Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Everything.
Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 2: for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of interesting things unfolding here. This
Speaker 1: week we had the Trump lawyer on literally every Sunday show,
Speaker 1: so we will show you some of the highlights of that.
Speaker 1: We have Americans potentially having a change of heart with
Speaker 1: regard to aid to Ukraine, even as of course the
Speaker 1: political class too needs to push forward Republicans, the Republican
Speaker 1: base seeming to sour on wokeness.
Speaker 3: Some interesting poll numbers for you there.
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo once again being the worst bank of all time.
Speaker 1: This time apparently they've deleted some of their customer deposits.
Speaker 1: And this isn't even the first time that happened. This
Speaker 1: is unbelievable stuff. Lizzo accused of fat shaming. It's quite
Speaker 1: a plot twist. We will get to the allegations, what
Speaker 1: the dancers are saying, and also the impact already on
Speaker 1: her career. And we have a guidance studio today who
Speaker 1: is going to make the case why Joe Biden should
Speaker 1: be reelected. We'll talk to him about the economic numbers,
Speaker 1: how people are feeling, and see what he thinks about
Speaker 1: all of that. Before we get to any of that, though,
Speaker 1: little programming. Note tomorrow is back to school day for
Speaker 1: my kids, so you need to get them off in
Speaker 1: the morning. So the show, I'm going to do the
Speaker 1: show with Sager, but we'll be.
Speaker 2: A little bit late, so yes, it'll be a little
Speaker 2: bit later. She'll be coming out remotely, but we'll make
Speaker 2: sure that it's good. Thank you again to all the
Speaker 2: premium subscribers who have built this beautiful studio for us,
Speaker 2: helping us compel guests. Michael Rosar guest. Today's actually the
Speaker 2: former Press secretary to the First Lady Joe Biden and
Speaker 2: senior advisor to Biden in the White House. Kind of
Speaker 2: the first time that we've been able to host someone
Speaker 2: here in the studio who is literally from Biden White House.
Speaker 2: We appreciate them engaging with us, and I don't think
Speaker 2: it would be possible without all of you guys. So
Speaker 2: Breakingpoints dot Com if you can help us out and
Speaker 2: become a premium subbeber helping build a space for some
Speaker 2: fun conversations and interviews.
Speaker 1: So far indeed, all right, let's get to Trump and
Speaker 1: his various legal issues. So his lawyer in a sign
Speaker 1: of the fact that yes, they're going to make their
Speaker 1: case in court as best they can, but they also
Speaker 1: clearly see the political case as being essential to former
Speaker 1: President Trump maintaining his freedom. So his lawyer, John Laurrow
Speaker 1: went on every single Sunday show that is called the
Speaker 1: Full Ginsburg. You can go look at the history of
Speaker 1: that to try to make the case on behalf of
Speaker 1: his client. We've pulled some of the highlights of that.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen former.
Speaker 2: Vice President Mike Pence.
Speaker 4: He's taking an issue with your contention that President Trump
Speaker 4: was simply asking him to pause the certification.
Speaker 5: Let's take a look.
Speaker 6: Are can people deserve to know their President Trump and
Speaker 6: his advisors didn't just ask me to pause. They asked
Speaker 6: me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.
Speaker 4: What's your response, Mike Pence will be one of our
Speaker 4: best witnesses a trial. I read his book very carefully,
Speaker 4: and if he testifies consisted with his book, then President
Speaker 4: Trump will be acquitted for these reasons. Number One, mister
Speaker 4: Pence recognizes that John Eastman, who was giving legal advice,
Speaker 4: was a renowned legal scholar. Number two, Vice President Pence
Speaker 4: recognized that there were discrepancies and fraud in connection with
Speaker 4: the election. He wanted it to be debated on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: Mister Trump wanted it to be debated in the state legislatures.
Speaker 4: But what make no mistake about it? Based on what
Speaker 4: Vice President Pence will say, the government will never be
Speaker 4: able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump
Speaker 4: had corrupt or criminal intent.
Speaker 2: And that's what this case. A Mike pens has.
Speaker 4: Said all this week is that what President Trump did
Speaker 4: was wrong, and he knew it was wrong, and he
Speaker 4: was pressing him to do something that was wrong.
Speaker 2: Was also pretty clear he never.
Speaker 5: Said it was criminal.
Speaker 2: He said it was wrong, never said it was criminal.
Speaker 5: There may be difference.
Speaker 4: You may think that somebody is acting inappropriately under constitutional principles.
Speaker 4: But mister Ans, who's a lawyer, never said to mister Trump,
Speaker 4: I think what you're doing is criminal. The ultimate option
Speaker 4: that mister Trump asked for. President Trump asked for at
Speaker 4: the lip speech was merely to pause the voting for
Speaker 4: a period of time to allow the state, not just
Speaker 4: like many many days before that, he was insisting that
Speaker 4: they would reject the votes.
Speaker 6: First, is there any condition under which the former president
Speaker 6: United States your client would accept a plead deal.
Speaker 5: On these January sixth charges. No, will you seek a
Speaker 5: motion to.
Speaker 4: Dismiss absolutely one hundred percent when one hundred percent well
Speaker 4: within the time permitted. This is what's called a Swiss
Speaker 4: cheese indictment. It has so many holes that we're going
Speaker 4: to be identifying and litigating a number of emotions that
Speaker 4: we're going to file on First Amendment grounds on the
Speaker 4: fact that President Trump is immune as president from being prosecuted.
Speaker 4: President Trump believed, in his heart of hearts that he
Speaker 4: had won that election, and as any American citizen, he
Speaker 4: had a right to speak out under the First Amendment.
Speaker 4: First of all, this protective order that's being suggested by
Speaker 4: the Biden administration is an effort to keep from the
Speaker 4: press important nonsensitive information that the Biden administration has that
Speaker 4: may speak to.
Speaker 5: This isn't by the Biden administration. This is independent counsel and.
Speaker 4: No no here for this reason, No, the independent council,
Speaker 4: it's not independent, it's special council has to get the
Speaker 4: approval of Merrick Garland in order to go forward. When
Speaker 4: it comes to political speech, you cannot only advocate for
Speaker 4: a position, but you can take action. You can petition,
Speaker 4: You can ask even your vice president to pause the
Speaker 4: vote for your anton laws, which is what this indictment.
Speaker 4: You have to understand what the First Amendment says and
Speaker 4: what it stands for, and all of the examples in
Speaker 4: this indictment our core political speech. Every single thing that
Speaker 4: President Trump is being prosecuted for involved aspirational asks, asking
Speaker 4: state legislatures, asking state governors, asking state electoral officials to
Speaker 4: do the right thing. In fact, even asking Vice President
Speaker 4: Pence was protected by free speech. And none of that
Speaker 4: is illegal.
Speaker 3: Co a lot there.
Speaker 1: First of all, you know, just to recap a little
Speaker 1: bit of what he said and on gets your reaction saga.
Speaker 3: First of all, he says, this case is about.
Speaker 1: If Trump had corrupt intent, and he also talks a
Speaker 1: lot about the First Amendment. So he sees it as
Speaker 1: being very pivotal that Jack Smith and his team be
Speaker 1: able to prove that Trump either knew that what he
Speaker 1: was saying was a pack a lized or else. Any
Speaker 1: sort of reasonable person presented with all of the information
Speaker 1: that he had and all of the advice he had
Speaker 1: from you know, Bill Barr, to Mike Pence, to various lawyers,
Speaker 1: would have come to the conclusion that what he was
Speaker 1: saying was a pack of lies. And so that's one piece.
Speaker 1: The piece about Pence is kind of interesting. He claims
Speaker 1: that Mike Pence will end up being one of their
Speaker 1: best witnesses on the stand. I find not a little
Speaker 1: hard to believe, given that Pences at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: he was kind of wafflely and a little wiggily about
Speaker 1: what exactly he thought about January six. At this point,
Speaker 1: he's made some pretty clear comments that what Trump did
Speaker 1: was wrong. Pence himself sought out legal advice to figure
Speaker 1: out if he was allowed to do that. He came
Speaker 1: to the conclusion, based on what he was presented with,
Speaker 1: that this was not something that you could do that,
Speaker 1: it would be against the law, unconstitutional etca. So we'll
Speaker 1: see if Pence ends up being a good witness for that.
Speaker 1: And he mentions there also this protective order and there
Speaker 1: have been some legal developments with regard to that that
Speaker 1: we'll get to in just a minute. But you see
Speaker 1: him out there really making the case, and to me,
Speaker 1: the fact that he is on all five of these
Speaker 1: shows trying to make the case to the American people
Speaker 1: tells you they see it as much more critical to
Speaker 1: sort of win hearts and minds and try to win
Speaker 1: an election. They feel better about those odds than they
Speaker 1: probably feel about their odds in the.
Speaker 2: Corporate Well they probably should, considering we've got a DC judge,
Speaker 2: a DC jury, and I guess we'll get to some
Speaker 2: of that whenever it comes to the judge. I do
Speaker 2: think it is still worth engaging a little bit with
Speaker 2: the facts of what he presented. The most interesting one
Speaker 2: to me is about the state of mind. And Bradley Moss,
Speaker 2: on our debate which I encourage everybody to go and
Speaker 2: to watch, pointed out that trying to prove a defendant
Speaker 2: state of mind is a tip is a typical but
Speaker 2: a difficult task often for prosecutors. That's part of the
Speaker 2: reason why if you guys read the indictment, you can
Speaker 2: actually see there's multiple times where Trump is presented with
Speaker 2: a list of people who presented him with the facts
Speaker 2: that he did lose the election in that way. Crystal
Speaker 2: Mike Pence. I think what they're saying might be a
Speaker 2: good witness is that Pence can testify that no, no, no,
Speaker 2: he really did believe it whenever he was pressuring me.
Speaker 2: The problem for Trump is that if they did in
Speaker 2: fact or Pence can't testify when Trump said, quote, you
Speaker 2: are too honest, then being too honest would imply that
Speaker 2: you're going countervailing to the facts as he would know it.
Speaker 2: And then second, really going and rejecting some of the
Speaker 2: Sydney Powell claims in private before then embracing some of
Speaker 2: them in public. So those would be two key instances
Speaker 2: where the prosecutors might try and prove that he did
Speaker 2: not in fact or he did not in fact believe
Speaker 2: everything that he was saying. It is an interesting thing, though,
Speaker 2: you know, to try and prove somebody's state of mind,
Speaker 2: as it coincides with free speech protections. It's another reason
Speaker 2: that they're saying, but overall, I think that your read
Speaker 2: of the whole thing is correct, which is, look, they
Speaker 2: don't think they're going to win this case. They're obviously
Speaker 2: going to throw everything they got at it, but they're
Speaker 2: going to try and throw every team to the American people.
Speaker 2: And also, you know, look they don't have an un
Speaker 2: they do have a decent case on appeal, very likely
Speaker 2: considering that some of this is almost certainly going to
Speaker 2: get adjudicated by the Supreme Court, so they're going to
Speaker 2: lay that out there as well. But this is political.
Speaker 2: Anything with the political official by definition is going to
Speaker 2: fall into this realm. And I read it exactly the
Speaker 2: same way you did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one interesting note on that piece about you know,
Speaker 1: if this goes the Supreme Court or not. Some of
Speaker 1: the pushback we didn't play it there from that lawyer,
Speaker 1: but some of the conservative pushback that I've heard is,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these charges, it's sort of untested.
Speaker 1: This is a novel application of these laws, the civil
Speaker 1: rights one in particular, people have been pointing to. But
Speaker 1: even this idea of okay, you were a corruptly imp
Speaker 1: acting government proceeding right, obstructing a government proceeding official proceeding,
Speaker 1: that particular charge has been used against literally hundreds of
Speaker 1: the January sixth rioters. So in a sense, even though
Speaker 1: you know Trump's actions were not exactly the same as
Speaker 1: people who were trespassing in the Capitol and doing whatever
Speaker 1: those people did, you still have some sort of precedent
Speaker 1: of using this charge with regards to obstructing the counting
Speaker 1: of the electoral votes on January sixth. And out of
Speaker 1: I think there are fifteen different judges who have handled
Speaker 1: cases that involved this charge with regards to January six rioters,
Speaker 1: and fourteen out of the fifteen found it to be
Speaker 1: an appropriate charge.
Speaker 3: It went up to a federal appealed court.
Speaker 1: The appeals court agreed with the government's interpretation of this.
Speaker 1: Now that of course is not the end of the
Speaker 1: appeals process. That may end up with the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: So that sort of litigation and those questions are ongoing,
Speaker 1: but at least some of these theories have been somewhat
Speaker 1: tested in court at this time. So Trump himself, of
Speaker 1: course not remaining quiet either on the campaign trail where
Speaker 1: he's been railing against Jack Smith and calling him deranged
Speaker 1: and whatnot, but also very much on truth social going
Speaker 1: after basically everybody who is involved in this case.
Speaker 3: God and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: We've got a little sampling here, probably the most noteworthy one.
Speaker 1: He put out this truth social which actually triggered showed
Speaker 1: up in a court filing.
Speaker 3: He says, if you.
