Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: What do we have, Crystal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of news breaking. Just this morning,
Speaker 1: we have drone strikes that have been reported in residential
Speaker 1: areas inside of Moscow. This is obviously dramatic new development
Speaker 1: in the Ukraine War, so we will tell you about
Speaker 1: the fallout from that. We also have more conservatives going
Speaker 1: on the record trashing the debt deal, but Trump remaining
Speaker 1: conspiculously silent, which is kind of interesting of itself.
Speaker 3: You all might have followed this.
Speaker 1: There's a big situation political situation unfolding down in Texas
Speaker 1: where the attorney general has been impeached in the houses.
Speaker 3: We'll go to the Senate.
Speaker 1: Where his wife is a senator and maybe voting on
Speaker 1: whether or not he is convicted there for a host
Speaker 1: of alleged violations and crimes. So we'll break that down
Speaker 1: for you. We also have more updates for you on
Speaker 1: that commercial real estate potential debt bomb looming over America
Speaker 1: cities and the country at large.
Speaker 3: DeSantis and Trump go into war.
Speaker 1: On a few more things Disney, and also Trump's connections
Speaker 1: to Saudi Arabia and MSBC really doing their thing with
Speaker 1: regard to backing up establishment democrats on full display in
Speaker 1: a new interview between Mehdi Hassan and Mary and Williamson.
Speaker 3: So we will bring you that as.
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Speaker 2: with the major news that happened overnight. Let's go and
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen. We had a
Speaker 2: drone strike attack all across the city of Moscow early
Speaker 2: this morning or I guess early Tuesday, Moscow time. According
Speaker 2: to Russian authorities, the first attacks hit civilian areas in
Speaker 2: Moscow and it is quote a potent sign that the
Speaker 2: war is increasingly reaching the heart of Russia. It's not
Speaker 2: exactly a mystery as to who is responsible for this,
Speaker 2: especially Crystal, because the Ukrainian Intelligence Service released a statement
Speaker 2: yesterday saying we will retaliate for the missile attacks that
Speaker 2: are currently happening on Kiev. And of course this is
Speaker 2: a terrible development because it's not just Moscow.
Speaker 4: It comes after Moscow.
Speaker 2: Which this is the first time is raining missiles and
Speaker 2: drones down upon Kiev and actually killed somebody.
Speaker 4: Just yesterday.
Speaker 2: This was the resumption of two straight days of miss
Speaker 2: and drone attacks on the Ukrainian capital, and you know,
Speaker 2: I just think it underscores the real death spiral about
Speaker 2: what's happening here.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: Luckily nobody was killed in the Moscow attack.
Speaker 2: What I guess, depending on which you take, nobody was
Speaker 2: killed in the Moscow attack. So but I mean, you
Speaker 2: can only imagine, like it's one thing, I think, to
Speaker 2: target the Kremlin building to hit a flag, once you
Speaker 2: start hitting civilian buildings, which once again you have to
Speaker 2: be fair, It's not like Russians haven't been killing Ukrainian
Speaker 2: civilians left and right, all across parking lots, shopping malls
Speaker 2: and all that other stuff. So they're getting a little
Speaker 2: bit of a taste of their own medicine. But there
Speaker 2: is no question that this is almost certainly going to
Speaker 2: harden and increased support inside of Russia. I mean, can
Speaker 2: you only imagine if war ever came to the doorstep
Speaker 2: of the United States of America like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: we have not tasted anything like this, and ever so
Speaker 2: it's almost difficult to even wrap your head around what
Speaker 2: this is going to feel like for the average Russian civilian.
Speaker 2: The populace, the way that the media putin and all
Speaker 2: of them are going to run with this and unfortunately
Speaker 2: only likely lead to even more of an escalation spiral
Speaker 2: where you can continue to count on even more drone
Speaker 2: and missile attacks on the city of Kief. We tried
Speaker 2: to vet some video and stuff coming out of it,
Speaker 2: but we don't want to be responsible for showing anything
Speaker 2: that's not right. You know, some things that we're floating
Speaker 2: around out there. But this is the best of what
Speaker 2: we have right now. We know that some of the
Speaker 2: drones were shot down by Russian authorities, but not all
Speaker 2: of them, and they ultimately did target residential buildings.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I talked to our friend Yegor, who lives in Moscow
Speaker 1: about what his experience is there on the ground. As
Speaker 1: best as he knows, there were no deaths and no
Speaker 1: one even sent to the hospital. The impact here appears
Speaker 1: to be purely psychological, and I think it could be
Speaker 1: a really significant impact. I mean, imagine you living in
Speaker 1: a city that was being bombed by drone strikes from
Speaker 1: an adversary. And this is remember at the start of
Speaker 1: this war, Putin went out of his way to try
Speaker 1: to shield the population from any impact. Obviously, we're in
Speaker 1: a very very different place now. According to yegg Or
Speaker 1: at a peer, again, this is all unvetted based on
Speaker 1: the account and the reporting that he's able to take
Speaker 1: in there. On the ground, it appears that wealthier areas
Speaker 1: of the city were targeted. Those drones appear to be
Speaker 1: the ones that were largely shot down successfully, But there
Speaker 1: was a drone strike that did hit a residential apartment
Speaker 1: block of you know more sort of like middle class
Speaker 1: or working class people. And again fortunately there were no deaths.
Speaker 1: I think, just to be really clear, whether your cause
Speaker 1: is just or whether your cause is unjust, Targeting residential
Speaker 1: civilian areas is wrong, period, end of story.
Speaker 3: And you know, so you could look at it and say, okay,
Speaker 3: but you know Russia did it to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one is justifying that either, Like the toll
Speaker 1: on civilians in this war is horrific. So what does
Speaker 1: this mean? I mean, I think you're probably right. The
Speaker 1: most likely outcome in terms of the Russian populace is
Speaker 1: that it hardens their position. It makes them more supportive
Speaker 1: of Putin's war effort. It sort of strengthens his hand
Speaker 1: in terms of the popular if he needs to do
Speaker 1: another draft or if there's additional sort of economic suffering
Speaker 1: that the population has to endure.
Speaker 3: It probably strengthens in sand.
Speaker 1: There is a chance that it goes in the other direction,
Speaker 1: and people say, you know, this is insane. I didn't
Speaker 1: sign up for this, and now my apartment building is
Speaker 1: being potentially under attack from Ukraine. It could theoretically go
Speaker 1: in either direction. But I think you're probably right Zager
Speaker 1: about the way people are going to respond to this.
Speaker 2: People have thought that ever since World War Two, and
Speaker 2: guess what happened. It's like Hitler was like, I will
Speaker 2: break the back of the British.
Speaker 4: By bombing London. What ended up happening.
Speaker 2: They were like, oh, screw you, every single one of
Speaker 2: us will go and hide in a tunnel and then
Speaker 2: we will fight this war until the bitter end. By
Speaker 2: the way, the same thing happened whenever the Allies also
Speaker 2: bombed Germany. Didn't actually do all that much to weaken
Speaker 2: the Nazi regime, at least in terms of their political support.
Speaker 4: And if you go and you take.
Speaker 2: It further, what we dropped more bombs in a single
Speaker 2: mission on North Vietnam than we did in all of
Speaker 2: World War Two?
Speaker 4: Did it break the back of the communists? Resolve?
Speaker 2: No, actually to harden the civilian populace. So and this
Speaker 2: is a message to both sides really because it's you
Speaker 2: know that the Russians, they're the ones who take an
Speaker 2: indiscriminate bombing and have mastered the practice basically in this war.
Speaker 2: And it's like, well, what do you think is going
Speaker 2: to happen? Yet, of course the Ukrainians aren't going to buckle.
Speaker 2: If anything, they're probably a more strengthened polity than they
Speaker 2: were before the war.
Speaker 4: So congratulations to.
Speaker 1: That urged the Ukrainian national identity, you know, like made
Speaker 1: it stronger than ever.
Speaker 3: So congratulations.
Speaker 2: Then you know, you got to do the other counter,
Speaker 2: which is, hey, just so you know, every time somebody
Speaker 2: thinks they could take on Russia and they bomb them,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, they're.
Speaker 4: Just about to fold and all that. What do they do?
Speaker 2: They they bunckle down, They crack down on their entire
Speaker 2: civilian populace, They criminalize any dissent, and then they throw
Speaker 2: everything they possibly can at you. And this is a
Speaker 2: great power nation with millions of people, with a major
Speaker 2: industrial base, a real economy, and the consequences of that
Speaker 2: can be much much more dire than what we have
Speaker 2: already seen in Ukraine, which is already a human catastrophe
Speaker 2: with tens of thousands of people who are now dead.
Speaker 2: So none of there's no cheerleading here, only to just
Speaker 2: say like this is this is bad, you know, and
Speaker 2: anytime you see any escalation in terms of the terms,
Speaker 2: you can only expect.
Speaker 4: Just more death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's possibly even more risk to us also, which
Speaker 2: is scarce.
Speaker 1: A really key point, especially at a time when we've
Speaker 1: just s greenlt F sixteen's and you know, Zelenski promise.
Speaker 4: You said he won't use them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, you know you can take that for what
Speaker 3: it's worth.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be and already are people on
Speaker 1: Twitter who are saying, maybe this is a false like listen,
Speaker 1: I mean, you never know. But every single time we've
Speaker 1: had one of these events, you know, the bombings of
Speaker 1: various activists, bloggers on the ground, the during strikes on
Speaker 1: the Kremlin like the or stream two y line and
Speaker 1: bombing at the end of the day after a little while,
Speaker 1: we get the news oh guess what it was actually Ukraine.
Speaker 1: But as far as I know, they haven't actually taken
Speaker 1: responsibility for the attacks yet. So I do want to
Speaker 1: put that out there is.
Speaker 2: They're not going to take responsibility. They lie every single Look,
Speaker 2: this is where I get annoyed. I'm not even gonna
Speaker 2: qualify it. It's obviously Ukraine. What Russia bombed its own populace,
Speaker 2: no way, its own residential its own residential buildings. After
Speaker 2: the our own intelligence committee is secretly like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: actually it was the Ukrainians.
Speaker 4: Such a shocker that bombed the Kremlin.
Speaker 2: In an every way, it's very obvious who is behind
Speaker 2: the attack. They're not going to take responsibility because they
Speaker 2: never officially acknowledge that they were the ones that were
Speaker 2: behind the attack. It's actually Ukrainian policy at this point.
Speaker 2: And you can also take that one to the bank.
Speaker 2: Whenever they come out and say, oh, we had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with it and it wasn't us, it's like, well,
Speaker 2: why should we believe you? You say you're not going
Speaker 2: to use our F sixteens or our made F sixteens
Speaker 2: on Russian territory. There's absolutely no reason to believe you,
Speaker 2: especially when the stakes get higher and higher for the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians as they're continually waiting for this spring offensive to
Speaker 2: shake up. From what I've been reading, it looks like
Speaker 2: the ground is beginning to get dryer, or we're getting
Speaker 2: to that period where they will be able to launch
Speaker 2: without having to worry as much about the mud.
Speaker 4: So this is it. This is the put up or
Speaker 4: shut up moment, you know.
