Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 1: Everything.
Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 2: for everybody today.
Speaker 3: What do we have personal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do. We have some big polls on the
Speaker 1: GOP side of the presdential nominating contest showing kind of
Speaker 1: a remade race, so we will tell you about that.
Speaker 1: And these are state specific polls, so very interesting. We
Speaker 1: also this morning have a brand new Twitter. It's actually
Speaker 1: no longer to it is now x. The rebranding has begun.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you everything that means, and also some new
Speaker 1: numbers about how Threads is doing the major Twitter competitor.
Speaker 1: Some interesting reporting within the White House about a freak
Speaker 1: ount over Cornell West campaign with the Green Party, so
Speaker 1: break that down for you. Sager is going to give
Speaker 1: you a UFO update some big happenings here in DC
Speaker 1: this week. We also got to talk about that blockbuster
Speaker 1: movie weekend, both movies Oppenheimer and Oppenheimer and Barbie pulling
Speaker 1: in huge numbers. I'm going to do my own review
Speaker 1: of the Barbie movie, as I did have to wear
Speaker 1: a pink, you know, for the get into the get
Speaker 1: into the whole spirit of it, even though I actually
Speaker 1: despised the entire movie.
Speaker 3: No, we can't give it away. Give it away.
Speaker 1: You liked it and I hated it, which is the
Speaker 1: cooler opposite of what I thought. So anyway, I'll give
Speaker 1: you all of my analysis of that. But we wanted
Speaker 1: to start with some breaking news this morning on what
Speaker 1: is happening in Russia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go ahead and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. We've got a little bit of the damage
Speaker 2: from what happened just four am local time in Moscow, Go.
Speaker 2: There has been a suspected Ukrainian drone attack actually on
Speaker 2: the city in the central business district and the Crystal.
Speaker 2: That suspected drone attack right now allegedly also came with
Speaker 2: simultaneous strikes inside of Crimea. The images that we have
Speaker 2: up here show some damage to an office building on.
Speaker 3: The top two floors.
Speaker 2: This is directly inside the city and also it fell
Speaker 2: on an area which is both near the capital center.
Speaker 2: Quote shattered shop windows, damaged the roof of a house
Speaker 2: just two hundred meters away from the towering Riverside Defense
Speaker 2: Ministry building. I'm gonna go ahead and guess of the
Speaker 2: Defense Ministry was the.
Speaker 3: Suspected target there.
Speaker 2: But just the latest in a series of these drone
Speaker 2: attacks we've seen by the Ukrainian very likely the Ukrainians,
Speaker 2: on the city of Moscow. I did find it funny
Speaker 2: if we'll all recall the original drone attack that was
Speaker 2: on the Kremlin flag. There was a furious denial, like,
Speaker 2: I can't be Ukraine. Why would Ukraine do this? There's
Speaker 2: so many reasons why. And then, you know, as always happens,
Speaker 2: the CIA leaks to the New York Times two weeks later,
Speaker 2: and there CIA confirms that Ukrainian military was behind said
Speaker 2: drone attacks, and apparently Biden and the White House was like, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe cut it out, but don't forget of the news
Speaker 2: that we've brought everybody. Actually, I believe in our last show,
Speaker 2: which was on Thursday, about the top Ukrainian military commander saying,
Speaker 2: who are you the United States to tell us what
Speaker 2: we can and can't do and who we can and
Speaker 2: can't strike. I guess to be fair, many of these
Speaker 2: drones actually are manufactured in Ukraine, So part of their
Speaker 2: theory here is like, well, it's not us provided aid,
Speaker 2: so we can do whatever we want. But nonetheless, you know,
Speaker 2: it's always significant anytime anything is hit in the capital
Speaker 2: of Russia. And I mean, don't forget you know that
Speaker 2: hasn't happened in literally decades on the European continent. It
Speaker 2: still is an extraordinary event. But they are at war,
Speaker 2: so we can only expect these things to happen as
Speaker 2: a conflict continues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose, so Russia is saying that they destroyed
Speaker 1: to attack drones. There were several buildings that appear to
Speaker 1: have been damage, though, some of the damage occurring in
Speaker 1: one of the sort of ritchiest sections of Moscow, So
Speaker 1: striking here at the heart of some of the wealthy
Speaker 1: elite in Moscow. I'm sure the thinking on the Ukrainian side,
Speaker 1: of course, they have said nothing Russia is attributing blame
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, that seems certainly like logical explanation,
Speaker 1: but just to give you the Ukrainian side of things,
Speaker 1: they haven't said anything yet. I'm sure the thinking here,
Speaker 1: Sager is to sort of damage public morale among the
Speaker 1: Russian people in Moscow, potentially among elites, because this isn't
Speaker 1: significant enough damage to you know, really impact the defense
Speaker 1: ministry or anything. No one was actually injured in these attacks,
Speaker 1: just like the attack on the Krumlin didn't cause significant
Speaker 1: damage and was you know, thwarted fairly easily by Russian
Speaker 1: authorities there. But you know, what we've seen throughout history
Speaker 1: is that attacks directly on civilian residential areas, just as
Speaker 1: we've seen with Russia attacking residential civilian areas in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: it has the opposite of the intended effect. You know,
Speaker 1: if the intended effect is to weaken morale, oftentimes it
Speaker 1: has led to the exact opposite, where people morale is strengthened,
Speaker 1: they become more committed to the cause, more hawkish, etc.
Speaker 1: This comes at a time when Russia appears to be
Speaker 1: prepping some more aggressive you know, domestic strategies and potentially
Speaker 1: another draft coming sort of floating that as a trial
Speaker 1: balloon among the domestic population and also, of course comes
Speaker 1: at a time when even mainstream Western outlets are admitting
Speaker 1: that the Ukrainian counter offensive is not going particularly well
Speaker 1: and it's looking very much like a stalemate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that this is actually better understood in
Speaker 2: the context of that we're going to do a big
Speaker 2: thing tomorrow on the state of the counter offensive. How
Speaker 2: many Western media outlets at this point are all admitting
Speaker 2: this has been effectively a failure so far. So far,
Speaker 2: always the big caveat, but that you know, the Ukraine
Speaker 2: is losing a significant amount of people for every inch
Speaker 2: of territory that's trying to get back that overall, their weapons,
Speaker 2: their inability to do combined arms means that we've effectively
Speaker 2: deteriorated into a World War One style trench conflict, which
Speaker 2: is going to of course benefit the Russians, which have
Speaker 2: taken twenty percent of the tear victoria of heart in
Speaker 2: the defenses. They have the industrial might, whereas Ukraine's own
Speaker 2: industrial ability to manufacture, especially the weapons that they really
Speaker 2: say that they need in order to pour into the
Speaker 2: conflict is basically doesn't exist. And the West is basically saying, look,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of the tap like we've got
Speaker 2: what Congress is appropriated, but that's basically it. So what
Speaker 2: do you do when you're in that situation. You try
Speaker 2: and inflict maximum damage on the enemy as possible and
Speaker 2: to terrorize the enemy and to try and to sue
Speaker 2: for peace. That falls into striking in you know areas,
Speaker 2: when you're pinned down in one place, you want to
Speaker 2: try and attack from somewhere else to try and take
Speaker 2: the pressure off and to change the strategic situation.
Speaker 3: So it actually makes.
Speaker 2: The likelihood of escalation even more, like like even higher,
Speaker 2: like in Crimeo or on Moscow or anywhere else, because
Speaker 2: if they were seeing battlefield victory there, then they wouldn't
Speaker 2: have as much incentive to try and push it somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you have both Ukraine and Russia in
Speaker 1: different ways with their backs up against the wall, and
Speaker 1: desperate actors can take desperate measures. So it is a
Speaker 1: dangerous situation. No one should delude themselves about that. And
Speaker 1: you know, we'll continue to follow the situation to make
Speaker 1: sure we bring you all of the leads. We'll probably
Speaker 1: cover Ukraine more in depth to Marrows. There are a
Speaker 1: few stories that are out there that are worth getting into,
Speaker 1: but we wanted to turn to presidential politics. And by
Speaker 1: the way, guys, here Breaking Points going to be a
Speaker 1: big week in terms of presidential politics. We have two
Speaker 1: GOP contenders booked for interviews tomorrow. Won't say their names
Speaker 1: because I never know. And yeah, when people can get
Speaker 1: a little you know, squishy or their schedule changes or whatever,
Speaker 1: they back out. But as of now, two big interviews tomorrow,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned for that. And just quick shout out
Speaker 1: to our premium subscribers who've made all of this possible.
Speaker 1: I know you guys have really been reacting very positive
Speaker 1: lead to the interviews we're doing on the Democratic side
Speaker 1: on the Republican side, So if you can become a
Speaker 1: premium member and help us continue that project, we really appreciate.
Speaker 1: At Breakingpoints dot com. All right, let's get to the
Speaker 1: news in terms of what is happening on the Republican side.
Speaker 1: Some big state level polls coming out from Fox Business
Speaker 1: and they show a sort of a changed state of
Speaker 1: this race. So from the beginning it has been Donald
Speaker 1: Trump number one, Ron DeSantis number two. That number two
Speaker 1: two slot is no longer so clear. Put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. This is the poll from Iowa again
Speaker 1: this is a Fox Business poll. You got Trump with
Speaker 1: a very solid lead there in Iowa. This is the
Speaker 1: state that you know his would be contenders really have
Speaker 1: to take away from him. Right now. He sits at
Speaker 1: forty six percent, so almost at a majority. Desanta is
Speaker 1: still holding on to that number two slot at sixteen percent,
Speaker 1: but just barely. Tim Scott there nipping at his heels
Speaker 1: at eleven percent. You've also got Nicky Haley five percent,
Speaker 1: Pence four percent, Doug Bergham three percent, Chris Christy three percent,
Speaker 1: and Asa Hutchinson, who we had the opportunity to interview
Speaker 1: last week at one percent. So Iowa looking like DeSantis
Speaker 1: is falling there and struggling even to maintain the number
Speaker 1: two position. Let's take a look at South Carolina next
Speaker 1: slide up on the screen. So Trump again up even
Speaker 1: though you've got two top contenders who are from the
Speaker 1: state of South Carolina. Trump at forty eight percent, again
Speaker 1: very close to a majority two slot. Nikki Haley, not
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis. Haley at fourteen percent. Ronda Santis right there
Speaker 1: at thirteen percent, that is, you know, statistically tied given
Speaker 1: the margin of area. You've got Tim Scott at ten percent.
Speaker 1: And then you drop down to Pence four percent of
Speaker 1: vivek Ramaswami three percent, Chris Christy two, Asa Hutchinson one.
Speaker 1: So a lot going on there. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: put this next piece up on the screen. Some of
Speaker 1: the numbers that were inside of this pulsager, I think
Speaker 1: are as interesting as the top line numbers and give
Speaker 1: some indication of why Ron de Santis is falling off.
Speaker 1: They asked voters, is it important that you vote for
Speaker 1: a candidate who shares your views or can defeat Biden?
Speaker 1: And seventy two percent said it was extremely important that
Speaker 1: their candidate can defeat Biden, and a lower number, sixty
Speaker 1: two percent, said that it was important that they share
Speaker 1: their views. So electability concerns sort of key there. You
Speaker 1: also had a question, okay, so then who do you
Speaker 1: think is most likely to defeat Joe Biden? Donald Trump
Speaker 1: running away with it on the electability question, fifty one
Speaker 1: percent saying he is most likely to defeat Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis down at seventeen percent, than Nikki Haley at
Speaker 1: seven and Tim Scott at six. There were also some numbers.
Speaker 1: Let's put this next one up on the screen about
Speaker 1: what is most important to voters in the state, big
Speaker 1: majority fifty one percent, so large proportion there, So this
Speaker 1: is it's economic issues. Then you drop down to twelve
Speaker 1: percent foreign policy, twelve percent immigration issues, twelve percent social issues,
Speaker 1: and seven percent populist issues, which are not even sure
Speaker 1: what that really means. You can maybe throw that in
Speaker 1: the bucket with the economic issues in my opinion, but
Speaker 1: I don't know how people would interpret that. But I
Speaker 1: think the reason Sogerate these are so significant is because
Speaker 1: DeSantis made a big bet on cultural issues, thinking that
Speaker 1: that was really the key to winning over the Republican base.
Speaker 1: He made a big bet on his critique of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: being that Trump was the squish and he wasn't hard
Speaker 1: right enough. So DeSantis has moved to the right of
Speaker 1: Trump on basically every significant issue, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: he has damaged himself in the key areas that voters
Speaker 1: actually most care about, which is number one, who can
Speaker 1: defeat Joe Biden. That was what they liked about DeSantis,
Speaker 1: apparently to start with, was like, Oh, you're doing great
Speaker 1: in Florida. Florida voters are voting for you overwhelmingly as
Speaker 1: a state that used to be a swing stable by
Speaker 1: moving hard right, he's damaged himself on the electability front,
Speaker 1: and by focusing in so much on cultural issues the
Speaker 1: exclusion of almost anything else. He's also damaged himself in
Speaker 1: terms of making an economic case to voters, which is
Speaker 1: apparently what voters are most interested in.
Speaker 3: This poll busts a hell of a lot of myths.
Speaker 2: Number one is that we've consistently talked about electability.
Speaker 3: So electability is.
Speaker 2: Just as important, I think, to Republican voters, but they
Speaker 2: are not going to view it in nearly the same
Speaker 2: terms as you or I might, as the mainstream media,
Speaker 2: and especially as a Democrat would in terms of whether
Speaker 2: they were going to vote. Remember, in the minds of Apes,
Speaker 2: the GOP primary base for them, Trump already did beat
Speaker 2: Joe Biden, he just had the election rob from him,
Speaker 2: so according to their analysis, so of course you can
Speaker 2: beat him again.
Speaker 3: So that's number one too. I mean a bit the
Speaker 3: more that I look at it, they may not be wrong.
