Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show. All right,
Speaker 3: good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints Emily. We've got a
Speaker 3: little bit of housekeeping to start out with, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. So we have some exciting new updates.
Speaker 4: Just make sure to stay tuned to your inbox because
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Speaker 4: Some new updates on the future Breaking Points, exciting stuff
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Speaker 5: That's all.
Speaker 3: We presume that all of you are doing that, because
Speaker 3: why on earth would you not be doing that. We've
Speaker 3: got some exciting election developments from last night. Angela also
Speaker 3: Brooks upset David Trone, the owner of Total Wine, who
Speaker 3: spent at least sixty million dollars to lose the Democratic
Speaker 3: primary for Maryland Senate. Money is not worthless. Though APAC
Speaker 3: did manage to defeat the Capitol Cop Harry Dunn incredible.
Speaker 3: Like so, Democratic voters were faced with a choice of
Speaker 3: do we go with APAK or do we go with
Speaker 3: the capitol cop who fended off the January sixth insurrection
Speaker 3: in Baltimore, Annapolis's area. They went with APAK.
Speaker 5: You have to choose between MSNBC.
Speaker 3: And APAC, except, of course APAC didn't say, like do
Speaker 3: you support genocide. If you support genocide, vote for Sarah Elfreth.
Speaker 3: They just did a bunch of attack ads and you know,
Speaker 3: spent millions of dollars supporting her.
Speaker 4: So those were primaries that were held last night. And
Speaker 4: we have a great guest coming up, by the way,
Speaker 4: on the Friday version of this show, Beto O'Rourke is
Speaker 4: going to be on with us talking about immigration and
Speaker 4: the border.
Speaker 5: We're very excited about that.
Speaker 4: Tuned again that hits your inbox if you're a premium
Speaker 4: subscriber Thursday nights. Otherwise for everyone else, it's out on
Speaker 4: Friday mornings. Breakingpoints dot Com again though, if you want
Speaker 4: to be premium, Beto.
Speaker 3: Verus Emily on the border and immigration and me just
Speaker 3: chiming and saying, why don't we just have completely open borders?
Speaker 5: Just three white people talking about the border.
Speaker 3: A bunch of irishmen.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, Actually, actually my grandmother's made name is McGrath,
Speaker 4: so I think I kind of qualified.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're all we're all allowed to participate in this conversation.
Speaker 5: Then perfect.
Speaker 4: Well, we're going to start today on Today's show with
Speaker 4: the economic news, because there's been a lot this week
Speaker 4: between Biden's tariff announcement and actually Jerome Powell was giving
Speaker 4: remarks yesterday about inflation and man, just some more depressing
Speaker 4: news on the economy. That's where we're going to start today.
Speaker 4: We're going to then move to Donald Trump's trial in
Speaker 4: New York, where a flock of Republicans, a literal flock
Speaker 4: of Republicans, came to offer their support. We have some
Speaker 4: soundbites from Vivek grama spot.
Speaker 3: Looking for the jury at launch to try to just
Speaker 3: intimidate them into what I don't understand what's going on.
Speaker 3: It's like a West criminal trials, but we don't usually
Speaker 3: prosecute the former president, so it's not going to be normal.
Speaker 4: U n C University of North Carolina is refunneling all
Speaker 4: of its money from DEI into safety public staff. Onions headline,
Speaker 4: not an onion headline, but Ryan actually some interesting thoughts
Speaker 4: on that. We have Bill bur versus Bill Maher and
Speaker 4: then Ryan, we have some really we have a very
Speaker 4: interesting guest that you have set us up with here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they talked about this on the program yesterday,
Speaker 3: but I reported on Monday that upwards of twenty medical staff,
Speaker 3: you American medical staff, are currently stranded in Gaza because
Speaker 3: Israel has closed the Rafa border crossing. They're running low
Speaker 3: on water, some of them are on an IV drip.
Speaker 3: There's massive dehydration, vomiting, diarrhea. And these are the American
Speaker 3: medical professionals, which tells you just how brutal the conditions
Speaker 3: must be for the general Palstingans who've been there for
Speaker 3: months facing these conditions. And so we're gonna be joined
Speaker 3: by nurse who lives in Oregons from Canada, but she's
Speaker 3: currently in Gaza unable to get out Monica Johnston if
Speaker 3: her Internet holds up and if the situation allows for
Speaker 3: the interview, we'll be talking with her later in the program.
Speaker 3: We spoke to her yesterday to get a sense of
Speaker 3: what the conditions are and it's just utterly harrowing from
Speaker 3: start to finish. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And then you have a monologue that you're going
Speaker 4: to be talking about.
Speaker 5: More APEX stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we uncovered some kind of secret a pac money
Speaker 3: flowing into the Portland, Oregon primary. We're going to unpack
Speaker 3: how they managed to do that and why they wouldn't
Speaker 3: just spend and say, hey, we are apac heros roar.
Speaker 4: It's basically an episode of portlanda so stationed for that.
Speaker 3: That's right, all right.
Speaker 4: So let's start today with the FED, because Jerome Powell
Speaker 4: was in Amsterdam yesterday at the Foreign Bankers Association's Annual meetings.
Speaker 4: Were annual meeting where he commented on the future of
Speaker 4: interest rates.
Speaker 5: Let's take a look at what Jerome Powell.
Speaker 3: Said question of.
Speaker 6: Restrictive policy or as I mentioned, our policy is the
Speaker 6: highest it's been in quite some time.
Speaker 3: The rate is at five and quarter to five and
Speaker 3: a half percent.
Speaker 6: Is high relative to recent history, so we think that
Speaker 6: it's probably a matter of just staying at that stance
Speaker 6: for longer.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let's put this next element up on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is from the New York Times. This is a
Speaker 4: headline fed holds rate study noting lack of progress on infation.
Speaker 4: The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged for a six
Speaker 4: straight meeting and suggested that rates would stay high for longer.
Speaker 4: Now again, a couple weeks later, on May fourteenth, just yesterday,
Speaker 4: Jerome Powell. You could hear the frustration in his voice,
Speaker 4: well to the extent that you can pick up on
Speaker 4: any sort of emotional connotation from what Jerome Powell was
Speaker 4: talking about.
Speaker 5: Ryan, you could hear it. But yeah, it was pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: He was on this panel to glean from what he
Speaker 4: was saying, that frustration that they have.
Speaker 5: Did you catch the rest of us remarks there, Yeah, And.
Speaker 3: He was saying, look, earlier in the year, we were
Speaker 3: hopeful that we were going to be able to cut
Speaker 3: rates before the end of the year. They maybe we
Speaker 3: still will, He's still leaving open that possibility. But then
Speaker 3: there were some economic indicators in the beginning part of
Speaker 3: the year that showed running a little bit hotter than
Speaker 3: they wanted to, and so they're keeping it at this rate.
