Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: So we have some really significant developments coming out of
Speaker 2: Chicago at this point with regard to that ICE and
Speaker 2: CBP deployment. So according to the Chicago Tribune, we can
Speaker 2: put this up on the screen. Those immigration agents are
Speaker 2: supposed to be pulled relatively soon, or at least most
Speaker 2: of them. So let me go ahead and read from
Speaker 2: you to you from this article. By the way, this
Speaker 2: reporter has done some really great on the ground reporting
Speaker 2: and has been following the court cases that have been
Speaker 2: going on and cargo as well, so he's certainly worth.
Speaker 3: A follow, so, he writes.
Speaker 2: Federal immigration agents part of the Trump administration's Operation Midway
Speaker 2: Blitz may soon leave Chicago, according to multiple sources, who
Speaker 2: said the controversial mission was rapidly winding down after a
Speaker 2: contentious two months of enforcement raids that have set the
Speaker 2: city and suburbs on edge. Commander Gregory Bovino, the top
Speaker 2: official on the ground leading the Trump administration's efforts, was
Speaker 2: expected to depart Chicago for another assignment within days, and
Speaker 2: most of the Border Patrol agents under this command would
Speaker 2: soon be redeployed elsewhere, three sources told The Tribune Monday.
Speaker 2: An on call task force composed of FBI and assistant
Speaker 2: US attorneys is also expected to close up shop in
Speaker 2: the coming days, the source is said. In a statement Monday,
Speaker 2: a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which is
Speaker 2: overseeing the operation, said, every day DHS enforces the laws
Speaker 2: of this country, including in Chicago. We do not comment
Speaker 2: or telegraph future operations. They go on to indicate that
Speaker 2: some of the people who the federal agents that have
Speaker 2: been involved in this Operation Midway Blitz would be relocated
Speaker 2: now to Charlotte, North Caro, Carolina. So it's not like
Speaker 2: the you know, insane and violent and reckless and lawless
Speaker 2: immigration actions are going to stop. Just looks like they're
Speaker 2: going to be relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. DHS is
Speaker 2: pushing back on this reporting. We can put D three
Speaker 2: up on the screen so people can take a look
Speaker 2: at what they're saying. This is Trisia McLaughlin. She says,
Speaker 2: we aren't leaving Chicago. Since start of Operation Midway Blitz
Speaker 2: in Chicago, ho sizer down sixteen percent, shootings down thirty
Speaker 2: five percent, robberies down forty one percent, carjackings down forty
Speaker 2: eight percent, transit crime down twenty percent. A lot of
Speaker 2: people pointing out online don't know if it got a
Speaker 2: community note or not that these numbers, first of all,
Speaker 2: included time period when they weren't even in Chicago, and
Speaker 2: those numbers had been coming down anyway. But in any case,
Speaker 2: she's saying here, we aren't leaving Chicago. Emily, I think
Speaker 2: likely the you know, full force operation that we've see
Speaker 2: in with the insane like black Hawk helicopter raids and
Speaker 2: ice and CBP agents. I mean CBP agents literally shot
Speaker 2: a woman and then bragged about the number of holes
Speaker 2: they put in her body. We've had numerous traffic incidents,
Speaker 2: We've had tear gassing of you know, near children getting
Speaker 2: ready for hall Ween Parade. Just a lot that has
Speaker 2: been going on that we've been seeing every single day.
Speaker 2: I think the height of that will be diminished significantly.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that they're pulling every single federal agent,
Speaker 2: which is why I think, I mean, Tricia McLaughlin is
Speaker 2: the chill just lie anyway, But I think that's probably
Speaker 2: what they're hanging their hat on to say, like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're not really technically leaving.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's been a similar situation here in DC.
Speaker 5: I don't know how much you've noticed this, Crystal, but
Speaker 5: the National Guard presence isn't totally gone, but it's diminished
Speaker 5: so significantly. And actually, I think I don't know to
Speaker 5: what extent this will be a problem for the administration,
Speaker 5: but it feels like homicides, unfortunately, are starting to tick
Speaker 5: back up as well. Three I think over the weekend,
Speaker 5: and some really brutal, awful crimes. So I don't know
Speaker 5: how they're going to start, you know, they've sort of
Speaker 5: put themselves. I'm just thinking about this, even from a
Speaker 5: PR perspective, But with places like Chicago and Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: Where they had this big surge, First of all, their
Speaker 5: own base is not happy with the pace of deportations.
Speaker 5: They say they're at roughly like two million self deportations,
Speaker 5: which is obviously part of the goal with the show
Speaker 5: of force that you're seeing in these cities, but also
Speaker 5: they think about five hundred thousand total deportations, and based
Speaker 5: on you know, where the base thought those numbers were
Speaker 5: going to be, this is not even doing it for
Speaker 5: the hardest core mass deportation people in MAGA world, who
Speaker 5: are getting annoyed honestly with Christy nomes like social media
Speaker 5: designed content, designed videos to kind of prove how tough
Speaker 5: the administration is being. So they're sort of they've sort
Speaker 5: of set themselves up for a difficult situation even as
Speaker 5: they go forward in some of those cities by their
Speaker 5: own measures, which is kind of an interesting part of
Speaker 5: it as well.
Speaker 4: Crystal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what I've been saying is in response to
Speaker 2: like the election results and the referendum really against this
Speaker 2: administration is unfortunately, I think people will accept a lot
Speaker 2: of authoritarianism if their material needs are being met, so
Speaker 2: they may not like seeing you know, children, dear guests.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, I think if you felt like but I'm
Speaker 2: able to pay my rent, or I'm able to buy
Speaker 2: a house, or I'm able to afford healthcare, or my
Speaker 2: wages are going up, you know, I guess I'm just
Speaker 2: going to have to deal with that. People are not
Speaker 2: looking like they didn't vote for you, including your own
Speaker 2: base who are fully on board with mass deportation. Now,
Speaker 2: they did not vote for you for some ASMR deportation video.
Speaker 2: They didn't vote for you so that the DHS account
Speaker 2: could Nazi post every day, right, So you know, even
Speaker 2: for the hardest core supporters, this is starting to leave
Speaker 2: them flat. And for the rest of America, it's very
Speaker 2: clear they are completely appalled. They're appalled by your lack
Speaker 2: of focus on their lives. They're appalled by your sadism.
Speaker 2: They're appalled by the fact that you want to put
Speaker 2: absolute cruelty and horror on display every single day. And
Speaker 2: you know, I know the idea is that this is
Speaker 2: going to lead to a bunch of self deportations, and
Speaker 2: guess what it has. And I would ask people, has
Speaker 2: that led your life to being any better? Because the
Speaker 2: sale of this immigration crackdown is that it's these people's
Speaker 2: fault that you're struggling. It's their fault that housing is
Speaker 2: too expensive. It's their fault that healthcare is too expensive.
Speaker 2: It's their fault that the job market isn't.
Speaker 3: What it should be.
Speaker 2: Well, guess what, Yeah, deportations are pretty high. The border
Speaker 2: is closed effectively, no more asylum cases coming in unless
Speaker 2: you're like a white South African apparently. And then and
Speaker 2: you know, you have had success in getting people to
Speaker 2: quote unquote self deport So the plan is working. Is
Speaker 2: your life better? Did that improve your life? And the
Speaker 2: answer is no. I mean, people say the economy sucks,
Speaker 2: and so the thing that you were blaming for all
Speaker 2: of the economic will woes, scapegoating this group of vulnerable people,
Speaker 2: turns out that wasn't really the problem, and voters would
Speaker 2: beginning to notice, you know, having these mass thugs in
Speaker 2: the street is actually keep creating more lawlessness and chaos
Speaker 2: and sense of unsafety then I was experiencing before. So
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's noteworthy to me that, you know,
Speaker 2: I think the timing of the winding down of this
Speaker 2: operation probably has to do with two things three things.
Speaker 2: Number one, the intense pushback in Chicago. Chicago residents have
Speaker 2: really been galvanized. Uh and the political class there as
Speaker 2: well has been quite galvanized. Number two, the election results
Speaker 2: being so clearly against the Trump administration on every front.
Speaker 2: And then number three, it's getting really cold in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and they're probably like, you know what, we don't like.
Speaker 2: We don't really want to be out here in the
Speaker 2: streets anymore. This is this, you know, violent sadism is
Speaker 2: no longer as fun as it was earlier. We've got
Speaker 2: a clip here of JB. Pritzker, the governor of the state,
Speaker 2: talking about this reporting this is D two. Let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and listen to that.
Speaker 6: The question was about Greg Bavino and CBP possibly leaving Chicago.
Speaker 6: I read the same thing. You know, they don't communicate
Speaker 6: directly with us and never have. All I can say
Speaker 6: is that, you know, whether it was the loss in
Speaker 6: the elections a week ago that's led to Donald Trump
Speaker 6: deciding to pull CBP out, or the fact that Greg
Speaker 6: Bavino is a snowflake on a day when you can
Speaker 6: see some snowflakes. Whatever it is, the people of Chicago
Speaker 6: have deserved better than having CBP and Greg Bavino in
Speaker 6: this city. But I would not say that we're now
Speaker 6: going to be free of these terrorized neighborhoods, because ICE
Speaker 6: and CBP probably will still be here, though they will
Speaker 6: have fewer people, and we'll have to continue to protect
Speaker 6: our neighbors and our friends and our.
Speaker 2: At the same time, DHS really keeping their eye on
Speaker 2: the ball and focus on the important things, such as
Speaker 2: quote tweeting me online, D five up on the screen.
Speaker 2: So I tweeted out this video and we'll show you
Speaker 2: the video in a moment so you can judge for
Speaker 2: yourself what is going on here. But a video which
Speaker 2: appears to show ICE or CBP, some federal immigration agent
Speaker 2: shooting tear gas into a car that is just driving by,
Speaker 2: and in the aftermath of that, there was a one
Speaker 2: year old in the car who gets hit with this
Speaker 2: tear gas. The family later said they had to take
Speaker 2: her to the hospital. They were worried about her airwaves
Speaker 2: closing up, because of course little children are very vulnerable
Speaker 2: to these sorts of chemical weapons. Effectively, so I said,
Speaker 2: they dumped pepper spray on a one year old baby. Demons,
Speaker 2: actual demons. I stand by that. And then Homeland Security
Speaker 2: quote twidts me and says DHS law enforcement does not
Speaker 2: pepper spray children. Here are the facts. During an operation,
Speaker 2: rioters began throwing objects at agents and blocking the road.
Speaker 2: This did not occur in a Sam's Club parking lot.
Speaker 2: Border patrol deployed crowd control measures that means pepper spray
Speaker 2: and safely cleared the area. So they're claiming that they
Speaker 2: did not, in fact pepper spray a one year old
Speaker 2: and that the whole presentation of this video is not correct.
Speaker 2: So let's go ahead and put the video up. You guys
Speaker 2: can judge for yourself of what happened here. This is
Speaker 2: the aftermath. This is the little baby who is being
Speaker 2: comforted by her mother and clearly distressed here after this event.
Speaker 2: And so here is the incident. So they're just driving
Speaker 2: and you can see they have a window open, and
Speaker 2: whoever this is ICE or CVP just dumps pepper spray
Speaker 2: into their window. These are not These are lawful residents.
Speaker 2: They were not protesting the exactly according to ye citizens exactly.
Speaker 2: And let's put the next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 2: There was a news report about this incident and spoke
Speaker 2: to this family, and the family basically said we were
Speaker 2: going shopping at Sam's Club and saw that there was
Speaker 2: some sort of something going on here, so we went
Speaker 2: to turn the car around and as we're trying to
Speaker 2: drive away, that's when they, you know, dump this pepper
Speaker 2: spray into their vehicle, and you know, everyone in the vehicle,
Speaker 2: including the one year old baby, is affected. This comes
Speaker 2: after too emily there have been court orders saying you
Speaker 2: cannot use pepper spray in this insane way that you've
Speaker 2: been using like you should be using it incredibly rarely.
