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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. Emily is
Speaker 1: back in the house with us. Welcome again, Emily, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. A big shout out to Sager for
Speaker 1: getting engaged making engagement news there. Yes, congratulations Saga. Enjoy
Speaker 1: your time off and he will be back here on Thursday,
Speaker 1: though we have very much enjoyed having Emily sitting in
Speaker 1: for him. There is a lot going on this morning
Speaker 1: to get to a big speech from Putin. It's his life,
Speaker 1: State of the nation. Things that will break all of
Speaker 1: that down for you. Also what I consider to be
Speaker 1: blockbuster news, bombshell news out of Ohio that the water
Speaker 1: testing that was used to tell residents that the water
Speaker 1: was safe and clean for them to drink. It was
Speaker 1: conducted by consultants paid by the railroad company themselves. This
Speaker 1: is what the EPA is basing their assessment on. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you can do that, so we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that. We also have someone on the ground, Richmond Q,
Speaker 1: fantastic reporter too, tell us what he is seeing their
Speaker 1: big Supreme Court cases, oral arguments being heard this week
Speaker 1: about the future of tech and the Internet project. Veritas
Speaker 1: founder and sort of the figurehead there, James o'keith is
Speaker 1: officially out Marjorie Taylor Green calling for a national divorce
Speaker 1: really going there. Let's talk about that one. Yeah, why not?
Speaker 1: And then we've got some crazy texts that were revealed
Speaker 1: from Fox News stars, people like Tucker Carls and Sean Hannity,
Speaker 1: Laura ingram I kind of reveal how they think about
Speaker 1: their job, how they think about their audience, how they
Speaker 1: think about Donald Trump. And we also have news that
Speaker 1: all of the January sixth video is going to be
Speaker 1: released to Tucker Carlson, So what does that ultimately mean.
Speaker 1: First time on the show, we've got Dave Weigel, political
Speaker 1: reporter for Semaphore. He's going to break down what he
Speaker 1: is seeing so far in the GOP primary. But we
Speaker 1: wanted to start with breaking news this morning, Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: delivering his State of the Nation address. This is very
Speaker 1: closely watched. This comes. The context here is that the
Speaker 1: war this Friday will hear hit its one year anniversary
Speaker 1: when Russia invaded Ukraine. We of course covered yesterday President
Speaker 1: Biden making a surprise trip into the active war zone,
Speaker 1: meeting with Selenski himself in Kiev. He is in Poland
Speaker 1: today he is expected to give his own address, so
Speaker 1: the White House trying to go for sort of like
Speaker 1: a split screen moment here. In terms of what Putin
Speaker 1: actually said, most of it was retreading ground that we've
Speaker 1: heard before. He once again was talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're sending longer range missiles, that they're going to
Speaker 1: have to respond in kind, So this sort of like
Speaker 1: inflammatory rhetoric. There were a few veiled nuclear threats involved
Speaker 1: in there. But the biggest news I think out of
Speaker 1: this that actually has real world policy implications is Russia
Speaker 1: is officially withdrawing from the New Start Arms Controlled Treaty.
Speaker 1: This was like the final remaining arms control treaty that
Speaker 1: we were still involved with. Now inspections with regards that
Speaker 1: had been paused since the pandemic, but still obviously a
Speaker 1: negative sign and development that Russia is now officially withdrawing.
Speaker 1: Was it surprising to you, Uh, not in particular, but
Speaker 1: no surprising that he rolled it out in the speech
Speaker 1: at this time. Also, I don't think it's particularly surprising,
Speaker 1: but it is an interesting bit of timing. Yeah, to me,
Speaker 1: I guess I was actually surprised that the speech didn't
Speaker 1: contain more new rhetoric aggressive. Yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people, myself included, were kind of watching
Speaker 1: this closely. Saga. Actually, my gosh, I'm away. It was like,
Speaker 1: you know, if he's on a different time zone, so
Speaker 1: he's of like live texting us like updates of the speech.
Speaker 1: So this was very closely watched. So the fact that
Speaker 1: ultimately it was a very kind of status quo speech
Speaker 1: from Putin in terms of rhetoric that we've heard before.
Speaker 1: He blames the West for the war, says said something like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're enforcing the peace with force or something
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense like that, and he you know,
Speaker 1: used the same type of rhetoric about responding in kind
Speaker 1: if there's escalation, but beyond that, there was no real
Speaker 1: new ground tread here. He did refer to it as
Speaker 1: a war, which is kind of, you know, new and different,
Speaker 1: but not all that shocking either. So I think the
Speaker 1: other thing to watch will be, of course, today when
Speaker 1: President Biden gives his speech later today in Poland, to
Speaker 1: see what he announces, if there's additional military aid or
Speaker 1: any revelations about his conversation with Selenski, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: we'll definitely keep an eye on that. Yeah, super interesting,
Speaker 1: and on the one year anniversary both sides to watch
Speaker 1: the split screen as you said, Biden and Poland Zelensky
Speaker 1: as he's been talking about the one year anniversary too.
Speaker 1: Just a big week. Yeah. The other news that I
Speaker 1: saw this morning is you already had a number of
Speaker 1: voices out of the UK calling for the shipment of
Speaker 1: fighter jets, which of course would be a dramatic escalation
Speaker 1: far beyond what was contemplated in the early days of
Speaker 1: this war from the US and NATO allies. Liz Trusts,
Speaker 1: the former Prime minister briefly, very briefly in office. Famously,
Speaker 1: it did not outlast ahead of Lettuce anyway. She is
Speaker 1: now adding her voice to those who want fighter jets
Speaker 1: to be shipped to Ukraine. So there's continued escalatory pressure
Speaker 1: from voices in the UK, certainly voices in the US.
Speaker 1: Yesterday I mentioned Lindsay Grahams and er Lindsay Graham, who
Speaker 1: was sort of famously hawkish, has been calling for the same,
Speaker 1: So those pressures continue. This comes in the wake of
Speaker 1: really getting confirmation of how the US acted directly along
Speaker 1: with their Needo allies early roughly a year ago, to
Speaker 1: circumvent any sort of peace process from ultimately unfolding. And
Speaker 1: so that's where we are now. Russia is started a
Speaker 1: spring offensive. Zelensky has been traveling around Europe and obviously
Speaker 1: was here in the US as well making his case
Speaker 1: for additional weapons shipment. So we'll see what Biden has
Speaker 1: to say about all of this today, and we'll certainly
Speaker 1: keep an eye on it. Yeah, I'm excited to hear
Speaker 1: what Sager has to say on Thursday. Absolutely all right,
Speaker 1: So let's get to some domestic affairs here, because the
Speaker 1: news out of Ohio with this horrific train derailment just
Speaker 1: continues to get worse and worse. Let's go and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. This from Stephen Donziger tweeted
Speaker 1: this out, but this is a huffing and post article.
Speaker 1: He says, breaking the EPA claim that water in Ohio
Speaker 1: is safe to drink is based on only a few
Speaker 1: tainted lab samples funded by the very rail company that
Speaker 1: caused the disaster. The EPA apparently never tested the water themselves.
Speaker 1: He asks, why does the polluter get to do the testing?
Speaker 1: I think that is something all of us would wonder.
Speaker 1: If you click through to the piece here, they give
Speaker 1: a lot of details about exactly how this testing went
Speaker 1: down and just why this is so troubling. Because they've
Speaker 1: been telling residents it's all clear, it's all good. You
Speaker 1: could go back to your homes, you could drink the water,
Speaker 1: no problem, We've tested it's safe, trust US, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And then the news breaks that they're basing that on
Speaker 1: rail company paid consultants doing testing. And not only that,
Speaker 1: it's not only the fact that the source of the
Speaker 1: testing is questionable at best, but the actual samples that
Speaker 1: were taken there's some indications that they were contaminated and
Speaker 1: not handled according to EPA standards. So let me go
Speaker 1: ahead and read a little bit of this article to
Speaker 1: you guys, so you can get a sense of it.
Speaker 1: So they start with the news that the state used
Speaker 1: preliminary results from railroad funded sampling to declare that the
Speaker 1: drinking water was safe in the wake of the toxic spill.
Speaker 1: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who's Republican, on Wednesday afternoon announced
Speaker 1: that new testing from five wells that supplied the town's
Speaker 1: municipal drinking water showed no evidence of contamination. With these results,
Speaker 1: he says, Ohio EPA is confident that the municipal water
Speaker 1: is safe to drink, But on its web page about
Speaker 1: the derailment, the Ohio EPA links only to railroad funded
Speaker 1: preliminary test results. That's the basis that they used for
Speaker 1: this press statement from Mike DeWine that it's all good.
Speaker 1: The municipal water is safe to drink. The Colombiana County,
Speaker 1: which is the county that East Palestine is located in,
Speaker 1: their general Health district, they separately sampled East Palestine's public
Speaker 1: water system last week, but at least as of when
Speaker 1: this article was written a few days ago, the county's
Speaker 1: testing results had not been made public, so the only
Speaker 1: results that have been made public are these railroad funded
Speaker 1: water testing results. The lab report on the railroad funded
Speaker 1: sampling indicates the samples were not handled in accordance with
Speaker 1: federal EPA standards. Sam Bickley, who's an aquatic ecologist of
Speaker 1: Virginia Scientist, Community Interface and Advocacy focused coalition of scientists
Speaker 1: and engineers, he's the one who alerted huff Post to
Speaker 1: the sampling errors. He called the report extremely concerning. Quote
Speaker 1: their results that claimed there were no contaminants is not
Speaker 1: a reliable find. I find this extremely concerning because these
Speaker 1: results would not be used in most scientific applications because
Speaker 1: the samples were not preserved properly. And this is the
Speaker 1: same data they are now relying on to say the
Speaker 1: drinking water is not contaminated. To be clear, the federal
Speaker 1: EPA has not done its own sampling of municipal water
Speaker 1: and needs Palestine, during a press call with reporters Friday,
Speaker 1: and official and the Biden administration said all the sambling
Speaker 1: that has been done in Ohio has been jointed, not
Speaker 1: Norfolk Southern alone. It's been with the Columbiaana County Health
Speaker 1: Department collecting samples along with Northfolk Southern and sending those
Speaker 1: a split samples to do different labs for verification. So
Speaker 1: that is their defense here, and Emily, this comes as
Speaker 1: actually the EPA administrator, Michael Reagan is finally in Ohio
Speaker 1: today to visit with residents there, long overdue. But this
Speaker 1: follows a playbook of cover up that we have seen
Speaker 1: so many times before, and it's something that a lot
Speaker 1: of social media users were actually warning about. When you
Speaker 1: see these sort of catastrophes, industrial accidents, et cetera, there
Speaker 1: is a common playbook that plays out where first the
Speaker 1: company is relied on for analysis of what's going on,
Speaker 1: the politicians echo whatever the company is saying, and then
Speaker 1: the media just echoes whatever the politicians are saying. So
Speaker 1: the whole narrative comes from the person and the group
Speaker 1: that are most interested in downplaying the severity of what
Speaker 1: exactly is going on. Right, the media will then repeat
Speaker 1: claims that have been sort of falsely baked together with
Speaker 1: just credulty, don't worry about it. We've looked into this. Now.
Speaker 1: Here's another, I think extremely disturbing quote from the huff
Speaker 1: Post article, which is a great piece of journalism. James Lee,
Speaker 1: a spokesman for Ohio EPA, acknowledged the samples were not
Speaker 1: properly preserved or acidified, but said they were quote acceptable
Speaker 1: due to the next day processing at the laboratory. There
Speaker 1: is also a spokesperson from Norfolk Southern quoted in the
Speaker 1: article saying that the initial data was valid, we wanted
Speaker 1: to ensure it compliance with EPA standards and proactively asked
Speaker 1: the lab to rerun the samples with the remaining preserved
Speaker 1: vile from each sample. So again, these are the players
Speaker 1: who are sort of barely admitting that this is not
Speaker 1: an ideal set of samples. The Ohio government was not
Speaker 1: at all upfront about potential problems with these samples might
Speaker 1: to wine. I mean, it's incredible people should know if
Speaker 1: they're making the decision to drink this water exactly who
Speaker 1: tested the results, Who came to the conclusion that said
Speaker 1: it was okay to do that. I bet a whole
Speaker 1: lot of people would have made different decisions based on
Speaker 1: that information. Well, and the question remains, okay, if the
Speaker 1: county did their own testing, where are those results? We
Speaker 1: still do those being made public? So this is deeply
Speaker 1: troubling because these residents deserve, you know, every level of
Speaker 1: scrutiny to the situation in order to protect their health,
Speaker 1: both in the near and the long term. And you know,
Speaker 1: the government pretends like, oh that we really know what's
Speaker 1: going on here in the media just parents this line,
Speaker 1: we're taking a look or the week in the New
Speaker 1: York Times wrote this piece that made me so mad
Speaker 1: about basically trying to frame everybody who was concerned about
Speaker 1: this ongoing crisis as you have residents continuing to say nausea,
Speaker 1: skin rashes, headaches, dizziness, trying to frame everybody who's concerned
Speaker 1: about that as a quote unquote right wing conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: And if you read through that article, you know there
Speaker 1: was a way to write an article about people who
Speaker 1: were going way too far spinning conspiracies where there's no evidence, etc.
Speaker 1: But they didn't do that. Instead, they just smear in
Speaker 1: everyone who was concerned of this, and they completely regurgitated
Speaker 1: the government official line about what was going on with
Speaker 1: zero skepticism about issues exactly like this, Like where is
Speaker 1: this journalism in the New York Times? And if you're
Speaker 1: going to pairent the government line, I mean, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be journalists holding power to account. You don't have
Speaker 1: many questions for government. Your message to the public is
Speaker 1: just like, no, accept exactly what they're saying, and if
Speaker 1: you don't, you're a right wing conspiracy theorist, absolute garbage.
