Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: What do we have, Krystal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of interesting stories to get into
Speaker 1: this morning. So first and foremost, the UAW those autoworkers
Speaker 1: are on strike. We'll give you all of the details.
Speaker 1: We also have reporters on the ground talking to workers
Speaker 1: about their concerns. We'll get into all of that. We
Speaker 1: also have student loan to have repayments beginning very soon
Speaker 1: and that could have a huge impact on the economy.
Speaker 1: There's some new numbers that we want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about. With that Trump getting questioned on abortion and
Speaker 1: also on trans writes with some very interesting responses, really
Speaker 1: going after directly Ron DeSantis. And that's six weeks abortion band,
Speaker 1: so that was kind of surprising. Ken Paxton, who is
Speaker 1: the Attorney General of Texas. He was impeached in the
Speaker 1: Texas House, but he has now been acquitted in the Senate.
Speaker 1: A lot of behind the scenes Trump related machinations there.
Speaker 1: Soccer was all on the ground in Texas, getting.
Speaker 2: The skills in Austin's feet away from the Capitol life
Speaker 2: there you go.
Speaker 1: So we've got all of that for you and Lauren
Speaker 1: Bober doing some things in movie theater that apparently we
Speaker 1: need to share with you and give our shakes out.
Speaker 2: See children's play of Beatle Japs that adds a lot
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 1: Yes, we have footage, we've got all the reactions, various stories, etc.
Speaker 1: And on a more serious note, we are very excited
Speaker 1: to have Neil de grasse Tyson of course very famous astrophysicists,
Speaker 1: who has a new book out and we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking to him about the mysteries of the cosmos.
Speaker 2: So that will be I get a UFO question in
Speaker 2: there too for those wondering. Yeah, don't worry about that
Speaker 2: before we start. Just thank you again to our premium subscribers,
Speaker 2: the focus group exceptionally well, We're already working on the
Speaker 2: next one. I think people are going to be very
Speaker 2: interested to hear what some of those people have to say.
Speaker 3: Not just a GOP one.
Speaker 2: We're going to go to all stripes, and I think
Speaker 2: people again are going to enjoy it. Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 2: If you are able, we're also very happy to be
Speaker 2: able to use your very hard earned money to help
Speaker 2: support journalist Jared Jordan Sheridan right now is on the
Speaker 2: ground for US and for his channel as well to
Speaker 2: be covering the UAW strike. We've got exclusive footage words
Speaker 2: from the workers themselves. We always like to hear from
Speaker 2: them on the ground, So that's what you were helping
Speaker 2: support again breakingpoints dot Com premum subscriber. But first, before
Speaker 2: we even get to the UAW, we just had to
Speaker 2: add this. In a hilarious development here on the Eastern Seaboard,
Speaker 2: the United States military has lost the F thirty five
Speaker 2: stealth aircraft somewhere in the United States.
Speaker 3: Have no idea where it is.
Speaker 2: And the military is now asking for the public's help
Speaker 2: if you can locate it.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: From JOINT based Charleston, we are currently working with Beaufort
Speaker 2: South Carolina to locate an F thirty five that was
Speaker 2: involved in a mishap this afternoon. The pilot ejected safely.
Speaker 2: If you have any information that may help our recovery
Speaker 2: teams locate the F thirty five, please call the base
Speaker 2: Defense Operations Center at this number. Based on the jets
Speaker 2: last known position. In coordination with the FAA, we are
Speaker 2: focusing our attention north of based Charleston and Lake Moultrie
Speaker 2: and Lake Marion. I probably said one of those wrong. Sorry,
Speaker 2: South Carolinians. For those who are wondering, this is not
Speaker 2: only just an F thirty five, This is an advanced
Speaker 2: F thirty five B Lightning two jet used for the
Speaker 2: United States Marine Corps. The pilot, as we said, ejected safely,
Speaker 2: he is in safe condition. However, quote the jets transponder,
Speaker 2: which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working for
Speaker 2: some reason we haven't yet determined.
Speaker 3: So that's why we have put out the public request
Speaker 3: for help.
Speaker 2: So that means that a seventy five million dollar aircraft
Speaker 2: part of a program which went hundreds of billions of
Speaker 2: dollars over budget, which costs taxpayer a total of one
Speaker 2: point seven trillion dollars to develop has gone missing after
Speaker 2: it was heralded as like God's gift to the United
Speaker 2: States military.
Speaker 3: Oh, this thing you do anything.
Speaker 2: You can fly upside down, it can go up straight,
Speaker 2: it can do this and that, and that's why we
Speaker 2: got to get rid of all of these cheaper aircrafts
Speaker 2: and buy this one. Because it's the same plane, it's
Speaker 2: intra platform whatever. All these military geeks can say all that,
Speaker 2: and that sounds awesome, except whenever you lose it all
Speaker 2: over the Eastern Seaboard and the transponder doesn't work, it
Speaker 2: is proving at least Crystal to be stealthy. It is
Speaker 2: quite stealthy because we can't find it.
Speaker 1: I just hate when I miss places seventy five million
Speaker 1: dollar asset and you know, have to call in the
Speaker 1: public to find it.
Speaker 2: At the very least, like there needs to be some
Speaker 2: serious questions that are asked about how this is allowed
Speaker 2: to transpire. We have a stealth program jet, which was
Speaker 2: again like fifth generation fighter aircraft. That's the way the
Speaker 2: way this was sold. It was a colossal boondoggle from
Speaker 2: the very beginning. And I always just find myself angry
Speaker 2: every time things like that happen, because we're all paying
Speaker 2: for this. It's an outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds. And listen,
Speaker 2: you know, Vera, this is just further proof of the
Speaker 2: amount of just like ridiculous things that we throw money
Speaker 2: at in the military.
Speaker 3: It don't even work whenever.
Speaker 1: It's like this is like the least the smallest example
Speaker 1: of the unbelievable. I mean again, with the military. The
Speaker 1: Pentagon is the one agency, the Defense apartments of one
Speaker 1: agency that cannot pass their audit and they don't even
Speaker 1: come close. They can only account for like forty percent
Speaker 1: of the money that they're given from Congress. Actually overstating,
Speaker 1: and I'm being too generously. It's it's just it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: So anyway, guys, you saw the number there on the screen.
Speaker 1: If you happen to have seen an F thirty five
Speaker 1: randomly in your community, alert the government because they're on
Speaker 1: looking for.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. Please call the number if you.
Speaker 1: Happen to try to do a public services a massive five.
Speaker 2: So much going on, all right, let's get this strike,
Speaker 2: all right, Let's get.
Speaker 1: To this autoworker's strike, which we previewed last week for
Speaker 1: you and did in fact happen, which we expected because
Speaker 1: it seemed like the two sides were very far apart. Now,
Speaker 1: the UAW the United Autoworkers, they are taking a bit
Speaker 1: of a different strategy here in terms of their approach
Speaker 1: to the strike. Number one, they're targeting all three of
Speaker 1: the Big three Detroit automakers. That is different from the past.
Speaker 1: And number two, the tactic that they are employing here.
Speaker 1: They're calling you a stand up strike rather than going
Speaker 1: out at all plants at once. They're starting with a
Speaker 1: targeted few one plan I believe, at each of the
Speaker 1: Big three automakers, and then expanding from there based on
Speaker 1: how the negotiations go. So the idea is to keep
Speaker 1: the automakers guessing and also to be able to ratchet
Speaker 1: up the pressure as things go on, and finally, to
Speaker 1: try to preserve their strike fund, which is quite significant.
Speaker 1: They have eight hundred and fifty million dollars in that
Speaker 1: strike fun But if everyone will went out all at once,
Speaker 1: that would only last them for a couple months, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to stretch and expand that while exerting maximum
Speaker 1: pressure on the automakers. Let's listen to their new president,
Speaker 1: National President Sean Fain, announcing the strike and the strike.
Speaker 4: Locations tonight, we call on three units to stand up
Speaker 4: and go on strike at midnight if we do not
Speaker 4: reach a tentative agreement in the next two hours. We're
Speaker 4: calling on GM Winsville Assembly Local twenty two fifty in
Speaker 4: Region four to stand up and strike. We're calling on
Speaker 4: Stillantis Toledo Assembly Complex Local twelve in Region two B
Speaker 4: to stand up and strike. And we're calling on Ford,
Speaker 4: Michigan Assembly Plant, Final Assembly and Paint Only Local nine
Speaker 4: hundred in Region one A to stand up and strike.
Speaker 4: These three units are being called to stand up and
Speaker 4: walk out on strike at midnight tonight. The locals that
Speaker 4: are not yet called to join the stand up strike
Speaker 4: will continue working under an expired agreement no contract extensions.
Speaker 4: Though the contract is expired, most of your contract is
Speaker 4: still in effect. Management cannot change terms and conditions of
Speaker 4: work in your workplace. You do not become an employee
Speaker 4: at will. You cannot be fired or disciplined for no reason.
Speaker 4: This strategy will keep the companies guessing. It will give
Speaker 4: our national negotiators maximum leverage and flexibility and bargaining, and
Speaker 4: if we need to go all out, we will.
Speaker 1: So that's the positive part I laid out of their approach.
Speaker 1: Here is it stretches sound to strike, fund keeps the
Speaker 1: bosses guessing, and they can use it in a targeted
Speaker 1: way to sort of ratchet up the pressure. Put the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal Peace up on the screen on the tactics,
Speaker 1: which really went into detail of the pluses and minuses
Speaker 1: and also why they chose these particular locations. They said,
Speaker 1: the three plants now idled in the strike emerged to
Speaker 1: sweet spots. UAW officials wanted to spread the pain evenly
Speaker 1: across the three companies. People with knowledge said each of
Speaker 1: the three factories makes mid size pickup trucks, for example,
Speaker 1: the Ford Ranger, Stalantis's Jeep Gladiator, and GM's Chevrolet Colorado
Speaker 1: and GMC Canyon and part these plants were chose to
Speaker 1: balance the impact across the automakers. One executive board member
Speaker 1: at the UAW said, we don't want to advantage one
Speaker 1: over the other. They also said the message with the
Speaker 1: initial targets was to show companies that wanted to continue
Speaker 1: bargaining and reach a deal swiftly, not hit companies with
Speaker 1: maximum pressure right after the contracts expired. They went on
Speaker 1: to note that these are not the factories that produce
Speaker 1: the company's biggest money makers, large pickup trucks and SUVs
Speaker 1: like FOURD F one fifty or GM's Cadillac Escalade, leaving
Speaker 1: the union with those those chips to play. Now, there
Speaker 1: is a potential downside to this strike strategy, which is,
Speaker 1: while it allows them to stretch their strike funding and
Speaker 1: sort of keep these automakers guessing, and there was all
Speaker 1: sorts of social media reports about apparently there was potentially
Speaker 1: some targeted disinformation put out there that threw the CEOs
Speaker 1: off on which plants were going to be struck, and
Speaker 1: then they were trying to move parts around, et cetera
Speaker 1: before this happened, and they were completely wrong about which
Speaker 1: ones actually went out. So that's the advantage. The disadvantages
Speaker 1: requires a lot of coordination. Obviously, across a large union,
Speaker 1: you've got about one hundred and fifty thousand members that
Speaker 1: are impacted by this. And also one of the greatest,
Speaker 1: most important parts of any strike or work action is solidarity.
Speaker 1: So if you have some workers going out but not
Speaker 1: all workers going out, you've got to just keep up
Speaker 1: the level of organization and make sure everybody still feels
Speaker 1: like they're in it together and everybody is sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, following the play in and following the marching
Speaker 1: orders as this thing goes along. So that is the downside,
Speaker 1: potential downside of the strike. But cannot understate what a
Speaker 1: big deal this is. Obviously. The Big three are some
Speaker 1: of the most iconic brands in America. You know, the automakers,
Speaker 1: the auto industry famously or built the American middle class,
Speaker 1: has a lot of cachet with the American public, and
Speaker 1: it's another signifier of how much workers are feeling much
Speaker 1: more assertive. We saw the teamsters and the ups workers
Speaker 1: able to secure a pretty good deal through the threat
Speaker 1: of a strike. We've got the writers and we've got
Speaker 1: the actors still out. We've had way more strike activity
Speaker 1: this year and a lot more union energy and activity
Speaker 1: than we have seen in decades, and this is certainly
Speaker 1: a part of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting the strike strategy that's been happening.