Speaker 2: You have to issue multiple warnings before you deploy it,
Speaker 2: and you are not allowed to just be using these
Speaker 2: aggressive riot control tactics whenever you feel like it. So
Speaker 2: when I talk about them being lawless, this is a
Speaker 2: perfect example of that where you know, there was no
Speaker 2: warning to this family. This family did literally nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: They just happened to be in the wrong place at
Speaker 2: the wrong time. They were trying to, you know, leave
Speaker 2: the scene, and like, okay, you guys are doing whatever
Speaker 2: you're doing, We're getting out of here, and that's when
Speaker 2: they're hit with this pepper spray. According to what they
Speaker 2: told local press, so, you know, just unbelievable stuff.
Speaker 5: So reading from this local report. This is a local
Speaker 5: PBS affiliate. There's a sentence in here where it says
Speaker 5: it is unclear how a family driving the opposite direction
Speaker 5: as the convoy vehicle's driven by federal agents on a
Speaker 5: major thoroughfare could pose an immediate threat to agents to
Speaker 5: merit the use of crowd control weapons. And I think
Speaker 5: that that brings pretty true.
Speaker 4: That is clearly. I mean, the little.
Speaker 5: Girl has clearly been pepper spray, and you can that's
Speaker 5: the typical reaction to pepper spray. It's awful to see
Speaker 5: it on a one year old. But your point about
Speaker 5: the lawlessness, Crystal Listen, I think this is an important one,
Speaker 5: and I'm saying that as somebody who actually believes that
Speaker 5: you have to do something about this. Everyone defines, like quote,
Speaker 5: mass deportations differently. I do think that there should be
Speaker 5: significant deportations. I don't know what mass deportations really means.
Speaker 5: I don't think the administration or anybody who's promising to
Speaker 5: do mass deportations really knows what that number means, as
Speaker 5: they constantly are trying to redefine what it means. But
Speaker 5: when you do it lawlessly, first of all, you completely
Speaker 5: lose support for the overall project, and it's wrong. It's
Speaker 5: just it's wrong. It's plainly wrong. It's not American, and
Speaker 5: it's a real problem when you're trying to do things
Speaker 5: so quickly that you have like very little control over
Speaker 5: or concerned for the way that it's being played out
Speaker 5: on a local level. So I mean, of course there
Speaker 5: are going to be people who protest these deportations that
Speaker 5: put themselves and others in dangerous situations, but that's obviously
Speaker 5: not what we're looking at in this case. There are
Speaker 5: some cases where you can look at that and say,
Speaker 5: you know, this is that's there's a there's a legitimate
Speaker 5: question as to who was being unsafe in the presence
Speaker 5: of law enforcement. This is not one of those situations whatsoever.
Speaker 5: They didn't check to see who was in the car.
Speaker 5: They saw what looked like a Hispanic male and pepper
Speaker 5: spray into the car. He's a citizen's exactly right, and
Speaker 5: he's a family like the little girl in the car,
Speaker 5: and they don't even they're driving my so quickly they
Speaker 5: wouldn't have even known.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that is exactly right. And you know the
Speaker 2: other thing that's interested, first of all, DHS just lies.
Speaker 2: They just lie routinely, like it's nothing. We can all
Speaker 2: literally watch the video it's attached to my tweet and
Speaker 2: see that what you're saying is not true like we
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 5: Or what's one is that they're getting lies from local
Speaker 5: people who are implicated and could potentially be legally implicated,
Speaker 5: and then they repeat them and which is not okay
Speaker 5: either way.
Speaker 4: But that's what like, I just it's.
Speaker 2: But like they could also watch the video, you know,
Speaker 2: it's right there. You can watch the video judge for yourself,
Speaker 2: maybe decide whether this is the hill you want to
Speaker 2: die on. But the other thing that's interesting to me
Speaker 2: is that they even want or feel the need to
Speaker 2: push back, which in the past they didn't, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a new thing I see not just
Speaker 2: with me, but with other people posting things online. They're
Speaker 2: quote tweeting and putting out their narrative about the story,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so, you know, to me, it is
Speaker 2: an indication that they realize that this is you know,
Speaker 2: people aren't just going, oh, it's a base that you
Speaker 2: to your guys to one year old base based base.
Speaker 2: They're like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And
Speaker 2: feel at least some level of Oh, we better come
Speaker 2: up with some kind of a justification here for what
Speaker 2: looks to be a horrible act.
Speaker 5: That little girl's an American. She's an American. According to reports,
Speaker 5: she's an American.
Speaker 4: There you go. Wouldn't do anything wrong. We're just in a.
Speaker 7: Car, all right.
Speaker 5: Christ Let's move on to the affordability question. Ben Shapiro
Speaker 5: was on with Friends of the show Triggerometry.
Speaker 4: I can say that, right, we.
Speaker 3: Have that really yeah, they're definitely gonna watch this.
Speaker 5: By the way, well, it is important, of course to
Speaker 5: watch before you react, as as they reminded us.
Speaker 4: When was that a couple of months ago?
Speaker 2: I don't know because I didn't watch. So's have you
Speaker 2: ever been to.
Speaker 4: The trigonometry studio? All right, let's you've never been? All right?
Speaker 5: Ben Shapiro was on Trigonometry and wide in on the
Speaker 5: affordability question in a way that we thought might make
Speaker 5: for a fun little conversation here about what actually can
Speaker 5: be done nuts and bold meat potatoes to make the
Speaker 5: country more affordable affordable for everyone. Crystal and I will
Speaker 5: probably disagree different directions on this, but I think we
Speaker 5: may have more agreement than we realized. Let's go ahead
Speaker 5: and roll this clip of Shapiro talking about affordability.
Speaker 8: Affordability is not like beetlejuice, or if you just say
Speaker 8: it over and over suddenly rise. You actually have to
Speaker 8: pursue policies that are likely to alleviate and affordable problem.
Speaker 8: But if your solution is always give me more power,
Speaker 8: and it does seem like that is the solution of
Speaker 8: the day from both sides, actually, then you are likely
Speaker 8: to just continue pendle theming one side to the other
Speaker 8: because people don't want to learn the actual lesson, which is,
Speaker 8: if you actually want affordability, then either you have to
Speaker 8: change policies or change locations, though those are really the
Speaker 8: only two things. And also, I think more broadly, it's
Speaker 8: not about affordability. We have trained an entire generation of
Speaker 8: people to believe that if their lives are not what
Speaker 8: they want them to be, it's the fault of systems,
Speaker 8: as opposed to decisions that are in their own control.
Speaker 8: I mean, I was looking around at property prices, real
Speaker 8: estate prices in New York.
Speaker 3: I'm doing pretty well for myself. I feel kind of
Speaker 3: poor looking at those.
Speaker 8: Oh no, a ton of And I'm not saying it's
Speaker 8: not affordable, right, absolutely is unaffordable. If you're a young
Speaker 8: person and you can't afford to live here, then maybe
Speaker 8: you should not live here.
Speaker 4: I mean, that is a real thing.
Speaker 8: I know that we've now grown up in a society
Speaker 8: that says that you deserve to live where you grew up.
Speaker 8: But the reality is that the history of America is
Speaker 8: almost literally the opposite of that, the history of mamercause
Speaker 8: you go to a place where there is opportunity, and
Speaker 8: if the opportunities are limited here and they're not changing,
Speaker 8: then you really should try to think about other places
Speaker 8: where you have better opportunities.
Speaker 4: So I absolutely hate that last part of the argument.
Speaker 4: That's probably not.
Speaker 3: As a president they are that's a little worried.
Speaker 5: No, I mean, that's actually one of the arguments that
Speaker 5: I think is the least conservative and the most detestable
Speaker 5: argument to hear from conservatives because one of the reasons
Speaker 5: I think places New York City is not the best
Speaker 5: example of it. DC is a pretty good example of it,
Speaker 5: a very transitory city, but also in San Francisco, places
Speaker 5: like that. One of the reasons that we see so
Speaker 5: much malaise in those cities is that the people who
Speaker 5: grew up and have family there can't afford it and
Speaker 5: move away, And you have people who are sort of
Speaker 5: in and out for five years, ten years, don't really
Speaker 5: care that much in the way that you care about
Speaker 5: the place that you grew up because you're part of
Speaker 5: the social fabric. You know people who know people in
Speaker 5: city council. You go to church with people, or you're
Speaker 5: in the pta people or that person was your teacher Christly.
Speaker 4: You know this because you live this. This is like.
Speaker 5: It does make a difference, no matter what you say,
Speaker 5: it makes an absolutely significant difference.
Speaker 4: It makes better communities, and.
Speaker 5: Communities is an important part of what lifts people into
Speaker 5: a sort of satisfying and fulfilling life.
Speaker 4: Maybe you can actually just speak to them moment because again,
Speaker 4: you do live that.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a person who values very much place
Speaker 2: and values very much I live and I'm raising my
Speaker 2: kids in the very same town that I grew up in.
Speaker 2: You know, my kids are in class with the kids
Speaker 2: of people that I It's amazing, graduated high school with
Speaker 2: like and went to preschool with I mean literally, and
Speaker 2: you know I moved one to be here in particular
Speaker 2: because my parents are are getting older. Just celebrated dad's
Speaker 2: ninetieth birthday. So I wanted to be close to them,
Speaker 2: and I wanted my kids to be able to be
Speaker 2: close to them. But I love the feeling of, you know,
Speaker 2: having that connectivity to this specific place. It is it's
Speaker 2: hard to describe the feeling, but it is a very
Speaker 2: rooted feeling and that loss of community in our country,
Speaker 2: which has been tracked, you know, all the way going
Speaker 2: back to Bowling Alone, which is this seminal sociological study
Speaker 2: of the way that we're all sort of like coming apart,
Speaker 2: and all of that accelerated of course by social media
Speaker 2: and smartphones. I think it is an affirmative value that
Speaker 2: we should aspire to that if people want to be
Speaker 2: able to live and raise kids in the places that
Speaker 2: they're from, that, you know, that's something we should value
Speaker 2: as society. And there's nowhere. I mean, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: rural areas have been decimated because of the free trade regime,
Speaker 2: so you know a lot of places don't have opportunities,
Speaker 2: so people feel they have to move then to a
Speaker 2: New York City because Ben Shapiro says that, well you
Speaker 2: go where the opportunity is, Well, where do you think
Speaker 2: the frickin' opportunity is it's places like New York City,
Speaker 2: but then you get there and you're living in a
Speaker 2: shoe box and you can't afford to make it, so
Speaker 2: it's like damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Speaker 2: This is a I think liberals have had a blind
Speaker 2: spot for the you know, that importance a place and
Speaker 2: that being an affirmative value, and then the economic elites
Speaker 2: over the past forty years, you know, their view has
Speaker 2: always been as they're destroying jobs in these various places,
Speaker 2: like basically big deal creative destruction.
Speaker 3: I guess you just need to move away.
Speaker 2: So they, of course, you know, haven't had any any
Speaker 2: appreciation for the importance of community or you know, they also,
Speaker 2: I think, find it easier to like control and make
Speaker 2: you and you know, make it so your whole life
Speaker 2: is your job if you are uprooted from a place
Speaker 2: in a community that has meaning for you. So it
Speaker 2: serves them on that end as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, Ryan and I were texting on Friday
Speaker 5: and I was looking for a movie to watch, and
Speaker 5: I asked him, you know, which should I watch Bowling
Speaker 5: for Columbine and Roger or Roger and Me? Because I was,
Speaker 5: I'm just going ding me. I'm working through my list,
Speaker 5: and Ryan's like, you've got to watch Roger and Me.
