Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
Speaker 4: Happy Wednesday, Crystal, we apparently dressed for like a baptism.
Speaker 1: Tends totally accidental, but we're we're just already like mind
Speaker 1: melding on the same waveleg.
Speaker 4: Here we're in sync, although we'll probably disagree like nine
Speaker 4: times out of ten tonight.
Speaker 1: Maybe that'ssibly See it's Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Crystal feels a little out of sorts in the Counterpoints too,
Speaker 4: doesn't know what to do with herself.
Speaker 5: I am a little confused.
Speaker 1: It feels like Sager sort of feels like I'm doing
Speaker 1: like dream World Breaking Points. Like the set is like
Speaker 1: a little bit of it's like not quite the right name.
Speaker 1: The host is a little bit different. But no, I
Speaker 1: had my kids kindergarten graduation yesterday, so Ryan filled in
Speaker 1: for me yesterday.
Speaker 5: I'm here today, so it all works. I'm happy to
Speaker 5: be here.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a big day.
Speaker 5: Lots going on.
Speaker 1: We have Ron DeSantis making it official tonight. We've got
Speaker 1: all kinds of early previews of what the campaign is
Speaker 1: looking like, the pitch to voters, the pitch to donors,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. We also have debt ceiling I
Speaker 1: don't know that I call them updates, maybe like non.
Speaker 3: Updates, updates about the lack of updates.
Speaker 5: That's pretty much where we're at.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We also have some new numbers about how much the
Speaker 1: American people are already not feeling great about the economy,
Speaker 1: and of course the whole dead ceiling showdown makes that
Speaker 1: even more precarious. We've got the first state to outrite
Speaker 1: ban downloads of TikTok, and TikTok is suing to try
Speaker 1: to push back on That's very interesting debate there.
Speaker 5: And Fox News under fire.
Speaker 1: This is this one I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 1: about because I don't have a sense of whether this
Speaker 1: is like real fallout for or whether this is like
Speaker 1: a blip on the radar.
Speaker 5: But reporter Mary Margaret Olahan.
Speaker 1: Revealed their sort of like behind the scenes woke policies
Speaker 1: with regard to gender identity in particular, and there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a backlash.
Speaker 5: So we will go through all of that.
Speaker 3: Lots to talk about.
Speaker 4: Well, let's start with the big news of the day,
Speaker 4: which is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is going to
Speaker 4: announce that he's running for president tonight at six pm
Speaker 4: on Twitter in a conversation with Elon Musk, and I
Speaker 4: believe David Sachs as well. He's going to be moderating
Speaker 4: the conversation. Pretty fascinating to DeSantis is going to follow
Speaker 4: that up with an interview on Fox News with Trey Goudi.
Speaker 4: They're going to release a launch video, and he's going
Speaker 4: to start visiting those states early voting states Iowa, South Carolina,
Speaker 4: New Hampshire over Memorial Day weekend. So it's a really
Speaker 4: big day obviously in the Republican primary field.
Speaker 3: Crystal.
Speaker 4: The Twitter move is fascinating. Yeah, just nobody saw that
Speaker 4: part coming. It had been rumored that DeSantis was going
Speaker 4: to launch on the twenty fourth on Wednesday, and then
Speaker 4: it comes out of left field yesterday. He's going to
Speaker 4: be announcing in a conversation with Elon Musk moderated by
Speaker 4: David Secks on Twitter. I think we can put the
Speaker 4: first element up on the screen here. This is this
Speaker 4: is a video. This is the launch video, part of
Speaker 4: a launch video that I think this was from yesterday.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, this was from yesterday.
Speaker 1: This is shared by his wife as like a little
Speaker 1: bit of like a please teaser and getting people to
Speaker 1: text in, like, you know, to sign up for their list.
Speaker 5: So let's take a look at what that is.
Speaker 4: They call it faith because in the face of darkness,
Speaker 4: you can see that brighter future of faith that our
Speaker 4: best days lay ahead of us.
Speaker 6: But is it worth the fight?
Speaker 2: Do I have the courage?
Speaker 3: Is it worth the sacrifice?
Speaker 4: America has been worth it every single time.
Speaker 5: So that's what we got so far.
Speaker 1: Go and put the next piece up because this has
Speaker 1: some of the details about the Twitter thing. And then
Speaker 1: I want to get your thoughts and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I think. So they say DeSantis will watch his
Speaker 1: presential bid with Elon Musk. They're doing that like audio
Speaker 1: chat thing feature that Twitter has, which I've actually never
Speaker 1: really used but is popular among a lot of people.
Speaker 1: He is going to be in that conversation with Musk,
Speaker 1: moderated by David Sax, who has been very supportive of
Speaker 1: him in the past. He's one of the hosts of
Speaker 1: the All In Podcast. I mean, okay, so there's a
Speaker 1: couple layers here. First of all, you know, part of
Speaker 1: the reason that the right was excited about Elon taking
Speaker 1: over Twitter was the idea like, oh, we're going to
Speaker 1: make it a neutral platform, neutral free speech platform. I mean,
Speaker 1: the free speech part is long out the window. The
Speaker 1: neutral part has also been out the window, but just
Speaker 1: makes it really clear here. And I was just thinking about, like,
Speaker 1: if the shoe were on the other foot, if it
Speaker 1: was like Jack Dorsey launching Joe Biden's campaign on Twitter,
Speaker 1: the right would be freaking out about how unfair this is.
Speaker 1: And I mean, to me, it's just a revelation that
Speaker 1: whatever Elon said about his principles free speech, that that
Speaker 1: was the core of what he was all about on Twitter.
Speaker 1: It increasingly looks like he's just using it as like
Speaker 1: a multi bill million dollar platform to advance his own
Speaker 1: political project and a Jedda Well, see this is.
Speaker 4: Really interesting because he was retweeting Tim Scott's announcement stuff
Speaker 4: this week too, And I wonder if he partially sees
Speaker 4: us as a business opportunity.
Speaker 3: Now, whether that's better or worse is an entirely fair question.
Speaker 4: But is he saying I can use the Republican primary
Speaker 4: to create intrigue and drive people to Twitter by using
Speaker 4: it as a platform where.
Speaker 3: Some of these debates happen.
Speaker 4: So whether he becomes fully on board with the DeSantis team,
Speaker 4: that I think would be that that would be genuinely like, yes,
Speaker 4: you're using this platform in a way that's like.
Speaker 3: Just your own butt.
Speaker 1: But already when you're the one launching the campaign, whether
Speaker 1: he outright endorses him or not, yeah, of course that's
Speaker 1: going to raise a lot of questions about like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: how are you using this influential platform among elites at
Speaker 1: least in order to help the candidates that you like?
Speaker 1: And I think that's you know, like, that is a
Speaker 1: very reasonable question. And we don't have the insights into
Speaker 1: Twitter or it's not the transparent place that he argued
Speaker 1: it would be. We also just had the specter of
Speaker 1: him basically, you know, intervening on behalf of Erdawan to
Speaker 1: help him get reelected in Turkey, So that that is
Speaker 1: still ongoing. They went to a runoff, So there's.
Speaker 5: That piece of it.
Speaker 1: The other piece of it, Emily, though, is I just
Speaker 1: wonder what you think is a political move of DeSantis
Speaker 1: launching on Twitter because Biden won the Democratic primary and
Speaker 1: ultimately the general election with a very famous mantra, which
Speaker 1: is that Twitter is not real life. One of the
Speaker 1: knocks on DeSantis is that he has trouble like relating
Speaker 1: to people and just sort of like interpersonal reaction interactions.
Speaker 1: The other knock on DeSantis is that he's way too online, and.
Speaker 5: This is a very it is a very.
Speaker 1: Way too online, very insular move, in my opinion, for
Speaker 1: him to start his campaign this way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would think it was really like it actually
Speaker 4: kind of reminds me of something we see on the
Speaker 4: left a lot, which is just super super online behavior
Speaker 4: that drives candidates to make questionable decisions.
Speaker 3: Right because you're trying to.
Speaker 4: Playcate a very particular slice of the public that's actually
Speaker 4: fairly out of step and like culturally different than the
Speaker 4: broader public.
Speaker 3: So I don't disagree with that at all.
Speaker 4: I actually think it's interesting your point about free speech
Speaker 4: and neutrality and the conservative ambition for Twitter as being
Speaker 4: a neutral place is fascinating because free speech used to
Speaker 4: be our standard of what neutrality is. And now conservative
Speaker 4: see one institution, all the other institutions, YouTube, whatever, aligned
Speaker 4: against them, and so one institution comes along and flirts
Speaker 4: and says, I can do even better than just free speech.
Speaker 4: I can you know, create a space for conservative speech
Speaker 4: and promote conservative speech in the so called like business,
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley mainstream.
Speaker 3: And everyone's like, hell yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's totally different than what you said, Like it's
Speaker 4: what you said is exactly right. It's totally different than
Speaker 4: just a neutral free speech platform, right, and people want that,
Speaker 4: Conservatives want that, and I think that is to an
Speaker 4: extent telling, but it also speaks to that like total
Speaker 4: death inspiration for just something one place that is going
Speaker 4: to be supportive and is going to let conservatives say
Speaker 4: what they want, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: That is totally different than free speech.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, I mean, and there were always like,
Speaker 1: obviously this was clear if you were looking for the science.
Speaker 5: From the beginning.
Speaker 1: I always talked about Mike Lindell launched his quote unquote
Speaker 1: free speech platform, and it was like, but no, taking
Speaker 1: the lord's name in vain, no cursing, but like it
Speaker 1: had a very specific set of rules for what he
Speaker 1: was defining us free speech, and so this has always
Speaker 1: been about art who's going to have control over the censorship,
Speaker 1: not really over free speech, because again, any idea that
Speaker 1: this is really truly a free speech platform, I think
Speaker 1: is out the window. Let's talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: though about DeSantis and what his pitch is. Put the
Speaker 1: next piece up on the screen here, because I think
Speaker 1: this is kind of fascinating reporting from CNN, and we've
Speaker 1: seen a little bit of this New York Times reporting
Speaker 1: as well. This is to be clear what DeSantis is
Speaker 1: putting out to these outlets, and the headline is how
Speaker 1: Desanta's plans to jolt the GOP presdential primary and sees
Speaker 1: back the narrative. A lot of this Emily is appears
Speaker 1: to be his pitch that he is more electable. And
Speaker 1: also there was an interesting addition in this reporting that
Speaker 1: one of the things he's leaning into is the fact
Speaker 1: that if Trump were to get elected, he's instantly alamed
Speaker 1: duck because he can only serve four more years since
Speaker 1: he's already served one term as president.
Speaker 5: So his pitch to the base and.
Speaker 1: Specifically to donors, is if you elect Trump, if he's
Speaker 1: able to get in there, Number one, I think he's
Speaker 1: less electable. So if he gets in there, though he's
Speaker 1: instantly alamed duck, you have to go back to having
Speaker 1: none of the advantages of incumbency and start from scratch
Speaker 1: the next time around. Whereas if I get elected, then
Speaker 1: you're much more likely to have eight years of a
Speaker 1: conservative in the presidency. So that's part of what he
Speaker 1: is leaning into in terms of the case he's making.
Speaker 3: That's a really good point.
Speaker 4: And again this gets into the question you asked about
Speaker 4: what kind of campaign Rnda Santis is going to run.
Speaker 3: I actually think Trump.
Speaker 4: Was very line and that's part of the problem in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty is that, like he gets so in the
Speaker 4: Twitter bubble, so in the social media bubble. One thing
Speaker 4: that's interesting is there is a Harris poll this week.
Speaker 4: It was conducted in mid May. It found that Elon
Speaker 4: Musk has like relatively high favorability, higher than Trump, higher
Speaker 4: than Biden.
Speaker 3: He's at forty seven percent.
Speaker 4: Ron De Santis is in third place at forty five
Speaker 4: percent in that pole, and then it's Bernie Sanders with
Speaker 4: forty two percent. So I think there is such like
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is probably more than just a super online figure.
Speaker 3: In the rest of the country.
Speaker 4: There are people who genuinely really admire him for reasons
Speaker 4: we may disagree with encounter, but he is a fairly
Speaker 4: popular figure nationwide. Obviously just a plurality, not a majority
Speaker 4: in the favorability race there. But it's going to be
Speaker 4: really tough, I think for Ron De Santis and Donald
Speaker 4: Trump both to be in this race and to have
Speaker 4: to resist the temptation of just running for a segment
Speaker 4: of conservative Twitter or truth social or whatever it is,
Speaker 4: because now the entire political class lives and breathes online
Speaker 4: and it just threw us mosis like soaks into everybody's
Speaker 4: perception of voters, and that is just so so dangerous,
Speaker 4: and so it's definitely a challenge for Ron de Santis
Speaker 4: moving forward.
Speaker 3: He's obviously, like.
Speaker 4: A lot of his legislation in Florida has made a
Speaker 4: lot of conservative Twitter very happy.
Speaker 3: Right, He's pretty popular in his own state.
Speaker 4: But whether or not that translates on a national level
Speaker 4: a very different question.
Speaker 1: What do you think of his electability pitch? Because I
Speaker 1: see two issues with it. Number One, it's not clear
Speaker 1: to me. I think donors definitely care about it, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it, and he's gonna have plenty of money
Speaker 1: behind him.
Speaker 5: That's not going to be an issue.
Speaker 1: But it's not clear to be the Republican base that
Speaker 1: this is anywhere close to their number one priority. The
Speaker 1: other issue for him, I think with the electability pitch
Speaker 1: is in that same Harvard Harris poll that you were mentioning,
Speaker 1: Republican voters are very divided on which one they think
Speaker 1: between DeSantis and Trump is more likely to defeat Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: So it's one thing if it's really clear to people like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the guy.
Speaker 5: If you want to win, this is the guy.
Speaker 1: And then you go to that secondary question of okay,
Speaker 1: but is that the top priority for the Republican base,
Speaker 1: But they don't see it the way that he sees it.
Speaker 4: Right, No, that's a really good point. And here's another
Speaker 4: we can put a three up. This is another part
Speaker 4: of his pitch. It's actually kind of echoes of Trump here.
Speaker 4: Desanta's envisions shaping seven to conservative majority on Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: That's a Washington Post headline, and so remember how crucial
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's Supreme Court. His Supreme Court promises were in
Speaker 4: the twenty sixteen primary and then in the general when
Speaker 4: you had all of these like never Trump conservatives saying
Speaker 4: I'm not voting for this guy. But then he rolls
Speaker 4: out the Leonard Leo list of judges that he would
Speaker 4: put on the Supreme Court, and that solidifies the support
Speaker 4: of the conservative movement.
