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Speaker 1: dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. Have an amazing
Speaker 1: show for everybody today. What do we have personal?
Speaker 3: Indeed we do.
Speaker 4: Nice to be back in the studio. Nice to have you.
Speaker 1: Back, Thank you, thank you. Yes, here we are to everybody.
Speaker 1: We're back. We've survived the Great snow Apocalypse at twenty
Speaker 1: so far.
Speaker 2: Anyway, we are actually just ano week, but anyway, we
Speaker 2: are here and it feels nice to be here, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot.
Speaker 4: To talk about.
Speaker 2: Obviously, we continue to have our eye on those horrific
Speaker 2: fires west in La. Already two of the fires are
Speaker 2: the worst and the second worst, most devastating fires in
Speaker 2: the history of LA some of the worst fires in
Speaker 2: all of California's history. So we're taking a look at that.
Speaker 2: We've got new horrific images from the ground. New political
Speaker 2: fallout will cover all of it. Biden actually decided to
Speaker 2: give I guess a bit of an exit interview to
Speaker 2: USA today. It's the only time, this is crazy during
Speaker 2: his four years in office, the only time he sat
Speaker 2: down with a major newspaper, and it is pretty interesting
Speaker 2: what he had to say.
Speaker 4: So we'll break that down for you.
Speaker 2: We've got Democrats joining with Republicans on an immigration crackdown.
Speaker 2: What is in that bill and what does it say
Speaker 2: about where our politics are right now? Jeff Stein is
Speaker 2: going to join. He had what turned out to be
Speaker 2: kind of a controversial scoop with regard to tariffs. People
Speaker 2: were mad at him, the Trump people pushed back on him.
Speaker 2: But you know, we have a lot of trust in
Speaker 2: Jeff and his reporting, So we'll tell him. We'll find
Speaker 2: out from him what his latest view is on how
Speaker 2: Trump is planning to implement this massive terrorist gen Fox
Speaker 2: News is being accused of slipping Trump the town hall
Speaker 2: questions in advance for this Fox News town while you
Speaker 2: guys might remember with Brett Baer and Martha McCollum, so
Speaker 2: take a look at that, and Sager has a big
Speaker 2: old monologue on the whole H one B situation, which
Speaker 2: I personally very much looking forward to. Is one of
Speaker 2: the stories that we really missed your voice on.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you. I was desperate to weigh in, but
Speaker 1: you know how it is when you're on vacation, your
Speaker 1: wife doesn't want you to so so be it. That's
Speaker 1: true pain for anybody who've ever had to suffer it.
Speaker 1: I've done my best here to try and weigh in
Speaker 1: later on with as much as I can add. But
Speaker 1: let's get to Los Angeles particularly, just heartbreaking, one of
Speaker 1: the best cities in the United States, and just horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible images coming out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolute insane apocalyptic images coming out of LA right
Speaker 2: now before we jump into them, just to give you
Speaker 2: the overview. I know Ryan and Emily did a great
Speaker 2: job covering this yesterday, but a number of fires have
Speaker 2: broken down around LA. The largest one is the Palisades Fire,
Speaker 2: the second largest one is the Eton Fire. There was
Speaker 2: another one that broke out yesterday in the famed Hollywood
Speaker 2: Hills area, causing further evacuations. So far, the numbers in
Speaker 2: the New York Times this morning say that they have
Speaker 2: burned more than twenty seven thousand acres. That's equivalent to
Speaker 2: nearly twenty thousand football fields. They have destroyed at least
Speaker 2: two thousand structures. And as I said before, the two
Speaker 2: largest fires here the Palisades which is the worst, the
Speaker 2: Eaten Fire, which is the second worst. They are the
Speaker 2: first and second worst fires in the history of la
Speaker 2: Both of them are in the top twenty most destructive
Speaker 2: fires in the history of California. Fed by massive drought situation,
Speaker 2: the worst drought that the southwestern United States has faced
Speaker 2: in some twelve hundred years. So fuel that, and then
Speaker 2: you add to that the Santa Ana winds and you
Speaker 2: have an absolute catastrophe on your hands. Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and take a look at some of the latest horrific
Speaker 2: images that are coming out here. This is an aerial
Speaker 2: view that you can see of the Palisades area. This is,
Speaker 2: you know, a very beautiful, very affluent area which has
Speaker 2: now been burnt to an absolute crisp. You can see
Speaker 2: this is driving around that neighborhood and you know, sections
Speaker 2: of it, there's just nothing left. Everything charred, homes, businesses, schools, churches,
Speaker 2: you name it, charred to the ground. This was a
Speaker 2: horrifying video that came out. There was a lot of
Speaker 2: concern for the person who recorded this video, but we've
Speaker 2: since learned that the individual recorded that is thankfully safe
Speaker 2: and sound. But you could see the fire lapping at
Speaker 2: their home. This is another view. This is I believe
Speaker 2: a former Starbucks that we saw there, a relatively famous
Speaker 2: Starbucks in La This is a school that is a
Speaker 2: blaze in the same area. And I think the last
Speaker 2: image we have is of this blood red sunrise. Again
Speaker 2: dystopian and apocalyptic as I mean, you can hardly that
Speaker 2: looks like that looks fake, right, doesn't even look real.
Speaker 2: So these are just some of the scenes of devastations
Speaker 2: that are coming out. And you know, there's the larger picture,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, this climate fueled disaster, climate change
Speaker 2: fuel disaster, and then there's also basically everything that could
Speaker 2: go wrong seems to be going wrong. The city, led
Speaker 2: by Mayor Karen Bass We're going to talk more about
Speaker 2: in a moment, has just recently cut the budget by
Speaker 2: millions of dollars for the firefighting department, which, you know,
Speaker 2: when you're talking about a city where there's always been
Speaker 2: a risk of wildfires and that risk has only escalated
Speaker 2: in this time of extreme climate events, seems like the
Speaker 2: wrong direction to go in.
Speaker 4: And sure enough, it turns out they are saying.
Speaker 2: Officials are saying, we don't have enough firefighters to fight
Speaker 2: this blaze.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to a little bit of what
Speaker 4: they had to say.
Speaker 5: Thank you for the question. So I'll start at the
Speaker 5: end and work back.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 5: La County and all twenty nine fire departments in our
Speaker 5: county not prepared for this type of widespread disaster. There
Speaker 5: are not enough firefighters in La County to address four
Speaker 5: separate fires of this magnitude. We were prepared. We did
Speaker 5: get state preposition resources that came from northern California that
Speaker 5: were up in the Santa Clarita Valley. We did hire
Speaker 5: additional firefighters from the La County Fire Department and preposition
Speaker 5: them in the Santa Monica Mountains. The La County Fire
Speaker 5: Department was prepared for one or two major brush fires,
Speaker 5: but not four, especially given these sustained winds and low humidities.
Speaker 5: Like our director of Emergency Management said, this is not
Speaker 5: a normal red flag alert, and.
Speaker 2: Sager, you know, one of the things that people have
Speaker 2: been focused on is, as I mentioned before, that fire
Speaker 2: department funding was just cut by twenty three million dollars
Speaker 2: in an era when obviously, you know, the risks continue
Speaker 2: to escalate. And in addition to this, Mayor Karen Bass
Speaker 2: has been out of the country, was in Ghana, Ghana,
Speaker 2: which you know, I mean, here's travel you could say, okay,
Speaker 2: just came out and no nowhere. No one could have
Speaker 2: predicted the extent of the fires here and just how
Speaker 2: destructive and damaging they would be. However, the Santa Ana
Speaker 2: wins are predictable, the drought was known, the you know,
Speaker 2: tinderbox conditions were certainly known, and as we're about to
Speaker 2: get to but I'll get your reaction first, she did
Speaker 2: herself no favors in terms of her lack of response
Speaker 2: to some very basic questions about her own leadership failures here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then this is one of those where people look
Speaker 1: to the person in charge and they need to have
Speaker 1: confidence that their government is looking out for them. If
Speaker 1: you live in Los Angeles and if you think about
Speaker 1: these areas, Pacific Palisades. We're talking about an area where
Speaker 1: I believe the average home price is like several million dollars,
Speaker 1: which means that the residents there are paying astronomical property taxes.
Speaker 1: They're probably tax if they're making over a million or so,
Speaker 1: fourteen percent state income tax. It's like, listen, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna pay that much, you know, you pay the sunshine task.
Speaker 1: But part of it is sunshine tax. Part of it is, hey,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to if there's a horrible fire, someone's
Speaker 1: gonna come out and look out for me. So this
Speaker 1: is a real abdication of leadership and just systematic basic failure.
Speaker 1: And so that's as you said, you've got to separate
Speaker 1: out historic temperatures and all of the other problems, but
Speaker 1: there are realistic things that should have been done. It's
Speaker 1: not me just saying this. There have been a lot
Speaker 1: of critiques in Los Angeles around this, around the fire hydrants,
Speaker 1: the draining of reservoirs, the fact that there is no water,
Speaker 1: which we're going to get to, the cutting of the
Speaker 1: fire department, forest management. All of this, of course is
Speaker 1: going to have to be scrutinized heavily afterwards. But for
Speaker 1: the mayor having approximately five days notice. From what I
Speaker 1: understand of the Santa Ana Wins end of the tinderbox conditions,
Speaker 1: it is just unforgivable to stay in Ghana because really
Speaker 1: we're talking about vanity trips here, like we're not talking
Speaker 1: about visiting Tokyo or somewhere else where you do a
Speaker 1: significant amount of business, you know, as the mayor or
Speaker 1: somebody of Los Angeles, I believe the purpose of the
Speaker 1: trip was just one of these cultural exchanges, just from
Speaker 1: what I saw in my initial research. And so yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and look fine, all right, but let be the US
Speaker 1: ambassador handle it. The mayor of Los Angeles does not
Speaker 1: need to handle it, and so for her not to
Speaker 1: come back as a problem. And then the thing is
Speaker 1: is that she delayed it up until like a very
Speaker 1: very last moment that we saw for coming back, and
Speaker 1: since has now basically refused to answer any questions when
Speaker 1: she was confronted at the airport. So we have here
Speaker 1: a clip. It appears to be a British journalist. We're
Speaker 1: not exactly sure where it was taken. It's from Sky News.
Speaker 1: It was taken from somewhere I believe it was in
Speaker 1: the UK. Possibly transiting through that airport on her way
Speaker 1: back to LA But she's basically catatonic in questions about
Speaker 1: why she's out of the country and why she got
Speaker 1: the fire department budget.
Speaker 6: Let's take a listen, do you, oh, citizen's an apology
Speaker 6: for being absent while their homes were burning, cutting the
Speaker 6: fire department budget by millions of dollars? Madam Mayre, Have
Speaker 6: you nothing to say today? Have you absolutely nothing to
Speaker 6: say to the citizens today? Do anything to say to
Speaker 6: the citizens today as you returned? Second, Madam Mayor, just
Speaker 6: a few words for the citizens today as you return
Speaker 6: to deal with a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: I mean literally catati. I just don't understand why anybody
Speaker 1: would act like that. I mean, it's one thing if
Speaker 1: you're a member of Congress and someone's asking about a
Speaker 1: question about like a Trump tweet, it's like you're the
Speaker 1: mayor of Los Angeles. Your city is burning to the ground.
Speaker 1: On top of that, I mean, you need to answer
Speaker 1: a question here about these fire hydrants, about reservoirs, uh
Speaker 1: and the stuff which is in your immediate purview. And
Speaker 1: so there's multiple like layers of crisis here that are
Speaker 1: happening from the fire department level, the managerial level of
Speaker 1: basic city function. We're talking about water resis of war management.
Speaker 1: Then the governor, the gubernatorial level who right now Gavin
Speaker 1: was asked about it yesterday. He goes, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: local matter. In terms, it's like, okay, well, you know,
Speaker 1: even if we think about La County and we have
Speaker 1: all these little different like municipalities, as I understand is
Speaker 1: like Santa Monica, etcetera. You know, they're all like self
Speaker 1: governing institutions. Somebody needs to look out for them. And
Speaker 1: it's just sounded like a big major culture. Of course,
Speaker 1: is a cultural capital of the United States. It's one
Speaker 1: of the largest cities in the US. I think it's
Speaker 1: number two, uh, and it's it's one of the it's
Speaker 1: it is the one of like the beating hearts of
Speaker 1: America's entertainment industry, of arts, of a lot of our culture.
Speaker 1: And it's really sad, you know, it's just on a
Speaker 1: personal level. I know people who've been affected by the fires.
Speaker 1: But this is a great American city and it looks
Speaker 1: it's had a lot of problems in recent years. But
Speaker 1: to have it just watch get burned to the ground.
Speaker 1: And we're about to talk about insurance. Who knows if
Speaker 1: it will ever be the same A lot of these people.
Speaker 1: I mean me tell you, if I had the amount
Speaker 1: of money that I was living in the Pacific Palisades
Speaker 1: and my home burned to the round, I'm not going back.
Speaker 1: I'm leaving. I'll be like, listen, you guys failed me
Speaker 1: in the biggest moment. You know that, in the moment
Speaker 1: that we paid all these millions of dollars in property taxes.
Speaker 1: I'm out. And I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: going to feel that way, especially if they can't even
Speaker 1: buy fire insurance again, which it seems likely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And for the wealthy, like it's still
Speaker 2: no matter who you are on your income level, is
Speaker 2: devastating to lose your home. It's devastating to lose, you know,
Speaker 2: something that's cherished and where you've built lots of memories
Speaker 2: and the possessions that you have attachment to, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to minimize their loss. But they're
Speaker 2: going to be okay, They're going to be able to build.
Speaker 2: They can leave wherever they want. They can leave, they
Speaker 2: can go somewhere else, they can if they want to stay,
Speaker 2: they can rebuild. They can take the risk of not
Speaker 2: having fire insurance and you know, have.
Speaker 4: The wealth to be able to just rebuild on their own.
Speaker 2: But obviously, when a natural disaster like this strikes, it
Speaker 2: doesn't distinguish by class. So you have every sociate and
Speaker 2: economic class in la that has been devastated by this,
Speaker 2: and you know, in a city that does have these
Speaker 2: sort of like you know, it's very local, partly because
Speaker 2: the traffic is so bad that you just want to
Speaker 2: like stay in your neighborhood and not have to drive
Speaker 2: around that much. This has really been kind of a
Speaker 2: unifying event because everyone is affected, even the areas that
Speaker 2: haven't been.
Speaker 4: Burnt to the ground.
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, let's put a two up on
Speaker 2: the screen just so you guys can see this image
Speaker 2: that is making the rounds of this is the overview
Speaker 2: of this is specific. This is palasades like that is insane.
Speaker 2: There is nothing left. But yeah, for the wealthy, they're
Speaker 2: going to be able to put it back together. They're
Speaker 2: going to be able to rebuild. If you're someone who
Speaker 2: was already struggling, who was already on the edge, and
Speaker 2: you've lost everything and you may not have a choice
Speaker 2: to go somewhere else. You may not have the funds
Speaker 2: to go somewhere else. Your job, you know, your only
Speaker 2: like lifeline to being able to have a prayer of
Speaker 2: paying the rent and being able to rebuild may be there,
Speaker 2: so you may not have an option just to go
Speaker 2: back to Karen Bass. And I mean that clip is
Speaker 2: one of the most politically catastrophic clips I have ever seen.
Speaker 2: And to just freeze up very obvious basic questions here,
Speaker 2: how hard would it be to say, as soon as
Speaker 2: I saw the fires breakout, I did everything I could
Speaker 2: to get back as soon as I could. And you know,
Speaker 2: here's what we're doing, and here's our action plan, and
Speaker 2: we're going to make sure everybody's okay in LA's and
Speaker 2: now's the time to come down like whatever political but
Speaker 2: like say something, To have no answers in that moment
Speaker 2: is truly astonishing. And what I would say is for
Speaker 2: Karen Bass and every mayor, every elected official around the country,
Speaker 2: you better get really good at mitigation. You better get
Speaker 2: really good at thinking about how your budget can be
Speaker 2: leveraged to try to protect people from these extreme climate events,
Speaker 2: because you know, these are the worst fires in LA history.
Speaker 2: We just saw again again fueled by a worse than
Speaker 2: twelve hundred year drought. The temperature, the average temperature in
Speaker 2: California has risen by a full degree celsius, which is
Speaker 2: about two and a half degrees fahrenheit. Just since nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty we saw the devastating her canes that ravaged western
Speaker 2: North Carolina and other areas with you know, flooding. These
Speaker 2: are areas that never really thought I mean, people had
Speaker 2: moved to those areas because they thought they were escaping
Speaker 2: the worst of extreme climate events like this is the
Speaker 2: era that we live in now. And I think there was,
Speaker 2: you know, a time when it was open a question
Speaker 2: whether we and the rest of the world would get
Speaker 2: our act together and use the technology available to us
Speaker 2: and curb some of the lifestyle and the bottom line
Speaker 2: of the ultra wealthy in order to get climate change
Speaker 2: under control and try to limit the damage. And you know,
Speaker 2: I look at this and it's we're effectively beyond that.
Speaker 2: The wealthy and especially the actors that you know that
Speaker 2: led fossil fuel companies, that led a political cover up
Speaker 2: for years and years, who knew for fifty years the
Speaker 2: impact they were causing on the climate. You know, they're
Speaker 2: sort of the worst villains here, But there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of characters that are complicit. But this is the era
Speaker 2: we're in now. So if you're the mayor of la
Speaker 2: and you know, you've got to sit that is fire
Speaker 2: prone and only becoming more so every single year that
Speaker 2: these patterns persist and the climate gets hotter and hotter,
Speaker 2: and the swings get more and more extreme, you've got
Speaker 2: to be insane to be cutting the firefighting budget. And
Speaker 2: then at the same time, you know, one of the
Speaker 2: subplots here is also that there are these private firefighters
Speaker 2: effectively for hire that exist in these areas, that are
Speaker 2: effectively hired by the insurance companies to protect the properties
Speaker 2: that they've ensured. So you know, it's just as dystoping
Speaker 2: as it can possibly be. And effectively, you know, the
Speaker 2: ultra wealthy effectively run this country and buy and large
Speaker 2: run the world. They've decided, rather than trying to deal
Speaker 2: with the core of the issue, they're going to try
Speaker 2: to mitigate for themselves and limit the catastrophic damage for
Speaker 2: themselves and letter rip and that's effectively where we are
Speaker 2: to get back to the micro level here, as Soccer
Speaker 2: was mentioning. In addition, to the fact that Karen Bass
Speaker 2: was gone, in addition to the fact that the fire
Speaker 2: chief is saying we just literally do not have enough
Speaker 2: firefighters to fight this blaze. Also, as was alluded to,
Speaker 2: some of the fire hydrants are running dry because of
Speaker 2: the obviously strain on the system. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: take a listen to some of the details that have
Speaker 2: been announced on that.