Speaker 3: He also said, look, when people hear that inflation is
Speaker 3: coming down, they respond by saying, yeah, but prices are
Speaker 3: still way too high. And he said that is what
Speaker 3: is guiding them. And the White House is going to
Speaker 3: hear that and be deeply frustrated because they want to
Speaker 3: see a rate cut that gets the economy kicking again.
Speaker 3: You've finally started to see a slowing of the economy.
Speaker 3: But so much of this is using a tool that
Speaker 3: was developed when the US had a different economy, a
Speaker 3: more manufacturing based economy, and now so much of our
Speaker 3: kind of frozen economy is related to real estate and
Speaker 3: rent that it's really, in some ways the wrong tool.
Speaker 3: JP Morgan, their top analyst, was arguing recently that keeping inflation,
Speaker 3: keeping interest rates high at this point is actually driving
Speaker 3: up prices and curious for your take on this. And
Speaker 3: everybody has a take on this because everybody, everybody interacts
Speaker 3: with the economy. Everybody's either a renter or a homeowner,
Speaker 3: so everybody understands all of the different phenomena that we're
Speaker 3: dealing with. But what he argues is that so many
Speaker 3: people refinance their homes during homeowners finance their homes during COVID,
Speaker 3: and now they're locked in these two point seven or
Speaker 3: three percent interest rates, so they don't want to move,
Speaker 3: so nobody's selling their homes. That means all of these
Speaker 3: people are renting who would rather, who do have the
Speaker 3: ability to buy, but can't because nobody's selling. So that's
Speaker 3: pushing up rent prices. It's also holding housing prices artificially
Speaker 3: high as a result. He's saying, if interest rates come down,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you unlock the supply of housing,
Speaker 3: and all these people who were waiting to sell are
Speaker 3: all going to start to sell. Now there's an alternative
Speaker 3: argument that says, well, there are so many people who
Speaker 3: want to buy. What you would do is that you
Speaker 3: would unlock demand and you would drive prices even further up.
Speaker 3: So nobody actually really knows what would happen. Nobody knows
Speaker 3: do you have more kind of pent up folks who
Speaker 3: want to sell their homes or do you have more
Speaker 3: pent up renters who want to burst into the housing market.
Speaker 3: And the answer to that question would then decide whether
Speaker 3: or not housing prices go up or down, and if
Speaker 3: housing prices go down, rent goes down, inflation goes inflation
Speaker 3: goes down. So that is the thing that is really
Speaker 3: keeping these prices high at this point.
Speaker 4: Another quote from Powell yesterday, he says, is inflation going
Speaker 4: to be more persistent going forward? I don't think we
Speaker 4: know that yet. I think we need more than a
Speaker 4: quarter's worth of data to really make a judgment on that.
Speaker 4: So not good news if you're one of like saying Ryan,
Speaker 4: I mean, people are experiencing the economy differently. But if
Speaker 4: you're somebody who's looking for interest rates to go down
Speaker 4: for different reasons, many different reasons, that's really not what
Speaker 4: you wanted to hear. It's definitely not what the Pie
Speaker 4: administration wanted to hear on that point. But that's where
Speaker 4: Jerome Powell is right now. And you know it's he said,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you caught this part. I just
Speaker 4: barely caught this.
Speaker 5: I almost missed it.
Speaker 4: He said something like, you know, we know this is
Speaker 4: hitting people in different in like lower income brackets harder,
Speaker 4: and they're looking for relief. And that's front of mine
Speaker 4: something that of course it's not just people, but it
Speaker 4: is disproportionately being felt The New York Times.
Speaker 3: Had a good now that you're talking about the like
Speaker 3: huge surgeon prices from twenty twenty to over the next
Speaker 3: couple of years, right, that really has sapped their spending.
Speaker 4: Power inflation, right, yeah, basically, And it's just I mean
Speaker 4: the New York Times had a story on that this week,
Speaker 4: basically how you're feeling it differently if you are in
Speaker 4: a low income bracket, but all around, I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just bad news for everyone all around, basically, right.
Speaker 3: Because yes, everything is just everything is much more expensive
Speaker 3: than it was a couple of years ago, all your
Speaker 3: basic expenses. Yeah, so by the time now, it used
Speaker 3: to be like you're scraping to get to the end
Speaker 3: of the month. Now it's like halfway through the month,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh God.
Speaker 4: And like you said, it's a different economy. So I mean,
Speaker 4: I think about all of the people graduating right now.
Speaker 4: I mean it's may everyone graduating right now going into
Speaker 4: the workforce and trying to start a life and own
Speaker 4: a home. I mean, it just feels so completely unattainable.
Speaker 4: And that's going to trickle into other areas of our
Speaker 4: politics that aren't just economic. Obviously, it's going to express
Speaker 4: itself in all kinds of different angsts and well founded
Speaker 4: angst because it sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a fascinating and difficult to actually measure. Part
Speaker 3: of this has been the immigration surge. And we're going
Speaker 3: to talk about this with Beto later on the Friday Show.
Speaker 3: But you know, there was this massive labor shortage and
Speaker 3: then you had this big surge of immigration. You're still
Speaker 3: seeing wages going up even relative to inflation. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: there's I think there are reasonable signs to say that
Speaker 3: at some levels the wage growth has slowed. But a
Speaker 3: lot of the inflation during the pandemic was related to
Speaker 3: the labor shortage. Supply chains were broken, restaurants were charging
Speaker 3: a lot more because like it couldn't get people to
Speaker 3: come to work, Like there is an inflationary impact of
Speaker 3: not having enough workers. So in some ways, if you
Speaker 3: immigration grows the entire economy.
Speaker 5: Well, he talked about that yesterday.
Speaker 4: Too, Yes, yes, exactly, he actually mentioned yeah, right, he
Speaker 4: actually mentioned like the influx of new work migrants, which
Speaker 4: we probably disagree on that and we're going to get
Speaker 4: to that in our conversation.
Speaker 3: Question is whether they're productive economically, and a lot of
Speaker 3: them are young, a lot of them are working age.
Speaker 3: A lot of them are here to work. A lot
Speaker 3: of them came here because they saw the stories of
Speaker 3: high wages and labor shortages.
Speaker 4: The other big half of the economic news this week
Speaker 4: actually was the Biden administration announcing these pretty significant new tariffs.
Speaker 5: And we can put this tear sheet up.
Speaker 4: This is a three from the Associated Press on the
Speaker 4: tariff hikes that Biden has implemented. He gave a speech
Speaker 4: at the White House earlier this week making the announcement
Speaker 4: start traded some.
Speaker 5: Shots back and forth with Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Let's first start with what Biden said when he announced
Speaker 4: these tariffs in the Rose Garden earlier this week.
