Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, Let's get to the showing.
Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 2: we have, Crystal, Indeed we do.
Speaker 1: It is a big week because Wednesday, that would be
Speaker 1: tomorrow first GOP primary debate sans Trump, but still will
Speaker 1: be interesting. And there was a memo it came out
Speaker 1: for Rhonda Santis that is just a fascinating look at
Speaker 1: like consultant brain and how all of these people are
Speaker 1: approaching this event.
Speaker 4: So we'll dig into that.
Speaker 1: We also have some updates from President Biden's trip to Hawaii,
Speaker 1: perhaps not getting the welcome that he expected there. We've
Speaker 1: also got some news out of China in terms of
Speaker 1: both their continuing economic struggles and also their plans to
Speaker 1: team up with the other Brick Nichans and some other
Speaker 1: nations around the world to serve as a counter to
Speaker 1: the G seven.
Speaker 4: So we'll get into all of that.
Speaker 1: Some new research on the impact of screen time on
Speaker 1: babies and on childhood development. This is when you definitely
Speaker 1: want to pay attention to. And finally, and very importantly,
Speaker 1: mister Beast has either started World War three or perhaps
Speaker 1: created world peace.
Speaker 4: So we will.
Speaker 1: We will dig into it. Just sort of accidentally he
Speaker 1: did that. Also excited to talk to Soa Amari this
Speaker 1: morning about his new book Tyranny, which is a hard
Speaker 1: look at corporate power and what we can do to
Speaker 1: check it, something we are obviously very interested in here,
Speaker 1: so that should be a good discussion as well.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're really excas. Today's a big day, guys.
Speaker 2: We are not gonna have mologs in the show. We
Speaker 2: were filming a bunch of extra content, an entire debate
Speaker 2: special that's actually going to drop for our premium subscribers
Speaker 2: to everything you need to know about the debate, prepare,
Speaker 2: how to think about it, what to look for, includes
Speaker 2: some predictions from Crystal and I but what's going to
Speaker 2: go down? So that drops today for everybody else it'll
Speaker 2: air tomorrow. We're not going to have a counterpoints show
Speaker 2: for everybody. Instead, we're gonna have the great Emily Jushinski
Speaker 2: here in the studio on Thursday. We're all going to
Speaker 2: break down everything as early as humanly possible on Thursday,
Speaker 2: as fast as we can. So I think we've got
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Speaker 1: So if you want to get that debate special that
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Speaker 3: There you go. All right, let's start with Hawaii.
Speaker 2: President Biden a touchdown late last night our time, earlier
Speaker 2: in the day over there, Hawaii time to not exactly
Speaker 2: the most welcome reception. This is actually from Hawaiian local
Speaker 2: News and shouts out some of the signs and the
Speaker 2: slogans that greeted President Biden on the street.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen over to my right.
Speaker 4: There are a bunch of people out here.
Speaker 5: They've been here for hours. A bunch of them are protesting.
Speaker 5: They have their makeshift signs, cardboard signs, a lot of
Speaker 5: them saying, as we've been talking about, that he's too late.
Speaker 5: Some of them feel that he should have been here
Speaker 5: much earlier. Other signs that see actions speak louder than words.
Speaker 5: So hearing a lot from the people here as well
Speaker 5: as Hawaiian flags.
Speaker 2: People standing out for hours on end is to make
Speaker 2: their thoughts felt to the president. And it's one of
Speaker 2: those where look, I can think back to Hurricane Maria
Speaker 2: to Trump, he always had like smattering a protest, specifically
Speaker 2: with Maria, especially with Puerto Rico, where his response was scrutinized.
Speaker 2: But Glenn Greenweal put this out yesterday and I just
Speaker 2: think it's so true. This is both a media story
Speaker 2: and it is a story of the response. I think
Speaker 2: the response itself has been horrific, But on a media level,
Speaker 2: crystal this type of thing. In Hurricane Katrina, they would
Speaker 2: have blared this from the rooftops, that would have shown
Speaker 2: it to everybody. As Glenn correctly pointed out, and I
Speaker 2: also referenced President Bush was destroyed for that fly by
Speaker 2: over Katrina as people were literally drowning. Yeah, and he
Speaker 2: did that sympathetic look out of the window. I mean
Speaker 2: President Trump also was scrutinized for Maria. Biden takes days,
Speaker 2: i mean almost two weeks in order to visit the
Speaker 2: site of this disaster, after barely opening his mouth about this.
Speaker 2: You have protesters and people on the ground. Let's keep
Speaker 2: this in mind, this is a democratic state that voted
Speaker 2: two to one for President Biden. These aren't just you know,
Speaker 2: like Republican trolls that are coming out and saying this.
Speaker 2: I think they're rightfully outraged, and we're basically hearing.
Speaker 3: This from local media.
Speaker 2: We're really not even seeing any pickup by the actual
Speaker 2: mainstream press. Very little bit of a criticism on the
Speaker 2: in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, a few of
Speaker 2: those other places, but you know, the talking heads, like
Speaker 2: they're basically giving him a pass on what is objectively
Speaker 2: a total disaster of a respet.
Speaker 1: I mean, to be clear, the media was right to
Speaker 1: take a very harsh lens to Bush's response to Katrina,
Speaker 1: which was I mean, not only callous and horrific, but
Speaker 1: also just the response itself was completely catastrophic. They were
Speaker 1: correct to take a harsh lens to President Trump's response
Speaker 1: to Hurricane Maria. That was, you know, that was the
Speaker 1: right thing to do, because there were true failures there.
Speaker 1: And also on the level of, you know, the optics
Speaker 1: of seeming like you actually care about these Americans who
Speaker 1: are suffering. You know, he fell far short of the mark.
Speaker 1: But there has not been a similar level.
Speaker 4: Of scrutiny of Biden.
Speaker 1: And certainly in terms of online I mean the amount
Speaker 1: of backlash to even you know, a little bit of
Speaker 1: criticism of the president for let's not forget his first
Speaker 1: the first questions he got about this, he was sitting
Speaker 1: on the beach and he said appeared to say no comment.
Speaker 1: Then he plans a vacation a Tahoe, which he you know,
Speaker 1: was shamed into leaving briefly to go down and make
Speaker 1: this visit. And more critically, what we are hearing from
Speaker 1: the ground from the people who are there living this
Speaker 1: nightmare is that the response and recovery effort and the
Speaker 1: relief effort has been woefully inadequate.
Speaker 4: That deserves great scrutiny.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that you have some wines there
Speaker 1: making their thoughts known. Listen, this is why it's important
Speaker 1: that you go visit, because human beings being what they are,
Speaker 1: to see that devastation firsthand, to actually see those signs
Speaker 1: and understand that people in a state that voted overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: for you are not impressed with what's going on. Hopefully
Speaker 1: those things going to make an impact. Just take a
Speaker 1: look at some of the images that he would have
Speaker 1: been seeing with his own eyes. Got and put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Guys, this is what his motorcade
Speaker 1: was driving by there on the island. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't I just can't imagine this being my talent. That devastation,
Speaker 1: I mean, those burnout cars, the buildings, just everything absolutely decimated.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, guys, we still don't have a
Speaker 1: full body count. Still don't even know how many lives
Speaker 1: were lost here. The last number I saw is one
Speaker 1: hundred and eleven. They haven't finished going through this area
Speaker 1: to recover all of the human remains. There are still
Speaker 1: hundreds of people who are missing. Residents fear that the
Speaker 1: death toll is going to be much higher than where
Speaker 1: it is now. So you just can't understate the massive,
Speaker 1: horrific impact of this tragedy.
Speaker 2: Christal, there are eight hundred and fifty missing people still
Speaker 2: as we air this second. Let's all be honest here
Speaker 2: about you know, unless I hope they turn up, but
Speaker 2: I hope everything works out. But it's been a long
Speaker 2: time since those fires, and if they haven't at this point,
Speaker 2: I know they found some children and all that that
Speaker 2: was about, you know what, several days ago. But this
Speaker 2: is a devastating disaster. I mean, the toll on the
Speaker 2: ground they are saying the local death toll estimate is
Speaker 2: somewhere in the four hundreds and likely going even higher.
Speaker 2: So this is one of the biggest tragedies, worst wildfires
Speaker 2: as you've always what over a century, for a century,
Speaker 2: over a century, with all the techno we've had. We've
Speaker 2: done multiple segments here scrutinizing the disaster response, the legal
Speaker 2: monopoly of the actual power utilities, the lack of scrutiny there.
Speaker 2: President Biden, you know, offering these people some seven hundred
Speaker 2: dollars one time payment which I'll never get over, on
Speaker 2: the exact same day requesting twenty five billion dollars in
Speaker 2: extra assistance of military assistance to the country of Ukraine,
Speaker 2: including humanitarian assistants, probably even more so than what's been
Speaker 2: requested for Hawaii so far. It's just outrageous. And you know, look,
Speaker 2: as you said, it's not just about why shouldn't he
Speaker 2: have It's not just the visit, It's that where is
Speaker 2: the whole of government approach? Where is the cabinet secretaries?
Speaker 2: Where is the energy and the action from the government
Speaker 2: here in the actual response, the residents on the ground
Speaker 2: are saying FEMA's not here, we don't know where they are.
Speaker 2: The day afterwards, we're talking about here on the show,
Speaker 2: multiple people in Hawaii saying we're being blocked by the
Speaker 2: local government from delivering the supplies that are needed to Maui.
Speaker 2: So at every level, I think it's been a failure.
Speaker 2: And fortunately, you know, only independent sources of the Internet
Speaker 2: and all that will scrutinize what should be entire news
Speaker 2: cycle about what a disaster this has been from the
Speaker 2: very beginning, and a major failure of President Biden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, listen, I want to say, I saw
Speaker 1: a Washington Post article that spoke to wyans on the ground,
Speaker 1: and you know, heard out their criticism.
Speaker 4: That's pretty much all I've seen.
Speaker 3: That's insane, that's about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Compare that again to you know, coverage of past
Speaker 1: tragedies under other presidents, and you see if the media
Speaker 1: has applied the critical lens to this president, that deserves
Speaker 1: to be based on what we've seen.
Speaker 4: On the ground.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the big political story
Speaker 1: of the week, which is the Republican debate primary debate
Speaker 1: happening tomorrow night. As we mentioned before, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: special coverage for you premium subscribers that will drop today
Speaker 1: for everybody else that will drop tomorrow warnings, so look
Speaker 1: forward to that.
Speaker 4: We did get news of exactly who the.
Speaker 1: Eight candidates are because there was some dispute over who
Speaker 1: was in and who was out. My condolences to all
Speaker 1: of the Perry Johnson and Francis Suarez fans. Your guys
Speaker 1: did not make it onto the debate stage. But we
Speaker 1: wanted to take a look at this memo. This is
Speaker 1: fascinating on a whole host of levels. So Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: most of his money is not actually in his campaign,
Speaker 1: it's in a super pac, and so he's very dependent
Speaker 1: on a super pac for polling and research and strategy
Speaker 1: and all of the mechanics of the campaign. But they
Speaker 1: can't directly cord me. So instead, what the super Pac
Speaker 1: has been doing is they will post these strategy memos
Speaker 1: online in places where they think only DeSantis and his
Speaker 1: team will really find them. But lo and behold, news
Speaker 1: Media picked up on their debate strategy memo that they
Speaker 1: had posted online, and some of the details here are
Speaker 1: pretty amusing.
Speaker 4: So put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: The overall plan here for DeSantis going to the debate,
Speaker 1: according to this super Pac strategy memo, is to defend
Speaker 1: Trump and quote hammer Ramswami vivike Ramaswami, Desanta's allies revealed
Speaker 1: debate strategy. Hundreds of pages of blunt advice memos and
Speaker 1: internal polling were posted online by the Means super Pac
Speaker 1: back in the Florida governor, offering an extraordinary glimpse into
Speaker 1: his operations. Thinking they have since taken this memo down
Speaker 1: off of the internet, but presumably Ron got the message
Speaker 1: before they before they pulled it. So let me give
Speaker 1: you some of the specifics from this memo. It's just
Speaker 1: a fascinating look into like consultant rain and the type
Speaker 1: of advice that they would be. This isn't unique to
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis. He's just the one who happened to have
Speaker 1: his memo, you know, caught by the news media. But
Speaker 1: this is the way that they approach this. They said,
Speaker 1: Number one, attack Joe Biden and the media three to
Speaker 1: five times, okay. Number two State Governor Randa Santis's positive
Speaker 1: vision two to three times. Number three hammer the vike
Speaker 1: Ramaswamy and her response. And they provide all sorts of
Speaker 1: you know, oppo research on vivek and especially they focus
Speaker 1: on some positions that he seems to have changed, some
Speaker 1: sort of more liberal sounding positions that he used to hold.