Speaker 7: We're losing water pressure up here. We have a lack
Speaker 7: of resources. The wind, as you see, is pushing it
Speaker 7: very violently, and the lack of water is a huge,
Speaker 7: huge hurdle that we're trying to overcome so we can
Speaker 7: save as much as we can.
Speaker 1: So, lack of water, no pressure in the neighborhood.
Speaker 7: All the hydrants have run dry.
Speaker 1: Oh no, so what do you do now?
Speaker 7: So we send our water tenders or our engines down
Speaker 7: to shuttle water from further away, different different hydrants that
Speaker 7: still have water.
Speaker 1: This is bad.
Speaker 7: It makes it challenging to do our job. But we're
Speaker 7: just up here trying to do the best we can
Speaker 7: for the citizens in the community.
Speaker 2: Hydrants running dry unbelievable, and we have a tear sheet
Speaker 2: to this effect too from the La Times that did
Speaker 2: some reporting on this cruise battling the Palisades blaze face
Speaker 2: and additional burdens scores of fire hydrants in that area
Speaker 2: had little to no water flowing out. The hydrants are down,
Speaker 2: said one firefighter in internal radio communications.
Speaker 4: Water supply just drop.
Speaker 2: By three am Wednesday, all water storage tanks in the
Speaker 2: Palisades area went dry, diminishing the flow of water from
Speaker 2: hydrants in higher elevations. According to the chief executive and
Speaker 2: chief engineer of the LA Department of Water and Power,
Speaker 2: that is the city's utility. So you've got hydrants running
Speaker 2: dry at the same time. I'm sure you guys have seen,
Speaker 2: you know, at times when they're battling these blazes, they'll
Speaker 2: use helicopters. But because these winds are so extreme, we're
Speaker 2: talking gusts of at times one hundred miles per hour,
Speaker 2: that is hurricane force gusts, which is part of what
Speaker 2: fueled this horrific blaze, with embers blowing everywhere and blowing in,
Speaker 2: you know, in ways that are not actually typical. Even
Speaker 2: with the Santa Anna wins. You can't fly a helicopter
Speaker 2: in one hundred mile per hour gust situation. So my
Speaker 2: understanding saga is that they are able to use aircraft
Speaker 2: to help to battle the flames. Today, the winds have
Speaker 2: subsided somewhat. The forecast calls for them to pick back
Speaker 2: up into tomorrow and into the weekend. But you know,
Speaker 2: to have imagine being out there trying to battle this
Speaker 2: blaze and you just literally there's no water, no water.
Speaker 1: In fact, the LA Council member Tracy Park for Pacific
Speaker 1: Palisades revealed that all three of the major reservoirs ran dry.
Speaker 1: So she said that they are the three large water
Speaker 1: tanks in the Pacific Palisades area with a million gallons each.
Speaker 1: The first ran dry at four to forty five pm Tuesday,
Speaker 1: the second eight thirty pm, and the third was dry
Speaker 1: as of three am on Wednesday, and by that time
Speaker 1: the entire place had burned. As you said, there was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary demand. But that's actually not an excuse as
Speaker 1: I understand it, because there had been previous there's been
Speaker 1: previous just major fights in the LA area about reservoirs
Speaker 1: and about water management. This goes back again to some
Speaker 1: like very basic city stuff, and I think again this
Speaker 1: is gonna have to take a lot of scrutiny in
Speaker 1: terms of the basics of this, but you know, the
Speaker 1: truth is is that. And I'm listening to the local
Speaker 1: reporters here on all of this. We're genuinely trying to
Speaker 1: stay out of the politics. They're like this, And I
Speaker 1: listened to one who was like, look, this is basic stuff,
Speaker 1: water management, city infrastructure, cutting, the budget, lack of investment,
Speaker 1: and it's been a failure and it is tragic. As
Speaker 1: you said. You know, I talked about the Pacific Palisades people,
Speaker 1: that's only one of four fires you know that is
Speaker 1: currently burning. You don't have to be ultra wealthy to
Speaker 1: live in some of these places, especially if you moved
Speaker 1: there thirty forty years ago. You just like a normal
Speaker 1: middle class person. You know, maybe you want it. You
Speaker 1: were retiring, you got lucky. You own the house kind
Speaker 1: of near the beach. You bought it for a couple
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. Now it's worth like two or three million.
Speaker 1: But this gets us now to the insurance question, and
Speaker 1: that is one where I really do think we're going
Speaker 1: to see a total like rewrite of insurance law in
Speaker 1: the state of California. By the way, if you think
Speaker 1: the feds are' going to bail them out. There's just
Speaker 1: no chance they have to basically at this point, and
Speaker 1: the insurance companies themselves were very much ahead of this one.
Speaker 1: Let's put a seven please on the screen. You can
Speaker 1: see that these upscale quote West Side, LA neighborhoods were
Speaker 1: hit hard by State Farm home insurance cancelations. This was
Speaker 1: just a few months ago. Thousands of Californians won't see
Speaker 1: their home insurance renewe by State Farm this summer. Homeowners
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles County, with these West Side neighborhoods hit
Speaker 1: especially hard, A majority were listen to this. Neighborhoods in
Speaker 1: West Los Angeles in the Santa Monica Mountains, including pel Air,
Speaker 1: Pacific Palisades, and Woodland Hills are going to lose their coverage.
Speaker 1: The State Farm move obviously affects some of the richest neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: but the reason for it was specifically fire is that
Speaker 1: these insurance companies picked up on the fact that there
Speaker 1: was a significant problem with fire coverage in that area.
Speaker 1: Listen to this in Pacific Palisades. So just in April
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, sixty nine percent of the policy holders
Speaker 1: in the area will lose coverage. Seventy percent as of
Speaker 1: a few months ago lost all of their coverage. I
Speaker 1: also believe that there are caps in the number of
Speaker 1: insurance for the payout that does not even come close
Speaker 1: to the actual value of the homes. This is complicated
Speaker 1: in terms of policy and all these others. Some people
Speaker 1: can self ensure have different but on average, it does
Speaker 1: seem like there will be think about this as well.
Speaker 1: We have a national home crisis right now. I mean,
Speaker 1: do know how much wood, timber and materials it will cost?
Speaker 1: So you can just see a total disaster. It's not
Speaker 1: as bad as the Maui situation, obviously, but you know,
Speaker 1: because it's on the mainland US. But even rebuilding this
Speaker 1: it will take tens of billions of dollars. Federal infrastructure
Speaker 1: is going to rewrite home insurance. If you live in
Speaker 1: Florida and or California, I mean, good luck, because that's
Speaker 1: another thing with these insurance companies. There's been previous propositions
Speaker 1: and laws. In California, they tried to cap insurance companies
Speaker 1: from raising premiums to make it basically unaffordable to have
Speaker 1: home insurance, and so they capped the number that they
Speaker 1: were allowed to have. You can you can change that
Speaker 1: if you want to, but then most people will probably
Speaker 1: just not buy it, or you know, you're going to
Speaker 1: have to have the state and the federal government step in. Heres.
Speaker 1: This is a huge mess. It's a disaster.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Effectively, extreme weather events have broken the home insurance market,
Speaker 2: Like State Farm is not going to ensure and no
Speaker 2: company is going to ensure this. Nobody's when they see this.
Speaker 2: I mean they looked and they saw this risk. They're
Speaker 2: like twelve hundred year drought, you know, unbelievable conditions. It's
Speaker 2: only a matter of time. We're cutting this off. And
Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to let the free market determine,
Speaker 2: then we're going to see more and more areas of
Speaker 2: the country, which this is already We've covered this previously
Speaker 2: with regards to to Florida and other parts of the country.
Speaker 2: This is already in effect. I mean, Florida has a
Speaker 2: total mess on their hands because of their susceptibility to hurricanes'
Speaker 2: entire Gulf coasts. You know, Colorado is another area where
Speaker 2: the home insurance. Homeowners insurance market is really struggling. You know,
Speaker 2: oftentimes you can't get a mortgage if you can't get
Speaker 2: that homeowner's insurance not to mention, you know, even if
Speaker 2: you can, then the premiums are absolutely skyrocketing. So that
Speaker 2: is the reality we live in now. And so you're
Speaker 2: going to have increasing swaths of the country that are
Speaker 2: just uninsurable. And then there's a question as a society,
Speaker 2: do we want effectively, you know, the federal government, because
Speaker 2: the state governments won't really have the funds to be
Speaker 2: able to handle it.
Speaker 4: Do we want.
Speaker 2: As a public to subsidize this market and you know,
Speaker 2: insurance for people who are living in these areas. This
Speaker 2: is one of the sort of societal questions we have
Speaker 2: to ask at this point because otherwise places like and
Speaker 2: I think Ryan said a version of this on the
Speaker 2: show with Emily yesterday, you know, places like the Pacific Palisades,
Speaker 2: you're going to have either people who can afford to
Speaker 2: just roll the dice and if their property is burned
Speaker 2: to the ground and they have to rebuild, they've got
Speaker 2: the funds to be able to comfortably do that and
Speaker 2: they're willing to live at that risk, or people who
Speaker 2: can't afford to go anywhere else and are forced into
Speaker 2: the position of effectively having to roll the dice. So
Speaker 2: you know that's that is the era we live in
Speaker 2: and that is where we are right now. The last
Speaker 2: piece of this, just to give the backstory here, why
Speaker 2: Karen Bass was in Africa while all of this was
Speaker 2: breaking out? We could put this tear sheet up on
Speaker 2: the screen. This is what I was referencing before this.
Speaker 2: There we go a Why was Mayor Karen Bass in
Speaker 2: Africa during the LA fires? She was apparently there to
Speaker 2: celebrate the inauguration of the new Ghanaian president and would
Speaker 2: meet with the country's first female vice president as well
Speaker 2: during a press conference.
Speaker 4: Her deputy chief of staffs she would.
Speaker 2: Be on the ground shortly, and you know, was never
Speaker 2: going to be great for her being out of the
Speaker 2: country for this, especially when there was some ability to
Speaker 2: predict that there could be a problem. Again, no one
Speaker 2: could have known the extent that this would be the
Speaker 2: worst fire in the history of LA including loss of life,
Speaker 2: including thousands of structures that are completely destroyed. But there
Speaker 2: was a high risk maybe that was overcomeable just from
Speaker 2: a political perspective. That clip of her stonefaced no answers,
Speaker 2: I think is, like I said before, one of the
Speaker 2: most devastating political clips that I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: And every elexed official.
Speaker 2: Around the country needs to be taking notes of what
Speaker 2: not to do, and they all need to get really
Speaker 2: smart about thinking about the risk to their area and
Speaker 2: what they can possibly do to mitigate it, because I
Speaker 2: think it's pretty clear at this point we're not getting
Speaker 2: our shit together to be able to actually deal with
Speaker 2: the underlying issue and the challenge, Like, the impacts are
Speaker 2: already here. So even if we got series tomorrow, the
Speaker 2: impacts have already arrived.
Speaker 1: I think that this should be a wake up call
Speaker 1: to the governor or the mayor of every major city
Speaker 1: in America, especially in these places you know this is
Speaker 1: an existential, actually event. I think for California that may
Speaker 1: seem crazy to say, but look, California New York in
Speaker 1: particular have a system which is heavily reliant on the
Speaker 1: ultra wealthy, where they pay almost fifty percent of the
Speaker 1: tax and a lot of the property tax. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: when you have that model, it only works if they
Speaker 1: don't leave. Now one hundred and thirty people with thirty
Speaker 1: thousand people or so left the state of California, I
Speaker 1: think just last year. It's one of those places with
Speaker 1: net loss migration. But if the disproportionate number of those
Speaker 1: people are let's say ultra wealthy. It's a huge debt
Speaker 1: to the tax base. So, like I said, if the
Speaker 1: Pacific Palisades I just looked it up, four point five
Speaker 1: million dollars median home list price, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: property tax. And if let's say twenty percent of them
Speaker 1: don't come back, that's boom wiped out. So now you
Speaker 1: have way less money. I mean, a lot of these
Speaker 1: folks are already seen billionaires on my timeline. They're like,
Speaker 1: that's it, I'm moving to Nevada, like I'm done, and
Speaker 1: you know they can afford that. But the point is
Speaker 1: is that they are so heavily relied on by the
Speaker 1: state to pay for all of this other stuff for
Speaker 1: the entire California Los Angeles. I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: the bedrock of how the entire city functions. So if
Speaker 1: they do not get their act together and they've decided
Speaker 1: to tax their system that way, that's fine, but you
Speaker 1: better make sure that you know those people want to stay,
Speaker 1: because if you don't, then all of the poorer people
Speaker 1: of the what are their eight million people who live
Speaker 1: in La County, all of their social services, and you know,
Speaker 1: tax base and all of that is going to be
Speaker 1: wiped out. So they've got the pyramid basically a way
Speaker 1: that they use their taxation system that they've decide on,
Speaker 1: and if they start to lose all of the intrinsic
Speaker 1: value of what makes the city of what it is,
Speaker 1: you could really see it get wiped out. So I
Speaker 1: really do feel for them. Like I said, I love
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those people who are like screwed
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles living, it's amazing. I
Speaker 1: love the state of California. Yeah, it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of problems, but natural, beauty wise and more. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's painful, you know, to why it's like
Speaker 1: any great American city. I would say the same thing
Speaker 1: about Chicago, New York, any of these places. They're special
Speaker 1: for a reason, and to see them stuffer like this
Speaker 1: is horrible. You know. Let's also remember, like you said,
Speaker 1: our producer Griffin used to live in one of the
Speaker 1: areas which is burning. Many of his friends had to
Speaker 1: flee apparently overnight. As he knows, they all got out safely,
Speaker 1: but because he knows somebody who personally lost their house,
Speaker 1: this is devastating for people, not just billionaires even multimillionaires,
Speaker 1: just normal people working in the industry or whatever. And
Speaker 1: then just imagine if you lost your house. Now, it's
Speaker 1: not the most important thing, but you know, especially when
Speaker 1: you have to deal with these insurance companies and others,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just it's probably one of the most
Speaker 1: taxing events that is up there for stress for your family.
Speaker 1: What do you do now? I can't imagine having to
Speaker 1: go through.
Speaker 2: When you're in LA You're very like it just there's
Speaker 2: an aura that settles on you of just the sense
Speaker 2: of all these people who are chasing their dreams, who
Speaker 2: are true and it is a very it's a very
Speaker 2: unique vibe when you get there, when you go to
Speaker 2: the restaurant and the waiter is the aspiring actor actress,
Speaker 2: like that is the heart of this.
Speaker 4: You know, iconic cultural phenomenon.
Speaker 2: And yeah, those are the people who are gonna suffer
Speaker 2: the most because they're you know, they're scraping to get
Speaker 2: by and trying to make it, trying to chase their dreams.
Speaker 2: And you know this, this could be extinguishing a lot
Speaker 2: of dreams here. And I do think the series of
Speaker 2: climate catastrophes that we've had. They do represent an existential crisis,
Speaker 2: certainly for California. You know, the irony here, both with
Speaker 2: California and with Florida is these are places people move
Speaker 2: to because of the weather, right, this beautiful, nat beauty,
Speaker 2: sunshiny days. I mean, there's no probably nowhere in the
Speaker 2: country that has a better weather than southern California, Like
Speaker 2: San Diego is ridiculous, right, It's just like, how how
Speaker 2: is this just not even fair? Like why do you
Speaker 2: get this weather all the time?
Speaker 4: This isn't right?
Speaker 2: And now that weather is really a double edged sword.
Speaker 2: And same thing with Flora. I mean, people moved to
Speaker 2: Florida because they love the beaches in the sunshine and
Speaker 2: it's warm year round and all that stuff, and now
Speaker 2: the weather comes with this also tremendous downside. So a
Speaker 2: lot of questions about where people will go in La
Speaker 2: from here, about where the country will go from here,
Speaker 2: how local officials will handle these events. But Karen Bass
Speaker 2: is so far a model of what not to do.
Speaker 2: And I have to say, I think Gavin Newsom is
Speaker 2: kind of lucky that she's screwed the pooch so badly, because.
Speaker 4: He's taking some of the focus off.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, he's got his own problems, like
Speaker 1: just today, we didn't have time to put it into
Speaker 1: the show. But he was asked about this fire hydrant thing.
Speaker 1: He goes, Oh, that's a local matter. I'm like, that
Speaker 1: ain't gonna cut it the right.
Speaker 4: No, that's not going to cut it all right.
Speaker 2: Well, in speaking of political failures, let's get to our
Speaker 2: current incredible president and.
Speaker 4: His great leadership.
Speaker 2: So he's at a press conference with Gavin Newsom, supposedly
Speaker 2: responding to the storm. He did cancel a trip to
Speaker 2: Italy to be on the ground and make sure that
Speaker 2: he can marshal the federal resources, not that it really
Speaker 2: has the capability to, you know, with his brain, to
Speaker 2: do much of anything. But anyway, he is here in
Speaker 2: the States for what it's worth. So take a listen
Speaker 2: to him at this press conference again supposedly Laser focused
Speaker 2: on these devastating fires where five people have lost their lives,
Speaker 2: twenty thousand football fields burned. And it'll be a little
Speaker 2: bit difficult to hear, but after the clip plays, I'll
Speaker 2: fill you in. If you aren't able to catch the
Speaker 2: way he changes the subject. Here, take a listen.
Speaker 8: You got the.
Speaker 9: Conflications today maybe st state, I'm sure what good news is,
Speaker 9: I'm a great frans flower.
Speaker 3: What it did?
Speaker 9: Four?
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: So if you weren't able to hear, changes the subject.
Speaker 2: Suddenly he's like, what the good news is, I'm a
Speaker 2: great grandpa, and then, in classic Biden fashion, doesn't seem to.
Speaker 4: Know whether the baby is a girl or a boy?
Speaker 2: Still a boyar, Oh, it's a boy. What did he
Speaker 2: say for?
Speaker 4: You said girl?