Speaker 2: Depending on the result of this, it could basically swing
Speaker 2: the war in either direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the danger of broader conflagration, of a larger
Speaker 1: escalation continues to exist, and that's why these actions are
Speaker 1: really dangerous from our perspective as well. But also again,
Speaker 1: whether your cause is just or unjust, don't target civilian
Speaker 1: residential areas.
Speaker 3: It's just wrong.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go to the very latest we know about
Speaker 1: the debt sealing. As you guys know, McCarthy and Biden
Speaker 1: had this worked out.
Speaker 3: This deal.
Speaker 1: I think it's very likely the Democratic side is more
Speaker 1: or less going to accept it because it is less bad.
Speaker 1: It is, in my opinion, still bad that they negotiate
Speaker 1: on this at all, but it is less bad than
Speaker 1: what I think a lot of Democrats were expecting. Republicans
Speaker 1: on the other side not too happy. We did get
Speaker 1: some comments from President Biden about how he sees this
Speaker 1: all shaking out. Let's take a listen a little bit
Speaker 1: of what he had to say Democrats.
Speaker 5: I oh, yes, no question.
Speaker 3: Well you guys are you guys?
Speaker 6: Will you realize you're not in a real world? No question.
Speaker 6: There is no reason why I shouldn't get done by
Speaker 6: the fifth. I'm confident that we'll get a vote in
Speaker 6: boat houses and we'll see and look, one of the things.
Speaker 5: That I here some of.
Speaker 6: You guys saying, is why didn't Biden say what a
Speaker 6: good dealer is? Why would Biden to say what a
Speaker 6: good dealer before the vote? Think that's going to help
Speaker 6: me get a pass? Oh that's why you guys, don't
Speaker 6: Bartner very well?
Speaker 3: So two pieces there.
Speaker 1: Number one, June fifth is the new x state that
Speaker 1: Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen says that is when the Treasury
Speaker 1: is likely to run out of money. It's actually amazing
Speaker 1: people have crunched the numbers of like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of billionaires in the world right now that actually
Speaker 1: have more money than the United States Treasure, which is
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. So June fifth is the appears to
Speaker 1: be the drop dead date. So the reporters are asking, like,
Speaker 1: you know, with legislation maneuvering in the seventy two hour
Speaker 1: waiting period, are you going to be able to get
Speaker 1: it done by June fifth, and he's like, get real,
Speaker 1: you all do only in the real world. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're going to get it done, which is probably true
Speaker 1: in terms of they can always find shortcuts when they
Speaker 1: ultimately need to get something through quickly.
Speaker 3: So that's that piece.
Speaker 1: The other one saga I want to get your thoughts on.
Speaker 1: There's been some discussion of like Biden's strategy in all
Speaker 1: of this, and he's been very sort of non communicative
Speaker 1: during this whole process of the negotiations. I was critical
Speaker 1: of him previously because it led to Republicans really getting
Speaker 1: the upper hand in terms of messaging where the public
Speaker 1: was very divided about who would be to blame if
Speaker 1: the country did go over that fiscal cliff, which I
Speaker 1: think is a real loss given that clearly it was
Speaker 1: the Republicans who forced this whole crisis situation. But he
Speaker 1: lays out there very plainly what his strategy is. He's like,
Speaker 1: it would not be helpful to getting this thing through
Speaker 1: a Republican house if I were to go out and
Speaker 1: talk about what a great deal it is, so I'm
Speaker 1: just going to keep my mouth shut, which you know
Speaker 1: is probably the.
Speaker 2: Right strategy, yes and no, So it actually requires kind
Speaker 2: of thinking about it on a strategic level and then
Speaker 2: like on an operational level. So operationally I think he
Speaker 2: was correct because he did get a better deal, especially
Speaker 2: if you compare his deal to President Obama's deals back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eleven. But rhetorically, who won in
Speaker 2: that fight, Well, we actually have a lot of polling
Speaker 2: to compare ten years ago. President Obama one hundred percent
Speaker 2: was on the upside of public opinion. Public opinion was like, no,
Speaker 2: we blame the Republicans, we are pro with the president.
Speaker 2: He messaged relentlessly around it, although he did on substance
Speaker 2: get a worse deal. President Biden, on the other hand,
Speaker 2: I guess on substance did get a better deal. But rhetorically,
Speaker 2: if anything, he probably normalized his behavior. And beyond that,
Speaker 2: let's remember and think about this, he has now said
Speaker 2: it so that the politics of this are an equal
Speaker 2: playing field. Now it may be to his immediate political
Speaker 2: benefit for his reelection, but in the long run he
Speaker 2: might have actually just signed away any real bargaining power.
Speaker 4: That he has in two years if he is to
Speaker 4: be elected.
Speaker 2: And we shouldn't forget like you can put the shoe
Speaker 2: on the other foot. I mean, now at this point,
Speaker 2: what is stopping the Democrats from doing anything like this?
Speaker 4: They basically did. There was a.
Speaker 1: Shutdown because and they never used their power that stops it.
Speaker 3: But there was their own reticence to do anything.
Speaker 2: But don't forget about the government shutdown. It was like
Speaker 2: a three week shutdown under President Trump whenever he wanted
Speaker 2: to do border wall funding. President Chuck Schumer and Nancy
Speaker 2: Pelosi basically stared Trump down in the eyes, and he
Speaker 2: Trump is ultimately the one that buckled. Anyway, My point
Speaker 2: is that these these tactics have now become so normalized,
Speaker 2: and I think Biden may have had an opportunity to
Speaker 2: try to get around it, which is ultimately just really
Speaker 2: weakens the chief executive. So I'm of two minds in
Speaker 2: terms of his suff like what he thinks.
Speaker 1: As you know, I think this whole thing has been
Speaker 1: a disaster. I think it played it wrong. He played
Speaker 1: it wrong from the jump. I think the point you
Speaker 1: made is the most important one outside of the details
Speaker 1: of this specific deal, which is that it has normalized
Speaker 1: this type of behavior. You can take it to the
Speaker 1: bank that the Republicans are going to do this again
Speaker 1: in two years of Biden as the White House. There
Speaker 1: is no doubt about it. And there also are real
Speaker 1: consequences even with this kind of showdown that you know
Speaker 1: they are, Even if they are able to pass the deal,
Speaker 1: just having this kind of kind of brinksmanship is really
Speaker 1: damaging to the economy, let alone the very real threat
Speaker 1: of actually going over the edge and the potential chaos
Speaker 1: that could be unleashed for that. I mean, in some ways,
Speaker 1: the fact that the deal doesn't have a whole lot
Speaker 1: for Republicans. Probably the biggest win they got with significant
Speaker 1: cuts in terms of the IRS budget, but the fact
Speaker 1: that it was actually things that they buy and large
Speaker 1: could have achieved through a normal appropriations process in a
Speaker 1: sense that even more normalizes this kind of behavior because
Speaker 1: they're willing to throw this tantrum and throw the whole
Speaker 1: global financial system into turmoil over very very little. So
Speaker 1: I definitely agree with you there on where we are
Speaker 1: with a potential vote. We've seen hardening opposition from not
Speaker 1: even like the far right of the Republican Party but
Speaker 1: opposite is sort of spreading to more mainstream corners of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party as well.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This was the whip count of the House Freedom Caucus
Speaker 1: members who as of yesterday had come out as in
Speaker 1: opposition to this deal, and not like, you know, tepid opposition,
Speaker 1: but quite strident to opposition. You've got Dan Bishop, Keith Self,
Speaker 1: Chip Roy, Ken Buck, Rolf Norman, Bob Good, Matt Rosendale,
Speaker 1: Andy Biggs, Andrew Clyde, and Lauren Bobert. So that is
Speaker 1: ten members who are on the record saying that they
Speaker 1: will not vote for this thing now. And like McCarthy
Speaker 1: can easily afford to lose ten members because Democrats look
Speaker 1: like they are going to vote for this in overwhelming numbers.
Speaker 1: But there are a couple of procedural hurdles that make
Speaker 1: this a little bit trickier.
Speaker 3: Than you might think. Because I think there's no.
Speaker 1: Doubt at this point they have a majority of members
Speaker 1: of the House who would vote for it. That seems
Speaker 1: very very likely, because all you would actually need is
Speaker 1: all the Democrats and five Republicans. But McCarthy has said
Speaker 1: not bringing this to the floor unless I have a
Speaker 1: majority support within the Republican caucus.
Speaker 3: He probably has that it's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: question mark. So there's that piece.
Speaker 1: But even more critically, this has to go through I
Speaker 1: mentioned this yesterday.
Speaker 3: This has to go through the Rules Committee.
Speaker 1: Okay, this sounds very archaic, but it becomes highly relevant
Speaker 1: because during the negotiations between McCarthy and the House Freedom
Speaker 1: Caucus for him to become Speaker, one of the things
Speaker 1: they demanded is we are going to have some key
Speaker 1: seats on that Rules Committee because it effectively controls what
Speaker 1: can come to the floor. So put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. This is from Chip Roy, who is on
Speaker 1: the Rules Committee and who is a House Freedom Caucus member.
Speaker 1: He says a reminder that during speaker negotiations to build
Speaker 1: the coalition that it was explicit both that nothing would
Speaker 1: pass Rules Committee without at least seven Republican votes and
Speaker 1: that the committee would not allow reporting out rules without
Speaker 1: unanimous Republican votes. So he's saying that they made some agreement,
Speaker 1: which is possible. I don't think we heard about.
Speaker 4: This at the time. I don't think this is true.
Speaker 1: Really, because well, remember so much of this was behind
Speaker 1: closed doors. It's impossible to know what they actually agreed to.
Speaker 2: McCarthy and them have come out. Not Macarthy himself, but
Speaker 2: his allies are like that's not true. We didn't agree
Speaker 2: to that. And then Trip Roy was actually pressed about
Speaker 2: it last night in an interview and he was like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, we agreed to a lot of things. It
Speaker 2: was a handshake deal and none of it is written
Speaker 2: down anywhere. I'm like, look, dude, as anybody who's ever
Speaker 2: done anything in terms of contracts, especially if you're striking
Speaker 2: a deal with somebody who you don't trust ostensibly that's
Speaker 2: these people and McCarthy, if you don't get it in writing,
Speaker 2: then you didn't have anything. And of course, like, look,
Speaker 2: maybe it was dishonorable, but also maybe he didn't say it,
Speaker 2: and he kind of hinted at it, and you took
Speaker 2: it away something very different, and now you're getting upset
Speaker 2: and you're coming out in public and saying something which
Speaker 2: is not written down and which is not confirmed.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I'm not calling him a liar.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, maybe they misunderstood miscommunicator.
Speaker 4: I think it's a music miscommunication.
Speaker 3: That's sort of theoretical.
Speaker 1: Yes, in principle, I there has to be seven votes,
Speaker 1: but in reality, now that he needs this done, he's
Speaker 1: going to toss that to the side. Washington Post had
Speaker 1: some reporting about this rules committee and the numbers in
Speaker 1: the way that they break down, can go ahead and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen.
Speaker 3: They say.