Speaker 1: That's why to day, I'm announcing new tariffs and key
Speaker 1: sectors of the economy that are ensured that our workers
Speaker 1: are not held back by unfair trade practices. They clude saying,
Speaker 1: I'm announcing today twenty five percent tariff on Chinese steel
Speaker 1: aluminum products, and we'll counter China's over capacity in these industries.
Speaker 1: And we're making major investments in clean American steel loom,
Speaker 1: clean American steel allumin It's a big deal clean because
Speaker 1: of the way we manufactured here. It's half as much
Speaker 1: carbon as steel made in China. Last month, my administration
Speaker 1: announced the largest investment in clean manufacturing in all of history,
Speaker 1: up to one point five billion dollars and six clean
Speaker 1: steel projects across in America, creating supporting thousands, thousands of
Speaker 1: union jobs. Next one hundred percent TARIF and electric vehicles
Speaker 1: made in China. People say wow, because we're not going
Speaker 1: to let China flood our market making it impossible for
Speaker 1: American model manufacturers to compete fairly. We're also implementing their
Speaker 1: twenty five percent tarifying electric vehicle batteries from China and
Speaker 1: twenty five percent tarifund critical minerals that make those batteries. Folks, look,
Speaker 1: I'm determined that the future of electric vehicles will be
Speaker 1: made in America by union workers period.
Speaker 3: Trump said today, China is getting our LUNs.
Speaker 5: What are you saying, responts?
Speaker 3: He said, China is eating our luks. That's what Trump
Speaker 3: said today.
Speaker 1: We've been being in a long time.
Speaker 3: If you didn't catch that, said Johnald Trump has said
Speaker 3: that China is eating our launch. Yeah, and Biden said
Speaker 3: He's been feeding them for a long time.
Speaker 5: Been feeding them for a long time.
Speaker 3: And Trump makes us all dumber for having watched the
Speaker 3: back and forth.
Speaker 5: So true. Trump said that outside.
Speaker 4: I think it was outside the courtroom earlier this week,
Speaker 4: he said, transmitting her lunch to that, Biden says, well,
Speaker 4: he's been feeding them for a long time, which is
Speaker 4: it's kind of hilarious coming from Joe Biden. But these
Speaker 4: are the tariffs on electric vehicles, as Biden mentioned, semiconductors,
Speaker 4: lithium ion batteries, all kinds of stuff, syringes, needles, yeah,
Speaker 4: solar components, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 5: And the tariff on the EV's.
Speaker 4: I'm curious what you think about this, Ryan, This is
Speaker 4: like one hundred percent tariff.
Speaker 5: I think I think he hiked it from twenty five
Speaker 5: to one hundred.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's one hundred percent increase in the tariff that
Speaker 4: was up from actually like twenty seven percent. And this
Speaker 4: is all happening under section three on one of the
Speaker 4: trade backs of mid seventies piece of legislation. Pretty bold
Speaker 4: decision from Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Those are rookie numbers though, on those evs. One hundred percent.
Speaker 3: If China is producing evs that can sell for like
Speaker 3: eleven to twelve thousand dollars, ye, that's what people are
Speaker 3: saying about these and saying that these are nice little cars.
Speaker 3: You're going to have to do more than one hundred
Speaker 3: percent at eleven thousand dollars to make the American industry competitive.
Speaker 3: So I probably have a pretty heterodox view on this.
Speaker 3: I would say that we need serious protection of our
Speaker 3: domestic solar, EV, clean and clean energy manufacturing industry. If
Speaker 3: we are serious about having an industrial base, if we
Speaker 3: want to be a country that makes things, we're going
Speaker 3: to have to do this. But I think we shouldn't
Speaker 3: do it in the sense of a war with China.
Speaker 3: I think China should be congratulated like good job, Like
Speaker 3: you guys are leading the world when it comes to
Speaker 3: EV production, when it comes to clean energy production. But
Speaker 3: but are.
Speaker 4: They leading the world by cheating via labor? I don't
Speaker 4: mean cheating in terms of like the labor.
Speaker 3: But yeah, uh, you know, we have trade deals. Let's inspect,
Speaker 3: inspect the labor conditions.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know. Obviously, the reason that American companies outsourced to
Speaker 3: China over the last you know, thirty years was because
Speaker 3: labor costs are much lower.
Speaker 5: A lot of businesses.
Speaker 4: The reason that we now need these tariffs because, for example,
Speaker 4: like they would say this to you, I'm playing devil's
Speaker 4: advocate here actually, Like you're the guy who wants all
Speaker 4: of our plants to be unionized, and that's why we
Speaker 4: now need this tariff.
Speaker 3: The end also protectionism. Yeah, go ahead, I'll protect them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's gonna Look, I do want our workers to be
Speaker 3: paid a living wage, yeah, and I want China's workers
Speaker 3: to be paid a living wage too. And China has
Speaker 3: done far more, frankly, to raise wages for their own
Speaker 3: workers than we have over the last thirty years. You know,
Speaker 3: they lifted like eight hundred million people. They had a
Speaker 3: slit lower they had, Yeah, they had a lot more
Speaker 3: room to grow, but it's been a miraculous rate of
Speaker 3: economic growth. Like you can say, whatevery one about the
Speaker 3: human rights condition and so on, although I think it's
Speaker 3: that's exaggerated to some degree by like just our general
Speaker 3: perspective on things. Though of course there's you know, there's
Speaker 3: merit to some of the claims. But South America needs
Speaker 3: EVS needs the products of a clean energy, you know,
Speaker 3: manufacturing base that China has. Africa needs it, Europe needs it,
Speaker 3: Russian needs it, Japan needs it. Like there's plenty of
Speaker 3: people China can sell to go ahead, sell to the
Speaker 3: rest of the world, and let's protect our industry and
Speaker 3: see if we can build one. It might be the
Speaker 3: case that we can't, that the United States of America
Speaker 3: just doesn't know how to do industrialization anymore, like that
Speaker 3: we just can't. Like the Inflation Reduction Act put like
Speaker 3: fifteen billion dollars into like basically subsidizing solar production. It
Speaker 3: was supposed to launch. Four plants were supposed to launch
Speaker 3: so far. I think one of them said, you know what,
Speaker 3: we're actually not launching it all. The other three are
Speaker 3: kind of on ice. And all of those it's because
Speaker 3: generally because the cheaper imports can't be competed with by
Speaker 3: American production at this point, so you're you're in a
Speaker 3: chicken and egg thing, like that's the that's the situation.
Speaker 3: And if that's the current situation, we will never catch
Speaker 3: up because these plants will all fail or they won't
Speaker 3: even get off the ground, like they'll they'll just gobble
Speaker 3: up a bunch of subsidies and then they'll do a
Speaker 3: ribbon cutting and then they won't actually open the factory,
Speaker 3: like which is what happened with at least one of these.
Speaker 3: It might happen with all four. So if you want
Speaker 3: to compete, you just have to basically just keep it out.
