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Speaker 1: Joining us now is Dave Smith.
Speaker 3: He's hot off of a major debate Royal the Internet,
Speaker 3: host of the Part of the Problem podcast, and more importantly,
Speaker 3: good friend.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you, Dave. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4: Man, good to see you too, Man. You thank you
Speaker 4: both for having me back.
Speaker 1: On absolutely there.
Speaker 3: I mean, Dave, look, we're preaching to each other, but
Speaker 3: it's still satisfying, and we need to sit here and
Speaker 3: revel a little bit and some of the fallout from
Speaker 3: your Douglas Murray debate. I mean, I think there are
Speaker 3: many parts of it, the unquote expert concern trolling from Douglas.
Speaker 3: There was the general pomposity, But I mean what really
Speaker 3: struck a nerve and what the pro Israel folks really
Speaker 3: hung onto in how you allegedly were destroyed was you've
Speaker 3: never been to Israel.
Speaker 1: A very lived experience argument.
Speaker 3: And so Will wanted you to respond to a clip
Speaker 3: that I know you've surfaced and have seen of Douglas
Speaker 3: Murray talking about lived experience to you, but then previously
Speaker 3: shouting down the idea of lived experience as legitimate.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen. We're going to get a reaction.
Speaker 5: Have you been to the crossing Points? I really resent
Speaker 5: that form of argumentation. When were you last there at all?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 5: I really resent it. You should at least do the
Speaker 5: courtesy of visiting it. This is not an attractive invitation.
Speaker 5: I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly
Speaker 5: if you spend a career talking about something. I have
Speaker 5: the right to talk about whatever the hell I want
Speaker 5: and no one's going to stop me or try to
Speaker 5: intimidate me. And I think that if I said to
Speaker 5: somebody else the other way around, it would be equally reprehensible.
Speaker 5: I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk
Speaker 5: about a country, even in passing un as I've.
Speaker 6: At least been there.
Speaker 5: If I said, shut up, you have no right to
Speaker 5: criticize anything that Douglas Murray says, because hang on, you're
Speaker 5: talking about crossing points and not only have you never
Speaker 5: been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel,
Speaker 5: but you never even been to the region. Okay, it's
Speaker 5: not an exact comparison, but seriously, is that a reasonable
Speaker 5: form of argument. No, in that case, nobody can talk
Speaker 5: about anything. We might as well pack up, go home
Speaker 5: and isolate ourselves. If you're insisting that you're an expert
Speaker 5: of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert but
Speaker 5: still talking about it, if you've never seen any of
Speaker 5: this going on. I mean, there are some people who've
Speaker 5: written about them. I mean, there are people whove written
Speaker 5: about the Holocausts who didn't experience the Holocaust and have
Speaker 5: written about it better than people who did. But that
Speaker 5: is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount
Speaker 5: of time talking about an issue in a region you
Speaker 5: haven't even had the courtesy to visit. Whilst developing all
Speaker 5: of these views about it. This idea that the lived
Speaker 5: experience has to triumph over everything else is not always correct.
Speaker 5: Should at least know what it is, what the territory is,
Speaker 5: what the situation.
Speaker 6: Is in the regions.
Speaker 5: There's an irony to this, but let's skate over the irony.
Speaker 1: Dave.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to subject to you to that again, but
Speaker 3: you got to I mean, what's it like, you know,
Speaker 3: on the other side of nearly three hours of this
Speaker 3: and now seeing some of this past lived experience argumentation
Speaker 3: from him.
Speaker 4: Well, I wish that guy was there at the debate.
Speaker 4: He did a better job than I did. It's funny.
Speaker 4: So once I saw this, you know, it's because I
Speaker 4: brought up my first thing was like, you've never been
Speaker 4: in Nazi Germany, but you can still have an opinion
Speaker 4: about that. And then I was like, oh, he made
Speaker 4: the same point. He made it better than me. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, like, yeah, exactly a lot of people have
Speaker 4: written about it and explained it better than people who
Speaker 4: actually lived through it. I mean, look, it's the the
Speaker 4: expert thing and the have you ever been to the region,
Speaker 4: Like as I said on the show, I go these
Speaker 4: are just non arguments like Objectively speaking, you don't win
Speaker 4: points in a debate for saying this, Like if you
Speaker 4: if you were to take the most generous interpretation of
Speaker 4: his point there and which you know, and it's not
Speaker 4: just the obvious logical fallacy that it is like an
Speaker 4: appeal to authority, but if you were to take the
Speaker 4: most generous interpretation would be like, Okay, it's important to
Speaker 4: know what you're talking about, and you can gain insights
Speaker 4: into something by traveling there and seeing it firsthand. Now
Speaker 4: I wouldn't disagree with either of those claims, but the
Speaker 4: point is that then you got to demonstrate that, like, Okay,
Speaker 4: if you have a level of expertise that I don't have,
Speaker 4: and you have insights because you've been there that I
Speaker 4: don't have, then okay, let's have the debate and that
Speaker 4: should show you know I said the other day it
Speaker 4: was kind of like it was almost like if you're
Speaker 4: like a fighter, like you're a UFC fighter or something,
Speaker 4: and so you agree to fight someone else and you're
Speaker 4: like at Madison Square Garden the fight. You know, you
Speaker 4: get introduced, you're about to fight, and like I put
Speaker 4: up my hands like okay, let's fight, and then the
Speaker 4: other guy puts his hands down and goes, I'm such
Speaker 4: a better fighter than you. I'm just so much better
Speaker 4: at fighting, you know, yeah, fight, so come show me,
Speaker 4: you know, and then the rate, it's just all these
Speaker 4: like Look, it became clear when I was there that
Speaker 4: Douglas Murray came to do anything but debate me, you know,
Speaker 4: Like in my mind I was like, Oh, we're going
Speaker 4: to debate Ukraine and Israel. And then it was like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's the opposite. And you know, I did resent, you know,
Speaker 4: because on the whole topic of like being an expert,
Speaker 4: I do think it's important, and I think it's lost
Speaker 4: on someone like the casual viewers, because people will think
Speaker 4: they'll be like, yeah, Dave's an expert on this, and
Speaker 4: I'm not. And I was quite comfortable saying that there,
Speaker 4: like I'm not. I'm a commentator. I'm a stand up comedian,
Speaker 4: you know. But again, Douglas, as you could see in
Speaker 4: that clip, he doesn't really believe any of the things
Speaker 4: he's saying. That's right, He's Look, if you really had
Speaker 4: a pro like commentators who aren't experts permeate the media
Speaker 4: and not just like the new media, like the old
Speaker 4: legacy media, but do you think Chris Matthews is an
Speaker 4: expert on Israel Palestine?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 4: Does does Does Douglas Murray have a problem with Bill
Speaker 4: Maher having a show? Does he have a problem with
Speaker 4: Dave Rubin having a show. By the way, I'll put
Speaker 4: my expertise up against those guys any day. And so
Speaker 4: it's like, you don't really mean this, you don't really
Speaker 4: have an issue. He didn't have an issue with Coleman
Speaker 4: Hughes going on Rogan Show and talking about Israel.