Speaker 3: Here you have DeSantis.
Speaker 4: Saying We're going to shape the courts for seven two
Speaker 4: conservative majority. Obviously, that would be the goal of a
Speaker 4: Democrat president if they wanted to, if they were in
Speaker 4: a similar situation, be the goal of any Republican president
Speaker 4: cident for the most part, unless someone very moderate. But
Speaker 4: that he is specifically already prioritizing the court is very telling.
Speaker 4: But that's again you have this question of Donald Trump
Speaker 4: having about thirty percent of really solid support in the
Speaker 4: Republican Party. Thirty percent of Republican voters are Trump voters.
Speaker 4: They may only vote Republican because of Donald Trump. They
Speaker 4: may have voted Democrat before and now they vote Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: That is an unmovable probably thirty percent. What DeSantis's pitch
Speaker 4: has always been is that he and Florida is appealing
Speaker 4: to those voters while also being appealing to suburban voters
Speaker 4: and while also continuing to peel off minority voters, Hispanic voters.
Speaker 4: That is going to be really difficult when Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is at that thirty percent and the rest of the
Speaker 4: field is split between Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley,
Speaker 4: whoever the hell else decides to get into this race.
Speaker 4: That makes you know, most Republican voters voted against Donald
Speaker 4: Trump in the primaries in twenty sixteen, which is the
Speaker 4: people forget a lot. And now if you're splitting it
Speaker 4: up again, and Donald Trump is not going to lose
Speaker 4: that thirty percent, they love him, and they probably a
Speaker 4: big section of them are probably like old union Democratic
Speaker 4: voters who are not going to vote for another regular politician.
Speaker 4: There's just nothing you can do to winno away at
Speaker 4: that number. And that's a real challenge for anybody, let
Speaker 4: alone to Santas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think, I mean, and it's not just
Speaker 1: that he has that solid thirty percent. There's like eighty
Speaker 1: percent or ninety percent of the Republican Party that's open
Speaker 1: to voting for him. So he's, you know, in a
Speaker 1: much stronger position than he was in twenty sixteen. And
Speaker 1: then you have all of these candidates dividing the field.
Speaker 1: I think in terms of DeSantis's electability pitch, another complicating
Speaker 1: factor for him is the fact that he just signed
Speaker 1: into law of the six week abortion ban, which, you know,
Speaker 1: if part of your pitch is, hey, I can appeal
Speaker 1: to suburbanites in a way that Trump has completely turned
Speaker 1: them off, well you have just completely muddied that issue
Speaker 1: because this is the you know issue that abortion has
Speaker 1: become the most animating issue among suburban voters in particular,
Speaker 1: suburban women in particular. So I also think that that
Speaker 1: undercuts the electability argument. But you know, I want to
Speaker 1: make the best case we can for him. I think
Speaker 1: that he has already shown I think his team has
Speaker 1: already shown a lot of competence.
Speaker 5: They've shown themselves to be really nimble.
Speaker 1: You know, in terms of Iowa, that that visit he
Speaker 1: had recently where Trump pulled out and DeSantis then shows
Speaker 1: up and kind of it's kind of like a little
Speaker 1: jab at Trump, and ultimately, you know, the pace of
Speaker 1: this race could be set in those early states. There's
Speaker 1: reporting this morning about how they want to use their
Speaker 1: money to really flood the zone in terms of organizers
Speaker 1: into Iowa and New Hampshire and the other early state
Speaker 1: primaries and caucuses. So that's their theory of the case.
Speaker 1: And you know, right now, I think it looks like
Speaker 1: a real uphill climb, But you know, it's.
Speaker 5: Going to be a long primary season and you never
Speaker 5: know what's going to happen. Emily, you never know what's
Speaker 5: going to happen.
Speaker 4: In my quick final thought on this is that the
Speaker 4: guy is extremely popular in Florida. That has genuine like
Speaker 4: generally been a fairly organic He barely won his governor's
Speaker 4: race against Andrew Gillen.
Speaker 3: It was just by a hair he won that race.
Speaker 4: He then started, you know, governing in a way that
Speaker 4: was very alien to a lot.
Speaker 3: Of people in the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: Has been you know, in the sort of Republican establishment circles,
Speaker 4: very controversial. Those things that Ron DeSantis has done. But
Speaker 4: in his state, his popularity is high. He has passed
Speaker 4: a lot of legislation, and he has a good messaging
Speaker 4: strategy on that legislation that makes it popular. Where the
Speaker 4: media says, don't say gay, well, Florida is genuinely split
Speaker 4: on whether or not they like that bill. Despite what
Speaker 4: the media says it's actually fairly popular, way more than
Speaker 4: the media says, and so to be able to sell
Speaker 4: that despite the media noise saying one thing, to be
Speaker 4: able to have a messaging strategy that cuts to what
Speaker 4: voters think and what they want to hear, I think
Speaker 4: that's that is a sign that he's definitely has political
Speaker 4: talents that people probably underestimate on the national scale. So
Speaker 4: it's going to be a very interesting primary, to say
Speaker 4: the least, and an important primary so as we figure
Speaker 4: out where the Republican Party is going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and we'll be watching closely his announcement tonight.
Speaker 1: I think Saga and I might jump on into a
Speaker 1: little instant react, so so stay tuned for that.
Speaker 3: Lea Sager worked today on a Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Sager is he's NonStop man. He lives in that suit.
Speaker 1: He's just like throws on the casual clothes over so
Speaker 1: you can rip him off at any moment and be
Speaker 1: ready to jump in front of a camera. So he's unstoppable.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about whatever.
Speaker 5: We know about the dead ceiling. At this point, as
Speaker 5: you guys know.
Speaker 1: We are hurtling, barreling rapidly towards the supposed drop dead date,
Speaker 1: which is June first. I'll tell you a little bit
Speaker 1: more about There are some questions over whether they could
Speaker 1: push that out further, but we'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute.
Speaker 5: For now, let's say June.
Speaker 1: First is when you actually run out of money and
Speaker 1: have to start making choices about what you pay, when
Speaker 1: you actually go into default, when you have all of
Speaker 1: these potentially catastrophic consequences that we are all concerned about.
Speaker 1: So Jake Sherman had some reporting yesterday from an internal
Speaker 1: Republican House Caucus meeting. He's got some details here about
Speaker 1: what they are saying amongst themselves. Go ahead and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. Speaker McCarthy just told House Republicans.
Speaker 1: He says, inside a clothes house, doop, meaning I need
Speaker 1: you all to hang with me on the debt limit.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 1: We are nowhere near a deal yet, very confidence inspiring.
Speaker 1: He goes on to say, put this next piece up, Colvin,
Speaker 1: I told the President three things. No clean debt limit,
Speaker 1: no raising taxes, spend less money. Remember where we were
Speaker 1: they refused to negotiate. We ow Garrett Graves and Patrick mckenry.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who've been negotiating a round of applause.
Speaker 1: They made a mistake. He's talking about the Democrats to
Speaker 1: not negotiate. Let's say stay strong together. He goes on
Speaker 1: to say, McCarthy showed a video with a chronology of
Speaker 1: Democrats saying they wouldn't negotiate. So their own little like
Speaker 1: propaganda piece to say, look, we rolled them. They already caved,
Speaker 1: which you know, hard to deny that that's the case.
Speaker 1: And then another important note here, put this next piece
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Colvin McCarthy got back up from
Speaker 1: the right and got back up from the right and
Speaker 1: closed House Guop meeting. Gates said McCarthy's tone was pitch perfect,
Speaker 1: and Scott Perry also concurred. So that shows a sort
Speaker 1: of unified Republican House Caucus in terms of the demands
Speaker 1: that they were making. One thing I'll point out here,
Speaker 1: I mean saying no raising taxes. That's an issue for Democrats.
Speaker 1: And it is very hard to see how this all
Speaker 1: gets resolved because the ground that Republicans have staked down,
Speaker 1: and that they sort of have to stake out in
Speaker 1: order to remain unified since you have the House Freedom
Speaker 1: Caucus taking relatively extreme positions is wildly unacceptable.
Speaker 5: To Democrats.
Speaker 1: So they have not only called for you know, in
Speaker 1: nominal terms, not just accounting for inflation, but in nominal terms,
Speaker 1: they want spending cuts that makes it, you know, very
Speaker 1: aggressive cuts. They also want to increase the budget for
Speaker 1: the military. They want to cut spending to the IRS,
Speaker 1: which actually puts a further hole in the budget because
Speaker 1: IRS agents helped to bring in additional revenue. And so
Speaker 1: you've lift yourself this very limited pool of funds of
Speaker 1: programs that you can cut, and that would require really
Speaker 1: dramatic cuts not only to social safety net programs, but
Speaker 1: also to what has been Biden's signature program, the Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act, which is going to be a really red
Speaker 1: line for him, also for House Democrats, for Senate Democrats.
Speaker 1: So and as he mentions here, they're not putting any
Speaker 1: taxes on the table. There was also reporting about Biden
Speaker 1: was saying, hey, let's work into this, like negotiating more
Speaker 1: prescription drug prices. McCarthy was like, now, we don't want
Speaker 1: to do anything that's actually good in this whole situation.
Speaker 1: So they put that off the table. They don't want
Speaker 1: to close the carried interest loophole. They certainly don't want
Speaker 1: to roll back any of the Trump tax cuts that
Speaker 1: largely went to wealthy incorporations. So even though they continue
Speaker 1: to talk, I just don't know how they actually find
Speaker 1: some sort of meeting of the minds here that's going
Speaker 1: to be acceptable.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think any way.
Speaker 4: But although Mitch McConnell did say yesterday, you know, everybody
Speaker 4: calmed down, they're gonna come to a deal, which was
Speaker 4: fairly interesting because the can has really been kicked over
Speaker 4: to McCarthy. McConnell has really taken a back seat.
Speaker 5: Yeah, mccon's like, all right, dude, good luck.
Speaker 3: And McConnell was that.
Speaker 4: McConnell was out and injured through a lot of this, Yes,
Speaker 4: in the hospital. He was back in Kentucky because he
Speaker 4: had a fall. But Kevin McCarthy took the reins on this,
Speaker 4: and if he were a Democrat, the glowing profiles of
Speaker 4: how he has held his conference together despite having this
Speaker 4: insanely slim majority, where people have no incentive really to
Speaker 4: get along with him, because they can. You know, if
Speaker 4: you're the Freedom Caucus, even if you're the Moderates, you
Speaker 4: can do so much stuff on your own and message
Speaker 4: on your own and not be unified, and that could
Speaker 4: still end up happening. Yeah, like we can't, you know,
Speaker 4: count the chickens before they hatch, because that's very much
Speaker 4: still possible. But the level of unity in a very
Speaker 4: divided conference in a very difficult situation. One thing that
Speaker 4: I have heard from Republican circles and especially Freedom Coccus circles,
Speaker 4: is that they think that a lot of these differences
Speaker 4: were ironed out during the speaker battle in January, and
Speaker 4: so when they came to loggerheads then and fought so
Speaker 4: bitterly over whether Kevin McCarthy would be the speaker, they
Speaker 4: kind of figured out how to get along, and that's
Speaker 4: helping them now.
Speaker 3: Again, this could still blow up in everyone's face.
Speaker 4: But I've been scratching my head and trying to figure
Speaker 4: out why on earth Joe Biden ever came to the
Speaker 4: table from a purely strategic standpoint, like the moral and
Speaker 4: ideological questions aside. It makes absolutely no sense that he
Speaker 4: started negotiating because there is an impasse, bottom line, there's
Speaker 4: no compromise.
Speaker 1: His whole position has been the worst of all worlds
Speaker 1: in terms of just any sort of trying to get
Speaker 1: strategic leverage. If you were going to negotiate from the beginning.
Speaker 1: You should have just negotiated from the beginning. The worst
Speaker 1: thing you could do is say absolutely no negotiation and
Speaker 1: then completely cave and negotiate the you know, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: what they should have done from the beginning is continue
Speaker 1: to hold out the very clear possibility of fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: or some other workaround, because that really signals to the
Speaker 1: I'm like, listen, we don't have to give you anything.
Speaker 1: And you know, also, in my opinion, they should actually
Speaker 1: exercise one of these options so we never have to
Speaker 1: deal with this nonsense again, which is truly dangerous and
Speaker 1: potentially catastrophic. I mean, people can lose their jobs, like
Speaker 1: millions of people could lose their jobs. You could have
Speaker 1: the whole global financial system completely collapse, really damaging to
Speaker 1: America's standing the world.
Speaker 5: Treasury bonds are.
Speaker 1: Used to backstop like every big corporate transaction around the world.
Speaker 1: So this is really dangerous stuff that they're playing with here.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but Democrats could have lifted the
Speaker 1: debt sailing on their own back when they had control
Speaker 1: before they lost the House, and they just didn't do it.
Speaker 5: That to me in terms of you.
Speaker 1: Know, they can't see three inches in front of their faces,
Speaker 1: and they were so worried about giving the Republicans and
Speaker 1: some talking point about like, oh, Democrats love debt, that
Speaker 1: they've now risked the entire entire global financial economy. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: Republicans are the hostage takers, so they're to blame in
Speaker 1: my view. But Democrats just never are able to strategize
Speaker 1: effectively and actually get out from under these problems. And
Speaker 1: I think part of it is not just that they
Speaker 1: didn't want to give Republicans a talking point. I think
Speaker 1: part of it is also that they sort of calculated
Speaker 1: that this would be bad for the Republican Party, the
Speaker 1: specter of them holding them hostage and all of that,
Speaker 1: and based on the polling, it's not clear that the
Speaker 1: messaging is even working out for them.
Speaker 5: But you know, I think politicians on.
Speaker 1: Both sides sort of like these kinds of crises because
Speaker 1: they think they can leverage them for their own political end,
Speaker 1: and it's really grotesque.
Speaker 4: So great point, and particularly one thing I think is
Speaker 4: genuinely worth thinking about if you're sitting at the DNC
Speaker 4: right now, is how incredibly their advantage with the media
Speaker 4: has started to become a disadvantage in ways that they
Speaker 4: don't anticipate. Because if you go back to the Obama years,
Speaker 4: which are heavy on everyone's mind. You had Dan Fire
Speaker 4: for writing about it in the New York Times recently.