Speaker 2: I mean, let's be honest, like Trump is the person
Speaker 2: who is willing to walk as far away from Roe
Speaker 2: versus weight as humanly possible, which was one of the
Speaker 2: main deciding you know, events of the twenty twenty two midterms.
Speaker 2: Trump is the person who is attacking other people in
Speaker 2: the Republican field for not or for wanting to cut
Speaker 2: Social Security or Medicare, or at the very least opening
Speaker 2: the door to that. Trump is the one who has
Speaker 2: tried to walk away from militarism militarism rhetorically as much
Speaker 2: as possible.
Speaker 3: In the race.
Speaker 2: These are very popular issues or at the very least
Speaker 2: they are completely untapped amongst the electorate, meaning that they
Speaker 2: will be able to get at least some support. And
Speaker 2: then finally, you know, on immigration, social and populist issues.
Speaker 2: I have always believed that on the so immigration particularly, there's.
Speaker 3: No out trumping Trump.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely impossible, considering the effectively reinvented the entire debate
Speaker 2: amongst the GOP. But on social issues too, if you
Speaker 2: are one of these people who is completely pro life,
Speaker 2: then you know you are within the minority whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to the I'm talking about like no exceptions or
Speaker 2: no like any limits or whatever. In terms of weeks,
Speaker 2: these people they were never a majority part of the
Speaker 2: caucus anyways. Yeah, so for them to be off of Trump,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really affect him, like what he needs to
Speaker 2: do is to get you know, what he clearly has
Speaker 2: in both of these states, which is either an outright
Speaker 2: majority or like pretty close to a very strong plurality
Speaker 2: on all three of those top issues, and you very
Speaker 2: easily get to a coalition of fifty one percent and
Speaker 2: possibly you know, I mean, you don't even really need
Speaker 2: fifty one if you're him. He won the original twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen primary with some thirty five percent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that time around.
Speaker 1: On the electability piece, this is one poll, so always,
Speaker 1: you know, keep it in mind. But I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a Michigan general election poll that has Biden and Trump
Speaker 1: basically tied within the margin of error, Biden at forty five,
Speaker 1: Trump at forty three, but Biden wiping the floor with
Speaker 1: DeSantis forty four for Biden, thirty one for DeSantis. Now,
Speaker 1: I do think that's an outlier. Most of the polls
Speaker 1: that we've seen that have the like trial runs, you know,
Speaker 1: what would it be, had to head matchups Biden versus
Speaker 1: Trump or Biden versus DeSantis, they show him pretty close
Speaker 1: both of them in the hunt and it basically a
Speaker 1: jump ball regardless of which one becomes the nominee. But
Speaker 1: the really clear case that DeSantis wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to bake you know, the look at the scoreboard case
Speaker 1: that he wanted to make. Clearly that is not panning
Speaker 1: out for him. And I want to say I was
Speaker 1: wrong about this too, because I didn't actually think that
Speaker 1: electability was that important to the Republican base. I thought
Speaker 1: they wanted what they wanted, And you know, I still
Speaker 1: think there's an element of that. They like Trump's stylistically.
Speaker 1: Trump is entertaining, he's charismatic, he's a fighter. You know,
Speaker 1: he is hated by all the right people, and that's
Speaker 1: there's certainly an element of that that really rings with
Speaker 1: that really is compelling for the GOP base. But you know,
Speaker 1: this poll has some decent evidence that electability is important
Speaker 1: to them. That DeSantis could have been in a better
Speaker 1: position if he had leaned into a different set of issues,
Speaker 1: the issues that actually made him a more moderate and
Speaker 1: popular governor of Florida, before he you know, really started
Speaker 1: leaning in hard to the culture.
Speaker 2: War stack, prosecuting more of a Ted Cruz case against Trump,
Speaker 2: whereas there's a different DeSantis you know certainly that could
Speaker 2: exist here. And then just to underscore we have this poll,
Speaker 2: let's go and put this up there on the screen
Speaker 2: actually shows a vivig Ramaswami tying Ron DeSantis for the
Speaker 2: number two slot here in the GOP primary, Trump, though
Speaker 2: still at forty eight percent, have a thirty six percent
Speaker 2: commanding lead both on Ramaswami and DeSantis, but DeSantis actually tied.
Speaker 2: This is from Capitalan Strategies with eight hundred likely voters.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you could take this with whatever grain
Speaker 2: of salt you want. I really think that you should
Speaker 2: not take it as gospel. But overall we see a
Speaker 2: slide for diand just how far we don't know.
Speaker 3: Let's be fair to the man, though, Let's try and
Speaker 3: think about it.
Speaker 2: So in this poll, like you were talking about the
Speaker 2: head to head pole, Okay, the electorate hasn't gotten a
Speaker 2: chance to know him. You know, he hasn't even won
Speaker 2: a single election. Yet he still could very much change.
Speaker 2: Things are fluid in terms of opinion. Everybody knows how
Speaker 2: they feel about Trump. Nobody knows yet as much how
Speaker 2: they feel about Ron DeSantis. He hasn't gotten the proper media.
Speaker 2: I'm just look, I'm just playing the devil's advocate. He's
Speaker 2: somebody who you know, if he wins a couple of
Speaker 2: states here and there.
Speaker 3: People's opinions will change.
Speaker 2: People had you know, Obama, nobody knew who he was
Speaker 2: until he won Iowa. So it's not like, you know,
Speaker 2: we're not still along a long way away.
Speaker 3: And should we really take that with it?
Speaker 2: Should we really look at that is the gospel that
Speaker 2: some people are casting. It is what I think I
Speaker 2: would say to steal Man that argument is your whole
Speaker 2: case is that you are the only one who can
Speaker 2: beat Biden, pointing to previous general election polls that showed
Speaker 2: that doing so. So why here in this critical state
Speaker 2: are use running so far behind him? Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that's a critical one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I appreciate you trying to steal Man
Speaker 1: the case. But also I've seen the numbers. It's not
Speaker 1: that people don't know who Ron DeSantis is in the
Speaker 1: Republican primary base. He actually has very high name recognition,
Speaker 1: and Fox News, which is the main conservative outlet and
Speaker 1: massive viewership, et cetera, has been doing everything they can
Speaker 1: until very recently at least to prop him up. Before
Speaker 1: We're going to move into some more details about what's
Speaker 1: going on with the DeSantis campaign and maybe some of
Speaker 1: the pitfalls that they've fallen into. But I do think
Speaker 1: it's worth noting who appears to be coming up in
Speaker 1: some of these polls. I mean, number one, I do
Speaker 1: think the vic Ramaswami is having a moment. This isn't
Speaker 1: the I don't know if he's tied for second place
Speaker 1: as this national poll shows, but he is definitely rising
Speaker 1: the polls. I think that's been pretty consistent now across
Speaker 1: a number of state in national polls as he second,
Speaker 1: as the third is. The fourth is a guy who
Speaker 1: was kind of unknown prior to this election. He's never
Speaker 1: held elected office, and he clearly has generated a lot
Speaker 1: of especially online enthusiasm for his campaign. And I've noticed
Speaker 1: this before, but I do think it's noteworthy that the
Speaker 1: person who seems to have the most sort of energy
Speaker 1: and momentum right now is probably the person who has
Speaker 1: hugged Trump the most tightly. So that's noteworthy. The other
Speaker 1: one is Tim Scott, who I think, as donors are
Speaker 1: getting some question marks about Ron DeSantis, some one that
Speaker 1: he's really the guy, and Fox News is sort of
Speaker 1: moving off of DeSantis. Tim Scott is the alternative that
Speaker 1: they seem to be turning towards. And you know, he's
Speaker 1: in terms of his sort of personal presentation. Obviously, my
Speaker 1: politics and his very different, but he has this very
Speaker 1: you know, very likable presentation and you know, has managed
Speaker 1: to avoid some of the pitfalls that the other campaigns haven't.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he seems to be the other one who
Speaker 1: is coming up in the polls. Let's turn down to
Speaker 1: some more specifics about the DeSantis campaign. So we brought
Speaker 1: you before. You know, his team had shared his war
Speaker 1: room had shared this like meme ridden online anti gay
Speaker 1: video that he got a lot of pushback about. Now
Speaker 1: we have another staffer that retweeted a video that emerged online,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that question of emerged online, which listen,
Speaker 1: I want to put a lot of caveats on this
Speaker 1: with this was not Ron de Santas. It was one
Speaker 1: campaign staffer, et cetera, et cetera. But go ahead and
Speaker 1: start running the video. It's got a lot of the
Speaker 1: same vibes as the other video that got a lot
Speaker 1: of pushback, except the cherry on top of this one
Speaker 1: is this imagery right here, which is just blatant Nazi imagery.
Speaker 1: This is a Nazi symbol that, by the way, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get totally dingged on YouTube. So you know this
Speaker 1: video rip, but anyway, you might see this on some
Speaker 1: of the patches in the Azov Battalion for example. Seriously,
Speaker 1: that's where I've seen it most recently. You're right, and
Speaker 1: so the fact that you have a staffer who you
Speaker 1: know is so enmeshed in these online worlds that the
Speaker 1: best thing you can say about is you just sort
Speaker 1: of like accidentally tweets some Nazi imagery. I think as
Speaker 1: indicative of the issue that not only DeSantis, but apparently
Speaker 1: the team that he's cultivated is just way too online,
Speaker 1: way too deep down these rabbit holes, and this creates
Speaker 1: yet another distraction and issue for Ron de Santis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, let's explain I think why we're even
Speaker 2: focusing on said video. It's not like we just randomly
Speaker 2: plucked it. Guys can go and put eight there up
Speaker 2: on the screen. You know, in that video that you
Speaker 2: referenced that was attacking Trump and saying that DeSantis himself
Speaker 2: was like the most like anti drag queen candidate.
Speaker 3: I guess that exists.
Speaker 2: The Dysantis aid had originally produced that video that we
Speaker 2: were discussing internally, passing it off to an outside supporter
Speaker 2: to then post it first to make it appear as
Speaker 2: if it was generated independently. And remember there was a
Speaker 2: lot of speculation about that video which was shared by
Speaker 2: the Dysantas war room account and which received quite a
Speaker 2: bit of scrutiny. I guess we could say nicely that video,
Speaker 2: it turns out, was actually produced in house and then
Speaker 2: farmed out to someone else. So then of course we
Speaker 2: have to raise the question of anytime we see some
Speaker 2: of these videos which are then our tied by campaign staffers,
Speaker 2: made to you almost make happen or fake organically, did
Speaker 2: that come from inside of the campaign If they're literally
Speaker 2: cutting some of these things in house. Part of the
Speaker 2: reason why we're having some speculation around this, And I
Speaker 2: do think it fits very neatly, Crystal, with the point
Speaker 2: that you were making around the voters he specifically are
Speaker 2: his targeting to try to win over from Trump are
Speaker 2: exactly the type of people who don't want to be
Speaker 2: near anything like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's just he completely I think misread
Speaker 1: the reasons for his victory in Florida. I think that
Speaker 1: there is a lot of online energy around anti trans
Speaker 1: bills and legislation and issues and whatever in the online right.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you look at the polling of
Speaker 1: the broader Republican base, they're still like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about the economy, and I want you to
Speaker 1: be able to beat Joe Biden. So the things that
Speaker 1: actually made him successful in Florida with some of the
Speaker 1: areas where he was actually a little bit heaterodos like
Speaker 1: raising teacher salaries for example, and where he appeared, and
Speaker 1: where he made the right bet too, by the way,
Speaker 1: on COVID, and that bet into an economic argument. Now
Speaker 1: you can't just like rest on your laurels on that
Speaker 1: though forever. You have to have an affirmative, forward looking
Speaker 1: economic vision at a time when everybody is really more
Speaker 1: or less moved on from COVID. So I think he
Speaker 1: really misread his election victory. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: Republicans misread his victory. And also, you know the victory
Speaker 1: of Glen Youngkin in Virginia, which again was read as
Speaker 1: an endorsement of hey, let's lean into anti CRT, let's
Speaker 1: lean into anti trans when you know that was the
Speaker 1: time when schools were still shut in a lot of
Speaker 1: places in Virginia, and Glenn Youngkin was the guy that
Speaker 1: was like, I'm going to get your kids back to
Speaker 1: school and make sure that they are able to stay there,
Speaker 1: which was a huge material impact on Virginia parents' lives.
Speaker 1: So to me, the midterm results and the fact that
Speaker 1: Republicans lean so heavily into those issues and came up with,
Speaker 1: you know, really historically poor results given the hand that
Speaker 1: they were dealt, was a repudiation of going so hard
Speaker 1: into those issues as a thing on the side. You know,
Speaker 1: the way the Santis played it in Florida was like,
Speaker 1: this is about parental choice that was relatively popular. Again,
Speaker 1: I had all kinds of disagreements, but framing it in
Speaker 1: that more moderate way that actually landed. When you're actually
Speaker 1: landing into like no, no, no, I'm virulently anti trans,
Speaker 1: then you're talking about more niche concern that is not
Speaker 1: at the core of certainly a general election, but even
Speaker 1: within the Republican lie.
Speaker 2: I am not ready to say that we First of all,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to call it anti trans.
Speaker 3: I think is very different framing.
Speaker 1: When he called it, says it himself. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: bragging about it in these ads. He's saying he's the
Speaker 1: most anti trans Governor Donald try.
Speaker 2: Trying to ban puberty blockers and castrating little kids, which
Speaker 2: I think is an important issue. But I am also
Speaker 2: going to say that that issue set is not as
Speaker 2: important amongst the eyes of the electorate as abortion, and
Speaker 2: I think that was the main reason why that didn't
Speaker 2: think if you've float them together, abortion I think is
Speaker 2: going to win. Every time I've said it here a
Speaker 2: million times. You know, apparently the political calculus around that,
Speaker 2: but I'm not yet ready to say that on its
Speaker 2: face it's not popular. I do still think though, that
Speaker 2: economic issues are going to remain vastly more important, and
Speaker 2: so if I were scientists, that's what I would focus
Speaker 2: on as well. This also gets to let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and put a seven please up there on the screen.
