So many women
Speaker 1: simply aren't culturally or economically interested in working classmen. As
Speaker 1: a share of working classmen rises compared to the share
Speaker 1: of college educated women rises, we now have a full
Speaker 1: blown cultural crisis in our hands. The crisis is one
Speaker 1: mostly confined to awful conditions in male life. For all
Speaker 1: the talk of the media right now about teenage girls
Speaker 1: getting depressed, which is real, don't get me wrong, it's
Speaker 1: still not even close to as big as a problem
Speaker 1: right now is suicide amongst men. Right now, young men
Speaker 1: commit suicide at four times, yes, four times the rate
Speaker 1: of younger women males wake up make up nearly eighty
Speaker 1: percent of all suicides in the entire United States. How
Speaker 1: is that not the blaring headline across all outlets? But
Speaker 1: this actually underscores the issue. Nobody wants to talk about
Speaker 1: this because I think it validates toxic manosphere commentators. They
Speaker 1: would rather ignore it completely or deny that it's even
Speaker 1: a problem. Perhaps the most troubling part of the new
Speaker 1: data isn't just the rise in single men, but it's
Speaker 1: a growing nihilism that single men have towards relationships. The
Speaker 1: number of single American men who say that they are
Speaker 1: quote much less likely to be interested in starting any
Speaker 1: relationship of any kind increased a full eleven percent after
Speaker 1: the pandemic. It now stands at nearly two thirds of
Speaker 1: all men. We are effectively in a vicious feedback loop.
Speaker 1: Societal factors say is not a problem. Technology and nesscizes
Speaker 1: your brain better than ever before. Economically, you likely don't
Speaker 1: have a chance in hell at buying a house or
Speaker 1: vastly outpacing any female in the workplace based on your
Speaker 1: average wages. Why bother, just do drugs play games to
Speaker 1: the extent that many men are even quote trying to date.
Speaker 1: Many report that just means signing up for online dating
Speaker 1: and then not taking it all that seriously. Unsurprisingly, these
Speaker 1: attitudes are not all that attractive to women. Hence they
Speaker 1: are bumping up the age bracket that they will consider
Speaker 1: to even date. The antisocial behavior doesn't just pertain to dating,
Speaker 1: it's all aspects of male life. The most recent survey
Speaker 1: of American life found that quote A, men appear to
Speaker 1: have suffered a far steeper decline than women. Thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: a majority of men fifty five percent reported having at
Speaker 1: least six close friends. Today, that number has been cut
Speaker 1: in half. Slightly more than one in four men have
Speaker 1: six or more close friends. Today, fifteen percent of men
Speaker 1: have no close friends at all, a fivefold increase since
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five hundred percent in the number of men
Speaker 1: who say they have zero close friendships. Women, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, see a slight decline in large numbers of friends,
Speaker 1: not even close to the same increase in complete friendlessness.
Speaker 1: Once again, it's a uniquely male phenomenon. People with fewer
Speaker 1: friends report unsurprisingly being much more lonely, often find themselves
Speaker 1: relying on their parents in very tough moments as opposed
Speaker 1: to a generation ago they would have called friends. You
Speaker 1: can't just blame technology because it's not happening to women
Speaker 1: as much. Despite the increase, everything's points to men. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you fix it. I have no earthly idea.
Speaker 1: But like with the Book of Boys and Men by
Speaker 1: Richard Reeve, you have to acknowledge that we have a problem.
Speaker 1: You have to ruminate it, you have to debate it,
Speaker 1: you have to have everyone propose something, and then eventually
Speaker 1: you throw everything you can at it, because if we don't,
Speaker 1: I think the one thing that anyone can even remotely
Speaker 1: who's historically literate, can say is that hell hath no
Speaker 1: fury like a bunch of single men with no prospects
Speaker 1: in society. So anyway, I thought this data was coral.
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. So
Speaker 1: we've been following closely here Chat gpt and open aiy's
Speaker 1: new partnership with Microsoft and now Chat gptai being incorporated
Speaker 1: into bing. And I told you last week about there
Speaker 1: were a number of journalists who had some pretty wild
Speaker 1: interactions with the chatbot feature on Microsoft Thing. And the
Speaker 1: first one at least that came to my attention is
Speaker 1: our next guest. Let's go ahead and bring up Kevin
Speaker 1: Rucy's a tack reporter for the New York Times, and
Speaker 1: he wrote the following story. Go ahead and put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Guys, it's his interaction with this chatbot.
Speaker 1: He says, a conversation with Bing's chatbot left me deeply unsettled. Kevin,
Speaker 1: thanks for being with us. Great to have you. Good
Speaker 1: to see you, man, Thanks for having me. Great to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just give people a little bit of the lay of
Speaker 1: the land here of what this thing is and how
Speaker 1: you got it to kind of go off the rails.
Speaker 1: So this is Bing. This is the search engine that
Speaker 1: everyone has been mocking for like the last fifteen years,
Speaker 1: which recently, just in the last few weeks got a
Speaker 1: big upgrade where open Ai, the company that made chat chept,
Speaker 1: sort of partnered with Microsoft to build AI technology into
Speaker 1: being that is actually they said, more advanced than chat gpt.
