Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today.
Speaker 1: What do we have, Crystal, Indeed, we do many, many
Speaker 1: things that are breaking this morning. We've got domestic news,
Speaker 1: We've got international news. Taker Carlson releasing some comments, speaking
Speaker 1: out for the first time after being canned over at
Speaker 1: Fox News. We'll play those for you and react. We
Speaker 1: also have a bit of deat sealing drama. Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: able to survive the first test, was able to barely
Speaker 1: cobble together enough votes to pass through his debt ceiling
Speaker 1: proposal through the House. Still very unclear what happens next.
Speaker 1: We have Zelenski and she actually speaking on the phone,
Speaker 1: will tell you what we know about that. We've got
Speaker 1: some new comments from Kamala Harris that you're going to enjoy,
Speaker 1: and a new poll over in the Democratic primary race.
Speaker 1: Someone actually decided to pull the actual candidates who are
Speaker 1: in the race, which like no one has done yet.
Speaker 1: You might be surprised by the results, and I think
Speaker 1: the Biden Whitehouse might be surprised by the results. We've
Speaker 1: got an escalation in the battle between Ronda Santis and
Speaker 1: Disney Nate Silver is out at five point thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Quite an extraordinary media move in a week of a
Speaker 1: lot of wild media moves. I're excited to talk to
Speaker 1: Anthony Fantanner. Now he's a YouTuber who he does a
Speaker 1: lot of music reviews huge channel, and he's going to
Speaker 1: talk to us about these new Ai Drake and the
Speaker 1: weekend songs that have been coming out, which actually, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, are not that bad.
Speaker 3: Low key not bad.
Speaker 2: Look a big music guy. So I'm excited to talk
Speaker 2: to Anthony about it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, mean well yeah, And I want to know
Speaker 1: his analysis of whether he thought the songs were good,
Speaker 1: because look, I'm not I like some Drake songs, but
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 4: A huge Drake fam. I actually thought this was like
Speaker 4: better than many Drakes.
Speaker 3: That's my thing is I'm not sophisticated enough.
Speaker 2: I've barely listened to any at Also, I want to
Speaker 2: talk to somebody like him and be like, okay, like
Speaker 2: how much of a thing actually, because to me, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a nobody got to.
Speaker 4: Be freaking out though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be a great conversation. I also
Speaker 2: want to take a moment here. I want to say
Speaker 2: thank you so much to everybody who's been heeding our
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Speaker 1: guys are coming through as you always have, and we
Speaker 1: are just extremely grateful.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Okay, So let's get to Tucker Carlson pretty crazy
Speaker 2: dropped a new video at eighth one Eastern Standard time yesterday.
Speaker 2: Probably not a coincidence because it's the exact moment when
Speaker 2: his old show was going Liveiday okay air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah. That's certainly a little bit of a
Speaker 3: subtweet since has now garnered over twenty five million views.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 5: Notice, when you take a little time off is how
Speaker 5: unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are.
Speaker 5: They're completely irrelevant, they mean nothing. In five years, we
Speaker 5: won't even remember that we had them, trust me as
Speaker 5: someone who's participated. And yet, at the same time, and
Speaker 5: this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics, the
Speaker 5: ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion
Speaker 5: at all. War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power,
Speaker 5: natural resources. When was the last time you heard a
Speaker 5: legitimate debate about any of those issues.
Speaker 3: It's been a long time.
Speaker 5: Debates like that are not permitted in American media, Both
Speaker 5: political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what
Speaker 5: benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any
Speaker 5: conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much
Speaker 5: like a one party state. That's a depressing realization, but
Speaker 5: it's not permanent. Our current orthodoxies won't last. They're brain dead,
Speaker 5: nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone's life is improved by them.
Speaker 5: This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so
Speaker 5: it won't. The people in charge know this. That's why
Speaker 5: the hysterical and aggressive. They're afraid. They've given up persuasion.
Speaker 5: They're resorting to force, but it won't work. When honest
Speaker 5: people say what's true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful.
Speaker 5: At the same time, the liars who've been trying to
Speaker 5: silence them shrink and they become weaker. That's the iron
Speaker 5: ware of the universe.
Speaker 3: True things prevail.
Speaker 5: Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There
Speaker 5: aren't many places left, but there are some, and that's enough.
Speaker 5: As long as you can hear the words, there is hope.
Speaker 3: See you soon. A couple of big takeaways there.
Speaker 2: I think number one at the end I actually thought
Speaker 2: was the most significant. There are still some places where
Speaker 2: you can tell truth that could be a hint at
Speaker 2: his future. We know he's currently in the middle of
Speaker 2: a contract in broglio with Fox News as to whether
Speaker 2: he will we will even be allowed to see the
Speaker 2: man sometime in the next couple of years. As I understand,
Speaker 2: he was under contract is negotiating his way out of
Speaker 2: it too. From the content alone before before you jump in, Crystal, yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought, at the very least, which was nice to hear,
Speaker 2: most of the debates on television don't matter and have
Speaker 2: not mattered to our future. I would hope that that
Speaker 2: is a signal to the future that so much of
Speaker 2: what was included on the Fox News program, including Let's
Speaker 2: be honest, like for a huge portion of the Tucker
Speaker 2: Carlson Show, outside of his own monologue and his own
Speaker 2: pet interest, it was just standard fair bs which Brian
Speaker 2: Kilmeade is including now, which you probably didn't even select.
Speaker 2: It was like some producers or whatever idea that you're
Speaker 2: just going along with.
Speaker 3: I am hoping that in the.
Speaker 2: Future we can move past that and actually get to
Speaker 2: something which is a genuine critique of some of the
Speaker 2: issues which he raised there in that I'm curious what
Speaker 2: you thought of the video.
Speaker 1: I mean, I find the video kind of irritating for
Speaker 1: in two ways. First of all, it was mostly like
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, grandiose, not really saying much
Speaker 1: of anything. Another thing, like, dude, you're not a martyr.
Speaker 1: You called your boss the sea word. You're involved in
Speaker 1: like multiple potential multi billion dollar lawsuits. Imagine if you
Speaker 1: out there called your boss the sea word. Do you
Speaker 1: think you would have a job at the end of
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 6: No way.
Speaker 4: It's amazing that he survived this long.
Speaker 1: But when you have, and there's some new reporting this
Speaker 1: morning about like the extent of how like out there
Speaker 1: the text messages that were revealed in the dominion lawsuit,
Speaker 1: not even the ones that were revealed publicly, but ones
Speaker 1: that were redacted that the company came to know about,
Speaker 1: like they were very concerned about what was in there.
Speaker 1: Apparently in there is where you know he called probably
Speaker 1: Suzanne Scott the C word. Again, this is his boss.
Speaker 1: He's implicated in this this sex discrimination lawsuit from habby
Speaker 1: Abby Grosberg that counterpoints covered yesterday. She claims she's got
Speaker 1: like ninety different audio tapes and recordings and whatever. Who
Speaker 1: knows what's in that, but Fox probably knows what's in that.
Speaker 1: He may be implicated in the Smartmatic lawsuit as well.
Speaker 1: All the texts that came out publicly during the dominion
Speaker 1: thing were extremely embarrassing as well. So, yeah, you look
Speaker 1: at all these you know, all these pieces, and you
Speaker 1: have the fact that advertisers don't want to advertise in
Speaker 1: his program. So even though yes, he's the highest rated
Speaker 1: thing from a business decision and from just a pain
Speaker 1: in the ass decision and from a you know, public
Speaker 1: embarrassment decision, you know, the match just didn't add up
Speaker 1: for them anymore, even though he was like buddy buddy
Speaker 1: with Lachlan, who was part of making this decision.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a bit odd how that all went down.
Speaker 2: I'm still not exactly sure why they would fire him
Speaker 2: over calling your boss a seaward and then it never
Speaker 2: even came out like you know, it's like something in
Speaker 2: your private text message.
Speaker 3: But and apparently he wanted those texts too.
Speaker 1: I think he got he got arrogant, and they felt
Speaker 1: like they needed to reclaim.
Speaker 4: You know, this isn't the first time that they've fired
Speaker 4: they top rated up. Yeah, they did the Glutton back bill, O'Reilly.
Speaker 4: You know Megan Kelly.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit different because she had kind
Speaker 1: of gotten crosswise with the Trump base and so her
Speaker 1: ratings had fallen off when they let her go. But
Speaker 1: she was still a gigantic talent and you know, extraordinarily
Speaker 1: talented person. So Fox is reasserting their dominance in this situation. Now,
Speaker 1: is Tucker going to be fine? Is he going to
Speaker 1: find of course, he's going to find an audience. Will
Speaker 1: he have the level of mainstream cultural impact and influence
Speaker 1: that he had at Fox?
Speaker 4: Doubtful.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know about that, because we have seen
Speaker 2: already is a massive crash Fox actually in the eight
Speaker 2: PM hour. I actually was just looking at it this morning,
Speaker 2: had their worst day since pre nine to eleven times
Speaker 2: in terms of the numbers at them.
Speaker 3: So I mean it's a massive crash, right, yeah, on
Speaker 3: the hour.
Speaker 2: It actually does show me too, which is they were
Speaker 2: able to make up their ground over O'Riley relatively quickly.
Speaker 4: It took a couple of years.
Speaker 3: It took a couple of.
Speaker 2: Years for Tucker, but they had Hannity to come in
Speaker 2: there and have hold strong, but Hannity has degraded so
Speaker 2: much in terms of his content. I'll just be kind
Speaker 2: just leave it to the content and say that that
Speaker 2: is where he hasn't been able to make up the
Speaker 2: ground that it is making it very difficult for them
Speaker 2: on the Abbey Grosberg thing.
Speaker 3: I have to be honest.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just was looking at this new report
Speaker 2: that her lawyers confirmed she never actually even met Tucker
Speaker 2: while working for Fox News. Says that she never met
Speaker 2: him in person because he was taping the show from
Speaker 2: his personal studios in Maine and in Florida. The more
Speaker 2: that I'm looking at the lawsuit, she's accusing him, I
Speaker 2: guess of promoting this hostile work environment. And that's part
Speaker 2: of the why though the EP was the target, because
Speaker 2: he's probably the main point of contact right like he
Speaker 2: has There're probably one hundred people who work on the
Speaker 2: show at least in some way, between booking producers, the
Speaker 2: overall it's like booking producers, I think the line producer,
Speaker 2: they had, the studio people, the camera people as well.
Speaker 3: I'm putting all these these teams.
Speaker 4: Are smaller than you think.
Speaker 1: I mean, on a primetime show, like the core team
Speaker 1: of producers that you know, Abby what's her.
Speaker 4: Name, Grosberg.
Speaker 1: Grosberg would have been part of You're maybe like fifteen people.
Speaker 1: It's not a huge group, and so listen, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, a way to see what comes out. But
Speaker 1: clearly there was enough here that Fox was getting concerned
Speaker 1: about that they felt like they needed to take some
Speaker 1: sort of action.
Speaker 4: And it's also hard to parse, like, you know, we've.
Speaker 1: Been heard of like one hundred different factors that were
Speaker 1: involved in this firing. Another issue, another thing was like
Speaker 1: they're made them a personal angle. Apparently Rupert Murdoch's ex fiance,
Speaker 1: you know, just after.
Speaker 4: They break up, she thought that Tucker was like the
Speaker 4: Messiah or something, and he was kind.
Speaker 1: Of freaked out by the way that she was talking
Speaker 1: about him, the way they were talking to each other.
Speaker 1: He breaks off the engagement. And then shortly thereafter Tucker's
Speaker 1: can so he's taking his ex fiance's favorite show off
Speaker 1: the air. So there's like a personal angle to this
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 4: I don't know how.
Speaker 1: All of these swirling factors come together to lead to
Speaker 1: this decision, but at least a lot of the reporting
Speaker 1: and the reporting in the Wall Street Journal, which I
Speaker 1: think we should take probably the most seriously indicates that
Speaker 1: the final straw was they just learned about some of
Speaker 1: these text messages just before the dominion suit for what
Speaker 1: the redacted ones, the ones that we haven't even seen yet,
Speaker 1: And that was kind of the piece where they are like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're done here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were done because they found out that he
Speaker 2: couldn't stand them. I think the Glenn Beck analogy is
Speaker 2: an important one. Yeah, people don't know. Beck was fired
Speaker 2: actually at the height of his powers whenever he was
Speaker 2: such a rating powerhouse there. They thought he was getting
Speaker 2: too big for his bridges because he was starting a
Speaker 2: blaze dot com or he's trying to start alternative media.
Speaker 2: He's writing a bunch of books like Outside of Contract
Speaker 2: in Row. Drails finally was like, look, I don't care
Speaker 2: if the ratings are big. You know, we have enough
Speaker 2: of a juggernaut here. We can recreate them on the
Speaker 2: aggregate and it'll work out from what we can see.
Speaker 2: The Murdochs apparently thought the same, or you know, as
Speaker 2: you said, who the hell knows we need a capricious
Speaker 2: ninety two year old balls like you know, it could
Speaker 2: come down to.
Speaker 3: Anything we've worked for similar people.
Speaker 2: And these people are nuts, and you know, they're power hungry,
Speaker 2: and to them it's a personal project. They don't even
Speaker 2: think of it as a multiple business. So you know,
Speaker 2: was he a victim of that? I mean, was it
Speaker 2: the Ray app stuff? As I've talked about here before.
Speaker 2: That's you know, another angle which is really not at
Speaker 2: least at the very least I haven't seen floated as much,
Speaker 2: but was cited in the original La Times report, which listen,
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't take a genius to figure out
Speaker 2: that Lachlan Murdoch lives in Los Angeles, so to figure
Speaker 2: out where exactly some of these leaks are all coming from.