Speaker 3: So here we have exactly what you were pointing to.
Speaker 2: Crystal DeSantis is campaign hemorrhaging support with this type of
Speaker 2: GOP voter. The large survey from Quinnipiac found that the
Speaker 2: drop in support for DeSantis for the largest one went
Speaker 2: from fifty one percent and fifty one percent amongst college
Speaker 2: educated white Republicans to twenty nine percent with them now,
Speaker 2: which is a twenty two point decline, and the problem
Speaker 2: with these people exactly is that, look they you know,
Speaker 2: even on the economy, these people are probably more likely,
Speaker 2: especially if they're still Republican, to be very like more
Speaker 2: like small business Mitt Romney type conservatives. They don't want
Speaker 2: to appear like they don't want to be controversial. And
Speaker 2: so for DeSantis, like when you're going to lean into this,
Speaker 2: like for him, it's going to be about it's like
Speaker 2: casting them. They don't they want to feel embarrassed when
Speaker 2: they're at the country club. They don't want to feel
Speaker 2: embarrassed when they're in the you know, when they have
Speaker 2: a Desanta sticker on on their their like vehicle parked
Speaker 2: in a mixed city where fifty percent people vote Republican,
Speaker 2: fifty percent vote Democrat, or and they pull up to
Speaker 2: the private school. I think that there's something about that though,
Speaker 2: which is so difficult for the average GOP politician, because
Speaker 2: these issue sets are so popular amongst the intelligentsia, amongst
Speaker 2: some parts of the base, but also repellent to a
Speaker 2: lot of the white suburbanite voters who did end up
Speaker 2: voting for Joe Biden. This is actually a perfect reason
Speaker 2: why a lot of them voted for Biden in the
Speaker 2: first place, because like, yeah, I don't want to feel controversial.
Speaker 2: I think with Trump forsantas, I think it's an impossible
Speaker 2: bargain when you're going to lean into.
Speaker 3: These issue sets as we were talking about.
Speaker 2: And I do think there is an alternative world where
Speaker 2: he does things differently and focuses more on COVID reopening
Speaker 2: and all that. But I do think it is far
Speaker 2: too soon to like say, oh, this is the reason
Speaker 2: that he's losing, you know, specifically, or that these issues
Speaker 2: quote unquote aren't popular. You know, on their face, things
Speaker 2: are very very you know, things are multifaceted, and things
Speaker 2: rank in importance, But that doesn't mean that some people
Speaker 2: don't agree with some of the underlying policy as well.
Speaker 1: Look, the Republican base agrees with him. It's just a
Speaker 1: question what are they voting on? But what do they
Speaker 1: care about? And I think we've got pretty significant evidence,
Speaker 1: judging by the fact that he can't go a single
Speaker 1: freakin sentence without saying the word woke, that this is
Speaker 1: not the core concern for the GOP base, because if
Speaker 1: it was, he would be rising in the polls instead
Speaker 1: of crashing and burning. And the fact that he you know,
Speaker 1: his most solid group of support was around among white
Speaker 1: college educated Republicans, who you know, probably tend to be
Speaker 1: more moderate on these type of issues. Has left him
Speaker 1: vulnerable to you know, bleeding, even like the core base
Speaker 1: of his support and the white working class of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party are firmly in the Donald Trump camp. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a bit of the dynamic, the you know,
Speaker 1: wine track, beer track dynamic from the Democratic primary last
Speaker 1: time around, where those fickle group of voters in the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party was, you know, the white college educated in
Speaker 1: this in that context, liberals, they were shopping around. They
Speaker 1: liked Kamala for a minute, they liked Beto for a minute,
Speaker 1: they liked Pete for a minute, they liked Dami Klobashaffer.
Speaker 1: They were kind of you know, they were week by
Speaker 1: week they would switch their loyalties and ultimately they really
Speaker 1: mostly came home to the guy that they thought would
Speaker 1: be able to beat Donald Trump, and that was Joe Biden. So,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a group of voters who is
Speaker 1: potentially more fickle than non college educated voters, and he's
Speaker 1: leaning into the exact wrong issue set in terms of
Speaker 1: keeping their loyalty. So you know, I mean just to
Speaker 1: give another example, the latest thing that he's under fire
Speaker 1: for is his Board of Education putting out these standards
Speaker 1: that emphasize how slaves personally benefited from the training that
Speaker 1: they received, and he doubled down and tripled down on that.
Speaker 1: So to your point about like the embarrassment factor, cyber
Speaker 1: like they don't want to have to defend and this guy,
Speaker 1: you know, given those those kind of comments and that
Speaker 1: kind of focus within his campaign and within his governance,
Speaker 1: So even among you know, the people who were the
Speaker 1: most core part of his support. And it's not just
Speaker 1: in that one pole. The piece that we put up
Speaker 1: on the screen, sites multiple polls that have found him
Speaker 1: just collapsing among what used to be his strongest demographic.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good indication of what has gone
Speaker 1: awry for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I don't know, I get very annoyed
Speaker 2: by these you know, everyone wants to point out like
Speaker 2: the curricula problems and anti CRT stuff, but apparently discussing
Speaker 2: what's actually in CRT education.
Speaker 1: So I think we've had quite a discussion about it.
Speaker 3: I mean, in terms of this scrutiny, No that, like,
Speaker 3: in terms of this is.
Speaker 1: Been a major focus of discussion.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, I actually don't think so at all.
Speaker 2: I think many Republicans, I mean, we're online enough and
Speaker 2: you interact with enough right wingers that you could have
Speaker 2: an intelligent discussion conversation.
Speaker 1: In the Virginia election, I mean.
Speaker 3: Well, there's our whole Sill school.
Speaker 1: Board candidate that's been run across the country that's like
Speaker 1: obsessed with this stuff all the like book banning and
Speaker 1: Florida and Texas.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about on a local level and on
Speaker 2: people who are like in terms of engaging the fight,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about like mainstream media analysis, and in terms
Speaker 2: of that, it's like, oh, everybody can point to a
Speaker 2: single sentence about what's going on in CRT, and everybody
Speaker 2: knows exactly what we're discussing. I do think DeSantis miffed
Speaker 2: his answer, by the way, on this, although even in
Speaker 2: the underlying curriculum, some of it was true, a lot
Speaker 2: of it was wrong, I will say that. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, you know, in terms of the scrutiny
Speaker 2: that does come on this stuff, it's like I always
Speaker 2: see it, you know, whenever it's the anti CRT, but
Speaker 2: whenever it's actual CRT, and we're like ranking children by
Speaker 2: skin color and all that.
Speaker 3: Then people call it.
Speaker 1: There's a whole media ecosystem.
Speaker 3: I agree with you on the right, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Think And here's the other thing is, you know, I
Speaker 1: think if you are developing a curriculum that intentionally downplays
Speaker 1: the harms of slavery, I think that's a legitimate topic
Speaker 1: of discussion.
Speaker 2: Personally, Well, I mean, I don't think he downplayed slavery.
Speaker 2: I think it was we're talking about single sentence in
Speaker 2: a textbook.
Speaker 3: Education.
Speaker 1: This is not the only instance where there's enough to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I mean, slavery's bat but everyone around
Speaker 1: the world was doing And by the way, did you
Speaker 1: know there were some white people in slave and let's
Speaker 1: talk about the white indentured servants, and you know, let
Speaker 1: me go ahead and double down on the idea that
Speaker 1: slaves personally benefits. So I think it's a legitimate critique.
Speaker 1: And even if you don't agree that this is a
Speaker 1: legitimate critique, you have to know that the media is
Speaker 1: of course going to seize true on a line in
Speaker 1: the curriculum that's like slaves actually had a pretty good
Speaker 1: So don't worry about it, guys. It was all fine.
Speaker 1: Of course you're going to get asked questions about that.
Speaker 1: And of course when you're you know, plumbing in the
Speaker 1: polls and you're worried about shoring up white college educated support,
Speaker 1: it's maybe not the fight you want to lean into.
Speaker 2: I agree with that completely actually in terms of him,
Speaker 2: for I've always said you could lean into the reopening
Speaker 2: of Florida net migration, you could talk about cost of living.
Speaker 3: You should all.
Speaker 2: What part of the problem though, is that cost of
Speaker 2: living is going up right now. But I would focus
Speaker 2: also in terms of the price of education, the University
Speaker 2: of Florida system, and to say, like Florida is a
Speaker 2: place that people are coming to because it's and there's
Speaker 2: currently a nightmare going on and the rest. I would
Speaker 2: focus on that, and I would hammer that home because
Speaker 2: I believe that we talked about this at nauseum. I
Speaker 2: think even all these cultural fights, we can fight here
Speaker 2: all day long about it, but this is not going
Speaker 2: to determine the course of your life. What's going to
Speaker 2: determine the course of your life is your mortgage rate
Speaker 2: where you can actually be able to raise your kids,
Speaker 2: and your kids be able to go get an education
Speaker 2: if you want to and do better than you in life.
Speaker 2: And I do think that if he were to talk
Speaker 2: much more about that issue set, he would do a
Speaker 2: lot better.
Speaker 1: Electability apparently matters more than I expected in economic issues,
Speaker 1: you know, just sing the praises of the Florida economy
Speaker 1: all day, day and night. That was the best path
Speaker 1: for him. But you know, in all fairness, even if
Speaker 1: he did that, do I think he would be winning
Speaker 1: right now? No idea?
Speaker 3: This is the Yeah. I mean, we've beat this to
Speaker 3: death at this point.
Speaker 2: But electability to the Republican base is subjectively important, but
Speaker 2: not objectively important. Like objectively is outrageous to think that
Speaker 2: Trump is, you know, the most electable candidate or the
Speaker 2: very least doesn't have serious electability problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'll have electability problems. Yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: well Trump there at least like he's won before.
Speaker 3: Yeah. True.
Speaker 1: And to your point I saw is sixty eight percent
Speaker 1: or something of Republicans think that he won the last
Speaker 1: election too, and it was stolen from him, so they
Speaker 1: feel like he's a two time winner. So why wouldn't
Speaker 1: he be able to pull it off again?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 2: Politics is an amazing profession, isn't it? In twenty twenty four. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead to the next part here about Twitter
Speaker 2: and well, I guess, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk
Speaker 2: Overnight has decided to change the name of the company
Speaker 2: to X. Let's go ahead and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen, debuting a brand new logo, which you
Speaker 2: will now find in the top left of your top
Speaker 2: left of your Twitter. Also, Chrislal, I guess we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to start remaking these graphics because it currently says
Speaker 2: Twitter up there at the top, or maybe we'll just
Speaker 2: stick to it because I don't think this one is
Speaker 2: going to catch on.
Speaker 1: Let's see how long it lasts.
Speaker 2: So the official rebrand for those who are watching, you
Speaker 2: could see right there in front of you got the
Speaker 2: Twitter logo there on the right for the old one
Speaker 2: from the early two thousands, and we've got X there
Speaker 2: on the left. So for the uninitiated, for those who
Speaker 2: don't know, let's put Elon's announcement up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Here's what we said about x X dot com. Noowpoints
Speaker 2: to Twitter dot com. The interim X logo goes live today,
Speaker 2: so this actually doesn't come out of nowhere. There's some
Speaker 2: interesting history behind X dot Com. X dot Com was
Speaker 2: actually the second company that Elon ever was the head of,
Speaker 2: and it eventually became known as PayPal because it was
Speaker 2: in the same building as the PayPal office with Peter Tiel.
Speaker 2: There's like a legendary like X dot Com and PayPal
Speaker 2: organization that happened because they got to know each other.
Speaker 3: They're both working on online payments.
Speaker 2: X was always the vision of Elon at that time
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties, going into the dot com bubble.
Speaker 2: The idea was that you should be able not only
Speaker 2: to seamlessly financially transact on the Internet, but you should
Speaker 2: have almost like a one stop shop for everything in
Speaker 2: terms of how you conduct your day to day life.
Speaker 2: It's actually interesting to consider this, but he was far
Speaker 2: ahead of his time because X dot Com as it
Speaker 2: was envisioned in the nineties is a lot like we
Speaker 2: Chat in China is today, and we Chat is effectively
Speaker 2: like an ecosystem where you have your payments, it has
Speaker 2: your social media, it has almost your entire digital online persona.
Speaker 3: Now there's a reason that China has its structure that way.
Speaker 2: And it's because it's like, well, we could turn it
Speaker 2: on and we could turn it off at every point,
Speaker 2: so I'm not saying it isn't scary, but of course
Speaker 2: it's very convenient to the consumer, and he kind of
Speaker 2: dreamed it up at that time.
Speaker 3: It didn't end up working out.
Speaker 2: For a variety of reasons, a lot of it having
Speaker 2: into bank regulations and also just the way our internet
Speaker 2: evolved versus theirs. I'm giving a very charitable read of
Speaker 2: this just so everybody knows I'm talking about the original vision.
Speaker 3: As to how it will be executed. Well.
Speaker 2: Twitter or X's CEO, let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, put out a statement hours after Elon announced this,
Speaker 2: saying quote, X is the future of unlimited interactivity centered
Speaker 2: in audio, video, messaging, payments, and banking, creating a global
Speaker 2: marketplace for ideas, good services, and opportunit unities powered by AI.
Speaker 2: X will connect us all in ways they were just
Speaker 2: beginning to imagine. For years, fans and critics have pushed
Speaker 2: Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fill
Speaker 2: our greatest potential.
Speaker 3: X will do that and more.
Speaker 2: We have started to see X take shape over the
Speaker 2: last eight months over our rapid feature launches.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you can call.