Speaker 2: It's like you explained it to me in order to
Speaker 2: stretch their strike fund. But it also is like a
Speaker 2: looming threat of if you can push and pull as
Speaker 2: negotiations happen, so negotiations go bad and you can ramp
Speaker 2: it up as they go down, you can ramp things
Speaker 2: there and you can keep it also as a sign
Speaker 2: of goodwill and then use like variable pressure to try
Speaker 2: and force a close. So it's very interesting actually to
Speaker 2: see it the smart strategy, to be honest, because if
Speaker 2: you just do a full blown walkout strike, I mean
Speaker 2: you can't. I mean you can last long, like in
Speaker 2: terms of resolve, but not necessarily in terms of the
Speaker 2: funds that they have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's right. So we've gotten a little reaction
Speaker 1: from the automaker CEOs. We had the Ford CEO going
Speaker 1: on cable news and saying, oh, if we met their demands, gosh,
Speaker 1: we just wouldn't be able to make it. Let's take
Speaker 1: a listen to what he had to say.
Speaker 5: Quickly put in some perspective the offer that they have
Speaker 5: what they're demanding relative to where you are right now.
Speaker 5: How much damage would that do to the bottom line if.
Speaker 3: You were to say, sure, we'll give you forty percent.
Speaker 5: If we signed up for the uaw's request, instead of
Speaker 5: making money and distributing seventy five thousand dollars in profit
Speaker 5: sharing in the last ten years, we would have lost
Speaker 5: fifteen billion dollars in gone bankrupt by now the average
Speaker 5: pay would be nearly three hundred thousand dollars fully fringed
Speaker 5: for a four day workweek. There is no employee U. Yeah,
Speaker 5: this is our full tenured school teacher in the US
Speaker 5: make sixty six thousand dollars. So for the military or
Speaker 5: fireman makes mid fifty thousand, this is four or five
Speaker 5: times six times what they make.
Speaker 1: Did you ever consider perhaps teachers and firefighters should make more?
Speaker 1: Number one?
Speaker 2: Even true?
Speaker 1: Number two, it's total bullshit. So just a couple things
Speaker 1: to keep in mind here. Number one, the car companies
Speaker 1: are making like record breaking profits, so much so that
Speaker 1: they felt comfortable to authorize five billion dollars in stock
Speaker 1: buybacks over just the past year. And now when it
Speaker 1: comes to workers, oh we just couldn't make it, we
Speaker 1: go bankrupt.
Speaker 3: Bullshit.
Speaker 1: Number Two, of the entire cost of a car, because
Speaker 1: this is the other thing they threatened the public car.
Speaker 1: Car costs are going to go up. Cars are just
Speaker 1: going to be way more expensive. Do you know what
Speaker 1: percent of the price of a new car is labor?
Speaker 1: Five percent? Yes, five percent. So don't fall for this.
Speaker 1: This is all total nonsense. Of course, the NBC does
Speaker 1: nothing to push back.
Speaker 3: Well, I dug actually a lot into it.
Speaker 2: So right now, just for everybody to know, the average
Speaker 2: employee at the Big three makes eighteen to thirty two
Speaker 2: dollars an hour depending on seniority. The wage is not
Speaker 2: kept up with the inflation even close to their way
Speaker 2: executive pay, stock buybacks, profits, etc. As you pointed out,
Speaker 2: the automakers offered wage increase from seventeen to five to
Speaker 2: twenty percent in terms of an increase over the four
Speaker 2: and a half year contract. They were arguing that they
Speaker 2: should receive compensation that beyond their hourly wages, profit sharing
Speaker 2: and other bonuses to try and keep it out of
Speaker 2: the contract. UAW says, we want to end the tiered
Speaker 2: employment status and to have manufacturers quote rely less on
Speaker 2: temporary workers important because it gets effectively put into the
Speaker 2: lowest tier in order to artificially lower the pricing, creates intracompetition,
Speaker 2: and they are pointing out that temporary workers are used
Speaker 2: effectively touse against full time union workers as well. This
Speaker 2: is a big focus of some of the previous strikes
Speaker 2: that we've seen or some of the stand ups, because
Speaker 2: they want to make sure that the newer generation of
Speaker 2: union workers is also preserved. The entire point is to
Speaker 2: try and preserve like some sort of middle class way
Speaker 2: of life. Also, the way that he comes to that
Speaker 2: math is the same deceitful way that they use the ups.
Speaker 2: UPS was one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, Like,
Speaker 2: that's about total compensation package. He's also using it not
Speaker 2: as three hundred thousand dollars per year. He's conflating a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff over a long timeframe with projected inflationary
Speaker 2: cost to arrive at that figure. So this was computed
Speaker 2: by some pr of course executive. It's a good talking point,
Speaker 2: you know, for them. I saw a lot of people
Speaker 2: take it unsafe face value, but it's just absolutely not
Speaker 2: true at all. Like, once again we are talking about
Speaker 2: the fact that they make eighteen to thirty two dollars
Speaker 2: an hour. So you can do the math. What's the
Speaker 2: percentage of their asker. I think it's fifty percent forty.
Speaker 1: Percent raise, And there's a very specific reason why, because
Speaker 1: the CEOs of the Big three they got a forty
Speaker 1: percent raise over the past four years. So they're saying, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if these companies are doing well well enough to give
Speaker 1: the CEOs a forty percent pay hike. Why don't the
Speaker 1: workers who actually generate all these profits, why don't they
Speaker 1: get cut in on the same deal. And it's also
Speaker 1: important to keep in mind when you see these numbers,
Speaker 1: because you know, one of the automakers put twenty percent
Speaker 1: raise on the table. Sean Fain was like, no, it's
Speaker 1: not good enough. And I'll tell you why, because these
Speaker 1: workers took a huge haircut in the financial crisis. They listen,
Speaker 1: taxpayers bailed out the automakers. You'll recall that these workers
Speaker 1: bailed out the automakers. They lost their cost of living increases,
Speaker 1: They took a direct hit in terms of their sally,
Speaker 1: huge layoffs, huge hits to their pension. So just for
Speaker 1: them to get back to even close to where they
Speaker 1: were would require more than a twenty percent increase. So
Speaker 1: that's why when they look at these numbers, they're like, no,
Speaker 1: it is not good enough. You have done phenomenally well
Speaker 1: based on our work, and we want in on the deal.
Speaker 1: We want a fair and just deal. And so they
Speaker 1: are standing very strong. As you mentioned, Sacher, we have
Speaker 1: status kus Jordan Sheridan on the ground for us giving
Speaker 1: us some exclusive content. He talked to some of the
Speaker 1: workers there about the way they are feeling about this
Speaker 1: strike and why this is so important to them. I
Speaker 1: would take their word for a lot more than these
Speaker 1: CEOs and their pr spin. So let's take a listen
Speaker 1: to what they had today.
Speaker 6: What for you is the main reason you wanted to
Speaker 6: go on strike? Is it the wages tears system? What's
Speaker 6: the core issues for you?
Speaker 7: Pretty much the wages. I currently work two jobs, so
Speaker 7: I want to kind of like, you know, not do
Speaker 7: that to support my family. But yeah, I'd rather just
Speaker 7: work the ten hours to go home my family instead
Speaker 7: of leaving here and going somewhere else to do another job.
Speaker 6: In a typical day, how many hours you work in
Speaker 6: between the two jobs?
Speaker 7: More so, I work like a Thursday through Sunday thing,
Speaker 7: so it's like they't like sixteen to seventeen hours a day.
Speaker 3: And sometimes watching these kids come in here.
Speaker 8: I work around a lot of kids that are really
Speaker 8: new to careers and whatnot and coming in at seventeen
Speaker 8: dollars an hour. And you know what the cost of
Speaker 8: living is now, You can't even have an apartment. You
Speaker 8: still got to live with your parents or have fifty
Speaker 8: million roommates.
Speaker 2: And it's not enough.
Speaker 1: It's not for what we do.
Speaker 8: It's not enough. It weighs on your body after a
Speaker 8: long period of time. So yeah, really deserve to at
Speaker 8: least have a better starting wage.
Speaker 6: Fifteen dollars an hour. In this economy gas groceries, you
Speaker 6: must be really stretched economically to pay the bills.
Speaker 9: Stretched is not the word, you know. We need better wages.
Speaker 9: We need at least a ten dollar raise for all
Speaker 9: the work that we do. We do a lot in
Speaker 9: my department, and we're just underpaid and overlooked, and I
Speaker 9: don't think it's fair, and I think it's about time
Speaker 9: that we fight for our rights. I'm in a building
Speaker 9: that we host sometime two to three hundred people, and
Speaker 9: I'm in that building by myself, cleaning it from top
Speaker 9: to bottom, and get the most extraordinary compliments on my
Speaker 9: work because I am that good at what I do.
Speaker 9: I'm just well underpaid. But we're in a crisis right
Speaker 9: now where that we are really one pay check away
Speaker 9: from being evicted a lot of from our homes. You
Speaker 9: can't feed yourself right, You can't do anything because you
Speaker 9: have nothing left.
Speaker 6: Do you feel you're getting enough from the President of support.
Speaker 6: Do you feel you're getting enough from other politicians, because
Speaker 6: it's one thing to show up when the strike happens,
Speaker 6: it's another thing are they backing you when the cameras
Speaker 6: are not here.
Speaker 10: Well, the UAW traditionally supports the Democratic Party, and last night,
Speaker 10: I was pretty proud of mister Biden, President Biden for
Speaker 10: backing up the union efforts, and I think he totally
Speaker 10: supports what's going on, you know, up to a certain
Speaker 10: reasonable time limit, and he is aware that we are
Speaker 10: the fabric of the entire country.
Speaker 1: So we're going to play some of President Biden's comments
Speaker 1: for you and also former President Trump's comments, which are
Speaker 1: a very interesting contrast. But I mean, listen to their testimonials. Here,
Speaker 1: we can't make rent. People are in danger being evicted.
Speaker 1: The auto industry was one of the original backbones of
Speaker 1: the American middle class, and Henry Ford listened. He was
Speaker 1: anti union and you know, got all kinds of issues there,
Speaker 1: but he understood that his workers needed to earn enough
Speaker 1: money to be able to buy the product and also
Speaker 1: was part of the push to make it a five
Speaker 1: day work week for some of the same reasons.
Speaker 3: This is part of what.
Speaker 1: Built the American middle class. So for these workers now
Speaker 1: to say, listen, fifteen dollars an hour, seventeen dollars an hour,
Speaker 1: How do you think I'm going to make it on that?
Speaker 1: How do you think with the cost of living, I'm
Speaker 1: going to survive? And they're being treated like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: so ungrateful, and they they're already getting some you know,
Speaker 1: luxury style pay. It's absolutely ridiculous. And you can see
Speaker 1: why you had overwhelming support for a strike and why,
Speaker 1: by the way, I mean they elected just recently Sean
Speaker 1: Fain because he said, I want to take a more
Speaker 1: militant approach. I don't want to be cozy with the
Speaker 1: boss class the way that you know, some of the
Speaker 1: previous union membership was. And by the way, I also
Speaker 1: don't want to be corrupt the way that some of
Speaker 1: the previous union leadership was and got caught for. So
Speaker 1: they're on board for the long haul. And you know,
Speaker 1: based on what we heard from the workers that Jordan
Speaker 1: is talking to there, they are very committed. They are
Speaker 1: ready to be all in and to actually secure the
Speaker 1: deal that they deserve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I just want to underscore, you know, when
Speaker 2: she was talking about seventeen to five, sometimes we're talking
Speaker 2: hourly terms. We don't think about annual that's like thirty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year. You know, it's like thirty five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars year, As she accurately pointed out, that's actually
Speaker 2: not it's not possible to really make it quote unquote
Speaker 2: on that or it's at least for some sort of
Speaker 2: middle class wage. When you consider the average household income
Speaker 2: the United States, it's seventy thousand dollars. And even with
Speaker 2: the forty percent race that the union here is asking for,
Speaker 2: it would put top compensation at ninety three thousand dollars
Speaker 2: per year. Once again, that's not total comp but I mean,
Speaker 2: I think people should be talking in stark terms, like
Speaker 2: is ninety three thousand dollars for a senior worker at
Speaker 2: a plant?
