Speaker 1: Thirty eight days to go until that noon hour when
Speaker 1: Donald Trump raises his hand and swears the oath, the
Speaker 1: same thirty five words that George Washington swore and Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt swore that every president of the United States has
Speaker 1: promised to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
Speaker 1: United States. This is the warning. Donald Trump is the
Speaker 1: only president in American history who openly transgressed against that oath,
Speaker 1: desecrated it when he ordered a mob to storm the
Speaker 1: capital on the day the election was to be officially
Speaker 1: certified that he lost. During his time Magazine Man of
Speaker 1: the Year interview, Donald Trump has promised to stay within
Speaker 1: the boundaries of the law. We should hope, we should pray.
Speaker 1: Let's see. But one of the things that's broken about
Speaker 1: American politics anthus America's media, is this dogma that politics
Speaker 1: on the river of life sits at the headwaters, that
Speaker 1: it is not something that lies below the culture, for example,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly where it lies. And some of the
Speaker 1: most out of touch people in the country are the
Speaker 1: people who are responsible for communicating to the whole of
Speaker 1: the country and image a reflection the news of what
Speaker 1: is happening in that country, the corporate leaders who make
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars a year, who speak in
Speaker 1: platitudes and live a life far far removed from ordinary Americans.
Speaker 1: This morning, I'm in Lake Havasu, Arizona, the west coast
Speaker 1: of Arizona, as they like to say. I've driven across
Speaker 1: much of the country, taking the route down old Route
Speaker 1: sixty six across an international boundary in Michigan, came through
Speaker 1: Saint Louis, on through to Amarillo, Texas, to Santa Fe,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and now Lake Havasu, Arizona. These places are
Speaker 1: seldom talked about on the national news. When is the
Speaker 1: last time that Santa Fe and what's happening there was
Speaker 1: featured on national broadcast. There's an irony about this moment,
Speaker 1: this era where everything is instantly connected. When you drive
Speaker 1: across the country and you see the trains rolling across prairies,
Speaker 1: when you see the tractor trailers forging across the plains,
Speaker 1: you see the electrical lines that before they were electrical lines,
Speaker 1: were telegraph lines, and as those telegraph lines went up,
Speaker 1: they connected the country. It was possible to know in
Speaker 1: San Francisco what had happened in New York on the
Speaker 1: same day. Ultimately, these wires were strewn across oceans. Kind
Speaker 1: became connected. Look at this, it's the first image of
Speaker 1: the Earth, taken in nineteen forty six. This was the
Speaker 1: horizon from Alan Shepherd's first flight in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: the first time in all of humanity an image of
Speaker 1: the Earth set against the blackness of space, taken by
Speaker 1: the Apollo eight astronauts as they made their circumnavigation of
Speaker 1: the Moon on Christmas Eve. All of this a forward
Speaker 1: momentum towards a mutual connectivity where it became possible for
Speaker 1: all of the world's people to be connected to all
Speaker 1: of the world's events at once. And so what had
Speaker 1: been a news that was parochial became instantly global, wired together,
Speaker 1: connected together by satellites above, cables below, and wires running
Speaker 1: through our daily lives, bringing the images from the street
Speaker 1: into our homes. In the world, as a shrank became
Speaker 1: more understandable. People traveled by the thousands of first, and
Speaker 1: then tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, and millions,
Speaker 1: and tens and hundreds of millions, and then billions of
Speaker 1: people on the move traveling around the world and yet
Speaker 1: in this Internet age, during this time where everything that
Speaker 1: is knowable can be accessed and known, the horizon inexorably shrank.
Speaker 1: Instead of bringing the news of what's happening to all
Speaker 1: of the places in the country with the belief and
Speaker 1: conviction that every place matters, Instead, what the biggest media
Speaker 1: companies did was packaged together a very narrow slice of
Speaker 1: America and gave it to the American peace people shoved
Speaker 1: it down their throats on these panels. I've sat on
Speaker 1: a lot of them, on MSNBC, on CNN, on all
Speaker 1: of these networks. The truth is, most of the people talking, debating,
Speaker 1: arguing live within ten to fifteen blocks of one another.
Speaker 1: They've not been to Amarillo, or to Santa Fe, or
Speaker 1: driven the highways and through the small towns that are
Speaker 1: constantly ignored. The world they live in is profoundly cloistered.