Speaker 4: Those negotiations really went poorly for the Tea Party Republicans
Speaker 4: who felt like they had the wind at the back
Speaker 4: and the wind at their back, and we're doing great
Speaker 4: and giving the voters what they wanted, and they were
Speaker 4: going to come out on top because this was the
Speaker 4: libertarian moment, as Time had on their cover.
Speaker 3: It did not work out that way, and in large part.
Speaker 4: Because the media heavily, heavily, heavily sided with Democrats and
Speaker 4: on government shutdown stuff.
Speaker 3: Average voters hate that.
Speaker 4: If you're someone who maybe leans right, votes Republicans sometimes
Speaker 4: votes Democrats sometimes aren't paying super close attention to the news,
Speaker 4: what you're going to instinctively hate is the government not working,
Speaker 4: like things just not happening, people holding stuff hostage for
Speaker 4: ideological reasons.
Speaker 3: You don't care.
Speaker 4: You want things to work and you're disappointed when they don't.
Speaker 4: And so that's a built in disadvantage to being obstructionist, period.
Speaker 4: Even if there are ideological reasons that justify it. You
Speaker 4: have a huge, huge problem if you're Republicans. Democrats know
Speaker 4: that they know that the media is going to take
Speaker 4: their side at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: They know instinctively there's independent voters.
Speaker 4: People just really don't like when government stops, and that
Speaker 4: I think gave them a false sense of confidence that
Speaker 4: they could basically do whatever they wanted start negotiating. Say, listen,
Speaker 4: Republicans are screwing this up. They don't want to work
Speaker 4: out a deal, and the media is going to take
Speaker 4: their side, which is true, but it doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: it shows any leadership and is any healthier for the
Speaker 4: country when you could have just done the damn thing
Speaker 4: before this all happens, and you could have just not negotiated,
Speaker 4: and Republicans can't do anything about it if you don't negotiate.
Speaker 5: Well, and here's the other thing.
Speaker 1: By Biden caving, he has basically given credence to the
Speaker 1: Republican claim that the debt is a real issue right
Speaker 1: now that needs to be dealt with. And that's why
Speaker 1: you see a lot of pulling that people are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want a debt sealing increase, but with spending cuts. Well,
Speaker 1: when you have both political parties basically saying like, all right,
Speaker 1: got it, we should negotiate and we should have some
Speaker 1: sort of spending cuts. Into that narrative, of course, you're
Speaker 1: going to end up with people wanting them to have
Speaker 1: some sort of a deal because you're not getting any
Speaker 1: other messaging from anywhere else, when the reality is there's
Speaker 1: no sign in the market that we are close to
Speaker 1: any sort of a debt catastrophe. Interest rates were low
Speaker 1: and still remain relatively low by historical standards, even in
Speaker 1: spite of the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates. There were
Speaker 1: no issues with like selling our debt. There was no
Speaker 1: indication in the market that this was a looming problem.
Speaker 1: And there's also no indication that Republicans actually care about
Speaker 1: this issue because they obviously blew up our debt and
Speaker 1: deficit with the Trump tax cuts, which they are adamantly
Speaker 1: committed to and have no intention of rolling back. This
Speaker 1: only becomes an issue when it's Democrats who are in power.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a lot of foolishness here all around.
Speaker 1: But the catastrophic error for Democrats was not dealing with
Speaker 1: this when they had complete power and when they could
Speaker 1: have there was another weird thing that happened in the
Speaker 1: Republican Caucus meeting that we wanted to highlight for you.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. They did a fifteen
Speaker 1: minute fundraising auction for some use chapstick from speaker McCarthy.
Speaker 1: Don't know, okay, whatever, that's kind of gross. Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green apparently won. Her winning bid was one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: This goes to like Republican campaign efforts. He also threw
Speaker 1: in there that he would attend to dinner with donors
Speaker 1: and supporters for whoever wins. So congratulations Marjorie. I think
Speaker 1: we have a picture of her with her.
Speaker 5: Chapstick that she won.
Speaker 1: Apparently the flavor, according to some in depth reporting here
Speaker 1: is cherry.
Speaker 5: So there you go. That also happened.
Speaker 1: Let's put this next piece up on the screen. Manu Raju,
Speaker 1: this is what I was referring to earlier. Biden tried
Speaker 1: to add in a provision to the debt talks to
Speaker 1: expand Medicare's authority to negotiate drug prices. This is one
Speaker 1: of those things that everybody pretends to be in favor of,
Speaker 1: but then it never actually happens because of the power
Speaker 1: of big Pharma, and McCarthy said that seems like a
Speaker 1: place to try and disrupt the whole negotiations, like trying
Speaker 1: to throw taxes in. Now, try to start talking about Medicare,
Speaker 1: so he comes out there in favor of keeping prices
Speaker 1: high for Medicare and you know, gouging the government. That's
Speaker 1: why it makes sense to put in here. If you're
Speaker 1: talking about cutting spending, one thing that would cut spending
Speaker 1: is if Medicare could negotiate with drug makers on the
Speaker 1: cost of prescriptions. You could save some dollars there. But no,
Speaker 1: we'll just keep giving the premium to big pharma.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And you know, I like, actually am ideologically more
Speaker 4: concerned about Dutton deficit. I think, you know, the financial
Speaker 4: management of the United States is to find it genuinely problematic.
Speaker 4: But the things Republicans and Democrats to some extent are
Speaker 4: picking to have fights over are incredibly stupid. And I
Speaker 4: really thought that this would be an opportunity, just like
Speaker 4: hearing some of the chatter in GOP circles, an opportunity
Speaker 4: to start taking on the surveillance state, to start taking
Speaker 4: on some absolutely ridiculous like excessive culturally like radical stuff
Speaker 4: that's been baked into the federal government from a conservative
Speaker 4: perspective that I think most people would probably object to.
Speaker 3: It's none of that. That's not where any of.
Speaker 4: This fight has gone. Like ridiculous Pentagon programs. Why aren't
Speaker 4: they fighting about that stuff?
Speaker 5: No, they want to give the Pentagon more money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, how about all of these things We're
Speaker 4: seeing all these offices like Ken Clippenstein reports on a
Speaker 4: new one every week that nobody knew existed at the Pentagon,
Speaker 4: and it just exists to surveil average Americans for the
Speaker 4: partisan purposes of the intelligence community. Why aren't they picking
Speaker 4: fights over that that's worth shutting down the government?
Speaker 3: Basically, like, if anything is that's worth it, there are
Speaker 3: just other things that would make so much more sense.
Speaker 4: And people who were doing like crunching some numbers RUSS
Speaker 4: vote as former own B director under Trump put together
Speaker 4: a budget of things that actually, really I thought were
Speaker 4: worth fighting over, and I just I'm not hearing much
Speaker 4: of that on the messaging side. And I think part
Speaker 4: of that is because when Biden started negotiating, it's just
Speaker 4: it's an impasse, and you can't if you're actually trying
Speaker 4: to find legitimate places for compromise.
Speaker 3: It's not any of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they took I mean I'm glad they did,
Speaker 1: but they took Social Security and Medicare off the table,
Speaker 1: maybe accidentally the Biden State of the Union. And they
Speaker 1: took the Pentagon off the table, and in fact want
Speaker 1: to increase funding at the Pentagon.
Speaker 5: That doesn't leave a whole lot left.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, Okay, you're risking the whole global
Speaker 1: economy for some blank additional work requirements on SNAP really really.
Speaker 1: My other question for you, Emily is I have also
Speaker 1: been surprised that they've been able to keep the Republican
Speaker 1: Caucus together as well as they have. I was frankly
Speaker 1: surprised they were able to as easily as they did
Speaker 1: pass their bill through the House. My question is what
Speaker 1: happens when the markets crash?
Speaker 5: What happens when the.
Speaker 1: Wall Street donors start actually freaking out and calling members
Speaker 1: of the Republican House Caucus. That's when, to me, the
Speaker 1: rubber sort of hits the road in terms of whether
Speaker 1: they have any defections and whether they have anyone who's
Speaker 1: open to say. For example, the discharge petition that Democrats
Speaker 1: are floating where you need five Republicans to sign on
Speaker 1: to get that through the House. Do you think that
Speaker 1: you start to see cracks emerge then, Because even though
Speaker 1: you got Matt Gates giving McCarthy backup in this Republican
Speaker 1: House Caucus meeting yesterday, he also then went and told reporters,
Speaker 1: I don't think we should be negotiating at all. I
Speaker 1: think our position should be what we passed in the
Speaker 1: House and that's it, end of story. There have been
Speaker 1: other you Republicans who are on record being like, I
Speaker 1: will not vote for raising the debt ceiling no matter what. Yep.
Speaker 5: So do you think that you could have cracks.
Speaker 1: Emerged there in the unity of the Republican Caucus when
Speaker 1: if and I would say it's more likely to when
Speaker 1: you have a massive market crash in Wall Street starts
Speaker 1: to freak.
Speaker 3: They're incredibly vulnerable.
Speaker 4: I think they're in a better position than they would
Speaker 4: be under any other potential speaker with Kevin McCarthy, because
Speaker 4: he's so intentional. I mean, the real lesson from the
Speaker 4: Marjorie Taylor Green chapstick auction, which, by the way, we
Speaker 4: will be auctioning off Sager's chapstick and it is used,
Speaker 4: but no, the real story there is a year ago,
Speaker 4: most of the establishment press would have said, how absurd
Speaker 4: it is that Marjorie Taylor Green, in a really bitter
Speaker 4: potential shutdown battle over the debt ceiling, is actually so
Speaker 4: chummy with Kevin McCarthy that they're auctioning off chapstick in
Speaker 4: the middle of it, and she's happy to make the
Speaker 4: winning one hundred thousand dollars bid. That is very unusual
Speaker 4: par to where the Republican establishment and the Tea Party movement,
Speaker 4: where the Freedom Coucus movement were under Barack Obama, even
Speaker 4: under Paul Ryan. And so they're in the best possible
Speaker 4: situation with Kevin McCarthy because he's very intentional about courting
Speaker 4: those disparate sort of factions of his party, and he's
Speaker 4: good at it.
Speaker 3: He's actually pretty.
Speaker 4: Good at a political ran A story last year that
Speaker 4: was just is Kevin McCarthy dumb?
Speaker 3: You remember that headline, Oh my.
Speaker 4: Gosh, again, Like he actually is not. He's very good
Speaker 4: at this, and so if there's any hope of preventing that,
Speaker 4: it's because of Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, there's just not.
Speaker 4: A lot of incentive on the Freedom Caucus part to
Speaker 4: play nice. When the rubber meets the road and Kevin
Speaker 4: McCarthy's getting calls from Wall Street donors, people are freaking out.
Speaker 4: That's where things, you're right, are going to get really
Speaker 4: tough because the Freedom Caucus is not.
Speaker 3: Beholden to those people.
Speaker 4: It's not beholden to the same sort of corporate donor set,
Speaker 4: especially not now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, past, Well, you have the Freedom Caucus group, which
Speaker 1: benefits personally, you know, in terms of their like grassroots
Speaker 1: and online support. The more strident they are, yes, right,
Speaker 1: the more extreme, the.
Speaker 5: More willing to blow things up they are.
Speaker 1: Then you have this new crop of Republicans elected in
Speaker 1: districts that Joe Biden won in places like New York,
Speaker 1: and their incentives are very different, right, They want to
Speaker 1: get reelected, they want to show to their districts. I'm
Speaker 1: different than those crazy people on the type of like
Speaker 1: reasonable Republican who just wants some fiscal responsibility in this
Speaker 1: joint and so they you know, if you do have
Speaker 1: that kind of crash, those disparate incentives may come to
Speaker 1: the fore. But we'll see how that all goes. There's
Speaker 1: one other piece here, you know, I keep saying, I
Speaker 1: really don't know how this is going to be resolved.
Speaker 1: I don't even have a guess at this point how
Speaker 1: this is going to be figured out, because it's just
Speaker 1: very hard for me to see how the White House
Speaker 1: the Republicans come to a deal. The White House seems
Speaker 1: to have put any of the extraordinary measures like fourteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment kind of off the table, although they still have
Speaker 1: technically kept those as live options. Jeff Stein reports on
Speaker 1: what is another effort here to at least kick the
Speaker 1: can down the road a little bit.
Speaker 5: Put this up on the screen from Jeff.
Speaker 1: He's got a scoop that Treasury has asked US agencies
Speaker 1: if any payments can be made at a later date.
Speaker 5: As the deadline nears.
Speaker 1: According to an internal memo that was obtained by the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, Biden aids are searching for new ways to
Speaker 1: prolong the X date beyond existing measure. Sources say, so
Speaker 1: the X date right now is June one, and the
Speaker 1: idea here, Emily is if they can actually push out
Speaker 1: till June fifteen, there's a bunch of quarterly tax payments
Speaker 1: that will flow into government coffers, then they would be
Speaker 1: able to stay alive for a while longer and push
Speaker 1: this off even further down the road. Now, it's the
Speaker 1: technicalities here are tricky. It's not obvious that they could
Speaker 1: actually make this work. God, and put the next part
Speaker 1: from Jeff up on the screen. I think we have
Speaker 1: a couple more tweets from him. He says, if they
Speaker 1: can and find a few days worth of extra cash,
Speaker 1: they can make it to June fifteen, then they get
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of new tax revenue. Obviously that's not
Speaker 1: the preferred outcome to punt the deadline to July, but
Speaker 1: that would at least buy them support time, they say.
Speaker 5: Despite the attention to.
Speaker 1: Legally novel arguments around minting the coin and the fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: there's a key, separate set of options, also likely controversial,
Speaker 1: to simply delay the date rather than simply end the standoff.
Speaker 5: As those ideas do.
Speaker 1: And he puts in parentheses, don't you love the idea
Speaker 1: of doing this for longer? I think Jeff is also
Speaker 1: set to get married, so I'm sure he would love
Speaker 1: having to follow this while he's, like, you know, on
Speaker 1: his wedding day and on his honeymoon whatever. But anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of technical questions whether they can actually
Speaker 1: do this because there's government regulations about like, hey, you
Speaker 1: got to like pay your bills on time federal government,
Speaker 1: and you can't. You are also sort of usurping some
Speaker 1: of the power of Congress if you are picking and
Speaker 1: choosing what bills get paid and what bills don't get paid.
