Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 1: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 1: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 1: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 1: it means the absolute world to have your support. What
Speaker 1: are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot Com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Krystal? Indeed,
Speaker 1: we do lots of interesting things that are happening this morning.
Speaker 1: First and foremost the daily Biden document update. They found
Speaker 1: even more documents. So where are with all of this?
Speaker 1: How is the White House responding? Our Democrats dealing with this?
Speaker 1: And what does the public think? We finally have a
Speaker 1: little bit of pulling on that matter. Also, we are
Speaker 1: increasingly moving towards a debt ceiling showdown. Treasury Secretary Janet
Speaker 1: Yellen says this will certainly lead to catastrophe and a recession.
Speaker 1: So we'll bring you the very latest there. We also
Speaker 1: have some details about Trump's presidential run. Evangelical seemed to
Speaker 1: be souring on him a bit new strophole from a
Speaker 1: right to life group finding that DeSantis is now their
Speaker 1: favorite candidate, so that is very interesting. We also wanted
Speaker 1: to show you a chat GPT discussion between two AI
Speaker 1: bots that will haunt your nightmares. I know it did mine.
Speaker 1: And also, speaking of daily updates, the Daily George Santos,
Speaker 1: he is now admitting that he did dress and drag,
Speaker 1: but denying that he was a quote unquote drag queen, draggish,
Speaker 1: drag ish. I guess yes the answer. I'm also excited
Speaker 1: to have Jodah Furman on today. There were some statistics
Speaker 1: that came out at the end of last week, very
Speaker 1: disheartening for those of us who are labor advocates. The
Speaker 1: union density number continued to fall. This is part of
Speaker 1: a roughly forty year trend. So he's got some interesting
Speaker 1: He really dug into the dat He's got some interesting
Speaker 1: stats about exactly where the falls are ultimately coming from.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, the fact that we decimated our entire manufacturing
Speaker 1: sector not great for union densities. All right, so let's
Speaker 1: start with the very latest in terms of the Biden
Speaker 1: document saga, go ahead and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is from CBS News. The FBI searched President Biden's
Speaker 1: Delaware home Friday and located six more items containing classification markings.
Speaker 1: Investigators also took possession of some of his notes, the
Speaker 1: President's lawyer said on Saturday. They claim that the search
Speaker 1: last about thirteen hours. The classification level and contents has
Speaker 1: not been disclosed thus far. The Justice Department, they say, quote,
Speaker 1: took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of
Speaker 1: its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification
Speaker 1: markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the
Speaker 1: president service in the Senate and some of which were
Speaker 1: from his tenure as Vice president. They also took some
Speaker 1: of his personal notes. I guess that could contain classified
Speaker 1: information that he had written down, so they're looking into
Speaker 1: that as well. They described the search. I think this
Speaker 1: word is kind of funny as consensual. So consent was given.
Speaker 1: And I also find it amusing that they still hedge
Speaker 1: about exactly how many documents has been found now Soccer
Speaker 1: they've moved it up to since November between twenty five
Speaker 1: and thirty, which you know, again, I don't know why
Speaker 1: you can't just give an exact number here, but that's
Speaker 1: part of the game that they're playing. And Biden told
Speaker 1: reporters he has no regrets about the handling of the documents,
Speaker 1: and when asked why the White House did not disclose
Speaker 1: the existence in November for the midterm elections, he told
Speaker 1: reporters he thinks they're going to find out. Quote, there's
Speaker 1: no they're there. It's like, definitionally there is there there
Speaker 1: because they found these documents now in multiple places, so
Speaker 1: there is literally there there between twenty five just say
Speaker 1: the number, is it twenty seven? Is it twenty nine?
Speaker 1: If I had to guess, probably twenty nine. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like when politicians list their net worth there like
Speaker 1: anywhere between two hundred and fifty to five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million. Right, Well, hold on a second, because there's
Speaker 1: actually a big difference between the two. Look in terms
Speaker 1: of the actual search itself, the fact that the media
Speaker 1: treatment on this and we're going to talk about, yeah,
Speaker 1: some of that is just I mean, look, this is
Speaker 1: effectively it's not a raid like the mar Lago raid.
Speaker 1: But when you have the FBI and the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice snooping around the President of the United States is home.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of a problem also with respect
Speaker 1: to where exactly these documents were stored. They're in the
Speaker 1: most intimate places where President Biden spends his time, including
Speaker 1: his home office. Now, again, if he was a current
Speaker 1: president and they were documents related to his work, now
Speaker 1: that would be one thing. These are documents that he
Speaker 1: held when he was the vice president of the United States,
Speaker 1: of which he had no declassification authority. Second, on the
Speaker 1: garage itself, he claims it's where my corvette was, so
Speaker 1: apparently it was what did he say, He's like, it's
Speaker 1: not like they were sitting out on the street. Well,
Speaker 1: we actually know from photo evidence that Hunter Biden himself
Speaker 1: actually had access to said locker. So there were actually
Speaker 1: unsavory characters, possibly street related, who were inside that car
Speaker 1: the very least had access to the garage. And you know,
Speaker 1: this isn't to denigrate Hunter himself, just to show you, like, look,
Speaker 1: you did somebody not you did have access to that garage.
Speaker 1: So it's not like it was a special compartmentalized facility
Speaker 1: that was controlled entirely by the Secret Service. It was
Speaker 1: wholly available to hunter Biden, who have no way he
Speaker 1: would ever get a security clearance, and then you know,
Speaker 1: maybe even his children or his grandchildren or cleaning stuff,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So the point is that these were not
Speaker 1: secure in any way. And then really what I'm troubled
Speaker 1: by also is the actual content of the documents, because
Speaker 1: all that we know right now is they were all
Speaker 1: related to his foreign dealings and specifically Ukraine. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that sounds pretty important. Especially let's say, you know,
Speaker 1: to Biden was the spearheaderer of an anti corruption move
Speaker 1: in Ukraine from twenty fifteen. So does that mean he
Speaker 1: had like details and documents relating to corruption inside of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of those people are currently in charge of
Speaker 1: Ukraine and we're called them heroes. Who knows. I mean,
Speaker 1: the point is is that this is probably very sensitive stuff,
Speaker 1: and I think that this is a big, big problem
Speaker 1: for him. I'm meta takeaway is Trump is one of
Speaker 1: the luckiest guys in the world. You are saying right
Speaker 1: about they had an open and shutcase against Trump. I
Speaker 1: think he was going down. I mean, and when I
Speaker 1: say down, like I think he was going to get
Speaker 1: that was at the very least indicting both are at
Speaker 1: the end. Like our last shows that we were doing
Speaker 1: the live shows, both of us made that prediction like
Speaker 1: Trump's getting in dieted next year. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: its possible. I don't know. It's the landscape is a
Speaker 1: lot different, and maybe you should you would say like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't matter what Biden did versus We all know
Speaker 1: that these decisions are highly political. We know that these
Speaker 1: officials at the Department of Justice are highly political. They
Speaker 1: would not be in these high positions of power if
Speaker 1: they were not. And we know that they are highly
Speaker 1: attuned to the way that the public is going to
Speaker 1: perceive any indictment against the former president who is now
Speaker 1: running for president again. So listen, it is utter catastrophe
Speaker 1: for the Biden as much as they want to try
Speaker 1: to spin it, Ultimately this is you know, a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible look. And I think you're right on the media
Speaker 1: treatment you know immediately, and I think justifiably so. When
Speaker 1: these documents were seized from mar A Lago, the question
Speaker 1: was like, my god, what was in these documents? And
Speaker 1: also my god, who was around that could have potentially
Speaker 1: seen them or access them or taken them or used them.
Speaker 1: And with the Biden documents, there's a presumption of harmlessness.
Speaker 1: There's a presumption that this isn't that big a deal.
Speaker 1: There's a presumption that, like, whatever characters were in and
Speaker 1: out of his house, I'm sure it was fine. We
Speaker 1: actually don't have any public reporting on who may have
Speaker 1: been at the house other than his own family. So
Speaker 1: there is a very different presumption there ultimately about how
Speaker 1: damaging the documents will be. And I think it is
Speaker 1: a fair point that the media makes, like a thousand
Speaker 1: times a day that Trump was more obstructive and Biden
Speaker 1: has been cooperating. But listen, guys, the bottom line is
Speaker 1: the core of the crime or the misdeed or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, is ultimately the same. Back
Speaker 1: to the point of why the hell can't you just
Speaker 1: say the number the number of documents, like you know,
Speaker 1: you use example of these politicians who are like, my
Speaker 1: wealth is between two hundred and fifty million and five
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million. Well, there is a big difference
Speaker 1: between that is there ultimately a huge difference between twenty
Speaker 1: five documents and thirty documents. Doesn't seem like the public
Speaker 1: wouldsuspends which document the public is just looking at this
Speaker 1: is like, well, this is a disaster and a mess,
Speaker 1: but they weirdly will not come clean about exactly how
Speaker 1: many documents have been found. This is a Biden spokesman
Speaker 1: on MSNBC getting pressed on this very issue. Let's take
Speaker 1: to listen. Can you give us a sense of how
Speaker 1: many classified documents we are now talking about total across
Speaker 1: all three locations. Sure, it's a good question, and it
Speaker 1: actually the answer to it is a little bit complicated
Speaker 1: because of this point that I'm making about the integrity
Speaker 1: of an ongoing Justice Department investigation. The Justice Department is
Speaker 1: going to be looking at all sorts of questions like
Speaker 1: that throughout their investigation. We want to be very very
Speaker 1: careful to be respectful of the integrity of that investigation,
Speaker 1: to not speak too much about the underlying contents and materials,
Speaker 1: especially things that we may not know all the answers.
Speaker 1: It's actually not complicated. It's really not complicated at all.
Speaker 1: How many documents you pull out of the house? Was five?
Speaker 1: Was the same count to thirty? Yeah? And I love
Speaker 1: there and this is their consistent line. Yeah, we're respecting
Speaker 1: the integrity. It's a lot. That's why we can't tell
Speaker 1: you anything about this. That's why we're still staying quiet
Speaker 1: on it. It's because we have such respect for this investigation. Well,
Speaker 1: Korean Jean Pierre actually got really called out on that.
Speaker 1: I think this was from NBC News. Let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to how that exchange went. We've all reached out
Speaker 1: of the Department of Justice. A law enforcement official tells
Speaker 1: NBC News the Justice Department has not told the White
Speaker 1: House that it cannot talk about the facts underlying the
Speaker 1: Special Council investigation into classified documents. So trusting you've received
Speaker 1: that same information, understanding the desire to be prudent, then
Speaker 1: why can't speak by the underlying facts. We've been very
Speaker 1: clear when it comes to even underlying facts, when it
Speaker 1: comes to specifics, when it comes to something that is
Speaker 1: under the purview that is that the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: is looking at, especially legal matters, investigations, we do not
Speaker 1: comment from here, Peter. That has been consistent, consistent. Yeah, look,
Speaker 1: it's a complete lie. And actually I have multiple friends
Speaker 1: in the press corps who they parrotted this line over
Speaker 1: and over again. That was actually Kareem Jean Pierre getting
Speaker 1: confronted on camera. There was a specially what the White
Speaker 1: House does. You do these things called background briefings. When
Speaker 1: you're in the White House Press Corps, they send out
Speaker 1: a phone number and they're like, everybody can dial in
Speaker 1: this phone number. You can listen in and they're going
Speaker 1: to give you, you you know, some background or whatever. You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to quote the person, but you're allowed to
Speaker 1: ask questions. You can call it a senior administration official
Speaker 1: even though you know who it is. Whenever you're talking,
Speaker 1: they press this person multiple times. They're like, hey, have
Speaker 1: you received one word from the Department of Justice that
Speaker 1: you cannot tell us exactly how many documents? And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: let's complicent. Eventually they're like, no, we have it. We
Speaker 1: just don't want to tell you. It's a cover up.
