Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the showing. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: What do we have, Krystal?
Speaker 4: Indeed, we do.
Speaker 1: Lots of interesting things we're taking a look at this morning.
Speaker 1: We've got some new pulling out of the Sunshine State
Speaker 1: in the GOP primary, not good news for Ronda Santas.
Speaker 1: Also some interesting pulling out of ioas that we bring
Speaker 1: you up to date on all of that. New developments
Speaker 1: in the Threads versus Twitter war, looks like Twitter has
Speaker 1: actually been kind of immediately hurt by the advent of threads,
Speaker 1: so we'll get into that as well. We also have
Speaker 1: quite an interesting piece written by Joe Scarborough, of course,
Speaker 1: multimillionaire MSNBC host, assuring everyone that actually the economy is
Speaker 1: great and America is doing wonderful.
Speaker 4: Please stop complaining.
Speaker 1: We also have some updated numbers about the way America
Speaker 1: feels about our institutions and trusted institutions. Not good news.
Speaker 1: There some updates on this is an interesting story. So
Speaker 1: apparently attendance at theme parks, in particular at Disney World
Speaker 1: are way down. So why what exactly is going on there?
Speaker 4: We will dig into that.
Speaker 1: And we've got to update for you from our friends
Speaker 1: at the View defending the fact that Joe Biden will
Speaker 1: not even acknowledge the existence of his seventh grandchild. What
Speaker 1: does that say about the man who really portrays himself
Speaker 1: as a family man. Also, I am personally very excited
Speaker 1: to welcome into the studio this morning the president of
Speaker 1: the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Speaker 4: Of course, they are.
Speaker 1: Facing a potential huge strike, one of the largest American
Speaker 1: history of UPS workers if that goes through. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk to him about where negotiations stand right now.
Speaker 1: But we wanted to start with the very latest in
Speaker 1: terms of the GOP primary.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited for that one, in particular the EUPS interview.
Speaker 3: But let's also talk a little bit about Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 2: Now, one of the things, Crystal, that we talked here
Speaker 2: about before is that for DeSantis, he has a two
Speaker 2: prong strategy.
Speaker 3: Number One, the.
Speaker 2: Guy has got to win Iowa and he has to
Speaker 2: win New Hampshire. But also the death knell of any
Speaker 2: presidential candidate is if you can win your own home state.
Speaker 2: Ted Cruz proved his viability in the twenty sixteen race
Speaker 2: when he was able to win the state of Texas.
Speaker 2: John ka six also was able to win the state
Speaker 2: of Ohio, And when Rubio lost the Florida primary to
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, he decided to drop out because it showed
Speaker 2: that even though he represents that state, if he loses
Speaker 2: to Trump, that means.
Speaker 3: You cannot be the nominee.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, right now for Ron DeSantis, things are not
Speaker 2: looking good.
Speaker 3: So right, let's go put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is the latest poll for the twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: Florida Republican primary from the FAU University that shows GOP
Speaker 2: likely voters, and the numbers are devastating for Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 2: Trump currently stands at fifty percent, up twenty points over DeSantis,
Speaker 2: who has about thirty percent. After that, everybody drops off
Speaker 2: dramatically Ramaswami, Scott, Christy, Pence, Hutchinson, Haley pulling between one
Speaker 2: and four percent. However, the biggest problem I think for
Speaker 2: for DeSantis in his own home state is the head
Speaker 2: to head pole. Even if you remove all of the
Speaker 2: other GOP contenders, Trump actually increases his support to fifty
Speaker 2: four percent, with DeSantis only gaining about seven percent in
Speaker 2: the aggregate.
Speaker 3: Now, obviously, look.
Speaker 2: It's one poll, but fau is you know, it's pretty
Speaker 2: a high quality poll in terms of its past record
Speaker 2: in the state of Florida. And it also does show
Speaker 2: that you know, in the past shoot showed DeSantis doing
Speaker 2: well in the GUBERNATORI primary. It's not really biased against him,
Speaker 2: it just does pick up. It reminds me of the
Speaker 2: diner scene that we played here from Fox News when
Speaker 2: they visited some Florida diner and every single person is
Speaker 2: voting for Trump.
Speaker 3: Even the lady wearing a.
Speaker 2: Dissanta shirt was like, Yeah, I like Ron, but I'm
Speaker 2: voting for Trump, so I mean, listen. It's just one
Speaker 2: of those that underscores again the level of love that
Speaker 2: Trump has within the GOP primary, that you know, reality
Speaker 2: is just beginning to stare a lot of people in
Speaker 2: the face. Yes, what's six weeks or so into the
Speaker 2: Ron de Santas campaign.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, And yesterday we covered the analysis of the
Speaker 1: words that all of the different GOP candidates were leaning into.
Speaker 1: And the one that really jumped out for Ronda Santis
Speaker 1: that was different from the other candidates is Florida.
Speaker 4: Talks about Florida all the time.
Speaker 1: He talks about his record in Florida, the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, he was able to pass this slate of
Speaker 1: legislation that is on the conservative wishless, but also the
Speaker 1: fact that he's such a winner in Florida, and that
Speaker 1: he's so beloved in Florida, and that he's been such
Speaker 1: a good governor of Florida. So I think for him,
Speaker 1: since he has in particular built his case around this state,
Speaker 1: the fact that he is losing quite handily to Trump
Speaker 1: at this point in his own home state is additionally devastating,
Speaker 1: even more so than it is for your run of
Speaker 1: the mill candidate who is you know, losing their own
Speaker 1: home state. I was thinking of Elizabeth Warren too, like
Speaker 1: it really was a sign of the death knel when
Speaker 1: she wasn't even winning in her home state of Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: But I think for him it is a little bit
Speaker 1: extra because he talks about it so.
Speaker 4: So much, and the fact that you have not only in.
Speaker 1: The you know, wide open race with all the various
Speaker 1: candidates that he's losing by twenty points, but even when
Speaker 1: you say, all right, if everybody gets out and you
Speaker 1: have some consolidation behind Ron DeSantis, Trump is still beating
Speaker 1: him by roughly the same margin. So again, it's one poll.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one little indicator. But if you aren't
Speaker 1: winning in your home state when supposedly your theory of
Speaker 1: the case is I'm such a great governor and people
Speaker 1: love me so so much. That's why you should make
Speaker 1: me president of the United States.
Speaker 4: It's a tough look.
Speaker 2: One of the people who's been backing Rond de Santis
Speaker 2: Eric Ericsson, he's a conservative radio hosts. He's actually been
Speaker 2: openly saying he's in a number of group chats, email lists,
Speaker 2: all of whom we're dealing with the ongoing threads a
Speaker 2: frustration from the Ron De Santis campaign. Perception is settling
Speaker 2: in that something needs to happen, but everyone has a
Speaker 2: different opinion on what to do. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: been a lot of interest right now in Casey DeSantis,
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis's wife, Let's go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen about how she herself is now beginning
Speaker 2: to hit the campaign trail actually without Ron DeSantis. So
Speaker 2: the Florida First Lady is launching quote Mama's for DeSantis
Speaker 2: at a first solo event in Iowa. Can she help
Speaker 2: her husband close the gap in the polls with Trump?
Speaker 2: This was from the Daily Mail, who took notice of
Speaker 2: this and reported the piece out. The reason why it
Speaker 2: is important is that from all of what we know,
Speaker 2: both publicly privately also heard the exact same thing is
Speaker 2: that DeSantis really doesn't trust anybody except for his wife.
Speaker 2: She's truly is like sole true counselor in terms of
Speaker 2: a close confidant. She was one of the people who
Speaker 2: encouraged him and pushed him to run for president, saying
Speaker 2: that this is your time encouraging after he won the
Speaker 2: gubernatorial election, has been warning him off a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, campaign advisor snakes and others. He keeps very
Speaker 2: very close counsel with her, and he trusts her completely.
Speaker 2: It's very few people that he does him dispatching her
Speaker 2: on the campaign trail is being read by the Trump
Speaker 2: folks as a sign of desperation. It's like, oh, you
Speaker 2: need your wife to bail you out. I don't know,
Speaker 2: I think necessarily if that's fair or not. But I
Speaker 2: do think that her pursuing solo campaign events that is
Speaker 2: something that very few campaign spouses do in primary elections.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily in the general election, but in the primary
Speaker 2: election where we are right now. You know, I can't
Speaker 2: think of a single event that like Heidi Kruz did
Speaker 2: by herself.
Speaker 3: Iowa or Milania.
Speaker 2: You know, I think they had to drag her out,
Speaker 2: even for the joint appearances.
Speaker 1: Kelly did some back in the day for Obama.
Speaker 2: I think Michelle did some. I'm not sure if she
Speaker 2: did in the primary or not. I haven't gone back
Speaker 2: and looked at that, but at least in modern memory,
Speaker 2: it is certainly kind of a departure, I guess from
Speaker 2: the norm. And it's like I said, you can read
Speaker 2: it really whichever way you want, as a sign of
Speaker 2: desperation or as just pulling out all the stops. The
Speaker 2: problem those you're pulling out all the stops, you know,
Speaker 2: this far out away from actual primary day.
Speaker 3: I also do think that is a problem yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean they're clearly scrambling, you know, between this and
Speaker 1: between that weird LGBTQ ad that they embraced, and you know,
Speaker 1: it just it just feels like they are turning through
Speaker 1: a lot of ideas, throwing everything against the wall and
Speaker 1: seeing what sticks. I can tell you I watched a
Speaker 1: little bit of her Iowa event, her Mama's for Desanta's event,
Speaker 1: and she's very talented.
Speaker 4: Maybe she should be the one, right.
Speaker 3: Well, she's actually a former local team. You know, she's good. Actually,
Speaker 3: I agree with.
Speaker 4: Because the thing is Ron.
Speaker 1: I think it's true that he is kind of you know,
Speaker 1: he's kind of an introvert. He's kind of awkward, you know,
Speaker 1: personal person interactions, a little uncomfortable in speeches. They feel
Speaker 1: very kind of canned, you know, in his interviews, he
Speaker 1: does fine as long as he's got his talking points.
Speaker 1: She's thought a lot more natural and comfortable up on stage.
Speaker 1: So I can see why they're leaning into putting her
Speaker 1: up front, because she's certainly very capable in that regard
Speaker 1: and you know, able to carry her husband's message. But
Speaker 1: you know, people aren't voting for a first lady.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're voting for you exactly.
Speaker 2: And that you know, it's generally always the problem with
Speaker 2: trying to get the wife to save your campaign. I've
Speaker 2: also taken notice, you know, kind of the scrambling of
Speaker 2: what you're talking about in these increasingly desperate attacks against Trump,
Speaker 2: like the best attacks against trumphere he said he was
Speaker 2: going to do X and then he literally didn't do it.
Speaker 2: But now they're trying to flip things around. And DeSantis
Speaker 2: himself actually made this point in a Fox News interview
Speaker 2: where he effectively tried to blame Trump for not lashing
Speaker 2: out at Twitter over censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Speaker 2: And the reason why I think it's so convoluted is
Speaker 2: he didn't have anything to do do with that. So
Speaker 2: he's trying to almost insert himself into a situation which
Speaker 2: had no impact like actually on him or even really
Speaker 2: on any GOP primary and say he would have handled
Speaker 2: it in a tougher way. I found it a very,
Speaker 2: very convoluted and almost bizarre way of saying that he
Speaker 2: would have handled something differently.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 5: What can you do about it to straighten things out?
Speaker 5: Given the fact that the Americans are sick and tired
Speaker 5: of the corruption they see in plain sight.
Speaker 6: We will end the weaponization of government. And that's of
Speaker 6: course a new FBI director on day one. That's a
Speaker 6: difference between me and Donald Trump. He says, the jury's
Speaker 6: still out on FBI Director Ray, I think you need
Speaker 6: a new start. On day one, We're going to clean
Speaker 6: house at the Department of Justice. And you know, I
Speaker 6: look back at like the Hunter Biden censorship, which was
Speaker 6: a huge, huge deal to happen in the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 6: and yet you know, those were Donald Trump's own agencies
Speaker 6: that were colluding with big tech. I would never allow
Speaker 6: that to happen. I would fire those people immediately. And
Speaker 6: in fact, in Florida, we've signed legislation that prohibits all
Speaker 6: state and local government officials in our state from colluding
Speaker 6: with tech companies to try to censor the political speech
Speaker 6: of Americans.
Speaker 2: So again I think that on the merits, he has
Speaker 2: an important point. But the problem I think that he
Speaker 2: comes back to is he's like Trump wasn't strong enough
Speaker 2: in going after Trump's opponents, and it's like, well, hold
Speaker 2: on a second here. You know, for Trump, you're still
Speaker 2: making him the central character. And also, whenever it comes
Speaker 2: to this whole like I'm signed the bill, I actually
Speaker 2: did the work.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: I'm coming back to almost like an Elizabeth Warren type
Speaker 2: campaign of like, you know, this whole like doing the
Speaker 2: work meme that used to abound really at that time.
Speaker 2: This is something that appeals, I think to a lot
Speaker 2: of policy wonks and you know, people like me, you
Speaker 2: actually pay a deep amount of attention. But that is
Speaker 2: just not how the average voter conceives of anything that
Speaker 2: happened in that time. And if anything, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they censored that story because they're so afraid of Trump.
Speaker 2: Why is nobody so afraid of you? That's why I
Speaker 2: love Trump. That's that seriously, That's how a lot of
Speaker 2: that is going to be interpreted.
Speaker 1: Well, we gave him a hard time early on when
Speaker 1: he wouldn't even say Trump's name, and he's very skittish
Speaker 1: about attacking Trump. Now he is going after him a
Speaker 1: little bit more, staking out some you know, clear positions,
Speaker 1: mostly to his right. But I think we are seeing
Speaker 1: in the polling and especially in DeSantis's favorability ratings why
Speaker 1: that was such a perilous prospect and why he's in
Speaker 1: this impossible situation because obviously you have to go after Trump.
Speaker 1: You have to give people a reason to, you know,
Speaker 1: move off of the guy that they want to vote
Speaker 1: for and that they really like and that they've supported
Speaker 1: for years and years at this point. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, when you hit him, you get a lot
Speaker 1: of blowback. And so, you know, he used to have
Speaker 1: a much higher favorability rating that has started to add
Speaker 1: even among Republican primary voters. And I do think part
Speaker 1: of that is because it is hard to go directly
Speaker 1: up against Donald Trump in a Republican primary. You know,
Speaker 1: I've said this for a while now. There's all kinds
Speaker 1: of critiques you could level at the DeSantis campaign missteps,
Speaker 1: things they maybe could have done different, but given who
Speaker 1: their candidate is, given the landscape, I just think it's
Speaker 1: an impossible puzzle to be.
Speaker 4: Able to put together it.
Speaker 1: Just like, I don't know what I would suggest to
Speaker 1: him to do, because you attack Trump, it's bad for you.
Speaker 1: Don't attack him, then he's just going to stay where
Speaker 1: he is. The Only thing he really has going for
Speaker 1: him right now is like to pray that something weird
Speaker 1: happens and he ends up is like the last man standing,
Speaker 1: because I think that's what it.
Speaker 2: Would take, right I mean, Listen called it a Gordian
Speaker 2: knot at the beginning, and it really does vindicate a
Speaker 2: lot of that. Let's turn specifically to Iowa, where things
Speaker 2: are taking a little bit of a nasty turn.
Speaker 3: First, let's put this up there on the.