Speaker 6: He's not an expert and he got everything wrong when
Speaker 6: he was on there.
Speaker 4: His issue is that there's people who disagree with Israel
Speaker 4: coming on. His issue isn't with the level of experts
Speaker 4: any of these people.
Speaker 2: And I think it's actually quite revealing in my opinion.
Speaker 7: Two things I want to say.
Speaker 2: Number One, what I find so troubling about that line
Speaker 2: of argumentation is I'm a US taxpayer, We're all US taxpayers.
Speaker 2: Our money is going to fund this would consider genocidal
Speaker 2: onslaught in Gaza. I don't get to have an opinion
Speaker 2: because I haven't been to the crossings.
Speaker 7: Like get out of.
Speaker 2: Here with that, Like be for real about what you're
Speaker 2: actually suggesting here, and it's actually very common tactic. You
Speaker 2: hear it from a lot of like you people who
Speaker 2: are describing themselves as like liberal Zionists. Well, it's complicated.
Speaker 2: You just don't understand, and it's a way to completely
Speaker 2: shut people down from engaging with this debate at all
Speaker 2: because they feel like, oh, if I don't have a
Speaker 2: PhD in all every in and out of this history,
Speaker 2: which you don't know much more about, and you have
Speaker 2: the mind to hold all those facts in your heads
Speaker 2: much more so than I do. But you feel like,
Speaker 2: if I don't know every single fact that has ever
Speaker 2: happened in what bb Netna who said in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: in this speech or whatever, then I don't get to
Speaker 2: have an opinion wrong, wrong, This is a democracy. I
Speaker 2: get to have an opinion about my money going to
Speaker 2: drop these bombs on children and women and aid workers
Speaker 2: and hospitals and mosques and level this whole place and
Speaker 2: set up a situation where now Trump is like, we're
Speaker 2: going to take get over.
Speaker 7: So that's number one. Number two.
Speaker 2: I think it's actually very revealing that in your language,
Speaker 2: he came here wanting to avoid a debate with you,
Speaker 2: because there is no debate at this point.
Speaker 7: There is no debate.
Speaker 2: Look at the way that I mean, the public who
Speaker 2: is consuming this through a very biased media media outlets
Speaker 2: with you know, very slanted coverage, how much they have
Speaker 2: turned on Israel, how much their sympathies have changed.
Speaker 7: The only group that still has a.
Speaker 2: Majority support of more sympathy for Israel or Palestine is
Speaker 2: like basically older Republicans. Every other demographic group has shifted.
Speaker 2: So I think to me, the hollowness and the resorting
Speaker 2: to effectively rhetorical tricks to try to come out on top,
Speaker 2: to me, it's just emblematic of the fact that if
Speaker 2: you're out there arguing like, oh, Israel isn't blocking eight
Speaker 2: at this point, I mean, you're just that's a ridiculous
Speaker 2: that's a ridiculous stance to try to claim. So instead
Speaker 2: you have to go to like, oh, well, you haven't
Speaker 2: even been to the crossings and personally inspected all the
Speaker 2: goods that are coming in get out of here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that was yeah, I completely agree, And that
Speaker 4: was one of the things that was infuriating about it,
Speaker 4: because he makes this this accusation to me that I
Speaker 4: claim to be an expert, but then I have kind
Speaker 4: of like this like get out of jail free card
Speaker 4: while I go, oh, I'm just a comedian or whatever,
Speaker 4: And that's just both of those are not true. Like
Speaker 4: I never do either of those. I never claimed to
Speaker 4: be an expert. And you guys, I mean, you guys
Speaker 4: have seen all my stuff, but you guys have seen
Speaker 4: enough of my content. Has there ever been a time
Speaker 4: once where like I made a point and then someone
Speaker 4: countered the point and I went, well, I'm just a comedian,
Speaker 4: so I do that.
Speaker 3: I actually know the debate that you did for over
Speaker 3: two hours, you didn't do that once.
Speaker 1: I can literally attest to that personally.
Speaker 6: And I smoked Dennis Prager in that.
Speaker 1: Debate at least, but you definitely did.
Speaker 4: I mean, at least he came to debate though, you know,
Speaker 4: like at least we actually debated the issues. So the
Speaker 4: thing that was so infuriing is like Douglas Murray is
Speaker 4: accused me of using this get at like this escape patch.
Speaker 4: You know, oh, I'm just a comedian. But then he
Speaker 4: was the only one who did that through every single point,
Speaker 4: like every time it came to, oh, we're actually talking
Speaker 4: about the issue. If like the most pedantic semantic if
Speaker 4: I went, we've been at war for twenty There was
Speaker 4: one point where he literally goes, I said, we've been
Speaker 4: at war, you know, for the last twenty five years,
Speaker 4: and he goes, you have not been at war and
Speaker 4: I went, I went, oh, because it's not a war here.
Speaker 4: I go, yeah, we're picking on third world country. But
Speaker 4: and then he goes into he said, well, in Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: you were there to take out al Qaeda, and I
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, maybe that sums up the war through
Speaker 4: the end of two thousand and one, but after that
Speaker 4: it was a twenty year regime changed war against the Taliban.
Speaker 4: And then his next line is that's because you got
Speaker 4: sucked into war. And it's like, wait, so I we
Speaker 4: just did this whole thing just to come back to
Speaker 4: you saying the same thing that you had. And I
Speaker 4: mean it would be like I'd say, okay. So when
Speaker 4: we were talking about Ukraine, at one point, I go,
Speaker 4: I go, well, look, Joe Biden's CIA director wrote the
Speaker 4: net means net memo. He was the CIA director for
Speaker 4: all four years of Joe Biden's administration, and he's the
Speaker 4: one who told you that this is what caused the war.
Speaker 4: Like he and then I said, the head of NATO
Speaker 4: said the same thing that he sent a draft treaty.
Speaker 4: And then his response to that is the warf wasn't
Speaker 4: about Ukrainian entry to NATO. And you're like, I'm just
Speaker 4: objectively speaking, like I look, maybe there's a counter to
Speaker 4: my point there, but he didn't offer it.
Speaker 6: He just asserted it wasn't.
Speaker 4: And then when I make the point about you know,
Speaker 4: when we were talking about the warren Libya, he goes, well,
Speaker 4: that was a humanitarian intervention. They thought he was going
Speaker 4: to go genocidal, And I was like, well, that's kind
Speaker 4: of interesting because didn't. For Star General Wesley Clark claimed
Speaker 4: that he had already seen the plans ten years earlier,
Speaker 4: when no one was claiming it was about to go genocidal.