Speaker 1: Number four defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to
Speaker 1: a Chris Christie attack. So they seem to think that
Speaker 1: quote taking a sledgehammer to vivike Ramswami, calling him fake
Speaker 1: vi vike or vivic the fake will be a good
Speaker 1: moment for and we'll see if he actually tries out
Speaker 1: these lines now that they've been made public. They also
Speaker 1: think that it could benefit him to really go on
Speaker 1: the offense against Chris Christy, who will be likely vociferously
Speaker 1: going against Trump, because that's part of what he has
Speaker 1: staked his campaign on as being one of the main
Speaker 1: anti Trump voices. Also fascinating, Sagar I thought was the
Speaker 1: kind of like kid Glove's way they want to go
Speaker 1: about talking about the former President Trump. They suggest saying
Speaker 1: that Trump's time has passed, that mister DeSantis should be
Speaker 1: seen as quote carrying the torch for the movement he inspired.
Speaker 1: They provided him with an elaborate script with which to
Speaker 1: position himself in relation to Trump. He could say that
Speaker 1: Trump was a breath of fresh air, the first president
Speaker 1: to tell the elite where to shove it, then add
Speaker 1: that the form whre president was attacked all the time,
Speaker 1: provoked attacks all the time, and it was NonStop. He
Speaker 1: could then argue that Trump was now, of course, have
Speaker 1: been indicted, faces so many distractions that it's almost impossible
Speaker 1: for him to focus on moving the country forward, and
Speaker 1: that this election is too important. We need someone that
Speaker 1: can fight for you instead of fighting for himself. And
Speaker 1: then the final detail here that I found rather entertaining is,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, they're aware that DeSantis has this
Speaker 1: like likability awkwardness issue, and so their suggestion here is
Speaker 1: I'm reading directly that he quote invoke a personal anecdote
Speaker 1: story about family kids, Casey showing emotion. Oh yeah, thanks, consultants.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Consultants that that definitely should do it.
Speaker 2: That gives you a good view into how brain did
Speaker 2: all these people are and how they try to manufacture
Speaker 2: personality and made.
Speaker 3: The King yes for about it so true.
Speaker 2: It's basically, you know, it's like the down the human
Speaker 2: suit zip up all the way we pretend to be.
Speaker 3: Emotional, show emotions. I got it. I will do that.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like you can't.
Speaker 2: He can't put authenticity in a memo, And that's really
Speaker 2: what it comes through. I took away from this much
Speaker 2: more like, aside from the consultant one, it's clear who
Speaker 2: DeSantis Seze is his main rival, and that's Vake Yep.
Speaker 2: He is going guns blazing, I think against Vike Ramaswami.
Speaker 2: If I'm Ramaswami, I'm gonna be doing the exact same thing.
Speaker 2: I'm going to hit back as hard as possibly can.
Speaker 2: These two are basically locked in a match for number
Speaker 2: two spot, and in terms of favorability ratings in Ohio
Speaker 2: and elsewhere, we're going to get into just in a
Speaker 2: little bit about how they're actually technically is a very
Speaker 2: very narrow lane for a single personal rival to Trump
Speaker 2: and they both want to be that person. I think
Speaker 2: Chris Christy is going to be coming in guns blazing
Speaker 2: against DeSantis because he is the person who he really
Speaker 2: needs to knock off. Christy Actually, interestingly enough, from the
Speaker 2: polling that I've seen so far, he's actually locked up
Speaker 2: the majority of the anti Trump votes so far in
Speaker 2: New Hampshire and in Iowa, so he needs to prove
Speaker 2: more of his bona fides there, and anybody who is
Speaker 2: actually going for DeSantis as an anti Trump move, Christy
Speaker 2: wants to move them in that category. So I think
Speaker 2: the DeSantis is going to be the main focal point
Speaker 2: on the stage in terms of Desanti is gonna try
Speaker 2: and blow off Christy.
Speaker 3: I'm already gonna predict.
Speaker 2: I think Christy is going to be coming after him
Speaker 2: on Ukraine and a few weather of these issues, also
Speaker 2: on Disney. Ramaswami's gonna be coming in probably serve as
Speaker 2: the main Trump attack dog in terms of going after Christie,
Speaker 2: but also on DeSantis for being weak and for not
Speaker 2: stepping up enough on behalf of Trump. So look, I'll
Speaker 2: save all my main predictions here and more look at
Speaker 2: it as I think this is a major two way.
Speaker 2: This is a two way fight with a like complete wild.
Speaker 1: Card a surrounding melee Asa Hotchinson.
Speaker 3: He's a nice guy. We interviewed him here.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's gonna have a big moment. Nikki
Speaker 2: Haley's gonna try and have her moment.
Speaker 3: She's gonna have a Kamala moment if if.
Speaker 2: He did kicking sideways against Viveik, not against Trump though,
Speaker 2: it isn't that funny. She'll kick, She'll kick to the left,
Speaker 2: but she'll never kick to the right. She'll kick DeSantis
Speaker 2: Tim Scott, he's.
Speaker 3: A nice guy. I'm sure I'll have a couple of moments.
Speaker 3: But he's not an attack guy.
Speaker 4: That's now No, that's not his personality. It's not a
Speaker 4: political brand. I don't think it would.
Speaker 1: I don't think it would go well with like what
Speaker 1: his political brand exactly.
Speaker 2: So in general I think that this is, you know,
Speaker 2: to boil it down for just this segment.
Speaker 3: It is Desanta's Ramaswami. They're going for the number two.
Speaker 2: We also had an interesting ABC News pieces go and
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen where they did
Speaker 2: kind of a deep dive into evac They say, quote
Speaker 2: how Aviake Ramaswami saw podcast start on prior to the
Speaker 2: White House run.
Speaker 3: They quoted someone who said he's wanted to be famous.
Speaker 2: They revealed that he apparently was in a development deal
Speaker 2: with The Daily Wire actually for a podcasts before he
Speaker 2: decided to run for president.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Daily Wire confirmed that part of it.
Speaker 2: They did confirm that one of the interesting things that
Speaker 2: actually came out to me is that whenever you looked
Speaker 2: at the Ramaswami rebuttal here, it is just like he
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, is your source a person who lives
Speaker 2: in a publicly funded mansion in Tallahassee as in the
Speaker 2: DeSantis team. I can only say anecdotally online just from
Speaker 2: watching kind of the sparring of all the camps. The
Speaker 2: Disanti folks have really stepped up their fire against Ramaswami
Speaker 2: in recent days. They particularly focused in on a line
Speaker 2: here in this ABC piece about how Ramaswami had told
Speaker 2: associates in the past that his candidacy could potentially nudge
Speaker 2: out Ron DeSantis. They're like, oh, Vivek is trying to
Speaker 2: sabotage Rond de Santas.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I just think he thinks he's better at the job
Speaker 2: than Desanta's. I think he's in more of a viable candidate,
Speaker 2: and to be honest, given his polling position right now,
Speaker 2: and especially given where DeSantis started, I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's necessarily wrong about that in terms of performance so far.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in terms of political talent, vivec
Speaker 1: is a more politically talented I agree person.
Speaker 4: And you have to.
Speaker 1: Look, obviously, you guys know, I have all kinds of
Speaker 1: policy disagreements with vivike Ramaswami, though I'm very grateful that
Speaker 1: he is willing to come here and mix it up
Speaker 1: with us and mix it up with the host of people,
Speaker 1: and I hope we can do that again. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is a guy who basically came out of nowhere
Speaker 1: and is now verging on being the leading alternative to Trump.
Speaker 4: Now. I mean, given that Trump is.
Speaker 1: Winning by like a landslide, maybe that's a low bar,
Speaker 1: but you know, he is certainly giving DeSantis right now
Speaker 1: a run for is my and DeSantis had the whole
Speaker 1: Fox News room for Urndock Empire pulling for him at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this. He's had endless free media coverage.
Speaker 1: He has much higher name recognition, and that's a thing
Speaker 1: that DeSantis has to be really nervous about with Viveke
Speaker 1: is even though he has relatively still low name mighty
Speaker 1: like there are a lot of Republicans who are just
Speaker 1: going to be getting introduced to him tonight at the debate.
Speaker 1: That means that Vivike has a lot of room where
Speaker 1: he could potentially grow, whereas Rond de Santis is known
Speaker 1: by the Republican base at.
Speaker 4: This point and you know, broadly liked.
Speaker 1: It's not that they hate him, although his favorability rating
Speaker 1: has come down significantly since this campaign started. So it
Speaker 1: seems like Viveke potentially has a much higher ceiling and
Speaker 1: much more room to grow than Rond de Santis does
Speaker 1: at this point. I'll just read you the piece of
Speaker 1: this article where they talk about how they were the
Speaker 1: is vivecan here just to torpedo Ronda Santis part. They
Speaker 1: say he pitched himself as a cannon who can serious
Speaker 1: waves in the Republican primary when he was talking to
Speaker 1: some of his initial backers when Mett was some skepticism,
Speaker 1: Ramaswami argued his candidacy could also dissuade Florida Governor Rond
Speaker 1: de Santis from entering the race. That didn't happen. According
Speaker 1: to a source who was on the call. In the
Speaker 1: lead up to his announcement, Ramswami would tell several other
Speaker 1: conservative activists that he believed that if he ran, it
Speaker 1: could stop DeSantis from running or impact his viability as
Speaker 1: a candidate if he did enter.
Speaker 4: The race, sources said.
Speaker 1: And look, I mean, in terms of his public posture,
Speaker 1: it's no secret he's been very defensive of Trump. You know,
Speaker 1: go to the matt to defend Trump. He says he'll
Speaker 1: pardon him if he becomes president of the United States.
Speaker 1: And he's not at all reticent about attacking Ronda Santis.
Speaker 1: When we interviewed him, he called DeSantis, or seemed to
Speaker 1: call Ronda Santis a super pac puppet, which tends to
Speaker 1: be the language that he uses around him. So he
Speaker 1: hasn't pulled any punches there. I don't think anyone should
Speaker 1: be shocked that Vivik Ramaswami or any of these individuals who.
Speaker 4: Are running for president want to be famous.
Speaker 1: Like obviously all of them have sizeable egos. Obviously all
Speaker 1: of them comfortable or searching out some national spotlight. And
Speaker 1: so I don't think you know, the fact that he
Speaker 1: was looking at a podcast or whatever, to me none
Speaker 1: of that is particularly surprising.
Speaker 3: Who runs for office and who doesn't want to be famous.
Speaker 3: Let's off, of course, come.
Speaker 1: And then I already been doing all kinds of because
Speaker 1: our remedia appearances.
Speaker 4: He wrote a book, you know, to get himself into that.
Speaker 2: Late hours ago, way before you know, whenever his first
Speaker 2: book came out. So it's one of those where that
Speaker 2: attack I really annoyed because I'm like, what, Desantas doesn't
Speaker 2: want to be famous? Come on, you know, it's like,
Speaker 2: let's all be honest, let's put the next one up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. Veke has been taking it on
Speaker 2: the chin recently because he gave an interview to the
Speaker 2: Atlantic and he said, quote, I think it's legitimate to
Speaker 2: say how many police, how many federal agents were on
Speaker 2: planes that hit the twin towers. Maybe the answer is zero.
Speaker 2: It probably is zero for all I know. He was
Speaker 2: interviewed actually last night on CNN Caitlyn Collins Show, and
Speaker 2: they had a pretty vigorous debate about it. I really, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's actually it's worth watching at least some of it.
Speaker 2: The reason why I just find this entire thing, everyone's like,
Speaker 2: I can't believe the vig said that he distrusts the
Speaker 2: nine to eleven Commission. By the way, that was his
Speaker 2: first comment on the Ax Alex Steins show over on
Speaker 2: Blaze TV, and it's like, this is so outrageous, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, hold on a.
Speaker 3: Second, do you believe the entire nine to eleven commission?
Speaker 2: Because I'm pretty sure we had done multiple segments here
Speaker 2: on this show about how the nine to eleven Commission
Speaker 2: at the very least dropped the ball and one hundred
Speaker 2: percent did cover up the Saudi connections inside of the file.
Speaker 2: So yes, I don't know who out there is standing
Speaker 2: for the nine You know, the nine to eleven Commission
Speaker 2: as the gold standard for everything that happens.
Speaker 3: Well, then most people are nuts and they should do
Speaker 3: a little bit of research.
Speaker 2: Now in terms of the specifics over what he said,
Speaker 2: in terms of the fact I have not seen I
Speaker 2: will just say, kindly outside of very small areas of
Speaker 2: the Internet, of the actual allegation that there were quote, federal.
Speaker 3: Agents on the plane.
Speaker 2: Now, if he changed that language to Saudi agents on
Speaker 2: the plane.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, now we're in business.
Speaker 3: Let's let's have.