Speaker 3: Did you see Jared and one hundred percent might not
Speaker 3: even do it?
Speaker 5: Did you see Jared Paulus's reaction?
Speaker 3: No, what did he say?
Speaker 5: They flipped out on Biden?
Speaker 3: Basically he's a neoliberal like this, this is this cuts
Speaker 3: their core right.
Speaker 5: And yeah, exactly like that. It has been.
Speaker 4: I mean, it has been a neoliberal freak out kind
Speaker 4: of across the board. But when we look back, for example,
Speaker 4: on BTO and we look back on NAFTA, and we
Speaker 4: look back at the industrialization basically, and a lot of people,
Speaker 4: even on the neoliberal side, we'll look back and say,
Speaker 4: you know, we didn't do enough in the transition period
Speaker 4: to help American workers and you know they were going
Speaker 4: to lose these jobs anyway, or the economy was going
Speaker 4: to change anyway, but we should have had some more
Speaker 4: cushion to literally cushion the blow from the changing economy. Well,
Speaker 4: the economy is changing again right now and in this direction,
Speaker 4: and I actually kind of see these as like part
Speaker 4: of the transition and if it's going to happen, if
Speaker 4: it's inevitable, we should make the transition to the extent
Speaker 4: that we can, you know, reindustrialize. That's great. I'm skeptical
Speaker 4: of that, and I wish it were true. I hope
Speaker 4: that it's true. I hope that I'm wrong. But to
Speaker 4: the extent that we can give American workers something to
Speaker 4: hold on to in a transition process, I think that's
Speaker 4: what these do. But you know the Quirky World Socialist website, Yeah,
Speaker 4: what are the trot Skuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, they're like they're recro sectarians who like
Speaker 3: show up at every strike. Basically, if if WS whatever
Speaker 3: it is is not funded by the bosses themselves, like
Speaker 3: they then the boss they're getting a free ride.
Speaker 4: So they had an interesting take on the tariffs, which
Speaker 4: is basically that in lieu.
Speaker 3: Of I'm on whatever, I'm on the opposite side of
Speaker 3: it where it so let me, I want to hear
Speaker 3: where these guys are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this one I'm bringing out curious.
Speaker 4: So they had this this really interesting take where they
Speaker 4: were like, instead of actually cracking down on the financialization
Speaker 4: of the economy, this is just kind of a life raft.
Speaker 5: To the robber barons.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, okay, when when when they make like the
Speaker 3: broad sweeping left wing arguments. Okay, that's fine, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean yeah, it is sort of like nationalized Wall Street.
Speaker 4: So but meantime it's Biden like pasture of the camera
Speaker 4: about union workers blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: But at the mean, like in the meanwhile, this is.
Speaker 3: Not do industrialization, and you're also not going to be
Speaker 3: the center of financial power and trying to compete with
Speaker 3: us militarily. Then and then what what what are we doing?
Speaker 3: Especially when China owns like half our farms.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the any thing with like syringes and needle tariffs,
Speaker 4: I mean, this is should be some common sense stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes, and should we should be able to make syringes, yes, needles, yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: it's that that that like the fact that we can't
Speaker 3: produce those basic things should scare us. It should have
Speaker 3: been should lead to some radical trade policy.
Speaker 4: And I actually think it's funny that most of the
Speaker 4: headlines have been on Chinese evs have been on semiconductors,
Speaker 4: when to me that's some of the biggest news is
Speaker 4: that like Biden, actually that's a really really again anathma
Speaker 4: in the circles that Joe Biden runs in, but like
Speaker 4: a really obvious policy move that is a huge deal,
Speaker 4: a huge deal and will create jobs here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't know if we can do it, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if the US has the ability to
Speaker 3: see through an actual industrial policy, Like does Trump come
Speaker 3: in and reverse these because they are Biden's tariff policies
Speaker 3: And even though you know, nobody loves tariffs more than Trump,
Speaker 3: but now if now, if they're Biden's, does he get
Speaker 3: rid of them? Like, I just don't know if we
Speaker 3: have a system that's you know, functionally capable of competing
Speaker 3: with China's.
Speaker 5: This is the last thought that we have here.
Speaker 4: Let's roll a five, because Biden basically opposed these tariffs
Speaker 4: when Donald Trump was doing with them, and then in
Speaker 4: a very like direct way, I mean, basically replicated what
Speaker 4: Donald Trump did.
Speaker 5: Let's take a look.
Speaker 7: I know that these new tariffs are seen as more
Speaker 7: targeted and strategic that the administration has chosen to keep
Speaker 7: in place those Trump Ara tariffs on some three hundred
Speaker 7: billion dollars worth of goods which Biden himself had signed
Speaker 7: in twenty nineteen that Americans are paying. So why make
Speaker 7: that decision to keep it in place? And aren't you
Speaker 7: concerned that it's going to keep prices elevated.
Speaker 8: So first of all, let me say a couple of things.
Speaker 8: In terms of the price that Americans paid for in
Speaker 8: the previous era, some of that, maybe a lot of
Speaker 8: it was about the chaos and unpredictability it created and
Speaker 8: the escalation that resulted.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 8: Secondly, I think what I'm a trade lawyer by training,
Speaker 8: and at USTR we are deep into the technical issues.
Speaker 8: The Section three OHO one based review that we undertook
Speaker 8: required us to look at a couple questions. One of
Speaker 8: them was the effect of the practices on our economy,
Speaker 8: and there you have our response, which is a targeted,
Speaker 8: strategic response that is meant to work together with the
Speaker 8: investments that we're making. The other aspect that we had
Speaker 8: to look at was the effect of the tariffs on
Speaker 8: changing China's behavior with respect to the IPR abuses and
Speaker 8: the force tech transfer. There the findings in my report,
Speaker 8: which you can find on the USTR website right here,
Speaker 8: it's a serious report, is that not only have we
Speaker 8: not seen the problematic practices subside in some areas, we
Speaker 8: have seen them get worse. And in that light, there
Speaker 8: is actually no reason for us and no justification to
Speaker 8: relieving the tariff burdens on the trade with Beijing.
Speaker 3: It's a funny logic. There's and what she's saying there.
Speaker 4: Catherine tis good who's great on trade, Like she's if
Speaker 4: either party could get somebody like Trump generals great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was this review that tested, okay, it is
Speaker 3: China basically gaming the system by saying, like, okay, you're
Speaker 3: not allowed to have a concentrated industry in a particular field,
Speaker 3: solar panels all in one country, So are they forcing
Speaker 3: transfer of property to like Malaysia and Vietnam and other places.