Speaker 1: I do also think that to the extent that there
Speaker 1: is an ideological component here, like in the intro Republican
Speaker 1: party fight that is now started between Trump and DeSantis
Speaker 1: in particular, Tucker's on one side and Rupert Murdoch is on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his flag is fully planted on Santa fully DeSantis.
Speaker 1: I mean, he told the Sants, according to Gabe Sherman's
Speaker 1: reporting that before twenty twenty, so before the election even happened,
Speaker 1: he had DeSantis and his wife to one of his
Speaker 1: estates and told him like Fox News and we are
Speaker 1: going to be with you, and you see that in
Speaker 1: their coverage. So here you have this very highly rated
Speaker 1: host who has a lot of sway culturally and with
Speaker 1: your audience, who is on the other side of that.
Speaker 4: I mean that is a rub as well in.
Speaker 1: Terms of the putting the business piece aside, because Fox
Speaker 1: News has always been at its core as well an
Speaker 1: ideological project, so I think that part is important here too.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's interesting times is it is interesting.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to see what happens next, at the very
Speaker 2: least just to see people lose it. I would love
Speaker 2: nothing more than to see very very low ratings on
Speaker 2: Fox and for them to have Listen.
Speaker 1: I'm cheering for low ratings on every one of the
Speaker 1: cable networks because they're all poisoned.
Speaker 2: I want to see these people go down so bad,
Speaker 2: so listen. You should always know. There's a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: of copium in all my analysis cable news. I do
Speaker 2: try my best. I try my best.
Speaker 3: We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're partisans in terms of hearing for cable
Speaker 1: news as failure. No one should delude themselves about that.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, Yeah, and you know, behind the scenes people,
Speaker 2: they've been trying to get me on Fox for quite
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 3: Basics at the beginning of the show.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons you haven't seen me on the
Speaker 2: Talker Carlson Show or any show was because I just thought,
Speaker 2: you know, even if you know we he's.
Speaker 3: My old boss and we were friends and all.
Speaker 2: That is, I didn't feel like it was cool to
Speaker 2: participate in this corporate media project and you know, be
Speaker 2: necessarily a pawn in the Fox News ecosystem because it's
Speaker 2: outside of the talent itself. Whenever we're sitting here doing
Speaker 2: critiques of cable every single day. Yeah, you know, it
Speaker 2: just didn't square right to me. And especially because the format,
Speaker 2: it's like you're on their turf. You don't have same power.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Yeah, when you watch those segments, you realize
Speaker 1: just the setup and the constraints of it, you're never
Speaker 1: going to have.
Speaker 2: If I don't have enough time, then I'm not really there.
Speaker 2: Then I'm a pond right right, It's like you always
Speaker 2: have to think about it. Yeah, that's not to say
Speaker 2: that anybody went on was bad. You can always go
Speaker 2: on and make a point. I just always felt like
Speaker 2: it would have been hypocritical within the confines of the show.
Speaker 1: There can be good reasons to do it if you
Speaker 1: have a certain project you want to get up to.
Speaker 1: I mean mainstream audience, no doubt about it. But in general,
Speaker 1: and just like a run of the mill, Hey, we
Speaker 1: come on and talk about X, Y or Z.
Speaker 3: It's exactly that.
Speaker 4: I'm good.
Speaker 3: I think that's right.
Speaker 4: All right, let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the latest with the dead ceiling, because
Speaker 1: this deadline is approaching faster than you may think. So
Speaker 1: the context here is that Kevin McCarthy had to really
Speaker 1: pull his caucus together and pass something through the House
Speaker 1: and an attempt to put pressure on Biden to try
Speaker 1: to negotiate. Now, if we breached the dead ceiling, it
Speaker 1: could be some sort of economic absolute catastrophe.
Speaker 4: So the stakes are very high.
Speaker 1: And as part of Kevin McCarthy's speakership deal with the holdouts,
Speaker 1: he agreed to some really eyewatering cuts and to you know,
Speaker 1: basically hold the country hostage in order to secure cuts
Speaker 1: that the House for dam caucus really wanted.
Speaker 4: So he was able to succeed. Let's go and put
Speaker 4: this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is a long way from being over but he
Speaker 1: got his bill through the House. There were four no votes.
Speaker 1: He could have afforded five no votes, so this was
Speaker 1: as close as he could possibly come.
Speaker 4: And that's no accident.
Speaker 1: By the way, they all trade off and figure out, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: who were going to be the no votes and who's
Speaker 1: going to take one for the team and actually go.
Speaker 4: Along with it.
Speaker 1: The no votes were all on the sort of for
Speaker 1: this right of the party. Gates, Buck, Biggs, and Burchett,
Speaker 1: all the more moderates ended up voting for it. Let's
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. This is how he
Speaker 1: ended up securing some of the votes. So there were
Speaker 1: a lot of pieces that people across the ideological spectrum
Speaker 1: were concerned about. Initially, McCarthy had said, like, no, we're
Speaker 1: not going to make any changes to the bill.
Speaker 4: You've got to accept it.
Speaker 1: But then they did end up making changes to things
Speaker 1: like biofuel tax credits, work requirements for social safety net programs,
Speaker 1: and Inflation Production Act fund for a host of democratic priorities.
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: why even though okay, there were no Republicans that voted
Speaker 1: for the Inflation Reduction Act in the House, I believe
Speaker 1: that is correct. However, there were a number of provisions
Speaker 1: in there that are really beneficial to a lot of
Speaker 1: districts across the country, some of which are represented by
Speaker 1: Republicans in particular.
Speaker 4: And this is kind of bullshit.
Speaker 1: This is what the Washington Post that says ethanol clean
Speaker 1: energy fuel drama over GOP debt limit deal. All the
Speaker 1: Iowa Republicans were very concerned about these Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 1: provisions that boost ethanol as a theoretically clean energy source.
Speaker 4: Now this is sort of a fiction.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's a total fiction that ethanol is in
Speaker 1: fact a clean energy source.
Speaker 4: But because Iowa has always.
Speaker 1: Long been very important politically, it will be less so
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side, but continue to be on the
Speaker 1: Republican side. Korn is king in terms of our politics.
Speaker 4: And so this is.
Speaker 1: Basically like a corn group of eight GOP lawmakers from
Speaker 1: the Corn Belt on Tuesday objected to repealing the incentives
Speaker 1: in the IRA for ethanol and other biofuels that have
Speaker 1: flowed to their states since the passage of the Climate Law.
Speaker 1: You also had some concerns from Nancy Mace about the
Speaker 1: repeal of some of the other inflation Reduction Act provisions.
Speaker 1: She said, we have a manufacturer in South Carolina in
Speaker 1: my district that builds the conductors for wind energy to
Speaker 1: get it from the windmill to wherever it's going. She
Speaker 1: appeared to be referring to an energy company, Nexon's plant
Speaker 1: in Charleston that manufactures high voltage power cables that carry
Speaker 1: energy from offshore wind farms to land. That facility, announced
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one before the Climate Laws passage, has
Speaker 1: brought hundreds of jobs to the area. Also in Mace's district,
Speaker 1: she had a battery component maker, Redwood Materials. They're building
Speaker 1: a three point five billion dollar manufacturing campus also near Charleston.
Speaker 1: Companies said that the IRA did influence their decision to
Speaker 1: move forward with the facility. So even though Republicans didn't
Speaker 1: vote for the IRA, some of them like some of
Speaker 1: the provisions and were unhappy with them being rolled back.
Speaker 1: Sager My read on how he was able to actually
Speaker 1: secure these votes in spite of the concerns is not
Speaker 1: only the little tweaks that were made, but also they
Speaker 1: know that this is not actually going to happen, yes,
Speaker 1: so they didn't feel like the stakes of voting for
Speaker 1: this were really that happening.
Speaker 2: Well, what had happened basically is he said, look, I'll
Speaker 2: give you guys whatever on the ethanol, but all of
Speaker 2: us know that this isn't going to pass. And what
Speaker 2: the reason was is he makes the case based on
Speaker 2: the analysis that I was talking about on our last show,
Speaker 2: is he was like, do you.
Speaker 3: Want us to negotiate this deal or do you want
Speaker 3: Mitch McConnell to do it, because if you don't vote
Speaker 3: for this bill, then I have no authority to negotiate
Speaker 3: with President Biden, and then we will have no seat
Speaker 3: at the table and they're going to ram it down
Speaker 3: our throats.
Speaker 2: So the House basically said, all right, well, we're going
Speaker 2: to try and keep our power.
Speaker 3: We have the majority in this chamber.
Speaker 2: It's one of the only places that we can still
Speaker 2: exercise power and extract at least some concessions should the
Speaker 2: time come. The thing is, too, is that what this
Speaker 2: does is it changes the negotiation dynamic. President Biden yesterday
Speaker 2: at the White House Joint Press Conference in the Rose
Speaker 2: Garden said I'm not going to negotiate with Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 2: about the debt limit. It's like, okay, well, I mean
Speaker 2: you could say that it's April twenty seventh, but let's
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen in terms of
Speaker 2: the reported amount of tax revenue. When the government will
Speaker 2: actually reach the debt limit. We don't know the exact date,
Speaker 2: but it is likely to come sometime in July.
Speaker 3: We don't know in July. Originally some people thought it
Speaker 3: might come.
Speaker 2: In June because tax revenue was flat, but a lot
Speaker 2: of people pay their taxes late, so now that they did,
Speaker 2: we will likely push it to sometime more squarely in July.
Speaker 3: So look, I think there will be.
Speaker 2: A lot of standoff and a lot of posturing now
Speaker 2: that this is over. Who knows around Let's say, what
Speaker 2: do you want to say three weeks before something like that.
Speaker 3: Then things will start to get interesting. That's when the
Speaker 3: Senate might get involved.
Speaker 2: They might try and pass an amend what I've previously
Speaker 2: spoken about, a revenue vehicle, to try and add their
Speaker 2: own version of the debt ceiling.
Speaker 3: We could have McConnell versus McCarthy stuff.
Speaker 2: We could have conferences between the Senate GOP and the
Speaker 2: House GOP in terms of what they're willing to negotiate,
Speaker 2: and then they present a uni fied plan to President
Speaker 2: Biden's about this is like step one, and we still
Speaker 2: have like nineteen store steps.
Speaker 1: And nobody knows what those nobody steps are, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: and step nineteen might be like literally off a cliff
Speaker 1: for the entire country and the world and whatever. Even
Speaker 1: though this particular bill is not going to be what
Speaker 1: comes to pass in terms of, you know, the cuts
Speaker 1: that it entails and the specifics of it, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that there wasn't political risk and there isn't political
Speaker 1: risk for the Republicans who voted for it, because you
Speaker 1: can guarantee Democrats are already going through with a fine
Speaker 1: tooth comb and cutting ads against all of the members.
Speaker 4: That voted for it.
Speaker 1: Of like, here's what they did to veterans benefits, here's
Speaker 1: what they did to X Y or Z program that
Speaker 1: brings jobs that are important to this district. So you
Speaker 1: can already see in the initial phases here how this
Speaker 1: is potentially really a very bad situation for Republicans politically.
Speaker 1: And also here's the other thing. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: doming Joe Biden's the nominee. They want to be able
Speaker 1: to run against him as like people aren't happy about the.
Speaker 4: Economy, inflation, et cetera.
Speaker 1: You own this, and so we're running against you on
Speaker 1: the economy. If they're responsible for pushing the country off
Speaker 1: of a cliff, you no longer can just pin the
Speaker 1: economic blame on Joe Biden. Now things are a lot muddier.
Speaker 1: They're a lot messier, and in fact, you may lose
Speaker 1: out that debate altogether. People may think that, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, you guys aren't good stewards of the economy,
Speaker 1: and we don't really trust you on this issue. And
Speaker 1: you know, we've got other issues with you on abortion
Speaker 1: and other things as well.
Speaker 4: So you know, I think this is a.
Speaker 1: Potentially number one, I mean, the most important thing on
Speaker 1: the On the content like this could be extremely damaging
Speaker 1: to an economy that's already on very shaky ground, and politically,
Speaker 1: it could also be a disaster for Republicans. They are
Speaker 1: really playing with fire here, even as they're able to
Speaker 1: get their initial first pass through.
Speaker 2: Well, we do know from the twenty and eleven and
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen debt ceiling five if they did come back
Speaker 2: to hurt their Republicans, specifically the twenty thirteen government shutdown
Speaker 2: for John Bayner. They tried very hard try and get
Speaker 2: Obama to take the blame for it, and it certainly
Speaker 2: was the political boomerang, and it ultimately led to the
Speaker 2: end of the Bayner speakership. So recent history not that
Speaker 2: like it was literally ten years ago. We know that
Speaker 2: they tried this before and it didn't work. Very similar tactics.
Speaker 2: We'll see as to where they come. The real problem,
Speaker 2: I think is the tight level, the tight amount of
Speaker 2: votes that he has in the caucus, and that just
Speaker 2: gives a tremendous amount of power to people who you know,
Speaker 2: may not even the mainstream Republican may not agree with,
Speaker 2: but they believe what they believe, and they're going to
Speaker 2: extract their pound of flesh.
Speaker 4: Well that's true.
Speaker 1: And if it does come to a bill where there
Speaker 1: are are real stakes, where it is going to be
Speaker 1: the real thing. You know, he barely was able to
Speaker 1: get this messaging bill through, I mean it only he
Speaker 1: could only afford to lose one more member, many of
Speaker 1: whom were kind of on the fence. So anyway, I mean,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the White House should allow them to
Speaker 1: you know, string them mount and allow them to play
Speaker 1: this little game, and then they should come in over
Speaker 1: the top and just you know, mint the coin or
Speaker 1: do something one are the workarounds they're not going to
Speaker 1: do it so that this isn't going to happen. That's
Speaker 1: my opinion of what direction they should go in here.