Speaker 4: Now maybe there's a counter to that, maybe there's an
Speaker 4: answer to like you know, well, yes he did say that,
Speaker 4: but those plans were scrapped and then it really was
Speaker 4: a humanitarian Like maybe there's a count, but he just goes,
Speaker 4: you can't say the name Wolfowitz or people might hate
Speaker 4: out with Jews, Like what what is it so to
Speaker 4: accuse me of like hiding behind being a comedian When
Speaker 4: you're unwilling to debate any of the topics. And and
Speaker 4: by the way, for the record, which I probably should
Speaker 4: have said at the time, but you know, I would
Speaker 4: argue that, you know, if he's gonna say that, like
Speaker 4: me pointing out that Paul Wolfwood's had these war plans,
Speaker 4: is going to lead to anti Semitism, I would say
Speaker 4: that saying you're not allowed to say that is going
Speaker 4: to lead to a lot more anti semitism, like to
Speaker 4: say that, like you're not allowed to criticize Jewish people,
Speaker 4: like I don't know if you've ever listened to any
Speaker 4: other people who don't like Jews very much, but that's
Speaker 4: a huge part of their beef.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and like they.
Speaker 4: Kind of have a point on that front. I don't
Speaker 4: think they're correct to like hate Jews, but they got
Speaker 4: a good point on that, Like it shouldn't be nobody
Speaker 4: who has that type of power should ever be absolved
Speaker 4: from criticism.
Speaker 6: It's just it's absurd.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right, Yeah, his idea is it was something
Speaker 3: I've never even heard this level of argumentation, which was
Speaker 3: that Wolfowitz was like some low level bureaucrat. It's like, dude,
Speaker 3: read a fucking book, like September twelfth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: he's at the table with George W.
Speaker 1: Bush. He's the first guy to mention Iraq this is
Speaker 1: this is a fact. But whatever. I don't even need
Speaker 1: to get more into that.
Speaker 3: You know, it is important though for us to see
Speaker 3: where Douglas still has a lot of friends in power.
Speaker 3: Let's go and put this one up there on the screen,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, literally the day after your debate truth doubt.
Speaker 1: Let's can we put that up there please?
Speaker 3: Yeah, my friend Douglas Murray just released a new book,
Speaker 3: My Friend, on Democracies and death cults. It's quickly becoming
Speaker 3: a best seller based on his first hand reporting quote reporting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could call it that.
Speaker 3: Documents the barbarity of Hamas's brutal attack on Israel in
Speaker 3: October seventh and Israel's heroic response. So I mean, Dave,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is something you know, you've delved on
Speaker 3: a little bit in the past. But you know, some
Speaker 3: of your past discussion just with the Trump administration and
Speaker 3: their current posture on Israel. And we'll get to the
Speaker 3: deportations in a little bit, But what was it like
Speaker 3: to see Trump, you know, just put this book out
Speaker 3: like that with. Obviously, you know, it's not his own behest.
Speaker 3: It's either the donor class or somebody around him. But
Speaker 3: if they never drafted that for Hi, Yeah, somebody drafted
Speaker 3: it for him, but it was still enough, somebody powerful
Speaker 3: enough to put that out there, kind of as a
Speaker 3: counter signal to the moments after your debate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, I don't have any more insight
Speaker 4: than what you guys have. I'd be speculating about what
Speaker 4: it is. I just it was amusing to me. I
Speaker 4: don't know, it's like I feel, you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of people were telling me, but you know, for for
Speaker 4: quite a while, but I hear, like, you know, the
Speaker 4: zionis on Twitter being like like Douglas Murray is the
Speaker 4: guy you got a debate because he'll smoke you, and
Speaker 4: like after the debate, I'm like, this is the best
Speaker 4: guy you guys got, Like who can't even argue the topic? Okay,
Speaker 4: but I did think it was I don't know, I
Speaker 4: just thought it was kind of amusing. But look, it's
Speaker 4: the it's the worst thing about Donald Trump, you know,
Speaker 4: it's just the worst quality about him.
Speaker 6: It was true in his first four years and it's
Speaker 6: true this term too.
Speaker 4: The absolute worst thing about him is that he is
Speaker 4: just terrible on the issue of Israel and Palestine. And
Speaker 4: then that of course undercuts everything else that could be
Speaker 4: good about the Trump administration, and that you just can't
Speaker 4: be America first while being more loyal to a foreign
Speaker 4: country than to your own. And it's never, I mean,
Speaker 4: it's never been so blatant as it is right now.
Speaker 4: You know, coming off the last twenty five years of
Speaker 4: terror wars on behalf of Israel, every last one of
Speaker 4: them being a disaster, every last one of them. We
Speaker 4: were sold based off lives, every one of them. You know,
Speaker 4: none of them can even defend them at this point.
Speaker 4: I remember when my good friend you guys have had
Speaker 4: on the show, Scott Horton, debated Bill Kristall, and he goes,
Speaker 4: when was the last war or someone in the crowd asked,
Speaker 4: what was the last war you could justify? And I
Speaker 4: think I can't remember. I think you started talking about
Speaker 4: the Balkans or something like that. Like even Bill Crystal
Speaker 4: can't pretend to justify one of these interventions over the
Speaker 4: last twenty five years. And now right now we're flirting,
Speaker 4: we're killing people in the poorest country in the Middle East.
Speaker 4: In Yemen, we're flirting with a war with Iran. And
Speaker 4: it is so obvious that this is that neither of
Speaker 4: these countries are any threat to US. No one's even
Speaker 4: pretending there isn't even like the al Qaeda argument. They
Speaker 4: don't even have like the Saddam Hussein was in on
Speaker 4: nine to eleven and he's got nukes and he's going
Speaker 4: to pass them.
Speaker 6: Off to alca.
Speaker 4: No one's even presenting an argument that this could be
Speaker 4: a risk to the United States of America.
Speaker 6: It's just simply like, oh.
Speaker 4: Well, people are upset about what Israel's doing, so we're
Speaker 4: going to go bomb them.
Speaker 2: That's obviously all horrendous. You also have now a mass
Speaker 2: crackdown on dissent at home. Trump obviously positioned himself as
Speaker 2: some free speech champion in the campaign, and you know
Speaker 2: the way that the tools of the state have been
Speaker 2: used against student protesters, have been used against universities to
Speaker 2: force the expulsion of certain professors, certain students who engage
Speaker 2: in wrong think. We can put the latest images up
Speaker 2: on the screen here of a Columbia student who has
Speaker 2: gone out or this is d one, guys that we
Speaker 2: can put up on the screen. This is a Columbia
Speaker 2: student who they arrested during a visit to the immigration
Speaker 2: office in Vermont. He's a Palestinian. His name is Mosa Madowi.
Speaker 2: There's a picture of him, and you know, they throw
Speaker 2: around these words like, oh, they're supporting terrorists, or they're
Speaker 2: terrorist allnes, etc. I just want people to take a
Speaker 2: listen to this individual and the way that he personally
Speaker 2: spoke when he was interviewed by sixty minutes about October seventh.
Speaker 7: Is about Jewish people.
Speaker 2: Just take a listen to the way that he spoke
Speaker 2: and the way that they are demonizing student protesters such
Speaker 2: as himself.
Speaker 7: Listen to this.
Speaker 8: What was your initial reaction when you heard about the
Speaker 8: Hamas attack on October seventh.
Speaker 9: I could not believe what my eyes were seeing, where
Speaker 9: I see Hamas members getting into settlements and so on.
Speaker 9: But also the first moment I saw that, I put
Speaker 9: my hand on my heart and I started praying, knowing
Speaker 9: that there will be a huge level of revenge from
Speaker 9: the Israelis, and I was praying that this will not
Speaker 9: be the result because it would be disastrous.