Speaker 3: But it's actually just paperwork and it's fake and it's
Speaker 3: all actually a Chinese controlled supply chain. And the resulting
Speaker 3: review was like, yeah, they're busted like that, that is
Speaker 3: actually what they're doing. Then she says, so we put
Speaker 3: these tariffs on as a result of this legal process,
Speaker 3: but their behavior didn't change, And then she says, therefore
Speaker 3: we need to continue the tariffs because their behavior didn't change,
Speaker 3: which is kind of a funny logic because on the
Speaker 3: other hand, you don't I guess you don't want to say, well,
Speaker 3: you've got to punish you, and you didn't change your behavior.
Speaker 3: So we're not going to punish you anymore. Like that
Speaker 3: also doesn't work. But the point is we don't really
Speaker 3: have a policy lever that can play here because China
Speaker 3: is extraordinarily powerful and effective, you know, economic giant astride
Speaker 3: this planet right now. It just is. So what we
Speaker 3: have to do is we have to boost our own manufacturing.
Speaker 3: We have to compete with them. Like the idea that
Speaker 3: we're going to be able to significantly change their behavior
Speaker 3: I think is a relic of a of a soul
Speaker 3: superpower period that we just have to get over well.
Speaker 4: And the idea that the American free marketers are going
Speaker 4: to take care of our need for syringes right and needles.
Speaker 3: Exactly, And so we can What we can do is
Speaker 3: we can protect our own industrial domestic con to me, like,
Speaker 3: we can do that, we can connect with that, we
Speaker 3: can try to build plants. But we're not really going
Speaker 3: to tell China what to do anymore. Even if they
Speaker 3: are breaking the rules, yeah, I mean, which they are,
Speaker 3: Like they were doing paperwork stuff to try to cover
Speaker 3: for the fact that they were dominating the market. But
Speaker 3: our answer has to be to actually push back and
Speaker 3: produce things that we can sell to the American people
Speaker 3: and around the world.
Speaker 4: So, Ryan, just as we're wrapping this segment, do you
Speaker 4: see this as I know that you don't actually the
Speaker 4: leading question, but the neoliberals thing one two punch basically
Speaker 4: in the economy this week tough news for people all
Speaker 4: around between Powell and the tariffs. How should people be
Speaker 4: feeling about the economy right now after this time?
Speaker 3: I mean, well, the stock market said that they're very
Speaker 3: excited about the fact that Powell is not going to
Speaker 3: raise rates. The recent jobs report at unemployment under four percent. Again,
Speaker 3: wage growth was still at two point eight percent, which
Speaker 3: is slightly above inflation. So if wages are growing faster
Speaker 3: than inflation, and there are plentiful jobs and union density
Speaker 3: is growing and militancy is strong in general, that is
Speaker 3: a good thing.
Speaker 5: Jobs potentially coming back there, you go, all.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, long way to go. The pandemic, you know,
Speaker 3: ripped through the economy in a brutal way. That that
Speaker 3: we're still recovering from the inflation of twenty one in
Speaker 3: twenty two, but less so than anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 3: Like you look at our like you know, I covered Pakistan,
Speaker 3: they're still sitting at like seventy percent inflation incredible. So
Speaker 3: to have single digits for two years was painful for people,
Speaker 3: but relative to the rest of the world, we're still
Speaker 3: out competing them, believe it or not. Notwithstanding what I
Speaker 3: just said about China's productive capacity.
Speaker 4: And interest rates, still I think it's the highest in
Speaker 4: twenty three years. Still sticking to that spot. Speaking of
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, we have some footage from outside the courtroom
Speaker 4: and the so called hush money Alvin Bragg trial in
Speaker 4: New York where Republicans have devised a strategy of basically
Speaker 4: flooding the zone going up to New York. I'm sure
Speaker 4: it's great for fundraising on their end and speaking out
Speaker 4: on behalf of their beliegered leader. Let's roll this clip
Speaker 4: of Mike Johnson and Vivek Ramaswami in New York yesterday.
Speaker 5: They were also accompanied.
Speaker 4: By Doug Bergham, all kinds of different people.
Speaker 5: I think Byron Donald was there. Let's take a.
Speaker 9: Look, buddy, anybody here in the press, anybody at home,
Speaker 9: anybody in MSNBC or the media afterwards, to clearly state
Speaker 9: what exactly is the crime that Donald Trump committed.
Speaker 10: I'll wait, we have not heard a good answer to
Speaker 10: that question. It has been vague until today.
Speaker 9: You heard Michael Cohen's testimony.
Speaker 10: After which I would say, it is less clear than
Speaker 10: ever what that crime actually was. They'll say, falsifying business records. Well,
Speaker 10: let's look at who do we learn falsified business records today?
Speaker 10: Get what hour two hours felt like, because it's seven
Speaker 10: hours of Michael Cohen talking about how he falsified business records. Okay,
Speaker 10: so you have a guy who has been a perjurer
Speaker 10: in the past that is now saying he falsified business records.
Speaker 10: What is the crime that Donald Trump committed? Now it
Speaker 10: appears to be what they might allege is some sort
Speaker 10: of bookkeeping error or whatever. The real bookkeeping that we
Speaker 10: need accounting of is Judge Merchant's own family member collecting
Speaker 10: millions of dollars as a democratic operative, using the existence
Speaker 10: of this trial as a fundraising employ for Democrats. This
Speaker 10: is unconscroonable. Imagine if the same shoot fit the other foot.
Speaker 11: I'm an attorney, I'm a former litigator myself. I am
Speaker 11: disgusted by what is happening here. What is being done
Speaker 11: here to our entire system of justice overall? The people
Speaker 11: are losing faith right now in this country, in our institutions.
Speaker 11: They're losing faith in our system of justice, and the
Speaker 11: reason for that is because they see it being abused
Speaker 11: as it is being done here in New York. The
Speaker 11: facts here are very important. Facts are always important in
Speaker 11: a trial, or at least they're supposed to be. The
Speaker 11: President's actions in this matter were previously reviewed and no
Speaker 11: charges were filed. Why is that because there's no crime here.
Speaker 11: Now eight years later, suddenly they've resurrected this thing. They
Speaker 11: brought it back, And why is that, Well, just apply
Speaker 11: common sense. Everyone can see it's painfully obvious. They were
Speaker 11: here now six months out from an election day, and
Speaker 11: that's the reason. That is the reason why they brought
Speaker 11: these these charges here and across the country.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of fatigue and exhaustion with Alvin
Speaker 4: Bragg's decision here, even on the left. Ryan, I think
Speaker 4: it's interesting, you know, Tommy Tuberville, Jamdie Vance, I think
Speaker 4: Rick Scott went last week. Yeah, he did go up
Speaker 4: last week to sort of go up to New York.
Speaker 4: Have these moments like we just saw with Mike Johnson
Speaker 4: and Deve Gramaswamy sort of relish the spotlight look like
Speaker 4: they're you know, really.
Speaker 5: They have Donald Trump's back.
Speaker 4: From my perspective, you know, we just did a whole
Speaker 4: segment on the economy. I find it very interesting that
Speaker 4: people are sort of patting Mike Johnson continue to be
Speaker 4: a real person.