Speaker 2: And then he seems so But anyway, whatever he, you know,
Speaker 2: is in such an adult state and you and then
Speaker 2: combined with like the narcissism of making this moment about
Speaker 2: you and forcing everyone in the room to be like, congratulations,
Speaker 2: way to go, Like people are dying in an iconic
Speaker 2: American city, is getting burnt to the ground, but happy
Speaker 2: for your personal you know, joy in this moment.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just too perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, dude, it's not about you. Yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 1: Congratulations on being the very first president ever to be
Speaker 1: a great grandfather. Not a milestone I would personally be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's literally the only president in American history to be
Speaker 1: at the age where you could have great grandchildren. That's
Speaker 1: especially crazy because if you think about some of the
Speaker 1: founders and others who were probably with their sixties or seventies,
Speaker 1: and when people were getting married and having children, and
Speaker 1: they're like sixteen and seventeen years old, you would have
Speaker 1: thought that someone would have been old enough even in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds or so. So, you know, congratulations Joseph
Speaker 1: Robin at Biden for past Bacon history. He is making.
Speaker 1: He is making history in a lot of ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's funny, but it's not funny just because, like I said,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is going I think I said this
Speaker 1: on election night and before too, I was like, he
Speaker 1: will go down as one of the most selfish, narcissistic
Speaker 1: individuals in the history of the American presidency. And I
Speaker 1: like to judge him by the things that he set
Speaker 1: out to do. Joe Biden never set out to be
Speaker 1: fdr ll. Maybe in his head he thought so, but
Speaker 1: in reality it was what I need to stop Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and instead he ushered in Donald Trump's popular vie electoral mandate.
Speaker 1: And if you look at him, his narcissism still somehow
Speaker 1: is able to fight through the Alzheimer's or dementia or
Speaker 1: whatever and rear its ugly head. This sit down with
Speaker 1: Biden is one of the most extraordinary things I've ever
Speaker 1: seen from an American president. Let's put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen, because the very first line that they
Speaker 1: quote is they ask him, do you have the vigor
Speaker 1: to complete four more years in office? And he says,
Speaker 1: so far, so good, But who knows what I'm going
Speaker 1: to be when I'm eighty six years old. Well, that
Speaker 1: might have been an interesting question and proposition to undertake
Speaker 1: when you were running for president as of one year
Speaker 1: ago and lying to the American people about your capacity.
Speaker 1: You guys did a good job of covering that Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal expose. I mean, but do you remember, you know,
Speaker 1: prior to Biden dropping out, the Journal wrote a much
Speaker 1: more tepid piece, just being like, hey, the president's old
Speaker 1: and people are worried about it. And they were savage,
Speaker 1: you know, ruthlessly by the American If anything, they massively
Speaker 1: understated it. So I just I don't know of reading this,
Speaker 1: I just it fills me with like fury and rage. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm happy Biden is not going to be present anymore
Speaker 1: and that they lost and all of that, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because he was our leader. On the global stage,
Speaker 1: and if you just think about, you know, the damage
Speaker 1: that his presidency has wrought, both to the reputation of
Speaker 1: the United States but also just domestically in the strife
Speaker 1: that it invited. We effectively had a vacuum of leadership
Speaker 1: for over four years. I just think it's criminal, honestly.
Speaker 8: I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just him, like oh, all the people
Speaker 2: around him and the journalists who didn't, who either were
Speaker 2: so dumb that they bought the cheap fakes line or
Speaker 2: were actively complicit in a cover up. And I think
Speaker 2: that there was certainly some of both in the press score.
Speaker 2: I mean, it truly is astonishing, And this is something
Speaker 2: I've been thinking a lot about. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you saw, like Matt iglaci as his.
Speaker 4: End of the year, did you guys?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I didn't know he thought this, but
Speaker 2: some of four did, like a oh, they talked to
Speaker 2: journalists about.
Speaker 4: What did I get wrong with?
Speaker 1: Oh, oh I did see this the text or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, well, you know, I genuinely believed the
Speaker 2: Biden iManage. Like you know, maybe that's even more embarrassing
Speaker 2: than being part of a cover up. But I just
Speaker 2: was that naive that I thought, I'm paraphrase and aren't
Speaker 2: it exact words that I genuinely thought, like, oh, he
Speaker 2: seems fine, you know, and he's going to prove the
Speaker 2: hater's wrong at the debate and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: And here you have.
Speaker 2: Matt Iglesias, who I think he went to Harvard. You know,
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm sure has a very high IQ. He's
Speaker 2: probably somebody who's been told his whole life how like
Speaker 2: super smart he is whatever, and he could not see
Speaker 2: what some eighty percent of the American public saw. And
Speaker 2: this is fundamentally why I'm a populist, because like, and
Speaker 2: that's not just him, This is so many members of
Speaker 2: this elite media class who were Ivy League educated and
Speaker 2: have all these sources in Washington and you know, think
Speaker 2: of themselves and have been told their whole lives how
Speaker 2: smart they are. And something that was so obvious and
Speaker 2: so basic if you just were watching the clips that
Speaker 2: were coming out of Joe Biden really starting in that
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen primary, when you and I were like, hey,
Speaker 2: this guy is lost like eight steps already. Imagine what
Speaker 2: this is going to look like four years later. But
Speaker 2: they were willing or able, or you know, they were
Speaker 2: willing to engage in a cover up worst case scenario,
Speaker 2: or they were so easily manipulated and able to trick
Speaker 2: themselves and talk themselves into thinking, no, no, he's fine,
Speaker 2: there's no problem here. It really is an astonishing, scandalous event.
Speaker 2: And in this sit down interview, so there's a number
Speaker 2: of things that are interesting. So Sager mentioned the one
Speaker 2: where he's like, yeah, I was basically willing to roll
Speaker 2: the dice on whether or not I would be cogent
Speaker 2: enough to function for another four years, or even alive
Speaker 2: for another four year. I was willing to roll the
Speaker 2: dice on that, which is crazy admission in and of itself.
Speaker 2: Then he gets asked, could you have won? Could you
Speaker 2: have beaten Donald Trump? And he says, it's presumptuous to
Speaker 2: say that, but I think yes, really really, because one
Speaker 2: of the things that we have learned first post election
Speaker 2: is that his own polling showed him losing four hundred
Speaker 2: Electoral College votes to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: And he still thinks, and I think he genuinely.
Speaker 1: Believes this as absolutely he.
Speaker 2: Still thinks that he could have won. Then, when he's
Speaker 2: asked about if he would have had the vigor to
Speaker 2: serve another four years in office.
Speaker 4: He said, I don't know.
Speaker 2: And then he talked a little bit about his decision
Speaker 2: to run again, and he was saying that, you know,
Speaker 2: after bo died, he didn't really wasn't really planning on running,
Speaker 2: and then he talked to Barack and he kind of
Speaker 2: decided that he better. And he says, when Trump was
Speaker 2: running again for reelection, I really thought I had the
Speaker 2: best chance of beating him. But I also wasn't looking
Speaker 2: to be president when I was eighty five years old,
Speaker 2: eighty six years old, and so I did talk about
Speaker 2: passing the baton to the next generation of Democratic leaders,
Speaker 2: of phrase many in his party took to mean he
Speaker 2: was not likely to seek a second term.
Speaker 4: In terms of how he wants his.
Speaker 2: Legacy to be viewed, he says, I hope history says
Speaker 2: I came in and I had a plan how to
Speaker 2: restore the economy and re establish America's leadership in the world.
Speaker 4: That was my hope. I mean, you know who knows,
Speaker 4: And I hope.
Speaker 2: It records that I did it with honesty and integrity,
Speaker 2: that I said what was on my mind. Okay, delusional
Speaker 2: that you think that your legacy is two things. Overseeing
Speaker 2: a genocide in Gaza and losing to Donald Trump. That's
Speaker 2: your legacy.
Speaker 1: I would actually add Ukraine to that as well, because
Speaker 1: that's very.
Speaker 4: That was a pivotal thing as well. I think you're
Speaker 4: right about that.
Speaker 2: And you know, there were good things that I praised
Speaker 2: him for that he did. Economically, right, it's early in
Speaker 2: the administration. He did some positive things the National Relations Board,
Speaker 2: Lena Khan at the FDC, like, there were some things
Speaker 2: that if he had first of all, it had gotten
Speaker 2: built back better through so you had a stronger social
Speaker 2: safety net that people actually felt an experience in real time. Domestically, economically,
Speaker 2: I think that was a pivotal mistake. But then in
Speaker 2: terms of foreign affairs, I mean, it's just outside of
Speaker 2: withdrawing from Afghanistan, which I hope history O record was
Speaker 2: the right decision, but I've been staying there forevery he
Speaker 2: took on a lot of water politically for the fallout
Speaker 2: from that, but Ukraine and Gaza utter and complete disaster.
Speaker 2: And then, as you said, Sager, the one thing that
Speaker 2: he was really sent there to do by the voters
Speaker 2: was to defeat Donald Trump. And you have now ushered
Speaker 2: in a sort of consolidated Trump era, which will be
Speaker 2: reflected in the next block when we talk about Democrats
Speaker 2: now joining with Republicans on these immigration crackdown measures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't want to. It's difficult. I
Speaker 1: think I did a Lex Readman thing on this. I
Speaker 1: was like, look, it's hard to assess presidents in real time.
Speaker 1: But if you have a good if you have a
Speaker 1: fifty thousand foot view, you can generally tell what are
Speaker 1: the things that you know. I have some of these
Speaker 1: books behind me that are like long ago retrospectives. And
Speaker 1: if you read a history book and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what are the major events that happened. You had Israel
Speaker 1: and Gaza, you had Ukraine, Yes, Afghanistan will be a footnote.
Speaker 1: We'll be like, yeah, it was decent. You know, in
Speaker 1: the long run, everyone can kind of admit that that
Speaker 1: was a good not needed to happen, It needed to happen,
Speaker 1: you know. The long word will how all have critics,
Speaker 1: criticisms of how it was done, et cetera. Glad that
Speaker 1: that happened, but it will. They will talk about the
Speaker 1: American people's radicalization, about the role of government. They will
Speaker 1: talk about inflation, and they will talk about the legacy
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. I mean, people do not. If you
Speaker 1: think about Grover Cleveland. One of the only things people
Speaker 1: note about Grover Cleveland is that he was elected to
Speaker 1: non consecutive terms. Every kid probably learns that in grade
Speaker 1: school when they look at the place matter or whatever,
Speaker 1: and oh, what happened there? That's the Biden will be
Speaker 1: the guy in between Trump. That's it. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: all anybody will really remember one hundred years or so
Speaker 1: from now about him, and that he's one of the
Speaker 1: oldest men to have rocket the Oval office and how much,
Speaker 1: honestly of a tragedy it is. If anything, the historian
Speaker 1: writing the age will just be like, how did the
Speaker 1: media you know, even go along with this grotesque farce
Speaker 1: for three years? It was so obvious, as they will
Speaker 1: write and cite editorials and criticisms from twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 1: remember getting so many angry emails and others at the
Speaker 1: time talking about Joe Biden's fake stutter and about how
Speaker 1: the fact that he was just old and his brain
Speaker 1: was melted. Back then, I'm like, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel good, I guess to be right, but it is
Speaker 1: somewhat vindicating in that if when you can say the
Speaker 1: truth out loud, it's actually powerful, you know in the
Speaker 1: long run. So yeah, reading this, I just I think
Speaker 1: he's so horrible, the way that he foisted himself on America,
Speaker 1: the way that the cover up and all of that
Speaker 1: happened all the My only consolation is that all of
Speaker 1: the people around him, like Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blincoln
Speaker 1: and all the other folks have become such a laughing
Speaker 1: stock in the globe. They won't be like the Obama
Speaker 1: folks who all got cushy jobs at Uber and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I think they're just to sail off into the sunset. No,
Speaker 1: because even.
Speaker 4: They know they're evil people, and you know, really evil people.
Speaker 1: Think about it with Trump in twenty sixteen, he was
Speaker 1: the aberration right, and people could have some false narrative
Speaker 1: about way Obama and all the people around him were heroes.
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything, you've seen Meta and all these
Speaker 1: other companies be like, oh wait, we actually live in
Speaker 1: Trump's America. He won the popular vote. Why would you
Speaker 1: go out and hire all of these fake ex Biden
Speaker 1: folks who not only perpetrated the crime of his foreign
Speaker 1: policy and others, but really just like domestically covered up
Speaker 1: his age, you know, for so long. I just don't
Speaker 1: think they have any credibility in the same way. I
Speaker 1: could be wrong.
Speaker 4: I hope you're right.
Speaker 2: There's still so much commitment among bipartisan elites to the
Speaker 2: you know, to stand strong with Israel and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And I mean that's what Tony Blanket is most associated with.
Speaker 2: I think at this point, I don't know. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I hope you're right about that because I genuinely think,
Speaker 2: like I watched his whole his whole exit interview Tony
Speaker 2: Blinkens with the New York Times, and I just you know,
Speaker 2: he I truly think, and I don't say this a
Speaker 2: lot about a lot of people.
Speaker 4: This is an evil individual.
Speaker 2: Like the things that he perpetrated, the things that he
Speaker 2: still you know, will cover up and lie about. It's
Speaker 2: just absolutely astonishing. But to get back here to Biden,
Speaker 2: let's go out and put b three up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This New York Times tear sheet that just had some
Speaker 2: of the details about how little he talked to the press.
Speaker 2: Their headline is this is based on the USA Today
Speaker 2: interview of Applied Technologies he's might not have been able
Speaker 2: to serve four more years, which is crazy, but anyway
Speaker 2: they write in this the interview with USA Today just
Speaker 2: demonstrated how the White House tried to shield him from
Speaker 2: encounters that might throw him off after four years in office.
Speaker 2: It was the first time he's ever given an interview
Speaker 2: to any reporter from any major mainstream newspaper. Unlike any
Speaker 2: president in generations, he has never given one while in
Speaker 2: office to reporters from newspapers like the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 2: the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Financial Times, or
Speaker 2: the New York Times. Overall, mister Biden has given fewer
Speaker 2: interviews of any kind and conducted fewer news conferences than
Speaker 2: any president in decades. So in the modern era, fewer
Speaker 2: news conferences, fewer interviews of any kind. He is at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the list for all presidents in the
Speaker 2: modern era. And again these are all things like the
Speaker 2: New York Times would have been keenly aware of the
Speaker 2: fact that they had no access to this man, that
Speaker 2: they had never gotten in interview with this man. Remember
Speaker 2: when we covered his decision not to do the interview
Speaker 2: at the Super Bowl. You know which if you think
Speaker 2: that this is a person who is remotely coherent, reliably coherent,
Speaker 2: then that decision makes absolutely no sense. And you know,
Speaker 2: people who were raising red flags about this were just dismissed,
Speaker 2: like that was such a tell, the fact that he
Speaker 2: would not get in front of the press, would not
Speaker 2: do a single interview with a single major mainstream newspaper,
Speaker 2: and you thought this guy was fine, Like, it really
Speaker 2: is astonishing, It really is astonishing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I still don't know how it took that much
Speaker 1: of a genius to point out and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's pretty weird not to do these interviews. It's pretty weird.
Speaker 1: How you know, you have all these incidents, what was
Speaker 1: it whenever you like went wandering off into the wandering
Speaker 1: off the parachute guy. I mean, there was a fake.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was a cheap fake. It just never
Speaker 1: ends with them. So look, I hope that their credibilities
Speaker 1: are raised. America certainly seems to think so Biden is
Speaker 1: a joke and will be remembered as such. But you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the media scandal and all that, I
Speaker 1: think that's probably the real story. And I honestly don't
Speaker 1: know how they're going to recover from it because there's
Speaker 1: so many people who just think that they'll never believe
Speaker 1: any of this stuff again. Again, I could be totally wrong,
Speaker 1: but you know, seeing the way that Mark Zuckerberg and
Speaker 1: all these other people like Legacy Media and others, even
Speaker 1: the people they relied on to pressure are like, no,
Speaker 1: the emperor has no clothes now at this point. So
Speaker 1: I think their power significantly diminished. Although with Trump, because
Speaker 1: he himself also loves the legacy media in his own way,
Speaker 1: he certainly could empower them.
Speaker 2: Again, I think their power is diminished because there has
Speaker 2: been a liberal reckoning with theirs as well, because that's
Speaker 2: what was what was causing them to remain with the
Speaker 2: level of power that they had, is that they had
Speaker 2: so much control in the Democratic Party, and I think
Speaker 2: that has been significantly undercut.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: If anything, I think historians will record an even war
Speaker 2: scathing indictment of Joe Biden and even like people like
Speaker 2: you and I have in our assessment because partly, I mean,
Speaker 2: we'll see what trajectory the country goes on, but if
Speaker 2: it's very possible that we look back at the Biden
Speaker 2: era and really see it as this like you know,
Speaker 2: pathetic gasp of a dying empire that you would put
Speaker 2: this old feeble man in charge, and that he would
Speaker 2: think that he was up to the job of running
Speaker 2: for reelection again, and that the entire press corps would
Speaker 2: either delude themselves or actively participate in a cover up.
Speaker 2: And you know, the the decisions with regard to Ukraine
Speaker 2: and then the decisions with regard to you know, being
Speaker 2: complicit in this this Gaza genocide.
Speaker 4: It really has ended.
Speaker 2: I mean that was that was the ending of the
Speaker 2: international rules base there, the order that was set up
Speaker 2: post World War two govern govern international relations and create
Speaker 2: some sort of stability and some sort of framework outside
Speaker 2: of if I can, I will and might makes right done,
Speaker 2: gone over.
Speaker 4: And it's Joe.
Speaker 2: Biden who supposedly's primary political commitment was to like restoring
Speaker 2: that order and rebuilding that order and giving that order
Speaker 2: more strength. Instead, he put the final nail in the coffin.
Speaker 2: So you know, uh, history will be able to look
Speaker 2: back and record what the fallout is from the end
Speaker 2: of ultimately that order.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. At the same time, and signs of
Speaker 1: the vibe shift that is currently happening here, some major
Speaker 1: Democrats are joining with Republicans to pass the Laken Riley
Speaker 1: Act who large largely led by some of the new
Speaker 1: Democrats in the United States Senate and in Congress, people
Speaker 1: like Reuben Diego and others. But Senator John Fetterman, who
Speaker 1: represents the state of Pennsylvania, which Donald Trump, of course
Speaker 1: one took to Fox News to actually push for the bill.
Speaker 1: Let's take a.
Speaker 10: Listen, like it's really common sense. And I'd like to
Speaker 10: remind everybody that we have hundreds and hundreds of thousands
Speaker 10: of migrants here illegally that have convicted of crimes. And
Speaker 10: I don't know why who wants to defend to allow
Speaker 10: them to remain in our nation. There that and now
Speaker 10: if you're here illegally and you're committing crimes and those things,
Speaker 10: I don't know why anybody thinks that it's controversial that
Speaker 10: they all need to go.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this was one of, if not
Speaker 1: the biggest issue for this.