Speaker 2: A conversation a little bit about this and whether the
Speaker 2: US government was aware of said Saudi agents and whether
Speaker 2: there was an entire I mean, I recommend the book
Speaker 2: always to Lawrence Wright's book about nine to eleven and
Speaker 2: the lead up to all of that in terms of
Speaker 2: the drop ball at the very least bureaucratic incompetence about
Speaker 2: knowledge of these people inside of the country, and the
Speaker 2: fact that these guys making approaches to these hijackers were
Speaker 2: almost one hundred percent connected to the Saudi government. So
Speaker 2: I've been very annoyed by the discourse on this as
Speaker 2: of late, as if it's like some scandalized thing to
Speaker 2: question the actual, like the actual nine to eleven commissioner
Speaker 2: word on what happened, especially considering we just had an
Speaker 2: interview here on the show about Al Bayoumi, the guy
Speaker 2: who made that contact with those hijackers, and specifically his
Speaker 2: now revealed almost direct connection to the Saudi government at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the funny thing to me about his
Speaker 1: comments are it sort of feels like he knows they're okay,
Speaker 1: like sort of conspiracy thinking. And I don't mean that
Speaker 1: in derogatory, but it's kind of hot right now. You know,
Speaker 1: he knows that the nine to eleven thing, he got
Speaker 1: some pushback before this got him some media juice whatever,
Speaker 1: but he hasn't really like dug into the details of
Speaker 1: what the actual, you know, questions are about what might
Speaker 1: have been wrong in the nine to eleven commission.
Speaker 4: So he's sort of like mixed up some of.
Speaker 1: The January sixth allegations with like just general nine to
Speaker 1: eleven conspiracy and comes out with this thing. It sort
Speaker 1: of feels like he feels like he should question nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, but he doesn't really know the details, so
Speaker 1: he's kind of throwing this against the wall.
Speaker 4: That's my vibe from all of this. But Vivek has.
Speaker 1: Really having a moment right now. I mean there's just
Speaker 1: no denying that. I think there's a lot of interest
Speaker 1: in him. I think he has room to grow. I
Speaker 1: suspect based on our interactions and what I've seen of
Speaker 1: him in the media. I suspect he'll be well equipped to,
Speaker 1: you know, spar with whoever comes at him on the stage,
Speaker 1: whether it's Ronda Santister, Chris Christi, or anyone else. I
Speaker 1: expect there are going to be a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are googling his name after the primary debate tonight
Speaker 1: who really hadn't dug into him as a candidate and
Speaker 1: didn't know that he was an option that existed. Now,
Speaker 1: is that enough to supplant Trump as the number one? No,
Speaker 1: especially when you're not really willing to go at Trump whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and you still have to have some sort of argument
Speaker 1: to move on from the guy that the Republican base
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly likes.
Speaker 4: Could I see him.
Speaker 1: Really, you know, supplanting Ron DeSantis as the number two
Speaker 1: and really positioning himself as the primary Trump alternative in
Speaker 1: case something happens that right now is unforeseen. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: could see that. I don't think that that is crazy
Speaker 1: at all. So anyway, that's some of what we'll be
Speaker 1: looking for at the debate. At the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: this is another interesting story with regards to him, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate him coming.
Speaker 3: Out with this too. For the record, okay, we'll.
Speaker 4: Get into the details. So put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Vivek is accusing Newsmax of basically telling him he needs
Speaker 1: to pay in order to get coverage on the network. Now,
Speaker 1: this is pretty wild because listen, candidates aren't stupid. They
Speaker 1: probably all suspect that maybe they'll get more favor favorable
Speaker 1: coverage on any of these news networks or conservative outlets
Speaker 1: or whatever, if they pay for advertising on those networks.
Speaker 1: But according to Vivek, Chris Ruddy, who runs the network,
Speaker 1: just outright, like bluntly told him, if he wants better coverage,
Speaker 1: then he can pay for advertising. And part of why
Speaker 1: this is so believable is because you all may not
Speaker 1: even know. There's this Republican businessman named Perry Johnson who
Speaker 1: is running for president and apparently he pays for a
Speaker 1: lot of ads on Newsmax, and Newsmax has gone all
Speaker 1: in for this guy in terms of his coverage. He's
Speaker 1: on their airwaves all the time. They're doing some like
Speaker 1: documentary series about his campaign.
Speaker 4: They have all of these.
Speaker 1: Like Perry Johnson puff pieces, oh and lo and behold.
Speaker 1: It just so happens that he's spending a lot of
Speaker 1: advertising dollars on the network. So that context, I think
Speaker 1: makes the Ramaswami claim here very believable.
Speaker 3: Oh one hundred and fifty percent.
Speaker 2: And in fact, as Ben Smith, who's outlet four actually
Speaker 2: originally reported this, almost immediately after the allegation came out,
Speaker 2: there was a hit piece against Ramaswami actually on the
Speaker 2: network where they were like, oh, interesting, and they specifically
Speaker 2: were doing segments about Vivic Ramaswami and when she said
Speaker 2: that he would cut aid to Israel. So I'll read
Speaker 2: directly what they say quote Vivic's comments put him in
Speaker 2: the same ballpark as those radical progressives who do not
Speaker 2: think that the state of Israel should exist. Those, by
Speaker 2: the way, are comments based on him saying that we
Speaker 2: shouldn't treat Israel special like everybody else, and by cutting
Speaker 2: aid he means just normalizing it to everybody else.
Speaker 3: Apparently a radical idea who is out.
Speaker 2: There, And I will say, look on that one in particular,
Speaker 2: I think that takes a hell of a lot of
Speaker 2: courage in a Republican debate. That's actual America first principle,
Speaker 2: if you were thinking about it ideologically consistently, something that
Speaker 2: I would support. I think it also is a direct
Speaker 2: signal to a lot of the donor class who was
Speaker 2: obsessed with Israel that he's like, no, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to be taking orders from you. That this is one
Speaker 2: of those benefits of being independently welchaired. And it's a
Speaker 2: direct contrast with Ron DeSantis because his constant attack against
Speaker 2: Ron is you are a donor controlled actual machine and you.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, let's think about the main thing that
Speaker 2: DeSantis walked back in the entire all of his controversy.
Speaker 2: He didn't necessarily he kind of walked away from Disney
Speaker 2: because he said, quote, I've moved on from that after
Speaker 2: he took a lot of heat for it. I think
Speaker 2: that was both ideological but a lot of it was
Speaker 2: Donor driven. But Ukraine to me was the big debarger point.
Speaker 2: He said something marginally towards the restrictionist side of foreign
Speaker 2: policy whenever it came to his Ukraine comments, and then
Speaker 2: got flayed by the billionaires of the world, and he
Speaker 2: walked it back.
Speaker 3: I mean, that was a real weak moment for him.
Speaker 2: Vivek, to his credit, has always been pretty consistent whenever
Speaker 2: it came to a to Ukraine and about how this
Speaker 2: isn't in America's national interest and pretty ideologically consistent on
Speaker 2: this issue. So if you look at that within that
Speaker 2: realm of the Israel comments now being the vector of
Speaker 2: attack on Newsmax, I just think it's ridiculous. Also not
Speaker 2: a surprise. Who is the only other candidate who criticized
Speaker 2: Vague for this? Nikki Haley another shocker, just an absolute shocker.
Speaker 4: Another person donor creation.
Speaker 2: Donor creation and probably backed by more Neokon billionaires than
Speaker 2: any other person in the race right now. So I
Speaker 2: think that it is almost one hundred percent true. The
Speaker 2: Perry Johnson critique is so obvious considering how many you know,
Speaker 2: how many ads here man is thought. The funniest thing
Speaker 2: is he claimed he'd qualify for the debate, and we've
Speaker 2: now learned he actually hasn't qualified for the debate, So
Speaker 2: it didn't even spend this money correctly, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe he's got to keep doing it if he wants
Speaker 2: to rack it up. But and to be clear, you know,
Speaker 2: for the lawyers, Newsmax denies it. Chris Ruddy and them
Speaker 2: say it's absolutely not true. Everybody claims there's like a
Speaker 2: Chinese firewall and all that. But listen, it's business, you know,
Speaker 2: when people are when your revenue is based on advertising dollars, well,
Speaker 2: who pays you and who doesn't At the very least,
Speaker 2: it's probably going to impact you, and specifically News Max
Speaker 2: their entire thing. They're not in the same level of
Speaker 2: cable carriage fees that Fox News and all those other
Speaker 2: media organizations are. They're probably even a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot more reliant on advertising dollars than any of their
Speaker 2: oh yeah, competitors, or it makes it even more believable.
Speaker 1: Usation Well and Ben Smith had previously profiled Chris Ruddy
Speaker 1: and said basically like, this is the most shameless operator
Speaker 1: I have ever encountered media, which is saying something because
Speaker 1: Ben has encountered a lot of shameless operators during his time.
Speaker 1: So you know, again, that's part of what makes it believable.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say about Newsmax, I mean
Speaker 1: they've positioned themselves for a right leaning or right wing
Speaker 1: audience as like the real truth tellers you know, who
Speaker 1: are going to give it to you straight, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And I think you can just see in this all
Speaker 1: of these allegations how sort of shameless they are, and
Speaker 1: how all of their positioning, all of their so called
Speaker 1: truth telling is really just about trying to make money
Speaker 1: off of, you know, a particular audience and serving them
Speaker 1: what they want to hear. To me, that that's part
Speaker 1: of what really comes out here. And then the other pieces, Again,
Speaker 1: it's not that the other networks probably don't do some
Speaker 1: of the same in a slightly more you know, nuanced
Speaker 1: and deniable way. But the fact that it's just so
Speaker 1: blatant and brazen is really something like going all in
Speaker 1: for Perry Johnson when he is buying so many ads
Speaker 1: on your network, just makes it all pretty blatant and amazing.
Speaker 1: The last thing I want to say about the debates,
Speaker 1: and again, we'll be doing a whole special on this,
Speaker 1: so we'll save some of our thoughts for there. But
Speaker 1: it's going to be interesting to me, Sager, how much
Speaker 1: wokeness comes up because DeSantis really launched his campaign like
Speaker 1: Florida is where goes to die and vivage. What was
Speaker 1: the name of woke Inc. Was the name of his
Speaker 1: book that really catapulted him into like you know, conservative media, etc.
Speaker 1: What started to get him the Daily Wire deal potentially
Speaker 1: And a whole rash of polling has come out showing that, yeah,
Speaker 1: Republicans are like concerned about but this is far from
Speaker 1: their top issue. It does not seem to have really
Speaker 1: landed even with the Republican base in terms of being
Speaker 1: an issue that falls people to the front. Vivik seems
Speaker 1: to be using that language less, Desanta seems to be
Speaker 1: using that language less. So I'm interested to see how
Speaker 1: much that comes up on the debate stage and how
Speaker 1: much they've sort of internalized like this might not really
Speaker 1: be the thing in the Republican primary.
Speaker 3: I'm curious to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I said, we'll save our thoughts with a
Speaker 2: special again, you can sign up if you want to
Speaker 2: take a look at that. It's going to be fun.
Speaker 2: It's going to be all over our public channels tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Let's go to real estate. This is a really interesting look,
Speaker 2: one that we've course been trying to keep an eye on.
Speaker 2: We referenced yesterday a whole segment about the economy and
Speaker 2: how potential crash could come. But also you can't underestimate
Speaker 2: the greedy heathens on Wall Street. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen. Currently, Wall Street,
Speaker 2: while simultaneously facing a debt bomb in terms of commercial
Speaker 2: real estate, is now raising billions of dollars in funds
Speaker 2: to target quote assets with slumping values. So really what
Speaker 2: they're doing is that entire new hedge funds are popping
Speaker 2: up to try and acquire quote office buildings, apartments, and
Speaker 2: other troubled commercial real estate asset on the cheap at
Speaker 2: a fraction of the price that the investors paid.
Speaker 3: Just a few years ago.
Speaker 2: Why this is noteworthy is that many people who are
Speaker 2: on the bad side of the trade, even banks like
Speaker 2: Goldman sacks we're holding a lot of commercial real estate debt,
Speaker 2: are now trying to capitalize on the fact that the
Speaker 2: debt might go bust to try and buy it and
Speaker 2: squeeze as much value out of this as possible. What
Speaker 2: they're saying is they quote several investment bankers and managers
Speaker 2: in the real estate funds, and what they're talking about
Speaker 2: is that they're trying to target the most troubled real
Speaker 2: estate market that they've seen in decades. The thing is
Speaker 2: that the original bad real estate crash happened in the
Speaker 2: housing sector, in the personal realm, this one being entirely commercial.
Speaker 3: They're now looking at it for vultures.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why everyone should care about this
Speaker 2: is note I didn't just talk about office buildings.
Speaker 3: You know, boohoo in some cases.
Speaker 2: For office buildings, although you know there's some relative like
Speaker 2: mom and pop ish type people who do run those,
Speaker 2: it's really apartment buildings. If a lot of these apartment
Speaker 2: buildings continue to get scooped up by these big hedge funds,
Speaker 2: they're going to try and squeeze even more of the
Speaker 2: value out of that as possible. It means they're going
Speaker 2: to lower services, they're going to jack up rents, they're
Speaker 2: going to continue to make sure they use how zoning
Speaker 2: regulation and all that to make sure that their premium
Speaker 2: remains high. So we should not be cheering, you know,
Speaker 2: distress assets being purchased by a bunch of Wall Street
Speaker 2: funds and billionaires just because some people on Wall Street
Speaker 2: will lose some money on one side of the trade.
