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Speaker 1: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show

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Speaker 1: for you today. We are back in beautiful Washington, DC.

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Speaker 1: What do we have, Christal? Indeed we do, and thank

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Speaker 1: you to everyone who tuned in for the live stream

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Speaker 1: on New York City. We had a blast. The comments

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Speaker 1: on it were really positive, so we'll be looking for

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Speaker 1: more opportunities to do that stuff like that. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was a fun format. I think people enjoyed sort of

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Speaker 1: how we switched it up in the show today. All right,

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Speaker 1: big moves with regard to Elon Musk and Twitter and

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Speaker 1: total media freak out about the whole thing, which is

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Speaker 1: very revealing in many ways. We also have some new

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Speaker 1: comments from Joe Biden's polster who helped him to win

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Speaker 1: the presidency, saying that this is the worst political environment

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Speaker 1: for Democrats that he has ever seen, which I think

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Speaker 1: is just, I mean, pretty undeniable, but for him to

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Speaker 1: admit it, he had some amazing interesting comments here. Also,

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Speaker 1: movement on the stock band for members of Congress will

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Speaker 1: tell you what the sort of sticking points are and

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Speaker 1: where that lies in the process. New news about CNN

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Speaker 1: Plus and you guys know how much the wheels are

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Speaker 1: already coming off big layoffs and budget cuts already planned.

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Speaker 1: We also have Jordan Cheriton in the show for an

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Speaker 1: update on union efforts and union busting efforts over with Amazon. Okay,

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Speaker 1: a couple other announcements for you here, guys. First of all,

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Speaker 1: we are not going to do a normal show on Thursday.

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Speaker 1: We will have content to post every single day like

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Speaker 1: we normally do. I unfortunately, have suffered death in the family,

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Speaker 1: so I'm going to be tending a funeral. And it

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Speaker 1: is soccer birthday. Yeah, that's right. So and Marshall is

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Speaker 1: not a Marshal Talan. So we just said, you know what, guys,

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Speaker 1: We're going to call it this. Yeah, we tried our bust,

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Speaker 1: but we're going to record a bunch of extra stuff

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Speaker 1: so we won't leave you high and dry. Another thing

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Speaker 1: that we will reveal at the end of the show,

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Speaker 1: we have at long last gotten the Lifetime Members plaque complete.

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Speaker 1: It is in the studio. It is sitting to my

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Speaker 1: left as we speak right now. If you say, very

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Speaker 1: difficult logistical challenge to figure on exactly how to pull

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Speaker 1: this out, especially we find do you know how hard

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Speaker 1: it is to make stuff in America? We can tell

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Speaker 1: you a whole thing about it. Yes, And finally, before

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Speaker 1: last announcement before we start the show is thank you

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Speaker 1: to James for putting together the newsletter. We're going to

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Speaker 1: continue forward with that because he seems to like doing

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Speaker 1: it and you guys seem to like getting it, so

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Speaker 1: premium guys really love it. It is a like we reminder,

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Speaker 1: it's basically a written roundup of the entire show, includes

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Speaker 1: all the links, all of the elements that are within here.

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Speaker 1: So if you want to check our stuff, what exactly

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Speaker 1: that we're citing and go and read deeper for yourself.

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Speaker 1: That is something that we make available to our premium members.

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Speaker 1: We want to make the show not only to be

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Speaker 1: able to watch to listen, but in order to consume

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Speaker 1: it in the best environment possible for you. Something've been

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Speaker 1: working on for a long time and I hope you

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Speaker 1: guys really Yeah. And by the way, guys, we have

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Speaker 1: some other announcements coming up this week, new partnerships. We're

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Speaker 1: continuing to look into more people and more content, more people,

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Speaker 1: more folks in the circle of friends here over at

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Speaker 1: breaking points, extended universe, the extended family here, so stay

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Speaker 1: tuned for that. All right. With all of that, out

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Speaker 1: of the way. Let's get to the very latest in

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Speaker 1: terms of Russia's war in Ukraine. President Biden making some

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Speaker 1: new comments, continuing to up the rhetorical anti in ways

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Speaker 1: that I personally find to be less than productive. Let's

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Speaker 1: take a listen to his latest comments. I called the

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Speaker 1: genocide because it's become clear and clear that Putin is

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Speaker 1: just trying to wipe out the idea of even being

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Speaker 1: able to flee in Ukrainian and the evidence is mounting.

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Speaker 1: It's different than it was last week. The more evidence

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Speaker 1: that's coming out of the literally the horrible things that

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Speaker 1: the Russians have done in Ukraine. So here's the trajectory. Guys.

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Speaker 1: You remember, first President Biden made some comments off the

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Speaker 1: cuff that Putin was a war criminal. Then he sort

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Speaker 1: of codifies it, puts on official statement, really leans into that,

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Speaker 1: so it wasn't just, you know, one sort of flippant comment.

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Speaker 1: Then he says he wants him to actually be tried

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Speaker 1: as a war criminal, is something that our own war

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Speaker 1: criminals have never subjected themselves to. And now we are

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Speaker 1: moving up the chain of rhetorical escalation here saying that

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Speaker 1: what Russia is engaged in Ukraine is in fact genocide,

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Speaker 1: and just to put the definition of genocide out there,

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Speaker 1: because sometimes we throw these terms around loosely without really

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Speaker 1: thinking through what they are and what they mean. It

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Speaker 1: was a Jewish Polish legal scholar who coined the term

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty four, and he said that the term

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Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily signify mass killings. More often, genocide refers to

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Speaker 1: a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations

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Speaker 1: of the life of national groups, so that these groups

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Speaker 1: wither and die like plants that have suffered uplight. I

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Speaker 1: think that certainly could apply to what is happening in

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Speaker 1: Ukraine right now, So I'm not saying that the term

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Speaker 1: is inaccurate in terms of you know, Putin has clearly

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Speaker 1: not just a war on Ukrainian soil and a desire

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Speaker 1: to annex parts, if not all, of the country, but

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Speaker 1: also really denies that Ukraine is even a thing. So

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Speaker 1: there is some justification here. But the broader picture, as

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Speaker 1: we always try to point out, is that look, ultimately,

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Speaker 1: we want there to be peace, we want there to

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Speaker 1: be a negotiated settlement, we want there to be an

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Speaker 1: end to the violence. And it's very clear from the

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Speaker 1: present's words and from the administration's posture that they're not

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Speaker 1: really interested in that and saga we talked last week

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Speaker 1: in New York about ron Klain also made some comments

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Speaker 1: on a podcast. He said, I don't want an exit

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Speaker 1: ramp for Vladimir Putin. I don't think that's our concern.

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Speaker 1: Our concern is punishing the Russian aggression and defending the

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Speaker 1: rights of the Ukrainians to have the kind of future

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Speaker 1: that they deserve. No one is denying the Ukrainians deserve

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Speaker 1: to be free, they deserve peace, they deserve all of that.

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Speaker 1: But when you don't want an exit rant for Vladimir Putin,

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Speaker 1: that means you don't want peace. That means you actually

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Speaker 1: want Ukraine to continue suffering. And we're going to bring

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Speaker 1: you some more reports on the civilian casualties here. You

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Speaker 1: want this war to continue because you're more interested in

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Speaker 1: punishing Russia than ultimately reaching a settlement here. Yeah, and look,

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Speaker 1: the words of a president matter. That was the very

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Speaker 1: first thing that Joe Biden said whenever he was running

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Speaker 1: for president in twenty nineteen. You can all go back

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Speaker 1: and watch his announcement video. But here's the problem. The

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Speaker 1: enduring legacy of never again is burned into all of us,

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Speaker 1: and I think that's a good thing. I actually do.

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Speaker 1: Post World War Two, we decided that it was a

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Speaker 1: just cause that four hundred thousand Americans died in order

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Speaker 1: to restore both peace and Europe and to stop the

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Speaker 1: genocide of Hitler and the Nazis. The greatest regret of

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Speaker 1: the United States in the nineteen nineties is that they

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Speaker 1: didn't do anything whenever it came to the genocide in Rwanda.

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Speaker 1: And that is why at the time, if you go back,

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Speaker 1: the Clinton administration refused to use the word genocide. There's

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Speaker 1: a famous clip of Susan Rice refusing to use the

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Speaker 1: word from the podium at the State Department. And the

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Speaker 1: reason why was because if we acknowledged it as a

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Speaker 1: quote unquote genocide, that would require and compel action on

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Speaker 1: behalf of the United States. So there's actually a two

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Speaker 1: pronged problem here. If this is a genocide and we

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Speaker 1: do nothing about it, then that begs the question why

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Speaker 1: are we doing Why aren't we doing the maximalst approach?

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Speaker 1: Why are we not bombing you know, whichever Russian contingent

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Speaker 1: is responsible for the war crimes in Bucha? Why are

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Speaker 1: we not, you know, taking out chemical weapons factories or

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Speaker 1: denigrating the Russian ability to wage war. Now, there's a

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Speaker 1: grand strategic reason we're not doing that. It's because Russia

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Speaker 1: is a nuclear power, and because doing so would very

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Speaker 1: likely invite a major escalation between a war between NATO

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Speaker 1: and the United States. And so Biden needs to choose

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Speaker 1: his words more carefully towards an actual strategic aim. Instead,

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Speaker 1: he's speaking aimlessly. Putin is a war criminal, this is

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Speaker 1: a genocide, and he doubles down on genocide. The thing is,

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Speaker 1: I don't think it is aimless. I think it's very intentional,

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Speaker 1: because they don't have any intention of bringing this thing

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Speaker 1: to a close. I mean, that's just become increasingly clear.

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Speaker 1: At the beginning, I was sort of fifty to fifty

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Speaker 1: whether it was just you know, they're just reacting and

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Speaker 1: bubbling through and it's all response to whatever's happening in

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Speaker 1: the moment. But I think it's become increasingly clear that

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Speaker 1: their only goal here ultimately is to punish Russian aggression

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Speaker 1: to the point that Putin gets pushed out of power.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's what Biden let flip in that famous

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Speaker 1: moment that you know they kind of cleaned up, they

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Speaker 1: kind of walked back, and then he kind of also

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Speaker 1: leaned into I think that was revealing what the true

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Speaker 1: aim is here, and I think that that's foolish. I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's going to happen, and ultimately I think

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Speaker 1: it's going to contribute to even more Ukrainian suffering. And

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Speaker 1: so that's really the issue here is I think that

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Speaker 1: the US administration is really actively standing in the way

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Speaker 1: of peace at this point and guaranteeing that we are

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Speaker 1: going to enter this new Cold War era of a

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Speaker 1: new Iron Curtain and a new world divided and a

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Speaker 1: new conflict and competition, which is wonderful if you're an

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Speaker 1: arms dealer or weapons manufacturer. You know, it's wonderful. For

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Speaker 1: the news here in this country, it's, you know, their

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Speaker 1: greatest dream. But it's a disaster if you actually care

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Speaker 1: about a sort of you know, if you actually care

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Speaker 1: about peace, it's ultimately a disaster. Yeah. To me, it's

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Speaker 1: all about ambiguity, which is that whenever Biden leaves terms

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Speaker 1: open like genocide and war criminal, he is inviting a

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Speaker 1: position of the United States in order to use military force.

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Speaker 1: This is something that we all know in our DNA. Rightfully,

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Speaker 1: we're good people. We don't want to see people massacred

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Speaker 1: across the planet. But when you use rhetoric like that,

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Speaker 1: and by the way, it's not just me saying that.

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Speaker 1: I've heard even from many even quote unquote like moderate

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Speaker 1: type interventions. Marshall is one of these people, and he

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Speaker 1: was denigrating the Biden ministry. He's like, you can't say that,

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Speaker 1: because if you say that, you are saying the United

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Speaker 1: States should be bringing the full force of its power.

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Speaker 1: We have shameful times in our legacy, turning away Jewish

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Speaker 1: refugees in the nineteen thirties in order to not antagonize

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Speaker 1: the Hitler regime. I mean, remember, like, these are things

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Speaker 1: which we've all been taught correctly in graduate school as

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Speaker 1: a black mark. And so when you, as the president

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Speaker 1: of the United States and the leader of the free world,

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Speaker 1: use this type of rhetoric, you justify and actually open

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Speaker 1: yourself up to the question, well, why are you not

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Speaker 1: taking direct military actions in order to stop this? And

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Speaker 1: we know why that answer is and we should acknowledge that, right,

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Speaker 1: that's right, and that's why you see actually a majority

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Speaker 1: of American people saying we're not doing enough, even though

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Speaker 1: we have taken extraordinary actions, both in terms of the

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Speaker 1: weapons support, the intelligence support we've provided that, the training

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Speaker 1: we've provided the Ukrainian military over years and years now,

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Speaker 1: and of course the economic warfare that is of almost

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Speaker 1: unprecedented scale that we have launched against Russia at this point.

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Speaker 1: That's how you get to a place where you can

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Speaker 1: have taken all of those extraordinary, in some of them

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Speaker 1: I think foolish and morally wrong actions, and still have

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Speaker 1: people feel like, yeah, but you're not doing enough. It's

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Speaker 1: because from the beginning of this conflict you've had a

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Speaker 1: certain contingent here in Washington who was perfectly willing and

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Speaker 1: comfortable to say this is World War two again, this

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Speaker 1: is putin again, this is you know, to throw round

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Speaker 1: language like genocide, which, as you said, you know, Americans

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Speaker 1: are good people. The country has not, certainly the leadership

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Speaker 1: has not lived up to the values that America is

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Speaker 1: supposed to be all about. But the American people buy

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Speaker 1: and large really do believe in, yes, those values and

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Speaker 1: support those values. So when you casually use those terms,

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Speaker 1: it does absolutely open the door for people saying, Okay,

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Speaker 1: then why aren't we doing more? Why aren't we isn't

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Speaker 1: this a just cause? Why aren't we using our men

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Speaker 1: and women to stop the atrocities? Right? And look, I

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Speaker 1: mean I just have to repeat it again, which is that, Yes,

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Speaker 1: what can happen in Ukraine is horrific. Can what's going

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Speaker 1: on there is like catastrophic? And Biden's not descriptively wrong

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Speaker 1: whenever he says that Putin does not acknowledge Ukrainian identity sovereignty. People,

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Speaker 1: this is a long time coming in the history of

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Speaker 1: not just Russia, many of the subordinate peoples to Russia.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I actually just saw a fascinating thing today

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Speaker 1: about Russian troops from eastern Siberia who are Buddhist. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's like and they're being conscripted and deployed to Ukraine. Really,

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Speaker 1: what do these step people have an interest in fighting

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Speaker 1: in Ukraine? Yeah, it's like, this is ludicrous. So many,

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Speaker 1: many people have different types of ethnic groups have long

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Speaker 1: suffered under the Great Russian thumb. However, that doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: that we should risk a nuclear war in order to

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Speaker 1: try and intervene within that country. And when you use

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Speaker 1: language like this, I'll just repeat it again. The words

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Speaker 1: of a president legitimately do matter. And just so you

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Speaker 1: know it's bipartisan, because President Donald Trump also called it

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Speaker 1: a Tenna side the day after, and he called it

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Speaker 1: a holocaust previously and on his rhetoric, and we should

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Speaker 1: call on there. So when you have the two leading

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Speaker 1: political figures in the United States, depresses me to say

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Speaker 1: that they're the two, but they are of the two factions,

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Speaker 1: and the president the former president likely next president. You

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Speaker 1: put that together, it's not a good situation for US policy,

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Speaker 1: and you have to understand the broader implications of the

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Speaker 1: machine that that wears up here in DC. But yeah, yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: the last thing I want to say about this too,

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Speaker 1: is just on the hypocrisy front. Of course, we've talked

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Speaker 1: about a lot about Saudi and Yemen, but if you're

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Speaker 1: following the news out of Israel, how you can apply

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Speaker 1: the term genocide to Russia's aggression against Ukraine and not

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Speaker 1: what Israel has been doing to Palestine for decades. I

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Speaker 1: don't think you're applying an even standard there where it

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Speaker 1: comes to those things. All Right, latest from on the ground,

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Speaker 1: there are some big news from the Ukrainian side and

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Speaker 1: also some very big significant news from the Russian side.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with the Ukrainian side. Let's go ahead and

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Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. So an incredibly significant

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Speaker 1: Russian warship called the Muska sunk in the Black Sea.

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Speaker 1: Now the Ukrainians and the US say that Ukrainian missiles

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Speaker 1: hit and sank this warship. The Russians say, no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: it caught fire. You guys had nothing to do with it.

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Speaker 1: And then the ammunition exploded, and actually, like it was

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Speaker 1: just it just happened. It really wasn't you guys. I'll

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Speaker 1: let you decide what you think actually happened here. But

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Speaker 1: let me tell you why this is so significant. This

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Speaker 1: is the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet. It was

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Speaker 1: being towed to port when stormy seas caused it to sink.

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Speaker 1: That's according to the Russians. That's their version of the story.

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Speaker 1: And why it matters so much is this was a

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Speaker 1: five hundred and ten crew missile cruiser. It was a

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Speaker 1: symbol of Russia's military power. It led the naval assault

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Speaker 1: on Ukraine. So it's been very significant player in terms

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Speaker 1: of this particular war. Some analysts are saying this is

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Speaker 1: more of a symbolic blow than it is actually a

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Speaker 1: sort of military tactical blow, although the tactical blow matters

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Speaker 1: as well because this is the largest vessel, the biggest

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Speaker 1: Russian warship to be sunk in action since World War II,

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Speaker 1: so that's kind of the symbolic blow. But on the

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Speaker 1: actual tactical blow here, smaller vessels were the ones that

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Speaker 1: were actually conducting the bombardments of Ukrainian cities, but this

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Speaker 1: ship was providing them with wide area air cover. It

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Speaker 1: had longer range missile defense systems, so it was able

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Speaker 1: to provide air cover for these smaller ships that were

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Speaker 1: actually due the bombardment. So there's kind of a dispute

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Speaker 1: over how significant it is in terms of the direction

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Speaker 1: of the war, but there's no doubt that this is

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Speaker 1: definitely symbolic blow to the Russians. And there was kind

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Speaker 1: of a freak out on Russian State TV purportedly over

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Speaker 1: the fact that this ship was sunk. This obviously with

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Speaker 1: something that the Russians could not hide from their people,

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Speaker 1: even though they're trying to spin their own version of

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Speaker 1: events here, and so on the one hand, there was

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Speaker 1: the Russian State TV. They were sort of freaking out

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Speaker 1: about it, but they were also saying this was an

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Speaker 1: attack on Russia herself, and this was causing them to

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Speaker 1: use the words war more frequently. And so there's also

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Speaker 1: concern that this is sort of being used to prepare

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Speaker 1: the Russian population for a broader conscription, calling up of

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Speaker 1: more military age men and saying, listen, now we have

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Speaker 1: to like fully commit ourselves to this war in Ukraine,

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Speaker 1: whereas before, of course they've been spinning it as this

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Speaker 1: limited special military operation, right, And actually this morning we

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Speaker 1: bear the consequences of what that looks like, which is

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Speaker 1: that Russian missiles struck this morning the city of Leviv

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Speaker 1: in western Ukraine at least seven people. But the reason

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Speaker 1: that Leviv strikes are always important is that is the

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Speaker 1: major conduit of NATO weapons into Ukraine. And also it's

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Speaker 1: a direct shot at many of the civilians and others

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Speaker 1: who had fled. It invites significantly also more escalation on

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Speaker 1: behalf of the Russians. It is so embarrassing for them too.

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Speaker 1: They're supposed to be this great power. Their Russian fleet

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Speaker 1: has long been a complete joke. We all found that

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Speaker 1: out in Syria when it would like steam this disgusting,

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Speaker 1: you could basically watch its smoke, you know, try and

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Speaker 1: get all the way over to Syria in order to

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Speaker 1: try and project naval power. But it just shows you

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Speaker 1: that things are not going well for them at all,

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Speaker 1: and they are becoming an embarrassment on the world stage militarily,

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Speaker 1: which invites its own problems. Let's go and put this

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Speaker 1: next one up there on the screen around the retreat

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Speaker 1: from Kiev and what people have found, which is that

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Speaker 1: more than nine hundred the associated press please, more than

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Speaker 1: nine hundred civilian bodies found in the Kiev region. So

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Speaker 1: the bodies of more than nine hundred civilians were discovered

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Speaker 1: in the region surrounding the capital, most of them who

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Speaker 1: were fatally shot, in indication that many people were simply executed. Now,

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Speaker 1: to be fair, this does come directly from the Ukrainian

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Speaker 1: police and the head of the Capital Regional Police Force,

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Speaker 1: so look, they also have an interest in discussing this.