Speaker 1: This often called the Speaker's Committee because it's made up
Speaker 1: entirely of appointees from the House.
Speaker 3: Speaker and the Minority leader.
Speaker 1: It's tilted in such an extreme way nine members of
Speaker 1: the majority party just four from the minority that the
Speaker 1: speakers always get their way here. Traditionally, the four members
Speaker 1: of the minority always vote against whatever the majority wants.
Speaker 1: Now that also is not written and drone. It's just
Speaker 1: sort of like convention for whatever reason. But that also
Speaker 1: could be changed. But you already have a number of
Speaker 1: members here from the right who have said they are
Speaker 1: opposed to the deal. So in all likelihood it could
Speaker 1: be Thomas Massey, who is ideologically aligned with the deficit
Speaker 1: hawk House Freedom Caucus, but he has been personally relatively
Speaker 1: loyal to McCarthy. McCarthy also gave him some good in
Speaker 1: this deal, things that he had pert like his own
Speaker 1: personal preferences in terms of how appropriations work.
Speaker 3: I won't get into all the.
Speaker 1: Gory details here, but McCarthy specifically mentioned Massy. I think
Speaker 1: because he knows he is such a key vote.
Speaker 3: Massey hasn't said one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Which way he will go on the deal, but he
Speaker 1: posted something on Twitter that indicated he was like, well,
Speaker 1: doing this kind of deal is one way to get
Speaker 1: things done. Another way is through the appropriations process, seeming
Speaker 1: to indicate that he was kind of willing to accept
Speaker 1: this direction with the idea that he would be able
Speaker 1: to achieve more through that appropriations process modified to suit
Speaker 1: his whims and what he has been pushing for.
Speaker 3: So I think where.
Speaker 1: We are is it's more likely than not that it
Speaker 1: is going to pass. Even as you have sort of
Speaker 1: hardening Republican opposition, you also have Ronda Santis coming out
Speaker 1: and in opposition to the deal as well, which gives
Speaker 1: you a sense of where the winds are blowing from
Speaker 1: a grassroots conservative perspective. Let's take listen to what he
Speaker 1: has to say.
Speaker 7: Well, prior to this deal, Kaylee, our country was careening
Speaker 7: towards bankruptcy, and after this deal, our country will still
Speaker 7: be careening towards bankruptcy. And to say you can do
Speaker 7: four trillion of increases in the next year and a half,
Speaker 7: I mean that's a massive amount of spending. I think
Speaker 7: that We've gotten ourselves on a trajectory here really since
Speaker 7: March of twenty twenty with some of the COVID spending.
Speaker 7: It totally reset the budget and they're sticking with that,
Speaker 7: and I think that that's just going to be totally
Speaker 7: inadequate to get us in a better spot.
Speaker 3: So would you make of that soccer?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean smart, because obviously the base is going
Speaker 2: to be again, the base doesn't They want to see
Speaker 2: Biden crushed and fail. They don't care about the substance
Speaker 2: of it, literally at all. This goes all the way
Speaker 2: back to twenty eleven politics. This is when the Freedom
Speaker 2: Caucus guys were all over Fox News and Bayner actually
Speaker 2: went to Roger Ayls and pleaded with him.
Speaker 4: He said, please take these guys off the air.
Speaker 2: You are destroying me. And Roger was like, hey man,
Speaker 2: that's what the people want, and I mean he's right. Like, really,
Speaker 2: what it is is that you have an undercurrent of
Speaker 2: a lot of the Republican base who not interested. They
Speaker 2: don't they wanted no wins for Obama, they want no
Speaker 2: wins for President Biden. There's no reasons to suspect why
Speaker 2: the dynamics have changed. Vivike Ramaswami also put out something
Speaker 2: against it. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: He's calling out quote other GOP candidates stand on the
Speaker 2: debt ceiling. Jumping on the anti woke bandwagon is easy, true,
Speaker 2: It is harder to take a real stand on the
Speaker 2: hard stuff debt deal, bank bailouts, pardoning, peaceful Jan six
Speaker 2: protesters criticizing the Trump indictment exiting Ukraine. If you can't
Speaker 2: speak candidly here at home, you're not ready to sit
Speaker 2: across the table from shishingping.
Speaker 4: So that's where we're at.
Speaker 2: You know, right now we have the vivid Ramaswami and
Speaker 2: Governor DeSantis out against it.
Speaker 4: Crystal Our show.
Speaker 2: We waited and held out for a Trump's statement, and
Speaker 2: we have not yet received anything. President Trump has not
Speaker 2: put out anything about this. Haven't seen Nicki Haley Way
Speaker 2: and haven't seen Tim Scott Way in either.
Speaker 4: Interesting because Scott actually.
Speaker 2: Does have to vote them out on it, So that
Speaker 2: will will be very very interesting to see which way
Speaker 2: he decides to go, because that will be an indicator
Speaker 2: of presidential politics overall.
Speaker 4: I actually thought it was a smart move for DeSantis.
Speaker 2: I increasingly and viewing him as the Ted Cruz of
Speaker 2: the race. He is running against Trump from the right,
Speaker 2: from a true conservative, kind of a true conservative like
Speaker 2: ideological lens. People shouldn't confuse this with political talent because
Speaker 2: it's not the same thing. So his attacks on Trump
Speaker 2: are very much Cruz esque. And don't forget this either.
Speaker 2: Ted Cruz came in second in the GOP primary one
Speaker 2: the second and most amount of votes, and frankly was
Speaker 2: probably the single most credible candidate other than Trump in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, So it's not a bad play considering how
Speaker 2: it went down. Also, he did lose, though, so you
Speaker 2: know it's corre gets complicated.
Speaker 1: Correct, he did lose. Ted Cruz notably also has come
Speaker 1: out against the deal. So to your point about DeSantis
Speaker 1: being in the Ted Cruise lane, I think that is true.
Speaker 1: DeSantis's attacks on Trump have a twenty sixteen Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: sc echo. The other comparison that's been made is like
Speaker 1: to Elizabeth Warren with the wine track, like I got
Speaker 1: a plan for that kind of vibe. There's a little
Speaker 1: bit of that going on too. But I think with Trump,
Speaker 1: you'll recall a little while ago he was sounding very
Speaker 1: you know, tough about the debt ceiling, deal, he said,
Speaker 1: I say to the Republicans out there, Congressman, senators, if
Speaker 1: they don't give you massive cuts, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to do a default. And I don't believe they're going
Speaker 1: to do default because sorry, an ad popped up, because
Speaker 1: I think the Democrats will absolutely cave. Will absolutely kay,
Speaker 1: because you don't want to have that happen. But it's
Speaker 1: better than what we're doing right now because we're spending
Speaker 1: money like druggon sailors. I mean, put aside the fact
Speaker 1: that this man blew up the deficit like crazy with
Speaker 1: his virgin tax cuts for the rich. But you know,
Speaker 1: he was sounding really like Hawka, Sean, we're willing to
Speaker 1: we're willing to go over the cliff and we got
Speaker 1: to do it, and we're spending too much. So it's
Speaker 1: very notable that now that a deal is struck, not
Speaker 1: a word from him.
Speaker 3: And it's not an accident.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's in this tough political mind because he,
Speaker 1: better than anyone, has his finger on.
Speaker 3: The pulse of the Republican base.
Speaker 1: He knows the popular thing to do would be to
Speaker 1: say this is a bad deal and we shouldn't accept it,
Speaker 1: and it's a disaster. And we're gonna you know, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But he also has backed Kevin McCarthy and
Speaker 1: you know, calls him by Kevin and helped him get
Speaker 1: over the finish line in terms of the speaker's race.
Speaker 1: So he doesn't necessarily want to go against someone who
Speaker 1: has turned into a key ally for him and who
Speaker 1: he is bolstered. So he has calculated that the safest
Speaker 1: move for him is just to zip it and keep
Speaker 1: his mouth shut. Uncharacteristic wisdom there from President.
Speaker 2: My suspicion is that Trump desperately wants a tweet against it,
Speaker 2: and that McCarthy called him and begged him not to that.
Speaker 4: If I had to bet money, I bet you that
Speaker 4: that is what has happened.
Speaker 1: My expectation as well, because that is the one thing.
Speaker 1: If Trump came out really strongly against this deal could
Speaker 1: be dead, could actually sink it, and it could really
Speaker 1: put the speaker's gavel on the line for McCarthy as
Speaker 1: well if he continued to push forward. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's a giant gift to Kevin McCarthy and massively
Speaker 1: increases the likelihood that this deal will get through. That
Speaker 1: Trump has remained silent, which also shows you the pull
Speaker 1: that he has with the Republican base and the Republican
Speaker 1: caucus continuing versus Ron DeSantis, who can come out and
Speaker 1: say this and you're still likely to have a bulk
Speaker 1: of the caucus be like yeah, but we're going to
Speaker 1: go along with it.
Speaker 3: So wanted to flag this. This is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So obviously we've been focused a lot on AI, on
Speaker 1: chat GPT, on these large language models. We talked yesterday
Speaker 1: about these couple of instances where you had a professor
Speaker 1: assigned to his students, this assignment where they were supposed
Speaker 1: to generate an essay from chat gpt and then fact
Speaker 1: check it, and every single one of the students was
Speaker 1: like sixty papers found glaring just they call them hallucinations.
Speaker 3: Chat GPT just made stuff up.
Speaker 1: And there was a lawyer that foolishly relied on chat
Speaker 1: GPT to create a legal brief and chat GPT just
Speaker 1: invented like a dozen different cases to back up whatever
Speaker 1: claim this lawyer was trying to make all completely fake,
Speaker 1: you know, completely fabricated. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: problems still with chat GPT, the LMS in general, AI,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So we've been talking about, Okay, what it
Speaker 1: would look like to regulate this stuff and what are
Speaker 1: the dangers, et cetera. And our general view has been,
Speaker 1: all right, lawmakers don't really have their heads wrapped out
Speaker 1: on this. They don't really understand it, and they're not
Speaker 1: really taking actions that they need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to have AI.
Speaker 3: That is actually beneficial for humanity.
Speaker 1: Well tucked into this debt sealing deal, there actually was
Speaker 1: some language about AI, but rather than being like, let's
Speaker 1: curtail it AI, it was like, let's see how it
Speaker 1: goes to incorporate this more into government and to try
Speaker 1: to quote unquote streamline the process for these environmental impact
Speaker 1: assessments by using AI. So David Day and Flagg this,
Speaker 1: take a look at what we've got here. So he says,
Speaker 1: you could certainly read this part of the permitting section
Speaker 1: of the debt ceiling bill as studying the fees of
Speaker 1: ability of AI reviews for this National Environmental Policy Act,
Speaker 1: which based on current technology, probably goes well as AI
Speaker 1: legal briefs, which is what I just refer to keep
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. I'll just read the language
Speaker 1: here and that it's a little bit technical. They say
Speaker 1: permitting Portal study that counts on environmental quality shall conduct
Speaker 1: a study and submit a report to Congress within one
Speaker 1: year of the enactment of this Act on the potential
Speaker 1: for online and digital technologies to address delays and reviews
Speaker 1: and improve public accessibility and transparency under Section one or
Speaker 1: two to see of the National Environmental Policy Act, including
Speaker 1: but not limited to a unified permitting portal.