Speaker 5: We can confirm on the.
Speaker 4: Back for this when it's like the dude just flip
Speaker 4: flopped on Faiza and he's doing this to like make
Speaker 4: you feel like he's maga. Like this is again, like
Speaker 4: the case is ridiculous, but Mike Johnson is going up here.
Speaker 5: Other Republicans are going up here.
Speaker 4: They might not actually vote the way that you want
Speaker 4: them to, but they're gonna do that and act like
Speaker 4: they're super maga because this is a really easy opportunity.
Speaker 4: I mean, even liberals in the New York Times are
Speaker 4: in vain against Alvin Bragg at this point, saying, you know,
Speaker 4: at first there was a not bad A couple weeks
Speaker 4: THO was like, this is a grave mistake because he
Speaker 4: had to upgrade because the statue of Statute of limitations.
Speaker 4: He had to basically devise the strategy to say this
Speaker 4: wasn't a misdemeanor, it was actually a felony because it
Speaker 4: was about breaking federal campaign finance laws, which is really
Speaker 4: unclear because if Donald Trump had classified the hush money
Speaker 4: payments to a board star as something else, you know,
Speaker 4: it also doesn't really make sense from a legal standpoint
Speaker 4: that that's the argument. And even to say that it
Speaker 4: was done to break federal campaign finance laws, he has
Speaker 4: to prove that it was only about the campaign. There
Speaker 4: were no personal reasons for hushing up somebody who is
Speaker 4: alleging that they had an affair with you while your
Speaker 4: wife was what pregnant.
Speaker 5: So it's just a.
Speaker 3: Circus, right, because it's this interesting situation where nobody, nobody
Speaker 3: seems to doubt that he did what he did from
Speaker 3: beginning to end. Question as well as it's a crime.
Speaker 3: And later in this program, we're going to talk about
Speaker 3: how Apak is spending millions of dollars secretly in a
Speaker 3: congressional race in order to influence it, using shell packs
Speaker 3: in order to get around kind of disclosure requirements. Nobody's
Speaker 3: remotely suggesting they're going to be prosecuted for any of that.
Speaker 3: Nobody gets prosecuted for anything when it comes to campaign
Speaker 3: finance law. The idea that this would be the one
Speaker 3: thing that would get prosecuted, I think is the reason
Speaker 3: that a lot of his supporters like, really, come on, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like hush money is legal, right and right it
Speaker 3: is okay, So and then you're saying, okay, well, is
Speaker 3: do we expect Donald Trump is like going over the
Speaker 3: paperwork that's filed on his behalf, either to the fec
Speaker 3: or to the like guy. And what good would that
Speaker 3: even do? Donald? Can you imagine Donald Trump like going
Speaker 3: over paperwork with a fine tooth comb, like it is
Speaker 3: a criminalizing his existence, which I'm for well, but it's
Speaker 3: hard to stand up stand up that on principle.
Speaker 4: So Michael Cohene was testifying yesterday obviously, and that was
Speaker 4: a big media circus as well, the ne're Times rates.
Speaker 4: When monthly checks to Cohen started arriving, most bearing mister
Speaker 4: Trump's signature, they disguised the nature of the payments. Mister
Speaker 4: Cohen testified the stubs described the checks as part of
Speaker 4: a legal quote retainer agreement, but they were in fact
Speaker 4: reimbursements for hush money that mister con had paid to
Speaker 4: silence a porn star story of sex with mister Trump.
Speaker 4: Mister Cohen said that mister Trump was present when a
Speaker 4: plan to fictionalize the records was cooked up weeks earlier
Speaker 4: in New York. The testimony marked a pivotal moment for prosecutors.
Speaker 4: They charged mister Trump with falsifying the checks and other records,
Speaker 4: and mister Cohen's were counting drove those accusations home. So obviously,
Speaker 4: Michael Cohen was cross examined yesterday as well, and it
Speaker 4: was admitting all kinds of.
Speaker 5: Stuff left and right.
Speaker 4: This follows the week of Stormy Daniels testifying, and we
Speaker 4: had David Pecker, who owned the media group behind the
Speaker 4: National Inquirer, testifying, and you know, the cross examination of
Speaker 4: Michael Cohen was, you know, basically what you would expect.
Speaker 4: So for at one point, Cohen was asked whether he
Speaker 4: knew whether he knew who he was who. Okay, this
Speaker 4: is this confusing the way that I'm reading this, but
Speaker 4: basically here's the CNN. Donald Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche began
Speaker 4: his confrontation with Michael Cohen on Tuesday by throwing the
Speaker 4: former fixer's language back in his face. Blanche confirmed the
Speaker 4: two had never spoken, but asked Cohen whether he knew
Speaker 4: who he was already since con quote went on TikTok
Speaker 4: and called me a crying little shit just before the
Speaker 4: trial began. Con responded, sounds like something I would say
Speaker 4: just Trumpian all around, like the peak Trump for Trump's trial.
Speaker 4: So he got grilled on the stand yesterday, but then
Speaker 4: the prosecution also felt like they got real concessions or
Speaker 4: got real emissions out of him that seal their case,
Speaker 4: which is these checks coming from and again like if
Speaker 4: you don't think Donald Trump did this that, I mean,
Speaker 4: we all kind of know what happened here. In all likelihood,
Speaker 4: we all kind of know what happened here.
Speaker 3: And then there's also the witness intimidation slash shenanigans that
Speaker 3: Cohen testified to yesterday. You know, he called Trump and
Speaker 3: after the FBI rated him, and Trump told him, according
Speaker 3: to Cohen, don't worry. I'm the president of the United States.
Speaker 3: There's nothing here. Everything's going to be okay, stay tough,
Speaker 3: You're going to be okay. Messages then later relayed to
Speaker 3: him sleep well tonight. You have friends in high places,
Speaker 3: a very clear suggestion from Trump that look, I'm the president.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to let you go down for this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if it's true, which again I think most people
Speaker 4: would probably believe, but Michael Cohen has also lied. And
Speaker 4: so just from the standpoint of the case strategy, this
Speaker 4: is a case based on David Packer's Stormy Daniels and
Speaker 4: Michael Cohen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, the thing that comes through here is everybody
Speaker 3: in the Trump world knows that Trump treats a lot
Speaker 3: of people around him terribly. He probably treated nobody more
Speaker 3: terribly than Michael Cohen. And now we know that Michael
Speaker 3: Cohen was harboring Mount Vesuvius level resentment against him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that once Trump did not have is back as he
Speaker 3: promised on. This has just erupted, right, And so on
Speaker 3: the one hand, you say, well, he's flipping, he's telling
Speaker 3: the truth on his old wretched boss, right, And you're
Speaker 3: saying he would like nothing more than just to see
Speaker 3: this guy convicted and go down, right, and it kills
Speaker 3: him that Trump remains like a part of our national
Speaker 3: politics and leading the presidential race.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, No, I mean absolutely, And Trump is facing again,
Speaker 4: is facing prison over this. And I know we've talked
Speaker 4: about this before.