Speaker 1: Go after me, I'm coming after you. Another one says, crazy,
Speaker 1: my political opponent has hit me with a barrage of
Speaker 1: weak lawsuits, including DAAG and others, which require massive amounts
Speaker 1: of time and money to djudicate, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Crooked Joe, go on to the next page. We've got
Speaker 1: way more for you. Considering the fact that I had
Speaker 1: to fly to a filthy, dirty, falling apart, very unsafe Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Today, and that I was then arrested by
Speaker 1: my political opponent who's losing badly to me in the polls.
Speaker 3: Krooked Joe Biden, it was a very good day.
Speaker 1: There's no way I can get a fair trial with
Speaker 1: the judge quote assigned to the ridiculous freedom of speech
Speaker 1: fair elections case than the last one drained Jack Smith
Speaker 1: and our highly partisan and very corrupt Department of Injustice
Speaker 1: could have brought this Biden opponent case years ago, but
Speaker 1: chose to wait and bring it right in the middle
Speaker 1: of my election camping.
Speaker 3: It's got a little bit of a point.
Speaker 1: With that when I wish they would have acted a
Speaker 1: little bit more quickly on this one. But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: where we are. So he's clearly, you know, he's doing
Speaker 1: his thing. He does doing what Trump does, going after
Speaker 1: everybody's involved, Jack Smith, the judge, Biden, of course, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And it is having somewhat of an impact
Speaker 1: in terms of how this case unfolds. So we've got
Speaker 1: a little bit of kind of wrangling going on in
Speaker 1: the legal world as they try to settle what are
Speaker 1: the rules and the guidelines with regard to the discovery process,
Speaker 1: and what's the timeline going to be one, are the
Speaker 1: dates going to be said, et cetera. So gun and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. There was a dispute
Speaker 1: between government lawyers and Trump's lawyers about when they would
Speaker 1: have to respond to this motion that was filed by
Speaker 1: the government. The judge denied Trump's request for additional time
Speaker 1: to respond to the DOJ motion for protective order. And
Speaker 1: this all has to do again with the rules with
Speaker 1: regards to discovery and who can have access to all
Speaker 1: of those materials. The government wants to request a rule
Speaker 1: barring Trump's lawyers from providing copies to Trump of discovery
Speaker 1: materials deemed sensitive, and they cited one of these truth
Speaker 1: social posts in their emotion to say listen, this guys
Speaker 1: shouldn't have access to this stuff because just look at
Speaker 1: how unhinged he is on social media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this fact reminds me of the last time whenever
Speaker 2: he faced that problem, whenever he was attacking the judge.
Speaker 2: But I think it's the same thing that we get
Speaker 2: to Cristel, which is that he believes that the best
Speaker 2: chance is to prosecute this in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 2: He had that same issue with the Alvin bradcase and
Speaker 2: some of the tweets that he had sent within that
Speaker 2: which I know we're also cited there. Many of his
Speaker 2: tweets also have come back to bite him in the court.
Speaker 2: But politically, he has to be able to continue to
Speaker 2: speak out on this to try and can not only
Speaker 2: drive his fundraising operations, but he needs to make a
Speaker 2: public case about whether whatever happens here in court, that
Speaker 2: it doesn't actually matter or it doesn't impact like what
Speaker 2: he's running on. So I think that just really connects
Speaker 2: to it. Attacking the judge, attacking the jurors, attacking the pool.
Speaker 2: All of that is just part of the political process, right,
Speaker 2: because you're like, hey, this is illegitimate in its face,
Speaker 2: before this thing even starts a most Republicans already believe that.
Speaker 2: So now you have to try and target independent voters.
Speaker 2: We have a decent amount of polling on this. You
Speaker 2: and I were taking a look at around way people
Speaker 2: feel about this. They both feel it's political and that
Speaker 2: it's just so that's always fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I actually understand that. I feel the
Speaker 3: same way.
Speaker 2: There is a been diagram there where you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I could see how someone gets there.
Speaker 5: I see it.
Speaker 1: Listen, Yeah, it's the Biden DOJ and it's Trump, Like,
Speaker 1: how could it not be political on some level? And
Speaker 1: at the same time, you can look at what he
Speaker 1: did on January sixth, and certainly in the build up
Speaker 1: to January sixth, and be like, this also was wrong.
Speaker 1: So you know, you can hold both those thoughts in
Speaker 1: your head, and I think that is where the majority
Speaker 1: of the American people are. I mean, the Republicans look
Speaker 1: seventy percent of them think that Trump won, like they
Speaker 1: think this was all justified, which actually brings up what
Speaker 1: I think is an interesting point that some in conservative
Speaker 1: media have been pressing people on the Trump side of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so are you going to prove that are you going
Speaker 1: to actually bring you know, the kraken this time and
Speaker 1: prove that the election really was stolen, because then like
Speaker 1: you're off the hook then and everything he did was
Speaker 1: completely justified. And so that's something to keep in mind,
Speaker 1: is if the election really was stolen, this is your
Speaker 1: golden opportunity to present to the entire nation your evidence
Speaker 1: that this election was unjust Something tells me they're not
Speaker 1: going to be going in that particular direction. One last
Speaker 1: piece about this, you know, the motions and the judge's
Speaker 1: decision here put this up on the screen from CNN.
Speaker 3: Why this is significant.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know that the details of how
Speaker 1: the discovery process unfolds will end up being that critical,
Speaker 1: but the fact that the judge did deny the Trump
Speaker 1: team's motion to extend this deadline, I think tells you
Speaker 1: one thing that maybe end up being quite significant, which
Speaker 1: is she seems early indications are she wants to move
Speaker 1: this case along.
Speaker 3: She wants to move this trial along.
Speaker 1: She's not going to put up with a lot of
Speaker 1: delaying and a lot of filibustering from the Trump team,
Speaker 1: which you know, their goal very much is to draw
Speaker 1: this out as much as possible so that they can
Speaker 1: potentially delay this and any sort of result from this
Speaker 1: trial until after election day.
Speaker 3: She seems to want to keep things moving.
Speaker 2: Well, we should keep it moving, as you and I
Speaker 2: have said, you know, if anything, the date needs to
Speaker 2: be set literally as soon as humanly possible, and in fact,
Speaker 2: in some cases, I know there were presented three options
Speaker 2: about when the next phase of the trial would begin,
Speaker 2: and they pick the latest one. I'm just like, we
Speaker 2: have to get this resolved, yeah, for the American people.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm not really sure it's too Trump's
Speaker 2: benefit actually to keep this thing dragged out. If anything,
Speaker 2: if you are going to get convicted or whatever, you
Speaker 2: won't kind of want that baked in from the beginning.
Speaker 2: It would be the best thing that ever happened to
Speaker 2: him from a primary perspective. But it's also interesting in
Speaker 2: terms of political point of view, he does seem to
Speaker 2: be thinking of this as truly clinched just I think
Speaker 2: it was yesterday his super pack released a first ad,
Speaker 2: not attacking Ron DeSantis, just going after Joe Biden, which
Speaker 2: is one of those moves where you only do whenever
Speaker 2: you no longer think you have to run against somebody.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, lots of interesting little signals.
Speaker 3: Don't know that he's really wrong.
Speaker 2: I think he's right.
Speaker 1: I think he's right, and we are now fully We
Speaker 1: showed you the calendar last week of all the trial dates,
Speaker 1: and this is before we even haven't had the Georgia
Speaker 1: Fulton County. You know that one come back, which is
Speaker 1: probably going to be additional charges for Trump. Like this
Speaker 1: whole primary season and the general election season is going
Speaker 1: to be dominated by Trump in court. This motion, that motion,
Speaker 1: new indictment, new details, new discovery. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: what we're looking at. That's what this election is gonna
Speaker 1: is going to be about. That's what is going to
Speaker 1: turn on. So it's not a surprise to me that
Speaker 1: he sort of feels like, all right, the Republican nomination,
Speaker 1: even this far out, is all but wrapped up, wrapped up,
Speaker 1: And my bigger issue is getting past Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: trying to push these trial dates off far enough so
Speaker 1: that I don't end up having a campaign from present.
Speaker 2: Really sad, pathetic state of the country, but that's who
Speaker 2: we are, that's where we are, America. Twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Let's go to Ukraine. There was some fascinating new polling
Speaker 2: that has come out on Ukraine in the first major
Speaker 2: sign that Americans in specifically independents and Republican voters, but
Speaker 2: an overall majority, are beginning to turn against increased aid
Speaker 2: to Ukraine. So we made some custom graphics here to
Speaker 2: try and break everything down. Let's go and put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. This is the first question,
Speaker 2: should the US authorize additional funding to Ukraine? Yes? Forty
Speaker 2: four percent, No, fifty five percent. That's the first time
Speaker 2: actually that we've seen that number. This is actually really interesting,
Speaker 2: and I want to keep this up here for a
Speaker 2: little while. What type of assistance should the US provide
Speaker 2: to Ukraine? Sixty three percent say intelligence gathering, fifty three
Speaker 2: percent say military training, But then the majority drops off
Speaker 2: providing weapons forty three percent, and is stunning, only seventeen
Speaker 2: percent say participation in military operations. And I've been yearning
Speaker 2: for something like this for a long time. Crystal because
Speaker 2: one of the way that the Ukraine hawks will try
Speaker 2: and hijack the debate. But well, the vast majority of
Speaker 2: Americans want to support Ukraine. I'm like, yeah, but to
Speaker 2: what extent and how like intelligence gathering? Okay, sure, you know,
Speaker 2: even that gets a little sketchy whenever we're providing military
Speaker 2: targets inside of Russia. But that's a whole other conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: as you start to segregate it down anything that involves
Speaker 2: like actual participation in kinetic events, people are like, not
Speaker 2: only no, but hell no. And then in terms of
Speaker 2: even supporting the overall war effort with actual like weapons
Speaker 2: and increased funding. Their Americans are really beginning to turn
Speaker 2: on that. So let's go to the next one. We
Speaker 2: have the partisan breakdown here. This is actually really interesting.
Speaker 2: We're talking about it before the show. Democrats on further
Speaker 2: support for Ukraine, support for additional funding super majority nearly
Speaker 2: sixty two percent. The US should do more, sixty one
Speaker 2: percent go to the Republicans here. So then when you
Speaker 2: see Republicans on further support for Ukraine, vast majority seventy
Speaker 2: one percent should not authorize funding. US has done enough
Speaker 2: sixty percent. But then we go to the next one,
Speaker 2: and this is where things are really odd. I worry
Speaker 2: that this war will continue without resolution. Democrats at eighty
Speaker 2: two percent, and then actually Republicans and Independence at seventy
Speaker 2: three and seventy five, respectively. So Democrats are worried that
Speaker 2: the war will continue without resolution, but are also basically
Speaker 2: united in wanting to actually authorize even more aid for
Speaker 2: the war in Ukraine. So politically, people are kind of
Speaker 2: all over the map. Democrats are worried, but they want
Speaker 2: to send more weapons. But the big top line figure
Speaker 2: Independence Republicans overall majority turn against increased actual military aid
Speaker 2: to Ukraine, and that flies in the face of what
Speaker 2: the administration is doing. Just two weeks ago, Biden promised
Speaker 2: actually more aid to Ukraine because the one hundred billion
Speaker 2: or so apparently has not been enough. He just said, quote,
Speaker 2: we will not waiver. This was the NATO summit. We
Speaker 2: are going to help Ukraine build a strong capable defense
Speaker 2: across land, air, and sea, which will be the force
Speaker 2: stability in the region and deccur against any and all threats.
Speaker 2: I think the American people are beginning to come to
Speaker 2: terms with what the reality of this type of rhetoric
Speaker 2: looks like one hundred billion dollars is more than we
Speaker 2: gave the Afghan national security forces over twenty years, and
Speaker 2: I think we all know how that worked out. We've
Speaker 2: brought everybody stories here about how even the Ukrainian military,
Speaker 2: which has been trained directly by the West, provided with weapons,
Speaker 2: has really faltered. They've had to revert to much more
Speaker 2: primitive tactics. And actually, just this morning, Krystals, I was
Speaker 2: reading a piece about the Ukraine. I talk a lot
Speaker 2: here about one of the reasons why it's going to
Speaker 2: be so difficult for Ukraine. I always say they don't
Speaker 2: have any industrial base. Well, they actually confirmed it. In
Speaker 2: the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine did
Speaker 2: not did not produce one single artillery shell. Today on
Speaker 2: the front line, they are using ninety thousand shells per month.
Speaker 2: To put that in perspective, the United States, with the
Speaker 2: full power of its industrial base, produces t four thousand
Speaker 2: shells per month, which is actually ten thousand more than
Speaker 2: we were producing in twenty twenty two, which means that
Speaker 2: the overall number of shells the Ukraine consumes is some
Speaker 2: four to five times higher than the entire United States
Speaker 2: is able to produce per month. The Ukrainian ammunition chief
Speaker 2: even admits there is no way we will be able
Speaker 2: to produce that amount of shells quote four years, which
Speaker 2: shows you that absent charity from all of the West,
Speaker 2: their military and war effort collapses effectively overnight. And Congress
Speaker 2: and the American people are at a point where like,
Speaker 2: we have done enough here. And I know this can
Speaker 2: sound very difficult, but people need to understand, like the
Speaker 2: level of money that would be required to basically convert
Speaker 2: American industry to support the war in Ukraine would be astronomical,
Speaker 2: and it would be doing so for something which fundamentally
Speaker 2: is not of an actual core interest to the American people.