Speaker 3: Is that a lot of money?
Speaker 2: Especially in the age of much more specialized like mechanical
Speaker 2: information with the electric vehicles that they've all talked about,
Speaker 2: it actually requires less labor in some cases, and so,
Speaker 2: but it requires more of a skilled workforce.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, there are college graduates.
Speaker 2: Did we did that whole thing about the Wall Street
Speaker 2: Journal that average Princeton grad is making like one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty or something like that, And that's a twenty
Speaker 2: two year old. Of course, his educational difference and all that,
Speaker 2: but just put it in societal perspective, well, in not
Speaker 2: ninety three thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: That's a really important point because part of the reaction
Speaker 1: we saw to the teams to securing a decent deal
Speaker 1: for ups drivers, all of this class contempt and class
Speaker 1: anxiety came out because we have been so conditioned to
Speaker 1: think that the only people who deserve, like a good
Speaker 1: salary and to be able to have some sort of
Speaker 1: stability in their lives are people with college degrees who
Speaker 1: are working at an office, and that is a poisonous
Speaker 1: way to think about things. These people work so hard
Speaker 1: that gentleman who said he's having to work fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: it works for the auto industry, supposedly the backbone of
Speaker 1: the American middle class, and he has to work two
Speaker 1: jobs just to make it work in sixteen seventeen hours
Speaker 1: a day. That's unconscionable. That's a failure and everyone should
Speaker 1: be invested in this fight. And by the way, I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit in my monologue about
Speaker 1: some other strike action that's going on. Drew Berry Moore
Speaker 1: of the writers, short or whatever. There's a lot going
Speaker 1: on there. But I looked at some of the numbers.
Speaker 1: Seventy five percent of the public is on the side
Speaker 1: of the workers here. That in and of itself is
Speaker 1: different because people have just seen the abuse of the
Speaker 1: working class. They've had it. They saw what happened during COVID,
Speaker 1: you know, people having their lives risk, people being you know,
Speaker 1: completely screwed during COVID, and you know, they bought the
Speaker 1: idea of Okay, we can see who is actually essential
Speaker 1: to this economy. We can see who actually makes these
Speaker 1: things work, and they deserve a much better deal. Let's
Speaker 1: get to some of the political response here. I have
Speaker 1: to say Joe Biden went a lot farther than I
Speaker 1: thought he would based on his past rhetoric around unions,
Speaker 1: which has always been very careful and very I I
Speaker 1: don't want to weigh in very both sides based on
Speaker 1: you know, where the Democratic Party has been for years
Speaker 1: under Obama, under Clinton certainly where if anything, they were
Speaker 1: siding with the boss class. Not only did he really
Speaker 1: clearly take the side of the workers here, but he
Speaker 1: also adopted some of the unions own framing and messaging
Speaker 1: around record contracts, record profits mean record contracts. Let's take
Speaker 1: to listen to a little bit of what you had
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 11: I respect workers right to use their options under the
Speaker 11: collective bargaining system, and I understand the workers frustration over generations.
Speaker 11: Auto workers sacrifice so much to keep the industry alive
Speaker 11: and strong, especially the economic crisis and the pandemic. Workers
Speaker 11: deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create
Speaker 11: for an enterprise. I do appreciate that the parties have
Speaker 11: been working around the clock, and when I first call
Speaker 11: them at the very first day of their negotiation, I said,
Speaker 11: please stay at the table as long as you can
Speaker 11: to try to work this out. And they've been around
Speaker 11: the clock, and the companies have made some significant offers.
Speaker 11: But I believe they should go further to ensure record
Speaker 11: corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAWM. Say it again,
Speaker 11: record corporate profits which they have should be shared by
Speaker 11: record contracts for the.
Speaker 1: Uaw So there you hear, like I said, the union
Speaker 1: framing record profits from the automakers should mean record contracts,
Speaker 1: which I think is a concept that you know, everyone
Speaker 1: should sort of get behind. And I don't know why
Speaker 1: he sounds different on this one, Sager. I think it's
Speaker 1: partly because he's a car guy. He's really obsessed with
Speaker 1: auto industry. He was part obviously of the bailout back
Speaker 1: under the Obama administration. You know, have been LUNs dead,
Speaker 1: GM's alive. That was his catchphrase that he came up
Speaker 1: with that they ran on in twenty twelve. What'd you
Speaker 1: make of his comments?
Speaker 12: So?
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting. I do think it's electoral.
Speaker 2: I think it's you know, you can read a poll,
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of the people are supporting unions all
Speaker 2: time support for a strike. He needs to win Michigan,
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin and the car areas all over again. There's
Speaker 2: a don't forget what killed Mitt Romney in twenty twelve
Speaker 2: that op ed that he wrote, what was it December
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, Let Detroit goote bankrupt?
Speaker 3: He was like, I didn't write the headline. That's not
Speaker 3: what Okay, dude, you can say whatever you want.
Speaker 2: But people in Michigan all decided to quote that whenever
Speaker 2: they were voting for Obama, and the Obama campaign blasted
Speaker 2: it all over.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: Actually, Trump very sma mantly leveraged union support against Hillary
Speaker 2: and in Ohio as well, both to win Michigan in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen and then also to win Ohio and increasingly
Speaker 2: going there. What is the I forget the counting exactly
Speaker 2: like the heavy union density county in Ohio which had
Speaker 2: a former GM plant, and they actually voted even more
Speaker 2: for Trump in twenty twenty. But the point that he's
Speaker 2: always done is he's tried to like leverage the idea
Speaker 2: of like outsourcing, fighting against that we're going against the
Speaker 2: trade deals, whereas Hillary was very much like she didn't
Speaker 2: know where the hell she stood on these issues. So
Speaker 2: I thought it was smart of him to do that,
Speaker 2: you know, at the gasp of trying to get to
Speaker 2: the industrial Midwest on his side. Because remember, you know,
Speaker 2: he didn't win Wisconsin or Michigan by all that many votes.
Speaker 2: A lot of people actually forget that even though he
Speaker 2: did win. You know, they don't look at that what
Speaker 2: the margins are in some of these states. All Trump
Speaker 2: has to do is win three of the Biden states
Speaker 2: and he wins the election in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in these states, you know, it's just having
Speaker 1: lived in Ohio, it's not just the people who work
Speaker 1: directly in the industry. I mean, first of all, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of suppliers and a lot of the
Speaker 1: surround economy that is really devoted to the industry. But
Speaker 1: it also is just part of the ethos and the
Speaker 1: pride of those states. So when you make a really
Speaker 1: clear statement like Biden actually did there again surprisingly of
Speaker 1: being on the side of the workers over the bosses, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is going to land. Trump, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, got asked what I thought was actually the
Speaker 1: best question that Kristen Welker asked her during her meet
Speaker 1: the press interview with him, which became very controversial, which
Speaker 1: we could talk about another time, but she asked him
Speaker 1: very directly, which side are you on? Whose side are
Speaker 1: you on? And instead of giving anything approaching a direct answer,
Speaker 1: he goes on this meandering thing about EV's and that's
Speaker 1: the union's fault that Biden got elected, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to how he approached this issue. My question
Speaker 1: for you, mister president, whose side are you on in this?
Speaker 12: I'm on the side of making our country grade. The
Speaker 12: auto workers are not going to have any jobs when
Speaker 12: you come right down to it, because if you take
Speaker 12: a look at what they doing with electric cars. Electric
Speaker 12: cars are going to be made in China. The auto
Speaker 12: workers are not going to have any I'll tell you what.
Speaker 12: The auto workers are being sold down the river by
Speaker 12: their leadership, and their leadership should endure Trump. The reason is,
Speaker 12: you gotta have choice.
Speaker 13: Like in school.
Speaker 12: I want school choice. I also want choice for cars.
Speaker 12: If somebody wants gasoline, if somebody wants all electric, they
Speaker 12: can do whatever they want. But they're destroying the consumer
Speaker 12: and they're destroying the auto workers. The auto workers will
Speaker 12: not have any jobs, Kristen, because all of these cars
Speaker 12: are going to be made in China. The electric cars
Speaker 12: automatically are going to be made in China.
Speaker 1: In response to the question who side are you on,
Speaker 1: he just doesn't answer, really, And you know, there's a
Speaker 1: few things here. We went over some of his comments
Speaker 1: on this before number one. He either doesn't know or
Speaker 1: has just decided to ignore the fact that the guys
Speaker 1: who's in charge of the Uawnwshan Fain. He's only been
Speaker 1: there five months. He has nothing to do with extreme leadership.
Speaker 1: He ran against the previous exactly, and so members just
Speaker 1: elected him because he closely represents their interests and because
Speaker 1: it very much appears like they support this militant direction
Speaker 1: that they are taking. That's number one. On the EV part.
Speaker 1: He loves to say that there's a mandate for EV's
Speaker 1: not true. I would be all for it if Republicans
Speaker 1: were actually in favor of, Hey, we're going to move
Speaker 1: to you know, we're going to make sure that we
Speaker 1: support the EV industry and that it's got to be
Speaker 1: union jobs and it's got to be good wages. That's
Speaker 1: not what they're about. They just don't want to see
Speaker 1: evs at all, which means you're going to completely see
Speaker 1: that entire industry to China. That's what they really want.
Speaker 2: This is where I disagree a bit because the Biden EPA.
Speaker 2: I did a monologue on this before, so I wanted
Speaker 2: to have all the details. They have the rule that
Speaker 2: they want to say that two thirds of new cars
Speaker 2: in a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the
Speaker 2: US by twenty thirty two are all electric. So it's
Speaker 2: not a mandate, but they're going to effectively do it
Speaker 2: through the EPA. Now that rule has not passed, let's
Speaker 2: be clear, it was proposed for a public comment, but
Speaker 2: it's very likely they have under the Biden.
Speaker 1: Metosed theoretical rule by twenty.
Speaker 2: Thirty it's not that administrative law. The way that it
Speaker 2: works is that whenever you you are about to change
Speaker 2: what administrative guidelines are, you have to publish public notice
Speaker 2: in the same way for like an x amount of
Speaker 2: period before it can go into an effect. So by
Speaker 2: all accounts, this is very likely to be the actual law,
Speaker 2: at least the EPA administrative rule that gets put into
Speaker 2: place almost certainly by the end of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: So then the question is, can we actually go to
Speaker 2: two thirds of new cars and a quarter of new
Speaker 2: heavy trucks sold in the US by twenty thirty two
Speaker 2: all electric?
Speaker 3: Not a chance in hell.
Speaker 2: I also support the ability to be able to drive
Speaker 2: gas power vehicles if they so want. I do think
Speaker 2: electric vehicles are very important for our future. I also
Speaker 2: agree with the critique that they make about China now
Speaker 2: that said they didn't do a lot of this stuff
Speaker 2: while they were in office, And that's actually where I
Speaker 2: get upset, because my response would be, like, I agree
Speaker 2: that it is a strategic national imperative that battery technology,
Speaker 2: which is not just useful for electric vehicles, but battery
Speaker 2: research which is great for uns universities, and all of
Speaker 2: that is heavily rolled up in China and they have
Speaker 2: all of the support. So let's do what we did
Speaker 2: with the Chipsack and let's build it here. That's what
Speaker 2: I would say.
Speaker 1: So, which is some of what is in the inflation
Speaker 1: reduction ass.
Speaker 2: Some but not even close to it enough. I mean,
Speaker 2: once again, the IRA is going to we will make
Speaker 2: what are we had ten percent of new cars electric?
Speaker 2: Maybe five percent or whatever that's bought on the lot.
Speaker 2: If we're lucky, we'll get to twenty five percent in
Speaker 2: two years. The other problem is, and this is a
Speaker 2: Big three problem, and actually this does nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the unions. They don't make good cars at all.
Speaker 2: Like the GM what was it, The GM Bolts has
Speaker 2: already been dish, It's already been discontinued. The only g
Speaker 2: Big three EV that's worth buying it all, it's a
Speaker 2: Ford Mustang Maki.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I disagree with that. I love
Speaker 1: my mind, but.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that is the only one. You know, what
Speaker 2: are you going to drive the Cadillac Lyric The thing
Speaker 2: looks like a shit box. I'm like, let's be honest.