Speaker 2: Other people are looking at this as a major, major
Speaker 2: opportunity to come in and buy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, that's a really good point, and it's something we've
Speaker 1: covered on this show. When permanent Capital ends up being
Speaker 1: your landlord, oftentimes the results are completely disastrous. Many of
Speaker 1: these companies use algorithms to jack up rents the absolute
Speaker 1: maximum amount that they possibly can, So they're running software programs,
Speaker 1: and what they've found is that it's worth it to
Speaker 1: actually price people out of some of their apartments in
Speaker 1: order to extract most rent out of the tenants that
Speaker 1: they do have that are able to afford it. So
Speaker 1: that's one piece of it, is, you know, jacking up
Speaker 1: rents to astronomical rates, and when you have you know,
Speaker 1: the same permanent capital institutions owning many of the apartment
Speaker 1: buildings in one town, then they basically get control over
Speaker 1: the market and they have market power to set what
Speaker 1: the going rate of rent is to start with.
Speaker 4: So that's number one.
Speaker 1: Number two, there's all kinds of reporting also about how
Speaker 1: you know they they look to cut costs, of course,
Speaker 1: in every single way possible. So if you've got a problem,
Speaker 1: if you've got mold growing, if you've got a plumbing issue,
Speaker 1: if you've got peeling pain, whatever, it is very unlikely
Speaker 1: that they're going to like hop to and take care
Speaker 1: of the issue or do it in any sort of
Speaker 1: a really you know, effective and sustainable way. So that's
Speaker 1: another piece of this, and then bigger picture in terms
Speaker 1: of the economy, we've been covering this commercial real estate
Speaker 1: potential debt bomb for a few months now, and the
Speaker 1: trend up to this point has been that the people
Speaker 1: who own these buildings have been holding out in terms
Speaker 1: of selling, hoping that things turn, hoping maybe interest rates
Speaker 1: come down and they can you know, refinance, hoping that
Speaker 1: something will change so that they don't have to sell
Speaker 1: at what are rock bottom prices, and the early indications
Speaker 1: from this report is that that phase seems to be ending,
Speaker 1: and now the phase of people being forced to sell
Speaker 1: at you know, extremely low valuations is here. So that
Speaker 1: marks a real turning point in the market. They give
Speaker 1: an example, an owner of a downtown San Francisco office
Speaker 1: tower unloaded the property for forty one million dollars to
Speaker 1: a large developer, Presidio Bay. The seller, Clarion Partners, had
Speaker 1: purchased the property for one hundred and seven million dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4: So back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: This thing at market value is one hundred and seven
Speaker 1: million dollars. They just sold it for forty one I
Speaker 1: mean that just getting grand. And San Francisco's one of
Speaker 1: the hardest hit markets in the entire country in terms
Speaker 1: of vacancy rates, et cetera. But when you look at
Speaker 1: those kind of valuation crashes, it's a scary scenario in
Speaker 1: terms of what some of the downstream effects of that
Speaker 1: could potentially be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, and you know, if you put it
Speaker 2: together with some other things, there could be a potential
Speaker 2: benefit here as long as some of this gets converted
Speaker 2: to housing. I did want to give us a rare
Speaker 2: shout out, I think to Mayor Eric Adams, but a
Speaker 2: new program which I am definitely supportive of. Let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and put this up there on the screen. In
Speaker 2: New York City, Adams has now unveiled a proposal to
Speaker 2: convert vacant offices to housing through a city action in
Speaker 2: called the City of Yes Plans. So basically, the plan
Speaker 2: that Adams has laid out is that they're going to
Speaker 2: take multiple neighborhoods, mostly in the Midtown area, that are
Speaker 2: the most empty. They're going to fast track regulatory approval
Speaker 2: and keep out some of the housing problems that have
Speaker 2: plagued New York City, rent control, all these other things
Speaker 2: that have kept the housing stock particularly low and not
Speaker 2: growing over the last couple of years, and immediately convert
Speaker 2: issue permits for construction, reorganization in and turn these places
Speaker 2: into housing. Twenty four billion dollars currently being appropriated for
Speaker 2: affordable housing as part of the program. But I do
Speaker 2: think that there are a couple of things that we
Speaker 2: have to at least shout out. From what I have read,
Speaker 2: one of the biggest issues in converting office space into
Speaker 2: housing comes down to like window space, lighting and the
Speaker 2: inner areas of these buildings would basically have to be
Speaker 2: commun have to be converted to more communal type areas
Speaker 2: where you wouldn't actually be able to use the of
Speaker 2: majority of some of this real estate as housing. It's
Speaker 2: really the outer rings. So the construction cost of conversion
Speaker 2: is a lot higher than people think. It's not just
Speaker 2: you can't just PLoP a, you know, an office building
Speaker 2: and PLoP a bunch of apartment building inside, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: go live in a box with no.
Speaker 3: Light in it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure New York City would love to
Speaker 2: sell that to you, but I think legally they're not.
Speaker 1: I have to think plumbing is an issue too, because
Speaker 1: a building you might have like one or two bathrooms
Speaker 1: on the whole floor whatever.
Speaker 3: There's a lot that goes into it.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That said, it's an innovative plan and I'd like it.
Speaker 2: I like at least the thinking of, like, hey, let's
Speaker 2: do it. You know, we've got one of the most
Speaker 2: expensive housing markets in the entire country. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why I think it's important is Manhattan has
Speaker 2: two paths. They can either go down this and actually
Speaker 2: make it a place to live. And I know a
Speaker 2: lot of people were young and live. They love it
Speaker 2: there even now continue My own sister lives there. The issue, though,
Speaker 2: is it's exorbitantly expensive and continues to be so.
Speaker 3: Rent increase there's like thirty forty percent.
Speaker 2: And the only other avenue that they had in order
Speaker 2: to raise the tax revenue was to basically make it
Speaker 2: even more of a playground for the rich and just
Speaker 2: make it the ultimate party destination for people who want
Speaker 2: to stay out until four am or whatever.
Speaker 1: Was the Bloomberg model that was to like intentionally make
Speaker 1: it a make Manhattan a luxury good.
Speaker 2: And it worked and they made a lot of money,
Speaker 2: but then a lot of those people with money moved
Speaker 2: to Florida during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: So now what you know.
Speaker 2: It's like it turns out that these people are very
Speaker 2: fickle getting roots and actually turning into more of a
Speaker 2: place that you can live.
Speaker 3: That's one of the original conceptions of New York.
Speaker 2: It's like the original like thing that people who grew
Speaker 2: up there really feel attached to. So I did want
Speaker 2: to shout out this plan because I think it's I
Speaker 2: think it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I lived there for a number of
Speaker 1: years and I loved it.
Speaker 4: I mean, once it.
Speaker 1: Took me a lot of get used to the just
Speaker 1: because I'm from the country, and it was like a
Speaker 1: whole overwhelming experience. But once I did, I really did
Speaker 1: love the energy of living in Manhattan. So you know,
Speaker 1: to have to have any sort of attempt to keep
Speaker 1: the vitality, restore some of the vitality, make it a
Speaker 1: place that young people or families potentially could live.
Speaker 4: I think that's really good.
Speaker 1: I do want to say, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of limitations here because all they're doing is they're changing
Speaker 1: some of the zoning regulations. I'll redo the specifics they
Speaker 1: say they're going to make it so that buildings that
Speaker 1: were built as recently as nineteen ninety could be converted
Speaker 1: to housing right now, I don't know why. Only buildings
Speaker 1: built between before nineteen seventy seven or nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: are eligible, depending on where they are in the city.
Speaker 1: So you can see there's like a tangle of zoning
Speaker 1: regulations that make this difficult. The city would also allow
Speaker 1: buildings to convert to housing anywhere in the city if
Speaker 1: the zoning regulations already allow for residential So they're making
Speaker 1: some zoning changes here, But I think it's a very
Speaker 1: difficult thing for any city to really accomplish on their
Speaker 1: own without state or federal assistance.
Speaker 4: There were a number of efforts.
Speaker 1: Also, I want to be clear, this still has to
Speaker 1: be approved by the city council, so this isn't even
Speaker 1: a done deal yet, and housing issues are always incredibly sticky,
Speaker 1: so we'll see whether it actually even passes. There were
Speaker 1: several plans put forward at the New York state level,
Speaker 1: pushed by Governor Kathy Hochel, that failed that would have
Speaker 1: provided some financial incentives for developers to make these sort
Speaker 1: of expensive, costly conversions from office space to residentials.
Speaker 4: So those failed.
Speaker 1: So there's no money involved here, and as you're pointing out, Soccer,
Speaker 1: the conversions are very expensive. So we'll see if the
Speaker 1: math ends up working out for this to actually shift
Speaker 1: the balance here whatsoever. When you don't have state or
Speaker 1: federal money backing up an attempted transition, my guesses, is
Speaker 1: probably not really going to be anywhere close to sufficient
Speaker 1: to induce developers to do what you want them to do.
Speaker 1: But it's an experiment. I appreciate that they're trying, and
Speaker 1: we'll keep an eye and.
Speaker 4: Safe it works.
Speaker 2: So let's try it. If it fails, so be it.
Speaker 2: But you know, right now it's a crisis and it's
Speaker 2: not working. So let's continue down there and I'll continue
Speaker 2: to try it. At least give credit to people who
Speaker 2: are trying something innovative and interesting. Let's go to the
Speaker 2: next one here on China. This is something that I
Speaker 2: know a lot of you were interested in, and the
Speaker 2: ongoing is to lead up to the Bricks Summit in
Speaker 2: South Africa is actually an area of great interest. Bricks
Speaker 2: for people who don't recall, was a phrase that was
Speaker 2: coined on Wall Street in two thousand and seven. It
Speaker 2: referred to Brazil, India, China, and South Africa as the
Speaker 2: bricks nations that we're going to continue to grow. Now
Speaker 2: there's a lot going on, sorry, Russia as well in that.
Speaker 3: One of the ones. There's a lot going on in
Speaker 3: terms of those countries.
Speaker 2: It hasn't necessarily worked out in the same way, but
Speaker 2: one thing that does kind of unite all of those
Speaker 2: powers is that they are relatively independent of the West.
Speaker 2: They have pretty good economic growth outside of Russia. I guess, well,
Speaker 2: it depends, I guess in terms of this quarter, and
Speaker 2: those nations are embracing the label as an alternative to
Speaker 2: the Western economic system, while some of them want to maintain.
Speaker 3: Ties to the West. Anyway, let's go and put this
Speaker 3: up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: China is currently urging the Bricks to become an explicit
Speaker 2: geopolitical rival to the G seven. And the reason why
Speaker 2: this is interesting is it actually has opened up all
Speaker 2: sorts of tensions even within the Bricks system themselves. One
Speaker 2: of the current debates is whether the Bricks Summit should
Speaker 2: invite multiple other nations into Bricks. They want to invite
Speaker 2: places like Argentina, other countries that are developing, and what
Speaker 2: China wants to do is use the Bricks as an
Speaker 2: alternative to the G seven, as an explicit counterweight and
Speaker 2: saying no, these are the emerging nations of the world.
Speaker 2: We're kind of uniting together in a non Western aligned system.
Speaker 2: We reject your economic sanctions, we reject or dominance of
Speaker 2: the global economic system.
Speaker 3: We're building something alternatively.
Speaker 2: The reason why it's interesting is that the split inside
Speaker 2: of Bricks is South Africa and India both have very
Speaker 2: different postures. South Africa is like, no, we're not anti
Speaker 2: Western at all. Makes sense because they actually have a
Speaker 2: lot of trade with the West. Also India, they don't
Speaker 2: want to be a Chinese vassal. They don't necessarily even
Speaker 2: want an alternative to the G seven. They're one of
Speaker 2: the largest economies on Earth. They continue to have budding
Speaker 2: in good relations with the West.
Speaker 3: Their main goal.
Speaker 2: Is to pursue an independent foreign policy in economics, both
Speaker 2: of China and of the Western system. China explicitly is
Speaker 2: anti Western. Russia, of course is also anti Western. So
Speaker 2: it's really like China and Russia. But then you have
Speaker 2: South Africa and India. There's a lot of beef in
Speaker 2: there about India doesn't necessarily want this to be a
Speaker 2: new G seven. So the reason why I think it's
Speaker 2: just interesting is we always have to keep our eye
Speaker 2: on the emerging.
Speaker 3: Alternative systems to what's happening here.
Speaker 2: We can all agree that declining influence of the West
Speaker 2: is happening to what the extent and degree, who knows.