Speaker 2: So reality, I think is really beginning to take its toll,
Speaker 2: both on the Ukrainian war effort sometime soon in the future,
Speaker 2: but really in the minds of people who are looking
Speaker 2: at this and being like, look, it's been nineteen months here,
Speaker 2: you know, like we got to bring things to a
Speaker 2: close at some point.
Speaker 1: I think it's remarkable, honestly that you find these numbers
Speaker 1: where you now have a majority opposed to further aid,
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that you have a really
Speaker 1: very consistent media narrative in favor of AID, always in
Speaker 1: favor of more hawkish actions. So I do think it's
Speaker 1: always remarkable when you have American people able to diverge
Speaker 1: with the consent that is attempting to be manufactured very
Speaker 1: heavily throughout mainstream outlets. So that's number one. Number two.
Speaker 1: The Democratic position here, it could seem a little perplexing
Speaker 1: on its face, where on the one hand they're like, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: more AID. On the other hand, they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty worried this is just going to continue forever.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, you would think like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you should consider that we should take a different approach,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a different you know, tactic, since this seems
Speaker 1: to be just continuing to draw off this conflict. But
Speaker 1: I think Democrats more than any other group, they really
Speaker 1: do buy whatever the mainstream media line is, by and
Speaker 1: large line and singer, I mean, they have the highest
Speaker 1: levels of trust in mainstream media outlets. And that's basically
Speaker 1: the messaging that you get from corporate press, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, the way to bring this resolution clothes
Speaker 1: that the correct action here is just to continue to
Speaker 1: support them and maybe they're going to win and take
Speaker 1: back all the territory, and that's our best shot, and
Speaker 1: so that's what we should do. And of course there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of parts and loyalty of just all right,
Speaker 1: this is what Joe Biden says the right course of
Speaker 1: action is. So we just we trust our guys, so
Speaker 1: we believe that this is the best way to bring
Speaker 1: things to a close, even though it's hard to see
Speaker 1: how that's really going to happen. The other thing to
Speaker 1: note is, you know, Democrats are fairly unified behind the
Speaker 1: Biden position. And I'm not just talking about elite Democrats
Speaker 1: who are one hundred percent unified behind the Biden position,
Speaker 1: but the Democratic base fairly unified behind the Biden position.
Speaker 1: The Republicans have a pretty significant divide on their hands
Speaker 1: between what Republican elected elites and even many of their
Speaker 1: sindential contenders, and certainly the donor base the policy that
Speaker 1: they support, versus the policy that now quite a significant
Speaker 1: majority of the Republican base supports. And this is again
Speaker 1: where you know Donald Trump, who just positions himself wherever
Speaker 1: he thinks it's going to be politically advantageous. On most issues,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really have a sort of like core belief.
Speaker 1: He just goes where his gut tells him is the
Speaker 1: right place to be based on his political needs and interests.
Speaker 1: You know, he really identified this split very early, and
Speaker 1: you know, very early in the primary season. Previously he'd
Speaker 1: sounded these extremely hawkish notes, being you know, to the
Speaker 1: sort of to the right and to the more hawkish
Speaker 1: side of Biden. He's gone back and forth and wavered
Speaker 1: even within the primary. Occasionally he goes back to that
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric. But by and large, he intuited that
Speaker 1: there was this divide between where the Republican base was
Speaker 1: and where Republican elites were, and also intuited that that
Speaker 1: divide would continue to open up, and he positioned himself
Speaker 1: once again in the place that makes the most political
Speaker 1: sense for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he he took Look, he actually did
Speaker 2: the same thing on Iraq. If I remember, there was
Speaker 2: that whole thing. It was like, well he said he
Speaker 2: supported it on Howard Stern in two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: but no one can deny that he actually did turn
Speaker 2: against Iraq very early, like two thousand and actually very early,
Speaker 2: I think in two thousand and four, and just like
Speaker 2: Barack Obama, who genuinely was against the war from the
Speaker 2: very beginning. That was not a popular position at the time,
Speaker 2: but it ended up being a political savior in the
Speaker 2: long run. I also bet on that frankly, you know,
Speaker 2: in the future. I was like, listen, you guys, can
Speaker 2: you know, put as many Ukraine flags in bio and
Speaker 2: out front of your house as long as you want.
Speaker 2: But great power conflict in a World War One style
Speaker 2: one always ends up basically catching up with reality and
Speaker 2: that's basically where we find ourselves right now, which you know,
Speaker 2: it's I think it's sad because it's a terrible tragedy.
Speaker 2: Everything that we've been reading about Ukrainian casualties is a nightmare.
Speaker 2: I mean, there were not releasing their casualty figures, but
Speaker 2: even they are fully acknowledging that it is a very
Speaker 2: heavy loss. You know, inside Ukraine, actually we're not hearing
Speaker 2: every thing about what's happening. There have been very viral
Speaker 2: blog post crystal of Ukrainian military bloggers kind of reflecting
Speaker 2: the sentiments of the rank and file, who said that
Speaker 2: their commanders are throwing them into the grinder with absolutely
Speaker 2: no concern for their lives and these things are going
Speaker 2: very viral. So I mean inside Ukraine, I mean think
Speaker 2: about it, like when you've got ninety thousand people in
Speaker 2: a pretty small country, you know, against relative to the US,
Speaker 2: where who have lost limbs. At that point, you all
Speaker 2: know somebody who's been wounded on the front line. You
Speaker 2: may probably be connected to someone who has lost their
Speaker 2: life and has been killed. Things start to get very
Speaker 2: real once you get to that level of death and
Speaker 2: of wounded in the population. This happened. I keep coming
Speaker 2: back to the First World War. It's a very instructive thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, we had almost a near revolution in France
Speaker 2: after millions of Frenchmen were wounded or killed on the
Speaker 2: front line, where they effectively demanded they're like, look, we
Speaker 2: got to bring this, we got to completely change tactics
Speaker 2: and all that. And it's also the revolution in Night
Speaker 2: ten eighteen in Germany, which was really like a ground
Speaker 2: up revolution against the conditions imposed on by the war,
Speaker 2: which brought down the entire Kaiser regime. So look, you know,
Speaker 2: if you let these things go on long enough, who
Speaker 2: the hell knows what's going to happen. Russian revolution also,
Speaker 2: of course, and I would say like let's avoid that
Speaker 2: scenario as much as possible, because it's not like everything
Speaker 2: worked out for the better.
Speaker 3: Yeah when it happened, Yeah, certainly, there we go.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go to woke love having that. What
Speaker 2: does it even mean? We're not the ones who are
Speaker 2: saying that. Trump, as we just said in our last one,
Speaker 2: is some sort of political Cassandra always able to identify
Speaker 2: Elane calling out Ron DeSantis just months ago and some
Speaker 2: other Republican politicians for always talking about woke and he
Speaker 2: doesn't even know what they mean. Here's what he said,
Speaker 2: it's gotten sick.
Speaker 5: And I don't like the term woke because I hear woke, woke, woke.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like just a term that use.
Speaker 2: Half the people can't even define it.
Speaker 1: They don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: So funnily enough, Trump actually did use the term woke
Speaker 2: in a truth just yesterday. But well at that slide
Speaker 2: on a political level, though, it seems yea, he might
Speaker 2: be onto something. Let's go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. This is the same thing that you
Speaker 2: and I identified Crystal as well, but it comes from
Speaker 2: inside several crosstabs of some new polls around whether Republicans
Speaker 2: are beginning to turn on quote wokeness and what exactly
Speaker 2: that means to the average voter, and how that they
Speaker 2: might how they might actually turn against it. One of
Speaker 2: them is actually a quote from an actual voter buried
Speaker 2: inside this piece. Can we put that police up there
Speaker 2: on the screen that really does identify what she was
Speaker 2: talking about. She like, for example, she says, quote, if
Speaker 2: if you don't like what bud Light did, don't buy it.
Speaker 2: Then she says, quote, if you don't like what Disney
Speaker 2: is doing, don't go. That's not the government's responsibility. But
Speaker 2: then there was even one who talked about book banning,
Speaker 2: and what they said there, Crystal, was that they both
Speaker 2: believed what was it, COVID is a Chinese lab okay,
Speaker 2: do you have a full one in?
Speaker 1: So she she believes that COVID was not just escape
Speaker 1: from a lot, but an intentional bioweapon. So she's all
Speaker 1: in on that conspiracy theory. But then in terms of
Speaker 1: book bands, she says that you know it's gone too far.
Speaker 1: That she lives in Iowa and there's a school district
Speaker 1: that's close to her, and she says, this is like
Speaker 1: burning books.
Speaker 3: So voters are.
Speaker 2: Complixing you gotta love them.
Speaker 3: The average voter is very complicated.
Speaker 2: And but she loves Trump. So it's one of those
Speaker 2: where I think that when you put it all together,
Speaker 2: what we find is that people have very different and
Speaker 2: varied views as to what you would believe originally from
Speaker 2: the media. So let's go and put some of these
Speaker 2: charts that we have up there on the screen. As
Speaker 2: a Republican, I would rather support a candidate who quote
Speaker 2: will fight woke left corporations only thirty eight percent will
Speaker 2: leave corporations to support whichever they choose fifty two percent. Okay, interesting,
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next one there, please. I am
Speaker 2: a Republican who quote supports gay marriage fifty percent, opposes
Speaker 2: gay marriage forty one percent, and then the next one there.
Speaker 2: What we can find is what is more important for
Speaker 2: Republican candidate quote protecting individual freedoms fifty one percent, guarding
Speaker 2: traditional values. So I think when you put those together,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to toot my own horn, but some
Speaker 2: of us have been talking about a phenomenon called barstool
Speaker 2: conservatism for a while which specifically emphasizes like individual libertarianism
Speaker 2: and a much more like secular country and environment, which
Speaker 2: is more opposed to political correctness and to social transgenderism
Speaker 2: and CRT, then much more so they are than what
Speaker 2: a traditional nine two thousand and four Republican kind of
Speaker 2: would be. And the more actually that you conflate those
Speaker 2: two things, the less popular that they are. But I
Speaker 2: thought it was very interesting to kind of see this
Speaker 2: very kind of libertarian bent become the prevailing attitude amongst
Speaker 2: the primary voter as a Republican, not just amongst the
Speaker 2: individual electorate, but that's overall indicative of a lot of
Speaker 2: social trends.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the part of the Megan Kelly
Speaker 1: Rhonda Santis interty we played where she was challenging him
Speaker 1: on this exact same thing because he's threatening obviously he's
Speaker 1: already embroiled in legal conflict with Disney, but then he's
Speaker 1: also threatening legal action against Budweiser because of their use
Speaker 1: of this transgender influencer. And he's like, oh, well, there
Speaker 1: stock went down and that hurt our pension hoolders, and
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, but you supported the boycotts.
Speaker 3: So aren't you kind of like part of that stock
Speaker 3: going down?
Speaker 1: So she was really highlighting this divide within the Republican
Speaker 1: Party and even more stark to me is they gave
Speaker 1: voters in this poll two different flavors of candidate, one
Speaker 1: that sounds more like the issues that Trump emphasizes, and
Speaker 1: one that sounds more like the issues that DeSantis emphasizes.
Speaker 1: So they say, when presented with a choice between two
Speaker 1: hypothetical Republican candidates, only twenty four percent of national Republican
Speaker 1: voters opted for a candidate who focuses on defeating radical
Speaker 1: woke ideology in our schools, media, and culture over a
Speaker 1: candidate who focuses on restoring law and order in our
Speaker 1: streets and at the border. So, now does Trump dabble
Speaker 1: in some of this like woke anti woke talk as well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's as Sacer just pointed out, and he's out truth
Speaker 1: and about it this morning. But in terms of the
Speaker 1: central focus of his campaign, you would say, it's more
Speaker 1: about the border.
Speaker 3: It's more about law and order.
Speaker 1: That's always been sort of like his man driver since
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, he's been leaning into that particular line of
Speaker 1: policy attack. Whereas DeSantis, I mean, he threw all in
Speaker 1: on the woke thing. I kind of understand why he
Speaker 1: did it, even though it obviously has ended up being
Speaker 1: a poor choice because the Republican Party in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, especially the base, is divided along certain issues,
Speaker 1: certain economic issues, Ukraine War, you know, even in terms
Speaker 1: of like style and affect. The coalition that Ron DeSantis
Speaker 1: is trying to pull together is, in fairness, I think,
Speaker 1: a very difficult coalition to pull together. It includes people
Speaker 1: who you know, really despise Trump at this point and
Speaker 1: don't want anything to do with him, and he also
Speaker 1: has to try to win over some people who still
Speaker 1: really like and you know, but maybe it might be
Speaker 1: open to a different candidate. To try to pull that
Speaker 1: group of people together is very hard. So the place
Speaker 1: the lane that he thought might unite the entire Republican
Speaker 1: coalition is on being anti woke. So he's really made
Speaker 1: that his bread and butter, even leaving decide, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the things that he did earlier on in
Speaker 1: his gubernatorial career, certainly things that he did when he
Speaker 1: was in Congress. But it's just I think there's been
Speaker 1: dramatic overreach number one. Number two, it has rubbed up
Speaker 1: against this live and let lift ideology that runs very deep,
Speaker 1: not just within the Republican Party but within the American public.