Speaker 1: So there are some questions around whether the strategy would
Speaker 1: be feasible or legal. But as of now, you know,
Speaker 1: I think, to me, what this shows is they really
Speaker 1: don't have a clear plan about how to work this out,
Speaker 1: and now they're like, well, maybe our best bet is
Speaker 1: just to like kick this down the road, so maybe
Speaker 1: we can come up with a plan that might ultimately
Speaker 1: work out.
Speaker 4: They're just going like full Jackson Pollock, like throwing things
Speaker 4: onto the canvas, seeing what it looks like. No, I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like, I actually think that's arguably the worst approach
Speaker 4: is saying we have this potential stop gap, we can
Speaker 4: keep kicking it down, because that's again what they did
Speaker 4: from last year.
Speaker 3: They could have done this last year. It's easier.
Speaker 4: You Actually, they have a recess coming up that might
Speaker 4: have to be abridged if they end up needing to
Speaker 4: come back to DC and vote on negotiations. As silly
Speaker 4: as that sounds, that is a motivation for members of
Speaker 4: Congress would be.
Speaker 3: Shocked to learn they don't. You like to have that
Speaker 3: stuff interrupted.
Speaker 4: So all of those things going on, I mean, the
Speaker 4: incentive to not figure this out and make a decision,
Speaker 4: whether it's saying we're at an impass, we can't compromise,
Speaker 4: we're going this way or that way, the incentive to
Speaker 4: do that sooner.
Speaker 3: Rather than later is really important because.
Speaker 4: Otherwise, I think that's where you get into a dangerous situation.
Speaker 4: If you can't figure it out now, you're not going
Speaker 4: to figure it out in two weeks. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just going to continue to get worse, and whatever deal
Speaker 4: you come to is going to continue to get worse
Speaker 4: in the next two weeks. I think there's a little
Speaker 4: measure of truth to what Mitch McConnell says that, like
Speaker 4: something's going to get done, it's probably going to be
Speaker 4: bad for both Republicans and Democrats. He may be much
Speaker 4: more optimistic that it's going to be good for Republicans
Speaker 4: than it ultimately is. But whatever deal they come to
Speaker 4: avoid default, I don't think that's actually going to happen.
Speaker 3: But you know, crazier things have happened.
Speaker 4: I guess the host of Celebrity Apprentice was our president for.
Speaker 5: I remember that.
Speaker 4: I remember that things can things can spiral. But all
Speaker 4: that is to say, if you keep punting, you're going
Speaker 4: to further lose your ability to do something that actually
Speaker 4: makes sense, because if you can't do it now, you're.
Speaker 3: Not going to do it.
Speaker 5: I agree with you. You kind of need the force.
Speaker 1: And nothing happens in DC until there's a hard deadline,
Speaker 1: and you kind of need the forcing mechanism and all. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're abots to talk about the economy. Like
Speaker 1: the longer that this hangs over everybody, I think, the
Speaker 1: worse it is all the way around. So let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and move on to that next part, because you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the potential catastrophic economic fallout if we
Speaker 1: do have a default, which I think is totally on
Speaker 1: the table. Here, guys, there's new polling that shows, you know,
Speaker 1: Americans are already feeling like the economy is really not good.
Speaker 1: So let's put this first part up on the screen.
Speaker 1: You've got these are the right track wrong track numbers,
Speaker 1: and you can see that redline is Americans who feel
Speaker 1: that the country is on the wrong track, the wrong track,
Speaker 1: and you've got now sixty two percent who say that,
Speaker 1: so an overwhelming majority. Now those numbers have been high
Speaker 1: for a while, I want to be clear, but still not.
Speaker 5: A good place to sit.
Speaker 1: Let's put this next piece up on the screen, which
Speaker 1: is more specifically about the economy. You have again sixty
Speaker 1: two percent saying that they think the economy is weak today.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because, of course you you have low
Speaker 1: unemployment numbers, you have a tight labor market, but because
Speaker 1: you have high inflation that's eating into a lot of
Speaker 1: people's wages and making very difficult for people just to
Speaker 1: get by month to month. You have people feeling, you know,
Speaker 1: things are still not good right now. But this next
Speaker 1: piece up on the screen, this is maybe in some
Speaker 1: ways the most key metric. A majority forty nine percent,
Speaker 1: so very near majority, say their own personal financial situation
Speaker 1: is getting worse.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: If you're an incumbent president, that is the last thing
Speaker 1: you want to see. Especially Biden actually plans on running
Speaker 1: hound how great the economy is. So when you have
Speaker 1: a majority people saying, actually, things are getting worse for me,
Speaker 1: and only I believe that's twenty five percent that say
Speaker 1: things are actually getting better. So one quarter of the
Speaker 1: country is like, yeah, things are going good for me,
Speaker 1: and everyone else is like, h this is really kind
Speaker 1: of a disaster, not a good landscape. And then finally,
Speaker 1: only twenty one percent of Americans say that we are
Speaker 1: going to avoid a recession. You have everybody else saying
Speaker 1: we are either already in a recession or we will
Speaker 1: be in a recession in the next year. So again,
Speaker 1: a very dire landscape right now, even before you get
Speaker 1: to potential default and whatever that would mean for the economy.
Speaker 5: So Emily, you know, in my mind, there's.
Speaker 1: Two pieces here that I think are really important, as
Speaker 1: I pointed out in terms of Democrats and being able
Speaker 1: to hold onto the White House with Joe Biden, you know,
Speaker 1: as their standard bearer that they want to anoint once again,
Speaker 1: and he wants to run on how great a job
Speaker 1: he's done with the economy. These numbers do not seem
Speaker 1: to give him back up there. And then there's just
Speaker 1: the actual reality that people are struggling. They feel like
Speaker 1: they're sliding backwards. Personal debt numbers keep hitting all time
Speaker 1: highs as people try to, you know, cling to you know,
Speaker 1: any sort of semblance of normalcy, any sort of semblance
Speaker 1: of stability. So it's a pretty dire landscape that we
Speaker 1: are already facing, going into a potential act, not a catastrophe.
Speaker 4: One of the things in the poll I think is
Speaker 4: really interesting when the question asked about the state of
Speaker 4: the economy being strong or weak. The changes over just
Speaker 4: the last several months are massive. It was like thirty
Speaker 4: percent at the beginning of the year if people said
Speaker 4: the economy was weak, and now it's at sixty two percent.
Speaker 4: As you pointed out, that's a very quick and very
Speaker 4: dramatic change.
Speaker 3: And again here's we can put C two up.
Speaker 4: Jamie Diamond has been talking about all kinds of things
Speaker 4: per usual, but here he says, this is a CNBC headline,
Speaker 4: Jamie Diamond warrens souring commercial real estate loans could threaten
Speaker 4: some banks. Actually, in the same article it quotes Diamond
Speaker 4: talking about how you should expect probably.
Speaker 3: More rate hikes.
Speaker 4: That's pretty interesting because if anybody's in a position to
Speaker 4: know whether or not we should be expecting more rate hikes,
Speaker 4: it'd be Jamie Diamond. And so when people's personal financial
Speaker 4: situations are worsening.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, people are right.
Speaker 4: Things are getting worse for them and they will continue
Speaker 4: to get worse for them likely.
Speaker 1: Yes, And there are huge storm clouds hanging over and
Speaker 1: already we economy, not only with the debt sealing, but
Speaker 1: as Jamie Diamond, who's basically king now after all of
Speaker 1: these like bank bailouts and his bank just becoming larger
Speaker 1: and larger and larger National Bank. Yeah, that's why we
Speaker 1: have to pay attention to what he says, because all
Speaker 1: of these politicians we talk about, Jamie Diamond is actually
Speaker 1: more powerful than all of them put together at this point.
Speaker 5: So he's pointing to something that's.
Speaker 1: Very real here, though, that I really want to keep
Speaker 1: our eye on, in terms of the commercial real estate bubble.
Speaker 1: And this is something I did a monologue on a
Speaker 1: while back, because Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's longtime partner, is
Speaker 1: saying the same thing that there's huge problems in terms
Speaker 1: of the commercial real estate market.
Speaker 5: Why because people after.
Speaker 1: The pandemic, you know, you have hybrid work schedules that
Speaker 1: people are really enjoying, and so you just don't have
Speaker 1: office workers at the office the way that you did
Speaker 1: and you probably never will again. It's very difficult to
Speaker 1: convert office space to you know, residential space or anything
Speaker 1: else which we could really use because on the other hand,
Speaker 1: housing is wildly out affordable because you have very low
Speaker 1: stock of housing to work with.
Speaker 5: But it's very difficult to convert that.
Speaker 1: Oh and so in the meantime, there are projections you
Speaker 1: could see commercial real estate values dropping by forty percent,
Speaker 1: and you have a lot of the commercial real estate
Speaker 1: debt coming due in half of it is coming due
Speaker 1: in just the next two years. So this is a
Speaker 1: huge cloud overhanging the economy. It's like something has to
Speaker 1: give here, because when you have real estate values dropping
Speaker 1: by potentially forty percent, that is a looming catastrophe. One
Speaker 1: other piece here, put this last indicator up on the screen.
Speaker 1: You're already seeing some signs of trouble in the corporate world.
Speaker 1: Corporate bankruptcies, especially of large companies, are creeping up. As
Speaker 1: they say, pressure grows in the economy. Again, this is
Speaker 1: kind of limited to large companies, and some of those,
Speaker 1: you guys have probably noted Bed Bath and beyond, Vice Media,
Speaker 1: among others that have filed for bankruptcies. Mark Zandi, who's
Speaker 1: chief economist at Moody says among all types of companies
Speaker 1: large and small, that increase in bankruptcies is more muted,
Speaker 1: with filings remaining blow pre pandemic levels and historic norms.
Speaker 1: So he's saying, listen, things are still not crazy, but
Speaker 1: these are some warning signs. And also in this article
Speaker 1: they quote an analyst who says that even a short
Speaker 1: lived failure to pay government debts would push the economy
Speaker 1: into recession. That means businesses are going to be struggling
Speaker 1: with weak or sales, They're probably not going to be
Speaker 1: able to get credit, so very quickly you'll be running
Speaker 1: out of cash and having to make some pretty hard
Speaker 1: choices layoff, slashing investment, and ultimately bankruptcy. Any long lasting
Speaker 1: default would be catastrophic and cause a tsunami of bankruptcies.
Speaker 1: So these are kind of you know, Canary and the
Speaker 1: coal Mine kind of indicators. And then the last piece here,
Speaker 1: there's actually some reporting from Ryan that we wanted to
Speaker 1: highlight on the commercial real estate piece.
Speaker 5: Not only do you have this looming.
Speaker 1: Potential catastrophe of valuations plummeting because of what the FED
Speaker 1: is doing, and also because of you know, changing office
Speaker 1: work habits and routines. You also have some indications here
Speaker 1: that banks are routinely overstating the value of commercial real estate.
Speaker 1: And for those of you who remember how it all
Speaker 1: went down with the housing crisis, what happened is you
Speaker 1: had these inflated values for personal residential mortgages and then
Speaker 1: those were securitized. They were like put together a chopp
Speaker 1: uft in pieces and sold, and those pieces were also
Speaker 1: then overstated because the underlying asset value was wildly overstated.
Speaker 1: And what Ryan and John Swartz here are saying is
Speaker 1: that you have a similar dynamic potentially unfolding in the
Speaker 1: commercial real estate market right now, which again is not
Speaker 1: some side corner of the economy. This is like a
Speaker 1: multi trillion dollar issue that we could be reckoning with
Speaker 1: over the coming years.
Speaker 4: And that article from Ryan and John Schwartz is from
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, so obviously with the pandemic still in motion,
Speaker 4: and that was the if we should have started paying
Speaker 4: attention to this at any time.
Speaker 3: It was all the way back then.
Speaker 4: And now you have Jamie Dimond talking about it, obviously,
Speaker 4: but this is something that under Joe Biden, I mean,
Speaker 4: we were talking about the debt negotiations in the last segment,
Speaker 4: and how Republicans actually want to gut Biden's cornerstone achievement,
Speaker 4: the Inflation Reduction Act. Well, part of the reason Biden
Speaker 4: maybe went to the table on this is because he
Speaker 4: recognizes that's a big vulnerability for him, because you can
Speaker 4: pin some of the inflation, you can pin some of
Speaker 4: the economic malaise or economic even like looming chaos to
Speaker 4: all of the spending that the Biden administration passed, whether
Speaker 4: you support it or not. And so that's obviously there's
Speaker 4: corporate price gouging happening and all of that as well.
Speaker 4: But Biden hasn't been a leader either starting to negotiate
Speaker 4: with corporations, bringing them to the table and saying cut
Speaker 4: it out. What you're doing with these price hikes is insane,
Speaker 4: and we're going to start pursuing legal action or something
Speaker 4: like that. And he hasn't taken a leadership role in
Speaker 4: starting to really address these big question marks in the
Speaker 4: economy that we've known about for a fairly long time.
Speaker 4: And so you can see if you look back, how
Speaker 4: both Trump and Biden set the stage for something that's
Speaker 4: going to be is already not going to be is
Speaker 4: already a huge problem for aubage Americans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it used to be this like fringe
Speaker 1: theory that corporations were using the excuse of inflation to
Speaker 1: hike prices, and now increasingly even mainstream sources are having
Speaker 1: to be like, yeah, y'all kind of had a.
Speaker 5: Point about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were exactly like, they're literally admitting it
Speaker 1: on their earnings call, and you're like, y'all are crazy,
Speaker 1: They're not doing that.
Speaker 5: It's like, of course they are. Of course they are.
Speaker 5: That's what they do.
Speaker 1: And to your point, Emily Biden has a lot of tools,
Speaker 1: even just rhetorical tools, to call out the behavior and
Speaker 1: call the carpet corporate price gougers, but he hasn't gone
Speaker 1: in that direction whatsoever. And so instead they've used the
Speaker 1: very blunt instrument of the FED hiking rates in hopes
Speaker 1: that that will, you know, crush the economy and crush
Speaker 1: ordinary workers, et cetera, when it really is not a
Speaker 1: tool effectively designed. It's not going to deal with corporate
Speaker 1: price gouging whatsoever. It's not going to deal with supply
Speaker 1: chain issues whatsoever. So it's a very poorly designed tool,
Speaker 1: which is why it hasn't fully worked. You've seen the
Speaker 1: pace of inflation slow and it's not as fast growing
Speaker 1: as it was previously, but you still have a lot
Speaker 1: of inflation in the economy that is really hurting people.