Speaker 2: It that there's absolutely no limit for transformation. X will
Speaker 2: be the platform that can deliver everything. Elon and I
Speaker 2: are looking forward to working with our teams and every
Speaker 2: single one of our partners to bring X to the world.
Speaker 2: So what do you think, Crystal, what do you think
Speaker 2: about the future of the X dot com?
Speaker 1: Raise your hand out there if you are ready to
Speaker 1: trust your banking to Elon Musk given what we've seen
Speaker 1: on the platform, the more regular crashes and blud bugs
Speaker 1: and glitches, the fact that they couldn't handle just like
Speaker 1: an audio only launch for Ron DeSantis, and you're putting
Speaker 1: out these like grand ideas about replacing half of the
Speaker 1: global financial system. Okay, color me skeptical on that one.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is that, you know, I was reading
Speaker 1: through the list of like the features and the changes
Speaker 1: and whatever, and most of them are pretty small ball.
Speaker 1: They're little like tweaks around the edges of like this
Speaker 1: or that functionality. And then it's like, so it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to change like this a little bit. We're
Speaker 1: going to not call them followers anymore. We're going to
Speaker 1: you know, implement this like creator payment system, which you
Speaker 1: know that could be quite significant. But and then it's like,
Speaker 1: and we're going to take over half of the global
Speaker 1: financial system. It's like, okay, sure, sure you are. In
Speaker 1: terms of the branding itself, I mean, listen, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just being a stick in the mud because I get
Speaker 1: attached to something I'm used to, the Twitter bird. It's
Speaker 1: an iconic brand, it's very recognizable. This is super generic, weird.
Speaker 1: I just don't really understand the point of it. I
Speaker 1: think you gave up what was an you know, iconic
Speaker 1: branding and imagery and all of that on sort of
Speaker 1: a scattershot basis and slap this thing on it. And
Speaker 1: I don't think it looks particularly good.
Speaker 2: So what I would say is the problem I find
Speaker 2: is that this almost seems a bit desperate.
Speaker 3: So did anyone see the term AI in there?
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, interesting, So there's a joke right now,
Speaker 2: like in the venture capital world, like all somebody has
Speaker 2: to do is just put AI at the beginning their
Speaker 2: startup and evaluation goes up by.
Speaker 3: Like one hundred million dollars. So I am like, okay,
Speaker 3: well hold on a second.
Speaker 2: My issue with you know, trying to think so grand
Speaker 2: in this way is, dude, you got to focus on
Speaker 2: core competencies first, like, are you profitable yes or no?
Speaker 3: Are you on a road to profitability delivering a core service?
Speaker 3: Yes or no? Does the product work?
Speaker 2: I mean the answer to that question is actually no
Speaker 2: on the consistency basis, is the product good even when
Speaker 2: it does work well? You know, I can't be the
Speaker 2: only guy whose feed is flooded with terrible ads.
Speaker 3: I hate the for you page, love following. I don't know,
Speaker 3: we'll see.
Speaker 2: I mean in terms of whether I am you know,
Speaker 2: in the minority here or not. The other question, you know,
Speaker 2: whenever it comes to this is are we actually going
Speaker 2: like ditching this iconic brand in favor of what like?
Speaker 2: Or can we realistically have a path towards that product?
Speaker 2: At the same time, look, this is Elon's modus operandi.
Speaker 2: You know, he talked a massive game on Tesla for years.
Speaker 2: Everybody bet against him and said you're gonna lose, You're
Speaker 2: gonna fail, You're all this production is never gonna happen.
Speaker 2: He always ended up pulling it out. But part of
Speaker 2: the reason why I do think this is fundamentally different
Speaker 2: is Elon was solving a series of engineering problems. At
Speaker 2: the end of the day, engineering, financial, and economies at
Speaker 2: scale in the Tesla system, this is about social media,
Speaker 2: which is about what consumers like their user patterns. It's
Speaker 2: not the same like when somebody goes to you and says,
Speaker 2: there's no way we can produce a thousand cars, well
Speaker 2: or one hundred thousand cars.
Speaker 3: The engineering problem set that you have.
Speaker 2: To solve there has to deal with let's get some
Speaker 2: more material, let's all work much harder. Well that what's
Speaker 2: a creative way to get there? And regulatory and all that.
Speaker 2: Social media is just totally different in terms of rolling
Speaker 2: stuff out. So you know, when we're talking here about banking,
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, did you even talk to any of
Speaker 2: the banks you know before you launch this product?
Speaker 3: Are they going to enter with your system? What about Apple?
Speaker 2: The vast majority of Twitter users are on the are
Speaker 2: on an iPhone or on Android? Are they going to
Speaker 2: take a cut of set product? Are they going to
Speaker 2: allow you through? You know, the app store has very
Speaker 2: onerous regulations whenever it comes to all this stuff. So
Speaker 2: that that's more My thing is I'm like, did you
Speaker 2: really think about the vision and the core competency before
Speaker 2: you're doing it?
Speaker 3: Or is this a ploy possible? I think to actually raise.
Speaker 2: Money by putting AI in there and putting some sort
Speaker 2: of like moonshot thing on top of the company to
Speaker 2: try and keep a higher valuation, raise money at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a start point, I mean to me, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, the most what I'm most hoping for is
Speaker 1: that this is just like a flight of fancy with
Speaker 1: nothing real behind it and not any sort of play
Speaker 1: that is going to really really work out, because to me,
Speaker 1: and I thought this with you know, Facebook now Meta,
Speaker 1: also another terrible rebranding making some similar noises is the
Speaker 1: idea of handing these oligarch tech billionaires even more control
Speaker 1: over our daily lives. Now we're going to marry like
Speaker 1: you know, what we're allowed to say in the public
Speaker 1: square with also like what tre actions were allowed to
Speaker 1: engage in. That's terrifying. So I actively hope that this
Speaker 1: direction is you know, just a sort of a whim
Speaker 1: that's going to come to absolutely nothing, because the alternative
Speaker 1: that it actually somehow magically works out and Elon Musk
Speaker 1: takes over half of the global financial system is completely terrifying.
Speaker 3: Right, let's go ahead and put this up there.
Speaker 2: Also on the screen, Threads, which lived a very short
Speaker 2: life appears to be plummeting after an explosive start. Quote,
Speaker 2: there's been a nearly seventy percent decline in the number
Speaker 2: of daily active users since the July seven peak, spoiling
Speaker 2: their explosive launch just two weeks ago after signing up
Speaker 2: one hundred million or so people. This, you know, is
Speaker 2: going to be a big question of like, were they
Speaker 2: going to be able to keep engagement on the platform? Actually, Hi,
Speaker 2: the answer appears to be no right now. I got
Speaker 2: to say, I think Threads had some promise, but part
Speaker 2: of the problem is they did not have the ability
Speaker 2: to post from desktop. There many of the features that
Speaker 2: they were built into the core of the Twitter platform
Speaker 2: didn't exist there. So in terms of being able to
Speaker 2: switch over seamlessly, it didn't really exist. I knew some
Speaker 2: very prolific Twitter posters who were trying to do everything
Speaker 2: on Threads, and because they were limited to mobile, it
Speaker 2: was definitely it just didn't work. It also didn't have
Speaker 2: a good enough load time if you're actually trying to
Speaker 2: use it for news. And then in terms of the algorithm,
Speaker 2: this always this was always a big question of friends
Speaker 2: and family, are you people actually going to want to
Speaker 2: have their people who follow them on Instagram actually see
Speaker 2: what they want to post on Twitter or on a
Speaker 2: Twitter alternative. I think that was also a big question,
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I think ultimately, you know the
Speaker 2: question or rarely. What we're learning from both of these
Speaker 2: things is so these companies evolve to what they are
Speaker 2: for a reason. They have core competencies. Branching out of
Speaker 2: those core competencies can be done, but it's also extraordinarily difficult,
Speaker 2: like we were just talking about with x dot com,
Speaker 2: and you made a great point too about centralization. The
Speaker 2: entire reason that the US doesn't have a weech hat
Speaker 2: like system is because we had an open, fair ish,
Speaker 2: and competitive.
Speaker 3: System in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as in, everything evolved separately, so you didn't have
Speaker 2: the ability to combine. The reason China has a different
Speaker 2: system is they banned all of that in the nineties
Speaker 2: and then they saw that with the development of the
Speaker 2: smartphone that centralization is actually a good thing, and so
Speaker 2: they just combined everything into a single app, whereas ours
Speaker 2: poured it over from an original web system onto the phone,
Speaker 2: which is why you have a different ecosystem. And while
Speaker 2: that can be annoying, you know, not having everything seamlessly integrated.
Speaker 2: It also makes it so that there's no one centralized
Speaker 2: point of control and of power. So I actually hope,
Speaker 2: like you do, that it never exists here in the US,
Speaker 2: because it didn't for the very reason that we originally
Speaker 2: had a very free and competitive ecosystem on the web
Speaker 2: that eventually poured it over onto the smartphone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that those are all good points. I mean,
Speaker 1: on the threads like it impart, they're a victim of
Speaker 1: their initial success and the blockbuster numbers that they did.
Speaker 1: So when you drop off seventy percent, it's still a
Speaker 1: lot of people or you using the platform and still
Speaker 1: thirteen million daily active users. But you know, I do
Speaker 1: sort of agree with you that it's just it's not
Speaker 1: even that they did anything wrong. It's just hard to
Speaker 1: persuade people to move off the thing that they're comfy
Speaker 1: with and they've built following in a network and whatever on,
Speaker 1: and so if there isn't an immediate payoff with that,
Speaker 1: or if there isn't sufficient immediate pain on the platform
Speaker 1: that they're on, it's just difficult. These things are sticky.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's not the same as the era when you used
Speaker 1: to have MySpace and Facebook was able to come in
Speaker 1: and kill them. That was still very nascent. It was
Speaker 1: still early adopters who were on that platform. There's just
Speaker 1: more sort of like churn in that atmosphere. Now people
Speaker 1: are kind of locked into. If they're a Facebook person,
Speaker 1: they're on Facebook. If you're a Twitter person, you're there
Speaker 1: on Twitter. You've built up a whole thing there. And
Speaker 1: even you know, for myself, like I signed up for Threads,
Speaker 1: I took a look at it, and I lurked a
Speaker 1: little bit to see what the general vibe was. That's
Speaker 1: all I've done, even though I sort of hate Twitter
Speaker 1: at this point, I really don't even post there anymore.
Speaker 1: But even for me, it's not like I'm super invested
Speaker 1: in making Threads work as some you know, Twitter competitor alternative,
Speaker 1: and I have issues with the fact that there is
Speaker 1: no just straight timeline feed. It's all algorithmically generated. I
Speaker 1: have an issue with that. I mean, there's a whole
Speaker 1: censorship regime over there that I have a problem with too.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't even totally clear to me. And they
Speaker 1: made it clear also that they didn't even want politics
Speaker 1: on their platforms. I was like, all right, well, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm not really welcome here either. So I think
Speaker 1: it's going to be difficult to supplant Twitter as the
Speaker 1: microblogging platform, even though I suspect threads will hang out there.
Speaker 1: They've got the corporate backing, they've got the Instagram tie in.
Speaker 1: There may be some specific communities that develop over there
Speaker 1: that make sense with the connectivity between those two platforms.
Speaker 1: I could see it's sort of working. But as an
Speaker 1: actual Twitter killer, I have grown increasingly skeptical.
Speaker 3: Look, here's the thing you never know.
Speaker 2: I mean, Instagram Stories wasn't an overnight success versus Snapchat.
Speaker 3: It took years for them to battle it out.
Speaker 2: At the same time, you know, Facebook has a long
Speaker 2: history of also just nuking products overnight. Like if they
Speaker 2: think that it's not going to work, so they have
Speaker 2: two options, they can nuke it. I don't think that
Speaker 2: they will, just from a pride perspective and because you know,
Speaker 2: maybe they see some user like actually using on the
Speaker 2: platform enough that there's nascent that they could build on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they could add a lot more features and they could
Speaker 2: make it more useful. It's one of those where don't forget,
Speaker 2: you know, with Twitter, I mean, sure, me and you, Crystal,
Speaker 2: how long did it take for you to really start
Speaker 2: engaging in tweeting? Like, I don't think it was instantaneous,
Speaker 2: you know, for me.
Speaker 1: Running for Congress, I sort of hades. I'm not a
Speaker 1: good example.
Speaker 2: I mean for me, like, you know, I drive and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, you know, and this is when
Speaker 2: I had, like I had no job even in politics.
Speaker 2: I would send like one tweet a month that was
Speaker 2: like normal, and then you know, eventually start getting into
Speaker 2: It was only until I became a journ like an
Speaker 2: actual employeede journalist, I started tweeting almost every single year.
Speaker 2: So that's one of those where you know, now it's
Speaker 2: it does seem like I've been doing it forever, But
Speaker 2: at the time, whenever I signed up and I didn't
Speaker 2: work or it didn't.
Speaker 3: Have an actual job in politics, it was a little
Speaker 3: bit different.
Speaker 2: So when I think about, like, well, how a normal
Speaker 2: person might engage with the platform, you and I are
Speaker 2: like more much more like super users, or use it
Speaker 2: for more for professional purposes, which is not what the
Speaker 2: vast majority of people do on social media sites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. So maybe we'll hold on, We'll hold
Speaker 1: on some possibility for threads there. All right, let's talk
Speaker 1: about a new White House free count about Green Party
Speaker 1: candidate Cornell West, who is running for president. He's been
Speaker 1: mixing it up in a bunch of interviews. He's been
Speaker 1: one for a long time, which I always respect about him.
Speaker 1: He will go and talk to anyone, and he's not
Speaker 1: and he doesn't change who he is. By the way,
Speaker 1: when he goes and talks to Sean Handy on Fox News.
Speaker 1: He was recently on there mixing it up with Sean
Speaker 1: Hannity about Trump's father's checkered pass. Let's they go listen
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, well, Trump's his own father has been
Speaker 4: tied to the Klan. Trump's language about black.