Speaker 2: I mean, the one you could look at the sanctions
Speaker 2: on Russia's a failure, I personally do, because they haven't
Speaker 2: actually achieved their main goal, which is stopping Russia from
Speaker 2: attacking Ukraine.
Speaker 3: But you could also.
Speaker 2: See it as look, you still had the anvil you
Speaker 2: could come down, you could cut off this country virtually overnight.
Speaker 3: That is a lot of power.
Speaker 2: You know, you hobbled their ability to conduct trade, but
Speaker 2: of course they've still been able to.
Speaker 3: Trade with countries like China and Russia.
Speaker 2: And how the bricks decides to conceive of itself and
Speaker 2: move forward, especially in the context of a no longer
Speaker 2: exploding economic growth China is going to be one of
Speaker 2: the defining issues of like what multipolarity looks like in
Speaker 2: the future and is it going to be a block
Speaker 2: is it going to be individual states. I come down
Speaker 2: on the individual states given the level of strife that's
Speaker 2: happening inside.
Speaker 3: But I'm curious what you thought of this.
Speaker 4: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a question mark two about whether Brazil wants
Speaker 1: to be more in that antagonistic side. Are more on that,
Speaker 1: like we just want to have building some more resilience
Speaker 1: basically and have options other than the West. So they're
Speaker 1: planning on potentially invit other countries to join this emerging group,
Speaker 1: and there's also a lot of tension and a lot
Speaker 1: of discussions about Okay, well, what would that criteria be,
Speaker 1: who would we include, what would the pathway to membership be?
Speaker 1: So are a lot of big questions here. One of the
Speaker 1: pieces that I found really interesting as well is there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk globally about de dollarization, right trying
Speaker 1: to move away from the US currency as the world's
Speaker 1: reserve currency. They say that a common currency not on
Speaker 1: the agenda here, but they're going to have a broader
Speaker 1: push towards de dollarization. They could focus on seeking an
Speaker 1: agreement that BRICKS members should increasingly settle trade between each
Speaker 1: other in their local currencies. Officials familiar with discussions said,
Speaker 1: right now, basically dollars and TA bills are used to
Speaker 1: settle trade differences between countries all around the world. So
Speaker 1: what they're trying to move towards is we're not going
Speaker 1: to rely on that. Instead, we're going to use our
Speaker 1: own local currencies. And even without moving towards some sort
Speaker 1: of common currency, that in and of itself is really
Speaker 1: quite significant.
Speaker 4: So look, to me, this is just the budding.
Speaker 1: Realization of a multipolar world that in many ways is
Speaker 1: already here. Even if China, even if China continues to
Speaker 1: struggle economically, their growth significantly reduced, even if they continue
Speaker 1: to struggle with this, you know, these debt loads that
Speaker 1: they have in terms of their real estate and in
Speaker 1: terms of infrastructure. Even if it really does continue down
Speaker 1: this path, when you combine this block together, this is
Speaker 1: a lot of economic might. This is a massive amount
Speaker 1: of GDP, and it is somewhat of a counterweight to
Speaker 1: the US and somewhat of an alternative for people who
Speaker 1: don't want to have to effectively koutou or whatever the
Speaker 1: US wants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is a fantastic feature piece over at the Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal. I encourage everybody's interest to go read it.
Speaker 2: It's called China's forty or boom is over what comes next?
Speaker 2: It's basically a lot of speculation as to forty years
Speaker 2: of booming economic growth is now definitively come to an end.
Speaker 2: The current IMF trajectory puts China's growth at below four
Speaker 2: percent in the coming years, quote than half of its
Speaker 2: tally for most of the past four decades. Current feature
Speaker 2: of current trends show that growth has slowed down from
Speaker 2: three percent from five percent just in twenty nineteen and
Speaker 2: will fall to just two percent and twenty thirty, making
Speaker 2: it a fully developed economy.
Speaker 3: What does that actually look like? And what is what
Speaker 3: are people going to do?
Speaker 2: The thing is, I've said this before, one of the
Speaker 2: explicit deals the CCP made was, Yeah, you're gonna be
Speaker 2: surveiled wherever you go, and we're going to make you rich.
Speaker 2: We're going to make you from poor to middle class
Speaker 2: and in many cases upper middle class. And for the rich,
Speaker 2: you're going to go from like marginal rich to some
Speaker 2: of the world's greatest billionaires and richest people on planet Earth.
Speaker 3: That was a great deal for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: What does it look like now?
Speaker 2: And with the middle class in particular in China really
Speaker 2: chafing at some of the housing crisis going on, at
Speaker 2: the real estate booms and busts and kind of the
Speaker 2: wild economic stuff that's been wrought post COVID, it's an
Speaker 2: open question of what does the new social contract look
Speaker 2: like inside of China? Right? And that social contract also
Speaker 2: comes down to what does their foreign policy look like?
Speaker 2: Much of China's foreign policy over the last forty years
Speaker 2: has been one entirely of economics. They basically economically took
Speaker 2: over the US and destroyed the industrial middle class by
Speaker 2: buying off our politicians and by being smart by subsidizing
Speaker 2: their own industry. The trick only works once they used
Speaker 2: it in Africa and elsewhere they've got the debt. But really,
Speaker 2: what I think it points to is the thesis that
Speaker 2: as economic growth and all that starts to slow down,
Speaker 2: and as the economic power that you've been able to
Speaker 2: wield just goes down, well what do you turn to.
Speaker 2: You turn towards your herd assets, and you turn towards
Speaker 2: your military. So this is the thing about multipolarity is
Speaker 2: that you can actually see more conflict in all that
Speaker 2: in the system whenever states begin to decline in overall
Speaker 2: influence and whenever they're increasing with relative peace over the
Speaker 2: last twenty five years or so. So the question though is,
Speaker 2: you know, look, they could go the other way and
Speaker 2: they'd be like, we're all making a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Everyone here is becoming rich. We could become like Japan
Speaker 2: will slow down. But Japan is a first world nation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they've got demographic problem, They've got all this, But last
Speaker 2: time I checked, is one of the cleanest and nicest
Speaker 2: places literally on earth, according to everybody I know who's
Speaker 2: ever been there. They have a lot of different choices
Speaker 2: about which way that they want to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the problem is that Japan reached a level of
Speaker 1: per capita income right before their big slow down that
Speaker 1: China is nowhere close to achieving. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: look per capita, China still hasn't even reached like middle
Speaker 1: income status, even though you know, they've done a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount to lift their own people out of poverty. Much
Speaker 1: of the world growth and improvement and living standards is
Speaker 1: located just in the nation of China. But they aren't
Speaker 1: at that level that Japan was at when their slow
Speaker 1: down began. So that's part of what makes this very difficult.
Speaker 1: I mean, I said this before, but just as a reminder,
Speaker 1: the way that this worked out with Chinese growth is,
Speaker 1: you know, first they really build out their industrial manufacturing capacity,
Speaker 1: basically took that as far as they could. Then they
Speaker 1: built out all of this infrastructure. And there are some
Speaker 1: anecdotes in here in the Wall Street Journal piece that
Speaker 1: are pretty wild. They just built a COVID nineteen quarantine
Speaker 1: facility and one province that's nearly the site is the
Speaker 1: size of three football fields, despite China having already ended
Speaker 1: its zero COVID policy months ago, long after the world
Speaker 1: has moved on from the pandemic and other localities are
Speaker 1: doing the same about one fifth of apartments. So after
Speaker 1: infrastructure was like overbuilt, then they moved on to all right,
Speaker 1: we'll build out housing like crazy. About a fifth of
Speaker 1: apartments in urban China one hundred and thirty million units
Speaker 1: or so are unoccupied. So, you know, massively built out
Speaker 1: real estate created this huge debt bubble that she has
Speaker 1: really been trying to deflate, allowing Evergrand to effectively go bust.
Speaker 1: Country Garden also having issues, you know, these shadow banks
Speaker 1: having issues now as well, so that has sort of
Speaker 1: reached its end. And this is, like I said, it's
Speaker 1: very intentional. God put the Bloomberg piece up on the screen,
Speaker 1: because what they point to here is that she, unlike Biden,
Speaker 1: is trying to run the economy here very hot, you know,
Speaker 1: with the infrastructure, with the Inflation Reduction Act, trying to
Speaker 1: inject money, continuing to inject money into the economy, having
Speaker 1: some sort of butting industrial policy. Jijinping is letting China's
Speaker 1: economy flail. And the bet is here that they can
Speaker 1: engineer some sort of a somewhat soft landing in terms
Speaker 1: of the apartment real estate residential bubble, and they are
Speaker 1: investing a lot in effectively renewable energy. I mean making
Speaker 1: a big bet on electric vehicles, big bet on solar
Speaker 1: and wind power, big bet on the batteries that are
Speaker 1: critical to all of this. I mean, they are really
Speaker 1: pushing forward to make that the new sector.
Speaker 4: But the question is, isn't enough?
Speaker 1: Is that enough to really provide jobs and middle class
Speaker 1: for all of the people who are getting college degrees
Speaker 1: and who are aspiring to be part of that middle
Speaker 1: class in a country with such a large population. The
Speaker 1: answer is probably, know what a lot of Western economists
Speaker 1: have been sort of urging the Chinese government the direction
Speaker 1: to go in is to, you know, create a more
Speaker 1: consumer driven economy like we have here. So basically Chinese
Speaker 1: citizens tend to save a lot more than we do here,
Speaker 1: So it's like, find ways to induce them to buy
Speaker 1: a bunch of consumer goods and crap and go into
Speaker 1: debt the way that we have here, and they're resistant
Speaker 1: to that idea, I think for a lot of good reasons.
Speaker 4: But it creates a bit of.
Speaker 1: A conundrum in terms of how they'll be able to
Speaker 1: continue to build on a middle class, how they'll be
Speaker 1: able to maintain any sort of the social contract that
Speaker 1: they've had and whether or not they're going to be
Speaker 1: able to continue even you know, modest growth, let alone
Speaker 1: the really rapid growth that they have gotten used to
Speaker 1: over the past number of years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 2: I mean, anyway, it's going to be one of the
Speaker 2: most defining questions of like how this plays out, what
Speaker 2: Shei Shehingping decides to do. On the one hand, we
Speaker 2: have this we put this up there on the screen
Speaker 2: from Bloomberg. What Bloomberg really showed is that she sing
Speaker 2: as you were talking about, they've decided to run it cold.
Speaker 3: They want to stop some of.
Speaker 2: The apartment buildings from basically running their economy. Real estate
Speaker 2: is too overly penetrated whenever it comes to their overall
Speaker 2: GDP growth, and they're making a conscious decision and trying
Speaker 2: to do a full blown, almost planned model of slowing
Speaker 2: things down and moving things into the future.
Speaker 3: So they're not freaking out as of yet.
Speaker 2: But as Peter's Ion has talked about, they have a
Speaker 2: lot of structural problems behind them. Their demographic problem is
Speaker 2: worse than Japan right now in terms of the mismatch.
Speaker 2: Now they're decelerating dramatically in terms of growth. Can they
Speaker 2: keep a hold on the population, and then what do
Speaker 2: they do abroad? You know, how do they unite keep
Speaker 2: the population united. These are big, big questions historically, of
Speaker 2: which you know is going to have massive consequence for
Speaker 2: all of us.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, this is another one that could have massive consequences
Speaker 1: for all of us. New research into the impact of
Speaker 1: screen time on really young children, really on babies.
Speaker 4: Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So new study just came out the headline here screen
Speaker 1: time at age one year and communication, problem solving, developmental
Speaker 1: delay at two and four years. So they found that
Speaker 1: the more screen time that young babies one years old have,
Speaker 1: the more developmental delays that they experience from ages two
Speaker 1: to four years in communication and problem solving. So this
Speaker 1: is really significant. It backs up a number of other
Speaker 1: studies that have shown similar results in terms of longer
Speaker 1: screen time leading to some developmental delays. But one thing
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting here sober is that they
Speaker 1: actually try to separate out not all screen time is
Speaker 1: the same, and they found that if you put your
Speaker 1: kids in front of things that are more educational, it
Speaker 1: really reduces the negative impact and in fact can actually
Speaker 1: improve some communication and problem solving and particular language skills
Speaker 1: in that critical age of two to four years. So
Speaker 1: I appreciate it that they put that part in there
Speaker 1: because they sort of acknowledge like, in the modern world,
Speaker 1: you are fighting a losing battle if you're trying to
Speaker 1: keep your kids away from screens, Like as a parent,
Speaker 1: I can tell you it is damn near impossible.
Speaker 4: So if you can.
Speaker 1: Focus on what's the quality of the content that my
Speaker 1: kids are engaging with, that my very young children in
Speaker 1: particular are engaging with, at least you have a fighting
Speaker 1: chance and can be armed with some knowledge that's actually
Speaker 1: useful instead of just being like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do. I give up, this is impossible.
Speaker 3: That was my question. You know what coounts as educational.