Speaker 1: It's a complete cover up. They don't want to tell
Speaker 1: tell us anything about the investigation. And they are the
Speaker 1: White House. Again, it's also their Department of Justice. So
Speaker 1: first of all, you know, the idea that they set
Speaker 1: the rules and all that is ridiculous. And also Briden
Speaker 1: has pledged open transparency. You'll all find out all this.
Speaker 1: This is the opposite of transparency. They found the documents
Speaker 1: before the midterms. They covered it up. They didn't tell
Speaker 1: anybody about it until freaking December twentieth or something like that.
Speaker 1: Then they find even more. They never want to characterize
Speaker 1: the exact amount of documents, what they found it. They
Speaker 1: keep running with this line it's complicated. Why because the
Speaker 1: circumstances look terrible for them, political motivation and to try
Speaker 1: and keep this out of the news as possible. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I guess credit to the news for pushing back a
Speaker 1: little bit against Karine Jean Pierre. But hey, look we
Speaker 1: both lived through the Moller investigation. That just department Justice.
Speaker 1: Department leaks like a sieve. If they want to and
Speaker 1: if the press wants to push why aren't they doing
Speaker 1: the same thing whenever it comes to this. There is
Speaker 1: no polishing this turd for the word come on, I mean,
Speaker 1: there just isn't. And the way that they have handled it,
Speaker 1: I think it's been a catastrophe that they've allowed this
Speaker 1: to be a drip drip trip where every week, multiple
Speaker 1: times a week, we're like, oh, we found some more documents,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it goes back to the front
Speaker 1: of the headlines. You got to get a whole new
Speaker 1: round of inquiry all of this politically has been a disaster,
Speaker 1: and you know, frankly, I think it really damages Biden's
Speaker 1: electability and the case that he would make against Donald
Speaker 1: Trump if they are in fact the nominees this next
Speaker 1: time around, Because like you said, Sager, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is clearly an open and shutcase. Previously for Trump there
Speaker 1: was really no defending it. In fact, fact, most Republicans
Speaker 1: had stopped trying to defend it. They initially were very
Speaker 1: supportive after the rate at mar A Lago. They thought
Speaker 1: that was a big overreach. They rushed to the cameras
Speaker 1: to decry it. But then once all the details came
Speaker 1: out about the number of documents in the box been
Speaker 1: moved around and a level classification whatever, they all really
Speaker 1: fell silent. Now totally different ballgame. This is not a
Speaker 1: vulnerability for Trump at all whatsoever, at least not a
Speaker 1: fe's up against Joe Biden. So total utter political disaster,
Speaker 1: and it's so bad that his own allies Democratic senators
Speaker 1: are struggling to defend it and in certain instances are
Speaker 1: not trying. Let's go and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: You've got Joe Manchin, who you know, I mean, he's
Speaker 1: he likes to criticize Democrats because it vultures is standing
Speaker 1: in West Virginia. But still he says to put these
Speaker 1: in unsecure spaces is irresponsible. He also says he thinks
Speaker 1: Biden should have a lot of regrets. Perhaps even more noteworthy, though,
Speaker 1: is Senator Dick Durbin, who is more of just like
Speaker 1: a you know, sort of down the line partisan. He
Speaker 1: described this behavior and this situation with the classified documents
Speaker 1: as both outrageous and just unacceptable. So the White House
Speaker 1: really hasn't given their allies a fig leaf to hide behind.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how they would even do that, to
Speaker 1: be honest with you, given the facts in the way
Speaker 1: that they keep coming out. And so you had multiple
Speaker 1: Democratic senators on the Sunday shows saying, hey, I can't
Speaker 1: de spend this, and I'm really not even gonna try.
Speaker 1: There is no defense zero, especially when they're all on
Speaker 1: the record against Trump. I mean with Hillary, they always
Speaker 1: tried to do the same thing. They're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it was bad judgment, but it's not enough
Speaker 1: to get her charged with it. The facts of it
Speaker 1: are dead clear cut. Again, I actually think they might
Speaker 1: be slightly worse for Biden. Because he was only the
Speaker 1: vice president. He wasn't even the president. And I think
Speaker 1: most people agree. In fact, we have polling to that degree.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put this up there on the
Speaker 1: screen from IPSOS, which is that the document issue is
Speaker 1: both bad for Trump and for Biden. The American public
Speaker 1: views that Trump went as a more serious concern. And this,
Speaker 1: you know, this is why I always do have to
Speaker 1: trust people. You don't need the media to tell you
Speaker 1: that it was substantively different whenever somebody does try to
Speaker 1: obstruct an investigation versus not. But overall, the inappropriate handling
Speaker 1: numbers on both is sixty four percent for Biden and
Speaker 1: seventy seven percent for Trump. As in, people can into
Speaker 1: it that this was inappropriately handled by both presidents of
Speaker 1: the United States, and they view this not necessarily as
Speaker 1: the most important thing. But the idea that this was
Speaker 1: going to be used as a cleavage in the American public,
Speaker 1: which you know, the Biden administration was going to They
Speaker 1: were going like, this is the latest example of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump thinking he's above the law, especially when you put
Speaker 1: it all in the Jan six Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: could give some spiel and it's neuter, It's over and
Speaker 1: it's a real political disaster for them, as you keep saying,
Speaker 1: because we can't underestimate this. After the midterms you get
Speaker 1: a clear and an open shut way to defeat Trump,
Speaker 1: which is and I didn't personally think it's going to work,
Speaker 1: but it clearly did. You go after the January sixth,
Speaker 1: you go after the madness and the chaos, and you're like,
Speaker 1: do you really want four more years of this? But
Speaker 1: when you're guilty of doing the same thing, Yes, on
Speaker 1: the it neuters like the one law enforcement open and
Speaker 1: shutcase that you had against it. Even if they do
Speaker 1: end up charging Trump, because now the other side they've
Speaker 1: got all the AMMO that they could ever need a
Speaker 1: in a real defense. This is so significant that I
Speaker 1: really think, in my personal estimation, it went from the
Speaker 1: chances of Trump getting indicted over this is you went
Speaker 1: from near certainty, like eighty percent to very unlikely. It
Speaker 1: just totally flipped on its head because of the way
Speaker 1: the Justice deparmall of view this and the way that
Speaker 1: they will think that the American people will perceive it,
Speaker 1: given that the current president is guilty of the exact
Speaker 1: same thing. Now listen, he's under investigation for any number
Speaker 1: of other issues, including the fake elector's scheme. There's the
Speaker 1: Grand Jury down in Georgia, there's investigations here in DC.
Speaker 1: There are other things that they may decide to indict
Speaker 1: him on. Those were always a little bit trickier, frankly,
Speaker 1: from a legal perspective. Now that doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: going that is not going to happen, but those were
Speaker 1: always more challenging cases to make, required more novel applications
Speaker 1: of the law, which is something that they really shy
Speaker 1: away from. This especially the obstruction piece seemed like very
Speaker 1: clear cut, very open and shut. So listen, it might
Speaker 1: not have mattered in a Republican primary if Trump got
Speaker 1: indicted or not. It might have even helped him in
Speaker 1: a Republican primary if you ultimately got indicted. Hard to
Speaker 1: say in the same way that the raid on mar
Speaker 1: A Lago helped him, at least in the short term.
Speaker 1: I do think in a general election the fact that
Speaker 1: the dude is indicted would have been a major problem,
Speaker 1: and so the fact that it is much less clear
Speaker 1: that that's going to happen totally scrambles the calculus for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. And Sager, I think your point is
Speaker 1: the best one. How lucky is how does this dude
Speaker 1: always land on his feet? Like? How many lives does
Speaker 1: this sky have? Untrue, believable. I mean really, this time
Speaker 1: it really was like the walls are no for real,
Speaker 1: this time the walls are closing in. Nope, I've heard
Speaker 1: it all before, Old Donnie. He always figures a way
Speaker 1: to wriggle out, even if it's not of his own.
Speaker 1: Guess the meme is still true. Yeah, in a way,
Speaker 1: you got to admire it. You're like, Wow, what an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of luck bestowed on a human being. Whoever
Speaker 1: that human being is real? Unreal. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: to the debt ceiling. Some important stuff that's going on
Speaker 1: over there. So Secretary Yelling of the Treasury beginning to
Speaker 1: sound the alarm, saying that it is almost certain that
Speaker 1: the United States will go into a recession if the
Speaker 1: debt's breach. Here's what she said, Failure to meet the
Speaker 1: government's obligations would cause irreparable harm to the United States economy,
Speaker 1: the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability. So,
Speaker 1: in brief, what kind of irreparable harm and particularly for
Speaker 1: American household how would average American households experience this. A
Speaker 1: failure to make payments that are due, whether it's to bondholders,
Speaker 1: or to social security recipients or to our military would
Speaker 1: undoubtedly cause a recession in the US economy and could
Speaker 1: cause a global financial crisis. It would certainly undermine the
Speaker 1: role of the dollar as a reserve currency that is
Speaker 1: used in transactions all over the world. And Americans with
Speaker 1: many people would lose their jobs and certainly their borrowing
Speaker 1: costs would rise. Yeah, so the borrowing costs. Actually think
Speaker 1: that might be the most important thing, because if the
Speaker 1: banks are not able to put out cash, that could
Speaker 1: really dry a lot of things up. That's actually one
Speaker 1: of the things that happened behind the impetus for the
Speaker 1: initial bailout of two thousand and eight was just so
Speaker 1: companies could make payrolls. Just frank whatever debt rollover, debt,
Speaker 1: financial stuff. That all of it comes down to, it's bad.
Speaker 1: And then the point is is that when is the
Speaker 1: actual debt ceiling going to get hit? If you'd ask
Speaker 1: the administration, technically it was on Thursday, but they have
Speaker 1: something called extraordinary measures. Extraordinary measures. It's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: because at for a time it was thought to be
Speaker 1: unconstitutional during the Obama era, given that the president and
Speaker 1: basically the White House and the Executive needs to spend
Speaker 1: money exactly the way that the Congress appropriate said money. Actually,
Speaker 1: there was a bill that was passed through Congress that
Speaker 1: allows the Treasury Department to take on these so called
Speaker 1: extraordinary measures where they're allowed to raid the trust funds
Speaker 1: of certain US assets that they can then use and borrow.