Speaker 5: I've never heard his father, professor. I've never heard that out,
Speaker 5: never once of Trump. I ran to be racial jungles.
Speaker 4: No, my brother, you got we won't go into all
Speaker 4: of that and now, but I'm not going to say
Speaker 4: the son has to take the responsibility as the fox.
Speaker 5: Oh no.
Speaker 4: We we have empirical evidence of that in terms of
Speaker 4: not just how he treated black people in Queens, but
Speaker 4: also the fact that he took him to clan rallies.
Speaker 3: But this is in the history.
Speaker 4: But We're not talking about his father, God bless his soul.
Speaker 4: We're talking about Trump himself. Look for example, the brother
Speaker 4: Yusef Salaam. You know Usu Salam was one of the
Speaker 4: central parks of young brothers who was taking to jail.
Speaker 4: I was blessed to support him. I live in Harlem.
Speaker 4: He's now my counselman. What did brother Trump say about
Speaker 4: brother us death penalty?
Speaker 3: Fair trial?
Speaker 4: I want a fair trial for Trump. I want a
Speaker 4: fair trial for Trump. Did he want a fair trial
Speaker 4: for that black brother?
Speaker 1: No. Cornell West, doctor West does not pull any punches.
Speaker 1: And you know, is who he is, regardless of where
Speaker 1: he finds himself, what platform he finds himself on, and
Speaker 1: the fact that he has such a large public profile
Speaker 1: and dedicated following has sort of apparently started to sink
Speaker 1: into the White House that this could be a problem
Speaker 1: for them. So let's put this up on the screen
Speaker 1: from the Atlantic. You've got Mark Leavovich here with the
Speaker 1: inside the White House Free count. He's got some quotes
Speaker 1: here from David Axelrod, who, of course former top Obama guy,
Speaker 1: who says too little attention is being paid to this.
Speaker 1: Axelrod recently recently gave voice to the gathering Democratic free
Speaker 1: count when he tweeted out some basic historical parallels. Quote
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, the Green Party played an outsized role
Speaker 1: in tipping the election to Donald Trump. Now, with Cornell
Speaker 1: West as their likely nominee, they could easily do it again.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, on the Jillstein piece, it's just unbelievable number
Speaker 1: of excuses they find for their own failures. Once again,
Speaker 1: Democratic Party can never fail, can only be failed. It's
Speaker 1: the fault of those damn voters who just didn't do
Speaker 1: what they were supposed to do, and we will never
Speaker 1: ever forgive them. But they point out in this piece
Speaker 1: that Cornell West is kind of in a sense leaning
Speaker 1: into some of the anxiety here because Jill Stein is
Speaker 1: actually his campaign manager, which yeah, absolutely, you know. The
Speaker 1: right up here is you can understand the sensitivities given
Speaker 1: the history. Democrats still recoil at the name Jill Stein,
Speaker 1: the Green Party nominee in twenty sixteen, Blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: pointing out that the amount of votes that she got
Speaker 1: in key battleground's Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania wound up exceeding
Speaker 1: the margins by which Hillary Clinton lost in those states. Now,
Speaker 1: I've always thought that this way of thinking about the
Speaker 1: election and this cope over their own failures and the
Speaker 1: fact that Hillary Clinton like barely even campaigned in those
Speaker 1: states and probably would have made things worse if she
Speaker 1: did campaign in those states. That's always left down of
Speaker 1: the analysis is always James Comey, Russia, Jill Stein, et cetera. However,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to do have to say because
Speaker 1: of who doctor West is and because of the fact
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden has left himself so vulnerable, especially among
Speaker 1: young people, with the many failed campaign promises that he made.
Speaker 1: You know, I do think that they have a real
Speaker 1: problem on their hands with doctor Cornell West in the race,
Speaker 1: and with the fact that you know, right now it's
Speaker 1: already a jump ball with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: You know what I don't understand too. You know, I
Speaker 2: forgot about this discourse. Chill Stein got one point four
Speaker 2: million votes. Gary Johnson got the point five million. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So if anybody's Gary, I mean Gary Johnson's fault, or
Speaker 2: is it that you didn't convince enough people to vote
Speaker 2: for you. And a lot of these libertarian types presumably
Speaker 2: they were voting for Gary Johnson because they couldn't stand
Speaker 2: the idea of voting for a Republican, but they wanted
Speaker 2: to vote with somebody more aligned with their actual votes.
Speaker 2: I mean, okay, then you should have made a case
Speaker 2: that you were the most credible anti Trump candidate, but
Speaker 2: you didn't.
Speaker 3: Do that, so you didn't win.
Speaker 2: I mean at the same time, you know, in terms
Speaker 2: of the White House problem, I mean, I think they're right,
Speaker 2: which is Look, Cornell Wesley is a very well known person,
Speaker 2: specifically Crystal amongst younger lefts, and if those are the
Speaker 2: type of people who you are the most disgusted with
Speaker 2: Joe Biden, there's a reason that he's trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: hammer home student Loan as much as you can right
Speaker 2: now to try and shore up support amongst them, because
Speaker 2: most of them have the lowest approval rating of Joe
Speaker 2: Biden than any other Democratic group. Yeah, you do have
Speaker 2: a problem, but don't blame Cornell west for that. Yes,
Speaker 2: your damn fault, Yeah, for not governing it in the right.
Speaker 3: Way, you know.
Speaker 1: I think I think this is such an interesting conversation
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm not a big third party person
Speaker 1: just because of the nature of the US political system,
Speaker 1: and so if you actually want to have a shot
Speaker 1: at really winning the presidency. I think you have a
Speaker 1: better chance. It's also very difficult, better better chance of
Speaker 1: taking over one of the two major parties just because
Speaker 1: of structural first best pose, no rank choice voting, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. However, the theory of the case from people
Speaker 1: who are really into you know, third parties and they're
Speaker 1: done with the Democratic Party and they're you know, very
Speaker 1: much planning on voting for Cornell West, is that you
Speaker 1: have to have a credible threat of withholding your vote
Speaker 1: from the Democratic Party in order to push them on issues. Now, again,
Speaker 1: I think that that is actually disproven by the jill
Speaker 1: Stein example, because even though it's kind of absurd the
Speaker 1: argument that they make, they really think that jill Stein
Speaker 1: is the reason that they lost. It did not cause
Speaker 1: them to feel pressure from their left and cause them
Speaker 1: to move left. Instead, it caused them to further crush
Speaker 1: descent and you know, make sure that all of the
Speaker 1: leftist Democrats that were in Congress were like, you know,
Speaker 1: got in line and they use whatever tools and tactics
Speaker 1: they had to sort of crush any sort of vibrant
Speaker 1: left in the country. So it didn't work out. But
Speaker 1: that's the theory of the case is you have to
Speaker 1: have a credible threat that it is going to be
Speaker 1: politically impactful to Joe Biden the Democrats to run a
Speaker 1: third party candidate, and so in a sense, the only
Speaker 1: way that theory works out is if you do have
Speaker 1: a chance to be a spoiler, you know' that's the
Speaker 1: whole concept of how power would be wielded in this situation,
Speaker 1: is that there has to be an idea that if
Speaker 1: you don't deliver on these priorities for the you know,
Speaker 1: left activist base that is most most inclined to vote
Speaker 1: towards Cornell West, that if you don't satisfy their demands,
Speaker 1: then you are going to lose the election. So in
Speaker 1: a way, I actually think that, you know, if that's
Speaker 1: your theory of the case, that's your theory of how
Speaker 1: power works, then you should in a sense be leaning
Speaker 1: into the idea that, yeah, you could be a spoiler.
Speaker 1: If Joe Biden doesn't deliver for these groups, then people
Speaker 1: are going to vote for Cornell West and you may
Speaker 1: well lose the election of Donald Trump. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you are one of those people who was really
Speaker 1: in the third party camp that you're okay with that
Speaker 1: being the ultimate outcome because Democrats have so failed to
Speaker 1: deliver on the basic core promises that they're supposed to
Speaker 1: stand for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am also deeply usually skeptical of third parties
Speaker 2: in terms of achieving anything unless they were able to
Speaker 2: actually receive a real critical mass.
Speaker 3: It can be done.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, we had Ross Pero, he won a
Speaker 2: decent percentage of the vote. He actually did hijack you know,
Speaker 2: political discourse and in a good way opinion back in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two. But it's been a long time since
Speaker 2: ninety two. And also he had a tremendous political he
Speaker 2: had tremendous wealth at his disposal number one two.
Speaker 3: It was a pretty unique moment.
Speaker 2: And then also though since then, we saw Trump be
Speaker 2: able to come in destroy the entire Republican establishment and
Speaker 2: actually win the nomination and take over the party. So
Speaker 2: the case of what you're talking about already has a
Speaker 2: very modern precedent. Third parties who are able to succeed Historically,
Speaker 2: this has been on a very long time. Happened whenever
Speaker 2: there is an irreconcilable difference in the actual coalition, And
Speaker 2: currently I don't see that in the Democratic coalition. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's anything irreconcilable specifically, given that we are
Speaker 2: becoming a party of effectively like older black voters, some Hispanics,
Speaker 2: and then white college educated and not even white college
Speaker 2: educated college educated voters who predominantly culturally dominate. That actually
Speaker 2: means that the party is becoming even more coherent really
Speaker 2: than ever before in terms of its base. In my opinions,
Speaker 2: actually the Republicans that have a much deeper split, so
Speaker 2: they're aligned on cultural issues, but economic issues, there is
Speaker 2: an irreconcilable difference in my view, between the working class
Speaker 2: voters and then the small business kind of constituency in
Speaker 2: the multi billionaire Republicans. Trump is able to paper that
Speaker 2: over somewhat rhetorically, but eventually I do think it will
Speaker 2: come to a head.
Speaker 3: So I actually see.
Speaker 2: More third party potential for a Republican party, or at
Speaker 2: least some sort of split there than I do over
Speaker 2: in the Democrat.
Speaker 1: Like if Trump was able to somehow manage to lose
Speaker 1: the nomination and or party, you could see how you
Speaker 1: would get a significantunk of.
Speaker 3: The Republican if they rigged it against him. I think
Speaker 3: he would still win.
Speaker 2: I think he would win forty something fifty something percent
Speaker 2: of the people who voted in the Republican primary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I mean, the last
Speaker 1: thing I'll say about this is, you know, I got
Speaker 1: a quote from AOC here when she endorsed Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: which I think is just so disgraceful. But she pays
Speaker 1: homage to doctor West. She says he has an incredible
Speaker 1: history in this country. What he gives voice to is
Speaker 1: incredible important. But she goes on to say the US
Speaker 1: has a winner take all system, whether we like it
Speaker 1: or not. We have to live with that reality, live
Speaker 1: with Joe Biden, in other words, because the alternative is
Speaker 1: far worse. Is the clothes to that piece. And you know,
Speaker 1: I just find it so sad the response from Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and the Democrats, including AOC to a challenge from
Speaker 1: their left like Cornell West, because their response isn't let
Speaker 1: me try to deliver war for this group, let me
Speaker 1: try to persuade them, let me try to win them over.
Speaker 1: What are the areas where we may have fallen short?
Speaker 1: Because at the beginning of the Joe Biden presidency, he
Speaker 1: had very high approval ratings with young voters, and it
Speaker 1: was you know, this latter half of the administration when
Speaker 1: things have really fallen off a cliff, as it has
Speaker 1: become manifestly clear the number of campaign promises that he's
Speaker 1: not going to fulfill that we're important to this group
Speaker 1: of voters. No, no, it's never caused for any self reflection.
Speaker 1: It's always just like, how do we smear and dismiss
Speaker 1: and shame. As the podcast broke, the Pods Bros actually said,
Speaker 1: shame these voters into falling in line. That is always
Speaker 1: their go to reaction, and you know, we see it
Speaker 1: very much here in the case of doctor West.
Speaker 2: Right, all right, well that's I think it's an interesting,
Speaker 2: you know thing, and it's not going away. And luckily,
Speaker 2: you know, Cornell West has ballot access to the Green Party,
Speaker 2: so he made a really smart choice by switching from
Speaker 2: People's degree. It makes him much more of a credible threat.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move on UFO. This is a big
Speaker 2: week for the UFO phenomenon. There's going to be some
Speaker 2: major hearings in Congress, and before we get to the
Speaker 2: witnesses of who will be appearing before the House Oversight Committee,
Speaker 2: there was an extraordinary press conference actually a bipartisan one.
Speaker 2: Jared Moskovitz and a Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett, Republicans
Speaker 2: and a Democrat here revealing some of their frustration with
Speaker 2: the intelligence community about the lack of disclosure, some of
Speaker 2: the things they hope to get through with the hearings,
Speaker 2: and also really display how fed up they are with
Speaker 2: some of the lies and obfuscations that have been made
Speaker 2: to them by the Pentagon.
Speaker 3: Here's what they had to say.
Speaker 6: Next way, July twenty sixth, at ten am, the House
Speaker 6: Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on unidentified anomalist phenomena UAPs.
Speaker 6: I've furd call them UFOs. Last year of the House
Speaker 6: Intelligence Committee held a hearing on UAPs. They brought in
Speaker 6: some Pentagon bureaucrats to it who only had two answers
Speaker 6: to the questions they were asked, I don't know, or
Speaker 6: that's classified. This hearing is going to be different. We're
Speaker 6: going to have witnesses who can speak frankly to public
Speaker 6: about their experiences. We've had a heck of a lot
Speaker 6: of pushback about this hearing. We've had members of Congress
Speaker 6: who fought us. We've had members of the intelligence community
Speaker 6: and also the Pentagon. Even NYSA backed out on us.
Speaker 6: There are a lot of people who don't want this
Speaker 6: to come to light. I've even tried to introduce it
Speaker 6: amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Bill, and all
Speaker 6: that would do would require the Federal Aviation Administration to
Speaker 6: report UAP sightings by commercial pilots to Congress. The intelligence
Speaker 6: I was told the intelligence community shut it down. This isiculous, folks.