Speaker 2: I know that they're like games and different iPad things
Speaker 2: and stuff that you can do, but also it seems
Speaker 2: very difficult just anecdotally watching my friends who do have
Speaker 2: kids kids have you know, their grubby little hands are
Speaker 2: always over your phone. Oh yeah, and they're always it's
Speaker 2: like if you don't watch them like a hawk, next
Speaker 2: thing you know, they're on TikTok like it's like every
Speaker 2: single time. And then the level of just being around
Speaker 2: young kids trying to circumvent the parents be like hey,
Speaker 2: can I have your phone? I'm like why, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: they want to go on Instagram and you know, I'm
Speaker 2: like okay, sure whatever, just give them the phone. Next
Speaker 2: thing you know, they've been on Instagram for the last
Speaker 2: like thirty five minutes, or on YouTube without parental locks.
Speaker 2: It does seem like this option takes a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: of just watching. You're like you have to watch and
Speaker 2: be like are you what are you doing? How can
Speaker 2: you curate this? And they're smart. They always are like
Speaker 2: working around the system and their controls and what they're
Speaker 2: allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do.
Speaker 2: I know somebody who actually I think they have a
Speaker 2: four year old and their kid has never used a
Speaker 2: phone or an iPad. What's interesting, and they are very concerted.
Speaker 2: So they have a lot of books and toys. It's
Speaker 2: always a big thing if you have a babysitter because
Speaker 2: they're like, no phone, no iPad. It's like, this is
Speaker 2: how we do our things. But even though the kid
Speaker 2: has never used the phone, when they see their parents
Speaker 2: on phones, they always reach for even though they've never
Speaker 2: experienced it.
Speaker 4: Well, that's it.
Speaker 3: That is crazy to.
Speaker 2: Me because I'm like, wow, they don't even know what's
Speaker 2: on the phone. They just know it's interesting and they
Speaker 2: could see that the way the parents use their phones
Speaker 2: right there, and they know it's an object of interest.
Speaker 2: And that kind of freaked me out because I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: like they have a deep intuition that this is like
Speaker 2: the greatest entertainment device ever made.
Speaker 1: Well, i mean, what kids are. They're a little sponges,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to figure out how to be in
Speaker 1: the world and what to do and how to operate.
Speaker 1: And so when they see us really engaged in this
Speaker 1: or really engage in this or whatever, that's what they do.
Speaker 1: They mimic their parents, and they mimic what's around them
Speaker 1: to try to figure out, you know, how to be
Speaker 1: in the world. And so yeah, of course, when and
Speaker 1: even if you and your household are like I'm not
Speaker 1: going to.
Speaker 4: Be on my phone when I'm around my children, which
Speaker 4: good luck.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're out in the world, guess what
Speaker 1: they're going to see every other adult and teenager and
Speaker 1: whatever out on their phone. So that's why I feel
Speaker 1: like it is fighting a losing battle, and there's also
Speaker 1: a part of me that you know, there's a balance
Speaker 1: between limiting the screen time, trying to improve the quality
Speaker 1: of the screen time that they are inevitably going to get,
Speaker 1: and you know, doing the best that you can. But
Speaker 1: there's also this is the world that we live in,
Speaker 1: and they are going to need to navigate these devices.
Speaker 1: They are going to need to be digital natives in
Speaker 1: order to effectively operate in the world that we live
Speaker 1: in too, So that is a part of.
Speaker 4: It as well. But you know, I uh had three kids.
Speaker 1: One of them, my son is the one who is
Speaker 1: I mean, he is a junkie, like I really have
Speaker 1: to He's the one. The two girls, I don't actually
Speaker 1: have an issue with Ida, the youngest, she will want
Speaker 1: to watch she really loves these like Ninja kids videos
Speaker 1: because she's very into gymnastics. So she'll watch them for
Speaker 1: a while and then she's done, and then she wants
Speaker 1: to actually go out in the world and do her
Speaker 1: own like cartwheels and flips and whatever. My son, though,
Speaker 1: he will stay on there endlessly, and he has always
Speaker 1: been this way. Now, I will say when he was young,
Speaker 1: he was actually obsessed with these.
Speaker 4: Like letter and word apps.
Speaker 1: That was what he spent the bulk of his time
Speaker 1: on and I do think because of that, he was
Speaker 1: like an early reader, and you know, he was early
Speaker 1: to some of those skills that have really helped him
Speaker 1: in terms of his academics. So it wasn't all bad
Speaker 1: and all downside. But to your point, Sager, you know,
Speaker 1: he likes chess, so will watch these chess videos, which
Speaker 1: I'm fine with. But then the next thing, I know,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, the bottom of the barrel type
Speaker 1: so YouTube content, it just evolves very quickly. And even
Speaker 1: if you're watching chess videos was relatively educational, like okay,
Speaker 1: watch him for an hour, maybe that's fine, but he
Speaker 1: would watch them endlessly. So it's just a contant battle.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that there's more research being done because I
Speaker 1: do think this is one of the central issues and
Speaker 1: central struggles of our time is like what is this
Speaker 1: doing in kids' brains? What are some reasonable, like sustainable
Speaker 1: interventions that parents can deploy, tools parents can use, What
Speaker 1: sort of regulation needs to be put in place, because
Speaker 1: as you get older, we also see more and more
Speaker 1: research that you know, anxiety and teenagers and suicide and
Speaker 1: teenagers and all of these horrible mental health outcomes really
Speaker 1: spiked around the time that smartphones became widespread and social
Speaker 1: media became so such a central part of our lives,
Speaker 1: and it started to be really gamified with algorithms and
Speaker 1: like really pitched at keeping you sort of emotionally engaged
Speaker 1: and emotionally overwrought all the time. So to me, this
Speaker 1: is one of the central issues that no one has
Speaker 1: great answers for and everybody's still struggling with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think, you know, for people who are
Speaker 2: asking questions, it's a high quality study. It's several thousand
Speaker 2: children that they tracked, you know, in terms of the
Speaker 2: developmental the actual like benchmarks and all the things. It
Speaker 2: seemed quite reasonable what they were measuring. I think we
Speaker 2: probably do need a hell of a lot more research.
Speaker 2: It's also it's one of those difficult as you said,
Speaker 2: keeping it completely off is hard also, but you know,
Speaker 2: you have to have sustainable intervention. The people I feel
Speaker 2: for are like people who are in a situation where clearly,
Speaker 2: you know, their children are actoring out and they're in public,
Speaker 2: So playing is the most classical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's the easiest thing to do.
Speaker 2: You shove an iPad in the kids, you know, hand,
Speaker 2: it's like five six hours. Like, well, it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: the best thing. Now we're breaking routines, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff going on. You're at dinner or you're
Speaker 2: in a restaurant, and I feel for a lot of
Speaker 2: these parents, I think it's probably one of it's incredibly
Speaker 2: difficult to navigate this. So yeah, I mean thinking and
Speaker 2: looking at it anecdotally, this is one of the big
Speaker 2: questions for young parents. They all they don't know what
Speaker 2: to do. Yeah, and they're dealing with infants here, you know,
Speaker 2: they just they really have no idea. How should the phone,
Speaker 2: should we check the phones in front of our kids?
Speaker 2: How do we handle even in the car, even even
Speaker 2: the car has screens. I've had some kids in my car.
Speaker 2: They're always playing around with these screens. Immediately they're like
Speaker 2: they know exactly what to do and they're going towards it.
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of stunning actually to watch just how
Speaker 2: quickly they can pick up on it and how they've
Speaker 2: watched videos on YouTube about how to navigate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Screen, well, I've noticed with my kids if they have
Speaker 1: too much screen time, So like we have rules in
Speaker 1: the house about no screen time in the morning, because
Speaker 1: if they have to screen time like to start their day,
Speaker 1: they are like little junkies. Like the reward system in
Speaker 1: the brain that they're getting from these videos or gains
Speaker 1: or whatever they're doing.
Speaker 4: It really is.
Speaker 1: Like the same biological response as if they were having
Speaker 1: some sort of mild drug. The more and it makes
Speaker 1: them the behavior deteriorates if they have too much screen time.
Speaker 1: I notice really really clearly, so you know, even anecdotally,
Speaker 1: just day to day, you can tell it is having
Speaker 1: an impact on them. So, you know, we just try
Speaker 1: to put some reasonable limits in and do the best
Speaker 1: we can because I do think in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways it is like a losing uphill battle, and it
Speaker 1: just helps to be armed with as much information as
Speaker 1: we possibly can can be as we navigate this landscape.
Speaker 3: Absolutely well said all right, mister Beast, this is the
Speaker 3: funniest thing. Our producers brought it to our attention.
Speaker 2: Mister Beast, as he does, he produces, you know videos,
Speaker 2: often ostentatious, big, you know, entertaining videos. He recently dropped
Speaker 2: a video where every country on Earth is competing for
Speaker 2: the gold in a mister Beast Olympics.
Speaker 3: Here's a little bit of a tease that he put out.
Speaker 2: I flew down one person from every country on Earth
Speaker 2: and they.
Speaker 3: Have to compete in the most extreme.
Speaker 4: Version of the Olympics. If you've ever created last Country
Speaker 4: standing with this two hundred and fifty thousand dollars golden method,
Speaker 4: Oh go, go, go.
Speaker 3: Go, whatis country takes on the goal?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 2: The funny thing is is that I doubt mister Beast
Speaker 2: and this team realized the geopolitical controversy they were weighing
Speaker 2: into whenever they decided to not only hold the Olympics
Speaker 2: but also produce some maps. So one user actually did
Speaker 2: a great job of digging into this. Let's go and
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen. This video has
Speaker 2: chosen has waded into every geopolitical conflict all at once.
Speaker 2: So this is the definitive take. I think here mister Beast,
Speaker 2: the most watched YouTuber. I think he's finally settled several
Speaker 2: disputes for us. Who's the country and who's began to
Speaker 2: go through? Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: He does recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, but does not
Speaker 2: recognize the four separatist republics that putin recently adopted into Russia.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the next one. So that's one.
Speaker 2: He does recognize Palestine, but only in the West Bank.
Speaker 3: As its country. Okay, compromising, he's already brought us world peace.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next one. He does not recognize Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Now you would think, oh, my gosh, is mister Beach
Speaker 2: kowtowing to China?
Speaker 3: What exactly is going on here?
Speaker 2: It's pretty clear here he's not just sucking up, you know,
Speaker 2: to one particular ideology, as we can see from the
Speaker 2: next one. Let's put this up there. He does recognize
Speaker 2: the Taliban government. Okay, let's move on now to my
Speaker 2: personal favorite. Mister Beach does recognize the State of Georgia,
Speaker 2: the sovereign state of Georgia. However, he uses the flag
Speaker 2: of the US State of Georgia by said un three
Speaker 2: of Georgia. Interesting, and that pretty much brings us to
Speaker 2: an ed. So Christal, what's your what's you take here?
Speaker 2: I think mister Beast has just brought us world peace.
Speaker 2: He's solved every major geopolical unwittingly and most likely due
Speaker 2: to one of his researchers.
Speaker 3: He probably didn't even think about this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I love. I mean the the accepts Hong Kong,
Speaker 4: but not Taiwan.
Speaker 3: Except Hong Kong not Taiwan. You know what I was saying,
Speaker 3: He use a British supremacist.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm hanging on in a since it
Speaker 1: was genius because it's clearly non ideal. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just completely random, and if it was anything other than random,
Speaker 1: it would have actually been controversy.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: But since it's just.
Speaker 1: Like Hong Kong, sure, Taiwan, no, Palestine, Okay, but only
Speaker 1: in the West, bed Prime sure, you know Luhansk. No,
Speaker 1: just because it's like totally non ideological and random, it
Speaker 1: actually is the perfect plan. Yes, because if you did
Speaker 1: it in some sort of like a concerted fashion, actually
Speaker 1: weighing these individual claims and having some sort of a
Speaker 1: like coherent foreign policy view worldview that was applied to this,
Speaker 1: then it would be controversial. But since he didn't do that,
Speaker 1: it ends up just being funny.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: I also I was looking for some controversy around the
Speaker 2: line of control on Pakistan and on India.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's a hot one. Could you tell? Could you
Speaker 4: discern the maps are a little.
Speaker 2: Hard, The maps aren't the screenshots and all those that
Speaker 2: we gathered weren't the best.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think if there were any other shout outs.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, here's one recognizing Western Sahara up but also
Speaker 2: recognizes Morocco's claims on a de facto border, which is
Speaker 2: one that cuts against what both of those two want.
Speaker 2: So geography nerds got a lot they could say out
Speaker 2: of this, but I actually thought it was It was
Speaker 2: almost like sweet in terms of its naivete and yeah interest,
Speaker 2: where you know it's the biggest stuff, the biggest YouTuber
Speaker 2: in the world, but also clearly you know he's doing
Speaker 2: this for fun, He's doing it for a lark, and
Speaker 2: I actually appreciate that no major controversy is coming with this.