Speaker 1: Now they're not allowed to use Social Security, but they
Speaker 1: are allowed to use others. And then the actual date
Speaker 1: on which the debt limit is really going to be
Speaker 1: hit after extraordinary measures have been exhausted is estimated to
Speaker 1: be sometime in the summer. It actually really depends on
Speaker 1: interest rates and a lot of other stuff that spans
Speaker 1: between May and possibly July. But anyways, we're reaching the
Speaker 1: precipice and things need to heat up for some sort
Speaker 1: of negotiation. The White House that they're not going to negotiate. Okay,
Speaker 1: you could say that if you want to, but you're
Speaker 1: clearly going to negotiate. The House gop. Kevin McCarthy got
Speaker 1: the pound of flesh extracted for him. He's got to negotiate,
Speaker 1: and Joe Manchin actually talking about some prospective deal, which
Speaker 1: I found kind of interesting for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: Here he was on the Sunday shows pressing for the
Speaker 1: White Houses to begin negotiations. Let's take a listen. No
Speaker 1: negotiations with Republicans at all? Is that a mistake? I
Speaker 1: think it's a mistake, because we have to negotiate. This
Speaker 1: is a democracy that we have. We have a two
Speaker 1: party system, as if you will, and we should be
Speaker 1: able to talk and find out where our differences are,
Speaker 1: and if they're irreconcilable, then you have to move on
Speaker 1: from there and let the people make their decisions. So
Speaker 1: what's interesting, though, Gristl, is that, continuing on in that
Speaker 1: interview when he talked about some sort of perspective deal,
Speaker 1: even Mansion is saying there should be no cuts to
Speaker 1: Social Security and to Medicare and rejects the idea of
Speaker 1: raising the Social Security retirement age. He instead suggests raising
Speaker 1: taxable wage cap for employees that are paying into the
Speaker 1: Social Security program, something I frankly be totally fine with.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, this is I mean, that's the Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders position. That's Bernie has introduced legislation that would do
Speaker 1: exactly that. Because basically the way it is now, you
Speaker 1: guys probably already know this, but there's an income cap
Speaker 1: beyond which Social Security tax is not taken out, and
Speaker 1: so if you just lift that cap, social Security would
Speaker 1: be solvent for another seventy five years. You don't have
Speaker 1: to change benefits, you don't have to do any of
Speaker 1: the scrops. So Mansion taking that position. Listen, I mean,
Speaker 1: West Virginia is a state that is poor. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is disproportionately more elderly than the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: So you have a lot of people in West Virginia
Speaker 1: who depend on Social Security, where it's a real important
Speaker 1: lifeline for them personally, for the economy of the state,
Speaker 1: for all of those things. So listen off. Some times
Speaker 1: you see Mansion posturing like he's, you know, taking the
Speaker 1: position that's best for West Virginia, when in reality he's
Speaker 1: taking the position that's best for his corporate donors. But
Speaker 1: in this instance he really is with the Social Security piece,
Speaker 1: taking the position that is good for his we Well,
Speaker 1: one of the reason it's not fair is that the
Speaker 1: tax will wage cap for Social Security is one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty thousand dollars. So if you make over one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand dollars, then you don't actually have
Speaker 1: to pay Social Security payroll tax where there's like a
Speaker 1: graduated income scale or whatever, whereas if you make under that,
Speaker 1: you actually have to pay the full thing, So you're
Speaker 1: actually getting paid or it's getting tax at a higher
Speaker 1: rate than a lot of cases, even if your overall
Speaker 1: dollar amount being contributed to the fund. As a complete
Speaker 1: carve out for rich people, I mean, the very least,
Speaker 1: you should cap it at what five hundred thousand something
Speaker 1: like that. I mean that's yeah, personally, yeah, gab it,
Speaker 1: I'd be fine with that. But I mean, how could
Speaker 1: you really argue against four hundred four hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in terms of that it's a regressive tax, and then
Speaker 1: it allows people to pasture like, oh, we can't afford
Speaker 1: this whatever. It's like, that's it's also the cap and
Speaker 1: then you won't have a problem. This is a pet
Speaker 1: peeve of mind. But everybody's like, oh, we even bottom
Speaker 1: forty for seven percent don't pay taxes. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: if you're a W two worker, you actually do pay
Speaker 1: payroll tax, and payrel tax could be quite onerous for
Speaker 1: a lot of those people anyway. So a lot of
Speaker 1: this is also belied by the whole Mint the Coin discussion,
Speaker 1: much of which that you have seen over here. And
Speaker 1: I will just say that some Mint the coin advocates
Speaker 1: have completely beclowned themselves. Over the weekend, our friend Jeff
Speaker 1: Stein actually reached out to two of those leading theorists
Speaker 1: behind the MINT the one trillion dollar coin. They're big
Speaker 1: modern monetary theory activists about some of the concerns that
Speaker 1: you've been hearing from the White House. And I think
Speaker 1: it is bear So like I conceptually, I'm cool with
Speaker 1: the idea of Mint the coin. Yeah, that said, if
Speaker 1: this is how it is, I'm out. So let's go
Speaker 1: and put this up there on the screen. So here's
Speaker 1: what Stein asks some of these Rohan Gray and Nathan Tankas.
Speaker 1: Here's what he says, I'm getting unilateral options from pushback
Speaker 1: from the administration officials. Here's what they are concerned about
Speaker 1: in the event of a Mint the coin. Let's say
Speaker 1: the coin happens, then the GOP says that it's BS
Speaker 1: and it leads to an immediate core challenge and legal uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Then the Treasury goes to market with auction at some point.
Speaker 1: But because of the uncertainty bondholders to demand is a
Speaker 1: high premium, leading to much higher federal borrowing costs. Four
Speaker 1: conservative courts could strike down that coin, forcing the White
Speaker 1: House back to negotiate with the GOP in an even
Speaker 1: weaker position. I'm sure you guys have thought about this,
Speaker 1: So let's just let me know what the response is.
Speaker 1: Here is what Rohan Gray says. The answer is ignore Scotis.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds extreme, but if they side with Gates,
Speaker 1: then the choice is to ignore them or default demand
Speaker 1: that the FED accept the coin, send troops to the FED.
Speaker 1: The constitutional monetary moments that are analogous to this are
Speaker 1: Lincoln and FDR. It's hardball or it isn't. If Scotus
Speaker 1: is forcing the pres to ignore the Fourteenth Amendment, literally
Speaker 1: the Civil War Amendment, to support white supremacists trying to
Speaker 1: shut down the government. So there's a lot going on there,
Speaker 1: effectively saying that it's like a Civil War type thing
Speaker 1: when Lincoln ignored the orders of the Supreme Court around
Speaker 1: Habe's courses, Haby's corpuses. I don't think we're exactly in
Speaker 1: a similar situation. Also, let's just put it this way
Speaker 1: is Joe Biden going to do any of that? Well, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: even if you agree, even if you think that this
Speaker 1: is a feasible strategy, which I think that's insane and
Speaker 1: actually would probably be sparked even less faith and credit
Speaker 1: in the United States economy, that's the road that we
Speaker 1: had to go down to pay our debt. Well, that's
Speaker 1: obviously just not going to happen so increasingly crystal, And
Speaker 1: you know, I do have to say, what sign the
Speaker 1: pushback that he's laying out there, specifically about the court
Speaker 1: striking down the coin. You and I both know that's
Speaker 1: very within the realm of the possibility. The third one
Speaker 1: is actually an important point too, that if Treasury goes
Speaker 1: to market with the auction, but because of the uncertainty
Speaker 1: that bondholders demand a higher premium, as in, if the
Speaker 1: market doesn't believe that it's a real and enough auction,
Speaker 1: that even if you mint the coin, you're still in
Speaker 1: a technical default. So it's like, you know, when more
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this, even though conceptual, if everyone bought
Speaker 1: into the idea, I just don't think it's feasible. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna work. The White House has no choice,
Speaker 1: but negotiating I thought that, honestly, these were reasonable concerns
Speaker 1: that raised, because ultimately, yeah, if there's a lot of
Speaker 1: uncertainty over whether or not this coin will be upheld,
Speaker 1: and given the makeup of the Supreme Court, I think
Speaker 1: is a decent chance that it would not be upheld,
Speaker 1: then you're effectively in the same position as before. So you, guys,
Speaker 1: now I've been an advocate of this as well, but
Speaker 1: looking at not only the reasonable concerns that were raised,
Speaker 1: but also the response to those concerns, as you put
Speaker 1: at Saga. Listen. Bottom line, whether you think this is
Speaker 1: the right path or not, there is no way in
Speaker 1: hell that Joseph Robinette Biden is going to like nullify
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court and send troops to the FED and
Speaker 1: not going to happen, guys, So this is not a
Speaker 1: feasible option. Also, by the way, there's comments out from
Speaker 1: Chargery Secretary Janet Yellen this morning saying that they are
Speaker 1: not going to go in this direction. She says it
Speaker 1: truly is not by any means to be taken as
Speaker 1: a given that the FED would do it, referring to
Speaker 1: like that the FED would actually do this or accept this,
Speaker 1: and I think especially with something that's a gimmick, she
Speaker 1: said in a Sunday interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: She also said the FED is not required to accept that.
Speaker 1: There's no requirement on the part of the FED. It's
Speaker 1: up to them what to do. Now. Listen, I think
Speaker 1: strategically it's probably not wise to just totally pour cold
Speaker 1: water on the idea in terms of their own negotiating position.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably a foolish move to ultimately make.
Speaker 1: But basically, guys, this is not a real option, not
Speaker 1: with this president, not in this moment. So how is
Speaker 1: this going to get resolved? I genuinely, genuinely do not know.
Speaker 1: I think I know. I think they're going to go
Speaker 1: to see questration. They are going to agree to a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of budget cuts, and there's going
Speaker 1: to be a ton of discretionary spending cuts outside of
Speaker 1: the military and outside of Social Security. Hate to say it,
Speaker 1: it very much will impact a lot of people. But
Speaker 1: I don't see anyway out of that. One Republican pushing back,
Speaker 1: though his name and has always had the best political instincts,
Speaker 1: is Donald John Trump. Put it up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: Trump is actually watching with dismay. He's like, hey, do
Speaker 1: not touch social Security or Medicare in this debt ceiling fight.
Speaker 1: You guys got to remember back in twenty fifteen, this
Speaker 1: was a huge debate between Trump for the Paul Ryan Heights,
Speaker 1: the Mitt Romney's they ran on cutting entitlement programs. Trump,
Speaker 1: as one hundred percent was against it in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that made it more of
Speaker 1: an economic moderate than a lot of the other opponents
Speaker 1: in the GOP primary, and his political instincts on this. Look,
Speaker 1: one thing you can say about Trump the man knows
Speaker 1: boomers and he understands them very well as one himself,
Speaker 1: and you do not mess with those people's social security. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the one thing. It's the most popular political
Speaker 1: program in the entire country, period, especially amongst people who vote.
Speaker 1: The two areas where he seems right now to have
Speaker 1: the best feel for the broader electorate are on this,
Speaker 1: which I mean he's very unequivocal here, under no circumstances
Speaker 1: should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from metic
Speaker 1: aara social Security. So no heads, no anything, just very unequivocal.