Speaker 4: But you know, I have I have no idea how
Speaker 4: this is going to be resolved, no clue.
Speaker 3: When they don't, I don't think you will do that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think such an institutionalist is an institutionalist.
Speaker 2: We have the Budget Control Act of twenty eleven. People
Speaker 2: should go look it up if they're interested, which outlines
Speaker 2: the way that sequestration caps and all that stuff will work.
Speaker 2: Almost everybody I've spoken to says that, look, default, if
Speaker 2: it ends the same way, just because all the incentives
Speaker 2: go the same way, it'll probably end sometime in there.
Speaker 3: But look, we have no clue. They really could Look,
Speaker 3: they could shoot the hostage and it could be like
Speaker 3: an economic catastrophe, and then who's going to blink first?
Speaker 3: Who nobody knows? All right, right, let's talk about Ukraine.
Speaker 2: An extraordinary phone call happened yesterday President Shishingping and Zelenski
Speaker 2: of Ukraine speaking on the phone for the first time
Speaker 2: for over an hour. Extraordinary phone call let's go to
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen. Very good analysis
Speaker 2: from the Financial Times. They say that Shishingping quote urged
Speaker 2: his Ukrainian counterpoint. This is according to the readout from
Speaker 2: the Chinese government to negotiate with Moscow. The first conversation
Speaker 2: between the leaders since the invasion. In the hour long
Speaker 2: phone call, Ukraine's president said it was quote long and meaningful,
Speaker 2: and he said it would send a special representative to
Speaker 2: all parties. This is Shishingping to seek a political settlement
Speaker 2: of the war, according to this Chinese Foreign Ministry statement.
Speaker 3: The reason why this is so important is it comes
Speaker 3: on the.
Speaker 2: Heels crystal of the peace, a deal that had already
Speaker 2: been released by the Chinese government. The US government, of course,
Speaker 2: already shot that down. President Zelenski though, took it very seriously.
Speaker 2: He understands that they have tremendous economic ties and also
Speaker 2: that you know, China kind of represents what I would
Speaker 2: say is the other view of the Ukraine conflict outside
Speaker 2: of the West, between Beijing, New Delhi and you know,
Speaker 2: even in South Korea, many of these other countries, in
Speaker 2: terms of how they look at the conflict, they look
Speaker 2: at it very much as look, look this is great power.
Speaker 3: We're not saying this is just, but this not a core.
Speaker 2: National interest, and we want to bring this thing to
Speaker 2: an end as soon as possible. The thing is, though,
Speaker 2: is that if you do look at the readout by
Speaker 2: Zelenski's office, it avoids any interest in negotiation and it
Speaker 2: says quote expresses hope for China's active participation in efforts
Speaker 2: to restore police but has dismissed the peace plan put
Speaker 2: forward by China in February and saying that there can
Speaker 2: be no peace without a restoration to nineteen ninety one borders.
Speaker 2: So that includes not only CRIMEA, but it also includes
Speaker 2: all the territory that Russia has taken.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that is it the way that a
Speaker 3: just peace would be, but I am only saying.
Speaker 2: That, let's be realistic possibly about where we may end
Speaker 2: up before hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people are
Speaker 2: dead and you end up in a similar situation.
Speaker 3: Anyways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there were a couple of other things I
Speaker 1: thought we're noteworthy. First of all, the US admitted that
Speaker 1: we didn't know this call was going to happen, So
Speaker 1: once again Ukrainian's keeping us in the dark, even though
Speaker 1: we are, you know, backstopping this whole thing.
Speaker 3: Might be the only time I'd say that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I liked the way they had this sort
Speaker 1: of like cope of like, although we're really glad it happened,
Speaker 1: want the Chinese to hear the ukraining point of view.
Speaker 1: It's like, are you really glad it happened? Because previously
Speaker 1: you were saying that if China was able to negotiate
Speaker 1: a ceasefire, you would be opposed to it and potentially
Speaker 1: try to block it. So I thought that was noteworthy.
Speaker 1: The other question is why now, Because Lenski's been seeking
Speaker 1: at least a call and preferably a visit from she
Speaker 1: for some time. This has been floating out here. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about it for a little while. So what
Speaker 1: happened right now that led to this phone call actually occurring?
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up on the screen. So it
Speaker 1: comes in the wake of this absolutely you know, fury
Speaker 1: from Europe, which is pretty understandable from some of these countries. Honestly,
Speaker 1: after a Chinese diplomat basically suggested that some of the
Speaker 1: ex Soviet states were fake the word here they use
Speaker 1: is not sovereign, and so there were comments made effectively
Speaker 1: questioning whether the post Soviet states really had international standing
Speaker 1: by law, and understanda believe the post Soviet states were like,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you saying? And so it's right
Speaker 1: after this when Europe is freaking out over these comments
Speaker 1: that were made to a French journalist. I believe, yes
Speaker 1: that you know the phone call. Actually, that's part of why.
Speaker 3: I thought it was important, just to be like, listen,
Speaker 3: is this real?
Speaker 2: I don't know, because really, China is really shot themselves
Speaker 2: in the foot with this one saying quote some ex
Speaker 2: Soviet Union countries by saying that don't have effective status
Speaker 2: under international law. It's also not some guys, really the
Speaker 2: US or the Chinese ambassador to France. That is as listen,
Speaker 2: you know, if you ever spent any time in those
Speaker 2: countries as I have, probably nobody hates the Russians more
Speaker 2: than people like the Latvians.
Speaker 3: And these Stonians. And there is nothing you could have
Speaker 3: said that would have pissed them off more than that.
Speaker 1: So well, I mean you basically call them fake country, right,
Speaker 1: So you know, if you're a patriot in those countries,
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna feel some sort of way about that.
Speaker 3: You certainly should. She fought for independence for like years
Speaker 3: and your you know, grandparents and other people were killed
Speaker 3: and sent to a gulag. I get it.
Speaker 2: So the point is that the Chinese may have just
Speaker 2: taken the phone call to appease the Europeans, because, as
Speaker 2: we know, Emanuel Macron went over to Beijing. One of
Speaker 2: the main things he was trying to do was get
Speaker 2: China to engage in some sort of peace negotiation on
Speaker 2: the side of Moscow to pressure them to end the war.
Speaker 2: We know that the Germans were over there, the foreign Minister,
Speaker 2: the EU president a commissioner was over there as well.
Speaker 2: They have been heavily pressuring Beijing to take the phone call.
Speaker 2: Beijing kind of been holding out, probably as a favor
Speaker 2: more to Moscow. They might have just buckled here just
Speaker 2: to appease the Europeans, just be like, look, yeah, we
Speaker 2: took it serious. Also, I always want to note this
Speaker 2: when it has an hour long phone call, that's really
Speaker 2: only a half hour because it has to get translated
Speaker 2: two ways.
Speaker 3: You know, people always forget.
Speaker 2: That, But it's extremely tedious actually watching this because like
Speaker 2: a guy like Zelenski as Leon as guy.
Speaker 3: Speaks speaks Russian.
Speaker 2: But I don't know actually if any Chinese Foreign ministry
Speaker 2: officials speaks Ukrainian. But in some cases it can be
Speaker 2: like Ukrainian to Russian to China ease, and then it
Speaker 2: can come back, you know, on the phone call whenever
Speaker 2: these people speak, and usually they're reading from prepared statements,
Speaker 2: so it's not as serendipitous, I think as a lot
Speaker 2: of people think, you know, every time they say, oh,
Speaker 2: President Biden had a two hour long phone call, like
Speaker 2: so it was a one hour long phone call.
Speaker 3: Yeah, half of his translation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is still one hour.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a significant, lengthy ish conversation here. But
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right, and you know, China really
Speaker 1: wants to be seen. They want to maintain, uh somewhat
Speaker 1: of an impression of neutrality within this conflict, and so
Speaker 1: when this Chinese diplomat made these comments, I think it
Speaker 1: made them feel like, all right, we're appearing a bit
Speaker 1: too much, too favorable towards Russia, to partisan on their side,
Speaker 1: and so this was the way to try to clean
Speaker 1: it up and try to reclaim some sense of neutrality,
Speaker 1: even though you know, the US public doesn't see China
Speaker 1: as a neutral actor, but I think a lot of
Speaker 1: other folks that are on the world do, and Selenski
Speaker 1: himself has been interested in getting them involved in trying
Speaker 1: to resolve this conflict.
Speaker 4: So that's always important to notice it.
Speaker 3: Yes, so just keep all of that in mind as
Speaker 3: it goes.
Speaker 2: But as as an act, it is still extraordinary. All diplomacy,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, is good. I hope that these people
Speaker 2: continue to talk. They're definitely getting a very different view.
Speaker 2: It also does show, you know, the Ukrainians, I've met
Speaker 2: some of them here in Washington, I think some of
Speaker 2: the most obnoxious people on earth. Like if you were
Speaker 2: one of those who says anything contrary to whatever their
Speaker 2: Foreign ministry things, they call you a Russian propagandist. But clearly,
Speaker 2: you know, when the Chinese come out with a peace plan,
Speaker 2: if you said that here in DC, as we have,
Speaker 2: we've said something similar, oh smeared, you know, horrific, canny
Speaker 2: out beyond the pale. The Chinese say it, and Zelenski
Speaker 2: hops on the phone. Because outside of the Western context,
Speaker 2: these people are realists.
Speaker 3: They're dying. Not only that they dying, and we'll show
Speaker 3: you how much they are dying. They're running out of AMMO.
Speaker 2: Their economy has been devastated. And also they know how
Speaker 2: the real world works and that, you know, beyond the
Speaker 2: posturing for a bunch of people in d C spec
Speaker 2: typically my neighborhood, who have more Ukrainian flags and American flags,
Speaker 2: that in reality is going to end one way, and
Speaker 2: they want to try and get to that point.
Speaker 3: For us, they need us in a raw, raw modes.
Speaker 2: We keep giving them as many bullets as possible, but
Speaker 2: for the rest of the world, they're singing a very
Speaker 2: different tune.
Speaker 1: Look, they don't have the luxury of just putting up
Speaker 1: like a flag in solidarity.
Speaker 4: And calling it a day.
Speaker 1: They're living with the reality of the horrors of war,
Speaker 1: and they're not stupid. They see the same assessments that
Speaker 1: you know, we were able to see thanks to Lease
Speaker 1: the show basically like this is very likely headed to
Speaker 1: a grinding, brutal stalemate. So any chance to you know,
Speaker 1: improve position, achieve some potential talks. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: beneficial for the world. It's beneficial for the Ukrainians, it's
Speaker 1: beneficial certainly for the US in my opinion, because this
Speaker 1: is I mean, war is a horror, This is a
Speaker 1: brutal toll that has been taken on this country and
Speaker 1: on this people, and so so yeah, I agree with
Speaker 1: you that you know, any potential talks, any discussion here,
Speaker 1: any diplomatic openings whatsoever, are to be cheered and encouraged.
Speaker 2: At the same time, as I just referenced, there has
Speaker 2: been a brand new information out of those leaked documents
Speaker 2: that the Washington Post has only now come around to
Speaker 2: telling us. Really interesting is in that crystal First. You know,
Speaker 2: we got to make sure that we know the identity
Speaker 2: of the leaker weeks ago, and we hunt first. Yeah,
Speaker 2: witch hunt first, and then the news second. Let's put
Speaker 2: that aside. They're the only ones with the docks. As
Speaker 2: I've said, I'm long waiting for these docks. If you
Speaker 2: have them, please send them so that I won't write
Speaker 2: them with stupid headlines like this one, because they really
Speaker 2: bury the lead. In the trove of leaked documents, the
Speaker 2: US government estimates between one hundred and twenty four thousand
Speaker 2: and one hundred and thirty one thousand Ukrainian soldiers have
Speaker 2: been killed or wounded since the start of the invasion.
Speaker 2: That is five times what Kiev has publicly disclosed. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying look, in this particular case, I understand why
Speaker 2: Kiev lied.
Speaker 3: To the world.
Speaker 2: I probably would too, sever devastating losses, and you don't necessarily,
Speaker 2: of course, want the enemy to know how badly you're doing.
Speaker 2: Russia also has suffered tens of thousands of casual hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands possibly of casualties.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows what the actual figure is. But what do
Speaker 3: we learn from that?
Speaker 2: A it's not even close to the number that not
Speaker 2: only the Kiev government has been giving us, but the
Speaker 2: American Kiev propagandists in Washington. They're saying, look at how
Speaker 2: few the losses are the ratios they're doing so well well.
Speaker 2: This entire Washington Post article is using the PEG of
Speaker 2: these leaked documents to underscore how difficult the Ukrainians are
Speaker 2: having a time to draft men between the ages of
Speaker 2: eighteen and sixty into the country and having reinforcements. They're
Speaker 2: talking specifically about how reinforcements our gate are getting killed
Speaker 2: or being wounded on the front line in such a
Speaker 2: fast turnaround that they're having difficulty replacing them with fresh recruits.
Speaker 2: And on top of that, who's going to replace the
Speaker 2: recruits themselves who get wounded or who get killed. In
Speaker 2: some cases, they're talking about drafting and bringing people in
Speaker 2: the militaryre at fifty two to fifty five or whatever
Speaker 2: years old. Nobody does this unlit unless the stakes are existential.
Speaker 2: You know, you can go back and think about the Virginia,
Speaker 2: you know, the last stand of the Confederate Army and
Speaker 2: when they're you know, anybody who's basically an able bodied man
Speaker 2: I think at age was fifteen to sixty five or
Speaker 2: whatever was thrown into the military.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was crazy, but World War One very similar.