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Speaker 1: That being said, I don't disbelieve photos of literal dead

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Speaker 1: bodies in the ground, and it just shows you how

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Speaker 1: much of a tragedy that war really is. But finally,

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Speaker 1: and this is the try to present a very balanced

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Speaker 1: picture of exactly what's happening here. Put the next one

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Speaker 1: up there, please us on the screen, which is that

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Speaker 1: the city of Mariopol is very much on the cusp

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Speaker 1: of falling almost completely to Russia. There are some heroic

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Speaker 1: stories that are coming out of the Ukrainian soldiers there,

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Speaker 1: basically saying that they're going to fight to the death

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Speaker 1: in holding that city, and really it reminds me of

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Speaker 1: some of the Soviet campaigns against the Nazis, when many

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Speaker 1: of the Soviet soldiers would willingly sacrifice themselves and say, look,

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Speaker 1: we know we're going to die, and then they would

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Speaker 1: you know this famous story I remember Dan Carlin's Hardcore

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Speaker 1: History where they scribble on the side of the building

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Speaker 1: and say, let it be known that the soldiers of

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Speaker 1: whatever fought to the death for their country. So really

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Speaker 1: heroic story coming out from the Ukrainian defenders, but it

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Speaker 1: doesn't change the grand strategic situation, which is that it's

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Speaker 1: very likely that Mariopol will fight to the Russians, but

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it's going to be incredibly costly. Some

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Speaker 1: of the defenders themselves saying we are doing this in

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Speaker 1: order to pin the Russians down here, make them sacrifice

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Speaker 1: every possible man, and they say they will fight to

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Speaker 1: the end of every block of the city. Is going

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Speaker 1: to have to be so, you know, Russia, you're going

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Speaker 1: to find out what we had to find out the

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Speaker 1: hard way in Fallujah, what we had to find out

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Speaker 1: in urban warfare. It's hell. It costs a ton of lives,

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Speaker 1: and when you face a devoted enemy, as the Ukrainians

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Speaker 1: are in this situation, it's going to be a bad

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Speaker 1: time for you. But that doesn't mean that they aren't

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Speaker 1: willing in order to incur that cost. That's right. And

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Speaker 1: just to put some of the numbers on this, I

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Speaker 1: believe Maria paul is a city of about four hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty thousand people. Remaining in the city is only

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Speaker 1: about one hundred thousand people. That's still a lot of

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Speaker 1: lives there, and the only known remaining resistance left in

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Speaker 1: the city in terms of armed resistance to the Russians

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Speaker 1: are sort of holed up in this steel plant and

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Speaker 1: Mariopol is This would be the most significant victory of

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Speaker 1: the Russians thus far in this war. It's very strategically important.

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Speaker 1: That's why they have devoted a lot of resources to

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Speaker 1: Mariopol from the very beginning. It's been under a seven

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Speaker 1: week siege. The humanitarian conditions on the ground are horrific.

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Speaker 1: You know, people couldn't get in food, medicine, electricity, water,

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Speaker 1: just mass suffering throughout the city. And the reason it

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Speaker 1: would be so significant is because it would allow them

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Speaker 1: to fully secure that land corridor that we've the land

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Speaker 1: bridge we've been talking about from the beginning to the

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Speaker 1: Crimean peninsula where they obviously already had sort of taken

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Speaker 1: over that they had seized from Ukraine twenty four and

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Speaker 1: it would deprive Ukraine of a major port and some

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Speaker 1: of its prized industrial assets. So, as I said, you know,

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Speaker 1: this would be an incredibly significant victory from the Russians.

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Speaker 1: It would be their most significant victory tactical victory here

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Speaker 1: in this war thus far. And it appears that Mariapol

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Speaker 1: at this point is all but lost, as that heroic

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Speaker 1: resistance does continue. This has potential implications also for the

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Speaker 1: peace process. And this is according to President Zelenski. Let's

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Speaker 1: go ahead and put his tweet, this tweet up on

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Speaker 1: the screen. He's saying that negotiations with Russia would come

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Speaker 1: to a halt if the Ukrainians defending the port city

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Speaker 1: of Mariopol are killed and defeated. He says, we are

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Speaker 1: not bartering using our territories and people. The language I've

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Speaker 1: heard from him most recently is very adamant that they're

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Speaker 1: not willing to give up any of their territory in

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Speaker 1: the east of the state. And Ukrainian Foreign Minister told

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Speaker 1: CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday that the situation Mariapoul

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Speaker 1: was dire and heartbreaking, that it could have significant implications

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Speaker 1: on peace negotiations with Russia. Here's his quote. He says,

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Speaker 1: after Bucha it became particularly difficult to continue talking with

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Speaker 1: the Russians. But as my president mentioned, Maria Paul may

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Speaker 1: be a red line. So as these continued atrocities unfold

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Speaker 1: and the Ukrainian sufferer more losses, both of their civilian

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Speaker 1: population and their soldiers, of course, it makes it more

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Speaker 1: difficult to sit down at the negotiating table and be

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Speaker 1: able to come to some sort of a resolution here.

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Speaker 1: And Putin himself has said that a second offensive is

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Speaker 1: likely to launch in the eastern part of the country.

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Speaker 1: So things look not really not good in terms of

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Speaker 1: what's happening over there. Really thinking about everybody in Mary

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Speaker 1: Paul today, all right, let's go ahead and move on

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Speaker 1: to Elon musk and to Twitter. So on Friday, during

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Speaker 1: the live show, we had the breaking news that Elon

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Speaker 1: Musk had offered fifty four dollars per share to Twitter

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Speaker 1: and that Twitter was considering it. We can now bring

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Speaker 1: you the news that Twitter has rejected that offer with

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Speaker 1: a so called poison pill. Let's go ahead and put

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Speaker 1: this up there on the screen. So the Twitter board

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Speaker 1: adopted this poison pill after must forty three billion dollar

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Speaker 1: bid to buy the company. Now it's a little complicated,

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Speaker 1: so let me just try and explain it to the

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Speaker 1: best of my ability. The way that these poison pills

431
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:15,120
Speaker 1: work is that they were invented in the crazy hostile

432
00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:18,280
Speaker 1: takeover days of the nineteen eighties, where the Twitter board

433
00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:22,560
Speaker 1: says that if any person or conglomerate accumulates more than

434
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:26,399
Speaker 1: fourteen point nine percent of Twitter stock, they will begin

435
00:22:26,800 --> 00:22:31,359
Speaker 1: issuing millions of more shares to broader public investors. The

436
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:35,040
Speaker 1: reason this matters is that the Musk offer is a

437
00:22:35,080 --> 00:22:37,840
Speaker 1: per share offer, So what it would do is a

438
00:22:38,119 --> 00:22:40,960
Speaker 1: it would dilute the stock, but b what it would

439
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:44,280
Speaker 1: do is make it much more of an expensive ability

440
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:47,400
Speaker 1: in order to offer to buy the broader company, especially

441
00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:50,480
Speaker 1: whenever you create millions of shares out of thin air.

442
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:53,760
Speaker 1: It would significantly inflate the purchase price and make it

443
00:22:53,840 --> 00:22:56,400
Speaker 1: much more difficult in order for Musking them to acquire

444
00:22:56,440 --> 00:22:59,280
Speaker 1: the company. Now, this has spawned a lot of discussion

445
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:03,879
Speaker 1: around corporate governance, shareholders and more. And the way that

446
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:07,040
Speaker 1: we have to understand this is, while yes, it matters

447
00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:10,000
Speaker 1: as to who the broader shareholders are, publicly traded companies

448
00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:12,879
Speaker 1: are subject to the governance of their board of directors.

449
00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:16,679
Speaker 1: Those board of directors, despite owning less than two percent

450
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:20,480
Speaker 1: of the entire company, which is less than Elon Musk,

451
00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:24,359
Speaker 1: which is less than you know, even Vanguard and many others,

452
00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:28,200
Speaker 1: still have the ability to reject and determine the course

453
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:30,520
Speaker 1: of action for the company. And it really raises a

454
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:32,680
Speaker 1: lot of questions of like, okay, like how exactly these

455
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:35,359
Speaker 1: things run seems a little ridiculous, you know, when you

456
00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 1: think about ownership and then corporate governance. But it's a

457
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:40,840
Speaker 1: long standing corporate practice in order to try and reject

458
00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:43,959
Speaker 1: hostile takeover efforts. Apparently Netflix did the same thing when

459
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:46,359
Speaker 1: Carl Icon tried to run a similar thing on the

460
00:23:46,359 --> 00:23:49,600
Speaker 1: company back in twenty twelve. That's the most recent example

461
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:52,440
Speaker 1: of a tech company kind of rejecting these hostile takeover

462
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 1: type bids. Let's put the next one up there on

463
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:57,800
Speaker 1: the screen, because what you can see is that there's

464
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 1: also a lot of behind the scenes shinanigans which are happening,

465
00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:04,720
Speaker 1: which is that Musk himself now is no longer the

466
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:10,720
Speaker 1: major Twitter large shareholder. Now Vanguard Group actually upped their

467
00:24:10,760 --> 00:24:14,520
Speaker 1: steak in the company all the way up to ten percent.

468
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:18,680
Speaker 1: Now we don't exactly know the reason why Vanguard has

469
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:21,399
Speaker 1: decided to up its steak. It does seem very much

470
00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: in direct reaction to Elon Musk, and perhaps it's an

471
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 1: effort to perhaps influence the board more and perhaps show

472
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:32,440
Speaker 1: that they are allies in the system. It just look,

473
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:35,680
Speaker 1: many of these board members and black Rock and other

474
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:39,040
Speaker 1: large shareholders don't have any interest in Elon Musk taking

475
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:42,480
Speaker 1: over the company, and you know, not unfairly. Because the

476
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:44,639
Speaker 1: one thing I do want to say is this, Musk

477
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: gave an interview on Friday where he said, quote, I

478
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:51,159
Speaker 1: don't care about the economics at all. Well Twitter, He's like,

479
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:55,919
Speaker 1: I view this as a editorial project of which I

480
00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: want to protect free speech. I don't care about the

481
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: business of the company, So if you're a shareholder, I mean,

482
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 1: that's not the best thing. At the same time, Musk

483
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 1: is offering you a buyout, and it's kind of hilarious

484
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: that Twitter's board is actually being advised by Goldman Sachs

485
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: in terms of how in order to defeat all of this. Well,

486
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 1: it turns out that Goldman Sacks itself has a cell

487
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 1: rating on Twitter and says that the price target on

488
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 1: it should be thirty dollars. So by their own analysis,

489
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: the Twitter as a company in a business is terrible,

490
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 1: and using Musk's metric, he's offering you insane to overpay

491
00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 1: I mean not just overpay, almost double what Goldman Sachs

492
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:38,560
Speaker 1: says that the company is truly worth, which is kind

493
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: of hilarious. So you put it all together. The Twitter

494
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:44,040
Speaker 1: board then has outright rejected it. We don't yet know

495
00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:47,320
Speaker 1: how this is going to play out, though things inside

496
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:50,520
Speaker 1: of Twitter are a bit chaotic. However, we do know

497
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:53,160
Speaker 1: this that Musk has said that there was a plan

498
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:55,480
Speaker 1: B that he said that was on the stage. He

499
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: said he is looking to work with possible other shareholders.

500
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:02,280
Speaker 1: So this saga is not over. Yeah, I think the

501
00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:05,159
Speaker 1: best way to think about it is Marshall made this

502
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:06,720
Speaker 1: point during our live stream. I thought it was excellent,

503
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 1: which is that this is like him buying a newspaper.

504
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:10,199
Speaker 1: He wants to look at this thing. He's like, I

505
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:12,440
Speaker 1: have a vision for Twitter. I don't only care about

506
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: the business. It's actually kind of a terrible business if

507
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: you look at it, right, And so this is the

508
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 1: vision of the world that I want to see. Well,

509
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: And there's so much that's fascinating about this. I mean,

510
00:26:21,359 --> 00:26:23,640
Speaker 1: first of all, like, as I've said before, I sort

511
00:26:23,640 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: of view all these billionaires the same, but there's a

512
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:29,159
Speaker 1: lot of partisan filtering of which billionaires people like and

513
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:31,160
Speaker 1: which ones they're comfortable with. And we're going to get

514
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 1: later to like the media freak count over this that

515
00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:36,360
Speaker 1: you certainly did not see when Bezos was buying watchings,

516
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: for example. But I think if you do think of

517
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:41,360
Speaker 1: it in that framework of this is like buying a newspaper,

518
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 1: then people start to understand more like, oh, then this

519
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:47,479
Speaker 1: isn't just purely a money making venture. Because that's what

520
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 1: makes this so unusual is usually when you have these

521
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: hustle takeover bids, activist investors, all of these activist shareholders,

522
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: all of these things, it usually is about I think

523
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 1: this company from a financial perspective is being run. I

524
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 1: think we could make more money here, not like I

525
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:07,200
Speaker 1: think their values are wrong. And so you have this

526
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 1: complicated mix of like ideology and financial incentives that makes

527
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 1: the picture confusing for people to understand whose motives are what.

528
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:22,440
Speaker 1: In that livestream interview that you reference, Elon Musk spoke

529
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 1: to the TED conferences, so orange whatever, I can't believe

530
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 1: it's so wrong. I know I think of the same

531
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 1: thing as like, oh, we're still doing this anyway. He

532
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:32,800
Speaker 1: spoke to TED twenty twenty two in Vancouver in a

533
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 1: livestreamed interview, and he partly laid on his vision for

534
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 1: making Twitter's algorithms more publicly accessible, something I would certainly welcome.

535
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: Limiting content moderation something else I would certainly welcome if

536
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 1: it's done in a consistent and you know again, transparent way.

537
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: He acknowledged he's not sure that he's actually going to

538
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: be able to pull this thing off and by Twitter, though,

539
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 1: he did say he has sufficient assets to fund the

540
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:58,280
Speaker 1: deal if accepted. You know, most of his assets are

541
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,400
Speaker 1: tied up in equity in his companies, so you probably

542
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:03,439
Speaker 1: have a big tax event if he had to, you know,

543
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 1: you'd have to like sell a stock whatever and have

544
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 1: an actual tax event and pay some taxes. That's not

545
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:09,840
Speaker 1: a bad thing. But must did say there is a

546
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: plan B if his initial offer to buy the company

547
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:14,919
Speaker 1: and take it private, which he called his best and

548
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 1: final offer, is rejected, but he isn't saying what that

549
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:22,640
Speaker 1: plan B ultimately is. So, you know, the big thing

550
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: to take away from the poison pill that's been adopted

551
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: here and Musk's comments from you know, directly from him

552
00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: is that this is far from a done deal, whether

553
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 1: or not that he's ultimately able to pull this off

554
00:28:35,119 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: and ultimately able to you know, take over Twitter. And

555
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:40,080
Speaker 1: he wants to take it private, by the way too.

556
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 1: That's the other plan here, And I completely believe him that,

557
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: you know, his motives have to do they are not

558
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: just directly financial. And so yeah, if you're a shareholder

559
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: and you're just in it for the money, even if

560
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 1: you don't care at all about content moderation or free speech,

561
00:28:56,120 --> 00:28:58,120
Speaker 1: if you're looking at this guy who's going to take

562
00:28:58,120 --> 00:28:59,480
Speaker 1: it over and he's like, I don't really care what

563
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: the return ultimately are, yeah, you're probably not going to

564
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: be too excited about that. Yeah, and you know this

565
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 1: is keeping with his behavior. I actually read over the

566
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: weekend reread actually two thousand and I think his seventeen

567
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:12,160
Speaker 1: book a biography of Musk elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX in

568
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: The Quest for a Fantastic Future. I highly recommend it

569
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 1: if you want to kind of understand how Musk ticks.

570
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: This is long standing in his behavior. If you look

571
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: at SpaceX, for example, he refuses to take the company

572
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: public because he does not want SpaceX subject to the

573
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: same whims of Twitter of Tesla as you've seen with Tesla,

574
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: like short sellers, quarterly earnings. He's like, you cannot plan

575
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 1: for the future the realistic company whenever you're subject to

576
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: the whims of the stock market. So even though Tesla

577
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: and then SpaceX I think is worth like seventy something

578
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: billion dollars, refuses to take the company public exactly for

579
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: this reason it doesn't want to be subject to the street.

580
00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: So he has a long standing kind of love of

581
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 1: private companies. And the only reason even wanted Tesla to

582
00:29:50,360 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 1: go public in the first place because at the time

583
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,240
Speaker 1: he actually needed the money and has long hated kind

584
00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:58,480
Speaker 1: of Wall Street's machinations all behind the scenes. Anyway, it's

585
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:01,280
Speaker 1: interesting and fitting with his worldview. But let's go to

586
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 1: the next part of this because it's hilarious. Put this

587
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 1: up there on the screen, please, which is that the

588
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: members of the Saudi royal family are very upset by

589
00:30:09,840 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's offer. Here is what Prince Alouied Talal says.

590
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 1: I don't believe the proposed offer by Elon Musk comes

591
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: close to the intrinsic value of Twitter, given its growth prospects,

592
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: being one of the largest shareholders the Kingdom, and I

593
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 1: reject this offer. Yeah, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejecting

594
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:36,480
Speaker 1: our offer. Elon replied, let's go ahead. Put this up

595
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:38,640
Speaker 1: there because there's a lot to say, and it reveals

596
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: a lot about our broken financial system and some of

597
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: the Saudi influence I've talked about here. Interesting. Just two questions,

598
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 1: if I may, how much of Twitter does the Kingdom

599
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: own directly and indirectly? Number two, what are the Kingdom's

600
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: views on journalistic freedom of speech? I think we all

601
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: know the answer to that question. You know this is

602
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 1: we didn't even put it together until this all happened.

603
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 1: But Brian Fogel's docum mentory The Dissident showed me that

604
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 1: a massive proportion of Saudi citizens are on Twitter, right,

605
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,719
Speaker 1: and the reason why is if they have anonymity, and

606
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:12,400
Speaker 1: a lot of Saudi politics happens in terms of Twitter discussion.

607
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: There are you've experienced, yes, oh yeah, yeah, they're very racist.

608
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 1: You can figure that out. But the mom's issue fatwas

609
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 1: on Twitter. It's really become a central part of Saudi discourse.

610
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 1: And the reason that MBS and the Saudi government were

611
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: so obsessed with Jamal Kashogi and other Saudi dissonances is

612
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: because they have big Twitter followings. They were living here

613
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 1: in the West and some of their stuff was re

614
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 1: entering Saudi discourse and bringing dissonance against the Kingdom. Now

615
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 1: the Kingdom has responded by you know, if you think

616
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: Russian troll farms are bad, the Saudi troll farms are

617
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 1: a whole other level. They're always like, and I've experienced

618
00:31:48,120 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 1: this first time. They're like, MBS is the greatest, you know,

619
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 1: and they'll call me some darky or whatever whatever people

620
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 1: are saying about Indians these days. I don't even know

621
00:31:57,080 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: what the slur is. No particularly care, So thank god

622
00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 1: I live over. But what you can see in their

623
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,959
Speaker 1: reaction is that the reason why Crystal I realize that

624
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 1: they have such a large stake in Twitter and are

625
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: on the board of directors is because they need to

626
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: control the political organ through which their politics is mediated

627
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:19,239
Speaker 1: in their country. And I can't believe it because it

628
00:32:19,280 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 1: cuts directly against the original promise of Twitter. I'm gonna

629
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: be talking about in my monologue about free speech, about

630
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: the ability of the Internet to serve as dissidents. So

631
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: to allow these Saudi despots, these people who chop people's

632
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 1: heads off and treat women in ways that you can't

633
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: even believe, to own an American publicly traded company and

634
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:43,719
Speaker 1: then try and work against in our system, our financial system,

635
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 1: to protect their hold over seventy million people and a

636
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 1: huge proportion of the world's oil supply. This is the

637
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:53,600
Speaker 1: most corrupt view as to how legal this all is.

638
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 1: I in the Kingdom reject your offer. How about we

639
00:32:56,560 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: reject the Kingdom. That's my answer. First of all, Okay,

640
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: do we need to have a Taylor Lorenz style public

641
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: airing or how you have been bullied online? Let me

642
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 1: know if you're able to contuct with this diagram here's

643
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 1: my plan. I just never want to go back to

644
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: the Gulf. Sorry, people, your country self, don't reach you.