Speaker 2: Screen, only really highlighting even more of the DeSantis' problem
Speaker 2: for his need to win Iowa. The latest poll from
Speaker 2: the American Greatness, which is a MAGA friendly organization but
Speaker 2: I should note has had very high quality polls, specifically
Speaker 2: from the GOP in the past, shows Trump beating Ron
Speaker 2: DeSantis by a full twenty three points in the state
Speaker 2: and actually quote bounced back to forty four that he
Speaker 2: had in the May survey, while DeSantis actually lost five
Speaker 2: points from the original May survey. Interestingly enough, Senator Tim
Speaker 2: Scott is the only person with another marginal increase now
Speaker 2: stands at full seven percent. Actually, so the full ranking
Speaker 2: is as such, Trump at forty four, DeSantis twenty one,
Speaker 2: then Haley, Ramaswami, Hudgson, Scott, Pence and others all basically
Speaker 2: taking the rest, with undecided also leading the pack.
Speaker 3: At fourteen percent.
Speaker 2: But again, you know, forty four percent very near and
Speaker 2: outright majority for Trump in the state of Iowa and
Speaker 2: DeSantis needing to not only just make up a few points,
Speaker 2: but literally double and still not get to the place
Speaker 2: where Trump is.
Speaker 3: That is an issue.
Speaker 2: I also think we need to hammer home, Crystal, what
Speaker 2: you were talking about. The DeSantis camp has really settled
Speaker 2: on trying to attack Trump as some sort of cultural leftist.
Speaker 2: And this actually really came to forward with some new
Speaker 2: mailers that people are seeing in IO. Let's go and
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen as you can
Speaker 2: see there in front of you.
Speaker 3: One of these mailers for those who are just listening, says,
Speaker 3: quote Donald Trump stood.
Speaker 2: Up for marriage equality and trans rights, and the other
Speaker 2: one says thank you President Trump. Trump celebrated gay marriage
Speaker 2: victory mar Lago party with log Cabin Republicans. The one
Speaker 2: that is on the left there about marriage equality and
Speaker 2: trans rights shows like one of those black power fists
Speaker 2: covered in the gay pride flag, and also says contact
Speaker 2: President Trump at forty five office dot com. Tell them
Speaker 2: to keep fighting for LGBTQ rights. It's paid for by
Speaker 2: quote Advancing Our Values, which is a super pack. So
Speaker 2: again this is one of those like shadowy organizations, but
Speaker 2: it clearly is picking up this attack after the DeSantis
Speaker 2: campaign kind of fired out against the former president and
Speaker 2: is trying to portray Trump again in some sort of
Speaker 2: some sort of cultural leftist I.
Speaker 3: Am very curious.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know that you and Emily talked a
Speaker 2: lot about that ad.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's complicated because on the one hand, like, look, many
Speaker 2: of the GOP base is very fed up with like
Speaker 2: gender ideology and specifically gender ideology towards children.
Speaker 3: That said, there are several.
Speaker 2: Polls that show that even older boomer Republicans support gay marriage,
Speaker 2: So I don't really know why gay marriage is included
Speaker 2: in this mailer. Also, though, let's be fair, Iowa is
Speaker 2: a very conservative state. They've got a lot of Catholics,
Speaker 2: they got a lot of Evangelicals. If you were to
Speaker 2: have a population that does still hold a position against
Speaker 2: gay marriage, it probably would be some of them. Ted
Speaker 2: Cruz won the state of Iowa specifically by marshaling all
Speaker 2: of these evangelical voters and his cruise camps and all.
Speaker 3: That other stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's a viable political strategy, but it does read
Speaker 2: as a bit of a sign of desperation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 1: I mean, unlessen we don't know for sure this came
Speaker 1: from the discassion can't, but it certainly is like echoing
Speaker 1: the messaging that they have been telegraphing through a variety
Speaker 1: of their social media posts, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: But you know the problem.
Speaker 1: The problem is that in that poll we just showed
Speaker 1: to Iowa voters, among Iowa voters who consider themselves very conservative,
Speaker 1: Trump is actually beating DeSantis by even more. He's winning
Speaker 1: an outright majority fifty four to twenty one. And we
Speaker 1: saw a polling previously that showed like people, if you
Speaker 1: ask them, okay, who's further to the right, who's more conservative,
Speaker 1: We'll say Ron DeSantis. And then it's like, okay, and
Speaker 1: you're very conservative, so who are you voting for?
Speaker 4: And there's like Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that the Republican base is really
Speaker 1: going to buy that Donald Trump is a cultural leftist.
Speaker 1: I just don't see that happening. And that's the thing
Speaker 1: is your attacks have to have some grain of truth,
Speaker 1: or they have to feed viscerally like okay, there's some
Speaker 1: there there.
Speaker 4: Otherwise it just falls flat.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is probably a small scale effort,
Speaker 1: this little kind of tricky mailer that purports to be, oh,
Speaker 1: good job, Donald Trump, that you were in favor of
Speaker 1: gay marriage or whatever. And obviously it's sent a Republican
Speaker 1: base that they're thinking is going to read that and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I don't like that. But you know,
Speaker 1: in a certain sense, it also undercuts DeSantis's electability argument.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing in this Iowa poll is and
Speaker 1: when you ask voters who do you think is more
Speaker 1: likely to beat Biden? Trump comes out on top there.
Speaker 1: Trump comes up out on top. Even among voters who
Speaker 1: have a favorable impression of Ron DeSantis. Trump comes down
Speaker 1: on top among voters who think who like both Trump
Speaker 1: and DeSantis. Those voters are still picking Trump. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't think that this attack has a lot
Speaker 1: of legs because you know, people have lived through years
Speaker 1: of liberal press freak ount over Donald Trump and him
Speaker 1: being very effective at owning the Libs and generating outrage
Speaker 1: and all the right people hating him, and I just
Speaker 1: don't think that they're going to really buy this direction.
Speaker 2: It also reminds me of the New York Values that
Speaker 2: famous moment in the twenty sixteen campaign, which look, I mean,
Speaker 2: at the time it was a novel, right, You're like, hey,
Speaker 2: this guy literally supported gay marriage and abortion. Who does
Speaker 2: he think he is running in a primary? And Cruz
Speaker 2: tried this attack against Trump to try and paint him
Speaker 2: as not a real conservative, real Republican in the race,
Speaker 2: and guess what, people didn't care. They didn't care at all.
Speaker 2: They actually increased their support for him, showing that in
Speaker 2: many cases, a lot of these voters aren't nearly as
Speaker 2: ideological as they purport to be on paper, which is
Speaker 2: something I wish I could continue to underscore to people
Speaker 2: that people don't vote in terms of policy checklists and
Speaker 2: in terms of making sure that they're all fully aligned
Speaker 2: on things, they really vote in terms of how they feel. Trump, though,
Speaker 2: is internalizing the problem in Iowa, even though he does
Speaker 2: remain on top in the fact that the Iowa political
Speaker 2: architecture is not necessarily nearly as behind him as they
Speaker 2: once were. This up there on the screen, Governor Kim
Speaker 2: Reynolds of Iowa has been floating some basically like alliance
Speaker 2: with Ron DeSantis, and DeSantis continues to name check her.
Speaker 2: He says, quote in a truth I love, Iowa protected
Speaker 2: and expanded ethanol, got twenty eight billion dollars from China
Speaker 2: for our farmers, ended the death tax on farms, made
Speaker 2: the best trade deals in history, introduced the world to
Speaker 2: our farmers, and kept Iowa's first in the nation status.
Speaker 2: I opened up the governor position for Kim Reynolds. When
Speaker 2: she fell behind, I endorsed her. I did big rallies,
Speaker 2: and she won. Now she wants to remain quote neutral.
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 2: I don't invite her two events. Dysanctus is down forty
Speaker 2: five points now, as this pundit is noting, he is
Speaker 2: now openly attacking the popular governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: If anybody could get away with it and still be popular,
Speaker 2: it's his name is Trump. And this also shows you
Speaker 2: that the real bind I think that Kim Reynolds and
Speaker 2: many of these Iowa officials are people like Senator Joni Ernst.
Speaker 3: Trump didn't show up to her, but.
Speaker 2: He doesn't ever seem to pay for any of these things.
Speaker 2: He skips the des moines what affair or whatever that
Speaker 2: DeSantis makes a show of going to.
Speaker 3: But then the poll comes out show him and double digits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these ming ground literally, yeah, these Iowa politicians and
Speaker 2: all these others, you know, Terry Brandstad and all these
Speaker 2: people who used to work for him. They still have
Speaker 2: yet remained, you know, kind of distant from Trump in
Speaker 2: terms of their support. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: and you know, many of them are trying to kind
Speaker 2: of push DeSantis behind the scenes. But as you can
Speaker 2: see too, if he gets even an inkling if you
Speaker 2: remaining neutral, he will full blown just attack you. And
Speaker 2: that's a problem for you. Yeah, never comes to GOP prime.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing is Kim Renolds hasn't even
Speaker 1: really picked anew even though I mean, I guess she's
Speaker 1: been shown up like she was at that Mama's for
Speaker 1: DeSantis event.
Speaker 3: She would adorse.
Speaker 1: DeSantis if she could, if she if she felt like
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a sort of death wish, political dust wish.
Speaker 1: She clearly favors DeSantis, but wants to stay neutral because she,
Speaker 1: you know, thinks that that's the smartest decision for her politically.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the normal rules of politics just don't apply
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump, and they never have.
Speaker 4: And you know, anyone.
Speaker 1: Who thought like I'm going to rack up endorsements from
Speaker 1: this popular governor that one, or Kim Reynolds is going
Speaker 1: to appear at my like Women's Women for DeSantis event
Speaker 1: or whatever, and that's going to be the key or
Speaker 1: who thought, like DeSantis, I'm going to go through a
Speaker 1: checklist of conservative policy priorities and pass them through the legislature.
Speaker 1: None of the stuff is going to be is going
Speaker 1: to work. That's just the bottom line. And you know
Speaker 1: we've seen this in the past too. Even Look, he's
Speaker 1: attacking DeSantis, who's popular in Florida with Republicans, and he's
Speaker 1: going up in the polls. He you know, went aggressively
Speaker 1: against Brian Kemp, who still was able to win reelection.
Speaker 1: But I guarantee you who's probably up in Georgia as well, Iowa.
Speaker 4: The same thing.
Speaker 1: Do I think it's going to hurt him even a
Speaker 1: tiny bit to go after a governor who Republicans like. No,
Speaker 1: because they may like her, they probably like Trump even better.
Speaker 2: You know, Brian Camp is actually a great example because
Speaker 2: Brian Camp, despite being viciously attacked by Trump, you haven't
Speaker 2: never actually responded, and he never made it about Trump.
Speaker 2: He was just like, I'm a conservative, I've been standing
Speaker 2: up for you guys. He never answered any of the
Speaker 2: critiques and he never put Trump's name in his mouth.
Speaker 2: By doing that, it was smart because he basically gave
Speaker 2: people a choice. Says, look, I'm not against the guy.
Speaker 2: We know we have this difference on all of this,
Speaker 2: but I'm not running as some sort of anti Trump
Speaker 2: Republican like Chris Christy. And there's a reason, by the way,
Speaker 2: why Chris Christy has the lowest approval rating of any
Speaker 2: Republican primary, any Republican primary aspirant, and.
Speaker 3: It's because he directly takes Trump on.
Speaker 2: The more that you go against him, you know, you
Speaker 2: can try and have some distance between you. But if
Speaker 2: you're saying his name and trying to draw this contrast,
Speaker 2: people read this as an attack. I'll just end with this.
Speaker 2: DeSantis put out a tweet trying to capitalize on the
Speaker 2: divide with Kim Reynolds. He says, quote, Kim Reynolds is
Speaker 2: a strong leader who knows how to ignore the chirping
Speaker 2: and get it done. She earned a landslide reelection because
Speaker 2: she delivered big results and is poised to deliver even
Speaker 2: more for Iowans in the special session. So he continues
Speaker 2: to court her. He basically doesn't open his mouth without saying, look,
Speaker 2: Governor Kim Riddles in Iowa, which is the smart play,
Speaker 2: and he needs to continue to go all in on
Speaker 2: Iowa if he wants to have any chance of then
Speaker 2: winning New Hampshire and having a chance in Super Tuesday.
Speaker 1: People just really overestimate how much normal voters like really
Speaker 1: love these governors.
Speaker 4: Okay, they voted for her. Yeah, they don't like.
Speaker 1: Democrats and she was the Republican so they voted for her.
Speaker 1: But are the Oh my god, Kim Reynolds, She's amazing.
Speaker 1: I would do anything for Kim Reynolds. Whatever she says goes,
Speaker 1: I highly doubt it.
Speaker 4: I highly doubt it.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk a little bit about threads. I
Speaker 2: want to give everybody an important update. Let's put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. Mark Zuckerberg revealing yesterday Instagram's
Speaker 2: threads has now surpassed one hundred million users, blowing out
Speaker 2: expectations far more than anybody thought whenever they launched. The
Speaker 2: reason why this is important, Crystal, is what we told
Speaker 2: everybody yesterday, which is that at the last November, whenever
Speaker 2: Twitter was forced to actually tell everyone how many users
Speaker 2: they have, they listed some two hundred and sixty million
Speaker 2: monetizable daily active users that was actually from Elon Musk
Speaker 2: at the time. However, it is important to even question
Speaker 2: that two hundred and sixty million figure because as Elon
Speaker 2: famously tried to get his way out of that actual deal,
Speaker 2: he kept saying that as much as five to twenty
Speaker 2: percent of those people may be bought, so that actual
Speaker 2: number may be lower. Regardless, getting to one hundred million
Speaker 2: after just a few days in terms of your users
Speaker 2: and sign ups is a blowout victory, considering that Threads
Speaker 2: has almost none of the same functionality outside of the
Speaker 2: mobile app that Twitter has. You can't use it on desktop.
Speaker 2: It is still like your following page. Everything is controlled
Speaker 2: by the algorithm. It doesn't even have like proper dms.
Speaker 2: And yet apparently the carryover and the ease of sign
Speaker 2: up from Instagram bringing your followers on has been a
Speaker 2: major victory. Now, look, at the same time, we've seen
Speaker 2: this thing before. I was one of those people who
Speaker 2: thought Clubhouse might work. Turned out to be a total
Speaker 2: flash in the pan. So I've seen this type of
Speaker 2: hype before. But you know, Threads has now reached one
Speaker 2: hundred million faster than chat GPT. Consider that in terms
Speaker 2: of the level of cultural impact the chat GPT was
Speaker 2: having at the time. I've increasingly been trying to use threads,
Speaker 2: like check it out, see how people are using it.
Speaker 3: I'm really interested.
Speaker 2: So first and foremost, in terms of I've talked about before,
Speaker 2: I think that the photo functionality on threads is far
Speaker 2: superior in terms of the cropping. I actually tried tweeting
Speaker 2: out a photo yesterday was fantastic. The load time on
Speaker 2: videos and other things, carrying over again from Instagram's core functionality,
Speaker 2: seems really good. The things that it still needs properly
Speaker 2: to fix, the retweet.
Speaker 3: Function or the rep thread function or whatever.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have the ability to quote tweet, It doesn't
Speaker 2: yet seem to have the same political discourse and all
Speaker 2: of that. But I am seeing like little niche things
Speaker 2: begin to pop up, health and fitness people in particular,
Speaker 2: who I've seem to get a lot of functionality.
Speaker 3: I could see that out of threads.
Speaker 4: Right now, I could definitely see that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the play it seems like from Zuckerberg is
Speaker 1: we're going to make a Twitter competitor, but we're going
Speaker 1: to try to keep the vibe of Instagram, which, if
Speaker 1: you guys aren't on Instagram, it's a much nicer, friendlier culture.
Speaker 1: Then Twitter is like nasty and snarky, and you can
Speaker 1: famously post like the most anodyne thing and people will
Speaker 1: still find some way to be mean to you. That's
Speaker 1: just like the way Twitter is for whatever reason. And
Speaker 1: so yesterday we talked about how the headed of Instagram
Speaker 1: was basically saying like, look, we don't really want news
Speaker 1: and politics here. And since the feeds are all algorithmically driven,
Speaker 1: so they're putting in front of you what they want
Speaker 1: to serve, they have a lot of control over what
Speaker 1: takes off and what gets suppressed. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: it's way more opaque than you know, the type of
Speaker 1: control that if you have the Twitter feeds set up
Speaker 1: where it's just you know, fire hose chronologically of the
Speaker 1: people that you're following over on threads, they have a
Speaker 1: lot more control and you have a lot less visibility
Speaker 1: into how they are making the decisions of what you're
Speaker 1: going to see and what you're not going to see.