Speaker 5: I've never seen it before, and you know, I'm from
Speaker 5: the Upper Midwest outside of Milwaukee, and watching that movie,
Speaker 5: it's it's like a really emotional experience because you look
Speaker 5: at what happened to Flint. You look at the way
Speaker 5: the people who were in the auto industry were treated.
Speaker 4: It didn't make for you. They weren't able to just
Speaker 4: like find jobs. A lot of them.
Speaker 5: You watch it, they're leaving Flint. They're leaving and going
Speaker 5: to other places. And what you take with you when
Speaker 5: you do that is this like real love for your community.
Speaker 5: And it makes worse businesses. It makes small businesses in
Speaker 5: a local community operate differently than massive global companies, which
Speaker 5: bring with them all of the problems. By the way,
Speaker 5: that conservatives hate about global governing organizations, whether it's like
Speaker 5: the World Economic Forum or the United Nations, there's just
Speaker 5: something that is completely detached in different and it's much
Speaker 5: easier to do mass layoffs. And conservatives will say, okay, well,
Speaker 5: that means it's much easier for you to be more efficient,
Speaker 5: But efficiency isn't the end of the economy. Nobody just
Speaker 5: believes the economy should exist only for the sake of efficiency.
Speaker 5: And I say nobody, but some people, of course do.
Speaker 5: They're just a minority, you know. Hardcore libertarians basically are
Speaker 5: the ones who will tell you that. So I wanted
Speaker 5: to put this chart on the screen because one of
Speaker 5: the things been talked about was how both sides are
Speaker 5: basically trying to consolidate power and that has created a
Speaker 5: less affordable America. And this chart is from AI. It
Speaker 5: gets updated like every six months. This is the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two version of it from the American Enterprise Institute
Speaker 5: Mark Perry, who's an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.
Speaker 5: It's a little bit of an ink blot test. You
Speaker 5: can kind of look into it. You can read into
Speaker 5: it a lot of different things. Stoller and I were
Speaker 5: going back and forth about how you can read antitrust
Speaker 5: into this chart.
Speaker 4: But what you see is.
Speaker 5: You look at overall inflation and then you can see
Speaker 5: certain things that have gotten more expensive since two thousand
Speaker 5: and certain things have gotten less expensive, so more affordable
Speaker 5: versus more expensive since two thousand and Everybody knows this
Speaker 5: in their hearts, like you, just this chart hits you
Speaker 5: like a ton of bricks when you see college tuition
Speaker 5: just going up so high, and then TVs going down
Speaker 5: so low, ninety seven point seven percent drop in the
Speaker 5: affordability of TVs, nursery, school, childcare going up, medical care
Speaker 5: services going up, college tuition, food and beverages going up,
Speaker 5: and then you see computers, software, toys, TVs, clothing, new
Speaker 5: cars roughly going down a little blip around the COVID
Speaker 5: time period. And I think the reason that I think
Speaker 5: Ben in a sense is correct this chart points to it.
Speaker 5: From my perspective is that I really do worry about
Speaker 5: subsidies in the like mom Donnie era New York City,
Speaker 5: making things in the long term less affordable. This is
Speaker 5: a huge part of the debate we're having right now
Speaker 5: about the Affordable Care Act subsidies and Obamacare subsidies really
Speaker 5: can create oligopolies, like they actually do have that effect.
Speaker 5: I think it's been pretty clear with college tuition that
Speaker 5: subsidies have created little incentive for these colleges to compete
Speaker 5: with one another on tuition price, and so I do
Speaker 5: think that should be part of the conversation. I don't
Speaker 5: know chrisl how you feel about it. But the question
Speaker 5: for me as a conservative is like, well, if the
Speaker 5: status quo is also miserable, which is the case with
Speaker 5: health insurance, then you can't just ask people to wait
Speaker 5: until there's some type of like comprehensive, conservative market based
Speaker 5: solution in six months or six years. People don't deserve
Speaker 5: to have their premiums spiked because the system is failing.
Speaker 5: And just like shoulder that on the promise that someday
Speaker 5: you'll do like a reform to the subsidies, Like I
Speaker 5: don't think the subsidies are a great option right here.
Speaker 5: I don't think just subsidizing housing, freezing rent.
Speaker 4: I don't think that those are good long term options.
Speaker 5: And so I think, you know, that's a blind spot
Speaker 5: in some ways, I think for the progressive left. Although
Speaker 5: mom Donnie is kind of interesting because he engages in
Speaker 5: the abundance conversation. It is, but neither neither you or
Speaker 5: I are like full abundance people.
Speaker 3: But I'm a yes, I'm yes, and on abundant.
Speaker 4: There we go, there we go.
Speaker 2: Right, you got to do the but you also have
Speaker 2: to and they're focus on like you actually need to deliver.
Speaker 3: Agree, But their.
Speaker 2: Lack of focus on you're going to have to confront
Speaker 2: capital is where that analysis falls short. I think you're
Speaker 2: right about subsidies, and to me, though I don't see
Speaker 2: that as progressive left, I see that as neoliberal perfect.
Speaker 3: You know, that's it. We're going to do a tax
Speaker 3: credit and we're going to give you. You know, we're
Speaker 3: going to.
Speaker 2: Okay, going to subsidize it, right, and look better than nothing. Right,
Speaker 2: it's a band aid, though it's absolutely a band aid.
Speaker 2: And if you're going to wait for your like conservative
Speaker 2: market based solution, you're going to get things like a
Speaker 2: fifty year mortgage. We have left to the market instead
Speaker 2: of having our own values and priorities in the way
Speaker 2: that for example, China has, we have said we are
Speaker 2: going to outsource our thinking and our values to the market,
Speaker 2: and all the market does is says, great, we're going
Speaker 2: to figure out how we can builk you for all
Speaker 2: of the money that we possibly can and consolidate power
Speaker 2: and wealth among a very few people. And that's how
Speaker 2: you end up broadly with the system where the core
Speaker 2: building blocks of a middle class life, housing, healthcare, and
Speaker 2: education are wildly unaffordable because we can't as a country say,
Speaker 2: you know what put them like the profitability aside. These
Speaker 2: are things that are just basic goods and values that
Speaker 2: everyone should have access to, and we're going to do
Speaker 2: what we need to do to make sure that that
Speaker 2: is the case. So, you know, your comment about subsidies
Speaker 2: is absolutely correct. Don't disagree with that at all. Where
Speaker 2: I would disagree is so for example, with college education,
Speaker 2: Zorn Mamdanie and Bernie Sanders wouldn't be saying that's why
Speaker 2: we need to, you know, have a better student loan program.
Speaker 2: They'd say, that's why we need free college education three,
Speaker 2: you know, public colleges that are free and available to everyone.
Speaker 2: On housing, they wouldn't say, you know, that's why you
Speaker 2: need an extra tax credit or for affordability. I mean,
Speaker 2: they may be on board with those sorts of things,
Speaker 2: but they would say, we need more direct government building
Speaker 2: of social housing so that we can surge affordable housing
Speaker 2: into the market and don't have to wait for some
Speaker 2: developer to decide that it's in their best financial interest
Speaker 2: to do it. And by the way, when they do,
Speaker 2: they're going to build luxury, high end condos, not starter
Speaker 2: homes for young families, you know. So and on healthcare. Obviously,
Speaker 2: they're not looking like, yes, they'll support subsidies in the
Speaker 2: short term just so people don't fifteen million people don't
Speaker 2: lose their healthcare or whatever the number is. That's not
Speaker 2: their long term solution though. What they would say is
Speaker 2: Medicare for all, we have to tackle putting profit at
Speaker 2: the center of our healthcare system instead of.
Speaker 3: Health and care. So, you know, to me, what you're
Speaker 3: pointing to is.
Speaker 2: The failures of a neoliberal democratic party that doesn't want
Speaker 2: to confront capital, wants to deal with some problems and
Speaker 2: seize the you know, sees the pain and is empathy,
Speaker 2: wants to deal with the problems, but doesn't want to
Speaker 2: confront capital. And that's where all of these weird subsidies
Speaker 2: and tax credits, and you know, if you're this kind
Speaker 2: of business owner in this kind of town, weird bizarre,
Speaker 2: piecemeal non universal programs ultimately come in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think probably where you and I have
Speaker 5: and Sager and I and Ryan and you have like
Speaker 5: more fundamental disagreements is on like I still have a
Speaker 5: really hard time with Medicare for all and like seeing
Speaker 5: that that or feeling comfortable with like the level of
Speaker 5: quality that a program like that would look like the
Speaker 5: same thing with you know, I mean all kinds of
Speaker 5: things at public colleges, that sort of thing. But my
Speaker 5: position in medicare for all of for the last several years,
Speaker 5: has been will it be more miserable than the already
Speaker 5: miserable system that we're in? And I don't know that
Speaker 5: the answer to that is no, because this system sucks.
Speaker 5: It sucks and it is great for people who continue
Speaker 5: to profit off of it. And that does go in
Speaker 5: both directions. I mean, the biggest enemies of capitalism, This
Speaker 5: was a common sentiment in the Gilded Age, by the way,
Speaker 5: the biggest enemies of capitalism are the capitalists. And that's
Speaker 5: how you end up with people reflexively going towards subsidy
Speaker 5: regimes because they're band aids. And it's understandable that people
Speaker 5: are looking for band aids when they're bleeding out, and
Speaker 5: so actually the capitalists continuing to prioritize themselves over let's
Speaker 5: bring this full circle the public, their communities. Michigan is
Speaker 5: such a good example of this, such a good example
Speaker 5: is you, mother effing capitalists, why do you think you
Speaker 5: got Trump? You didn't want Trump? Why do you think
Speaker 5: people voted for Trump. Well, it's because of what you
Speaker 5: did to Michigan, it's because of what you did to
Speaker 5: Wisconsin's because of what you did to Pennsylvania. Do you
Speaker 5: think the country is healthier because of any of this,
Speaker 5: because you put people to the brink of desperation that
Speaker 5: they voted the host of celebrity Apprentice into the presidency.
Speaker 4: No, and it's not.
Speaker 5: There's been zero self reflection about how their policies, whether
Speaker 5: they were subsidy band aids or whether they were bailouts
Speaker 5: for the auto industry, whether they were complete you know,
Speaker 5: just just treating people like widgets and abandoning communities that
Speaker 5: had lifted them, lifted their profits and supported them and
Speaker 5: been a part of their team and taken pride in
Speaker 5: working for Milwauk and think about like Masterlocke. But if
Speaker 5: you're in Michigan GM, those types of things, it's just
Speaker 5: me just like I'm talking about it, I'm almost crying.
Speaker 5: It's just so horrible, and there's no reflection on it
Speaker 5: whatsoever from the capitalists themselves. And again, that was a
Speaker 5: common sentiment in the Yilded Age, was that the capitalists
Speaker 5: were the enemies of capitalism. But nobody wants to Even
Speaker 5: after Donald Trump gets elected and Bernie Sanders almost gets elected,
Speaker 5: nobody wants to talk about that.
Speaker 2: Well, let me say that what was done to Michigan,
Speaker 2: what has been done to small towns and small cities,
Speaker 2: the hollowing out across the country, the de industrialization is
Speaker 2: going to look like child's play compared to what they're
Speaker 2: planning with AI. Now, maybe AI is just a big
Speaker 2: hype in a bubble and it pops and there's you know,
Speaker 2: massive economic fallout and chaos, which is a horrible outcome
Speaker 2: but doesn't end up with all human labor being replaced.