Speaker 2: I've actually personally visited the grave sites of fifteen sixteen
Speaker 2: year olds who were killed in the British Army in France.
Speaker 2: The point is is that, you know, whenever things get
Speaker 2: really existential, that's whenever you see anyone the very young
Speaker 2: and the very old begin to fight and die in
Speaker 2: the in the conflict. And it also does show you
Speaker 2: and really raises questions around the Spring Offensive. Now, I
Speaker 2: think we've all learned enough lessons about predicting how the
Speaker 2: Spring offensive can go.
Speaker 3: Who doos did very well last time.
Speaker 2: It blew all apart all expectations. Clearly, you know, Bachmutz
Speaker 2: still has not fallen.
Speaker 3: They're throwing an extraordinary amount of man and materiel. But
Speaker 3: you can understumate the toll.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: That's like saying, you know, that's like saying in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 2: it's like, well the line is held in Verdun. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, one hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 3: People are dead, So is it a victory or not? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, there were some extraordinary details in this report.
Speaker 1: You know, we previously talked about how Russia had just
Speaker 1: passed a new law to make it more difficult to
Speaker 1: avoid the draft there with these like e draft notices
Speaker 1: that you know, you're assumed to have been served with
Speaker 1: your draft notice and you were barred from leaving the country,
Speaker 1: and if you don't show up then you're subject to
Speaker 1: all sorts of you know, you can't take down a
Speaker 1: low and you basically can't do any banking. Your life
Speaker 1: is sort of shut down if you don't report to
Speaker 1: a draft office. And you see some measures being taken
Speaker 1: in Ukraine as well, and they have reporting in this
Speaker 1: piece about the methods that men military age men are
Speaker 1: taking in order to try to avoid fighting. In some instances,
Speaker 1: there are others who are willingly signing up, just as
Speaker 1: there are in Russia others who are willingly signing up
Speaker 1: and want to be involved in this war. So they
Speaker 1: that previously officials could only deliver draft papers to people's homes.
Speaker 1: Some avoided the notices by staying at different addresses than
Speaker 1: where they are officially registered. New rules have widened the
Speaker 1: scope places where men can be stopped and questioned about
Speaker 1: their draft status. It's also important to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that they point out here martial law has been in
Speaker 1: place in Ukraine since February twenty two, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and it bars most men between ages eighteen and sixty
Speaker 1: from leaving the country at all. Under mobilization rules, any
Speaker 1: man in that range can theoretically be called to fight.
Speaker 1: Exceptions are made, including for students, parents with three or
Speaker 1: more children under eighteen, caretakers of disabled dependence and those
Speaker 1: dem medically unfit, among others.
Speaker 4: So I think this just you know.
Speaker 1: It underscores the horse and the human toll and the
Speaker 1: number of people who are being fed into a meat
Speaker 1: grinder here. And there's nothing to say about it other
Speaker 1: than it's awful.
Speaker 2: It's awful, it certainly is, and also big development here
Speaker 2: in terms of our politics. Governor Ron DeSantis giving an
Speaker 2: interview while he was abroad in Tokyo to nik let's
Speaker 2: go and put this up there on the screen with
Speaker 2: a direct quote about what he said around Ukraine. Quote
Speaker 2: the Europeans really need to do more on Ukraine. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is their continent. The US has provided for security
Speaker 2: for them, and yes, Poland there's some stuff that they
Speaker 2: are doing and that should be appreciated. But Germany they're
Speaker 2: not doing anything. Let's go to the next one there.
Speaker 2: Please quote. You don't want to end up like in
Speaker 2: a Battle of Verdune situation where you must have just
Speaker 2: had mass casualties, mass expense, and end up with a stalemate.
Speaker 2: He said, it's in everybody's interest to try and get
Speaker 2: to a place where we can have a cease fire.
Speaker 2: So look, it's at least a positive comment, and I
Speaker 2: think it also should be taken a note of this
Speaker 2: at this point, no matter who wins the GOP nomination,
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, it's only gonna be two people. It's
Speaker 2: either gonna be Trump or it's gonna be Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 2: They now have a very different view on Ukraine than
Speaker 2: President Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: And Ukraine.
Speaker 2: This is proof is going to be a huge dividing
Speaker 2: line between the two. I also want to say this,
Speaker 2: does the Santis really mean it? I don't know, I mean.
Speaker 4: Does Trump really mean and I don't know does Trump.
Speaker 3: Really mean it? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean it's one of those where look with Trump,
Speaker 2: I mean, the guy had John Bolton in office with DeSantis,
Speaker 2: he had a very different tune when he was in Congress.
Speaker 3: He tells Tucker one thing, the next thing.
Speaker 2: You know, he's singing the Neo Kon tune in his
Speaker 2: Peers Morgan interview, where is he?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 2: Is he going to answer more to his billionaire donor
Speaker 2: buddies who were super pissed at him for his previous
Speaker 2: comments on Ukraine. I view him very much as a
Speaker 2: very politically calculated person. Trump, I think isn't politically calculated.
Speaker 2: I think he just doesn't know what he thinks about anything.
Speaker 4: He's just like a very in the moment you're at player, Yeah.
Speaker 2: You're so listen on both of them, who the hell knows?
Speaker 2: But on rhetoric alone, and we have no idea on
Speaker 2: substance until we can't judge it on its face, it
Speaker 2: will be a dividing line in twenty twenty four. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I think that's important. I think it's important for
Speaker 2: people to get a choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And I mean the question is always like how much
Speaker 1: is foreign policy? You got a factor into people's votes.
Speaker 1: The conflict, I think for a lot of people, feels
Speaker 1: very distant right now, even though you know it looms
Speaker 1: over everything. And obviously we cover it a lot here
Speaker 1: because it is really important and possibly even existential. But
Speaker 1: I think the other thing you can see from these
Speaker 1: comments is it won't be as much of a dividing
Speaker 1: line in the Republican primary as it might have been.
Speaker 1: Trump has moved on to focus on other ways of
Speaker 1: attagging DeSantis on social Security, Medicare, Disney, which we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about later. And you know his theorizing that
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis is a groomer.
Speaker 3: See yes, yeah, I know, in terms of what the
Speaker 3: fights between them are, but look on the politics on
Speaker 3: the substance alone.
Speaker 2: There's no getting around it. This is a big, big deal.
Speaker 2: How it will actually manifest Who the hell knows?
Speaker 1: Yep, all right, you guys are going to enjoy this
Speaker 1: a lot. Our eloquent vice president had some thoughts on
Speaker 1: the moment and the time and the moment that.
Speaker 4: We wanted to share with all of you. Take a listen.
Speaker 7: So I think it's very important, as you have heard
Speaker 7: from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment
Speaker 7: in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment
Speaker 7: in time in which we exist and are present, and
Speaker 7: to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we
Speaker 7: exist in the history and in the moment as it
Speaker 7: relates not only to the past but the future.
Speaker 4: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: Where does she come up with this? Like where is
Speaker 3: this coming from? Is it a speech writer?
Speaker 2: You know, like what's happening inside your brain that makes
Speaker 2: you think that this is eloquent or impactful?
Speaker 4: It's I mean, Marshall nailed it.
Speaker 1: I always have to go to Marshall's analysis, which is
Speaker 1: like she's trying so hard to like be profound, but
Speaker 1: has just nothing really to say. So it ends up
Speaker 1: like this And this is far from the first style.
Speaker 1: Is that anyone there are you know, anyone can have
Speaker 1: an instance where there's sort of rambles going on in
Speaker 1: nonsense words. But this happens all the time, this one
Speaker 1: in front of the cameras It's like, what are you
Speaker 1: even saying right now? The word salad is absolutely astonishing.
Speaker 1: We're not the only ones who have noted that she
Speaker 1: is not the most effective politician, just in terms of
Speaker 1: her sheer talent. The White House and their Biden reelect
Speaker 1: team is apparently very concerned about the fact that she
Speaker 1: is in the number two slot. Let's put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen from Axios. They say, this is from
Speaker 1: Alex Thompson, who has just moved over to Axios as
Speaker 1: national political correspondent. With polls showing VP Harris as a
Speaker 1: drag on the twenty twenty four ticket, Anita Dunn and
Speaker 1: other West wing aids are moving to elevate her issues
Speaker 1: and schedule.
Speaker 4: They also tell.
Speaker 1: A story here about how she left Cape Bettingfield sort
Speaker 1: of simmering for two weeks after it came out that
Speaker 1: Bettingfield had insulted her in some sort of way. Within
Speaker 1: the piece, they talk about how Harris's numbers are even
Speaker 1: worse than Biden's. Her approval is in the high thirties,
Speaker 1: Biden's is at least in the low forties.
Speaker 4: Neither is great.
Speaker 1: Officials believe that could make her a drag on the ticket.
Speaker 1: There's zero chance Biden will replace her, but because doing
Speaker 1: so would be an admission that he boshed the most
Speaker 1: important decision he made as a candidate. So the White
Speaker 1: House and campaign team are working to give Harris a boost,
Speaker 1: which her allies.
Speaker 4: Feel is long overdue. Good luck with that.
Speaker 1: Biden's campaign announcement video future shot after shadow the President
Speaker 1: and Harris together, as well as her meeting solo with voters.
Speaker 1: She's also featured prominently with Biden on the homepage of
Speaker 1: Biden's revamped website.
Speaker 4: Anita Dunn, who.
Speaker 1: They describe as one of the most powerful West wing
Speaker 1: officials I think that's correct, recently directed the White House
Speaker 1: political and engagement teams to help schedule events with Harris
Speaker 1: promoting popular democratic causes such as infrastructure spending and abortion rights. Listen,
Speaker 1: they realize that when you have a president who Sager's
Speaker 1: going to get into some of the details here about
Speaker 1: Biden's age and how this fits into the historical picture
Speaker 1: when the actuarial tables don't look too hot for him
Speaker 1: in terms of finishing his next term, and his own
Speaker 1: White House Press secretary can't answer give a straight an
Speaker 1: about whether or not he even intends to finish his
Speaker 1: next term. People are going to be looking at the
Speaker 1: vice president more closely, and they should be than even
Speaker 1: they normally would, and really evaluating is can this person?
Speaker 1: Should this person really be a heartbeat away from the
Speaker 1: presidency When you've got the oldest president in history and
Speaker 1: they're aware that there's.
Speaker 3: A real issue for that, it's going to be a
Speaker 3: big problem.
Speaker 2: I am. I'm doing my monologue just on all the
Speaker 2: statistics on Biden's This is very morbid, and I apologize,
Speaker 2: but look, he wants to be reality on earth, so
Speaker 2: we have we owe it at least somebody does to
Speaker 2: talk about chance of death, chance of developing dementia, chance
Speaker 2: of serious illness.
Speaker 3: While in office.
Speaker 2: I mean, the main thing I came away with in
Speaker 2: doing my research for my monologue was that the difference
Speaker 2: between seventies and eighties is so substantial that we really
Speaker 2: have difficulty wrapping our minds around, especially if you're younger.
Speaker 2: You know, you think that they're kind of the same,
Speaker 2: But in terms of your chance of death, serious illness,
Speaker 2: chances of losing kind of losing your ability to think properly,
Speaker 2: and showing signs of mental degradation, the change is dramatic
Speaker 2: to the point that you really will have to see it,
Speaker 2: and I'll lay it all out there.
Speaker 3: But the point of that is she doesn't.
Speaker 2: She has a better chance of being in charge as
Speaker 2: President of the United States through his death or through
Speaker 2: his incapacitation than any vice president in modern American history.
Speaker 2: And I think people should really internalize that. There's a
Speaker 2: famous story about Lyndon Johnson. He was one of the
Speaker 2: most powerful people in America. He was a Senate majority leader,
Speaker 2: and he took the vice presidency under Kennedy. And then
Speaker 2: one of his friends said, what are you doing, Lyndon?
Speaker 2: Why would you take this job? You know, it's the
Speaker 2: most BS gig And he cited the number of times
Speaker 2: as a US president has been assassinated at her office,
Speaker 2: and he said, I'll take my odds, darling. And he
Speaker 2: was right, you know, and that was just dying in
Speaker 2: office and being killed. Okay, that's not serving for the
Speaker 2: oldest man to ever hold the oval office. Yeah, really
Speaker 2: put that in perspective. So outside of the very real
Speaker 2: risks actually of being I hope this doesn't have I'm
Speaker 2: just saying, like, you know, if you look at the statistics,
Speaker 2: all the history of that of dying in the Oval
Speaker 2: from unnatural causes. The risk of natural causes is exponentially
Speaker 2: higher than any man who's ever held the office. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're talking about an age here where a single fall
Speaker 2: is like could be deaf and once again.
Speaker 3: Like, I don't want it to be I hope that.
Speaker 2: Doesn't happen, but we have to be realistic, and he
Speaker 2: is asking us to put a tremendous amount of faith
Speaker 2: not just in him, in his ability to live, in
Speaker 2: his ability to conduct the job, and then to select
Speaker 2: this woman as possibly our next commander in chief. I
Speaker 2: could never pull the lever for her.
Speaker 1: I also think it's incredibly irresponsible that his team and
Speaker 1: him have seen her inability to rise to the moment
Speaker 1: and have to be aware that she is really not
Speaker 1: the person that you would want to be in the
Speaker 1: Oval office.
Speaker 4: But out of cube.
Speaker 1: Risks and out of a fear of admitting a mistake,
Speaker 1: they won't make another choice.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: I think that really says something as well, that you
Speaker 1: know they see all this stuff as just a game,
Speaker 1: like it's just about the polls and the politics of it,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, you have massive power and massive
Speaker 1: responsibility that should be your first and foremost consideration. Not
Speaker 1: saying he's any different from other politicians in that regard,
Speaker 1: but I think it's worth reflecting on that choice.