Speaker 6: Either they do exist or they don't exist. They keep
Speaker 6: telling us they don't exist, but they block every opportunity
Speaker 6: for us to get a hold of the information to
Speaker 6: prove that they do exist.
Speaker 3: So you can see there, he's pretty pissed off.
Speaker 2: He actually gave an interview to local TV in Knoxville
Speaker 2: where he expounded on some of these views and on
Speaker 2: some even more of the obfuscation that's happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to what he said. Just to
Speaker 3: be clear, are you saying what you have seen? Do
Speaker 3: you think it's something you know international technology.
Speaker 6: We haven't seen, or do you believe that you have
Speaker 6: seen videos of extraterrestrial life forms in UFOs. I'm one
Speaker 6: hundred percent convinced that is not are any of our
Speaker 6: allies or any of our enemies aircraft that it did
Speaker 6: not come.
Speaker 3: From this world. Either it's.
Speaker 6: From our skunk works, which means it was something they
Speaker 6: recovered and they reversed engineered, or it is something extraterrestrial.
Speaker 3: There you go, Crystal. Now, look, I believe there.
Speaker 2: Tim Burchett is a longtime UFO guy. He knows, he's
Speaker 2: very well informed. He knows the whole history of Roswell.
Speaker 2: So you know, if anybody, I'm actually glad to see
Speaker 2: him on the committee. He is one of the first
Speaker 2: people to actually push it. But you know, look Anna Poline,
Speaker 2: these people, I'm presuming you know, she's a former like
Speaker 2: tpsa activist. I mean, they are getting into this, I
Speaker 2: think because they genuinely do find cover ups.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: She's talked also about problems that they've had in Florida
Speaker 2: trying to have some disclosure requirements Matt Gets is now
Speaker 2: talking about as well. Like I said, Jared Moskwitz was
Speaker 2: there behind Tim Burchett, you know, clearly also pushing. We've
Speaker 2: talked about Andre Carson, who, by the way, I mistakenly
Speaker 2: sayers from New York is from Indiana. Andre Carson has
Speaker 2: also talked a little bit about pushing for disclosure. So
Speaker 2: like in all of these cases, we're seeing Congress get
Speaker 2: fed up with the official narrative that is being told.
Speaker 2: Not all of them are believers like Tim Burchett, but
Speaker 2: many of them actually are willing to hear more. And
Speaker 2: that's why I think this hearing is so important. So
Speaker 2: let's put these witness lists up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: I actually think this is the perfect witness list we
Speaker 2: have here. Ryan Graves, who's been on the show, the
Speaker 2: executive director for Americans for Safe Aerospace. He's a former
Speaker 2: US Navy pilot who has reported multiple sidings and been
Speaker 2: pushing a lot of disclosure.
Speaker 3: Within the community.
Speaker 2: And then a man who I owe a great debt to,
Speaker 2: even though I've never even met him, Commander David Fraver.
Speaker 2: I did not really care about UFOs until I listened
Speaker 2: to Commander David Fraver and his testimony about the Tiktak incident,
Speaker 2: his personal encounter with the tic Tac object, and also
Speaker 2: with all of the corresponding evidence that he brings to
Speaker 2: the table. The corresponding like his co pilot, the people
Speaker 2: who served with him in the squadron, the level of reporting.
Speaker 2: He was the first person I ever saw of a
Speaker 2: genuinely serious US Navy background. I mean, this is a
Speaker 2: man who and he often said this too. He's like,
Speaker 2: look I was, I didn't go into this looking for UFOs.
Speaker 2: He's like, I was training for war in the Gulf
Speaker 2: when we were off the coast in the Middle Is.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why I didn't think even
Speaker 2: more about it or take it as seriously at the
Speaker 2: time was we were at war.
Speaker 3: I literally had to.
Speaker 2: I was the commander of a squadron heading into an
Speaker 2: active war zone. So I am a person you know,
Speaker 2: with Ryan Graves and with Commander Fravor, these people were
Speaker 2: put in charge of other pilots. They were put in
Speaker 2: charge of hundreds of millions of dollars of aircraft equipment. Presumably,
Speaker 2: like if these people are totally completely nuts, somebody would
Speaker 2: have flagged it or found it, or they would have
Speaker 2: acted out in some other way.
Speaker 3: They are completely normal.
Speaker 2: They're completely like studious and professional, and you know, in
Speaker 2: every aspect of their lives except on this one. We
Speaker 2: want to say that what they're saying is completely insane.
Speaker 2: And then finally is Dave Grush, who, of course is
Speaker 2: the former National n RO Officer representative on the UAP
Speaker 2: Task Force inside of the Pentagon, otherwise known as the whistleblower,
Speaker 2: who has made extraordinary allegations from that there have been
Speaker 2: murders that have been committed to cover up the UFO phenomena.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have to laugh when I hear that,
Speaker 3: but I mean he says this with a straight face.
Speaker 2: If they say that his allegations are serious, they're credible
Speaker 2: that they bear investigation right now. So far we've only
Speaker 2: gotten that News Max interview with him. He's been very quiet,
Speaker 2: you know, otherwise in terms of the people that he's
Speaker 2: spoken to. And here he's going to be testifying under oath. Right,
Speaker 2: that's serious business. So look to the Pentagon and to
Speaker 2: all of them. If he's a liar, he's not, we
Speaker 2: should he should be asked about all of asu in
Speaker 2: the row. If he's a liar, throw him in jail,
Speaker 2: then throw him. But if you don't, that tells us
Speaker 2: a lot too about what.
Speaker 3: He's going to testify.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting point, do you think I think part
Speaker 1: of what is happening here with an increasing number of
Speaker 1: members of Congress becoming increasingly strident in their demands and
Speaker 1: you know, really pushing for transparency. You know, it's partly
Speaker 1: genuine interest, it's partly that they feel stonewalled, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's frustrating to them and to like their
Speaker 1: ego because they feel like, okay, you have to answer
Speaker 1: to us. And so the fact that we're not getting
Speaker 1: straight answers here, it really you know, rubs them the
Speaker 1: wrong way. So I think that's part of why you're
Speaker 1: getting this increasing push. The other thing I'm curious about,
Speaker 1: Sager is we've seen, for example, with the allegations from
Speaker 1: Dave Gresh, we saw that there was a real reluctance,
Speaker 1: there was a total blackout in the mainstream press of
Speaker 1: being willing to actually report out those allegations. And so
Speaker 1: some you know, people who had done reporting to the
Speaker 1: New York Times previously on UFOs, they actually had to
Speaker 1: take it to a different outlet because the Times turn
Speaker 1: them down, Politico turn them down, Washington Post turned them down.
Speaker 1: And these were not like weird, wacko fringe reporters. These
Speaker 1: are mainstream journalists who reported this out and you know,
Speaker 1: actually were able to bring these allegations forward, but not
Speaker 1: in any of the mainstream papers. So do you think
Speaker 1: that having this kind of congressional testimony and inquiry kind
Speaker 1: of forces the hand of the mainstream press to cover
Speaker 1: it at all?
Speaker 3: I would hope. So, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I have very little faith in these institutions. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're talking about freaking Leslie Keene here. She literally wrote
Speaker 2: the twenty seventeen New York Times article with Ralphil mcthal
Speaker 2: that blew open everything on this top and revealed it
Speaker 2: to the world. In terms of these videos, I mean,
Speaker 2: if they are if the Times is willing to ignore
Speaker 2: somebody that they previously trusted and you know, worked on
Speaker 2: their behalf for decades, well I think they can ignore
Speaker 2: a lot. At the same time, a man under oath
Speaker 2: making these claims, you cannot ignore it, in my opinion.
Speaker 3: And at the very least, here's the good news.
Speaker 2: Even if they do, enough people in Congress are fed
Speaker 2: up about what's going on here that they are still
Speaker 2: demanding questions. So we've got, you know, this hearing, We've
Speaker 2: got the Schumer Amendment that is happening inside the US
Speaker 2: Senate on the topic. You put those two things together
Speaker 2: and you force legal disclosure or at least alleged legal
Speaker 2: disclosure in the NDAA combined with this, and maybe we'll
Speaker 2: eventually get to the truth. But you know, you asked
Speaker 2: me this last time. Do you think this will actually work?
Speaker 3: I honestly don't know.
Speaker 2: Let's from you know, in JFK, we still don't know
Speaker 2: who killed JFK's been over sixty years since that happened. Also,
Speaker 2: it's not like being legally required to provide oversight has
Speaker 2: ever stopped the FBI, the CIA, or the Pentagon from
Speaker 2: breaking the law before. You know, Usually it takes like
Speaker 2: it doesn't take a Grush level guy. It takes somebody
Speaker 2: with direct knowledge with the actual like files. Remember with Grush,
Speaker 2: he says that he's seen evidence of this through highly
Speaker 2: classified programs, all that he hasn't actually seen craft or
Speaker 2: any of these other things with his own eyes.
Speaker 3: So, you know, who are those people? Where are they?
Speaker 3: Do they exist?
Speaker 2: Let's get them before Congress. They don't have to be public,
Speaker 2: they can even be private whatever. We'll take it as
Speaker 2: long as somebody tells us a little bit about it afterwards.
Speaker 3: But Congress, what.
Speaker 1: Has Grush said about why he decided to come forward?
Speaker 2: He says they were lying, but He said that Sean Kirkpatrick,
Speaker 2: the director of the program, the Arrow Program, basically lied
Speaker 2: before Congress and he felt compelled to come forward and
Speaker 2: say something, which is the best reason to.
Speaker 3: Be a whistleblower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you could imagine a situation where, you know,
Speaker 1: people who have actually seen craft or have additional evidence
Speaker 1: if such a thing exists, where they feel so outraged
Speaker 1: by the lies that they see told or by the stonewalling,
Speaker 1: that potentially that causes more whistleblowers to come forward would
Speaker 1: be the ideal SI.
Speaker 2: That would be the ideal scenario, whether it will happen,
Speaker 2: whether those people exist, where they're alive, Like, I mean,
Speaker 2: who knows, you know, these things are all compartmentalized in
Speaker 2: such a way. I think the most extraordinary allegation from
Speaker 2: Leslie Keene actually is that billions tens of billions of
Speaker 2: dollars have been spent on crash retrieval programs and are
Speaker 2: part of a black budget and account for some accounting
Speaker 2: problems that the Pentagon has.
Speaker 1: That's why they past the audit.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if it's going to be
Speaker 2: you know, eighty percent of the budget or whatever, but
Speaker 2: it may also it may be more than you actually know. So,
Speaker 2: as I always say, Transformers is real. All right, let's
Speaker 2: go to the movie section. Barbenheimer or is it Barbie Heimer?
Speaker 2: I forget Barbenheim. Barbenheimer, Griffin, come in my ear and
Speaker 2: tell me.
Speaker 1: I think it's Barbenheimer.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahad and put this up there on the
Speaker 2: screen while I'm awaiting. It is Barbenheimer.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right?
Speaker 2: So the weekend box office the two Barbie and Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: combining for their fourth highest domestic weekend of all time
Speaker 2: and the best summer weekend on record, the first big
Speaker 2: smash since April of twenty nineteen, led by Avengers Endgame.
Speaker 2: So this is a full return to pre pandemic movie levels.
Speaker 2: It's an extraordinary blockbuster in terms of the combination for
Speaker 2: the two, for Warner Brothers Studios. And this actually does
Speaker 2: show you that event movies, that strategy around them can
Speaker 2: still work. And the reason I love it is neither
Speaker 2: of these are a damn franchise, Crystal. Neither of these
Speaker 2: are a sequel. They're both original scripts. And no matter
Speaker 2: what you think of them, I know you didn't like.
Speaker 3: The Barbie movie. I did see both.
Speaker 2: I pulled off the vaunted double feature. I saw Oppenheimer
Speaker 2: in the morning Barbie at Night. The ability to compel
Speaker 2: big audiences, big cultural moments on original scripts with studded casts.
Speaker 3: Is something that a lot of people have been waiting
Speaker 3: for a long time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Originally we thought Top Gun was a savior of the movies,
Speaker 2: and I still think Tom Cruise did a tremendous service, you.
Speaker 3: Know, to people. But at the same time, like Maverick
Speaker 3: is a number.
Speaker 2: Two movie, Avatar sequel, both big event movies, all the
Speaker 2: Marvel ones that have come out in the last two
Speaker 2: years of garbage in my opinion, especially ant Man. But
Speaker 2: these original scripts. One is a freaking three hour biopic,
Speaker 2: you know. The other is you know, I you know,
Speaker 2: connects to some cultural touchstone in terms of Barbie like
Speaker 2: something which is an asshold name. But still the ability
Speaker 2: to compel people to the theater, This is something people
Speaker 2: have been waiting to see for a long time or
Speaker 2: returned to, like an actual original script studded cast. The
Speaker 2: bet that marketing and making a cultural touchstone and all
Speaker 2: that actually can work.
Speaker 3: I think it's a big deal for the movies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: really happy to see it.
Speaker 1: I do too. In fact, it's so rare now that
Speaker 1: there's any one like cultural tent pole, like touchstone thing
Speaker 1: that's happening. It was kind of extraordinary to see, you know.
Speaker 1: I was actually I was traveling with my mom in
Speaker 1: Saint Louis when we saw when we saw Barbie, and
Speaker 1: when we came back the hotel front desk they wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to like everybody wanted to talk to us
Speaker 1: about what we'd seen and whether which one of the
Speaker 1: movies we'd seen and what we thought about it, and
Speaker 1: whether they were going to go see it or not.