Speaker 2: I actually like the way it looks okay, but the
Speaker 2: performance max all that stuff, it's not gonna work in
Speaker 2: my opinion.
Speaker 1: Let's hacker. Let's be real about what are they proposing.
Speaker 1: They're not proposing to do anything.
Speaker 2: I don't disagree. I'm just saying, just want to correct.
Speaker 1: They just want to shit on evs. That's it. It's
Speaker 1: not like I have a better plan that's going to
Speaker 1: make sure that these jobs are here in America and
Speaker 1: make sure that it's union jobs. And by the way,
Speaker 1: not to get into the weeds here, but in the
Speaker 1: Inflation Production Act, originally the White House wanted a rule
Speaker 1: in there that would require these to be union jobs,
Speaker 1: which would be really important, and which is exactly why
Speaker 1: the fact that didn't make it in is why Sean
Speaker 1: Faine and the UAW are not endorsing Joe Biden yet,
Speaker 1: which is another thing that Trump seems to like mislead
Speaker 1: on on all of this. And it was basically Joe
Speaker 1: Manchin and none of the Republicans supported any of this,
Speaker 1: by the way, So the choice is either you can
Speaker 1: go do I think that the Biden administration has done enough. No,
Speaker 1: I don't obviously have been critical of them on a
Speaker 1: number of times on this front. It should have been
Speaker 1: a requirement, that is, union jobs. They should do war
Speaker 1: to make sure this industry is here in America, like
Speaker 1: you said, like with the Chips Act. But the Republicans
Speaker 1: and Trump specifically and Jdvance, who put out very similar
Speaker 1: things on Twitter, they don't want to do anything. They
Speaker 1: just want to say, here, China, go ahead, have the industry.
Speaker 1: We're just going to try to hold on to just
Speaker 1: the you know, the traditional gas powered part of the
Speaker 1: market for as long as we can. When whether you
Speaker 1: have a guidance from the government in place or not.
Speaker 1: The automakers of their own volition were moving in this
Speaker 1: direction because they can see the writing on the wall
Speaker 1: that this is one of the key industries of the future.
Speaker 1: So are we going to compete in this industry or
Speaker 1: are we not? And that's kind of the choice here
Speaker 1: and again, to go back to the you know, the
Speaker 1: core of this, he gets asked whose side are you on?
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump supposed the mister working class. Whatever he
Speaker 1: can't say, he cannot say. None of them has been
Speaker 1: able to say. There was I think one Republican who
Speaker 1: represents some moderate you know, Joe Biden District in New
Speaker 1: York who was able to say something somewhat pro worker.
Speaker 1: But all of these other supposedly pro worker senators and
Speaker 1: congressmen on the Republican side, they've all tacitly backed the
Speaker 1: bosses in this. They cannot say that we think the
Speaker 1: worker should get about it.
Speaker 2: I would disagree that JD doesn't support building anything new
Speaker 2: because I look, I haven't talked him about it. I
Speaker 2: don't know full disclosure. I've known the guy for a
Speaker 2: long time. But the point is is that I would say,
Speaker 2: if you look, we say say supports more worker funds
Speaker 2: or more worker but Trump can't even bring us off
Speaker 2: to say that, So I would just put it that way.
Speaker 2: I agree. Look, I think most of this is weaponized.
Speaker 2: It's weaponized cynicism in order to undermine it on behalf
Speaker 2: of the oil industry, that's the vast majority of the
Speaker 2: Republican Party, and specifically gas powered vehicles. At a structural level,
Speaker 2: I really just don't know what to do because here's
Speaker 2: the truth. TESLA is beating every single one of these
Speaker 2: people and eating their lunch. They're dropping prices while they're
Speaker 2: able to fight, and even the like I said, the
Speaker 2: vast majority the ev vehicles or prop proposals that have
Speaker 2: come out since you know, the only one, as I said,
Speaker 2: the Mustang, I mean that's a luxury vehicle. Unfortunately, in
Speaker 2: order to try and make it accessible, the Asian countries
Speaker 2: and Tesla are the only ones even able to compete.
Speaker 2: You've got the Hundai Ionic five. I think the Key
Speaker 2: actually is quite affordable. It actually looks like a good ride.
Speaker 2: But my point is is that the people who are
Speaker 2: playing in that space are not Big three makers. So
Speaker 2: there's a structural level where I think it's interesting important,
Speaker 2: But I don't disagree. I don't think that Trump administration
Speaker 2: would do anything necessarily on this, and I also don't
Speaker 2: have any confidence the vast majority of Republicans would back
Speaker 2: and industrial policy to bring battery technology here to the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 1: I think it's never posed anything. They support it. They
Speaker 1: should propose something.
Speaker 2: The important thing to understand too, is that even if
Speaker 2: we don't go electric, the rest of the world will.
Speaker 3: I was in India.
Speaker 2: It was really troubling. I was seeing some Chinese like
Speaker 2: BYD vehicles that were on the road. India is actually
Speaker 2: going very heavily into electric vehicles as well. I saw
Speaker 2: it in multiple that were there. So we want to
Speaker 2: maintain like our ability to also export some of the
Speaker 2: future technology to the world the way that China is
Speaker 2: and wants to do. It's not just about domestic policy.
Speaker 2: It's also about One of the things with oil is
Speaker 2: we have a ton of it. We actually are I
Speaker 2: think we're a net oil exporter in some cases, which
Speaker 2: I think is stupid for a whole other reasons, but
Speaker 2: it gives us strategic independence and a big economic fund. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: know this is happening public policy, So you're not wrong. Well,
Speaker 2: I don't disagree.
Speaker 1: Some of it is happening in public policy. I mean,
Speaker 1: in the Inflation Production Act, you have not only incentives,
Speaker 1: you have some attempts at real industrial policy so that
Speaker 1: we are part of that future and we don't just
Speaker 1: seed the whole thing to China. We're way behind in
Speaker 1: terms of moving in that direction. And you also have
Speaker 1: some efforts at consumer and centers to try to make
Speaker 1: these vehicles more affordable.
Speaker 3: That's mostly a Tesla.
Speaker 2: Mostly Tesla's been using, I believe, because it's a tiered
Speaker 2: system where the Union I think it's seventy five hundred
Speaker 2: off for a union made vehicle and then five thousand
Speaker 2: off for a non union made vehicle. But my point
Speaker 2: is the tax credit system is not it has not
Speaker 2: been the impetus that was wanted in the consumer market
Speaker 2: for you, well, at at least at least let.
Speaker 1: Tesla could always unionize it. And I mean that's the
Speaker 1: other thing is, you know, this fight for the auto
Speaker 1: workers is so much bigger than just their wages, because
Speaker 1: you can see already with what happened with UPS and Teamsters,
Speaker 1: the number of Americans who understand that being part of
Speaker 1: a union is going to secure you a better deal
Speaker 1: has skyrocketed. The amount of interest in organizing has skyrocketed,
Speaker 1: the amount of work actions skyrocketed. And you also have
Speaker 1: somewhat of a more favorable landscape for union organizing right
Speaker 1: now with this National Labor Relations Board. So it makes
Speaker 1: it easier for you know, if you're for example, if
Speaker 1: you are working at FedEx and you see what the
Speaker 1: UPS drivers are getting, I mean, this is a problem
Speaker 1: for FedEx. They're going to have to up their wages
Speaker 1: in order to compete. And it's the same thing with Tesla.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're going to have to Their workers are
Speaker 1: looking at the deal that these autoworkers secure and they're
Speaker 1: way further down the total poll in terms of what
Speaker 1: they're earning. I mean, that's going to impact that whole industry,
Speaker 1: whether or not they're unionized. So that's why these fights matter,
Speaker 1: not just for the workers that are directly impacted.
Speaker 2: I agree with you completely.
Speaker 3: Let's go move on student loans.
Speaker 2: This is an important one. It actually gets a lot
Speaker 2: of what we're talking about, affordability, way of life. How
Speaker 2: exactly do we make it here October, student loan repayments
Speaker 2: are starting, So let's go and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. The restart threatens to pull quote one
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars out of consumer pockets. Households are cutting
Speaker 2: back and are worrying the largest retailers in the United States.
Speaker 2: So the average payment that borrowers are going to have
Speaker 2: to start making is two to three hundred dollars each month,
Speaker 2: which is effectively equivalent to a car payment. The payments
Speaker 2: will quote mark the first time that borrowers have to
Speaker 2: make good on these loans since the Education Department instituted
Speaker 2: that pause in March of twenty twenty, so it's been
Speaker 2: over three and a half years now that they has
Speaker 2: been in place. Quote. The issue is that in the interim,
Speaker 2: money was spent on television's, travel, new homes, and thousands
Speaker 2: of other products. That spending is one reason that the
Speaker 2: economy has remained resilient in recent years despite the surge
Speaker 2: in interest rate. So we're going to have now a
Speaker 2: high interest rate environment, and we are going to see
Speaker 2: on average two to three hundred dollars a month that
Speaker 2: are pulled out of the consumer pocket.
Speaker 3: So right now, Target, Walmart and other.
Speaker 2: Retailers which rely heavily on discussionary spending, are flagging this
Speaker 2: as one of the biggest things that are going to
Speaker 2: impact their bottom line. Now the Biden economists and others
Speaker 2: are actually saying opposite. They're like, well, it's a small
Speaker 2: thing for the eighteen trillion dollars in US consumer spending,
Speaker 2: but this actually can have a really big impact that
Speaker 2: I've been thinking a lot about Crystal. October, November, and
Speaker 2: December is known as the time when like forty something
Speaker 2: percent of retail sales occur, largely because of Christmas. People
Speaker 2: thread money like crazy during the holidays. Don't ask me why,
Speaker 2: but anyway, so like people throw money out of their
Speaker 2: pockets it seems like nothing is real. Well, if you,
Speaker 2: at the very same time have a two to three
Speaker 2: hundred dollars a month pulled out of your budget for
Speaker 2: Christmas gifts and for all this other stuff that you
Speaker 2: were going to buy let's say on Black Friday, Prime
Speaker 2: Day or any of these other things, well then you
Speaker 2: may just you know, that could be the reason not
Speaker 2: to buy it, or it could be the reason to
Speaker 2: go into debt. Both of those things are really bad,
Speaker 2: you know, when we consider it from a macro level,
Speaker 2: it also just makes it even more so daily life.
Speaker 2: For two to three hundred dollars, I get a current
Speaker 2: grocery price, what is that like a week, you know
Speaker 2: for a family of four, probably less, unfortunately, So that's
Speaker 2: one week of groceries which is gone, or it's one
Speaker 2: week of your house fund, you know, your sorry, one
Speaker 2: month of your put you down payment fund, or any
Speaker 2: of these other things that people are signing up for.
Speaker 2: So the overall pull out of the economy I think,
Speaker 2: I think is actually going to have an immense impact,
Speaker 2: given the fact that quarter four, whenever it's starting up,
Speaker 2: it's one of the worst times you want to impact
Speaker 2: retail spending from a macro level.
Speaker 1: To your point, I mean the reason they call it
Speaker 1: Black Friday is because traditionally that's when the retailers actually
Speaker 1: get into the black and become profitable, and so that's
Speaker 1: why they call it that, and that does make this
Speaker 1: period of time really critical for a lot of retailers
Speaker 1: target Walmart, et cetera. I thought one of the most
Speaker 1: noteworthy pieces that they noted in here is that the
Speaker 1: FED did a survey of economic conditions and found that
Speaker 1: already the potential payment restart had led to workers taking
Speaker 1: on more hours and more workers being available. So they're
Speaker 1: already seeing the pressure. Of course, they're like probably celebrating this,
Speaker 1: but they're already seeing the pressure being put on the
Speaker 1: workforce just with the anticipation of these payments restarting. You
Speaker 1: also have a lot of signs that workers and Americans
Speaker 1: who have a student loan debt significant student loan debt
Speaker 1: are already under a lot of financial pressure and already
Speaker 1: are relying on debt in order to finance their living expenses.