Speaker 3: And then it goes on from there. So what do
Speaker 3: you make of this saga?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, at the same one the hand, it's not
Speaker 2: like a definitive we're going to use AI, but it's
Speaker 2: more about appropriating government funds and saying that we will
Speaker 2: conductudy a study for the potential for online and digital technologies. Now,
Speaker 2: once again, the reason why we should all be just
Speaker 2: a little bit suspect on this is that it means
Speaker 2: like we will see a total fusion of AI and
Speaker 2: government in the future, which if possible. If it's good,
Speaker 2: like maybe that will make it more effective. If it's bad,
Speaker 2: it will be just as bad as the lawyer brief.
Speaker 2: Given the history of the government here, I'm just going
Speaker 2: to go ahead and say I'm a bit skeptical as
Speaker 2: to how this is going to go. And also in
Speaker 2: terms of the content. I mean, we've already gottene over
Speaker 2: this so many times. But you know, when you think
Speaker 2: about the tax system, it's like, what if the IRS
Speaker 2: sends you a bill and like you owe five you know, you.
Speaker 4: Have no ability to contest that.
Speaker 2: Or for example, we live in the state of Virginia
Speaker 2: where they you know, this is one of those insane
Speaker 2: states where they decide to tax your car like the
Speaker 2: property of your car, and they send you a bill
Speaker 2: based on the assessed value.
Speaker 4: You have no ability to contest that.
Speaker 2: You're like, well, actually the market is different, or oh
Speaker 2: actually it has there's like no, They're like, this is
Speaker 2: what you owe us. And that seems very likely to
Speaker 2: be the type of scenario where the environmental impact review,
Speaker 2: for example, I think environmental impact of views can be important.
Speaker 2: I also think they even dramatically misused. There's a recent
Speaker 2: Supreme Court case that was around this, around the couple
Speaker 2: that want to build something on their properties. Complicated, But
Speaker 2: my point is that you could see in the future
Speaker 2: where AI or some government program just looks at input
Speaker 2: output variables are like Nope, that's actually just not we're
Speaker 2: going to do, and then you have to spend years
Speaker 2: of your life, as this one couple did, having to
Speaker 2: fight it in the Supreme Court and they spend sixteen
Speaker 2: years in court and they won nine oh you know,
Speaker 2: but they had to wait sixteen years to try and
Speaker 2: build something on their own property. Yes, that's an example
Speaker 2: of like, that's how the STEM already is with humans
Speaker 2: involved with technology.
Speaker 4: Like who knows what.
Speaker 1: You're pointing to here is that you already have a
Speaker 1: problem with faceless, unaccountable bureaucracy within the government, and adding
Speaker 1: a layer of even more mysterious and unaccountable tech is
Speaker 1: unlikely to improve that viguaction. I think the other piece
Speaker 1: here that it makes me think about is just you know,
Speaker 1: they Washington is stacked with lobbyists who are all advocating
Speaker 1: for the interest of companies like Microsoft, for example, which
Speaker 1: obviously is placing a big bet on AI, and they're
Speaker 1: constantly working to get these little provisions stuck in that
Speaker 1: almost no one notices. And so at the same time
Speaker 1: that we're going, all right, what are lawmakers, like, how
Speaker 1: are they going to grapple with AI? And what are
Speaker 1: they going to do while we are having that public conversation.
Speaker 1: Behind the scenes, Microsoft or whatever other companies have an
Speaker 1: interest in plugging AI into federal government as this new
Speaker 1: giant customer. They are working to get their provisions in
Speaker 1: like their thing is very effective.
Speaker 3: So, you know, is this like the end of the world.
Speaker 1: Is it a huge deal to have this study into
Speaker 1: using AI within the permitting process? Probably not, although again,
Speaker 1: as David Dan points out, it's not just explicitly limited
Speaker 1: to that. They said that, you know, it could go
Speaker 1: beyond that. But I do think it's very telling about
Speaker 1: some of the dangers here, some of the ways that
Speaker 1: this could become omnipresent without any of us even intending
Speaker 1: to or noticing, and also just the way that Washington
Speaker 1: works in general.
Speaker 4: Absolutely well said. Okay, let's go to the next part here.
Speaker 2: My own home state of Texas, lots of stuff going on.
Speaker 2: A historic event, the Texas a Journey Attorney General has
Speaker 2: been impeached by the Texas House of Representatives, of which
Speaker 2: a trial will now take place in the Senate. The
Speaker 2: impeachment process is very much like our own for the
Speaker 2: President of the United States, and he will be put
Speaker 2: on trial before the Senate and be tried the jurors
Speaker 2: will be the Senators themselves who will eventually go ahead
Speaker 2: and vote. So let's actually get into the details. What
Speaker 2: she covered this quite a long time ago on rising
Speaker 2: whenever the FBI launched investigation into Ken Paxton. This one
Speaker 2: is actually more consequential and important because not only is
Speaker 2: it taking place in the state of Texas, but is
Speaker 2: directly being led by investigators attached to the House of
Speaker 2: which they launched their own investigation and impeach Paxston based
Speaker 2: upon the findings of that investigation, not the FBI investigation.
Speaker 4: Let's put the details up here on the screen. This
Speaker 4: is from the Texas Tribune.
Speaker 2: So the Texas Tribune lays out there are over twenty
Speaker 2: impeachment articles that were actually filed against Ken Paxson. Almost
Speaker 2: all of it goes back to a gentleman by the name.
Speaker 4: Of Nate Paul.
Speaker 2: So Paul is an Austin real estate investor, as a
Speaker 2: friend and a political donor to Paxson. What the Texas
Speaker 2: House alleges is that Paxton, in his capacity as the
Speaker 2: Attorney General of the State of Texas, basically pursued actions
Speaker 2: that were beneficial to Paul abused his official capacity, including
Speaker 2: diverting senior employees to perform work that benefited Paul some
Speaker 2: seventy two thousand dollars in taxpayer funded labor costs, misuse
Speaker 2: of public information allegedly providing Paul with an internal FBI
Speaker 2: file related to an investigation into that developer, misapplication of
Speaker 2: fit fiduciary property for allegedly hiring an outside lore of
Speaker 2: twenty five thousand dollars to work inside the Attorney General's
Speaker 2: office without the knowledge or the consent of senior staff,
Speaker 2: to perform work that principally benefited Paul himself. They also
Speaker 2: allege that Paul, as return for favors, helped basically helped
Speaker 2: update the house of Ken Paxon that he was living in,
Speaker 2: and in some of the salacious details, it also hired
Speaker 2: a woman who Packson allegedly had.
Speaker 1: Not alleged think it's acknowledged. I don't even think it's allegedly.
Speaker 4: Had an extra extra marital affair with. So it's messy.
Speaker 2: I guess, as the kid say about what's happening here
Speaker 2: with this situation. Like I said, the charges that I
Speaker 2: laid out, those are just the felony charges. They don't
Speaker 2: include everything, but they're probably the most serious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the other piece of this is so you know,
Speaker 1: allegedly he was engaging and all of this just like
Speaker 1: over the top favoritism and giving out of government favors
Speaker 1: and even using his own staff to do work for
Speaker 1: this developer, etc. And getting things in return like having
Speaker 1: him hire this woman that he was sleeping with and
Speaker 1: bringing her to Austin and doing a flori to ceiling
Speaker 1: renovation of his home. Okay, so very clear like favor
Speaker 1: trading here. And there were whistleblowers within his own office.
Speaker 1: These are not like liberals, These are conservative Texas Republicans
Speaker 1: who were whistleblowers about this misconduct and he fired them,
Speaker 1: which is also illegal under Texas law. So it's both
Speaker 1: the crime and it's the cover up and the retaliation
Speaker 1: against these whistleblowers. That is that is you know, at
Speaker 1: stake here and at issue here. It really is a
Speaker 1: pretty grotesque alleged pattern of misbehavior and just incredibly brazen
Speaker 1: the level of favors and you know trading that he
Speaker 1: was willing to do with this Austin based developer. I
Speaker 1: feel like the developers oftentimes like these are these you know,
Speaker 1: the Cuoma there was stuff with the developers too, Like
Speaker 1: it does show you how much financially you can gain
Speaker 1: from having someone who's on the inside, like clear the
Speaker 1: red tape for you and give you a leg up
Speaker 1: in terms of the bidding process, and all of that
Speaker 1: stuff go on.
Speaker 2: Wherever you live, Go look at who donates to the
Speaker 2: local politicians, people like comptroller, mayor and all that. Nine
Speaker 2: out of ten of them are going to be the
Speaker 2: biggest city contractors almost every single where I'm from.
Speaker 4: That's the case, especially in Texas.
Speaker 1: That's the matter if it's Democrats or Republicans. So they'll
Speaker 1: donate both sides of the aisles to believe people opportunity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't care.
Speaker 2: You think they build those houses you know, for free,
Speaker 2: or those roads or any of those other infrastructure, those
Speaker 2: no big contracts or those sweet deals, all the kickbacks.
Speaker 4: It's like in the shosh Ank redemption. Man.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next part here, just about the
Speaker 2: actual vote, because the vote itself was stunning. The House
Speaker 2: actually voted one hundred and twenty one to twenty three
Speaker 2: to suspend the Attorney General and refer to him to
Speaker 2: the Senate for trial. The first impeachment in the Texas
Speaker 2: House since nineteen seventy five, you know, and this shows
Speaker 2: you that impeachment was also supported by sixty Republicans. It
Speaker 2: wasn't all just Democrats, including the speaker of the Texas House,
Speaker 2: who himself was involved in a spate with packs and
Speaker 2: packs and accused him of being drunk and actually called
Speaker 2: for him to be impeached. So obviously this has all
Speaker 2: been you know, behind the scenes. This has been building
Speaker 2: now for quite a period of time. Eventually we will
Speaker 2: see how the vote falls in the Senate. But I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure yet that he's done. And I
Speaker 2: think the reason is that he obviously beat he was
Speaker 2: the ability to beat the FBI investigation once the Senate
Speaker 2: may not have as I understand, and I asked some
Speaker 2: people back in Texas and they were like, well, it's
Speaker 2: not going to be necessarily as much of a slam, donk.
Speaker 4: It'll be closer in terms of a vote.
Speaker 2: At least that's where things currently stand, you know, with
Speaker 2: the information that we have right now, he still does
Speaker 2: have a lot of political support.
Speaker 4: In the state.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because Trump loves Ken Paxson
Speaker 2: put this up there. He has actually slammed Texas quote
Speaker 2: Rhinos over the impeachment effort. He went ahead and actually
Speaker 2: praised Ken Paxton and condemned the quote radical left Democrats
Speaker 2: and the Rhinos for voting against him. As he says,
Speaker 2: I love Texas, I want it to twice watched as
Speaker 2: many other friends, including Ken Paxson, one came alongside me.
Speaker 2: Hopefully Republicans in the Texas House will agree this is
Speaker 2: an unfair process that should not be allowed to happen
Speaker 2: or proceed.
Speaker 4: I will fight you if it does.