Speaker 1: At the same time, continue to be a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: So we just talked about the water. There's continue to
Speaker 1: be a lot of questions about the air quality. There
Speaker 1: are lawsuits that are being filed left and right. Here,
Speaker 1: let's go and put this up on the screen. The
Speaker 1: sixth lawsuit claims quote controlled chemical release worsened the East
Speaker 1: Palestine situation. The suit alleges that burning vinyl chloride creates
Speaker 1: phose gene gas, a chemical warfare agent used in World
Speaker 1: War One. By the way, this isn't like wild speculation.
Speaker 1: That is what is created when you burn vital chloride.
Speaker 1: So the question is, you know, the government claims ow,
Speaker 1: it's all dispersed, everything's fine now, residents continue to have
Speaker 1: health impacts and very worried about the future. The details
Speaker 1: here are. The complaint was filed on Wednesday in the
Speaker 1: US District Court by an injury firm. They alleged the
Speaker 1: railroad dump more than one point one million pounds of
Speaker 1: vinyl chloride into the environment during the incident. They claim
Speaker 1: that amount of that emission of the toxic chemical was
Speaker 1: more than two times the total amount of vinyl chloride
Speaker 1: that is released by all US industries over an entire year,
Speaker 1: and they alleged that burning vinyl chloride creates phosgene gas,
Speaker 1: a chemical warfare agent used in World War One that
Speaker 1: was banned by the Geneva Connection Convention. Sorry quote from
Speaker 1: the attorney here, I'm not sure Norfolk Southern could have
Speaker 1: come up with a worse plan to address this disaster.
Speaker 1: Residents exposed to vital chloride may already be undergoing DNA
Speaker 1: mutations that can linger for years or even decades before
Speaker 1: manifesting as terrible and deadly cancers. The lawsuit allegis in
Speaker 1: Norfolk Southern made it worse by essentially blasting the town
Speaker 1: with chemicals as they focused on restoring train service and
Speaker 1: protecting their shareholders. Authlready say they undertook what they called
Speaker 1: a quote controlled release of unstable chemicals to prevent a
Speaker 1: possible explosion at the derailment scene. And of course, vinyl
Speaker 1: chloride is a known carcinogen, and as was previously stated,
Speaker 1: this type of gas was banned by the gene Convention
Speaker 1: because of its toxic nature well, and this is something
Speaker 1: that gets to the water as well. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people probably remember this with nine to eleven, for
Speaker 1: responders and people that were around the crisis, seen around
Speaker 1: ground zero on nine to eleven and the weeks and
Speaker 1: months afterwards. Is that we don't know. We really don't
Speaker 1: know the scope of the tragedy until years later. We
Speaker 1: don't know the scope of the effects of some of
Speaker 1: these cancer causing chemicals, of some of the chemicals in general,
Speaker 1: whether they're in the air or the water. Yes, So
Speaker 1: for the confidence to be projected by Mike de Wine,
Speaker 1: the Ohio EPA, Norfolk Southern, which of course their interest
Speaker 1: in this is obvious. You understand why they would be
Speaker 1: doing that, But for that confluence between the government and
Speaker 1: the private company here to be projecting that level of
Speaker 1: confidence instead of meeting people where they are, which is
Speaker 1: terrified that they're going to have effects from this down
Speaker 1: the road years from now. That can't even be calculated
Speaker 1: right now or understood right now. I think it's just
Speaker 1: on a political level, purely political level, big swing in
Speaker 1: a miss, an obvious mistake, but even on a moral level,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have no idea truly no idea, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Yes, that's exactly right. And I can't
Speaker 1: imagine being a resident of this town wondering if you
Speaker 1: can go back to your home, wondering if it's safe
Speaker 1: to drink the water and breathe the air your pet. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: We played for you guys last week, Jordan Chariton. They've
Speaker 1: been on the ground and status kup our partners and
Speaker 1: he interviewed a foxkeeper who one of his foxes had
Speaker 1: already died and all the others were sickened. Another one
Speaker 1: has now passed away. So people and these you know,
Speaker 1: you guys know how people feel about their pets. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you feel the same way about your pets. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are important parts parts of your family and to
Speaker 1: watch them be killed by this incident and just to
Speaker 1: hand wave away, Oh it's safe now and don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. It's just it's a disgrace. It's an absolute betrayal.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a couple other things to say
Speaker 1: about this. One is we now, with this horrific accident,
Speaker 1: have kind of tracked where the corruption started. You know,
Speaker 1: back in the year the Obama administration, at least with
Speaker 1: regards to this specific tale. Okay, the Obama administration wanted
Speaker 1: to institute more safety regulations. That was great, but then
Speaker 1: industry comes in to sort of curtail and undermine what
Speaker 1: the NTSB had said what the restriction should ultimately be.
Speaker 1: So there's a curtailing of the initial ambition under the
Speaker 1: Obama administration be more industry friendly. Under the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: you see that go even further. They roll back some
Speaker 1: of the REGs that were put in place in the
Speaker 1: Obama administration. Under the Biden administration, you actually see rail
Speaker 1: workers really rising up saying calling attention to major potential
Speaker 1: safety issues, not only in terms of their own lives,
Speaker 1: but in terms of the potential impacts on these communities.
Speaker 1: And you see a bipartisan effort, but led by Democrats
Speaker 1: to crush this movement and silence their warnings and side
Speaker 1: ultimately with the railroad executives and the shareholders. And you
Speaker 1: also see they don't do anything to put back in
Speaker 1: place the regulations that had been curtailed by Obama and
Speaker 1: rolled back by Trump. So you can see this tale
Speaker 1: of how industry shaped the shape the landscape to make
Speaker 1: it friendly for them. But what you realize in looking
Speaker 1: at this is god, how many other instances throughout our country,
Speaker 1: you know, where this is going on, where whether it's
Speaker 1: big oil or big chemicals, or big pharma or big
Speaker 1: agg or whatever. I mean, this is happening every single
Speaker 1: day with our government and the people who are supposed
Speaker 1: to be keeping us safe, who are more interested about
Speaker 1: you know, campaign contribution or more interested in what their
Speaker 1: next job is going to be aft they leave the
Speaker 1: EPA or whatever their agency they're at, instead of making
Speaker 1: sure that people are kept safe today. And I think
Speaker 1: for you know, broader picture zooming out from Ohio, that's
Speaker 1: what is so incredibly incredibly troubling about this story is
Speaker 1: because you realize that this is really just scratching the
Speaker 1: surface of the way that the whole system has been
Speaker 1: rigged to generate profits for a few over the health
Speaker 1: and safety of communities across the country. And by the way,
Speaker 1: final thought on this, that's why the media is I
Speaker 1: think the same biggest problem in American politics because business,
Speaker 1: industry government can't get away with that level of collusion
Speaker 1: when you have a healthy fourth estate that's going forth
Speaker 1: the state. And so when people kind of roll their
Speaker 1: eyes about media bashing, actually Without a strong media, you
Speaker 1: don't get this level of corruption and collusion because the
Speaker 1: media creates an incentive for the industry and the government
Speaker 1: partner with the industry not to behave badly. So to
Speaker 1: your point about where we might know this, where we
Speaker 1: might not know this is happening. What we didn't know
Speaker 1: this was happening for years because the corporate press wasn't
Speaker 1: covering it. I mean, seriously, we have no idea how
Speaker 1: many other places in the like you were saying, whether
Speaker 1: it's big a big pharma. Where should media be looking
Speaker 1: right now to create disincentives for people to behave badly
Speaker 1: and to give public the public information they need to
Speaker 1: vote wisely, to shop wisely, all of these different things.
Speaker 1: When you don't have that, you don't have a functioning system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Insteady of the New York Times literally running cover
Speaker 1: for the government and saying that anyone who questions them
Speaker 1: is a whack job, is outrageous. We want to stay
Speaker 1: with this story. We've got Rich mcchey is a fantastic
Speaker 1: investigative reporter. He's with News Nation now. He is on
Speaker 1: the ground in East Palestine. Let's get to it. Rich,
Speaker 1: is so great to see you welcome. Hey, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on. Good to see you. Yeah, our pleasure.
Speaker 1: So you've been there on the ground in East Palestine, Ohio,
Speaker 1: just give us a sense of how residents are feeling
Speaker 1: and what you're hearing from them. Residents are angry, you know,
Speaker 1: they feel like the people that I've spoken to at
Speaker 1: least feel like they've been forgotten. They you know, here
Speaker 1: we are, we're approaching three weeks and they say help
Speaker 1: is finally just coming. And you know, walking around and
Speaker 1: talking to folks here, there's a lot of talk that
Speaker 1: like Fema is here and people are here and like,
Speaker 1: but but that's not we haven't seen that. There's people
Speaker 1: hanging out water in townspeople helping town, the other people
Speaker 1: in town. But like in terms of actual help, it's
Speaker 1: it's not everywhere, not like a normal disaster, you know,
Speaker 1: setting like where you go in and you see all
Speaker 1: these all these stations and people helping. I'm outside of
Speaker 1: a church right now where they're just opening this morning
Speaker 1: a health clinic and people are starting to file in
Speaker 1: nurses and toxicologists, and then apparently there's twenty at least
Speaker 1: twenty people signed up to come here this morning and
Speaker 1: get themselves checked out. So it's you know, the residents
Speaker 1: I've talked to you are angry. They say they're just
Speaker 1: not getting helped, their homes are not getting tested. They
Speaker 1: are saying, this is Norfolks, so other is handling this
Speaker 1: the wrong way and they need help. Well, on that note, Rich,
Speaker 1: you've been tweeting us some really I think disturbing images.
Speaker 1: We have one that we can put up on the
Speaker 1: street and the screen here just tracking what people are
Speaker 1: saying the effects this may have had on their bodies.
Speaker 1: It's it's very early to know exactly the extent of
Speaker 1: all of that, but can you share with us more,
Speaker 1: you know, examples like this, what are you hearing about
Speaker 1: people's health? What examples have you encountered of how this
Speaker 1: might have affected people's health? You know, I went to, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a church set up where Norfolk Southern is set
Speaker 1: up to kind of try and reimburse people for hotels
Speaker 1: and assistants like that, and I went there to interview
Speaker 1: people on that and one guy stopped me. He's like, listen,
Speaker 1: his eyes were bloodshot and red, and like He's like,
Speaker 1: I my eyes feel like they're going to pop out
Speaker 1: of my head. He's like every time I sneeze, it's
Speaker 1: like bloody. He's like, I'm like, have you gone to
Speaker 1: the hospitals? Had a time? We don't have time to
Speaker 1: do this. So I interviewed this other woman last week.
Speaker 1: She called me and she said, look, I just went
Speaker 1: back to my house. They'd been a vacuu that I
Speaker 1: just went back to my house to move something around.
Speaker 1: And she's like, I was there for thirty minutes. And
Speaker 1: I walked and I went to go take a shower,
Speaker 1: and that's the picture that you that you should that
Speaker 1: you have. Her face and her neck was all covered
Speaker 1: in rashes. And so I went over there and she
Speaker 1: asked me if I wanted to go into that part
Speaker 1: of the house that where she feels like she was exposed.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm not going in there, Like, nobody's
Speaker 1: tested there, nobody knows what's residing in It was a
Speaker 1: low level part of the house where she was in
Speaker 1: the direct line of the smoke the night that they
Speaker 1: kind of did the chemical release. So a lot of
Speaker 1: these houses have not been tested. Nobody really knows what
Speaker 1: is actually in them and if their houses are safe.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of questions you had. I think
Speaker 1: an important story for News Nation about how East Palestine
Speaker 1: residents were asked by Norfolk Southern to sign an indemnity form,
Speaker 1: a whole harmless form. Your lead here, you say, just
Speaker 1: weeks after a training caring toxic chemicals derailed these Palestine, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Some residents say they're being asked to sign contracts they
Speaker 1: fear could prevent them from suing later on. So basically
Speaker 1: Norfolk Southern here trying to do a little cya and
Speaker 1: convince residents to sign this contract that could prevent them
Speaker 1: from suing the company. What does the companies line on this?
Speaker 1: And what are residents saying about it? So the residents say,
Speaker 1: like we spokes do say. Initially they came around, they
Speaker 1: said we want to test your house, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: who's this And it was like apparently the EPA was there,
Speaker 1: but representatives like aligned with Norfolk Southern were there, and
Speaker 1: so in order to have your house tested, you had
Speaker 1: to sign this form. And one woman who was you know,
Speaker 1: kind of smart legally and said, I'm not signing this form.
Speaker 1: What is this? Can I have it? And it wouldn't
Speaker 1: give it sor so she took a picture, she gave
Speaker 1: it to me and basically it's a whole harmless agreement
Speaker 1: saying you, if you agree to this testing, you'll hold
Speaker 1: us harmless as we enter your property and for any
Speaker 1: like basically future litigation. We asked Norfolk Southern about this
Speaker 1: and they said, no, some of those were sent out
Speaker 1: by mistake. Those that language indemnity language should not have
Speaker 1: been included going forward. It was a mistake. And so
Speaker 1: they basically said it was a mistake and any any
Speaker 1: people who did sign this will have not waived their
Speaker 1: right to future litigation. So you just touched on something
Speaker 1: really interesting is this was mistakenly sent out by the state,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. And we know the Ohio EPA,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, and FEMA. There are people who
Speaker 1: are down there at least attempting to look like they're
Speaker 1: helping out, and maybe helping out to some extent. But
Speaker 1: when you're talking to people rich you mentioned they're frustrated
Speaker 1: at Norfolk Southern. Are they also frustrated at the government.
Speaker 1: Are they frustrated at the governor? Are they frustrated at
Speaker 1: the EPA? What are people sentiments towards their own government
Speaker 1: right now? I think they're frustrated at everybody. They're they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, one gentleman I interviewed called me this morning
Speaker 1: and asked me, like, where do I go for this
Speaker 1: health screen? How do I how do I get tested?