645
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:19,640
Speaker 1: That's all. It's very revealing because this the saudis having

646
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 1: a gigantic steak in a company that obviously central to

647
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: their discourse, with more significant for us, it's our discourse.

648
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: I mean, this is where elite opinion gets made, which

649
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 1: is why you know there's such a freak out over this,

650
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: and why Eline is so you know, interested in what's

651
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: going on with Twitter. Our Twitter is really the hub

652
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 1: of elite discourse and opinion making in the US. And

653
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:46,600
Speaker 1: so the fact that the saudis having a major steak

654
00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 1: and being, according to them, the like one of the

655
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: largest shareholders that goes by without any very little kid. Hey, whoa,

656
00:33:55,680 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 1: that's a big problem exactly. But that's sort of like, ah,

657
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:02,720
Speaker 1: we're okay with that, because I guess they're much more

658
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: comfortable with any regime of censorship than they ultimately are

659
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: with a regime of actual free speech. And to your

660
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:15,880
Speaker 1: point about how focused the Saudis have been on Twitter,

661
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:19,359
Speaker 1: I had forgotten this until this whole incident. Remember they

662
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,640
Speaker 1: had there were a couple of Twitter employees who were

663
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:26,759
Speaker 1: arrested Saudi spies as they were Saudi spies. Yeah and so,

664
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 1: and they had access to all kinds of, you know,

665
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: data that should be kept private about users who are

666
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 1: on Twitter who may have been critical of the Saudis.

667
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: So they were accused by the Justice Department of using

668
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 1: their positions, their access to Twitter's internal systems to aid

669
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia by attaining information on American citizens and Saudi

670
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: dissidents who opposed the policies of the kingdom and its leaders.

671
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:55,960
Speaker 1: So again, I think it's revealing as to which sort

672
00:34:55,960 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: of directionally which ideologies American elites very threatening. The cozy

673
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:06,279
Speaker 1: relationship with Saudi obviously is always there, and somehow they

674
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:10,880
Speaker 1: get a pass on all their wars and atrocities and

675
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 1: human rights violations because of how much money flows through

676
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: American pockets coming from the Kingdom, and just the utter

677
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 1: corruption of all of it, I think is what's really

678
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: on display here. It disgusts me, It really disgusts me.

679
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 1: And I remember confronting that with Brian Foegol's documentary The

680
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: Dissonant This guy, and we had him on the show.

681
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:32,000
Speaker 1: By the way, people can go back and watch it.

682
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: This guy created one of the best documentaries in the

683
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:39,400
Speaker 1: history of Netflix, Icarus One an Oscar made. The Netflix

684
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: documentary team makes this incredible documentary on Jamalka Shogi the

685
00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:48,279
Speaker 1: Killing exposing the Saudi regime, and nobody will buy it.

686
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:54,440
Speaker 1: Netflix pass Amazon Prime. Jeff Bezos' company, who was Jamalka

687
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 1: Shogi's boss, passes on the documentary for his streaming service.

688
00:35:58,560 --> 00:36:01,879
Speaker 1: Why because he wanted to buy souk dot com in

689
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, which is their online retailer. It's repulsive to

690
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: me watching the way that anti Saudi dissonance is just

691
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 1: completely squeezed out and nobody talks about it, and you know,

692
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: good on Elon. Look. I don't know what his motivations are,

693
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 1: but at least here people need to realize how much

694
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:20,920
Speaker 1: power the Saudis have in our country. And it's a

695
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 1: very good a good reminder, especially you know, in the

696
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: midst of all of these task high gas prices. But

697
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:30,879
Speaker 1: speaking of Bezos, we could not let this slide, which

698
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: is that the media freak out when it's not one

699
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 1: of their billionaires who wants to control elite discourse. Is

700
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 1: just been chef's kiss. So let's put this up there

701
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:43,959
Speaker 1: on the screen, we put together a little highlight reel

702
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:46,439
Speaker 1: for all of you. Here's from the Los Angeles Times,

703
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:48,600
Speaker 1: which by the way, is owned also by a billionaire

704
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:54,839
Speaker 1: biotech billionaire Elon Musk's paradoxical vision of running Twitter less democracy,

705
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: more freedom. Did they say the same whenever a billionaire

706
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 1: bought their paper. No, that's exactly right. Let's go to

707
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:02,879
Speaker 1: the next one. This is from The Guardian. To be fair,

708
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:05,319
Speaker 1: the Guardian is not a billionaire owned in control. They

709
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 1: just have a cringe ideology. This is from Robert Reich,

710
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: the former US Labor Secretary, who says that Elon Musk's

711
00:37:12,719 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: vision for the Internet is dangerous nonsense. He says that

712
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 1: the Russian people know little about Putin's war on aggression,

713
00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 1: so of course he has to start with Russia. He says,

714
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 1: pundits assume the Internet would open a new era of

715
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: democracy and all of that. But again he's pointing to

716
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:35,399
Speaker 1: the pervading objection amongst elites. Musk's Twitter by is that

717
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:39,440
Speaker 1: more moderation is needed in order to have more democracy,

718
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 1: which is really incredible, Like when you think about it,

719
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: the people are not and should not be exposed to

720
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: all sorts of ideas we as the elite, should mediate

721
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:52,279
Speaker 1: what is disinformation and what is not? What is misinformation

722
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,399
Speaker 1: disinformation and what is not. And then we use those

723
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:58,759
Speaker 1: definitions in order to control the public discourse on these

724
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:02,279
Speaker 1: tech companies, in order to control overall public opinion. That

725
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: is the opposite of democracy. And yet look closer and

726
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:09,399
Speaker 1: they just say the quiet part out loud. The next

727
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 1: one here, I love this. Elon Musk's vision of free

728
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 1: speech will be bad for Twitter. Now he says. This

729
00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: is by Ellen Powe, you know, the former CEO of

730
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:20,880
Speaker 1: Reddit famously you had to get run out of it it

731
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,760
Speaker 1: and the bad companies here exactly, which is published straight

732
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:28,799
Speaker 1: out of the Bezos Amazon Washington Post, and points to

733
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 1: how the need for more moderation and more content controls

734
00:38:34,120 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: are necessary for a free country. And she tries to

735
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:39,279
Speaker 1: cast it as bad for the business. And here's one

736
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: of the best things about Elon's extraordinary wealth. By my account,

737
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:45,719
Speaker 1: he's worth two hundred and fifty seven billion dollars. It

738
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:48,319
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. He doesn't care about the money. So when

739
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 1: you don't care about the money, and yeah, people are like, oh,

740
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:52,879
Speaker 1: this might be bad for the advertisers. He doesn't care.

741
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:54,880
Speaker 1: He just wants people to be able to use it

742
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:58,080
Speaker 1: and not be censored whenever they're speaking. And look whether

743
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,600
Speaker 1: that would bear out under his leadership. I have no idea.

744
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: We obviously need to see that, but I'm willing to

745
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: suspect that it's going to be better than what it

746
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:09,880
Speaker 1: currently is. And you know, another bezos Washington Post columnists

747
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:13,279
Speaker 1: put this one up there, Max Boot quote, I am

748
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon

749
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:19,720
Speaker 1: Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social

750
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more

751
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: content moderation, not less. This is why I hate they

752
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:31,239
Speaker 1: define democracy only in terms of things that I like

753
00:39:31,600 --> 00:39:35,279
Speaker 1: and not things that others. Well, Max boots one is

754
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:37,919
Speaker 1: my favorite, because I mean he just puts it out there,

755
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:42,719
Speaker 1: Democracy equals content moderation. It was like I thought our

756
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:45,920
Speaker 1: democracy had a whole free speech thing to it, Like

757
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 1: that was kind of a core a while we were

758
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: in and all that project we're supposed to be committed

759
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,879
Speaker 1: to here. And of course free of course speech has

760
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:58,280
Speaker 1: limits that we've long recognized. Right, it's not absolutely anything goes,

761
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: but you know, we have started to hem in and

762
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: hemin and hem in what is allowed. And then when

763
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: you do that, ultimately what you're doing is handing more

764
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:09,399
Speaker 1: control over to the billionaire class, over to the people

765
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: who own these platforms and the people who influence the

766
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:15,759
Speaker 1: billionaires who own these platforms. And that's my objection to

767
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:18,840
Speaker 1: this whole thing. I mean, I just see listen, so

768
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: many people are viewing this through the lens of like

769
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,759
Speaker 1: which particular billionaires they think aligned with them ideologically, when

770
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:28,799
Speaker 1: what the real takeaway from all of this should be

771
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:31,640
Speaker 1: is whether you like Musk, whether you like Bezos, whether

772
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: you hate all of them, the fact that you are

773
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: allowing this very small class of billionaires to control things

774
00:40:38,040 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 1: that are so essential to our democracy as speech. That's

775
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:46,720
Speaker 1: the big problem that we're facing here, and that should

776
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 1: be something that everyone could come together around and say,

777
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we shouldn't be just like left the

778
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 1: whims of whichever billionaire happens to buy up the public

779
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: square this time, right. That's the big issue that I

780
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:00,000
Speaker 1: have here. And so as we're going through all these

781
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 1: different articles, it's just noteworthy that, you know, when it

782
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:07,600
Speaker 1: was Bezos buying the Post or other billionaires buying other newspapers,

783
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:09,839
Speaker 1: a lot of times these people were comfortable with it.

784
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:14,040
Speaker 1: It also reminded me remember when Bernie made those comments about, Hey,

785
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 1: maybe the Washington Post doesn't like me because it's owned

786
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:19,760
Speaker 1: by Jeff Bezos and I want to raise his taxes,

787
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: And there was a total meltdown. There was outrage. The

788
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:28,240
Speaker 1: liberal commentariat was up at arms. How could you say

789
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 1: that about the Washington Post? And how dare you sir?

790
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:34,480
Speaker 1: And then when it comes to, you know, someone that

791
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:36,839
Speaker 1: they are less comfortable with and has a at least

792
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 1: purports to have a different ideology that they do, then

793
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 1: suddenly they see the risks and the problems of billionaire

794
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:47,279
Speaker 1: ownership here. Personal favorite was Washington Post saying, quote, this

795
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 1: is Elon Musk at peak billionaire in the Washington Post. Yeah. No,

796
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: peak billionaire is when the richest man in the world,

797
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:57,399
Speaker 1: who is Jeff Bezos, buys the Washington Post in order

798
00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: to influence political das. I think both of you're washing

799
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: o peak billionaire. That's my thing. It's like, let's apply

800
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 1: an even standard here and recognize that. Look, do I

801
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:09,480
Speaker 1: think that we're probably more likely to get better content

802
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: moderation out of Elon Musk and Twitter as a private

803
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: company than we do under whatever the dude's CEO's name

804
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 1: is now, Agarwall Yes, I do. I do think. But

805
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: the problem is leaving these incredibly consequential issues to the

806
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 1: whims of billionaires. That's the problem. And so you know,

807
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 1: there's a reason why elites are so freaked out by

808
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:33,760
Speaker 1: this because I think what all of this has reminded

809
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: us and revealed once again is how important Twitter is

810
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: to elite discourse. And so this is a real battleground

811
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:46,680
Speaker 1: for them where they want their ideology to have be

812
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:51,400
Speaker 1: enforced by the leadership of Twitter, versus having it be

813
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: you know, truly open and people allowed to say some

814
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 1: things that you don't like. And by the way, if

815
00:42:56,600 --> 00:42:59,359
Speaker 1: your goal is to you know, get Donald to keep

816
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:01,760
Speaker 1: Donald Trump on office again, I don't think by censoring

817
00:43:01,800 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 1: him ultimately you've done yourselves any favors. Yeah, okay, guys.

818
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: Interesting pulling commentary from Biden's polster John anzelone, let's go

819
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:16,800
Speaker 1: ahead and put this up on the screen. There was

820
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:18,680
Speaker 1: a lot here in this conversation. I actually listened to

821
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 1: the whole thing this morning. Written up in Politico playbook,

822
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 1: Biden's polster who came up with his winning strategy in

823
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election, says, this is now the worst

824
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 1: political environment or Democrats of my lifetime. There was a

825
00:43:34,040 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 1: lot here that he said and angelone. So here's his deal.

826
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: He's he really sees himself as like coming from a

827
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:44,839
Speaker 1: white working class, kind of a DC outsider, even though

828
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 1: he really is a DC insider. He lives in Alabama

829
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 1: right now, he's working on a race in Nevada. He

830
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 1: sees himself as like separate and apart from the sort

831
00:43:53,680 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: of DC chattering class, and his commentary tends to be

832
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,840
Speaker 1: like it's that sort of thing where he'll say a

833
00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:02,520
Speaker 1: lot of things you're like, yeah, this guy gets it,

834
00:44:02,560 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 1: this guy gets it. And then he'll say one thing

835
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 1: where you're like, wait, what that totally contradicts everything else

836
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:09,359
Speaker 1: that you just said. So that's kind of who he is.

837
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 1: He really came up with not just Biden's general election strategy,

838
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: also the primary strategy. He had this idea of ri

839
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 1: you can sort of ride out Iowa, New Hampshire and

840
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 1: even Nevada, even though no one's ever done that before,

841
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: and we'll make it all about South Carolina and Super Tuesday.

842
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 1: Of course, he had the assistance of the media coming

843
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:30,239
Speaker 1: in for Joe, everybody dropping out, Barack Obama and or Veening,

844
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:31,920
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. But he really sort of saw

845
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:34,759
Speaker 1: how those ships were ultimately going to fall. So a

846
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:37,800
Speaker 1: few things that he said here that were very noteworthy.

847
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,399
Speaker 1: First of all, on his prediction for twenty two, he says,

848
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: it's the worst political environment I've lived through in thirty

849
00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:46,799
Speaker 1: years of being a political consultant. And there's a big

850
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: difference between losing seven and ten seats in the House

851
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,880
Speaker 1: and getting your ass kicked and losing thirty five to forty.

852
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: He believes they might still have the ability to keep

853
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:56,800
Speaker 1: the Senate. I think the only thing that could possibly

854
00:44:56,840 --> 00:44:59,280
Speaker 1: save them at this point is if the Republicans nominate

855
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:01,880
Speaker 1: a bunch of like completely unelectable people, which they have

856
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 1: the possibility they've proven themselves able to do before you

857
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: can see, you know, Todd Achin and Roy Moore, if

858
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 1: you need a reminded minder of how that ultimately goes.

859
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: He also says what Democrats need to do is number one,

860
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,360
Speaker 1: voters are always asking what have you done for me lately?

861
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: And he decries the fact that on economics Democrats really

862
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: haven't delivered it. Says they really need to get something done,

863
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:26,759
Speaker 1: whether it's a skinny build back matter or something that

864
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: actually speaks to voters' concerns. Imagine that crazy idea. He

865
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:34,919
Speaker 1: also says that they need to lean into a populist

866
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:38,719
Speaker 1: message on taxes. He says, we're scared of our own

867
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 1: shadow on taxes and efing makes no sense. People do

868
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 1: not begrudge people making a lot of money and getting wealthy.

869
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:46,399
Speaker 1: People have a problem and are pissed off about them

870
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:49,360
Speaker 1: not paying any effing taxes. And why as a party

871
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,279
Speaker 1: we don't elevate that in our messaging is beyond me.

872
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 1: The last part of this that I thought was really

873
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 1: interesting as he talks about the myth of Latino voters

874
00:45:56,960 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 1: and says something that should be obvious to literally any

875
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 1: human being, which he says, listen in DC, among Democrats,

876
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: they think you only talk to Latino is about immigration,

877
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:08,319
Speaker 1: like immigration is the twelfth issue they're concerned about. Guess

878
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 1: what they're concerned about the same things everyone else is

879
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 1: concerned about. It's about the economy or inflation, or healthcare

880
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 1: or schools. So you know what I would say to

881
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:20,319
Speaker 1: all of this, Because then he goes on to have

882
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:22,560
Speaker 1: some commentary that's in line with like, the left is

883
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: the problem. Well, you've just outlined something here in the

884
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: tax ris messaging that comes directly out of the left

885
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:31,560
Speaker 1: leg of the party and is being steinmied by the

886
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:36,680
Speaker 1: corporatist moderate wing of the party. And so I think

887
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:39,799
Speaker 1: he's absolutely right in the fact that there are obvious

888
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: directions that Democrats could go in to seize the messaging

889
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: and put Republicans in a very difficult spot, and they

890
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 1: just don't do it. Yeah. I mean, look, I think

891
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:50,919
Speaker 1: the cultural left is the problem, but I mean they're

892
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: dominant amongst the establishment left, which is part of this

893
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:55,280
Speaker 1: why they're so unpopular. It's like when you have cultural

894
00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:57,719
Speaker 1: leftism and then terrible economic policy. And this is what

895
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:00,359
Speaker 1: always irritates me is there's no ability to set break

896
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 1: out the culture left policy and economic Yeah, one hundred percent.

897
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 1: I don't disagree with you. And what's interesting too about

898
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:09,239
Speaker 1: what he says is that Republicans do a much better

899
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 1: job of branding Democrats than Democrats do of Republicans. We

900
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 1: don't do a good job of branding. And it's interesting

901
00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: because what they try to do is brand Republicans is

902
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: cultural extremists, when in reality, they're more than in today

903
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, they're like roughly dead center at

904
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:26,960
Speaker 1: least when you compare it to what the dominant cultural

905
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: liberalism is. It's on economics that they're all the way

906
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 1: out here at like twelve percent. And yet when they

907
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:33,840
Speaker 1: don't do a good enough job of talking about that

908
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:36,080
Speaker 1: and putting them in those types of positions, you're getting

909
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: out flanked on the economy and on inflation. It's like,

910
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: no wonder the Steve More Freedom Works definition of deficit

911
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:46,239
Speaker 1: reduction inflation is being is being accepted by the broad

912
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:48,960
Speaker 1: majority of the American people, when Biden himself has just

913
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:53,400
Speaker 1: no ability to articulate or do anything whenever it comes

914
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:56,359
Speaker 1: to the most pressing concerns. I mean, people should remember too,

915
00:47:56,960 --> 00:47:59,480
Speaker 1: we've seen some fluctuation and gas price right now. It

916
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 1: has zero to do with Joe Biden. What it has

917
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:06,640
Speaker 1: to do is China is locking down, and so global

918
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 1: demand is down, and so gas is slightly down. I

919
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 1: was talking with Rory Johnson, the guy we had on

920
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 1: the show. He's like, yeah, there's been no structural change

921
00:48:14,680 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: to US oil markets by the Biden administration under this

922
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,719
Speaker 1: since this crisis has begun that's crazy. It's almost two

923
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 1: months to the day since Russia invaded Ukraine. Two months

924
00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 1: can sound like a short time, but you can get

925
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 1: a lot done if you want to. You know, people,

926
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: forget this country changed in just one hundred days. Under

927
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 1: the FDR. There were fifteen major pieces of legislation go

928
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:40,720
Speaker 1: back in time. The Civil Rights Act eight of nineteen

929
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:44,200
Speaker 1: sixty four was passed after an eighty three day filibuster.

930
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:47,759
Speaker 1: That's not that long. Same with medicare, the Great Society,

931
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: social Security. The history of these programs, they were conceived

932
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:53,880
Speaker 1: of and enacted in a quick environment because people had

933
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:57,520
Speaker 1: a real strategic vision and grand vision for the country itself.

934
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:00,759
Speaker 1: Biden doesn't have any of that. They just release some

935
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 1: new rule on federal leasing and lands. It's complicated, it's bureaucratic.

936
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:07,920
Speaker 1: Nobody really understands it in terms of its impact on

937
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:11,319
Speaker 1: the oil market. It may have one nine months from now, right,

938
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:14,520
Speaker 1: what are you doing? This is the point? Well, and

939
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: here's the thing is, it's very hard for you to

940
00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: blame the left, and the left has no power like

941
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:23,600
Speaker 1: you all are in charge. This entire program, the entire

942
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 1: economic program, the entire strategic program, the entire rhetorical program.

943
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 1: This all comes out of Bill Clinton DLC. I mean,

944
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 1: it's the same old, same old in charge of the party.

945
00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:38,640
Speaker 1: None of that has changed. So it's like, no matter

946
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:41,480
Speaker 1: who's in charge, no matter what they do, they always

947
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:42,880
Speaker 1: want to say I was the fault of the left.

948
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 1: You all have all the power here. The left is

949
00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 1: completely impotent and has proved themselves that time and time again.