Speaker 1: And it's just been a long time since there was
Speaker 1: like a sort of unifying monocultural moment, So that was
Speaker 1: extraordinary to see. I think your point about the fact
Speaker 1: that these weren't just like tired retreads of Fast and
Speaker 1: Furious eighty five or whatever. They actually took a little
Speaker 1: bit of risk here, I think, especially with Oppenheimer. I mean,
Speaker 1: Barbie is such a known brand and known quantity, and
Speaker 1: it's Barbie core esthetic is having a moment and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. That to me that one is less
Speaker 1: of a risk. But Oppenheimer, you know, this weighty, lengthy
Speaker 1: historical piece that's quite a significant risk, and it's the
Speaker 1: type of risk that you just don't see movie studios
Speaker 1: taking all that often. At the same time, it's also
Speaker 1: a bit of a less Hurrah, at least for a while, because,
Speaker 1: as you know, actors and writers are out on strike indefinitely.
Speaker 1: It appears from what we can tell from the outside,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you guys check down our
Speaker 1: interviews with Ron Pearlman and Susan Sarandon and also another woman,
Speaker 1: Michelle Hurd, who is on the negotiating committee. It appears
Speaker 1: that the negotiations are not going well and that they're
Speaker 1: not any we're close to coming to terms, and the
Speaker 1: actors at least feel like there is a whole lot
Speaker 1: at stake in these negotiations. So put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen from the New York Times. I mean, it
Speaker 1: may be quite a while before we have, you know,
Speaker 1: another sort of big blockbuster weekend like this. They say,
Speaker 1: Barbenheimer is a huge Hollywood moment, maybe the last for
Speaker 1: a while. Big launch of Barbie and Oppenheimer should have
Speaker 1: been a celebratory moment, but an industry on pause has
Speaker 1: darkened the mood. And this really comes down to, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of what we were talking about in the
Speaker 1: sort of tech section of the show. That the business
Speaker 1: model has so changed and the stakes for actors and
Speaker 1: writers are so high in terms of being able to
Speaker 1: make sure that they are able to participate in the
Speaker 1: future success even to a small degree going forward, that
Speaker 1: you could see the strike dragging out for quite some time.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, in terms, that's always the caveat
Speaker 2: that we have to give. It's also you know, there's
Speaker 2: some interesting stuff that's kind of happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: I saw that many Hollywood stars are very concerned that
Speaker 2: their brand is going to take a dump on the
Speaker 2: Q score. Qscore is like there, what is it like
Speaker 2: the way that people feel about you. Yeah, in terms
Speaker 2: of anyway like advertisers stuff like that, they're the ones
Speaker 2: who pronominately. So they are all thinking about ways to
Speaker 2: become TikTok influencers, and they're going to lean very heavily
Speaker 2: into like Instagram content and to YouTube content and all
Speaker 2: that to keep themselves culturally relevant and still.
Speaker 3: In the public eye.
Speaker 2: So things very much I think are going to move,
Speaker 2: you know, towards the whole creator sphere. But it's also
Speaker 2: going to be difficult for them because they they can't
Speaker 2: violate you know, the sad guidelines in terms of promoting
Speaker 2: old work and stuff like that. We also found a
Speaker 2: crystal this map if people want to take a look
Speaker 2: in terms of the cultural difference between bar between who
Speaker 2: liked Barbie or not. Who put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, please, So this shows an electoral map on
Speaker 2: the left show Democrats and Republicans that are like basically
Speaker 2: like hard red states, hard blue states, along with the
Speaker 2: favorability rating of is Oppenheimer trending or is Barbie trending
Speaker 2: in the states.
Speaker 3: Of the US.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, Krystal, what do you make of this?
Speaker 2: I mean in terms and let's explain for the people
Speaker 2: who are watching.
Speaker 1: Oh so, first of all, just a caveat that we
Speaker 1: like pulled these off. I've read it and have not
Speaker 1: verified them ourselves, so but figured it was like low
Speaker 1: stakes enough for us to tip over without actually going
Speaker 1: in and state by state checking that this was accurate. However,
Speaker 1: you cannot help but notice a stunning similarity between the
Speaker 1: electoral map. The red states were Barbie states overwhelmingly, I mean,
Speaker 1: the way it matters is actually pretty stunning. The blue
Speaker 1: states that went for Joe Biden in twenty twenty were
Speaker 1: much more likely to be Oppenheimer states. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing that is crazy is there are a few states.
Speaker 1: So Minnesota was skan in, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which of
Speaker 1: course are all key swing states, were like perfectly split
Speaker 1: between Barbie and Oppenheimer. Now there are a few outliers,
Speaker 1: so Wyoming not a swing state but also was evenly divided,
Speaker 1: Nebraska not really a swing state. And Georgia, even though
Speaker 1: it was a Biden state this time around, it was
Speaker 1: also a Barbie state. So it's not like it lines
Speaker 1: up one hundred percent. But I do think it's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty funny, pretty remarkable, And you know, I guess I
Speaker 1: feel like Oppenheimer probably appeals to more like NPR type crowd,
Speaker 1: so like the college educated well, although I feel like
Speaker 1: the college educated white lib also probably loved Barbie more
Speaker 1: than anyone else. But you know, in the audience that
Speaker 1: I was in, in this like working class black neighborhood
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis, Missouri, people didn't come to Barbie for
Speaker 1: the like, you know, some sort of like radical feminist message.
Speaker 1: They brought their little girls in Barbie merch because their
Speaker 1: little girls love and so I and they hated the
Speaker 1: movie by the way. They were like appalled and about
Speaker 1: to revolt by the end of this movie because I
Speaker 1: don't think it was what they expected. They thought this
Speaker 1: was going to be, you know, a fun kids movie.
Speaker 1: It was wildly inaproperf because I'll save my commentary for
Speaker 1: my monologue. But to me, that's more of like Barbie
Speaker 1: is the widespread mainstream cultural touchdown, you know, product and so,
Speaker 1: and Oppenheimer is, you know, the historical think piece. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's more of an NPR crowd that goes
Speaker 1: to Oppenheimer. And so it would make some sense to
Speaker 1: me that it's like the more liberal states that are
Speaker 1: into it.
Speaker 3: I was thinking that, saying it's possible.
Speaker 2: I also was wondering whenever it comes to the R
Speaker 2: rating on Oppenheimer, I'm like, well maybe then you know,
Speaker 2: the more child the less children that you have, or
Speaker 2: like you know, the more childless than you probably more
Speaker 2: likely se oppen Hour first like me, or you know,
Speaker 2: if you do have kids, like if you're going to
Speaker 2: go see one movie, then your kids are going to
Speaker 2: be like, no, We're going to go see the Barbie movie.
Speaker 2: I saw a lot of people like parents who are
Speaker 2: like want to see Oppenheimer. But you know, got these
Speaker 2: three to contend, like three.
Speaker 1: Children don't Barbie either, by the way, Yes, well we.
Speaker 3: Go out there. So I think that might be one explanation.
Speaker 3: I mean, who knows.
Speaker 2: There's a lot that's going on here. I just think
Speaker 2: it's fun that we all have something that we can discuss.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time, you know, since I'm trying
Speaker 2: to think, and especially even if you look at the
Speaker 2: data that was in this box office time, this box
Speaker 2: office pro piece that we were looking at. So for example,
Speaker 2: the previous big weekends that happened were Avengers Endgame, Star Wars,
Speaker 2: The Force Awakens, and Avengers Infinity War. So we've got,
Speaker 2: you know, franchises in every single one of basically all
Speaker 2: Disney products. In terms of Barbie is actually the number
Speaker 2: five July opening of all time. Number one was the
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen The Lion King Terrible reboot.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna say that. Really it's the live action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the live action.
Speaker 3: I don't like live action Disney. It just feels cheap
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: I'm like, really, give me a freaking original Stopped twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows twenty twelve, The Dark
Speaker 2: Knight Rises, and then two thousand and eight in the
Speaker 2: Dark Knights so too Kristen Nolan properties and number fove
Speaker 2: below there also in terms of the all time list,
Speaker 2: you know, other ones that previously had done well were
Speaker 2: Catching Fire, Rogue one Man Rogue one was a great movie,
Speaker 2: as much as I don't like some of these like
Speaker 2: big reboots, and then also The Hunger Games and Captain Marvel.
Speaker 2: So whenever we started to look at it, you know,
Speaker 2: within that context, clearly these are doing very well. The
Speaker 2: other fascinating thing here is that Barbie's audience was sixty
Speaker 2: five percent female, compared to most other big openings, very rare.
Speaker 2: Even Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid or sorry,
Speaker 2: Little Mermaid had sixty eight percent, but Beauty and the
Speaker 2: Beast only was able to draw sixty. And for Captain
Speaker 2: Marvel and for Wonder Woman, even so called like female
Speaker 2: centric films, those were almost fifty to fifty in terms
Speaker 2: of female and male.
Speaker 1: Yes, interesting, very interesting Griffin messages, and he follows the
Speaker 1: La Hollywood stuff closer than certainly I do. The studios
Speaker 1: are going to fill in the gap during the strike
Speaker 1: with terrible shelved movies, so things they already made but
Speaker 1: were like, we can't put the sound of the public.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be like, I guess we're gonna pull it
Speaker 1: off the shelf and put it onto the public after all,
Speaker 1: because we got nothing else, and they're gonna buy more
Speaker 1: indie films. So that's how they'll kind of fill in
Speaker 1: the gaps. Interesting to see.
Speaker 3: I love great indie films.
Speaker 1: I do want to say Kyle had a different theory
Speaker 1: of the electoral map, which is because there has been
Speaker 1: a real conservative backlash against Barbie, you know, Ben Shapier, like, there's.
Speaker 3: Actually that's what.
Speaker 1: I don't really buy it either in terms of just
Speaker 1: like normy people and what they're searching for and what
Speaker 1: movies they're going to see. I don't buy it either,
Speaker 1: But that was his His instant reaction is like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this they're searching for Barbie because they hate barbiejection.
Speaker 2: Yours review it's got one point one million views. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's good for a YouTube video, but that's not.
Speaker 3: Like everybody everybody hates it. I don't think so, Crystal,
Speaker 3: what do you take a look at.
Speaker 1: Folks, Let's talk Barbie. Now, the first thing you should
Speaker 1: know is I was really sharing for this movie for real.
Speaker 1: I like the Barbie core aesthetic. It was fun to
Speaker 1: see this whole big cultural moment around it, which isn't
Speaker 1: really a thing that happens very often anymore. And just
Speaker 1: before I went in, I saw Ben Shapiro whining on
Speaker 1: Twitter about how his producers made him see and it
Speaker 1: was so woke and terrible, blah blah blah. So of
Speaker 1: course I really wanted him to be completely wrong. But
Speaker 1: as it dragged on an interminable two hours of dated,
Speaker 1: predictable contrivances, the verdict became undeniable. The Barbie movie is atrocious.
Speaker 3: Look.
Speaker 1: I am all for creative content with a good political message.
Speaker 1: White Lotus loved it, Squid Game loved it. I'm all
Speaker 1: for a kid's orient and movie that has jokes that
Speaker 1: go over the kids' heads. Legos movies, for example, genuinely
Speaker 1: funny some real political undertones, or The Lorax, which is
Speaker 1: more overtly political but still succeeds as a great kids movie.
Speaker 1: My kids can sing every line from Let It Grow,
Speaker 1: and therefore, for better or worse, so can I. This
Speaker 1: movie was not funny or entertaining or family friendly. I
Speaker 1: breathed a sigh of relief that I was out of
Speaker 1: town so I did not make the mistake of bringing
Speaker 1: my six year old and having to explain jokes about
Speaker 1: penises and guidencological exams. It was mildly horrifying to sit
Speaker 1: alongside little girls in their Barbie merch as they suffered
Speaker 1: through vulgar humor and a plot that was completely impenetrable
Speaker 1: for the kids while still managing to be thoroughly predictable
Speaker 1: for all of the grown ups. No star actor or
Speaker 1: immaculate set design was going to rescue this mess, all right.
Speaker 1: So here's the basic plot, and it is basic as hell.
Speaker 1: It's roughly as follows. Barbie lives in a girl power
Speaker 1: utopia of Barbieland with all the various iterations of Barbie
Speaker 1: and alongside her erswhyle superfluous male Ken. Then she starts
Speaker 1: to lose her barbinous, suffering thoughts of death, losing her
Speaker 1: trademark high heel, ready arched feet, developing a patch of
Speaker 1: cellulight on one thigh, so she has told she must
Speaker 1: travel to the real world in order to fix this,
Speaker 1: where she is shocked by the patriarchy, but Ken he
Speaker 1: is enamored with it. He makes Barbieland a patriarchy where
Speaker 1: dudes do the most stereotypical activities imaginable and women run
Speaker 1: around in playboy outfits. Barbie then returns alongside her new
Speaker 1: sassy human companions. They put upon Mom and an angsty tween.
Speaker 1: The three of them overthrow Ken and resubjugate him. But
Speaker 1: Barbie decides all of this barbie dumb perfection is no
Speaker 1: longer for her. She's going to become a real girl,
Speaker 1: embrace the complicated reality of the real world, and presumably
Speaker 1: climb the corporate ladder late stage girl boss stuff. Cheryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg would be so proud now. The whole thing is
Speaker 1: way too preachy to be enjoyable or even to really
Speaker 1: be very effective as propaganda. It's sort of like Ai
Speaker 1: wrote a screenplay based on twenty ten's White Feminism, Not
Speaker 1: to mention the radicalism level is firmly set on safe
Speaker 1: for the army of brands that are raking in money
Speaker 1: off of this crap. It's a dumb person's idea of
Speaker 1: a smart movie, a liberals idea of a revolutionary message.