Speaker 8: The night of the rally, I believe someone in the
Speaker 8: crowd said something very anti Jewish, not just say anti Israeli,
Speaker 8: but anti Jewish.
Speaker 9: Yes, this was as I walk out on November ninth
Speaker 9: and a person who is not affiliated with Columbia, we've
Speaker 9: never seen him, we don't know who is. This guy
Speaker 9: comes down down the stairs yelling death to Jews. I
Speaker 9: was shocked. And they walked directly to the person and
Speaker 9: they told him, you don't represent us because this is
Speaker 9: not something that we agree with. And directly what I've done,
Speaker 9: I tooked the megaphone and they gave a speech and
Speaker 9: they said, we here are conscious, educated students, and we
Speaker 9: know how to separate right from wrong, and what this
Speaker 9: guy has said is wrong. What this guy has said
Speaker 9: is clearly anti sematic against Jews. To be anti Semitic
Speaker 9: is unjust. Is unjust, and the fight for the freedom
Speaker 9: of Palestine and the fight against anti Semetism go hand
Speaker 9: in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Speaker 2: So this is someone who they're saying is undermining their
Speaker 2: foreign policy because of his raging anti Semitism. We also
Speaker 2: know the State Department had actually internally put out a
Speaker 2: memo about one of the other the young woman who
Speaker 2: was disappeared with also the video of these masked officers,
Speaker 2: five or six of them, coming and taking her because
Speaker 2: she wrote a student newspaper up ed. I mean, what
Speaker 2: do you make of this direction and what it means
Speaker 2: not just for these students, but day for.
Speaker 7: All of us.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, that guy sounds like a terrorist to me, right,
Speaker 4: just so ridiculous. And I am not seen that before
Speaker 4: and that was like exactly what you'd want someone to say.
Speaker 4: I don't know, sounded perfect to me. I think it's
Speaker 4: you know, okay, I'm not like trying to like, you know,
Speaker 4: go down a conspiracy rabbit hole or something like this,
Speaker 4: Like I don't know, I'm just speculating, but I do
Speaker 4: know as we all know. I mean, there were so
Speaker 4: many attempts made in Donald Trump's first term to undermine him,
Speaker 4: like by his own government framing him as a as
Speaker 4: a Russian spy for God's sakes, And it does just
Speaker 4: seem to me that if you wanted to undermine mass deportations,
Speaker 4: like if you want, you couldn't go about it in
Speaker 4: a better way than what the Trump administration is doing.
Speaker 4: By the way, mass deportations are not happening, yes, but
Speaker 4: if you you know, like if you're let's say you're
Speaker 4: an immigration restrictionist, which I am, and you you think
Speaker 4: that Biden's you know, uh, immigration policy was like suicidal
Speaker 4: and insane, and you were like, you finally won the day.
Speaker 4: You know, the it is unbelievable how far to the
Speaker 4: right the American population has has been moved under the
Speaker 4: Joe Biden administration. I mean, mass super majorities of the
Speaker 4: American people support mass deportations. Donald Trump, it is his
Speaker 4: signature issue. He won every swing state, at won the
Speaker 4: popular vote. You've won the day. And so then you're like, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: how do we go about doing it, because obviously this
Speaker 4: is a very tricky thing that you want to get right.
Speaker 4: So let's wade into the most controversial issue and start
Speaker 4: deporting legal residents for having the wrong opinion on an
Speaker 4: issue where the majority of Americans are with I mean this,
Speaker 4: it's it's insane. And so that's just from from the
Speaker 4: perspective of even being pro mass deportation, but just then
Speaker 4: from the perspective of just being a human being. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like, okay, yeah, if people entered your country illegally,
Speaker 4: they don't have a right to be here.
Speaker 6: There probably should be some type of order of.
Speaker 4: You know, operationism, hierarchy of who should go first, and
Speaker 4: you know, we probably all agree with like violent criminals
Speaker 4: and gang members and things like that, but you know,
Speaker 4: to do it because someone is like an eloquent defender
Speaker 4: of one side of a conflict is just I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's it's horrific.
Speaker 6: It's also it, you know, an.
Speaker 4: Incredibly scary president to set you know, this idea that
Speaker 4: we can label you a terrorist. You know it's one
Speaker 4: because this is the game that they always play. It's like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: it's only if you're a pro a terrorist group or
Speaker 4: if you hate Jewish people or something like that. And
Speaker 4: just like with all speech regulations, it's like, fine, but
Speaker 4: who gets to decide that, because I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 4: there certainly are a lot of people out there who
Speaker 4: hate Jewish people, and there certainly are a lot of
Speaker 4: people out there who maybe less people. But there are
Speaker 4: some people out there who defend Hamas. But I get
Speaker 4: accused of that every single day and I've never done either.
Speaker 4: So like, I who gets to determine this? And it
Speaker 4: does seem to me just like more of a continuation
Speaker 4: of kind of the worst of the post nine to
Speaker 4: eleven tradition in America where we just get to label
Speaker 4: something terrorism and then that shuts off the Bill of
Speaker 4: Rights or that shuts off critical thinking.
Speaker 6: It's just, man, it's terrible. It's just so terrible.
Speaker 2: I mean, just to address what you're floating that like,
Speaker 2: it feels like almost directly undermining you know, the other
Speaker 2: things that he ran on that, you know, a more
Speaker 2: sort of rigorous and law abiding, constitutionally compliant deportation process.
Speaker 2: I mean, but he did run on he said multiple
Speaker 2: times he was using Palestinian as a slur. He said
Speaker 2: multiple times he wanted to deport pro Palestine protesters, that
Speaker 2: he wanted to kick them out of the country. You know,
Speaker 2: we covered Bikelly being here and the Alien Enemies Act
Speaker 2: and how they've shipped ninety percent of the people that
Speaker 2: they sent to this you know, notorious prison and El
Speaker 2: Salvador had no criminal records whatsoever. He ran on the
Speaker 2: Alien Enemies Act. So you know, what would you say
Speaker 2: to people such as myself as others to say, like
Speaker 2: he did say he was going to do this stuff,
Speaker 2: and he is very proud about doing it too. There's
Speaker 2: no like, oh, this person screwed up now he's out
Speaker 2: there owning it, saying, Hey, the US citizens, they're going
Speaker 2: to Bokelly next.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean i'd say, you're right. I don't know what,
Speaker 4: you know, I don't really have a counter to that.