Speaker 10: Election, Well, I think if we can't. You know, there's
Speaker 10: forty seven of us in the Senate, and if we
Speaker 10: can't pull up with with seven votes, if we can't
Speaker 10: get at least seven out of forty seven, and if
Speaker 10: we can't, then that's the reason why we lost. That's
Speaker 10: one of them. That's one of why we lost.
Speaker 1: In part vibes are shifting. That was Senator John Feeder. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess not with him, but with the with the
Speaker 1: other ones.
Speaker 4: I mean over longer trajectory.
Speaker 2: Certainly his own wife came to this country as an
Speaker 2: undocumented immigrant.
Speaker 4: Ye, that's something that he used.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, exactly what.
Speaker 2: His progressupposed progressive bona fides. So yes he has. I
Speaker 2: mean he's done a total one to eighty. But in
Speaker 2: the near term, this is part of the course.
Speaker 1: Is part of the course for him in the near term.
Speaker 1: You're right in terms of the long term. But I
Speaker 1: think really where it indicates the most to me are
Speaker 1: people like Alyssa slock In Ruben Diego. Ruben Diego, the
Speaker 1: newly elected senator from Arizona, is actually co sponsoring the bill.
Speaker 1: Let's put the bill up there on the screen. So
Speaker 1: obviously the House of Representatives, which is controlled by the Republicans,
Speaker 1: was able to pass the bill and send it to
Speaker 1: the United States Senate. Can we put this c two
Speaker 1: please now from this Actually, what's interesting is that a
Speaker 1: couple of Democrats from the House of Representatives did join
Speaker 1: them in passing.
Speaker 2: Forty eight Democrats who voted for it this time last time,
Speaker 2: because this is they tried to pass it last session
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 4: That was thirty seven Democrats.
Speaker 2: So there's been a number of new There's been eleven
Speaker 2: increase increase.
Speaker 1: Now, the question was always going to be in the Senate.
Speaker 1: So remember in the Senate that you need to cross
Speaker 1: the sixty vote threshold to be even able to debate
Speaker 1: the bill on the floor. That was the big question
Speaker 1: as to whether that was even going to be allowed.
Speaker 1: It does appear now that they do have the votes
Speaker 1: to actually advance this further. Now, keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the bill itself as written is going
Speaker 1: to pass. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: Senator Katie Britt, who's one of the sponsors of the bill,
Speaker 1: told Senate Republicans that she has the necessary eight votes
Speaker 1: to advance it over filibuster. Again, this is to be
Speaker 1: for consideration. Democrats are saying that they would like to
Speaker 1: amend certain parts of it, but the bill itself is
Speaker 1: actually I mean, in my opinions, well, I guess we
Speaker 1: could debate. It basically requires ice US Immigration and Customs
Speaker 1: Enforcement to take custody of I legal immigrants in the
Speaker 1: US without legal permission who have committed theft related crimes
Speaker 1: like shoplifting. Current US law says that the people who
Speaker 1: should be most prioritized for deportation are those convicted of
Speaker 1: a felony, but not necessarily of minor crimes. So the
Speaker 1: name of the bill is related to Lake and Riley,
Speaker 1: who was of course killed earlier in twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: by a gentleman who was actually who had been arrested
Speaker 1: previously in a nearby apartment building. It appears after the
Speaker 1: commission of this horrible crime. So the point is is
Speaker 1: that this is a vibe shift, quote unquote, and because
Speaker 1: this was a bill, as you said, Crystal, that previously
Speaker 1: had not achieved as much, had not achieved as much
Speaker 1: democratic support, but now actually does look like it is
Speaker 1: going to pass the United States Senate in some form.
Speaker 1: We're not exactly sure what form that is. Sure there'll
Speaker 1: be amendments and fights there, but the fact that it's
Speaker 1: even getting to the floor, I mean, this would be
Speaker 1: one of the most significant changes to ice enforcement policy
Speaker 1: in I think. I don't think policy on this has
Speaker 1: changed since the Obama era. Just to give people an idea,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump is not even the President of the
Speaker 1: United States yet and will be in some eleven days.
Speaker 1: So it's extraordinary the fact that its even go to
Speaker 1: the Center floor.
Speaker 2: So there's a political part of this bill, which is
Speaker 2: probably probably the most significant part, and then there's the
Speaker 2: actual impact of the legislation as far as migrating of
Speaker 2: the bill, the most significant impact is that it shifts
Speaker 2: the balance of power in terms of immigration enforcement towards
Speaker 2: the states. So it provides the states with the mechanism
Speaker 2: to sue the federal government if they feel that they're
Speaker 2: not enforcing immigrant law as it exists now. Of course,
Speaker 2: as with any law, there's a lot of sort of
Speaker 2: prosecutorial discretion. This is what Obama famously made use of
Speaker 2: in Dhaka in terms of which immigrants you're going to
Speaker 2: undocumented immigrants you're going to prioritize for detention and for deportation.
Speaker 2: So it hands states like Texas, for example, a weapon
Speaker 2: to use against the federal government. And I have a
Speaker 2: feeling that that will probably be the most significant, lasting
Speaker 2: impact ultimately of this legislation. And you know, the way
Speaker 2: that I look at this from a political perspective, the
Speaker 2: obviously the name is very evocative, you know, very intentionally
Speaker 2: chose Lake and Riley Act. This is part of the
Speaker 2: Trump and Republican narrative about what is ailing the country.
Speaker 2: Right in the Trumpian frame, one of the biggest problems
Speaker 2: is immigrants who are stealing your jobs, committing crimes, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Obviously, this is not a frame I agree with.
Speaker 2: This is their frame. And so what I find most
Speaker 2: significant about this is, uh, this is effectively Democrats validating
Speaker 2: that frame. Now, they had already done this before the election.
Speaker 2: You know, they did their whole bipartisan border bill, which
Speaker 2: you know Sager wanted to see it go further, but
Speaker 2: I don't think you would disagree that it was a
Speaker 2: break from the traditional in the the you know, past
Speaker 2: couple of decades democratic approach which tied more border enforcement
Speaker 2: with legal pathways to citizenship. That bill said we're ditching
Speaker 2: the you know, pathways citizenship part and we're just doing
Speaker 2: the hawkish border enforcement. So in some ways they had
Speaker 2: already validated the Republican view and frame of the world.
Speaker 2: But this is another step in that direction, you know,
Speaker 2: and another indication that that will be a primary Democratic
Speaker 2: reaction to the Trump era. And this is effectively what
Speaker 2: I expected. You know, I think that we are most
Speaker 2: likely to see from the Democratic Party a replay of
Speaker 2: kind of what Bill Clinton was able to success from
Speaker 2: his perspective, accomplish when he came into office, which is,
Speaker 2: rather than trying to rekindle the New Deal or rekindle
Speaker 2: you know, an oppositional framework to the Reagan era or
Speaker 2: the neoliberal era, instead, I'm going to embrace the core
Speaker 2: tenants of that. I'm going to you know, do a
Speaker 2: democratic version of that. And in some ways his version
Speaker 2: was even more far reaching because he had this Democratic
Speaker 2: brand behind him and you know, for him personally it
Speaker 2: was electorally successful. It ultimately led to devastating Democratic losses
Speaker 2: in rural areas and you know, the situation that they
Speaker 2: find themselves in today, but it was for him electorally successful,
Speaker 2: and I think, you know, this is an indication that
Speaker 2: that is effectively the direction the Democrats are going to go,
Speaker 2: and they're going to embrace more or less the Trumpian
Speaker 2: frame of the world there do their own sort of
Speaker 2: like you know, potentially kinder, gentler version of it. And
Speaker 2: the era of you know, total Trump resistance, the era
Speaker 2: of trying to articulate competing view of the world, that
Speaker 2: era likely is passed. Now this will all shake out
Speaker 2: in terms of the Democratic primary in you know, the
Speaker 2: next presidential election. I'm sure there will be a fight
Speaker 2: amongst the factions and how they want to respond to
Speaker 2: the rise of trump Ism. But you know, so far,
Speaker 2: this is where the bulk of the momentum is within
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party and with their aligned media class, which
Speaker 2: is almost as important and as significant here.
Speaker 4: And that's why the.
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg News and you know, Elon controlling Twitter, and the
Speaker 2: LA Times doing what they're doing, and the Bezos owned
Speaker 2: wash imposts doing what they're doing, and all the social
Speaker 2: media giants effectively lining up to kiss the ring with
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. That means that, you know, the media ecosystem
Speaker 2: is also aligned very much with what you describe as
Speaker 2: a vibe shift.
Speaker 1: That's part of what But I just can't get away from.
Speaker 1: What else are you supposed to do Trump won the election.
Speaker 1: What argument are you going to make people whose shoplift
Speaker 1: to are here illegally should be in the country. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: I just don't think anybody can agree with that. In
Speaker 1: the past, they always fake it. They're like, oh well,
Speaker 1: we just it's cruel or whatever, and then they'll focus
Speaker 1: on child separations if it has anything to do with
Speaker 1: a guy who murdered Lake and Riley previously have been
Speaker 1: arrested for theft in the state of New York and
Speaker 1: some other thing eventually was released, goes on to murder her.
Speaker 1: I'm just think this is an indefensible policy, Like, if anything,
Speaker 1: this has just revealed, like the veneer of how the
Speaker 1: architecture of like all this language the people basically use
Speaker 1: to justify tens of millions of people coming here illegally,
Speaker 1: and when people vote for a popular mandate for somebody
Speaker 1: who has now won the popular vote who explicitly ran
Speaker 1: on mass deportation, Like, I just have no idea what
Speaker 1: counter argument you're supposed to make if you're a democratic politician.
Speaker 1: I mean, Reuben Diego was literally elected with the counter
Speaker 1: argument to carry Lake by saying, I'm the serious person
Speaker 1: who will help Donald Trump. I mean, in a certain sense,
Speaker 1: there is a democratic argument here to be made of,
Speaker 1: Like this is genuinely what people want. And I look,
Speaker 1: people have made the immigrant argument, they illegal immigrant argument
Speaker 1: now for twenty five years, and I think people have
Speaker 1: rejected it correctly. In my opinion, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: a lot about this in my monologue, but if you
Speaker 1: really understand, like the way, I mean, look at California
Speaker 1: what it is right now, because anyone says is a
Speaker 1: well run state, part of it is is that they
Speaker 1: focus on bullshit like passing sanctuary city laws which say
Speaker 1: that they're not going to cooperate with ICE. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is now. This was like an in vogue policy
Speaker 1: for what twenty twelve, twy probably twenty nineteen or so,
Speaker 1: and I think you just have a devastating consequences. A
Speaker 1: lot of these people came to I could bite them
Speaker 1: in the ass because Republicans smartly just shipped a bunch
Speaker 1: of them to these cities and they're like, okay, you
Speaker 1: deal with it. And then, of course what happened the
Speaker 1: population was like, oh my god, we can't deal with this.
Speaker 1: This is crazy. You know, in a sense, you kind
Speaker 1: of reap what you sew. So, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: don't think it's an argument. I think it's a reality problem.
Speaker 1: Biden changed the status quo more than any president in
Speaker 1: modern American history. Let ten million people illegally into the country.
Speaker 1: Of course, the argument is going to change, and the
Speaker 1: reaction of the people is just so extraordinary when you
Speaker 1: look at the data. So I just when I see this,
Speaker 1: the Democrats have no choice Otherwise, what are they going
Speaker 1: to say, Yes, people who are here illegally shoplift shouldn't
Speaker 1: be deported. Good luck. I mean, I just have no
Speaker 1: idea how you can make better.
Speaker 4: I think this bill.
Speaker 2: There's no doubt this bill would be very difficult for
Speaker 2: them to pose for exactly the like rhetorical reasons you're
Speaker 2: laying out. But why I'm saying that it validates the
Speaker 2: Republican frame is because Republicans like to seize on crimes
Speaker 2: like the horrific murder of lacoln Riley's truly a whrror,
Speaker 2: and try to paint all immigrants, all undocumented.
Speaker 4: That like they are.
Speaker 2: Of course it's true, like they're dispropertionally criminal. Okay, this
Speaker 2: is the same thing that like Elon Musk is doing
Speaker 2: in the context of the UK with the quote unquote
Speaker 2: grooming gangs, when of course you know the statistics. I
Speaker 2: know the statistics undocumented immigrants and legal immigrants are more liable,
Speaker 2: law abiding than US born citizens. So I don't deny
Speaker 2: that this would be a tough bill for Democrats to oppose,
Speaker 2: given the election results, given where the public is on
Speaker 2: this issue, et cetera. But I also don't think it's
Speaker 2: quite as one dimensional as you portray it, because on
Speaker 2: this issue, like on many issues, but I think this one,
Speaker 2: maybe in particular, what you get from the public really
Speaker 2: depends on how you ask the question. So still, if
Speaker 2: you ask the public, are immigrants a net benefit to society,
Speaker 2: they say yes. Still, if you ask the public, you know,
Speaker 2: should there be a pathway to citizenship for people who
Speaker 2: are here who are undocumented, the answer is yes. So
Speaker 2: there is in fact a broader zooming out from this bill,
Speaker 2: a broader case to be made that is, yeah, of
Speaker 2: course we should know who's coming into the country. Of
Speaker 2: course there should be, you know, a border secure that
Speaker 2: we can make sure that people who are criminals are
Speaker 2: not coming in willy nilly, etcetera, etc. But immigrants are
Speaker 2: a net benefit to the country, and the problems that
Speaker 2: we have are not about immigrants. The problems we have
Speaker 2: are massive income inequality fueled by a billionaire class who
Speaker 2: has rigged the rules to their benefit. And you know,
Speaker 2: we see that playing out right now in LA with
Speaker 2: this climate fueled catastrophe.
Speaker 4: You see it.
Speaker 2: Playing out in you know, the Elon Musk taking control
Speaker 2: of the government and like ushering in an era of
Speaker 2: just brazen oligarchy and using the government as his tool
Speaker 2: so that he can make as much money as he
Speaker 2: possibly can in China and get the AI rules and
Speaker 2: whatever written to benefit him, et cetera. That to me,
Speaker 2: that's my view of what are the biggest challenges in
Speaker 2: the country. And yeah, of course when you have a
Speaker 2: lot of new people coming here, especially when you have
Speaker 2: you know, a system that is truly archaic.
Speaker 4: That means that you know, you.
Speaker 2: Can exploit it by saying I have an asylum case
Speaker 2: and then it's going to be years before it's adjudicated.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, you can just be here in the country. Like, Yes,
Speaker 2: those are all problems that need to be dealt with.
Speaker 2: Is it the central issue that is causing people to
Speaker 2: struggle with housing costs, with low wages, with you know,
Speaker 2: low union density, with so little power in terms of
Speaker 2: their democracy and in terms of in their work lives.
Speaker 4: No, I don't think it's the central.
Speaker 1: See that's why I just totally disagree. I think it's
Speaker 1: a massive impact. I mean again, is basic supplying demand.
Speaker 1: You let thirty million people in the country illegally over
Speaker 1: forty year period, and then you're shocked whenever prices go
Speaker 1: up and wages go down. This is I mean again,
Speaker 1: like the argument is what they consume and through the
Speaker 1: black market economy and through their fake GDP consumption that
Speaker 1: they were all supposedly better off. That is the same
Speaker 1: neoliberal arguments.
Speaker 2: Just there's just not evidence for what you're arguing. You've
Speaker 2: been asking the maurial boat when you had a huge
Speaker 2: influx of Cuban immigrants into the state of Florida. That's
Speaker 2: as close to a natural experiment as you could possibly
Speaker 2: have and the impacts were minimal, if any, according to
Speaker 2: like the entire body of research that was done on
Speaker 2: that particular event. So no, I do think immigrants overall
Speaker 2: are a net benefit to the country. I think they
Speaker 2: are a huge part of what has made this country great.
Speaker 2: And you know, I just reject the idea that the
Speaker 2: fingers should be pointed at them rather than pointed up
Speaker 2: at you know, the people who have created the laws,
Speaker 2: created the system, will run the country, who run our politics,
Speaker 2: who are screwing workers and lowering weight. Is like the
Speaker 2: corporate bosses are the ones here.
Speaker 1: The corporate bosses are the ones union. The corporate bosses
Speaker 1: are the people who love illegal immigration. I'm going to
Speaker 1: My entire monologue is about how Elon Musk and all
Speaker 1: these other people explicitly like low wage labor of which
Speaker 1: has no legal recourse, specifically because they can chain them
Speaker 1: in order to well, that's create more profits.
Speaker 2: And I agree with you on that on when you
Speaker 2: talk about a guest worker program where people's labor, like
Speaker 2: their immigration status is directly tied to their employer, like,
Speaker 2: that is an inherently exploitive situation. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that there isn't a way to do immigration that you know,
Speaker 2: eliminates those sort of exploitative, abusive behaviors and you know,
Speaker 2: make sure that wages aren't being undercut for the people
Speaker 2: who are here. You can trust in the history of immigration, yes.
Speaker 1: But the history of immigration policy in the country has
Speaker 1: been legalization. And then maybe we'll get to wages late.
Speaker 1: Oh oops, forgot to get to that one, Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1: That's the reality. People have no trust and they shouldn't.
Speaker 1: I think that if you look at it right now,
Speaker 1: there's a mass movement basically against at the very least
Speaker 1: current illegal immigration. And you know, a lot of these
Speaker 1: questions are outdated too. Should you have a pathway to
Speaker 1: citizenship for who? For the ten million who came in
Speaker 1: four years ago, for the twenty million who preceded them
Speaker 1: from Mexico, from Haiti, which ones you know, Cuba, etc.
Speaker 1: I mean there's are each one, and that's another problem
Speaker 1: immigrant that means nothing there. I have nothing in common
Speaker 1: with somebody who came here illegally two years ago, or
Speaker 1: my parents have nothing in common with somebody who came
Speaker 1: here illegally two years ago, who doesn't even have a
Speaker 1: basic high school diploma and can barely speak Spanish, let
Speaker 1: alone English. This term is meaningless, which is why you
Speaker 1: need skills based, high points immigration system like they have
Speaker 1: in the entire Western world. But move away from that
Speaker 1: when you actually look at the basics of this demographic change,
Speaker 1: strain on the American character, on the American welfare system. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I don't know why these terms are
Speaker 1: such like taboos when Donald Trump just got reelectric press.