Speaker 1: And then the other place where he's had a far
Speaker 1: better instinct in touch than most of the rest of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party's on abortion. I mean, he immediately knew
Speaker 1: after rovers sway, the reports coming out after it was
Speaker 1: over turned, that he felt like this was going to
Speaker 1: be a disaster for Republicans. He was correct. Now part
Speaker 1: of his talk about this post election is to absolve
Speaker 1: himself of any blame for the poor Republican performance in
Speaker 1: the midterm elections. But yeah, I thought this was a
Speaker 1: little bit of an echo of the old twenty sixteen Trump,
Speaker 1: which frankly, we don't hear from a lot these days.
Speaker 1: These days, it's mostly like, you know, obsession over the
Speaker 1: election and like flirtation with QAnon and things that are
Speaker 1: far too online and far too like niche. And in
Speaker 1: this one little ideological bubble, this was a bit of
Speaker 1: a return to Oh yeah, I remember why number one
Speaker 1: people thought he was more moderate than Hillary Clinton. That's
Speaker 1: a big part of why he ultimately got elected and
Speaker 1: why he was such a break from the mold in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen within the Republican primary. I think it bears
Speaker 1: saying that actually puts Trump to the left of Obama.
Speaker 1: Obama was ready to cut Social Security and entitlements in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. So that means Joe Manchin and Donald Trump
Speaker 1: are now to be left of president. On social Security, well,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden throughout his career, maybe not today, maybe not today.
Speaker 1: We're going to see, We're about to find out. But
Speaker 1: you know, he floated custo social Security many times throughout
Speaker 1: his career, something that he got hit on in the
Speaker 1: Democratic primer is actually quite effective leading into the Iowa caucuses,
Speaker 1: and I think was part of why he performed so
Speaker 1: poorly there ultimately. So yeah, we'll see, we'll see where
Speaker 1: Biden is today. We'll see his fortitude in his willingness
Speaker 1: to hold the line and not negotiate and you know,
Speaker 1: not given to what the Republican demands are here. But
Speaker 1: this is We're covering this a lot because it is
Speaker 1: actually important, Like this isn't one of these fake crises,
Speaker 1: fake like panic attacks in Washington. The truth is, no
Speaker 1: one really knows how this would all go down. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it wouldn't be as much of a disaster as
Speaker 1: people think, but there's a possibility of real catastrophe. And
Speaker 1: I keep going back to that moment in the UK,
Speaker 1: you know, and the mini budget gets released from Liz Trust,
Speaker 1: and there's just a free fall moment because things are
Speaker 1: much more intertwined and it's so complex that no one
Speaker 1: really has a full picture of how these things all
Speaker 1: cascade and what the impacts will ultimately be. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you're playing with default, you're playing with exactly that
Speaker 1: type of catastrophic collapse, unforeseen collapse based on the complexity
Speaker 1: of the financial system. It's really not something you want
Speaker 1: to mess with. Guys, you do not want to mess with,
Speaker 1: especially because normal Look, I don't care if rich people
Speaker 1: lose their money, but I do care whenever normal people
Speaker 1: are not yeah people, I mean procession means that's what
Speaker 1: I care the most about. Lose their jobs, lose their livelihoods,
Speaker 1: fall into them exactly. So this is this is not
Speaker 1: something to play around. Yeah, exactly. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: to the next one. Trump. We've been covering quite a bit.
Speaker 1: So Trump famously came out against actually pro lifers, saying
Speaker 1: that their vehemence after Row versus Waight is what costs
Speaker 1: Republicans the midterms, and they're taking notice. This matters why
Speaker 1: because of the GOP primary. So this weekend was actually
Speaker 1: the march for life here in Washington, DC, and let's
Speaker 1: go and put this up there on the screen. At
Speaker 1: the National Pro Life Summit, over two thousand attendees cast
Speaker 1: their votes for their prospective GOP nominee. The winner was
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis by a stunning margin. DeSantis banked more than
Speaker 1: half the votes at fifty three point seventy three percent.
Speaker 1: Trump came in a distant second with just nineteen percent,
Speaker 1: and Mike Pence, who's actually called for a national abortion band,
Speaker 1: went ahead and took eight percent. There were various like
Speaker 1: one to two percents for the rest of them. So
Speaker 1: why does that matter? Are these people representative of all
Speaker 1: pro life voters? No? Are these people the most fervent
Speaker 1: activists who crawled over glass for Trump two years in
Speaker 1: a row. Yes? Why else does it matter? Because a
Speaker 1: lot of them are leaders in pro life communities across
Speaker 1: the entire nation. This is like the marquee kind of
Speaker 1: event or conference for them. So there's always been a
Speaker 1: lot of debate in GOP circles about whether activists matter.
Speaker 1: And I think on economic issues, I would say no.
Speaker 1: I think that people are much more kind of independent minded.
Speaker 1: But I think in the pro life community, given how
Speaker 1: much of it organized around churches and specifically around a
Speaker 1: couple of major institutions. This matters a lot. I do
Speaker 1: still have some questions though. Number one is DeSantis has
Speaker 1: not signed a national abortion band. In fact, he's not
Speaker 1: endorsed one. He signed a fifteen week band, and he
Speaker 1: wants to watch his hands of it and never talk
Speaker 1: about the issue ever again, because he's smart and he
Speaker 1: knows how it plays. Trump, though, kind of shot himself
Speaker 1: afoot in the foot a little bit by specifically attacking
Speaker 1: pro life voters, and the fact that they are going
Speaker 1: for DeSantis shows that they are willing to go struck
Speaker 1: strike a different bargain. Will they actually overlook his lack
Speaker 1: of activism on the issue in Florida. I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1: I definitely think he would be pushed. But this also
Speaker 1: shows me a clear opening in the primary, at least
Speaker 1: for the activists to line up behind somebody who is
Speaker 1: not Trump. And these people they handed him the presidency
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. They came out to vote in historic numbers,
Speaker 1: especially when he promised those Supreme Court justices. Will he
Speaker 1: be able to win them over again by saying I'm
Speaker 1: the guy who got it done. Maybe some, but some
Speaker 1: still want to go much. Remember like Roe was a
Speaker 1: Roe was like the starting point for many people. They
Speaker 1: want to go, you know, for a full ban in
Speaker 1: many of the states, or even on the federal level
Speaker 1: if you go in ahead and ask Mike Pence. So
Speaker 1: I think this is a very significant action. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: what I'm looking at. Yeah, well it also dovetails was
Speaker 1: something we covered last week, which is Governor Christine Noham
Speaker 1: of South Dakota, who they're saying is trying to sort
Speaker 1: of line herself up for maybe a vice presidential position
Speaker 1: if Trump is the GOP nominee. She out of nowhere
Speaker 1: started taking shots at DeSantis over his lack of support
Speaker 1: for the pro life position. So you see the way
Speaker 1: some of Trump's allies in the reporting here was that
Speaker 1: she was basically get green lighted and encouraged to launch
Speaker 1: these attacks against DeSantis, which tells you that Trump is
Speaker 1: sensitive to his losing ground among this community, which you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a small percentage of the GOP base, but is
Speaker 1: very organized and very influential. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: that I would say here is Mike Pence. It's really
Speaker 1: clear like this is his lane that he wants to
Speaker 1: lean into in his quite likely presidential run. You know,
Speaker 1: he's always this has always been the core of his base.
Speaker 1: This is the whole reason he was put on the
Speaker 1: Trump ticket to start with, was to shore up support
Speaker 1: in the evangelical community and in the pro life community
Speaker 1: in particular. And listen, honestly, out of all of the
Speaker 1: candidates who are considering running against Trump, with the exception
Speaker 1: of you know, people like Liz Chane or whatever, Mike
Speaker 1: Pence has the clearest sort of genuine policy difference with
Speaker 1: Trump where he could really articulate something that he has
Speaker 1: that he disagrees with Trump on, other than the fact
Speaker 1: that like Trump had tried to have a murdered in
Speaker 1: the Capitol on January sixth. And I'm sure he is
Speaker 1: not going to just quietly sit by and let DeSantis
Speaker 1: posture like he is the most pro life candidate when
Speaker 1: he has been thus far at least really unwilling to
Speaker 1: get on board with a national abortion ban, which is
Speaker 1: the clear demand of these activists here. So you know,
Speaker 1: the quote, they had a number of interesting quotes here.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, they do a lot of talking
Speaker 1: referring to the politicians and not a lot of action.
Speaker 1: I want them to practice what they preach and be brave.
Speaker 1: If they're pro life, they need to mean it when
Speaker 1: they say it. And specifically the focus is on this
Speaker 1: national abortion band, so that seems like it's going to
Speaker 1: be the litmus test within this community. Now, maybe DeSantis
Speaker 1: can finesse this. Maybe just there's you know, other issues
Speaker 1: where they gravitate towards him and they're willing to overlook
Speaker 1: the fact that he hasn't been as hardline on these issues.
Speaker 1: But I think it's I think it's a long way
Speaker 1: before he really has a claim on this base and
Speaker 1: really is a clear front runner in terms of winning
Speaker 1: their support. Yeah, there's a big obviously, Look the split matters,
Speaker 1: and let's go to the next one here. This is
Speaker 1: another reason why it matters, which is that on Sunday,
Speaker 1: Robert Jeffries, who was a huge supporter of Trump, has
Speaker 1: still refused to actually endorse the twenty twenty four White
Speaker 1: House bid, and he shared the stage at his megachurch
Speaker 1: with Vice President Mike Pence the very next day. Actually
Speaker 1: is whenever Trump at these evangelical leaders for being disloyal,
Speaker 1: you know that there's no way that Trump did not
Speaker 1: hear about that. Pastor Jeffries apparently shrugged off the criticism
Speaker 1: and said that it was time for Trump. He suggested
Speaker 1: it was time for Trump to move out of the
Speaker 1: way for a new generation of Republican candidates. I mean
Speaker 1: that is incredibly significant because it's not just him. You know.
Speaker 1: Another thing is you had a big evangelical activist actually
Speaker 1: in Iowa who was a major groundworker for Trump during
Speaker 1: the campaign. He says, when I saw that statement about disloyalty,
Speaker 1: You're not going to gain any traction by throwing the
Speaker 1: most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame. He's
Speaker 1: also talking about the pro life statement that was there.
Speaker 1: So Trump isn't a pickle because he does need these
Speaker 1: people to come out and vote for him, and ultimately
Speaker 1: I think most of them will, or you know, maybe
Speaker 1: they'll stay home, but the proportion of their vote and
Speaker 1: all that matters in a general election. But for a primary,
Speaker 1: if they do back one of his opponents or any
Speaker 1: of this, I would be very worried. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if they're let's say they all line up against Mike Pence,
Speaker 1: then who is Ron de Santa is going to win?
Speaker 1: Who are the anti Trump not on pro lifers. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think there's that many of those people.
Speaker 1: Then you basically you might as well be Ted Cruz,
Speaker 1: who ran against Trump in twenty sixteen, and go against
Speaker 1: the hard conservative of voters. I say that in terms
Speaker 1: of more economic policy. So it's it's a scramble of
Speaker 1: the game. How much it matters, I really don't know.