Speaker 4: I Mean, the thing about Donald Trump is that he's
Speaker 4: always on every side of every issue, and so you
Speaker 4: just never really know what he's gott right. It's always
Speaker 4: like end the wars and America first, and bomb the
Speaker 4: crap out of them and go after their families. And
Speaker 4: I mean, he's always just so you never you kind
Speaker 4: of never know with Donald Trump, like what is he
Speaker 4: really thinking or what is he just floating out? No, listen,
Speaker 4: it was obviously he's terrible on Israel, and that was
Speaker 4: clear throughout the campaign. I think that for many people,
Speaker 4: like myself, the calculation was essentially that, unfortunately, we were
Speaker 4: caught in a binary and it was going to be
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, and she was going to
Speaker 4: be just as awful on Israel. Now, she may not
Speaker 4: have gone as far as some of this stuff that
Speaker 4: we're talking about, but in the big picture, there wasn't
Speaker 4: like a true anti war choice. There wasn't a real
Speaker 4: non interventionist and you know, I'd say there from my perspective,
Speaker 4: at least there were a lot of cultural benefits. I
Speaker 4: believe that came from Donald Trump winning. I also just
Speaker 4: thought the Democrats had to lose this one. It's just
Speaker 4: too crazy. I mean, I don't know, it's just the
Speaker 4: policy in Ukraine I view as the most reckless foreign
Speaker 4: policy in the history of the United States of America.
Speaker 4: I really think nothing is a close second to this,
Speaker 4: the idea of like flirting with a proxy war of
Speaker 4: choice on the border of the most nuclear armed country
Speaker 4: in the world. I mean, it's just absolutely Throughout the
Speaker 4: entire height of the Cold War, there was never a
Speaker 4: policy as crazy like we always, you know, we fight
Speaker 4: a war in Vietnam or something, but there's a whole
Speaker 4: China in between, you know, Russia and Vietnam that to
Speaker 4: fight on their borders just insane. They funded this, this
Speaker 4: catastrophe in Israel throughout the you know, the whole last
Speaker 4: year of their term, and they had a brain dead,
Speaker 4: senile president and lied to the American people.
Speaker 6: So it was just like I felt like they needed
Speaker 6: to oose.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I can't defend any of this stuff, And
Speaker 4: you're right, and Trump did did talk about it during
Speaker 4: the campaign, and it is.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 6: Let's hope it doesn't get much worse.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you this, Dave, You're an honest guy and
Speaker 3: you can't say that for most people.
Speaker 1: And so I appreciate you. I always look at you,
Speaker 1: man and thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate that.
Speaker 4: And as I've told you guys publicly and privately, I
Speaker 4: love Breaking Points. I watch it every day and I
Speaker 4: think you guys are doing an amazing thing with the show.
Speaker 6: So thank you very much.
Speaker 7: Appreciates Steve, good to see you.
Speaker 1: We'll see you later YouTube. Chrystal, what are you taking
Speaker 1: a look at?
Speaker 2: Without a doubt, the biggest Liberation Day breakout media star
Speaker 2: has been free press calmness and self described maga lefty
Speaker 2: Bachia Ungar Sargan. Whether tariffs are on or off, or
Speaker 2: reciprocal or with exemptions or no exemptions, Bachia has dutifully
Speaker 2: defended Trump's trade war tactics too Pure's Morgan Bill Maher CNN,
Speaker 2: and is of course a regular for the North Korea
Speaker 2: level propagandists over at Fox News. No matter the current
Speaker 2: state of the tariff roller Coaster and Batcha's telling they
Speaker 2: are all part of Trump's glorious revolution against the elites
Speaker 2: in favor of the working class.
Speaker 7: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 11: When somebody has the courage to show up and stay
Speaker 11: to Wall Street, screw you. I am waging war. I'm
Speaker 11: waging class warfare on behalf of the American working class.
Speaker 11: And you elites and Wall Street, you do what you
Speaker 11: need to do because I'm not going to stop fighting
Speaker 11: for the American working class. Suddenly everybody is sitting around going,
Speaker 11: oh no, the stock market, Yeah, the stock market looks
Speaker 11: like that because the rich are punishing Trump for siding
Speaker 11: with the neglected and humiliated American working class over them.
Speaker 2: So she is correct that Trump's cares are class warfare,
Speaker 2: she just gets the direction completely wrong. In fact, Liberation
Speaker 2: Day is direct class warfare against the working class in
Speaker 2: favor of Trump aligned oligarchs.
Speaker 7: This should be no surprise. Of course. Trump is himself
Speaker 7: a billionaire.
Speaker 2: His administration is stocked with over a dozen billionaires. The
Speaker 2: nation's billionaire class has made a great show of aligning
Speaker 2: and pledging fealty to him and his entire economic project,
Speaker 2: of which tariffs are a key part, has revolved around
Speaker 2: catering to the rich. Trump has all but ended white
Speaker 2: collar enforcement. He's gutting the irs so they cannot audit
Speaker 2: the rich sufficiently. He's engaged in a massive regulatory rollback
Speaker 2: so that big.
Speaker 7: Business can act with impunity.
Speaker 2: He is cutting the social safety net while handing out
Speaker 2: a giant tax cut to the rich, and is destroying
Speaker 2: the last remaining remnants of labor power. As just one
Speaker 2: but very telling example, how do you square Trump's supposed
Speaker 2: war on Wall Street with the fact that on the
Speaker 2: day he rolled back some of the global tariffs, he
Speaker 2: hosted billionaire Charles Schwab at the White House and then
Speaker 2: bragged about how Schwab had been able to make two
Speaker 2: point five billion dollars in the markets that day alone.
Speaker 10: It's not just s.
Speaker 7: Today now.
Speaker 2: That is about as close to an admission of insider
Speaker 2: trading as you could possibly get. While what main streets four, A,
Speaker 2: one k's were puking and retail investors were getting clobbered,
Speaker 2: a group of billionaires at the White House just happened
Speaker 2: to be positioned to cash in on the massive Trump
Speaker 2: triggered rebound. That should be enough to convince you that
Speaker 2: Trump's primary ideological motivation is to accrue wealth and power
Speaker 2: for himself and for his ring of aligned oligarchs.
Speaker 7: But there is so much more.
Speaker 2: Here is the definitive proof that Trump's tariffs are class
Speaker 2: war against the ninety nine percent, the likes of which
Speaker 2: we have perhaps never seen before. All right, number one,
Speaker 2: massive corporations are being liberated from Trump's tariffs while the
Speaker 2: little guys are getting screwed. Stocks were up yesterday after
Speaker 2: the Trump administration announced significant exemptions to their one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty five percent China tariffs that would be particularly
Speaker 2: beneficial to so called Magnificent Seven companies like Apple and Nvidia.
Speaker 2: This is, of course no accident. In Vidia's CEO recently
Speaker 2: paid at least a million dollars in order to attend
Speaker 2: a Trump super Pac dinner, where he was presumably able
Speaker 2: to have an audience directly with the president. Apple CEO
Speaker 2: Tim Cook gave a million dollars to the Trump inauguration
Speaker 2: and has been quietly courting Trump for years with his
Speaker 2: shitcoin development properties around the world, blatant political favor sellings.
Speaker 2: Through these super Pac dinners, Trump has created an industrial
Speaker 2: scale bribery factory where anyone with the cash can lobby
Speaker 2: the King for a favor. The fear of this exact dynamic,
Speaker 2: by the way, is precisely why the power to raise
Speaker 2: revenue was left to Congress in the Constitution. But while
Speaker 2: the big guys get the world, the small and medium
Speaker 2: sized business owners they are getting the shaft. Meet Beth
Speaker 2: and a Rock War veteran and the founder and CEO
Speaker 2: of Busy Baby.