Speaker 4: That they know this is the problem.
Speaker 1: They know that, you know, she has failed to even
Speaker 1: be able to succeed as a vice president, let alone
Speaker 1: capable of handling the presidency, and yet they choose to
Speaker 1: stick with their choice just because they don't.
Speaker 4: Want to admit a mistake.
Speaker 1: Even some of the media is Listen, all the polls
Speaker 1: show voters seventy percent of voters don't want Biden, Okay,
Speaker 1: don't want Biden to run again.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean that all those people won't vote.
Speaker 1: You know, some of them are going to vote for
Speaker 1: him because they also really hate Trump. Okay, but seventy
Speaker 1: percent of voters are like, please, could we have someone else?
Speaker 1: And a majority of them, what's their number one concern?
Speaker 1: It's his age, It's we aren't confident that he's going
Speaker 1: to be able to effectively and competently serve another term.
Speaker 1: So there has been a little bit of media scrutiny
Speaker 1: on this question, and he was recently asked about some
Speaker 1: of these issues.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to a little bit of that.
Speaker 8: You've said questions about your age are legitimate, and your
Speaker 8: response is always just watch me. But the country is watching,
Speaker 8: and recent polling shows that seventy percent of Americans, including
Speaker 8: a majority of Democrats, believe you shouldn't run again to.
Speaker 9: Age, you know, and pulling, Dad. I noticed. The pulling
Speaker 9: dat I keep hearing about is that I'm between forty
Speaker 9: two and forty six percent favorable rating, et cetera. But
Speaker 9: every bloody running for reelection and this time has been
Speaker 9: in the same position. There's nothing new about that. We're
Speaker 9: making it sound like Biden's really underwater with regard to
Speaker 9: a I can't even say I guess how old I am.
Speaker 9: I can't even say the number I've done register with me.
Speaker 9: But the only thing I can say is that one
Speaker 9: of the things that people are going to find out,
Speaker 9: they're going to see a race, and they're going to
Speaker 9: judge whether or not I have or don't have it.
Speaker 9: I respect them taking a hard look at it. I
Speaker 9: take a hard look at it as well.
Speaker 3: I took a hard.
Speaker 9: Look at it before I decided to run. And I
Speaker 9: feel good. I feel excited about the prospects, and I
Speaker 9: think we're on the verge of really turning the corner
Speaker 9: and away we have in a long time.
Speaker 4: Brazie's like, oh, voters will have a chance to value
Speaker 4: and all.
Speaker 3: They won't.
Speaker 4: No, they won't.
Speaker 1: No, they won't because you have rigged the democratic primary.
Speaker 1: But the states and the order you want them, you're
Speaker 1: not going to host any debates. So yeah, if you
Speaker 1: have a full and open democratic process where oh you're
Speaker 1: sitting for interviews and giving more press conferences.
Speaker 4: This is like a very rare one that.
Speaker 1: He actually did, and people actually have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: evaluate you versus the alternatives. And you even acknowledge that
Speaker 1: the alternatives exist.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's a different deal.
Speaker 1: But they've gone above and beyond to shut down any
Speaker 1: sort of primary process. For all their talk of democracy,
Speaker 1: when it comes down to it, their whole strategy, and
Speaker 1: this is what I'm talking about in my monologue, in
Speaker 1: part given Bernie's endorsement of Biden, their whole strategy is
Speaker 1: to make people feel like you have no other choice,
Speaker 1: that there are no other quote unquote serious candidates. In
Speaker 1: the primer, we're about to show you some polling that
Speaker 1: may say otherwise.
Speaker 4: And in the general election, Trump.
Speaker 1: Is so bad that it's effectively no choice as well.
Speaker 1: They don't want a democratic process, they want a coronation.
Speaker 1: They want people to feel they have no other option.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk very specifically about the polling, which
Speaker 2: is insane, which the media would really rather that you
Speaker 2: not hear about. And altogether, I just think that the
Speaker 2: way he has handled it is outrageous. And I also
Speaker 2: just do want to show everybody a little bit behind
Speaker 2: the scene, which we always tried to do here.
Speaker 3: Put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Biden cheat sheet shows that he had advanced knowledge of
Speaker 2: a journalist question.
Speaker 3: That wasn't the question that you had in front of you.
Speaker 2: It was actually the next question where he called on
Speaker 2: a reporter, the La Times reporter Courtney Subramanian. Now the
Speaker 2: reporter asked him a question specifically about re shoring semiconductor
Speaker 2: manufacturing with Alliance based policy. What you can actually see
Speaker 2: in the cheat sheet that was zoomed in on by
Speaker 2: the photographers who were present there in a picture captured
Speaker 2: by Getty Images, they show not only her face, they
Speaker 2: have her title, the pronunciation of her name, and right
Speaker 2: underneath her question they have bullet points for his answer
Speaker 2: on what he's supposed to say.
Speaker 3: Now, I want to say this again.
Speaker 2: I covered the White House and getting a question before
Speaker 2: these things. It's a dirty game. The way it works
Speaker 2: is there's one hundred people there, right, you only get two.
Speaker 2: It's called a two and two, so two and from
Speaker 2: the Americans and two from the foreign press. But he's
Speaker 2: lobbying the Press secretary to get a question. You're already
Speaker 2: pre selected. I was pre selected many times. That that's
Speaker 2: how it goes. And also part of the game, though,
Speaker 2: is they call you and they go, so, what do
Speaker 2: you want to talk about? And you say, you know,
Speaker 2: I can't ask that. You know me, I'm a fair guy.
Speaker 2: You can choose me if you would like, But I'm
Speaker 2: not going to get into it. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: different things I'd like to ask the president about it. Again,
Speaker 2: it's all a game in case somebody slips up and says,
Speaker 2: here's exactly what I said.
Speaker 3: I'm not so sure this was a slip up.
Speaker 2: I think this was a direct here's what I'm going
Speaker 2: to ask, and you know why, because look, I think
Speaker 2: semiconductors are important. But I'm sorry, you get two questions
Speaker 2: before the president. The first is obviously about the re election.
Speaker 2: And the second one is about semiconductor manufacturing policy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's insane, that's ridiculous. Yeah, like you, there are
Speaker 3: so many more pressing things that you could have asked
Speaker 3: the man about, and that was the biggest plant that
Speaker 3: I have ever seen before.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's embarrassing for everyone involved. Yeah, clearly his.
Speaker 1: Staff, as you point out, every president, everybody's staff.
Speaker 4: Try to get a jump on our right.
Speaker 3: What are these?
Speaker 4: It's all we asked. It's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: But embarrassing for him because there's already these questions about
Speaker 1: could you handle a question coming out at you that
Speaker 1: you weren't expecting. Number One, humiliating for this journalist because
Speaker 1: the question that's listed on the sheet is like verbatim's.
Speaker 2: Exactly what you said, which is crazy. She might have
Speaker 2: emailed it to them.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm starting, right, So, I mean it is
Speaker 1: the verbatim question that she ends up asking, not just
Speaker 1: some general sense of h she might ask about some
Speaker 1: countries conductors. No, no, no, here is the specific right
Speaker 1: that she is going to use. And here's, sir, are
Speaker 1: your bullet points of what you are supposed to reply,
Speaker 1: So listen, put this in the context of the president
Speaker 1: who was given the fewest press conferences, that for the
Speaker 1: fewest interviews, all of their democracy dies in darkness, liberal
Speaker 1: media whatever. If Trump was this shut off.
Speaker 4: From the media, they'd be freaking out.
Speaker 1: If the Republicans were blocking any sort of primary debates,
Speaker 1: they'd be freaking out. And in fact, there has been
Speaker 1: lots of outrage coverage about trum is now suggesting, which
Speaker 1: is not okay either, that he may sit out from
Speaker 1: the Republican primary debates.
Speaker 4: Well, there's lots of outrage.
Speaker 1: They can see how that's anti democratic when it's on
Speaker 1: the Republican side, But when it's Joe Biden, that's all
Speaker 1: fine and good and it's just what we expect. At
Speaker 1: the same time, there's huge effort now in the media
Speaker 1: to once again paint him as like always so electable.
Speaker 4: It's going to be shoeing, no problem.
Speaker 1: David from with one example of this genre of analysis. Now,
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. He's saying the coming
Speaker 1: Biden blowout. Republicans thought about running without Trump in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four but lost their nerve. They are heading for
Speaker 1: electoral disaster again. Maybe possible, you know, I mean, Democrats
Speaker 1: did better in the midterms than they were expecting. They
Speaker 1: still did lose the House, so it's not like it
Speaker 1: was amazing.
Speaker 4: For them there either.
Speaker 1: Maybe people are so done with Trump that they suck
Speaker 1: it up and vote Joe. I think that's a very
Speaker 1: possible outcome. I also think it's a very possible outcome
Speaker 1: that we end up with Donald Trump back in the
Speaker 1: White House again if he ends up being the Republican nominee.
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, it's not clear to me
Speaker 1: that DeSantis or another Republican candidate is actually more electable.
Speaker 4: Than Trump either.
Speaker 1: Maybe again possible, but that is much murkier to me
Speaker 1: than it is to people like David Frum who apparently
Speaker 1: learned absolutely nothing from twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these people are nuts. I mean, go and put
Speaker 2: the next one out there, please on the screen. Like,
Speaker 2: look at the general election polling, people like, it's not
Speaker 2: great for Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: It has RCP average at Trump one plus three. Now, look,
Speaker 3: who knows.
Speaker 2: The RCP average was off by about four in the
Speaker 2: Democratic direction in twenty twenty two, it was off by
Speaker 2: about four in the Republican direction in twenty twenty, so
Speaker 2: I guess it averages out.
Speaker 3: I don't know which way to read that.
Speaker 2: What I do know is crystal if it's off by
Speaker 2: four and so basically, unless you're leading by anything out
Speaker 2: of that, you're within the margin of error. And if
Speaker 2: you're within the margin of error, well you can lose
Speaker 2: or you can win if you're Trump. So maybe have
Speaker 2: a little bit of humility about what the hell is going.
Speaker 1: They are all cheering for Trump to be the nominee
Speaker 1: once again, and I just they learn nothing. They learn
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. And also, by the way, many of these
Speaker 1: people became very wealthy and famous in opposition to Trump,
Speaker 1: so they have their own sort of incentive as well
Speaker 1: for him to be the party nominee.
Speaker 3: On the Republican side, absolutely right.
Speaker 1: At the same time, so there have been a million
Speaker 1: polls of the Democratic primary race, and normally what they do,
Speaker 1: and I have never understood this, is they'll put a
Speaker 1: whole laundry list of candidates in there who have no
Speaker 1: intention of running, who have said they're not going to run.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've pulled like Michelle Obama and all these
Speaker 1: people who were like, I am.
Speaker 4: Not running in the primary. But they'll put this whole
Speaker 4: laundry list of candidates.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes they'll completely leave off Mary and Williamson and now
Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy even though they are actually running and they
Speaker 1: are in the race. Well, now we have a very
Speaker 1: clear picture of who the Democrats in contention are going
Speaker 1: to be. They have all now announced. Probably, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's unlikely that you see any other entrance.
Speaker 1: I don't see anyone else making any noise about it.
Speaker 1: You've got Mary and Williamson, you've got Bobby Kennedy Junior,
Speaker 1: and you've got Joe Biden. So lo and behold, one
Speaker 1: news organization decided, let's actually pull on the contest that
Speaker 1: exists rather than this weird fantasy one where we're running
Speaker 1: AOCM Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton and every other laundry
Speaker 1: list of candidate. And the results are kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. This is Fox News poll.
Speaker 1: They're you know, serious polsters over there.
Speaker 4: Joe Biden's is.
Speaker 1: Sixty two percent, Robert Kennedy Junior nineteen percent, and Marian
Speaker 1: Williamson at nine percent.
Speaker 4: So you've got you know, third, You've got a.
Speaker 1: Third, and you've got you know, more than a third
Speaker 1: of voters who are not backing Biden. Here those numbers,
Speaker 1: considering the media has completely pretended like these two candidates
Speaker 1: don't even exist right, anytime they even get mentioned, it's
Speaker 1: always couch and all this language about they're a long shot,
Speaker 1: they don't have a real shot, they're not considered serious,
Speaker 1: they're you know, like all of this language to try
Speaker 1: to dismiss them or invisibilize them entirely. They've been mocked
Speaker 1: and derided in the media, and yet clearly there is
Speaker 1: an appetite from voters for something other than a coronation.
Speaker 1: They are open to options, they would like to hear
Speaker 1: more about the options, and at the very least, they
Speaker 1: deserve to be able to see these candidates debate their
Speaker 1: ideas and if at the end of the day they decide, listen,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is our best bet for whatever reason. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the fact that they are openly explicitly the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party blocking any sort of a real primary process is
Speaker 1: truly unconscionable, given the fact that there is a real
Speaker 1: appetite obviously for alternatives.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, it's stunning. Also just to consider the media treatment.
Speaker 2: I mean, somebody is pulling in nineteen percent, that is,
Speaker 2: I mean, in some polls that's almost equivalent to how
Speaker 2: much Ron DeSantis has versus Donald Trump. So you've got
Speaker 2: to treat that person fairly. By the way we are
Speaker 2: working right now and getting RFK Junior, So RFK if
Speaker 2: you see this, Yeah, trying to have you on the
Speaker 2: Show've been in communication with people around you, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we're trying to make that happen because that's
Speaker 2: what we believe in. Here is let's talk like, let's
Speaker 2: figure this out. Nineteen percent of people are interested in
Speaker 2: you have your father's book right behind me. Actually, that's
Speaker 2: an original that I found very interesting. The point is
Speaker 2: is that these people are showing the path to an alternative,
Speaker 2: and at the very least Crystal, they deserve.