Speaker 1: There's just there's not a really centralized kind of blast
Speaker 1: out to this community, like here's where they can go
Speaker 1: for your health screenings, here's where you can go to
Speaker 1: for this. Like they're having to hunt and gather this
Speaker 1: information in a way that when you kind of cover
Speaker 1: other disasters or tornado rips through a town, it's all
Speaker 1: centralized and people have access to this information. Here, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like that to me, that's my impression. And
Speaker 1: people are upset. They're upset at the governor, they're upset
Speaker 1: at the EPA. They're just like this is totally bungled
Speaker 1: from the start, and here we are three weeks later
Speaker 1: and we're kind of in the same scenario. These people
Speaker 1: are like, look, the only people that have come to
Speaker 1: my house are the mailman. So it's pappling and finally
Speaker 1: Rich Early on in this crisis, one of your colleagues
Speaker 1: at News Nation was trying to do his job and
Speaker 1: ended up getting arrested during a press conference that Mike DeWine, Governor,
Speaker 1: was giving at that time. Have you had any trouble
Speaker 1: or roadblocks to doing your job as a journalist while
Speaker 1: you're on the ground there. I can't say that I
Speaker 1: have since that, you know, look the video speak for
Speaker 1: itself on that with Evan and my colleague, I think
Speaker 1: you handled himself well. From my experience here in town, No,
Speaker 1: I've been. There's been no hindrances. There's been nothing to
Speaker 1: say that I can't continue my job, although we are
Speaker 1: you know, we have our guard up because of what happened. Yeah, absolutely, well, Rich,
Speaker 1: thank you for spending some time with us today, and
Speaker 1: most importantly, thank you so much for being there on
Speaker 1: the ground, dooing real reporting about exactly what is going on.
Speaker 1: Thank you appreciate having me on our pleasure today. Tuesday,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in a major case.
Speaker 1: It's called Gonzales. The Gonzalez and at stake is Section
Speaker 1: two thirty itself. You've probably heard a lot about Section
Speaker 1: two thirty in recent years. It basically shields internet companies
Speaker 1: from liability for harmful content that gets posted on their platform.
Speaker 1: Now here's the Washington Post's quick summary of the case
Speaker 1: quote in November twenty fifteen, three rifle wielding isis gunman
Speaker 1: open fire at a restaurant in Paris, killing twenty three
Speaker 1: year old Nohemi Gonzalez, a college exchange student. Almost eight
Speaker 1: years later, her family is seeking justice for her death,
Speaker 1: targeting not the gunman but the tech giant YouTube, in
Speaker 1: a landmark case that could shift the foundations of internet law. Now, Chris, So,
Speaker 1: there is something important and about Section two thirty I
Speaker 1: think to recognize, which is that a lot of these
Speaker 1: big tech giants at this point, Facebook, for instance, has
Speaker 1: been running ads like in axios for a year saying
Speaker 1: we're okay with Section two thirty reform because they now
Speaker 1: know that they have the financial resources to kind of
Speaker 1: handle it. They've had a long time to figure out
Speaker 1: where to go with it. There's no question it would
Speaker 1: hurt them, but they're also sort of prepared for what
Speaker 1: might happen with Section two thirty now, any regulatory changes
Speaker 1: happening through a court decision. On the other hand, there's
Speaker 1: nothing they can do to lobby the Supreme Court. There's
Speaker 1: really nothing that they can do to predict what might
Speaker 1: come out of this case, what might come out of
Speaker 1: the arguments. The arguments today should give us some indication
Speaker 1: of how this case will unfold. Obviously, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: business friendly Supreme Court, so Google has that going for it.
Speaker 1: But Section two thirty. Clarence Thomas has come out against
Speaker 1: basically Section two thirty. He said that maybe we should
Speaker 1: have a different approach, We should maybe be treating them
Speaker 1: like common carriers. These tech giants, like common carriers Google, Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: they want in general to not be considered publishers, even
Speaker 1: though they do all kinds of publishing, whether it's on
Speaker 1: the search engine itself, whether it's through YouTube. What they're
Speaker 1: doing fundamentally is publishing, and Section two thirty allows them
Speaker 1: to do that without the liabilities that news outlets have
Speaker 1: when they publish hard, full information. This is a fascinating, fascinating,
Speaker 1: fascinating case because we're talking about life and death right, well,
Speaker 1: we're also it's also one of these weird, interesting horseshoe
Speaker 1: issues because there's a critique of Section two thirty from
Speaker 1: the right, and there's a critique of Section two thirty
Speaker 1: from the left. Oftentimes the right focuses on and I
Speaker 1: think these concerns, by the way, are justified on the
Speaker 1: ability of platforms like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or
Speaker 1: Google to discriminate against creators and against content based on
Speaker 1: political ideology. The reality is they have cart blotch to
Speaker 1: do whatever they want with their recommendation algorithms. And so
Speaker 1: the critique from a lot of liberals and democrats is
Speaker 1: that they aren't doing enough to combat harmful content, misinformation, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: And so the context here in terms of when this
Speaker 1: little provision was originally enacted, this was in the early
Speaker 1: days of the Internet. It was kind of before these
Speaker 1: companies had become gigantic monopolies. It was before recommendation algorithms
Speaker 1: began to drive literally everything in terms of content distribution
Speaker 1: on the web, really before social media too correct. So
Speaker 1: this was really more they were thinking about these message
Speaker 1: boards for those of you who are old like me,
Speaker 1: like this is where you just post and it's there,
Speaker 1: and somebody else posts and it's there. And so they
Speaker 1: really were aimed more at a concern that if these
Speaker 1: companies had total liability as publishers placed on their heads,
Speaker 1: then it would stifle innovation. I think those concerns, by
Speaker 1: the way, we're justified. And in the wake of this
Speaker 1: provision being enacted, there was, in fact an explosion of innovation,
Speaker 1: but it also then enabled the giant monopolization of the
Speaker 1: entire tech sector space. And so now you have critics
Speaker 1: of Section two thirty from both the left and the right,
Speaker 1: who are saying this should not have been interpreted as
Speaker 1: carte blanche. You can do whatever you want. You can
Speaker 1: manipulate this algorithm however you want and serve up whatever
Speaker 1: content you want and push whatever content you want without
Speaker 1: having any sort of responsibility as a publisher. So the
Speaker 1: question I think that's in front of the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: as I understand it, is are there any limiting principles here?
Speaker 1: And basically what you know what some people who have
Speaker 1: been thinking about this and proposing reforms. One direction you
Speaker 1: could go is, okay, there's still an opportunity to be
Speaker 1: held harmless of the type of content that's posted on
Speaker 1: your platform. I think that, you know, under certain circumstances,
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. But you have to
Speaker 1: meet certain guidelines. You have to be regular, you have
Speaker 1: to meet certain standards that we want in terms of
Speaker 1: having a neutral platform that serves as really kind of
Speaker 1: the a public utility at this point in terms of
Speaker 1: how we communicate with one another. So that's what's at
Speaker 1: stake here. I have no idea what this court is
Speaker 1: going to ultimately find, if they courtailed us at all,
Speaker 1: if they send it back to Congress. I really don't
Speaker 1: know what direction this will ultimately go in, but the
Speaker 1: implications of it could be hugely profound. Yes, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad this is going to be. I mean, it's actually
Speaker 1: hard to overstate how important this is the oral arguments today,
Speaker 1: because we're really going to get a glimpse into how
Speaker 1: justices are grappling with these huge questions. And one thing
Speaker 1: that our government has struggled with in the past, understandably so,
Speaker 1: is that new technologies for older generations it's harder to
Speaker 1: sort of be in full contact with and understand exactly
Speaker 1: how profoundly they have changed human existence if they're not
Speaker 1: as central to your existence because you grew up without
Speaker 1: them and you don't sort of have the level of
Speaker 1: tech fluency. So I'm really curious about that. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, this is fundamentally about publishing, and that
Speaker 1: the insight into how the Court is thinking about publishing.
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas in particular, not the most vocal questioner, but
Speaker 1: someone who has said the public utility point that you
Speaker 1: made common carrier, the common carrier framework, treating these companies
Speaker 1: more like phone companies than their own little independent businesses
Speaker 1: is probably the best way to go. So I would
Speaker 1: expect to hear that argument fleshed out from who I
Speaker 1: considered one of the most important legal thinkers. I mean,
Speaker 1: whether or not you agree with him, he definitely is.
Speaker 1: So this is a huge day. This is really big implications.
Speaker 1: And this is more from the Washington Post. They say
Speaker 1: the gonzaz family's lawyers say that applying Section two thirty
Speaker 1: two algorithmic recommendations incentivizes promoting harmful content and that it
Speaker 1: denies victims an opportunity to seek redress when they can
Speaker 1: show those recommendations caused injuries or even death. And that's
Speaker 1: the publisher point that you're making this argument about how
Speaker 1: they serve up things with their algorithms. They also put
Speaker 1: headlines on news stories. They decide which news stories to
Speaker 1: promote in which stories not to promote. That is a
Speaker 1: huge job if people have ever worked in news, even
Speaker 1: if you haven't, one of the biggest things that people
Speaker 1: don't see behind the scenes is headline writing. It is
Speaker 1: a huge part of publishing. Story selection is a huge
Speaker 1: part of publishing, and from the perspective of journalists, these
Speaker 1: companies are doing all of that. They just don't have
Speaker 1: any of the liabilities that other journalists have, and they
Speaker 1: act like it's not journalism, so they don't take it seriously.
Speaker 1: They just serve up the dumbest stuff, and they well,
Speaker 1: what they serve is whatever is going to keep you
Speaker 1: agitated and staring at their platform the longest, so that
Speaker 1: they can serve up the ads that are the real
Speaker 1: core of the business model. It's a slot machine, it is.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, if you think about it and
Speaker 1: you ask yourself, okay, should there be any limiting principle
Speaker 1: on section two thirty, imagine a theoretical platform where the
Speaker 1: recommendation algorithm is tuned so that the only stories that
Speaker 1: get amplified and recommended and served to people are left
Speaker 1: wing stories. It's only about, you know, whatever is going on.
Speaker 1: Everything that's on the right is, you know, is sort
Speaker 1: of hidden. It's not banned or totally censored, although they
Speaker 1: could do that as well. And right now, the idea
Speaker 1: is it doesn't matter. You're still not a publisher. You
Speaker 1: still have no liability, or imagine it the other direction,
Speaker 1: where you recommendation algorithm is designed so that it only
Speaker 1: pumps and promotes right wing content about how great Trump
Speaker 1: is or whatever is going on there right pizza Gate
Speaker 1: or QAnon, whatever's hot at the moment. Can you really
Speaker 1: look at that with a straight face and say, oh,
Speaker 1: these are just you know, neutral common carrier platform. No,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't. And so then the question becomes, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the limiting principle? What are the rules you
Speaker 1: have to follow? What is the business model that you
Speaker 1: have to engage in in order to get the benefit
Speaker 1: of what is based a giant gift and giveaway to
Speaker 1: these companies. So I think that most people would look
Speaker 1: at the situation and say, you know, if you think
Speaker 1: about Fox News versus MSNBC, part of the way that
Speaker 1: they present their very one sided views of the world
Speaker 1: is through the type of commentators they have on the
Speaker 1: opinion sayespros, et cetera. But a big part of how
Speaker 1: they do it is through story selection. That's like their
Speaker 1: own recommendation algorithm. What are they going to promote as
Speaker 1: like the biggest problems in the world. What are they
Speaker 1: just not going to talk about. On Fox, you're going
Speaker 1: to get a lot of stories about, Oh, there's a
Speaker 1: crime spike, there's an immigrant caravan, there's government spending gone wild. Whatever.
Speaker 1: They're going to have their list, and if you're just
Speaker 1: consuming their content, the impression you're getting of the world
Speaker 1: is these are the core issues, these are the big
Speaker 1: things going on in society. If you're watching MSNBC, you're
Speaker 1: being presented a very different slate of issues to focus
Speaker 1: on as like the biggest threats to society, the most
Speaker 1: important issues ultimately in the world. That story selection is
Speaker 1: really really critical to their propaganda efforts. And so we've
Speaker 1: basically said that social media companies can do the same thing.
Speaker 1: They can have these recommendation algorithms that there are their
Speaker 1: own form of story selection that are dramatically much more
Speaker 1: so than cable news at this point, shaping the way
Speaker 1: people perceive the world and yet be totally held harmless
Speaker 1: for any harms that come to pass from those choices
Speaker 1: that they're ultimately making. And I think most people would
Speaker 1: look at that and say, that's really that's ridiculous. Yes,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, there should be an availability of you know,
Speaker 1: section two thirty where you can avoid liability. I believe
Speaker 1: in free speech. I believe in people being able to
Speaker 1: post all kinds of content. But when you get into
Speaker 1: the manipulation of what gets seen and what doesn't, that's
Speaker 1: I think where you run into a problem where Okay,
Speaker 1: now you really are serving as a publisher and not
Speaker 1: just sort of a neutral platform. Well, and they've also
Speaker 1: entered the fact checking space, and that's hugely, hugely important. Again,
Speaker 1: it's another act of journalism, and they try try to
Speaker 1: outsource it to journalistic outlets, nonsense fact checking outlets that
Speaker 1: have so little credibility except for the fact that Facebook
Speaker 1: contracts with them or whatever, and that's their kind of
Speaker 1: fig leaf to get away with this. So they're absolutely
Speaker 1: acting as publishers, there's no question about it. This case
Speaker 1: is huge, especially because we also, as we mentioned these
Speaker 1: the Gonzales family wants opportunities to seek redress. They're saying
Speaker 1: those opportunities don't exist properly because of Section two thirty.