Speaker 1: So all is the long way of saying that as
Speaker 1: we approach this debt ceiling wall, whether it's June first
Speaker 1: or whether they're able to push it out and kick
Speaker 1: the can down the road a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of reason to be very concerned
Speaker 1: already in the economy without adding this potential catastrophe on.
Speaker 3: Top of it. That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nobody needs us to tell them that, but they're
Speaker 4: not being served well by the political or corporate class.
Speaker 4: So some happy news to deliver on this Wednesday morning. Yes,
Speaker 4: all right, let's move on to news out of Montana, actually,
Speaker 4: where the first TikTok ban is being challenged.
Speaker 3: By TikTok itself.
Speaker 4: You'll be shocked to learn we can put the first
Speaker 4: element up on the screen here from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 4: They report that TikTok is suing Montana over their new
Speaker 4: ban of the social media platform. They're actually challenging it
Speaker 4: on a constitutional basis. Here's more from the Journal. The
Speaker 4: suit was filed Monday in the US District Court of Montana,
Speaker 4: and it alleges that the ban violates the First.
Speaker 3: Amendment other laws. The case was brought.
Speaker 4: Against the state's attorney General, who is the person that
Speaker 4: was tasked by the law with enforcing the band. Now
Speaker 4: that ban is not set to go into place until
Speaker 4: January first. This is a little sentence in the journal
Speaker 4: report quote it is unclear how it will be in force.
Speaker 4: That is true, it is unclear how it will be
Speaker 4: enforced the law. This is more from the journal. It's
Speaker 4: saying that it's banning byteedance from quote operating in the
Speaker 4: state and app stores such as Googles and Apples.
Speaker 3: That is pretty interesting, and.
Speaker 4: It says any entity violating the law will be fined
Speaker 4: ten thousand dollars a day, while individual TikTok users will
Speaker 4: not be punished. Now, a group of TikTokers actually sued
Speaker 4: the attorney general last week over the ban.
Speaker 3: They have all kinds of followers.
Speaker 4: They say that it's unconstitutional, violates the First Amendment and
Speaker 4: other laws. TikTok is also saying that it's not within
Speaker 4: Montana's purview to actually enact a ban based on national
Speaker 4: security concerns, because that's a exclusively the federal government's right
Speaker 4: with foreign entities. That's something that is not at the
Speaker 4: state level. It's an interesting part of the lawsuit because
Speaker 4: it sort of challenges the system of federalism, and TikTok
Speaker 4: is saying this ban is in violation of a law
Speaker 4: that prevents the government from saying a person is guilty
Speaker 4: of a crime and then punishing them without ever going
Speaker 4: to trial, and rules that govern interstate commerce. As the
Speaker 4: journal reports, and they quote a professor at the University
Speaker 4: of Richmond, a law professor who says, quote, the First
Speaker 4: Amendment argument is a very strong one. He continues to add,
Speaker 4: the claim for Montana is that they're protecting national security,
Speaker 4: and that is something squarely within the domain of the
Speaker 4: federal government, not left to the state.
Speaker 3: So on two points there you.
Speaker 4: Have a lot of professors saying the Montana ban is vulnerable.
Speaker 4: The first point being the First Amendment speech questions. The
Speaker 4: second point being if you're doing this on national security
Speaker 4: grounds as a state, it's constitutionally shaky ground as well.
Speaker 4: Now totally against TikTok for a number of reasons. Whether
Speaker 4: a state ban is the way to handle it is
Speaker 4: a separate question whether something needs to be done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was wondering about that because it you know,
Speaker 1: for you, I was wondering what your thoughts were.
Speaker 5: In my opinion.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a lot of concerns about obviously privacy,
Speaker 1: not only when it comes to TikTok, but when it
Speaker 1: comes to all of these social media platforms. That's number one.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of civil liberties violations there. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: there's also increasing research, including dire warning from the Surge
Speaker 1: in general, about the impact of over use of social
Speaker 1: media on mental health, and especially mental health of young people.
Speaker 1: I have a fifteen year old. I see this like
Speaker 1: up close and personal as a parent. It is something
Speaker 1: that I'm very concerned about. I think a ban is
Speaker 1: way too blunt a tool and goes way too far
Speaker 1: just to say in one fell swoop like this one
Speaker 1: particular company we're going to target for a ban.
Speaker 5: I think that that.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know whether it's going to end
Speaker 1: up being legal.
Speaker 5: I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1: I'm not a legal analyst, but in terms of whether
Speaker 1: I think it's the right to approach or not, I
Speaker 1: would say, now, what goes too far.
Speaker 4: Doing it on the state level is really interesting too,
Speaker 4: because there are pretty clear national security reasons to target
Speaker 4: TikTok to say, like, obviously, we have a problem here
Speaker 4: because Americans data is being sucked up by a country
Speaker 4: that's posturing as a hostile foreign power, and it just
Speaker 4: doesn't make sense to be hoovering up all the data
Speaker 4: with really no concern, really no safeguard, because even TikTok
Speaker 4: says with Project Taxes, which is their delivery of American
Speaker 4: data into Oracle Cloud, there will still be some people
Speaker 4: in Beijing who are authorized to view the data. Okay,
Speaker 4: So that's already a concession that there's going to be
Speaker 4: some people that could be We know, thanks to excellent
Speaker 4: reporting from Forbes, there are plenty of members of the
Speaker 4: CCP that actually work at byte Edances headquarters in Beijing.
Speaker 4: So who's going to have access to the data? How
Speaker 4: close are they to the Chinese government?
Speaker 3: That question is.
Speaker 4: Not solved by Project Texas whatsoever, despite TikTok's repeated assurances
Speaker 4: that this is the answer to the problem. But that's again,
Speaker 4: it's a federal question. That's clearly a federal question, not
Speaker 4: a state based question. Utah actually just banned access to Pornhub.
Speaker 4: Did you follow that at all a little bit?
Speaker 1: I saw UTAH was doing a lot in terms of
Speaker 1: also providing parents with like access to their kids, you know,
Speaker 1: social media accounts. They're they're doing a lot over there,
Speaker 1: which I also have like sort of complicated feelings about.
Speaker 1: And I don't think any of this breaks down along
Speaker 1: easy partisan lines because.
Speaker 3: Although Democrats are allowing it.
Speaker 1: To, there's a lot of there's a lot of tricky
Speaker 1: principles in conflict when you talk about these. I mean,
Speaker 1: the other thing that struck me about the Montana band
Speaker 1: that I was kind of surprised about is I didn't
Speaker 1: think that you could just directly target one company. So
Speaker 1: in this bill they single out TikTok. Usually what LED
Speaker 1: lawmakers do, because I think it's the way you're supposed
Speaker 1: to legislate, is they'll put in a bunch of s
Speaker 1: difficil Oh, it's going to apply to a company that
Speaker 1: has this percent foreign ownership, blah blah blah, where at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, Okay, maybe only applies to
Speaker 1: TikTok or like two other things, but it really is
Speaker 1: aimed at TikTok. But they explicitly were like, no, this
Speaker 1: is just about TikTok, which also, you know, makes me
Speaker 1: feel like part of this too is not just genuine
Speaker 1: concerns about data privacy, which again apply across the board
Speaker 1: to all of these social media companies, but it's also
Speaker 1: specifically about this like China, cold war hawkish few towards
Speaker 1: one country in particular. But you know, if you really
Speaker 1: are concerned about the data privacy piece of this, or
Speaker 1: about the teenager social media mental health piece of this,
Speaker 1: I think what you have to do is you have
Speaker 1: to have an across the board regime that protects people's
Speaker 1: privacy that can be applied to TikTok. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: Twitter has Saudi investors, so why are we not concerned
Speaker 1: about that, right? I mean a lot of these companies
Speaker 1: have foreign investors that one could be concerned about if
Speaker 1: you're worried about foreign powers having access. And they also
Speaker 1: are all giant, you know, multi billion dollar corporations that
Speaker 1: have been weaponizing our own data against us and you know,
Speaker 1: selling into the highest bidder. So it seems like the
Speaker 1: right approach is federal. It seems like it's protecting data
Speaker 1: privacy and not just aimed at one particular company for
Speaker 1: an outright ban, which again I think is too heavy handed.
Speaker 4: And some of this is the normal, like using the
Speaker 4: state level as the laboratory of democracy. And maybe there's
Speaker 4: a novel legal theory that's going to be put to
Speaker 4: the test in court over this, where there's there's some
Speaker 4: provision in Montana state law, or there's some provision that's
Speaker 4: been tested, there's some Supreme Court ruling that could apply
Speaker 4: and protect Montana's ban, and that's all going to be
Speaker 4: tested and tried, and maybe we'll learn some interesting things
Speaker 4: through this legal back and forth.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just this is a huge problem because it's
Speaker 4: not just going to be TikTok to your point, it's
Speaker 4: also American companies that are exporting and we're going to
Speaker 4: talk about this a little later in the show. Some
Speaker 4: heavy surveillance tools to other countries that other countries aren't
Speaker 4: cool with in the same way that Pontana's not cool
Speaker 4: with it, and that the United States. A lot of
Speaker 4: people in the United States aren't cool with Byteedance. We're
Speaker 4: kind of doing the same thing with Facebook, and Facebook
Speaker 4: operates Instagram, Snapchat, these all have the same Twitter, these
Speaker 4: all have the same bad incentive structure that is addictive,
Speaker 4: and as Jonathan hat has been documenting extensively over on
Speaker 4: his sub stack after Babble, the evidence is now mounting
Speaker 4: that these have been very, very damaging to young people's brains,
Speaker 4: to their mental health. That is not just coming from Beijing.
Speaker 4: I think it's ultra or extra problematic that you could
Speaker 4: have potential manipulation coming from a foreign power of the
Speaker 4: algorithm that's going into teenagers' brains. I think it's problematic
Speaker 4: that they could have control, like over election stuff. You know,
Speaker 4: they have people say whether they're interested in voting and
Speaker 4: registering on TikTok. Well, you can all then be fed
Speaker 4: misinformation based on you know, what they can guess about
Speaker 4: your party and what they can guess about your location.
Speaker 3: All that stuff is not good.
Speaker 4: So I think the instinct to take action against TikTok
Speaker 4: is understandably.
Speaker 3: More urgent than the other companies. But if you're not
Speaker 3: starting to.
Speaker 4: Target the other companies, I don't know if I can
Speaker 4: take it seriously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are all sorts of products that we regulate
Speaker 1: because of our concern over their harm to kids, in
Speaker 1: particular whose brains are still forming This is a like
Speaker 1: brave new world we're in where not only is it
Speaker 1: social media, but the way that it's not accidental that
Speaker 1: these things are addictive. They are engineered to be addictive.
Speaker 1: They are engineered to keep you on their platforms as
Speaker 1: long as possible, even.
Speaker 5: Though this is to keep you angry and to keep
Speaker 5: that's I was gonna mention that. I mean, that was
Speaker 5: one of.
Speaker 1: The interesting revelations from the whole like Facebook file thing
Speaker 1: that came out was that they saw that people liked
Speaker 1: their product less but stayed on it longer. Yeah, why
Speaker 1: when they amped up the anger and the rage content,
Speaker 1: They're like, people find this to be a worse experience,
Speaker 1: but they stay longer, and that's all we care about.
Speaker 1: And you can bet it's not just Facebook that is
Speaker 1: making those sort of calculations. So we're seeing now huge
Speaker 1: fall and especially among teenage girls, from the amount of
Speaker 1: time on these platforms and the way these platforms have
Speaker 1: been engineered to basically like, you know, torturous.
Speaker 4: And that's why even like most libertarians are not in
Speaker 4: favor of legalizing heroin, you like the hardcore ones are,
Speaker 4: but like free markets don't work when a product is
Speaker 4: intentionally addictive because there's no market incentive for somebody who's
Speaker 4: addicted to the product to stop using the product. It's
Speaker 4: not a pure free market experiment if you're being becoming
Speaker 4: chemically addicted. And we do have increasing evidence, like do
Speaker 4: I go back and forth on how we treat cigarettes, Yes,
Speaker 4: but like this is arguably more serious because all of
Speaker 4: our politics are being funneled through a platform that functions
Speaker 4: as a giant cigarette ie.
Speaker 3: It's so much worse than that your personal life.
Speaker 4: It's like, Okay, yeah, you get addicted to go out
Speaker 4: for a smoking break. Well, guess what, now you're addicted
Speaker 4: because every time you get a call, it could be
Speaker 4: the worst call of your life, it could be the
Speaker 4: best call of your life. And so you have an
Speaker 4: INCENTI to keep this on you and to think about
Speaker 4: it mentally. There's research on just how having a phone
Speaker 4: in your vicinity change is the function.
Speaker 3: Of your brain.
Speaker 5: Interesting.
Speaker 4: It's crazy stuff, and we're I think obviously too slow
Speaker 4: to come around on it.
Speaker 5: We're just scratching the service.
Speaker 3: And it gives an.
Speaker 4: Excuse for Republicans and Democrats to put legislation like the
Speaker 4: restrict Act on the table that just gives them more
Speaker 4: surveillance powers. Whenever there's bipartisan agreement on something, there's danger
Speaker 4: for bipartisan corruption. So it's a complicated set of problems
Speaker 4: that we have shown like very little ability to deal with.
Speaker 5: Yes, Indeed, speaking.
Speaker 4: Of complicated problems, let's move on to the next segment.
Speaker 4: Crystal has twisted my arm and forced me to talk
Speaker 4: about there's an excellent report from Mary Margaret Olahan over
Speaker 4: at the Daily Signal that is a publication that is
Speaker 4: run by.
Speaker 3: The Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 4: Mary Margaret, we can put the first element up here,
Speaker 4: that would be E one reports that Fox News employees
Speaker 4: are allowed to use bathrooms that align with their gender
Speaker 4: identity rather than their biological sex, and permitted to dress
Speaker 4: in alignment with their preferred gender.
Speaker 3: She also goes on to.
Speaker 4: Quote a former producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight who says,
Speaker 4: Fox wants you to think it's a place that supports
Speaker 4: traditionally conservative values, but in reality, they're pushing this nonsense
Speaker 4: behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: She also says that they were.
Speaker 4: She mentions that they use preferred pronouns on the website.
Speaker 4: That's actually in accordance, by the way, with ap style.