Speaker 2: But you know, those are basically the two directions. But
Speaker 2: their their goal is to make everyone irrelevant. That is,
Speaker 2: you know we talk about like late stage capitalism, like
Speaker 2: that is actually their end state that they're trying to achieve,
Speaker 2: because the whole history of labor and capital is that
Speaker 2: capital basically hates labor, wants to pay them as little
Speaker 2: as possible, work them as much as possible, like not
Speaker 2: that let them have maternity leave or paternity leave or
Speaker 2: sick leave or whatever. It's this adversarial relationship and they
Speaker 2: would love nothing more than to make it so they
Speaker 2: don't have to deal with us at all, and the
Speaker 2: level of power and wealth that would float to them
Speaker 2: in that scenario is just I mean, it's beyond anything
Speaker 2: that we have even come close to seeing before in
Speaker 2: human history. That's what they're aiming for. I mean, that
Speaker 2: is the goal, and that's that's the market based solution.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think a few of them realize, like,
Speaker 2: if we're going to pull this off, we're going to
Speaker 2: have to give them like a universal basic.
Speaker 3: Income or throw them some crumbs or something.
Speaker 2: But you know, let's be clear about what they actually want.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've been thinking of this. We don't
Speaker 2: have to open this whole can of worms. But I'll
Speaker 2: just put this idea out there. We can flesh it
Speaker 2: out more because I'm still fleshing it out myself. But
Speaker 2: Capital is very happy with Trump, like they're you know,
Speaker 2: Wall Street CEOs are hanging out with him at the
Speaker 2: White House. They figure out if I just bring him
Speaker 2: his gold bar in the White House, I can get
Speaker 2: whatever I want. I got my tax cut, you know,
Speaker 2: he's I can the tariffs are now you know, being
Speaker 2: rolled back, and anyway, I was able to get my
Speaker 2: car ounce, so it wasn't that big of a problem
Speaker 2: for me whatsoever. And the big thing that they're getting,
Speaker 2: these tech giants in particular.
Speaker 3: Is off to the races on AI.
Speaker 2: They think they're going to get whether this is I mean,
Speaker 2: I think this is reality. They think they'll get government
Speaker 2: bailows to backstop their losses. They think that government is
Speaker 2: going to affect it, like actively help them with their
Speaker 2: compute build out and allow them to achieve the grand
Speaker 2: dream and vision, which is to get rid of all
Speaker 2: of our like the need for any of our labor.
Speaker 3: Like that's the goal exactly.
Speaker 2: And so when you hear Shapiro talking about like you know,
Speaker 2: his market like classic conservative market driven solutions, that is
Speaker 2: the future that the market has in mind for us.
Speaker 2: That's the goal is to pay a zero employees, zero amount,
Speaker 2: Like that is the driving push.
Speaker 3: So just be aware.
Speaker 2: That's like that's what he would advocate for. That's what
Speaker 2: he would say is finding good and acceptable and and
Speaker 2: you know, we can get whatever, you know, with our pitchforks.
Speaker 2: We can sort of extract from the trillionaires that run
Speaker 2: the show. You know, it kind of makes uh. So
Speaker 2: what I was gonna say with regard to the connection
Speaker 2: with immigration is you know, in the past, the anti
Speaker 2: immigration position was anathema to business because they do abuse
Speaker 2: and exploit undocumented workers.
Speaker 3: There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: They love the chief labor force and they've kind of
Speaker 2: come to terms with it in Trump's second term because
Speaker 2: what's even better than chief labor is no labor at all,
Speaker 2: not having to pay human beings at all.
Speaker 3: So it's part of why I feel like.
Speaker 2: You know, the the focus on immigration misses the point
Speaker 2: at this point, like there is a great replacement theory
Speaker 2: playing out. It's these tech oligarchs who literally are telling
Speaker 2: you they want to replace you with a robot. That
Speaker 2: is the That's the big battle that's going on right now.
Speaker 2: And you know, I hope, and we've been covering closely
Speaker 2: on the show. I hope there is a cross ideological
Speaker 2: coalition that is able to come together to push back
Speaker 2: forcefully on that view because it is genuinely existential.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's easy to be blackpolled on the right
Speaker 5: because during the kind of peak woke era is when
Speaker 5: you saw people in the Republican Party saying we're done
Speaker 5: with the Chamber of Commerce and we're creating our own
Speaker 5: chamber of commerce.
Speaker 4: You know, these capitalists.
Speaker 5: Marco Ruba gave this entire speech at Catholic University is
Speaker 5: a wonderful piece of theology and politics where he's talking
Speaker 5: about the ends of markets are not efficiency, the ends
Speaker 5: are families and community. Like that is why markets don't
Speaker 5: exist for the sake of efficiency. They exist because we
Speaker 5: create them via our democracy in order to have strong,
Speaker 5: prosperous families that can flourish in communities that can flourish,
Speaker 5: and people that can flourish. And that's like obviously true,
Speaker 5: but that is not what the tech giants belief. And
Speaker 5: the tech giants, some of them might have these like
Speaker 5: sincere libertarian positions that I think are insane, but they
Speaker 5: may like genuinely believe that UBI is, you know, the
Speaker 5: peak version of humanity.
Speaker 4: But it's not a conservative belief.
Speaker 5: It might be a libertarian belief, it's definitely not a
Speaker 5: conservative belief.
Speaker 4: And that's what I think.
Speaker 5: You're still right, crsal Like, that's where this is all
Speaker 5: heading is the UBI band aid is going to be
Speaker 5: applied in ways that's like all right, sorry, humans, you
Speaker 5: guys can't do this as well as our l ms
Speaker 5: and our lms inside our robots. So just be content
Speaker 5: with this, you know, two thousand dollars a month or
Speaker 5: whatever it is, and you know, get in your autonomous
Speaker 5: vehicle and.
Speaker 4: That's where it's going.
Speaker 5: It's exactly what we were talking about, which is when
Speaker 5: you don't actually want to do the hard work of
Speaker 5: having a well regulated market, very hard work to do
Speaker 5: because you're swamped by lobbyists all of the time to
Speaker 5: create a market that is in their direction one way
Speaker 5: or the other. Substis can be a tool towards that,
Speaker 5: but also so can deregulation. So that's much harder work
Speaker 5: to have a fair market and a place where people
Speaker 5: actually can you know, create small businesses where they can
Speaker 5: have meaningful lives and thrive through the dignity of work.
Speaker 4: Nope, we're just going to get UBI.
Speaker 3: It's easy, yeah, UBI and no Epstein files.
Speaker 5: Emily, that's just the name of your next book, which
Speaker 5: is that we do a breaking Epstein news to get to.
Speaker 5: So let's go ahead and move on to that story.
Speaker 5: Congressman Rocana is going to join us in just a bit.
Speaker 5: We have breaking news for everyone.
Speaker 4: This morning.
Speaker 5: The House Oversight Committee's Democrats released several emails from Jeffrey
Speaker 5: Epstein giln Maxwell and author Michael Wolfe that offer more
Speaker 5: insight into Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. We can
Speaker 5: go through some of these emails. We're going to put
Speaker 5: them up on the screen. My goodness. So, first of all,
Speaker 5: twenty eleven, you have Jeffrey Epstein emailing Gelan Maxwell saying
Speaker 5: I want you to realize that that dog that hasn't
Speaker 5: barked is Trump redacted victim's name, spent hours at my
Speaker 5: house with him. He has never once been mentioned, police chief, etc.
Speaker 5: I'm seventy five percent there, Maxwell responded again, this is
Speaker 5: twenty eleven, April of twenty eleven.
Speaker 4: I have been thinking about that. Dot dot dot.
Speaker 5: Another set of emails here, fast forward to twenty fifteen.
Speaker 5: This is Jeffrey Epstein. December of twenty fifteen. CNN is
Speaker 5: hosting a primary debate for Republicans as Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: completely racketing.
Speaker 4: Up in the polls.
Speaker 5: I hear CNN Epstein what Michael wolf writes to Epstein.
Speaker 5: I hear CNN is playing to ask Trump tonight about
Speaker 5: his relationship with you, either on air or in scrum afterwards.
Speaker 5: I want to just pause there, by the way, for
Speaker 5: a moment. This is my Wolf pulling a little bit
Speaker 5: of what a Donna Brazil like tipping off Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 5: to something in the gossip in the milieu surrounding Michael
Speaker 5: Wolf about a question in a presidential debate. Epstein replies,
Speaker 5: if we were able to craft and answer for him,
Speaker 5: what do you think it should be? So basically Wolf
Speaker 5: and Epstein are trying to preemptively give Donald Trump a
Speaker 5: little something to work with that might be beneficial to
Speaker 5: them in the long run. Here is Wolf who styles
Speaker 5: himself as a journalist who is critical of Donald Trump
Speaker 5: and is something of a crystal Do you have any
Speaker 5: like you have any thoughts on this Wolf? Part of
Speaker 5: it all because it's making me so mad that I
Speaker 5: can't even really speak. To see these emails, it's not
Speaker 5: surprising in any way whatsoever, But to see how involved
Speaker 5: he was and then to watch him try to claim
Speaker 5: the moral high ground as like an Instagram TikTok celebrity
Speaker 5: is deeply, deeply irritating.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you see a window into his methods
Speaker 2: in particular where I mean this is part of how
Speaker 2: he in the first Trump White House apparently was a fixture,
Speaker 2: like just hanging out there all the time, and clearly
Speaker 2: he gives people the sense of like I'm on your side,
Speaker 2: I'm giving you advice, like we're in this thing together.
Speaker 2: And then that's how he ingratiates himself to wealthy, powerful
Speaker 2: or in the case of you know, Jeffrey Epstein, wealthy,
Speaker 2: powerful and notorious people and is able to write about it.
Speaker 2: And Michael Wolfe has been, you know, out there talking about, Hey,
Speaker 2: I've seen pictures of Donald Trump with girls of uncertain age.
Speaker 2: I've you know, here's what Epstein told me about Trump.
Speaker 2: He also claimed that Epstein had a lot of insider
Speaker 2: knowledge into Trump's first administration, so still had a lot
Speaker 2: of connectivity there. In any case with regard to this
Speaker 2: you know this question, Abo, he might get asked a
Speaker 2: debate question about this. CNN did not ask him about
Speaker 2: Epstein at that debate. Probably would have been a good
Speaker 2: question to ask him, but that didn't get asked at
Speaker 2: that debate or in the scroll. And then do you
Speaker 2: have the other email, Emily where they're talking about Trump
Speaker 2: spending hours with one of the victims.
Speaker 5: Yes, so this is from twenty nineteen, and this is
Speaker 5: from Jeffrey Epstein to Michael Wolfe. So it says victim
Speaker 5: name redacted, mar A Lago redacted. Trump said, he asked
Speaker 5: me to resign, never a member. Ever, of course he
Speaker 5: knew about the girls. He asked Gilaine to stop. And
Speaker 5: this is after, by the way, back in twenty fifteen
Speaker 5: that Wolf emailed the advice from Michael Wolf to Jeffrey
Speaker 5: Epstein about potentially crafting a response to hand Donald Trump
Speaker 5: was I think you should let him hang himself. If
Speaker 5: he says he hasn't been on the plane or to
Speaker 5: the house, then that gives you a valuable pr and
Speaker 5: political currency. You can hang him in a way that
Speaker 5: potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or if it
Speaker 5: really looks like he could win, you could save him
Speaker 5: generating a debt. Interesting line right there. Of course, Wolf continues,
Speaker 5: it is possible that when he'll say, Jeffrey is a
Speaker 5: great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is
Speaker 5: a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed
Speaker 5: in a Trump regime. Now when he says, of course
Speaker 5: Trump knew about the girls. This is from Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 5: he asked Glaine to stop. That is, in the strangest
Speaker 5: way ever, confirmation of what Donald Trump has said, which
Speaker 5: is also, in the strangest way ever, confirmation that he
Speaker 5: clearly knew as he alluded to in media reports before
Speaker 5: he was president, before Epstein became such a mythical figure.