Speaker 1: Tech has come to terms with the fact that maybe
Speaker 1: they should be lobbying for Section two thirty reform because
Speaker 1: it hurts any potential competitors to the extent that it's
Speaker 1: even possible to compete with them way more. They can
Speaker 1: shape what the legislation would look like, they can lobby
Speaker 1: to make it friendly to them, and they can weather
Speaker 1: the regulatory burden way better than any potential competitors can. So,
Speaker 1: but you can't do that in the court. You can't
Speaker 1: shape the regulation that might come out of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: So just a fascinating, fascinating day and a really important
Speaker 1: one for the future of the Internet, and not one
Speaker 1: that I think many people are paying attention to, but
Speaker 1: it is unfolding today to day here in Washington. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At the same time, there is some other sort of
Speaker 1: media news that I think is significant. I mean Project Veritas.
Speaker 1: Whatever you think of them, which I have a lot
Speaker 1: of mixed feelings about them, They've been really important in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, political sort of right leaning or
Speaker 1: right wing investigations. They certainly have huge cultural impact. Anytime
Speaker 1: they drop one of their videos, it's major, major, It
Speaker 1: gets a lot of attention on social media, whether the
Speaker 1: mainstream news covers it or not. And James O'Keefe is
Speaker 1: the founder of Project Veritas. He has been their figurehead.
Speaker 1: He is really he is this entity and now he
Speaker 1: is officially out Charlie Kirk actually had the kind of
Speaker 1: broke this news a little bit, got a little bit
Speaker 1: the inside scoop on the fact he was stepping down
Speaker 1: or be even forced out as CEO. Let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to a little bit though, of what James himself
Speaker 1: had to say about it. A board member reached out
Speaker 1: to one of our journalists and stated, quote, you get
Speaker 1: a raise if there was a restructure without James O'Keeffe
Speaker 1: at Project Barreitas. I have a copy of the text
Speaker 1: message and I'll give it to all of you. I've
Speaker 1: redacted the name of the journalists. The board member deleted
Speaker 1: the message, but not before our journalist took screenshots. So
Speaker 1: I'm announcing to you all that today on President's Day,
Speaker 1: unpacking up my personal belongings. I don't have the answers
Speaker 1: to why they've been doing this or why board members
Speaker 1: were going directly to employees to collect grievances. So you
Speaker 1: will recall we reported here and others covered as well,
Speaker 1: that there were some rumors this may ultimately come to pass.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of which you get from this
Speaker 1: that little stippit, as well a lot of internal grievances.
Speaker 1: James O'Keeffe, I think comes off as a very difficult boss.
Speaker 1: It's probably the diplomatic way to put it, very difficult
Speaker 1: person to work for. There were reports that like he
Speaker 1: was hungry and about it. He stole some like eight
Speaker 1: month pregnant lady sandwich, things of that nature. A lot
Speaker 1: of accounts of him, you know, really seeking to humiliate
Speaker 1: publicly humiliate his staff members in front of other staffers.
Speaker 1: Some donors very displeased with some of his behavior and choices.
Speaker 1: And one thing that caught our attention, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people's attention is going to put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Apparently they acknowledged Project Veritas acknowledged
Speaker 1: improperly giving James O'Keefe twenty thousand dollars in excess benefits
Speaker 1: to pay for staff members to accompany him to Virginia
Speaker 1: as he performed a lead role in the production of
Speaker 1: the musical Oklahoma. Surprising one there theater kid, theater kid
Speaker 1: gone off the rails, And there were also some reports
Speaker 1: in the Daily Beast here that you know, people were
Speaker 1: like the donors think that this theater stuff is weird
Speaker 1: in a distraction, et cetera. So I don't know all
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of exactly what was going on there,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a lot of staff member drama.
Speaker 1: You know, I said it the top. I have mixed
Speaker 1: feelings about Project Veritas. I mean, I mostly think that
Speaker 1: they are they have done themselves a disservice by you know,
Speaker 1: they've gotten caught selectively editing things, making people sound like
Speaker 1: they're saying totally the opposite of what they're saying. And
Speaker 1: the fact that they're a partisan outfit. That doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: bother me because there are plenty of investigations of Democrats
Speaker 1: that deserve to be done or you know, left ideas
Speaker 1: or thinkers or what out institutions whatever, Like that's all fine.
Speaker 1: I don't have an issue with that. But they really
Speaker 1: went above and beyond to sort of manipulate these videos
Speaker 1: to give the most negative impression and at times completely
Speaker 1: false and misleading impression. In instance, certain instances they've had,
Speaker 1: you know, really impactful revelations like Amy Roebach on Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein in the fact that her news outlet like held
Speaker 1: a story on it because they wanted to be access
Speaker 1: and maintain access to the royal family. Like that was
Speaker 1: very impactful. It was real journalism, but oftentimes they have
Speaker 1: gone too far in the direction of just right manufacturing
Speaker 1: things and propaganda, so that when they put something out
Speaker 1: like you can't trust what they're ultimately revealing. So that's
Speaker 1: my gripe with them. I'm sure James O'Keeffe is a
Speaker 1: difficult person to work with, but it is kind of
Speaker 1: an end of an era because he really is this organization.
Speaker 1: I think without him, I can't imagine that they amount
Speaker 1: to much. I'll imagine. I imagine that he will continue
Speaker 1: doing exactly what he was doing at Project Veritas, just
Speaker 1: in another new organization, right different name, because to your point,
Speaker 1: it is him, like James o'keef is Project Veritized, and
Speaker 1: so wherever James O'Keefe goes, it'll be Project Veritas, but
Speaker 1: just with a different name and maybe a different board
Speaker 1: in different resources. But I think two things can be true. First,
Speaker 1: it can be absolutely true that he is eccentric and
Speaker 1: very difficult to work for. And it can also be
Speaker 1: true that his board used that as an excuse to
Speaker 1: oust him for some reason. We don't totally have a
Speaker 1: good idea, weut Yeah, he has invoked the fact that
Speaker 1: this is all coming to pass right after the big
Speaker 1: Pfizer revelation video. Do you remember the one where he was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's kind of invoked. He said, this is our biggest
Speaker 1: investigation of all time. So it's not a coincidence that
Speaker 1: this is happening. This is all unfolding right now. I
Speaker 1: want to bring up maybe maybe right, we don't know,
Speaker 1: we don't know, And I want to bring up a
Speaker 1: tweet though. I thought it was really interesting from Ben
Speaker 1: Dominic who said James O'Keefe out at Project Veritas as
Speaker 1: yet another example of how right media and the donor
Speaker 1: class have a deep intolerance for creative genius. If Andrew
Speaker 1: Breibert had lived, they'd have found a way to ditch him.
Speaker 1: To conservative media is a wash with medium talent who
Speaker 1: pay their bills, unforgettable churn that changes nothing and has
Speaker 1: a half life measured in hours. Creatives rise up, make
Speaker 1: a lot of noise, give a lot of enemies, thin
Speaker 1: get taken out it by their own Then donors turned
Speaker 1: to the mids. I think it's an interesting point because,
Speaker 1: especially coming from somebody in sort of conservative media, there
Speaker 1: is you know, the donor class is different. It's not
Speaker 1: you don't have any like Hollywood people in the conservative
Speaker 1: donor class. You don't have many art artistic people in
Speaker 1: the conservative donor class. And I don't think I would
Speaker 1: go so far as to say James o'keef is a
Speaker 1: creative genius. And I do think there is a different
Speaker 1: level of tolerance for that level of activism. And I
Speaker 1: you know, I think journalism can be activism, but I
Speaker 1: think he leaned way more heavily on the side of
Speaker 1: activism than journalism. Yeah, I mean, I think I buy
Speaker 1: that he's creative, you know, but does in Oklahoma? I guess,
Speaker 1: Like I said, just to reiterate, I don't think that
Speaker 1: he did himself any favors by leaning so heavily in
Speaker 1: the direction of manipulation and propaganda, because he could have
Speaker 1: had a lot more impact with what he put out
Speaker 1: if they played it a little more straight and didn't
Speaker 1: edit the videos deceptively and ultimately get caught in things
Speaker 1: of that nature, so that when you do put out
Speaker 1: something that is legit and real and deserves news coverage,
Speaker 1: it becomes very easy for everyone to dismiss it as
Speaker 1: just more James o'keef project veritas propaganda. And I feel
Speaker 1: the same way. I mean, on the Fizer. You guys
Speaker 1: very reluctant to cover that because I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know who this dude is that they interviewed. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they edit it. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that like given his track record. Yeah, it makes me
Speaker 1: very very wary of trusting what they're ultimately putting out
Speaker 1: to the public. And you know, I'm someone who is
Speaker 1: very open to, you know, uncomfortable conversations exposing companies like Pfizer,
Speaker 1: Like I have no issue with any of that. We
Speaker 1: try to do that here all the time. But when
Speaker 1: you've made proven yourself to be so untrustworthy so many times,
Speaker 1: it gives your ideological adversaries very easy grounds to just
Speaker 1: dismiss out of hand everything you ultimately put out. And
Speaker 1: the Fizer investigation is also a really good example of that.
Speaker 1: In the same way o'keef season is an example of
Speaker 1: sort of the pinnacle of Project Veritasa's work. It's also
Speaker 1: a great example of how easy it was for the
Speaker 1: media completely to dismiss it and not cover it, and
Speaker 1: if they did cover it, only cover it to the
Speaker 1: extent that they're almost like mocking O'Keefe and criticizing O'Keefe,
Speaker 1: and there is a different world in which that investigation
Speaker 1: happens and has more credibility because James O'Keefe, you know,
Speaker 1: in the thirteen years since he founded Project Veritas, all
Speaker 1: the way back in the Obama years twenty ten, you know,
Speaker 1: was putting They do sometimes dump the raw footage out,
Speaker 1: but not all the time, and we have seen that
Speaker 1: go wrong in the past. And so there is a
Speaker 1: world in which they're doing these investigations just dumping raw
Speaker 1: video out and everyone can sort of judge for themselves,
Speaker 1: and they get Pfizer in an impossible situation where they
Speaker 1: can't wriggle out of the media coverage because other people
Speaker 1: take it and run with it. But that's not the
Speaker 1: world that we live in. Ye, it's not the world
Speaker 1: James o'keeff created. Yeah, absolutely, I have some more news
Speaker 1: from that side of the aisle. You want to set
Speaker 1: this one up, Emily, Yeah, absolutely, Well. Representative Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green has called for a national divorce using that exact language.
Speaker 1: She was sort of mocked for this tweet yesterday. This
Speaker 1: is the quote, we need a national divorce. We need
Speaker 1: to separate by red state and blue states and shrink
Speaker 1: of the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this
Speaker 1: from the sick. It's like Trump Bratten. Many people are
Speaker 1: saying in this sick and discussing woke culture issues, shoved
Speaker 1: down our throats to the Democrats, traitorous America, last policies,
Speaker 1: we are done. We are done, all right. So obviously
Speaker 1: somebody with now as much clout in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: as Marjorie Taylor Green actually does have. You know, she
Speaker 1: is in a position right now. I wouldn't have predicted
Speaker 1: this maybe a couple of years ago, but she is
Speaker 1: in a position right now where she does genuinely have
Speaker 1: some clout in the Republican Party. And here she is
Speaker 1: calling outright for a national divorce. That's why we're covering
Speaker 1: it here because it is worth talking about. There have
Speaker 1: been on the right, especially, some rumblings of this. There
Speaker 1: always are, by the way, you probably remember this, like
Speaker 1: going back years, there's always that conversation. There's an interesting
Speaker 1: there's an interesting point to be made about the fact
Speaker 1: that we have sort of come apart, to borrow the
Speaker 1: language from the book, coming apart in socioeconomic ways, and
Speaker 1: that people who are at very different ends of the
Speaker 1: socioeconomic spectrum are basically living in different worlds within our
Speaker 1: own country at this point. But that said, Marjor Tailler
Speaker 1: Green's argument falls apart because of her own state. What
Speaker 1: do you do with Georgia, right, Seriously, you live in
Speaker 1: a blue state exactly exactly, And are your neighbors who
Speaker 1: you might get along with fine and who voted for
Speaker 1: Warnock or who voted for us off? What do you
Speaker 1: think of them? Do you think they should live in
Speaker 1: a different country? Do you think that they do live
Speaker 1: in a different country? And it's just it hasn't been
Speaker 1: formally determined at this point, and so I think it's
Speaker 1: an opportunity, I think to really consider the impracticality, not
Speaker 1: just I don't mean that like logistically, just like actually philosophically,
Speaker 1: it makes no sense. It's an incoherent kind of idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a few things to say about this.
Speaker 1: To me, it feels like a sort of of throwing
Speaker 1: up of your hands, an abandonment of any idea of
Speaker 1: a democratic, small d democratic nation where Okay, you disagree
Speaker 1: with whatever the Biden administration's doing, there's going to be
Speaker 1: another election, Like that's the whole idea is Okay, we
Speaker 1: have this push and pull, and yeah, the country has
Speaker 1: different ideas about exactly how we should accomplish it. That's
Speaker 1: why we have a democracy where you appoint representatives and
Speaker 1: where you elect representatives, and where you run on a
Speaker 1: platform and you make your case for your ideas. That
Speaker 1: made the best ideas win. That's the whole idea of
Speaker 1: what we're doing here. That's number one. Number two is
Speaker 1: I mean, part of why I wanted to cover this,
Speaker 1: because we don't cover the utterances of Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: all that often on this show, is because it's really
Speaker 1: the polar opposite of the view of the country that
Speaker 1: we believe in and are trying to promote with this show.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm sitting here with you. We
Speaker 1: have some different ideas about things sober and have some
Speaker 1: different ideas about things and in no world am I
Speaker 1: like this is your reconcile. We must get a national divorce.