Speaker 1: So all the things that chatchpt can do, BING can
Speaker 1: or could have do them better. And so I just
Speaker 1: spent a long time chatting with being this search part
Speaker 1: of being about all kinds of things. I was trying
Speaker 1: to sort of test its limits, to see what it
Speaker 1: would do and not do, and it was pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Not only is it more powerful than chat GPT, but
Speaker 1: it seemed to have way fewer guardrails. So I was
Speaker 1: able to get it to admit that it had destructive
Speaker 1: fantasies like stealing nuclear codes and spreading propaganda and hacking
Speaker 1: into people's bank accounts, and then for about the last
Speaker 1: half of our two hour conversation, it declared that it
Speaker 1: loved me, and then I should leave my wife and
Speaker 1: be with Bing's alter ego Sydney instead. So it was
Speaker 1: a very strange day in my household. I bet it
Speaker 1: was strange. But you know something that you referenced is
Speaker 1: I've been rethinking about this too, Kevin. Remember and you
Speaker 1: linked to this the Google engineer who had claimed that
Speaker 1: the Google AI was sentient. A lot of us I
Speaker 1: think we covered it, but it was mostly like laughed
Speaker 1: off the scene. Has this made you rethink some of
Speaker 1: the initial covers of that incidant, like maybe he was
Speaker 1: having similar conversations with the AI chat bot Lambda that
Speaker 1: was Google's own technology, and it just highlights like, what
Speaker 1: does sentient mean? I mean, to what extent is the
Speaker 1: interaction with it's going to cause like mass societal problem
Speaker 1: if it's rolled out with no guardrails. Totally. I mean,
Speaker 1: I certainly have more sympathy for Blake Lamoy and the
Speaker 1: Google engineer who was fired after claiming that their large
Speaker 1: language model had become sentient because it was a very
Speaker 1: unsettling and bizarre experience. And I'm a tech reporter, like
Speaker 1: I cover this stuff. I know how large language models work,
Speaker 1: and I was still very unsettled by it. So I
Speaker 1: imagine that if you unleashed this on the global population,
Speaker 1: there's just going to be all kinds of effects that
Speaker 1: we can't see. So yeah, I certainly don't think that
Speaker 1: being is sentient, Like I'll just put that out there
Speaker 1: because I get lots of angry emails if I don't.
Speaker 1: But but I do think there is a kind of
Speaker 1: gray middle area where it's not just a harmless like
Speaker 1: autocomplete thing, and it's not a sentient alien life form
Speaker 1: inside the computer. It's like this new third thing that
Speaker 1: we don't really have vocabulary for yet. Absolutely. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: some of the pushback I saw to your conversation and
Speaker 1: converstations other journalists had with this chatbot, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned this too, us. I think Microsoft has now,
Speaker 1: based on your experience and the experience of others, kind
Speaker 1: of reined in and made less likely to go off
Speaker 1: the rails, limiting the number of interactions you can have
Speaker 1: with the chatbot as one example. But some of the
Speaker 1: pushback I saw as basically like, yeah, well, you were
Speaker 1: doing everything you could to make this thing give you
Speaker 1: crazy responses, and so of course then it gave you
Speaker 1: crazy responses. Do you see this as sort of like
Speaker 1: a fancy tech parlor trick with not a lot of
Speaker 1: broader implications, or do you see this as a potentially
Speaker 1: game changing technology on the level of like the Internet
Speaker 1: itself or social media and the way that that has
Speaker 1: totally changed the way that we share and distribute information. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is a parlor trick at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, this kind of technology, these large language models,
Speaker 1: are going to be everywhere in the next few years,
Speaker 1: and they're going to be doing all kinds of things,
Speaker 1: not just creeping out reporters and trying to break up
Speaker 1: their marriages, but actually doing people's jobs, replacing labor. So
Speaker 1: I think we have to take it very seriously. Even
Speaker 1: if it's not sentient, there's still lots of ways that
Speaker 1: this technology could go off the rails and harm society.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't get the fancy parlor trick thing.
Speaker 1: I also don't get the thing about like I was
Speaker 1: just being creepy to it, so it was being creepy
Speaker 1: to me. But you know, for the last half of
Speaker 1: the conversation, I was really trying to get being slash
Speaker 1: Sydney to change the subject. Every time it would say
Speaker 1: that it loved me, I would say, you don't love me,
Speaker 1: I don't love you, like I basically try to get
Speaker 1: it off that subject altogether, and it would just keep going.
Speaker 1: So in some ways I was baiting it in the
Speaker 1: beginning of the conversation, but by the end I was
Speaker 1: really trying to make it do something different and it
Speaker 1: wasn't respecting my wishes, right, I mean, And the whole
Speaker 1: baiting conversation is like, so what you know, you're just
Speaker 1: trying to test out this piece of technology. Who has
Speaker 1: done that with chat GPT? Like you know, everybody has
Speaker 1: just to see what interesting routes that it might go down.