Speaker 1: They note that more than half of consumers with student
Speaker 1: loans added bank credit card debt during the pandemic, around
Speaker 1: a third took on new auto loans, fifteen percent took
Speaker 1: out new mortgages, and at the same time, these consumer
Speaker 1: savings have been declining since reaching a peak in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. So you already have some signs that you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of student loan debt holders who are
Speaker 1: already kind of at the brink. We've been talking here
Speaker 1: and put up some charts and showing you some numbers
Speaker 1: about you know, over the course of the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: in the beginning, you have the American Rescue Plan, that's
Speaker 1: what it was called, right, the Biden one, where you
Speaker 1: got checks and people's you got the child tax credit,
Speaker 1: you got some pandemic aid and recovery added on top
Speaker 1: of what was done during the early days of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And the story of these years has been those programs
Speaker 1: falling away and falling away and falling away. So no
Speaker 1: surprise that you have all these signs of financial insecurity
Speaker 1: in creating. The number of Americans who you know, could
Speaker 1: afford a four hundred dollars emergency emergency express expense that's
Speaker 1: going down. You see the number of people who have
Speaker 1: these huge ballooning credit card balances that's going up. You
Speaker 1: see the amount in the savings account, you see that
Speaker 1: going down. So you have all these signs that Americans
Speaker 1: are already stressed, and of course inflation adding to that picture.
Speaker 1: Then you layer on top of that this huge blow
Speaker 1: of Americans having to restart payments. That could be it
Speaker 1: could be very difficult. Now, one thing I did want
Speaker 1: to note, I mean, we do have we had the
Speaker 1: Biden administration's attempt to cancel some debt. Obviously the struck down.
Speaker 1: They're trying again through a different method to try to
Speaker 1: get that to go through the courts. That's going to
Speaker 1: take some time to work itself out if that even
Speaker 1: comes to pass. They did pass, they did put forward
Speaker 1: a repayment plan to make the payments lower. It's called save,
Speaker 1: to make the payments lower than what they would be
Speaker 1: based on your income level, to try to make this
Speaker 1: more affordable for people as they restart, I will typical
Speaker 1: neoliberal fashion because it's all means tests and complicated whatever.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit hard to navigate. But that program
Speaker 1: is a vail to try to at least help to
Speaker 1: soften the blow for some individuals. But I'm really concerned
Speaker 1: about what this is going to look like when it
Speaker 1: fully restarts, because this is going to be a huge
Speaker 1: hit to a lot of people who are already in
Speaker 1: a difficult position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the SAVE program i've heard people talk about. Dave
Speaker 2: Ramsey in particular, had a whole interesting take on how
Speaker 2: exactly it works. I recommend people go listen to them
Speaker 2: if you're interesting, because I know a lot of people
Speaker 2: actually struggling with this. I think it has something to
Speaker 2: do with pausing interest in the hope of in the
Speaker 2: hope of forgiveness later on. I know also that there's
Speaker 2: a lot of issues with SAVE is that it only
Speaker 2: focuses on federal bowers and it doesn't apply to some
Speaker 2: private programs, and also parents who'd taken programs out as well.
Speaker 2: The point is that this is really bad, and we
Speaker 2: have numbers actually to continue to show you, just to
Speaker 2: give you an idea. Let's put these up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. Please that the time our team put together,
Speaker 2: you can see that the average debt bachelor degree holder
Speaker 2: right now is twenty eight thousand and four. Grad school
Speaker 2: as of course, where it always gets really hit seventy
Speaker 2: one thousand, the parent plus loan, that's what I was
Speaker 2: talking about. There is at twenty eight thousand. Law school
Speaker 2: debt is an average one hundred and thirty MBA six,
Speaker 2: med school two oh three, dental school three oh one.
Speaker 2: I wonder if dentists made more than doctors, because that's
Speaker 2: pretty crazy. And then pharmacy school, which I don't understand,
Speaker 2: is one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, nursing school somewhere
Speaker 2: between twenty thousand dollars to forty seven thousand, and then
Speaker 2: vet school is one hundred and fifty. And you can
Speaker 2: see that the overall amount of student dret outlying right
Speaker 2: now is one point seventy sixty six trillion, and that
Speaker 2: is after you have seen an interest basically an interest
Speaker 2: freeze for the last couple of years. So anyway, the
Speaker 2: point is that some big consumer spending is about to
Speaker 2: get pulled out of the economy, and we could very
Speaker 2: much see some contraction in the year to come. At
Speaker 2: the very overall impact on retail spending. Retail spending has jobs.
Speaker 2: We have seasonal workers who work for Amazon, for all
Speaker 2: these other people which rely on a lot of these places.
Speaker 3: So yeah, drop in retail is very bad for the
Speaker 3: US economy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course there's I mean, the bigger structural
Speaker 1: picture of the insanity of these costs and the fact
Speaker 1: that we need to do. I mean, that's the macro
Speaker 1: is that all all of these different programs that are
Speaker 1: an attempt to make the payments at least somewhat reasonable,
Speaker 1: are you know, not getting at the core issue that
Speaker 1: it's insane that a college education should cost as much
Speaker 1: as it does at this point. Last thing, I just
Speaker 1: want to say, if you do have a high student
Speaker 1: loan debt burden, and this is something you're struggling with,
Speaker 1: do look into the Safe Plan. It's just an income
Speaker 1: driven repayment plan. The ideas they'll take into account how
Speaker 1: much you're earning, what your family size is, and then
Speaker 1: your monthly payment will be lower than what it was.
Speaker 1: And anything after twenty years that hasn't gotten paid down
Speaker 1: that will be forgiven. Some people who are lower income
Speaker 1: they'll qualify for no payments whatsoever. So do look into it.
Speaker 1: I will tell you everything we're hearing is the paperwork
Speaker 1: and getting a process. It takes about four weeks to
Speaker 1: get these things processed, so it is a little bit
Speaker 1: of a bureaucratic nightmare as these things are. Again, you know,
Speaker 1: this is why I'm in favor of simple universal programs,
Speaker 1: but I think it could help a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there if this is something you're struggling with, So
Speaker 1: that's the flag ps.
Speaker 2: You know, take care out there if this is one
Speaker 2: of you folks. Yes, ob let's move on abortion. So
Speaker 2: Trump making some interesting comments in two separate interviews that
Speaker 2: he gave over the last couple of days. The first
Speaker 2: is probably the most politically astute thing he's done since
Speaker 2: the announce for reelection. He came out hard against Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 2: but also any state that signed a six week abortion ban.
Speaker 2: In his Meet the Press interview, let's take a lesson.
Speaker 1: Mister President. I want to give voters who are going
Speaker 1: to be weighing in on this election, Yeah, a very
Speaker 1: clear sense of I think I don't think they're all
Speaker 1: going to like me.
Speaker 12: I think both sides you are going to like me.
Speaker 12: Let's going to have to happen, is you're going to
Speaker 12: have to do this question. You're asking me a question.
Speaker 12: What's going to happen is you're going to come up
Speaker 12: with a number of weeks or months. You're going to
Speaker 12: come up with a number that's going to make people happy.
Speaker 12: Because ninety two percent of the Democrats don't want to
Speaker 12: see abortion after a certain period of time.
Speaker 2: If a federal ban landed on your desk if you
Speaker 2: were re elected, would you say.
Speaker 12: It at fifteen Are you talking about a complete ban
Speaker 12: a ban at fifteen weeks? Well, people are starting to
Speaker 12: think of fifteen weeks. That seems to be a number
Speaker 12: that people are talking about right now.
Speaker 1: Would you sign that.
Speaker 12: I would sit down with both sides and I negotiate
Speaker 12: something and we'll end up with peace in that issue
Speaker 12: for the first time in fifty two years. I'm not
Speaker 12: going to say I would or I wouldn't. I mean,
Speaker 12: de Sanctis is willing to sign a five week and
Speaker 12: six week bit.
Speaker 3: Do you support that?
Speaker 12: You think that that's what he did is a terrible
Speaker 12: thing and a terrible.
Speaker 3: Mistake, a terrible thing. So don't forget it's not just Florida.
Speaker 2: It states like Iowa, which is the caucus happening right now,
Speaker 2: States like Ohio, Georgia. There are multiple six week bands
Speaker 2: which would pass across the United States. So this is
Speaker 2: a direct break not only with Ron DeSantis, but with
Speaker 2: a huge portion of this GOP states. And as I said,
Speaker 2: what's what he has just said makes him the most
Speaker 2: moderate present person in the entire race on the issue. Abortion,
Speaker 2: I mean, which is fascinating for I think the mind
Speaker 2: to comprehend for people who try to look at this stuff.
Speaker 3: But listen, the man got elected for a reason.
Speaker 2: He's moderate in many ways on the areas where the
Speaker 2: GOP has always been the most radical quote unquote, which
Speaker 2: is poisonous to the electorate.
Speaker 3: And also Trump doesn't really believe anything.
Speaker 2: So whenever he sees states like Ohio, Kentucky, with Michigan
Speaker 2: and all these others kill abortion at the ballot box
Speaker 2: every single time it comes up for referendum, He's like,
Speaker 2: all right, well whatever, He's like, it helped me get elected,
Speaker 2: you know, being pro life, to get the evangelicals to
Speaker 2: come out to vote for me in twenty sixteen when
Speaker 2: I made my Supreme Court thing. But those votes are
Speaker 2: gone and a ton of other votes have been activated.
Speaker 3: And if that's the case, well this is where I'm.
Speaker 1: Going classic Trump in that he doesn't actually say what
Speaker 1: his position is. You know, she's like fifteen, and he's
Speaker 1: like many people are talking about fifteen, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: doesn't actually commit to anything. I was surprised he was
Speaker 1: as clear as he was on a six week ban, though,
Speaker 1: I mean that was for him to say it was
Speaker 1: terrible and to be that overt about it. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of you know, upset
Speaker 1: pro life in the pro life world. But this is
Speaker 1: the other thing. When you're the big dog, you can
Speaker 1: get away with things that other candidates could not get
Speaker 1: away with. I don't think there's another candidate in the
Speaker 1: field who could say things as directly that you know, no,
Speaker 1: that's too far, and that's terrible, and we're not doing
Speaker 1: that on an issue that is really key to a
Speaker 1: lot of Republican voters, even if it's at odds with
Speaker 1: the general public. I don't think there's another candidate in
Speaker 1: the Republican field who could afford to say that that
Speaker 1: directly on this issue. And that's why you ended up
Speaker 1: with DeSantis signing this bill, which he clearly was uncomfortable doing.
Speaker 1: You know, waited until after he got re elected as
Speaker 1: governor Florida because he was worried how it would play
Speaker 1: even in the state of Florida. He signed it in
Speaker 1: like a midnight signing. Cereal. He's clearly trying to bury
Speaker 1: the fact that he was doing this thing, but also
Speaker 1: felt the need to placate the pro life activists both
Speaker 1: in his state and nationally. So that's how he ends
Speaker 1: up in this position. But you know, this is Trump's
Speaker 1: kind of normy instincts coming out here, and he immediately
Speaker 1: recognized even though he of course is the one who
Speaker 1: put the justices in place to overturned Growth versus Way,
Speaker 1: he also immediately recognized that Roe versus Way being overturned
Speaker 1: was going to be a massive liability for Republicans.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The important point here with the Rod with DeSantis
Speaker 2: and what's happened is, as you said, they are all
Speaker 2: still at the liberty of the pro life groups of
Speaker 2: being attacked.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But you know, Mark Levin, if this were any other candidate,
Speaker 2: he would lose it, you know, on the board, lose it.
Speaker 2: You would see like frauth at the mouth of some
Speaker 2: of the Glenn Beck some of these other folks. They're
Speaker 2: not going to say a damn thing on this, and
Speaker 2: if they do, it's going to be like the most me. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, he's this and but he got road dun
Speaker 2: you know, something like that. True, And he gets away
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 3: And that's why he's good at what he does.
Speaker 2: You know, he leverages his position and as always he
Speaker 2: remains one of the most moderate people really on the
Speaker 2: issue on social issues in the entire GOP issue, where
Speaker 2: I have always believed has given him tremendous amounts of strength.
Speaker 2: One third of the people who voted for Trump in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen were pro choice, and I think probably one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the people voted for the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: or pro choice. So you know, you only have anything
Speaker 2: to gain by being moderate on the issue and by
Speaker 2: disavowing specifically the most unpopular elements of your party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then again, I mean, he was the guy
Speaker 1: that put these dust.