Speaker 1: So it seems like the direction they're going in is
Speaker 1: they don't really want it to be the place for
Speaker 1: news and politics because news and politics is divisive, it's controversial,
Speaker 1: it's a pain in the ass for advertisers, so they'd
Speaker 1: rather not deal with it, and if they want to
Speaker 1: keep the happy, friendly vibe of Instagram, which is genuinely nice,
Speaker 1: like Kyle's not on Instagram and every time I show
Speaker 1: them a post and like all the comments underneath.
Speaker 4: Are like wait a go, You're so great. It's like,
Speaker 4: what is this place? This is crazy?
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think in order to try to
Speaker 1: keep that vibe, they're just basically like, we're not going
Speaker 1: to do politics, and I think that that really kind
Speaker 1: of sucks in terms of whether it's going to be
Speaker 1: a success or not. Who knows, but just to give
Speaker 1: you a sense, one hundred million users that's how many
Speaker 1: US TikTok users there are. I mean, this is these
Speaker 1: are giant numbers. This is like already puts it in
Speaker 1: league with some major social media competitors and we're not
Speaker 1: even a week in. So I do think the fact
Speaker 1: that you had so many people who could port over
Speaker 1: so easily from Instagram was you cannot understate what a
Speaker 1: huge advantage that was because you instantly come in and
Speaker 1: have people to talk to, you already have engagement with
Speaker 1: your posts, whereas when you're starting from scratch over on
Speaker 1: Mastadon or Blue Sky or whatever, and you're in there
Speaker 1: and you feel like you're talking to yourself and no
Speaker 1: one even knows you exist. It takes a while to
Speaker 1: really get over that hump, especially if you've built up
Speaker 1: a following somewhere else.
Speaker 4: It's hard to just give that up and go to
Speaker 4: a different platform.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And already we're beginning to see this cut into
Speaker 2: Twitter's margins. Go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Twitter traffic is down some five percent on the launch
Speaker 2: of Threads. This is from cloud Flare data by the CEO,
Speaker 2: Matthew Prince, and it is also backed up by an
Speaker 2: independent analysis at CNBC looked at guys, please put the
Speaker 2: next one up there on the screen. CNB Cudy describes
Speaker 2: it this way, quote, Twitter traffic is tanking as metas
Speaker 2: Threads hits one hundred million users.
Speaker 3: They not only showed the number.
Speaker 2: Of the level of drop in the overall traffic, but
Speaker 2: they say that Twitter traffic was down five percent for
Speaker 2: the first two full days that Threads was available, and
Speaker 2: that web traffic is down a full eleven percent compared
Speaker 2: with the same days in twenty twenty two. Now let's
Speaker 2: also be honest, like this is a small sample size.
Speaker 2: We only have a couple of days here. The Twitter
Speaker 2: team is actually firing back the new CEO, Linda Yakarino.
Speaker 2: I think that's the right way to say, says quote,
Speaker 2: don't want to leave you hanging by a thread. But Twitter,
Speaker 2: you outdid yourselves last week. We had our largest usage
Speaker 2: day since February. There is only one Twitter. You know it,
Speaker 2: and I know it. Elon replying. Cumulative user seconds per
Speaker 2: day of phone screen time, as reported by iOS and
Speaker 2: Android is the hardest to game. I think we may
Speaker 2: hit an all time record this week.
Speaker 3: So time on app. Look, first of all, I just
Speaker 3: want to say this.
Speaker 2: I think all these metrics are fake in terms of
Speaker 2: like user seconds, cumulative screen.
Speaker 3: Time, all of that.
Speaker 2: The probably one that matters the most is time on app.
Speaker 2: That's what Zuckerberg and all of them always focused on
Speaker 2: whenever it came down to Instagram versus TikTok. So you know,
Speaker 2: I'm calling on everyone to release those figures.
Speaker 3: I doubt that they ever.
Speaker 4: Actually get Twitter files going on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get the Twitter files and the thread files
Speaker 2: and all of that stuff happening here. But overall, I
Speaker 2: think what we can say is is Threads the Twitter killer.
Speaker 2: Way too soon to tell, very likely, though I don't
Speaker 2: think that it will be, because it is clear that
Speaker 2: their strategy is we don't want all the divisive stuff.
Speaker 2: We want all the monetizable stuff. They will port over
Speaker 2: health and fitness, sports, all of these other you know, influencers,
Speaker 2: people Lebron that they have great relationships with over from
Speaker 2: their Instagram Partnerships team, and they'll be like, all right,
Speaker 2: Elon and Linda, you guys can take all this.
Speaker 3: Sudden crap, deal with censorship problems.
Speaker 2: We don't want anything to do with it. We're gonna
Speaker 2: sit here and laugh all the way to the bank.
Speaker 2: Not a bad strategy. However, as a user, it's not
Speaker 2: great because at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 2: the Internet selects for monopolies.
Speaker 3: That's why it is.
Speaker 2: You know, it's easier to use whenever one place where
Speaker 2: everything is. So now what we're gonna have two apps, Like,
Speaker 2: when you want to check in on culture, let's go
Speaker 2: to Threads. When you want to check in on politics,
Speaker 2: let's go to Twitter. That's a pain in the ass
Speaker 2: from your in my perspective, but I've also come to
Speaker 2: accept like maybe that's a good thing. I actually, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe not one platform does deserve to have everything. But
Speaker 2: the really unfortunate part is it wasn't a real startup
Speaker 2: that was able to come in and gain one hundred
Speaker 2: million users. It was an existing, you know, one one
Speaker 2: trillion dollar social media company. But it does show you
Speaker 2: quite a bit of savvness that Mark Zuckerberg has. He's
Speaker 2: basically doing to Twitter what he did to Snapchat with
Speaker 2: the invention of Instagram Stories. It took Snapchat years to
Speaker 2: be able to catch back up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is true. I mean, this is something. Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: at this point has a horrific record in terms of
Speaker 1: innovating new products, like the whole metaverse thing sporal disaster,
Speaker 1: like one hundred percent fluff disaster. That sort of vision
Speaker 1: isn't there.
Speaker 4: But he does have a.
Speaker 1: Pretty good track record of seeing what is working in
Speaker 1: the marketplace, replicating it, and you know, being able to
Speaker 1: grab market share and have an impact in that way.
Speaker 1: So he does seem to know how to do that piece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see a world where news and politics basically
Speaker 1: stays over on Twitter because Zuckerberg suppresses it on threads
Speaker 1: and just doesn't really become the thing over on Threads,
Speaker 1: and you have.
Speaker 4: This sort of like bifurcation.
Speaker 1: You may also have some like ideological bifurcation where more
Speaker 1: right wing people stay on Twitter, where more liberal or
Speaker 1: left wing people migrate to threads or other platforms. So
Speaker 1: I could see that happening as well. But you know,
Speaker 1: for Elon, if becomes more we use it for Douce
Speaker 1: and politics especially, I use it for Douce, but I
Speaker 1: don't really look at any of the cultural stuff, but
Speaker 1: that there is a lot of that on Twitter as well.
Speaker 1: So if Zuckerberg is eating into that piece, which is
Speaker 1: the most easily monetizable, that's a real problem for him
Speaker 1: from a business perspective. And you know, I think that
Speaker 1: one of the things that Elon wants to do, which
Speaker 1: may create a better platform in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: some of the key values that he claims to spouse,
Speaker 1: like form speech, is to move it from dependency on
Speaker 1: advertising revenue to dependency on subscription revenue. But we also
Speaker 1: have to say, thus far, he's been wildly unsuccessful at that,
Speaker 1: partly because of his own foolish missteps and basically like
Speaker 1: antagonizing some of the core part of the creator base
Speaker 1: on Twitter and make it so that people out of
Speaker 1: spiite do not want to pay your eight dollars no
Speaker 1: matter what you do to try to coerce them into
Speaker 1: doing it. In fact, at this point, you know things
Speaker 1: like the rate limit where you can't view more tweets
Speaker 1: than six hundred a day or whatever unless you pay
Speaker 1: for the check marketc. It doesn't make people want to
Speaker 1: become a blue check mark. It makes them even more like,
Speaker 1: screw you. I'm going to see what's going on over
Speaker 1: on Threats. So I do think that this kind of
Speaker 1: is a perfect storm because at the same time you
Speaker 1: have this new product which seems relatively well designed and
Speaker 1: easy to port over onto, and all of those things
Speaker 1: comes into existence is at the very time when Elon
Speaker 1: is making some of his worst and most foolish decisions
Speaker 1: and doing everything he can to make the Twitter user
Speaker 1: experience miserable and push people off of.
Speaker 4: His own platform.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think it is a big problem. Let's
Speaker 2: turn now to what Elon is trying to do in response.
Speaker 2: Elon trying to make a play into both video and
Speaker 2: to try and create some sort of rev share in
Speaker 2: the same way that YouTube has with their YouTube Ad
Speaker 2: Partners program, Let's go ahead and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. Elon effectively begging again, yes, mister Beast
Speaker 2: to try and bring some of his videos over onto Twitter.
Speaker 2: Mister Beast tweeted out quote neuvid which shows some new
Speaker 2: views that he's been getting on over on the platform.
Speaker 2: Elon says, post to this platform too, earnings perview should
Speaker 2: be competitive with YouTube. If not, we will adjust, which
Speaker 2: means I mean he's trying to increase the level of
Speaker 2: video content that we're going to see on Twitter. But
Speaker 2: this is a very difficult game, and I don't think
Speaker 2: yet that they fully.
Speaker 3: Have internalized what they're looking for.
Speaker 2: Because YouTube is the giant that it is not just
Speaker 2: because of rev share, not just because of the ability
Speaker 2: to post videos, because of the algorithm. The recommendation algorithm
Speaker 2: is the golden key to YouTube. It is what increases
Speaker 2: the time on the platform. It's what gets people interested.
Speaker 2: People who are watching this video are not the same
Speaker 2: video who are not the same people getting recommended the
Speaker 2: previous video. You and I just did about Ron DeSantis
Speaker 2: that in many ways we owe entire careers and success
Speaker 2: the recommendation algorithms, and that is because of the extraordinary
Speaker 2: ability to match videos that you may also be interested in.
Speaker 2: It's not just about the views that you are earning
Speaker 2: on the platform. It is really about the ability to
Speaker 2: recommend and keep content that people want to continue and
Speaker 2: stay watching. This has always been a core problem for
Speaker 2: video on Twitter. Video on Twitter has also been always
Speaker 2: been best when very very short bites, whereas the entire
Speaker 2: Mister Best strategy Crystal is built around retention beasts. Videos
Speaker 2: are literally like genetically engineered in a lab to keep
Speaker 2: you watching as long as humanly possible, juice the retention
Speaker 2: rate to increase his overall recommendation. Obviously, he uses Twitter,
Speaker 2: but he's not the main thing for what he's known for.
Speaker 2: He's an international celebrity for a reason, specifically also built
Speaker 2: on the YouTube algorithm. So this does, I think show
Speaker 2: a little bit of a misunderstanding of what you need
Speaker 2: to build for Twitter to actually be.
Speaker 3: A viable video platform.
Speaker 2: But I also think that at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: what makes Twitter good in terms of the doom scrolling
Speaker 2: and all of that, Yeah, that kind of cuts against
Speaker 2: your ability to sit and watch a full video. And
Speaker 2: we haven't seen any creator tools, platforms or changes to
Speaker 2: the platform that would incentivize people like you and I
Speaker 2: are others to actually want to post and create video
Speaker 2: specifically for the Twitter platform.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is very true.
Speaker 1: Also, I was chuckling because the second Mister Beast video
Speaker 1: that he had listed there Train versus Giant Pit. My
Speaker 1: son was literally just watching yesterday. I spoiler alert the
Speaker 1: Giant Pin wins in the end. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: people aren't on Twitter to lot watch long term video.
Speaker 1: That's just not what the platform was ever built for.
Speaker 1: It's not what people are geared to go over there
Speaker 1: and do, or prime to go over there and do.
Speaker 1: They're prime to scroll through, you know, these short snippets.
Speaker 1: I even hate the advent of like the longer tweets
Speaker 1: like this is not like Twitter, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm alone in that. I see a lot of backlash
Speaker 1: against the like long say form tweets. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not what the platform is built for. It's there's nothing
Speaker 1: built in to make you aware that there is a
Speaker 1: Mister Beast video on the platform, if that was ever
Speaker 1: something to happen, or that Tucker Carlson just released his
Speaker 1: latest show, so you know, to me, it seems like
Speaker 1: a bit of a miss.
Speaker 2: We have a little bit of those Tucker data. Let's
Speaker 2: put this up there please on the screen. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of discussion around this. It actually shows you
Speaker 2: some of the video of view stats for the video
Speaker 2: that was played for more than two seconds. This is
Speaker 2: another reason why I actually warned a lot of people
Speaker 2: not to overemphasize the actual overall view count, because as
Speaker 2: you and I know, there is a massive difference between
Speaker 2: scrolling passive video and watching two seconds of it and
Speaker 2: watching let's say four and a half minutes or something.
Speaker 2: This shows you some of the decreasing numbers on the
Speaker 2: overall view count. And I do think that it gets
Speaker 2: back to the fundamental mismatch of the Twitter platform and
Speaker 2: of what Tucker specifically is trying to do.
Speaker 3: Tucker's basically effectively doing what.
Speaker 2: All of us are doing, which are these longer commentaries
Speaker 2: with actual video elements in them, spliced in a monologue
Speaker 2: which you need to sit and consume and take some time.
Speaker 2: That is just not built for the Twitter platform. It's
Speaker 2: something that's built for YouTube. Now, contractually, he's kind of boxed,
Speaker 2: I think in a way where that's really the only
Speaker 2: venue where you can reliably post, so you know, I
Speaker 2: guess that's fair, and it's not like it has to
Speaker 2: worry about money, but it is a problem, I think
Speaker 2: for trying to cast the platform as the next big thing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I talked a little bit about this with the Glenn
Speaker 2: Greenwald and we both kind of shared our unvarnished thoughts,
Speaker 2: and I was like, listen, you know, Glenn, you are
Speaker 2: on Rumble and we're on YouTube and you know, on
Speaker 2: podcasts and all that for a reason, Like these platforms
Speaker 2: are designed for this, we go to them.
Speaker 3: To watch stuff.
Speaker 2: That's just not what we do whenever we go over
Speaker 2: to Twitter. So I've always said you can't change people's behavior.
Speaker 3: You have to meet them where they are.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm not going to go on YouTube
Speaker 2: and trying to get you to go read my tweets.
Speaker 3: Why would we ever do that.
Speaker 2: That's just not really what is designed for, right And
Speaker 2: I don't think it's the right way, you know. I
Speaker 2: see the Daily Wire and all these other people being like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're exclusively going to be posting on Twitter, and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, call me in six months and tell me
Speaker 2: whether you're actually making your real money or converting anything
Speaker 2: off that, Because I just don't think that that's going
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even those view numbers for Tucker, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's pretty fake because two seconds of watching a video
Speaker 1: does not really count as a video view and so yeah,
Speaker 1: how long do people sit and engage with that content?