Speaker 5: Trump said, Jeffery likes him on the younger side. He
Speaker 5: said recently, I think he was on Air Force one
Speaker 5: within just the last few months saying, yeah, they were
Speaker 5: stealing girls from mar A Lago, which is exactly what
Speaker 5: happened to Virginia. Jeffrey, who was working at mar A
Speaker 5: Lago was poached by Gilan Maxwell at mar A Lago.
Speaker 5: So these emails, again, these are ones released by the
Speaker 5: Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. As the Guy government
Speaker 5: shut down ends, Mike Johnson is going to face enormous
Speaker 5: pressure to bring an epscene vote to the floor. There
Speaker 5: may even be a discharge petition that goes around Mike
Speaker 5: Johnson to bring some of this to the floor. So Chrystal,
Speaker 5: no surprise that we are starting to see these as
Speaker 5: the government looks poised to reopen, hopefully forcing a vote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Trump even got asked specifically, was when you're
Speaker 2: talking about they were stealing girls from mar A Lago,
Speaker 2: are you talking about Virginia Guffray, and he said something
Speaker 2: to the effect of, yeah, I think, I think I
Speaker 2: am I think I am talking about her. And so
Speaker 2: it is strange the way that their two stories in
Speaker 2: a sense confirm each other, because Jeffrey says, of course
Speaker 2: he knew because we were taking girls from there and
Speaker 2: he told Galaine to stop, so he knew exactly what
Speaker 2: was going on. And then you add to that the
Speaker 2: color of he spent hours with a victim, and then
Speaker 2: him pondering like, why isn't why isn't Donald Trump getting
Speaker 2: mentioned in all of the coverage surrounding me, And you know,
Speaker 2: I mean that would be that would be a sort
Speaker 2: of head scratching thing, given how close we know that
Speaker 2: they their lives were intertwined for years and years where
Speaker 2: you know, again, according to Michael Wolf and Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 2: Epstein and Trump were besties.
Speaker 3: They were super close.
Speaker 2: They were hanging out in New York City, they were
Speaker 2: hanging out down in Palm Beach. You know, both living
Speaker 2: this sort of high flying lifestyle, both of them loving women,
Speaker 2: in Epstein's case, girls, and so you know, these paint
Speaker 2: helped it to fill in some of that portrait. And
Speaker 2: yesterday Soger and I covered the unbelievable special treatment that
Speaker 2: Gleainne Maxwell is getting in her club fed prison. First
Speaker 2: of all, she's not even supposed to be in this
Speaker 2: club fed prison because she's a sex offender. That's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, they're providing her with extraordinary perks, what they
Speaker 2: described as concierge service. One of the prison officials said,
Speaker 2: I'm tired of being Glene Maxwell's bitch because she's getting
Speaker 2: She got a freaking puppy, she got special meals, she
Speaker 2: gets to go to the exercise area when no one
Speaker 2: else is there. She gets to have these long meetings
Speaker 2: where people bring in computers so she can communicate with
Speaker 2: the outside world in whatever kind of way she wants.
Speaker 2: Oh and lo and behold, she's filling out her application
Speaker 2: for a presidential commutation. Gee, why is she getting such
Speaker 2: special treatment? I wonder? I mean, it doesn't take a
Speaker 2: genius to figure out. Trump is afraid of what she
Speaker 2: has on him, what she would say about him, and
Speaker 2: so he is directing his administration to make sure you
Speaker 2: keep Galaine happy, do what you need. And every time
Speaker 2: that he gets asked about a potential partner commutation for
Speaker 2: Glene Maxwell, he de Marse. He will not say one
Speaker 2: way or another whether he would consider that, because you know,
Speaker 2: as soon as she got moved to Club Fed and
Speaker 2: started getting this cushy treatment, well that's when the leaks
Speaker 2: to the Wall Street Journal and other places about the
Speaker 2: birthday book and other things. That's when those leaks stopped.
Speaker 2: So again, put two and two together, you can likely see, Okay,
Speaker 2: those initial leaks were kind of a shot across the bell, like, hey,
Speaker 2: here's a little taste of what I might have, what
Speaker 2: I might be able to say about you. And again,
Speaker 2: given their long history together and the incredibly guilty and
Speaker 2: bizarre way that the Trump administration has acted around the
Speaker 2: Epstein files, you know, it's I don't think anyone should
Speaker 2: be surprised that some of this is coming out. And Emily,
Speaker 2: you know, one example of that is they refused to
Speaker 2: swear in Adelita Grihalva for almost two months, seven full weeks.
Speaker 2: They refused to swear this lady in, meaning that that
Speaker 2: district has no representation whatsoever in Congress, just so they
Speaker 2: would not have another vote on that Epstein discharge petition.
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson like shut down the entire House and ended
Speaker 2: the session to avoid that vote previously. You know, they're
Speaker 2: and the way that this has, you know, really undercut
Speaker 2: their reputation. As though we're outside we're going to shine
Speaker 2: a light on the truth here.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: It tells you, babe, he is very concerned about what
Speaker 2: could potentially come out and be contained in emails and
Speaker 2: government records, in FBI searches, whatever sort of material they
Speaker 2: were able to obtain. CIA Ryan and Dropsite have been
Speaker 2: doing in Hussein and Murtaza Hussein have been doing the
Speaker 2: only reporting, by the way, and extraordinary reporting confirming that
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein, yes, in fact, was an Israeli intelligence assets.
Speaker 2: So surely the CIA would have a lot to say
Speaker 2: about this guy as well. And the Republicans, led by
Speaker 2: Trump and Mike Johnson, have gone to extraordinary lengths to
Speaker 2: try to keep any of this from becoming public.
Speaker 5: So I'm wondering, actually, if the House Oversight Committee got
Speaker 5: these emails from Michael Wolfe, I think that seems to
Speaker 5: be the most likely case. It potentially could have come
Speaker 5: from Gilan Maxwell, who was meeting with obviously Deputy ag
Speaker 5: Todd Blanche over the last several months. That's certainly possible. Well,
Speaker 5: Johnson is set to swear in Adelite Girlova today and
Speaker 5: that's the vote they need for the discharge petition, which
Speaker 5: Thomas Massey I believe Marjorie Tayler Green among other Republicans
Speaker 5: are among the Republican Conference support, So that gets them
Speaker 5: around Mike Johnson to a vote demanding a release of
Speaker 5: all of the Epstein files. And so the House Overside
Speaker 5: Committee had that conversation back and forth with Alex Acosta,
Speaker 5: former Labor Secretary nominee who dropped out because Vicky Ward's
Speaker 5: reporting and other information surrounding the sweetheart deal in Florida
Speaker 5: that happened under his watch. Triguerian Epstein and the House
Speaker 5: Overside Committee asked, you know about that Vicky Ward quote
Speaker 5: from an anonymous source many people speculate to be Steve
Speaker 5: Bannon that Acosta says he was told Epstein belonged to
Speaker 5: intelligence and to leave him alone. Acosta denied basically that
Speaker 5: in spirit, but he wasn't really. I mean, there are
Speaker 5: a lot of other ways that that question could have
Speaker 5: been posed to him to get around the technicalities of
Speaker 5: whether Epstein was an asset or an agent and who
Speaker 5: told him what that The House Oversight Committee just did
Speaker 5: not get to the bottom of in that interview, at
Speaker 5: least according to the transcript of it that we have
Speaker 5: so crystal this story to see in writing from Jeffrey
Speaker 5: Epstein that Trump has never once been mentioned by police chief, etc.
Speaker 5: I don't know what Epstein means when he says I'm
Speaker 5: seventy five percent there, but it sounds like maybe he's
Speaker 5: speculating that Trump is cooperating with an investigation.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't know what that seventy five percent there
Speaker 2: piece meant. But I just want to underscore for people
Speaker 2: why this matters. You know, Ryan and Mas's reporting has
Speaker 2: proven the deep ties that Epstein did in fact have
Speaker 2: with the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence specifically. You can
Speaker 2: go and read numerous stories at this point based on
Speaker 2: the leak of a former's really prime minister's emails, which
Speaker 2: also worth noting, as we always do, any mainstream outlet
Speaker 2: could have looked at these emails and reported them out.
Speaker 2: They're all sitting out there for anyone to report on.
Speaker 2: They are the only ones who have put that aside.
Speaker 2: So you're the President of the United States, and you know, whatever,
Speaker 2: whatever things you did or you know, you're worried that
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein knows about you have to assume that the
Speaker 2: Israelis know about as well. You have to assume that, right,
Speaker 2: And so what kind of pressure does that create in
Speaker 2: your relationship? How does that impact your foreign policy and
Speaker 2: the way you conduct yourself vis a VI this state.
Speaker 2: That's one of the most obvious reasons why this reporting
Speaker 2: and getting to the bottom of this is so incredibly,
Speaker 2: incredibly important, because even if Jeffrey Epstein, you know, there's
Speaker 2: all sorts of reports about the cameras he had and
Speaker 2: a sort of documentation he kept, even if he didn't
Speaker 2: actually have the goods on whatever it is that Trump
Speaker 2: is terrified of coming out about him, and clearly there
Speaker 2: are things he is terrified of coming out about him.
Speaker 2: Even if Epstein didn't have the goods, you have to
Speaker 2: assume that he did, and you have to assume that
Speaker 2: he was sharing that information with his very close friends, allies,
Speaker 2: business partners in the Israeli government. So I mean that
Speaker 2: that is extraordinary and incredibly important for the American people
Speaker 2: to know and understand.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it is so important because when people
Speaker 5: say I think you know Trump, and then some Republicans
Speaker 5: who rushed to defend Trump and it happened with Democrats
Speaker 5: under the Biden administration, say, this is a silly side show.
Speaker 5: It's not in the question of foreign policy, right, you know,
Speaker 5: people have important questions on their play every single day
Speaker 5: about costs of living and just trying to put food
Speaker 5: on the table, keep a job, all of that. Yes,
Speaker 5: our foreign policy is downstream of the shadow government in
Speaker 5: many ways that we aren't quite aware of. And that
Speaker 5: sounds crazy. But go ahead read the emails that the
Speaker 5: mainstream media probably isn't covering, so they don't want to
Speaker 5: go into what looks like a hack from Iran, but
Speaker 5: one that Ryan and Moz are confirming is verifiable by
Speaker 5: talking to people saying, is this is these emails? This
Speaker 5: is you in this email, Is this a real email,
Speaker 5: et cetera. So when you see it put so plainly
Speaker 5: in those drop site stories, Jeffrey Epstein and Hooper Rock
Speaker 5: were puppet masters and they were doing it, putting it
Speaker 5: in writing. We have that evidence for everybody to see.
Speaker 5: They were actually pulling the strings of geopolitics and foreign policy,
Speaker 5: willing and dealing in their punctuation error laden emails which
Speaker 5: Ryan says as a power move. I'm not so sure
Speaker 5: that I agree it's a power move. It may just
Speaker 5: reflect the actual incompetence. And that is remarkable when you
Speaker 5: look at it, because you see how few people have
Speaker 5: such disproportionate control over foreign policy. Foreign policy affects domestic policy.
Speaker 5: So these are enormously serious questions. And I think, you know,
Speaker 5: Epstein is an example of something that is still happening
Speaker 5: right now with other names that we just don't know.