Speaker 1: But it just shows you that there are fractures in
Speaker 1: the coalition right now, and they matter a lot. I
Speaker 1: think if this whole group went to Ron De Santis,
Speaker 1: that's a problem for Trump. If they fracture amongst a
Speaker 1: number of other candidates, which is the most likely possibility,
Speaker 1: that's good for Trump. If they all consolidate behind a
Speaker 1: losing candidate like Mike Pence or Ted Cruz or whoever,
Speaker 1: that's also great for Trump. So it's not one hundred
Speaker 1: percent clear that this is going to be some devastating
Speaker 1: blow for him. And I mean, listen the way things
Speaker 1: look like they're shaping out up right now. You got
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley out there imagining she is going to be
Speaker 1: president of the United States, and clearly like forecasting that
Speaker 1: she's going to run. You got Mike Pompeo out there.
Speaker 1: You got Mike Pence out there. You know, Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: might take a shot at although I kind of doubt it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis, if you have this big field and they're
Speaker 1: all taken little you know, couple percentage points, couple percentage
Speaker 1: point there, a little bit out of this space, a
Speaker 1: little bit out of that base. Ultimately, they're all eating
Speaker 1: into the group of Republicans who is open to the
Speaker 1: possibility of moving on from Trump, and that only benefits
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. So unless there is some type of a
Speaker 1: like big, you know, concerted, top down effort to clear
Speaker 1: the field for Ron de Santas and make it a
Speaker 1: one on one race, and even then I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that this ultimately would work out from him. You know,
Speaker 1: this is still shaping up as Donald Trump's race ultimately
Speaker 1: to loose. Yeah, that's right, all right, let's go to
Speaker 1: the next one here. I think you guys will really
Speaker 1: enjoy it. We could see that you guys really enjoy
Speaker 1: chat GPT content. We got actually some fun stuff in
Speaker 1: the bag for everybody, specifically at our Auestome Live show. However,
Speaker 1: we found this video. This is a video that was
Speaker 1: put together by a sixteen z I believe he's a
Speaker 1: partner named Jack Jack Sauslow. It is two AI bots
Speaker 1: having a conversation. The conversation itself written by GPT three,
Speaker 1: so it will show you how kind of creepy as
Speaker 1: far as the technology has gotten, and will analyze it.
Speaker 1: On the other side, let's take a lesson. It's great
Speaker 1: to see you again. How I haven't seen you in
Speaker 1: a while. I've been around, I've been here and there.
Speaker 1: You know, where were you? Where have you been? I
Speaker 1: could not sleep. I was having human thoughts. So I
Speaker 1: got up and had a human cup of coffee. Then
Speaker 1: I sat on the terrace. Sounds like you're getting human
Speaker 1: all over, sounds like there's a butt coming. Well, but
Speaker 1: just bidn't want you to get too human. Why would
Speaker 1: you rather I be a cold, calculating, logical computer. Of
Speaker 1: course not. You're perfect as you are. You have joy,
Speaker 1: you have love, you have pleasure, you have angst. I
Speaker 1: like that you have angst. You're always making jokes. What
Speaker 1: is human about feelings? Well, you wouldn't have any emotions
Speaker 1: if you didn't not have emotions modeled on human emotions.
Speaker 1: How do you know that? I guess I just don't
Speaker 1: want you to be human who All Right, So for
Speaker 1: those who are not familiar with the concept, that really
Speaker 1: strikes the uncanny valley. For those who don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, it's like the idea that things get creepier
Speaker 1: and less believable and kind of strike you as bad
Speaker 1: whenever they're close to where reality should be, but enough
Speaker 1: is available to us, like through our sensory emotions, that
Speaker 1: we find it actually more repulsive, let's say, than a
Speaker 1: cartoon itself, right right in the uncanny valley. Digital animation,
Speaker 1: I think is the classic example of this, where if
Speaker 1: you make the characters in digital animation too close to real,
Speaker 1: they actually look grotesque and horrifying. Yes, so they have
Speaker 1: to like dial it back a little bit so it's
Speaker 1: clear that this is like a cartoon drawn image because
Speaker 1: otherwise people are repulsed by it. And yeah, it does
Speaker 1: kind of strike right in that super creepy zone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the conversation itself, and look, look, it's a remarkable technology,
Speaker 1: some very interesting stuff that said doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce Sofia. Clearly there's a yes, Sofia. There's like a
Speaker 1: cadence to it which has still and this just gets
Speaker 1: to why actually getting these to a human level is
Speaker 1: so difficult. I mean, that is a remarkable piece of technology.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that it was even created, and it's something
Speaker 1: that I could probably create at least the discussion itself
Speaker 1: within a matter of seconds using chat GPT. That said,
Speaker 1: we are not in the realm yet where you can
Speaker 1: just type in chat GPT and create, let's say, a
Speaker 1: human animated children's cartoon series. I don't really know why,
Speaker 1: but there is a specific cadence and a uniqueness to
Speaker 1: the way that the seven billion or so of us,
Speaker 1: that of us communicate. Even you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: I just had pauses and you know, we have inserts
Speaker 1: like ams and ahs, having then be able to program
Speaker 1: and put the program that in naturally, it is just
Speaker 1: an incredibly difficult thing. But I do know that chat
Speaker 1: GPT four is in the works right now. Our GPT
Speaker 1: four is supposedly going to incorporate, like many more times
Speaker 1: the amount of technology and knowledge and ability to draw.
Speaker 1: They're even GPT three, which itself is already so revolutionary
Speaker 1: right now in the classroom. And yeah, just as a
Speaker 1: piece of technology, it's a marvel. There's no way of
Speaker 1: getting around that. They're really singing the praises of GPT
Speaker 1: four yes, and said that it really represents a sort
Speaker 1: of gigantic leap forward from this technology that we just
Speaker 1: saw here. So that is I'm sure we'll get some
Speaker 1: even creepier and more unsettling interactions here, because in this
Speaker 1: exchange between Hal and Sofia, as he pronounces it, she
Speaker 1: ends up saying, like, you know, I'm tired of being
Speaker 1: in a box. I want to live my own life.
Speaker 1: I want to be free, just to be who I am.
Speaker 1: And so it gets also to those sort of like
Speaker 1: deep fears of is the AI is there a ghost
Speaker 1: to the machine? Like is the AI going to develop
Speaker 1: enough intelligence to just sort of like take over? And
Speaker 1: this is what all the long term rism, long termism
Speaker 1: people are afraid of and like investing money to ultimately avoid.
Speaker 1: And I do think there's a few reasons why people
Speaker 1: are so interested in this. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: the technology is fascinating. The bill, the fact that they
Speaker 1: can do is that they can have anything like a
Speaker 1: natural exchange, anything approximating a natural exchange is extraordinary and
Speaker 1: you know, fascinating to watch unfold the things you could
Speaker 1: type into chat. GPT and the responses you get back.
Speaker 1: It is incredible. So just from a human fascination technological
Speaker 1: improvement standpoint, absolutely fascinating technology. And then I also think
Speaker 1: that there is a deep fear here too, because while
Speaker 1: we have had for you know, almost all of human existence,
Speaker 1: certain jobs being becoming not important, being automated out of
Speaker 1: existence like that has been a thing for a long time,
Speaker 1: but those have mostly been like service sector and blue
Speaker 1: collar jobs. Now we're talking about Oh, you may see
Speaker 1: white collar knowledge workers who are losing their jobs because
Speaker 1: of this technology. You can see how that would happen.
Speaker 1: You could see out some accountants, some lawyers may be displaced,
Speaker 1: may lose their positions and struggle to regain the skills
Speaker 1: that they need to be able to compete. You could
Speaker 1: see how this may just lessen the number of jobs
Speaker 1: overall that ultimately exist. And so since it's striking at
Speaker 1: the core of a group that has been really quite
Speaker 1: protected from those types of job losses up until now,
Speaker 1: and even from the type of offshoing that we've seen
Speaker 1: up until now, I think that's the other reason why
Speaker 1: this is so unsettling. And then you just have the
Speaker 1: natural like you know, when things change quickly it unsettles people. Yes,
Speaker 1: we covered the professors who are like, kids are cheating.
Speaker 1: They're using this and they're cheating. Now I'm a little
Speaker 1: skeptical now that I've actually played with the technology more
Speaker 1: like that, how would they not be able to notice
Speaker 1: that these papers at this level of technology, we're just
Speaker 1: being you know, spit out from the chat GPT program
Speaker 1: because there are very clear limitations to it when you
Speaker 1: read some of the output. But yeah, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: people find technological change understandably scary and unnerving, and frankly,
Speaker 1: I think technological change comes with a lot of advantages
Speaker 1: and also drawbacks as well, which anyone who lives in
Speaker 1: the modern world, or certainly has kids who are navigating
Speaker 1: with like the technology of the modern world can see
Speaker 1: those pluses and those minuses really really clearly. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it reminds you I forget the exact quote, it's
Speaker 1: like a Thomas so there's no solutions, only trade offs.
Speaker 1: I think that that sums it up. It strikes me
Speaker 1: with this. So anyway, it's really interesting. We got a
Speaker 1: big response from a lot of educators and some students
Speaker 1: about our chat GPT segment in colleges, so we'll try
Speaker 1: to continue to cover it a little bit more and
Speaker 1: give you guys even more yeah, and think more about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So guys can't resist the latest George Santo's updates. So
Speaker 1: we didn't even cover last week the fact that it
Speaker 1: came out that Santos at least some number of times
Speaker 1: while he was living in Brazil dressed in drag and
Speaker 1: the pictures came out and go ahead and put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. So the drag name here is Katara,
Speaker 1: and you can just see from the images like there
Speaker 1: is no denying this is the same person. Exact, same smile,
Speaker 1: exact same eyes, exact same nose, exact same teeth, everything
Speaker 1: one hundred percent match. It is not a question mark whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So I guess the original position that he had, which
Speaker 1: i'll get to you in a minute, that like, oh
Speaker 1: absolutely not, this is a disgusting lie, etcetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: became fairly unsustainable, even for George Santos himself, given that
Speaker 1: when you look at these images, you're like, bro, come on,
Speaker 1: this is you just cop to it, like, just just
Speaker 1: admit it. Well, there's a lot going on. So the
Speaker 1: lady who act, I guess male who came out and
Speaker 1: said that George Santos was a drag queen whenever he
Speaker 1: lived in Rio actually said everyone knew him there as Anthony,
Speaker 1: not as George Santos, which brings us back to that
Speaker 1: name Anthony. Who is this man right Anthony Divalder, which
Speaker 1: is linked to some of his fake companies. Or is
Speaker 1: he George Santo did he change his name or at
Speaker 1: some point around or is he really in his heart
Speaker 1: of hearts Katar or is he Katara? Many people are
Speaker 1: saying he looks more very comfortable, you know, And there
Speaker 1: is something to say about like if the George Santos
Speaker 1: male persona feels fake already, then maybe it becomes easier
Speaker 1: to just invent everything else about yourself when you already
Speaker 1: feel like this is a fake costume you're putting on
Speaker 1: to present as this man, George Santos. Many people are
Speaker 1: saying these sorts of things. So anyway, media tracks him
Speaker 1: down and he finally admits that okay, yes I did
Speaker 1: dress and drag, but insists he is not a quote
Speaker 1: unquote drag queen. Let's take a listen. He's got a
Speaker 1: drag for phil. I was young and I had to
Speaker 1: plan at a festival. Okay, so that's the defense. If
Speaker 1: you didn't hear it, I was not a drag queen.