Speaker 2: Is being a nation of immigrants, that is the American
Speaker 2: character to That's why you're here, That's why I'm here
Speaker 2: to go back even further. That is what built the
Speaker 2: American character. That's what makes America so interesting. That's one
Speaker 2: of the things that that's one of the things that
Speaker 2: is most like when I feel pride in this country,
Speaker 2: it's when I watch things like the Olympics and you
Speaker 2: see this incredible rainbow of people from all of the
Speaker 2: world who have come together in this country and have made.
Speaker 4: It what it is.
Speaker 2: That's part of what makes it so different from Europe
Speaker 2: or that you do have more of this like you know,
Speaker 2: ethnic based, blood and soil type of ingrained nationality. That's
Speaker 2: never been what we are about. And that's what has
Speaker 2: made this country so innovative, so dynamic, and given it.
Speaker 4: Its best character and quality.
Speaker 2: So I don't know why at a time when you
Speaker 2: know a lot of the parts of this country are
Speaker 2: sort of like crumbling and lacking in dynamism, why you
Speaker 2: want to close the door to the thing that has.
Speaker 1: Because the people who are coming here, the people who
Speaker 1: are majority coming here, are low skilled. Now, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you talk about the American character, do you think part
Speaker 1: of the American character should be speaking English? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so it should be you'd be like educated and
Speaker 1: not a net loss on the economy. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: so these are all like basic questions, have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with race, nothing to do with blood and soil
Speaker 1: or any of this other stuff. And again I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, America has not always been just vast open
Speaker 1: door to everybody. Who've had several periods in our history,
Speaker 1: correctly in my opinion, where we did shut the door
Speaker 1: for a long time. There's a reason they shut the
Speaker 1: door in the nineteen hundreds because we were basic.
Speaker 2: Gennis Eugenics was popular, and it was the bil Kraft
Speaker 2: Are you literally eugenicis?
Speaker 11: I mean?
Speaker 1: Christal? The reason that you're considered white quote unquote is
Speaker 1: because of that. At the if we had continued to
Speaker 1: allow that, I don't know what your heritage is, you
Speaker 1: would have been Scottish, American or whatever. I don't want
Speaker 1: to live in hyphenated America in the famous Teddy Roosevelt quote,
Speaker 1: which was the case, by the way, at the time.
Speaker 1: The idea that Irish people were white is a very
Speaker 1: modern concept that only happened because we allowed a period.
Speaker 2: My goal isn't to like increase the number of people
Speaker 2: in the country who are deemed white, So not.
Speaker 1: Sure what point. Their goal is to make sure that
Speaker 1: people don't identify with being Venezuela and American, Indian American,
Speaker 1: Pakistani American and just say I call myself.
Speaker 4: That That just happens naturally.
Speaker 1: No, No, but it's not it's a literal government policy
Speaker 1: of shutting things down. No, you can actually look it's
Speaker 1: very simple.
Speaker 2: Look at the number of Latinos who migrated here a
Speaker 2: generation or two generations ago.
Speaker 4: They just consider themselves.
Speaker 2: Like Textans, and it took a long they're voting for
Speaker 2: Donald Trump and associated with the Republican Party. It didn't
Speaker 2: take a long time. It takes usually like one generation
Speaker 2: long time. And this happens naturally. And no, it wasn't
Speaker 2: an official government policy. This is just what happens when
Speaker 2: you live in a country, and you live in a place,
Speaker 2: and you go to the local schools and you assimilate
Speaker 2: into the nation. That's been the story of our entire history,
Speaker 2: whether it was Irish immigrants, or Italian immigrants, or Germans
Speaker 2: or Polish immigrants or now Mexican immigrants that is just
Speaker 2: or Indian American immigrants, right like that is just the
Speaker 2: natural flow of how things happen when you come and
Speaker 2: you live in the country and you and.
Speaker 1: By it, I think you're calling it natural when it
Speaker 1: was an intentional government choice to immediately shut down immigration
Speaker 1: for a forty year period to encourage in sibilation the period.
Speaker 1: The point that you're making about Latinos is exactly what
Speaker 1: I mean, quote unquote white Hispanic fake term that they
Speaker 1: created for themselves. I don't care, that's fine, but it
Speaker 1: took forty fifty years of the Chicano Texican whatever identity
Speaker 1: to be created, and the fact that those people also
Speaker 1: voted for Donald Trump. That happened to shut down immigration,
Speaker 1: But it's pretty.
Speaker 2: Happen as a result of intentional government policy. When the
Speaker 2: government policy you're talking about ended what.
Speaker 4: In the eighties.
Speaker 1: What I'm talking about specific well, first, I'm using the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds example. That was an intentional government policy to
Speaker 1: specifically encourage assimilation, which I think is good. Second, around
Speaker 1: the Texicano or whatever, the Chicano to Texican whatever, white
Speaker 1: Hispanic identity it was. Yeah, it's a long one, but
Speaker 1: it's also not just recent arrivals. A lot of those
Speaker 1: people have been there for hundreds of years.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 1: Beyond that comes to this question of the people who
Speaker 1: are coming here, don't speak English, don't have any education.
Speaker 1: In a service based economy that is not industrialized anymore.
Speaker 1: We do not need Irish and Scotsman and Slovenians to
Speaker 1: shovel coal into a fire anymore. We need people who
Speaker 1: have language skills, are highly educated people who are not
Speaker 1: not let net loss on the economy. If anything, our
Speaker 1: low wage work, if you look at the wages and
Speaker 1: all that has been depressed significantly because of illegal immigration,
Speaker 1: no evidence that. Okay, well again if I will, as
Speaker 1: you can see in my natural H one B experiment, Yes,
Speaker 1: it is true that Goldman, Sachs and others people who
Speaker 1: have been quote unquote unable to find that. However, Harvard Universities,
Speaker 1: George Waras, who again I've cited many times from twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen as significant evidence on that. So we can debate
Speaker 1: the studies or whatever if you want. All of the
Speaker 1: reliance on immigration is good for America. It says that
Speaker 1: it increases GDP because they buy stuff that is just
Speaker 1: completely ridiculous. And America, as I said, has seen through it.
Speaker 1: They have voted for a person who had a sign
Speaker 1: behind him that said one thing massed deportation. I just
Speaker 1: don't see at this point how the argument cannot be.
Speaker 1: I mean, in a sense you're almost saying it in
Speaker 1: a way, you're like, yeah, we have to control the border,
Speaker 1: we need this, we need that, and we can have
Speaker 1: debates over the levels of immigration. But if you see
Speaker 1: right now, the vast preference and the median of where
Speaker 1: things are is significantly away from where the Democratic policy was,
Speaker 1: which is a wide open door, let anybody in, have
Speaker 1: no enforcement. No, it is true. It's true out of
Speaker 1: ten million people arrived here.
Speaker 2: People get supported under Joe, But how many people.
Speaker 4: Got sported under Barack Obama?
Speaker 2: Joe Biden actually deported more people than Donald Trump when
Speaker 2: he was in Austine.
Speaker 4: Now, you're right different.
Speaker 2: But it's not like any of these people have ever
Speaker 2: been open borders. There's not a single member of Congress
Speaker 2: who supports an open border policy. So don't care, don't
Speaker 2: caricature it.
Speaker 4: That's all I'm asking.
Speaker 1: Eighty and million people come here legally, and what two
Speaker 1: percent or whatever get deported? What do you think that
Speaker 1: means ninety eight percent of the people who arrived.
Speaker 2: But Zager, my point is we should know. But I
Speaker 2: think the question isn't should we control the border. Of
Speaker 2: course we should. The question is how many people can
Speaker 2: the country accept what is beneficial for the nation, And
Speaker 2: I just don't agree with your arguments that.
Speaker 4: That number zero.
Speaker 1: I don't agree.
Speaker 2: I don't fetishize this like everyone must assimilate immediately.
Speaker 4: It is a process that happens naturally over time.
Speaker 2: I do think that immigrants, even you know, people who
Speaker 2: come here not speaking the language and not having a
Speaker 2: you know, Ivy League.
Speaker 4: Education, that they're beneficial.
Speaker 2: That they're beneficial to the country, and that is what
Speaker 2: the overwhelming bulk of the research shows. So should they
Speaker 2: come in here in these like exploitative H one B
Speaker 2: processes that ties them to employer No, of course not,
Speaker 2: and that does undercut that is exploited to them and
Speaker 2: does undercut the workers that they're competing with in that industry,
Speaker 2: as we've seen with these tech layout. But if you
Speaker 2: look more broadly at the immigration system, yes, they've been
Speaker 2: a net benefit. I think you and your family have
Speaker 2: been a net benefit to the country. I'm glad you're
Speaker 2: here at Thoer.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. But the point is, and this is
Speaker 1: why I personally find it offensive. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be looped in with somebody who doesn't have a not
Speaker 1: because I have nothing.
Speaker 4: Being that's the only thing that potentially.
Speaker 1: We're both humans and we should be evaluated as.
Speaker 2: Our individuals realize their capability and in this.
Speaker 1: Bay, do that in Guatemala or Venezuela or else, And
Speaker 1: oftentimes reason they can't is because of the way that
Speaker 1: we've sanctioned and screwed those countries. Is just too Again,
Speaker 1: if we're going to argument that policies from the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties or now, not.
Speaker 2: The nineteen eighties, when did we stop intervening in Haiti?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Well, we're doing it right now, all right, So when
Speaker 2: we stop thanking a we're.
Speaker 4: Doing it right now.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about back you know, in Ronald Reagan
Speaker 2: or under Dwight Eisenhower, whatever, I'm talking about literally right now.
Speaker 2: But even putting that aside, we should be glad that
Speaker 2: people want to come to this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nice, our fortunate doesn't they get to come.
Speaker 2: And the same people who are out here obsessing about
Speaker 2: the birth rate declining and oh my god, this is
Speaker 2: going to be then to the civilization are the same
Speaker 2: ones who want to close the door to people who
Speaker 2: want who want to come here. Who you know, it
Speaker 2: is a problem if a country has a low birth
Speaker 2: rate and you know, you don't have a productive workforsus.
Speaker 2: So we're lucky that we have people who want to
Speaker 2: come here. And you know, I think that the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party should be making that argument. I think there should
Speaker 2: be an oppositional view. And you know, yes, immigration was
Speaker 2: an important part of thish of this election. I don't
Speaker 2: think anyone could possibly deny that, But there was no
Speaker 2: one making the counter case. The Democrats have been making
Speaker 2: that countercase for years at this point. They have not
Speaker 2: made that countercase for years at this point. And you
Speaker 2: know that's I think that that has been already a
Speaker 2: political disaster for them. It certainly did not help them
Speaker 2: in the context of this election. And I just also
Speaker 2: happen to think it's wrong. So no, when I have
Speaker 2: principles in something I view as correct, even if it
Speaker 2: is on the wrong side of public opinion, that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean I'm just going to like abandoned those principles and
Speaker 2: stop making that case.
Speaker 4: But that is what you're acting.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that electorally, if you want to
Speaker 1: win election, I wouldn't run on that And I think
Speaker 1: that's important. I think the will of the people here
Speaker 1: actually matters.
Speaker 2: Now, Jo Biden did run on that in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: He did run on that alternative view, and he was successful.
Speaker 1: So I mean, are we really going to say he
Speaker 1: won because immigration, like.
Speaker 4: That's just well, it didn't cause him to lose. It
Speaker 4: wasn't you know.
Speaker 2: And Trump was certainly making the opposite case and it
Speaker 2: didn't cause him to lose. And in fact, the last
Speaker 2: time Trump was in office was when we had some
Speaker 2: of the highest supports in history for increasing the amount
Speaker 2: of legal immigration. So you know, yeah, maybe people feel
Speaker 2: a certain way right now. People's views are complex, they're
Speaker 2: not ideological in the way that we are. And even
Speaker 2: on this issue at this moment in time, polls showed
Speaker 2: their views continue to be complex. They continue to value
Speaker 2: immigrants as a part of the country. They continue to
Speaker 2: believe that they bring more positive than negative to this country.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think there is an opportunity to make
Speaker 2: an alternative case about the benefits of you know, net
Speaker 2: positive migration done the right way. I just think Democrats
Speaker 2: have decided that they are not going.
Speaker 1: To make that argument can only be made when there's
Speaker 1: actually secure law enforcement at the border. When people here
Speaker 1: are illegally who for example, who murder a girl named
Speaker 1: Lake and Riley get you know, maybe deported befohen they're
Speaker 1: arrested here before they can commit a crime like that.
Speaker 1: And look, I mean, just to return to the core
Speaker 1: of illegal immigrant crime, the reason why it get to
Speaker 1: focus is they're not supposed to be here. The point
Speaker 1: is is that it's a crime that was never supposed
Speaker 1: to happen, in actual preventative crime as opposed to a
Speaker 1: natural born US citizen when the way that we adjudicate
Speaker 1: and look at that. So even this whole talking point
Speaker 1: about oh they commit less crime, first of all, no
Speaker 1: one even knows that's true. I can't even tell you
Speaker 1: the number of people who are here illegally. So how
Speaker 1: are you supposed to compute like proper crime statistics. If
Speaker 1: you look at states, many of them don't even say
Speaker 1: the immigration status, etc. All of this is anecdotal. So
Speaker 1: the true status basically doesn't exist at a philosophical level.
Speaker 1: Whenever something happens that was supposed to be prevented, and
Speaker 1: then it does happen, you can't say, well, oh it's fine,
Speaker 1: because even though it's supposed to be preventable, that there's
Speaker 1: all these other reasons why it's okay. People naturally understand that.
Speaker 1: That's why they look at the fire hydrant thing that
Speaker 1: we talked about today, or with illegal immigration crime, that's
Speaker 1: the reason it's in a special and a different class
Speaker 1: than people were here naturally US or legal US citizen.
Speaker 1: There was an actual process. So that's where I would
Speaker 1: say on that one. But if you want to propose
Speaker 1: the views that you're proposing, it only works, as it
Speaker 1: has in the past, when there is order and a
Speaker 1: sense that this is something that is being used to
Speaker 1: the benefit of the country. The H one B process,
Speaker 1: which I'm talking about today, it passed in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: What was happening in nineteen ninety three not a bunch
Speaker 1: of mass illegal immigration. There was a big question about
Speaker 1: the dot com boom. They had all this optimism about America.
Speaker 1: That's the nature of the country that you need to
Speaker 1: be able to pass something like that, or even if
Speaker 1: you want, you know, one million people, I think that's crazy.
Speaker 1: But look, if you want to make that argument, fine,
Speaker 1: you can do that if there's an orderly process, if
Speaker 1: you talk about the caps, if you feel as and
Speaker 1: people may even support it if they feel as if
Speaker 1: it can also be circumvented by big corporate interests and
Speaker 1: people coming here illegally under asylum law. It only works
Speaker 1: in one way. And the point is is that where
Speaker 1: we are right now, with the you know, complete chaos
Speaker 1: at the border, with lack of ice enforcement, with sanctuary
Speaker 1: cities and all this, it's impossible. And so in the
Speaker 1: balance of all of that, I think that's why people
Speaker 1: ultimately just pull the red liver lever for Trump is
Speaker 1: they just felt like there was no choice with this
Speaker 1: completely uncontrolled system. And so look, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: step one. I think we'll see if they go along
Speaker 1: with some of the other stuff. My prediction is no,
Speaker 1: they start screeching any minute now. But you know, the
Speaker 1: point is is that when you when you don't have
Speaker 1: any of that and alrighty it's a titanic task to
Speaker 1: impose order and all of that at the border, you
Speaker 1: can't have any even of the discussion that we're having here.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's possibleocratically, especially because for them,
Speaker 1: the chaos and the feel as if there is no
Speaker 1: controlled system of no even democratic will or say over
Speaker 1: who or say it gets to come here. That is
Speaker 1: lost in the vacuum of what we've had to have.
Speaker 2: More control at the border is to have more legal
Speaker 2: pathways for people to come Okay, And the more that
Speaker 2: it's true, but it's true, the more that you try
Speaker 2: to just totally close the border, the more illegal. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's just like with with drug legalism. That's like
Speaker 2: the more you do, the more you're going to It's
Speaker 2: exactly what happened with prohibition. The more that you crack
Speaker 2: down and try to ban alcohol, the more criminal gang
Speaker 2: activity you ended up with. And it's the same thing
Speaker 2: with the border. The more that you have it completely
Speaker 2: shut and absolutely impossible to come here if you have.
Speaker 1: To, we're going to let foreigners determine level.
Speaker 2: No, because it's hot, it's positive for the country. So
Speaker 2: I do think that one of the things that people
Speaker 2: react strong to is the sense of chaos and like
Speaker 2: we don't have control. And one of the ways is
Speaker 2: to obtain to have actual control and be able to
Speaker 2: do this is to have more legal pathways for people
Speaker 2: to be able to come through here through an orderly process.
Speaker 2: No one wants to go with some like you know,
Speaker 2: coyote and risk their lives, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: if you have a legal pathway to do that, people
Speaker 2: will avail themselves of that and then guess what, you
Speaker 2: will know who's coming and be able to evaluate them
Speaker 2: in their criminals.
Speaker 1: But I think the bad news is that if we
Speaker 1: do have a legal process, none of these people are
Speaker 1: going to be allowed in, like, you know, under any reasonable.
Speaker 4: What do you mean, none of these under any.
Speaker 1: Reasonable points based immigration system. People who are coming here
Speaker 1: with no English, with no high school diploma are not
Speaker 1: being let in for what job?
Speaker 2: Who said it has to be a points based system?
Speaker 2: I didn't say that.
Speaker 1: Well, every western country in the world uses a points
Speaker 1: based immigration system except for the United States. So and
Speaker 1: even if you look under chain migration, the current existing
Speaker 1: ridiculous system that we have right now, a lot of
Speaker 1: these folks don't even qualify under the chain based status.
Speaker 1: So look, I mean, that's the truth is is that
Speaker 1: most of the people coming here and not going to
Speaker 1: qualify under any real legal system. Part of the reason
Speaker 1: why I think, you know, to say, oh, if we
Speaker 1: have more legal pathways like, they may not like the
Speaker 1: results because the people who are the least skilled with
Speaker 1: the least connection of the country. They're not coming, there's
Speaker 1: no way for them to be able to qualify, and
Speaker 1: they'll probably still try to get here illegally. That's why
Speaker 1: I just don't think we can use that argument of like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're going to come anyway. It's like, well, their willingness
Speaker 1: to come does not determine our law.
Speaker 2: We get to decide, sure, but the fact that we
Speaker 2: have it's so narrowly structured, But it's not where people
Speaker 2: have to come here illegally because there's no other there's
Speaker 2: no other possible.