Speaker 1: And I do think his first show and everyone was like, oh,
Speaker 1: what is this and what's he going to say and
Speaker 1: what's going on with flax or whatever. I do think
Speaker 1: millions and millions of people sat and actually consumed that
Speaker 1: entire video. But it does not surprise me whatsoever that
Speaker 1: there's been this dramatic falloff. I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a really foolish move ultimately for him to
Speaker 1: throw his lot in with Twitter, not only for the
Speaker 1: reasons that we've been describing, the fact that when people
Speaker 1: go onto that platform, they are not in the mindset
Speaker 1: of let me sit and engage with content for minutes,
Speaker 1: minutes and minutes. They're in the mindset of, let me
Speaker 1: scroll through and get these little quick bites and you know,
Speaker 1: snarky replies or whatever. But because Tucker's audience is like
Speaker 1: a bunch of boomers that aren't on Twitter, that don't
Speaker 1: know how to use Twitter, that even he was sending
Speaker 1: out emails to try to like walk them through the
Speaker 1: process of even finding him on this app. So, you know, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile, Fox News is actually recovering from the very
Speaker 1: significant decline in ratings that they saw right after he left.
Speaker 1: They seemed to be recovering and writing the ship. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're in the same managed decline state as all the
Speaker 1: other cable news networks. But in the end it seems
Speaker 1: that the analysis is at least in terms of him
Speaker 1: going to Twitter, Fox News has actually come out the
Speaker 1: better side of this, and he has seriously hobbled his
Speaker 1: own relevance and career by his choice of platform.
Speaker 2: I think he needs to get out of that whatever
Speaker 2: that deal is possible, and get on YouTube.
Speaker 3: He went on a Russell Brand show, you very well
Speaker 3: he was on YouTube.
Speaker 2: It's like that that's where you belong, you know, or
Speaker 2: not even you rumble whatever, you know, any of these places.
Speaker 2: You got to get to a platform podcast the ability
Speaker 2: where people actually consume longer form content, because that's where
Speaker 2: the strength is. I just saw the news maybe we'll
Speaker 2: talk about it in our next show that he's going
Speaker 2: to be moderating a candidate forum.
Speaker 3: You know, with Blaze Media. Right, so maybe that Harold
Speaker 3: is like a little.
Speaker 2: Bit of a change, but we'll we'll continue to monitor
Speaker 2: and we'll see.
Speaker 3: But why don't we talk about Joe Scarborough now?
Speaker 1: Yes, so let's switch to another cable news topic.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: This is I just this is extraordinary. I couldn't even
Speaker 1: believe when I was reading this piece. So Joe Scarborough,
Speaker 1: of course, multimillion dollar cable news host, very wealthy guy,
Speaker 1: has been in the game for a long time, decided
Speaker 1: to pend this essay chiding anyone who would have anything
Speaker 1: critical to say about the United States of America. Let's
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. His headline here is
Speaker 1: America is doing just fine. The United States deserves a
Speaker 1: robust defense. And let me read you a little bit
Speaker 1: of this because I really enjoyed this. Uncle Sam deserves
Speaker 1: a modern day Atticus Finch to argue his case before
Speaker 1: the American people.
Speaker 4: But he doesn't have one.
Speaker 1: The usual suspects who once regularly deliver garrulous Eric Stratton
Speaker 1: styled defenses of all things American are now scattered to
Speaker 1: the wins by the tumult of trump Ism. Neither the
Speaker 1: Capitol Riot nor our barrageum indictments have stopped these hucksters
Speaker 1: from slavishly siding with Donald Trump and his attacks against
Speaker 1: the same American institutions that conservatives once defended against enemies
Speaker 1: real or imagined, whether the dirty hippies who tried to
Speaker 1: levitate the Pentagon or the Kamis on the Church Committee.
Speaker 1: Trump conservatives really are having their own hippie moment turning
Speaker 1: against American institutions because God forbid we critique American institutions
Speaker 1: that would be horrified. The opposing council's bench will likewise
Speaker 1: be unhelpful because it is packed with a motley crew
Speaker 1: of progressive politicians, left wing think tankers, and journalists who
Speaker 1: are far more comfortable prosecuting claims against American greed, US imperialism,
Speaker 1: and ruling class dominance than mount muscular defenses of America.
Speaker 4: Now, I would say, I.
Speaker 1: Wish that our nation's journalists would do more critiquing of
Speaker 1: American greed, US imperialism, and ruling class dominance. But God
Speaker 1: forbid again that we have any critique of any.
Speaker 4: Of those things.
Speaker 1: Instead of just uniformly mounting what he describes as a
Speaker 1: muscular defense of America. He goes on Zachary you have
Speaker 1: to love this to talk about, you know, how great
Speaker 1: things are under Joe Biden and his leadership, And of
Speaker 1: course he leans into everything we're doing with the Ukraine
Speaker 1: war has been great and good, and you know, no
Speaker 1: mention of cluster BOMs, and that's being complicit in potential
Speaker 1: war crimes.
Speaker 4: There none of that.
Speaker 1: But the one critique that he does have is that
Speaker 1: the pullout from Afghanistan, now that was the real problem.
Speaker 4: But don't worry.
Speaker 1: They've already righted the ship, so no need to complain
Speaker 1: about that either. And he concludes with this, despite the
Speaker 1: blather that cable news hosts spit at you daily, your
Speaker 1: country is doing pretty damn well, which is also hilarious
Speaker 1: because I mean, number one, he's a cable news host,
Speaker 1: one of the most prominent cable news hosts in the
Speaker 1: freaking country. Number Two, if you tune into his network
Speaker 1: or you tune into CNN, what you will hear over
Speaker 1: and over and over again is actually, how wonderful things
Speaker 1: are under Joe Biden, How the economy is actually great,
Speaker 1: how everything's just find how his leadership is so brilliant
Speaker 1: and wonderful, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I
Speaker 1: don't know what world this man is living in.
Speaker 3: I think it's just.
Speaker 2: A real look, it's not just a blind spot. It's
Speaker 2: actually that they have to do this like justification of
Speaker 2: where we are in order to prop up the structure
Speaker 2: of which the vast majority of people are fundamentally against.
Speaker 3: We know with this from every.
Speaker 2: Political leader that has been doing well in modern memory
Speaker 2: for the lat what Obama and Trump and Biden. Really,
Speaker 2: we're all kind of quote change candidates really in their
Speaker 2: own way from the previous status quote nobody was ever
Speaker 2: voting for keeping actually what we had in place. Second, though,
Speaker 2: look at any poll like the one we have, we
Speaker 2: can put this right up here on the screen. There
Speaker 2: has never been more dissatisfaction with national economic conditions, with
Speaker 2: faith in American institutions, with a complete lack of faith
Speaker 2: in overall higher elite institutions like college education. I just
Speaker 2: saw a poll come across the desk that says the
Speaker 2: thirty six percent and all time low people approve of colleges,
Speaker 2: all time low number of people approve of institutions, which
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about in a bit. People feel
Speaker 2: like they're doing worse off than ever their inability to
Speaker 2: achieve the American dream. And this is really propaganda that
Speaker 2: I often see put forward by defenders of the neoliberal
Speaker 2: establishment really helped architect it because they rely always on
Speaker 2: fake metrics.
Speaker 3: And this is always the big problem that we see.
Speaker 2: And we were talking previously, there's a big wonk war
Speaker 2: right now about whether we're doing well or not. And
Speaker 2: they always rely on things like what he points in years,
Speaker 2: like America's universities are best in the world, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but what's the overall trend? They're going down, They're not
Speaker 2: doing well. What is the overall trend right now in
Speaker 2: terms of American views throughout the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: I kept telling you the sea change I saw in
Speaker 2: Indian attitudes towards America.
Speaker 3: I'm still flabbergasting around.
Speaker 2: When I visited India ten years ago, people either wanted
Speaker 2: to move here or they didn't care about America. Now
Speaker 2: the overall elite opinion has turned on. They're like, you
Speaker 2: guys are a bunch of moralizers. You don't shut up
Speaker 2: in terms of lecturing us, we are an independent country.
Speaker 2: You think you could come and tell us what to do,
Speaker 2: who's oil to buy?
Speaker 3: And all this? Who do you think we are.
Speaker 2: We're the most populous nation on earth. You, Joe Biden
Speaker 2: and all these other people can screw off. We're going
Speaker 2: to do whatever we want to do. Hearing the same
Speaker 2: thing from Brazil, and we know this also from all
Speaker 2: across the West non Western world. This is the attitude
Speaker 2: that pervades about the United States and about its overall decline.
Speaker 2: We're entering a very dangerous period, I think, in geopolitics,
Speaker 2: and I think that's the problem that he does is
Speaker 2: he's trying to cast some sort of Reaganesque, you know,
Speaker 2: a view of the United States around both our economy
Speaker 2: and our place in the world, when we actually see
Speaker 2: retrenchment everywhere. And the worst thing is that his answer
Speaker 2: is to triple down on all of the things that
Speaker 2: brought us exactly where to where we are, when in
Speaker 2: that retrenchment, we need both humble and big ideas here
Speaker 2: at home to get our population to a point where
Speaker 2: we can be you know, united and all of that,
Speaker 2: and also to think about the way that we carry
Speaker 2: ourselves abroad so that we don't go back into you know,
Speaker 2: some hor horrible state of war and you know, multipolarity
Speaker 2: or even more multipolarity from where we are right now.
Speaker 3: That's that's you know.
Speaker 2: I just see like it's almost like a boomer level
Speaker 2: of like America right or wrong. And I always just
Speaker 2: look at it like, look, I think Americans are awesome
Speaker 2: and I think America is doing badly well.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of it. He probably said some of
Speaker 1: those same stuff or in the Bush era, the whole
Speaker 1: like a rock war, like you can't criticize our leader,
Speaker 1: blah blah, b it's not patriotic to be critical of
Speaker 1: the president of the United States back Bush, no matter
Speaker 1: what I mean. That was a big strain of argument,
Speaker 1: if you can even call it argument from the right
Speaker 1: at that time, which again I'm sure he was partaking in.
Speaker 1: It is so low IQ to not be able to
Speaker 1: comprehend that you can be a patriot. You can love
Speaker 1: this country, you can appreciate many of the core values,
Speaker 1: you could celebrate some of its best parts of you know,
Speaker 1: of history and the progress that has been made, and
Speaker 1: you can also look across the landscape and see some
Speaker 1: real problems and see some real problems by the way,
Speaker 1: with the elite class Joe Scarborough included. I also feel like,
Speaker 1: can you imagine him writing this during the Trump era,
Speaker 1: if Donald Trump was present, can you imagine him being like,
Speaker 1: how dare you criticize America? This is a yeah, it
Speaker 1: needs a muscular defense, and actually everything is going really great.
Speaker 4: I mean totally.
Speaker 1: This is just complete one partisan blinders where it's like,
Speaker 1: since my guy's in charge, everything's fine and everyone needs
Speaker 1: to shut up and get on there.
Speaker 2: Really, honestly, all the same fundamentals that he points to
Speaker 2: were the exact same under Trump. If you're like, hey,
Speaker 2: our universities are the best in the world, Okay, it's
Speaker 2: been that way for forty years, hasn't changed really all
Speaker 2: that much. And I think what he gets to is
Speaker 2: this attitudinal thing of which I believe was the best
Speaker 2: thing about Trump. I think Trump was the most honest
Speaker 2: person in a generation of politics when he said our
Speaker 2: American carnage is over. I believe that the American carnage
Speaker 2: speech is still one of the most important ones ever delivered,
Speaker 2: because for the very first time somebody was like, you
Speaker 2: know what, things aren't all that rosy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what people wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is so I'm covering my monologue today,
Speaker 1: the interview that Obama did with Aslaomanaj, which was mostly
Speaker 1: just like the questions were mostly very fluffy, but he
Speaker 1: did have this one question that I really liked, and
Speaker 1: that spoke to something that I've been trying to put
Speaker 1: my finger on for a while, which is he he
Speaker 1: basically begged Obama to for once in his life, be
Speaker 1: emotionally honest, because he has this whole thing of being
Speaker 1: like so removed and you know, so detached from all
Speaker 1: of it. And what he argued is, you know Trump
Speaker 1: in particular, but a lot of Republicans, they lie and
Speaker 1: mistate a lot of things, but there's a level of
Speaker 1: emotional honesty that people respond to, whereas Democrats, progressives, whatever,
Speaker 1: they may be right on the facts, but there's like
Speaker 1: a level of emotional dishonesty. And I think that this
Speaker 1: article is very like fits really well in that mold.
Speaker 1: You can't just gloss over everything. You can't pretend like
Speaker 1: it's unpatriotic to and throw out like your dirty hippie
Speaker 1: if you dare, if you dare criticize American greed or
Speaker 1: imperialism or ruling class dominance, as.
Speaker 4: He puts it.
Speaker 1: So it's also very easy to say when you know
Speaker 1: you are doing just fine. Your bank account is full,
Speaker 1: you have no financial woes or worries it you know
Speaker 1: in the world, your children, same deal.
Speaker 4: Very easy to have.
Speaker 1: This view from the station that Joe Scarborough finds himself.
Speaker 2: And this is not what people you know, even if
Speaker 2: you listen to Joe Biden. I mean, he's not making
Speaker 2: his pitch based on, oh, the economy is great. They
Speaker 2: will say some of that, yeah, but at the core
Speaker 2: it's we are going to fight against these Republicans who
Speaker 2: are nuts.
Speaker 3: That's the only reason that they're trying to get people.
Speaker 2: Really, I mean, and let's look at the midterms too,
Speaker 2: what's the number one reason why Dems came out. It
Speaker 2: ain't the economy. It's abortion. It is a negative reason.
Speaker 2: Negativity and the influence of that for voting is not
Speaker 2: even an indicator of the positive view that Scarborough puts forward.
Speaker 3: So anyway, yeah, I think that's it. Let's go to
Speaker 3: the next one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about how Americans do
Speaker 1: feel about the country we live in and the institutions
Speaker 1: governing this country that we live in. The picture is
Speaker 1: pretty dire. Put this up on the screen from Gallop. Historically,
Speaker 1: low faith in US institutions continues, and effectively they don't find.
Speaker 4: Much change year over year.
Speaker 1: It's pretty flat in terms of public confidence in eleven
Speaker 1: of the sixteen institutions that Gallup tracks annually, they had
Speaker 1: seen insignificant declines. Presidency and the Supreme Court suffered the most.
Speaker 1: The share of Americans expressing a great deal or fair
Speaker 1: amount of confidence in these had previously fallen fifteen and
Speaker 1: eleven percentage points, respectively, and those numbers have basically remained
Speaker 1: unchanged now. They do go on to note that the
Speaker 1: survey was conducted before this latest slate of Supreme Court
Speaker 1: rulings came down. Those of course impacted firm in faction,
Speaker 1: college loan forgiveness, LGBTQ plus Americans their rights and how
Speaker 1: they intersect with religious values. So possible that the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ratings change a bit after those. But generally speaking,
Speaker 1: Americans felt pretty bad about these institutions. They continue to
Speaker 1: feel pretty bad about these institutions. And you know, to
Speaker 1: tie in the Joe Scarborough conversation, in some of this
Speaker 1: like wonk fight that's going on, there's this very anti populist,
Speaker 1: very elitist attitude of like.
Speaker 4: Americans are just confused.
Speaker 1: They don't understand how great our institutions actually are. They
Speaker 1: don't understand how well things are really going in the economy.
Speaker 1: They just don't get what a great leader Joe Biden
Speaker 1: actually is. And if they just, you know, if we
Speaker 1: just got rid of the misinformation and the bad actors
Speaker 1: and we just were able to message properly and get
Speaker 1: the word out about how actually good their lives are,
Speaker 1: then they wouldn't feel this way about any of these things. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when I look at these numbers and trust
Speaker 1: in our institutions, on the one hand, it's sad because
Speaker 1: you would like to have institutions worthy of trust. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, I look at it and I think
Speaker 1: it's a sign of societal health that there is a
Speaker 1: recognition that these institutions have failed, that in many instances
Speaker 1: they have been corrupted. I mean, just look at some
Speaker 1: of the things we've been covering with the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: and the level of deep just institutionalized rot and corruption
Speaker 1: which has been accepted now for years and years. I
Speaker 1: think it's a sign of health and a positive development
Speaker 1: that Americans have accurate views of these various institutions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the all time low I think this is
Speaker 2: really interesting. For several institutions was actually hit and let
Speaker 2: me read you what they are in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: And I think these are all correct.