Speaker 1: In general, where it's like, listen, you're an adult, go
Speaker 1: do what you want to do. Let's like, you know,
Speaker 1: make your choices. As long as they don't interfere with me.
Speaker 1: I really could care less, and also rubs up against
Speaker 1: this traditional conservative position of like, hey, businesses get to
Speaker 1: make their own decisions within their own companies, is not
Speaker 1: the governors.
Speaker 2: I actually think it's generational. I think there's something very
Speaker 2: generational to it where a lot of boomer Republican voters
Speaker 2: are much more libertarian minded in general. They came up
Speaker 2: in the Reagan era, they've becameed Reagan Democrats, you know,
Speaker 2: they were Democrats who had voted for Reagan kind of
Speaker 2: been Republicans ever since. The activist base, specifically of younger
Speaker 2: Republicans who are the most pro Desantists people, I think
Speaker 2: you will mostly find out there are very much kind
Speaker 2: of on board the whole, like we got to use
Speaker 2: the government and weaponize it against corporations who we don't
Speaker 2: really agree with on a cultural level. So I think
Speaker 2: that because DeSantis is what he's like forty four or
Speaker 2: something like that. Yeah, of his cohort of Republicans, he's
Speaker 2: going to be in more of that like minded group,
Speaker 2: So there's something to that. There's also in general, who
Speaker 2: are the people who are professional who don't like Trump.
Speaker 2: You have two sets. You basically have the group I
Speaker 2: just talked about who thinks Trump is too friendly to
Speaker 2: like gay interests, and we've suckered up to what Caitlin
Speaker 2: Jenner and didn't use the power of the government to
Speaker 2: actually transform conservative and then you got more like January
Speaker 2: sixth is the worst thing that ever happened in American history,
Speaker 2: like Liz Cheney types. So if you're a Desantist, Desanta's
Speaker 2: person kind of their professional Republican apparatus, well you're really
Speaker 2: going to be in that first category that I talked about.
Speaker 2: And those are the type of people who I can
Speaker 2: tell you from personal experience. I know many of the
Speaker 2: people who work for him, many of the people who
Speaker 2: are on his campaign and who backed him from the beginning,
Speaker 2: they very much fall into the category that I just described.
Speaker 2: So I think it could be a staff driven thing.
Speaker 2: But listen, I mean DeSantis also probably believes it, so
Speaker 2: you can't take that away from.
Speaker 3: It's too I don't know what DeSantis believes.
Speaker 1: I think he's just I mean, he's shaped shifted enough
Speaker 1: of his career that I just really kind of feel
Speaker 1: like he positions himself wherever he thinks his advantageous is
Speaker 1: my view, but I see it as less generational and
Speaker 1: more class based. Sure, if you look at I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look within the polls, consistently, Ron DeSantis does
Speaker 1: better among college educated Republicans than he does among non
Speaker 1: college educated Republicans who are still all in for Trump,
Speaker 1: and it makes sense. I mean, we see a similar
Speaker 1: divide on the Democratic side, where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: more affluent, college educated Liberals, they're more concerned with the
Speaker 1: cultural value set and the working class, you know, multiracial
Speaker 1: working class base that still supports Democrats. They are more
Speaker 1: concerned with bread and butter issues like hey, how am
Speaker 1: I gonna be able to pay the bills at the
Speaker 1: end of the month in healthcare, et cetera, and unions.
Speaker 1: So you see a similar divide. The issue says isn't
Speaker 1: obviously the same on the Republican side, but you see
Speaker 1: a kind of similar divide where if you were non
Speaker 1: college educated and you think that immigrants are a real
Speaker 1: threat to your sort of livelihood and they're depressing your wages,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and you're worried about like safety in your community.
Speaker 1: Like these are very kitchen table, bread and butter issues.
Speaker 3: They're much more.
Speaker 1: Closely aligned with a sort of material set of values.
Speaker 1: Then if you are college educated and you're doing pretty
Speaker 1: well in this world, and you've you know, you got
Speaker 1: your house, and you got your family, and you're doing
Speaker 1: all right, then maybe can afford to worry about like
Speaker 1: what bud Light is doing with their marketing spend, and
Speaker 1: what's going on in the schools and the you know,
Speaker 1: college education system, and what the media is doing.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 1: It's it's a more sort of luxury set of priorities
Speaker 1: that you're able to hold if your material needs are
Speaker 1: arguing that. So, I see it as more of a
Speaker 1: class divide than really a generational or even really ideological divide.
Speaker 2: I think there's probably two elmess to that. I mean,
Speaker 2: all the people I talked about kind of before about
Speaker 2: the generational thing, those people are all very highly educated,
Speaker 2: and they're all, you know, it takes an interesting breed
Speaker 2: to kind of be highly educated and to come through
Speaker 2: the elite system and also still turn out kind of
Speaker 2: on the other side. Usually there's a degree of contrarianism.
Speaker 2: And also it can be a very hardening experience. I
Speaker 2: can tell you from personal experience. So I do understand.
Speaker 2: I think that cohort well, specifically because I came up
Speaker 2: with them throughout Washington and have watched them kind of
Speaker 2: with curiosity as they branch out between Trump, DeSantis, and
Speaker 2: then like Tim Scott, people that there really are only
Speaker 2: the three genders I guess in Republican politics, so those
Speaker 2: are kind of where people generally fall. But overall, I
Speaker 2: do think it is clear that that college educated group
Speaker 2: clearly really isn't as touch as they would like to
Speaker 2: think with the mean republic can voter as to what
Speaker 2: animates them into why they are all voting or very
Speaker 2: likely to vote Trump in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also it's super online. That's the other piece
Speaker 1: is that's why it hasn't even translated into Desanta's winning
Speaker 1: college educated voters. It's, you know, a minority group of
Speaker 1: college educated voters. It is a super you know, online
Speaker 1: fixation that there's a lot of energy around, but doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily translate into a majority of the base. Speaking of
Speaker 1: bread and butter issues and material concerns, let's put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. This is insane. A bunch of
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo banking customers went to pay their bills, check
Speaker 1: their bank account accounts, et cetera, pay their rent, and
Speaker 1: found out their deposits were gone because of a quote
Speaker 1: technical issue me read you the opening of this piece.
Speaker 1: They say that those deposits had disappeared, causing the customers
Speaker 1: to express concern over where their money had gone and
Speaker 1: in some cases to report being late on their bills.
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo said it a technical issue and that it
Speaker 1: has been resolved. By the way, this isn't even the
Speaker 1: first time this has happened at Wells Fargo, which you
Speaker 1: all probably know. Wells Fargo has a very checkered recent
Speaker 1: past of all kinds of fraud that they have been.
Speaker 1: You know, they have gotten into all kinds of legal
Speaker 1: troubble for creating all these fake accounts, which by the way,
Speaker 1: they were caught doing again just recently, even though they
Speaker 1: said they'd turn over a new leaf and changed their ways,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But a similar glitch that resulted in deposits
Speaker 1: being erased or being reported incorrectly happened for customers Back
Speaker 1: in March. NBC News put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: They did some additional reporting on this. They talked to
Speaker 1: some of the customers. They actually found a guy that
Speaker 1: this happened to in both instances. It happened to him
Speaker 1: in March, and then it happened to him again now,
Speaker 1: and understandably he's like, all right, I think I'm done
Speaker 1: with this bank. They also spoke with a woman, Genie Cortez, single, disabled,
Speaker 1: self employed accountant and Alaska resident. She was supposed to
Speaker 1: have paid her rent, gas, A Lite, extric and internet
Speaker 1: payments for the month by now, with funds that she
Speaker 1: deposited Wednesday. She was told Friday by Wells Fargo Rupp
Speaker 1: that she would not be able to access her deposit
Speaker 1: for another three to five business days. She'd earlier been
Speaker 1: told Wells Fargo could send her a letter to give
Speaker 1: to her creditors, that too, has not arrived. She said, quote,
Speaker 1: there is simply not enough funds without that deposit to
Speaker 1: cover them all. Talking about her bills, I simply cannot
Speaker 1: live without my funds now. So this bank screws up
Speaker 1: deletes these deposits. Glitch, whatever happened, technical issue that again
Speaker 1: had already happened to them previously, just a few months prior.
Speaker 1: In March, this happens again, and people were just absolutely
Speaker 1: screwed by this. I mean, you know, and screws up
Speaker 1: your credit. It makes it and once it's just it
Speaker 1: can be a total cascading effect. The late fees that
Speaker 1: get piled up for you know, potentially like getting kicked
Speaker 1: out of your apartment, et cetera. So people put in
Speaker 1: a very bad position because of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't understand how this is really even possible.
Speaker 2: And remember we shouldn't forget. Wells Fargo has fined three
Speaker 2: point seven billion dollars for consumer banking violations less than
Speaker 2: a year ago, and it was very similar Crystal in
Speaker 2: terms of they did not record payments on their home
Speaker 2: and their auto loans and in some cases quote wrongfully
Speaker 2: repossessed some borrowers cars and homes and then charged overdraft
Speaker 2: fees even when customers had enough money to cover purchases
Speaker 2: that they had made with their bank cards. Wells Fargo
Speaker 2: had stopped this conduct this year as a part of
Speaker 2: a larger effort to clean up other unlawful practices stretching
Speaker 2: back to two thy eleven. So they have now paid
Speaker 2: two record fines on a Consumer Banking Institution three point
Speaker 2: seven billion was a record after a previous one billion,
Speaker 2: which they had also been forced to pay before that.
Speaker 2: So this is totally crazy. And at this point, now
Speaker 2: this is what the overall statistics, six point two billion
Speaker 2: dollars have been fed for banks for mistreating customers and investors.
Speaker 2: Who wants to bet that those finds pale in comparison
Speaker 2: to the overall profit that all said banks have made
Speaker 2: in the two thousand since the two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: financial cross six point two billion is like a paltry
Speaker 2: day on Wall Street for some of these folks. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just crazy. Yeah, they always get away with it.
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo is like the worst repeat effector here, because
Speaker 1: even after they claimed like, oh, yeah, we fixed all
Speaker 1: the superfluous fake accounts that they pressured their sales associates
Speaker 1: to setting up, they're like, oh we fixed that all that,
Speaker 1: they had to be again fined by the government a
Speaker 1: pretty significant amount because it turnout they had lied about
Speaker 1: just how much work they had done to clean up
Speaker 1: the problem, so they are a complete mess. At the
Speaker 1: same time, this was a pretty wild go and put
Speaker 1: D three up on the screen. So this ties back
Speaker 1: to the conversations we were having around Silicon Valley Bank
Speaker 1: and the bank balance that happened at that time, and
Speaker 1: one of the theories was like, if the government is making
Speaker 1: it clear that even these mid sized institutions are too
Speaker 1: big to fail, you know who's going to get screwed?
Speaker 3: Are the little guys?
Speaker 1: Why would anyone keep their deposits at small banks when
Speaker 1: you have the government, you know, out and out making
Speaker 1: it clear that they are going to backstop the deposits
Speaker 1: at the big guys. So the theory based on that
Speaker 1: landscape that was really created, you know, with the bailounce,
Speaker 1: and even prior to the bail ounce, was Okay, the
Speaker 1: big guys are going to get even bigger, They're going
Speaker 1: to consolidate even more of the nation's deposits. That actually
Speaker 1: turned out not to be true, and for a very
Speaker 1: interesting reason. So actually deposits at the big banks have
Speaker 1: gone down. Some of the biggest deposit declines during the
Speaker 1: second quarter were not those mid sized regional lenders that
Speaker 1: everybody was worried about. They were the industry's giants, JP, Morgan, Chase,
Speaker 1: Bank of America, City Group, Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo, the
Speaker 1: four biggest banks by assets gave up a net two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty two billion in deposits when compared with
Speaker 1: the year earlier period. Now, it is no surprise that
Speaker 1: even without the issues that were happening at banks, that
Speaker 1: deposits would be going down right now. Why because you
Speaker 1: had the Federal Reserve hike interest rates and so there
Speaker 1: are sort of better opportunities to move your money out
Speaker 1: of a savings account and earn higher interest somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So it's not a surprise that deposits are being pulled down.
Speaker 1: What is a surprise is that they are coming overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: from the biggest players. The reason for that is that
Speaker 1: the smaller players realized they're going to have to compete
Speaker 1: by offering higher interest rates on their savings accounts, and
Speaker 1: so they have upped the amount of interest that customers
Speaker 1: who put their money in a savings account in those banks,
Speaker 1: those smaller banks have upped the interest that those are
Speaker 1: accounts are earning. And because of that, they have actually
Speaker 1: in some instances increased their deposits over this period. So
Speaker 1: it's surprising as the total opposite of what everyone had predicted.