Speaker 12: A problem solver by nature, I decided to create something
Speaker 12: to keep our kids entertained and to save our backs
Speaker 12: and sanity parents keeping your babies busy just got a
Speaker 12: whole lot easier because.
Speaker 7: Of the Busy Baby Matt.
Speaker 2: So Beth was living this small business dream story after
Speaker 2: that Shark tank appearance or sales skyrocketed. She was expanding
Speaker 2: Walmart and Target came knocking. She was even honored by
Speaker 2: Trump's Small Business administration as Minnesota's Small Business Person of
Speaker 2: the Year. But now, thanks to the one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty five percent China tariffs, all of it, the business,
Speaker 2: the dream, even her house, which she had leveraged to
Speaker 2: finance her expansion into Walmart, all of it is on
Speaker 2: the line. She recently spoke to The Daily about how
Speaker 2: for her business, the tariffs mean certain death.
Speaker 10: I cannot bring this product into the US now. I
Speaker 10: don't have that kind of money. And what that means
Speaker 10: then is if I can't bring in that product and
Speaker 10: I run out of what's in my warehouse now, then
Speaker 10: I no longer have revenue coming into my business. And
Speaker 10: what that means is I can no longer pay my employees,
Speaker 10: I can no longer pay my loans to which my
Speaker 10: house is ridged against, and in about six months I
Speaker 10: could very very possibly lose my home.
Speaker 2: Now, I want you to understand best actually plan for
Speaker 2: some level of tariff. She was ready for that, but
Speaker 2: right now she's got a shipment in China, roughly one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of product. It would
Speaker 2: now cost two hundred and twenty nine thousand to bring
Speaker 2: that product to the US. She doesn't have that cash.
Speaker 2: She's sure as hell doesn't have the cash to spend
Speaker 2: a million dollars to plead her case directly to Trump.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
Speaker 10: I'm not in a face off with the administration because
Speaker 10: I'm not a player in the game. I'm a pawn.
Speaker 10: There's literally nothing I can do. And I was coming
Speaker 10: up with strategies. But then any strategy I came up with,
Speaker 10: I'm afraid to execute it because the policy changes every
Speaker 10: twenty four to thirty six hours.
Speaker 2: Now, this is no small bump in the road for Beth.
Speaker 2: At one point the interview actually turned extremely dark.
Speaker 6: I'm not okay.
Speaker 10: I'm scared for my friends. I'm scared for myself.
Speaker 1: They don't understand.
Speaker 10: This is certain death for us. It is certain death
Speaker 10: for so many of my friends and myself. Not in
Speaker 10: the literal sense of Actually, no, I'm not gonna say
Speaker 10: not in the literal sense, because the very first thought
Speaker 10: that came to me when he announced one hundred and
Speaker 10: four percent tarif was at least I have at least
Speaker 10: I have life insurance so that there's a way my
Speaker 10: family can still.
Speaker 1: Have a home.
Speaker 2: Now, Beth says she's got a big support network and
Speaker 2: she's going to make it through, but she worries how
Speaker 2: many small business owners out there like her are facing
Speaker 2: similarly dire circumstances and are not going to be okay.
Speaker 2: So big business they get Marralago Dinners, they get special
Speaker 2: car balance, they get their rebounding stock prices. Mom and
Speaker 2: pop companies get effectively a business death penalty.
Speaker 7: But that is only one aspect of this class war.
Speaker 2: Number two, let's talk about those armies of millions screwing
Speaker 2: in little little screws.
Speaker 8: Great American workers.
Speaker 7: You know, we are going on other networkies.
Speaker 6: Millions of people.
Speaker 8: Well remember the army of millions and millions of human
Speaker 8: beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones. That kind
Speaker 8: of thing is going to come to America.
Speaker 4: It's going to be automated, and great Americans, the trade
Speaker 4: craft of America is going to fix them.
Speaker 2: So one of the many justifications of Trump's tariff policy,
Speaker 2: and the one that has I think the most popular
Speaker 2: emotional resonance, is that it's going to restore American manufacturing.
Speaker 2: Might there are some aspects of that stated goal that
Speaker 2: I am personally sympathetic to. The First thing that you
Speaker 2: should know about this alleged goal, though, is that it's
Speaker 2: not happening. You'd have to be insane to willingly invest
Speaker 2: in US manufacturing given the wild daily shifts in policy.
Speaker 2: In fact, Trump's policy incentivizes offshoring and avoiding US markets altogether.
Speaker 2: But let's assume Trump is able to strong arm some
Speaker 2: companies into building some new factories. What is that actually
Speaker 2: going to look like. There is nothing inherently good about
Speaker 2: factory jobs. In fact, the early days of US industrialization
Speaker 2: were a horror show of child labor, low wages, miserable
Speaker 2: living conditions, company towns, and deadly accidents. Go read The
Speaker 2: Jungle by Upton Sinclair or the History of the Triangle
Speaker 2: Shirtwaist Fire for a refresher on how workers were treated
Speaker 2: at that time. It is instructive to reflect on the
Speaker 2: fact that Trump is not calling for a return to
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty style industrialization when progressive row reforms, high union
Speaker 2: density and an expanding social safety and that meant that
Speaker 2: Dad could work in the factory and support a family instead.
Speaker 2: Trump is inspired by the Gilded Age President William McKinley
Speaker 2: he models his administration.
Speaker 7: He said this repeatedly after a.
Speaker 2: Time when American workers, many newly arrived immigrants, crowded into
Speaker 2: ghettos and worked in sweatshops as Robert Barns commanded ever
Speaker 2: greater portions of the economy. Instead restoring nineteen fifty's working
Speaker 2: class stability, he wants American workers to be pushed into
Speaker 2: the global race to the bottom that goes hand and
Speaker 2: glove with the doge efforts to destroy government's ability to
Speaker 2: regulate business and Trump's onslaught against unions. In fact, the
Speaker 2: US already does produce more than every country on Earth
Speaker 2: except China, but due to automation, that production no longer
Speaker 2: requires nearly as many workers, and thanks to attacks on unions,
Speaker 2: those jobs are not nearly as good as they once were.
Speaker 2: As Matt Burning points out McDonald's workers in Denmark, they
Speaker 2: actually make more than Honda workers in Alabama. Bottom line,
Speaker 2: Trump wants you bring back these sweatshops of the early
Speaker 2: Industrial Revolution, not the union backed middle class jobs of
Speaker 2: your grandparents' era.
Speaker 7: The work would be.
Speaker 2: Low, pain, difficult, and lacking in labor protections. Not to
Speaker 2: mention that we're talking about far fewer jobs anyway, since
Speaker 2: robots would be the ones enlisted to screw in those
Speaker 2: little little screws now. A third element of Trump's terra
Speaker 2: fueled class war is his desire to shift funding the
Speaker 2: government away from the income tax and towards the tariff.
Speaker 13: To me, the most beautiful word, and I've said this
Speaker 13: for the last couple of weeks in the dictionary today,
Speaker 13: is the word tariff. It's more beautiful than love. It
Speaker 13: more beautiful than any It's the most beautiful word. This
Speaker 13: country can be come rich with the use, the proper
Speaker 13: use of tariffs.