Speaker 1: One might ask why Mattel, which used to associate with
Speaker 1: the movie that was basically made by someone who clearly
Speaker 1: hates their product. The answer is obvious in the film
Speaker 1: because it never strays beyond the surface level consumer friendly critique. Basically, yes,
Speaker 1: we realize Barbie's body and ethos was unobtainable, Well we
Speaker 1: fix it now so you can go out buy our
Speaker 1: products for your little girls. And it's basically like you're
Speaker 1: fighting with patriarchy. There is one throwaway line from the
Speaker 1: Angsty Tween about Barbie promoting consumerism, but you can't really
Speaker 1: take it seriously given the context that the whole movie
Speaker 1: roll out is a hyper capitalist wet dream. According to
Speaker 1: Hollywood Reporter, Barbie's attracted more than one hundred promotional partners
Speaker 1: worth tens of millions of dollars to Mattel, from custom
Speaker 1: pink crocs to a product clothing line, to hair dryers
Speaker 1: and everything in between. Merchants and brands rushed to cash
Speaker 1: in on Barbie Mania, while companies including Progressive Insurance and
Speaker 1: General Motors use Barbie and custom TV and digital advertisements.
Speaker 1: Per Hollywood Reporter, Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Saslov promoted
Speaker 1: Barbie across his various properties, including an HGTV Barbie design
Speaker 1: competition low key sounds more interesting to me than the movie.
Speaker 1: A food network, Barbie bakeoff, and Barbie promotion graphics generally
Speaker 1: sprinkled across fifteen different networks. Turns out the patriarchy Barbie
Speaker 1: and siss she's subverting is getting wildly rich off her
Speaker 1: dated girl power latitudes and merchandise. The real moral of
Speaker 1: the Barbie movie for me is that you can make
Speaker 1: a dogshit movie and still make a fortune with the
Speaker 1: right marketing strategy, quite the opposite of go woke and
Speaker 1: go broke. I suppose in the resolution of the film,
Speaker 1: Barbie rejects her iconic ultra femme look for a sensible
Speaker 1: blazer and pale pink birkenstocks, signaling to all the young
Speaker 1: girls and women out there that to be an evolved,
Speaker 1: complex woman, you should take off some of the sparkle,
Speaker 1: hide your curves, limit the glam modese's hottest ladies. An
Speaker 1: odd fit for a moment when young girls are joyfully
Speaker 1: embracing and reclaiming the Barbie aesthetic, not out of repression,
Speaker 1: but actually out of power. As my fifteen year old
Speaker 1: informed me, Hy two k Bimbo is in and why
Speaker 1: shouldn't it be? In the Year of Our Lord twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, we got deeper issues than whether or not
Speaker 1: Barbie's tits are out okay, and more fundamental issues than
Speaker 1: the diversity ratios on corporate boards. While they are systematically
Speaker 1: busting unions, growing workers and buying off politicians and speaking
Speaker 1: of that, a far more profound and revolutionary message is
Speaker 1: being sent to studios like Warner Brothers by the actors
Speaker 1: and writers who are on strike right now, demanding a
Speaker 1: small sliver of the vast wealth created by their work.
Speaker 1: So here's my advice for what it's worth. If you
Speaker 1: really want to mess with a patriarchy, take your Barbie
Speaker 1: ticket money and popcorn cash and send it to a
Speaker 1: strike fund instead. SI, I just there was no part
Speaker 1: of this that I really enjoyed. By the end, I
Speaker 1: just wanted it to be over.
Speaker 2: I'm realizing I really think that this is also a
Speaker 2: difference in audience, because he was telling you, I watched
Speaker 2: it with a bunch of very raucous drunk gaze here
Speaker 2: in Washington, DC, and they were loving the movie.
Speaker 1: There are all they were feeling the energy.
Speaker 3: They were feeling the energy.
Speaker 2: A lot of the women who were in the audience
Speaker 2: are exactly the type who love like Lehman Fen So
Speaker 2: I was just like, hey, you know, it's almost.
Speaker 3: Get caught up in the crowd.
Speaker 2: You're like, ah, you know, everyone's loving the jokes like
Speaker 2: they love the core message of it.
Speaker 3: So I guess I just didn't look even as political.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, generic center left movie is going
Speaker 2: to be generic center left.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed a lot of the Ken humor.
Speaker 2: I thought it was funny, like Ken the Patriarchy, and like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to issue too many spoilers, so you
Speaker 2: haven't seen it, I recommend you.
Speaker 1: I mean I already did the whole plot in my
Speaker 1: things spoiled off.
Speaker 3: But just like some of the jokes like the Ken
Speaker 3: dance off or what else am I thinking of?
Speaker 2: Like the Mount Rushmore, the Mount Rushmore filled with horses,
Speaker 2: there were like intermittent laughs and all those things. I
Speaker 2: thought it was light and I didn't I didn't find
Speaker 2: that it was plotting.
Speaker 3: I didn't think it. Well, maybe because I saw Appenheimer
Speaker 3: that morning, so anything that could I don't know.
Speaker 2: I saw it and I was like, huh, that was humorous.
Speaker 2: I wasn't like, I love this movies the greatest movie
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. I was like, it was kind of fun.
Speaker 3: But I'm telling you, my audience was obsessed.
Speaker 1: With this movie, like would not it was so funny
Speaker 1: because I'm telling you, there was about to be a
Speaker 1: revolt among the like working class black audience that brought
Speaker 1: their little girls there. And I'm talking there were teeny
Speaker 1: tiny kids. There were, you know, little girls of all.
Speaker 3: I got one hundred percent see.
Speaker 1: That, and also a mom. So I would have, I think,
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't paid close to to It's PG thirteen
Speaker 1: is the rating on I wouldn't paid close to it.
Speaker 1: I would have been like, it's probably fine, you know,
Speaker 1: and i'da likes dolls, so I'll bring her, you know.
Speaker 1: And thank god I didn't, because seriously, early on, there's
Speaker 1: this scene with the Kens where they're joking about beaching
Speaker 1: each other off, and I was so shocked by having
Speaker 1: that in what is ostensibly like this kid's movie, with
Speaker 1: all these little girls sitting around me, that I just
Speaker 1: refused to believe that they actually intended that joke to
Speaker 1: be what I thought it was. And then there's all
Speaker 1: these jokes about like genitals and gym glass. I'm like, what,
Speaker 1: And it's not like any of the funny stuff would
Speaker 1: land with the kids. It wasn't really that funny for
Speaker 1: the grown ups. And they're relentlessly beating you over the
Speaker 1: head with this like patriarchy discourse that you know, felt
Speaker 1: like gamer Gade all over again or something like that
Speaker 1: was the level of messaging it.
Speaker 2: Just for me, it was an Now, I could totally
Speaker 2: see that especially for kids. I didn't consider that that
Speaker 2: if there are a lot of kids going to this, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The lady next to me right after it was over,
Speaker 1: she turned to me and she was like, that didn't
Speaker 1: know kids movie, and that was dead. And towards the
Speaker 1: end of the movie, I mean, people were talking, they
Speaker 1: were like there was like a murmur of discontent for
Speaker 1: probably the last like I need to thirty minutes of
Speaker 1: the movie did not land all right, Sorrey looking at
Speaker 1: it well.
Speaker 2: On Thursday, I did a monologue about the stunning admission
Speaker 2: by Disney CEO Bob Iger that linear TV itself is dead.
Speaker 2: It's the most stark admission yet by someone at the
Speaker 2: very top of the industry on the state of the
Speaker 2: TV business in retrospect, I think it will be a
Speaker 2: big event, preceding mass layoffs, declining ratings, and a decade
Speaker 2: or more of chaos in the industry. The parallel that
Speaker 2: I use of how TV would fall is what happened
Speaker 2: to newspapers, where almost all of them mostly died save
Speaker 2: for the three majors, the Wall Street Journal, the New
Speaker 2: York Times, and the Washington Post.
Speaker 3: But lo and behold.
Speaker 2: Just a few days later, some news emerged on one
Speaker 2: of those papers showing that even amongst the majors, there
Speaker 2: is trouble, and worse that even our so called genius
Speaker 2: oligarchs can't do very much about it. New figures out
Speaker 2: of the Washington Posts show that Jeff Bezos, under his leadership,
Speaker 2: the paper has yet to turn a profit, and this
Speaker 2: year alone is set to lose some stunning one hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars in just one year. To understand how extraordinary
Speaker 2: that it is, consider this. In twenty thirteen, Bezos purchased
Speaker 2: the paper for two hundred and fifty million dollars. A
Speaker 2: decade later, after pouring hundreds of millions into the paper's infrastructure,
Speaker 2: a renovated building, new staff, and more, he's still losing
Speaker 2: nearly forty percent of his original purchase price in a
Speaker 2: single year. What is going on at this company? It's
Speaker 2: a simple and pathetic answer. During the Trump years, they
Speaker 2: were actually doing okay. They peaked at nearly three million
Speaker 2: digital subscribers to the paper. They turned out resistance fantasy
Speaker 2: after resistance fantasy. And if you think I'm joking about that,
Speaker 2: the true natier of the Washington Post happened after the
Speaker 2: Mellor report was released as a PDF, and they released
Speaker 2: it as a literal, annotated fan fiction version book, which
Speaker 2: became a number one New York Times bestseller. Today you
Speaker 2: can also purchase de side that the January sixth report,
Speaker 2: similarly annotated by so called esteemed reporters. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a real wonder why they lost half a million subscribers
Speaker 2: after the Boogeyman left office. But what I find delicious
Speaker 2: about this is a few things. Number One, obviously I
Speaker 2: like to see the mainstream media fail. But number two
Speaker 2: is the mint busting over the so called genius of Bezos.
Speaker 2: Outside of Amazon. I believe that Bezos revolutionized e commerce.
Speaker 2: He's one of the great businessmen of our time. But
Speaker 2: I can't help but also enjoy Bezos quitting Amazon to
Speaker 2: be revealed as just your average sixty year old rich
Speaker 2: dude going through a midlife crisis, humiliating himself with his
Speaker 2: new fiance tweeting about the best hangover foods, and then
Speaker 2: the most storied rich guy trade of them all, thinking
Speaker 2: that you're actually special and different because you did so
Speaker 2: well in one area that you can do it in another.
Speaker 2: It's worth going back a decade and seeing just how
Speaker 2: big of a game that Bezos talked. When he bought
Speaker 2: the Post, he promised quote a new golden era of
Speaker 2: the paper that his big idea was not to run
Speaker 2: a newspaper, but to turn The Washington Post into a
Speaker 2: software company. He invested massively into a new building that
Speaker 2: I've actually seen. It feels like Google whenever you're in it,
Speaker 2: and he hired all these new engineers to start crashing
Speaker 2: on turning the company into software. The idea was that
Speaker 2: to truly make a lot of money, you had to
Speaker 2: build a new back end system that publishers could use
Speaker 2: to actually operate their websites. On paper, sounds like a
Speaker 2: good idea, but a few years after it didn't sound
Speaker 2: so special. It didn't work at all. Widespread adoption didn't
Speaker 2: happen five years later, they think they might just sell
Speaker 2: their business off. And in a sign of just how
Speaker 2: unoriginal the idea is, Vox Media, which raised tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars to pursue the exact same thing, just
Speaker 2: gave up on it a few days ago and just said,
Speaker 2: screw it, We're going off our own back end system
Speaker 2: because the money is just not there. Basically WordPress one,
Speaker 2: despite billions of dollars being thrown.
Speaker 3: At replacing it.
Speaker 2: Why because it's cheap, because it was already in existence,
Speaker 2: and because at the end of the day, the Washington
Speaker 2: Post Company and Vox were not trying to solve real
Speaker 2: problems that people had. The biggest problem facing newspapers is
Speaker 2: not that they don't have a good enough website or
Speaker 2: that it isn't easy enough to publish a story. It's
Speaker 2: that people don't trust them at a mass scale. And
Speaker 2: instead of trying to build that trust back under bezos leadership,
Speaker 2: he went in the opposite direction. He leaned into the
Speaker 2: worst resistance tendencies under Trump. He allowed the paper to
Speaker 2: descend into a trash heap that tolerated people like Felicia
Speaker 2: Sonmez blasting her own bosses as somehow sexist or hiring.
Speaker 2: The New York Times scraps with people like Taylor Lorenz
Speaker 2: so she could docks people for a living. All of
Speaker 2: his genius tech plays failed because you can't teck your
Speaker 2: way out of bad content. Ask anyone who makes content
Speaker 2: for a living. You can gussie up things with editing
Speaker 2: and graphics and all that that you want, but if
Speaker 2: the core thing is bad, no one will care. In fact,
Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm saying this, but Bezos could learn
Speaker 2: a thing or two from The New York Times. And
Speaker 2: as much as I don't like The New York Times,
Speaker 2: you can't help but admire their business. They solve the
Speaker 2: trust pop problem how by monetizing the parts of their
Speaker 2: brand that weren't affected by it. According to The Times,
Speaker 2: his own numbers a huge part of their growth. Pro
Speaker 2: Trump has nothing to do with politics. It's subscriptions to
Speaker 2: the cooking section and the crossword app, along with sports
Speaker 2: subscribers to the most recent purchase of the Athletic Company
Speaker 2: saw growth in its ownership of The Wirecutter as well.
Speaker 2: That's a consumer goods recommendation outlet. Notice what's not driving growth,
Speaker 2: They're at all politics the time, simply became a lifestyle
Speaker 2: brand for upper class liberals, and it's doing very well
Speaker 2: at it. Ironically, it wasn't a visionary entrepreneur came up
Speaker 2: with that strategy, but one hundred year old family business
Speaker 2: that appears to have absolutely creamed him in it.
Speaker 3: So what can we learn from all of this. It's
Speaker 3: that all the money in the world, all.
Speaker 2: The reputation, you can't buy your way out of losing trust.
Speaker 2: And just because you're awesome at one thing doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you're going to be all that awesome in another, And
Speaker 2: that in this business, it is not about money. It's
Speaker 2: about reputation, integrity, trust in the long run, and the
Speaker 2: ability to actually turn it into a business in the
Speaker 2: long run. So that's the thing, christ Bezos. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: the software plays in most part.
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