Speaker 3: Time on the stage.
Speaker 2: You can't not have a debate where he doesn't get
Speaker 2: to be on the stage and Marianna doesn't get to
Speaker 2: be there either. They're well over the two percent threshold
Speaker 2: that they were allowed to be on the stage in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty in an open primary, and they are rigging
Speaker 2: this system.
Speaker 3: If you think twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Was rigged, and if this is like another level, yeah
Speaker 2: of the primary changing the schedule and having no debate,
Speaker 2: that's genuinely nuts to not allow that.
Speaker 1: You know, I may do a monologue on this next week.
Speaker 1: It was about a week ago. One of the New
Speaker 1: York Times podcast is called The run Up. They went
Speaker 1: and they interviewed DMC members about the reordering of the states,
Speaker 1: and some of them were out right. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were not ashamed of the fact that, yeah, we did
Speaker 1: the president's bidding. Yeah we ordered the states exactly how
Speaker 1: we wanted them. I mean, they dropped this facility. It's
Speaker 1: still put up the language about representation, black voters, etc.
Speaker 1: But they sort of dropped the mask and were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are here to serve the president. We want him
Speaker 1: to be the nominee. We're doing what he thinks is
Speaker 1: in his political interest. And the fact that it adds
Speaker 1: this like representation talking point, that's all good for us
Speaker 1: as well. The fact that they feel comfortable admitting this
Speaker 1: is astonishing. And you know, the New York Times has
Speaker 1: been part of this coronation process, but even they in
Speaker 1: that piece, we're like, this is a coronation, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how this squares with the fact that you
Speaker 1: have a clear, consistent majority of Democratic base voters who
Speaker 1: are like, we want an alternative, and yet everybody on
Speaker 1: the party, from party elites from every ideological corner, including
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, who immediately bends the knee hours after Biden
Speaker 1: announces that he's running for reelection, all of them coalescing
Speaker 1: behind him in what is a very very anti democratic
Speaker 1: and sort of outright authoritarian fashion. Again, the very least
Speaker 1: that people deserve is to be able to hear these
Speaker 1: candidates that they clearly have some interest in, and guys,
Speaker 1: whether you want them to be or not, are clearly
Speaker 1: serious candidates as judged by the American people. They deserve
Speaker 1: to hear them.
Speaker 3: Debate absolutely real democracy.
Speaker 1: We've got an escalation we can tell you about this
Speaker 1: morning between run de sand and Walt Disney Company. So
Speaker 1: this is not necessarily a surprise, but put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. Disney is officially suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: This came down yesterday on Wednesday over they say the
Speaker 1: Republicans takeover of its theme park district, alleging the governor
Speaker 1: waged a targeted campaign of government retaliation after the company
Speaker 1: opposed a law critics called Don't Say Gay. That lawsuit
Speaker 1: was filed in Tallahassee Minutes after a Disney World oversight
Speaker 1: board appointed by DeSantis voted to void a deal that
Speaker 1: gave the company authority over design and construction decisions and
Speaker 1: its sprawling properties near Orlando. Here's the quote from the company.
Speaker 1: They say, Disney regrets that it has come to this,
Speaker 1: but having exhausted efforts to seek a resolution, the company
Speaker 1: is left with no choice but to file this lawsuit
Speaker 1: to protect its cast members, guests, and local development partners
Speaker 1: from a relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney
Speaker 1: in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint unpopular with certain
Speaker 1: state officials.
Speaker 4: Just a brief.
Speaker 1: Reminder of how we got to this point. Disney has
Speaker 1: a sizable LGBTQ fan base or customer base. They also
Speaker 1: have positioned themselves as being sort of allies. So when
Speaker 1: this quote unquote don't say gay bill passes in Florida,
Speaker 1: they were under a lot of pressure to say something.
Speaker 4: They put out this, you know, sort of late.
Speaker 1: And not all that strong statement about it, but in
Speaker 1: opposition to it. DeSantis takes it as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: stand up to the woke corporation. And what they take
Speaker 1: amatt in particular is this reedy Creek Improvement District, which
Speaker 1: is a crazy It is a crazy So since the sixties,
Speaker 1: Disney has effective control, Like they run their own town,
Speaker 1: they tax themselves, they can issue bonds, they can build.
Speaker 4: A nuclear power plan.
Speaker 1: Apparently they just have control of this whole thing. Now,
Speaker 1: this has been beneficial in certain ways for the state
Speaker 1: because Disney's obviously brought brings in lots of tourist dollars
Speaker 1: and generates lots of economic activity. Uh, they employ tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people in Florida. So it's been that's
Speaker 1: been the partnership. And it's very clear that DeSantis decided
Speaker 1: to retally. I mean, I don't think anyone can look
Speaker 1: at the situation and come away with any other idea
Speaker 1: than he decided to retaliate against him because he didn't
Speaker 1: like the political perspective that they were offering. Disney pulled
Speaker 1: kind of a fast one on DeSantis, though, and it
Speaker 1: left him looking a bit foolish because at the very end,
Speaker 1: before they put the DeSantis appointees on this Reedy Creek
Speaker 1: Improvement Board, the Disney Favorable Board passes this development deal,
Speaker 1: effectively taking control away from the board and handing it
Speaker 1: back to Disney. So now DeSantis has been maneuvering with
Speaker 1: his appointees to try to undo that and unravel that, etc.
Speaker 1: And now we're at loggerheads with this lawsuit. The other
Speaker 1: piece of this from a political perspective, I've got some
Speaker 1: pulling on this that shows this kind of it's a
Speaker 1: little bit muddy.
Speaker 4: How this is all going to.
Speaker 1: Work out for him is after Disney was able to
Speaker 1: pull a fast one on him and get the upper hand,
Speaker 1: a lot of his Republican adversary came out, including Nikki Haley,
Speaker 1: but including most importantly Trump, who said he's getting killed
Speaker 1: by Disney and this is all a pr stunt, and
Speaker 1: he really planted his flag very aggressively in opposition to
Speaker 1: what DeSantis is doing here and also just trying to
Speaker 1: paint DeSantis's like weak and foolish that he got played
Speaker 1: in this way. So DeSantis has been scrambling to figure
Speaker 1: out what to do and just his re minder. He
Speaker 1: like had a kind of weird press conference where he
Speaker 1: was floating like, oh well, maybe in response, I'm going
Speaker 1: to build my own theme park, or maybe I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put a prison next door to Walt Disney. Take a
Speaker 1: listen to what he had to say, maybe.
Speaker 5: Have another maybe create a state park, maybe trying to
Speaker 5: do more amusement parks. Someone even said like, maybe you
Speaker 5: need another state prison.
Speaker 3: Who knows.
Speaker 8: I mean, I just think that the possibilities are endless,
Speaker 8: and so that is now going to be analyzed to
Speaker 8: see what would make the most sense.
Speaker 1: So let me just say, Zagar on the legal merits,
Speaker 1: I genuinely have no idea, Like, it's very complex.
Speaker 3: Like it. You're not Florida property law.
Speaker 1: Experts, no, So I have no idea how this will
Speaker 1: be resolved legally. I will say from my general knowledge
Speaker 1: of the American legal system, gigantic corporations who can hire,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, spend billions of dollars on attorneys
Speaker 1: if they want to, they often have an upper hand
Speaker 1: in these disputes. And Disney clearly sees this as close
Speaker 1: to existential, very very important to them.
Speaker 4: So that's all I can really say about it.
Speaker 2: Here's the issue for DeSantis. You said you were going
Speaker 2: to pick a fight with Disney. So if you lose,
Speaker 2: you look weak, and if you come with the King,
Speaker 2: you best not mess and Disney that's it, you know,
Speaker 2: they run that state. It's like look at least when
Speaker 2: the Georgia legislature went after Coca Cola, they actually won.
Speaker 2: Or with MLB in this case, it's like if you lose,
Speaker 2: and you have a very.
Speaker 3: Good chance of losing.
Speaker 2: As I understand, once again, we are not experts in
Speaker 2: Florida property law and all of that. But if you
Speaker 2: do it in a haphazard way, and if they can
Speaker 2: prove that your actions were done in regards to try
Speaker 2: and silencing free speech, this is also the problem. You know,
Speaker 2: on conflicted level, I think it's crazy that a multi
Speaker 2: billion dollar company has self governance inside of a sovereign
Speaker 2: American state.
Speaker 3: Sorry, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that corporations, quote have free speech rights
Speaker 2: because I don't think that corporations are people. I don't
Speaker 2: think that they should be treated equally under the law. However,
Speaker 2: many conservative justices disagree that all the way goes back
Speaker 2: to Citizens United and actually would be very ironic if
Speaker 2: Citizens United itself is the one that came back to
Speaker 2: bite DeSantis in the episode.
Speaker 3: Very well. Actually, no, like on the.
Speaker 2: Merits, if you look at kind of the way, like
Speaker 2: whether corporations or whatever have free speech rights, I really
Speaker 2: don't believe that not because I want to silence people's speech,
Speaker 2: but because that leads to political giving advertising, which comes
Speaker 2: back to some of the woke problems I think we
Speaker 2: even have in the first place.
Speaker 3: Put that all aside. It politically he made it a thing.
Speaker 2: So now if you lose at your own thing, then
Speaker 2: you look like an idiot, and that's not good.
Speaker 3: And the chances again, now you're throwing it to.
Speaker 2: A legal fight where who the hell knows if this
Speaker 2: is even going to be resolved by the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is we got billions at stake.
Speaker 2: And if you think they're not going to fight till
Speaker 2: the end of time on this case, not at the
Speaker 2: jury level, at the appeals level, at the Supreme court level,
Speaker 2: then you're stupid too. So at the very least, like
Speaker 2: in terms of the talking point Trump and let's put
Speaker 2: Haley side, doesn't matter. Trump has got what he needs
Speaker 2: in his Amma, in his back pocket if he needs
Speaker 2: it whenever he wants a brand out.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem for DeSantis is, like most culture war
Speaker 1: outrage flare ups, people have already moved on from this,
Speaker 1: and yet he's stuck here now having to go up
Speaker 1: against this corporate behemoth. So this is gonna suck up
Speaker 1: a lot of time and attention because the upside at
Speaker 1: this point, if he wins, the upside is not that
Speaker 1: great because people have already moved on to you know,
Speaker 1: blud light or whatever. The next thing is going to
Speaker 1: be a minute from now. But the downside risk for
Speaker 1: him is massive. And Trump clearly already smells blood in
Speaker 1: the water and is going.
Speaker 4: For the jugular.
Speaker 1: And if he does lose against Disney, or even appears
Speaker 1: like he's losing against Disney, Trump is never gonna let
Speaker 1: you hear the end of it. On the polling of
Speaker 1: how people feel about it already, it's kind of mixed.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. Only forty four percent
Speaker 1: of Republicans say that they have a more favorable view
Speaker 1: of DeSantis because of the fight with Disney, So it's
Speaker 1: not like this was a clear, gigantic winner for him.
Speaker 1: Seventy three percent of respondents say they are less likely
Speaker 1: to support a political candidate who backs law is designed
Speaker 1: to punish a company for its political or cultural stances.
Speaker 1: That includes sixty three percent of Republicans who sort of
Speaker 1: don't like the concept of it, and they polled specifically,
Speaker 1: you know, they try to give DeSantis' argument for this
Speaker 1: versus the free speech argument against DeSantis. They say DeSantis
Speaker 1: has argued his actions against Disney were rightfully rolling back
Speaker 1: special treatment for the company. Some sixty four percent of
Speaker 1: Republicans agreed, with thirty seven percent, though siding with the
Speaker 1: vast majority of Democrats and also majority of Independents who
Speaker 1: say DeSantis was punishing Disney for exercising free speech. So yeah,
Speaker 1: a majority of Republicans are kind of siding with him,
Speaker 1: but you got a sizeable minority thirty seven percent who
Speaker 1: are not. And I have to think if Trump really
Speaker 1: digs in on that iss on this issue, that number
Speaker 1: is only going to shift more to the other side.
Speaker 2: I'm really sure the merits matter at all, to be honest,
Speaker 2: I just think it's all comes down to optics.
Speaker 3: You pick a.
Speaker 2: Fight, you're lose. You just look like it's very base.
Speaker 2: It's like, you made this a thing, dude. You know
Speaker 2: the bud Light thing is instructive. No governor was like, oh,
Speaker 2: we're gonna punish bud Light. A brunch of conservatives were like,
Speaker 2: we're not going to buy bud Light. Bud Light a
Speaker 2: bunch of its executives and apparently their sales are down
Speaker 2: by seventeen percent. Now in general, I don't know if
Speaker 2: Boycott's work or not, but you know, people who are
Speaker 2: anti bud Light can claim victory because they did win
Speaker 2: and they didn't actually have to really do anything except
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 3: So all you really would have had to do in
Speaker 3: the Disney case is be.
Speaker 2: Like, well, you know, we're not going to stand by Disney,
Speaker 2: and then Santas doesn't go to some Disney event, you
Speaker 2: probably would have the same political level of upside that
Speaker 2: actually winning on this Reedy Creek fight would have had
Speaker 2: in the first place, without any of the downside politically anyway,
Speaker 2: an interesting concert.
Speaker 1: Let me there's one more thing I want to point
Speaker 1: out here, and I'm going to pull up some numbers
Speaker 1: that I was looking at that same Fox News pool
Speaker 1: that we showed you the Democratic primary numbers on they
Speaker 1: tested the Republican primary numbers and Donald Trump was winning
Speaker 1: by a significant amount.