Speaker 3: Now the big guys, don't worry, are doing just fine.
Speaker 1: Part of why they haven't upped their interest rates to
Speaker 1: try to compete as well is because they're making so
Speaker 1: much money in so many other ways that they just
Speaker 1: feel like it's not even worth it and they don't
Speaker 1: even need it.
Speaker 3: But it's just an interesting result in the opposite of
Speaker 3: what was being predicted.
Speaker 2: It was the opposite, but I mean, we can't say that.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why it had happened is for
Speaker 2: cop is actually spurred some level of competition. So it
Speaker 2: actually means that the aggregate amount of profit that some
Speaker 2: of these banks is going to go down. But I mean, hey,
Speaker 2: it's better for the consumer, which I think is overall
Speaker 2: a good thing. It is interesting. I actually, personally, you know,
Speaker 2: had this experience. You know, like most people, you want
Speaker 2: to try and have some savings in terms of an
Speaker 2: emergency fund and all that. And I remember looking, you know,
Speaker 2: at one of these large banks and they didn't even
Speaker 2: offer like a higher interest savings account. So you start
Speaker 2: googling around and I came across all of these banks
Speaker 2: which are paying like five or six percent interest, banks
Speaker 2: I'd never even heard of, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: that's interesting, Okay. You know, you start to read a
Speaker 2: little batter, you're like, okay, FDIC insured, all right, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe you could take a chance on that. So like,
Speaker 2: on a personal level, actually kind of went through this
Speaker 2: and it does make sense, which is that's how these
Speaker 2: banks are able to make a name for themselves. And also, frankly,
Speaker 2: in an arrow where the Federal Reserve is paying like
Speaker 2: four and a half on T bills, there's no reason
Speaker 2: that these banks don't have the capacity to do it
Speaker 2: because they can literally just take your money and investment
Speaker 2: in treasuries and then pay you back in the same
Speaker 2: interest and still make a modest profit. So there's no
Speaker 2: reason for the big banks not to offer it other
Speaker 2: than they literally just don't want to. So small banks
Speaker 2: using the arbitrage. I guess you can always have faith
Speaker 2: in the American entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1: Let's work it out. Yeah, okay, let's talk about Lozo.
Speaker 1: There is a lot here, so I'm sure some of
Speaker 1: you guys have.
Speaker 3: Been following this.
Speaker 1: Lizo of course known for her sort of body positivity
Speaker 1: and being this sort of like female empowerment symbol. Huge artists,
Speaker 1: many record breaking hits, all of that good stuff. So
Speaker 1: pretty shocking, then given her brand that she's been accused.
Speaker 1: Now put this up on the screen. Three of her
Speaker 1: former dancers have accused her of weight shaming, so fat
Speaker 1: shaming them, and pressuring them to do all kinds of
Speaker 1: crazy stuff at a strip club. Let me read you
Speaker 1: some of the allegations. They say that she created a
Speaker 1: hostile work environment. This was all in a lawsuit that
Speaker 1: was filed last week. They alleged she pressured one of
Speaker 1: the dancers to touch a nude performer at an Amsterdam
Speaker 1: strip club and subjected the group to an excruciating audition
Speaker 1: after leveling false accusations that they were drinking on the job.
Speaker 1: That audition, they said, was so brutal, it lasted twelve
Speaker 1: hours and they were so terrified for their jobs that
Speaker 1: one of the dancers actually soiled herself because she was
Speaker 1: so afraid of just asking to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 3: Horrific stuff.
Speaker 1: The dancers accused Lozo of calling attention to one dancer's
Speaker 1: weight gain and later berating then firing that dancer after
Speaker 1: she recorded a meeting out because of a health condition.
Speaker 1: I'll give you some of the details about what happened
Speaker 1: allegedly at the club apparently, she began inviting cast members
Speaker 1: to take turns touching the nude perfers, catching dildo's launched
Speaker 1: from the performers vaginas, and eating bananas protruding from other
Speaker 1: performers vaginas as well. Lizzo then turned her attention to
Speaker 1: one of the dancers who was suing her and began
Speaker 1: pressuring Miss Davis to touch the breast of one of
Speaker 1: the nude women, pressure that that dancer ultimately gave into.
Speaker 1: She felt very sort of like bullied, and like the
Speaker 1: from listening to some of the interviews with the dancers,
Speaker 1: they felt very much like their job was on the
Speaker 1: line and all of these interactions. So where Lizo may
Speaker 1: have been like, oh, we're at the club and we're friends, whatever,
Speaker 1: they're viewing this as like, this is my boss, this
Speaker 1: is my entire career on the line. I do think
Speaker 1: you know one factor here is she's known for and
Speaker 1: full disclosure, I've been to a Lizo show, so I've
Speaker 1: watched some of these dancers perform. She's known for her
Speaker 1: dancers being bigger, consistent with her image, and so if
Speaker 1: you are a high level dancer who has that physique,
Speaker 1: it's probably hard to find war in other areas, so
Speaker 1: you feel extra pressure of like, I got to keep
Speaker 1: this job because this is the dream. This is the
Speaker 1: thing with Ann, and I don't even know if I'll
Speaker 1: be able to work. I have a little bit of
Speaker 1: an interview with two of the dancers who are involved
Speaker 1: in this laws.
Speaker 3: They were just talking about their experience. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2: Did Lizzo know about this behavior that you're alleging.
Speaker 7: Well, Lizzo was a participant in the Lizzo is the
Speaker 7: reason that we were that I specifically was pressured to
Speaker 7: touch a new performer. She singled me out at the
Speaker 7: club that I didn't want to be at, but was
Speaker 7: told I couldn't really back out since I already said
Speaker 7: I was going before I knew what it really was.
Speaker 7: Once I had time to research it, Me and Noel
Speaker 7: Rodriguez also we figured out what it was and we're like, okay,
Speaker 7: maybe we should not go. You know, this is a
Speaker 7: little weird. But then we were told that a headcount
Speaker 7: was already sent, a list was already sent, so she
Speaker 7: knows who's coming. And at that time we had already
Speaker 7: been kind of fearing for our jobs and being austra
Speaker 7: so It is an understand it's an understanding in the
Speaker 7: camp that if you don't really participate and you know,
Speaker 7: try to get in with Lizzo, it's you won't be
Speaker 7: booked on as many jobs, she won't like you as much.
Speaker 7: It just you'll be ostracized later. So we went, We
Speaker 7: stayed in the corner. We talked to each other the
Speaker 7: whole time. We tried to ignore, you know, what was happening.
Speaker 7: A lot of crazy things were happening. And after a
Speaker 7: lot of explicit things went on, Lizzo kind of saw
Speaker 7: me singled me out. She was kind of going around
Speaker 7: like inviting people to touch the nude performers, and I
Speaker 7: guess it was my turn.
Speaker 1: She goes on to say they started chanting. She felt
Speaker 1: completely pressured, humiliated.
Speaker 3: She know what to do.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that is their side of the story. Lizzo
Speaker 1: has responded, let's go and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is what she had to say. She said, I'll
Speaker 1: read this and full This was posted on Instagram. These
Speaker 1: last few days have been gut wrenchingly difficult and overwhelmingly disappointing.
Speaker 1: My work, ethic, morals, and respectfulness have been questioned. My
Speaker 1: character has been criticized. Usually I choose not to respond
Speaker 1: to false allegations, but these are as unbelievable as they
Speaker 1: sound and too outrageous to not be addressed. These sensationalized
Speaker 1: stories are coming from former employees who have already publicly
Speaker 1: admitted they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate
Speaker 1: and unprofessional. As an artist, I've always been very passionate
Speaker 1: about what I do. I take my music and my
Speaker 1: performances seriously because at the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: only want to put out the best art that represents
Speaker 1: me and my fans. With passion comes hard work and
Speaker 1: high standards. Sometimes I have to make hard decisions, but
Speaker 1: it's never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable or
Speaker 1: like they are not valued as an important part of
Speaker 1: the team, which you think, Sagar.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, basically calling these people a liar
Speaker 2: not great, and especially whenever you're so powerful. So one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why I thought it actually was interesting
Speaker 2: to cover the story was because there are actual real
Speaker 2: world implications outside of tabloid drama, of which I've been
Speaker 2: fascinated by. Let's put this up there. From Showbiz four
Speaker 2: one one, they say that Lizo's record sales and streaming
Speaker 2: and airplay have collapsed in a single day after the
Speaker 2: harassment scandal broke wide in a career crisis. They say
Speaker 2: that the quote two days her record sales, including streaming
Speaker 2: an airplay of collapse. Looking at numbers from illuminate, the
Speaker 2: trends have not just fallen, but have evaporated. It's as
Speaker 2: if every radio has pulled LISO hits, fans stop streaming
Speaker 2: the records, and they forgot about buying them or downloading them.
Speaker 2: This is actually incredibly rare. We did not see a
Speaker 2: similar instance whenever it came to Kanye West. I think,
Speaker 2: for example, or I mean, listen, you know many people
Speaker 2: in the music business and all of that are not
Speaker 2: exactly angels. And we've been talking about this about why
Speaker 2: I think this like kind of culturally resonated, which I
Speaker 2: think that because she casts herself as such an image
Speaker 2: of female empowerment, as above the rest, as a genuine
Speaker 2: like liberal icon, that whenever she is found to just
Speaker 2: be like a rich, pompous, you know, a ridge girl,
Speaker 2: pops mean girl, like probably everybody else in this profession,
Speaker 2: that people are like, hey, you know what, screw you?
Speaker 2: Like there's a real personal identification. I think that a
Speaker 2: lot of people personally found, you know, with both her
Speaker 2: music and kind of the way that she presented herself
Speaker 2: and all of that. Of course, you know, media kind
Speaker 2: of blew that up out of proportion. It's not like
Speaker 2: she wasn't playing into it. And so when it turns
Speaker 2: out that she's just like everyone else, you know who
Speaker 2: has too much money and is the center of attention
Speaker 2: and acts like this and treats their employees like pawns
Speaker 2: and then calls them on professional whenever they speak out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, hold on, honestly, you've got a titanic
Speaker 2: ego that really backstops a lot of this, and that
Speaker 2: led to an actual consumer backlash.
Speaker 1: She also apparently put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: She's also apparently lost two hundred and twenty thousands she
Speaker 1: had Instagram followers.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I'll lets you look that up. But
Speaker 3: two hundred and twenty thousand people is a lot of people.
Speaker 2: That is a lot of people. Yeah, let me go,
Speaker 2: She's got thirteen million.
Speaker 8: So it's not.
Speaker 1: Exactly all as a percentage is that it's not all
Speaker 1: that much, But listen, I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 1: So I saw the headlines first before I read in
Speaker 1: detail the allegations, and you know, obviously like the stuff
Speaker 1: that happened at the strip club is the most delicious
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about you know, bananas and vaginas and whatever.
Speaker 1: But the part that is the most dissonant with her
Speaker 1: brand is the fat chain part. And I will say,
Speaker 1: when I actually read the allegations with regards to the
Speaker 1: alleged fat shaming, it's a little ambiguous.
Speaker 3: I don't doubt that.
Speaker 1: So it required the dancer's interpretation of what Lizo was saying.
Speaker 1: It's not like she was just flat out like you're
Speaker 1: a fat ass, it's disgusting, et cetera.
Speaker 3: It was nothing like that.
Speaker 5: It was like.
Speaker 1: She had performed it south By Southwest, and when she
Speaker 1: was there, she'd apparently this dancer had just gained some weight,
Speaker 1: and afterwards there I'm in a discussion about that performance,
Speaker 1: and this dancer already said, you know, feeling basically like
Speaker 1: I'm feeling a lot better than I was there, and
Speaker 1: Lizo said something to the effect of, yeah, because we
Speaker 1: were worried about how you were doing. And there was
Speaker 1: another comment that was made around the same time about
Speaker 1: like we weren't sure of your commitment. And the dancer
Speaker 1: interpreted that because she says, listen, everything about me was
Speaker 1: the same. My energy level, my dancing, my capabilities, you know,
Speaker 1: my commitment, all of that was the same.
Speaker 3: The only thing that was different at that festival was
Speaker 3: that I had gained weight.
Speaker 1: So I just want to say it was a little
Speaker 1: less clear cut than Lizo just out and out being
Speaker 1: like you're fad and I hate you or anything that blatant.
Speaker 1: So that was this dancer's interpretation. I don't know how
Speaker 1: that works out in terms of a lawsuit. I think
Speaker 1: some of the other stuff is, like, you know, these
Speaker 1: dancers clearly felt very pressured, like if they didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to this club, they just wanted to chill
Speaker 1: or this wasn't their thing. The one dancer, Ariana who's
Speaker 1: involved in this suit says she was known as being
Speaker 1: sort of like the most modest, and they didn't feel
Speaker 1: that they really had a choice and participate in these activities.
Speaker 1: They felt there was a lot of kind of bullying, shaming,
Speaker 1: harassment that Lizo created this you know, really toxic setting
Speaker 1: where they just felt sort of like powerless and like
Speaker 1: their whole lives were on the line if they didn't
Speaker 1: go along with whatever was happening there. And there's also
Speaker 1: this piece about the girl who led the woman who
Speaker 1: led the dancers, was they say, you know, really very religious, fine,
Speaker 1: but then really proselytizing to the others. But and then
Speaker 1: at the same time with like shame them for being
Speaker 1: virgins and post this. So she was like opposed the
Speaker 1: premaral sex, but then she was also like posting publicly
Speaker 1: and humiliating some of the girls who were.