950
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:52,800
Speaker 1: So if it's the worst political environment of your lifetime

951
00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: and it's your dude who's in charge, and it's your

952
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 1: guy who's running the Senate, and it's your gal who's

953
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:00,319
Speaker 1: running the house, like, when are you ever to do

954
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: a little bit of soul searching and say, hey, maybe

955
00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:05,600
Speaker 1: we need to maybe we need to rethink how we're

956
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:08,480
Speaker 1: ultimately approaching things here. Because yeah, listen, as we've talked

957
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 1: about on the show a million times, if you don't

958
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:14,200
Speaker 1: deliver for people materially, if you only, if you basically

959
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: put that off the table, then of course politics is

960
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: going to be all about the culture war. Of course,

961
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 1: Republicans are excellent at prosecuting their culture war case that

962
00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: is not the landscape that you ultimately want to be

963
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 1: fighting on. But because Biden has basically broken his promises

964
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: to every core constituency within the Democratic Party base. Then

965
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:38,359
Speaker 1: you end up with this worst of all worlds where

966
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:40,799
Speaker 1: of course the right is highly motivated to come out

967
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: and vote in the midterms, and just as Obama did

968
00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:48,000
Speaker 1: to the Democratic base, you've totally depressed the Democratic base.

969
00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:50,719
Speaker 1: Something I think I'm going to do my monologue on

970
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:54,239
Speaker 1: for tomorrow is in this recent poll that just came

971
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:57,480
Speaker 1: out that had Biden's approval of thirty three percent, with

972
00:50:57,719 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 1: thirty three percent in Quinnipiac, his approval rating with young

973
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:06,360
Speaker 1: voters was lower than Trump's was in the same poll

974
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:10,520
Speaker 1: during his presidency at the same time. And I want

975
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:13,640
Speaker 1: people to understand, but that doesn't mean like, oh, Republicans

976
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:16,919
Speaker 1: are picking up the young voters. No, young voters are disgusted.

977
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 1: They're much more ideologically in line, closer to the Democratic

978
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,840
Speaker 1: Party's ideals. They're not like interested in either the Republican

979
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:28,920
Speaker 1: cultural positions or the Republican economic positions, but they're completely

980
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:31,879
Speaker 1: disgusted with Democrats, so they're not going to show up.

981
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: I mean, you say the same thing. I'm still following

982
00:51:34,680 --> 00:51:37,680
Speaker 1: the French election. You see very similar similar dynamic there

983
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 1: where young people are like these The entire attitude of

984
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:45,919
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party establishment is complete contempt and like discussed

985
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: with the young base of the party that was supposed

986
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:51,320
Speaker 1: to be the future, that was supposed to be the

987
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:54,520
Speaker 1: coalition of the ascendant. So when you consistently screw up

988
00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:57,880
Speaker 1: your base, when you don't deliver for independence, when Republicans

989
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:01,279
Speaker 1: are highly motivated, yeah, you're gonna getting your ass kicked. Yeah.

990
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: I think they're They're going to real, real bind here,

991
00:52:04,239 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 1: and they look they're so impotent they are. First of all,

992
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:10,799
Speaker 1: we talked about on the foreign crisis, people either feel

993
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:12,839
Speaker 1: like he's not doing enough or hasn't done enough, So

994
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: there's no support for his handling of Ukraine. On the economy,

995
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,720
Speaker 1: it's a disaster. Inflation higher, higher, higher. He's not taking

996
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:22,840
Speaker 1: on corporate profits, not to be putting on markups, not

997
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:26,640
Speaker 1: lowering gas prices, doesn't seem generally focused on the issues

998
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,279
Speaker 1: that you care about. Recipe for a complete route, and

999
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 1: he deserves it. I don't. There really is no other

1000
00:52:32,680 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 1: way to say it. Yeah, yeah, you are lying in

1001
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:37,040
Speaker 1: a bed of your own making. That is very true.

1002
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:40,759
Speaker 1: All right, Some interesting potentially hopeful movement guys on the

1003
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 1: congressional stock trading ban, Let's go ahead and put this

1004
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 1: insider report up on the screen. So by Parson Group

1005
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:49,359
Speaker 1: nineteen lawmakers laying out three key parameters for a stock

1006
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:52,840
Speaker 1: trading man. Following the House's first hearing on the issues

1007
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: so important that the House actually had a hearing on

1008
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 1: reforming the rules around stock ownership in Congress, they are

1009
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 1: planning to this bipartisan group is planning to pressure the

1010
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:05,640
Speaker 1: Committee on House Administration to move forward on an outright

1011
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: ban on stock trading by members of Congress. According to

1012
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:12,439
Speaker 1: a source of knowledge of the effort, you have Democrats

1013
00:53:12,600 --> 00:53:17,160
Speaker 1: like Jared Golden of Maine, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. You

1014
00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:21,040
Speaker 1: also have Republicans like Matt Gates of Florida, Brian Fitzpatrick

1015
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania, a very odd fellow. Is kind of a

1016
00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:27,279
Speaker 1: mix of folks here across the truly across the ideological

1017
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:29,720
Speaker 1: spectrum too. You've got the corporate wing represented, the moderate

1018
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 1: wing represented, You've got the more progressives represented. You've got

1019
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 1: you right wings like Matt Gates represented here as well.

1020
00:53:37,719 --> 00:53:41,680
Speaker 1: And so the three key sticking points that we really

1021
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:44,560
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure to highlight for you, because there

1022
00:53:44,560 --> 00:53:47,600
Speaker 1: are very different directions. This bill could go, and it

1023
00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 1: could turn into something that's just like sort of the

1024
00:53:50,120 --> 00:53:53,040
Speaker 1: toothless virtue signal that has a million loopholes that people

1025
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:54,880
Speaker 1: can get down of, or you could have something that

1026
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 1: is actually consequential and actually has a meaningful constraint on

1027
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 1: members of Congress and what they're able to do. So

1028
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:04,560
Speaker 1: the first piece that is a point of contention is

1029
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:08,759
Speaker 1: whether or not to include spouses and dependent children. So

1030
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different potential bills floating around. Some

1031
00:54:12,160 --> 00:54:15,240
Speaker 1: of them include the spouses, independent children, people like Nancy

1032
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:20,439
Speaker 1: Pelosi's husband, Rocana's wife, you know, the adult children who

1033
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:23,959
Speaker 1: are still dependent. That piece is really important to making

1034
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 1: this thing ultimately have teeth, because if the spouses, if

1035
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:29,960
Speaker 1: the husbands and wives can still trade stock, this ultimately

1036
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:33,600
Speaker 1: ends up being fairly meaningless because obviously your spouse can

1037
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 1: just tell you, like, here's the inside tip that I'm

1038
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:37,880
Speaker 1: learning in my committee hearings, then you go make the trade.

1039
00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 1: So that's a really important part, and it seems like

1040
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: pressure is building in the direction of making sure that

1041
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:47,359
Speaker 1: these spouses independent children are included. The other one is

1042
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:50,000
Speaker 1: this question of some people are saying, like, oh, the

1043
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:53,719
Speaker 1: blind trust. This is really fair because it's expensive to

1044
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:55,640
Speaker 1: set up. And then you know, I can't be a

1045
00:54:55,680 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 1: member of Congress because I can't afford the fees the

1046
00:54:57,719 --> 00:54:59,319
Speaker 1: vast majority of your millionaires, I don't want to hear

1047
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:02,920
Speaker 1: it and not to mention. And you know, credit to

1048
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 1: Abigail Spamberger, I'm not a huge fan of on this one.

1049
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: She's like, okay, then just sell it here that's a

1050
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:11,000
Speaker 1: fan of blind trust. That's fine, just divest, no big deal.

1051
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:14,320
Speaker 1: So that's the other piece, is you know, pushing towards

1052
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:16,839
Speaker 1: the divestment or blind trust. And then the last one

1053
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: in this one also really matters, is okay, let's say

1054
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 1: you violate the Act, then what happens? Are you going

1055
00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:25,279
Speaker 1: to actually give give this thing some teeth so that

1056
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:30,920
Speaker 1: there's a significant fine and real consequences for violating the

1057
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:34,239
Speaker 1: ban on stock trading? Because what we've seen with the

1058
00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:37,239
Speaker 1: Stock Act, which just requires transparency, which ended up being

1059
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 1: important because it helped a Galvan and his public pressure

1060
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:45,040
Speaker 1: around moving further. But when it's routine that members just

1061
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:48,600
Speaker 1: don't file the stuff they're supposed to file and there's

1062
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 1: no consequence for it, what's there? It's like a two

1063
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:54,480
Speaker 1: hundred dollars fine or something utterly pathetic, and no one

1064
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:57,000
Speaker 1: seems to really pay attention or ultimately care of very

1065
00:55:57,000 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 1: few people. So that's the other piece, is making sure

1066
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 1: this thing has actual tea so that members have to comprise.

1067
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:04,320
Speaker 1: And also, did you know that there's no public record

1068
00:56:04,320 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 1: disclosure required on whether you actually paid the fine? What

1069
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:10,880
Speaker 1: kind of enforcement mechanism that's this? Nothing? Literally, this is

1070
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:13,920
Speaker 1: what happens whenever they are in charge of regulating themselves,

1071
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:16,480
Speaker 1: and the only check on it is our public outrage.

1072
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:19,799
Speaker 1: So from the beginning layout the timeline, unusual Wales on

1073
00:56:19,840 --> 00:56:23,759
Speaker 1: Twitter begins publishing reports as to how exactly these guys

1074
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:26,279
Speaker 1: are beating the market, which is crazy because the best

1075
00:56:26,320 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 1: paid people on Wall Street routinely do not beat the market.

1076
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 1: Then we begin talking about it here on our show.

1077
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:36,000
Speaker 1: It begins to become a meme on the internet. TikTok

1078
00:56:36,040 --> 00:56:38,400
Speaker 1: gets a hold of it, gen Z gets really invested

1079
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:41,320
Speaker 1: within the story. It becomes a ground swell, and eventually

1080
00:56:41,320 --> 00:56:44,240
Speaker 1: what happens is Nancy Pelosi is asked about it after

1081
00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 1: other journalists. Journalists begin to do investigations into stock trades,

1082
00:56:48,600 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 1: bipartis and members of Congress she says, well, it's a

1083
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: free market. All of that. That was a great moment

1084
00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:56,719
Speaker 1: for us because obviously she looked like the out of

1085
00:56:56,760 --> 00:57:00,600
Speaker 1: touch ultra networth high individual that she is. A scoff moment,

1086
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 1: and the public was like, hey, screw you. You shouldn't

1087
00:57:03,680 --> 00:57:06,200
Speaker 1: be able to trade stocks. This became I mean, I

1088
00:57:06,239 --> 00:57:08,400
Speaker 1: saw Dave Portnoy talking about it. I saw people all

1089
00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: the left talking about it. It became a real piece

1090
00:57:11,239 --> 00:57:14,719
Speaker 1: of the internet zeitgeist. From there, congressman had to begin

1091
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:17,800
Speaker 1: to respond. John Ossoff introduces a bill, Josh Holly introduces

1092
00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:20,480
Speaker 1: a bill. There are now twenty separate bills that are

1093
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:24,480
Speaker 1: working their way through Congress. However, the establishment is fighting

1094
00:57:24,520 --> 00:57:26,280
Speaker 1: back in every way that they can. We know that

1095
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 1: Joe Biden was supposed to have it in the draft

1096
00:57:28,480 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 1: vision of his State of the Union, was supposed to

1097
00:57:30,560 --> 00:57:32,920
Speaker 1: call for a stock band on Congress, and it was

1098
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:36,800
Speaker 1: taken out us. Every other laundry list, the box thing

1099
00:57:36,920 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 1: was in that State of the Unions. Identity politics, every

1100
00:57:40,760 --> 00:57:44,800
Speaker 1: little identity politics, every lgbtq i A gets a little

1101
00:57:44,880 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: check mark. But stock band, Oh no, we can't have

1102
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:52,040
Speaker 1: that whatsoever. That's what the priorities are in Washington right now.

1103
00:57:52,160 --> 00:57:54,680
Speaker 1: So just goes to show you, really, just shows you

1104
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 1: how powerful that the people inside are fighting back against this.

1105
00:57:58,360 --> 00:58:01,600
Speaker 1: And remember, the average network in Congress is well over

1106
00:58:01,640 --> 00:58:05,160
Speaker 1: a million dollars. Most of these people are wildly, wildly

1107
00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:08,680
Speaker 1: rich and successful, which is great. It's a free country.

1108
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 1: And if you want to keep making money, don't run

1109
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:15,880
Speaker 1: for Congress. If you actually want to serve, then you don't.

1110
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:18,560
Speaker 1: Then you have to give up that part I mean service.

1111
00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:21,920
Speaker 1: Do we think about what we ask the people who

1112
00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:24,480
Speaker 1: sign up for in the uniform? That's right, right, our

1113
00:58:24,520 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 1: service members they get paid dog like nothing. They don't

1114
00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:30,920
Speaker 1: get paid well, their lives are subject to the whims

1115
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:33,360
Speaker 1: of the military. They have all sorts of restrictions on

1116
00:58:33,560 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 1: what they can and can't do, even outside whenever they're

1117
00:58:36,440 --> 00:58:39,120
Speaker 1: off duty. But we recognize it as a service, and

1118
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:41,640
Speaker 1: then we take care of them after they leave the uniform.

1119
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:44,760
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well we should. Obviously we don't do the

1120
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 1: best burn pits, you know, VA reform, et cetera. But

1121
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:51,840
Speaker 1: there's a social contract. Now with Congress. We don't seem

1122
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:54,240
Speaker 1: we seem to have thrown all of that completely out

1123
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:57,520
Speaker 1: of the window and let these people become wildly rich.

1124
00:58:57,600 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: I mean, Nancy Pelosi and her husband have increased her

1125
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:03,400
Speaker 1: net worth by something like one hundred million dollars since

1126
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 1: she first entered office. That's crazy town. With active trading

1127
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:11,280
Speaker 1: of options and things based upon things which are moving

1128
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:13,480
Speaker 1: through Congress in which she's the Speaker of the House.

1129
00:59:13,520 --> 00:59:16,120
Speaker 1: It's ludicrous. But I think it's important to think about

1130
00:59:16,200 --> 00:59:19,360
Speaker 1: why there's been movement on this because it's so unlikely, right,

1131
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:22,920
Speaker 1: because this is something that actually impacts like directly members

1132
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:25,680
Speaker 1: of Congress of the ability to cash in on their position.

1133
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:30,000
Speaker 1: So why is there any movement on this thing whatsoever?

1134
00:59:30,560 --> 00:59:34,160
Speaker 1: And I think when the snowball really started to pick

1135
00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:37,040
Speaker 1: up speed was actually when Kevin McCarthy said, Hey, we're

1136
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: going to run on this in the midterms. Yes, you know.

1137
00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:40,920
Speaker 1: And whether or not they're full of shit or have

1138
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:44,720
Speaker 1: any credibility on like corruption ethics, whatsoever. The fact that

1139
00:59:44,760 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 1: there was this horseshoe bipartisan populous outrage about this thing.

1140
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:55,280
Speaker 1: That's what made this movement so powerful, Because if it

1141
00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:58,640
Speaker 1: was just on the right, then Democrats would just dismiss

1142
00:59:58,640 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 1: it and ignore it. If it was just on the

1143
00:59:59,840 --> 01:00:03,080
Speaker 1: wa left, then Democrats would also just dismiss and ignore

1144
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:06,520
Speaker 1: it because they're perfectly content to stick it to their

1145
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:09,280
Speaker 1: own base all day long. But since you had it

1146
01:00:09,320 --> 01:00:12,680
Speaker 1: coming from all parts of the political spectrum, it made

1147
01:00:12,720 --> 01:00:16,160
Speaker 1: it very difficult ultimately for them to resist and also

1148
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:18,200
Speaker 1: made it so that, you know, some of these members

1149
01:00:18,320 --> 01:00:21,520
Speaker 1: realized that it was to their political benefit to try

1150
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:23,520
Speaker 1: to get out in front of it and be the

1151
01:00:23,520 --> 01:00:27,120
Speaker 1: face of some sort of reform effort ultimately here. So

1152
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:31,440
Speaker 1: that's what made it so incredibly powerful. And I'm talking

1153
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:35,400
Speaker 1: in my monologue today about Christian Small's Amazon labor union

1154
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:38,040
Speaker 1: going on with Tarker Carlson and the freak out over that.

1155
01:00:38,200 --> 01:00:41,360
Speaker 1: But if you really want to have something that actually

1156
01:00:41,400 --> 01:00:44,280
Speaker 1: happens in this country, you have to have a movement

1157
01:00:44,400 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 1: that brings in some different ideological perspectives. That's the only

1158
01:00:49,280 --> 01:00:51,920
Speaker 1: way you ultimately really can put pressure on these people.

1159
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: Otherwise they just respond to their donor base, and that's that.

1160
01:00:54,680 --> 01:00:57,680
Speaker 1: So I think that has been such a critical part

1161
01:00:58,080 --> 01:01:01,480
Speaker 1: of why there's actually even movement, why you've just had

1162
01:01:01,520 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: the first ever House hearing, why you have so many

1163
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:06,320
Speaker 1: different versions of this bill, why the provisions are being

1164
01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:10,160
Speaker 1: debated right now. It's one of the few hopeful things

1165
01:01:10,160 --> 01:01:13,440
Speaker 1: within the actual political system, and so to study this

1166
01:01:13,520 --> 01:01:16,040
Speaker 1: and understand how this all went down is so important.

1167
01:01:16,080 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: So I think the two key moments are Nancy Pelosi

1168
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:21,440
Speaker 1: mask off saying, well, it's a free market. That comes

1169
01:01:21,480 --> 01:01:24,160
Speaker 1: because she actually subjected herself to some question, get asked

1170
01:01:24,200 --> 01:01:26,800
Speaker 1: the right question and actually says what she thinks, which

1171
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:29,880
Speaker 1: creates this large level of outrage that causes the right

1172
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:31,960
Speaker 1: to jump in on it. Kevin McCarthy saying, we're running

1173
01:01:32,040 --> 01:01:33,960
Speaker 1: on this on the midterms, and then you were kind

1174
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:37,360
Speaker 1: of off to the races to put forward some kind

1175
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:39,800
Speaker 1: of proposal that people are going to respond well to

1176
01:01:39,920 --> 01:01:42,600
Speaker 1: and feel like you were actually someone responsive to their needs. Yeah,

1177
01:01:42,800 --> 01:01:45,720
Speaker 1: it really is just an amazing, amazing story that we

1178
01:01:45,720 --> 01:01:48,320
Speaker 1: should all once again chat out to unusual whales. He's

1179
01:01:48,320 --> 01:01:50,960
Speaker 1: the guy who started this whole thing, and we owe

1180
01:01:51,040 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 1: him a very big debt. All right, let's move on. Finally,

1181
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:56,120
Speaker 1: this is a story very near and dear to our

1182
01:01:56,120 --> 01:01:58,320
Speaker 1: hearts for those who are sick of hearing them talk

1183
01:01:58,360 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 1: about it. You could skip this, but this is not

1184
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:03,200
Speaker 1: something that we can just simply let slide. So we

1185
01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:06,320
Speaker 1: brought you the disastrous launch of CNN Plus and our

1186
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:08,240
Speaker 1: friend Sarah Fisher, let's go ahead put this up there

1187
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:11,880
Speaker 1: on the screen reporting already big cuts now come in

1188
01:02:11,920 --> 01:02:15,120
Speaker 1: for CNN Plus after a slow start, So the official

1189
01:02:15,200 --> 01:02:18,720
Speaker 1: number of people has yet to be has yet to

1190
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:21,920
Speaker 1: be acknowledged by the people with inside of CNN, but

1191
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 1: we do know now about the numbers. So to date,

1192
01:02:25,680 --> 01:02:30,600
Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars has been spent on the subscription service,

1193
01:02:31,080 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 1: including a sizeable marketing investment up to one hundred million dollars,

1194
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,400
Speaker 1: and yet the start has been such a disaster that

1195
01:02:39,760 --> 01:02:42,880
Speaker 1: they are already planning on cutting a huge portion of

1196
01:02:42,920 --> 01:02:45,520
Speaker 1: the staff some of the original plans for it, and

1197
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:47,960
Speaker 1: are scaling back how it's going to look. I've done

1198
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:51,120
Speaker 1: a lot of reading into this, and it's amazing that

1199
01:02:51,320 --> 01:02:54,880
Speaker 1: the CEO of Time Warner, or sorry, the CEO of WarnerMedia,

1200
01:02:55,600 --> 01:02:59,960
Speaker 1: Jason Kylar, before the merger with Discovery, finally was four

1201
01:03:00,200 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 1: to admit that now the plan is in order to

1202
01:03:04,000 --> 01:03:08,360
Speaker 1: roll CNN Plus into HBO Max. Basically have it a

1203
01:03:08,400 --> 01:03:11,360
Speaker 1: standalone subscription if you want it, but really just make

1204
01:03:11,400 --> 01:03:14,600
Speaker 1: it bundled content while people are watching movies and whatever

1205
01:03:14,680 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: awesome shows are on HBO and then not have to

1206
01:03:17,760 --> 01:03:21,240
Speaker 1: reveal just how much of a disaster the thing really is.