Speaker 1: A million people come here a year legally. That's just
Speaker 1: that's not true. I mean, under chain based immigration one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand per year.
Speaker 4: It very much depends on where you're immigrating.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, if you are from a certain country,
Speaker 2: you know it's going to be nearly impossible to come
Speaker 2: through any sort of legal pathway. So in any case,
Speaker 2: just last piece on this on the democratic vibe shift
Speaker 2: and the way that they're coroaching the Trump administration so
Speaker 2: different than they did last time around. If we can
Speaker 2: put this last piece C five up on the screen
Speaker 2: from Chuck Schumer. He says he's going to work with
Speaker 2: Trump on renaming the Gulf of Mexico to America if
Speaker 2: he will work with Democrats on lowering costs. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I won't hold my breath on that, but you know,
Speaker 2: it just does show the elites in the party have
Speaker 2: decided that capitulation to Trump. And during the Joe and
Speaker 2: Mega trip to mar A Lago, the Mark Zuckerberg hostage video,
Speaker 2: the Tim Cook million dollars to the Inauguration Fund, like,
Speaker 2: that's basically how the heads of the Democratic Party have
Speaker 2: decided to approach the Trump administration as well. So you know,
Speaker 2: I think, well, this is what I expected after this election.
Speaker 2: I will say I did predict this direction, even though
Speaker 2: a lot of people found it far fetched at the time.
Speaker 2: But here we are, and that's exactly what is currently happening,
Speaker 2: and I will see also America. I will say it's
Speaker 2: not that I don't think that this could potentially be
Speaker 2: electorally successful, because Bill Clinton, right for himself, was electorally successful,
Speaker 2: even though he then went and presided over like massive
Speaker 2: midterm losses, just like Barack Obama electorally successful for himself,
Speaker 2: massive devastation in terms of the wider Democratic parties so
Speaker 2: do I think they could pick up seats in the midterms,
Speaker 2: and do I think that they could potentially win back
Speaker 2: the presidency next time around?
Speaker 4: It's possible with this strategy.
Speaker 2: I just think it's, you know, effectively, what you're doing
Speaker 2: is ideologically ushering in just as Bill Clinton ushered in
Speaker 2: the neoliberal era, ideologically locking in the Trump era. And
Speaker 2: I think that's basically what many people in the party
Speaker 2: have decided to do.
Speaker 1: I think. So I also think that people had something
Speaker 1: to do with that. But yeah, there is a theory.
Speaker 1: I think it's uh, I think it's Julius Crime said this,
Speaker 1: that there's a theory of one party rule. Is an
Speaker 1: America is always under one party rule, they just don't
Speaker 1: know it, and those two parties operate within that. So
Speaker 1: under FDR and the New Deal, even if you look
Speaker 1: at Eisenhower, yeah he was a Republican. We proken a
Speaker 1: New Deal, so we lived in a new for a
Speaker 1: long time. Then we lived in a Reagan era for
Speaker 1: a long time. I think Obama was like kind of
Speaker 1: a bridge ish.
Speaker 4: No, I don't mean he was pure neoliberal.
Speaker 1: Yes, but he also ushered something in which I still
Speaker 1: don't have the correct term yet to really think about,
Speaker 1: but he was, he had that, and Biden was like
Speaker 1: a continuation of that. Trump one point zero was a signal,
Speaker 1: but it was not one that was really ready to
Speaker 1: take power obviously, as what happened during those four years,
Speaker 1: mostly because the elite saw him as completely illegitimate. But
Speaker 1: I do think that his actual election here with the
Speaker 1: popular vote is part of what changed everything. And now
Speaker 1: I do I mean, we will retroactively look at the
Speaker 1: Trump era as twenty eleven onward, but I think now
Speaker 1: is when it really became sole locked in.
Speaker 2: I think so too, And I think I see Biden
Speaker 2: as like a Carter figure with a foot in both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because yeah, straddle.
Speaker 2: Transitional figure, which is part of why his presidency was
Speaker 2: such a catastrophe. But you know, he kept the tariffs
Speaker 2: with China, right, so there was a new direction. There
Speaker 2: was industrial policy, and then there was also you know,
Speaker 2: but it's still a lot of the neoliberal elements, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So he really was kind of, you know, buffeted by
Speaker 2: these forces. And I mean that's not to deny him
Speaker 2: his own agency for his catastrophic presidency ultimately, but I
Speaker 2: do think he kind of ends up being this transitional figure,
Speaker 2: and then when things will really be solidified is when
Speaker 2: you have if you end up having a Democratic president
Speaker 2: who fills that role of Bill Clinton, basically solidifying that
Speaker 2: both parties are now operating under the same ideological framework.
Speaker 4: Now what exactly that ideological framework is is.
Speaker 2: Significant question at this point, given that Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: oppositional to some elements of the way that trump Ism
Speaker 2: has been sold to the public, which is part of
Speaker 2: what makes that fight so central and so ultimately interesting.
Speaker 2: But nonetheless, I basically that's where we are in history.
Speaker 2: As I said, I think it'll be a big fight
Speaker 2: in the twenty twenty eight Democratic primary about whether or
Speaker 2: not the party does just sort of like embrace the
Speaker 2: Trumpian vision of the world, including this you know, anti
Speaker 2: immigrant antipathy towards any net migration effectively direction.
Speaker 4: But all of that remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: Well, the good news, I think for you is that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump mostly at this point agrees with you. And
Speaker 1: if only if Stephen Miller a few others get their way,
Speaker 1: will my view ever be represented here. But anyway, it
Speaker 1: is interesting. Nonetheless, let's get to Jeff Stein. He's got
Speaker 1: some great reporting on tariffs, that, let's see what he
Speaker 1: has to say.
Speaker 2: We're fortunate to be joined this morning by Jeff Stein,
Speaker 2: white House economics reporter for the Washington Post, with a
Speaker 2: hot scoop on tariffs.
Speaker 4: Jeff, great to see.
Speaker 1: You, go to see you man.
Speaker 3: Thanks for guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, Ill. Let's put your reporting here up
Speaker 2: on the screen. This caused a little bit of controversy
Speaker 2: that we can get into as well. But your headline
Speaker 2: here is Trump aids ready the universal and you put
Speaker 2: that in quotes tariff plans with one key change, and
Speaker 2: effectively what you outlie is outline is Trump, of course,
Speaker 2: when he was running said universal tariffs on every country,
Speaker 2: on every good across the board. What they're looking at,
Speaker 2: according to your reporting, is universal in the sense of
Speaker 2: applies to all countries, but a more limited amount of
Speaker 2: goods that this would be subject to. And this would
Speaker 2: still be a massive economic shift, but not quite as
Speaker 2: one might say revolutionary as what was proposed on the
Speaker 2: campaign trail.
Speaker 4: Go ahead and break down for is what you've learned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is as you alluded to.
Speaker 11: This is the first time I've ever been called fake
Speaker 11: news directly by the president.
Speaker 4: Congratulations, congrat friends, have.
Speaker 11: Been trying to figure out what nickname will come up
Speaker 11: with for me little Jeff for I don't know. I'll
Speaker 11: have to say the reporting that the president was objecting
Speaker 11: to him, he can get into what his objections were,
Speaker 11: what we were, as you out lines. During the campaign,
Speaker 11: Trump said universal tariffs, meaning import duties, taxes essentially on
Speaker 11: everything that comes into the United States. We import four
Speaker 11: trillion dollars or so worth of goods every year, which
Speaker 11: is a lot. And what Trump was talking about was
Speaker 11: on the campaign a ten to twenty percent tax on
Speaker 11: all of that. So that was looking like potentially, you know,
Speaker 11: the numbers vary, but maybe to four hundred five hundred
Speaker 11: billion dollar tax increase unilaterally by a Republican president. Shocking idea.
Speaker 11: And what I've been told by.
Speaker 3: Trump officials and people close to the transition is.
Speaker 11: That they're looking at saying, well, Okay, some of these
Speaker 11: goods that we import, we can't even really make here,
Speaker 11: Like Mexican avocados do not grow in sufficient quantities in
Speaker 11: the United States to like on shore production of avocados,
Speaker 11: cheap consumer electronics from China, Like, do we want to
Speaker 11: put taxes on those.
Speaker 3: Import on those imports?
Speaker 11: To stand up domestic production of super cheap consumer electronics
Speaker 11: or would just drive up prices for consumers and make
Speaker 11: them unhappy. So we reported provisionally conditionally that the Trump
Speaker 11: people were looking at potentially changing that universal tariff plan,
Speaker 11: not to throw out the universal component of it, because
Speaker 11: as we can discuss, Trump really wants to prevent circumvention
Speaker 11: where you know, trying to can send its imports via
Speaker 11: Vietnam and then it gets into that back door.
Speaker 3: So they really want to go universal in that sense.
Speaker 11: But what they're looking at is saying, maybe those agricultural products,
Speaker 11: maybe you know, the cheap consumer goods, maybe those don't
Speaker 11: have to be part of the overall tariff program.
Speaker 3: So we wrote that that was pairing back.
Speaker 11: That was the language I use Trump's initial plan because
Speaker 11: frankly is that is what it is.
Speaker 3: It is pairing back what they proposed.
Speaker 11: Trump in his social media post calling me fake news,
Speaker 11: did not say I am going to put tariffs on
Speaker 11: every import. He didn't say that. He said I am
Speaker 11: not backing down. And if the President will elect wants
Speaker 11: to go out there and say, hey, this is still
Speaker 11: a huge policy that no other president has done, I
Speaker 11: mean that's true, Like this is still a massive, as
Speaker 11: Crystal said, a massive mathematic expansion of any tariffs that
Speaker 11: we've ever done, depending what they actually said alone, but
Speaker 11: almost certainly what.
Speaker 3: Is still the case is that it's a step back.
Speaker 11: From what he said he was going to do, and
Speaker 11: therefore we stand by reporting that said that it was
Speaker 11: a pairing back of what he initially did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's totally fair, and I mean, I
Speaker 1: will say I'm pretty sure this is what we called
Speaker 1: here in terms of like what this stuff looks like
Speaker 1: in practice. As you said, of course, avocado is a
Speaker 1: perfect example. I think they come from Micho La Khan.
Speaker 1: They can't grow here. It's a difcient quantity that too
Speaker 1: manly millennials eat them, right, and that's why they can't
Speaker 1: buy how but as you said, it would still be
Speaker 1: a massive expansion. Can you lay out for us how
Speaker 1: this would work, which you do a little bit in
Speaker 1: the pace. Would it involve USTR, the Unit Series Trade Representative,
Speaker 1: the Treasury Department, would Congress be able to have any input?
Speaker 1: What would this look like?
Speaker 11: That's a great question that they're trying to sort through
Speaker 11: right now. We reported sort of during the campaign they
Speaker 11: were looking at a few different legal authorities. The president
Speaker 11: has unilateral teriff authority, but this would be stretching it.
Speaker 3: I think is pretty clear.
Speaker 11: The thing is, from the Trump administration's perspective, the courts
Speaker 11: have been enormously deferential to the executive branch when they
Speaker 11: invoke any sort of natural security justification. And the Trump
Speaker 11: people could say, I think somewhat legitimately that the inability
Speaker 11: of the US to domestically produce.
Speaker 3: Goods necessary for our military.
Speaker 11: Industrial supply chain, goods necessary for our medical supply chain,
Speaker 11: and pharmaceutical is goods necessary for our energy production, that
Speaker 11: these are matters to national security, and use the IEPA
Speaker 11: law from nineteen seventy seven to say that is the
Speaker 11: basis for these universal, massive tariff plans.
Speaker 3: The challenge this is not exactly what you're asking, but
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 11: Big challenge from a congressional perspective is that Trump and
Speaker 11: the Republicans on the Hill are trying to pay for
Speaker 11: a tax bill that could be as big as four
Speaker 11: five trillion dollars to extend the twenty seventeen Republican tax pits,
Speaker 11: and to do that they want to use the revenue
Speaker 11: that they are raising from tariffs, especially you know, Republicans
Speaker 11: on the Hill, a lot of them don't like the
Speaker 11: tariffs at all, but they're going to say, you know, hey,
Speaker 11: if Trump is doing it anyway and it's going to
Speaker 11: hurt you know, businesses that rely on imports anyway, we
Speaker 11: may as well say that that money is being used
Speaker 11: for you know, that our tax bill is less expensive
Speaker 11: because it's paid for an import by these tariff duties.
Speaker 11: That said, that could really delay the Trump agenda, because
Speaker 11: if Trump says I'm going to wait but whatever, four
Speaker 11: or five months until Congress passes that bill, that might
Speaker 11: mean that he.
Speaker 3: Has to wait to do the tariffs.
Speaker 11: And he already blew up that memei for saying that
Speaker 11: he was pairing back his agenda. And if he waits
Speaker 11: until Congress passes a bill to do tariff that would
Speaker 11: be a huge potential missed opportunity from their perspective about,
Speaker 11: you know, on raising tariffs.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, just since we referenced the Trump true social post,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to read it so people know the
Speaker 2: specific language that he used.
Speaker 4: He says.
Speaker 2: The story in the Washington Post, quoting so called anonymous
Speaker 2: sources which don't exist, incorrectly states that my tariff policy
Speaker 2: will be paired back. That is wrong. The Washington Post
Speaker 2: knows it's wrong. It's just another example of fake news.
Speaker 2: I mean, my rate of this, Jeff is Trump loves
Speaker 2: to stake out a maximali's position and then use that
Speaker 2: as a negotiating leverage to arrive at whatever the ultimate
Speaker 2: position is. And so you know it, He's probably angry
Speaker 2: that you're sort of exposing the game of where he
Speaker 2: wants to ultimately end up and you know, eliminating the
Speaker 2: ability for him to pretend like he's actually committed to
Speaker 2: putting tariffs on avocados and bananas and all sorts of
Speaker 2: things that it would just be completely idiotic to put
Speaker 2: a tariff on.
Speaker 11: And there's also this like key tension here a lot
Speaker 11: of people have picked up on, I think accurately that
Speaker 11: you know, Trump is busy, like with a million things.
Speaker 11: You know, he's got like has a state coming to
Speaker 11: kiss the ring of mar A Lago, like Bezos and
Speaker 11: Zuckerberg or like calling him and like he's buying Greenland,
Speaker 11: Panama and whatever and so like. I don't know for sure,
Speaker 11: but my impression is that Trump is not like studying
Speaker 11: the like USTR codes under which like tariffs will be applied, right,
Speaker 11: So there's this opportunity for his staff so maybe do
Speaker 11: not exactly what he would do if he were like
Speaker 11: able to really focus and do it.
Speaker 3: And so there's that that gap.
Speaker 11: That I think is super interesting where you know, his
Speaker 11: his aids are saying, sir, these are universal tariffs, are
Speaker 11: going to be on everything, and Trump is like, well,
Speaker 11: if they're not on every good and the Washington Post
Speaker 11: is calling them a step back, then are we really
Speaker 11: doing universal? And I don't have this like fully confirmed,
Speaker 11: but there's some say rumor skull, but that the response
Speaker 11: to my story and his tweets, you know, his social
Speaker 11: media posts about it may actually sort of affect the
Speaker 11: process itself, where now the aids who had sort of
Speaker 11: hope to get.
Speaker 3: Get these tariffs.
Speaker 11: These universal tariffs in and tell convince him that they
Speaker 11: were the universal tariffs, are now having going to have
Speaker 11: to convince him that these more moderate plans actually are that.
Speaker 2: Why do you think they wanted to talk to you, Jeff? Like,
Speaker 2: why do you think that they wanted this story to
Speaker 2: come out? Because it does seem like kind of from
Speaker 2: their perspective, if they wanted to try to sell them
Speaker 2: like see these are these are universal terrorists.
Speaker 4: This is what you ran on.
Speaker 2: That that really sort of backfired if that was ultimately
Speaker 2: their goal.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it's hard to know with sources why they talk
Speaker 11: to you. I'm assume that it's because of charming and persuasive,
Speaker 11: but I know that's probably that that every journalist thinks
Speaker 11: that and it's not true ever, Right, So what was
Speaker 11: the incentive here to leak this?
Speaker 3: And I think.
Speaker 11: Trying to think how to phrase this. I mean, I
Speaker 11: think there are people in the Trump orbit who are
Speaker 11: worried that these will be paired back too far and
Speaker 11: want stories to create the effect that we were just
Speaker 11: talking about.
Speaker 3: Yea, that.
Speaker 11: For the corner perspective of people who are worried that
Speaker 11: these will be sort of you know, down by the
Speaker 11: by the free trade Reaganites in the Trump orbit, this
Speaker 11: story has worked out brilliantly for them because now Trump
Speaker 11: is aware that people might be trying to weaken them, and.
Speaker 2: So they wanted this reaction from Trump and for him
Speaker 2: to be pissed off. You're hard to know, right ro Mey, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's a possible, That's one possibility, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a while since we've done some crimlinology
Speaker 1: here on the show. I don't miss it, but I
Speaker 1: guess that's four more years what we're in store.
Speaker 4: Jeff, one last question for you.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Elon Musk has tremendous power within this administration. Trump
Speaker 2: completely sided with him on H one B visas. You know,
Speaker 2: what is his view of Terris. This is something that
Speaker 2: he could potentially take a personal interest in it as well,
Speaker 2: because he is in a lot of ways is a
Speaker 2: much more ideological figure than Donald Trump himself is.
Speaker 3: I'm actually it's a great question.
Speaker 11: I'm not sure where Musk is specifically on the tariffs,
Speaker 11: but as a businessman, with the amount of interest he has,
Speaker 11: clearly he's going to be at least somewhat dependent on
Speaker 11: im force for all his companies. And we've seen now
Speaker 11: like a few times this this fracture point emerge over
Speaker 11: the H one B visas and over I think we're
Speaker 11: going to see.
Speaker 3: It for sort of over terifs potential.
Speaker 11: Are the sort of tech executives Musk and Omswami, but
Speaker 11: also injuries in Horowitz and many of them Teal and
Speaker 11: their incentives are just not necessarily aligned with the nagabase
Speaker 11: or the protectionists. And yeah, No, it's a great recording target.
Speaker 11: And I should probably figure out because Musk is a
Speaker 11: huge amount of power right now, and is he going
Speaker 11: to try to get you know, you know, the tariffs
Speaker 11: not placed on things that would affect his private business,
Speaker 11: that was requests being submitted by other We'll be you know,
Speaker 11: we'll be watching that very closely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I know, he said. He praised Javier Malay
Speaker 2: for rolling back tariffs. Yeah, in that context. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you did have a different definition of universal here,
Speaker 2: it would certainly open up the door to Musk and
Speaker 2: others being able to say, like, well, that component that
Speaker 2: I need for my rockets, sure early you're not going
Speaker 2: to tear of that, Or that I need for my
Speaker 2: tesla assembly.