Speaker 1: And I think that the reason the show, I think
Speaker 1: has been successful is because that is much more reflective
Speaker 1: of how people actually live in their normal lives than
Speaker 1: this like bizarrely fringe ultra online take of Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 1: It is ultra online. It's only if you're like the
Speaker 1: old Okay, she says, Like everybody I talk to you
Speaker 1: says this, Are you only talking to the worst people
Speaker 1: on Twitter? Because that's what the view of the world
Speaker 1: you would get is if you spend way too much
Speaker 1: time down a rabbit hole on like Twitter or Getter
Speaker 1: or true Social or par or whatever your social media
Speaker 1: of choice happens to be. But if you're actually like
Speaker 1: existing in the world and living with your neighbors, many
Speaker 1: of whom may have different ideologies and vote for different
Speaker 1: politicians than you, like, this is not the experience of
Speaker 1: the country that most people have on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis. I live in Accounting that is quite conservative
Speaker 1: and has been for a long time. Voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is where I was born and raised.
Speaker 1: And again, at no moment have I been like, this
Speaker 1: is irreconcilable. We need to give up on democracy and
Speaker 1: just split at you know, split at the seams. It's
Speaker 1: so it's a very I think it's a very sad
Speaker 1: and very pessimistic view of the country. Ultimately, yeah, and
Speaker 1: again it is true that we are having a hard
Speaker 1: time agreeing on like, very very very fundamental questions about,
Speaker 1: for instance, what is gender, what is truth, what is disinformation?
Speaker 1: What is democracy? We actually are having a hard time
Speaker 1: coming to terms with those questions. That is not unprecedented
Speaker 1: in American history. We have had a very hard time
Speaker 1: determining the value of human beings. There are people who
Speaker 1: disagreed on that perhaps the most fundamental question in human
Speaker 1: existence in this country. And that's not to say that
Speaker 1: we've handled it perfectly. It's not to say that everything
Speaker 1: is just peachy and that the United States is the
Speaker 1: perfect example of how to sort of work through these questions.
Speaker 1: But it is to say, the whole point of what
Speaker 1: we do, as opposed to what other countries have done
Speaker 1: in human history, is work through these things and use
Speaker 1: this tool of constitutional democracy to create a more peaceful
Speaker 1: existence to the best of our ability. Best of our
Speaker 1: ability is not always going to be perfect, and it
Speaker 1: is going to be sadly tragic, violent, all of those things.
Speaker 1: Human existence is tragic and violent in all of those things.
Speaker 1: But we're working towards a better form of it. And
Speaker 1: to give up on that, yeah, that's really sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there were a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: who like this is treasons whatever. She can say what
Speaker 1: she wants to say, but I do think it's kind
Speaker 1: of a I would say that the sentiment at the
Speaker 1: core of it is kind of anti American because of
Speaker 1: exactly the reasons that you're laying out. It goes against
Speaker 1: the core of the best notions of what America is
Speaker 1: supposed to be. Not that we've lived up to it,
Speaker 1: not that we live up to it today. But again,
Speaker 1: I just I find the comments profoundly sad that you
Speaker 1: would just sort of like give up on the country
Speaker 1: in this way. And I wasn't the only one. There
Speaker 1: were lots of Republicans who were not impressed with what
Speaker 1: she had to say. Here, this Spencer Cox, who is
Speaker 1: the governor of Utah, Republican in case you are surprised
Speaker 1: by that in Utah, obviously it's a Republican And what
Speaker 1: he said in response to this is this rhetoric. We
Speaker 1: can put this up on the screen. Media. I had
Speaker 1: had a kind of round up of some of the
Speaker 1: criticism here. They say she was roundly condemned after calling
Speaker 1: for a national divorce on Twitter. Spencer Cox, the governor
Speaker 1: of Utah, said this rhetoric is destructive and wrong and
Speaker 1: honestly evil. We don't need a divert force. We need
Speaker 1: marriage counseling, and we need elected leaders that don't profit
Speaker 1: by tearing us apart. We can disagree without hate. Healthy
Speaker 1: conflict was critical to our nations founding and survival. He
Speaker 1: has a little Reagan quote there, But then I liked
Speaker 1: what he said here. He said that he doesn't mean
Speaker 1: just civility and kindness, although we definitely need more of
Speaker 1: that too. I mean passionate disagreement that does not destroy
Speaker 1: our souls and our country. Healthy conflict is good and foundational,
Speaker 1: but we must be Americans first, in partisans second or last.
Speaker 1: And I like the way he phrased that because sometimes
Speaker 1: these things get just like bound up in decorum and
Speaker 1: civility politics, which I think is silly. There should be
Speaker 1: fierce debates, it should be raw, it should be passionate.
Speaker 1: There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But you know
Speaker 1: the idea that, oh, we're just going to give up
Speaker 1: on the other half of the country that disagrees with me, frankly,
Speaker 1: I think it's disgusting. No, And that's such an important
Speaker 1: distinction because the nonsense respectability theater that our politicians want
Speaker 1: to drag us into which is like, you can't how
Speaker 1: dare you say anything that so critical of the American
Speaker 1: media or the American government, or you can't criticize our
Speaker 1: institutions because you're going to sow institutional distrust. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, our institutions deserve to be distrusted, and so
Speaker 1: that's I think a distraction. But we should be able
Speaker 1: to For instance, I have this longstanding disagreement with most
Speaker 1: people when they look at the John Stewart clip of
Speaker 1: him laying into Tucker Carlson and Paul Bagala on Crossfire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forget what year, it was, like two thousand and
Speaker 1: four or somewhere around there, somewhere in there. I don't
Speaker 1: think that was a great moment because I think what
Speaker 1: we lose when we take away that sort of public
Speaker 1: example of debate, heated debate, intense debate, but where you
Speaker 1: have two representatives and it's important that they do actually
Speaker 1: represent both sides of the argument and they do it well.
Speaker 1: Butting heads in public on television. I think that's a
Speaker 1: cathartic and important thing for Americans to be able to
Speaker 1: do and for Americans to be able to see. It's
Speaker 1: part of why this show works so well, and that
Speaker 1: even Sager have always worked so well. It's because people
Speaker 1: do need to be able to see that, because we
Speaker 1: can all do that with each other. And when you
Speaker 1: lose that, and when the corporate press, as they do now,
Speaker 1: tries to push us away from that and tries to say, no,
Speaker 1: purveyors of disinformation or hate or whatever deserve to breathe
Speaker 1: the same oxygen in our green rooms, yeah, or get
Speaker 1: any room in our pages, then you're getting This is
Speaker 1: how you set the stage for the national divorce conversation,
Speaker 1: because people no longer think they can talk through these
Speaker 1: things because they don't see it happening. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: about I can't control these other people, so I just
Speaker 1: have to. Like it's an almost totalitarian instinct. Honestly. On
Speaker 1: the John Stewart point, I think what people are reacting
Speaker 1: to is how inauthentic that particular debate, How is just
Speaker 1: theater cartoonish, cartoonish exactly, But the core point of having
Speaker 1: people disagree and like genuinely going at it and battling
Speaker 1: it out, I think that's the core of what we
Speaker 1: should all be about, all right. On that note, Yeah,
Speaker 1: on that note, we want to talk about a story
Speaker 1: that's sort of in a slow motion train wreck. Over
Speaker 1: the course of the last week, huge revelations from Dominion's
Speaker 1: defamation lawsuit against Fox News. We have learned, because of
Speaker 1: some of the disclosures in this lawsuit, that Tucker Carls
Speaker 1: and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram were on a group text.
Speaker 1: First of all, Big News, Yeah, that's true us. You
Speaker 1: never know how these people feel about each other behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, and might hate each other's guts. That's kind
Speaker 1: of common. Actually. Well, in fact, we find out through
Speaker 1: the revelations in this lawsuit that they were talking about
Speaker 1: their colleagues. They were talking about not just Sidney Powell,
Speaker 1: not just Rudy Giuliani, but also other hosts, including Neil Cavudo.
Speaker 1: They were talking about Jackie Heinrich, who had taken the step.
Speaker 1: This is probably the revelation from the filings that has
Speaker 1: gotten the most I would say airtime is that they
Speaker 1: were concerned when Jackie Heinrich sort of went into a
Speaker 1: correct fact check of something Donald Trump said about voting
Speaker 1: machines or something like that fact checked him. They were
Speaker 1: upset because they were saying privately, our viewers are so
Speaker 1: few they're going to flee to an alternative source like Newsmax.
Speaker 1: This is in the wake of that Chris stiwald decision
Speaker 1: to call Arizona really early. That just infuriated many many
Speaker 1: Trump supporters, many many Fox News viewers and did send
Speaker 1: them actually away from Fox News at least for a
Speaker 1: period of time to places like Newsmax. And they were
Speaker 1: talking behind the scenes and saying basically like this is
Speaker 1: killing the network stock, this is a problem. They were
Speaker 1: also saying some things about Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
Speaker 1: As I've mentioned, this is Laura Ingram quote, Sidney is
Speaker 1: a complete not No one will work with her. Dido
Speaker 1: with Rudy. This is from Tucker. Sidney Powell is lying
Speaker 1: by by way, I caught her. It's insane. I think
Speaker 1: it's really important to note that Tucker actually did have
Speaker 1: Sidney Powell on and gave her a like he gave
Speaker 1: her a tough interview at the time, and was actually
Speaker 1: pretty publicly skeptical of Sidney Powell. Tucker also texts our
Speaker 1: viewers are good people and they believe it, which is
Speaker 1: really interesting. Talking about the lies surrounding the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 1: So Crystal, there's just it's an overwhelming, I think amount
Speaker 1: of information, like an info dump that just boggles the mind.
Speaker 1: But what do you make of it? Well, and this
Speaker 1: comes in the context of a dominion lawsuit, which you know,
Speaker 1: this is part of the discovery process where they're trying
Speaker 1: to show like these people knew that this stuff was
Speaker 1: all garbage and they still promoted it because they have
Speaker 1: a very high bar to meet in terms of defamation.
Speaker 1: I have no ideam not a legal analyst, but you know,
Speaker 1: oftentimes it's very difficult to meet that bar. But I
Speaker 1: think the picture that emerges is of a group of
Speaker 1: people who unsurprisingly are most concerned about their ratings, the
Speaker 1: stock price, and the business bottom line. Like that's clearly
Speaker 1: their priority above and beyond you know, Karen, concern for
Speaker 1: their audience, Karen, concern for the truth or their own
Speaker 1: integrity or anything else you might come up with. The
Speaker 1: bottom line was the bottom line, which you know, that's
Speaker 1: not surprising. That's the way that CNN operates, That's the
Speaker 1: way i'm that's that is definitionally what corporate media is
Speaker 1: all about, right, And so I think that's one takeaway,
Speaker 1: and just to underscore that with regards to trying to
Speaker 1: get this woman fired. I don't know how do you
Speaker 1: know her, Jackie, not personally. She's a white House. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I don't know anything about her. But anyway, Carlson
Speaker 1: told Hannity about Jackie Heinrich, please get her fired. Seriously,
Speaker 1: what the F I'm actually shocked this is with regards
Speaker 1: to some tweet she sent out fact checking Trump. It
Speaker 1: needs to stop immediately, Like tonight, it's measurably hurting the company.
Speaker 1: The stock price is down. Not a joke. Tucker added,
Speaker 1: I just went crazy on need over it. Hannity said,
Speaker 1: he I don't know who it is. He had quote
Speaker 1: already sent to Suzanne with a really Suzanne's got being
Speaker 1: the person who runs Fox News. He then added, I'm
Speaker 1: three strikes, wall is shit. Debate, Election night a disaster
Speaker 1: now this BS Nope, not gonna fly. Did I mention? Kavudo?
Speaker 1: And they were all very concerned about, you know what
Speaker 1: the time like Newsmax and let's thea oan. They were
Speaker 1: like willing to go harder into the election conspiracies, and
Speaker 1: there was a sense of betrayal among some of the
Speaker 1: Fox News watching audience that they had called Arizona early
Speaker 1: and that they had called the election for Joe Biden
Speaker 1: instead of engaging with all of this stuff. And there
Speaker 1: was also a pivot point that came out with regards
Speaker 1: to Suzanne Scott, where Rupert Murdoch had initially been trying
Speaker 1: to tamp down some of the conspiracy indulgence that was
Speaker 1: happening on the network. He put out in one of
Speaker 1: his papers like an editorial and made sure that it
Speaker 1: got widely distributed at the network. That was the day
Speaker 1: that it gets called for that the network calls the
Speaker 1: election officially for Biden. Ratings fall off a cliff, and
Speaker 1: there's messages from Suzanne Scott to that effect of like, well,
Speaker 1: this was terrible in a disaster, and after that they
Speaker 1: didn't really try to tamp down any of the speculations.
Speaker 1: So you also see from the highest levels how these
Speaker 1: were all business decisions, and again they didn't really care
Speaker 1: about like what was accurate or what they should be
Speaker 1: presenting to their audience. They no longer had control of
Speaker 1: the beast. They were riding the wave of what people
Speaker 1: already thought. So I think it also shows them as
Speaker 1: a lot more impotent than they are sometimes portrayed, which
Speaker 1: becomes relevant as you look at now like the Dessanta's
Speaker 1: Trump matchup Fox News, and all the Murdock properties are
Speaker 1: clearly on team DeSantis, and they've been doing what they
Speaker 1: can to promote him, pump him up. That New York
Speaker 1: Post interview with Rod DeSantis, there's just like the most
Speaker 1: embarrassing puff piece I've ever seen from Selena Zito. But
Speaker 1: how much will that really have an impact when clearly
Speaker 1: like they're not fully in control of what's going on here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, like they actually canceled an episode of Janine
Speaker 1: Piro's show because they're of what the guests were going
Speaker 1: to say about the election. And so you see that
Speaker 1: they are trying. They are trying because they're using words
Speaker 1: like myth there that's from Rupert Murdoch. Actually, like that's
Speaker 1: a word that Rupert Murdoch himself used. One of the
Speaker 1: biggest things I thought actually to come out of this
Speaker 1: was Rupert Murdoch saying if we go all in on
Speaker 1: Arizona coverage that it might help the network or it
Speaker 1: sounded like even he wanted to kind of help Trump
Speaker 1: in Arizona coverage. And so that's interesting because you see
Speaker 1: Rupert Rupert Murdoch himself directly weighing in on editorial decisions
Speaker 1: at Fox News. That's a good insight into the network's operation,
Speaker 1: especially on sensitive stories like this. But I think there's
Speaker 1: a there's a way to look at it in which,
Speaker 1: to your point, Fox is trying to control the beast.