Speaker 3: That's what It's complicated.
Speaker 1: So it's not like the reality of what you know,
Speaker 1: his term in office led to was moderation.
Speaker 2: There was also a very funny bit when Megan Kelly
Speaker 2: started trying to get Trump into some of our modern
Speaker 2: culture wars, and you can tell he is just completely
Speaker 2: detached from the issue. Let's take a lesson.
Speaker 12: I knew caitlyn Is Bruce. I knew Bruce, and you know,
Speaker 12: Bruce was a great athlete and a very handsome person,
Speaker 12: very handsome guy, and all of a sudden, Bruce's Caitlin
Speaker 12: I said, what's this all about? This was a brand
Speaker 12: new subject too, just like just like we talk about,
Speaker 12: you know, the pandemic was a subject that nobody knew
Speaker 12: anything about. Nobody knew anything about.
Speaker 2: Can a man become a woman.
Speaker 12: In my opinion, you.
Speaker 1: Have a man, you have a woman.
Speaker 12: I think I think part of it is birth.
Speaker 1: Can the man give birth?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: So you know what I find just fascinating about Trump
Speaker 2: is like he truly doesn't care. This is a man
Speaker 2: who it's because this is where a huge portion of
Speaker 2: the energy is, especially online online republic. This is like
Speaker 2: Matt wallsh Daily Wire, like this is like the beating
Speaker 2: heart of what they're all about.
Speaker 3: And really, actually, let's be honest.
Speaker 2: You know that big portion of people who are into
Speaker 2: like modern right wing politics, like this is the genesis
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: But Trump himself floats in a different universe.
Speaker 2: So I just I don't know, I can't help but
Speaker 2: just marvel at the fact that he gets away with
Speaker 2: something that no other Republican politician would be able to
Speaker 2: on this issue too, If any Republican politician didn't definitively
Speaker 2: answer like absolutely not and go off about schools and
Speaker 2: all this stuff be raked, you know, they would look
Speaker 2: at what Asa Hutchinson and all that the amount that Tucker,
Speaker 2: Carlson and others go after him. But with Trump, he
Speaker 2: gets it. He gets away with everything. He gets away
Speaker 2: with everything.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's going to be an incoming Tucker
Speaker 1: monologue like expiating him. Yeah, it's a great point. I
Speaker 1: mean you can see in particular, like the Veik and
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis or like compete with each other on the
Speaker 1: extremist language that they use on this subject. They would
Speaker 1: have no problem, no qualms about answering this issue. They
Speaker 1: would know exactly what to say. And we noted even
Speaker 1: in his in Trump's announcement speech, remember that he didn't
Speaker 1: really he may have said one thing about it, but
Speaker 1: it was like not, it's so just like I said
Speaker 1: DeSantis and now we're amswami as well. This really they
Speaker 1: put at the core of especially when they were launching,
Speaker 1: when they were first getting their campaigns going, because they
Speaker 1: saw this is where all a lot of right wing
Speaker 1: online energy is. But again I do feel like this
Speaker 1: is kind of Trump called it early on the you
Speaker 1: know this woke's anti woke thing like people means. I
Speaker 1: love that, And it goes back to I think some
Speaker 1: of his like New York parts of him where he's not.
Speaker 1: He's in for you know, the like casual xenophobia, but
Speaker 1: he's not really ready to go in on all the
Speaker 1: anti gay stuff. That being said, I mean, he goes
Speaker 1: on to remind everybody that he pointed out he banned
Speaker 1: trans people from the military, and he basically said the
Speaker 1: right things with regards to the right when it comes
Speaker 1: to you know, banning trans people from bathroom sports, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But he clearly is not interested in really talking about
Speaker 1: this issue, not interested in really running on this issue.
Speaker 1: This is not the core of what he wants to
Speaker 1: be tagget.
Speaker 3: But it's smart.
Speaker 2: I mean the bathroom thing, for example, it was extremely popular.
Speaker 2: But with our friend of mine, Joe Simonston actually had
Speaker 2: a good insight quote Trump is not going to be
Speaker 2: based on trans stuff because he's from Manhattan, where transgender
Speaker 2: people were not an uncommon fixture of downtown life throughout
Speaker 2: the seventies, eighties, and nineties. It is only now a
Speaker 2: political movement.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a.
Speaker 2: Very astute observation. We always have to remember, like Trump's
Speaker 2: from Manhattan.
Speaker 1: You know, the pictures are Rudy Julie Ye dressed up
Speaker 1: as a woman that.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that's not thing. It's like a drag.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But they're all against that now too.
Speaker 2: I mean, well they're against it for children, Crystal. Okay, sure, okay,
Speaker 2: against it for children or at the very least a
Speaker 2: reasonable position.
Speaker 1: Yes, Lauren Bobert and cow are very concerned about our children.
Speaker 2: Lauren Barber ship be concerned about her own children after
Speaker 2: her actions this weekend, but we will save in a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 3: Let's move on, Ken Paxton.
Speaker 2: As crystl said, I was down in Austin where Marshall
Speaker 2: was getting married this weekend. So congratulations to my friend
Speaker 2: of the show, Marshall Costloff. And while I was there,
Speaker 2: just feet away from the US Capital, Texas Attorney General
Speaker 2: Ken Paxson was acquitted on all sixteen articles of impeachment.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put this up there on the screen
Speaker 2: because the details of this are actually really interesting. Quote.
Speaker 2: Only two out of the nineteen Republican senators voted in
Speaker 2: favor of convicting for any article of impeachment, which is
Speaker 2: a complete flip after the seventy percent of House Republicans
Speaker 2: actually teach the attorney general in May. As you can
Speaker 2: see there, you can see all of the votes that
Speaker 2: lined up to equit him. The point was that they
Speaker 2: needed twenty one votes to ecquit and they are to convict,
Speaker 2: and they didn't come close on any of the measures
Speaker 2: that were made against him. Now we've gotten investigation, we've
Speaker 2: broken down some of the details here before they effectively
Speaker 2: boil down to let's just say, very cozy interesting relationships
Speaker 2: involving big donors, his mistress, getting his mistress a job,
Speaker 2: using and pressuring the office the FBI to investigate competitors
Speaker 2: to set donor. It's like the most intra Texas thing
Speaker 2: you can imagine. Also, what is it getting free remodels
Speaker 2: on his house? Ye, there's a lot going on here.
Speaker 2: And let's just say that in terms of the allegations himselves,
Speaker 2: like I don't even think it really denies it, you know,
Speaker 2: they're basically bulletproof true, which is part of the reason
Speaker 2: why I was impeached. But this is why I wanted
Speaker 2: to focus in on this is this is a major
Speaker 2: victory for the MAGA move movement in the Texas GOP
Speaker 2: because there was a lot of intro fight around the
Speaker 2: Bush people and then the Trump people about who has
Speaker 2: the power, who has the energy, the Bush contingent, obviously
Speaker 2: left over from the W. Bush administration. These are Chamber
Speaker 2: of Commerce Republicans, oil guys, very traditional, the Mitt Romney
Speaker 2: archetype of GOP. We've had MAGA people, mostly like Ken Paxson,
Speaker 2: who's been a MAGA hero now for a long time,
Speaker 2: and that is really what saved him in this trial.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: You've got almost every single Texas politician who is aspiring
Speaker 2: to something like Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick immediately coming out
Speaker 2: blasting the impeachment process. But most importantly, and I'd heard
Speaker 2: a lot of rumblings from this crystal, is that a
Speaker 2: full blown movement was launched by Trump and by many
Speaker 2: of the people around him to make sure that the
Speaker 2: message was sent. Let's put Axios please up on the screen,
Speaker 2: which just made it clear, if you vote to impeach
Speaker 2: Ken Paxton, we are coming after you with everything we've got.
Speaker 3: You will get primary, you will lose power.
Speaker 2: They leashed, unleashed all of the MAGA influencers and others
Speaker 2: who were against him to prop him up.
Speaker 3: Packson.
Speaker 2: Of course, remember we remember he did that lawsuit on
Speaker 2: behalf of the electors or whatever for the pet during
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election. He has long endeared himself to Trump.
Speaker 2: This entire thing, by the way, has made me convince
Speaker 2: that if Trump does win, Ken pax is gonna be
Speaker 2: Attorney general. He will be one hundred percent he's going
Speaker 2: to be the ag nominated. But anyway, politically, it was
Speaker 2: a huge coup for MAGA. Really in the Texas GOP,
Speaker 2: where there's been a long fight between Greg Abbott and others.
Speaker 3: There was recently a.
Speaker 2: Clip I'm sure people saw of Tucker going after Texas
Speaker 2: Governor Greg Abbott for not doing enough on the border.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of you know, intro fighting that's
Speaker 2: been happening within the party for a long time. The
Speaker 2: fact that they were able to prevail here actually does
Speaker 2: show a pretty interesting balance of power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the details here are disgusting.
Speaker 3: As I said, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: A property developer who he was buddies with. They're trading
Speaker 1: political favors and a long sort of it is this dude.
Speaker 1: Part of why Paxson was so interested in protecting him
Speaker 1: and going after his you know, adversaries, competitors, et cetera,
Speaker 1: is because the developer dude had hired his mistress so
Speaker 1: that the mistress could be there nearby in Austin. And
Speaker 1: it's also, you know, disgraceful because his wife is part
Speaker 1: as a member of the Senate, so she had to
Speaker 1: stand by and like watch all of this unfolding too,
Speaker 1: knowing he'd lied to her and lied to everyone else
Speaker 1: about this affair that was going I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: it's as blatant as possible. And the people who were
Speaker 1: the whistleblowers in this were like Republican true believers who
Speaker 1: worked in his office who saw all of this going down,
Speaker 1: were like, this is unbelievable. This dude is breaking the law,
Speaker 1: Like we have to come forward with this information. So
Speaker 1: of course it was painted in Trump friendly circles as
Speaker 1: some sort of like deep state plot et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was very successful. And I think
Speaker 1: it's said because the facts here couldn't be any more
Speaker 1: clear cut. But politics is so tribal, even within the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, where you had a Republican House that actually
Speaker 1: impeached him, but the Republican House in Texas is more
Speaker 1: aligned with that like Bush wing of the party, and
Speaker 1: the Senate is more trumpy. So we were saying from
Speaker 1: the beginning, we expected him to be acquitted because of
Speaker 1: that political dynamic. But that's it. It doesn't the facts,
Speaker 1: the details, the you know, gravity of the allegation, sy
Speaker 1: none of that matters. It ended up just mattering are
Speaker 1: whose team are you on? They paid social media influencers
Speaker 1: to defend the attorney general. Apparently Charlie Kirk was very critical.
Speaker 1: According to strategists who you know, were involved in this effort.
Speaker 1: Quoted by Axios, they said he had his people posting
Speaker 1: senators office numbers, was giving the manage show driving the
Speaker 1: centers absolutely crazy. Also interesting, they said they didn't care
Speaker 1: what mainstream media said about this. All they cared about
Speaker 1: were like the partisan rag outlets that were going to
Speaker 1: toe the line, So that was what their focus was on.
Speaker 1: And then the last sign of just sort of how
Speaker 1: utterly corrupt this process was the Lieutenant Governor Patrick, who
Speaker 1: presided over this trial as judge. As prescribed by you
Speaker 1: know how this procedure works in Texas, he got a
Speaker 1: million dollar campaign donation and a two million dollar loan
Speaker 1: from a pro Paxton group just before the trial, and
Speaker 1: then immediately after the trial is over, he comes out
Speaker 1: and talks about how you know what a disgrace this
Speaker 1: was that they impeached him, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: it's just as blatantly tribal and corrupt as it could
Speaker 1: possibly be.
Speaker 2: Absolutely am and that's the Texas GOP always kind of
Speaker 2: has been. So but now I really see this as
Speaker 2: like an intro fight Dan Patrick. He knows where his
Speaker 2: bread is buttered now and you won't be seeing something different.