Speaker 1: And within that world there is a ranking of sorts,
Speaker 1: a hierarchy, and within it a wisdom that is so
Speaker 1: narrow and so confined that it can become delusory. And
Speaker 1: so in this sphere of delusion there exists a culture
Speaker 1: in which a segment of the tribe is the global
Speaker 1: sea EO like Sir Andrew Whitty, chair of the United
Speaker 1: Health Group, he was United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson's boss.
Speaker 1: The assassination of CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione is
Speaker 1: not a seminal event, but rather a predictable one, and
Speaker 1: so is the reaction. And the reaction is not a
Speaker 1: particular indictment of this time, but a reaction that would
Speaker 1: stand through all time. When power is confronted and gunned down, knifed, killed,
Speaker 1: murdered in the type of way that Brian Thompson was,
Speaker 1: it has been and always will be politicized. Luigi Mangione
Speaker 1: is a killer. He's an assassin. Let's watch Piers Morgan's
Speaker 1: finest moment with Taylor Lorenz, the disgraced internet journalist formerly
Speaker 1: of The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Speaker 2: Why would you be in such a celebratory mood about
Speaker 2: the execution of another human being. Aren't you supposed to
Speaker 2: be on the caring sharing left, where you know you
Speaker 2: believe in the sanctity of life.
Speaker 3: I do believe in the sanctity of life, and I
Speaker 3: think that's why I felt, along with so many other
Speaker 3: Americans joy. Unfortunately, you know because it seriously I mean execution,
Speaker 3: maybe not joy, but certainly not no, certainly not empathy.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I could go on for hours and hours and
Speaker 1: hours about where the road to anarchy leads, specifically in America,
Speaker 1: it leads to a fascist strong man in the White House,
Speaker 1: and it will lead to abuses of power to boggle
Speaker 1: the imagination in the name of protecting the people. It
Speaker 1: always works that way. Nobody should be confus used about
Speaker 1: what Luigi Mangione is. A privileged young man with all
Speaker 1: of the opportunity in the world, struck, like many, by
Speaker 1: a mental health decline that as yet is inexplicable and unknowable,
Speaker 1: but we'll find out all of the details. And that
Speaker 1: mental health crisis saw him suffer. We know, alone, cut
Speaker 1: off from his friends and family who could not reach him,
Speaker 1: until he walked through a gateway, a portal of evil,
Speaker 1: and he killed a man, an executive who led a
Speaker 1: company that makes billions, inflicting misery on millions. That's the
Speaker 1: business model. Now, when you pay for insurance, the expectation
Speaker 1: is when you need it, you'll have it, and the
Speaker 1: agreement will be kept. United Healthcare is notorious as a
Speaker 1: company that says no. The bullet casing left behind contained
Speaker 1: a message, and that message is corporate strategy. It's about deny, deny, deny,
Speaker 1: and the denials inflict misery, bankruptcy, stress, pain, and a
Speaker 1: denial of care that shortens lives, makes the end of
Speaker 1: life more painful, and makes living much harder than it
Speaker 1: needs to be for ordinary Americans. Now, I have spent
Speaker 1: years of my career advising CEOs, athletes, presidents, prime ministers, senators, judges,
Speaker 1: you name it, a lot of them in crisis situations.
Speaker 1: When you're in a crisis, when you're in a hole,
Speaker 1: the golden rule is very simple, put down the shovel
Speaker 1: and stop digging, which, if you're a leader in one
Speaker 1: of the global bullshit industries, that gets translated into stop
Speaker 1: up talking, don't move, do less, don't make the situation worse.
Speaker 1: But of course, in this era, nobody can comprehend the
Speaker 1: simple wisdom of a man like Chief Joseph, who said
Speaker 1: speaking truth requires few words. When CEOs find themselves in
Speaker 1: a desperate space, there are a couple of predictable avenues
Speaker 1: where they can go and communicate with tremendous efficiency to
Speaker 1: the global elite, and one of those places, or the
Speaker 1: editorial pages of the nation's greatest newspapers, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, the Atlantic Magazine, the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: and there's a few more. And so it is that
Speaker 1: Andrew Witty, who was Brian Thompson's boss at the United
Speaker 1: Healthcare Group, has gone to the pages of the New
Speaker 1: York Times, and there Andrew Whitty subjects the reader to many,
Speaker 1: many paragraphs of platitudes, platitudes about healthcare, platitudes and lies
Speaker 1: about his company, about his intentions, and about what is
Speaker 1: happening to ordinary people at the hands of his company. Now,
Speaker 1: the entire editorial is deceptive, starting with this at the beginning,
Speaker 1: mister Andrew Witty. But that's not how he was introduced
Speaker 1: when he took over the company. The CEO of the group,
Speaker 1: this former advisor to the governor of Gangzhou, China. Yes,
Speaker 1: in the People's Republic, the communist governor of Gangzhou, China.