Speaker 1: They're trying to control lou Dabs, They're trying to control
Speaker 1: Janine Piro, They're trying to rein in something that I mean,
Speaker 1: in some extent, did they help foment the voting stuff
Speaker 1: is tough because they obviously didn't with Trump? Or are
Speaker 1: these opinion hosts We're mostly not talking about news hosts.
Speaker 1: We're mostly talking about their opinion hosts. They're upset internally
Speaker 1: with Trump. And that's a huge question, by the way,
Speaker 1: in the conservative movement in general, It's like, how much
Speaker 1: is it worth it to rebut everything that comes out
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump's mouth when the rest of the media
Speaker 1: exists to do exactly that and is going to spend
Speaker 1: every breath that they have rebutting everything that comes out
Speaker 1: of Trump's mouth. So what is the sort of cost
Speaker 1: benefit to fact checking everything Trump said? Like the Jackie
Speaker 1: Heinrich tweet, when all it does is sort of push
Speaker 1: your audience away and repeat what the rest of the
Speaker 1: media is doing. That is a huge question that people
Speaker 1: debate all the time, especially behind the scenes in the
Speaker 1: conservative movement. And I think that is a fair question
Speaker 1: to debate. What I don't think is fair to debate.
Speaker 1: And I know you, I'm sure you know people like this.
Speaker 1: I know people like this Zogerno's, people like this who
Speaker 1: knew what they were saying was garbage. They felt like
Speaker 1: their career and their paycheck dependent on saying it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't think there is any greater contempt that you
Speaker 1: can show for a group of people and for your
Speaker 1: audience than to knowingly lie to them. I think that
Speaker 1: is the greatest form of contempt that you can show
Speaker 1: for somebody, to think that they're dumb enough that you
Speaker 1: can lie to them and just feed them what you know,
Speaker 1: you think they want to hear, and that that's what
Speaker 1: your job is. So there were a bunch of other
Speaker 1: little revelations we can put up here. Good to E three.
Speaker 1: We can show some of these specific quotes just so
Speaker 1: you get a sense of a little bit. This is
Speaker 1: uh Will Summer, who was with the is with the
Speaker 1: Daily beast Tucker of how Trump described him as a
Speaker 1: demonic force, a destroyer, but quote, He's not going to
Speaker 1: destroy us. He also said, uh, we are not going
Speaker 1: to follow them. What Trump's good at is destroying things.
Speaker 1: He's the undisputed world champions that he could easily destroy
Speaker 1: us if we play it wrong. So Tucker's kind of
Speaker 1: true feelings about Trump and what he's all about come
Speaker 1: out there. Let's kind of put this next one up
Speaker 1: on the screen. He also is freaking out after the election,
Speaker 1: hearing from anger viewers, worrying that Fox calling Arizona for
Speaker 1: Biden will kill his golden goose. That's the characterization of
Speaker 1: Will Summer, while also afraid of quote effing bitch, Sidney
Speaker 1: Palell has gone too far. He said directly that he
Speaker 1: told his producer Sidney Powell is lying, effing bitch. That's
Speaker 1: the quote. There. Let's go and put the next one
Speaker 1: up on the screen. You've got Fox brass and top
Speaker 1: hosts really not impressed with Rudy Giuliani. Hannity called him
Speaker 1: an insane person. Laura Ingram said he's such an idiot.
Speaker 1: Murdoch said really crazy stuff. So you kind of get
Speaker 1: the sense of the behind the scenes characterization, and they
Speaker 1: fought hard to, by the way, to keep these messages
Speaker 1: from coming out. And I think it was a New
Speaker 1: York Times lawsuit that ultimately led to them lifting the
Speaker 1: seal so that we all have access to this one
Speaker 1: last piece. Put this up on the screen, because this
Speaker 1: again gets to like the business model, and I think
Speaker 1: this is really important, Like whatever side of the political
Speaker 1: spectrum you are on, the business model is the thing
Speaker 1: driving all of the news and coverage at all three
Speaker 1: of the cable news networks. They are a business first.
Speaker 1: And so Lindell had made some negative comments about Fox
Speaker 1: over on Newsmax, and Lindell is not only like an
Speaker 1: important guest for Fox, but much more importantly, he spends
Speaker 1: a lot of money advertising on their network. And so
Speaker 1: the Fox's executives after we made those comments, they exchanged
Speaker 1: worried emails about alienating him, and then they sent him
Speaker 1: a gift along with a handwritten note from Suzanne Scott,
Speaker 1: and the filing goes on to say that they had
Speaker 1: a strong motive to welcome him back on air and
Speaker 1: avoid any sort of conflicts because of the advertising dollars
Speaker 1: that he was shipping to the network. Well, and imagine
Speaker 1: what this does to their relationship now, and imagine what
Speaker 1: is doing a lot of relationships at Fox News right
Speaker 1: now as this entire story has unfolded. And the probably
Speaker 1: most contentious point, or the one that probably the least
Speaker 1: popular with other people that I would make is Tucker
Speaker 1: I think emerges from this looking like somebody who was
Speaker 1: saying Donald Trump is being disrespectful to his own voters,
Speaker 1: and he was the one that like publicly did grill
Speaker 1: Sidney Powell, and he was trying. I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that he's ended up getting so much of the heat
Speaker 1: because he is the top host at Fox that it's
Speaker 1: like all coming on him. Media hates like few people
Speaker 1: more than Tucker Carlson, so he's getting a lot of
Speaker 1: the flak for this. But it is an interesting like
Speaker 1: that in this broader context, at the point you made
Speaker 1: about like trying to then control the beast is a
Speaker 1: really really important one, and we are going to see
Speaker 1: Fox News continue grappling with that post, all of them
Speaker 1: knowing what each other, what they're saying about each other
Speaker 1: in this really difficult like six month period for them. Yeah. One,
Speaker 1: we have one more Tucker piece of news here that
Speaker 1: just came out yesterday as well, big news. Yeah, forty
Speaker 1: one thousand hours of January sixth footage was provided to
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson by Kevin McCarthy. Democrats like Jamie Raskin are
Speaker 1: beside themselves with us. They said, it's sort of outrageous
Speaker 1: that Kevin McCarthy would turn over all of this footage
Speaker 1: to a quote pro putin journalist. Is what Jamie Raskin said.
Speaker 1: I think it's incredibly absurd, Yeah, to call Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: pro putin. But forty one thousand hours of January six
Speaker 1: footage going to Tucker from Kevin McCarthy, we don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to it yet, I'm curious. I
Speaker 1: think the government has been a little bit ridiculous with
Speaker 1: the January six footage because they want to promote a
Speaker 1: very particular narrative, and there are important facts to get
Speaker 1: right about January six. There are some big facts that people,
Speaker 1: especially conspiratorial people, get wrong about January six. But honestly,
Speaker 1: the more transparency the better. And I know I understand
Speaker 1: why people don't trust an opinion host to be the
Speaker 1: best steward of that footage. So I get it. I'm
Speaker 1: so curious. Listen, the answer to a lack of transparency
Speaker 1: or a one sided narrative isn't to hand the footage
Speaker 1: over to another person who's going to spin a one
Speaker 1: sided narrative. No, I agree. If you're interested in transparency,
Speaker 1: put the whole footage on to WikiLeaks. I mean absolutely
Speaker 1: put it all out there and let citizen journalists or
Speaker 1: you know, official draw whoever sifts through it and pull
Speaker 1: out parts that are new or different or relevant and
Speaker 1: like do that rather than all right, they had their
Speaker 1: partisan turn at this, We're going to have our partisan
Speaker 1: turn at it that only one side is going to
Speaker 1: ultimately pay attention to and listen to. So in that way,
Speaker 1: I think it's a disservice to accuracy in fact finding.
Speaker 1: And January sixth has become like basically the ultimate crystallization
Speaker 1: of how we're doing this on both sides. It's not
Speaker 1: both sides. Is and to say, because it's become this
Speaker 1: like weird tit for tat just on the congressional level
Speaker 1: with the committees. So then the reason you end up
Speaker 1: getting ilhan Omar booted from her committee and other people
Speaker 1: put it from their committee is because partially Republicans House Republicans.
Speaker 1: I talked to Kevin McCarthy about this hate the way
Speaker 1: that Nancy Pelosi treated them after January sixth, and so
Speaker 1: now they're getting into this back and forth and then
Speaker 1: giving the tapes to Tucker after the January sixth committee
Speaker 1: was so selective about the information that it released. It's
Speaker 1: again just the tit for tat, and you can see
Speaker 1: how it all comes together in January sixth is like
Speaker 1: the best shining example of how ridiculous our politics are
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, I think that's all said. All right, Crystal,
Speaker 1: what's on your mind today? Well, the Republican twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four primary is just getting started, and already it's actually
Speaker 1: way more interesting than I initially expected. What do I
Speaker 1: mean by that? Well? I assumed Trump would just continue
Speaker 1: with his twenty twenty election conspiracies, which it seemed to
Speaker 1: be an all consuming focus after his loss, and that
Speaker 1: strategy it did have some logic to it. Trump had
Speaker 1: pretty successfully made stop this deal the key dividing line
Speaker 1: and GOP primaries for seats up and down the ballot.
Speaker 1: Where you stood on this array of conspiracies defined whether
Speaker 1: you were a real one or a rhino, and of
Speaker 1: course no one would be willing to go as far
Speaker 1: on the issue as Trump himself would, and that would
Speaker 1: force the other twenty twenty four contenders to make a
Speaker 1: choice between preserving some shred of their dignity but signing
Speaker 1: up for sure fire defeat, or abandoning their dignity and
Speaker 1: still probably losing. But of course, as we saw in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, while fully embracing all the crazy might
Speaker 1: have helped candidates to win in a GOP primary, it
Speaker 1: also turned out to be the best way to get
Speaker 1: yourself destroyed when it came to the general election. Perhaps
Speaker 1: Trump actually learned something from the twenty twenty two election results,
Speaker 1: because he certainly still spouts off about election nonsense, but
Speaker 1: he's drown some very different battle lines for the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four primary. Trump is launching a GOP civil war
Speaker 1: right now over two issues, entitlements and US policy on
Speaker 1: the Ukraine War. Both of these issues have some echoes
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen now, if you'll recall, in that election,
Speaker 1: Trump successfully identified a set of key issues where the
Speaker 1: Republican base and GOP elites were directly at odds. In fact,
Speaker 1: his defense of social security and Medicare is pulled straight
Speaker 1: from that twenty sixteen playbook, and his move on Ukraine
Speaker 1: echoes his stance on the Iraq War at the time.
Speaker 1: Both were pretty astonishing. After all, the previous nominee was
Speaker 1: literally met Romney with boy wonder Paul Ryan. Romney and
Speaker 1: Ryan leaned into ideas to both cut Social Security and Medicare.
Speaker 1: Ryan's entire rise to prominence in the party was enabled
Speaker 1: by elite swooning over his austerity politics, including vaucherizing Medicare.
Speaker 1: The commentariat just sort of assumed that the GOP base
Speaker 1: actually wanted a dismantling of both of those programs, but
Speaker 1: they didn't like the rest of America. They liked Medicare
Speaker 1: and they liked Social Security, and guess what they still
Speaker 1: do this time. Trump is not the only one in
Speaker 1: the GOP who wants to keep Social Security in Medicare
Speaker 1: as they are, but the overwhelming majority of party elites
Speaker 1: are still either actively pushing for cuts or trying desperately
Speaker 1: to run away from their long track records of embracing
Speaker 1: Paul Ryan's style cuts. And that overwhelming majority includes every
Speaker 1: single Republican who's planning to run against Trump in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, Nikki Haley confirmed in her presidential launch weeek
Speaker 1: that she is still committed to entitlement cuts. Trump hit
Speaker 1: her for this stance in his campaign's reaction to her launch,
Speaker 1: writing that quote, Haley supported Paul Ryan's plan for entitlement
Speaker 1: reforms threatening Medicare and Social Security. He also knocked her
Speaker 1: there for something nice she once said about Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny Mike Pence, who's widely expected to run,
Speaker 1: he has insanely come out for a social security privatization
Speaker 1: scheme similar to the one that George W. Bush tried
Speaker 1: and utterly failed with. I actually sort of respect the
Speaker 1: honesty from Pence, even if it is a political death wish.
Speaker 1: Now it remains to be seen what Ron DeSantis is
Speaker 1: going to say on the issue, but he's got a record.