Speaker 7: It'll Can you just float out the idea of getting
Speaker 7: rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs, Well.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're serious about that?
Speaker 6: Hower, Yeah, but why not?
Speaker 2: Trump of course likes to pretend that those tariffs will
Speaker 2: be paid by foreign countries. That's just not true. Just
Speaker 2: remember again our small business owner Beth. She had to
Speaker 2: abandon her shipment of goods in China because she can't
Speaker 2: afford to pay herself the tariff. Now, if she could
Speaker 2: afford to front the tariff, she would then instead have
Speaker 2: to pass a significant amount, if not all, the costs
Speaker 2: of the tariff onto consumers, pushing her thirty dollars, busy
Speaker 2: baby Matt up to let's say fifty dollars. So, in practice,
Speaker 2: tariffs are a consumption tax, and since working class people
Speaker 2: spend a far greater percent of their income on goods
Speaker 2: than the rich do, the tax is directly regressive, hurting
Speaker 2: the poorest people the most and leaving the rich largely unscathed.
Speaker 2: A YO budget Lab analysis found the average American would
Speaker 2: face thirty eight hundred dollars in increased costs from the
Speaker 2: April second tariffs, with the impact falling hardest on the
Speaker 2: lowest end of the income scale. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: Trump is of course planning a massive multi trillion dollar
Speaker 2: tax cut for the rich.
Speaker 7: Large custom of medicaid.
Speaker 2: Social security is being destroyed, and rich tax cheats are
Speaker 2: going to be able to more easily avoid income taxes
Speaker 2: thanks to a gutted IRS. In practice, this means that
Speaker 2: the working class is going to increasingly be forced to
Speaker 2: shoulder the burden of funding the government and frankly, their
Speaker 2: own oppression, as the budget tilts away from social spending
Speaker 2: and towards the police date. After all, Trump the Republican's
Speaker 2: new budget calls for a mass expansion of military, a
Speaker 2: record breaking one trillion dollar Pentagon budget also calls for
Speaker 2: a dramatic increase in funding for ice into dole out
Speaker 2: for private prison contractors to create mass detention centers. As
Speaker 2: we covered earlier yesterday, or sorry, as we covered earlier yesterday,
Speaker 2: Trump told El Salvador's president Bkelly that next he wanted
Speaker 2: to send quote homegrowns to rot in the Seacot torture dungeon.
Speaker 2: It has never been more clear that what begins with
Speaker 2: immigrants will rapidly expand to American citizens in an effort
Speaker 2: to silence and intimidate dissenters. I doubt, however, that that
Speaker 2: effort to quash all dissent is going to succeed, because
Speaker 2: already the American people are not buying what Trump and
Speaker 2: Batia are selling. People can see what is being done
Speaker 2: to them to enrich Trump and as ooligarchs, which is
Speaker 2: why Trump's economic approval and overall approval are plummeting. CBS
Speaker 2: has a new pull out which asks Americans who will
Speaker 2: benefit from Trump's trade and teariff policies. Seventy four percent
Speaker 2: say the wealthy, seventy one percent say large corporations, only
Speaker 2: forty two percent say the working class, and only thirty
Speaker 2: nine percent say small business. What's more, only twenty one
Speaker 2: percent of Americans, overwhelmingly Republican partisans, say that Trump's policies
Speaker 2: are making them personally better off. As the economy worsens,
Speaker 2: Trump's popularity it's going to continue to fall, and he's
Speaker 2: going to reach for war and more tools of repression
Speaker 2: in order to maintain his power. You simply cannot do
Speaker 2: this to people without expecting a backlash, and if you
Speaker 2: are an authoritarian, the response to a backlash is not
Speaker 2: to back off, it is to crack down. And on
Speaker 2: that I'm going to end this particular monologue, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to have more on that note later this week.
Speaker 2: And Sager, this is a crazy making.
Speaker 3: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 3: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. I
Speaker 3: don't usually do personal segments here on Breaking Points, but
Speaker 3: I guess this one qualifies. My wife and I are
Speaker 3: having a baby. Do date is basically anytime in the
Speaker 3: next few weeks. So first, I hope you can all
Speaker 3: forgive me. I've been unexpectedly absent or less engaged than
Speaker 3: I may have been in the last several months, navigating
Speaker 3: doctor's appointments, illness, and the general chaos of an irrevocable
Speaker 3: change to your entire life. If you see me disappear
Speaker 3: unexpectedly sometime in the next few weeks, you'll know why.
Speaker 3: And while I'll be off for a little while, rest
Speaker 3: assured i'll be back and the team here is well prepared.
Speaker 3: So what I thought I would do is reflect on
Speaker 3: a few lessons that I have learned throughout the process
Speaker 3: so far and point people in the direction of some
Speaker 3: great books that I've read in the last nine months
Speaker 3: that you may also enjoy if you find yourself in
Speaker 3: a similar position.
Speaker 1: There is an absolute ocean of bullshit.
Speaker 3: I've discovered out there whenever it comes to pregnancy and
Speaker 3: what foods that women are not supposed to eat, and
Speaker 3: whether you're supposed to drink coffee or not, an exercise
Speaker 3: and everything else. If you just absorb knowledge through pop
Speaker 3: culture like I did, you're forgiven. But in my opinion,
Speaker 3: it is much more useful to actually investigate claims behind
Speaker 3: these societal expectations and see which ones actually hold up
Speaker 3: under scrutiny. For this, there is a rightfully famous book
Speaker 3: I cannot recommend enough. It's called Expecting Better, Why the
Speaker 3: conventional Pregnancy wisdom is wrong and What you really need
Speaker 3: to Know, by Professor Emily Oster. Emily Oster is an
Speaker 3: economist who actually used hard data sets to investigate the
Speaker 3: claims of societal myths and doctors recommendations behind everything like
Speaker 3: whether you can eat sushi while pregnant, what type of
Speaker 3: exercise you're allowed to do, how much if any alcohol
Speaker 3: or caffeine is actually safe and much much more.
Speaker 1: The book is.
Speaker 3: Unbelievably useful because it opened my eyes both to the
Speaker 3: absolute relative risk or lack thereof, of certain behaviors the
Speaker 3: society or the medical system says that there is risk of,
Speaker 3: but also showed me really how public health guidelines and
Speaker 3: societal norms are set broadly, and I am painting, obviously
Speaker 3: with a big brush. Public health guidance is written for
Speaker 3: the lowest common denominator in the United States.
Speaker 1: For example, sushi.
Speaker 3: Sushi has a relatively higher risk of making people sick. Therefore,
Speaker 3: because there is a portion higher risk of getting sick
Speaker 3: from sushi. Absolutely, because of the existence of things like
Speaker 3: gas station sushi, they have a recommendation don't need it
Speaker 3: at all, or you could just say, wait, don't get
Speaker 3: it from a gas station. Exercise the same level of
Speaker 3: judgment a normal person would when they go to a
Speaker 3: steakhouse and order a rare steak or beef tartar.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, of course your risk of getting sick is hire.