Speaker 2: Like remember when Vietnam bought banned the Barbie movie over
Speaker 2: its map because they were like, oh, the Barbie.
Speaker 3: Movies map didn't show show.
Speaker 2: The line of whatever, the nine dash line or for
Speaker 2: the South chrying to see. I'm like, it's a freaking
Speaker 2: cartoon map. Yeah, and it's one of those where, look,
Speaker 2: I'm the first guy. If they actually did kowtow to
Speaker 2: China and all that, I would call it out one
Speaker 2: hundred percent I've done a lot of stuff here, but
Speaker 2: it is so clear to me. It's like from Greta
Speaker 2: Gerwig and all this. They didn't think about it for
Speaker 2: a single second if.
Speaker 4: You were seeing this map.
Speaker 1: It was hilarious to me that because this actually was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a controversy on the right, Oh
Speaker 1: what do they do?
Speaker 4: I was reading.
Speaker 1: If you look at the map, it's totally like a
Speaker 1: kid draw. You can't even tell there's things that don't
Speaker 1: exist in new things that do. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: like completely absurd to imagine that this reflected anything approaching
Speaker 1: reality or was taking some sort of geopolitical stand that
Speaker 1: was ridiculous. So yeah, I think part of why this
Speaker 1: didn't end up being any sort of like a controversy
Speaker 1: thing is because it is so random, because it is
Speaker 1: so just like scattershot, and in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: because it's so sloppy, like taking the country of Georgia
Speaker 1: and giving it the state of Georgia's flat.
Speaker 4: It's probably just some producer it was like.
Speaker 1: Tasked work entire Wikipedia or whatever and trying to come
Speaker 1: up with.
Speaker 3: This Georgia plan. I know exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: I feel that probably didn't even realize Georgia was real country,
Speaker 2: because it would.
Speaker 1: Be impossible, it would actually be impossible to go through
Speaker 1: this exercise and make everyone happen like to you know,
Speaker 1: really intentionally try to draw out what you think is
Speaker 1: right and just and.
Speaker 4: Accurate and what like.
Speaker 1: There is no way you can make everybody happy. So
Speaker 1: just making it random was the best part.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I think about the real Olympics.
Speaker 2: Remember they have all those like unflagged countries where people
Speaker 2: do play and people march in the parade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Arge is the real country. It's like, it's always
Speaker 3: a massive kind of Taiwan is always a big one.
Speaker 3: Palestine is always a big one, you know, in the past,
Speaker 3: like Swazland and places like that.
Speaker 2: So anyway, yeah, I think it's hilarious and I'm actually
Speaker 2: glad there was no deranged cycle of discourse around this.
Speaker 2: Let mister beast be mister beast, let them just play around.
Speaker 4: Did you watch the actual video?
Speaker 3: I watched the full thing. I watched it.
Speaker 4: It's fun I mean, it's all the movies are great.
Speaker 2: Like my personal favorite was the one on So I'm
Speaker 2: a traveld Junkie. I loved the playing video, the one
Speaker 2: where He's like, here's what a thousand, one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: flight up to like.
Speaker 3: One hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Oh oh, that is kind of That was.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite videos that he's ever done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well this, I mean, this goes well with the
Speaker 1: block we just did on screen time.
Speaker 3: Kids love, they love.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, my son is not a huge Mister
Speaker 1: Beast fan. He's not like watch the conto. He's not
Speaker 1: like obsessed with it. But some of his friends are
Speaker 1: like the biggest Mister Beast stands.
Speaker 4: On the planet.
Speaker 3: Every kid, if I said a word.
Speaker 4: Against mister Beast, they would become inform me.
Speaker 2: Every kid I've ever met under twelve, it's like, I
Speaker 2: love mister Beast. There always like do you have feastables?
Speaker 3: Am I? How do you even know about it?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: This is crazy? Yeah true.
Speaker 1: Anyway, good job, mister Beast, thank you for solving all
Speaker 1: the world's problems.
Speaker 2: That's right, we got a great guests standing by sorabamar
Speaker 2: Let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Excited to be joined this morning by Sorabamari. He is
Speaker 1: founder and editor of Compact Magazine. He's also a contributing
Speaker 1: editor to the American Conservative and Most importantly for this morning,
Speaker 1: author of a new book called Tyranny, Inc. It's all
Speaker 1: about corporate power. The subhad here is how private power
Speaker 1: crushed American liberty and what to do about it.
Speaker 4: Great to have you, Sora, Welcome, good.
Speaker 6: To see you, exc you both, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, So just tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: of why you decided to write this book at this
Speaker 1: moment and what the central thesis is.
Speaker 7: Sure this book was actually conceived on election night twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: It wasn't clear what the outcome was, but one thing
Speaker 7: was clear, and that was the present sident. Trump and
Speaker 7: the Trumpy and GOP had not only consolidated the working
Speaker 7: class gains that I had made among white working class people,
Speaker 7: but had begun to make inroads among working class people
Speaker 7: of color. And so what I proposed to do at
Speaker 7: that time was to write a kind of manifesto for
Speaker 7: a new working class Conservatism. But when I actually got
Speaker 7: down to writing the book, I realized that that would
Speaker 7: be putting the cart before the horse, because a lot
Speaker 7: of the issues that stand in the way of working
Speaker 7: class flourishing in this country have to do with what
Speaker 7: happens in the private economy. Whereas a lot of the
Speaker 7: kind of populous energy of the since twenty sixteen had
Speaker 7: gone toward not entirely, but a lot of it toward
Speaker 7: kind of cultural populism. And so we did not have
Speaker 7: a working class agenda for the Republican Party, even though
Speaker 7: it did claim a republic working class base.
Speaker 6: So what this.
Speaker 7: Book does is to is to show those obstacles, and
Speaker 7: many of them, I have to say, have been put
Speaker 7: up by Republicans, by center right lawmakers, Supreme Court justices,
Speaker 7: including ones appointed by President Trump sadly despite his appeal
Speaker 7: to organize labor in twenty fifteen and sixteen.
Speaker 6: So the core thesis of.
Speaker 7: The book is that, contrary to what many American conservatives
Speaker 7: have come to believe since the past, over the past
Speaker 7: two generations, since the Reagan era, government is not the
Speaker 7: only source of coercion in our lives, and in fact,
Speaker 7: we are surrounded by coercion needed out by the private
Speaker 7: sector in our lives as workers and consumers. And most
Speaker 7: of the book is just the kind of repertorial tour
Speaker 7: of what that looks like from the point of view
Speaker 7: of different ordinary Americans and different walks of life. So
Speaker 7: I won't go into all of them, but typically, for example,
Speaker 7: the way in which scheduling and wage precarity sort of
Speaker 7: tightly constrain the lives of people in the lower ends
Speaker 7: of the labor market, especially retail and restaurant workers, so
Speaker 7: that they can't do elder care, they can't do childcare,
Speaker 7: there's no sense of certainty regularity about their schedules.
Speaker 6: All the way to.
Speaker 7: The abuse of commercial arbitration, you know, these privatized corporate
Speaker 7: courts in the workplace where they were this practice was
Speaker 7: never meant by Congress to enter the realm of the workplace,
Speaker 7: where there's vast disparities and bargaining power between workers and employers.
Speaker 7: And then finally, the ravages mainly of private equity and
Speaker 7: hedge funds, the way in which they erode the real
Speaker 7: economy where we produce stuff, useful stuff, and basically sap
Speaker 7: companies out of all their energy and capital and into
Speaker 7: the asset ledgers of a relatively few financiers.
Speaker 3: I think it's really courageous, Harp.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people who are affiliated with the
Speaker 2: RIDE or whatever who don't want to be honest about
Speaker 2: some of the major barriers to that. Why do you
Speaker 2: think that things got to this place where Trump was
Speaker 2: both a vehicle for a lot of working class energy
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, but also effectively allowed himself to be
Speaker 2: co opted by a lot of people around him. But
Speaker 2: then also what we've seen since has been a willingness
Speaker 2: to engage in like cultural wars that definitely align with
Speaker 2: some working class people and with voters, but never really
Speaker 2: giving an inch on the economic front. How do we
Speaker 2: get here? I guess that's part of what you get
Speaker 2: into the book.
Speaker 7: Well, I have to introduce one caveat on the question
Speaker 7: of free trade Trump's actually delivered. You know, decoupling from
Speaker 7: China has now become a bipartisan conventional wisdom, which wasn't
Speaker 7: the case when he ran. Of course, you know, the
Speaker 7: typical organs of the right and the left even attacked
Speaker 7: him for that. That said, on every other front, you're right,
Speaker 7: you know, his Department of Labor was basically stuffed with
Speaker 7: union busters.
Speaker 6: So why is that?
Speaker 7: One is just inertia of a part Parties don't easily
Speaker 7: shift their agenda, even as their voting base might shift.
Speaker 7: Second one is the lack of Republican personnel who are
Speaker 7: willing to or even know the language of dealing with
Speaker 7: corporate power. You know, all of that, all of that
Speaker 7: reform energy and expertise on this front is actually on
Speaker 7: the center left. It's with people like Senator Warren and
Speaker 7: Senator Sanders, shared Brown.
Speaker 6: Chris Murphy.
Speaker 7: You know, like the Republican doesn't have the personnel, but
Speaker 7: the biggest influence is not even like the sociopathic few billionaires.
Speaker 7: And this is the hardest one to talk about, honestly,
Speaker 7: is the fact that the power base of the Republican Party,
Speaker 7: which is not the same as its voting base, but
Speaker 7: the power base of the country of the party, is
Speaker 7: what you would call small and regional capital. It's like
Speaker 7: the higher distributor the chain of car dealerships in a
Speaker 7: particular region. And that figure is the most kind of
Speaker 7: resistant to the to reform. He might be himself in
Speaker 7: some ways a victim of the vicissitudes of the market system.
Speaker 7: He's resentful at larger capital, which is able to muster
Speaker 7: corporate governmental power and so forth. But his only answer
Speaker 7: is always turning down the few constraints that remain to
Speaker 7: try to control the market system and make it a
Speaker 7: little fair.
Speaker 6: It's like, just leave me alone.
Speaker 7: The self made man at the Rubber Chicken Dinner is
Speaker 7: a powerful figure in the Republican Party. Just a quick
Speaker 7: point that what might fix that is if the Republicans
Speaker 7: make enough good faith gestures toward organized labor so that
Speaker 7: the workers who are now voting for the Republican Party
Speaker 7: find an organized voice within the Republican coalition rather than
Speaker 7: being basically people who vote one way but a different
Speaker 7: gettative set of results.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the reasons that you laid out, I'm just
Speaker 1: very skeptical that that's even possible. And you know, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you I was. I was saying to you before
Speaker 1: we started the segment, like I was expecting to hate
Speaker 1: at least some portion of this book, but I really didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, the book is basically like social democracy. I'm
Speaker 1: a social democrat. This could have been a lot of
Speaker 1: this could have been written by like a Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: and the typical, in my opinion, trick that people on
Speaker 1: the right do. I'm think of like vi veg Ramaswami,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Ron de Santis is they'll use a
Speaker 1: lot of the language of.
Speaker 4: A critique of corporate power.
Speaker 1: But then what it comes down to is like and
Speaker 1: that's why we need to fire this one DEI consultant
Speaker 1: or that's why we need to fight back against wokeness.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the whole anti woke discourse in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways has been very cleverly used to
Speaker 1: sort of posture like you have an anti corporate critique,
Speaker 1: but not actually go after corporations in any sort of
Speaker 1: way that would like meaningfully curb their power. The classic
Speaker 1: example that we've talked about here a number of times
Speaker 1: is Marco Rubio pendusap ed that was like, I'm in
Speaker 1: support of the Amazon workers trying and unionize in bessemer
Speaker 1: in justice one limited example, not because I have a
Speaker 1: critique of corporate power, but because I don't like the
Speaker 1: diversity initiatives of Amazon hr so as one example of this,
Speaker 1: So how do you get out of that? And also,
Speaker 1: you know, do you have a critique of that sort
Speaker 1: of use of anti corporate power language but in ways
Speaker 1: that you know, don't actually threaten any of the system
Speaker 1: as it exists now.
Speaker 7: So one quick point about Senator Ruvio, I think he's
Speaker 7: actually one of the better ones. You know, he's exploring
Speaker 7: what it means to be pro labor on the right,
Speaker 7: and so the rhetoric isn't always the way the labor
Speaker 7: left wants to hear it.
Speaker 4: But no, sorry, just to push back.
Speaker 1: I don't really care about whether the rhetoric is the
Speaker 1: way I want to hear it. But like I don't
Speaker 1: see him supporting the proact. You know, I don't see
Speaker 1: him walking the walk in terms of actually backing labor either.