Speaker 3: Weird weird stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and clearly the hypocrisy is why this
Speaker 1: is a problem for her, because if you compare this
Speaker 1: to other artists and various things that they've done, it's
Speaker 1: really pales and compared not excusing Z's behavior, but it
Speaker 1: pales in comparison. It's the fact that she created this
Speaker 1: whole brand, and then you get a little peak belneath
Speaker 1: the service, and it's like you are not remotely who
Speaker 1: you are claiming to be to the public.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I personal experience, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people in this situation there's nothing more dehumanizing
Speaker 2: than having to like pretend and just go with the
Speaker 2: flow with whatever your boss wants. Specifically, during like a
Speaker 2: social thing, we were like, I don't want to be
Speaker 2: here right now. This is one of the last things
Speaker 2: that I would rather do. I'm giving up, you know,
Speaker 2: my personal time and like so many of the things
Speaker 2: that I would rather pretending to, like the type of
Speaker 2: food or whatever the hell that you're putting in front
Speaker 2: of me and having to sit there and kind of
Speaker 2: eat it with a smile on your face while you
Speaker 2: secretly hate yourself inside. That is a terrible experience. So
Speaker 2: like when she was talking about that, I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: especially you know, you're on the road, you're tired, you
Speaker 2: don't want to be doing this, and she's like, you
Speaker 2: got to come to the club. It's like I cannot.
Speaker 2: For me, first, I cannot imagine more nightmarriage type situation.
Speaker 2: But millions of Americans are put into that same type
Speaker 2: of environment in their own way, you know, by being
Speaker 2: forced into something or whatever with their boss. Sometimes it's okay,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes you actually do want to do that
Speaker 2: and there's a genuine friendship, but the power differential is
Speaker 2: one that people who are bosses very often forget, and
Speaker 2: then they delude themselves into thinking that everybody actually does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's like, no, you're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still like you're still their boss, You're still really famous,
Speaker 1: you're still really powerful. They you know, they really kind
Speaker 1: of have their fate in your hands. Do you think
Speaker 1: that she can recover from the clearly her career Lizo
Speaker 1: has taken it. Yeah, yes, I mean my thing is like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm kind of biased because I already
Speaker 1: found her music like a little bit tired, you know,
Speaker 1: since the initial like breakout hits. I haven't really been
Speaker 1: feeling it down much. So part of me is like,
Speaker 1: maybe her thing is just a little bit tired anyway,
Speaker 1: in which case I don't think she recovers, but clearly
Speaker 1: a lot of people still like the music, So.
Speaker 2: You be love Lizzo. I don't know, I mean in
Speaker 2: terms of yeah, like I think she'll be fine, you know,
Speaker 2: in the longer run, she'll eventually apologize or do whatever.
Speaker 2: I do think that kind of to your point, there
Speaker 2: is something tired about the brand of like lean in
Speaker 2: feminism that Lizzo is, I guess embodies, And there's something
Speaker 2: around like the political correctness discussion and then the whole
Speaker 2: like fat acceptance movement and all of that just was
Speaker 2: just codes cringe. I think in a way whereas it
Speaker 2: would have been more celebrated by the media, I would
Speaker 2: say even three maybe four years ago. Maybe partially also
Speaker 2: why people are willing to turn on her, you know now,
Speaker 2: So I don't know, I don't know what It all
Speaker 2: kind of leads to I'm the last person. I guess.
Speaker 3: I feel like, if the music is good, people are.
Speaker 5: Going to over.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, here's the thing about music.
Speaker 3: Is not that good, then people will move on.
Speaker 2: Kanye is literally like spousing naziality. Go walk into a
Speaker 2: gym anywhere in this country, they're gonna be blasting con.
Speaker 2: Just the other day I was doing it. But it's
Speaker 2: like when Kanye came on as Yeah.
Speaker 3: But it's like Kanye from at least ten years ago.
Speaker 2: This stuff is.
Speaker 3: Total trash.
Speaker 2: But if power comes on, you're at the bottom of
Speaker 2: a set, all right, a crystal, what are you taking
Speaker 2: to look at?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 1: Jim Kramer was distressed, dismayed, and frightened on a recent
Speaker 1: day over at CNBC Studios. The source of his panic
Speaker 1: a new militancy among autoworkers, led by new UAW President
Speaker 1: Sean Fainne, who are pushing hard for a better contract
Speaker 1: and threatening a strike.
Speaker 3: Take a listen.
Speaker 9: I want you to compare the labor negotiations here to
Speaker 9: the ones in auto where I think there's going to
Speaker 9: be a strike and I think.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be horrible. You're making that call September fourteen,
Speaker 2: I think they're going to strike.
Speaker 9: Just the Champagne, the guy who runs the UAW, I
Speaker 9: find him frightened.
Speaker 2: And Teamster's ups didn't give you any solid.
Speaker 5: Teamster turned out to be get a good deal.
Speaker 9: Teams are historically very powerful, union rich union. But the
Speaker 9: UAW leader one there was a contestant, very contested between
Speaker 9: the company.
Speaker 5: The union that wants to.
Speaker 9: Work with the autos together to try to preserve some
Speaker 9: jobs and give the elder people.
Speaker 2: A good, good pay.
Speaker 5: And then this man Sean who is.
Speaker 9: Just talking about capitalism and the nature of capitalism and
Speaker 9: how it's really hurt workers.
Speaker 5: This is very Walter Ruther language.
Speaker 9: It's say, it's the kind of language that when we
Speaker 9: when we had in this country, will take you down
Speaker 9: if you don't play ball. That's the language I'm hearing
Speaker 9: for UAW. And look, I mean it's the kind of
Speaker 9: language where you just say, you know what we should
Speaker 9: have built all our evs in Mexico.
Speaker 2: It's that bad.
Speaker 9: I don't think people are paying enough attention the man is.
Speaker 9: I'm not saying he's irrational. I'm saying he was elected, sure,
Speaker 9: in order to make it so that there's a very
Speaker 9: short week to find benefit back.
Speaker 5: And then the.
Speaker 9: Notion that we're fat cats. The shareholders are fat cats
Speaker 9: and have been overly rewarded.
Speaker 5: We haven't seen this.
Speaker 9: That's please class warfare, and it's very shocking.
Speaker 1: To hear class war I honestly got to start watching
Speaker 1: CNBC more because that was some fantastic content. So Kramer there,
Speaker 1: he said, it's class warfare, and it's very shocking to
Speaker 1: hear class warfare. So let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: this class warfare, shall we?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and eight and two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine to set the stage here, when the Big Three
Speaker 1: were on the verge of collapse, the BOMA administration decided
Speaker 1: to bail out the industry in order to protect jobs
Speaker 1: at American manufacturing capacity. And honestly, it was the right call.
Speaker 1: But wasn't only the government that stepped up to save
Speaker 1: the automakers. It was workers at those automakers who offered
Speaker 1: their own bailout. They put on the chopping block wages, pensions,
Speaker 1: and healthcare benefits. Now, the rhetoric at the time from
Speaker 1: the executives, of course, was oh, we're all in this together.
Speaker 1: When profits returned, the gains all flowed to the top. Today,
Speaker 1: starting wages at the Big three are about ten dollars
Speaker 1: lower per hour than they were back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven when you account for inflation. In the bailout,
Speaker 1: workers gave up annual cost of living increases, something that
Speaker 1: the UAW first won back in the nineteen forties, and
Speaker 1: without those gains to keep up with inflation, worker wages
Speaker 1: for both new and experienced workers fell further and further behind.
Speaker 1: Not so for the CEO those of the automakers, though
Speaker 1: they have seen their pace bike forty percent in just
Speaker 1: the past several years, widening a massive gulf between the
Speaker 1: pay of the executives and those of the workers who slaver,
Speaker 1: of course, makes.
Speaker 3: The whole thing go.
Speaker 1: In fact, at a time when the typical GM employees'
Speaker 1: wages went down, CEO Mary Bara got a huge race,
Speaker 1: saw her overall compensation jump up to twenty nine million
Speaker 1: dollars per year. This was class war all right, the
Speaker 1: kind that has been standard fair in America since the eighties,
Speaker 1: the kind that Jim Kramer is very comfy with, where
Speaker 1: the working class always loses. Now, take a listen to
Speaker 1: how uaw president that Kramer reference there, Sean Fain, take
Speaker 1: a listen to how he described the class warfare that
Speaker 1: has been waged against his members at a time when
Speaker 1: the automakers are back to record breaking profitability.
Speaker 10: So one, are the Big Three done with these staggering profits?
Speaker 10: Instead of rewarding the workers who spent long hours, wrecking
Speaker 10: their bodies on the line to make these profits possible,
Speaker 10: the Big Three of funnel billions into stock buyback schemes
Speaker 10: that artificially inflate the value of company shares and further
Speaker 10: in rich company executives in the top one percent. That's
Speaker 10: billions of dollars that have been robbed from the workers
Speaker 10: who made these profits possible. That's billions of dollars that
Speaker 10: weren't spent on the EV transition. So when the Big
Speaker 10: Three say the future is uncertain and that the EV
Speaker 10: transition's expensive, remember that they've made a quarter of a
Speaker 10: trillion in North American profits over the last decade. And
Speaker 10: afford billions of it into special dividends, stock buybacks, and
Speaker 10: supersize executive compensation. Our message going into bargaining is clear,
Speaker 10: record profits mean record contracts.
Speaker 1: But it is not just lacking wages, multitier compensation, and
Speaker 1: degraded benefits that has UAW members up at arms. They
Speaker 1: see this current contract negotiation as existential because of something
Speaker 1: that Sean Fadn referenced there, the EV transition. Now, the
Speaker 1: union does not oppose the transition to electric vehicles, They
Speaker 1: just oppose using that transition as an excuse to screw workers,
Speaker 1: which of course is exactly what the automakers are doing
Speaker 1: with I might add and assist from the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: Many of the new EV battery plants are joint partnerships
Speaker 1: with foreign companies that are not subject to UAW contracts.
Speaker 1: These new plants are also concentrated in Southern states and
Speaker 1: environments that are more hostile to unionization, and already the
Speaker 1: union has plenty of examples to point to where lower
Speaker 1: paid EV jobs are replacing higher paid gas powered vehicle jobs.
Speaker 3: Lordstown, Ohio is a perfect example.
Speaker 1: Here, GM closed their storied plants in the town, only
Speaker 1: to reopen an ev battery joint venture where workers make
Speaker 1: half of what the old labor force was earning. And
Speaker 1: UAW isn't just waging war with the automakers over the
Speaker 1: state of affairs, but also with the Biden administration. After all,
Speaker 1: no surprise that giant corporate multinationals would do everything they
Speaker 1: can to cheat labor.
Speaker 3: Biden, hey is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: The most pro union president ever, and yet his ev
Speaker 1: incentives did not include necessary requirements that the jobs created
Speaker 1: the union or even match the pay and benefit rates
Speaker 1: of existing auto manufacturing jobs. In fact, bucking the trend
Speaker 1: of many other unions which have fallen in line behind
Speaker 1: Biden's reelect Fane and the UAW pointedly refuse to endorse
Speaker 1: the president. They instead issued a scathing rebuke of the
Speaker 1: no strings attached dollars, slamming them for quote funding, a
Speaker 1: raise to the bottom, and facilitating corporate greed. Everything is
Speaker 1: really at stake for workers in the auto industry right now,
Speaker 1: and they're huge implications overall for the dying American middle class.
Speaker 1: These workers join the ranks of hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: others who are using this time of fat profits and
Speaker 1: tight labor markets to try to strike a better deal
Speaker 1: and clawback some portion of what workers have lost out
Speaker 1: to capital over the past four years. And I have
Speaker 1: to tell you pretty impressed with the audacity of the
Speaker 1: auto workers asks. They are pushing for a twenty percent
Speaker 1: pay hike now with additional five percent increases until the
Speaker 1: pay increase reaches forty percent number, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: consistent with the pay hikes that the big three CEOs
Speaker 1: have garnered over just the past several years. They are
Speaker 1: also asking for a right to strike over plant closures
Speaker 1: and for automakers to fund a program that would keep
Speaker 1: workers employed if those automakers decide to close a plant.
Speaker 1: They're to make that EV workers get the same deal
Speaker 1: as non EV workers, and they're making some real demands
Speaker 1: for work life balance, including shorter work weeks and more
Speaker 1: paid time off. Contrast that with the pasture of the
Speaker 1: labor movement since the nineties, where they were constantly on
Speaker 1: the back foot, constantly playing defense, trying to keep the
Speaker 1: concessions from cutting too deep. Now we got a new
Speaker 1: leadership with the Team Starts, which just won quite a
Speaker 1: bit for their members and a tentative deal that their
Speaker 1: members are now voting on three hundred and twenty three
Speaker 1: thousand workers across the country have already gone out on
Speaker 1: strike this year, making it one of the biggest years
Speaker 1: for strikes since the year two thousand. Among those workers,
Speaker 1: of course, are the writers and actors who are fighting
Speaker 1: their own existential battle to have a stake in the
Speaker 1: future of that industry. And this all comes at a
Speaker 1: time when public support for unions has skyrocketed across party lines,
Speaker 1: forming a new national consensus, bipartisan consensus in favor of
Speaker 1: workers against capital.