Speaker 3: But we can recognize restaurant reputation, sourcing and other things
Speaker 3: obviously matter. You can do a simple Google search and
Speaker 3: see whether pregnant women in Japan still eat sushi, and
Speaker 3: what their birth outcomes are, it will shock you to
Speaker 3: learn that they are perfectly healthy. The same example and
Speaker 3: the same safetiest philosophy behind a guidance from a medical
Speaker 3: establishment pervades basically everything pregnancy and birth related.
Speaker 1: You again will be forgiven.
Speaker 3: For not knowing any of this, and that is why
Speaker 3: I am urging any expected pairs read these books and
Speaker 3: her follow up cripsheet. Furthermore, if you are able, one
Speaker 3: of these flagship statistics from Oster's book is this recommendation
Speaker 3: to hire a doula for better birth outcomes and for
Speaker 3: fewer sea sections. My wife and I have found having
Speaker 3: a doula to be incredibly helpful in helping understand exactly
Speaker 3: what we face and to have actual informed consent when
Speaker 3: and if the time comes to participate in any medical intervention.
Speaker 3: I want to underscore if you do not do your
Speaker 3: own research or speak with people deeply familiar with the process,
Speaker 3: you will be at their mercy of the medical system.
Speaker 3: And I do not think that the doctors themselves are
Speaker 3: actively trying to harm anyone, but it is obvious from
Speaker 3: the USC section rate and the US maternal outcomes. The
Speaker 3: system that we are forced to participate in does not
Speaker 3: line up with the ideal broadly. This brings me to philosophy.
Speaker 3: In the United States, everything is about individualism. What type
Speaker 3: of health insurance you have, whether you can afford something
Speaker 3: or not, how much leave can you take, what childcare
Speaker 3: to pursue. It's all a to you, and there's no
Speaker 3: true authority on what is best or not. This is
Speaker 3: not bad per se. It has a lot of strengths.
Speaker 3: But this process and reading different books has really made
Speaker 3: me appreciate.
Speaker 1: Other countries' attitudes and customs.
Speaker 3: For example, in the United States today, only about sixty
Speaker 3: percent of women are covered by the Family and Medical
Speaker 3: Leave Act for an average amount of leave of eleven weeks.
Speaker 3: That is, of course, if you are lucky, and to
Speaker 3: most people it sounds reasonable. That is honestly, until I
Speaker 3: saw what an actual physical eleven week old baby looks like.
Speaker 3: It's a barely functional, tiny human being, handing it off
Speaker 3: to a daycare center or stranger. It seems so difficult
Speaker 3: for me, and I'm not even there yet. This does
Speaker 3: not even contend with the run of the mill medical
Speaker 3: trauma that any mother will go through.
Speaker 1: While giving birth.
Speaker 3: In the United States, postpartum women are expected to attend
Speaker 3: doctor's appointments in the days after birth, and paternity leave
Speaker 3: is a luxury roughly available to twenty percent of US males.
Speaker 3: By reading books such as The First Forty Days, I
Speaker 3: learned this is not normal in the rest of the world,
Speaker 3: a major departure from more civilized societies and how they
Speaker 3: care for women. In China and in Japan, there is
Speaker 3: a societal custom known as a confinement period, where women
Speaker 3: basically don't even leave the house for forty days. Traditionally,
Speaker 3: they are surrounded by other women who can cook and
Speaker 3: clean and take care of every basic need that they have.
Speaker 3: The regimen is incredibly strict and important for recovery. It
Speaker 3: is more modern versions that include government sponsored programs that
Speaker 3: include home help recovery sites for these women, where the
Speaker 3: notion that someone would be able to be responsible for
Speaker 3: feeding an infant and doing household tasks in their culture
Speaker 3: that's insane. In the US, this is basically the norm
Speaker 3: unless you have a family member or you can help
Speaker 3: are well off enough to have hired help. Even then,
Speaker 3: the expectation is vastly different. Millions are expected literally back
Speaker 3: at work after mere weeks of giving birth, very little
Speaker 3: societal understanding or support. Broadly, this reflects my more Asian
Speaker 3: collectivist mindset to how I think people should be treated
Speaker 3: after giving birth. But a book that showed me how
Speaker 3: this can still work in a more Western context is
Speaker 3: a very popular one from a few years back.
Speaker 1: It's called Bringing Up Bebe.
Speaker 3: One American mother discovers the wisdom of French parenting, and
Speaker 3: as low as I will be to praise Europeans, it
Speaker 3: is undeniable after reading this that a Western society that
Speaker 3: can encourage women to be able to pursue careers without
Speaker 3: Asian collectivist values can absolutely work. The caveat is you
Speaker 3: need decades long cultural buy in as to the standards
Speaker 3: of what such state sponsored childcare institutions should look like,
Speaker 3: and you need to surrender to standards that are about
Speaker 3: ten times higher than the United States. It's unbelievable reading
Speaker 3: this the level of care and attention that the French
Speaker 3: government puts not only onto discipline and childcare centers, but
Speaker 3: ensuring proper nutrition from a very early age. Their system
Speaker 3: works because of decades of proven state capacity and its
Speaker 3: availability to anyone rich or poor. Costs are variable for
Speaker 3: the same service based upon your income. I can easily
Speaker 3: see how it would not work here with so much
Speaker 3: societal division, but it is something to aspire to, especially
Speaker 3: compared to the ad hoc and individual fend for yourself
Speaker 3: system that we have here in America. So broadly, these
Speaker 3: are the reflections that have been on my mind. It
Speaker 3: is a weird sensation. I'm patriotic, I'm an American. Baseline
Speaker 3: assumption was, yeah, we're the best country in the world,
Speaker 3: but honestly, you have to wonder if that's truly true
Speaker 3: when you're starting a family. It is certainly is a
Speaker 3: good place to make money, to pursue individual interests or
Speaker 3: liberty by consumer goods. But I can't help but looking
Speaker 3: around at skyrocketing costs, distrust in the most basic levels
Speaker 3: of systems, and see how these women are just left
Speaker 3: to fend for themselves, and think that we really need
Speaker 3: to change things up if we want more people in
Speaker 3: this country to have kids. Finally, for fun and letting
Speaker 3: my mind wander, I read a bunch of different books
Speaker 3: that won't apply for many years. You may find them
Speaker 3: useful if you're at this age. How to raise kids
Speaker 3: who aren't assholes, the anxious Generation, the self driven child,
Speaker 3: and even throwbacks like Battle Him of the Tiger Mother.
Speaker 1: All of those books.
Speaker 3: Have parts that I do not agree with necessarily, but
Speaker 3: they all plant interesting seeds of things that I may
Speaker 3: or may not do as a parent. So anyways, I
Speaker 3: hope everyone can wish me luck. Luckily, I'm not doing
Speaker 3: any of the hard work.
Speaker 1: My wife is. I'm sitting. I'm here to support her.
Speaker 3: And the meanwhile, the true horror that I cannot stop
Speaker 3: thinking about is I will not get a good night's
Speaker 3: sleep again for a long time, and my cherished days
Speaker 3: of the eight pm bedtime are finally over.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We're about to take the AMA. Now, let's get to it.