Speaker 2: And there's also still a lot of fights too. Don't
Speaker 2: forget there was a split I believe between the two
Speaker 2: Texas senators. Ted Cruz was a big Ken Paxton supporter
Speaker 2: because he wants to remain popular and in office, whereas
Speaker 2: John Corn I don't think he had said anything that
Speaker 2: we're on the procedure. He's much more of establishment parent
Speaker 2: and protachment type. So you know, like I said, it's
Speaker 2: a very interesting cleavage in the entire party. And this
Speaker 2: I believe is a big victory, not just obviously for Paxton,
Speaker 2: who gets to remain in the job, but for all
Speaker 2: the people in Washington who are on the side of
Speaker 2: MAGA in particular.
Speaker 1: This is it. The last thing I'll say on this
Speaker 1: is Paxon is not out of the woods. He's also
Speaker 1: under criminal investigation, so you know, he could potentially be
Speaker 1: in legal trouble even though he escaped with his life.
Speaker 3: In terms of the political well that's what helps set
Speaker 3: off this whole thing.
Speaker 2: Remember this has right years ago, these allegations came out
Speaker 2: about the federal investigation and all that, So who knows,
Speaker 2: maybe the Biden people will pick it up.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, sorry guys, but we have to
Speaker 1: talk about Lauren Buffort. I'm sure you all know. She's,
Speaker 1: you know, like sort of very far right congresswoman represents
Speaker 1: a district in Colorado.
Speaker 3: She just barely five hundred votes by.
Speaker 1: The skin of her teeth last time around, and she's
Speaker 1: facing a tough challenge this time around. So first thing
Speaker 1: we learned is that she had gone to a family friendly,
Speaker 1: supposedly theatrical production of Beetlejuice in Denver and she was
Speaker 1: kicked out, and you know, she was all, oh, I
Speaker 1: did nothing wrong. I was just singing and enjoying myself
Speaker 1: and maybe they just hate like Republicans and that's why
Speaker 1: I got kicked out, etc. Well, turns out there was
Speaker 1: security footage. So let's go and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. By the way, this is not a child
Speaker 1: friendly if you have Okay, So this is her with
Speaker 1: her date ye in this family friendly theatrical production, feeling
Speaker 1: up on her tits, and then she goes ahead and
Speaker 1: reaches over to his crotch and whispers something to him.
Speaker 1: I really hate myself right now describing all this. Then
Speaker 1: you see her getting kicked out. According to the theater,
Speaker 1: there was lots of you know, don't you know who
Speaker 1: I am on the board? I'm on the board, and
Speaker 1: she apparently flipped off some usher who's just trying to
Speaker 1: do their job. Put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: We've got some of the details here from Reuters they
Speaker 1: are sorry. From the Associated Press, they say the theater
Speaker 1: didn't name bober but a spokesperson and said Wednesday the
Speaker 1: video which showed Bobert and guests being escorted out of
Speaker 1: the venue was of guests who were kicked out after
Speaker 1: audience members accused them of vaping, singing, using phones, and
Speaker 1: causing disturbance. During the argument in the theater, the two
Speaker 1: made comments along the lines of do you know who
Speaker 1: I am? And I will be contacting the mayor. According
Speaker 1: to the venue's statement, which that type of attitude. I
Speaker 1: just I actually find that worse than a lot of
Speaker 1: the other things.
Speaker 2: Wait, I actually agree, that's probably the worst thing that
Speaker 2: she did the.
Speaker 1: Whole Yeah, do you know, I am thing and yeah,
Speaker 1: so initially, like I said, she she tried to deny it.
Speaker 1: They had also in that writer's report, her original statement
Speaker 1: from her campaign manager said, I can confirm the stunning
Speaker 1: and sallicious rumors in her personal time. Congressman Lauren Bobert
Speaker 1: is indeed a supporter of the performing arts gasp, adding
Speaker 1: that she pleads guilty to singing along, laughing and enjoying herself.
Speaker 1: That was the original.
Speaker 3: She brought this on herself. Yeah, nobody was going to
Speaker 3: release that video.
Speaker 2: She said.
Speaker 1: That's a great she was.
Speaker 2: She's like, I wasn't vaping. She was puffing fat clouds
Speaker 2: in the vernacular of the gen z kness who were
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 3: I want to know if she was using an elf bar.
Speaker 1: Apparently too, there was pregnant lady who was right there
Speaker 1: who was asking her to stop.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basic etiquette. Keep that in mind.
Speaker 2: Vapors, by the way, both weed variety and nicotine variety,
Speaker 2: because it is annoying whenever you're in an indoor venue.
Speaker 2: But the point is that she brought it on herself
Speaker 2: by acting like a fool whenever she was in public
Speaker 2: and then denying it after she got kicked out. But
Speaker 2: the best part is is her recent defense in an
Speaker 2: interview with O A N one American news network. Here's
Speaker 2: what she had to say.
Speaker 14: What's the top story Lauren Bobert getting kicked out of
Speaker 14: the Baute Theater, Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1: On what the media does.
Speaker 13: It's what the media does, so what they do.
Speaker 14: I was a little too eccentric.
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 14: I'm very known for having a animated personality, maybe overtly
Speaker 14: animated personality. I was laughing, I was singing, having a
Speaker 14: fantastic time. Was told to kind of settle it down
Speaker 14: a little bit, which I did. But then my next
Speaker 14: slip up was taking a picture.
Speaker 13: Sure can't take any images of the play. I've done
Speaker 13: it too, I've snuck them sh right. So you got
Speaker 13: thrown out because she took a pick and you weren't
Speaker 13: supposed to. But you know what, here's my.
Speaker 2: Whole thing, was arguing.
Speaker 14: There's report saying that I was arguing threatening you call
Speaker 14: the Denver mayor. I don't know why I would ever
Speaker 14: call the Denver mayor. I think he would have tried
Speaker 14: to lock me up the report saying I was on
Speaker 14: the board of something.
Speaker 1: I don't know what. I'm on the board.
Speaker 14: I'm on the edge of a lot of things.
Speaker 13: Let me tell you, people that complained that, I'm thinking
Speaker 13: you're in Denver, Lauren. It's very liberal. The people that
Speaker 13: complained to the ushers that you're being noisy could have
Speaker 13: recognized you and been like, oh, I think that's that
Speaker 13: mega girl.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's why she reason well and all of the
Speaker 2: other stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's the other thing too, She is flat out at first,
Speaker 1: you flat out lied. She's a liar about the vaping,
Speaker 1: and then when she was caught on camera, she issued
Speaker 1: some apology for just that portion. I mean, listen, here's
Speaker 1: here's my thing with all of this, Like it is
Speaker 1: the behavior tragy, it's trashy. Do I really care that much? No.
Speaker 1: What I care about here, though, is what she's such
Speaker 1: a hypocrite because she does posture as this like oh,
Speaker 1: I'm such a Christian, and oh I'm so concerned about
Speaker 1: the children, and she's very you know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: trans drag shows. What are she's like very vociferously against
Speaker 1: Alida because we must protect the children. Whatever, And there
Speaker 1: you are feeling up on this dude in some family
Speaker 1: friendly Beetle Juice production. Like listen, I'm all for Trashi
Speaker 1: Hoose having representation in Congress, but I would like those
Speaker 1: trashios to be a little less hypocritical in their approach.
Speaker 1: And here's the other piece that many were pointing out.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. So the dude that
Speaker 1: she's with there, apparently he owns a gay friendly bar
Speaker 1: that hosts drag shows, something that she again supposedly is
Speaker 1: vociferously against because we must think of the children. Soccer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, as I said, there's a lot going on here.
Speaker 2: My personal favorite there's a lot of good tweets and
Speaker 2: a lot of good memes about this is that the
Speaker 2: venue should start shelling t shirts, which has got my
Speaker 2: Beetle Juice and the Beetle Juice.
Speaker 3: Jillian scept me that one.
Speaker 1: I also there's also some really thank you for the memes, Lauren.
Speaker 3: There are some good ones about why are we all
Speaker 3: saying be star star?
Speaker 2: Do you know what we're bringing up? Actually we might
Speaker 2: have said it more than three times in this more
Speaker 2: than three times this, that's a great fine you've ever
Speaker 2: watched the if you know the premise of the if
Speaker 2: you don't understand the premise of the show anyway, there's
Speaker 2: a lot going on here.
Speaker 1: Also, it's not exactly like the sexiest show you give me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's there's also there's questions you know about, like
Speaker 2: why beatle juice? You know very I God, I just
Speaker 2: said it again. I'm bringing I'm bringing it upon myself.
Speaker 2: This is the most fun we've had here in a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 1: Yes, so thank you, Lauren. I appreciate that. All right, Sorry,
Speaker 1: we're looking.
Speaker 2: At I want to start out by saying I've got
Speaker 2: nothing personal against Asnamonaj.
Speaker 3: If anything, I actually owe him.
Speaker 2: Once, despite the fact that I had never met him,
Speaker 2: I sent him an email saying that my sister was
Speaker 2: coming to a show. He personally insisted on greeting her
Speaker 2: and her friends backstage, which of course made me cool
Speaker 2: in her eyes for five milliseconds.
Speaker 3: The point, though, is that.
Speaker 2: He's a nice guy and even nice to me, despite
Speaker 2: vast political differences, and because I want people to know
Speaker 2: this is not out of malice at all. Instead, it's
Speaker 2: to dwell on the area where I have always differed
Speaker 2: most from Hassan. Much of his political orientation and comedy
Speaker 2: focuses in on what I would say are the worst
Speaker 2: parts of America. It is rooted, I believe, and probably
Speaker 2: what was a genuinely traumatic experience that many Indian Americans
Speaker 2: like me had to go through post nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: We went, at least in our eyes, from a genuinely
Speaker 2: post racial society where no one particularly cared where our
Speaker 2: parents were from, to a world where suddenly heritage with
Speaker 2: suspect and kids, of course, would make ignorant or nasty comments.
Speaker 2: This was not easy, to say the least, but the
Speaker 2: response to it amongst many Indian Americans who have lived
Speaker 2: here has always troubled me. I have watched as many
Speaker 2: of us, who, by going off of data alone, are
Speaker 2: the richest people in the United States, begin cause playing
Speaker 2: as victims and becoming obsessed with all the faults of
Speaker 2: the country. Many Indians, it seemed, who are the children
Speaker 2: of doctors or engineers, suddenly began using the language of
Speaker 2: black liberation, as if their experience was in any way
Speaker 2: comparable to the aftermath of chattel slavery and Jim Crow.
Speaker 2: The mind meld of modern liberalism has flattened the ability
Speaker 2: for these distinctions to even be made. Many in the
Speaker 2: American's wholesale have embraced the label of persons of color.
Speaker 2: They fixate on these unpleasant experiences to intellectually justify ideological
Speaker 2: taker of American institutions. Now, I'm letting this all out
Speaker 2: because it's important. It's a worldview of which America is awful,
Speaker 2: which the institution are rotten, unfair. It's a racial view
Speaker 2: almost entirely. And of course you can never quite be
Speaker 2: honest about why if it was so bad in the
Speaker 2: first place, all the parents would have fought so hard
Speaker 2: to come here. This is the backdrop that you need
Speaker 2: to dive into some of these shocking revelations from the
Speaker 2: New Yorker profile on Hassamanaje, which detail multiple incendiary falsehoods
Speaker 2: in his comedy. Now, let's be clear, I do not
Speaker 2: expect truth from a comedy set. Exaggeration, lies, all outright
Speaker 2: falsehoods are probably key elements. But as we go through
Speaker 2: and you see what I'm talking about, what was led
Speaker 2: about for what emphasis, You'll begin to see the problem.
Speaker 2: The story opens with two key parts of hassan stand
Speaker 2: up routine. The first is the story of a muscle
Speaker 2: bound white man who had infiltrated his mosque growing up
Speaker 2: after nine to eleven as an alleged Muslim convert, and
Speaker 2: now would mess with the man to make him suspicious. Now,
Speaker 2: per his telling, years later, he was watching the news
Speaker 2: and the white man popped up on the news as
Speaker 2: an FBI informant. He follows it by playing then a
Speaker 2: clip of said man being revealed on the news. The
Speaker 2: second is about how a white powder substance was mailed
Speaker 2: to his home after doing a segment about Jamal Kashogi
Speaker 2: on his Netflix show, per Is telling the powder god
Speaker 2: onto his daughter and she was rushed to the hospital,
Speaker 2: where his wife then told him she would leave him
Speaker 2: if he ever put her children in danger again. But
Speaker 2: that's the kicker. Neither of these ever happened to him.