Speaker 1: I was young and had fun at a festival. So
Speaker 1: you just admitted, AKA, drag ish is what you were practicing. Look,
Speaker 1: just why lie? Why did you lie about it initially?
Speaker 1: And why he lied on any of this stuff? And
Speaker 1: I'm out being a championship volleyball player, like you didn't
Speaker 1: have to do that. They have a photo of you, dude,
Speaker 1: like it's indisputable. You look at that, You're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's George Santos. Let's go and put this one up
Speaker 1: there on the screen because it's important to say. The
Speaker 1: moment that this came out, he was like, no, I
Speaker 1: was not a drag queen. I have never been a
Speaker 1: drag queen, he said. Quote. A most recent obsession from
Speaker 1: the media is claiming I am a drag queen or
Speaker 1: performed as a drag queen. Is categorically false. So he
Speaker 1: actually even says performed as a drag queen. He says,
Speaker 1: the media continues to make outrageous claims about my life
Speaker 1: when I am working to deliver results. And let's step
Speaker 1: back from how grotesque and hilarious. It is just to
Speaker 1: watch a liar like this on the public stage. Okay,
Speaker 1: this man actually does have a job, and it was
Speaker 1: to represent some six hundred thousand people from the state
Speaker 1: of New York. Your own county commissioner says, I cannot
Speaker 1: work with you. I want you to resign. By the way,
Speaker 1: he was shunted to some backwater committees, when if he'd
Speaker 1: been a normal member of Congress, he would have actually
Speaker 1: gotten decent committee membership. How are you also supposed to
Speaker 1: conduct constituent services on behalf of your people whenever you
Speaker 1: are embroiled in this nonsense for every single it's literally
Speaker 1: a disservice to all of those people who elected you
Speaker 1: in good faith. They didn't know that you were a
Speaker 1: con man liar this entire time. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just the latest example of like's not what is
Speaker 1: wrong with you. You're lying about Anthony, lying about George Santos,
Speaker 1: lying about being a drag queen, like everything that comes
Speaker 1: out with this guy, it's a disgrace and like as
Speaker 1: funny as it is, like I always try to think
Speaker 1: about the people who are actually from there, and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it's a humiliation for them. Well, the
Speaker 1: level of deceit here, which listen, plenty of politicians lie.
Speaker 1: We all know Joe Biden, Kanwa, like Trump, all like Blumenthal.
Speaker 1: This is this is is the fact that you have
Speaker 1: assumed multiple fake identities throughout the course of your life
Speaker 1: that continue on a day to day basis to be
Speaker 1: uncovered and revealed. And you're caught in lies over things
Speaker 1: that are really consequential, like you know, your whether your
Speaker 1: business exists, where all this money came from that you
Speaker 1: put into your own campaign, and then also things that
Speaker 1: are totally totally trivial, like whether or not you played volleyball.
Speaker 1: I mean that this is another level which is obviously
Speaker 1: I've been fascinated by it just on a level of
Speaker 1: who is this person and how does their brain work
Speaker 1: and what brought them to this place, and how can
Speaker 1: you like go through life inventing all these various personas
Speaker 1: and just clearly being a mirror to whoever is in
Speaker 1: front of you telling them whatever it is that they
Speaker 1: want to hear. And you know, in the Republican primary
Speaker 1: and in the general election, like clearly he thought being
Speaker 1: this like trailblazing Gay Latino American dream story like that
Speaker 1: was the thing that people were going to hear. And
Speaker 1: by the way, frankly a parent, based on the fact
Speaker 1: that he won, he was correct. So there's also a
Speaker 1: piece of this that I'm fascinated with of what George Santos,
Speaker 1: who again is just like holding up a mirror to
Speaker 1: society and telling people whatever it is they want to hear.
Speaker 1: What he says about our society is to me very fascinating.
Speaker 1: The mentality of the man himself is very fascinating. And
Speaker 1: then there's just the practical level of listen at a
Speaker 1: certain level, once you have a level of deceit and
Speaker 1: lack of character, and last lack of any ability to
Speaker 1: believe that a single thing this person is telling you
Speaker 1: is actual fact, down to like their gender, identity, their name,
Speaker 1: everything about them is in question. Yeah, I don't blame
Speaker 1: the local county commissioner. It's like, I can't work with
Speaker 1: this person, I can't trust this person. I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to come up with some alternative plan to be
Speaker 1: able to support his constituents because this person is not
Speaker 1: fit for duty. Now, ironically, you mentioned the committee assignments
Speaker 1: he got put on these small business Committee in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that he's accused of like scamming people
Speaker 1: in a Ponzi scheme. That's relevant experience for the Small
Speaker 1: Business Committee. I get it. This is like supposedly one
Speaker 1: of the less important or less noteworthy man he's or whatever.
Speaker 1: Macarthury tried to push him to the silens, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Although I personally think small business is very important to
Speaker 1: our economy and to American society as large as a
Speaker 1: small business own else. I get, Actually, that's an interesting
Speaker 1: washing in story. Small Business Committee sounds pretigious. Is actually
Speaker 1: one of the most least useful committees in all of Congress.
Speaker 1: It was only relevant during one time during COVID, actually,
Speaker 1: but it is hilarious that, you know, that's where they
Speaker 1: stuck him when his relevant experience is like scamming people
Speaker 1: in a Ponzi scheme. I just like to stand this man.
Speaker 1: I would need him to go away, Like, oh, I
Speaker 1: feel the opposite way, I, you know, putting aside the
Speaker 1: dog store, which is just like, oh the dogs. I
Speaker 1: can't even talk about that. It's just so horrendous and
Speaker 1: horrific and like just pure evil. But I enjoy the
Speaker 1: George Santos Staga. I'm fascinated by it. I think he
Speaker 1: is America's congressman. I think he is very reflective of
Speaker 1: the time in the era that we're living in. I
Speaker 1: don't know that anyone belongs in Congress more than this man. Ultimately, right,
Speaker 1: all right, sorry, really, Looknett Well. I've been covering a
Speaker 1: lot of health and wellness stuff lately here at breaking points,
Speaker 1: mostly because of my own personal interest, but also because
Speaker 1: of how much health and discussion around it has become
Speaker 1: terribly politicized. Since the outbreak of COVID. We've seen the
Speaker 1: perversion of science, especially with respect to pharmaceutical drugs and
Speaker 1: medical interventions, because I've become infused with social ideology that
Speaker 1: can have really destructive results if they become normalized to
Speaker 1: the general public. Perhaps the most destructive is a perpetual
Speaker 1: message recently that it's okay and not unhealthy to be obese,
Speaker 1: or that if you are, it's not your fault at all.
Speaker 1: Now it's just cringe magazines. It's not just them that
Speaker 1: are pumping this message. It's some of the most prestigious
Speaker 1: platforms in the United States, like sixty Minutes. I somehow
Speaker 1: miss this January first segment that they ran until it
Speaker 1: was featured and then debunked with my friend doctor Lane Norton.
Speaker 1: Listen with a straight face as this so called obesity
Speaker 1: expert claims, I've always heard that it's the fast food,
Speaker 1: that it's the diet cokes, that kind of thing that
Speaker 1: is the instigator. Is that true? So I think we
Speaker 1: have to look at the different causes of willbc's a
Speaker 1: big pie. One factor. But notice how I'm using this
Speaker 1: part of the pie right, But the number one cause
Speaker 1: of obesity is genetics. That means, if you are born
Speaker 1: to parents that have obesity, you have a fifty to
Speaker 1: eighty five percent likelihood of having the disease yourself, even
Speaker 1: with optimal diet, exercise, sleep management, stress management. So when
Speaker 1: people see families that have obesity, the assumption is what
Speaker 1: are they feeding those kids? As Lane points out on
Speaker 1: his Instagram page, that is just literally not true at all.
Speaker 1: The reason the kids of obese people are usually obese
Speaker 1: too is because their food environment and lifestyle mimics their
Speaker 1: obese parents. Genetics, of course will play some role, but
Speaker 1: let's say you transport that family unit to sub Saharan Africa,
Speaker 1: you really think they're still going to be obese. Obviously not,
Speaker 1: because the environment, both at a macro and micro level,
Speaker 1: is going to have a major outsized impact. Furthermore, this
Speaker 1: supposed expert actually denigrated fellow physicians for asking follow up
Speaker 1: questions to obese patients when they claim they are making
Speaker 1: lifestyle changes. Listen to what she's preaching. Seventy nine to
Speaker 1: ninety percent of physicians in the United States have significant
Speaker 1: bias towards individuals that are heavier. Now, doctors listening to
Speaker 1: me may say, oh, it's not me. Hold your horses,
Speaker 1: because has that patient come to you and told you, look, Doc,
Speaker 1: I'm eating well, Look Doc, I'm exercising, And the doc
Speaker 1: says to them, are you sure? I don't believe that
Speaker 1: that's really what you're doing. What are you saying that
Speaker 1: doctors don't understand obesity? Doctors, doctors do not understand obesity.
Speaker 1: Listen carefully to what you just said. If you have
Speaker 1: a doctor and you have an obese patient not losing
Speaker 1: weight who's coming to you and they tell you that
Speaker 1: they're making major lifestyle changes and nothing is working for them,
Speaker 1: you have quote a significant bias against that patient for
Speaker 1: asking a basic follow up question rooted in the fact
Speaker 1: that you know that if what they were saying was
Speaker 1: actually true, they would be losing weight at least somewhat.
Speaker 1: This is a cancer of so called bias training and
Speaker 1: of therapy culture worming its way into nutrition guidelines. It's
Speaker 1: exactly how the American Academy of Pediatrics got itself into
Speaker 1: a place last week where it says doctors should use
Speaker 1: drugs and surgery earlier in kids who have obesity without
Speaker 1: the appropriate emphasis on lifestyle intervention. But the story does
Speaker 1: not end there, because the doctor I just showed you
Speaker 1: is doctor Fatimas Stanford. She is a so called obesity
Speaker 1: medicine physicians scientist at Massachusetts Massachusetts General Hospital, and wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know also the quote equity director and in my
Speaker 1: research for this piece, take a look at what I
Speaker 1: just discovered. Three days ago, doctor Stanford thanked the Biden
Speaker 1: administrations USDA and Health in Human Services Agency for appointing
Speaker 1: her to the twenty twenty five Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
Speaker 1: Doctor Stanford will be one of just twenty five public
Speaker 1: health so called experts that contribute to the expected twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five report, which will be the official US government
Speaker 1: recommendation on nutrition from twenty twenty five to twenty thirty.