Speaker 2: Big business, large technology companies, public schools, Congress. Those are
Speaker 2: the places that hit it in twenty twenty or at
Speaker 2: the police in twenty twenty three. Now if you look
Speaker 2: at the rest of them, many were also hit in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, the presidency, the criminal justice system, television news,
Speaker 2: the US Supreme Court, newspapers, church and or organized religion.
Speaker 3: As you said, Crystal, I think it's a sad story.
Speaker 2: I wish that people had more faith in all of
Speaker 2: these well established institutions in American life, which genuinely had
Speaker 2: some good in the past.
Speaker 3: But a core theme of our show.
Speaker 2: Is about the corruption of these institutions at the expense
Speaker 2: of some of the lowest and most vulnerable amongst us.
Speaker 2: And I think it is correct that the vast majority
Speaker 2: of people should turn on these institutions and should question
Speaker 2: whenever they say, Hey, this is why we need a
Speaker 2: tax break, this is why we're doing so well. And
Speaker 2: you know, this is the actual consequence of really decades
Speaker 2: not only of partisanship, but of our economic policy. And
Speaker 2: it actually, as I you know, talked about previously the
Speaker 2: American carnage speech, and really, you know, many of the
Speaker 2: campaigns of the twenty sixteen, the successful ones, was the
Speaker 2: pointing to the actual ills which based us into these
Speaker 2: institutional numbers. And then look, I'm not saying Trump did
Speaker 2: anything about it, but he acknowledged the problem. And really,
Speaker 2: you know, the smartest democrats I see are.
Speaker 3: Also willing to acknowledge it as well.
Speaker 2: I'm no fan of Chris Murphy or anything, but I
Speaker 2: was fascinated to see him try to wade into like
Speaker 2: masculinity discourse and what can we do about faith and
Speaker 2: institutions and all of that, you know, Buddhage Edge, you know, well, look,
Speaker 2: you know, I think he's incompetent fool, but even he
Speaker 2: can read the tea leaves around. If you want a future,
Speaker 2: you have to be able to speak to the deep,
Speaker 2: like the deep despair. I think that falls all the
Speaker 2: way from upper to middle class. That's another or upper
Speaker 2: to lower class. I think that's a key part here
Speaker 2: of the story, which is these institutions we're talking about
Speaker 2: here are not at like fifty percent, like for example,
Speaker 2: big business as a fourteen percent of rural rating. That's stunning.
Speaker 2: That means a vast majority of people are against it.
Speaker 2: Large Technology twenty six, Public schools twenty six. Think about
Speaker 2: what a death knew that is for public education. Public
Speaker 2: education was at one time one of the shining lights
Speaker 2: of the way that Americans felt about the shared institution
Speaker 2: that was federalists, you know, local, state, federal connected.
Speaker 3: They felt a real connection to that.
Speaker 2: For the vast majority of people to turn against public
Speaker 2: schooling that is not a good thing. That means that
Speaker 2: they literally have no trust in the ability for these
Speaker 2: institutions to carry on their legacy. And it explain school voucherization,
Speaker 2: the rise in public schools, and many of the pushes
Speaker 2: away because they're like, we don't trust you at all.
Speaker 2: And again I only want to sit here and just
Speaker 2: vindicate that and be like, I agree, you shouldn't trust them.
Speaker 3: I mean, I want to see an alternative.
Speaker 2: But you know, for many of these that I see
Speaker 2: on the list, I think you're a fool to put
Speaker 2: any of your faith in that event.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the big tech example is a really
Speaker 1: is an interesting one because I guarantee you the numbers
Speaker 1: during like the Obama years when you know, it was
Speaker 1: very opt there's a lot of tech optimism, right, and
Speaker 1: these companies were seen as like the good guys, and
Speaker 1: they were on the bank are and they were like
Speaker 1: part of these democracy movements and whatever. It is a
Speaker 1: better state of affairs, in my opinion, for people to
Speaker 1: understand the problems with these massive tech monopolies that have
Speaker 1: so much control over our public discourse and over all
Speaker 1: of our lives. I think it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: are that we have the bloom is off the rods,
Speaker 1: though to speak, and people have a more clear eyed
Speaker 1: view of what some of the yeah benefits but also
Speaker 1: challenges and problems and the way that it has been
Speaker 1: corrosive to society. So I think that's you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's a good thing that banks have seen trust
Speaker 1: fall off to twenty six. I think it's a good
Speaker 1: thing that television news trust is at fourteen percent and
Speaker 1: big business trust is at fourteen percent, because when I
Speaker 1: look at these numbers, I feel like, all right, they
Speaker 1: can only hold back the waters for so long before
Speaker 1: the damn breaks, before there is some movement or some candidate,
Speaker 1: or some combination of things that breaks through and changes
Speaker 1: things for the better because you can't. You just can't
Speaker 1: sustain this distance between you know, the happy talk of
Speaker 1: Joe Scarborough and the you know, beltwegh wanks and whatever
Speaker 1: and the reality of how people view the country, the institutions,
Speaker 1: the economy, and the prospects for their lives and the
Speaker 1: lives of their children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know.
Speaker 2: And also whenever I look at the chart, there's a
Speaker 2: very clear story here. The last time that we had
Speaker 2: even you know, moderately high level of confidence in major
Speaker 2: US institutions was two thousand and three and two thousand
Speaker 2: and four. What happened, Oh I forgot the Iraq Wars. Yeah, shocker.
Speaker 2: People dropped the amount of faith in US institutions. And
Speaker 2: then also there's a sad story. The modern high is
Speaker 2: thirty six percent in twenty twenty. Why because of the
Speaker 2: feeling of let's all come together during COVID. Then none
Speaker 2: of those institutions actually did anything for us, and they
Speaker 2: fell apart and broke and now we're at the all
Speaker 2: time low. Their last time that Americans had confidence in
Speaker 2: the presidency was before Vietnam. I mean, can you blame
Speaker 2: them for not having confidence? And you know, afterwards they're
Speaker 2: not wrong to continue to drop. So I think I
Speaker 2: see a consistent and a proper story which is genuinely
Speaker 2: small d democratic, and I think that there is only
Speaker 2: one actual way to fix any of this, which is
Speaker 2: enacting good policy, good politics, and to try and shift
Speaker 2: away from where we are right now to get to
Speaker 2: some sort of consensus. But that's way way harder, you know, easier,
Speaker 2: I think, said than done.
Speaker 1: How dare you criticize America instead of offering a muscular defense.
Speaker 2: However, I can give it a great defense, you know,
Speaker 2: compared to some body else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't mean that I can't look inward as well, Yes, indeed,
Speaker 3: of course.
Speaker 1: All right, so this was a fascinating story we're both
Speaker 1: kind of interested in. Apparently, attenance at Disney World is
Speaker 1: way down. Put this up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: from the Wall Street Journal. So the way that they
Speaker 1: measure this is kind of interesting to me too. They
Speaker 1: measure the wait times on rides, like the average time
Speaker 1: you have to wait in line in order to get
Speaker 1: on rides at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom,
Speaker 1: and at each of those sub parks of Disney World,
Speaker 1: wait times are way down. On the July fourth weekend,
Speaker 1: which look, it's hot as hell in Florida during the summer,
Speaker 1: so people actually prefer to go Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's
Speaker 1: Those are the real peak season at Disney World. But
Speaker 1: July fourth, you know, over the summer, when people are
Speaker 1: on vacation, This is also a really key time for
Speaker 1: the park. So to see such a drop off from
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two and then they go back to twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen pre pandemic is pretty fascinating. I'll read you a
Speaker 1: little bit of the Wall Street Journal analysis. They say
Speaker 1: that former Disney finance chief Christine McCarthy and indicated they
Speaker 1: anticipated lower demand that sounds like cope to me for
Speaker 1: the second half of the year because Disney World's fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary celebration had ended.
Speaker 4: They also say, and this seems to be to me,
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 1: More honest, they kind of intentionally thinned the park's crowds
Speaker 1: because they upped the cost of everything to make it
Speaker 1: more of a luxury experience, I guess, and sort of
Speaker 1: like thin the herd so that people can pay more
Speaker 1: and wait less in line, and they feel like that's
Speaker 1: going to work out in terms of their bottom line.
Speaker 4: They also point out that some.
Speaker 1: Of this may be industry wide, so not specific to
Speaker 1: Disney crowds. They indicate were also relatively light at Universal Orlando.
Speaker 1: The average weight time there was twenty eight minutes on
Speaker 1: July fourth. That's down from thirty thirty eight minutes in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, but it was more in line with
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen levels. So there does seem to be something
Speaker 1: kind of specific going on here. In terms of Disney World,
Speaker 1: you found this saga Disney Fanatic.
Speaker 4: There's all the whole world of like.
Speaker 1: Disney trip planning and Disney World blogs. This one Disney
Speaker 1: Fanatic put us up on the screen talked about a
Speaker 1: podcast where a Disney History Institute analyst explained that families
Speaker 1: are being hit in terms of the ticket prices that
Speaker 1: they are pricing out their primary audience, which is middle
Speaker 1: class families. In the past, this analyst said, families would
Speaker 1: make multiple trips to Disney Park after a successful first trip,
Speaker 1: and now families are unable to gather the funds for
Speaker 1: even that first trip, making follow up trips unlikely.
Speaker 4: So those are some of the information.
Speaker 1: I'm sure people out there will also be like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because they.
Speaker 4: Went wo Maybe as possible.
Speaker 1: There's some political piece of this as well, where conservative
Speaker 1: families are more iety logical or like, I don't really
Speaker 1: want to spend my dollars there, I'll do something different.
Speaker 1: But I think it's more likely that the increase in
Speaker 1: ticket prices and food prices and all of those things
Speaker 1: are probably to blame.
Speaker 2: The big and sad question is is they did a
Speaker 2: take a revenue hit because the reality is is that
Speaker 2: if they can make it effectively a premium product, you
Speaker 2: can have less people and you can make a ton
Speaker 2: more money. Some one of my favorite business books of
Speaker 2: all time called Disney War. I forget exactly who wrote it,
Speaker 2: the same person who wrote Den of Thieves. It'll come
Speaker 2: to me in a second, but that book actually outlined
Speaker 2: kind of the path to profit and the giant that
Speaker 2: Disney is today via Michael Eisner and eventually the takeover
Speaker 2: of Bob Iger, who has now returned as the CEO.
Speaker 2: And the really sad part is that a lot of
Speaker 2: it just comes down to bilking people who are trying
Speaker 2: to take their families. And I'm talking about like at
Speaker 2: the in the beginning, parking used to be free at
Speaker 2: Disney World. Now it's like fifty dollars, they actually be like.
Speaker 4: Three dollars and fifty cents or something like that.
Speaker 2: I like that Walt Disney correctly had a vision of
Speaker 2: bringing to life the characters which he was able to
Speaker 2: put on the screen and making a centerpiece of American life.
Speaker 3: And he succeeded, you know, in that vision.
Speaker 2: And then really what happened is they monetized as much
Speaker 2: as humanly possible as the IP to turn Disney into
Speaker 2: the multigajillion dollar company that it is today. But the
Speaker 2: problem that I see really in this is where is
Speaker 2: the middle class experience?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 2: Like, what are you supposed to do when you are
Speaker 2: a middle class person and you want to provide a
Speaker 2: family vacation, which is, you know, ticks the boxes and
Speaker 2: give people the experience. I was talking with my parents
Speaker 2: when we were in India and they were calling. The
Speaker 2: first time they took me to Disney World. Apparently tried
Speaker 2: to bite one of them.
Speaker 3: So that's me.
Speaker 4: He tried to bite one.
Speaker 2: Of my parents, one of my parents because I was tired,
Speaker 2: You were a bit apparently I was.
Speaker 3: I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think any people who watch the show will
Speaker 2: be surprised by that. I don't know what it is
Speaker 2: about kids in biting. I don't really get it. You
Speaker 2: have to like train children.
Speaker 4: Yeah they Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Some kids are more Anyway, every preschool this is.
Speaker 4: A happens at least once a year. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that my first trip to We went
Speaker 1: to Disney World once when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: We did a road trip down from Virginia.
Speaker 1: It was right around my sixth birthday, when I was
Speaker 1: in kindergarten, and I still remember parts of I mean,
Speaker 1: I was a little kid, but I still remember parts
Speaker 1: of that trip. Disney World is really like the iconic
Speaker 1: seminole middle class vacation. It's almost like it's almost like
Speaker 1: a bedrock of what you feel like as a middle
Speaker 1: class parent. You should be able to provide for your kids.
Speaker 1: But I would my question wouldn't be, Okay, what is
Speaker 1: the middle class experience?
Speaker 8: Now?
Speaker 4: It's where is the middle class?
Speaker 1: Because the reason why Disney and many other companies too,
Speaker 1: by the way, are leaning into ari We're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna move up the food chain. We're going to offer
Speaker 1: this more premium, more expensive experience, is because those are
Speaker 1: people that still you know, those are people have money
Speaker 1: those are the people who have expendable income. And so
Speaker 1: when you have this huge split and massive income inequality
Speaker 1: and all of these things, if you're just looking for, like,
Speaker 1: where are the people with the revenue that I can
Speaker 1: squeeze down, it's increasingly not the middle class. It's certainly
Speaker 1: not the working classes. People are pushed up and you know,
Speaker 1: against the wall and many times over the cliff. It's
Speaker 1: those upper middle class families that are you know, doing
Speaker 1: better that you know, they may have issues with housing
Speaker 1: costs or whatever, but they're in the higher professional classes
Speaker 1: and they're able to afford the Disney vacation and not
Speaker 1: look twice at the way they're getting price gouged at
Speaker 1: every single turn, and the way hotel costs have escalated,
Speaker 1: in the way that concession costs.
Speaker 4: Have escalated, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So, you know, there was a concept a number of
Speaker 1: years ago that was that came out of the economics
Speaker 1: profession of the plutonomy, where a number of analysts were
Speaker 1: advising companies that, hey, if you want to maximize your revenue,
Speaker 1: this is the segment of the market you need to
Speaker 1: go after because everyone else is getting squeezed so much.
Speaker 1: They just aren't going to be able to provide you
Speaker 1: with the revenue and the profit generation that you're going
Speaker 1: to be looking for. So Disney following a lot of
Speaker 1: broader economic trends here, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, and let's put this also up there on the
Speaker 2: screen of which you found, which is kind of mound boggling.
Speaker 2: Eighteen percent of Disney goers have racked up debt, but
Speaker 2: quote most have no regrets. Let me just go ahead
Speaker 2: and plug a Dave ramseysm. Please do not go into
Speaker 2: debt and whenever to go on vacation, no matter what
Speaker 2: said vacation is. It will put you behind and it
Speaker 2: definitely is a problem.
Speaker 3: You should only go on vacation if you can afford it.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 3: Now, in terms.
Speaker 1: Of people don't regret experiences, they don't regret childhood memories.
Speaker 2: Okay, but that's not worth twenty eight percent credit card interest. Okay,
Speaker 2: but again i'll channel Ramsey there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean, if you want to put yourself a
Speaker 2: message away, it's your money.
Speaker 3: You decide what you want to do.
Speaker 2: I do think though, what this is generally is the
Speaker 2: level of expense that which people have come to expect
Speaker 2: a normal vacation comes to the conversation that we're having
Speaker 2: around parking, the fees for parking, the fees for tickets,
Speaker 2: for so much of this behavior where the inability to
Speaker 2: really access, you know, a normal vacation at a modest
Speaker 2: price for like a family of four, that's very much disappearing.