Speaker 2: That's part of the reason why some people think things
Speaker 2: could happen or change in the Senate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, Paxon has the support of Senator Ted Cruz. He says,
Speaker 2: quote what is happening to Ken Paxson as a travesty.
Speaker 2: For the last nine years, Ken has been the strongest
Speaker 2: conservative ag in the country, bar none. No attorney general
Speaker 2: has battled the abuses of the Biden administration more ferociously
Speaker 2: than Ken Paxson. Virtually all the informations in articles were
Speaker 2: public before election day. Voters chose to re elect Ken
Speaker 2: Paxson by a large margin. In my view, the Texas
Speaker 2: Legislature should then respect the House of the Texas voters.
Speaker 2: So there you go, he's got support from Ted Cruz,
Speaker 2: he's got support from Trump.
Speaker 4: I still think he might he might survive. I really do.
Speaker 1: I actually think you probably will survive. You need a
Speaker 1: two thirds vote in the Senate to convict. And apparently
Speaker 1: I did some digging, and so I was like, what's
Speaker 1: going on here? Why did they turn on this guy?
Speaker 1: Apparently this is symbolic of a broader split within the
Speaker 1: Texas GOP almost between like the old Bush wing of
Speaker 1: the party that's like, you know, sort of like classically conservative,
Speaker 1: very cozy with business, very cozy with the oil industry,
Speaker 1: you know, in favor of low taxes, like that vein
Speaker 1: of conservatism, versus the more sort of like performative culture
Speaker 1: war Trump wing of the Republican Party, which also will
Speaker 1: go after corporation they considered to be woke. So there's
Speaker 1: a different There aren't a lot of real hard policy
Speaker 1: ideological differences, but there's very different like vibe and esthetic
Speaker 1: and these. Obviously, Texas is dominated by Republicans both in
Speaker 1: the House and in the Senate, even as it has
Speaker 1: shifted some, you know, and made.
Speaker 3: It a little bit more purple.
Speaker 1: But this is still a state legislature that's very dominated
Speaker 1: by Republicans, and you have this real divide between these
Speaker 1: two wings of the party. And one of the sort
Speaker 1: of representatives of that more traditional conservative wing of the
Speaker 1: party is this guy who Speaker of House, Dade Failin,
Speaker 1: and he's the one that Trump was like ripping to shreds.
Speaker 1: And in general, in Texas, it's considered the House is
Speaker 1: more populated with those type of conservatives, and the Senate,
Speaker 1: where he would have to be convicted, where his wife
Speaker 1: also sits, is more populated with the sort of new
Speaker 1: Trumpier conservatives. So that's why you shouldn't be surprised to
Speaker 1: see Trump and Ted Cruz, who's just you know, goes
Speaker 1: wherever he thinks the winds are blowing, backing Ken Paxton
Speaker 1: and all of this, And also why I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised to see him acquitted in the Senate, even though
Speaker 1: the details here are really damning. I mean, you'll not
Speaker 1: with both Trump and Ted Cruz, neither one of them
Speaker 1: is actually defending him on the merits and saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's nothing he did nothing wrong and this.
Speaker 3: Was all above board, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: The best they can muster is well voters already knew
Speaker 1: that he was.
Speaker 3: A corrupt SOB before they re.
Speaker 1: Elected him, which is probably the strongest case that you
Speaker 1: could possibly make for him. And he did win reelection
Speaker 1: quite overwhelmingly. I think it was actually up against.
Speaker 3: Like George P.
Speaker 1: Bush or somebody in that ree elect So he's sort
Speaker 1: of soundly defeated personally that more traditional Bush wing of
Speaker 1: the Texas Republican Party. But that's why you're seeing the
Speaker 1: schism right now, and that's why I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I think it is less likely that he will actually
Speaker 1: be convicted in the Senate because there are more of
Speaker 1: his ideological allies in the Senate, including his wife, who
Speaker 1: may or may not recuse herself apparently with regard to
Speaker 1: the affair. It was a few years ago. She found
Speaker 1: out in twenty nineteen. They were apart for a while.
Speaker 1: They've since reconciled, so theoretically, you know, water under the bridge,
Speaker 1: I guess, and she may be that team.
Speaker 3: I don't know, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So I wish him Lucky's trump Y's to say,
Speaker 2: all right, let's talk about commercial real estate. This is
Speaker 2: actually a fascinating one. Crystal, you flagged this. Let's go ahead.
Speaker 4: Put this up there on the screen and even diving
Speaker 4: into this a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, LA's office towers have on average two hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty dollars in debt per square foot. The only building
Speaker 2: that actually sold this year went for one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 4: Dollars four dollars per square foot, so that's obviously a
Speaker 4: huge delta.
Speaker 2: The biggest landlord in Los Angeles, which is called the
Speaker 2: Canadian Giant, Brookfield, has actually defaulted on more than a
Speaker 2: billion dollars worth of loans already this year. And so
Speaker 2: really what they're appointing to is that this massive, massive
Speaker 2: debt bubble in commercial real estate and the lack of people,
Speaker 2: especially in cities Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York,
Speaker 2: and Washington, DC, could absolutely blow up.
Speaker 4: In all of our faces.
Speaker 2: And really the time that it would start is now,
Speaker 2: because they've had they've used a lot of their cash,
Speaker 2: they've tried to weather the storms. Leases they're starting to
Speaker 2: go up, and a lot of people are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not signing or I'm not paying. Sorry, my employees
Speaker 2: aren't coming back to the office, and they don't have
Speaker 2: the same level of cash flow or of future value
Speaker 2: that they once had, and the dramatic drop in all
Speaker 2: of that backstops a lot of loans and then commodities
Speaker 2: on Wall Street. So Los Angeles is a ticking time
Speaker 2: bomb with their decline in the downtown Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Where you and I are crystal right now. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't think people understand that Washington, d C. Is
Speaker 2: a ghost town compared to what it wants. I spent
Speaker 2: my whole professional life here, especially in the downtown area,
Speaker 2: and when I go now, it is at best one
Speaker 2: tenth of what it once was like. And really, I
Speaker 2: mean in anybody who commutes or takes the metro or
Speaker 2: any of these can tell you that. And you know
Speaker 2: the city has changed to even the traffic patterns rush
Speaker 2: hours at three thirty now, which is crazy. It's like
Speaker 2: everybody's leaving the office at three thirty, even on the
Speaker 2: three days or whatever that they do happen to come in.
Speaker 2: New York is a little bit different. Commerce apparently demands
Speaker 2: people to come into the office more often, but flexible
Speaker 2: work has still dropped things by forty percent. San Francisco
Speaker 2: is donzo like from what from my family. I've been
Speaker 2: to many of those neighborhoods in San Francisco, which were
Speaker 2: once like thriving business districts or at the very least.
Speaker 4: Had a lot going on. From everybody I.
Speaker 2: Know who's visited since has completely either abandoned or they've
Speaker 2: moved to different parts of the city.
Speaker 4: And it's not a surprise. I was in downtown La
Speaker 4: not that long ago.
Speaker 2: It was basically me and a bunch of other people
Speaker 2: who were there for a conference, and nobody was actually
Speaker 2: there for any other reason.
Speaker 1: Well, the hardest hit in the most likely to be
Speaker 1: hit very soon are the West coast cities because on
Speaker 1: top of the pandemic trends of people working remote or
Speaker 1: having hybrid work schedules, they also are dealing with this
Speaker 1: massive tech session which impacts them more than any other
Speaker 1: cities in the country. So in San Francisco, put this
Speaker 1: next piece up on the screen, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: really ground zero.
Speaker 3: They say.
Speaker 1: This is from the Guardian. They say, vacant skyscrapers, empty trains.
Speaker 1: Can San Francisco once again reinvent itself? They cite and
Speaker 1: hear a study on if UC Berkeley comparing mobile phone
Speaker 1: data across sixty two downtowns in North America. They found
Speaker 1: that San Francisco's recovery is dead last, with only thirty
Speaker 1: one percent of the activity that it had pre pandemic.
Speaker 1: Some of these major tech companies are leaving downtown they
Speaker 1: don't need the office space anymore. This has obvious massive
Speaker 1: ripple effects in terms of local businesses. You know, the
Speaker 1: shops and restaurants that rely on office workers coming in
Speaker 1: and spending their money while they are working downtown. All
Speaker 1: of those places are really really struggling, and so the
Speaker 1: city is trying to figure out how they avoid the
Speaker 1: so called doom loop of you know, once these office
Speaker 1: buildings go vacant and you have a lot less business
Speaker 1: in the city, then you have a lot less tax revenue,
Speaker 1: and then you can't keep up you know, public transportation
Speaker 1: and infrastructure spend, and the whole thing starts to decay
Speaker 1: and decline. So they are frantically trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what they can do. I mean, one thing in San
Speaker 1: Francisco that's really obvious is they have, perhaps worse than
Speaker 1: any other place in the country, this massive housing crisis
Speaker 1: of wild unaffordability and a lack of They need way.
Speaker 3: More affordable housing as the bottom line.
Speaker 1: So there has been this thought of Okay, we'll take
Speaker 1: all these giant office towers that are now vacant and
Speaker 1: transform them into residential apartments so that you can deal
Speaker 1: with your house and costs. You can bring people back
Speaker 1: to the downtown, you can maintain vitality. That is theoretically possible,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of obstacles in the way
Speaker 1: of that happening. And first of all, conversion like that
Speaker 1: is not simple and straightford. It's a complex like just
Speaker 1: you know, development and like architectural perspective. Dean Baker, who's
Speaker 1: the co director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research,
Speaker 1: he said, the city is set up to serve a
Speaker 1: large commuting population. That population is gone and not coming back.
Speaker 1: It will be a doom loop if the city doesn't
Speaker 1: make it a top priority to convert commercial or residential. California,
Speaker 1: and I think San Francisco in particular is also notorious
Speaker 1: for making it very.
Speaker 3: Hard to do construction.
Speaker 1: There's like a long permitting process zoning all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So they need now to aggressively rethink what the city
Speaker 1: is going to look like before they get behind the
Speaker 1: eight ball and have They already have big budget deficits
Speaker 1: that are looming in that are only going to get
Speaker 1: worse with time. So it is quite a dire circumstance
Speaker 1: for that budget crime.
Speaker 2: Like they have everything that could possibly going against them.
Speaker 4: It's expensive and it's not a nice place to live.
Speaker 3: That's basically because I love San Oh.
Speaker 4: It's a great city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, vibrant and interesting and you know
Speaker 1: culture there, restaurants like, it's beautiful, wonderful.
Speaker 2: People get mad and I say this, but California wins
Speaker 2: on all the fundamentals.
Speaker 4: Look, I like Texas, That's where I grew up.
Speaker 2: But listen, the ocean is nice, and so is weather
Speaker 2: where it's hot, but it was also not crazy amounts
Speaker 2: of humidity, and also the sunshines.
Speaker 4: I mean, look it does you can actually go. Look.
Speaker 4: I'm obsessed with these.
Speaker 2: There's like temperate charts which shows you the only real
Speaker 2: zones in the US with the best weather, and the
Speaker 2: way that they define that is like X amount of
Speaker 2: days without clouds, X amount of days without rain, x
Speaker 2: amount of days with sunshine.