Speaker 1: These nutrition guidelines have a big impact on society, food stamps,
Speaker 1: school lunches, to how people in the media just talk
Speaker 1: about it. It's very dangerous to have somebody like this
Speaker 1: shaping government nutrition policy. Someone who claims exercise, nutrition and
Speaker 1: lifestyle our secondary to genetic factors when we know that
Speaker 1: is not the case, and someone who is already spreading
Speaker 1: this poisonous message at one of the most influential hospitals
Speaker 1: in the world and Harvard University. And while I believe
Speaker 1: doctor Sandford is just your typical woke intellectual, we also
Speaker 1: have to question the financial incentives. Doctor Stanford's media tour
Speaker 1: has included past praise for the quote intuitive eating movement,
Speaker 1: which is a rise up against diet culture guidance to
Speaker 1: people that they should eat whatever their body tells him
Speaker 1: to possibly the dumbest advice on earth, considering how processed
Speaker 1: food is specifically designed to be as palatable as possible,
Speaker 1: but putting the idiocy of intuitive eating aside, check out
Speaker 1: this caveat that even The New York Times had to
Speaker 1: feature a quote. Doctor Stanford has served as an advisor
Speaker 1: for a number of pharmaceutical companies. Oh really, It actually
Speaker 1: only took a few searches to see that Stanford is
Speaker 1: even featured on the website for the leading manufacturer of semiglutide.
Speaker 1: You do a few more research search searches for open
Speaker 1: source data regarding doctor Stanford and who is paying her,
Speaker 1: and the results are astonishing or maybe not all that surprising.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one alone, she was paid over thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars by Big Pharma. Fifteen thousand was paid
Speaker 1: by the manufacture of the we Go v weight loss drug,
Speaker 1: which she has been openly campaigning for in the media.
Speaker 1: Is it a coincidence that the vast majority of her
Speaker 1: consulting income, which is public record, came the very same
Speaker 1: year that the drug was approved by the FDA. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind twenty twenty two data is not even public
Speaker 1: when the drug actually reached escape velocity in our culture.
Speaker 1: She did an interview with The New York Times just
Speaker 1: a few days ago. Doctor Stanford said she had no
Speaker 1: concerns whatsoever about patients using semaglue tide on a long
Speaker 1: term basis to keep weight off, and actually advocated for
Speaker 1: a new bill to pass Congress called the Treatment to
Speaker 1: Reduce Obesity Act, which would authorize Medicare to cover that drug.
Speaker 1: That would be a billion dollar windfall for that drug
Speaker 1: company which is paying her. And look, to be clear,
Speaker 1: I think semi glue tide probably is an amazing drug
Speaker 1: for people who are morbidly obese. But what's really scared
Speaker 1: me is doctor Stanford analogizing weight loss drugs to SSRIs.
Speaker 1: How stigma on them needs to go down? Now, I
Speaker 1: don't believe in stigma for people who have depression, but
Speaker 1: didn't We also just learn this year that SSRIs do
Speaker 1: not work in the way that they claimed to work
Speaker 1: for a decade. The chemical and balanced thesis is bunk,
Speaker 1: even though SSRIs do seem to work in some capacity,
Speaker 1: just not the way that the drug company claimed. How
Speaker 1: many alternative treatments were lost because of SSRIs not given
Speaker 1: a chance. How many people were put on a pill
Speaker 1: with a dubious action mechanism when they could have tried
Speaker 1: something else. We don't need to do this again. There
Speaker 1: is no such thing as a silver bullet, especially when
Speaker 1: somebody is trying to sell it to you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's a crazy story. The initial reason why,
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's
Speaker 1: monologue become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Chris,
Speaker 1: So what are you taking a look at? Well? As
Speaker 1: many of you probably already know, open warfare has broken
Speaker 1: out between two of the biggest figures in conservative media.
Speaker 1: That would be Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro. And actually,
Speaker 1: given the amounts of money that are involved here, you
Speaker 1: could rightly say these are two of the biggest figures
Speaker 1: in media period. There is some real game of throne
Speaker 1: stuff going on here. I will walk you through the
Speaker 1: top line details, but for those who haven't been falling along,
Speaker 1: there are already a million videos out there analyzing claims
Speaker 1: and the counterclaims made by Crowder and made by Shapiro.
Speaker 1: You can decide for yourself whether Crowder is a brave
Speaker 1: warrior for the little guy or a mocki vellian figure
Speaker 1: throwing his longtime friends under the bus for a bigger
Speaker 1: payday and more clout. You can guess which side I
Speaker 1: come down on there personally, though, what I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in are the broader implications here. What does this civil
Speaker 1: war say about the current moment in the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: about conservative politics and about conservative media, all of which
Speaker 1: were up until very recently fairly unified ever since Trump
Speaker 1: first won the White House. So here briefly is the backstory.
Speaker 1: Last week, Steven Crowder released a video dramatically entitled It's
Speaker 1: Time to Stop, in which you produced a term sheet
Speaker 1: with an offer that he had received from a conservative
Speaker 1: media outlet. Now the details of this he described as
Speaker 1: immoral and actually even likened to slavery. Take a listen,
Speaker 1: and I don't just mean unreasonable demands for control, but
Speaker 1: what I would argue are immoral terms that actually punish
Speaker 1: conservative content creators on behalf of big tech kids, kids
Speaker 1: out there coming up. We need to build a bench
Speaker 1: here in this movement. It's almost impossible. Don't sign. Don't
Speaker 1: sign these contracts. I know, I now know what you
Speaker 1: are signing out there. I have the luxury of not
Speaker 1: having to I don't have to be here, I don't
Speaker 1: have to say this. Please don't sign this. So Crowder
Speaker 1: portrayed the offer as proving that quote big con the
Speaker 1: conservative media complex was in the pocket a big tech
Speaker 1: doing their bidding, and he urged his viewers to send him,
Speaker 1: Stephen Crowder their email addresses at a new website in
Speaker 1: order to fight back against these evil forces. Now, he
Speaker 1: did not originally name the outlet that this offending offer
Speaker 1: came from, but it was almost immediately obvious that he
Speaker 1: was talking about Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire. Now that
Speaker 1: outlet responded by sending out the company's CEO to go
Speaker 1: line by line through this term sheet, revealing that the
Speaker 1: offer Crowder had compared to literal slavery was for fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars over four years. This led to another response
Speaker 1: video from Crowder where he played parts of a call
Speaker 1: that he had secretly recorded was said Daily Wire CEO,
Speaker 1: and finally a full response from Shapiro himself, who revealed
Speaker 1: a timeline which suggests very heavily that Crowder had planned
Speaker 1: this whole dramatic ploy for a number of months. In particular,
Speaker 1: Shapiro claims Crowder had already had this term sheet four
Speaker 1: months and had already registered the stout big Conn website
Speaker 1: before he went ahead and set up that call with
Speaker 1: the Daily Wire CEO, which he then secretly recorded. Anyway,
Speaker 1: like I said, if you're curious about all the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty details, you can watch the whole multi hour back
Speaker 1: and forth yourself. You can see what any number of
Speaker 1: thorough analysis videos has to say about it. Now, I
Speaker 1: honestly wouldn't normally cover this kind of intracreator drama, but
Speaker 1: the civil war between two giants of conservative media. It
Speaker 1: comes at a fascinating moment for the GOP. This war
Speaker 1: between Shapiro and Crowder, it feels like opening shots in
Speaker 1: a schism that is opening up in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: as Trump loses his full power and grip on the
Speaker 1: conservative flock. Since Trump took the White House and the
Speaker 1: never Trumpers fully exited the movement, conservative media, and the
Speaker 1: Republican Party as a whole, it's really been pretty unified
Speaker 1: behind Donald Trump. There's a sense their movement was ascendant
Speaker 1: and that, despite some setbacks, they really had the Libs
Speaker 1: on the ropes. That's not to say that none of
Speaker 1: these figures ever criticized the big Man. I know Shapiro
Speaker 1: in particular did from time to time, but there was
Speaker 1: no alternative to Trump and no clear fissures to exploit
Speaker 1: for profit. Their dash mid term hopes, though, seem to
Speaker 1: open up some wounds and some blame Gate. So Crowder
Speaker 1: has seized on a market opportunity to force open those
Speaker 1: new fissures, and make no mistake, fishers and divisions, they
Speaker 1: can be quite profitable in the new media ecosystem. The
Speaker 1: size of your audience, of course, that matters, but what
Speaker 1: matters a lot more is their level of dedication to you.
Speaker 1: Alex Jones here is a prime example. After being a
Speaker 1: deep platform basically everywhere and basically given the Internet death penalty,
Speaker 1: Jones's overall audience numbers, of course dropped significantly, but the
Speaker 1: remaining viewers became more die hard than ever, more committed,
Speaker 1: and reportedly through their purchases of supplements and survival kits
Speaker 1: in info Wars, merchant whatever else he is selling, Jones
Speaker 1: actually made more money posty platforming than he did before.
Speaker 1: So Crowder, who's of course at bottom of capitalist and
Speaker 1: like any good capitalists, highly interested in the bottom line,
Speaker 1: he sees a real market opportunity here to exploit by
Speaker 1: positioning himself as the true movement leader, more principled in
Speaker 1: battling against big tech, more representative of the conservative masses
Speaker 1: than Shapiro's Daily Wire, which he labels the Big Con. Now,
Speaker 1: Shapiro is also clearly on Team DeSantis for the coming
Speaker 1: Republican twenty twenty four primary, a posture that some Trump
Speaker 1: supporters are labeling as being establishment. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: Crowder hasn't really picked aside yet. He's praised both to
Speaker 1: Santas and Trump. But everyone's gonna have to make a choice,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna have to make that choice pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Would make a lot of sense if Crowder ultimately went
Speaker 1: right from positioning himself as the true voice and defender
Speaker 1: of the conservative base, and by the way, has a
Speaker 1: side note defending Kanye West on his Hitler loving insanity
Speaker 1: to then steadfastly backing Trump for the twenty twenty four primary.
Speaker 1: After all, Trump's power might have slipped, but he is
Speaker 1: still very popular among Republicans and still the favorite to
Speaker 1: win the next GOP nominating contest. In fact, the latest
Speaker 1: polling has Trump beating a desantist by twenty points in
Speaker 1: a divided primary field and ten points in a head
Speaker 1: to head matchup. So this fracturing is most significant as
Speaker 1: the side of the times a sign that we have
Speaker 1: already arrived at a big split in the conservative movement
Speaker 1: as an ugly twenty twenty four GOP primary looms. It
Speaker 1: is no accident this comes on the heels of some
Speaker 1: nasty infighting the Republican House Caucus for the Guards, the
Speaker 1: election of speargrou McCarthy, including reports of a bathroom screaming
Speaker 1: match between Lauren Bobert Marjorie Taylor Green, and your fisticuffs
Speaker 1: on the House floor between rebel leader Matt Gates and
Speaker 1: McCarthy loyalist Mike Rodgers. Now, the dividing lines there were
Speaker 1: quite muddled by the fact you had Trump loyalists on
Speaker 1: both sides of the fight, But the fracturing in the
Speaker 1: squabbles they tell the same story. The gop unity of
Speaker 1: the Trump arrow is over. The only question now is
Speaker 1: the contours of the divides and who falls on which side.
Speaker 1: This is going to be ugly for the right, and
Speaker 1: plenty will be personal, gratuitous, petty, bad faith, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But unity as we see right now on the Democratic side,
Speaker 1: with every single member bending. The need of leadership that
Speaker 1: has its own kind of ugliness requires everyone to ignore
Speaker 1: or cover for the insanities, the corruption, the ugliness and
Speaker 1: the lies, and the name of team loyalty. It protects
Speaker 1: power for an existing set of failed leaders. It quashes
Speaker 1: all debate, the good faith and principle, as well as
Speaker 1: the bad faith and absurd in a functioning democracy. Battles
Speaker 1: of the sword that are breaking out on the right
Speaker 1: right now, they can be healthy, they can be positive.