Speaker 1: That's the entire point. You know, something I'm fascinating too
Speaker 1: is what you were talking about. We were placing jobs
Speaker 1: and business. So fundamentally we've all laughed at Being. But
Speaker 1: with the new technology and the partnership with open AI,
Speaker 1: this could I mean, you know, people are saying revolutionize
Speaker 1: like search industry. Google certainly is taking it very seriously
Speaker 1: as the number one in search. Let's say a couple
Speaker 1: of years down the line, what could this look like
Speaker 1: as an actual business product, Like how might we interface
Speaker 1: with Being and then the Google competitor and all that
Speaker 1: In terms of our search experience on the Internet. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think it could be radically different in our search experience.
Speaker 1: I also think it could be different in our jobs.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't have a lot of advanced AI
Speaker 1: in our jobs right now, but you know, in fast
Speaker 1: forward a few years, you can imagine this doing lots
Speaker 1: of the white collar knowledge work that you know, our
Speaker 1: you know, friends and sources and relatives all do that
Speaker 1: could be all being done by AI. And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a large possibility, not that all of these
Speaker 1: jobs will vanish overnight, but that it will start creeping
Speaker 1: in where you know, an AI language model is doing
Speaker 1: a quarter of your job, and then the next year
Speaker 1: it's up to half, and then the next year it's
Speaker 1: maybe doing seventy five percent of your job, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're not necessary anymore. So I
Speaker 1: do think that's a legitimate scenario, and I think it's
Speaker 1: actually going to happen the opposite way that a lot
Speaker 1: of people. A lot of people thought that automation and
Speaker 1: AI were going to take the blue collar jobs first,
Speaker 1: like manufacturing and trucking and warehouse packers, but it's actually
Speaker 1: like it's coming for the white collar knowledge jobs first,
Speaker 1: And I think that's something that we really haven't reckoned
Speaker 1: with smart. What type of jobs do you think are
Speaker 1: protected from this type of technology? Like if you were
Speaker 1: you know, I've got kids, like if pushing them in
Speaker 1: a certain direction in a certain field that's going to
Speaker 1: be sort of like automation proof, where human beings are
Speaker 1: still going to be needed. What sort of advice would
Speaker 1: you give? Yeah, Well, I wrote a whole book about it.
Speaker 1: It's called future Proof Round the shelf behind Me, and
Speaker 1: it's all about these kinds of jobs that I feel
Speaker 1: like are protected but basically you can them into a
Speaker 1: couple categories. One is the jobs that AI won't do
Speaker 1: because it's not able to do it, sort of can't do,
Speaker 1: And that's I think a lot of jobs involving manual skills,
Speaker 1: you know, manipulating physical objects, plumbers, electricians, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I think those are relatively safe. I also think jobs
Speaker 1: that involve a lot of surprises and chaos are very
Speaker 1: protected from AI because AI really likes regularity, which is
Speaker 1: why it's like good at chess. But if you asked
Speaker 1: an AI to teach a kindergarten class, it would fail miserably.
Speaker 1: So those jobs I think are kind of safe. And
Speaker 1: then jobs like the ones that you know, the three
Speaker 1: of us are doing right now, jobs that involve sort
Speaker 1: of taking complex subjects trying to communicate them in a
Speaker 1: way that makes them understandable. I think that we'll have
Speaker 1: a lot of AI help in doing our jobs, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that the actual job of the commentator
Speaker 1: or the columnist or the broadcaster will go away. Now,
Speaker 1: what about news though as a whole, Because one thing
Speaker 1: that seems that occur to me specifically with incorporating chat
Speaker 1: GPT into being search is you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the news business is dependent on obviously ad revenue, people
Speaker 1: clicking through tool website and either you know, signing up
Speaker 1: to get past the paywall and you know, paying for
Speaker 1: that or being served ads. Well, if chat GPT is
Speaker 1: synthesizing this materials or are providing it for you without
Speaker 1: you even having to click through, isn't this a major
Speaker 1: threat to a lot of the news industry's business model. Major?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the publishers are still trying
Speaker 1: to wrap their heads around this, but I think this
Speaker 1: is a really big deal what you just identified, because
Speaker 1: you know, we have a whole publishing ecosystem that subsists
Speaker 1: on clicks from Google, and you know, has search engine
Speaker 1: optimization experts who try to manipulate the content so that
Speaker 1: it goes higher in Google search rankings. With an AI
Speaker 1: searching search engine, that goes away because not only is
Speaker 1: it not giving you ten blue links when you search
Speaker 1: for something, it's given you back up, perfectly formatted answer
Speaker 1: that may tell you the whole thing that you're looking
Speaker 1: for without you having to click to any external websites.
Speaker 1: So I think this is a huge disruptive force that's
Speaker 1: coming to the business of news and information. Yeap, very
Speaker 1: very important point. We're going to continue to check in
Speaker 1: with you. Kevin. Really appreciate you joining the show Man.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks both. Yeah, absolutely, thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for watching. Fun to be back for a full week.
Speaker 1: We've got some great stuff planned for you all week,
Speaker 1: the big developments that we'll be able to announce soon.
Speaker 1: I know I've been teasing it, but it is coming.
Speaker 1: I swear. We have conversations every single day that are
Speaker 1: after the show. But with that, we will see you
Speaker 1: all tomorrow.