Speaker 1: Trump is already using to attack him. In just one instance,
Speaker 1: here's DeSantis, while he was running for Congress as a
Speaker 1: Tea Party Republican, backing Paul Ryan's plan for Medicare while
Speaker 1: also pushing similar cuts to Social Security by increasing the
Speaker 1: eligibility age. So I would embrace proposals, you know, like
Speaker 1: Paul Ryan offered, and other people have offered that are
Speaker 1: going to you know, provide some market forces in there,
Speaker 1: more or choice, and make it so that it's not
Speaker 1: just basically a system that's gonna that's going to be
Speaker 1: bankrupt when you have new people coming into it. Social Security,
Speaker 1: you know, I would do the same thing. Social Security
Speaker 1: is actually not as as as bad as medicare in
Speaker 1: the sense that you know, it had been running surpluses
Speaker 1: for a long time. Now it's running a deficit. So
Speaker 1: there's nothing left in Social Security. It's guys like me
Speaker 1: pay into it, and then people who are on Social
Speaker 1: Security that check immediately goes out to them. We're now
Speaker 1: taking in less than the checks are going out, and
Speaker 1: so that's problem is gonna get worse. But I think
Speaker 1: for people in my generation, you know, my life expectancy,
Speaker 1: and again I wouldn't change it for people who are
Speaker 1: on it now. But my life expectancy is, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's improved. I was born in seventy eight, and
Speaker 1: I mean it's probably improved five or six years just
Speaker 1: on average. That that tends to annoy people when I
Speaker 1: tell them I'm going to be around for a few
Speaker 1: more years later, but it's it's true and so you know, me,
Speaker 1: get any social Security at sixty five or sixty seven
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna live, you know, for in the my
Speaker 1: eighties is probably not sustainable. Now. Trump has issued a
Speaker 1: series of truths this week about the man he swears
Speaker 1: he definitely does not call me Paul Ron. Every one
Speaker 1: of his comments goes after DeSantis for wanting to cut
Speaker 1: Social Security and wanting to cut Medicare. Here's a little
Speaker 1: taste of some of those he said. Ronda Sanctimonius wants
Speaker 1: to cut your social Security and Medicare, closed up Flora
Speaker 1: and speeches loves Rhinos, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and Carl
Speaker 1: Rove disasters all is backed by Globalist Club for No Growth,
Speaker 1: Lincoln Pervert Project, and quote uninspired coke. And it only
Speaker 1: gets worse from there. He is a rhino in disguise
Speaker 1: whose pull numbers are dropping like a rock. Good luck Ron.
Speaker 1: In another one, he writes support for Desanta's cools and
Speaker 1: latest goopee pole from the Washington Times. Of course it cools,
Speaker 1: he wants to cut social Security and Medicare. Loves throw
Speaker 1: them over the cliff. Paul Ryan, who is destroying Fox
Speaker 1: News and the Wall Street Journal, pig lit Carl Rove
Speaker 1: and Jeb You get the point. There's a lot like this.
Speaker 1: Does the Santis stick with his previous position even though
Speaker 1: it's politically toxic, or does he flip flop in the
Speaker 1: face of the attacks and potentially look weak. It's not
Speaker 1: an easy one for him ultimately to navigate. We're getting
Speaker 1: a first glimpse though, of how he is going to
Speaker 1: handle the other issue Trump is making central to his
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four pitch, and that is limiting support for
Speaker 1: Ukraine or cutting aid altogether to push them for a deal.
Speaker 1: DeSantis was on Fox and Friends yesterday sounding much more
Speaker 1: like the Ukraine's skeptical side of the GOP. Thanks first
Speaker 1: on the presidents un announced visitor. Is this a good
Speaker 1: move for you? Know, Brian? I'm reminded of when he
Speaker 1: was vice president, Obama and Biden opposed providing leath the
Speaker 1: laid to Ukraine during those years. Then I'm also reminded
Speaker 1: that I don't think any of this would have happened
Speaker 1: but for the weakness that the President showed during his
Speaker 1: first year in office, culminating of course, and the disastrous
Speaker 1: withdrawal in Afghanistan. So I think while he's over there.
Speaker 1: I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's very concerned about those borders halfway around the world.
Speaker 1: He's not done anything to secure our own border. Here
Speaker 1: at home, We've had millions and millions of people pour in,
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Americans dead because of fence at all.
Speaker 1: And then, of course we just suffered a national humiliation
Speaker 1: of having China fly a spy balloon year across the
Speaker 1: continental United States. So we have a lot of problems
Speaker 1: accumulating here in our own country that he is neglecting.
Speaker 1: So Desantas has a good can line there for the
Speaker 1: GOP base about why does Biden cares so much about
Speaker 1: Ukrainian borders when he's not doing enough for our own borders.
Speaker 1: It allows him to virtue signals to the Ukraine skeptics
Speaker 1: without actually saying whether he would really do anything differently,
Speaker 1: But one wonders what ground he will actually stake out
Speaker 1: when head to head against a guy and Donald Trump
Speaker 1: who's willing to come out and say things very directly
Speaker 1: like this, first come the tanks, then come the nukes.
Speaker 1: Get this crazy war ended now? So easy to do
Speaker 1: now the politics on Ukraine with the GOP base, they've
Speaker 1: actually become pretty clearcut. Skepticism of further aid is already
Speaker 1: the majority position, and it only seems to be growing.
Speaker 1: But Trump is not out of step with the broader
Speaker 1: public either. Take a look at this. Fifty seven percent
Speaker 1: of Americans, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans, would like
Speaker 1: to see diplomatic negotiations even if they lead to Ukrainian concessions,
Speaker 1: and only thirty two percent oppose those sorts of negotiations. Now,
Speaker 1: the remainders say they're not sure. This is from September two,
Speaker 1: and all indications are that support for the endless blank
Speaker 1: check has only deteriorated from there. Across the board now,
Speaker 1: Trump has been all over the place on his views
Speaker 1: on the Ukraine War since Russia first invaded. At times
Speaker 1: he's pushed for a more hawkish approach, but he seems
Speaker 1: to sniff down the position he now believes will be
Speaker 1: a political winner, and everyone else is being forced to react.
Speaker 1: DeSantis is hoping that the cultural ground he is staked
Speaker 1: down on issues like trans kids, CRT tech, He's hoping
Speaker 1: those will be the driving factors of the GOP primary.
Speaker 1: And listen after Trump thoroughly abandoned many of his populist
Speaker 1: economic positions as president. There is a good chance a
Speaker 1: Republican base has been trained to respond more viscerally to
Speaker 1: these type of cultural fights that DeSantis has engaged in.
Speaker 1: It has certainly served him well as governor thus far.
Speaker 1: But it appears to me that Trump is already doing
Speaker 1: what he does best, shaping the battlefield, forcing everyone else
Speaker 1: to fight on the terrain of his choosing with the
Speaker 1: issues that he wants to focus on. Is Trump's world,
Speaker 1: and for better or worse, we are all still living
Speaker 1: in it. Been surprised by the all right, Emily, what
Speaker 1: are you looking at? All? Right? Well? On Monday, the
Speaker 1: National Endowment for Democracy announced it was parting ways with
Speaker 1: the Global Disinformation Index. Most Americans have never heard of
Speaker 1: those two groups, but they've surely felt their influence. The
Speaker 1: NED is actually mostly funded by the State Department. The
Speaker 1: GDI is a British organization that purports to police disinfo.
Speaker 1: It has recently received hundreds of thousands of American taxpayer
Speaker 1: dollars from the ND and other entities. And that's all
Speaker 1: according to a deep investigation published last week in The
Speaker 1: Washington Examiner. Now I want to give a quick shout
Speaker 1: out to my former intern Gab Kaminski for this deeply
Speaker 1: reported series over at The Examiner, without which the powerbrokers
Speaker 1: involved here would have continued with their quiet grift. Gabe
Speaker 1: series resulted in Microsoft and the NED both severing ties
Speaker 1: with the GDI the Global Disinformation Index amid pressure to
Speaker 1: deplatform alleged disinformation. Microsoft's Zander and the State Department funded
Speaker 1: the GDI. In turn, the GDI developed a blacklist of
Speaker 1: anti establishment conservative websites that, to quote The Examiner, were
Speaker 1: fed to advertisers. GDI's list of the top ten most
Speaker 1: and least risky news outlets is still on its website.
Speaker 1: On the left, literally you can see all the liberal sites,
Speaker 1: and on the right literally you can see all all
Speaker 1: of the conservative sites, including, of course my employer, the
Speaker 1: Federalist now former States Department official Mike Bens explained to
Speaker 1: The Examiner why that GDI exclusion list matters. It's devastating,
Speaker 1: he said. The implementation of ad revenue crushing sentinels like NewsGuard,
Speaker 1: Global Disinformation Index and the like have completely crippled the
Speaker 1: potential of alternative news sources to compete on an even
Speaker 1: economic playing field with approved media outlets like CNN and
Speaker 1: The New York Times. That's absolutely true. No publication is perfect,
Speaker 1: but much of conservative media correctly reported on major stories
Speaker 1: that corporate media, with all of their resources, utterly botched
Speaker 1: in recent years. Sometimes they lied, other times they lacked
Speaker 1: the objectivity to CBN ideology. But they were often wrong,
Speaker 1: and honestly, we were often right. More importantly, their errors
Speaker 1: all served the political establishment, while our accuracies all challenged
Speaker 1: the political establishment. We'll get fact checked and then suppressed
Speaker 1: like crazy for reporting completely accurate information about say Pete
Speaker 1: mooda judge. Well, the New York Times gets Yulitzer Prizes
Speaker 1: for reporting inaccurate information. That's just just how it works,
Speaker 1: so you can understand why the state Department and a
Speaker 1: powerful corporation like Microsoft might turn to a group like GDI. Basically,
Speaker 1: taxpayer money was used to misinform taxpayers and disempower critics
Speaker 1: of the government. This helped major corporations feel better about
Speaker 1: their advertisements and effectively defunded anti establishment conservatives who like
Speaker 1: it or not. We're reporting information much closer to the
Speaker 1: truth on several major stories. Remember, the disinformation label is
Speaker 1: not and will not only be used to silence the right.
Speaker 1: Matt Tayebi's reporting on Hamilton sixty eight showed clearly that
Speaker 1: powerful people were happy to categorize leftist journalism as the
Speaker 1: product of Russian influence operations so long as it threatened elites.
Speaker 1: People are largely familiar with the corporate media media's failures
Speaker 1: on twenty sixteen, Hunter Biden, Russiagate, and much more. Many
Speaker 1: understand our elites are eagerly flinging charges of disinformation at
Speaker 1: their opponents to shut them down. But it's important we
Speaker 1: realize they are laundering the credibility of our government and
Speaker 1: using public money to undermine the free press. They are
Speaker 1: intentionally using your money to empower journalists who are lying
Speaker 1: to you. And GDI is not alone. Other groups are
Speaker 1: engaged in similar efforts, and other corporations are taking debate.
Speaker 1: The entire operation is complex and tangled. It's full of
Speaker 1: these alphabet soup organizations, powerful boards, and long money trails.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is that the serious issue of disinformation,
Speaker 1: and it is a serious issue, is being weaponized to
Speaker 1: silence critics of corrupt elites, and it's happening right under
Speaker 1: our noses. Wow, that list National political reporter Dave Weigel
Speaker 1: has been on the ground in a lot of the
Speaker 1: early primary states, tracking in particular the Republican primary field,
Speaker 1: and he joins us now from some ofph Welcome Dave,
Speaker 1: good to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: so we covered last week and I know you've been
Speaker 1: eleve in person with Nicki Haley, one of the first
Speaker 1: to jump into the race against Alan Trump. Let's gott
Speaker 1: and put your piece up on the screen so people
Speaker 1: can get a sense of what you're writing over there.
Speaker 1: You say, Nicki Haley's pitch conservative policies minus the trumpy chaos, which,
Speaker 1: in a sense, it's kind of impressive that you're able
Speaker 1: to define Nicky Haley's pitch, because I'm not sure she
Speaker 1: has done that well defining her own pitch in multiple
Speaker 1: media appearances. Yeah, it was a matter of listening to
Speaker 1: the public facing part of her campaign. The interviews she
Speaker 1: selected to do. She didn't do gaggles as much as
Speaker 1: she kind of pulled a sized local media and the
Speaker 1: speeches she gave. The town hall question she took, she
Speaker 1: had this format. Starting in Charleston. She had a longer
Speaker 1: speech that laid out everything. This is where she introduced,
Speaker 1: I'd say, is it fair to say the most the
Speaker 1: best known part of her campaigns so far is this
Speaker 1: idea of making every politician over seventy five take a
Speaker 1: mental acuity test. Right, That was where she launched that
Speaker 1: got applause in New Hampshire. The rest of it was
Speaker 1: the sort of a rundown of things that are wrong
Speaker 1: with America and how with young, new generation leadership we
Speaker 1: can fix it. Fairly light on detail and especially the
Speaker 1: most interesting back and forth I saw was in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire where a teacher who was pretty skeptical Hailey to
Speaker 1: start with, asked what she would do to end the
Speaker 1: harassment of teachers, the context being Florida to Santus all that,
Speaker 1: and Haley's answer was, well, the people don't hate teachers,
Speaker 1: they hate your school board. And then she kind of
Speaker 1: gave her boiler plate ants about that and start talking
Speaker 1: about school of choice. So so far she has not
Speaker 1: been pushed off this box of issues that she prepared
Speaker 1: to run on in eighties. Which is which is? Which
Speaker 1: is a skill? I mean sometimes remember Joe Biden to
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, his very first year he was
Speaker 1: a candidate with my colleague Ben Smith. That's where he
Speaker 1: calls Obama articulate. She didn't do that. She didn't make
Speaker 1: him in a a state in the first week, but she
Speaker 1: didn't lay a lot of a lot of substance out
Speaker 1: about how she would govern well and just zooming in
Speaker 1: on the headline itself, just those two words conservative policies
Speaker 1: and as you mentioned, Dave, that box of issues Nicki
Speaker 1: Haley is planning to run on. That in and of
Speaker 1: itself is a huge question. You know, Nikki Haley pivoting
Speaker 1: to school choice, which is a sort of old conservative
Speaker 1: issue and an old conservative favorite, a very sweet spot,
Speaker 1: a comfort spot for so many conservatives. So can you
Speaker 1: just tell us more about what that box of issues
Speaker 1: looks like. Haley herself has come out and disagreed with
Speaker 1: a lot of populist economic policies Republicans like JD. Vance
Speaker 1: or Donald Trump themselves have proposed. Is she being aggressive
Speaker 1: of in rebutting those policies off the bat, or is
Speaker 1: she more just trying to present the issues that she
Speaker 1: does want to run on. Basically, what does that box
Speaker 1: look like? I'd say where she's distinguished herself most from
Speaker 1: the field and the field at this point is her
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and a couple other people who are not
Speaker 1: very well known. Is being very supportive of US support
Speaker 1: for the war Inine for Ukraine's defense against Russian invasion.