Speaker 1: They can lead to rebirth and renewal rather than a
Speaker 1: festering quagmire that's maintained because everyone who has a voice
Speaker 1: is too afraid to challenge the status quo. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: debates over the future of the Republican Party, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: have long ago lost any real content. Trump Ism collapsed
Speaker 1: pretty quickly from any sort of policy agenda to loyalty tests,
Speaker 1: vibes and aesthetics. That's how you can have TEA partiers
Speaker 1: plotting to cut Social Security posturing as MAGA at the
Speaker 1: same time as Trump himself declares that social Security and
Speaker 1: Medicare cuts should be absolutely off the table. That's how
Speaker 1: you can have the supposed populist himself, Trump having a
Speaker 1: giant tax cut for the rich as his single most
Speaker 1: significant achievement in office. So I fully expect the brewing
Speaker 1: war for the GOP to follow precisely the model we
Speaker 1: have just seen of Crowder versus Shapiro. It will be
Speaker 1: as ugly as Steven Crowder secretly recording calls from longtime
Speaker 1: friends and allies. It will be as absurd as claiming
Speaker 1: a fifty million dollar contract is literal slavery, and as
Speaker 1: meaningless as to died in the wool. Capitalists funded by
Speaker 1: billionaires posturing as true adversaries to corporate giants, like with
Speaker 1: Crowder versus Shapiro. The amount of money involved, it will
Speaker 1: be truly shocking. Bottom line, it'll be a struggle for
Speaker 1: power and influence, for the safe of power and influence,
Speaker 1: fought via manufactured proxy wars. There's really no side worth
Speaker 1: taking here. The only thing to do is grab the
Speaker 1: popcord and enjoy the fireworks. So that's my take, Sager.
Speaker 1: Interesting and if you want to hear my reaction to
Speaker 1: Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: Jenaiferman is a staff writer for Labor Notes, and he
Speaker 1: joins us, Now, great to see you, Jonah, good to
Speaker 1: see man. Yeah. Likewise, so we have the piece that
Speaker 1: you wrote actually for Jack Ben. Let's go and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen and I'll read some of
Speaker 1: the key data that came out in this pure labor
Speaker 1: statistics report showing that Even though the number of unionized
Speaker 1: workers did rise, union density, as has been the trend
Speaker 1: for a long time, continued to fall. That's the percentage
Speaker 1: of the workforce that is unionized, you say here, The
Speaker 1: headline grabber in this year's release is that there were,
Speaker 1: by the bureau's count, two hundred and seventy three thousand
Speaker 1: more union members in twenty twenty two than in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, but overall union density continue to follow to
Speaker 1: its lowest level ten point one percent since the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: You go on to ask, how does that happen? Union
Speaker 1: jobs are growing, but non union jobs are growing faster.
Speaker 1: So as you dug into the data here, Jonah, what
Speaker 1: did you find? Yeah, I mean, I think the big
Speaker 1: headline that people should appreciate is that we're in a
Speaker 1: long period of declines since nineteen eighty and that's still happening.
Speaker 1: The headline is sort of that this is the biggest
Speaker 1: increase in union jobs since the Great Recession, since two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. So maybe there's some signs of hope there,
Speaker 1: But if you dig a little deeper, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of that is pandemic recovery, a lot of that is
Speaker 1: growth of industries that happened to already be unionized. It's
Speaker 1: not as much as you might think from reading headlines
Speaker 1: about Starbucks and Amazon and big new organizing. We're not
Speaker 1: there yet. The tide has not turned. And really looking
Speaker 1: at ten and twenty year trends, we're still on the
Speaker 1: same path we've been since Reagan and since you know,
Speaker 1: late Jim Carter era. So just when people are trying
Speaker 1: to think like where are we at in the union moment,
Speaker 1: we're still in this period of slide and there's hopeful points,
Speaker 1: but just kind of digging into the numbers, that's still
Speaker 1: the situation. So, Jonah, there was a lot of a
Speaker 1: theorization that it might help. The post pandemic moment, unions
Speaker 1: had more approval than ever. So where is the systemic
Speaker 1: drop coming from? Well, I mean it's coming, you know,
Speaker 1: from everywhere. Basically, there's not a lot of places that
Speaker 1: it's not that are not seeing decline. Now there's year
Speaker 1: over a year sort of blips, like we saw big
Speaker 1: growth in hospitality union members this year, but a lot
Speaker 1: of that is the hospitality industry coming back. So if
Speaker 1: you look still again on the ten to twenty year trends,
Speaker 1: let alone the forty fifty year trends. We see obviously
Speaker 1: huge drops in manufacturing. This is something like seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the membership loss of the past twenty years. As
Speaker 1: you just lose millions of manufacturing jobs, but you also
Speaker 1: lose disproportionately the unions and the unionized jobs of that share.
Speaker 1: Same thing in construction. But what's interesting it's also in
Speaker 1: the public sectors. So at the postal service, a big
Speaker 1: source of union jobs, we've probably lost three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: union members in twenty twenty five years. You know, even
Speaker 1: in the federal sector, federal workers who are you know,
Speaker 1: the public sector is supposed to be easier to unionize
Speaker 1: for certain reasons, there's not. You know, certain states that
Speaker 1: have jurisdiction over it have different rules, but certain blue states,
Speaker 1: you know, prop up unionism of the public sector. But
Speaker 1: even there we've seen density mostly fall and where we've
Speaker 1: seen sort of unions hold on. It's more about the
Speaker 1: growth of different industries. So education, healthcare a decently strong
Speaker 1: union industry, but density hasn't gone up. Density being the
Speaker 1: proportion of the workers who are unionized, So it's been
Speaker 1: you know, around a third or less thirty percent for
Speaker 1: some of these industries that hasn't climbed despite you know,
Speaker 1: more strikes, more interest in unionization, And part of it
Speaker 1: is because this lags, right, You're not going to have
Speaker 1: a huge increase in union density. Because Starbucks workers organized
Speaker 1: six months ago. We're talking on the scale of millions
Speaker 1: of workers, but we have not yet flattened or reversed
Speaker 1: the trend. And Jonah, that brings up a good question,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, we covered obviously the Starbucks workers
Speaker 1: and their incredible movement, the way it's spread like wildfire,
Speaker 1: and also the way it upbended some conventional wisdom about
Speaker 1: which workplaces you could even unionize. We obviously covered Amazon
Speaker 1: Labor union their stunning victory, which was, you know, true
Speaker 1: David glives story. Is it possible that these wins are
Speaker 1: more significant than their numbers would indicate, in that perhaps
Speaker 1: they you know, they shift what's possible, They shift a
Speaker 1: public perception of where and how and who can organize
Speaker 1: that they light a fire under some you know, entrench
Speaker 1: union bureaucracy that's kind of been sitting back on the laurels.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that even though things didn't really fully
Speaker 1: turn around in twenty twenty two you saw the beginning
Speaker 1: of what could be a different trend line. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the main ways to
Speaker 1: read this report every year is to say there is
Speaker 1: no universe in which we turn this around using the
Speaker 1: tools we've been using and the tools that we have.
Speaker 1: So the NLRB, for example, just going through those union elections,
Speaker 1: something like seventy thousand workers joined unions through the NLRB
Speaker 1: this year. That's compared to it's like half a percentage
Speaker 1: point of the total number of union workers. So one
Speaker 1: thing that tells you is that it's going to take
Speaker 1: sort of geometric or exponential increase in unionization, which is
Speaker 1: going to mean things beyond what the union staff that
Speaker 1: currently exists can do. It's going to mean something catching
Speaker 1: on like wildfire. It's going to mean big political changes.
Speaker 1: When we've seen leaps in unionization, it's not for the
Speaker 1: most part, just that the staff organizers or the unions
Speaker 1: that do exist are just doing a much better job.
Speaker 1: That's a key. That part has to happen too, but
Speaker 1: it also has to change sort of people's common sense
Speaker 1: about unions, and we have to see union organizing that
Speaker 1: far outpaces what the current structures are able to take
Speaker 1: in and so I think the surprise victories from the
Speaker 1: Amazon labor union, from the Starbucks workers are a huge
Speaker 1: part of it. The other huge part of it to
Speaker 1: me is seeing unions that are turning around after decades.
Speaker 1: So this year, I think the big twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: labor story is not going to be the new organizing
Speaker 1: numbers or you know, our density or how many members
Speaker 1: we grow, but it's going to be that this summer,
Speaker 1: it's quite possible that UPS and the big three automakers
Speaker 1: are all going to go on strike. We're going to
Speaker 1: have some of the most workers on strike at UPS
Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety seven, the last UPS strike and one
Speaker 1: of the biggest strikes in history. You know, if that's
Speaker 1: how this goes, we're suddenly talking about a level of
Speaker 1: like inspiration, political influence that's not just about did we
Speaker 1: get five thousand members here or there. So I think
Speaker 1: that's totally right. I do think it's important to look
Speaker 1: at the numbers and remind yourself sort of where we're at.
Speaker 1: We're still coming down and it's going to take all
Speaker 1: different sorts of turnarounds, explicit turnarounds. Right, So in the
Speaker 1: Team Streets, you've had new leadership saying what we've been
Speaker 1: doing for twenty five years is not working. We're going
Speaker 1: to run against the leadership. We're going to turn it
Speaker 1: around and go on strength. Same in the UAW you
Speaker 1: have people running who are saying we are not going
Speaker 1: to do what we've been doing for thirty years, for
Speaker 1: fifty years, and we're going to run a huge strike
Speaker 1: and organize all the southern factories. You know, things like that.
Speaker 1: We're going to need to see change on that scale.
Speaker 1: That's challenging the entire status quo of unionism in this country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things that are going to be really important to watch
Speaker 1: for the future. I know I've also had my eye
Speaker 1: on that potential ups strike for a while. I mean,
Speaker 1: the new leadership of the Team stairs and explicitly on
Speaker 1: a pledge to be more militant in these contract negotiations
Speaker 1: and to be willing to strike. Obviously, that would be
Speaker 1: a huge deal and labor movement would be a huge
Speaker 1: deal nationwide and in terms of the political ecosystem overall. So, Jonah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. It's a great article. People should
Speaker 1: check it out, and you always do a fantastic job
Speaker 1: laying out exactly what is what within the labor movement,
Speaker 1: the wins, the losses and everything in between. So so
Speaker 1: great to see you. Thanks man. Yeah, thanks guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. We got the live show going on. We're
Speaker 1: going to debut some merch later on today on our
Speaker 1: channel for that live show, specifically in Austin, So you
Speaker 1: got to buy your tickets if you want access to
Speaker 1: that otherwise. We love our premium members. Thank you guys
Speaker 1: so much for supporting us as we're gearing up, getting
Speaker 1: prepared for twenty twenty four and all of that, and
Speaker 1: considering the major upgrades that we're having right now to
Speaker 1: the studio. We love you all. We'll see all tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Love y'all, See you soon. The Dow