Speaker 3: It is truly a new day. So yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: Maybe Jim Kramer is right to be a little trembling
Speaker 1: over the class war because for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, his side of the last war could actually lose.
Speaker 1: And this is the next big fight. September is the
Speaker 1: deadline for these contract negociates.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 3: All right, sorry, were we looking at well?
Speaker 2: In the beginning, when the United States and the West
Speaker 2: through their economic might against Russia, there was a universal
Speaker 2: narrative one that I to at least kind of thought, man,
Speaker 2: the Russian economy is screwed. There really was no turning back.
Speaker 2: There seemply seemed no way that Russia, a declining power
Speaker 2: with little resources other than minerals and oil, could hang
Speaker 2: on without some serious problem. That was based upon all
Speaker 2: of our general understanding of the global economy, one in
Speaker 2: which the global economy is backstopped by the US dollar
Speaker 2: and the US power, one which the US and the
Speaker 2: West control, to the global financial system, where if one
Speaker 2: is cut off it becomes incredibly difficult to conduct commerce.
Speaker 2: Almost immediately, however, cracks began to show. It turned out
Speaker 2: the rest of the world didn't really agree with our
Speaker 2: view of the Russia Ukraine conflict, or even if they did,
Speaker 2: they didn't care nearly enough to stop buying oil from Putin,
Speaker 2: especially when there was a good deal to be had.
Speaker 2: And slowly, something even more frightening is becoming clear. What
Speaker 2: if the United States isn't nearly as powerful as we
Speaker 2: once thought. What if we don't really have control over
Speaker 2: the global financial system as we wanted, And what if
Speaker 2: instead we have accelerated the development of multipolarity and a
Speaker 2: world where the US does not nearly have as much
Speaker 2: say in the affairs of the world. It's difficult eighteen
Speaker 2: months later not to come to that conclusion, as we
Speaker 2: have a look at the middling effects that US sanctions
Speaker 2: have had on the Russian economy. Just last week came
Speaker 2: a stunning announcement from the IMF, the International Monetary Fund,
Speaker 2: the Russian economy is going to grow this year by
Speaker 2: one point five percent. How can an economy so cut
Speaker 2: off from the West, so attacked, not only survive but grow.
Speaker 2: The answer is important for us to understand. It tells
Speaker 2: a story of how the rest of the world is
Speaker 2: really not with us on Ukraine. The first and most
Speaker 2: important to that story is oil. The West and the
Speaker 2: US have cut themselves off, but as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean the rest of the world is, And in fact,
Speaker 2: despite efforts by the European Union and the US to
Speaker 2: cap the price on Russian crude oil, the price is
Speaker 2: high enough at a discount that Russia has been able
Speaker 2: to facilitate enough money into its economy and fund its
Speaker 2: war machine. The Wall Street Journal even says that the
Speaker 2: current global position is especially advantageous to Russia. The countries
Speaker 2: most likely to depart from the Western Ukraine consensus are India, China,
Speaker 2: and other rapidly growing industrialized Asian countries. These Asian countries
Speaker 2: comprise almost three quarters of all global economic growth this year.
Speaker 2: They are happily consuming Russian oil at a steep discount,
Speaker 2: fueling their industrial economies Without Asian cooperation, Western sanctions have
Speaker 2: found themselves able only to slightly dent Russian revenues instead
Speaker 2: of cripple them as they once thought. This story, of course,
Speaker 2: has been told here many times now and looked at deeply.
Speaker 2: But the other question, the question of Russian economic resilience,
Speaker 2: is equally piercing in its indictment of Western sanctions US
Speaker 2: and Western bands on exports to Russia, especially if anything
Speaker 2: thought to be able to fuel war machine was thought
Speaker 2: to be deadly to the Russian military's ability to wage
Speaker 2: war on Ukraine. However, instead of directly importing Western tech,
Speaker 2: the Kremlin simply buys it via third parties who are
Speaker 2: not subject to sanctions, namely former Soviet socialist republics Armenia, Georgia, Kyrghyzstan,
Speaker 2: z Pakistan, Kazakhstan. By importing the exact same things through
Speaker 2: third parties, they quickly have been able to import materials
Speaker 2: they need for precision guided weaponry. Which in recent months
Speaker 2: has been bombarding Ukraine on a near daily basis even
Speaker 2: deeper than that, though, it's a profound view into what
Speaker 2: the real strength of an economy is what matters when
Speaker 2: the chips are down. Despite being nearly cut off from
Speaker 2: the entire Western led financial system, Russia has turned to
Speaker 2: its hard assets that it has its disposal and is
Speaker 2: putting oil revenue to the most direct use, pumping it
Speaker 2: right back into the economy, spending massively on industrial production
Speaker 2: to continue at the war effort. Russian government spending is
Speaker 2: now fourteen percent of the entire country's with an explosion
Speaker 2: of weapons and ammunition spending and of computers, electronics optical outputs,
Speaker 2: the government has effectively created a government stimulus by orienting
Speaker 2: its spending around the war effort, with an increase in
Speaker 2: material being sent to the front line and easing the
Speaker 2: effect of any of the war at home on the
Speaker 2: elite front. Sanctions two have clearly failed. One of the
Speaker 2: efforts by the West was to wage economic war on
Speaker 2: Russian oligarchs and billionaires with two hopes. One, seize the
Speaker 2: assets create economic problems inside Russia, the other fuel rebellion
Speaker 2: against Putin, encourage people to speak out and save their finances.
Speaker 2: Almost no high high profile oligarchs, however, have spoken out,
Speaker 2: save for that very weird pregosion coup that lasted forty
Speaker 2: eight hours. Instead, something else entirely has occurred. Many oligarchs,
Speaker 2: now seem entirely cut off from their finances in the West,
Speaker 2: have found themselves actually more dependent on Putin than ever before.
Speaker 2: They can't speak out because it means absolute financial destruction
Speaker 2: at home, and as long as they and their families
Speaker 2: are inside Russia, they more or less have less agency
Speaker 2: than they once did when they simply relied on him,
Speaker 2: but also were able to hobnob with the Western financial alite.
Speaker 2: And all of this is a familiar story the law
Speaker 2: of unintended consequences, and worse, a reveal of what power
Speaker 2: the US has in real terms. We have discovered our
Speaker 2: ability to compel another date, another nation to do what
Speaker 2: we want in financial terms actually didn't work. And worse,
Speaker 2: we have forced our actual strategic partners in Asia to
Speaker 2: make a choice between their own economies and a moral
Speaker 2: war we're waging which does not affect our actual material interests.
Speaker 2: The end result of this will be a study by Beijing,
Speaker 2: how do you sanction proof your entire economy, and in
Speaker 2: eye opening across South America in Asia they have much
Speaker 2: more autonomy than they once thought without being touched by
Speaker 2: US public opinion. The net result is one which nobody wanted.
Speaker 2: The West and the US are weaker. Ukraine is under siege,
Speaker 2: embroiled in a devastating war of attrition. The Kremlin has
Speaker 2: zero signs of stopping. If that's not the definition of failure,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what is. I mean, everybody predicted otherwise.
Speaker 2: They not only survived. IMF says they're going to grow.
Speaker 2: And it's a real lesson too, you know.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagres's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: very excited to be joined by the former press secretary
Speaker 1: for doctor Jill Biden is someone I've known for quite
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 3: Michael E. Rosa, welcome. Great to have you.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having mee.
Speaker 2: Michael.
Speaker 1: We want to have you on because you're not, you know,
Speaker 1: an totally uncritical you know, Biden's fan, but you do
Speaker 1: support him for reelection, and so we wanted to hear
Speaker 1: you strongly make the case. So first question I have
Speaker 1: for you is just what great greade do you give
Speaker 1: him as president so far?
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, I want to say that I'm
Speaker 8: a huge Biden fan I have. You know, sometimes I
Speaker 8: take issue with sort of the you know, strategies around
Speaker 8: him that are pursued, But I love all those guys,
Speaker 8: and you know we you know, winning an election like
Speaker 8: that in twenty twenty against incumbent and being an underdog
Speaker 8: basically in a primary, you go through a lot with people,
Speaker 8: and certainly me and the first lady who traveled together
Speaker 8: for you know, three years, and so I have a
Speaker 8: lot of affection and for the family personally and the
Speaker 8: president personally. But I would also say that as president,
Speaker 8: judging by any historic historic measure, you might disagree with
Speaker 8: what he has done, but he has been the most
Speaker 8: effective president I think we've had since LBJ in terms
Speaker 8: of the amount of legislation. He was able to get
Speaker 8: done with a Democratic Congress with a small majority, the
Speaker 8: same majority that exists now. He was able to do
Speaker 8: more than most presidents do in eight years, and he
Speaker 8: did it basically in two and a half. So from
Speaker 8: that perspective, from the scoreboard perspective, he gets an A
Speaker 8: plus plus. You couldn't ask for more to be done.
Speaker 8: You may not disagree with all of it, but he's
Speaker 8: gotten a lot done, and a lot of it came
Speaker 8: from like wishless for Democrats that they've been wanting to
Speaker 8: get done for decades.
Speaker 2: So, Michael, what is your theory of the case for
Speaker 2: what went wrong?
Speaker 6: Then?
Speaker 2: So let's go put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: You've got the right track wrong track number. Right direction
Speaker 2: twenty five percent, wrong direction sixty five percent. LBJ famously
Speaker 2: actually did very well on that number up until a
Speaker 2: little thing called Vietnam. So Biden doesn't have, or at
Speaker 2: least yet anything like that on the horizon. How do
Speaker 2: you explain that number right there? This isn't just Republicans
Speaker 2: and Democrats, this is the entire country.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So Mario Cuomo once said, you campaign in poetry
Speaker 8: and you govern in pros. Governing is a lot unpopular,
Speaker 8: especially with Democrats, because Democrats can be, you know, as
Speaker 8: a party, sometimes very fraught in terms of issues and
Speaker 8: how they feel about compromise. And so the president has
Speaker 8: had to navigate a lot of that, a lot of
Speaker 8: different internal dynamics in the party. But he's kind of
Speaker 8: where a lot of incumbents are at this stage. There's
Speaker 8: a lot of fatigue with incumbents by this point, and
Speaker 8: I think that's why you're seeing, you know, there's some
Speaker 8: minimal primary challenge, there's some democratic lack of enthusiasm, but
Speaker 8: that's all fairly standard operating procedure at this point in
Speaker 8: any administration.
Speaker 2: Well, that's not necessarily true. So let's put this the
Speaker 2: second one gallup we have there. That's the overall approval
Speaker 2: rating that shows forty point seven percent. That's actually the
Speaker 2: second lowest at this time in history except for Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 2: So many incombatants were actually doing quite better than that,
Speaker 2: including Barack Obama when he was running for president. Even
Speaker 2: Donald Trump actually was meeting that number. So how do
Speaker 2: you explain that whenever he's only second really to Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 8: Well, I would explain it by in terms of electoral politics.
Speaker 8: I mean, both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton got slaughtered
Speaker 8: in their midterm. True, this president and all the candidates
Speaker 8: that were running the last cycle ran on this president's record,
Speaker 8: and we had the most historic midterm as a party,
Speaker 8: and he had the most historic midterm as an incumbent
Speaker 8: president in I think since nineteen thirty two. So the
Speaker 8: White House feels pretty validated about the direction they're going in.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't expect to see many changes because that, you know,
Speaker 8: this red wave that everybody had been talking about just
Speaker 8: never never materialized, and the President took a lot of
Speaker 8: credit for that, and they should.
Speaker 1: But how much of that is about the Biden record
Speaker 1: and Biden accomplishments, and how much of that is about
Speaker 1: Dobbs the returning of Roe versus Wade. How much of
Speaker 1: that is about you know, psychotic Republican candidates right Newho
Speaker 1: were you know, very extreme and really out of touch
Speaker 1: and fixated on election conspiracies, et cetera. How much of
Speaker 1: it was really a referendum on those pieces versus anything
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden had done.
Speaker 8: Well, I can't get the nuance past you, so I
Speaker 8: won't try to. I won't even try to spend. Look,
Speaker 8: I think even in the states where the Democrats won,
Speaker 8: where they had tough races, they were still the Democratic
Speaker 8: candidates were more popular than President Biden.
Speaker 5: That's just a fact.
Speaker 8: But they were also more more likable and more popular
Speaker 8: than their Republican opponents, So candidate quality was a big
Speaker 8: issue for sure, and then there's always unforeseen events that
Speaker 8: That's why I don't think every election can be really
Speaker 8: determined by any one size fits approach, and I think
Speaker 8: unforeseen events affect things all the time. I think we
Speaker 8: saw that with Obamacare, and we saw that with a
Speaker 8: couple of other things like a nine to eleven affected
Speaker 8: that midterm election.