Speaker 4: Almost all of them.
Speaker 2: Are in Hawaii and in California. The Bay Area is
Speaker 2: one of them, Los Angeles, San Diego. There are certain
Speaker 2: areas on the East coast. I think it's like Georgia,
Speaker 2: South Carolina, Cape cod and others.
Speaker 4: But they really only.
Speaker 2: Qualified because they're super nice in the summer, but during
Speaker 2: year round, there's no beaten California weather. Sorry everybody, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, part of the issue is that that's
Speaker 2: why they are the biggest state in the country, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who live there. Now there's
Speaker 2: a disaster of governance, taxation, and so much more. The
Speaker 2: downtown areas, as you were pointing to, is a real problem.
Speaker 2: And the other issue is that they have net or
Speaker 2: they have net population declined. So a lot of the
Speaker 2: people who did leave are exactly the type of folks
Speaker 2: who would be in these office buildings, you know, in
Speaker 2: another world. And they moved to Texas, they moved to Austin.
Speaker 2: Most of them who even moved there aren't even going
Speaker 2: to the office. A lot of those people are working
Speaker 2: either fully remote or in some sort of hybrid situation.
Speaker 2: So overall, I think it's a very bad time to
Speaker 2: be a commercial real estate developer or a community commercial
Speaker 2: real estate landowner because another thing that they point to
Speaker 2: is this entire industry floats on debt. None of these
Speaker 2: people have large reserves of cash. It's literally the aim
Speaker 2: of the game is you price your rent like right here,
Speaker 2: like a little bit above where your debt servicing is.
Speaker 2: I mean, you just hope and pray, and then over
Speaker 2: years you become a billionaire and you use a bunch
Speaker 2: of depreciation on their nonsense in order to write all
Speaker 2: of this yea, on your taxi.
Speaker 3: It's a crazy because I gave you more of that too.
Speaker 4: I don't understand how I can.
Speaker 2: I don't understand you can even breathe when you're that,
Speaker 2: you know, close to bankruptcy.
Speaker 4: We constantly, I guess they do.
Speaker 3: When people live for that, good for them.
Speaker 1: One thing that's an important note just on the economics
Speaker 1: of this is you're probably thinking, for those of you
Speaker 1: have knowledge of like the local rental and real estate market,
Speaker 1: like rents haven't really come down. So there are estimates
Speaker 1: that these buildings valuations are going to crash by something
Speaker 1: like forty percent, which is I mean, that's an astonishing
Speaker 1: fall in value.
Speaker 3: But so far rents have it come down that much?
Speaker 3: Well why is that?
Speaker 1: It's because if you drop the rent to reflect with
Speaker 1: the actual valuations and what you might actually be able
Speaker 1: to get tenants in well that's going to immediately crash
Speaker 1: your appraisal. So when you are then up to to
Speaker 1: you know, renegotiate your loan and try to you know,
Speaker 1: take out stros or try to be able to roll
Speaker 1: this thing over, your appraisal is going to come in
Speaker 1: way lower. You're just dramatically underwater then, and so it's
Speaker 1: a disaster for you. So a lot of developers calculate,
Speaker 1: you know, understandably so that it's better to keep rents
Speaker 1: where they are and take the hit in terms of
Speaker 1: a lost tenant for the time being in hopes that
Speaker 1: they'll be able to roll over those loans. Now that
Speaker 1: also becomes much more difficult because of the mortgage rate increases,
Speaker 1: which you know, not only impact residential loans, but also
Speaker 1: impact these gigantic you know, loans for skyscrapers that become
Speaker 1: wildly more unaffordable as well.
Speaker 3: Not to mention, the banks aren't stupid.
Speaker 1: They're looking at this and potential you know, massive drop
Speaker 1: in valuation and they're not feeling too excited about renegotiating
Speaker 1: a lot of these loans as well. So that's why
Speaker 1: there were sort of in this you know, in between
Speaker 1: zone where everybody's just holding their breath and hoping that
Speaker 1: conditions improve for them by some sort of unforeseen magic.
Speaker 1: And it feels a little bit static, even though there's
Speaker 1: a ton of pain and collapse and potential devastation just
Speaker 1: underneath the surface. So that's part of what is going
Speaker 1: on here as well. But you know, this story of
Speaker 1: how downtowns will reinvent themselves in a new era with
Speaker 1: less office workers is going to be one of the
Speaker 1: things that you know, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: major trend over the coming decades. Cities that are able
Speaker 1: to figure this out, that are able to get ahead
Speaker 1: of it, that are able to you know, I think
Speaker 1: the key is going to be building out affordable housing
Speaker 1: to bring people back to the downtowns so that that
Speaker 1: while they're working from home, they're working from home in
Speaker 1: their apartments, in their.
Speaker 3: Condos, in their houses in your city.
Speaker 1: And the cities that get on top of that fastest
Speaker 1: and anticipate the need the soonest, I think, are going
Speaker 1: to be the ones that succeed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty four, we can't miss any of the election news.
Speaker 2: There is fascinating stuff going on between DeSantis and Trump
Speaker 2: around the Disney issue. Some people switching sides, but it
Speaker 2: also kind of shows you how central this is I
Speaker 2: think to some of the GOP primary. I saw some
Speaker 2: polling very recently that the ability to combat wokeness is
Speaker 2: literally number one for some GOP primary voters and especially
Speaker 2: for people who are on the fence between Ron DeSantis
Speaker 2: and Trump. So DeSantis once again got to give the
Speaker 2: man respect, actually hitting back against Trump, especially on the
Speaker 2: Disney issue. During his Fox and Friends interview, Here's what
Speaker 2: he had to say.
Speaker 7: We obviously have a lot in common with Iowa in
Speaker 7: terms of what Florida has done and what they've done
Speaker 7: under Governor Kim Reynolds, and I think the groundswell of
Speaker 7: support has been really, really strong, and you know, we're
Speaker 7: going to press the case. I mean, you know, they
Speaker 7: had mentioned there may be some differences with me and
Speaker 7: Donald Trump, and I think that those differences were doown
Speaker 7: to my benefit in a place like Iowa. I mean,
Speaker 7: for example, you know, he's taken the side of Disney
Speaker 7: in our fight down here in Florida. I'm standing for parents,
Speaker 7: I'm standing for children, and I think a multi billion
Speaker 7: dollar company that sexualizes children is not consistent with the
Speaker 7: values of Florida. Or the values of a place like Iowa.
Speaker 2: Hey, you got to give the guy credit because what
Speaker 2: did he say?
Speaker 4: First? He shouts out Kim Reynolds, who is the governor
Speaker 4: of Iowa.
Speaker 2: He said the Iowa said the word Iowa, I think
Speaker 2: three times during that short clip, making it clear that
Speaker 2: he's trying to contrast himself directly with Trump in that state.
Speaker 2: The news also just broke this morning, Crystal he will
Speaker 2: be attending the Joni Earnst like Summer Iowa event. Jony Ernst,
Speaker 2: for those who don't know, is the She's the senator
Speaker 2: from Iowa.
Speaker 4: It's called the Roast and Ride.
Speaker 2: It's a kickoff for the twenty twenty four campaign in Iowa.
Speaker 2: And obviously she's very important in somebody that they have
Speaker 2: to woo. Everybody tries to if they are hopeful to
Speaker 2: attend some of her events. Trump right now is unconfirmed
Speaker 2: for the event, but Dessantas says he absolutely will be there.
Speaker 2: This underscores his early state strategy.
Speaker 4: Tromp has actually changed his tune.
Speaker 2: At first, he took Disney's side, and he said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: why is DeSantis going after Disney?
Speaker 3: Now he's getting humiliated by Disney.
Speaker 2: He said, humiliated by Disney, but he also basically implied
Speaker 2: that he shouldn't be going after Disney at all, and
Speaker 2: also hit him on the job case now though he's
Speaker 2: actually changing his tune. Put this up there on truth Socially,
Speaker 2: he says, Ron de Sanctimonious just stated without correction on
Speaker 2: Fox and Friends that I was backing Disney wrong. Fox
Speaker 2: should have read my post in Truth on Disney, but
Speaker 2: that's not the game they play. Also, in the polls,
Speaker 2: I am beating Biden by a lot. Rob is not
Speaker 2: also way up on Ron. Check out the dysanctist speech.
Speaker 2: So he obviously live tweeted yanctus Rob all of that.
Speaker 2: But actually what was even more interesting is that the
Speaker 2: same truth that after came before was that he said
Speaker 2: that Disney has become a woke, in disgusting shadow of
Speaker 2: its former self, people actually hating it. It must go
Speaker 2: back to what it once was or the market will
Speaker 2: do damage. This all happened during the governor ship of
Speaker 2: Rob Dysanctimonious. Instead of complaining now for publicity reasons only,
Speaker 2: he should have stopped it long ago.
Speaker 4: Would have been easy to do still is.
Speaker 2: So now he's like, well it happened under Desanta's governorship,
Speaker 2: as if he somehow controls Disney and he's like, no,
Speaker 2: actually it should be stopped. But DeSantis is ineffective. I
Speaker 2: actually think that's more of an effective attack on the
Speaker 2: Disney issue is that he tried to do and he
Speaker 2: failed after Disney was able to outsmart him on the
Speaker 2: Reedy Creek Governorship board.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean on the merits, you know, the Disney
Speaker 1: fight I sort of hate because there's there's no one
Speaker 1: to share for here.
Speaker 3: Like it is true.
Speaker 1: Disney is this like gigantic, unaccountable corporation that's been gifted
Speaker 1: massive tax breaks and benefits in Florida for decades now.
Speaker 1: I think the reason that DeSantis is going after them
Speaker 1: is stupid. It's just political posturing. You can see my
Speaker 1: monologue yesterday about the giveaway that he's giving to gifting
Speaker 1: to Elon Musk to see that this is not a
Speaker 1: critique of corporate power. It's just a war on certain
Speaker 1: corporations doing things that he doesn't like.
Speaker 3: Ideologically.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, like the arguments that Disney is
Speaker 1: using in court are kind of insane and not anything
Speaker 1: that anyone who has a critique of corporate power should
Speaker 1: be cheering on. So that's on the merits of this.
Speaker 1: I mean with regard to Trump, like this is again
Speaker 1: one of the ways Trump is graded on a curve.
Speaker 1: He can say one thing one day, workshop that see
Speaker 1: how it goes for him, and totally changes tune and
Speaker 1: say something completely different called the other day, and even
Speaker 1: if he does get called out for it, you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately people just kind of go along with it and
Speaker 1: buy into whatever the latest line of attack is. I
Speaker 1: think for Ron DeSantis with the Disney fight, the risk
Speaker 1: is not among Republican base voters, who I think generally
Speaker 1: like the idea of like you said, they're into fighting
Speaker 1: against wokeness, whatever that means, and they like the specter
Speaker 1: of him like taking on this quote unquote quote corporation.