Speaker 3: I'm not Yeah, it skeptical. I mean, it's a felony,
Speaker 3: you know, thirty four felonies or whatever.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, it is a felony, and so the
Speaker 4: former president of United States, the leading presidential candidate, facing
Speaker 4: felony charges for this. There's a host of other cases
Speaker 4: obviously as well, as much as both of us are
Speaker 4: in favor of locking up white cott criminals personally, if
Speaker 4: you're just we need to go after one party in
Speaker 4: two sort of ticky tacky ways, I just think it's it's, obviously,
Speaker 4: from my prospective, a very dangerous road to go down.
Speaker 4: And every day we hear testimony from this trial about
Speaker 4: whether or not Donald Trump was like wink wink nod
Speaker 4: mafia style falsifying checks. It's like, is this really what
Speaker 4: we're talking about with Donald Trump? Like you, why are
Speaker 4: we doing this?
Speaker 5: Talk about something else?
Speaker 4: There's plenty to talk about when it comes to Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: and instead he's in New York. Well, you know, we
Speaker 4: have to listen to Michael Cohen and Stormy and Daniels
Speaker 4: recount their various interactions with him over the years.
Speaker 5: The University of.
Speaker 4: North Carolina at Chapel Hill has voted via their Board
Speaker 4: of trustees to divert to funnel a lot of money
Speaker 4: that was spent previously on diversity equity and inclusion program,
Speaker 4: so DEI.
Speaker 5: Into public safety.
Speaker 4: This just happened this week, and we can put the
Speaker 4: first element up on the screen.
Speaker 5: This is the headlin and from.
Speaker 4: The Guardian, a two point three million dollar DEI budget
Speaker 4: now going to safety and policing. The chairman of the board,
Speaker 4: his name is David Baliek, told the Raleigh News and
Speaker 4: Observer that he expected jobs would be eliminated quote as
Speaker 4: a result of the reallocation. He said, my personal opinion
Speaker 4: is that there's administrative bloat in the university, and he
Speaker 4: cuts an administration and diverting of dollars to rubber meets
Speaker 4: the road.
Speaker 5: Efforts like public safety and teaching is important. Now.
Speaker 4: You and C became a somewhat of a flashpoint in
Speaker 4: the greater encampment debate. Because we're going to skip ahead
Speaker 4: with the elements here, we can put this vo up
Speaker 4: on This is C three of the Fraternity Brothers protecting
Speaker 4: the American flag after some protesters had tried to take
Speaker 4: it down, according to reporting Fox News and replace it
Speaker 4: with a Palestinian flag.
Speaker 5: This went massively viral.
Speaker 4: I think they got like a ten thousand dollars donation
Speaker 4: from Bill Ackman on a gofund me, although there were
Speaker 4: different fraternities who were getting nations and we're going viral
Speaker 4: for doing things like this, But that again sort of
Speaker 4: thrust this back into the spotlight for you. And see
Speaker 4: obviously there've even been academic studies on this point. The
Speaker 4: rolling back of DEI spending has kind of happened across
Speaker 4: the board academia, It's happened in corporations. But you know,
Speaker 4: I would argue, and have interviewed people in the who
Speaker 4: watched this in the corporate space, some of it is
Speaker 4: actually not really being rolled back.
Speaker 5: It's being rolled back.
Speaker 4: In name and then you know you're seeing it still
Speaker 4: happen intentionally in other places, kind of being disguised, disguised
Speaker 4: and obfuscated rather than fully abandoned. But in the case
Speaker 4: of UNC here, it's actually really being fully abandoned. I
Speaker 4: think jobs will be lost. Well, last thing I'll point
Speaker 4: out Ryan before I toss to you, because you have
Speaker 4: some interesting thoughts on this I'm excited to get to,
Speaker 4: is that when the president of the board said that
Speaker 4: they have administrative bloat, He's right. There was a Progressive
Speaker 4: Policy Institute sort of ran would you describe them as
Speaker 4: kind of.
Speaker 5: Third Way e.
Speaker 3: So it is their length third Way.
Speaker 5: They're literally they're like third Ways Think Tank.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they had a so by that way mean kind
Speaker 4: of centrist. But they had a report looking at the
Speaker 4: student to faculty ratio at the top fifty universities that
Speaker 4: was released just last fall, so this is very recent.
Speaker 4: They found that there are three times as many non
Speaker 4: faculty members as they are as there are faculty per
Speaker 4: student at the top fifty schools in the United States.
Speaker 4: That's new, that's a shift, that's something that's happened over
Speaker 4: the course of many years. So just a lot of
Speaker 4: people's student loan is paying for some of the positions
Speaker 4: that might be eliminated. And maybe rather than reallocating two
Speaker 4: point three million dollars you want to give them to
Speaker 4: public safety, you might want to give that back to students.
Speaker 4: But actually, neighboring Duke has one of the worst non
Speaker 4: faculty ratios to student ratio non faculty to student ratios.
Speaker 5: And when I say one of.
Speaker 4: The worst, they literally have more non faculty than students
Speaker 4: at Duke. The ratio at UNC is three point five.
Speaker 4: I have students to one non faculty. So that's administrative position. Basically,
Speaker 4: obviously you need some of those positions. But part of
Speaker 4: the reason that universities have been on this hiring spree
Speaker 4: is because of the constant increase in student loan potential.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: I don't know if we even disagree on this, but basically,
Speaker 4: when you have the massive subsidy in the form of loans,
Speaker 4: students are able to keep affording colleges. Their college just
Speaker 4: keeps marking up the prices. And that's definitely what's happened
Speaker 4: across the board, and what they've done with a lot
Speaker 4: of that money is higher administrators have gotten into this
Speaker 4: administrative arms race. They've also had like the Lazy River
Speaker 4: arms race, that's happened too. But you flagged an argument
Speaker 4: from sam Adler Bell that I was really interested in
Speaker 4: getting to as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, sam Adler Bell has been one of my Ninja
Speaker 3: comrades over the years, and like fighting the kind of
Speaker 3: pro DEI left from the left and Ninja is like
Speaker 3: the attacks just keep coming, right and we're going to
Speaker 3: just keep fending them off to that. So, these two
Speaker 3: tweets are in response to NYU faculty and staff for
Speaker 3: Justice in Palestine putting out a statement that said that
Speaker 3: NYU is punishing arrested students by requiring them to complete
Speaker 3: quote reflection papers and completion of quote integrity modules. And
Speaker 3: so this is the kind of students are protesting against
Speaker 3: what the DEI office is kind of punishing them with.