1207
01:03:21,320 --> 01:03:26,080
Speaker 1: Because Jeff Zucker was intent on making streaming CNN plus

1208
01:03:26,360 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 1: its own standalone thing that he thought that people would

1209
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:34,240
Speaker 1: pay for. And what's really incredible about this is that

1210
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:39,760
Speaker 1: they say CNN executives worked with the consulting firm McKenzie

1211
01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:45,560
Speaker 1: to think. Mackenzie, you know, the famous consulting company, told

1212
01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:51,360
Speaker 1: CNN they were going to bring in two million subscribers

1213
01:03:51,360 --> 01:03:55,280
Speaker 1: in the United States in the services first year and

1214
01:03:55,720 --> 01:04:00,600
Speaker 1: fifteen to eighteen million after four years. Just to give

1215
01:04:00,640 --> 01:04:03,560
Speaker 1: you an idea of how bonkers this is, two million

1216
01:04:03,600 --> 01:04:10,840
Speaker 1: subscribers would be about five times what an average CNN broadcast, sorry,

1217
01:04:10,880 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 1: four times what CNN broadcasts is getting during prime time

1218
01:04:16,120 --> 01:04:19,160
Speaker 1: right now, Crystal their average is six hundred and seventy

1219
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:21,960
Speaker 1: seven thousand subscribers. My math might be a little bit off, sorry,

1220
01:04:22,000 --> 01:04:26,360
Speaker 1: math people, but that's just how many multiples of that.

1221
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:29,160
Speaker 1: And now, the rule in the subscription business is that

1222
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:33,240
Speaker 1: about three to seven percent of your big audience will pay.

1223
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:36,280
Speaker 1: So it's clear these people have no idea what the

1224
01:04:36,320 --> 01:04:39,880
Speaker 1: hell is going on. It's like the most basic understanding

1225
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:43,080
Speaker 1: of how this ultimately works out New York Times subscriber

1226
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:45,240
Speaker 1: bases like seven million people exactly, and they thought they

1227
01:04:45,240 --> 01:04:47,560
Speaker 1: were going to get eighteen million. We're gonna get double

1228
01:04:47,560 --> 01:04:51,600
Speaker 1: in New York Times. Yeah, like you're insane. Yeah. I

1229
01:04:51,840 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 1: love the addition to the story of mckenseick. Of course,

1230
01:04:55,240 --> 01:04:57,680
Speaker 1: all the greatest players are in something exactly well. I

1231
01:04:57,800 --> 01:05:01,640
Speaker 1: think if you've ever needed to understand how fake the

1232
01:05:01,800 --> 01:05:06,000
Speaker 1: meritocracy is, I think this story is the perfect example

1233
01:05:06,120 --> 01:05:10,880
Speaker 1: you have. You know, the highest levels of elite media figures,

1234
01:05:10,920 --> 01:05:14,760
Speaker 1: supposedly the greatest minds in American media trying to figure

1235
01:05:14,800 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 1: this thing out. You put it together with the brightest

1236
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:21,040
Speaker 1: minds of the McKinsey consultant world, and they come up

1237
01:05:21,160 --> 01:05:26,120
Speaker 1: with something that is absolutely dogshit and completely insane. And

1238
01:05:26,560 --> 01:05:31,920
Speaker 1: the numbers like how if you had asked any just

1239
01:05:32,400 --> 01:05:35,320
Speaker 1: random person on the street, how this would have gone.

1240
01:05:35,760 --> 01:05:37,680
Speaker 1: Tell them, you're lit, here's what we got, here's what

1241
01:05:37,800 --> 01:05:39,920
Speaker 1: we're investing in, here's what we're spending money on. They

1242
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:42,640
Speaker 1: would have been like, like, are you out of your mind?

1243
01:05:42,720 --> 01:05:45,960
Speaker 1: You spent three hundred million dollars on this thing. This

1244
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:49,320
Speaker 1: is insane. And so we talked about the sum last week,

1245
01:05:49,400 --> 01:05:52,080
Speaker 1: but as a reminder of how this is actually going

1246
01:05:52,320 --> 01:05:55,640
Speaker 1: outside of their like highly paid consultant world. Let's go

1247
01:05:55,720 --> 01:05:57,560
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. Fewer than ten

1248
01:05:57,640 --> 01:06:01,760
Speaker 1: thousand people are using CNN Plus on a daily basis

1249
01:06:01,920 --> 01:06:05,160
Speaker 1: two weeks in two and its existence. It's, according to CNBC,

1250
01:06:05,800 --> 01:06:11,160
Speaker 1: fewer than ten thousand people. I cannot begin to communicate

1251
01:06:11,400 --> 01:06:13,840
Speaker 1: how utterly pathetic that is. If we got that, we

1252
01:06:13,880 --> 01:06:16,640
Speaker 1: would be a failure, a huge thing. Oh, we couldn't

1253
01:06:16,760 --> 01:06:19,680
Speaker 1: last beyond like the first month. If we got that,

1254
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:21,240
Speaker 1: no way we'd be able to keep the life in

1255
01:06:21,240 --> 01:06:23,720
Speaker 1: the students about or do our We would not make

1256
01:06:23,800 --> 01:06:25,960
Speaker 1: payroll if that was what we were doing. Literally, if

1257
01:06:26,000 --> 01:06:28,680
Speaker 1: they opened up the windows at their headquarters in New

1258
01:06:28,760 --> 01:06:30,920
Speaker 1: York and yelled out the window, they would reach more

1259
01:06:30,960 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: than ten thousand literally literally true. And so what they're

1260
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: finding is they're learning that when they have to actually

1261
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:44,840
Speaker 1: compete in the free market, guess what, no one really

1262
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:47,960
Speaker 1: wants anything you have to offer. And I don't know

1263
01:06:48,040 --> 01:06:50,360
Speaker 1: why you didn't know that to start with. I think

1264
01:06:50,400 --> 01:06:52,760
Speaker 1: the other thing that it kind of reveals, too, is

1265
01:06:52,840 --> 01:06:56,400
Speaker 1: how fake the YouTube algorithms are. Because you see, you

1266
01:06:56,440 --> 01:06:59,520
Speaker 1: know the numbers that they're able to get on YouTube

1267
01:07:00,120 --> 01:07:03,240
Speaker 1: when when they're actually like competing in the free market.

1268
01:07:03,320 --> 01:07:05,520
Speaker 1: Here you see how utterly pathetic it is. So you

1269
01:07:05,640 --> 01:07:07,680
Speaker 1: see how sort of propped up their numbers are on

1270
01:07:07,760 --> 01:07:11,360
Speaker 1: YouTube as well as independent media is being surprised one

1271
01:07:11,640 --> 01:07:14,360
Speaker 1: hundred percent because and it also shows you the engagement

1272
01:07:14,440 --> 01:07:16,240
Speaker 1: also of their audience, which is that they get these

1273
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:19,960
Speaker 1: fake views which are pumped out into the news tabs

1274
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:22,720
Speaker 1: and the algorithms and all that stuff, but it's not

1275
01:07:22,920 --> 01:07:25,960
Speaker 1: actually engaged groups of people. And look, we said this,

1276
01:07:26,440 --> 01:07:29,600
Speaker 1: we beat that ten thousand figure within the first week

1277
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:35,080
Speaker 1: of launch with fifty thousand dollars of our own money

1278
01:07:35,240 --> 01:07:38,600
Speaker 1: that we had to invest in this product. That is

1279
01:07:38,680 --> 01:07:42,520
Speaker 1: compared to the three hundred million that they had to

1280
01:07:42,600 --> 01:07:45,600
Speaker 1: spend in order to do less than Look, I'm not

1281
01:07:45,640 --> 01:07:48,440
Speaker 1: saying we're as powerful as CNN from a popular culture

1282
01:07:48,520 --> 01:07:50,960
Speaker 1: perspective in terms of their impact on the news. Obviously

1283
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:53,320
Speaker 1: they have news gathering and all that, and I've praised

1284
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:55,960
Speaker 1: many good journalists who are actually work over there, but

1285
01:07:56,120 --> 01:07:59,720
Speaker 1: clearly they have a major editorial problem whenever they're shedding

1286
01:08:00,480 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 1: viewers subscribers. Like I said, six one hundred and seventy

1287
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:07,000
Speaker 1: seven thousand in primetime is a total disaster. Yeah, and look,

1288
01:08:07,080 --> 01:08:08,880
Speaker 1: it just shows you how fake this whole business is.

1289
01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:13,080
Speaker 1: It's rigged because what happens here. They make a billion

1290
01:08:13,160 --> 01:08:15,760
Speaker 1: dollars a year in profit just from being part of

1291
01:08:15,800 --> 01:08:17,920
Speaker 1: the cable bundle because a lot of people really like

1292
01:08:18,040 --> 01:08:21,479
Speaker 1: live news, But as that begins to diminish whenever it

1293
01:08:21,520 --> 01:08:24,360
Speaker 1: comes to negotiation time seven eight years from now on

1294
01:08:24,479 --> 01:08:27,560
Speaker 1: their live news property, they're screwed because a lot of

1295
01:08:27,600 --> 01:08:30,320
Speaker 1: people are cutting the cord. And in a cord cutting environment,

1296
01:08:30,520 --> 01:08:32,160
Speaker 1: you got to compete, not just with us, I mean

1297
01:08:32,280 --> 01:08:34,719
Speaker 1: you got to compete with TikTok, You've got to compete

1298
01:08:34,760 --> 01:08:38,080
Speaker 1: with Instagram, You've got to compete with whatever your uncle

1299
01:08:38,320 --> 01:08:41,639
Speaker 1: is emailing you. This is a true free market where

1300
01:08:41,800 --> 01:08:45,799
Speaker 1: you don't just have three options, you have gajillion options.

1301
01:08:45,920 --> 01:08:48,200
Speaker 1: And louis been very lucky that. You know, maybe people

1302
01:08:48,240 --> 01:08:49,920
Speaker 1: have showed up for us, but that takes a lot

1303
01:08:49,960 --> 01:08:51,800
Speaker 1: of time and a lot of trust. Yeah, lild it

1304
01:08:51,880 --> 01:08:54,120
Speaker 1: up over many years. And as we always remind you,

1305
01:08:54,560 --> 01:08:56,400
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're going to give up and they're

1306
01:08:56,439 --> 01:08:58,120
Speaker 1: going to be defeated and we're going to win. It

1307
01:08:58,200 --> 01:08:59,920
Speaker 1: means they're going to try harder to rink this market.

1308
01:09:00,479 --> 01:09:02,360
Speaker 1: And there was already there was another piece in the

1309
01:09:02,360 --> 01:09:04,920
Speaker 1: New York Times trying to take Substack down a peg

1310
01:09:05,200 --> 01:09:08,360
Speaker 1: and all of that going on. So you have to

1311
01:09:08,439 --> 01:09:10,880
Speaker 1: see these things as a piece. I mean, the you know,

1312
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:13,320
Speaker 1: Elon Musk Twitter story sort of fits into this as well.

1313
01:09:13,400 --> 01:09:16,240
Speaker 1: This whole regime of like censorship and telling you which

1314
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:18,880
Speaker 1: platforms you can go on, which content sources are okay,

1315
01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:23,760
Speaker 1: which platforms are okay, what podcasts are dangerous? Now, all

1316
01:09:23,760 --> 01:09:25,800
Speaker 1: of that as an attempt to keep control over a

1317
01:09:25,960 --> 01:09:29,120
Speaker 1: market that they really aren't able to compete in just

1318
01:09:29,360 --> 01:09:31,559
Speaker 1: on their merits. And we're going to see. I mean,

1319
01:09:31,680 --> 01:09:33,600
Speaker 1: the Substack article from the New York Times was a

1320
01:09:33,640 --> 01:09:36,040
Speaker 1: perfect example of they like tried to cast it as

1321
01:09:36,080 --> 01:09:40,240
Speaker 1: some crazy right wing company, which you know is elevating

1322
01:09:40,320 --> 01:09:43,080
Speaker 1: all these horrific voices. I went and checked, okay, I

1323
01:09:43,200 --> 01:09:46,760
Speaker 1: actually ran. The number one person on Substack is Heather

1324
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:50,040
Speaker 1: Cox Richardson, who is a huge Biden lib Number two,

1325
01:09:50,520 --> 01:09:52,640
Speaker 1: I think is The Dispatch, or maybe it might be

1326
01:09:52,680 --> 01:09:55,200
Speaker 1: Matt Taib. They switch back and forth all the time.

1327
01:09:55,240 --> 01:09:58,400
Speaker 1: The Dispatches is never Trump magazine. The Bulwark is also

1328
01:09:58,520 --> 01:10:01,080
Speaker 1: a never Trump Magazine. Then it's Matt Tyebe and Glenn

1329
01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:03,280
Speaker 1: Greenwald who are within the top five. But of the

1330
01:10:03,360 --> 01:10:07,680
Speaker 1: top twenty, the majority of the outlets are actually establishment

1331
01:10:07,760 --> 01:10:10,880
Speaker 1: type liberal ones. Right, Matt Iglesias is in the top twenty.

1332
01:10:11,640 --> 01:10:14,280
Speaker 1: Jud Legoon, the guy who's always you know, going after

1333
01:10:14,400 --> 01:10:17,439
Speaker 1: corps responsors of Fox News. By the way, whatever, you know,

1334
01:10:17,640 --> 01:10:19,759
Speaker 1: it's a free country. He can do whatever he wants.

1335
01:10:20,400 --> 01:10:24,360
Speaker 1: There are several establishment, never Trump type organizations, people who

1336
01:10:24,479 --> 01:10:27,479
Speaker 1: have CNN contributorships, who are owners of some of the

1337
01:10:27,560 --> 01:10:30,600
Speaker 1: top substacks. It's just ludicrous to say that it's a

1338
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:34,280
Speaker 1: right wing company. The Internet is a massive place. That

1339
01:10:34,520 --> 01:10:38,040
Speaker 1: means sometimes people like yours truly will succeed and we

1340
01:10:38,160 --> 01:10:41,679
Speaker 1: will succeed right alongside many other people who are feeling

1341
01:10:41,680 --> 01:10:44,519
Speaker 1: different niches. That's the you know, that's the real promise

1342
01:10:44,600 --> 01:10:47,040
Speaker 1: of the technology from the beginning, right, And like you said, like,

1343
01:10:47,200 --> 01:10:50,360
Speaker 1: I'm not like, oh, it's terrible that some like annoying

1344
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:56,240
Speaker 1: resistance person is doing. I think it's cringe. But you know, Conry, Okay,

1345
01:10:56,320 --> 01:11:00,519
Speaker 1: you're she's obviously providing something she does history people like it,

1346
01:11:00,600 --> 01:11:03,320
Speaker 1: and people like it. Okay, that's cool. That's great were

1347
01:11:03,800 --> 01:11:06,400
Speaker 1: you know? So anyway, if you're like secure in your

1348
01:11:06,439 --> 01:11:08,880
Speaker 1: ability to compete in that marketplace, that's the attitude you have.

1349
01:11:09,080 --> 01:11:11,080
Speaker 1: And if you are like CNN and you know you're

1350
01:11:11,120 --> 01:11:13,120
Speaker 1: going to fail in that marketplace, then you have to

1351
01:11:13,439 --> 01:11:15,160
Speaker 1: you know, you got to put it down, you got

1352
01:11:15,240 --> 01:11:16,560
Speaker 1: to smear it, you got to try to make it

1353
01:11:16,680 --> 01:11:19,240
Speaker 1: so that people aren't allowed to go or talk or

1354
01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:24,000
Speaker 1: speak in these various forms. Absolutely right, Crystal, what are

1355
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:25,920
Speaker 1: you taking a look at? Well, guys, something very related

1356
01:11:25,960 --> 01:11:29,000
Speaker 1: to that. Actually, something pretty interesting happened last week. Amazon

1357
01:11:29,120 --> 01:11:32,559
Speaker 1: Labor Union president Christian Smalls went on Tucker Carlson's show

1358
01:11:32,640 --> 01:11:36,200
Speaker 1: to talk about their David Versus Glide victory against Amazon.

1359
01:11:36,560 --> 01:11:39,200
Speaker 1: So you have the most significant labor leader in the

1360
01:11:39,240 --> 01:11:42,080
Speaker 1: country going on the most popular right wing show in

1361
01:11:42,200 --> 01:11:44,639
Speaker 1: the country. Here's how that went. It's the short segment,

1362
01:11:44,680 --> 01:11:46,439
Speaker 1: so I'm just going to go ahead and play most

1363
01:11:46,479 --> 01:11:48,960
Speaker 1: of it for you. Take a listen. Jenny Purtet spends

1364
01:11:49,000 --> 01:11:50,320
Speaker 1: a lot of time telling you that she's on the

1365
01:11:50,360 --> 01:11:52,840
Speaker 1: side of the worker. She's got modern wobbly She's the

1366
01:11:52,880 --> 01:11:55,640
Speaker 1: Walter Ruther of our day. And that's why last year

1367
01:11:55,680 --> 01:11:58,240
Speaker 1: she about to stand alongside striking workers at Amazon's Staten

1368
01:11:58,240 --> 01:12:00,960
Speaker 1: Island warehouse, and we're for that because they need the help.

1369
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:03,360
Speaker 1: But at the last minute, Sandy cort has bailed on

1370
01:12:03,400 --> 01:12:06,040
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and that infuriated labor organizers, whol just

1371
01:12:06,080 --> 01:12:08,120
Speaker 1: want a big vote to unionize the STATNA on facility.

1372
01:12:08,360 --> 01:12:10,800
Speaker 1: Now Amazon is stepping up its effort to crush the union.

1373
01:12:11,160 --> 01:12:14,360
Speaker 1: Amazon has just banned words like union, but it's employee

1374
01:12:14,439 --> 01:12:17,960
Speaker 1: chat app. Christian Smalls is a union leader at Amazon

1375
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:19,800
Speaker 1: and we're happy to have him joined us now. Christian,

1376
01:12:19,800 --> 01:12:23,200
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming on. So were you surprised

1377
01:12:23,240 --> 01:12:26,400
Speaker 1: that Sandy Kurtz is alexander A Kasuk Cortez, who has

1378
01:12:26,439 --> 01:12:28,439
Speaker 1: said repeatedly that she's on the side of the worker

1379
01:12:28,520 --> 01:12:31,439
Speaker 1: against the corporation, wasn't standing with you at the barricades. Yeah,

1380
01:12:31,479 --> 01:12:33,800
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it wasn't just her, It was

1381
01:12:34,200 --> 01:12:36,000
Speaker 1: all of them pretty much. You know, it's not fair,

1382
01:12:36,280 --> 01:12:38,120
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, I don't wanted to make it just

1383
01:12:38,479 --> 01:12:41,320
Speaker 1: between us in AOC because you know, a lot of

1384
01:12:41,360 --> 01:12:44,040
Speaker 1: them didn't show up, and you know, once again, we

1385
01:12:44,400 --> 01:12:47,080
Speaker 1: have no alwill against them. We know that whether they

1386
01:12:47,120 --> 01:12:49,400
Speaker 1: shoulder showed up or not, they didn't make a break

1387
01:12:49,400 --> 01:12:52,080
Speaker 1: our election. We just had to continue to organize. Yeah,

1388
01:12:52,080 --> 01:12:53,920
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's a weird moment because I mean,

1389
01:12:53,920 --> 01:12:55,960
Speaker 1: I'm on the right up, never been particularly pro union,

1390
01:12:56,080 --> 01:12:58,360
Speaker 1: but it does seem like Amazon needs some counterbalance, Like

1391
01:12:58,439 --> 01:13:00,760
Speaker 1: it's this huge company, the workers have no power, and

1392
01:13:00,800 --> 01:13:02,559
Speaker 1: maybe we could, I don't know, share a little power

1393
01:13:02,600 --> 01:13:04,840
Speaker 1: with people who work there. So that's my view anyway.