Speaker 4: The Associated Press. In their style guide, which most newspapers
Speaker 4: and publications follow around the country. You know, if your
Speaker 4: Gannett certainly follows it, so your local Gannett paper, Milwaukee
Speaker 4: Journal Sentinel.
Speaker 3: Or wherever it is, they're going to follow ap style guide.
Speaker 4: So every locality in the country was changed by this decision.
Speaker 4: I think it was back in twenty seventeen, like before,
Speaker 4: a lot of the country was on this issue to
Speaker 4: use preferred pronouns, and that applied basically around the country
Speaker 4: for publications and was I think part of where this
Speaker 4: clash came from.
Speaker 3: Now. A source who still works at Fox News told.
Speaker 4: Mary Margaret Olahan the Daily Signal that after Talker Carlson
Speaker 4: Show was canceled in April, producers for the APM Fox
Speaker 4: News Tonight program, we're told not to bash mulvaney. That
Speaker 4: directive came from high level executives, the source said, when
Speaker 4: we're referring to.
Speaker 3: Mulvany, that would be Dylan mulvaney.
Speaker 4: And all of this was unfolding as the bud Lights
Speaker 4: saga was unfolding as well. Regarding Dylan Mulvaney. There's more
Speaker 4: here from Fox's corporate handbook. They're citing the Human Rights
Speaker 4: Campaign and going into the whole like the full gender
Speaker 4: identity and sex are the same thing. And once you
Speaker 4: sort of accept that premise, you go to bathrooms, to
Speaker 4: locker rooms and all kinds of different places, which is
Speaker 4: unusual for Fox News. As people see it now, this
Speaker 4: report circulated really heavily in conservative circles.
Speaker 3: You know, someone made a really good point.
Speaker 4: I think it was my colleague Edtty Scary made a
Speaker 4: really good point basically that if you do this in
Speaker 4: conservative media, this is giving up one of the biggest
Speaker 4: platforms that you if you if you criticize Fox especially
Speaker 4: with reporting like this, it is it is basic. You're
Speaker 4: signing a death warrant with Fox, which traditionally has been
Speaker 4: where you reach conservatives. Yeah, like that is the one
Speaker 4: place where you can guarantee you're going to reach a
Speaker 4: huge swath of conservative Republican voters at the same time.
Speaker 3: So it's funny.
Speaker 4: The week before Tucker Carlson got yanked off the air
Speaker 4: on Federalist Radio Hours having a conversation saying, like the
Speaker 4: litmus test for conservative media should be whether or not
Speaker 4: people are willing to criticize Fox News, like you know
Speaker 4: that you can trust a conservative publication if they're willing
Speaker 4: to be critical Fox News, because that takes a lot
Speaker 4: of guts on the right, because you have a hard
Speaker 4: time reaching people without having that on your platform. And
Speaker 4: it doesn't mean you have to be like overly negative.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean you have to go after them, but
Speaker 4: you know, and everyone makes mistakes, and so you should
Speaker 4: be willing to say that.
Speaker 3: Indeed, that's a big deal.
Speaker 4: So this report is a really big deal I think
Speaker 4: because conservatives.
Speaker 3: It gave them, like Mott Walsh, an opportunity.
Speaker 4: He's quoted in the report being like, listen, Fox is
Speaker 4: just like every major media corporation. I had heard revelings
Speaker 4: of all of this stuff for years, Like people had
Speaker 4: been privately griping about that for years, some of those
Speaker 4: for years. So that this suddenly is surfacing post Tucker,
Speaker 4: as we can put the next element up E two.
Speaker 3: The ratings are cratering in that hour. This is from
Speaker 3: the rap. Since Tucker's surprise ouster from Fox News just
Speaker 3: over three.
Speaker 4: Weeks ago, viewership on the cable news channel has cut
Speaker 4: in half, cut in half, and where are those people going?
Speaker 3: Oddly enough, they're going over to Newsmax.
Speaker 4: Newsmax ratings are up which, again a year ago, would
Speaker 4: be unthinkable that Newsmax is competing with CNN. That they're
Speaker 4: competing with these these giants is fairly remarkable. So this
Speaker 4: is basically a panic type situation for Fox at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I have also a lot of thoughts about this.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I have no issue what's itwever with
Speaker 1: the policy. I think it's appropriate. I think adults should
Speaker 1: be able to do what they want to do with
Speaker 1: their lives, and if they have a pronoun they want
Speaker 1: to use, it's different from the sex they wors at birth.
Speaker 1: I have no problem with that whatsoever. So my personal views,
Speaker 1: I think there's a few things here. Number one, this
Speaker 1: clearly seems like somebody aligned with Tucker loves this. This
Speaker 1: is like, you know, they were leaking some stuff on him.
Speaker 1: This is like him trying to get revenge.
Speaker 4: So because he's trying to get out of his contract. Remember,
Speaker 4: in order to do his Twitter show, he needs to
Speaker 4: get out of the contract, right, So they're not letting
Speaker 4: him out, and he's saying, you let me out or
Speaker 4: I'm going to blow.
Speaker 1: I'm going to embarrass you, I'm gonna blow the place up. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: exactly right. So I think that's that's probably where this
Speaker 1: leak comes from, which is interesting in and of itself.
Speaker 1: Another piece here is that I do think there is
Speaker 1: something there in terms of, you know, Fox News anchors,
Speaker 1: they portray themselves as sharing the values of their mostly
Speaker 1: sort of like heartland conservative viewing base. Meanwhile, these are
Speaker 1: multimillionaires living in New York and DC.
Speaker 3: They're Manhattan liberals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so this is you know there there is
Speaker 1: like showmanship going into that on air caricature and the
Speaker 1: minute you pull the mask off. I do think that
Speaker 1: that is an issue for Fox if you have widespread
Speaker 1: realization within their viewing audience that like, oh, these people
Speaker 1: are just putting on a show for me, Like behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, the way they're actually acting is very different
Speaker 1: from the values they're pretending to support on air. That's
Speaker 1: another piece of this. The other piece I think in
Speaker 1: terms of like the freak ount over these particular policies
Speaker 1: is I also think it sort of exposes the lie
Speaker 1: that consertives are just worried about, like we're just worried
Speaker 1: about the kids here with regards to trans issues, because
Speaker 1: we're not talking about kids, we're talking about adult workers.
Speaker 1: In the workplace, wanting to identify. However, they identify and
Speaker 1: be treated as human beings, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: upset over adults. There are no kids involved in this,
Speaker 1: so I think that part is revelatory as well. But
Speaker 1: you know, I go back and forth on whether or
Speaker 1: not Fox has a real issue in terms of like
Speaker 1: persistently losing audience. I think they're on overall the same
Speaker 1: downward trajectory as the other two cable news networks. You
Speaker 1: have new numbers out about just how many cord cutters
Speaker 1: there are now reaching record heights. So they have a
Speaker 1: huge like business issue coming down the pike that all
Speaker 1: of cable news is basically reckoning with right now.
Speaker 5: But in terms of these individual instances.
Speaker 1: What they're betting on is basically, like in one of
Speaker 1: these reports, somebody out right said this, like our audience
Speaker 1: is really old and they don't know how to go
Speaker 1: anywhere else. Like they actually will struggle to like figure
Speaker 1: out where news Max is on the channel, let alone
Speaker 1: go on Twitter to see DeSantis in e laon Musk,
Speaker 1: or go over the Daily Wire, be able to figure
Speaker 1: out like this is their habit. They're old, they're set
Speaker 1: in their ways and so we think we're good. That's
Speaker 1: their bet, and to be honest with you, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that's a crazy bet.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they Fox had a bigger built in hedge than
Speaker 4: a lot of the other cable networks because they had
Speaker 4: a huge like their audience was basically double the size
Speaker 4: their permanent audience.
Speaker 3: But obviously, sadly this is you know.
Speaker 4: It's a blunt way to put it, but it has
Speaker 4: been slowly dying off and that, but that would have
Speaker 4: lasted them longer just because it was a bigger kind
Speaker 4: of part minute base than the other cable news networks CNN, MSNBC,
Speaker 4: who are also actively like infuriating some part of that
Speaker 4: permanent audience.
Speaker 3: That was fleeing. But that said, you know, you live.
Speaker 4: Outside DC, and it's to me, like there's times when
Speaker 4: things on Fox News just feel like what Nashville does
Speaker 4: to country music, which is like, do people actually behave
Speaker 4: the way that these ridiculous corporate written country songs.
Speaker 3: Right about them?
Speaker 4: No, you have a bunch of dumb ass rich Nashville
Speaker 4: country music executives who put people in a writer's room
Speaker 4: and make them come up with like redneck mad libs
Speaker 4: and wrote it into a song that they put a
Speaker 4: hip hop beat on and it sounds stupid and it's
Speaker 4: exactly what they're do time I do too, I.
Speaker 5: Need to myself a conversation because they're really good.
Speaker 4: They're really good at making like catchy music, but like
Speaker 4: the picture that it that it represents, Like sometimes it's
Speaker 4: like people who have actually no idea what happens in
Speaker 4: rural America and they're just like guessing. They're like, yep,
Speaker 4: Crown Royal in the bed of a Ford pickup and
Speaker 4: everybody's like half naked at the river And does that
Speaker 4: happen sometimes? Yes? Is it an everyday occurrence? No, But
Speaker 4: it's just it's that stuff that drives me insane of
Speaker 4: like you have in at Fox News, like getting people
Speaker 4: at News Corp getting rich off of I think what
Speaker 4: sometimes is this very ham fisted version of red meat conservatism.
Speaker 4: And there have been people at Fox who are very,
Speaker 4: very responsive to their audience and are very good at this,
Speaker 4: and it is I think the last bastion of the
Speaker 4: sort of mainstream so called mainstream that allows conservative voices
Speaker 4: to speak. Like the fact that Glenn Greenwald was on
Speaker 4: Tucker's show is like insane for Fox News and that
Speaker 4: Tayebi had a platform there and that other people had
Speaker 4: you could say certain things. I think that's actually fairly remarkable,
Speaker 4: and I don't think it's a a good thing if
Speaker 4: that goes away entirely for the right, because there's something
Speaker 4: powerful about that. But at the same time, our people
Speaker 4: being well served, as you know, the executives are just
Speaker 4: cutting those checks getting the money off of them.
Speaker 3: I don't know, and it's sort of something that's always
Speaker 3: bothered me.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that came out to
Speaker 1: me in the Dominion discovery was a level of contempt
Speaker 1: from the host towards their own audience, where they felt
Speaker 1: like they thought a certain way about Sidney Powell about
Speaker 1: stop the steal about Donald Trump, you know, Tucker saying
Speaker 1: like he hated him and he's a demonic force and whatever,
Speaker 1: but they didn't feel like their audience could handle that.
Speaker 1: They felt like their audience were like a bunch of
Speaker 1: rubes that just needed to be like served whatever red
Speaker 1: meat they needed to be served. And so to me,
Speaker 1: when you're dishonest with your audience, that's sort of like
Speaker 1: the highest form of contempt. And you know that that
Speaker 1: did come out in the dominion filings.
Speaker 5: And I think it is.
Speaker 1: I think there is a potential damage to them from
Speaker 1: having the mass pulled off and people really starting to
Speaker 1: look at them rather than seeing them as these like
Speaker 1: authentic voices of conservatism, as people who are getting rich
Speaker 1: off of them living in Manhattan, living in DC and
Speaker 1: not really sharing their values, lifestyle or culture. So to me,
Speaker 1: that's you know, do I think that this particular like
Speaker 1: blow up over the you know, pronoun policy within Fox
Speaker 1: is going to blow over.
Speaker 5: Yes, But the more that.
Speaker 1: You have these pieces add up where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you all are really not what you're representing to us,
Speaker 1: I think that is kind of an existential issue because
Speaker 1: in the current media landscape, authenticity is everything feeling like
Speaker 1: you're getting the real deal from people, feeling like even
Speaker 1: if you know, maybe you disagree with them on an issue,
Speaker 1: like they're really telling.
Speaker 5: You what they think.
Speaker 1: I think that's like the most valuable commodity and they
Speaker 1: are kind of squandering that.
Speaker 4: So that's interesting because one of the things I picked
Speaker 4: up on from those text messages is.
Speaker 3: Sort of the opposite.
Speaker 4: I think I see what you're saying, like the Trump
Speaker 4: thing in particular, does bother me because you see that
Speaker 4: from a lot of people, especially a lot of like
Speaker 4: electric Republicans here in DC, saying one thing publicly about
Speaker 4: Trump and another thing privately. Yeah, actually does bother me
Speaker 4: because they think that their voters can't handle like nuance
Speaker 4: when it comes to Trump.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: But Tucker and I think Laura to some extent Laura
Speaker 4: Ingram were frustrated by Fox News executives who they saw,
Speaker 4: you know, trying to manipulate voters and trying to, you know,
Speaker 4: do things that they were uncomfortable with they felt their
Speaker 4: audience would be uncomfortable with. Tucker was saying it's not
Speaker 4: fair to the audience, and a couple of text messages,
Speaker 4: and then he also was saying from a purely business perspective,
Speaker 4: it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's the thing they were worried about, like
Speaker 1: the ratings and the business and like their the value
Speaker 1: of their stockholdings.
Speaker 5: That's not concern for the audience.
Speaker 1: That's like, you know, again, it's a level of inauthenticity,
Speaker 1: like this is my bottom line is my bottom line,
Speaker 1: and this is a problem for me.
Speaker 4: Talker had a couple of times where he said that
Speaker 4: it wasn't it was he was actually saying like our
Speaker 4: audience thinks.
Speaker 3: This is bs like blah blah blah, where he was.
Speaker 4: Saying can actually but the motivations clearly their business motivations involved.
Speaker 4: I personally think that Tucker was like very very frustrating,
Speaker 4: just from things that I've heard, was very very frustrated
Speaker 4: with the Fox executive volile and some of that.
Speaker 3: Like leaked out over it.