Speaker 2: And I think that Trump and the Republicans had hoped
Speaker 2: they had kind of put this story to bed. You know,
Speaker 2: it was quiet there for a while. We were getting
Speaker 2: any new leaks. The Republican efforts, Mike Johnson's efforts at
Speaker 2: least to stonewall in the house had been successful. It
Speaker 2: was very much on the back burner. And Soccer and
Speaker 2: I were talking about this, and what I said is,
Speaker 2: but this is the sort of thing that can erupt
Speaker 2: back into the public consciousness at any time, because it's
Speaker 2: completely unresis and you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 2: maga that were upset about it first kind of made
Speaker 2: their peace with it, kind of like bought into some
Speaker 2: convoluted like, oh, actually, Trump is playing the Deep States somehow,
Speaker 2: or they're fake or Clinton comy whatever. They just were like,
Speaker 2: all right, we're just gonna move on. When things like
Speaker 2: this come out, makes it pretty hard for you to
Speaker 2: just like close your eyes and pretend like nothing's happening
Speaker 2: here and pretending like pretend like this is all fine,
Speaker 2: especially when you have a voice, a running gade voice
Speaker 2: like Marjorie Taylor Green out there, who is willing to
Speaker 2: make her own side uncomfortable for whatever reason she's doing it.
Speaker 2: She is that voice right now, willing to make her
Speaker 2: own side uncomfortable. So, you know, we talked about the
Speaker 2: Maga revolt. When you have a president who was just
Speaker 2: weakened by an extraordinary electoral defeat for his party really
Speaker 2: across the board, you know, he's effectively already a lame
Speaker 2: duck at least is not legally allowed to run for
Speaker 2: another term. Is aging very clearly in front of our eyes,
Speaker 2: you know, sleeping through White House events at this point,
Speaker 2: and outsourcing major parts of his administration to his aids,
Speaker 2: seems to only really care about, like his his parties
Speaker 2: at mar A Lago and his renovations. Yeah, when you
Speaker 2: have all of those sorts of things, then people start
Speaker 2: to feel a little bit bolder about their criticism and
Speaker 2: start to be looking at and constantly Okay, well, what
Speaker 2: is the world after Trump going to look like? And
Speaker 2: where is the place to be? How to position myself
Speaker 2: in that world? So I think even as you know
Speaker 2: Democrats just capitulated in Anthony and are embarrassing and all
Speaker 2: of that sort of stuff, you also have Trump at
Speaker 2: a becoming increasingly sort of weakened in his own administration.
Speaker 2: Approval rating is very low. You know, some errors starting
Speaker 2: to come at him from his own side, economic troubles,
Speaker 2: and you know a lot of unfulfilled promises, and then
Speaker 2: you add this to the mix. It's not it's a
Speaker 2: it's a pretty pretty challenging landscape for him.
Speaker 5: I would say, right, yeah, I think for those elections
Speaker 5: last week, it's becoming clearly the administration that they're approaching
Speaker 5: the one year mark. And after you get past that
Speaker 5: one year itch, as we've talked, as we've talked about
Speaker 5: Crystal before in the show today, you can't keep blaming Biden.
Speaker 5: I mean you can, but whether or not you're successful
Speaker 5: at continuing to blame the Biden administration or inherited. Yeah,
Speaker 5: people are not going to buy it, and you are
Speaker 5: mister draining the swamp, so as emails come out showing
Speaker 5: you part of a swamp.
Speaker 4: And then when you campaign, you know, when you're not.
Speaker 5: In power, it's easy to say, yeah, yeah, we'll release
Speaker 5: the Epstein emails, even though Trump was a little bit
Speaker 5: more hesitant about those than JFP files and such during
Speaker 5: the campaign. But when you're actually in power, you can't
Speaker 5: just say like, yeah.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that. We'll get to that. You know,
Speaker 4: you actually you have to look like you're draining the swamp.
Speaker 5: If that's the predicate for your political career. That's where
Speaker 5: you see the people like Marjory Taylor Green and Thomas
Speaker 5: Massey breaking away from Trump on that particular question.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, very fortunate on last minute notice here
Speaker 2: to get congresson Rocanna to join us this morning. Of course,
Speaker 2: he has been the Democrat leading the push to get
Speaker 2: the Epstein files released. Great to see you congresson.
Speaker 7: Two breaking point appearances in the same week. Must be
Speaker 7: my lucky week here.
Speaker 2: I love our lucky week. Yeah, people were very interested
Speaker 2: in what you had to say last time. I have
Speaker 2: a suspicion they're going to be very interested in what
Speaker 2: you have to say today as well. So Emily and
Speaker 2: I just went through some of the new emails that
Speaker 2: were released tying Donald Trump directly to Jeffrey Epstein. The
Speaker 2: first question for you is just why are these emails
Speaker 2: coming out now? What was the sort of chain of
Speaker 2: events that led to these revelations.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, I was on Laurence o'donald about three
Speaker 10: months ago, and the attorney for the survivors is the
Speaker 10: guest right before me, and he says, I don't understand
Speaker 10: why no one has subpoena the Epstein estate, and shockingly
Speaker 10: Pam Bondi Cash Battel and no one in Congress had
Speaker 10: done it. So I talked to Comer. I said, we've
Speaker 10: got to get these documents. To his credit, he's subpoena's
Speaker 10: the Epstein estate, and the Epstein Estate has been producing
Speaker 10: these documents gripped by Grip by grip, And today, of
Speaker 10: course comes out the first time some of the emails
Speaker 10: thing that Trump knew about the abuse of these young
Speaker 10: girls and the guilty conduct. And I expect four more
Speaker 10: documents are going to be coming out over the next
Speaker 10: couple of months.
Speaker 5: Is the I mean, I was speculating earlier that maybe
Speaker 5: these emails came from Michael Wolfe or Glane. Are you
Speaker 5: able to tell us anything about that, congressman.
Speaker 10: Not the specifics of who they're coming from other than
Speaker 10: the Epstein estate, and that the estate has thousands of
Speaker 10: more documents.
Speaker 7: But what this really says is we've got to get
Speaker 7: the full release.
Speaker 10: We shouldn't be relying on the Epstein estate to be
Speaker 10: giving us piecemeal documents.
Speaker 7: We have the full files at the Justice Department.
Speaker 10: Those files have all of the interviews that were taken
Speaker 10: with men who abuse these young girls, with people were
Speaker 10: involved in the cover up. And today, as you know,
Speaker 10: Adlita Grihovo gets worn in, we get two hundred and
Speaker 10: eighteen signatures, and that triggers a boat in seven days
Speaker 10: in the house to release these files. The bombshell document
Speaker 10: dropped today, I think is going to increase the stakes
Speaker 10: of just saying get this.
Speaker 2: Out there, yeah, no doubt about it, and just your
Speaker 2: reaction to what we learned today. So we had emails
Speaker 2: from Jeffrey Epstein saying, first of all, of course Trump
Speaker 2: knew about what was going on with the girls because
Speaker 2: he told Galene Maxwell to stop. He also claimed that
Speaker 2: Trump had spent hours with one of the victims. You
Speaker 2: also see him strategizing with Michael Wolfe about a potential
Speaker 2: question to Donald Trump in the debates during twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Those questions didn't end up getting asked, but in any case,
Speaker 2: interesting to see them strategizing back and forth. You see
Speaker 2: them talking about how surprised they are that Trump hasn't
Speaker 2: been brought up in the context of Jeffrey Epstein in
Speaker 2: a more significant way given their long standing ties. So
Speaker 2: what is your reaction to the content of these emails?
Speaker 7: Well, this whole Epstein class needs to go.
Speaker 10: The issue in American politics is and left or right,
Speaker 10: it's are you for working ordering Americans?
Speaker 7: Are you for this Epstein class? And this is what's
Speaker 7: all forant about those emails.
Speaker 10: It's not just rich and powerful men who may have
Speaker 10: abused and raped young girls. It's a lot of rich
Speaker 10: and powerful people who knew that the abuse was going
Speaker 10: on and did nothing about it and actually still solicited
Speaker 10: Epstein for funding and we're friends with Epstein and just
Speaker 10: swept it under the rock.
Speaker 9: And what these.
Speaker 10: Emails show is Donald Trump was aware of what was
Speaker 10: going on and that it was such a culture of
Speaker 10: abuse that people just thought, Oh, this is just the
Speaker 10: way the world works. Well, their time is up. People
Speaker 10: are sick of it. Anyone involved in this stuff needs
Speaker 10: to move aside. We need to have a moral cleansing
Speaker 10: in this country.
Speaker 5: And Congressman, just if this discharge petition goes through is
Speaker 5: I think everyone can do the math and expect it
Speaker 5: to at this point, what ways might the White House
Speaker 5: and the Administration.
Speaker 4: Have to wiggle around?
Speaker 5: What do we expect potentially to see from them, assuming
Speaker 5: that they try to continue blocking access to some of
Speaker 5: those files. What could we expect in terms of their
Speaker 5: methods of blocking release.
Speaker 10: Well, first of all, there's a full core press today
Speaker 10: to try to get one of these Republicans to drop
Speaker 10: before Adelita Grihovo get sworn in at four pm. I'm
Speaker 10: pretty confident they won't. But it's not done until four
Speaker 10: four o'clock.
Speaker 7: And then Johnson has.
Speaker 10: Dozens of procedural motions he can try to obstruct it.
Speaker 10: I mean, we could spend the whole day talking about
Speaker 10: the tools he has. The confidence I have, though, is
Speaker 10: that there are a lot of Republicans who do not
Speaker 10: want the discharge petition tool to be rendered useless. They
Speaker 10: want to use it to get a bill on banning
Speaker 10: stock trading, they want to use it to.
Speaker 7: Get boats on other reforms.
Speaker 11: So I hope the coalition will hold to say no,
Speaker 11: you've got to bring this for a vote, because what
Speaker 11: Johnson stops our petition for getting a voute, that will
Speaker 11: hurt Luna and Chip Roy and any Republican who wants
Speaker 11: to bring any bill using that mechanism.
Speaker 2: Congressman, do you have any other plans to you know,
Speaker 2: public event awareness raising to sort of focus in scrutiny
Speaker 2: on the lack of transparency on the Epstein files and
Speaker 2: on the horrific abuse of these women.
Speaker 7: We do.
Speaker 10: We have a press conference that Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 10: Green and I are planning next week, and a number
Speaker 10: of survivors from around the country are going to be
Speaker 10: flying in, some who have.
Speaker 7: Not spoken out before.
Speaker 10: You know, Mike Johnson keeps thinking, Okay, if you just
Speaker 10: shut down Congress long enough, people are going to forget.
Speaker 10: But he doesn't realize that this story has gripped the
Speaker 10: American people. They know there was horrific acts that were committed,
Speaker 10: and I think when they hear from these women again,
Speaker 10: these brave women next week. It's going to make where
Speaker 10: that we have action and an overwhelming vote in the
Speaker 10: House of Representatives.
Speaker 4: Well, please keep us updated as always.
Speaker 2: Car Yeah, yeah, thank you for joining us last minute Congress.
Speaker 3: Been great to see you appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Grank to see as always. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Chrystal.
Speaker 5: You have an interview with the likely new mayor of
Speaker 5: Seattle that we should get to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so just heads up.
Speaker 2: I recorded this interview with Katie Wilson yesterday the vote count.
Speaker 2: At that point, she was up by ninety one votes
Speaker 2: in the vote count. Another drop has come since I
Speaker 2: interviewed with her. Now she's up by a larger margin.
Speaker 2: I think it's roughly one thousand to two thousand votes.