Speaker 3: So Sam says, for what it's worth, I do think
Speaker 3: this stuff should force the left to rethink its hostility
Speaker 3: to the more sophisticated arguments against the deiification of university administration.
Speaker 3: If this sounds to you like quote forced re education
Speaker 3: and repudiation in response to thought crimes unquote, maybe we
Speaker 3: should all reconsider the paradigms that have made this seem
Speaker 3: an appropriate response to political speech. So what he is
Speaker 3: saying there is that if you feel like you're being
Speaker 3: lectured to and re educated by the administration just for
Speaker 3: stating your political opinion that Palestinians deserve justice, that Palestinians
Speaker 3: should not be the victims of an ethnic cleansing, that
Speaker 3: the university ought to divest from the Israeli military industrial complex,
Speaker 3: and they respond to you by this like insane, like
Speaker 3: you know, making right reflection papers and telling you that
Speaker 3: you've committed thought crimes. And what he's saying there is
Speaker 3: that flip it over, flip it around. Think about that
Speaker 3: from another perspective. You don't like it that the administration
Speaker 3: is telling you that you're guilty of wrong thing, that
Speaker 3: you're thinking the wrong things. You don't like that, do you?
Speaker 3: You should be able to think for yourself. Apply that
Speaker 3: to everybody. Take ownership of your own independent thought process.
Speaker 3: Don't outsource it to administrators. Yeah, don't let them be
Speaker 3: the art of what is good and what is bad.
Speaker 3: What is right is what is wrong. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm old man yelling at clouds, But what I have
Speaker 3: been yelling at this cloud for several years now is
Speaker 3: that this empowering, this active empowering of administrators is counter
Speaker 3: to the kind of freethinking, you know, people power that
Speaker 3: the left is supposed to be about. Like back in
Speaker 3: say the nineties and two thousands if or and before that,
Speaker 3: people were protesting against the administration. The protests over the
Speaker 3: last ten to fifteen years are demands that more administrators
Speaker 3: be hired to cover particular areas and that more offices
Speaker 3: be created and.
Speaker 5: Driven by by Obama or Title nine policies.
Speaker 3: And now those offices are being turned predictably as predicted
Speaker 3: back against left. Yeah, yeah, I'll stop doing that.
Speaker 4: You're bankrupting working class people. You're bankrupting people on their way,
Speaker 4: bankrupting people as they are on their way in the
Speaker 4: course of upward mobility, supposedly as they're claiming their ticket
Speaker 4: to the middle class. That higher education is supposed to
Speaker 4: be punging people tens of thousands of dollars into debt
Speaker 4: in large part to finance a thought regime basically, and
Speaker 4: an inflexible thought regime at that. And I think it
Speaker 4: took a lot of people on the left, and I
Speaker 4: don't think the broader left is still cued into this basically,
Speaker 4: but like it took people a little bit to realize
Speaker 4: that these thought regimes actually are really restrictive. Not a
Speaker 4: lot of sympathy for the conservative students who end up
Speaker 4: on the wrong side of it and have for decades,
Speaker 4: but especially over the course of the last decade post
Speaker 4: Title nine Obama era regulations and post cancel culture and
Speaker 4: all of that was a lot of sympathy for conservative students.
Speaker 4: But this is actually wrong, is actually meant to advance
Speaker 4: the interests of people who are using it as window
Speaker 4: dressing for their basically neoliberal politics, and it's disgusting and
Speaker 4: it's hollowing out. It's contributing to the hollowing out of
Speaker 4: the middle class. We have people spilled blood to create
Speaker 4: laws in this country that forbid discrimination on a racial basis,
Speaker 4: sexual basis, that we have a lot of laws on
Speaker 4: the books to do that. College campuses are unique environments,
Speaker 4: I think, especially in terms of questions like sexual assault.
Speaker 4: These are really serious conversations. But to say that these
Speaker 4: administrations have become bloated as even an understatement. We have
Speaker 4: just blown up universities in the name of not creating
Speaker 4: thought restrictions, whatever that means.
Speaker 5: People.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, not only is the budget now being sent
Speaker 3: over to cops, which, like we said, earlis like an
Speaker 3: onion headline, but the overreach has empowered the Stephen Miller's
Speaker 3: of the world to then fight back against all efforts
Speaker 3: to advance civil rights, in advance diversity in hiring, and
Speaker 3: acceptance in general across the board. It's just getting the
Speaker 3: baby is just getting thrown out with the bathwater. Because
Speaker 3: I'm somebody who thinks that, Look, if you're grappling with
Speaker 3: the legacy of racism, things don't just go away on
Speaker 3: their own because you just want them to like it
Speaker 3: takes actual affirmative action on the part of a society
Speaker 3: to grapple with those legacies. And so even if that
Speaker 3: means what the NFL called a roomy rule, which is like, look,
Speaker 3: there is just a subtle there's a subtle sense in
Speaker 3: the NFL back in the you know, it's not as
Speaker 3: pronounced as it used to be at all. But for
Speaker 3: years there were no black head coaches, and no black
Speaker 3: head coaches were even getting no assistant coaches were even
Speaker 3: getting interviewed for the jobs. So they create a rule.
Speaker 3: It said, you have to interview somebody who's black or
Speaker 3: who's not white. You know, we're not saying you have
Speaker 3: to hire them, but for God's sake, just stop this
Speaker 3: thing where you just call your four friends like you're
Speaker 3: all your friends are white. And if you don't break
Speaker 3: that cycle, that's just gonna how it's going to be
Speaker 3: how it propels forward. And so the rules interview something
Speaker 3: and then turned out like, oh, wow, this guy's really
Speaker 3: good and we want to win, so we're hiring this guy.
Speaker 3: And so even though he's not in our social circle,
Speaker 3: he's not our friend. So you need you need, you
Speaker 3: do need. I think if you're going to break the legacy.
Speaker 3: And if you want a legacy to become a legacy
Speaker 3: rather than the ongoing part of your culture, you need
Speaker 3: some intervention like that. Instead, this kind of this uh
Speaker 3: DEI at ideology metastasized and took over and became its
Speaker 3: own thing, and it and then was rightly targeted by everybody,
Speaker 3: and and some of the nefarious people like Miller are
Speaker 3: gonna use it to toss everything out.
Speaker 4: It's definitely going to swing the pendulum or risks swing
Speaker 4: swinging the pendulum back in a Yeah, like if I
Speaker 4: if I'm on the left, yeah, I would have the
Speaker 4: exact concerns that you do. And I even on the
Speaker 4: right have concerns that there are people who will take
Speaker 4: it too far. But this is, you know, probably not
Speaker 4: an example of that. Although I would just give the
Speaker 4: money back to the students in some way or another,
Speaker 4: because two point three million dollars it's chump changed to
Speaker 4: a university. But there's there's got to be a better
Speaker 4: better use for it, certainly than the DEI administrators.