Speaker 7: I would push all three of the sort of most
Speaker 7: committed economic politics economic populace on the right in the Senate, Rubio, Hally, Jdvans,
Speaker 7: all of whom I admired. I would push them and
Speaker 7: have pushed them to support the proact. I would say again, Rubio,
Speaker 7: for example, has done serious work, with the help of
Speaker 7: figures around orncast about the erosion of the real economy
Speaker 7: by finance. But setting that aside, I do I totally agree.
Speaker 7: I agree with you about the critique at large. You
Speaker 7: know that you said you didn't find much to agree
Speaker 7: with you didn't find much to disagree with my book. Likewise,
Speaker 7: I don't find much to disagree with you in what
Speaker 7: you just said. I've come to really despise this kind
Speaker 7: of fake populism, this weird class analysis in which like
Speaker 7: precarious adjunct professors are the elite, and you know, Elon
Speaker 7: Musk is actually the subaltern proletarian hero, you know, or
Speaker 7: just the sort of hostility frankly for the proverbial purple
Speaker 7: herd barista who may not share cultural views, but insofar
Speaker 7: as she's wants like a decent wage and more workplace
Speaker 7: security and health security. You know, if you're pro worker,
Speaker 7: you have to hear that out and listen to that
Speaker 7: and not just sort of image the typical worker as
Speaker 7: only like a self employed roofer or at best a
Speaker 7: kind of burly teamster that's part of the working class.
Speaker 7: But the reality is the working class in the United
Speaker 7: States also includes you know, Filipina ladies, work in hospitality,
Speaker 7: it includes it's like precarious adjuncts and so on. So
Speaker 7: I hear you totally on that. And you know, my
Speaker 7: favorite example is the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The
Speaker 7: collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is a symptom. Is this
Speaker 7: ongoing issue in American banking? I would argue going back
Speaker 7: to the Jacksonian era, where most developed countries have like
Speaker 7: a few large banks that are almost regulated utilities, whereas
Speaker 7: the United States since the Jacksonians has had these small
Speaker 7: and regional banks which can actually their own weird way,
Speaker 7: can wreak havoc.
Speaker 6: So that's a complex and serious issue.
Speaker 7: What was the response of the right to that as
Speaker 7: a kind of populism? Oh, it was because it was
Speaker 7: a woke bank. Well, sorry, but the board of Silicon
Speaker 7: Valley Bank was dominated by white guys.
Speaker 6: What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: There was like one gay guy on there, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we found the wokeness.
Speaker 7: There was a kind of parallel version of this on
Speaker 7: what I call the lifestyle left. Not to make much
Speaker 7: of it, because there's plenty, like I said, plenty of
Speaker 7: good reforms on the left and center left, but there
Speaker 7: is that kind of Corporations have also learned that if
Speaker 7: they sort of do the song and dance of a wokeness. So,
Speaker 7: for example, at RII, the outdoor gear chain, there's been
Speaker 7: an ongo communization drive and infamously, their chief diversity officer
Speaker 7: did a podcast which she began by saying, hello, I'm
Speaker 7: so and so. My pronouns are she and her and oh,
Speaker 7: by the way, I want to acknowledge that I'm coming
Speaker 7: to you from the traditional lands of people, lonely people.
Speaker 7: Please don't join a labor union, was it right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, We cover that extensively here.
Speaker 2: So I am curious, though, in an uncomfortable question, some
Speaker 2: one that I think about all the time. What if
Speaker 2: a lot of the voters don't actually want this? What
Speaker 2: if the voters what if the politicians are responding to
Speaker 2: the correct incentive, which is the voters want culture work.
Speaker 2: They actually like it, they really enjoy watching their politicians
Speaker 2: stick it to the left, and in fact, specifically in
Speaker 2: a primary system, that's the thing that the people who
Speaker 2: really vote, they care about that number one, and they
Speaker 2: care about it the most. I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of polling that could argue otherwise, but voting results. You know, politicians,
Speaker 2: they're cynical people. They respond to incentives. Do you think
Speaker 2: I have it wrong? Do you think it's nuanced?
Speaker 3: What do you think it is?
Speaker 7: I mean, I think cultural issues have their own inner integrity,
Speaker 7: and they're not everything. Not everything that's a cultural phenomenon
Speaker 7: can be reduced to class relations. You know, I'm certainly
Speaker 7: kind of vulgar, vulgar Marxist. That said, the the the
Speaker 7: recent trends in Republican electoral politics, maybe maybe Crystal can
Speaker 7: speak better about this when it comes to the Democrats.
Speaker 7: But on the Republican side, noticed that the candidate who
Speaker 7: won in twenty fifteen and sixteen and sort of barreled
Speaker 7: his way past all these conventional Republicans was the one
Speaker 7: who said I will protect your entitlements. He even contemplated
Speaker 7: a public option in healthcare in that debate with Ted
Speaker 7: Cruz where he said I'm not going to let people
Speaker 7: die on the streets and questioned the party's free trade orthodoxies.
Speaker 7: So to me, I mean, culturally, all those candidates up
Speaker 7: there were more or less just Republicans, even Trump pretending
Speaker 7: to be a cultural conservative in twenty fifteen sixteen, whether
Speaker 7: he was sincere or not. So that all else being equal,
Speaker 7: the one that the base went for was the one
Speaker 7: who kind of harkened back to the New Deal order
Speaker 7: and who tried some in his own way to revive
Speaker 7: what I call the Eisenhower Nixon tradition in the Republican Party,
Speaker 7: which made its peace with the New Deal with entitlements
Speaker 7: and even expanded the logic of the New Deal in
Speaker 7: different directions. Again, more recently, I have to say, I mean,
Speaker 7: if voters wanted anti vote, anti woke, Rhonda Santis should
Speaker 7: be doing a lot better in the Republican primaries. I mean,
Speaker 7: he ran on pure I'm going to turn your populist
Speaker 7: grievances into cultural grievances and it and it's disastrously bad
Speaker 7: as a gambit.
Speaker 4: That's I think that's really well put.
Speaker 1: How do you think about the relationship between economics and culture?
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of times, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to draw a hard line of like
Speaker 1: this is where the economic issue ends and this is
Speaker 1: where the cultural issue begins. But do you prioritize one
Speaker 1: over the other? Do you think culture is downstream by
Speaker 1: and large of you know, class interests and material needs?
Speaker 4: How do you think about those things?
Speaker 7: So, okay, that's a that's a complex question about which
Speaker 7: I've written a lot, and it's it's hard to summarize.
Speaker 7: But what I will say, you don't need to be
Speaker 7: a Marxist to recognize that how we structure our economy
Speaker 7: and our class structure has a bearing on how people
Speaker 7: feel they belong in the world and their sense and
Speaker 7: they're all the sort of cultural sensibilities and so forth.
Speaker 7: So you can you can turn back to Aristotle who
Speaker 7: says that law is and politics are architectonic with respect
Speaker 7: to everything else we do.
Speaker 6: They create everything else we do. They structure what we do.
Speaker 7: And when they I mean obviously in the classical tradition,
Speaker 7: and when you say law and politics, that meant economy
Speaker 7: as well. So I think there is a kind of
Speaker 7: dynamic relationship between the two. And what I've found frustrating
Speaker 7: is a brand of social conservative lament that says, oh,
Speaker 7: people aren't getting married, Oh, family formation is collapsing, Oh,
Speaker 7: church attendance is down, but never connects the sort of
Speaker 7: link between these phenomena, which I decry as well. I
Speaker 7: have my conservative sensibilities and I think there's an ideal
Speaker 7: of human flourishing that I draw from the Christian faith
Speaker 7: I have and so on, But they never then connect
Speaker 7: that to.
Speaker 6: Our material conditions.
Speaker 7: Like, oh, if you're constantly harried because your firm does
Speaker 7: human resources scheduling using an algorithm to minimize the costs
Speaker 7: their labor costs, but for you, life is a complete
Speaker 7: chaos as a result of that, you may not have
Speaker 7: time to spend with your kids. And your kids in fact,
Speaker 7: studies show a University of California studies show that workers
Speaker 7: who are subjected to this kind of precarious scheduling, which
Speaker 7: is about a third of at least a third of
Speaker 7: workers in the service industry. Their children. I mean, it
Speaker 7: doesn't take a rocket science to scientists flend this. Their
Speaker 7: children have feelings of guilt, are more likely to act
Speaker 7: out in school. Why because mom and dad or however
Speaker 7: the family formation may be, don't get to spend regular
Speaker 7: systematic time. So there is this nexus, There is this
Speaker 7: sort of interplay of culture and material reality. And I
Speaker 7: think the conservative movement goes too far in the direction
Speaker 7: of everything is a matter of ideals. If we just
Speaker 7: tell people to get married and have children, that just
Speaker 7: will listen. If we just say it the right way, well,
Speaker 7: that hasn't worked. And I think I'd like to tip
Speaker 7: the direction of conservative thought a little bit more, or
Speaker 7: maybe a lot more, in the direction of recognizing the
Speaker 7: centrality of economic imperatives.
Speaker 1: So, Sarah, if you feel like a lot of the
Speaker 1: cultural outcomes that you would like to see in terms
Speaker 1: of family formations and human flourishing, if you feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of those would be achieved by what is
Speaker 1: basically like Bernie Sanders style social democracy, why are you
Speaker 1: on the right.
Speaker 6: Well, two reasons.
Speaker 7: One is, I think a lot of people on the
Speaker 7: left diagnose the material causes of our cultural crises, but
Speaker 7: then they end up ratifying the effects. So they say, oh,
Speaker 7: it's good that people are hyper individualistic now, and the
Speaker 7: gold in life is ever greater self kind of maximization
Speaker 7: and realization in the realm of.
Speaker 6: Family and so on.
Speaker 7: So I think for me, I get my picture of
Speaker 7: what the world should look like from my Catholic faith,
Speaker 7: from my kind of reading in the classical and Christian tradition,
Speaker 7: in ways that are I think alien to people on
Speaker 7: the left. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the main reason.
Speaker 7: And I will say there are there are issues of
Speaker 7: fundamental conscience for me that make it very hard, and
Speaker 7: that has mainly with you know, abortion and the liberty
Speaker 7: of the church or religious liberty, where I feel like,
Speaker 7: if if the left were willing to moderate just even
Speaker 7: a teeny bit, you can maybe begin to take steps
Speaker 7: in its direction, because that as it is, I don't
Speaker 7: see that, and I think a lot of Americans don't
Speaker 7: see it either, which supplies an opening to you know, frankly,
Speaker 7: that kind of Ronda scientis culturalist, right.
Speaker 1: So then you would have to say then that that
Speaker 1: is your number one priority over the economics. It's more
Speaker 1: important to you to align This is fine, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to understand what your worldview is. It's more important
Speaker 1: to you to align with a party that agrees with
Speaker 1: you more on abortion than it is to align with,
Speaker 1: you know, an ideology that agrees with you more on
Speaker 1: social democracy, labor unions, and corporate power.
Speaker 7: I think the task is for people on both sides
Speaker 7: of the divide to recognize that we will continue to
Speaker 7: have cultural disagreements in this country about fundamental issues, but
Speaker 7: that those issues, insofar as they have common material roots,
Speaker 7: should be the subject of the kind of coalition building
Speaker 7: that FDR did, right, I mean, you know, large coalition
Speaker 7: politics between urban Catholics, you know, WASP kind of downstall
Speaker 7: evangelical farmers unions and so on. Likewise, actually the neoliberals
Speaker 7: built a coalition as well. It wasn't just a phenomenon
Speaker 7: of the left. In fact, famously, Margaret Thatcher when she
Speaker 7: was asked who was your greatest or what was your
Speaker 7: greatest achievement, she said Tony Blair. So if something is
Speaker 7: going to replace the neoliberal consensus, it has to be
Speaker 7: built in the middle, and what I'm trying to do
Speaker 7: is try to get my own side to see that.
Speaker 7: And I will say, like, there are lots of policy
Speaker 7: issues where I'm out there cheering the left. I'm almost
Speaker 7: doing like the clap emoji on Twitter, you know, like
Speaker 7: the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. You know, I think
Speaker 7: there's been honestly left or right there which is a
Speaker 7: I should say, it's a war and bill. There's been
Speaker 7: no greater louder champion of that bill on either side
Speaker 7: of the isle than myself. The pro Act, you know,
Speaker 7: and more generally, just like a reversing the way that
Speaker 7: American law has been used to depress union density in
Speaker 7: the private economy. I guess so on all this stuff,
Speaker 7: we used to be able to do coalitional politics where
Speaker 7: we disagree on certain things, but we have a common
Speaker 7: ground on other things, and I think those other things
Speaker 7: are quite fundamental and important, so let's work together.
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's a really you're one
Speaker 2: of the most interesting people out there who's thinking about
Speaker 2: these things right now. I think the book is very important.
Speaker 2: We encourage everybody going buy it. We're going to a
Speaker 2: link down in the description, and we really think if
Speaker 2: your time.
Speaker 4: STARp, Thank you, yeah, great chatting with you.
Speaker 6: Thank you both.
Speaker 3: Go to see them in our pleasure. See you guys later.