Speaker 2: The later votes that are coming in are more in
Speaker 2: her favor, so the expectation it's probably going to recount,
Speaker 2: just because of the narrowness of the margin, But it
Speaker 2: looks very likely she is going to be the next
Speaker 2: mayor of Seattle. Progressive insurgent taking on and incumbent, so
Speaker 2: some some sort of Mum Donnie West Coast Mum Donnie vibes.
Speaker 2: I would say she's very different character from him, but
Speaker 2: also really centered affordability and housing affordability in particular in
Speaker 2: her campaign, both as a way to deliver for voters
Speaker 2: across the board and also a way to tackle a
Speaker 2: chronic homelessness issue that Seattle has continued to suffer from.
Speaker 2: So with all of that being said, let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and take a listen to my interview with Katie Wilson.
Speaker 2: So I am super excited to talk to our next
Speaker 2: guest this morning. Katie Wilson is the co founder executive
Speaker 2: director of the Transit Writers Union. She is also the
Speaker 2: progressive candidate for mayor in the city of Seattle, locked
Speaker 2: in an extraordinarily close race with the current mayor, Bruce Harrell,
Speaker 2: and she joins us now, Welcome Katie.
Speaker 9: Great to be here, Crystal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: So I've been following your race for the past couple
Speaker 2: of weeks. You know, incumbent who's more I think politically centrist.
Speaker 2: You're more the progressive, kind of insurgent outsider candidate, coming
Speaker 2: in very close race all the way along, and as
Speaker 2: of yesterday, based on the mail drops, you have now taken.
Speaker 3: A ninety one one vote lead.
Speaker 2: So first question for you, you know, just give us
Speaker 2: a little bit of the sense of the dynamics of
Speaker 2: this race, what ballots still remain, and whether your expectation
Speaker 2: is that you will be the next mayor of the
Speaker 2: city of Seattle.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 12: So the way that we do elections here in Washington
Speaker 12: State is that it's all by mail, so everyone in
Speaker 12: mails in their ballots. We also have ballot drop boxes
Speaker 12: around the city. And there's a very consistent pattern that
Speaker 12: more progressive voters, younger voters tend to vote late, and
Speaker 12: so what you'll see is that the election night results.
Speaker 12: There's actually fairly a large shift between election night and
Speaker 12: the final results toward the more progressive or left leaning candidate.
Speaker 12: So on election night, I was at forty six percent.
Speaker 12: Now I've pulled ahead by ninety one votes, as you said,
Speaker 12: and there's another about ten thousand ballots out there still
Speaker 12: to be counted, mostly from election day, mostly skewing younger.
Speaker 12: So we're really hopeful that that margin will liden. It's
Speaker 12: possible that there will be a recount because the margin
Speaker 12: will still be very small, but we're feeling really good
Speaker 12: about this race.
Speaker 9: At this point.
Speaker 2: Incredible, absolutely incredible. So tough tests just a little bit
Speaker 2: for people who have not been following this race closely
Speaker 2: as I confess, I actually wasn't until the last couple
Speaker 2: of weeks before the election. Tell people about the incumbent
Speaker 2: Mayor Bruce Harrel, your issues with his leadership, and then
Speaker 2: the platform that you were running on as a contrast.
Speaker 9: Yeah, sure thing.
Speaker 12: So I mean my background, I'm a community organizer, a
Speaker 12: coalition builder, and so for the past fourteen years, I've
Speaker 12: been leading this organization that I co founded back in
Speaker 12: twenty eleven called the Transit Writers' Union, and we basically
Speaker 12: fight on economic justice issues. So I've led campaigns to
Speaker 12: raise the minimum wage to the highest in the country
Speaker 12: in several cities around King County, fought for stronger renter
Speaker 12: protections in Seattle and other cities around King County. Fought
Speaker 12: for progressive taxation, so we have a landmark tax on
Speaker 12: wealthy corporations in Seattle called the Jumpstart Tax that I
Speaker 12: played a big role in designing and passing. And then
Speaker 12: of course public transit right as the name of the
Speaker 12: organization suggests, fighting for better public transit, and we've won
Speaker 12: a bunch of affordable and free fair programs for lower
Speaker 12: income riders for youth. So that's the kind of work
Speaker 12: that I've done over the years, it's very grassroots community organizing,
Speaker 12: coalition building, and I really have never had the ambition
Speaker 12: to run for elected office until this year. And so
Speaker 12: this early this year we had an election on funding
Speaker 12: Seattle's new social housing developer through attacks on wealthy corporations,
Speaker 12: and our current Mayor, Bruce Harral was kind of the
Speaker 12: face of the opposition campaign, and he's done a lot
Speaker 12: in office to try to undermine Social Housing, which is
Speaker 12: a kind of a new project for Seattle that a
Speaker 12: grassroots campaign put on the ballot last year. And nevertheless,
Speaker 12: this funding measure to fund the developer passed by a landslide,
Speaker 12: and so that really showed me that our current mayor,
Speaker 12: Bruce Harel is out of touch with the issues that
Speaker 12: people are facing in their daily lives. And I think
Speaker 12: the affordability crisis is really right up there at the top.
Speaker 12: And you know, when I jumped into this race, I've
Speaker 12: never heard of zoron Mondani, but it's very clear that
Speaker 12: there are some similar dynamics playing out across the country
Speaker 12: where coming out of the pandemic with really high rates
Speaker 12: of inflation, the cost of housing in high cost cities
Speaker 12: like Seattle is just really out of control. Rents just
Speaker 12: keep going up and up. Home prices are out of
Speaker 12: reach for anyone wanting to buy a home, and then
Speaker 12: everything else, from childcare to food to groceries, everything.
Speaker 9: Is just really really expensive.
Speaker 12: And people are feeling that, right, not just the lowest
Speaker 12: income households, but people up to kind of middle class
Speaker 12: people who have decent jobs are just like, can't believe
Speaker 12: how expensive everything is. So I think that's definitely a
Speaker 12: dynamic in this race where the work that I've done
Speaker 12: over the years and what I want to tackle as
Speaker 12: mayor is in this affordability crisis. And really we also
Speaker 12: have this extremely bad homelessness crisis here in Seattle. We
Speaker 12: actually have rates of unsheltered homelessness that are much higher
Speaker 12: than comparable cities around the country in the US. And
Speaker 12: I really, you know, our current mayor, rece he came
Speaker 12: into office promising to address issues of homelessness in public safety,
Speaker 12: and I think people are looking around and not really
Speaker 12: feeling that.
Speaker 9: He's succeeded at that.
Speaker 12: So that's kind of a local dynamic, But the national
Speaker 12: dynamic is affordability. And then I think also obviously Trump
Speaker 12: getting elected last fall, right, there's there's a certain brand
Speaker 12: of establishment Democratic party politics which utterly failed to stop
Speaker 12: the train wreck that was Trump's election. And and so
Speaker 12: I think that there's a feeling that people want new
Speaker 12: leadership and leadership that's that's not gonna power like that.
Speaker 12: And I think our current mayor he doesn't break that
Speaker 12: mold right like he's he's been the mayor for four years,
Speaker 12: but before that he was a council member for twelve years.
Speaker 12: So he's kind of part of that kind of centrist
Speaker 12: Democratic party establishment that people are pretty upset with right now.
Speaker 12: So I think that's also a dynamic in this race.
Speaker 12: And so for me, you know, coming coming in as
Speaker 12: an outsider, someone who's you know, worked with city worked
Speaker 12: with city hall, is familiar with the legislative process and
Speaker 12: and all that, but at the same time is coming
Speaker 12: in as kind of an insurgent candidate. This was the
Speaker 12: right moment for that to work, and it looks like
Speaker 12: we're going to pull it out by the skin of
Speaker 12: our teeth.
Speaker 3: Incredible.
Speaker 2: I'd love for you to dig a little bit more
Speaker 2: into the contrast in the approach of Bruce Harrel on
Speaker 2: homelessness versus you know, what approach did he take and
Speaker 2: what did you run on?
Speaker 12: Yeah, And I mean, honestly, this is something that I
Speaker 12: didn't have super high expectations when he came into office,
Speaker 12: kind of knowing who he was from when he was
Speaker 12: on council, But I've been deeply disappointed relative to those expectations.
Speaker 12: So basically, the current administration's approach has been to sweep
Speaker 12: people around the city from place to place without actually
Speaker 12: getting people inside. So we basically have thousands of people
Speaker 12: sleeping on sheltered on the streets, and we have two
Speaker 12: homeless people in the Seattle area for every one shelter bed,
Speaker 12: and there's been very very little focus of his administration
Speaker 12: on actually opening new emergency housing and shelter so that
Speaker 12: we can get people inside. Instead, they're spending all this
Speaker 12: time and energy just basically telling people you can't be
Speaker 12: here and forcing them to move along.
Speaker 9: But then like where is supposed to go?
Speaker 12: Right? And so that also contributes to our public safety probms, right,
Speaker 12: because a lot of people have issues with drug addiction
Speaker 12: mental illness, and those aren't being dealt with, and you
Speaker 12: can't really deal with those issues if you're sleeping outside.
Speaker 12: And so the fact that they're not actually focusing on
Speaker 12: getting people inside is just really damning in my mind,
Speaker 12: and people are noticing it, right, Like there's you know,
Speaker 12: people who just rather than small business owners in various
Speaker 12: neighborhoods around the city, who you know, they see that
Speaker 12: there's like an encampment there and they know that they're like, Okay, well,
Speaker 12: the city's going to come and sweep them. But we
Speaker 12: know that they're just going to go to the next
Speaker 12: neighborhood and then a couple of weeks from now they'll
Speaker 12: be back. And so there's this deep frustration with this approach.
Speaker 12: So I you know, what I've been saying on the
Speaker 12: campaign trail is I'm going to really focus on opening
Speaker 12: new emergency housing and shelters so that we can actually
Speaker 12: revolve encampments by getting people inside rather than just sweeping
Speaker 12: them around the city. And we you know, we know
Speaker 12: that this works, right. So there's during a pandemic, there
Speaker 12: was a program that several nonprofits put together called Just Care,
Speaker 12: which basically did that, right, resolved encampments by getting people inside.
Speaker 12: And at that time it was kind of temporary hotel
Speaker 12: that had been repurposed as shelter and was very successful.
Speaker 12: So we know that the vast majority of homeless folks
Speaker 12: sleeping outside will accept meaningful offers of shelter and support
Speaker 12: when that's given to them, and that's just not what
Speaker 12: we're doing right now. So that's really the big difference
Speaker 12: in our approach there.
Speaker 2: And what do you do with the more challenging cases,
Speaker 2: you know, people who are suffering from addiction issues or
Speaker 2: from mental illness who don't want to accept that, you know,
Speaker 2: that offer of shelter. How do you handle those cases?
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, I think we know from practice that
Speaker 12: that ends up being a fairly small percentage of the
Speaker 12: homeless population. But you know, the fact is we do
Speaker 12: have levers, right, so you know, our laws around involuntary
Speaker 12: commitment are governed at the state levels, so changing those
Speaker 12: is pretty challenging. But here's the thing, Like, most people
Speaker 12: who are addicted to drugs, you know, are also engaged
Speaker 12: in various forms of criminal behavior, right in order to
Speaker 12: obtain drugs or just in order to meet basic needs
Speaker 12: almless people, That is right, And and so we have
Speaker 12: the ability to, if necessary, arrest people for criminal behavior,
Speaker 12: and then we have successful diversion programs where because we
Speaker 12: also know that just throwing someone in jail like doesn't
Speaker 12: work right, and then they're back out of the street
Speaker 12: and have been destabilized and or more at risk of overdosing.