Speaker 1: The issue for him is more with the donor set
Speaker 1: that do not like this. And Disney has already said they're,
Speaker 1: you know, pulling out some investment in the state. How
Speaker 1: will that impact the state of Florida, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: the donor class is very uncomfortable with this fight, and
Speaker 1: that is a key part of the DeSantis constituency.
Speaker 3: So that's where I think.
Speaker 1: This is the trickiest for him, not as much with
Speaker 1: the Republican base. However, to the extent that Trump has
Speaker 1: an effective attack here, the idea that DeSantis is losing
Speaker 1: and getting humiliated by Disney, I think that is the
Speaker 1: strongest line that's definitely strung.
Speaker 2: One that said DeSantis also sticking Trump in the eye.
Speaker 2: Put this up there on the screen, and I actually
Speaker 2: love this. Meets DeSantis meets with nine to eleven families
Speaker 2: who had bashed Trump for the Saudi funded golf tournament.
Speaker 2: He spent Memorial Day with the families of nine to
Speaker 2: eleven victims who had bashed President Trump for hosting the
Speaker 2: live golf tournament at the Trump property, hosted five hundred veterans,
Speaker 2: gold star families and relatives who had lost loved ones
Speaker 2: on September eleventh at the Florida governor Mansion, and then
Speaker 2: specifically went out of his way to meet with eight
Speaker 2: of the nine to eleven families who had talked to
Speaker 2: him about this issue. All those families came out and
Speaker 2: were singing his praises, saying how happy they were with
Speaker 2: to be able to meet and to have their concerns voiced.
Speaker 4: After Trump went ahead and had that tournament.
Speaker 2: And obviously had a very close relationship with Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: and they also did it as more of a stick
Speaker 2: in the eye, not just politically, but put this up there.
Speaker 2: We also know that there currently is a part of
Speaker 2: the DOJ investigation into one of the myriad of investigations
Speaker 2: is actually specifically looking into Trump's ties to Live Golf
Speaker 2: around foreign influence and Saudi Arabia and financial ties. So
Speaker 2: it was a dual pronged attack and it was a
Speaker 2: smart play. It was a good headline for Desantas, no
Speaker 2: question about it.
Speaker 1: Listen, if you actually care about government corruption foreign influence,
Speaker 1: like if you're worried about Hunter Biden's ties. For example,
Speaker 1: this is so recent we Live Golf is funded directly
Speaker 1: by the Saudi government. Trump is getting an undisclosed amount
Speaker 1: of cash directly from them, not to mention Kushner's deals
Speaker 1: over there, etc. So yeah, this should be investigated. And yeah,
Speaker 1: if you actually care about government corruption and wanting to
Speaker 1: make sure that the president of the United States is
Speaker 1: actually serving US interests and not doing the bidding of
Speaker 1: whoever is like lining his pockets, this is definitely a
Speaker 1: big deal and something that should be looked into as
Speaker 1: part of the myriad of investigations that are going on here.
Speaker 3: I thought it was funny.
Speaker 1: In the letter that those families of nine to eleven
Speaker 1: victims sent condemning Trump for hosting these live golf Saudi
Speaker 1: funded golf events. In addition to expressing their extreme pain, frustration,
Speaker 1: and anger, they.
Speaker 3: Actually included a quote.
Speaker 1: From Trump's twenty sixteen comments on the nine to eleven
Speaker 1: terrorist attack, from a segment that he did on Fox
Speaker 1: and Friends. He said, at that time, who blow up
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center? It wasn't the Iraqis, It was Saudi.
Speaker 1: Take a look at Saudi Arabia. Open the documents. We
Speaker 1: ought to get Bush or somebody to have the documents open,
Speaker 1: because frankly, if you open the documents, I think you
Speaker 1: were going to see it was Saudi Arabia. Obviously saying
Speaker 1: a different tune once he was in office, and continues
Speaker 1: to sing a very different tune now that he is
Speaker 1: getting closed large amount of cash directly from the Saudi government.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's an issue, and I despise all
Speaker 2: of them. There's so many live golf defenders like normal,
Speaker 2: I had never I'm not a golf guy. I went
Speaker 2: to a driving range recently and that was fun. But
Speaker 2: I've encountered golf bros who love live golf because players
Speaker 2: should get in their bag and all that. I'm like, Okay, look,
Speaker 2: it's not about the players. It's about like disgusting foreign corruption.
Speaker 2: And this isn't even a defensive PGA. From what I understand,
Speaker 2: it sounds like the PGA actually do suck and do
Speaker 2: not treat the people well. There are many reasons for
Speaker 2: why they should be dissatisfied shockers, just like every other
Speaker 2: league and big business maybe, and I absolutely think it
Speaker 2: should be reformed. Do I think you should be reformed
Speaker 2: by the Saudi Arabian government?
Speaker 4: Right? No?
Speaker 2: And like that is where it's like, I don't understand
Speaker 2: how you could possibly defend.
Speaker 4: It unless you are a midwin moron.
Speaker 2: So anybody just putting that out there, I already know
Speaker 2: the amount of golf bros who are going to be
Speaker 2: in the comments on this one is going to drive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but learn more about golf.
Speaker 2: But I will tell you we are absolutely the minor.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's an actual golfer. Again, I only a
Speaker 2: peripherally connected to the golf world. But what I'm saying
Speaker 2: apparently is very controversial in the golf.
Speaker 3: There's a real device.
Speaker 1: I actually think a majority is more on the side
Speaker 1: of PGA and his leg.
Speaker 4: That's maybe the silent majority.
Speaker 3: Is with Yes, I think they are, but I don't
Speaker 3: really know.
Speaker 4: I'm personally I just like Tiger. Anyway, let's go.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next one here and put it
Speaker 2: up there on the screen, because this is also important
Speaker 2: for the twenty twenty four race and actually possibly might
Speaker 2: have the most impact on everything. If we got a
Speaker 2: chance to not have a Biden Trump rematch, it won't
Speaker 2: be because democracy wants it.
Speaker 4: It's this headline.
Speaker 2: Wall Street dreads Biden Trump rematch Damie Jamie Diamond, Joe Mansion.
Speaker 2: The finance set is casting about for a more business
Speaker 2: friendly challenger, so, according to the Wall Street Journal, on
Speaker 2: a farm in upstate New York, Wall Street types groused
Speaker 2: about the upcoming presidential election in between rights.
Speaker 4: Of roast pig.
Speaker 2: Billionaire money manager Mario Gabelli and banker Ralph Schlostein were
Speaker 2: among the guests at a Chief Executive carnivores ball, a
Speaker 2: celebration of all things meet that.
Speaker 4: Featured a lot.
Speaker 2: This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard featuring lively
Speaker 2: discussions of potential business friendly candidates who can shake up
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty four race. They floated people like Secretary
Speaker 2: Gina Raymondo, who's the cabinet secretary. They said that they
Speaker 2: were dreading a Biden and a Trump rematch and that
Speaker 2: neither were quote business friendly enough for them.
Speaker 3: So insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is insane considering how much a handout so
Speaker 2: they've gotten from both of them. Were They liked Ron
Speaker 2: at first, but now that he's chosen the side against Disney,
Speaker 2: there against him. You have people like Bill Ackman, who's
Speaker 2: tweeted his support of Vivek Ramaswami, who himself is a
Speaker 2: multi one hundred millionaire after the sale of his company.
Speaker 2: Tim Scott and South Carolina of South Carolina and Nikki
Speaker 2: Haley are also absolutely beloved by this donor said, people
Speaker 2: like Steve Schwartzman and others.
Speaker 4: You'll don't forget.
Speaker 2: You weren't here for this, but Larry Ellison was very
Speaker 2: prominently at Tim Scott's announcement as the VIP Guest of honor,
Speaker 2: the multi billionaire obviously going to underwrite the entire Yeah,
Speaker 2: the donors loved Tim Scott there's nobody that they love
Speaker 2: more in my opinion, so they've also considered this no
Speaker 2: labels attempt at maybe launching Joe Manchin. But I saw
Speaker 2: this and I was like, man, this is the only
Speaker 2: actual threat to the Biden Trump rematch that probably exists
Speaker 2: is if these Wall Street billionaires don't like it, well,
Speaker 2: that actually might have some impact.
Speaker 1: Well this was I mean, this was the play for
Speaker 1: Rondo Santa Is for all of capital to get behind him.
Speaker 1: But now both with his comments on Ukraine and also
Speaker 1: his war with Disney that he's sort of fallen out
Speaker 1: of favor and so they're casting about for some I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just insane to me, Like, think of how
Speaker 1: much these people got from the Trump presidency, Like he
Speaker 1: rewrote the whole tax code on their didn't close the
Speaker 1: Carried Interest show, didn't do any of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Just giant gift after giant gift. Joe Biden was known
Speaker 1: as like the you know senator from the credit card
Speaker 1: capital of the country for his entire career. This is
Speaker 1: hardly someone who's some like radical renegade from the left.
Speaker 1: This is a corporate friendly democrat as much as you
Speaker 1: could possibly get. But the thing they don't like about
Speaker 1: Biden is they say his aggressive stance on anti trust
Speaker 1: enforcement has turned off potential backers whose profits depend on
Speaker 1: a healthy supply of corporate deals.
Speaker 3: Do you understand what that means.
Speaker 1: They're admitting up front they basically need monopolies, Like they're
Speaker 1: not looking for some free market competition. They're like, he's
Speaker 1: not letting us rig the market to the extent that
Speaker 1: we want, So we're mad at him. That's their beef
Speaker 1: with Joe Biden, which is astonishing. And by the way,
Speaker 1: just follow Matt Stoller on the number of Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal editorials trashing Lena Khan over her anti trust stance.
Speaker 1: It's like for already one. I mean, it's an insane number.
Speaker 1: They have a complete jihad against this woman because they
Speaker 1: hate the fact that they might have some semblance of
Speaker 1: actual competition in the marketplace and not just a series
Speaker 1: of gigantic monopolies who were able to price gouge all
Speaker 1: of us and etc.
Speaker 3: So it is incredible to me that if.
Speaker 1: These people don't get every single thing they want at
Speaker 1: every single second of the day, they pitch a complete
Speaker 1: fit and you know, go desperately searching for some more
Speaker 1: friendly alternative who's actually going to literally give them everything
Speaker 1: they want. It reminds me of during the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: another very Wall Street, very corporate friendly government. He made
Speaker 1: some one speech that was like mildly critical of Wall
Speaker 1: Street at a time when they had just crashed the
Speaker 1: entire global financial economy and destroyed and they were so oh,
Speaker 1: they were so in their feelings about how could you
Speaker 1: criticize us? And they were, you know, openly weeping about
Speaker 1: how hurt they were over his mild critique of them.
Speaker 1: There are the most fragile, egotistical people in the entire planet.
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering, I don't know if you've seen.
Speaker 1: We haven't covered a lot of this because I don't
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of legs behind it.
Speaker 3: But there's been all this chatter about no labels.
Speaker 1: Fielding a presidential candidate, and Joe Manchit appears to be
Speaker 1: the person they would most likely to put in there
Speaker 1: because he is, if anything, just completely beholden to corporate America.
Speaker 1: Over and over again, he's proven his bona fides there.