Speaker 4: But what is really important to.
Speaker 1: Understand is the differences in their coalitions. So if you
Speaker 1: test white people with a college degree, it's tied tiede
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is at thirty six, DeSantis is at thirty five,
Speaker 1: So effective tie within the margin of error. That's college
Speaker 1: degree holders, white people with no college degree sixty one
Speaker 1: percent for Trump, fifteen percent for run DeSantis. So why
Speaker 1: am I bringing this up? That college degree holding were
Speaker 1: affluent part of the Republican base. They're very pro business,
Speaker 1: tend to be much more of the like traditional Reaganite conservatives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're more like Romney type.
Speaker 1: People that look at this and are like, why are
Speaker 1: you being anti business? So he's taken a position that's
Speaker 1: kind of at odds with his own natural constituency. Not
Speaker 1: to mention the donor Glass hates this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: They're not on board with it whatsoever. And meanwhile, it's
Speaker 1: funny because you know the Trump bass would be more
Speaker 1: likely to view this move favorably, but now you've got
Speaker 1: Trump coming in to trash to Santis over so they're
Speaker 1: not going to be on.
Speaker 4: Board with you either.
Speaker 1: So he's really kind of politically exposed here and wrapped
Speaker 1: up in something that is much bigger than probably what
Speaker 1: he really wanted to bite off.
Speaker 3: Very true. Absolutely, it looks like a fool in my opinion.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about Nate Silver, some big news
Speaker 2: that just fits with so much of what we've been
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 8: Here.
Speaker 3: The twenty tens media era.
Speaker 2: Is officially over. Go ahead and put this up there
Speaker 2: on the screen. Nate Silm five thirty eight is out
Speaker 2: at ABC News as Disney layoffs once again hit the
Speaker 2: news division. So Nate actually revealed in a tweet that
Speaker 2: he would be leaving five thirty eight and then five
Speaker 2: thirty eight employees had been heavily impacted by layoff.
Speaker 3: Announcement at ABC News.
Speaker 2: For those who don't remember, five thirty eight was an
Speaker 2: independent political website that was started by Nate Silver after
Speaker 2: he left The New York Times With the five thirty
Speaker 2: eight blog, it was very successful, had a good track
Speaker 2: record up until twenty sixteen started his own website, which
Speaker 2: was then bought by ABC News as part of the
Speaker 2: Disney portfolio. It was seen as one of the darling
Speaker 2: companies of the twenty tens, like the blogger era of
Speaker 2: a guy like him who could literally go from playing
Speaker 2: shit posting on Twitter and playing online poker two becoming
Speaker 2: you know, the guy who called the twenty twelve election,
Speaker 2: and now to see him out of his own company,
Speaker 2: which is crazy and also, by the way, why you
Speaker 2: should never see or at the very least you are
Speaker 2: going to sell like you should have protections. Here's what
Speaker 2: he has to say. Put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Disney layoffs are substantially impacted.
Speaker 3: Five thirty eight. I'm sad and disappointed to a degree
Speaker 3: that's kind of hard to express. Right now.
Speaker 2: We've been at Disney almost ten years. My contract is
Speaker 2: up soon. I expect I will be leaving at the
Speaker 2: end of it. I've been worried about an outcome like.
Speaker 3: This and have had some great initial conversations with opportunity elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Don't hesitate to get in touch. I'm proud of the work.
Speaker 3: Five thirty eight. Staff.
Speaker 2: It's never been easy. I'm sorry to the people who
Speaker 2: have been impacted by this. I put this together with
Speaker 2: a couple of things, the end of BuzzFeed News, the decline,
Speaker 2: and let's go back in time. It's twenty twelve. Silver
Speaker 2: is a rock star. His book was called The Signal
Speaker 2: and the Noise. That book was like number one on
Speaker 2: Amazon after his model called the twenty twelve election. This
Speaker 2: guy is like getting you know, book contracts, and money's
Speaker 2: being thrown at him. At five from The New York Times.
Speaker 2: Everybody loves this guy. BuzzFeed News. They are the hottest
Speaker 2: thing on the block. Mike dot Com. They're killing it
Speaker 2: for millennials. They're crushing it on Facebook. You've got Gawker, right,
Speaker 2: Goker still exists.
Speaker 3: All these companies.
Speaker 2: Gowker's on the upswing, like they're swinging and punching.
Speaker 3: And now it's twenty twenty three. It's a decade later.
Speaker 2: They're all dead. They're gone, like hollowed. Business insiders still around.
Speaker 2: I guess if you want to have a paywall for
Speaker 2: clickable articles. And then wes Is, I don't know what
Speaker 2: the hell is going on there. They to be fair,
Speaker 2: I think Wece was the best of all of them.
Speaker 3: I loved Vice.
Speaker 2: I'll always stand by some of their early content, but
Speaker 2: I think they very much lost their way, and Jane
Speaker 2: Smith made some questionable business decisions which certainly benefited him personally,
Speaker 2: but which necessarily work out for the company. They're still
Speaker 2: trucking along, I guess, but it's not even close to
Speaker 2: the level what they were or Look at vox Media.
Speaker 2: Vox Media was one of the biggest startups of the
Speaker 2: twenty tens, built on the click model era, and now
Speaker 2: they're two founders. One is on substack, Matt Iglesias and
Speaker 2: Ezra Kleine works over at the New York Times and
Speaker 2: his wife works for the Atlantic. It's like you either
Speaker 2: became an institutionalist or you went independent.
Speaker 3: There really was no in between for this clickbase media.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking at it almost as a metastory just
Speaker 2: to say wow, like wow, man, the blogger era is dead.
Speaker 2: All of the big bloggers who everybody thought was going
Speaker 2: to be the new it thing, they went. They made
Speaker 2: the wrong bet. They thought that they could sustain themselves
Speaker 2: on the click model or in partnership with traditional media,
Speaker 2: and they got burned. The ones who went independent, they're
Speaker 2: still trucking along and they're doing okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah. With regard to this particular business decision, and you
Speaker 1: and I were talking about this, I honestly from Disney's
Speaker 1: I don't quite understand it, because i'd have to know,
Speaker 1: I guess more than numbers. But I feel like Nate
Speaker 1: Silver is a bigger brand than five thirty eight, like,
Speaker 1: if anything, And I have to think that the burn
Speaker 1: for the whole five thirty eight operation would be more
Speaker 1: than this one guy, even though I'm sure he's very
Speaker 1: well paid. So I find it a little strange from
Speaker 1: a business decision perspective. But putting that aside, what all
Speaker 1: of these companies have in common is that they're built
Speaker 1: on a business model that just doesn't really work anymore
Speaker 1: and they were unable to adjust. That's really the bottom line.
Speaker 1: And some of them there are ideological issues as well.
Speaker 1: I do think the whole polling analysis industry was certainly
Speaker 1: hurt by the unexpected results in twenty sixteen and by
Speaker 1: the fact that in every election since then, the polls
Speaker 1: have been off in some significant way.
Speaker 4: So people just don't look to the polls as the
Speaker 4: gospel that they used. So let's be honest, No, they
Speaker 4: absolutely shouldn't.
Speaker 1: And so I think that, you know, so the core
Speaker 1: of the Nate Silver philosophy is that this is the
Speaker 1: thing that you should rely on, that there are models
Speaker 1: that you can use that can work out pretty well
Speaker 1: what's going to happen and predict these elections, and that
Speaker 1: theory has taken a big hit from twenty sixteen and
Speaker 1: really in every election since then. So I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the backstory here too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just you know, just thinking about it in terms
Speaker 2: of like the meta story here.
Speaker 3: I feel bad for him.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do think he was a genuine talent.
Speaker 2: He had some pretty heterodoxic views, you know, at some
Speaker 2: point he was a media critic too, in his own right.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it didn't necessarily always agree with him. But he
Speaker 2: had a lot of people into politics.
Speaker 3: I'll say that a lot of people got into politics
Speaker 3: because they enjoyed tracking five thirty eight polling.
Speaker 2: I've seen that too. It's kind of like an easy
Speaker 2: gateway drug for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: And I'm sad.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he'll be fine, But five thirty eight was
Speaker 2: a cool thing. It didn't work out. I think they
Speaker 2: made many, many, many wrong mistakes or big mistakes in
Speaker 2: terms of their business model, hiring too many people selling
Speaker 2: themselves to Disney being one.
Speaker 3: But it was it was a cool project. And to
Speaker 3: watch it die, like, I'm not as gleeful as watching
Speaker 3: BuzzFeed News die. I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, five thirty eight is apparently still going to be around,
Speaker 1: but sure without Nate Silver, It's is a really five
Speaker 1: thirty eight. Yeah, like it's it is funny because I
Speaker 1: think if he had maintained his independence, they could have
Speaker 1: shifted to a business model that would work in the
Speaker 1: current era where advertising rates just aren't.
Speaker 4: What they used to be.
Speaker 1: And social media distribution isn't what it used to be.
Speaker 1: Because even though the polls aren't what they used to be,
Speaker 1: it's still Listen, you only have so much information to
Speaker 1: go on, so you have to look at what the
Speaker 1: polls are saying, and then you factor in a margin
Speaker 1: of error and they who knows, And it's been wrong
Speaker 1: in both directions in recent elections, so you know, keep
Speaker 1: that in mind, take it with the big grain of salt,
Speaker 1: and here are the states that have been the.
Speaker 4: Most of it.
Speaker 1: And that's the way that we've tried to analyze the polls.
Speaker 1: But it's still beneficial to take a look at his
Speaker 1: model to understand what his projections are. And I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people that would have paid
Speaker 1: to be able to benefit from that service. So I
Speaker 1: do think there's another universe in which he never sells
Speaker 1: and which he maintains it as his own outlet. But also,
Speaker 1: some people don't want to be business people.
Speaker 3: They just in the ask yeah, And some people just you.
Speaker 1: Know, they want to do the thing they like to do,
Speaker 1: crunching the numbers or whatever his deal is, and they
Speaker 1: don't really want to be bothered with the HR decisions
Speaker 1: and the tax system men, all of those sorts of things,
Speaker 1: and it's so Yeah, I do feel like it is
Speaker 1: a loss, and I do kind of feel for him
Speaker 1: because when you've built this is his baby. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: when you've built that up and then like you're no
Speaker 1: longer associated, but it's still going to continue on.
Speaker 4: We know a little bit of what that feels like.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent know what it feels like. That's really tough.
Speaker 2: And I look at the cost of dealing with annoying
Speaker 2: tax problems.
Speaker 3: As the cost.
Speaker 2: That's the cost of being independent and being your own boss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's basically how it works out anyway, Christal, where
Speaker 3: you take a look at this week, the.
Speaker 1: Current president launched one of the least inspiring democratic campaigns
Speaker 1: of all time. He released a carefully crafted video which
Speaker 1: promised literally nothing in the way of an affirmative agenda,
Speaker 1: with the tagline finished the job. Left unsaid was what
Speaker 1: job he planned to finish, since there has been nothing
Speaker 1: in the way of tangible goals or plan since the
Speaker 1: implosion of Build Back Better. Biden then had the goal
Speaker 1: to go speak to some unions, presumably trying to put
Speaker 1: on his pro labor president stick, even as his unconsciable
Speaker 1: actions backing rail bosses over workers has already put to
Speaker 1: bed any notion that he would ever really stand with workers. Yet,
Speaker 1: in spite of all of the disappointments and broken promises
Speaker 1: of the first Biden term, within hours of his announcement,
Speaker 1: Biden's chief rival, the independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: has endorsed his bid. It's a final betrayal of the
Speaker 1: movement that Bernie himself created, thoroughly capitulating to Biden and
Speaker 1: the worldview that he represents. Depressingly, given Bernie's trajectory post
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, this was not really surprising. Bernie told the
Speaker 1: AP quote, the last thing this country needs is a
Speaker 1: Donald Trump or some other right wing demagogue who's going
Speaker 1: to try to undermine American democracy or take away a
Speaker 1: one's right to choose, or not address the crisis of
Speaker 1: gun violence, or racism, sexism, or homophobia.
Speaker 4: So I'm in to do what I can to make
Speaker 4: sure that the president is re elected.
Speaker 1: Bernie didn't even make a single demand, didn't force a
Speaker 1: single concession, at least not that we know of. No
Speaker 1: demand for debates or renewed commitment to living bade Union
Speaker 1: legislation anything, Bernie instantly bent the knee, and he did
Speaker 1: it in exchange for less than nothing. It actually gets
Speaker 1: even worse though. When asked about other primary challenges to Biden,
Speaker 1: Bernie actively discouraged others from entering, suggesting that this was
Speaker 1: the wrong focus for progressives and echoing the media's framing
Speaker 1: though we should all just accept a coronation of Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: Bernie said of potential challengers, quote, people will do what
Speaker 1: they want to do. I think Joe Biden will be
Speaker 1: the Democratic nominee, and my job, and I think the
Speaker 1: progressive movement's job is to make certain that he stands
Speaker 1: up and fights for the working class of the country
Speaker 1: and does not take anything for granted. And without, my friends,
Speaker 1: you can see with undeniable clarity that the bastard's really
Speaker 1: got them.
Speaker 4: What do I mean?
Speaker 1: Well, back in twenty sixteen, Bernie's central and most provocative
Speaker 1: insight was that the only way to fight an authoritarian
Speaker 1: demagogue like Trump was through expanding democracy, enlisting an energizing
Speaker 1: new voters, showing that a multi racial, working class centric
Speaker 1: democracy could deliver on the material needs of its citizens.
Speaker 1: In other words, it was a thoroughly populist pitch, which
Speaker 1: trusted in the voters of America, believed they could be
Speaker 1: persuaded and that only more democracy could really write the ship.