Speaker 12: But what we can do is put people into a
Speaker 12: diversion program where there's basically accountability and there's you know,
Speaker 12: shelter and services. But that's kind of like offered as
Speaker 12: an alternative to the booking and jail kind of route.
Speaker 12: And so we have programs that that have been very successful,
Speaker 12: and so it's a matter of scaling those up, and
Speaker 12: I think that we can if we do that well,
Speaker 12: I think that we can address those those toper cases
Speaker 12: or the vast majority of them as well.
Speaker 2: And of course, chronic homelessness is a symptom of a
Speaker 2: larger housing crisis, as you were speaking to, which affects
Speaker 2: absolutely everyone. What are some of the obviously we all
Speaker 2: know that the Zoron platform, he's you know, freezing the
Speaker 2: rent on rent stabilized departments and then he wants to
Speaker 2: surge building bonands of additional two hundred thousand housing units.
Speaker 2: What are some of the things you ran on in
Speaker 2: terms of housing affordability, because I know that is a
Speaker 2: major issue in the city of Seattle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 9: So there's a few things.
Speaker 12: So one is social housing, which I mentioned right, and
Speaker 12: this is the model which is a little bit unfamiliar
Speaker 12: in Seattle and a lot of the United States, but
Speaker 12: similar to you know, Vienna and Paris and other European
Speaker 12: cities which have had really strong social housing sectors for
Speaker 12: a long time. And so the idea here is to
Speaker 12: begin to build a non market housing sector that's mixed income,
Speaker 12: so here in Seattle would go up to one hundred
Speaker 12: and twenty percent of area median income, which is a
Speaker 12: fairly high threshold. And then by having this like publicly
Speaker 12: owned and operated permanently affordable housing, you know, once you
Speaker 12: get that to a certain scale, that also helps to
Speaker 12: moderate rents in the prime of a sector. Now we're
Speaker 12: a long way from that, but there's no better time
Speaker 12: to start than now. So part of my platform is
Speaker 12: really having the city and the mayor be a strong
Speaker 12: partner in getting the new social housing developer up and
Speaker 12: rolling and acquiring buildings and developing buildings. At the same time,
Speaker 12: I also believe that we need to make it possible
Speaker 12: for the private market to build more housing in our
Speaker 12: great neighborhoods around Seattle, and so that means working on
Speaker 12: our land use and zoning laws to make that possible,
Speaker 12: because we have had very restrictive single family zoning laws
Speaker 12: and Seattle for a long time, and that's beginning to
Speaker 12: loosen up a little bit, but we can go a
Speaker 12: lot further than the previous administration has gone. In addition,
Speaker 12: so we are not allowed in local jurisdictions in Washington
Speaker 12: State to do rent regulation directly, so we can't do
Speaker 12: rent control here locally without a change in state law. However,
Speaker 12: we do have a law called the Economic Displacement Relocation
Speaker 12: Assistance Law, which basically said, if your landlord raises your
Speaker 12: rent time percent or more and you move out because
Speaker 12: you can't afford it, your landlord is spilt to pay
Speaker 12: you three times your monthly rent and relocation assistance. So
Speaker 12: that's nice, and it also diffincentivizes large rent increases because
Speaker 12: landlords don't want to trigger that law. And so one
Speaker 12: thing that I've talked about is bumping that threshold down
Speaker 12: from ten percent to for example, five percent, and so
Speaker 12: that would help to disincentivize those larger rent increases. There's
Speaker 12: some other things that we can do on the renter
Speaker 12: protections front, like regulating or banning rental junk fees something
Speaker 12: that happens, especially if you have a corporate landlord in
Speaker 12: the United States, there's kind of the sticker price of
Speaker 12: your apartment, but then there's all these like hidden monthly
Speaker 12: fees or hidden annual fees that are kind of in
Speaker 12: the fine print, and so you end up paying a
Speaker 12: lot more than you think you were going to pay.
Speaker 12: So something that the city can do is also regulate
Speaker 12: or ban some of those kind of extraneous fees. So
Speaker 12: those are a couple of other ideas for how we
Speaker 12: can help around the margins. The city can do more
Speaker 12: to invest in affordable homeownership programs. There's some other things to do,
Speaker 12: but it's kind of a whole range of things, right,
Speaker 12: There's not one silver bullet, but we kind of need
Speaker 12: to do it all the above.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Kay.
Speaker 2: My last question for you is, you know, I'd love
Speaker 2: for you to zoom ount and talk a little bit
Speaker 2: more broadly about the political trends within Seattle. I saw
Speaker 2: a tweet about this, so forgive me you can correct
Speaker 2: if this analysis tweet analysis was incorrect. But basically they said,
Speaker 2: you know, there were a lot of progressive legislators in Seattle,
Speaker 2: and then there was after Black Lives Matter and the pandemic,
Speaker 2: there was kind of a backlash and that's when people
Speaker 2: like Bruce Harrel and other war like centrist types get
Speaker 2: elected to the city council. And now, with Harold's likely defeat,
Speaker 2: that wave of the backlash wave has now been swept
Speaker 2: out by a more progressive cohort. And so, first of all,
Speaker 2: is that sort of accurate your view of the way
Speaker 2: that Seattle politics has swung back and forth? And then
Speaker 2: how what is most important to you in order to
Speaker 2: make sure that there isn't another sort of backlash swing
Speaker 2: to the center after your mayoralty.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's a really good question. And so yeah, I
Speaker 12: think that picture that you laid out is fairly accurate.
Speaker 12: So we had a pretty darn progressive city council for
Speaker 12: about a decade, and that included council members, the former
Speaker 12: council members Shamasa Want who is you know, a socialist
Speaker 12: city council member. And now one thing to note though,
Speaker 12: is that during that time when we had a very
Speaker 12: progressive council, we had pretty centrist mayors and so that
Speaker 12: really that dynamic kind of cramped the council's style in
Speaker 12: a sense, in terms of their ability to get things
Speaker 12: not just passed, but.
Speaker 9: Really like implemented well.
Speaker 12: And then yes, after twenty twenty and Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 12: there was a there was a backlash. And so then
Speaker 12: we had actually our current mayor elected and a very
Speaker 12: for Seattle, very very centrist or right leaning compared to
Speaker 12: usual city council. So this year, with hopefully my election
Speaker 12: but then also a couple of council members and the
Speaker 12: new city attorney, things are swinging back in a progressive direction.
Speaker 12: Now we have kind of staggered elections. So this year
Speaker 12: there was only well for complicated reasons three, but normally
Speaker 12: there would be two at large council positions up for elections.
Speaker 12: So there's seven district council elections seats which will be
Speaker 12: up for election in two years. So right now, assuming
Speaker 12: that I win this race, right, we'll have me and
Speaker 12: the mayor's office, and we'll have several very progressive council members,
Speaker 12: but the bulk of we don't have a strong progressive
Speaker 12: majority on the council yet, but that could happen in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty seven. Now, in order for that to happen
Speaker 12: in twenty twenty seven, you asked about kind of what
Speaker 12: needs to.
Speaker 9: Be accomplished in the next couple of years.
Speaker 12: I really think that, you know, I have a lot
Speaker 12: of ambitious progressive policy.
Speaker 9: Dreams in my platform, but.
Speaker 12: I really think what I'm going to be judged on,
Speaker 12: what my administration is going to be judged on, first
Speaker 12: and foremost, is homelessness in public safety. And I really
Speaker 12: think that in the first couple of years, we're going
Speaker 12: to need to drill down and make progress on those
Speaker 12: really basic quality of life issues and show I think
Speaker 12: we have an opportunity here for people on the progressive
Speaker 12: left to bey show that we can actually govern. And
Speaker 12: so there's going to be I'm going to be paying
Speaker 12: a lot of attention to the work that needs to
Speaker 12: happen to basically get City Hall, the city bureaucracy moving
Speaker 12: in a good direction, actually delivering services for the people
Speaker 12: of Seattle, and hopefully pioneering a new model of kind
Speaker 12: of responsive government and communication with the people where we're
Speaker 12: really explaining what we're doing and why and if we're
Speaker 12: coming up against obstacles, here's why. And I think this
Speaker 12: is a similar challenge that I think, you know, Mom
Speaker 12: Donnie's going to face in New York City where there's
Speaker 12: a lot of really ambitious things that we want to
Speaker 12: get done, but there's also real obstacles.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 12: It's like the reason why these things haven't been done
Speaker 12: is complicated, and there's really entrenched interests that are going
Speaker 12: to fight against it. And so we're going to need
Speaker 12: to be able to tell a story of the things
Speaker 12: that we're fighting for, the progress that we're making, but
Speaker 12: also the reason why we're not. It's not moving faster, right,
Speaker 12: So that's going to be big. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 12: like I'm in this race, right there was more corporate
Speaker 12: pack spending against me than has ever been spent in
Speaker 12: a Seattle race against a candidate, and a lot of
Speaker 12: those same trists are also going to want.
Speaker 9: To undermine my administration.
Speaker 12: And so I'm going into this with I think clear
Speaker 12: riot about the challenges, the political challenges as well as
Speaker 12: the practical challenges of implementing my agenda. And I mean,
Speaker 12: it's going to be a massive challenge, but I'm really
Speaker 12: excited about it as well.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: Katie, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know
Speaker 2: you're probably like super busy right now and really in
Speaker 2: the thick of things. I won't say congratulations yet because
Speaker 2: I don't want to. I don't want to jinx the result.
Speaker 2: But I'm very excited to see what you do with
Speaker 2: the position. And I hope you'll come back and check
Speaker 2: in with us in the future.
Speaker 9: I would love to thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's our pleasure.
Speaker 5: Super interesting interview, Crystal, and we should mention programming note,
Speaker 5: we have moved the block. We have not canceled the
Speaker 5: block on mar A Lago Face that we tease at
Speaker 5: the beginning of the show. We have simply moved it
Speaker 5: to the Friday show because of the breaking Epstein news.
Speaker 5: But the benefit of that is now Ryan will be
Speaker 5: with us to weigh in, and we know that Ryan
Speaker 5: is going to have something great to say about mar
Speaker 5: A Lago Face.
Speaker 2: He will say something that none of us expect. He'll
Speaker 2: tie it into some personal experience he had as a
Speaker 2: plastic surgeon when he was twenty three or something, as
Speaker 2: a plastics who knows who knows Yngram is going to
Speaker 2: bring to the table in the mar A Lago Face conversation,
Speaker 2: But we wanted to make sure that it was inclusive.
Speaker 2: You know, it felt a little bit because men are
Speaker 2: also getting their version of the Marra a lago face.
Speaker 2: So I think it is better actually in the end
Speaker 2: that we exactly not.
Speaker 3: Naming names, Matt Gates.
Speaker 2: It is better in the end that we have a
Speaker 2: more inclusive, diverse panel of voices to discuss this phenomenon.
Speaker 4: That's right. I think that's well said, Crystal.
Speaker 5: So if you want to see, well, I don't know
Speaker 5: if we'll keep that in the second half where maybe
Speaker 5: we'll bring it out for everyone TPD. But if you
Speaker 5: don't want to miss it no matter what, then go
Speaker 5: subscribe for a premium membership over at breaking Points dot com.
Speaker 4: You get the second half of the Friday Show.
Speaker 5: You also get the show every day in your inbox,
Speaker 5: early full version of it, no ads, no nothing, It's
Speaker 5: right there.
Speaker 4: In your inbox.
Speaker 5: So go ahead and subscribe over at Breakingpoints dot com. Crystal,
Speaker 5: thanks for being here today.
Speaker 3: Fun one interesting one, never a dull moment.
Speaker 5: That's all right, all right, well, crystalin Soccer will be
Speaker 5: back with you all tomorrow.
Speaker 4: I'll see you Friday. Have a great day.