Speaker 2: The NYPD has no records of this incident with the
Speaker 2: white powder. The FBI agent who was referencing the clip
Speaker 2: shown to the audience apparently didn't even start working for
Speaker 2: the bureau until two thousand and six, four years after
Speaker 2: the period when Minaj said that it had happened to him.
Speaker 2: When the interviewer repressed him and said why in terms
Speaker 2: of the white powder story, why did you sigh that?
Speaker 2: On stage?
Speaker 3: He cited it as fact.
Speaker 2: Actually, though in multiple interviewers and whether he was manipulating
Speaker 2: his audience, Here's what he had to say, quote, I
Speaker 2: don't think I'm manipulating. I think they are coming for
Speaker 2: an emotional roller coaster ride. He adds that is grounded
Speaker 2: in truth and that what I'm ultimately trying to do
Speaker 2: is to highlight all of those stories. But what the
Speaker 2: interviewer really pegs it for what it is, Basically, you're
Speaker 2: making things up as if they happened to you to
Speaker 2: try to emphasize a narrative of personal heroism and victimization.
Speaker 2: The next story, too, is just as bad. In his
Speaker 2: specially describes how he had a meeting with the Saudi
Speaker 2: embassy in an attempt to try and interview Crown Prince
Speaker 2: Mohammed bin Salman. Now, in his telling, his wife didn't
Speaker 2: want him to go, was prodding him to keep the
Speaker 2: Saudis because she was afraid of retaliation. He describes how
Speaker 2: the Saudis threatened him during the meeting and how on
Speaker 2: his train ride back to New York he was getting
Speaker 2: a barrage of text messages asking if he was okay,
Speaker 2: because apparently, at that exact moment, the news had broken
Speaker 2: of Jamal Kashogi's murder, except as they found out quote,
Speaker 2: the eating hit the embassy happened a month before the
Speaker 2: Kashurdi murder. When asked about his response, quote, he had
Speaker 2: conflated the timelines as a story to telling device to
Speaker 2: make it feel the way that it felt. As one
Speaker 2: of his former employees put it to The New Yorker, quote,
Speaker 2: he totally presents himself as a person who is always
Speaker 2: taking down the despots and dictators of the world and
Speaker 2: speaking truth to power. Another who worked with him, I
Speaker 2: actually think was even more as Sue quote, most comic
Speaker 2: acts wouldn't pass a rigorous fact check. But if a
Speaker 2: show is built on sharing something personal that's not necessarily
Speaker 2: laugh out loud funny, the invention of important details could
Speaker 2: make an audience feel justifiably cheated. If he's lying about
Speaker 2: real people and real events, that's a problem.
Speaker 3: So much of the appeal of those stories is quote,
Speaker 3: this really happened.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm going to end it there because I don't
Speaker 2: think it's a cut and dry situation. Comedy is supposed
Speaker 2: to speak emotional truths. But when those emotional truths are
Speaker 2: rooted in a punch line of this happen and is
Speaker 2: representative apparently of others experience, it does deserve to really
Speaker 2: be questioned now, especially in each case, fabrications were made
Speaker 2: to really emphasize narratives what a hero Minaje is, how
Speaker 2: awful America isn't always been for brown people. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: end with a fight from a few years back. It
Speaker 2: was a real rorschack test for how Indians in America
Speaker 2: process who we are a representation in pop culture. Indian
Speaker 2: comedian Hari Condelablu led a crusade against Apu from The Simpsons.
Speaker 2: He had a documentary that was called and blamed the
Speaker 2: character for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about Indians in America and
Speaker 2: blamed the character for a racial backlash. The character was
Speaker 2: then diminished on The Simptons with an implicit apology that
Speaker 2: it was bad. But as socialist Boscar Sankara and I
Speaker 2: actually spoke about at the time, what's so bad about Aphu?
Speaker 2: Aphu was both an emotionally developed character on The Simpsons.
Speaker 2: He represented what many who have come to this country
Speaker 2: have done. He cared about his family so much that
Speaker 2: he worked his ass off at a gas station. When
Speaker 2: he said thank you, come again, is because he wants
Speaker 2: those customers to come back. He wants to make his
Speaker 2: life work in a tough, tough business. As Boscar wrote
Speaker 2: in one episode quote after becoming a citizen ap who
Speaker 2: gets a letter summoning him to jury do he casually
Speaker 2: throws it in the waistbags. I cannot think of a
Speaker 2: better depiction of a person of color in media, neither
Speaker 2: an object of scorn nor fetishized, just trying to get
Speaker 2: by like everyone else. Anyway, I'm curious with Oscar.
Speaker 3: Colum was like, oh, it's awesome. We had him on
Speaker 3: at the time, and.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints.
Speaker 2: Dot com, Crystal, what do you taking a look at?
Speaker 1: After being the first show to cross the writer's strike
Speaker 1: picket line and announce the return of her show, Drew
Speaker 1: Barrymore realized she knew exactly who the real victim in
Speaker 1: this situation is herself. She posted a weepy, rather pathetic
Speaker 1: video to Instagram attempting to explain the unexplainable why she
Speaker 1: threw her own writers and all the other writers, working
Speaker 1: people looking for a little bit of solidarity under the bus.
Speaker 15: There are so many reasons why this is so complex,
Speaker 15: and I just want everyone to know my intentions have
Speaker 15: never been in a place to upset or hurt anyone.
Speaker 15: It's not who I am. I've been through so many
Speaker 15: ups and downs in my life and this is one
Speaker 15: of them. I deeply apologize to writers. I deeply apologize
Speaker 15: to unions. I deeply apologize. I don't exactly know what
Speaker 15: to say, because sometimes when things are so tough, it's
Speaker 15: hard to make decisions from that place. There's a huge
Speaker 15: question of the why why am I doing this? Well,
Speaker 15: I certainly couldn't have expected this kind of attention, and.
Speaker 5: We aren't.
Speaker 15: Going to break roles and we will be in compliance.
Speaker 15: I wanted to do this because, as I said, this
Speaker 15: is bigger than me, and there are other people's jobs
Speaker 15: on the line, and since launching Live in a pandemic,
Speaker 15: I just wanted to make a show that was there
Speaker 15: for people in sensitive times.
Speaker 1: So you wanted to help people in sensitive times by
Speaker 1: screwing working people struggling in sensitive times, make it make
Speaker 1: sense now. They say that celebrities become frozen in time
Speaker 1: at whatever age they become famous. Drew was seven when
Speaker 1: she became a national sensation in et. That level of
Speaker 1: emotional maturity sounds about right now. After people reacted with
Speaker 1: what I can only imagine was universal revulsion at the
Speaker 1: sight of this wealthy celebrity having a public pity party
Speaker 1: over their own bad decision, Drew deleted the video, and
Speaker 1: now I actually have some good news to report. After
Speaker 1: widespread outrage, She's announced that she is reversing course, delaying
Speaker 1: the return of her show until the end of the strike.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Drew. Big win for online shaming and an
Speaker 1: even bigger win for writers. But I'm to say, in
Speaker 1: some ways, the damage here has already been done. After
Speaker 1: Drew took the initial hit for being the first across
Speaker 1: the picket line, other shows quietly decided to do the same.
Speaker 1: The Talk The Jennifer Hudson Show said they are resuming
Speaker 1: production as well. As we covered last week, Bill Maher,
Speaker 1: who is himself a member of the Writers' Union, announced
Speaker 1: that Real Time would restart, albeit without the monologue and
Speaker 1: other scripted segments. Contrast this approach with that of other
Speaker 1: celebrities who've taken an actual stand in solidarity with their
Speaker 1: writers and show staffs. Yes, the content is very cringe,
Speaker 1: but Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Seth Myers, and
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert did launch a podcast with all proceeds going
Speaker 1: to make sure that their striking staffs can hold the
Speaker 1: line and still make the rent. You see, when you're
Speaker 1: a wealthy celebrity, you do have other options available than
Speaker 1: becoming the Hollywood version of a union busting Pinkerton. Now,
Speaker 1: support for the strikers has come from another unlikely place
Speaker 1: as well, though, The California legislature. The state House and
Speaker 1: Senate just passed a law which would make striking workers
Speaker 1: eligible for unemployment insurance at a rate of four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars per week. Now New York and Jersey
Speaker 1: workers already benefit from similar legislation, California could become the
Speaker 1: third state in the country to follow suit, but the
Speaker 1: ball is now in the hands of Governor Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 1: and it is far from certain that he will actually
Speaker 1: sign this bill into law. Newsom has been known to
Speaker 1: use his veto pen and has not been a one
Speaker 1: hundred percent reliable front to labor. So we will be
Speaker 1: watching closely to see what he will actually do here,
Speaker 1: because the stakes could hardly be higher. Recall, Studio executives
Speaker 1: literally said directly they were going to use the threat
Speaker 1: of homelessness in famously unaffordable California to try to force
Speaker 1: writers to take whatever bad deal they are willing to
Speaker 1: give them. And a lot is on theline here too.
Speaker 1: Writers are trying to preserve the basics of a living
Speaker 1: in an era of streaming and in an era of
Speaker 1: chat GPT where tech is only going to become more
Speaker 1: of a threat to their livelihoods. They're also fighting really
Speaker 1: on behalf of human creativity at a time when we
Speaker 1: are in danger of having our humanity devoured and sold
Speaker 1: back to us by the oligarch's robots. If the state
Speaker 1: here could give them any kind of assist in their
Speaker 1: attempt to stay fed and house for the duration of
Speaker 1: the strike, that could be huge. In spite of the
Speaker 1: selfish narcissism of people like Drew Barrymore and the corporate
Speaker 1: greed of well literally every corporate CEO, striking workers actually
Speaker 1: have more of a shot at success now than perhaps
Speaker 1: ever in my lifetime. For the first time in generations,
Speaker 1: the legal landscape is starting to shift a little bit
Speaker 1: back towards more fairness for workers. We have, of course
Speaker 1: covered the federal progress made by the National Labor Relations Board,
Speaker 1: but California is far from the only blue state that
Speaker 1: has passed pro worker laws since the midterms. In Minnesota,
Speaker 1: the Democratic governor and one seat cent of majority has
Speaker 1: perhaps gone the furthest comprehensive labor bill, including paid family
Speaker 1: and medical leave, ban on noncompete clauses, ban on anti
Speaker 1: union captive audience meetings, new protections for workers in dangers
Speaker 1: in industries like Amazon warehouses and meat packing plants. Illinois
Speaker 1: enshrined union rights in the state constitution, banning so called
Speaker 1: right to work for the private sector, and also pass
Speaker 1: forty hours of annual paid leave to be used by
Speaker 1: workers for whatever they wish. And Michigan this year became
Speaker 1: the first state in fifty eight years to repeal so
Speaker 1: called right to work laws, anti union legislation which has
Speaker 1: been pushed by Republicans to undercut labor. Now, this all
Speaker 1: represents a tectonic shift in the typical trajectory of labor rights,
Speaker 1: which for decades only trended in one direction, and that
Speaker 1: was race to the bottom. And just as important here,
Speaker 1: the public is on the side of these workers. According
Speaker 1: to Gallup, americans back the striking writers over the studio
Speaker 1: bosses by a margin of seventy two to nineteen. They
Speaker 1: back the actors almost as strongly sixty seven to twenty four.
Speaker 1: And they are strongly behind the autoworkers over the Big
Speaker 1: three seventy five to nineteen. So if you are a
Speaker 1: millionaire out there thinking of backing the bosses, crossing a
Speaker 1: picket line, becoming a scab, take Drew Barrymore here as
Speaker 1: a little bit of a cautionary tale, because this really
Speaker 1: isn't complicated, comes down to one simple question, whose side
Speaker 1: are you on? And I guess I'm heartened to see
Speaker 1: that she did reverse core.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. Yeah
Speaker 2: all right, we had a great show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed that. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah we anyway, Breaking points dot Com, go ahead and
Speaker 2: sign up. We're already late as it is, so let's
Speaker 2: get it out. Bye. We'll see you tomorrow,