1394
01:13:04,880 --> 01:13:07,760
Speaker 1: So tell us where you are in your organizing efforts. Well,

1395
01:13:07,840 --> 01:13:09,840
Speaker 1: right now, you know, we're fighting for a contract. You know,

1396
01:13:09,880 --> 01:13:13,600
Speaker 1: Amazon's disputing the election results, so we're we're walking in

1397
01:13:13,720 --> 01:13:15,960
Speaker 1: chewing bubblegum. At the same time we're fighting for a contract.

1398
01:13:16,120 --> 01:13:18,599
Speaker 1: We're preparing for another election in two weeks on April

1399
01:13:18,640 --> 01:13:20,519
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, we're going to be voting at a second

1400
01:13:20,560 --> 01:13:23,800
Speaker 1: location directly across the building that we just unionized. So

1401
01:13:24,120 --> 01:13:25,519
Speaker 1: we're we're in the thick of a fight right now,

1402
01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:27,800
Speaker 1: you know, a legal battle, and you know, we just

1403
01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:30,799
Speaker 1: have to stay grounded and pretty much begin our campaign

1404
01:13:30,800 --> 01:13:33,880
Speaker 1: all over again. You'd think that Amazon would be open

1405
01:13:33,920 --> 01:13:36,280
Speaker 1: to a union when you as a very progressive company.

1406
01:13:36,960 --> 01:13:39,639
Speaker 1: Why do you think they're trying to thwart you from organizing?

1407
01:13:40,640 --> 01:13:43,519
Speaker 1: Amazon hasn't been unionized in this country since the beginning

1408
01:13:43,640 --> 01:13:46,560
Speaker 1: of its existence, and they're very anti union. You know,

1409
01:13:46,600 --> 01:13:49,160
Speaker 1: they want they created a system that hires and fire people.

1410
01:13:49,360 --> 01:13:51,240
Speaker 1: They create a system that they have full control of

1411
01:13:51,320 --> 01:13:53,720
Speaker 1: the working the working people. And you know, having a

1412
01:13:53,840 --> 01:13:57,200
Speaker 1: union obviously brings representation for the workers that have benefit

1413
01:13:57,240 --> 01:14:00,240
Speaker 1: the workers at the bottom like myself. Hourly associates entry

1414
01:14:00,320 --> 01:14:02,920
Speaker 1: level workers that don't get the rights to negotiate, So

1415
01:14:03,040 --> 01:14:05,000
Speaker 1: forming a union gives us the right to collect the

1416
01:14:05,040 --> 01:14:07,759
Speaker 1: bargain with the company, form a contract to protect ourselves.

1417
01:14:08,040 --> 01:14:09,439
Speaker 1: So that's exactly what we're trying to do with the

1418
01:14:09,439 --> 01:14:12,200
Speaker 1: Amazon labor union. We hope that we'll be a catalyst

1419
01:14:12,320 --> 01:14:15,320
Speaker 1: for something that will take place nationwide. Well, I certainly

1420
01:14:15,320 --> 01:14:16,840
Speaker 1: am rooting for you. I mean maybe if they throw

1421
01:14:16,880 --> 01:14:18,559
Speaker 1: some more Wolkes logans at you'll forget you can't feed

1422
01:14:18,600 --> 01:14:21,240
Speaker 1: your family, right, christ I appreciate you coming on. Thank

1423
01:14:21,280 --> 01:14:23,160
Speaker 1: you very much, Leulie. Thank you for having me. Okay,

1424
01:14:23,200 --> 01:14:25,120
Speaker 1: there's a lot to note here. So first of all,

1425
01:14:25,320 --> 01:14:29,280
Speaker 1: amazing tax rich jacket. Second of all, Tucker clearly most

1426
01:14:29,360 --> 01:14:31,559
Speaker 1: interested in the AOC riffed angle. And as I've shown

1427
01:14:31,600 --> 01:14:33,800
Speaker 1: here before, Fox News is so committed to attacking AOC

1428
01:14:33,920 --> 01:14:36,719
Speaker 1: that they will even temporarily pretend to support workers unionizing

1429
01:14:36,800 --> 01:14:39,439
Speaker 1: in order to attempt to own her. But Christian Smalls

1430
01:14:39,640 --> 01:14:41,920
Speaker 1: is no fool. He quickly parries that point, noting that

1431
01:14:42,000 --> 01:14:44,280
Speaker 1: he's got no ill will and that no politicians showed up,

1432
01:14:44,360 --> 01:14:46,320
Speaker 1: before moving on to the reason he wanted to do

1433
01:14:46,400 --> 01:14:49,400
Speaker 1: the segment in the first place, to explain to Tucker's

1434
01:14:49,439 --> 01:14:53,599
Speaker 1: audience why workers need unions. Second, I actually laughed out

1435
01:14:53,640 --> 01:14:56,920
Speaker 1: loud when Tucker described Amazon as a progressive company. There

1436
01:14:57,080 --> 01:15:00,160
Speaker 1: is nothing progressive about a tax dodging monopoly with a

1437
01:15:00,240 --> 01:15:03,200
Speaker 1: business model reliant on chewing workers up and spitting them

1438
01:15:03,240 --> 01:15:05,120
Speaker 1: out at a rate of one hundred and fifty percent

1439
01:15:05,200 --> 01:15:08,520
Speaker 1: turnover every single year. The fact that they are aggressively

1440
01:15:08,640 --> 01:15:13,040
Speaker 1: union busting, including using blatantly illegal tactics, should disabuse everyone

1441
01:15:13,120 --> 01:15:15,960
Speaker 1: of the notion that Amazon is in any way progressive,

1442
01:15:16,280 --> 01:15:18,200
Speaker 1: and that should be made obvious by the report Tucker

1443
01:15:18,280 --> 01:15:20,840
Speaker 1: sites from the intercept, revealing that Amazon was banning words

1444
01:15:20,880 --> 01:15:24,800
Speaker 1: like union and wage slavery and even restroom. Finally, Tucker

1445
01:15:24,920 --> 01:15:28,720
Speaker 1: reluctantly himself makes a pretty solid case for unionizing. He

1446
01:15:28,800 --> 01:15:31,120
Speaker 1: acknowledges he's not in general a big fan of unions,

1447
01:15:31,400 --> 01:15:34,240
Speaker 1: but that Amazon seems like it needs some counterbalance. That's

1448
01:15:34,280 --> 01:15:36,760
Speaker 1: what he says. He goes on to say, like, it's

1449
01:15:36,800 --> 01:15:39,320
Speaker 1: this huge company, the workers have no power, and maybe

1450
01:15:39,400 --> 01:15:41,760
Speaker 1: we could, I don't know, share a little power with

1451
01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:45,880
Speaker 1: the people that work there. Exactly. That's literally all that

1452
01:15:46,040 --> 01:15:49,720
Speaker 1: unions are ultimately about. He closes by saying, quote, I

1453
01:15:49,880 --> 01:15:52,519
Speaker 1: certainly am rooting for you, while making sure sure to

1454
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:54,880
Speaker 1: take a shot at quote woke slogans. But you know what,

1455
01:15:55,120 --> 01:15:57,640
Speaker 1: if opposition to woke slogans will bring any part of

1456
01:15:57,680 --> 01:16:00,000
Speaker 1: the institutional right on board with unions, I am perfec

1457
01:16:00,040 --> 01:16:02,719
Speaker 1: quickly fine with that. Now I see this entire segment

1458
01:16:02,880 --> 01:16:05,719
Speaker 1: as nothing but a win. Chris quickly, Perry's the AOC

1459
01:16:05,880 --> 01:16:09,480
Speaker 1: beef gets straight to his message, and Tucker's large conservative

1460
01:16:09,520 --> 01:16:12,680
Speaker 1: audience numbering in the millions gets to hear a conversation

1461
01:16:12,760 --> 01:16:15,600
Speaker 1: that is overwhelmingly pro union from both the host and

1462
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:18,760
Speaker 1: the guest. It is not a close call at all

1463
01:16:19,240 --> 01:16:21,559
Speaker 1: if you believe in the labor movement and worker power.

1464
01:16:21,760 --> 01:16:26,439
Speaker 1: This was absolutely wonderful to watch, but predictably, a liberal

1465
01:16:26,479 --> 01:16:29,519
Speaker 1: meltown quickly ensued, and the attacks on Chris were as

1466
01:16:29,600 --> 01:16:32,200
Speaker 1: silly as they were dishonest. So one of the folks

1467
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:35,400
Speaker 1: who runs Media Matters took a single screenshot from that

1468
01:16:35,560 --> 01:16:38,639
Speaker 1: interview with a Chiron mentioning the AOC beef and used

1469
01:16:38,680 --> 01:16:42,760
Speaker 1: that to characterize the entire segment, tweeting quote, Yeah, this

1470
01:16:43,080 --> 01:16:46,439
Speaker 1: isn't it, before going on to explain, quote Carlson is

1471
01:16:46,439 --> 01:16:48,800
Speaker 1: a hateful bigot and he uses his program every night

1472
01:16:48,840 --> 01:16:51,519
Speaker 1: to spread his hateful bigotry. Someone like Small's appearing on

1473
01:16:51,640 --> 01:16:55,760
Speaker 1: his show only gives Tucker credibility he doesn't deserve. Guys, listen,

1474
01:16:56,200 --> 01:16:59,040
Speaker 1: Tucker is a popular host who already has a massive

1475
01:16:59,080 --> 01:17:02,400
Speaker 1: audience any prime time show. Christian Smalls cannot do anything

1476
01:17:02,439 --> 01:17:05,240
Speaker 1: about that, but he sures how can provide that large

1477
01:17:05,280 --> 01:17:08,400
Speaker 1: audience with some actually useful information for a few minutes,

1478
01:17:08,479 --> 01:17:13,320
Speaker 1: which is exactly what he did. So Media Matters dude continued, saying, furthermore,

1479
01:17:13,600 --> 01:17:16,519
Speaker 1: spare me the whole get the message out bullshit. On

1480
01:17:16,680 --> 01:17:19,240
Speaker 1: his best nights, Tucker has one percent of the population

1481
01:17:19,360 --> 01:17:21,800
Speaker 1: tuning in. I'd imagine it's the least likely to be

1482
01:17:21,880 --> 01:17:24,519
Speaker 1: swayed one percent of the population in America. There are

1483
01:17:24,600 --> 01:17:28,960
Speaker 1: more effective, less harmful ways to get the message out. Okay, dude,

1484
01:17:29,320 --> 01:17:31,840
Speaker 1: then if Tucker is so insignificant, what are you so

1485
01:17:32,000 --> 01:17:34,920
Speaker 1: upset about? And further, what is even the point of

1486
01:17:35,000 --> 01:17:37,479
Speaker 1: your project at media matters if the right wing media

1487
01:17:37,520 --> 01:17:41,240
Speaker 1: ecosystem is totally fringe and totally meaningless. He closes his

1488
01:17:41,360 --> 01:17:45,240
Speaker 1: thread with this condescending mess quote, Tucker Carlson is your enemy.

1489
01:17:45,280 --> 01:17:47,439
Speaker 1: And if you don't understand that, you have no idea

1490
01:17:47,520 --> 01:17:52,360
Speaker 1: what we're actually up against. Imagine having the audacity to

1491
01:17:52,640 --> 01:17:56,840
Speaker 1: chide an actually heroic working class movement leader for failing

1492
01:17:56,920 --> 01:18:01,200
Speaker 1: to follow your arbitrary and failing code of DC conduct.

1493
01:18:01,640 --> 01:18:04,120
Speaker 1: Some of these supposed allies of black and brown people

1494
01:18:04,439 --> 01:18:07,080
Speaker 1: sure do have a lot of patronizing contempt for the

1495
01:18:07,240 --> 01:18:10,280
Speaker 1: largely black and brown working class. As it turns out, now,

1496
01:18:10,400 --> 01:18:13,479
Speaker 1: Chris has been underestimated from the beginning. He's been speared,

1497
01:18:13,600 --> 01:18:16,639
Speaker 1: he's been dismissed, and he still is to this day. Listen,

1498
01:18:17,080 --> 01:18:20,640
Speaker 1: put your minds at ease, professional liberals. Chris Malls has

1499
01:18:20,720 --> 01:18:23,280
Speaker 1: got this. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he

1500
01:18:23,360 --> 01:18:26,479
Speaker 1: sure doesn't need your dumb ass advice. As doctor Thrasher

1501
01:18:26,520 --> 01:18:29,759
Speaker 1: put it on Twitter, quote, very curious how many liberals

1502
01:18:29,840 --> 01:18:33,559
Speaker 1: want Chris Malls, whose rising coalition is winning in arenas.

1503
01:18:33,720 --> 01:18:37,080
Speaker 1: They never have expect him to conform to their norms

1504
01:18:37,120 --> 01:18:41,600
Speaker 1: and behaviors, even as their coalitions are consistently losing. But

1505
01:18:41,680 --> 01:18:44,160
Speaker 1: there's also something bigger going on here. Listen. Part of

1506
01:18:44,200 --> 01:18:47,360
Speaker 1: the right has basically boxed themselves into a rhetorical corner.

1507
01:18:47,439 --> 01:18:49,479
Speaker 1: During the Trunk years, they were happy to say the

1508
01:18:49,560 --> 01:18:52,960
Speaker 1: words working class, pretend like they support workers while giving

1509
01:18:53,040 --> 01:18:55,439
Speaker 1: tax cuts to the rich and stacking the NLRB with

1510
01:18:55,560 --> 01:18:58,720
Speaker 1: union busters. Their support for workers through symbolic gestures like

1511
01:18:58,800 --> 01:19:01,479
Speaker 1: putting workers on stage at the RNC or Trump donning

1512
01:19:01,520 --> 01:19:03,840
Speaker 1: a hard hat and pretending to mine it had all

1513
01:19:03,960 --> 01:19:06,519
Speaker 1: the substance of Nancy Pelosi kneeling in Kent take clock

1514
01:19:06,760 --> 01:19:09,280
Speaker 1: or Amazon putting Black Lives Matter up on their homepage.

1515
01:19:09,560 --> 01:19:12,799
Speaker 1: But this rhetoric was basically safe so long as workers

1516
01:19:12,840 --> 01:19:15,880
Speaker 1: were powerless and represented no real threat to the established order.

1517
01:19:16,600 --> 01:19:20,120
Speaker 1: Now they're faced with the uncomfortable situation of their rhetoric

1518
01:19:20,240 --> 01:19:23,679
Speaker 1: about support for the working class bumping up against actual

1519
01:19:23,760 --> 01:19:26,880
Speaker 1: working class people challenging corporate bosses, who the right, by

1520
01:19:26,920 --> 01:19:30,080
Speaker 1: the way, has characterized as woke or progressive. And while

1521
01:19:30,120 --> 01:19:32,400
Speaker 1: Republican elites didn't mean a word of what they were

1522
01:19:32,439 --> 01:19:35,320
Speaker 1: saying about workers, the American people by and large actually did.

1523
01:19:35,760 --> 01:19:38,600
Speaker 1: That's why Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly backed the

1524
01:19:38,640 --> 01:19:40,960
Speaker 1: strikers at John Deere. That's why support for unions is

1525
01:19:41,040 --> 01:19:43,719
Speaker 1: near record highs. That's why the number of shops filing

1526
01:19:43,760 --> 01:19:46,760
Speaker 1: for union elections has jumped up fifty seven percent year

1527
01:19:46,840 --> 01:19:48,840
Speaker 1: over year. And Tucker, by the way, is not the

1528
01:19:48,920 --> 01:19:51,599
Speaker 1: only right wing media figure who's offering at least modest

1529
01:19:51,880 --> 01:19:55,240
Speaker 1: tacit support for the Amazon union effort. Our wonderful friend

1530
01:19:55,280 --> 01:19:58,160
Speaker 1: and new Breaking Points partner, Max Alvarez just joined Megan

1531
01:19:58,240 --> 01:20:00,920
Speaker 1: Kelly for a thoughtful interview in which Megan and acknowledged

1532
01:20:01,320 --> 01:20:04,880
Speaker 1: both that trickled down economics was not working and that

1533
01:20:05,040 --> 01:20:07,800
Speaker 1: right to work was a misleading concept. The whole thought

1534
01:20:07,840 --> 01:20:09,200
Speaker 1: about right to work states and so on was that

1535
01:20:09,400 --> 01:20:11,240
Speaker 1: it would give corporate America to do right by the workers.

1536
01:20:11,800 --> 01:20:13,040
Speaker 1: You want to you don't want to be told what

1537
01:20:13,160 --> 01:20:14,719
Speaker 1: to do by the unions, do right by the workers,

1538
01:20:14,840 --> 01:20:16,000
Speaker 1: and you want to have to deal with this problem.

1539
01:20:16,240 --> 01:20:18,400
Speaker 1: And if you don't do right by the workers, things

1540
01:20:18,400 --> 01:20:19,640
Speaker 1: are going to go south. They're going to they are

1541
01:20:19,720 --> 01:20:22,200
Speaker 1: going to revolt at some point, and we're seeing it

1542
01:20:22,280 --> 01:20:23,599
Speaker 1: just feels to me like we're seeing more and more

1543
01:20:23,600 --> 01:20:25,719
Speaker 1: of that love corporations not not doing right by the workers,

1544
01:20:25,800 --> 01:20:28,479
Speaker 1: not wanting to take care of their staff and the

1545
01:20:28,560 --> 01:20:30,280
Speaker 1: way they should. And I mean, I know you've been

1546
01:20:30,320 --> 01:20:32,639
Speaker 1: talking about Kroger, that's a great example. Now we're seeing

1547
01:20:32,680 --> 01:20:36,200
Speaker 1: Starbucks big union push there. The numbers are okay. Starbucks

1548
01:20:36,240 --> 01:20:37,880
Speaker 1: had quarterly profit jump thirty one percent at the end

1549
01:20:37,880 --> 01:20:40,720
Speaker 1: of last year to eight hundred and sixteen million. That's

1550
01:20:40,760 --> 01:20:43,120
Speaker 1: amazing for the New York Times. Meanwhile, more than two

1551
01:20:43,160 --> 01:20:45,160
Speaker 1: hundred Starbucks locations across the country in some thirty states

1552
01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:47,960
Speaker 1: of file petitions to organize because the old trickle down

1553
01:20:48,200 --> 01:20:51,320
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be happening outside of the coffee pot.