Speaker 4: And the other thing that I thought was interesting about
Speaker 4: the story to your point about the adults versus kids
Speaker 4: thing before we wrap, is that this is in accordance. Basically,
Speaker 4: the Fox News is aligned with New York City's Human
Speaker 4: Rights law, which a lot of people probably remember was
Speaker 4: pasted sort of controversially a few years ago. But it
Speaker 4: actually requires employers, as mary market rights to use the names, pronouns,
Speaker 4: and titles with which a person identifies, regardless of their
Speaker 4: biological sex. That is so, in some ways Fox's hands
Speaker 4: are tied, like there's not much they can do. It
Speaker 4: does seem like from the corporate handbook they're enthusiastic about
Speaker 4: these policies and promoting these policies. And that's something that
Speaker 4: I have heard that you know, there are people in
Speaker 4: corporate Fox that have pronouns in their bios et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera, are in their email signatures, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: And whether or not that's true, that is really difficult
Speaker 4: because that does compel people to use pronouns that they
Speaker 4: may not be comfortable using, like it's government compelled speech.
Speaker 4: And then it also creates the question of single sex
Speaker 4: spaces and whether women want that and whether that's safe.
Speaker 4: And so I think the adult thing is just goes
Speaker 4: on the table when you have compulsion from the government,
Speaker 4: and that even Fox News had to deal with it
Speaker 4: or chose to deal with it in this way or
Speaker 4: whatever not present a legal challenge or whatever. I think
Speaker 4: is actually kind of an interesting barometer of the country
Speaker 4: right now too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, Liz, honestly, I disagree with your views on
Speaker 1: these issues, but I do think conservatives have tried to,
Speaker 1: at least initially frame their concerns is just about protecting
Speaker 1: the kids, and oh it's very clear, yeah, very clear
Speaker 1: that that is not the case. That they also are
Speaker 1: worried about adults who are living their lives and want
Speaker 1: to transition. And we've already seen legislation and talking about
Speaker 1: you know, state compulsion. Are you've seen legislation coming in
Speaker 1: that's impacting adults in their ability to make choices. So
Speaker 1: that was, you know, one piece that I thought was
Speaker 1: reflected here as like, oh, this has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with kids, and yet there's a lot of upset over it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I think that's a totally fair point.
Speaker 1: So I've got some happy news for all of you,
Speaker 1: a few different pieces of this with regards to the
Speaker 1: labor movement. Let's start with the big corporate behemoth Amazon.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up on the screen from the New
Speaker 1: York Times. They have a new report about how, even
Speaker 1: in places where they don't have unions, Amazon workers have
Speaker 1: really found effective ways to garner concessions from this company.
Speaker 1: And basically what's happened here is because Amazon has become
Speaker 1: so large, and because they have taken on so much
Speaker 1: of the delivering of their products themselves, they have these
Speaker 1: critical choke point locations where even a few dozen workers
Speaker 1: taking collective action can really hobble them and hobble their
Speaker 1: ability to deliver goods in the timely. That was part
Speaker 1: of their core promise. So within this report, I'll just
Speaker 1: tell you they've got a few examples here where workers
Speaker 1: have really effectively sort of pushed back on the company.
Speaker 1: They say, in September twenty nineteen, workers at an Amazon
Speaker 1: delivery station in Sacramento began campaigning for paid personal time off,
Speaker 1: and they were able to actually gain those benefits through
Speaker 1: this sort of collective action. You had walkouts overpay and
Speaker 1: working conditions at two Chicago delivery stations just before Christmas.
Speaker 1: They then received raises of about two dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: They also point to a situation where Amazon had suspended
Speaker 1: a San Bernardino Air Hub employee named Sarah, and suspicion
Speaker 1: is because of her union organizing and advocacy. The next week,
Speaker 1: workers wore hello, my name is stickers and they wrote
Speaker 1: on it where is Sarah? And lo and behold, Sarah
Speaker 1: was reinstated. Now, if you know anything about Amazon and
Speaker 1: they were the way they treated Christian Smalls and other
Speaker 1: Amazon workers who were also union organizers, you will recognize
Speaker 1: how extraordinary it is that the company was actually forced
Speaker 1: to bring her back to work and reinstate her because
Speaker 1: of her co worker's upset. They also mentioned here location
Speaker 1: in Kentucky and Northern Kentucky, sort of near Cincinnati. That
Speaker 1: has become their primary delivery hub in the entire country,
Speaker 1: really really critical to their operations, and you have a
Speaker 1: lot of union organizing activity there and potential for this
Speaker 1: sort of choke point organizing that can gain concessions, additional
Speaker 1: pay raises, you know, paid time off, and these sorts
Speaker 1: of things which you know, you think in the abstract,
Speaker 1: you've got this giant, multi billion dollar global corporation, and
Speaker 1: then you've got these workers. You know, even at one location,
Speaker 1: they make up a tiny sliver of the overall Amazon workforce.
Speaker 1: But when you have critical functions at some of these locations,
Speaker 1: these critical choke points actually provide a mechanism of very
Speaker 1: effective organizing. One thing they point to you here that
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting in light of this is
Speaker 1: there was a very famous strike back in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: it's called a sit down strike in Flint that forced GM,
Speaker 1: which has been very had been very anti union, to
Speaker 1: recognize United Auto Workers because the workers chose to do
Speaker 1: this sit down strike at a plant that was called
Speaker 1: a mother plant. It was the only location that manufactured
Speaker 1: some of the parts for GM, so it was so
Speaker 1: affected gmsh we got a cave like we got no choice.
Speaker 1: This is the only place where we make these certain parts.
Speaker 1: But after that they learned their lesson and they then
Speaker 1: distributed all of their parts production across a lot of locations.
Speaker 1: Amazon has gone in the opposite direction of consolidating a
Speaker 1: lot of functions at these critical hubs, and that's what's
Speaker 1: making them vulnerable to these choke point to this choke
Speaker 1: point organizing.
Speaker 5: So that was the main piece.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of other stories that I just wanted
Speaker 1: to highlight. There was a successful effort to unionize bus
Speaker 1: makers down.
Speaker 5: In Georgia and rural Georgia.
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up on the screen. So this
Speaker 1: is a bluebird. They make a lot of school buses
Speaker 1: and they voted overwhelmingly this workforce s ninety seven to
Speaker 1: four to thirty five to organize with the United steel Workers.
Speaker 1: One thing that was really interesting to me about this
Speaker 1: is part of why these workers were able to succeed
Speaker 1: even in a very anti union state in Georgia, even
Speaker 1: in a rural area where there may not be a
Speaker 1: lot of other employment, is because within Joe Biden's Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act, they actually had provisions saying, if you're going
Speaker 1: to benefit from these tax credits, you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: use the money to do anti union organizing, so they
Speaker 1: didn't have those captive audience meetings. They say you have
Speaker 1: to remain neutral in any organizing campaign, and so that
Speaker 1: helped to tilt the scales a little bit and potentially
Speaker 1: contributed to this success for the United steel Workers. And
Speaker 1: then the last piece here is in Minnesota. You know,
Speaker 1: the conservative laws that are getting passed in states across
Speaker 1: the country have gotten a lot of attention, but in
Speaker 1: the wake of the last midterms, you actually have more
Speaker 1: states that have democratic trifectas. You had Democrats take back
Speaker 1: in a lot of places in terms of state legislators,
Speaker 1: and in Minnesota they are really pushing the ball forward
Speaker 1: on labor rights. In particular, You've got a new measure
Speaker 1: that mass pass that mandates paid sick days for nearly
Speaker 1: all workers. It forbids non compete agreements in labor contracts,
Speaker 1: something the federal government's been looking at as well. It
Speaker 1: establishes I thought this was the most interesting part. A
Speaker 1: sectoral bargaining system for nursing homes allows teachers to negotiate
Speaker 1: class sizes and bans those captive audience meetings where employers
Speaker 1: forced their workers to listen to anti union propaganda. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we had a lot of excitement last year
Speaker 1: about strike waves, about Amazon, victory, about Starbucks, grassroots movement.
Speaker 1: Some of that has felt like it's sload. We also
Speaker 1: got the numbers at the end of the year that
Speaker 1: were like ah, in spite of these exciting waves, we
Speaker 1: still want backwards in terms of union density and the
Speaker 1: number of workers that are in unions as a percentage
Speaker 1: of the total working population. But I think these small
Speaker 1: shifts actually pretend something really positive. And Emily, we also
Speaker 1: see in terms of public opinion, Emily, what are you
Speaker 1: looking at all?
Speaker 4: Right, We're going to be talking about something very niche
Speaker 4: section seven oh two.
Speaker 5: I'm excited, you know.
Speaker 3: Section seven h.
Speaker 4: Two is something that the American left is very familiar
Speaker 4: with and has been very familiar with for a long
Speaker 4: time because it's something that came out of the Snowden revelations.
Speaker 3: And it's an interesting story.
Speaker 4: Because just this week I saw a headline and we
Speaker 4: can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 3: This is E one.
Speaker 4: This is from the Associated Press Meta find record one
Speaker 4: point three billion dollars in order to stop sending European
Speaker 4: user data to the US.
Speaker 3: What does that sound like.
Speaker 4: It sounds a little bit like America's complaints about TikTok,
Speaker 4: doesn't it those questions about how user data is sent
Speaker 4: back to Beijing.
Speaker 3: Now, of course, in this situation it's a little bit
Speaker 3: different because we're generally allied with the European Union.
Speaker 4: But it raises a really interesting question about American exports.
Speaker 4: And obviously, I think to people who have concerns, you
Speaker 4: know Section seven oh two. As much as it's been
Speaker 4: an issue on the left because of Snowden, there are
Speaker 4: a lot of libertarians on the right that have followed
Speaker 4: Section seven oh two for years very closely as well.
Speaker 4: But to flesh out this AP story a little bit,
Speaker 4: they're reporting that the EU slapped Meta with a record
Speaker 4: one point three billion dollars one point three billion dollars
Speaker 4: as a privacy fine on Monday and ordered it to
Speaker 4: stop transferring users' personal information across the Atlantic by October.
Speaker 4: The Associated Press describes this as the latest salvo in
Speaker 4: a decade long case sparked by US cyber snooping fears. Now,
Speaker 4: when you see in the United States these complaints about TikTok,
Speaker 4: which by the way, I think are entirely legitimate that
Speaker 4: you have just a truly astounding amount of data on
Speaker 4: children in some cases that will follow them their entire
Speaker 4: lives being sucked up and then accessible. Even with Project Texas,
Speaker 4: that's TikTok's plan to transfer American data to Oracle's cloud server,
Speaker 4: they still concede that people in Beijing will have access
Speaker 4: to that data. We know thanks to Forbes reporting that
Speaker 4: people in Beijing, in the headquarters there there are members
Speaker 4: of the Chinese Communist Party, former members of state media
Speaker 4: that work there.
Speaker 3: So these concerns are very legitimate.
Speaker 4: But you can understand why one, people in the United
Speaker 4: States are concerned about how their own data is being
Speaker 4: used by their own government, let alone how American companies
Speaker 4: that export that business model of surveillance capitalism that we
Speaker 4: pioneered here in the United States over to other countries
Speaker 4: in Europe. You can understand why those countries in Europe,
Speaker 4: even though we're generally allied with the EU, would have
Speaker 4: problems with it, because even we have problems with it,
Speaker 4: and we should here in the United States now Section
Speaker 4: seven h two To be clear, if you're not familiar
Speaker 4: with it, it's one of those very, very very broad
Speaker 4: powers that was delegated to the surveillance state. Basically, I
Speaker 4: think it dates back to two thousand and eight. I
Speaker 4: have it right here in front of me. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: dates back to two thousand and eight, and it allows
Speaker 4: the federal government basically to tap into a huge amount
Speaker 4: of data that comes from these things.
Speaker 3: So that's yeah.
Speaker 4: Section it's actually part of the Foreigner Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Speaker 4: It lets the NSA, this is from Fox News intercept
Speaker 4: communications of foreign terrorist or espionage suspects that pass through
Speaker 4: US telecom and internet companies. But the tool also vacuums
Speaker 4: up data about American citizens living in the US, for instance,
Speaker 4: when they communicate with people overseas. And just actually recently
Speaker 4: we learned it's amazing we recently learned the timing here
Speaker 4: that the FBI used Section seven two to spy on
Speaker 4: they were searching for information about defendants in the January
Speaker 4: sixth attack and then also on the twenty twenty George
Speaker 4: Floyd protests, and so this is actually they found a
Speaker 4: truly insane amount of abuse. I think it was an
Speaker 4: Inspector general who found a truly insane amount of abuse
Speaker 4: on the the platform. And so you have conservatives now
Speaker 4: mobilizing against Section seven oh two. The left has people
Speaker 4: like Ron Wyden have always been against Section seven oh two,
Speaker 4: And to just put an emphasis on how crazy this
Speaker 4: timing is. Section seven oh two is up for reauthorization
Speaker 4: this year. Its mandate expires on December thirty first, So
Speaker 4: have you as you have all of these Republican concerns
Speaker 4: about the surveillance state being used to target, for instance,
Speaker 4: people who were at the protest part of January sixth
Speaker 4: outside the Capitol, didn't go in, didn't trespass, even so,
Speaker 4: as you have concerns about that from Republicans, concerns from
Speaker 4: Democrats again reasonable stuff about people who were protesting in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty and weren't involved in any violence. But we're
Speaker 4: being spied on based on a law that's just supposed
Speaker 4: to be used on when you have a legitimate reason
Speaker 4: to be overseeing communications with somebody in another country, not
Speaker 4: an American citizen. When you have that and you have
Speaker 4: cooperation from companies like Meta, when you have cooperation from
Speaker 4: companies like Twitter, who knows what Elon Musk would be
Speaker 4: doing with Section seven oh two, that becomes a huge
Speaker 4: problem for both political parties. And what I just want
Speaker 4: to say here is that Republicans have all the incentive
Speaker 4: in the world politically and ideologically right now to get
Speaker 4: on the right side of the surveillance capitalism question, because
Speaker 4: we are exporting a product that is invading people's privacy
Speaker 4: to other countries, and we're using it to create a
Speaker 4: wildly out of control, vast security state not just on
Speaker 4: Americans but in people in other countries. And the real
Speaker 4: motivation here that should get those Republicans on board is
Speaker 4: that one point eight billion dollar fine or one point
Speaker 4: three I think it is billion dollar fine, because if
Speaker 4: there's anything that can get Republicans on board with ending
Speaker 4: surveillance capitalism, it would maybe be the capitalism.
Speaker 3: Part of this. When does it start hurting American businesses?
Speaker 3: Because you know, we can put E two.
Speaker 4: This is the Fox News article that talks about the
Speaker 4: political concerns with Section seven oh two.
Speaker 3: Again, that's from this week.