Speaker 4: Sure you're not going to tear of that.
Speaker 2: So it would certainly open up a door for him
Speaker 2: to be able to influence that process.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, all right, Jeff, We appreciate you man. We'll see
Speaker 1: you later.
Speaker 4: Congrats Jeff on the presidential on the presidential call.
Speaker 1: Out, keep it coming, see you guys.
Speaker 4: Bye.
Speaker 1: At the same time, in terms of media scandals out there,
Speaker 1: there certainly are no true heroes in the Big three.
Speaker 1: Fox News finding itself in a major controversy. Let's put
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen. A new book by
Speaker 1: reporter Alex Eisenstadt, who look, he's a great reporter, he's
Speaker 1: a solid campaign finance person followed him for many years,
Speaker 1: claims that a Fox News insider actually fed questions to
Speaker 1: the Trump team in advance to somebody there, specifically questions
Speaker 1: about quote unquote retribution that were obviously dogging Trump at
Speaker 1: the time. We watch this live. I think we even
Speaker 1: covered this answer here whenever we did the show, so
Speaker 1: you know, we would think that makes sense. We thought
Speaker 1: that this was off the cuff. There's always allegations about
Speaker 1: insider questions and all that, but here's what in. Eisenstadt writes,
Speaker 1: thirty minutes before the town hall was set, a senior
Speaker 1: aide started getting text messages from a person on the
Speaker 1: inside at Fox. Holy shit. The team thought they were
Speaker 1: images of all the questions Trump would be asked and
Speaker 1: the planned follow ups, down to the exact wording Jackpot.
Speaker 1: This was like a student getting a peek at the
Speaker 1: test before the exam started. Behar and McCollum planned to
Speaker 1: ask Trump if he would divest from his businesses if
Speaker 1: he won, whether the party was risk making a risk
Speaker 1: nominating him giving his indictments. They planned to press Trump
Speaker 1: to disavow political violence and ask if his White House
Speaker 1: would be focused on retribution, but with the questions in hand,
Speaker 1: the team quote workshopped the answers. Eisenstadt told CNN that
Speaker 1: the anecdote was based on quote multiple people with direct
Speaker 1: knowledge of the event. Fox says, while we we do
Speaker 1: not have any evidence of this occurring, Alex Eisenstat has
Speaker 1: refused conveniently refused to release the images for fact checking.
Speaker 1: We take these matters very seriously and plan to investigate
Speaker 1: should there prove to be a breach within the network.
Speaker 1: I mean it would be extraordinary. Look also, why would
Speaker 1: he release the images? Obviously the images would then give
Speaker 1: away the person. He shouldn't do that. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I don't think he's lying, Like that's what a lot
Speaker 1: of people have said, like, oh, this is obviously a
Speaker 1: fake plan. I'm telling you, guys, I followed Alex. It's possible.
Speaker 1: I followed him for many years, solid campaign finance reporter.
Speaker 1: I don't think this one is fake news. I don't
Speaker 1: know why.
Speaker 2: People would think that it's so far fetched that you
Speaker 2: would have some strong Trump supporters working at Fox News
Speaker 2: as producers, who would feed the team this info. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's massive ties between Trump and Fox News.
Speaker 4: He's calling John Hannity all the time.
Speaker 2: You know, he's Kaylee mc nanny works there now and
Speaker 2: work for Trump previously. Like obviously there's huge interconnections there.
Speaker 2: And so to think that it's so far fetched that
Speaker 2: they would feed him the questions, I don't think that's
Speaker 2: just silly to me.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing is that, according to eisenstas reporting, the
Speaker 2: Trump team was actually kind of nervous about this town
Speaker 2: hall because it's Brett bare and Martha McCallum, who were
Speaker 2: supposed to be more of the like hard news folks
Speaker 2: over at Fox. Even though Brett bare is kind of
Speaker 2: like buddy buddy with Trump too, like plays golf with
Speaker 2: him at times.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 2: Obviously they are more right leaning as well, but they
Speaker 2: like to preserve an image as were like the real
Speaker 2: news folks here, and so they were concerned that they
Speaker 2: might ask him some questions that were difficult for him
Speaker 2: to handle, or that he might have whatever kind of
Speaker 2: reaction to So for them to have the chance in
Speaker 2: advance to be able to workshop some of these more
Speaker 2: challenging answers was important. This was also during the time
Speaker 2: that there was an ongoing Republican primary and Ron DeSantis
Speaker 2: was maybe potentially theoretically some sort of a threat to him,
Speaker 2: So there were a lot of Dysantis questions that were
Speaker 2: mixed into this town hall as well. But you know,
Speaker 2: obviously CNN was feeding Kamala Harris questions or feeding Joe
Speaker 2: Biden questions.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a scandals because you know, these news
Speaker 2: organizations try to preserve some level of credibility. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's embarrassing for Fox and was clearly beneficial to Trump,
Speaker 2: and you know, and you just shouldn't take any of
Speaker 2: the Fox is an ideological organ of the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: It was effectively set up to be that. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what does set Fox sort of apart, is that
Speaker 2: the conception from the beginning was we are going to
Speaker 2: be an ideological weapon for use by the Republican Party
Speaker 2: so that we can compete with you know, the quote
Speaker 2: unquote liberal news media ecosystem. So you know, this is
Speaker 2: not a particularly surprising turn of events, but still noteworthy.
Speaker 4: The other part of the book.
Speaker 2: That was interesting is again speaking of the connectivity with
Speaker 2: the Fox News universe. Apparently Trump really considered Maria Bartiromo
Speaker 2: as being his running mate instead of JD.
Speaker 4: Vance. Apparently really liked her.
Speaker 2: He said that she, you know, the donors love her,
Speaker 2: and of course he loves that. She's you know, very
Speaker 2: fluent on TV and really combative on TV. She did
Speaker 2: any number of just like embarrassingly softball interviews with Trump
Speaker 2: as well, so I'm sure he enjoyed that too, so
Speaker 2: and I think he you know, I do think he
Speaker 2: had somewhat of a preference potentially for a female in
Speaker 2: that role as well. But that's kind of funny to
Speaker 2: imagine that she could have gotten that pick and had
Speaker 2: to be talked down of by what Susie Wilde.
Speaker 1: Apparently it was by Susie wide hooped.
Speaker 4: In to try to talk him out of that particular idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, who knows how serious it all was.
Speaker 1: It genuinely would have been hilarious if Trump had gone
Speaker 1: in that direction in some ways quite fitting. You know,
Speaker 1: she backed him up on everything from voter fraud to
Speaker 1: She's always been one of the most like slavish defenders
Speaker 1: of him. So yeah, yeah, that's where it is. With
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. I mean, look, it's humiliating that it's humiliating
Speaker 1: if this did happen any news organization, the White House
Speaker 1: and campaigns, they always press you for questions and you
Speaker 1: can maybe give a topic, you know, if I think
Speaker 1: that's reasonable, but the direct questions themselves is outrageous. And
Speaker 1: then you know to use that to prepare, like if
Speaker 1: a member on the staff was able to do that.
Speaker 1: Another big question for Fox as well is you know,
Speaker 1: they probably probably were alerted by this a long time ago,
Speaker 1: so nobody's been fired, no action has been taken. I
Speaker 1: would be assumed that there's not a ton of people
Speaker 1: who have access to this for very good reason, so
Speaker 1: that there's a narrow, you know window of a number
Speaker 1: of people who this would even know.
Speaker 2: There's probably like ten people these specific.
Speaker 4: Questions in advance.
Speaker 2: There's probably like a ten person you know, producer group
Speaker 2: that would be privy to that level of information. So yeah,
Speaker 2: if they want to figure out who it is, they
Speaker 2: can figure out who it is.
Speaker 4: The question is like, do they really want to know? Yeah,
Speaker 4: they really care?
Speaker 1: That's a good question.
Speaker 2: Probably not, because they probably like having people who are
Speaker 2: friendly to Trump, just like the rest of the media
Speaker 2: organizations want to suck up to Trump at this point.
Speaker 2: Fox at one point was the kind of all announce
Speaker 2: with him, and they want to make sure that they
Speaker 2: stay in his good graces. So I don't think any
Speaker 2: sort of retribution will likely becoming.
Speaker 1: It will probably correct, although I still think at a
Speaker 1: very basic level they should be fired.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course, of course, anyway, all right, all right, soccer,
Speaker 2: what are you looking at?
Speaker 1: Winning an election is easy. Actually, governing is a much
Speaker 1: more difficult thing. It's a trite but universal lesson of
Speaker 1: all presidencies. We're in our two party system, Disparate coalitions
Speaker 1: come together to dream before an election, and inevitably then
Speaker 1: somebody is disappointed when actual decisions have to happen. As
Speaker 1: usual with administrations, especially with one as loosely defined as
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's, the knife fights start early, and sometimes even
Speaker 1: on Christmas. I'm referring, of course, to the massive maga
Speaker 1: civil war that has taken place over the Christmas holidays
Speaker 1: that began with the critique over H one B Visas,
Speaker 1: then a tech write versus maga write fight about who
Speaker 1: really is in power, and then a racist versus globalist
Speaker 1: fight over who's American and It ended with one of
Speaker 1: the most extraordinary posts I've ever seen from vuvek Ramaswami.
Speaker 1: It basically said, white people are lazy, so let's start
Speaker 1: with a roadmap and let's go from the beginning. Things
Speaker 1: got kicked off when full disclosure personal friend of mine
Speaker 1: shreve Ram Krishnan, he was appointed by Donald Trump to
Speaker 1: be an advisor to the incoming administration on Ai stre
Speaker 1: Ram is a former venture capitalist of A sixteen and
Speaker 1: Z who in the past had vocally supported an increased
Speaker 1: number of H one B visas and uncapped country quotas
Speaker 1: for green cards. Now this set off an immediate firestorm
Speaker 1: of criticism from the Magga universe, who saw the street
Speaker 1: Ram appointment as a betrayal of Trump's promises to reset
Speaker 1: US immigration policy and as a corporate giveaway. Some of
Speaker 1: the discussion was just genuine racism against Indians to the US,
Speaker 1: But what was really interesting was to actually see the
Speaker 1: conflict began from grassroots Day one supporters versus many newly
Speaker 1: arrived technology sector Trump supporters who were at direct odds.
Speaker 1: Many of these people of Trump awarded Trump from the
Speaker 1: tech sector were shocked that the movement they aligned themselves
Speaker 1: with including other venture capitalists and others engage in these
Speaker 1: big fights online. We're trying to justify the H one
Speaker 1: B visa. But the ultimate tech aligned right wing figure
Speaker 1: that weighed in with, Elon Musk, tweets this quote. The
Speaker 1: reason I am in America along with so many critical
Speaker 1: people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies
Speaker 1: that made America strong is because of H one B.
Speaker 1: Take a big step back and fuck yourself in the face.
Speaker 1: I will go to war on this issue, the likes
Speaker 1: of which you cannot possess. So why the emotion there
Speaker 1: from Elon Musk and others? Obviously for a tech entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: who supported Donald Trump. The truth, beyond any personal interest,
Speaker 1: is that H one B visa is what the entire
Speaker 1: US technology industry runs on. And the dirty truth is
Speaker 1: that it exploits both the workers themselves and the US
Speaker 1: workers who are they are competing against. So let's define
Speaker 1: some terms. What the hell is the H one B visa.
Speaker 1: H one B visa is basically a supposedly high skilled
Speaker 1: G worker program other than that otherwise known as a
Speaker 1: Specialty occupation visa, created by the United States Congress in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety The justification for the visa, which has an
Speaker 1: annual cap of eighty five thousand per year, is at
Speaker 1: high skilled industries like technology and engineering, that there's not
Speaker 1: enough available talent in the United States. Thus, the H
Speaker 1: one B allows the so called best in the brightest
Speaker 1: of the world to come to the United States to
Speaker 1: work for specific company in a specific role for three
Speaker 1: to six years before they become eligible for a green card.
Speaker 1: In theory, it's very easy to see how this visa
Speaker 1: category was created, but in practice it has become very
Speaker 1: controversial for the major reliance of the US technology industry
Speaker 1: has on it. H one B visa holders are not
Speaker 1: allowed to easily switch jobs without risking their immigration status,
Speaker 1: effectively chaining them to the original sponsor for the visa,
Speaker 1: and systematic study has now shown us that the H
Speaker 1: one B visa holders depress wages for US citizens because
Speaker 1: they are willing to work for less for the benefit
Speaker 1: of being able to emigrate to the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: those who defend the program say, we're only talking about
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand or so visas a year here. These
Speaker 1: people feel jobs that Americans, according to them, are not
Speaker 1: qualified to do. So let's actually dig into the numbers
Speaker 1: and just take a look at this. Norman matt Lofos
Speaker 1: weighed in with the definitive piece here, and so I
Speaker 1: will quote him from length from Compact magazine. H one
Speaker 1: B advocates like to point out that eighty five thousand
Speaker 1: year visas is only a small fraction of overall STEM employment,
Speaker 1: but that is misleading. Assuming a six year stay the
Speaker 1: nominal time limit, at any given time, there would be
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand visa holders in the country. More importantly,
Speaker 1: the impact is cumulative. The H one B worker who
Speaker 1: transitions to green cards becomes a permanent fixture in the
Speaker 1: labor market, especially tech heavy regions. In nineteen ninety, thirty
Speaker 1: percent of Silicon Valley engineers were foreign born. By twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: that figure had jumped to seventy four percent. So let's
Speaker 1: think about that. We're talking here about a sector of
Speaker 1: our economy which is roughly twenty percent of US GDP
Speaker 1: and almost entirely responsible for the growth of all of
Speaker 1: our stock intacies, and the vast majority of visioneers are
Speaker 1: not from here. That's not bad, per se, but it
Speaker 1: does raise a question why who's benefiting from this here? Again,
Speaker 1: basic labor law supply and demand come into play. If
Speaker 1: you run a business like we do here, what's the
Speaker 1: number one pain in the ass staff turnover? So what
Speaker 1: do you do when you want to prevent staff turnover?
Speaker 1: How do you prevent that person? If you employ US
Speaker 1: citizen from leaving, you pay them more and you try
Speaker 1: to have good working conditions. How does that work with
Speaker 1: an H one B. Actually, you can pay them less
Speaker 1: and they can't leave. That's a good trade, easy way
Speaker 1: to juice the stock price, You reduce employee compensation, you
Speaker 1: get more riches for yourself, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with one of the biggest threats to any business
Speaker 1: talent leaving. Now the H one bvs A holder themselves
Speaker 1: might be miserable in the job, but he or she
Speaker 1: has other things on their mind, Like listen, I've only
Speaker 1: got a few more years where I have to take
Speaker 1: this that I can get a green card. Once that happens,
Speaker 1: I'm free. I can do whatever I want. So you
Speaker 1: sit there and you take it. The person who loses
Speaker 1: out here is the applicant who is a native born
Speaker 1: US citizen. Because of theirs can leave whenever they want. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: there is no implied compensation like there is for the
Speaker 1: H one B vis a holder. The citizen already lives
Speaker 1: in America. The H one B visa holder can accept
Speaker 1: less because a big part of the benefit is getting
Speaker 1: to stay now here. Again, Matt Loof weighs in by
Speaker 1: noting a University of California Berkeley study that shows that
Speaker 1: high tech engineers and managers have experienced less wage growth
Speaker 1: than all of their counterparts nationally. How is that possible.
Speaker 1: We're talking again about the fastest growing sector of the
Speaker 1: US economy. Wages should be booming, and yet they're actually
Speaker 1: growing less than average. Again, it's very simple to see why.
Speaker 1: With the vast majority of jobs at these tech companies
Speaker 1: now held by H one B visa holders, technology companies
Speaker 1: can depress industry standard wages and keep out these troublesome
Speaker 1: US citizens. Worse, in many cases, US citizens themselves can
Speaker 1: be fired to be replaced by H one b's they
Speaker 1: take a look. Take a look, for example, at this
Speaker 1: recent report from sixty Minutes, where a former IT administrator
Speaker 1: for a hospital in the state of California describes the
Speaker 1: anguish of being fired and then forced to train his replacement.
Speaker 8: What did they say to you?
Speaker 12: Well, sorry to inform you that as of February twenty eighth,
Speaker 12: you'll no longer have a job. We're going to ask
Speaker 12: Social Position to discompany in India.
Speaker 7: To accompany in India.
Speaker 8: Sir Harrison was told he could stay on the job,
Speaker 8: get paid for four more months, and get a bonus
Speaker 8: if he trained his replacement.
Speaker 12: Now I'm being told that I am not only going
Speaker 12: to lose my job, but I also have to train
Speaker 12: these people to take my job.
Speaker 8: Are you angry? Pissed?
Speaker 7: That exceed is angry?
Speaker 12: I'm really not a valant guy.
Speaker 7: I love people, but.
Speaker 12: I've envisioned myself just backhanding the guy as he's sitting
Speaker 12: next to me trying to learn what I know. And
Speaker 12: I was like, God, please don't let them send anybody
Speaker 12: the sit next to be the shadow me. I don't
Speaker 12: want to do this, I really don't.
Speaker 8: Harrison and his colleague staged a protest outside the medical center.
Speaker 8: His fellow worker, Senior systems administrator Ho, is losing his
Speaker 8: job too. He had just trained his replacement from India.
Speaker 11: I think, for once, we're going to stand up as
Speaker 11: an American and say enough is enough.
Speaker 3: We're not going to take it anymore.
Speaker 1: So, with all that in mind, is it really such
Speaker 1: a surprise that Elon Musk is willing to go to
Speaker 1: war for H one bs. A basic perusal of the
Speaker 1: data shows us that Tesla is the sixteenth largest H
Speaker 1: one B employer in the United States, Yes, far behind
Speaker 1: Amazon and Cognizant, a company that does it systems or
Speaker 1: Infosis or IBM or Microsoft or Meta. Do you get
Speaker 1: the picture here? Technology giants. So let's make clear that
Speaker 1: this is about money for them. But to obfuscate that
Speaker 1: is where Vivike Ramaswami comes in. During much of the
Speaker 1: debate around H one b's, what many tech leaders basically
Speaker 1: came to admit is that they prefer predominantly H one
Speaker 1: B workers from India because they work harder than Americans.