1554
01:20:51,680 --> 01:20:53,599
Speaker 1: You're right, I mean, like in the end, it really

1555
01:20:53,720 --> 01:20:56,080
Speaker 1: is that simple. Like, you know, the trickle down theory

1556
01:20:56,320 --> 01:20:58,240
Speaker 1: was nice, it sounded good in principle. We have enough

1557
01:20:58,320 --> 01:21:00,559
Speaker 1: data to see now it didn't work. It didn't work

1558
01:21:00,600 --> 01:21:03,519
Speaker 1: for us, right, It worked for a very small few people, right,

1559
01:21:03,720 --> 01:21:05,760
Speaker 1: But for the vast amount of workers who, as I said,

1560
01:21:05,960 --> 01:21:08,639
Speaker 1: have been working longer working harder and been more productive

1561
01:21:08,680 --> 01:21:11,600
Speaker 1: over the past half century, and yet have seen the

1562
01:21:11,680 --> 01:21:13,920
Speaker 1: majority of their wages stagnate as the cost of living

1563
01:21:13,960 --> 01:21:16,080
Speaker 1: continues to go up. Just as recently as a few

1564
01:21:16,120 --> 01:21:19,320
Speaker 1: years ago, you would never hear anyone, even nominally on

1565
01:21:19,400 --> 01:21:22,000
Speaker 1: the right, acknowledge that unions can be good, right to

1566
01:21:22,080 --> 01:21:24,599
Speaker 1: work sucks, and corporate giants are abusive, and that trickle

1567
01:21:24,680 --> 01:21:28,080
Speaker 1: down is a lot. Never And while I'm not deluding

1568
01:21:28,160 --> 01:21:31,879
Speaker 1: myself that this represents any meaningful shift among elected Republican elites,

1569
01:21:32,280 --> 01:21:35,040
Speaker 1: it does open the door for exactly what we are

1570
01:21:35,120 --> 01:21:39,720
Speaker 1: witnessing among regular people right now, a newly energized, grassroous

1571
01:21:39,800 --> 01:21:44,840
Speaker 1: labor uprising which crosses cultural, geographic, and political divides. I

1572
01:21:44,920 --> 01:21:47,360
Speaker 1: might also add that the opportunity to talk about actual

1573
01:21:47,400 --> 01:21:50,320
Speaker 1: working class power with an ideologically diverse audience is part

1574
01:21:50,360 --> 01:21:52,519
Speaker 1: of what makes me so proud of this show. We've

1575
01:21:52,560 --> 01:21:54,640
Speaker 1: had quite a few folks who consider themselves to be

1576
01:21:54,720 --> 01:21:56,519
Speaker 1: on the right reach out to tell us how they

1577
01:21:56,560 --> 01:21:59,920
Speaker 1: are rethinking long held anti union views, and every time

1578
01:22:00,400 --> 01:22:03,200
Speaker 1: I see one of these messages, it absolutely delights me

1579
01:22:03,439 --> 01:22:05,519
Speaker 1: and would not be possible if we were just here

1580
01:22:05,560 --> 01:22:08,120
Speaker 1: preaching to acquire of people who share my views on

1581
01:22:08,240 --> 01:22:12,040
Speaker 1: the left already. Now, if the Democratic Party was worth anything,

1582
01:22:12,320 --> 01:22:14,599
Speaker 1: they would seize the moment. They would use this opening

1583
01:22:14,640 --> 01:22:16,439
Speaker 1: to press the case on labor rights. They would fight

1584
01:22:16,560 --> 01:22:19,599
Speaker 1: like hell for the Proact and obliterate any politician, Democrat

1585
01:22:19,720 --> 01:22:21,920
Speaker 1: or a Republican who tries to stand in the way

1586
01:22:22,000 --> 01:22:25,080
Speaker 1: of the rights of workers to organize. Make it clear

1587
01:22:25,360 --> 01:22:28,320
Speaker 1: the American people who actually stands with working people and

1588
01:22:28,360 --> 01:22:31,400
Speaker 1: who just wants to use them as political props instead.

1589
01:22:31,840 --> 01:22:35,400
Speaker 1: Elected Dems will settle for being marginally better than the

1590
01:22:35,479 --> 01:22:39,240
Speaker 1: Republicans by staffing the NLRB with non sociopass, by offering

1591
01:22:39,320 --> 01:22:42,639
Speaker 1: rhetorical support for union drives before quickly walking it back,

1592
01:22:42,680 --> 01:22:46,160
Speaker 1: of course, and the professional liberal activist class will chastise

1593
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:49,120
Speaker 1: working class leaders who don't abide by their DC Code

1594
01:22:49,160 --> 01:22:53,320
Speaker 1: of Conduct, and Chris Mal's Amazon workers, the Starbucks workers,

1595
01:22:53,479 --> 01:22:56,200
Speaker 1: and many more will keep winning, whether or not a

1596
01:22:56,360 --> 01:22:59,920
Speaker 1: single elite actually cares to help. This was such a

1597
01:23:00,320 --> 01:23:02,960
Speaker 1: clear demonstration of so many of the things that we've

1598
01:23:03,000 --> 01:23:06,360
Speaker 1: been talking about here, Like if you and if you

1599
01:23:06,439 --> 01:23:09,160
Speaker 1: want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a

1600
01:23:09,200 --> 01:23:14,200
Speaker 1: Premium subscriber today, at Breakingpoints dot Com. All right, Sager,

1601
01:23:14,240 --> 01:23:15,680
Speaker 1: what are you looking at it? Well, in the year

1602
01:23:15,720 --> 01:23:18,240
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, it almost feels trite to do a

1603
01:23:18,320 --> 01:23:21,360
Speaker 1: monologue about free speech on the Internet. It often feels

1604
01:23:21,400 --> 01:23:23,679
Speaker 1: like everything that has to be said has been said,

1605
01:23:23,920 --> 01:23:26,519
Speaker 1: and it's entered the culture War years ago. It's fueled

1606
01:23:26,560 --> 01:23:29,640
Speaker 1: to debate fundamentally the way that we mediate conflict in

1607
01:23:29,720 --> 01:23:32,960
Speaker 1: our society as reflected on the Internet. But the debate

1608
01:23:33,080 --> 01:23:36,000
Speaker 1: comes front and center again with this year, with Elon

1609
01:23:36,120 --> 01:23:39,040
Speaker 1: Musk's bid in order to buy Twitter, admittedly, as he said,

1610
01:23:39,360 --> 01:23:42,200
Speaker 1: not for economic reasons, but to stop what he believes

1611
01:23:42,320 --> 01:23:44,920
Speaker 1: is too much censorship on the Internet. Now, before we

1612
01:23:45,080 --> 01:23:47,840
Speaker 1: mediate the conflict of today, I really think it's worth

1613
01:23:47,960 --> 01:23:50,320
Speaker 1: let's take a trip down memory lane. What was the

1614
01:23:50,400 --> 01:23:52,880
Speaker 1: original promise of the internet, so we can just see

1615
01:23:52,920 --> 01:23:55,960
Speaker 1: how far we have come. In nineteen eighty nine, Tim

1616
01:23:56,040 --> 01:23:59,439
Speaker 1: berners Lee laid out a system of interconnected computers at

1617
01:23:59,520 --> 01:24:03,360
Speaker 1: CEO and what would become the earliest conception of the Internet.

1618
01:24:03,600 --> 01:24:06,360
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, the hope would be to allow a

1619
01:24:06,439 --> 01:24:09,880
Speaker 1: pool of information to develop, which could grow and evolve

1620
01:24:09,960 --> 01:24:13,400
Speaker 1: with the organization and the projects it describes. He adds

1621
01:24:13,720 --> 01:24:17,200
Speaker 1: for this to be possible, the method of storage must

1622
01:24:17,360 --> 01:24:21,479
Speaker 1: not place its own restraints on the information. Now, look,

1623
01:24:22,160 --> 01:24:24,519
Speaker 1: it's important to say berners Lee was not talking about

1624
01:24:24,520 --> 01:24:28,400
Speaker 1: technical constraints on information, but about the observation is still key.

1625
01:24:28,760 --> 01:24:31,960
Speaker 1: From the day the Internet was born, it was recognized

1626
01:24:32,160 --> 01:24:37,080
Speaker 1: that placing restraints on information, not allowing it to flow freely,

1627
01:24:37,479 --> 01:24:41,120
Speaker 1: would disrupt the promise of sharing across a distributed network.

1628
01:24:41,439 --> 01:24:44,280
Speaker 1: This promise was alive in the nineteen nineties vision of

1629
01:24:44,320 --> 01:24:47,000
Speaker 1: the Web, and it was with the explosion of decentralized

1630
01:24:47,040 --> 01:24:51,160
Speaker 1: protocols and anonymity on the Internet where centralized choke points

1631
01:24:51,200 --> 01:24:54,800
Speaker 1: for information did not exist. But that couldn't last forever.

1632
01:24:55,120 --> 01:24:58,080
Speaker 1: As humanity onboarded to the Internet in millions by the month,

1633
01:24:58,320 --> 01:25:01,160
Speaker 1: it became a mess. Finding stuff became a real problem,

1634
01:25:01,439 --> 01:25:05,000
Speaker 1: and thus began the first moves at organization. First were

1635
01:25:05,080 --> 01:25:08,519
Speaker 1: walled gardens, but eventually they were supplanted by Google, a

1636
01:25:08,640 --> 01:25:12,000
Speaker 1: simple index of the Internet. The indexing system was brilliant

1637
01:25:12,040 --> 01:25:15,000
Speaker 1: in its regard, but of course what Google discovered is

1638
01:25:15,040 --> 01:25:17,639
Speaker 1: that when you become the index agent for the Internet,

1639
01:25:18,040 --> 01:25:20,840
Speaker 1: you get to control the index and what people see.

1640
01:25:21,200 --> 01:25:24,240
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, we had a centralized jokepoint. More importantly,

1641
01:25:24,400 --> 01:25:30,200
Speaker 1: we had a vision of what would come for the web. Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.

1642
01:25:30,479 --> 01:25:33,960
Speaker 1: All of them involve a platform which derives value from

1643
01:25:34,080 --> 01:25:37,080
Speaker 1: its network effects. We get the benefit of their use.

1644
01:25:37,320 --> 01:25:40,000
Speaker 1: They get the benefit of everybody using it, which allows

1645
01:25:40,040 --> 01:25:43,240
Speaker 1: them to aggregate data and have the greatest advertising softwares

1646
01:25:43,439 --> 01:25:46,560
Speaker 1: known to man. But with great responsibility and power and

1647
01:25:46,680 --> 01:25:49,240
Speaker 1: wealth and more, came a new problem, what do you

1648
01:25:49,320 --> 01:25:52,879
Speaker 1: do with all this content? In the earliest days these companies,

1649
01:25:53,120 --> 01:25:57,080
Speaker 1: they all confronted the same problem, illegal content, controversial content,

1650
01:25:57,320 --> 01:25:59,120
Speaker 1: the need to figure out what to do with it.

1651
01:26:00,040 --> 01:26:03,160
Speaker 1: From that point came the de facto an original promise

1652
01:26:03,200 --> 01:26:06,559
Speaker 1: of the Internet that generally governed how platforms companies would

1653
01:26:06,600 --> 01:26:09,760
Speaker 1: serve and most of the humanity. We will remove the

1654
01:26:09,960 --> 01:26:13,560
Speaker 1: least amount of content possible and seek to have a

1655
01:26:13,640 --> 01:26:17,040
Speaker 1: broad trust with the public. Hence the don't be evil

1656
01:26:17,240 --> 01:26:21,240
Speaker 1: Google mantra. The mindset dominated Silicon Valley about a decade

1657
01:26:21,280 --> 01:26:25,800
Speaker 1: ago when then Twitter CEO Dick Costello famously pronounced we

1658
01:26:25,960 --> 01:26:28,719
Speaker 1: are the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party

1659
01:26:28,960 --> 01:26:31,440
Speaker 1: at the Web two point zero summit in San Francisco.

1660
01:26:31,880 --> 01:26:35,280
Speaker 1: That declaration was important it represented at the time of

1661
01:26:35,400 --> 01:26:38,479
Speaker 1: Western elites saw the promise of the Internet as one

1662
01:26:38,560 --> 01:26:41,240
Speaker 1: that was able to allow free exchange of ideas in

1663
01:26:41,320 --> 01:26:44,640
Speaker 1: authoritarian countries, which then led in soft heart to the

1664
01:26:44,720 --> 01:26:47,920
Speaker 1: Arab Spring protests in Egypt and Tunisia and elsewhere. The

1665
01:26:48,040 --> 01:26:51,680
Speaker 1: same was often repeated by Mark Zuckerberg himself inside of

1666
01:26:51,760 --> 01:26:55,360
Speaker 1: bay Facebook, who as a Jew, would often hold up

1667
01:26:55,439 --> 01:26:58,759
Speaker 1: Holocaust deniers as an example of worst types of speech

1668
01:26:58,840 --> 01:27:01,320
Speaker 1: that he would still defend. Homing on his platform, he

1669
01:27:01,439 --> 01:27:04,640
Speaker 1: said quote, I don't believe our platform should take that

1670
01:27:04,760 --> 01:27:06,880
Speaker 1: down because I think there are things that different people

1671
01:27:06,960 --> 01:27:09,880
Speaker 1: get wrong. I don't think that they're intentionally getting it wrong.

1672
01:27:10,200 --> 01:27:13,439
Speaker 1: It is hard to impugne intent and to understand the intent.

1673
01:27:13,840 --> 01:27:16,200
Speaker 1: I think as abhorrent to some of these examples are

1674
01:27:16,520 --> 01:27:18,920
Speaker 1: I think the reality is also that I get things

1675
01:27:18,960 --> 01:27:22,360
Speaker 1: wrong when I speak publicly. Humble answer there. That seems

1676
01:27:22,439 --> 01:27:25,479
Speaker 1: like a lifetime ago, but that was twenty eighteen. You

1677
01:27:25,560 --> 01:27:27,600
Speaker 1: can just see within a span a few years, the

1678
01:27:27,640 --> 01:27:30,280
Speaker 1: free speech wing of the Free Speech Party caved quickly.

1679
01:27:30,600 --> 01:27:33,439
Speaker 1: It began first a bow to foreign government pressure abroad,

1680
01:27:33,680 --> 01:27:36,599
Speaker 1: but eventually to social pressure here in the US, which

1681
01:27:36,600 --> 01:27:39,280
Speaker 1: has turned out to be far more powerful. Zuckerberg himself

1682
01:27:39,360 --> 01:27:42,320
Speaker 1: made that holocaust denial statement just four years ago in

1683
01:27:42,400 --> 01:27:45,439
Speaker 1: reference to why Alex Jones should not be taken off

1684
01:27:45,479 --> 01:27:48,519
Speaker 1: the platform. Well, you all know how that story played out.

1685
01:27:48,800 --> 01:27:50,880
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, of course, really was the year that

1686
01:27:50,960 --> 01:27:55,320
Speaker 1: everything broke apart. The COVID nineteen pandemic gave expansive definitions

1687
01:27:55,400 --> 01:27:59,320
Speaker 1: of misinformation as defined by the state to the tech companies,

1688
01:27:59,400 --> 01:28:02,439
Speaker 1: who then you to approve a censorship regime that people

1689
01:28:02,520 --> 01:28:05,000
Speaker 1: had never seen before. That's how the lap league theory

1690
01:28:05,080 --> 01:28:07,920
Speaker 1: got censored. That's how discussions about mass and lockdowns and

1691
01:28:07,960 --> 01:28:11,400
Speaker 1: vaccine efficacy were quashed without even the hesitation. And it

1692
01:28:11,520 --> 01:28:14,760
Speaker 1: was that infrastructure that saw the unprecedented banning by Twitter

1693
01:28:14,840 --> 01:28:17,320
Speaker 1: of the Hunter Biden laptop story in twenty twenty, and

1694
01:28:17,439 --> 01:28:20,240
Speaker 1: then on January sixth, the deplatforming of Donald Trump, the

1695
01:28:20,280 --> 01:28:23,439
Speaker 1: sitting president of the United States. Now we see with

1696
01:28:23,560 --> 01:28:26,760
Speaker 1: regularity the deplatforming of accounts that are dissident to the

1697
01:28:26,840 --> 01:28:30,400
Speaker 1: cultural milieu, as Twitter itself is headed by a CEO

1698
01:28:30,720 --> 01:28:33,360
Speaker 1: that has said he sees no reason why he should

1699
01:28:33,360 --> 01:28:35,879
Speaker 1: be bound by the First Amendment and that harm reduction

1700
01:28:36,160 --> 01:28:39,519
Speaker 1: is their main concern Donald Trump was taken off, an

1701
01:28:39,560 --> 01:28:42,479
Speaker 1: elite panic about right wing terrorism was used to justify

1702
01:28:42,800 --> 01:28:45,920
Speaker 1: an even more censorious environment, and the rules continued to

1703
01:28:45,960 --> 01:28:48,600
Speaker 1: get bent. One of the seminal moments came around the

1704
01:28:48,640 --> 01:28:52,640
Speaker 1: same time when Zuckerberg, despite defending holocaust deniers right to

1705
01:28:52,680 --> 01:28:56,240
Speaker 1: free speech on his platform, reversed himself completely in October

1706
01:28:56,280 --> 01:28:59,599
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, saying his thinking had involved what was happening

1707
01:28:59,640 --> 01:29:01,880
Speaker 1: in enough Ti twenty twenty. By the way, that's how

1708
01:29:01,960 --> 01:29:04,720
Speaker 1: quickly things change. The devolution of the promise of the

1709
01:29:04,760 --> 01:29:07,040
Speaker 1: Internet into the chaotic mess that we have right now

1710
01:29:07,479 --> 01:29:11,080
Speaker 1: is a genuine tragedy for mankind. I maintain the original

1711
01:29:11,120 --> 01:29:13,960
Speaker 1: promise of the Internet. Elon Musk fight aside. It is

1712
01:29:14,160 --> 01:29:16,640
Speaker 1: worth it for all of you to consider what we

1713
01:29:16,880 --> 01:29:20,000
Speaker 1: lost in such a short period of time, how valuable

1714
01:29:20,120 --> 01:29:24,240
Speaker 1: the original idea of unrestrained information in networks can have

1715
01:29:24,400 --> 01:29:26,880
Speaker 1: for the future of our society. It really is worth

1716
01:29:27,200 --> 01:29:28,960
Speaker 1: you know, people don't go back and see some of

1717
01:29:28,960 --> 01:29:32,080
Speaker 1: the original and if you want to hear my reaction

1718
01:29:32,200 --> 01:29:35,880
Speaker 1: to Sagres's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints

1719
01:29:35,920 --> 01:29:41,800
Speaker 1: dot Com. Join us now. The founder of Status kup

1720
01:29:42,439 --> 01:29:47,360
Speaker 1: wonderful and independent investigative journalists. Jordan Chared. Great to see you, Jordan.

1721
01:29:47,439 --> 01:29:49,320
Speaker 1: Good to see you. Man, Hey, thanks for having me.

1722
01:29:50,320 --> 01:29:52,800
Speaker 1: So listen before we jump into this, you all have

1723
01:29:52,880 --> 01:29:56,280
Speaker 1: been doing indispensable reporting. Some of the few people who

1724
01:29:56,320 --> 01:29:59,200
Speaker 1: were there on the ground in Staten Island from the

1725
01:29:59,280 --> 01:30:02,800
Speaker 1: beginning who actually understood that Christian Smalls and his team,

1726
01:30:02,880 --> 01:30:04,960
Speaker 1: Derek Palmer and all the rest actually had a shot

1727
01:30:05,040 --> 01:30:07,160
Speaker 1: at pulling this thing off. And I want to say

1728
01:30:07,200 --> 01:30:11,280
Speaker 1: to our audience, you guys, this outlet really deserves your support.

1729
01:30:11,320 --> 01:30:13,479
Speaker 1: So tell people how to follow you, how to support

1730
01:30:13,520 --> 01:30:16,680
Speaker 1: you if they believe in your work. Yeah, we're on

1731
01:30:16,800 --> 01:30:21,000
Speaker 1: YouTube status coup coup clicked the bill for all notifications

1732
01:30:21,000 --> 01:30:24,240
Speaker 1: because they don't like to show us that much. You

1733
01:30:24,640 --> 01:30:27,360
Speaker 1: get a text when we're live statuskud dot com slash

1734
01:30:27,439 --> 01:30:29,720
Speaker 1: text and if you want to support our on the

1735
01:30:29,800 --> 01:30:33,320
Speaker 1: ground reporting that statusqud dot com slash join for five

1736
01:30:33,400 --> 01:30:36,000
Speaker 1: bucks a month. Great. All right, So with that out

1737
01:30:36,040 --> 01:30:37,800
Speaker 1: of the way, let's talk about what we brought you

1738
01:30:37,880 --> 01:30:40,760
Speaker 1: here to talk about today, which is the Amazon union fight.

1739
01:30:40,880 --> 01:30:42,519
Speaker 1: And here's the lay of the land. Guys. You all

1740
01:30:42,640 --> 01:30:46,679
Speaker 1: know they want a historic victory at that Staten Island warehouse.