Speaker 4: The timing here is so perfect because of the excess
Speaker 4: spying that Yeah, so this is the FBI that tracked
Speaker 4: a truly insane amount of abuse of the program two
Speaker 4: hundred and seventy eight thousand violations in twenty twenty and
Speaker 4: early twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: By the FBI.
Speaker 4: They're supposed to follow particular procedures that were not followed
Speaker 4: when they start spying on people. Two hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: eight thousand violations. Two hundred and seventy eight thousand, I mean,
Speaker 4: just an astounding level of abuse.
Speaker 3: So you have that, But also we put E three up.
Speaker 4: This is the real thing that maybe this can entice Republicans.
Speaker 4: This is a graph that shows it might be listed
Speaker 4: as F three. But this is a graph that shows
Speaker 4: the tech industry in the US as the percentage of GDP.
Speaker 4: So it's about ten percent of our economy right now.
Speaker 4: It's a huge swath of our economy and only growing.
Speaker 4: So as tech and data becomes the chief American export
Speaker 4: at this point, as it becomes such a huge American export,
Speaker 4: and that American export is threatened because other countries actually,
Speaker 4: you know, are concerned about their citizens privacy, that will
Speaker 4: come into conflict with the capitalism question. And the one
Speaker 4: thing that I'll end on is that it also was
Speaker 4: going to come into conflict with people in the EU.
Speaker 4: Tayabi Matt Tavy had a great report this week about
Speaker 4: AVERU on his Racket News about how Australia was trying
Speaker 4: to use I think it was Twitter at the time
Speaker 4: to oversee communications by people in the service of like
Speaker 4: cracking down on vaccine disinformation. We know that people in
Speaker 4: the EU, the sort of Davos set here in the
Speaker 4: United States and the European Union and all across the West,
Speaker 4: want to use these capitalist products as surveillance tools. But
Speaker 4: they also have really tight privacy laws and in tightening
Speaker 4: privacy laws. So all of this is coming into conflict,
Speaker 4: and with Section seven h two up for reauthorization this year,
Speaker 4: and fresh information about how how widely abused it has
Speaker 4: been against both the right and the left, on top
Speaker 4: of this fine, we see a lot of different interests
Speaker 4: coming into conflict, and it makes it right for Republicans to.
Speaker 3: Get on the right side of the debate.
Speaker 4: I'm never optimistic about any of this, but if anything
Speaker 4: could do at Crystal, I think maybe it's that one
Speaker 4: point three billion dollar fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is that the best help. We're joined now by
Speaker 3: Nick Terurse.
Speaker 4: He's a contributing writer over at The Intercept and also
Speaker 4: the author of the book Kill Anything That Moves The
Speaker 4: Real American War in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: Nick, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 6: Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 4: Nick is the author of a stunning but not surprising
Speaker 4: new series of reports over in the intercept about Henry
Speaker 4: Kissinger and Vietnam. Again I say stunning but not surprising,
Speaker 4: is called Kissinger's Killing Fields. This is based on new
Speaker 4: information and that's one of the most I think interesting
Speaker 4: aspects of it. We think we basically know everything about
Speaker 4: what happened at that time, and we think that is
Speaker 4: bad enough, but it actually continues to get worse. So
Speaker 4: I want to start just by asking you what are
Speaker 4: some of the most important new information that you learned
Speaker 4: over the course of this reporting.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me on. I think the key takeaways
Speaker 6: here that Kissinger is responsible for more civilian deaths in
Speaker 6: Cambodia than was previously known. And this is according to
Speaker 6: an exclusive archive of US military documents that I assembled
Speaker 6: and also interviews with seventy five Cambodian witnesses and survivors
Speaker 6: of these attacks. This archive that I put together offers
Speaker 6: previously unpublished, unreported, and also unappreciated evidence of hundreds of
Speaker 6: civilian casualties that were kept secret during the US war
Speaker 6: in Cambodia during the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies
Speaker 6: and remain almost entirely unknown to be American peutable today.
Speaker 6: Talking with these seventy five Cambodian witnesses survivors, I learned
Speaker 6: about new details of a long term trauma that's born
Speaker 6: by survivors of the American war there and taken altogether,
Speaker 6: this adds the list of killings and crimes that Henry
Speaker 6: Kissinger should, even at this late date in his life,
Speaker 6: be asked to answer for Well, let's.
Speaker 1: Pick up with that, just give people a little bit
Speaker 1: of a history lesson of what we were even doing
Speaker 1: in Cambodia.
Speaker 5: In the first place.
Speaker 1: And to your point about Henry Kissinger's involvement here, why
Speaker 1: is this still relevant today?
Speaker 6: Basically, Richard Nixon was elected took office as president in
Speaker 6: nineteen sixty nine, promising to end the Vietnam War, to
Speaker 6: achieve peace with honor, as he put it. But really
Speaker 6: what Kissinger did and what Nixon did, and Kissinger was
Speaker 6: really the architect of the war policy there was to
Speaker 6: expand the Vietnam War into Laos further than it had been,
Speaker 6: but also notably to Cambodia. Kissinger came up with a plan,
Speaker 6: engineered a secret bombing of Cambodia. Ironically, the secret bombing
Speaker 6: is the one that we've known about for decades. A
Speaker 6: tremendous amount of ordinance dropped on Cambodia that destabilized that
Speaker 6: country and eventually ushered in the Khmer Rouge and a
Speaker 6: genocide that followed. But you know, my reporting shows that
Speaker 6: there were other attacks that haven't had previously been brought
Speaker 6: to light that also retavock on Cambodia and killed the
Speaker 6: tremendous number of civilians. So there was a secret plan
Speaker 6: to end the Vietnam War, and really it just expanded
Speaker 6: the war and expanded the killing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just to get to the title of the series,
Speaker 4: Kissinger's Killing Fields. You have transcripts of his calls as
Speaker 4: part of one of the series. As an article on
Speaker 4: some of his calls that you say reveal his calpability.
Speaker 3: It's helpful to kind of, I think.
Speaker 4: Nail down exactly why this is pinned to Kissinger himself.
Speaker 4: You just explained some of it, but could you get
Speaker 4: into a little bit about what we know when it
Speaker 4: comes to how Kissinger himself is the architect of this
Speaker 4: death and destruction.
Speaker 6: Definitely, Kissinger had a really hands on role here. He
Speaker 6: was the national security advisor for Richard Nixon, and there
Speaker 6: hasn't been a national security advisor before or since that's
Speaker 6: had the type of sway that he had. He was
Speaker 6: really co president in a way for a policy war
Speaker 6: policy in Southeast Asia. Kissinger actually picked targets for bombings.
Speaker 6: The secret bombing that was carried out. There would be
Speaker 6: a kernel from the Pentagon who came to Kissinger office.
Speaker 6: They would look at maps. Kissinger would point to different
Speaker 6: sites and say bomb here, bomb there. So I mean
Speaker 6: very hands on in that regard. And you mentioned there's
Speaker 6: a sidebar article that I wrote about Kissinger had a
Speaker 6: taping system, not unlike his boss Richard Nixon, and the
Speaker 6: transcripts of these calls you can see Nixon calling up
Speaker 6: a Kissinger in one instance in a rage, saying that
Speaker 6: he wanted anything that flies to hit anything that moves
Speaker 6: in Cambodia, and Kissinger getting off the phone and relaying
Speaker 6: this order to his military deputy. And you know, I
Speaker 6: was able to match this up to show palpable effects
Speaker 6: out in the field. After that order came down, the
Speaker 6: strikes on Cambodia increased threefold over the next several weeks,
Speaker 6: and I chronicle hacks on villages by US helicopter gunships
Speaker 6: that resulted after this. So you can see a direct
Speaker 6: line from Kissinger's office in the White House to villages
Speaker 6: in Cambodia nine thousand miles away, and there's a clear
Speaker 6: line of death and destruction between the two.
Speaker 1: Nick, you talk about how when you went and interviewed
Speaker 1: people in Cambodia who lost relatives, loved ones, are still
Speaker 1: dealing with this trauma, that they were sort of shocked
Speaker 1: that there was an American that even knew about it,
Speaker 1: that cared about it, that cared enough to come and
Speaker 1: interview them and write a whole series on what you
Speaker 1: were able to uncover. What does it say about the US?
Speaker 1: What does it say about our current foreign policy? What
Speaker 1: does it say about our inability to reckon with the
Speaker 1: past that to this day Henry Kissinger is feted, sought after,
Speaker 1: looked at, looked at as this sort of sage advisor
Speaker 1: on foreign policy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I was always umbled by the response
Speaker 6: of my Cambodian interviewees there and uh and that the
Speaker 6: trauma that they experience was it was palpable. And the
Speaker 6: interviews and the documents really demonstrate a consistent disregard for
Speaker 6: Cambodian lives, a failure to detect and protect civilians, UH,
Speaker 6: to conduct post strike assessments, UH, to investigate civilian harm allegations,
Speaker 6: to prevent such damage from reoccurring, and to punish or
Speaker 6: hold accountable US personnel from the field all the way
Speaker 6: up to the White House. And I think these policies
Speaker 6: not only obscured the true toll of the conflict in Cambodia,
Speaker 6: but they set the stage for the civilian carnage of
Speaker 6: the US War on Terror from Afghanistan into a Rock,
Speaker 6: Syria to Somalia and beyond. You know, this, this legacy,
Speaker 6: I think is something that we're dealing with today. And
Speaker 6: the Pentagon has always been reticent to look backward and
Speaker 6: holds its people to account. You know, just just last year,
Speaker 6: the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was asked about attacks
Speaker 6: in the Forever Wars, if the United States would would
Speaker 6: look back and and try and you know, take accountability
Speaker 6: for strikes that we know that have happened that they've
Speaker 6: they've never done anything about as far as accountability or compensation,
Speaker 6: And he said there were there was there was no
Speaker 6: plan to do that, and if there's no plan for that,
Speaker 6: you know, the possibility that the Pentagon will investigate these
Speaker 6: crimes is fifty years later is pretty much nil.
Speaker 4: I'm really fascinated by how little we knew at the
Speaker 4: time of what was going on and how much we
Speaker 4: continue to learn about it, because i think it speaks
Speaker 4: to how that the sort of Pentagon has taken that
Speaker 4: as a permission slip to continue acting that way. As
Speaker 4: you say, Nick, that it extends into Afghanistan or wars
Speaker 4: in the Middle East. So that's my question here, is
Speaker 4: just the intentional or strategic targeting of villages as you're
Speaker 4: writ about in particular, Nick Long. I'm probably saying that incorrectly,
Speaker 4: but that learning more about that, I think tells us
Speaker 4: a lot about where the strategy comes from and why
Speaker 4: it continued to happen. So as we wrap up here,
Speaker 4: could you just tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 4: you learned in that particular instance and how it speaks
Speaker 4: to perhaps a broader strategy that continued on afterwards.
Speaker 6: Particularly in nik Long. This was an accidental bombing that
Speaker 6: occurred in nineteen seventy three through sheer carelessness and disregard
Speaker 6: a full bobbload from a B fifty two Strata Fortress
Speaker 6: thirty thirty tons of high explosives opt on this Cambodian town.
Speaker 6: It was reported that at the time, it was known
Speaker 6: that hundreds were killed or wounded, and the US actually
Speaker 6: made a restitution, but that wasn't the whole story. I
Speaker 6: found State Department documents that show that the US knew
Speaker 6: it had killed and wounded about double the number of
Speaker 6: Cambodians as was publicly announced, but they covered it up
Speaker 6: and they kept it secret until now. The US also
Speaker 6: announced that they had paid out four hundred dollars to victims' families.
Speaker 6: It wasn't a lot a few years salary, and these
Speaker 6: were often families who lost their sole breadwinner, so you know,
Speaker 6: a few years wasn't going to make a huge impact.
Speaker 6: But the documents that I found show that the US
Speaker 6: didn't even pay out that paltry sum. They paid out
Speaker 6: only about half, about two hundred and fifteen dollars. But again,
Speaker 6: they have this secret, and they acknowledged it and said
Speaker 6: that we shouldn't release these figures. We should just let
Speaker 6: the press coverage go with the original story. So you know,
Speaker 6: again you can see this this lack of accountability and
Speaker 6: the inability to hold the Pentagon accountable at the time,
Speaker 6: and I think, you know, we can we can see
Speaker 6: this extend, as I said, to the present day. They've
Speaker 6: been able to get away with it for decades, and
Speaker 6: until they're held to account, I think they'll continue with
Speaker 6: the same line of obscuring the true costs of our wars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is really well said. I very
Speaker 1: much encourage people to read through the whole report exactly
Speaker 1: for the reason that you're stating. If there is no
Speaker 1: accountability for those past crimes, that are just going to continue.
Speaker 1: We see it in for example, the withdrawal from Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: just going to thrown strike and aid workers has pretended
Speaker 1: to pretend, you know, tried to pretend he was isis K,
Speaker 1: even after reporters uncovered that they blew up this man
Speaker 1: and his whole family that were completely innocent. Was there
Speaker 1: any accountability for that, No, it was just oops are
Speaker 1: bad moving forward. So thank you so much for your
Speaker 1: work and reporting on this, and thank you so much
Speaker 1: also for your time today.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's our pleasure.
Speaker 4: You can read nixt story in the intercept you can
Speaker 4: also go get his book kill anything.
Speaker 3: That moves Crystal.
Speaker 4: Kind of a somber note to end the show on,
Speaker 4: but a really important one for the reason you just said,
Speaker 4: this just happened. The strategy is, you know, don't ask permission,
Speaker 4: ask forgiveness, but then they just don't even do the
Speaker 4: ask forgiveness part because they cover it up and don't
Speaker 4: pay out when they're supposed to.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's exactly right, Emily. Thank you for having me today.
Speaker 3: Thank you for being here. Actually, Crystal, you're going to
Speaker 3: be back next week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're stuck with me again next week. So Ryan
Speaker 1: and I being parents, both have all this like end
Speaker 1: of school year stuff going on, so I think he's
Speaker 1: got some of that to take care of next week.
Speaker 1: So I'll be doing breaking points and counterpoints next week,
Speaker 1: so full week for me.
Speaker 4: I'm looking forward to it. We'll see everybody back here
Speaker 4: next Wednesday. And Crystal, we'll see you what tomorrow?
Speaker 5: Yeah, there, you're.
Speaker 3: Gonna get a lot of Crystal.
Speaker 5: That line would rob my head around that. Yes, I
Speaker 5: will be back here tomorrow.
Speaker 3: All right, We'll see you then,