Speaker 2: And I guess I'll give a plug even though this
Speaker 2: is not my interest, because they are getting.
Speaker 3: More crowded national parks.
Speaker 2: They're not free, but they're pretty close whenever it comes
Speaker 2: to the admittance fee and all of that. And it
Speaker 2: remains probably one of the most only really accessible things
Speaker 2: that a lot of people can do with their children
Speaker 2: these days, which is a good thing.
Speaker 1: But I also that's amazing favorite place, great smoking mountains.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I haven't been to that one.
Speaker 7: I'd like to.
Speaker 4: Go, Absolutely amazing. I highly recommend.
Speaker 1: And just one last thing to underscore how it probably
Speaker 1: is the cost that is driving these trends. They found
Speaker 1: in that study they most people had been to Disney World.
Speaker 1: Most people who had gone to at least one park
Speaker 1: had gone to Disney World.
Speaker 4: But if the people who had.
Speaker 1: Not been to it, they said the top reason for
Speaker 1: not going was because of the cost, So for people
Speaker 1: who are making the decision to forego, they're not including
Speaker 1: it in their vacation.
Speaker 4: There were some.
Speaker 1: Percentage that was just like I just don't like theme parks,
Speaker 1: but forty eight percent the top reason was it's too expensive.
Speaker 4: So I think that says a.
Speaker 3: Lot, big problem, big problems on the horizon.
Speaker 1: So you guys may know, Hunter Biden has a child
Speaker 1: that he is providing child support payments to but just
Speaker 1: just reached a settlement with the mom to never take
Speaker 1: the Biden last name for this child and his father,
Speaker 1: President Biden doesn't even acknowledge that this child exists. He
Speaker 1: frequently says, very specifically, he has six grandchildren. Well, if
Speaker 1: you included this child, who is his grandchild, that would
Speaker 1: be seven grandchildren and more. In doubt of the New
Speaker 1: York Times, obviously liberal, oftentimes Biden supporter, actually just kind
Speaker 1: of quite critical of the President for his treatment of
Speaker 1: this seventh grandchild. The ladies' view decided to weigh in
Speaker 1: on us in their own special way.
Speaker 4: Let's take a lesson Maureen.
Speaker 5: Dad is saying it's bad for the child that the
Speaker 5: President has not acknowledged her. So I kind of think, well,
Speaker 5: that's she should be catching at the son whose baby
Speaker 5: it is. It's not the president's baby. So I don't
Speaker 5: know what you think, but I'm throwing it out.
Speaker 3: I agree with you completely.
Speaker 7: It shouldn't have been.
Speaker 10: Directed to Joe Biden, should be directed to Hunter Biden.
Speaker 10: It's five children, not four Hunter, because this is not
Speaker 10: Joe Biden's baby. And I think it's very hard for
Speaker 10: Joe Biden to be a grandfather to the child. If
Speaker 10: his son is not being a father. He can talk
Speaker 10: to his child, he can advice Hunter. But look, what
Speaker 10: is absolutely evident to me is that the right wing
Speaker 10: and the maga world has decided to weaponize Hunter Biden
Speaker 10: against his dad, and everything and anything the Hunter does
Speaker 10: or does not do is going to be weaponized.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you this story actually affected me
Speaker 1: way more than I expected it to. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put moreen Dad's column up on the screen. She talks
Speaker 1: about this little four year old girl in rural Arkansas
Speaker 1: who's growing up there, learning to ride a camouflage pattern
Speaker 1: four wheeler alongside her cousins. Some days she wears a
Speaker 1: bow in her hair. On other days, she threads her
Speaker 1: long blonde ponytail through the back of a baseball cap.
Speaker 1: When she's old enough, she'll learn to hunt, just like
Speaker 1: her mother did when she was young, she says. The
Speaker 1: girl is aware that her father is Hunter Biden, her
Speaker 1: paternal grandfather is the President of the United States. She
Speaker 1: speaks about both of them often, but she has not
Speaker 1: met them. Her maternal grandmother describes her as with smart
Speaker 1: and funny.
Speaker 4: Listen.
Speaker 1: This is the president who has made family central to
Speaker 1: his political brand. I mean, and I think that's part
Speaker 1: of what the American people have really responded.
Speaker 4: To with him, his empathy.
Speaker 1: It's the way that he centers his family and the
Speaker 1: tragedies that have befallen his family, even the way that
Speaker 1: he has embraced Hunter despite a lot of struggles with addiction,
Speaker 1: and you know, major roller coaster there.
Speaker 4: To say the.
Speaker 1: Least, I don't know how you just disown this child.
Speaker 1: I just don't know how you can morally justify that
Speaker 1: in any instance. And you know this, this is like
Speaker 1: a normal family in rural Arkansas. The dad who's kind
Speaker 1: of the patriarch there, This is the child's grandfather on
Speaker 1: his mother's side, her mother's side, he owns a gun store.
Speaker 1: I think you went hunting with Don Junior, like he
Speaker 1: seems to have some Republican leanings, so so what And
Speaker 1: to me it comes across, especially the piece about how
Speaker 1: hard they fought to make sure that this child cannot
Speaker 1: have the Biden last name. I mean, it really smacks
Speaker 1: of classism, smacks of just elitism, like you aren't worthy
Speaker 1: enough and the circumstances of your birth are too tawdry
Speaker 1: for us to even acknowledge that you exist, and certainly
Speaker 1: not to welcome you into the family. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's defensible, and I think it's grotesque that the view
Speaker 1: tried to defend it.
Speaker 3: Oh it's sick.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, look, obviously Hunter is the one
Speaker 2: here most to blame. I mean, he knocked up a
Speaker 2: stripper and then basically banished her, you know, refused to pay.
Speaker 2: She literally had to sue him for child support and
Speaker 2: for support. So let's put the deadbeat, repulsive behavior aside.
Speaker 3: He's not the president, so that's fine.
Speaker 2: But the president is the person, as you said, who
Speaker 2: puts family at the center, the loss that he has
Speaker 2: experienced throughout his life as a testament to his character
Speaker 2: and how he conducts himself on a daily basis, and
Speaker 2: he refuses to acknowledge, you know, the grandchild that he
Speaker 2: has by birthright, you know, in Arkansas. And then do
Speaker 2: we really believe that Hunter was the person who wasn't
Speaker 2: the you know that Bridge just the only one pushing
Speaker 2: that she wouldn't be able to use the Biden family name.
Speaker 2: Like we know that he was obviously intimately involved in this.
Speaker 2: And you know, Fox News is Peter Doucy has asked
Speaker 2: him about this grandchild before and he's flown off the handle,
Speaker 2: calling him a classy guy and all this stuff. I'm like, well, look,
Speaker 2: you know, you're pursuing one of the closet classless acts
Speaker 2: that I've seen, you know, from a person who is
Speaker 2: a head of state, who's effectively shunning somebody who is
Speaker 2: your grandchild through absolutely zero fault of their own. This
Speaker 2: is a four year old who is full knowledge of
Speaker 2: you as their grandparent and of your father. And if
Speaker 2: your son chooses to be a deadbeat dad, that's one thing,
Speaker 2: but it is an absolute choice on your behalf in
Speaker 2: order to not publicly embrace this person. And I also think, look,
Speaker 2: America's messy, and you know, our divorce rate speaks to that,
Speaker 2: and there's I think there's a lot of problems and
Speaker 2: all that, but most Americans would feel nothing but deep
Speaker 2: empathy towards you for embracing this child and for saying,
Speaker 2: no matter what family is family, we don't care about
Speaker 2: the circumstances, mistakes have been made.
Speaker 3: And all of that. But he's an eighty year old man.
Speaker 2: Do you really want to go to your deathbed knowing
Speaker 2: that one of your grandchildren, who is related to you
Speaker 2: by blood has no relationship with you? And then also
Speaker 2: then for have this publicly be a thing and to
Speaker 2: still retrench in that position is the height of disgust
Speaker 2: for how a person conducts himself in this way. And
Speaker 2: it's not just about Biden, it's about you know, Jill Biden,
Speaker 2: the entire first family, and.
Speaker 3: That the way that they have behaved here this is
Speaker 3: Kennedy esque.
Speaker 2: In terms of the way they you know, rally around
Speaker 2: ted after Chap equittic and all that, and the way
Speaker 2: that they keep these things, you know, very internal and
Speaker 2: try and keep the shame and you know, and and
Speaker 2: they go after those who you know, are victims of
Speaker 2: their own personal behavior just to try and retain some
Speaker 2: public image.
Speaker 1: It's so unfairly and you're right, families can be messy family.
Speaker 1: You know, this is obviously not something that you know,
Speaker 1: Hunter really wanted or Joe Biden really anticipated. It's it,
Speaker 1: but this child is not responsible for the way that
Speaker 1: she came into the world. It's not her fault who
Speaker 1: her parents are. And so, you know, I also was
Speaker 1: thinking about soccer. Remember when after Bo Biden died and
Speaker 1: Hunter ended up in a relationship with Bo's widow, and
Speaker 1: actually Joe and Jill acknowledged that, and you know, put
Speaker 1: their stamp of approval on that. That was also very
Speaker 1: messy and also rather tawdry. But you know, apparently they
Speaker 1: found the characters in that relationship high born enough for
Speaker 1: them to acknowledge. So that's why I really feel like
Speaker 1: this just smacks of a deep sort of classism and condescension.
Speaker 1: And the piece that Anna and Navarro said, I guess
Speaker 1: in particular, bothered me about, like, well, this isn't really
Speaker 1: on Joe. They should be asking Hunter, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: but Hunter's not the president of the United States.
Speaker 4: Number one and number two.
Speaker 1: How many grandparents are out there in America right now,
Speaker 1: who have you know, been in difficult circumstances with their
Speaker 1: kids and they have stepped up for their grandchildren in
Speaker 1: spite of whatever is going on with their children. There
Speaker 1: are a lot, a lot millions of grandparents who have
Speaker 1: stepped in to fulfill that role. So to completely absolve
Speaker 1: him of this, I just again, I I just genuinely
Speaker 1: don't understand how you can do it. And yes, the
Speaker 1: Republicans are doing everything they can to weaponize Hunter, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it, But that does not change the reality
Speaker 1: that number one, this is more endowed, hardly like a
Speaker 1: Republican operative here. And number two, this child is his
Speaker 1: grandchild and the basic human decent thing to do is
Speaker 1: to welcome and celebrate her and have her be part.
Speaker 4: Of the family.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: You know, think about the millions of people out there
Speaker 2: with very similar circumstances who had crack addicted children, who
Speaker 2: may have fathered children, you know, out of wedlock and
Speaker 2: all that, and they stepped up.
Speaker 4: Go to Westbridge.
Speaker 1: The number of grandparents who are raising kids and you
Speaker 1: know their grandkids.
Speaker 2: Where I'm from, it's a very common thing as well.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of people. That's why I said,
Speaker 2: you know, if you act in the right way, you
Speaker 2: actually could have some empathy. But you know, look, he's
Speaker 2: chosen to conduct himself this manner. I think he's absolutely discussing, Crystal,
Speaker 2: what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Former President Obama has emerged once again to lecture us
Speaker 1: all on our failings and to bemoan the state of
Speaker 1: the world, a state that he himself co authored as
Speaker 1: president for eight years. Of course, here he is in
Speaker 1: an interview with Hasanmanaj, explaining the advice that he would
Speaker 1: give to his daughter Malia on the despair she feels
Speaker 1: about climate change.
Speaker 9: Malia comes to me, she says, you know what, she's
Speaker 9: twenty four.
Speaker 7: All our friends.
Speaker 9: We sometimes we talk about climate change and we just
Speaker 9: feel like there is no way we're going to be
Speaker 9: able to solve this. We're looking at the science. It
Speaker 9: feels as if we're on a trajectory that we're going
Speaker 9: to sail past this two degrees centigrade benchmark, where after
Speaker 9: that potentially things are getting cataclysmic. And so I'll be
Speaker 9: honest with you, Dad, a lot of my friends they
Speaker 9: just feel as if what's the point because the world's
Speaker 9: burning and there's nothing I can do. And I said
Speaker 9: to her, well, she asked me, what should I say
Speaker 9: to them? And what I said to him is what
Speaker 9: I said to her is Look, we may not be
Speaker 9: able to cap temperature rise to two degrees centigrade. But
Speaker 9: here's the thing. If we work really hard, we may
Speaker 9: be able to cap it at two and a half
Speaker 9: instead of three, or three instead of three and a half.
Speaker 9: That extra centigrade that might mean the difference between whether
Speaker 9: Bamalla Dash is underwater, right. It might make the difference
Speaker 9: as to whether you know, one hundred million people have
Speaker 9: to migrate right or only a few.
Speaker 3: In these incremental changes.
Speaker 7: That matters.
Speaker 9: It makes a difference, and we're fighting for and it's
Speaker 9: worth fighting.
Speaker 11: You can't descend into nihilism and not try to save
Speaker 11: those one hundred, two hundred and three hundred million people.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Now, there are about one hundred and raging things about
Speaker 1: all of this, and they are all classic Obama. The
Speaker 1: most maddening has got to be the way he always
Speaker 1: removes himself from the action, blessing us with his wisdom,
Speaker 1: but never, you know, actually doing anything about the problems
Speaker 1: that he identifies. Even as president he basically did the
Speaker 1: same thing, unwilling to get his hands, dirty and political struggle,
Speaker 1: but very happy to dispense sage advice and analysis here. Also,
Speaker 1: as is his custom, Obama completely absolves him of accountability
Speaker 1: for his own record of climate action avoidance at what,
Speaker 1: in retrospect was obviously a really critical time. The centerpiece
Speaker 1: of those efforts was cap and Trade legislation, which passed
Speaker 1: the House and got hung up in the Senate in
Speaker 1: Obama's first term. Please recall that Obama had a big
Speaker 1: House majority and for a time a filibuster proof majority
Speaker 1: in the Senate. Once Cap and Trade became politically polarized
Speaker 1: and bipartisan support dropped from it, Obama just abandoned and
Speaker 1: really never looked back. Instead, he vacillated between some small
Speaker 1: boar efforts like the virtue signaling Paris Climate Agreement, which
Speaker 1: lacked any sort of legal force of law, an actively
Speaker 1: destructive policy like continuing oil and gas subsidies, backing fossil
Speaker 1: fuel projects around the world, and leaning hard into the
Speaker 1: new fracking boom. Here so you will recall, is Obama
Speaker 1: bragging to a Texas audience about his role in Drill, Baby, Drill.
Speaker 7: No, We're an oil country and.
Speaker 9: We need American energy, and by the way American energy production.
Speaker 9: You wouldn't always know it, but yeah, it went up
Speaker 9: every year I was president, and you know that whole
Speaker 9: Suddenly America is like the biggest oil producer and the
Speaker 9: biggest gut That was me, people.
Speaker 4: I just want you to so that was me, people.
Speaker 1: Climate activist Bill mckibbon put it this way in an
Speaker 1: interview with the Obama Oral History Project. Quote, no matter
Speaker 1: how much I liked him, it was very clear he
Speaker 1: could care less about any of this stuff at some
Speaker 1: deep level and was not willing to sacrifice or suffer
Speaker 1: any political.
Speaker 4: Pain in order to raise the issue.
Speaker 1: I think you could say that about a number of
Speaker 1: issues during the Obama era. Now, how does that reality
Speaker 1: square with Obama's admonition to young people that they've got
Speaker 1: to fight and work really hard to try to limit
Speaker 1: temperature rise, a struggle that he absented himself from in
Speaker 1: office and has failed to join as a private citizen,
Speaker 1: preferring instead to fill his role as global brand and
Speaker 1: swooping in a key moments to enforce a Democratic party
Speaker 1: status quote. His his post presidency deserves, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: as much scrutiny in some ways as his presidency. Here
Speaker 1: He is a wealthy, beloved, connected, powerful global figure who
Speaker 1: has dedicated his life to popping up in interviews such
Speaker 1: as this one to demand that we limit our political
Speaker 1: imaginations and enforce a worldview that says incrementalism is the
Speaker 1: very best that we can hope for. That's what really
Speaker 1: comes through in the little negotiation he has with himself
Speaker 1: and his theoretical advice to Malia on what level of
Speaker 1: temperature increase.