Speaker 4: Here he is making that case.
Speaker 10: You cannot be Trump with the same old, same old
Speaker 10: kind of politics.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 10: What we need is a new politics that brings working
Speaker 10: class people in Tawa political movement, which brings young people
Speaker 10: in Tuahwa political movement, and which in Novembo will create
Speaker 10: the highest vote to turnout in American political history.
Speaker 1: This view of politics was actually and still is deeply controversial.
Speaker 1: At a time when cable news is trying to convince
Speaker 1: you every single day that your fellow citizens represent an
Speaker 1: existential threat, Bernie argued that we should go further than
Speaker 1: ever to put our faith in them, to appeal to them,
Speaker 1: to bring them into the process. Bernie's policies, from medicare
Speaker 1: for all to free college were of course different from
Speaker 1: his opponents as well, but the most vital difference between
Speaker 1: him and almost everyone else was his belief in populism. This,
Speaker 1: for example, is what really separated him from Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1: Bernie believed in the movement, Warren believed in the insider game,
Speaker 1: populism versus elitism. Now, the counter narrative to this populist
Speaker 1: approach was argued by Hillary Biden and all the rest.
Speaker 1: They argued that the threat from the right was too
Speaker 1: dire to leave up to untrustworthy, deplorable voters. They argued,
Speaker 1: in essence, don't worry your pretty little heads about your
Speaker 1: policy desires or candidate preferences, because the serious people will
Speaker 1: tell you who you absolutely must vote for in order
Speaker 1: to fight fascism. Sadly, that counter narrative has been very successful.
Speaker 1: They convinced much of the Democratic base that their fellow
Speaker 1: Americans were terrifying, racist.
Speaker 4: And generally evil.
Speaker 1: They used this belief to justify in anything goes politics
Speaker 1: that included rigging the twenty sixteen primaries, rigging the Iowa
Speaker 1: caucuses in twenty twenty, and the Obama clibern media collusion
Speaker 1: that foisted Biden on voters in twenty twenty, as well
Speaker 1: anyone who dissented from this as a fascist or a
Speaker 1: useful idiot, or a grifter or some other terrible thing.
Speaker 1: Democratic elites are, of course running this playbook.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 1: Biden's message, the majority of Democratic voters who don't want
Speaker 1: him and the overwhelming majority of all voters.
Speaker 4: Who don't want him is you have no choice.
Speaker 1: You have no choice in the primary because, according the
Speaker 1: elites in Washington, no quote serious opponents are running, and
Speaker 1: even if there was an elite certified serious choice, the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party has already rigged the primaries and killed all
Speaker 1: debates to try to guarantee a Biden coronation. Similarly, you
Speaker 1: have no choice in the general election because, just like
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, Biden may not get your pulse racing,
Speaker 1: and may barely have a pulse himself, but at least
Speaker 1: he's not Trump. This worldview is an all out assault
Speaker 1: on democracy. The theory is basically only liberal authoritarianism can
Speaker 1: defeat right wing authoritarianism. It is as stupid an idea
Speaker 1: as it is completely poisonous, and now it has the
Speaker 1: world's foremost former left populist standing behind it. Bernie joining
Speaker 1: the ranks of the anti democracy elitist is nothing short
Speaker 1: of a tragedy. I'll personally always be grateful to Bernie
Speaker 1: for the movement he launched, the way it transformed politics,
Speaker 1: for the way it personally expanded my political imagination and
Speaker 1: fully shook me out of my partisan prism. There is
Speaker 1: simply no denying, however, that his defection to the other
Speaker 1: side of this debate has done massive damage to that
Speaker 1: very movement. Many have become dissolusion. They've given up on
Speaker 1: the idea that electoral politics can even be a venue
Speaker 1: for real change. Others have followed Bernie into being co
Speaker 1: opted by the establishment elitist wing of the party. The
Speaker 1: number of supposed leftists I see fully supporting the DNC's
Speaker 1: decision to hold no debates and doing the work of
Speaker 1: smearing any and all potential primary challengers to Biden is
Speaker 1: extremely depressing.
Speaker 4: But all hope is not lost.
Speaker 1: As I report on Tuesday, younger generations, they're not really
Speaker 1: fooled by these lies, and they're much less likely to
Speaker 1: be kout and to believe in the arguments of a
Speaker 1: political class that has done nothing but betray them for
Speaker 1: their entire lives. Bernie's endorsement of Biden comes at kind
Speaker 1: of an ironic moment here too. He's just finishing up
Speaker 1: a media tour promoting his book, It's Okay to Be
Speaker 1: Angry About Capitalism. It's filled with critique of the Biden
Speaker 1: wing of the party and outlines Bernie's long standing concerns
Speaker 1: about inequality and an economic system that is at this
Speaker 1: point less capitalist than it is outright psychopathic. I don't
Speaker 1: doubt that Bernie is still extremely genuine in his belief
Speaker 1: in the universal healthcare, canceling student debt, fighting climate crisis,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But his full capituates capitulation to the elitist
Speaker 1: insiders means that these core policy commitments they only really
Speaker 1: matter on the margins. I guess in Bernie's new worldview,
Speaker 1: it's okay to be angry about capitalism, you just can't
Speaker 1: actually do anything about it. And Siger, listen, am I surprised?
Speaker 1: No I act?
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 4: All right, Sciger, what are you looking at?
Speaker 10: Well?
Speaker 2: We have talked a lot here over the years about
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's age. It's perhaps the most fraught personal thing
Speaker 2: about the man. Anyone with eyes can see he's not
Speaker 2: who we are was, And yet if you discuss his decline,
Speaker 2: you're immediately maligned as some disgusting agist or a someone
Speaker 2: who discriminates against old people or against stuttering that miraculously
Speaker 2: reappeared when he started pushing eighty years old, and that
Speaker 2: didn't exist for his entire professional life. In light of
Speaker 2: Biden's official announcement that he's running again in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: the country needs to be allowed to have a discussion
Speaker 2: that everyone is thinking, is it responsible to put someone
Speaker 2: in the Oval office who will be pushing eighty seven
Speaker 2: years old? If he were to leave in January twenty
Speaker 2: twenty nine, not that long ago, the answer would have
Speaker 2: been a resounding hell no. In nineteen eighty four, there
Speaker 2: was a serious debate in this country as to whether
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan should be allowed to serve a second term.
Speaker 2: He was a spring chicken by today's standards, only seventy three,
Speaker 2: the oldest president ever at the time, and he had
Speaker 2: to prove that he could handle the job for another
Speaker 2: four years. Reagan's first debate with Walter Mondale did not
Speaker 2: go well. He appeared aloof and he was tired. The
Speaker 2: campaign actually brought it up and his doctor made a
Speaker 2: under and saying that mister Reagan was in excellent health
Speaker 2: but was quote tired.
Speaker 3: After his first debate.
Speaker 2: It made him just look older and more feeble than
Speaker 2: he was Reagan and his adviser Roger Ailes, who would
Speaker 2: later go to It or later go on to create
Speaker 2: Fox News, understood that he had to make it clear
Speaker 2: to the American public. He was not only with it,
Speaker 2: but he still had a killer instinct, and it culminated
Speaker 2: in one of the most famous moments in American political history.
Speaker 4: Let's watch your question to President Reagan.
Speaker 11: Mister President, I want to raise an issue that I
Speaker 11: think has been lurking out there for two or three
Speaker 11: weeks and cast it specifically in national security terms. You
Speaker 11: already are the oldest president in history, and some of
Speaker 11: your staff say you were tired after your most recent
Speaker 11: encounter with mister Mondale. I recall yet, that President Kennedy
Speaker 11: had to go for days on end with very little
Speaker 11: sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt
Speaker 11: in your mind that you would be able to function
Speaker 11: in such circumstances.
Speaker 6: Not at all, mister trud and I, and I want
Speaker 6: you to know that also, I will not make age
Speaker 6: an issue of this campaign. I am not going to
Speaker 6: exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
Speaker 2: That was it even made his opponent laugh. Country loved it,
Speaker 2: and he won one of the biggest victories in history.
Speaker 2: Of course, maybe that shouldn't have been enough, though, because
Speaker 2: when Reagan left office, he abruptly retired from public lie
Speaker 2: and he had been suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's
Speaker 2: or dementia.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of questions about that.
Speaker 2: The facts are still unclear, as the Reagan family still
Speaker 2: today smarts at any suggestion that he did so while
Speaker 2: in office, but the.
Speaker 3: Example remains apt.
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan when he left office was seventy seven years
Speaker 2: and three hundred and forty nine days old.
Speaker 3: That was on the day he left.
Speaker 2: Biden, on the other hand, was seventy eight years and
Speaker 2: sixty one days old the day he took the oath
Speaker 2: of office, extraordinarily old from day one and years later.
Speaker 2: He is asking us to entrust him not with one
Speaker 2: or two more years of some ceremonial chairman emeritus role,
Speaker 2: but the most powerful and demanding job in the world.
Speaker 2: Consider what most Americans at Biden's age are actually The
Speaker 2: average age of a nursing home patient in the US
Speaker 2: today is eighty one years old, one year younger than
Speaker 2: the age he would be when he starts his second term.
Speaker 2: I often joke that people should take a look at
Speaker 2: actuarial tables, and I decided to do it myself. Statistics
Speaker 2: compiled by the Social Security Administration today, at age eighty,
Speaker 2: President Biden has a four point seven percent chance of
Speaker 2: dying in one year. At eighty two, the year that
Speaker 2: he would be sworn in for his second term, he
Speaker 2: has a five point eight percent chance of death.
Speaker 3: The next year.
Speaker 2: After that, he would six point five percent chance, a
Speaker 2: seven point four percent chance a year after, an eight
Speaker 2: point three chance to the next, and a whopping nine
Speaker 2: point three percent chance of death his last year in office.
Speaker 2: I understand this is very morbid, and to be clear,
Speaker 2: I hope nothing but the best for him. I hope
Speaker 2: he lives a long and a prosperous life. If he
Speaker 2: were retired in a nursing home like many people's age,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't matter, But it does matter when he has
Speaker 2: to make the most important decisions in the world.
Speaker 3: Note.
Speaker 2: I too, have discussed the probability here of only death,
Speaker 2: which is incredibly high in the ninth decade of life
Speaker 2: for most Americans. But what about mental fitness like dementia?
Speaker 2: Here the statistics are also troubling. The risk of dementia
Speaker 2: grows exponential from age seventy. Only about five percent of
Speaker 2: adults between seventy to seventy nine years old have dementia,
Speaker 2: sixteen percent of those adults beten ages of eighty and
Speaker 2: eighty nine have it, and twenty two percent of adults
Speaker 2: from age eighty five to eighty nine. In other words,
Speaker 2: given his age, he already has nearly a one to
Speaker 2: five chance of having dementia if he doesn't already, and
Speaker 2: every day he gets closer to eighty six, his risk
Speaker 2: goes exponential. That's just dementia. What about the odds are
Speaker 2: just being in reasonably good health. Already at age eighty,
Speaker 2: Biden has less than a fifty percent chance of being
Speaker 2: in reasonably good health. If you look at overall population data,
Speaker 2: as you can tell, the risk of remaining so and
Speaker 2: not developing critical illness dramatically increases over time. By eighty six,
Speaker 2: when you would have left office, the odds of having
Speaker 2: no serious illness are less than twenty percent. Once again,
Speaker 2: I understand this can sound callous, but let me tell
Speaker 2: you something that people who work in the medical field
Speaker 2: all know. There is a titan difference between being in
Speaker 2: your seventies and being in your eighties, you don't even
Speaker 2: have to ask me. Look at this clip of Joe
Speaker 2: Biden from twenty seventeen on the View when he was
Speaker 2: just seventy five years old, and you have.
Speaker 4: Said that if Bo hadn't gotten sick, you would have
Speaker 4: you regret?
Speaker 1: Not right?
Speaker 3: No, I don't was the right thing to do for
Speaker 3: me and for my family.
Speaker 12: And look, I both wanted me to run, and Hunt
Speaker 12: and Ashley they all did. And when Bo passed, Hunt
Speaker 12: called a family meeting and said, look, will Biden's always
Speaker 12: do better under pressure? And why don't we use this
Speaker 12: as a way to rally and stick together and fight
Speaker 12: through this. And so about August, I said, okay, I'm
Speaker 12: gonna go look at it.
Speaker 9: I'll look at it.
Speaker 12: And I went out to go to the Merri Denver,
Speaker 12: who's a great friend and a supporter, wanted me to run.
Speaker 12: And it's still there. And I landed a Buckley Air
Speaker 12: Force Base and military base, and I got off the plane.
Speaker 12: Make a long story, not quite so long. There was
Speaker 12: a whole group of military guys and went in as
Speaker 12: a ropeline. I ran over to shake hands, tell them
Speaker 12: how much I appreciate them.
Speaker 2: He's not the same man. I've got eyes and ears.
Speaker 2: As to most of you, it's not fun to think
Speaker 2: about this, and that's a movie story. But people near
Speaker 2: their last years in life, they have a responsibility to
Speaker 2: themselves and to others. You got to be honest about
Speaker 2: your limitations. Biden and the media, they don't even want
Speaker 2: to talk about this when you have nearly a ten
Speaker 2: percent chance of natural death, when you have the most
Speaker 2: important job in the world. I would venture to say
Speaker 2: it's one of the most important things for us to consider.
Speaker 2: Do with this information what you will, but you at
Speaker 2: least should have it. I mean, this is the thing
Speaker 2: I was trying to say. It's like people think seventy
Speaker 2: five to eighty doesn't sound all that different, but again,
Speaker 2: look at the actually and.
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Speaker 2: see you all on Monday.
Speaker 4: Love y'all, See you Monday.