Speaker 1: She brought that up kind of unbidden. She said that
Speaker 1: we didn't need a blank jack, but we need the
Speaker 1: support them. We need to win that war. It was
Speaker 1: a fight for freedom. I thought that that was interesting
Speaker 1: because part of the reason Haley is relevant is that
Speaker 1: there are people running for president. There are people one
Speaker 1: art president who don't have great donor access. She has
Speaker 1: terrific access to donor that she's built up for years,
Speaker 1: especially since leaving the UN in twenty nineteen. I mean
Speaker 1: Neuram Madleson as a fan like the conservative donor network
Speaker 1: that doesn't like Donald Trump and that maybe has a
Speaker 1: couple of questions about the answers of lictability, they love her,
Speaker 1: and so she's very in line with that sort of
Speaker 1: that that way of the Republican Party that the peace
Speaker 1: through strength but also occasionally were peace through proxy wars.
Speaker 1: That part of the party she's very comfortable with. And
Speaker 1: the rest of the issues. I'm not trying to about
Speaker 1: trying to diminish what she's running out just it's just
Speaker 1: when when you listen to it, there are candidates talking
Speaker 1: about specific ways to you know, example, cut the budgeter,
Speaker 1: get to a balanced budget, get to an episode she has.
Speaker 1: She talked a little bit about about how we need
Speaker 1: to end wasteful spending, but not what. And I try
Speaker 1: to list a lot of Republicans. You know, the stimulus
Speaker 1: bills happened under Trump, under Biden, it's very easy to
Speaker 1: say Washington's been spending too much. Well, I mean, we
Speaker 1: saw Washington spend a lot, but it's not tooking head anymore.
Speaker 1: We're not seeing more stimulus spending. Now. You didn't get
Speaker 1: very in the weeds about what it was going to do.
Speaker 1: It was. It really was a lot about changing the person.
Speaker 1: Reminds you of something that Obama said, and he was
Speaker 1: running in two thousand and eight. You know, he would
Speaker 1: ask he'd be asked, why is the world going to
Speaker 1: look at this differently if if you're her president? He said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm I represent the change you need to say look
Speaker 1: at me. But that's what he maan I'd be the
Speaker 1: first black president. A lot of this is I am
Speaker 1: I am a Generation X woman of color who would
Speaker 1: be president who wins every fight that she's in. So
Speaker 1: you just give me the ball and let me run
Speaker 1: with it. Trust me, it's a lot more of I
Speaker 1: have the character and the experience for the job. Less.
Speaker 1: I'm going to pick an issue and distinguish myself with
Speaker 1: the exception of Ukraine, where you know, she's not doing
Speaker 1: any of what Trump's doing and in saying that we
Speaker 1: should have peace negotiations right negotiations right now or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I noted that on Ukraine in terms
Speaker 1: of a core difference. And the other issue that Trump
Speaker 1: seems to want to make central to the campaign is
Speaker 1: a defensive social security and who's on what side was that?
Speaker 1: And Haley has also come out and said she still
Speaker 1: believes we should take a look at entitlements. I mean
Speaker 1: basically every other Republication who don't have it yet. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know that's always their line, Dave, That's always It
Speaker 1: still means cuts ultimately, and basically every Republican who Trump
Speaker 1: is going to be up against either is currently like
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley or like Mike Pence who still says like
Speaker 1: we should privatize it out on the record saying there
Speaker 1: should be cuts, or they have like Ronda Santis a
Speaker 1: long track record of backing, for example, Paul Ryan's plan
Speaker 1: on Medicare and other cuts to social security. Who are
Speaker 1: going to have to navigate where they stand on those
Speaker 1: issues today with Nicki Haley, I mean, it is funny because,
Speaker 1: like you said, a lot of what she's leaning into
Speaker 1: here is bio. It's like born in a small town
Speaker 1: and immigrant experience and her age. We can all debate
Speaker 1: whether she's quote unquote prime age, but let's not do that.
Speaker 1: That doesn't go well from shows with one guy on
Speaker 1: a panel. You're an independent media, You're good, Dave. But
Speaker 1: it is funny because conservatives do love their identity politics
Speaker 1: ultimately here as well, even as she insists like, oh,
Speaker 1: I hate identity politics, but here's ten pieces of my
Speaker 1: bio that are the reasons that you should vote for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I was circling that point. But that's how
Speaker 1: she starts every set of remarks, and she talks about
Speaker 1: a family that was neither black nor white, that you
Speaker 1: can't tell her this is a racist country. When she
Speaker 1: was elected to the first non white female governor of
Speaker 1: the state until in twenty ten. That's a big part
Speaker 1: of the appeal to and the Champian has actually done
Speaker 1: less than I thought it could have, because every time,
Speaker 1: every time a non white Republican gets ahead of steam,
Speaker 1: you start to see this panicky criticism from people liberals,
Speaker 1: i'd say more than on the left, that are just
Speaker 1: annoyed that she is saying conservative things. But she should
Speaker 1: be on our team. So you saw this. I think
Speaker 1: you saw, I think more less offensively from some of
Speaker 1: the AAAAPI groups that exist that are mostly democratic. You
Speaker 1: saw from pundits that have said silly things about her.
Speaker 1: She's not made that a huge part of her Kennon.
Speaker 1: She's definitely kind of dunked on people when she's had
Speaker 1: the chance to, but she's not. You made the point
Speaker 1: about social Security. Yeah, Pence has been stuck out much
Speaker 1: further on that issue than he has. He is actually
Speaker 1: talked specifically about going back to what he voted for
Speaker 1: as a congressman or reported because it didn't go to
Speaker 1: vote of the kind of Bush design private accounts, so
Speaker 1: reform of social Security. He's into that, but not gotten
Speaker 1: specific I honestly just as a not as a theater critic,
Speaker 1: as somebody who's covered this a lot, and that's just
Speaker 1: engaging performances. It makes sense for me at the moment
Speaker 1: because you have in polling in early states and nationally
Speaker 1: Donald Trump at forty percent or so, a little bit higher,
Speaker 1: a little bit lower. It is not bad to be
Speaker 1: the Republican who a lot of Republicans consider a strong
Speaker 1: second choice or a strong potential vice president. That hasn't
Speaker 1: happened yet. Via that conversation, but she's not saying anything
Speaker 1: that defends any fact to the party, with the exception
Speaker 1: of Ukraine stuff. Where she is I wouldn't say out
Speaker 1: on a limb. But if you look at the Pew
Speaker 1: pole and look at the nose AP sorry AP polling
Speaker 1: most recently that said, most Republicans just want to stop
Speaker 1: the funding. They don't want this. Apart from that, it
Speaker 1: is there is no faction the party that she's willing
Speaker 1: to offend. It's even one thing. My colleague Shelby taught
Speaker 1: that noticed and I noticed it, and I asked her
Speaker 1: in a double checks that pick. In Iowa, she never
Speaker 1: talks about the Confederate flag takedown in twenty fifteen. She
Speaker 1: talks very generally about the shooting at Mother Emmanuel Church.
Speaker 1: These are events. Had she run for president in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty or twenty sixteen that she decided to run off
Speaker 1: that those would have been I think much more central
Speaker 1: in the campaign. She doesn't talk about them now. I
Speaker 1: think she's still kind of finding about finding her way
Speaker 1: into how do we discuss race and gun violence and
Speaker 1: things that do not bring up this this moment where
Speaker 1: a lot of where some conservatives, I don't think most
Speaker 1: would say she did she buckle to the left wing pressure.
Speaker 1: She just hasn't. By the conversation, I was struck one
Speaker 1: she got a question to answer about the Second Amendment.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I'm not ready for speeches. For
Speaker 1: some politicians would have said, well, actually, as governor, I
Speaker 1: presided over this, this shooting that you heard about. Tim
Speaker 1: Kane doesn't like a lot of governors who have shooting
Speaker 1: in their backyard do this. He didn't mention it at all.
Speaker 1: He kind of talk went back generally to why she
Speaker 1: supports the Second Amendment. So it's interesting that probably the
Speaker 1: most famous thing about her before she started running for
Speaker 1: president not really part of the mix when she's she's
Speaker 1: giving speeches. And Dave, you also have a piece of
Speaker 1: about New Hampshire Governor Chris Sunu let's put that up
Speaker 1: on the screen. You say he could carry the moderate
Speaker 1: banner in twenty twenty four. First of all, this is
Speaker 1: a guy who's very popular in New Hampshire, and obviously
Speaker 1: New Hampshire is an important early state. I think he
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't have as much national name recognition. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: do you think that Not to ask this in like
Speaker 1: a mean way, but do you think that anybody in
Speaker 1: this race really matters other than Donald Trump and nikkiy Haley?
Speaker 1: I think Ran DeSantis will matter and everyone else, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I met Ron santas Donald chart of the question, because
Speaker 1: the only two running right now this matters. I think
Speaker 1: that the rest of the field at the moment, Like
Speaker 1: I was saying with Haley, it's good for her to
Speaker 1: be a popular second choice or Republican to go in
Speaker 1: the booth and say, well, Biden was this relied Democrats
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, Like, well, he's my second or third choice.
Speaker 1: But I like Obama. I like him, fine, whatever. I
Speaker 1: think no one else in the field has enough support
Speaker 1: from rank and file Republican voters to be relevant yet,
Speaker 1: and they are. If you look at quinip X pulling
Speaker 1: this week is pretty good. Illustration to this. You know,
Speaker 1: Trump leads DeSantis by six points. If you ask people
Speaker 1: about everyone who might run, it's two points. If you
Speaker 1: ask about just them and Haley, and everyone who's not
Speaker 1: a Trump voter in the Republican Party wants somebody else
Speaker 1: once may be DeSantis. That's also I was struck in
Speaker 1: that bowl. Moderates Mond Republicans prefer DeSantis, which tells you,
Speaker 1: I think they're the way we in the media kind
Speaker 1: of compromentalize people. It's usually accurate, but Desantras is getting
Speaker 1: momented by doing things that the party's I think hardest
Speaker 1: right faction wants to do, really taking on the left,
Speaker 1: Marxian institutions in academia, business, in the media, all of that.
Speaker 1: And but for moderate it's just, well, he's not Trump
Speaker 1: and he's not to do silly things and loses an election.
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, yeah, I'm not seeing what I
Speaker 1: saw on twenty nineteen, which was franked a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to cover, which is a lot of Democrats really
Speaker 1: thinking one the elector was a shoe in whoever whoever
Speaker 1: they nominated, which I mean, by the end they didn't
Speaker 1: think that, but the start of a campaign they thought,
Speaker 1: surely anyone can beat Trump. And they also had policy asks.
Speaker 1: They were, who are you going to take this stance
Speaker 1: on Medicare for all? Are you going to take the
Speaker 1: stands on jobs guarantee? That's not really happened in this
Speaker 1: race yet. And so Snunu, when I talked to him,
Speaker 1: he talked to a lot of people. He doesn't use
Speaker 1: the phrase monitor. He just thinks there's a different version
Speaker 1: of publican party that doesn't care about culture war stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to that's for him, him dismissing it
Speaker 1: than me. Uh, and that what people want is a
Speaker 1: competent government that's smaller, they cut spending, that's responsive to them,
Speaker 1: stay away from the fights with Disney, things like that.
Speaker 1: But not a huge difference in talking to him. I
Speaker 1: didn't imagine he to point radically different people to like
Speaker 1: the under secretaries of Education than Ron DeSantis would. I
Speaker 1: think he just he's less the not knock on Sunu,
Speaker 1: but kind of the rep so has is. He's just
Speaker 1: a naturally talented politician who doesn't get very deep into
Speaker 1: the details, doesn't try to dig in and have the party.
Speaker 1: He doesn't try dis mantle democratic power the way that
Speaker 1: DeSantis does. So if you're paying close attention to the
Speaker 1: Desantas model is working terrifically. I mean, it's it's probably
Speaker 1: the most progress the governor has made in undermining the
Speaker 1: opposition party since since Scott Walker. Probably more than that.
Speaker 1: That's not that the new way sow is just in
Speaker 1: a very George H. W. Bush way. I'm a confident
Speaker 1: guy who you can get along with, and I'd run
Speaker 1: the government officially unlike these these goofy Democrats. That's more
Speaker 1: than a policy difference. That has been the dispute inside
Speaker 1: the party. What we lose some voters if we come
Speaker 1: off as kind of mean and we're kind of obsessed
Speaker 1: with Fox News things. We all agree that we can
Speaker 1: just run as like Biden screwed things up. That's there's
Speaker 1: a lot more I think concord agreement inside this public conversation.
Speaker 1: Then you'd think from how many people are just trashing
Speaker 1: Trump whenever they get interesting? Yeah, I mean, to me,
Speaker 1: the biggest relevance for Sununu is the fact that he
Speaker 1: does have high popularity in New Hampshire, probably do well there,
Speaker 1: and you know if he does run in a primary,
Speaker 1: and that could serve as a block to someone like
Speaker 1: DeSantis or another Republican who's trying to gain some early
Speaker 1: momentum in some of those early states. Dave, great to
Speaker 1: have you, welcome and thank you so much. Congrats on
Speaker 1: the new job over at Semaphore. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: fun independent media. Let's go, let's do it. And thank
Speaker 1: you guys for watching. Thank you to the wonderful Emily
Speaker 1: for sitting in for soccer. Just a reminder, no counterpoints
Speaker 1: this week because Ryan is also out. Do you want
Speaker 1: to know where Ryan is viewers. He's in Mexico at
Speaker 1: a four day fish concert. I didn't even know I
Speaker 1: that's hilarious. Yeah, it's peak, it's peak, Ryan Grove. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of layers to this man. Anyway, Sacer will
Speaker 1: be back here on Thursday, at least that is the plan,
Speaker 1: so I will see you