Speaker 4: That we should try to settle.
Speaker 1: For the fact that, thanks in part to his own failures,
Speaker 1: we will surely blow past the two degrees mark is
Speaker 1: hand waved away, even as he acknowledges that every tick
Speaker 1: upward is potentially devastating for vast swahs of humanity. Just
Speaker 1: to give you a little bit of a sense here,
Speaker 1: one analysis found that temperature rise of two point five
Speaker 1: or three degrees, which Obama floats, could slash global GDP
Speaker 1: by a quarter. But if incrementalism is all that's on off,
Speaker 1: or you have to accept that temperatures will just continue
Speaker 1: to rise and we should just fight really hard to
Speaker 1: limit the war's displacement and death that will surely result.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he and his family, of course, will be
Speaker 1: well insulated from all of the chaos. To me, though,
Speaker 1: in some ways, the most interesting part of this interview
Speaker 1: came in a question from Minaj because he put his
Speaker 1: finger on something that's been bothering me.
Speaker 4: For a while.
Speaker 1: Listen to how he practically begs Obama to actually be
Speaker 1: emotionally honest just for once.
Speaker 7: That is what I'm trying to get out of you.
Speaker 11: Actually, I'm actually just gonna say it, emotional honesty. Yes,
Speaker 11: because when you first came into office, when I was
Speaker 11: uh Sasha's age, you were like ted Lasso season one,
Speaker 11: folks see optimistic, cheerful, and now some of these kind
Speaker 11: of like vox dot com talking points feel like Ted
Speaker 11: Lasso season three, oh man, predictable and that time's forced
Speaker 11: and what let me give you that's a tough review,
Speaker 11: but I want to give you props. Yes, remember that
Speaker 11: moment where you were like caught the hot mic in
Speaker 11: your like Kanye is a jackass.
Speaker 7: A nice person award?
Speaker 5: Why would he do that?
Speaker 11: And everyone's like yes, yeah, yes, there's these moments of
Speaker 11: emotional honesty where there's such deep resonance because the American
Speaker 11: public feels gas lit and lie to I will say
Speaker 11: this about the other guy who is in office. He
Speaker 11: was a factual liar, but emotionally honest.
Speaker 9: He was always who he is.
Speaker 11: Yeah, but I think progressives sometimes can be factually accurate
Speaker 11: but emotionally dishonest.
Speaker 1: Now Obama doesn't really respond, of course, he just swears
Speaker 1: he's being who he really is.
Speaker 4: And listen, maybe that's true.
Speaker 1: But we should not allow politicians like him or Biden,
Speaker 1: or so called progressives to get away with claiming an
Speaker 1: issue is existential and then meekly crying about the parliamentarian
Speaker 1: or how mean the Republicans are, or the difficulty of
Speaker 1: working with Joe Manchin. It is, at its core, deeply dishonest.
Speaker 1: It's emotionally manipulative. Not to mention the stakes are really
Speaker 1: pretty high. Just to look around the world right now.
Speaker 1: We just had a string of days that were the
Speaker 1: hottest in history, and the Southwest is getting roasted with
Speaker 1: relentless triple digit heat pushing one hundred and twenty degrees.
Speaker 1: Historic Canadian wildfires are suffocating much of the US with
Speaker 1: dangerously poor air quality levels on what is now a
Speaker 1: pretty regular basis. Meanwhile, extreme floods just hit New York
Speaker 1: and Vermont, much of New England, and what is being
Speaker 1: described as a one in one thousand year tidal wave
Speaker 1: of water that has already caused massive damage, chaos, and
Speaker 1: led to at least one death. Obama can, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: recite these statistics and more quite ablee in a soothing
Speaker 1: tone of deep concern, and then he will implore young
Speaker 1: people to take action because g someone ought to do
Speaker 1: something about all of these problems.
Speaker 4: Saga. It's classic Obama.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 4: All right, Saga, were looking at well.
Speaker 2: Whenever I travel, I try my best to check out
Speaker 2: from the news completely, but I confess only two things
Speaker 2: actually piqued my interest while I was gone.
Speaker 3: Affirmative Action, which I touch on.
Speaker 2: Yesterday, and then rumblings about a movie that I had
Speaker 2: not heard of, Sound of Freedom. From what I could gather,
Speaker 2: it was doing very well in the US despite expectations.
Speaker 2: But only upon my return did I decide to look
Speaker 2: into it, not only in the movie, but an increasingly
Speaker 2: shrill and elite effort to stop people from watching the movie.
Speaker 3: And why So, to begin with, what is the Sound
Speaker 3: of freedom.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a movie loosely based on the life of
Speaker 2: Tim Ballard. He's the founder of an operation Underground Railroad,
Speaker 2: an organization dedicated to combating global child trafficking. Ballard previously
Speaker 2: served as a special agent in the Department of Homeland
Speaker 2: Security to combat child pornography and child endangerment, but left
Speaker 2: to start his own organization after he says he found
Speaker 2: bureaucratic red tape that frustrated his ability to try and
Speaker 2: save children in developing countries. The film dramatizes efforts by
Speaker 2: Ballard and his organization to infiltrate child sex trafficking organizations abroad,
Speaker 2: but bust them that saved the kids and press lawmakers
Speaker 2: to pass laws to make it more difficult. Overall, the
Speaker 2: film has been a sh shocking, dramatic success so far,
Speaker 2: some forty million dollars at the box office in a
Speaker 2: few days, and has come close even to the latest
Speaker 2: release of the Indiana Jones franchise. So the question arises,
Speaker 2: why is there even a controversy around this movie at all? Well, apparently,
Speaker 2: child sex trafficking is a topic itself has now been
Speaker 2: very politicized in the eyes of these media organizations. Effectively
Speaker 2: being linked in and mentioned whatsoever with the QAnon movement. Now,
Speaker 2: criticism of the movie effectively says that it dramatizes the
Speaker 2: problem of child sex trafficking globally and feeds q ANDON
Speaker 2: conspiracies by validating it as a reality. This was effectively
Speaker 2: the criticism that CNN brought on its air regarding the movie.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen, and.
Speaker 8: This film is being marketed to either specific q ANDON
Speaker 8: believers or to people who believe all of the same
Speaker 8: tenets as QAnon but claim they don't know what it is.
Speaker 12: And the Sound of Freedom does focus on a real
Speaker 12: issue of sex trafficking. But that theme, it's sort of
Speaker 12: like that kernel of truth that feeds the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Speaker 12: Tell us how those two things work together.
Speaker 8: Sure, and the most durable and the most believable conspiracy
Speaker 8: theories are not entirely false. There's something in them that
Speaker 8: is true and the rest of it is false. But
Speaker 8: the believers point to the one true thing and they say, oh,
Speaker 8: you don't believe that this particular thing is true. In
Speaker 8: terms of child trafficking. We know trafficking is real, we
Speaker 8: know it has real victims. No one is denying that
Speaker 8: but these films are created out of moral panics, they're
Speaker 8: created out of bogus statistics, They're created out of fear,
Speaker 8: and with something like Sound of Freedom, it specifically is
Speaker 8: looking at q it on concepts of these child trafficking
Speaker 8: rings that are run by the high level elites, and
Speaker 8: only people like Tim Ballard, and only people like Jim
Speaker 8: Cavizl and by extension, only people like the ticket buyer
Speaker 8: can help bring these trafficking rings down.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the criticism is actually simple. The film is
Speaker 2: being marketed towards QAnon believers or those unwittingly are buying
Speaker 2: into QAnon who watch the movie. But in the same
Speaker 2: breath they do acknowledge, of course the child sex trafficking
Speaker 2: is real, but that the idea of that it leads
Speaker 2: participating it is ridiculous. Well, perhaps they have not heard
Speaker 2: of Epstein's Island. But below all of this, I find
Speaker 2: myself asking a simple question, why are the CNN these
Speaker 2: other liberal media organizations spending so much time going after
Speaker 2: one of the most basic movie ideas of all time
Speaker 2: based on a true story. Rolling Stone took the same
Speaker 2: tactic in the review of the movie, saying Sound of
Speaker 2: Freedom is a superhero movie for dads with brainworms and
Speaker 2: described it as quote a q andon tinged thriller about
Speaker 2: child trafficking designed to appeal to the conscience.
Speaker 3: Of a conspiracy addled boomer.
Speaker 2: The review evidence for why the movie is QAnon adjacent
Speaker 2: is that some people on.
Speaker 3: Some q and on boards are heralding the movie.
Speaker 2: And once again took aim at the moving for movie
Speaker 2: for validating that child sex trafficking is a big problem
Speaker 2: in our society.
Speaker 3: They write, quote, there is visible suffering all around us
Speaker 3: in America.
Speaker 2: There are poor and unhoused people brutalized killed by police.
Speaker 2: There are mass shootings, lack of healthcare, climate disasters, and
Speaker 2: yet over and over again, the far right learns these
Speaker 2: sortid fantasies about godless monsters hurting children. I mean, once again,
Speaker 2: is anyone saying that any of those problems are not real?
Speaker 2: Are they just even saying that by watching this movie
Speaker 2: or supporting it, the child sex traffic is the biggest
Speaker 2: problem that we face, or are they just saying it's
Speaker 2: a problem ignored or not paying enough attention to in society.
Speaker 2: The Guardian also parroted the same line in their review
Speaker 2: of the film. They called it QAnon adjacent, and once
Speaker 2: again they are the only ones shoehorning anything political into
Speaker 2: this interpretation. They readily admit that Taken, a film already
Speaker 2: made starring Liam Neeson, invented this genre and that the
Speaker 2: film seeks to replicate its very success to prove q
Speaker 2: Andon connections. Reviews focus on the star of the film
Speaker 2: and his past comments, but they seldom find any specific
Speaker 2: example overtly in the movie, tying it to a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, you do not have to be a
Speaker 2: crazy person to believe child sex trafficking is a problem,
Speaker 2: and it shouldn't be a political statement actually to go
Speaker 2: on an entertaining film trying to highlight such this subject.
Speaker 2: I particularly found it funny that Rolling Stone described the
Speaker 2: movie as the dream of boomer dads and describe the
Speaker 2: plot as some sort of white savior complex. Considering that
Speaker 2: the current data released so far via Variety indicates ticket
Speaker 2: buyers to this film are quote predominantly female, and that
Speaker 2: a full one third of the audience so far is Hispanic,
Speaker 2: someone should ask these female Latinos what they think of
Speaker 2: that criticism, And in fact, I actually think this demographic
Speaker 2: validates something important about the film. Vulnerable children in developing
Speaker 2: countries are preyed upon by wealthy people both in country
Speaker 2: and who travel abroad specifically to indulge in these disgusting fantasies.
Speaker 2: Anyone who has ever been to Thailand or walk the
Speaker 2: streets of Bangkok or Fuquet like I have, knows what
Speaker 2: this film describes is a very real and gross phenomenon.
Speaker 2: A large Hispanic audience from the film may even have
Speaker 2: personal experience with this issue, considering that Latin America remains
Speaker 2: one of the global hotspots of child trafficking today. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: the real line that the media appears to be going
Speaker 2: with is that any discussion of elites and child sex
Speaker 2: trafficking by definition, validates every q Andon conspiracy ever. And
Speaker 2: first of all, it's as if they want to pretend,
Speaker 2: as I said, that Epstein never happened and that we
Speaker 2: still don't know all the people who were involved there.
Speaker 2: But second, why does someone somewhere believing something wacky invalidate
Speaker 2: what before q Andon has always been acknowledged as a
Speaker 2: pervasive problem plaguing US law enforcement globally. Broadly, the success
Speaker 2: of the film does speak volumes. It is running on
Speaker 2: part at the box office as I said with Indiana,
Speaker 2: Jones undeniably already called a summer box office hit with
Speaker 2: effectively zero mainstream promotion and strength only from online support
Speaker 2: and word of mouth. Hollywood pros are already saying it
Speaker 2: is especially notework that it hit the top five in
Speaker 2: a time reserved for the biggest blockbusters in all of Hollywood.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, people want to
Speaker 2: be entertained, and they also don't want to be told
Speaker 2: what to think, so maybe things in entertainment will be okay.
Speaker 2: After all, I'm curious what your sound of freedom take is, Crystal.
Speaker 2: What do you think I mean?
Speaker 1: Listen, liberals are annoying, okay, but film is political. Conservatives
Speaker 1: freacount all the time about various mainstream movies. There's a
Speaker 1: whole like Barbie Map controversy right now. All that's about
Speaker 1: Southshire's Little Mermaid, you know, the main character being black.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think that there is a lot
Speaker 1: of conservative freacount about movies. And I would also say, listen,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the movie. You haven't seen the movie.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to opine on the specifics of the movie.
Speaker 1: The dude that it is based on is at best
Speaker 1: of fabulous and at worst an outright fraudster. His organization
Speaker 1: has been caught in any number of lies. Just to
Speaker 1: give you one. Per twenty early discussing example, they highlighted
Speaker 1: this young girl who they called Lilliana, who they said
Speaker 1: was trafficked across the border at age eleven. They said
Speaker 1: that they freed her from her hell of being trafficked
Speaker 1: and raped thirty to forty times a day. Lilliana freed herself.
Speaker 1: This organization had nothing to do with her, didn't even
Speaker 1: know her until two years or something after she was
Speaker 1: able to free herself from her own hell, and some
Speaker 1: of the key details, even her age, and the circumstances
Speaker 1: under which she was trafficked she came across the border
Speaker 1: with a romantic partner, for example, were completely you know, invented,
Speaker 1: and that's not the only circumstance. Journalists went along with
Speaker 1: them on one of their raids, and I think it
Speaker 1: was in Haiti, and found that actually some of the
Speaker 1: kids that they were trying to save from from their
Speaker 1: own hell, they were being traffic for the first time
Speaker 1: that time because they had actually inadvertently created demand for.
Speaker 4: Sex trafficking through their tactics. Other people who work.
Speaker 1: In the space say that they go about this in
Speaker 1: like a horrible way. They don't keep track of the
Speaker 1: women and girls that they work with. After the fact,
Speaker 1: they were under investigation by the State of Utah for
Speaker 1: lying to donors and potentially abusing some of these trafficking
Speaker 1: victims themselves. That investigation, I will say, has been dropped.
Speaker 1: But just let's be clear the dude that this is
Speaker 1: based on, there are a lot of questions about who
Speaker 1: this guy is, what he actually did, and he also has,
Speaker 1: like it's public that he has this plan to use
Speaker 1: his prominence in the sex trafficking world to bolster his
Speaker 1: own profile and potentially run for political office.
Speaker 4: So anyway, that's what I'll say.
Speaker 2: I think everything you just said is completely fine. I
Speaker 2: just don't think it has any to do with the movie.
Speaker 2: And so it was like the movie I guess is
Speaker 2: based on him, But you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the movie, so I can't say, and
Speaker 1: you haven't watched it either, So I don't know how
Speaker 1: you can say that definitively.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it's based on his life. But the point, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess it is.
Speaker 2: I need to look at the end of the Day
Speaker 2: is a dramatization quote unquote like based on a true story.
Speaker 2: So I think all that is true. I think all
Speaker 2: that criticism should remain there. But I'm saying that what
Speaker 2: effectively is being said is that the movie itself is
Speaker 2: QAnon based. Now, the star Jim what's his name, kevkas whatever,
Speaker 2: I can't pronounce it properly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he definitely said some crazy stuff.
Speaker 4: He's spoken a q Andon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of that one hundred percent true.