Speaker 5: And I think the Dabs case.
Speaker 8: Absolutely energized Democrats to turn out in places that we
Speaker 8: didn't even expect.
Speaker 1: So let me talk to you a little bit about binomics,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's been an effort from the administration
Speaker 1: to sell their economic record the same look. Unemployment is low,
Speaker 1: We've created a lot of jobs, but in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, the American people.
Speaker 3: Aren't feeling it.
Speaker 1: And certainly, you know, we just showed you approval ready,
Speaker 1: we showed you right track, wrong track. But even on
Speaker 1: measures of basic economic security, Let's go and put this
Speaker 1: next graphic up on the screen. You've got the percent
Speaker 1: of American struggling to pay their bills continues to go up.
Speaker 1: You also have increases in the percent of Americans without
Speaker 1: enough to eat. And you know, Michael, I want to say,
Speaker 1: like some of the things that this president did at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the administration, in particular, I was frankly
Speaker 1: kind of surprised by, and I think we're more progressive
Speaker 1: and more more aggressive than was reflected in his Senate career.
Speaker 1: You know, the stimulus checks, the child tax credit, even
Speaker 1: his attempts to reduce student loan debt, even though they've
Speaker 1: gotten stemming by the Supreme Court. We got a debate
Speaker 1: about whether it could fight more and how he could
Speaker 1: do that differently, et cetera. But a lot of those
Speaker 1: pieces I thought were really encouraging. But the story of
Speaker 1: his administration since then has been basically those programs getting
Speaker 1: slowly stripped back, and things that could have had more
Speaker 1: of a permanent impact, like the fifteen dollars minimum wage,
Speaker 1: for example, he's failed to get through. During the campaign trail,
Speaker 1: he used to talk about, you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: do a public option. In terms of expanding healthcare, I
Speaker 1: never hear anything about healthcare anymore. He's supposed to be
Speaker 1: the most pro union president in history, Yet any thought
Speaker 1: of passing the pro Act or using his executive power
Speaker 1: to cancel contracts of union busters.
Speaker 3: That's fallen by the.
Speaker 1: Wayside, And so you have this reality of Americans who
Speaker 1: started off doing okay under the Biden administration and have
Speaker 1: slowly had these sort of you know, pandemic error supports
Speaker 1: pulled from them, where their bank accounts are being drained
Speaker 1: and they're struggling to pay their bills. And so now
Speaker 1: they're saying, listen, I'm in a tough spot here and
Speaker 1: inflation hasn't really helped me. So how do you square
Speaker 1: a message from the President that's trying to say say, hey,
Speaker 1: the economy is great, and a reality that's being experienced
Speaker 1: by the American people that are saying not in not
Speaker 1: in my household.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, there's no question Americans have to feel that
Speaker 8: in order to lend their support to the president, they
Speaker 8: have to start feeling the economic gains. Now, there was
Speaker 8: a New York Times article out I think our New
Speaker 8: New York Times SIENA pull out a couple of days ago,
Speaker 8: and it said that actually, the standard of living most
Speaker 8: people feel well I'm sorry, not most people, but the
Speaker 8: standard of living and the cost of consumer goods have actually, sorry,
Speaker 8: the cost of goods has come down, wages have gone up,
Speaker 8: are going up, Inflation is cooling and the standard of living.
Speaker 8: People said they were worse off a year ago. It
Speaker 8: dropped about ten points from the last year, So there's improvement.
Speaker 8: I think there is improvement in people's lives. But you're right,
Speaker 8: there's a lot, I mean, and that's why he's running
Speaker 8: for reelection.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 8: We have to get the child tax cut or the
Speaker 8: child tax credit permanent.
Speaker 5: We have more to do on climate investment.
Speaker 8: We have more to do on an assault weapons ban,
Speaker 8: on codifying row.
Speaker 5: There's a lot to be done.
Speaker 1: Honest with you, though, I don't really hear that pitch much.
Speaker 1: What I hear from his team is number one. I
Speaker 1: found it very revealing. I brought this up like a
Speaker 1: million times on the show. But after Emmanuel Macrone won
Speaker 1: in France, ron Klayan is like, oh, interesting, he won
Speaker 1: with thirty percent approval rating. Huh, maybe that could be
Speaker 1: a model for us. That's number one. Number two I hear,
Speaker 1: here's the list of things we did accomplish. In number three,
Speaker 1: I hear Trump is bad, which no disagreement there. I
Speaker 1: literally haven't heard a single agenda item for what would
Speaker 1: be accomplished in a second term. Isn't that you know,
Speaker 1: shouldn't he be making an affirmative case. It's not just about, Hey,
Speaker 1: the Republicans suck and Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't there be some sort of like, here's the plan,
Speaker 1: here's what we're going to do in the second term.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard that.
Speaker 5: Well, Okay, let me unpack a little bit.
Speaker 8: First of all, I think during your reelection, I think
Speaker 8: part of the first thing.
Speaker 5: Incumbents need to do.
Speaker 8: And Barack Obama did this in May of twenty eleven.
Speaker 8: George Bush did it in March of two thousand and four.
Speaker 8: Once they had their opponent, they were immediately ready to
Speaker 8: make their opponent unacceptable to the American people. Yes, and
Speaker 8: that is going to be a very big part of
Speaker 8: the reelection, as it is for every reelection. Okay, joint.
Speaker 8: But that's not to say that there is an affirmative
Speaker 8: case to be made. I agree with you that all
Speaker 8: with all the legislative success he has had and the
Speaker 8: accomplishments and three hundred bipartisan pieces of legislation, whatever, the
Speaker 8: legislative scoreboard doesn't always translate into voting behavior. There is
Speaker 8: more right, there is performance, there's candidate quality, There is
Speaker 8: how you appear in front of the voters. The performance
Speaker 8: aspect of politics. There's a lot more that I think
Speaker 8: they're going to have to do because the numbers are
Speaker 8: where they are and they have to get them up.
Speaker 8: But you're right, there's a lot of things on the
Speaker 8: progressive agenda that need to be talked that they need
Speaker 8: to be talked about, and you're gonna have to and
Speaker 8: he's gonna have to address that as well.
Speaker 2: Michael. The majority of Democrats and even majority of the
Speaker 2: American people, I think that Biden is too old to
Speaker 2: be president. You serve either with him or around him
Speaker 2: for several years. I mean, what case can you make
Speaker 2: at least on that front. I mean, it's very troubling
Speaker 2: and in some cases, you know, disheartening. It sat kind
Speaker 2: of to see his overall public performance. This is a
Speaker 2: man that we've all seen on our television screens, maybe
Speaker 2: before I was even basically since I was alive. So
Speaker 2: it's not like we could deny that things are a
Speaker 2: little little bit different really on that front. He would
Speaker 2: be the oldest president in modern American history, no in
Speaker 2: ever actually in American history. Should he be re elected
Speaker 2: up until the day that he served, I mean, should
Speaker 2: Americans feel okay that he's up to the job. I'm
Speaker 2: putting this in the nicest way I.
Speaker 5: Know you are.
Speaker 8: And the answer, the short answer is yes, okay. But
Speaker 8: I remember back in the nineties when the Democrat retort
Speaker 8: to Bill Clinton was, you know what, he's creating twenty
Speaker 8: two million jobs and the tech sector's booming the economy
Speaker 8: as we have record surpluses. He's done a fantastic job
Speaker 8: as president. Who cares what he does in his personal life? Right,
Speaker 8: it's almost the same argument. Yes, he's eighty, you can't
Speaker 8: escape it. He's going to be the oldest he's the
Speaker 8: oldest president, and he is going to be the oldest president.
Speaker 8: But you know what, I would take thirteen million jobs
Speaker 8: created in two years plus. Remember think about what this
Speaker 8: seventy eight eighty year old did. He walked into a
Speaker 8: crisis of huge proportion unlike we've entered, we've ever seen
Speaker 8: in our lifetime in a century. Not only did he,
Speaker 8: you know, force a huge spending package to stimulate the
Speaker 8: economy through Congress, but he administered the most successful vaccination
Speaker 8: program in history. And we can't forget where we were
Speaker 8: when he came in and where we are now. Schools
Speaker 8: were closed, businesses, were closed, the economy was feeling a
Speaker 8: lot of pain, and he's reversed a lot of that
Speaker 8: and actually created more jobs than at pre pandemic levels.
Speaker 8: And he did that as he's eighty year old. Not
Speaker 8: to mention the huge wish list or a laundry list
Speaker 8: I could run through.
Speaker 5: That would take way too much, right.
Speaker 2: I think what people are getting at is like we're
Speaker 2: talking about on a personal level. On a personal level,
Speaker 2: so you're like, you listen. I mean, there's a big
Speaker 2: narrative out there. A lot of people wonder like, is
Speaker 2: this person actually up for the job to get to
Speaker 2: the Oval? Until what like nine am? I mean jins
Speaker 2: Hockey and all these people are like, he's the most.
Speaker 8: Does anything I have said so far give you pause
Speaker 8: to whether he's up for the job?
Speaker 2: Well, no, it's more so like I'm not. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not I'm not a novice to Washington. I know
Speaker 2: that advisors can run a lot of things. A lot
Speaker 2: of people think that he's effectively like a prop No,
Speaker 2: that's not true. Okay, tell it, my god, what's going on?
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 3: And with mccombells, and we're not feeling a lot of comfort.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got.
Speaker 8: But like any age, as I've said before, in public,
Speaker 8: age is a fair question.
Speaker 5: It was for Ronald Reagan, he doesn't get up.
Speaker 2: He was sixty.
Speaker 8: You're right, but it was still but it was still
Speaker 8: an issue think about. I mean, people have selective memories
Speaker 8: in Washington, but like it was a huge issue when
Speaker 8: Bob Dole was running. But my advice to them has
Speaker 8: always been to shine a light on your weaknesses. That's
Speaker 8: where he is. Weakness, that's where he is weak. People
Speaker 8: perceive him as old. Be self deprecating about it. There's
Speaker 8: nothing else you can do, he says, watch him, watch
Speaker 8: what he does. And he's been, like I said, probably
Speaker 8: the most successful president we've had, uh since LBJ in
Speaker 8: terms of the amount of things he's been able to
Speaker 8: get done at his age.
Speaker 5: So I would take the eighty year.
Speaker 8: Old over you know, Trump nomics or DeSantis culture wars
Speaker 8: any day.
Speaker 3: Okay, So last question for you?
Speaker 5: Sure? What one more? Just one more?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is just the first of many.
Speaker 1: What advice would you offer or what critique do you
Speaker 1: have of either the Biden administration or the way that
Speaker 1: they're prosecuting the campaign thus far?
Speaker 8: Well, I think the campaign is sort of engaging in
Speaker 8: a really young stage right now. It's not fully developed,
Speaker 8: but I think it's it's going fine at the moment.
Speaker 8: I think that when there is a foil to run against,
Speaker 8: you are going to see juices and energy around Democrats
Speaker 8: like they're they're going to get excited, They're going to
Speaker 8: get psyched because it's going to be a choice between
Speaker 8: two people. My biggest advice, and this has always been
Speaker 8: my advice, is that we live in a we still,
Speaker 8: whether we like it or not, we are playing by
Speaker 8: at least the legacy.
Speaker 5: Media still plays.
Speaker 2: By Trump's rules. What does that mean?
Speaker 8: That means means that he is able to be America's
Speaker 8: assignment editor, and he is able to drive a lot
Speaker 8: of the coverage. He can spend all of his money
Speaker 8: on his legal bills. Sure, go ahead and spend it.
Speaker 8: He's not effective as a fundraiser, he's not effective as
Speaker 8: an organizer. He's effective at owning free media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that it's hard to avoid when yeah, you know.
Speaker 5: The former president, but yes, it is, it is. I
Speaker 5: get it.
Speaker 8: He floods the zone and is able to own the airwaves,
Speaker 8: and they have to compete with that. And part of
Speaker 8: that is embracing the way Trump kind of embraces the media,
Speaker 8: treats them as an opportunity, not as a hazard or
Speaker 8: a threat. And I think if you talk to reporters
Speaker 8: who cover the White House daily, there are severe levels
Speaker 8: of distrust. And you know what, there's no reason to
Speaker 8: be generally speaking, the President likes the press, but he
Speaker 8: should engage them more, and they should build constructive relationships
Speaker 8: that earn them goodwill and not lose them the benefit
Speaker 8: of the doubt. And I think if you talk to
Speaker 8: a lot of reporters, sadly, I think that's been going on,
Speaker 8: and I would say that the President should engage more
Speaker 8: with the media.
Speaker 2: Uh not less.
Speaker 1: Well, we agree we would be happy to host him
Speaker 1: here triantal candidates, So.
Speaker 8: You should invite Apparently I shouldn't call the White House
Speaker 8: Press Office and write him on.
Speaker 2: It's not like it has you can.
Speaker 3: Put in a word for us, Michael, thank you.
Speaker 5: It's to say, yeah, of course, I hope you'll come
Speaker 5: back and sea anytime.
Speaker 2: We'd love to have you. All right, We'll see you
Speaker 2: guys later.