1741
01:30:46,720 --> 01:30:49,240
Speaker 1: They have another vote that is coming up. At the

1742
01:30:49,320 --> 01:30:52,880
Speaker 1: same time, Amazon has dramatically escalated the tactics, and you

1743
01:30:52,960 --> 01:30:54,599
Speaker 1: all had a piece upt status. Cool, let's go ahead

1744
01:30:54,600 --> 01:30:57,559
Speaker 1: and throw this element up on the screen talking about

1745
01:30:58,200 --> 01:31:01,880
Speaker 1: why the New York Amazon union victory was such a

1746
01:31:02,040 --> 01:31:04,639
Speaker 1: game changer. So before we get into the very latest

1747
01:31:04,680 --> 01:31:06,880
Speaker 1: news and their union busting tactics, just give us a

1748
01:31:06,880 --> 01:31:09,599
Speaker 1: little bit of the context here of why people should

1749
01:31:09,680 --> 01:31:12,040
Speaker 1: care so much about what is happening on Staten Island

1750
01:31:12,120 --> 01:31:17,000
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, I think what really is important about

1751
01:31:17,040 --> 01:31:21,839
Speaker 1: Staten Island is they have gone against convention and especially

1752
01:31:22,000 --> 01:31:25,120
Speaker 1: in organized labor, which hasn't really changed things up in

1753
01:31:25,200 --> 01:31:28,799
Speaker 1: the last thirty forty years. They basically did a gorilla

1754
01:31:28,880 --> 01:31:36,680
Speaker 1: campaign kind of like gorilla warfare, basically shunning traditional labor, advice, consultation,

1755
01:31:37,000 --> 01:31:40,360
Speaker 1: traditional labor that told them what you're doing is basically

1756
01:31:40,880 --> 01:31:44,840
Speaker 1: suicidal in terms of victory. And they are basically doing

1757
01:31:44,960 --> 01:31:50,880
Speaker 1: this in kind of a digital media meets barbecue kind

1758
01:31:50,920 --> 01:31:55,759
Speaker 1: of way, so you know, barbecues for workers, free food,

1759
01:31:56,840 --> 01:32:00,719
Speaker 1: snappy TikTok videos. And I think that's really reside because

1760
01:32:01,320 --> 01:32:04,520
Speaker 1: it's kind of like all politics is local, Well, for unionization,

1761
01:32:04,680 --> 01:32:08,280
Speaker 1: you really have to hit the demographic and the geography

1762
01:32:08,320 --> 01:32:10,799
Speaker 1: of where you're trying to unionize. Most of the workers

1763
01:32:10,960 --> 01:32:14,479
Speaker 1: in that massive warehouse were young people. I remember the

1764
01:32:14,760 --> 01:32:16,640
Speaker 1: union tep was right next to the bus stop. It

1765
01:32:16,760 --> 01:32:19,680
Speaker 1: was mostly like I would say, eighteen to twenty six

1766
01:32:19,800 --> 01:32:22,960
Speaker 1: twenty seven year olds coming off that bus. So they

1767
01:32:23,040 --> 01:32:26,800
Speaker 1: have very strategically done this and it's a blueprint for

1768
01:32:26,960 --> 01:32:30,599
Speaker 1: other Amazon warehouses or you know, workers wanting to unionize

1769
01:32:30,600 --> 01:32:34,840
Speaker 1: elsewhere to really if you target the demographic of your

1770
01:32:34,880 --> 01:32:40,040
Speaker 1: warehouse or cafe, if you you know, do things strategically

1771
01:32:40,120 --> 01:32:44,120
Speaker 1: and smart digitally, you really have a shot to overcome

1772
01:32:44,160 --> 01:32:46,760
Speaker 1: a lot of the union busting. So talk to us

1773
01:32:46,880 --> 01:32:49,960
Speaker 1: then about the upcoming fight. What are the central issues

1774
01:32:50,040 --> 01:32:53,080
Speaker 1: at stake? Is it in any different from organizing and

1775
01:32:53,160 --> 01:32:57,879
Speaker 1: the effort of the original union vote. Amazon is definitely

1776
01:32:58,200 --> 01:33:01,559
Speaker 1: escalated in the final weeks at the previous one, they

1777
01:33:01,640 --> 01:33:06,840
Speaker 1: actually it seemed allowed more organizing maybe because of all

1778
01:33:06,880 --> 01:33:09,920
Speaker 1: the complaints that were being filed against them. Here they

1779
01:33:09,960 --> 01:33:12,920
Speaker 1: have added more security to the parking lot, basically to

1780
01:33:13,000 --> 01:33:16,920
Speaker 1: surveil the organizers which are continuing to do the same

1781
01:33:16,960 --> 01:33:21,000
Speaker 1: type of organizing outside the warehouse. Inside the warehouse, they've

1782
01:33:21,040 --> 01:33:24,480
Speaker 1: already written up a couple of the union organization organizers

1783
01:33:24,680 --> 01:33:27,720
Speaker 1: in this other warehouse that's soon to vote for solicitation.

1784
01:33:28,520 --> 01:33:32,280
Speaker 1: And they've also shifted and moved some of their over

1785
01:33:32,360 --> 01:33:36,120
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars a day union consultants to full time.

1786
01:33:36,720 --> 01:33:39,720
Speaker 1: So now some of those union consultants that were parachuting

1787
01:33:39,760 --> 01:33:41,920
Speaker 1: in and out for the last year, they're in the

1788
01:33:41,920 --> 01:33:45,559
Speaker 1: warehouse all the time, pulling workers aside for one on ones.

1789
01:33:46,040 --> 01:33:50,200
Speaker 1: And it's really striking because of this. Most of this

1790
01:33:50,360 --> 01:33:54,439
Speaker 1: union busting backfired at JFK eight, but they're just doubling

1791
01:33:54,520 --> 01:33:58,920
Speaker 1: down on it across the street LJ five. Yeah. Well,

1792
01:33:59,040 --> 01:34:01,519
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm curious of because Chris also explained

1793
01:34:01,560 --> 01:34:04,439
Speaker 1: to me that the workforce at the this is a

1794
01:34:04,520 --> 01:34:08,280
Speaker 1: sorting facility now that we'll be voting in just about

1795
01:34:08,280 --> 01:34:11,559
Speaker 1: a week, that the workforce is also different because it's

1796
01:34:11,720 --> 01:34:15,080
Speaker 1: a lot more part time. That makes the organizing challenge

1797
01:34:15,120 --> 01:34:18,360
Speaker 1: even that much more difficult. It means that you know,

1798
01:34:18,479 --> 01:34:20,560
Speaker 1: this may not be their main gig. They may have

1799
01:34:20,760 --> 01:34:24,240
Speaker 1: two three other jobs that they are balancing to try

1800
01:34:24,280 --> 01:34:26,800
Speaker 1: to make ends meet. It means that concerns are also

1801
01:34:26,840 --> 01:34:28,639
Speaker 1: a little bit different. What they would want to fight

1802
01:34:28,720 --> 01:34:31,479
Speaker 1: for in a contract is different from what was going

1803
01:34:31,560 --> 01:34:35,800
Speaker 1: on at the warehouse facility. So, as you pointed out

1804
01:34:36,360 --> 01:34:41,479
Speaker 1: ultimately with JFK eight, those union busting tactics, they not

1805
01:34:41,600 --> 01:34:44,920
Speaker 1: only didn't work, they seem to directly backfire. You all

1806
01:34:45,000 --> 01:34:47,479
Speaker 1: had video of a guy that I love. I think

1807
01:34:47,560 --> 01:34:50,280
Speaker 1: he's called Uncle Pat or something like that. He's like,

1808
01:34:50,840 --> 01:34:54,240
Speaker 1: was initially kind of not too into the union. He's

1809
01:34:54,240 --> 01:34:57,120
Speaker 1: a Trump supporting Republican. He got pissed off at the

1810
01:34:57,200 --> 01:34:59,560
Speaker 1: fact that they arrested Chris Small's and some of the

1811
01:34:59,600 --> 01:35:02,360
Speaker 1: other works. He ends up not just being for the union,

1812
01:35:02,479 --> 01:35:05,280
Speaker 1: but flipping like hundreds of votes from no to yes

1813
01:35:05,800 --> 01:35:08,040
Speaker 1: to make some of the critical difference down the stretch.

1814
01:35:08,120 --> 01:35:11,280
Speaker 1: So we saw that it really backfired over across the

1815
01:35:11,320 --> 01:35:13,600
Speaker 1: street at the warehouse. Do you think that it is

1816
01:35:13,720 --> 01:35:16,800
Speaker 1: also backfiring at the sorting facility or do you think

1817
01:35:16,840 --> 01:35:19,240
Speaker 1: that it's landing and gaining some traction with a very

1818
01:35:19,320 --> 01:35:25,680
Speaker 1: different workforce there. I believe it's backfiring because yes, a

1819
01:35:25,720 --> 01:35:27,960
Speaker 1: lot of these workers are part time, but again, a

1820
01:35:28,000 --> 01:35:31,280
Speaker 1: lot of these workers are young, and I mean Before

1821
01:35:31,360 --> 01:35:34,200
Speaker 1: this Staten Island victory, I mean here or there, there

1822
01:35:34,280 --> 01:35:36,120
Speaker 1: was media coverage, but not a lot. There's been a

1823
01:35:36,160 --> 01:35:40,679
Speaker 1: tsunami of media coverage now, mostly positive. So all those workers,

1824
01:35:40,800 --> 01:35:43,840
Speaker 1: a couple of of them spoken to that honestly weren't

1825
01:35:43,880 --> 01:35:46,599
Speaker 1: as plugged in to what was going on across the street,

1826
01:35:46,720 --> 01:35:50,000
Speaker 1: like they came to their job and left there now

1827
01:35:50,560 --> 01:35:54,040
Speaker 1: basically inundated in a good way of the victory across

1828
01:35:54,120 --> 01:35:58,840
Speaker 1: the street. Some of the workers from lg LDJ five

1829
01:35:58,920 --> 01:36:01,040
Speaker 1: were at the press conference I just covered last week,

1830
01:36:01,720 --> 01:36:04,559
Speaker 1: So I think it's backfiring. I also think, yes, it's

1831
01:36:04,640 --> 01:36:06,439
Speaker 1: more difficult because a lot of them are part time.

1832
01:36:06,800 --> 01:36:10,320
Speaker 1: But I think part of the pitch from AOU to

1833
01:36:10,520 --> 01:36:14,240
Speaker 1: those workers is Amazon thrives on having part time and

1834
01:36:14,320 --> 01:36:16,519
Speaker 1: seasonal workers that they don't have to pay benefits to,

1835
01:36:17,040 --> 01:36:20,639
Speaker 1: that they hire and fire at a very rapid pace.

1836
01:36:20,960 --> 01:36:24,040
Speaker 1: So part of having a union, a big part of

1837
01:36:24,120 --> 01:36:26,360
Speaker 1: our demands is making you full time and getting you

1838
01:36:26,439 --> 01:36:29,280
Speaker 1: those benefits. Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, in terms

1839
01:36:29,280 --> 01:36:31,280
Speaker 1: of the people that you've spoken to and more, what's

1840
01:36:31,320 --> 01:36:34,720
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm level on the ground. Is it helping the

1841
01:36:34,840 --> 01:36:38,000
Speaker 1: case for a head of the union vote because despite

1842
01:36:38,000 --> 01:36:43,480
Speaker 1: Amazon propaganda, are they getting access to better information? Yeah? Absolutely,

1843
01:36:43,640 --> 01:36:46,760
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of donations have come in

1844
01:36:47,040 --> 01:36:51,439
Speaker 1: after ALU's victory. The Staten Island warehouse the massive one,

1845
01:36:52,000 --> 01:36:55,080
Speaker 1: so they have more resources now. And I think Christian

1846
01:36:55,120 --> 01:37:00,000
Speaker 1: Small's strategically going around the country meeting with labor leader

1847
01:37:00,720 --> 01:37:05,040
Speaker 1: but also speaking with you know, more collaboration with Starbucks

1848
01:37:05,080 --> 01:37:09,000
Speaker 1: Workers United, who is obviously having huge momentum. I think

1849
01:37:09,080 --> 01:37:14,680
Speaker 1: he's actually getting even more kind of strategic weaponry to

1850
01:37:14,800 --> 01:37:18,519
Speaker 1: tailor the message to them. And again I think these

1851
01:37:18,560 --> 01:37:22,439
Speaker 1: workers across the street, I mean, momentum is momentum. It

1852
01:37:23,040 --> 01:37:26,400
Speaker 1: cannot be ignored. So a lot of those workers. I

1853
01:37:26,479 --> 01:37:28,400
Speaker 1: spoke with one the other day who was just like

1854
01:37:28,840 --> 01:37:32,240
Speaker 1: we honestly we didn't think it was possible across the street.

1855
01:37:32,600 --> 01:37:35,760
Speaker 1: So now the victory there is giving a little bit

1856
01:37:35,840 --> 01:37:39,560
Speaker 1: more of optimism that they could win, but it is

1857
01:37:39,640 --> 01:37:43,320
Speaker 1: going to be harder for the reasons Crystal stated, Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1858
01:37:43,320 --> 01:37:45,000
Speaker 1: On the other hand, listen, if this is your part

1859
01:37:45,040 --> 01:37:47,680
Speaker 1: time gig and it's not, you know, you're full, like

1860
01:37:48,560 --> 01:37:51,080
Speaker 1: the full source of your income, that also may make

1861
01:37:51,120 --> 01:37:52,800
Speaker 1: you feel more comfortable to take a little bit of

1862
01:37:52,840 --> 01:37:55,160
Speaker 1: a risk, So that does cut both ways. The last

1863
01:37:55,200 --> 01:37:57,720
Speaker 1: question for you, Jordan is you know I tracked the

1864
01:37:57,760 --> 01:38:01,519
Speaker 1: stuff closely, and you're seeing not just the Starbucks workers

1865
01:38:01,760 --> 01:38:05,120
Speaker 1: their last I think four elections they won unanimously. Not

1866
01:38:05,280 --> 01:38:08,400
Speaker 1: a single worker voted against the union, which is incredible.

1867
01:38:08,760 --> 01:38:14,040
Speaker 1: We see now Apple retail stores moving filing for union elections,

1868
01:38:14,120 --> 01:38:18,040
Speaker 1: that's incredible. We saw Verizon retail workers winning the right

1869
01:38:18,160 --> 01:38:21,519
Speaker 1: to a union as well. And just the numbers, it's

1870
01:38:21,600 --> 01:38:25,320
Speaker 1: not just anecdotal. The General Counsel of the NLRB says

1871
01:38:25,400 --> 01:38:29,160
Speaker 1: that union election petitions are up fifty seven percent year

1872
01:38:29,240 --> 01:38:32,720
Speaker 1: over the year over year. So how's the victory with

1873
01:38:32,960 --> 01:38:37,439
Speaker 1: Amazon playing into this broader movement of worker uprising across

1874
01:38:37,560 --> 01:38:42,400
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, I think even before Amazon there was

1875
01:38:42,439 --> 01:38:46,200
Speaker 1: a political factor here. I mean Amazon Starbucks workers I

1876
01:38:46,280 --> 01:38:50,479
Speaker 1: spoke to basically said very similar. Yeah, we got like

1877
01:38:50,520 --> 01:38:53,160
Speaker 1: a fourteen hundred dollars check and a kick of the ass.

1878
01:38:53,640 --> 01:38:57,799
Speaker 1: This pandemic. We have not gotten relief from the government,

1879
01:38:57,960 --> 01:39:01,840
Speaker 1: even state unemployment. A lot of workers I spoke to

1880
01:39:01,920 --> 01:39:03,560
Speaker 1: said they were getting letters in the mailment they have

1881
01:39:03,600 --> 01:39:08,679
Speaker 1: to repay their rental relief or unemployment for bureaucratic reasons

1882
01:39:09,680 --> 01:39:12,559
Speaker 1: or in competence. So I think there was political reasons,

1883
01:39:12,720 --> 01:39:15,920
Speaker 1: like you know, Paul Revere hasn't come for a lot

1884
01:39:15,960 --> 01:39:18,479
Speaker 1: of workers around the country from the government. And I

1885
01:39:18,560 --> 01:39:21,960
Speaker 1: think Amazon, in particular, if that this could be a

1886
01:39:22,040 --> 01:39:25,280
Speaker 1: title wave. Not to minimize what Starbucks has historically done,

1887
01:39:25,479 --> 01:39:27,920
Speaker 1: but if Amazon is two for two, they already have

1888
01:39:28,640 --> 01:39:30,800
Speaker 1: by my count, like one hundred and fifteen warehouses that

1889
01:39:30,960 --> 01:39:35,040
Speaker 1: have reached out, I think then you could be looking.

1890
01:39:35,600 --> 01:39:37,679
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to get people too hopeful.

1891
01:39:38,040 --> 01:39:39,840
Speaker 1: Then the next question is when when you're going to

1892
01:39:39,880 --> 01:39:45,080
Speaker 1: do Walmart, which would be a herculean task. Walmart obviously

1893
01:39:45,360 --> 01:39:47,840
Speaker 1: is the biggest company in America. But I think if

1894
01:39:47,880 --> 01:39:50,800
Speaker 1: Amazon starts to see the title wave that Starbucks has,

1895
01:39:51,479 --> 01:39:54,920
Speaker 1: then you start looking for the biggest employer. Well, people

1896
01:39:55,120 --> 01:39:58,040
Speaker 1: realize with this, like, oh my god, if you can

1897
01:39:58,080 --> 01:40:02,040
Speaker 1: do it against Amazon, actually possible enough that it's easy.

1898
01:40:02,200 --> 01:40:04,800
Speaker 1: Not that they won't throw millions of dollars and fire

1899
01:40:04,880 --> 01:40:07,920
Speaker 1: you and Timda all that stuff, but it is actually possible.

1900
01:40:08,000 --> 01:40:09,720
Speaker 1: So I know Chris has said that it's not just

1901
01:40:09,880 --> 01:40:12,519
Speaker 1: Amazon facilities that have been reaching out to them. They've

1902
01:40:12,560 --> 01:40:14,800
Speaker 1: been hearing from Walmart workers, They've been hearing from Dollar

1903
01:40:14,920 --> 01:40:19,160
Speaker 1: General workers and other retail and warehouse workers across the country.

1904
01:40:19,280 --> 01:40:21,400
Speaker 1: So it really is one of the most helpful things

1905
01:40:21,479 --> 01:40:23,400
Speaker 1: that's going on. And just to emphasize again what I

1906
01:40:23,479 --> 01:40:27,680
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, listen, mainstream media obviously is completely

1907
01:40:27,840 --> 01:40:31,559
Speaker 1: ignorant that any of this was even happening, this ground swell,

1908
01:40:31,560 --> 01:40:34,599
Speaker 1: which could turn into one of the most significant stories

1909
01:40:34,760 --> 01:40:38,080
Speaker 1: of the decade. Jordan Charreton and his team was there

1910
01:40:38,439 --> 01:40:40,360
Speaker 1: on the ground from the beginning. There were some of

1911
01:40:40,400 --> 01:40:42,479
Speaker 1: the few that actually knew that this had a shot

1912
01:40:42,720 --> 01:40:45,960
Speaker 1: that took Christian Smalls and his team seriously that didn't

1913
01:40:46,040 --> 01:40:49,240
Speaker 1: underestimate what was going on here. And so listen, he

1914
01:40:49,360 --> 01:40:52,519
Speaker 1: beat the mainstream media with many fewer resources at their

1915
01:40:52,560 --> 01:40:54,560
Speaker 1: own game. And I really just encourage you all to

1916
01:40:54,760 --> 01:40:58,000
Speaker 1: support him if you're able the links. Jordan will put

1917
01:40:58,040 --> 01:41:00,240
Speaker 1: them all down in the description so people can find

1918
01:41:00,240 --> 01:41:02,080
Speaker 1: out where you guys are and how to support you

1919
01:41:02,080 --> 01:41:04,519
Speaker 1: if they're interested. There we go. Thank you, Jordan, appreciate it, man,

1920
01:41:04,920 --> 01:41:08,400
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. That's pleasure. Thank you guys for joining

1921
01:41:08,479 --> 01:41:10,600
Speaker 1: us so much. Yeah, thank you guys so much. That

1922
01:41:10,720 --> 01:41:12,439
Speaker 1: was an awesome show. It's really good to be back

1923
01:41:12,479 --> 01:41:14,600
Speaker 1: here in Washington. Just as a reminder, we don't have

1924
01:41:14,720 --> 01:41:17,320
Speaker 1: the show on Thursday due to a variety of personal

1925
01:41:17,400 --> 01:41:21,439
Speaker 1: scheduling circumstances, but we will be back here tomorrow on Tuesday.

1926
01:41:21,479 --> 01:41:24,640
Speaker 1: As always, a special thank you to our premium subscribers

1927
01:41:24,680 --> 01:41:29,439
Speaker 1: and especially now to our lifetime subscribers. Let's throw to

1928
01:41:29,520 --> 01:41:32,680
Speaker 1: the plaques there. Look at that at the end of

1929
01:41:32,800 --> 01:41:34,920
Speaker 1: every single show, you right there, we'll have that. We

1930
01:41:35,000 --> 01:41:37,960
Speaker 1: have our beautiful made in the USA plaques, which thank

1931
01:41:38,000 --> 01:41:40,320
Speaker 1: you so much. To our lifetime members, we also include

1932
01:41:40,520 --> 01:41:43,040
Speaker 1: in our credit section. We will see you all tomorrow.

1933
01:41:43,200 --> 01:41:44,120
Speaker 1: See you guys tomorrow.