Speaker 2: However, you know, once again, like in the movie, like,
Speaker 2: that's not actually what's being done. So I think we
Speaker 2: should look at these things on their merits. The fact
Speaker 2: that the movie is doing well doesn't appear to really.
Speaker 2: I mean, at the end of the day, how many
Speaker 2: times do we talk about q Andon and the tiny
Speaker 2: slice of the US population. Millions of people have gone
Speaker 2: and seen already, people were going to go see this
Speaker 2: film had nothing to do with QAnon.
Speaker 3: Well, here you just heard about that.
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing that bothers me about the promotion
Speaker 1: of the film, which is that they've been pitching audience
Speaker 1: members on buy tickets by tickets, buy them ahead of time,
Speaker 1: and trying to persuade them that they're going to be
Speaker 1: part of this fight, and that they're doing doing something
Speaker 1: like noble by buying these tickets, and that they're really gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, aid in what is a genuine, legitimate, horrific
Speaker 1: problem here and around the world. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think that that is incredibly emotionally manipulative and misleading as well.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the other ass and that's a great follow
Speaker 3: up piece.
Speaker 2: Did you actually use this money to do anything about
Speaker 2: this problem or are you doing it for so you
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Get straight answers from them because they've been caught in
Speaker 1: any number of a lot.
Speaker 3: I think that's a one hundred percent, you know, fair question.
Speaker 2: I think all the points that you just brought up
Speaker 2: are exactly the things they should talk about, and yet
Speaker 2: what are we talking about instead?
Speaker 3: They're like anybody even goes see the.
Speaker 2: Movies, some like QAnon nut Job, and I'm like, these
Speaker 2: are all far more legitimate I think lines of inquiry
Speaker 2: whenever it comes to it. So anyway, I thought it
Speaker 2: was interesting in terms of the discourse hall here and
Speaker 2: actually our discussion was far better I think than most
Speaker 2: of what.
Speaker 3: We're seeing in Guard.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I guess that's uh that's kind of har
Speaker 2: we of course, right, that's We've got a great guest
Speaker 2: standing by Sean O'Brien.
Speaker 3: Let's get to it.
Speaker 1: So, as you guys know, because we've been covering it
Speaker 1: on the show, there is a potential massive strike looming
Speaker 1: at the end of this month. That's gone and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. This would involve three hundred
Speaker 1: and forty thousand UPS workers who are organized under the
Speaker 1: International Brotherhood of Teamsters. This was the very last update
Speaker 1: that we got after marathon sessions. UPS negotiations collapse around
Speaker 1: four am. UPS walked away from the bargaining table after
Speaker 1: presenting an unacceptable offer to the Teamsters that did not
Speaker 1: address members' needs. We are very excited to be joined
Speaker 1: in studio by the international President of the Teamsters Union,
Speaker 1: Sean O'Brien.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Sar, Thank you very much.
Speaker 7: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So just give us an update here. Why did negotiations collapse?
Speaker 1: What are some of the key sticking points at this point.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so we've been negotiating since January. We have forty
Speaker 13: four supplements that are area conditions for the master agreement,
Speaker 13: and we've got all those done and then we started
Speaker 13: negotiating the National Master Agreement towards the end of April,
Speaker 13: made a lot of progress, made a lot of changes
Speaker 13: favorable for our members, and things were going well. And
Speaker 13: then once we got into economics, that's when it started
Speaker 13: to fall apart. And you know, we're not that far
Speaker 13: apart as far as getting the deal done. Ninety five
Speaker 13: percent of the contract has been negotiated. But when it
Speaker 13: came down to talking about wage increases, rewarding people with longevity,
Speaker 13: just rewarding our teams to members, UPS took a position
Speaker 13: at one point that they had no more towards the
Speaker 13: end of it, we have no more to give, and
Speaker 13: I'm like, what does that mean? And so we just
Speaker 13: have no more to give? I said, so there's no
Speaker 13: sense in moving forward then, right, and they left. But
Speaker 13: you know, the sad part about it is that, you know,
Speaker 13: our members, they worked through the pandemic. They provided goods
Speaker 13: and services to this country with total disregard for their
Speaker 13: safety and the safety of their families. We actually transported
Speaker 13: our members, transported vaccines when they weren't even eligible form,
Speaker 13: making sure other people had them.
Speaker 7: And you know, the bottom line of.
Speaker 13: The UPS's balance sheet, they made one hundred billion doll is.
Speaker 13: Everybody got paid through COVID except for our members. When
Speaker 13: you think about it, the shareholders got paid, the executives
Speaker 13: got paid, the CEO got paid and rewarded, and they
Speaker 13: never touched and forwarded a package. So, you know, it's
Speaker 13: a little bit frustrating, especially you know, the earnings that
Speaker 13: UPS has been making as a result of.
Speaker 7: The hot work of our three hundred and forty thousand teams.
Speaker 13: And it's frightening when you see, you know, our part timers.
Speaker 13: It's actually embarrassing for UPS when part timers are making,
Speaker 13: you know, living in poverty in some of the big
Speaker 13: cities that are on subsidized housing. So it's time for
Speaker 13: UPS to do the right thing and reward these these folks.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no argument.
Speaker 2: Here. Reminds us a lot of the railway situation and
Speaker 2: the people who literally make a country run and are
Speaker 2: the people not getting paid well the big executives are.
Speaker 2: So let's talk actually, I think about that because you know,
Speaker 2: we're talking here about the economic conditions and more like,
Speaker 2: give people a sense of what you're asking for a
Speaker 2: very basic fairness in terms of compensation.
Speaker 13: Look, I mean, UPS has you know, had double digit earnings.
Speaker 13: You know, they double their profits, double their volume. And
Speaker 13: you know, the reality is our members want to be rewarded,
Speaker 13: and you know, the UPS is going around telling people, well,
Speaker 13: the full time is make ninety three thousand dollars per
Speaker 13: year with fifty thousand dollars benefits. And that may be true,
Speaker 13: but not ninety three thousand dollars a year is not
Speaker 13: an easy task. They're working sixty sixty five hours per week.
Speaker 13: It's a very demanding job. And our full time is,
Speaker 13: regardless what they make, need to be paid more. UPS
Speaker 13: has set the industry standards, but that's only because the
Speaker 13: teamsit's union is a conscience. We've fought long and hard
Speaker 13: for decades to get the conditions and benefits. UPS is
Speaker 13: not giving them to our members out of the kindness
Speaker 13: of our heart. And the part timers, I mean, everybody
Speaker 13: sees their UPS driver in their neighborhoods, but they don't
Speaker 13: understand that without the part timers, who some are working
Speaker 13: two or three.
Speaker 7: Jobs and make ends meet.
Speaker 13: Without the part timers, those packages don't get loaded or
Speaker 13: unloaded on those trucks. So there they're the unsung heroes
Speaker 13: of the of this bad of this fight, and they
Speaker 13: need to be rewarded. And look, this is something that
Speaker 13: UPS has the opportunity to do, to be the model
Speaker 13: employer throughout the United States, to show and demonstrate this
Speaker 13: is how you treat and reward people that make you
Speaker 13: the success that you are.
Speaker 4: And this is no small issue.
Speaker 1: What percentage of the three hundred and forty thousand are
Speaker 1: actually part timers, because I know it's a signals Well.
Speaker 13: It's over fifty percent, probably fifty fifty three percent, and
Speaker 13: one hundred thousand of those UPS part timers are making
Speaker 13: less than twenty dollars per hour. Wow, in UPS, UPS,
Speaker 13: you know hasn't been consistent either with all their you know,
Speaker 13: tweets and all their little press releases. One time, one
Speaker 13: minute they're saying they make over twenty dollars an hour,
Speaker 13: and then next minute they're saying they make five dollars
Speaker 13: less than thirty nine dollars an hour. So the one
Speaker 13: thing we've been consistent and on messaging and you know UPS, Look,
Speaker 13: if they want to get a deal, all they have
Speaker 13: to do is pick up the phone.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the context of
Speaker 1: how we got here. You were recently elected key part
Speaker 1: of your campaign seem to be, you know, promising you
Speaker 1: would take a more aggressive stand on these contract negotiations.
Speaker 1: I know members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a potential strike.
Speaker 1: So can you talk about, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: concessions that were made in previous contracts that led you
Speaker 1: to this place of being willing to walk away and
Speaker 1: really pushing hard for what your members deserve.
Speaker 13: Well, the one thing that we have done as administration
Speaker 13: is we've listened to the people that are responsible for
Speaker 13: us to be here. That's how rank and file members.
Speaker 13: Those are the people that you know we work for.
Speaker 13: They don't work for us. So that's been a different
Speaker 13: approach that we've taken as a new administration. And the
Speaker 13: last two contracts have been concessionary. Ups have gotten tremendous flexibility.
Speaker 13: They had a two taer wage system. There was a
Speaker 13: lot of stuff that you know, we needed to change
Speaker 13: and our members weren't happy. So we've been focusing on
Speaker 13: not just the ups with every contract negotiations. You know,
Speaker 13: we're not working beyond expiration dates of contracts. We're out there.
Speaker 7: And the good thing.
Speaker 13: Right now is because of when we ran the changes
Speaker 13: we made in our Constitution. Now it's mandated that rank
Speaker 13: and file members are on the negotiating committees all these
Speaker 13: national agreements, where they are our best testimonials at the table.
Speaker 13: You know, it's great when an employer can tell a story.
Speaker 13: And I always say employers' stories are compelling but highly inaccurate.
Speaker 13: But there's nothing better when you have someone that's working
Speaker 13: in that industry that knows the trials and tribulations every
Speaker 13: day and can actually give true testimonials. That is amazing
Speaker 13: and it's helped us tremendously in all these negotiations.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about morale within the rank and file,
Speaker 2: their willingness to stand up for a fair contract here,
Speaker 2: because there's a lot of talk right now, but the
Speaker 2: great resignation is over about some kind of diminishing willingness
Speaker 2: amongst labor to not only just strike, but just kind
Speaker 2: of stand up and try to get what's theirs.
Speaker 3: What's the attitude right now?
Speaker 13: But the attitude is our members are fired up. You know,
Speaker 13: they know what they did for this company, what they
Speaker 13: did for the country during the pandemic, and you know
Speaker 13: they want to fight. They want they want to fight.
Speaker 13: And look, at the end of the day, I don't
Speaker 13: think anybody wants to strike. But I keep telling people,
Speaker 13: and this is the truth, that if there is a strike,
Speaker 13: it's because UPS caused a strike. This is going to
Speaker 13: be a self inflicted wound. They know what they need
Speaker 13: to do for our members, they know what they do
Speaker 13: need to do for their employees, and it's time they
Speaker 13: do it.
Speaker 1: What happens next in the negotiations or what do you
Speaker 1: think are the odds that you get to a deal
Speaker 1: or that you go out on strike.
Speaker 7: That's strictly up to UPS. I mean, we're willing to
Speaker 7: sit down, We're willing to talk.
Speaker 13: And it's you know, like I said, when ninety done
Speaker 13: in the contract, all the supplements are done. Now it's
Speaker 13: just just about the money, the economics. And the problem is,
Speaker 13: and I don't mean to tell you off, the problem
Speaker 13: is is that UPS is so focused on Wall Street.
Speaker 7: They're forgetting about Main Street.
Speaker 13: Main Street are the people that we represent, the people
Speaker 13: we have the privilege to work for every single day,
Speaker 13: and they need to reward main Street. Everybody else is
Speaker 13: getting paid that hasn't even touched a package or forwarded
Speaker 13: a package.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how does this impact broader labor movement? And just
Speaker 1: workers in general.
Speaker 13: I think what it's going to do, and I'm excited
Speaker 13: about it. I think we are going to be the
Speaker 13: template on how to fight big business, how to take
Speaker 13: them on, and how to win. And I think this
Speaker 13: is going to invigorate the labor movement even more so.
Speaker 13: I mean, you see these young workers at Starbucks. You
Speaker 13: see these young workers all over the country looking to organize,
Speaker 13: and that's that's refreshing to someone like me and the
Speaker 13: teams dis Union, because look, I'm a fourth generation teamster
Speaker 13: and there's nothing better than young people being involved and
Speaker 13: people want to take on the boss.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, tell us about Amazon. Put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 1: There were some experts who are saying this is kind
Speaker 1: of a prelude to future Amazon fights. I know you
Speaker 1: all have been doing some organizing at Amazon locations around
Speaker 1: the country. It would be huge. Obviously, Amazon huge workforce.
Speaker 1: They've really degraded work and pay conditions among warehouse workers
Speaker 1: in particular.
Speaker 4: What are your plans there?
Speaker 13: Oh, we have to organize Amazon. There's going to be
Speaker 13: no question about it. And that's why you know, ups
Speaker 13: in collaboration with negotiations with teamsters over the years, we
Speaker 13: have collectively set the standard as high as we can,
Speaker 13: and we want to maintain that standard as far as
Speaker 13: when you're working in this business loading trucks delivering packages.
Speaker 13: We've set that standard and we're going to make sure
Speaker 13: that we continue to set the highest standard. But we
Speaker 13: need to take this contract as a template and bring
Speaker 13: it to these Amazon workers who there's no doubt they
Speaker 13: have one hundred and ten percent turnover ratio. There's no
Speaker 13: pathway to a full time career. We need to take
Speaker 13: this contract and say this is what you get when
Speaker 13: you become a team st to member. You're going to
Speaker 13: get health and welfare, you're going to get PENSI, and
Speaker 13: you're going to get job opportunities. But more importantly, you're
Speaker 13: going to get dignity and respect in your workplace.
Speaker 3: I think that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1: And finally, last question for you. You know, we've been tracking
Speaker 1: the fact that public sentiment is at all time highs
Speaker 1: practically in terms of support for labor unions. You have,
Speaker 1: you know, not just Democrats now, but a lot of
Speaker 1: Republicans coming back around. I'm talking about rank and file Republicans,
Speaker 1: not necessarily the ones in Washington.
Speaker 2: D C.
Speaker 1: But of organizing in favor of labor unions because they
Speaker 1: see the way that worker power has been diminished over decades.
Speaker 1: At the same time, private sector union density continues to decline.
Speaker 1: So what are the sorts of things that need to
Speaker 1: be done at the federal policy level in order to
Speaker 1: enable the you know, burgeoning grassroots labor movement that we've
Speaker 1: been tracking here across the country.
Speaker 13: Well, I think I think the government needs to not
Speaker 13: reward bad employers like Amazon has a ten billion dollar
Speaker 13: contract for the cloud. You know, if they're not treating workers,
Speaker 13: they have the highest violations in OSHA. We shouldn't be
Speaker 13: the government shouldn't be rewarding bad employers. But we also
Speaker 13: should be looking at how we can make it easier
Speaker 13: for people to organize. You know that you talked about
Speaker 13: the Proact, and you've talked about we talk about that
Speaker 13: all the time.
Speaker 1: But are you disappointed the president sort of drop that
Speaker 1: talked about at the beginning and I haven't heard about
Speaker 1: it in a long time and you's still give an
Speaker 1: Amazon contract.
Speaker 13: Yeah, Well, the the president has done a law for labor,
Speaker 13: and sometimes we focus on what have you done for me?
Speaker 7: Now? I mean, look at the end of the day.
Speaker 13: We need to find a path to let people organize
Speaker 13: easier without retaliation or retribution. Union busting is a five
Speaker 13: hundred billion dollars per year industry, and the government needs
Speaker 13: a crackdown on that.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's the bottom line.
Speaker 13: People nowadays should be able to join a union free
Speaker 13: of any threats retaliation. But the American people should be
Speaker 13: entitled to a middle class wage and living and that's
Speaker 13: not happening right now, but hopefully we can change that.
Speaker 1: Well, very grateful for your time, good luck and the negotiations.
Speaker 4: We'll be watching closely. I hope you'll come.
Speaker 3: Back and keep thee definitely well. Thank you very much,
Speaker 3: research I appreciate it. We'll see you guys later.