Speaker 1: Andrew Whitty was his advisor. Which I don't say to disparage,
Speaker 1: other than to make the point that he probably doesn't
Speaker 1: really care about the lives of ordinary Americans, because Andrew
Speaker 1: Witty is not an ordinary American, has never been an
Speaker 1: ordinary American. He's a British subject. Sir Andrew Whitty is
Speaker 1: not an American. And so when he's dressed up like
Speaker 1: one in the New York Times, mister Andrew Whitty, and
Speaker 1: within the company he's known as Sir Andrew Whitty, it's purposeful,
Speaker 1: purposefully deceptive. It's aimed at making a connection. But the
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is, Sir Andrew makes twenty three
Speaker 1: million dollars a year. That is three one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty seven times more than the United Healthcare worker that
Speaker 1: he purports to speak for in this paragraph, which is
Speaker 1: an astonishment, if I may read it. The people of
Speaker 1: United Healthcare Group or nurses, doctors, patients and client advocates,
Speaker 1: technologists and more, they all come to work each day
Speaker 1: to provide health services for millions of Americans in need.
Speaker 1: Let me just say, as a customer of United Healthcare
Speaker 1: and is somebody that has had to have a spinal
Speaker 1: fusion surgery and somebody who because of an injury, will
Speaker 1: have another back surgery. United Healthcare is a brutal, brutal company.
Speaker 1: It is miserable to deal with. It exists in a
Speaker 1: space where it purposefully antagonizes the people that pay it
Speaker 1: money by inflicting on them an imprisonment of impossibility to
Speaker 1: ever be able to successfully navigate their labyrinth of challenges, denials,
Speaker 1: their maize, their bureaucracy of no that enriches the shareholder
Speaker 1: at the expense of the patient, serving as a type
Speaker 1: of poisonous middleman, that adds lost, that adds complexity, and
Speaker 1: adds misery to millions and millions of people. It is
Speaker 1: the business strategy, and to pretend otherwise is to add
Speaker 1: more insult on top of the misery. The simple truth is,
Speaker 1: Sir Andrew doesn't care. And what makes that most clear
Speaker 1: are the platitudes of the New York Times editorial. Within it,
Speaker 1: there is not one sentence that acknowledges what it is
Speaker 1: that United Healthcare could do to lessen the misery it inflicts. Instead,
Speaker 1: it is calls to who knows what? I will begin reading,
Speaker 1: but before I do, let me make this point. Nobody
Speaker 1: ever tells these people shut up, don't talk, don't do anything,
Speaker 1: announce changes. Instead, They've been conduct all their life to
Speaker 1: believe that when they open their mouth, what emerges is genius,
Speaker 1: and that all problems can be solved with the invocation
Speaker 1: of the language of corporate platitude written by some pr
Speaker 1: man overpaid to service, the dressing up of the denial
Speaker 1: of claims that are at the heart of the company's strategy.
Speaker 1: Let me give you some examples from the piece. We
Speaker 1: know the healthcare system does not work as well as
Speaker 1: it should, and we understand people's frustrations with it. No
Speaker 1: one would design a system like the one we have,
Speaker 1: and no one did. It's a patchwork built over decades.
Speaker 1: Our mission is to help make it work better. We
Speaker 1: are willing to partner with anyone as we always have
Speaker 1: healthcare providers, employers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, government and others to
Speaker 1: find ways to deliver high quality care and lower costs.
Speaker 1: Hit is all bullshit. The American people see it, they
Speaker 1: understand it. The news media doesn't see it because they
Speaker 1: don't cover it, they don't comprehend it, and they don't
Speaker 1: travel to the places where the American people are because
Speaker 1: the world, as its shrunk, has become more remote and
Speaker 1: more isolated, adding to the misery. The truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is people are not alone in dealing with this company.
Speaker 1: Everybody who deals with it, from the doctor, from the nurse,
Speaker 1: from the provider to the patient. Every part of the
Speaker 1: healthcare system, except for the bureaucracy, except for the companies,
Speaker 1: knows and disdains United Healthcare because they appreciate it for
Speaker 1: what it is. A cancer on the healthcare system. Let
Speaker 1: me keep reading. Healthcare is both intensely personal and very complicated,
Speaker 1: and the reason behind coverage decisions are not well understood.