Speaker 1: Implicit in that is, they say Americans are lazy. It
Speaker 1: was implicit until Vivik just said that out loud, which
Speaker 1: I know you've heard some of this, but it's really
Speaker 1: worth ruminating. On the crux of Vivike's posts is that
Speaker 1: Americans are fat, lazy and that our culture venerates the
Speaker 1: quote jock instead of the math olympiad like him. Perfect
Speaker 1: Ax's formulation. The reason that top tech companies hire foreign
Speaker 1: workers over native Americans is because Americans, and particularly white Americans,
Speaker 1: are lazy. He blames this on cultural degradation and obviously
Speaker 1: personal feuds that he had growing up, where he watched
Speaker 1: Corey from Boy Meets World and Zach and Slater from
Speaker 1: Saved by the Bell get venerated instead of math olympiad
Speaker 1: nerds like himself. Now, a Vik's prescription is that Americans
Speaker 1: instead to adopt a parenting culture like the one he
Speaker 1: was raised in, the immigrant striver model best known to
Speaker 1: Americans from the book Battle Him of the Tiger Mother
Speaker 1: by Amy Chua. And in the meantime, of course, he
Speaker 1: needed more H one bs. Now this might be a
Speaker 1: surprise to the Vivike Ramaswami of twenty twenty three who
Speaker 1: called for the end of the H one B visa system,
Speaker 1: but nonetheless let's take it seriously. As I laid out
Speaker 1: in my own lengthy response to vivig Vivic is not
Speaker 1: wrong that many companies hire foreign born workers or children
Speaker 1: of immigrants because they work hard, But he is wrong
Speaker 1: in thinking it is somehow implicit to these groups and
Speaker 1: not one that Americans have not always had in their
Speaker 1: own culture. It's certainly true much of our culture today
Speaker 1: revolves around hedonism, gambling, drinking, getting stoned. But the fact
Speaker 1: is is that as a solution is American as apple pie.
Speaker 1: You just have to return to what we all once valued.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the period before World War Two, many
Speaker 1: Ivy League schools and other so called prep schools for
Speaker 1: the American elite explicitly emphasized athletics, social skills, and leadership
Speaker 1: over rote memorization and academics that is characteristic of much
Speaker 1: of Asian parenting today. The reason they did that is
Speaker 1: because if you lay a foundation for discipline through sport,
Speaker 1: and you create well rounded leaders, you can combine that
Speaker 1: with academic inquiry to create the entrepreneurial culture that gave
Speaker 1: birth to the American culture that beat the Axis powers
Speaker 1: in World War two and put a man on the moon.
Speaker 1: If Avig's model of parenting was a solution for greatness,
Speaker 1: then you would see the greatest companies in the world
Speaker 1: being built in China, India, Singapore, Korea, and Japan. And look,
Speaker 1: as much as you all know, I love Japan, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, it's not the case. The reason so many
Speaker 1: people want to immigrate to the United States and are
Speaker 1: willing to do so even undercut US wages. Is because
Speaker 1: this is the place where you have, or at least
Speaker 1: had the best shot of being whoever you want to be.
Speaker 1: As I lay out in the very reason that Indians
Speaker 1: succeed in the US is precisely the dynamism, frontier spirit,
Speaker 1: and foundation laid by the American founding fathers. It is
Speaker 1: by combining their cultural rejection of hedonism and now current
Speaker 1: focus of the family unit with hard work that they
Speaker 1: are able to achieve such stupendous success in such a
Speaker 1: short period of time. And absolutely none of this is
Speaker 1: intrinsic to being Indian. It is the same story of small,
Speaker 1: high achieving immigrant groups. The lesson for us all is
Speaker 1: a universal one. Pure consumerism, individualists, hedonism in an atomized
Speaker 1: America as a way that we have today will lead
Speaker 1: to ruin. The way that you get out of it
Speaker 1: is not to bring in guest workers who have yet
Speaker 1: to be tainted by this, but instead to reinvigorate the
Speaker 1: spirit of the United States and refocus all US government
Speaker 1: policy on the prosperity of the American family over the
Speaker 1: prosperity of shareholder capitalism. Vivic and Elon's proscription is actually
Speaker 1: the one that is truly anti American. It effectively believes
Speaker 1: America is so deurrascinated and lazy it can no longer
Speaker 1: accomplish what it once did without foreign guest workers. This
Speaker 1: only makes sense if your civic ideal is to increase
Speaker 1: a company's shareholder value. But as I said in my
Speaker 1: response to Vivic, if you prioritize a reinvigorated civic nationalism,
Speaker 1: that will inevitably clash with capitalist interests. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: we should have no more widespread immigrations to the US
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. Our power and population is just
Speaker 1: far too high, and at any time you history, we
Speaker 1: have nearly flooded this country with twenty million illegal immigrants
Speaker 1: in a short span of a few decades, and all
Speaker 1: of the signs of ethnic strife that we saw one
Speaker 1: hundred years ago have returned. At that time when the
Speaker 1: similar levels of high foreign born population reached a crescendo,
Speaker 1: the United States effectively shut down the vast majority of immigration.
Speaker 1: In that forty year or so period, something happened interesting happened.
Speaker 1: People went from Irish, American or Slovenian American or German
Speaker 1: American to just American racist nativism which was fueling the
Speaker 1: KKK actually disappeared for a generation and the country that
Speaker 1: put a man on the Moon was born. Now, this
Speaker 1: was directly at odds with the oligarchs of their day,
Speaker 1: who also relied on cheap labor from Europe's poor to
Speaker 1: flood their factories. But nonetheless the population understood at that
Speaker 1: time it was near a breaking point. It is my
Speaker 1: opinion that is what we need again, and with the
Speaker 1: popular vote for Donald Trump, I think some of you
Speaker 1: feel the same. But even if you do not, what
Speaker 1: I at least hope to convince you of this in
Speaker 1: this monologue is of what the US immigration system today
Speaker 1: has become a vehicle for corporate interests to protect their
Speaker 1: profit and having your interests secondary. You do not even
Speaker 1: have to agree with me on immigration levels to get that.
Speaker 1: I will prove it to you by ending with some
Speaker 1: words from a US senator. I'll tell you his name
Speaker 1: at the end quote. The primary purpose of H one
Speaker 1: B and other guest worker programs is not to employ
Speaker 1: the best in the brightest, but instead to replace American
Speaker 1: workers with lower paid workers from abroad who often live
Speaker 1: as indentured servants. The cheaper it is to hire guest workers,
Speaker 1: the more money the multi billionaire owners of large corporations make.
Speaker 1: Multi billionaire oligarchs in big tech should not be allowed
Speaker 1: to hire guest workers to fill entry level and mid
Speaker 1: level IT jobs. Those jobs should be going to American
Speaker 1: workers who have the constitutional right to form a union
Speaker 1: and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Speaker 1: It must never be cheaper for a corporation to hire
Speaker 1: a guest worker from overseas than an American worker. Mister
Speaker 1: Ramaswami and others have argued we need a highly skilled
Speaker 1: and well educated workforce. They are right. But the answer, however,
Speaker 1: is not to bring in cheap labor from abroad. That
Speaker 1: was Senator Bernie Sanders writing for Fox News. So perhaps
Speaker 1: there is a bipartisan future on this issue, at least
Speaker 1: ahead of us. I mean, it's been interesting to watch
Speaker 1: the ideological.
Speaker 4: Issue on both sides since Trump is on TM.
Speaker 1: Trump, which is amazing. We'll say we did a monologue
Speaker 1: about it at the time, or sorry, a segment about
Speaker 1: it which people can watch. Remember during the all In
Speaker 1: interview where he's like, we need to staple. All of that.
Speaker 1: I accurately called it as a betrayal. But the theg
Speaker 1: thing is actually more shocking to me, because I mean,
Speaker 1: you and I were talking a bit about this. His
Speaker 1: parenting model has already been tried. It is the model.
Speaker 1: The Tiger Mother model is the model of the American
Speaker 1: elite and has been for twenty years. How's the American
Speaker 1: elite doing? I don't think they're that great. They are
Speaker 1: the people who covered up Joe Biden. They are the
Speaker 1: people who went to Ivy League schools and went to
Speaker 1: go work at McKenzie to help Purdue Pharma juice their profits.
Speaker 1: Are we putting men on the moon? No, are we
Speaker 1: doing anything great. No way that you really make a
Speaker 1: ton of money in America today is to go work
Speaker 1: for a health insurance company and use AI to deny claims.
Speaker 1: Or it's like, what are we educating people for? It's
Speaker 1: for such great purpose? Like I don't see anything all
Speaker 1: that good happening in the US society right now. And
Speaker 1: that's just where the breakdown in his whole theory is incorrect.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, study and be good at violin.
Speaker 1: I just reread Tier Mother. It's an insane book. It's
Speaker 1: actually crazy just where she sits there and like whips
Speaker 1: her child rhetorically for not being good enough at the piano.
Speaker 1: And it's like, to what end? So you could go
Speaker 1: to Harvard Law for what? For? What question was never
Speaker 1: answered by these people. And that's the problem I have
Speaker 1: with this whole thing. It's just bullshit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ye, well, I already fought with you about immigration,
Speaker 2: so we'll put that part to the tide and talk
Speaker 2: about the VIVG thing because I do find it really fascinating. Also,
Speaker 2: it's just like such a bit. I mean, Trump just
Speaker 2: won this election on the backs of non college educated
Speaker 2: workers who explicitly rejected this view of the world that
Speaker 2: has this essentially even embraced both by elite liberals and
Speaker 2: by who you know, look at the white working class
Speaker 2: and are like, it's your fucking fault.
Speaker 1: Yeah they hail, Yeah, right, that's that is the view that.
Speaker 2: Was rejected in you know, Trump is twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 2: so for fake to be like, no, actually, I do
Speaker 2: think it's your fucking fault that you and your kids
Speaker 2: are allowed to be which is increab I actually am too,
Speaker 2: because it's a mask off moment.
Speaker 4: And now we can talk about it. So there's that.
Speaker 2: There's also this part, really I don't know why the
Speaker 2: sticks in my crop, but the culture he's describing doesn't
Speaker 2: even exist anymore, like the mall culture and the universal
Speaker 2: sitcom culture. Things were so much better when we actually
Speaker 2: had that culture, right, not that that was perfect, and
Speaker 2: obviously mall culture is all wrapped up in consumersm or whatever.
Speaker 2: But we're trying to have Derek Thompson on next week
Speaker 2: is tracking the way that these social trends, like teenagers
Speaker 2: don't even hang out with each other anymore, be better
Speaker 2: if they were hanging out together at the mall. He
Speaker 2: goes after like he's like, you shouldn't have your kids
Speaker 2: go to sleepovers. They should instead be studying for the
Speaker 2: math Olympics. But it's like that's the exact wrong direction
Speaker 2: because these teens are miserable, depressed, and of course they're
Speaker 2: not going to live up to whatever the best version
Speaker 2: of themselves is when they're struggling with these mental health
Speaker 2: issues and the lack of social engagement is a big
Speaker 2: part of that.
Speaker 4: So that's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, like Vivek is a political leader in a
Speaker 2: position of political power. No, we didn't vote for him,
Speaker 2: but that's who he is now. I don't need our
Speaker 2: political leaders lecturing to us about what our culture is
Speaker 2: and how we should be raising our kids. Focus on policy,
Speaker 2: because you know, I think you and I have a
Speaker 2: different view of how much culture drives these trends. I
Speaker 2: think policy drives much of these outcomes, much more so
Speaker 2: than these different individual cultural dynamics. But whether you think that,
Speaker 2: agree with me on that or not, the thing you
Speaker 2: have control over, the thing that you've been put in
Speaker 2: charge of, is policy. So stop lecturing people about what
Speaker 2: sitcoms they watched when they were twelve years old, and
Speaker 2: start focusing on how to make life better for people.
Speaker 2: And then the number three thing, This is really the
Speaker 2: core of it. Neoliberalism effectively says the only thing that
Speaker 2: matters is GDP growth and shareholder value. You as a person,
Speaker 2: if you don't make it in the market, not only
Speaker 2: is it your own fault, and you have failed as
Speaker 2: a human being. There is nothing redeeming about you. If
Speaker 2: you aren't going to Harvard, if you aren't providing shareholder
Speaker 2: value for one of Elon Musk's many companies, you have
Speaker 2: failed as a human being. I fundamentally reject that view
Speaker 2: of humanity. There are so many more ways to be
Speaker 2: valuable to society than just to go work at McKenzie
Speaker 2: or go get your Harvard law degree, or go come
Speaker 2: up with the latest exotic financial instrument on Wall Street.
Speaker 4: There are so many actually better.
Speaker 2: Ways to be a useful, valuable, honorable, decent family member,
Speaker 2: community member, member of society, et cetera. And so I
Speaker 2: find this whole way of viewing human beings to be
Speaker 2: totally disgusting. And where I saw it up close and
Speaker 2: personal was more so less in the immigrant families that
Speaker 2: I'm close with, but more actually with the elite manhattanites
Speaker 2: that I saw when I was working at MSNBC who
Speaker 2: had adopted this model for themselves, their families, and their kids.
Speaker 2: This is the type of mentality that leads to like
Speaker 2: the Varsity Blue scandal, where you think that the only
Speaker 2: thing that matters is this specific mode of achievementism, and
Speaker 2: you will do anything including schedule your child down to
Speaker 2: the minute and force them into all these you Latin
Speaker 2: tutoring and the math Olympics and the fencing, because that's
Speaker 2: the best way to get a scholarship, et cetera. That
Speaker 2: you will schedule them down to the minute and never
Speaker 2: let them just be and discover who they are intrinsically
Speaker 2: and what they might want and enjoy.
Speaker 4: To contribute to the world.
Speaker 2: So I actually completely reject this model of parenting as
Speaker 2: a parent well and find it really.
Speaker 1: Dist most Americans do, and that's why reading the Vivike this, Look,
Speaker 1: you can't call me racist for saying this. It literally
Speaker 1: sounds like a foreigner trying to tell people what to do.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's crazy. You're like, dude, this is the
Speaker 1: mentality of all of the Indian elite in India. If
Speaker 1: it worked, then why isn't it working there. It's obviously
Speaker 1: something intrinsic here in the US that makes it possible
Speaker 1: for people like to Vivike become fantastically wealthy in a
Speaker 1: single generation. And yet he's basically prescribing it for people
Speaker 1: while and I mean just in general, like telling them
Speaker 1: what to value and whatnot. Now, listen, I agree with
Speaker 1: some of his critiques. I do think it's true a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't work very hard and all of that,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and we have a culture of hedonism, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But I agree with you completely that a lot of
Speaker 1: that is policy. The H one B thing is perfect example.
Speaker 1: It's like you, it's not in your control how much
Speaker 1: you get paid. It's a macro system based on visa.
Speaker 1: You know the I didn't put this in. The actual
Speaker 1: person who wrote the H one B law, he said
Speaker 1: at the time that he was duped by the technology
Speaker 1: companies and he's outraged at the way that it is
Speaker 1: now used. The congressman who passed H one B and
Speaker 1: wrote the law said he is outraged at the way
Speaker 1: that the technology companies have circumvented it to use and
Speaker 1: discriminate against the US workers. And look at that video
Speaker 1: of that guy. Again didn't have time to play it.
Speaker 1: He worked at a children's hospital and he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I took my work really seriously keeping these systems up
Speaker 1: because I would walk around and see parents with children
Speaker 1: who are fighting cancer. He's like, somebody who's not here
Speaker 1: in the building has no idea, you know what the
Speaker 1: responsibility and all that, and that describes what you're saying.
Speaker 1: It's not just about the bottom line. And you know
Speaker 1: the craziest part too, that was a state institution, so
Speaker 1: those were government dollars that they were being paid. That
Speaker 1: were outsourced.
Speaker 2: I mean, here's the thing, is, like, you don't want
Speaker 2: to deny people agency, like the choices they make in
Speaker 2: their lives, Like, yes, personal responsibility blah blah blah. But
Speaker 2: is the primary reason that the working class in America
Speaker 2: keeps going backwards because of their own moral personal failings?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 2: Or is it because their jobs were shipped to shipped
Speaker 2: overseas by a combination of you know, NAFTA and PNTR
Speaker 2: and the busting up of unions and all of these
Speaker 2: elite driven policies that were meant that were meant to
Speaker 2: crush the working class and make them desperate, make it
Speaker 2: so that they can't bargain for better wages, that they
Speaker 2: have no other options, and they will be effectively like
Speaker 2: those in denreservants.
Speaker 4: That they're now just you know, bringing in for H
Speaker 4: one b's.
Speaker 2: Et cetera, who are literally their job status is tied
Speaker 2: to their employment.
Speaker 4: That is, that is the real crux of the problem. So, yes, of.
Speaker 2: Course, your own personal choices and the way you raise
Speaker 2: your kid blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Of course these things have an impact.
Speaker 2: But when you look at a trend that is infected
Speaker 2: an entire society, you have to say these were because
Speaker 2: of policy choices, not because you liked a certain character
Speaker 2: in boy Meet's world when you were thirteen years old,
Speaker 2: or because you let your kids have sleepovers. Okay, so
Speaker 2: that's what is so revealing about the whole vake monologue.
Speaker 4: And listen, he said it out loud.
Speaker 2: But trust and believe many Republicans, many Democrats think the
Speaker 2: same thing, especially about the white working class, because Democrats
Speaker 2: have a story about if you're you know, a group
Speaker 2: that's like, in their view, officially oppressed, they have a
Speaker 2: story about why you may have been held back and
Speaker 2: not made it blah blah blah blah blah. If you
Speaker 2: are a white man living in America, they do not
Speaker 2: have a story for why you aren't making it. So
Speaker 2: must be something you did, must be some failure, It
Speaker 2: must be your fault. And so yeah, the vag saying
Speaker 2: it out loud, and by the way, using rhetoric that
Speaker 2: many Black Americans will recognize as the type of rhetoric
Speaker 2: that many elites, but especially Republicans, have used about their
Speaker 2: culture and why they've struggled to succeed as well, is
Speaker 2: also really quite something.
Speaker 1: Is it's either all individual agency or all systems. I
Speaker 1: am a big believer in both, but in.
Speaker 2: When you're t I am more of a believer in
Speaker 2: the systems. But when you're talking about politicians, like, who
Speaker 2: are you to tell us exactly how we should raise
Speaker 2: our kids and what sort of like, you know, cultural
Speaker 2: enjoyments we should partake in when we're in our rare
Speaker 2: leisure time.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, all right? I enjoyed writing that one. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys liked it. We will see you all later.