Speaker 1: We share there some of the responsibility for that. Together
Speaker 1: with employers, governments, and others who pay for care, we
Speaker 1: need to improve how we explain what insurance covers and
Speaker 1: how decisions are made. Behind each decision lies a comprehensive
Speaker 1: and continually updated body of clinical evidence focused on achieving
Speaker 1: the best health outcomes in ensuring patient safety. Blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, meaningless corporate tease and jargon. It is a lie.
Speaker 1: While the health system is not perfect, every corner of
Speaker 1: it is filled with people who try to do their
Speaker 1: best for those they serve. Is Sir Andrew comparing himself
Speaker 1: to the brain surgeon who has spent twenty years of
Speaker 1: their lives honing an exactitude a skill. Is he comparing
Speaker 1: himself to the attention who cleans the bedpen who tends
Speaker 1: to the sores and the wounds and cleans the blood
Speaker 1: and the stains and the puke. Is he comparing himself
Speaker 1: to the labor and delivery nurse? Is he comparing himself
Speaker 1: to the person who holds the hand of the dying patient? This,
Speaker 1: sir Andrew, who makes twenty three million dollars a year.
Speaker 1: What sir Andrew does, what his great skill is, is
Speaker 1: reading a spreadsheet. What Sir Andrew is great at doing
Speaker 1: is appreciating that the human being can be reduced to
Speaker 1: a cog, to a nothing, to a number that if
Speaker 1: enough of them can be said no to who deserve
Speaker 1: to have their treatments paid for because that's what their
Speaker 1: insurance guarantees. That he's a genius, the greatest doctor of
Speaker 1: them all, But he's not. What he is is a
Speaker 1: global scumbag and a businessman who's been knighted because he
Speaker 1: can surf the wave of a very complicated business. Let
Speaker 1: me keep reading from his essay of platitudes. Clearly, we
Speaker 1: are not there yet. We understand and share the desire
Speaker 1: to build a healthcare system that works better for everyone.
Speaker 1: That is the purpose of our organization. No, sir Andrew,
Speaker 1: the purpose of your organization is to return shareholder profit,
Speaker 1: and none benefit more than you do, Sir Andrew. The
Speaker 1: United States and the United Kingdom are said to share
Speaker 1: a special relationship, and Americans have a fondness for British subjects.
Speaker 1: Here's the truth. We have a lot of Brits in America,
Speaker 1: like the one running the Washington Post newsroom, doing a
Speaker 1: lot of damage to important institutions. And so when you
Speaker 1: hear Sir Andrew just because he speaks English does not
Speaker 1: make him one of us. He's not, And when he
Speaker 1: pretends to be, it's a offensive. The truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is, and I say this as a customer of
Speaker 1: the company, it's a wretched, miserable misery machine. It does
Speaker 1: so intentionally, purposefully. Nobody who deals with United Healthcare doesn't
Speaker 1: get it. So Sir Andrew should save his empty words
Speaker 1: and his platitudes, and Democrats should appreciate that it is
Speaker 1: time to begin to think, in this moment of defeat,
Speaker 1: about what comes next and how to talk to ordinary Americans,
Speaker 1: not in the platitude in the language of Sir Andrew,
Speaker 1: but in the plain English of men like Franklin Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: There's a lot at stake right now, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people in America really are hurting, and they fell
Speaker 1: for a lie because at least the liar had enough
Speaker 1: interest to lie to them. Being seen is always better
Speaker 1: than being ignored, even if you're seen by the most
Speaker 1: awful amongst us. Sir Andrew somehow feels pressure. He feels
Speaker 1: like this story is about him somehow, and so he
Speaker 1: decided he would start talking, he would start dancing, he
Speaker 1: would start the jive and chuck. But it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Maybe it does to a deluded CEO class that will
Speaker 1: call him and write them a note and say, wow,
Speaker 1: Sir Andrew, that was great. What a notp aad brilliant,
Speaker 1: brilliant genius, What a leader you are? Might you speak
Speaker 1: at Davos? What can you tell us there, Sir Andrew?
Speaker 1: Maybe you can join a panel and talk about trust.
Speaker 1: This is the warning. I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning,
Speaker 1: and I invite you to join. Subscribe on our substack,
Speaker 1: on our YouTube channel, follow us. Welcome to the community.