Speaker 1: They actually have been working on. This is well funded
Speaker 1: because it's backed by these type of people. They've been
Speaker 1: working on getting ballot access. Democrats are very worried that
Speaker 1: if they do field some sort of third party candidate
Speaker 1: on the no label's ballot line, that this could hand
Speaker 1: the election to Trump. This type of maneuvering is where
Speaker 1: all the energy from that comes from. There is no
Speaker 1: organic interest in the country out there for someone to
Speaker 1: be even more pro Wall Street and even more pro corporate.
Speaker 1: But they delude themselves consistently into thinking that they represent
Speaker 1: some sort of silent majority to which is also just
Speaker 1: incredible and shows you the bubble they live in.
Speaker 2: It's certainly a majority of their peers, but that's the
Speaker 2: only yes indeed.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, So we got a little update
Speaker 1: for you on what's going on over there on MSNBC,
Speaker 1: which is struggling to grapple with the fact that, yes,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden has a healthy lead in the Democratic primary,
Speaker 1: but the contenders against him, Marian and RFK Junior, have
Speaker 1: been a little bit stronger in the polls than probably
Speaker 1: they're comfortable with.
Speaker 3: They've gone out of their way.
Speaker 1: All of media has to say they're not serious, and
Speaker 1: Biden doesn't have a real contender and he's just going
Speaker 1: to be anointed, and all the action is on the
Speaker 1: Republican side. So MSNBC's Mehdi Hassan had Marian Williamson on
Speaker 1: his show, presumably to talk about her campaign. Just take
Speaker 1: a listen to the way that Mehdi, who is supposedly
Speaker 1: like a progressive and a.
Speaker 3: Leftist, the way that he sets this up on MSNBC.
Speaker 3: Listen to this.
Speaker 8: So what do you say to those who point out that, yes,
Speaker 8: you are popular with younger voters and on TikTok, but
Speaker 8: you can't win a Democratic presidential primary. You're essentially a
Speaker 8: spoiler candidate, and so by primary ing Biden, all you're
Speaker 8: doing is weakening him in the general and making it
Speaker 8: easier for a Republican to beat him in twenty twenty
Speaker 8: four in what will be a very tight election.
Speaker 5: Well, there are two things about what you said. First
Speaker 5: of all, you said I'm a spoiler candidate. I'm not
Speaker 5: a spoiler candidate. I'm running in a primary, So you
Speaker 5: can't be a spoiler if you're running in the primary.
Speaker 5: The second thing you said was this narrative you can't win.
Speaker 5: Isn't that what people said about Donald Trump? I will
Speaker 5: win if people vote for me. I believe that in
Speaker 5: a democracy, people should have as wide an array of
Speaker 5: options before them as there are candidates running on agendas.
Speaker 5: That's what a democracy is. We need to protect our
Speaker 5: democracy right now, that's obvious to everyone. The way you
Speaker 5: protect your democracy is by using your democracy. Candidate suppression
Speaker 5: is a form of voter suppression. So this idea that
Speaker 5: I'm a spoiler, No, I'm not a spoiler. I'm a
Speaker 5: candidate in a primary, and it's very important. I believe
Speaker 5: that the president debate me, that the President debate any
Speaker 5: other people who are challenging him. At a time like this,
Speaker 5: when the fashions are clearly at the door, we should
Speaker 5: be having a very serious conversation about what it will
Speaker 5: take to defeat them, and not just accepting what the
Speaker 5: DNC has to say because a few elites have decided
Speaker 5: it's going to be Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: So he says you can't win and you're a spoiler,
Speaker 1: which she rightly is very confused by, because the previous
Speaker 1: definition of spoiler was a third party candidate. Like we're
Speaker 1: just talking about the noble labels thing, which I dispute.
Speaker 3: Even that right. If people want to run third party,
Speaker 3: is your job to feel the voters they have the
Speaker 3: right to do it.
Speaker 1: Okay, but at least with a third party thing, you
Speaker 1: can at least see the case that they're making here.
Speaker 1: She is running an RFK junior, are running in a
Speaker 1: democratic primary.
Speaker 3: These are the same.
Speaker 1: People who spend all day every day say democracy is
Speaker 1: at stake and democracy is on vote, like democracy is
Speaker 1: on the line.
Speaker 3: Because it is in the minute.
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, I'm here for the democratic process through
Speaker 1: How could you?
Speaker 3: How dare you? You can't win and you're spoiler? Et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now, specifically, the role that Mehdi is playing here I
Speaker 1: think is particularly gross because he acknowledges Sager at another
Speaker 1: point in the interview, like I actually agree with you
Speaker 1: on policy.
Speaker 3: All of his objections are Number one, I don't think
Speaker 3: you're qualifying serious. Well, guess what. It's not up to
Speaker 3: you to determine.
Speaker 1: Voters should get the chance to determine that through a
Speaker 1: democratic process. So he says he agrees with her on
Speaker 1: the policy, but then he's giving cover and permission for
Speaker 1: people who are ideologically aligned with her to come up
Speaker 1: with some excuse for voting for some corporate back candidate
Speaker 1: that has been you know, failing from a progressive perspective
Speaker 1: and from just a like general American perspective. So I
Speaker 1: think it was really gross and unfair, and he didn't
Speaker 1: give her any chance to like discuss like what she
Speaker 1: actually thinks in the campaign. It was all this stuff
Speaker 1: about like, oh, you're not serious and you're not qualified
Speaker 1: and you can't win.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I thought it was really bad. And
Speaker 4: also it's just not the problem.
Speaker 2: It's also Look with MSNBC especially, they have very little
Speaker 2: time I actually interview, So why would you waste your
Speaker 2: time actually asking a question like this about being a spoiler.
Speaker 2: Why don't you actually just delve into You can ask strategy,
Speaker 2: You could ask differences, you could ask many other things.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could even ask it in a different way,
Speaker 2: be like, look, one of the criticisms against you is
Speaker 2: your spoiler. What do you say to that? I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's actually a more neutral way of saying it,
Speaker 2: instead of coming in and over the top and saying
Speaker 2: you are a spoiler, like you don't get to determine it.
Speaker 1: As right, It doesn't even make sense to society. Is
Speaker 1: she or Rfcare Junior are spoilers?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: They're running in a democratic primary. So I mean this
Speaker 1: is to me just like does not compute. It's utter
Speaker 1: invented nonsense, and to waste your time on it instead
Speaker 1: of talking about I mean, this should be very simple,
Speaker 1: like if you ideologically align with Canada other than Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: then you should support that candidate. You know, it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be all of the like, but clearly like he's allowed
Speaker 1: at MSNBC to break with the line on things like
Speaker 1: you know, Israel, Palestine, and he's good on other Florid
Speaker 1: affairs issues.
Speaker 3: I don't want to take that away from him.
Speaker 1: But the end of the day, if you're going to
Speaker 1: be on MSMEC, you're going to freaking back democratic leadership.
Speaker 1: You're going to back Joe Biden, You're going to carry
Speaker 1: water for him. You're going to be in service of that.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it makes him a more effective propagandist
Speaker 1: that he does break the line occasionally on these other
Speaker 1: issues because he gains credibility as being this like honest
Speaker 1: broker and a true representative of the left. So then
Speaker 1: when you do something like this and it's like, well
Speaker 1: even leftists don't support Marianne, then you are you know,
Speaker 1: providing cover, providing a justification for people who should be
Speaker 1: her ideological allies to just get you know, sucked up
Speaker 1: into the whatever the DNC wants him to do.
Speaker 4: Quote Blue, No matter who, it's a it's a mind disease. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess that's the one I say it result, what
Speaker 4: are you taking a look at?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: As you know, Donald Trump has been relentlessly hitting round
Speaker 1: de Santis with every attack possible, throwing it all against
Speaker 1: the wall to just see what sticks. But somewhere between
Speaker 1: slamming his lack of loyalty and alleging that he's a grumer,
Speaker 1: Trump's are an interesting critique into the mix. In a
Speaker 1: post a while ago on True Social Trump wrote, quote
Speaker 1: Ron the sanctimonious is delivering the biggest insurance company bailout
Speaker 1: to globalist insurance companies in history. He's also crushed Florida
Speaker 1: homeowners whose houses were destroyed in the hurricane. They're getting
Speaker 1: pennies on the dollar. This is the worst insurance scam
Speaker 1: in the entire country. Now, if you don't live in
Speaker 1: Florida or work in the insurance industry, you could be
Speaker 1: forgiven for having no idea what Trump is talking about here.
Speaker 1: Whether or not this particular attack undo Santis sticks. There
Speaker 1: is actually a lot to say about the underlying problem
Speaker 1: that Trump is wildly gesturing at. It's an issue that
Speaker 1: is increasingly relevant not only of Florida, but in states
Speaker 1: across the country due to climate fuel disasters. Vast swaws
Speaker 1: of America are becoming essentially uninsurable. Homeowners are getting gouged,
Speaker 1: state insurance funds are collapsing, and private insurers are demanding
Speaker 1: bailounce and engaging in some instances.
Speaker 3: In outright fraud.
Speaker 1: It is a mess with huge implications for homeowners and
Speaker 1: looming costs for the entire economy. Just take a look
Speaker 1: at these headlines. You've got Some insurance companies pull out
Speaker 1: of Luisiana in Florida in hurricane season. State Farms stops
Speaker 1: home insurance sales in California citing wildfire risks. Colorado's wildfire
Speaker 1: risk is so high some homeowners cannot get in short,
Speaker 1: whether it's wildfire's, hurricanes, or floods. The increased threat of
Speaker 1: extreme weather, especially in states along the Gulf Coast and
Speaker 1: in the western US, has made homeowners insurance a losing
Speaker 1: proposition for a lot of actors in the private market.
Speaker 1: In fact, the CEO of one of the largest insurance
Speaker 1: companies in the world, recently issued a dire warning to
Speaker 1: a US Senate committee that these disasters have completely destabilized
Speaker 1: the insurance and reinsurance industries.
Speaker 3: For those who don't know.
Speaker 1: Reinsurance is basically insurance for the insurers and backstops the
Speaker 1: losses from particularly catastrophic events. PLC president Eric Anderson testified
Speaker 1: that reinsurance companies quote have been withdrawing from high risk
Speaker 1: areas around wildfire and flood. In particular, he continued, just
Speaker 1: as the US economy was overexposed to mortgage risk in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, the economy today is overexposed to
Speaker 1: climate risk. Anyone with a mortgage is required by banks
Speaker 1: to have an active homeowners insurance policy, So what happens
Speaker 1: in this very un sexy sounding market can have huge
Speaker 1: implications for housing affordability. In high risk areas, premiums have
Speaker 1: been absolutely skyrocketing. In fact, after Hurricane Ian slammed into
Speaker 1: Florida as one of the most expensive extreme weather events
Speaker 1: in history, Florida homeowners have watched with horror as their
Speaker 1: premiums have gone up an astonishing amount. One analysis projected
Speaker 1: that Florida homeowners can expect a forty percent rate hike
Speaker 1: this year alone, and that is if you can get
Speaker 1: insurance at all.
Speaker 3: Many states, including.
Speaker 1: Florida, have watched as large insurers abandon the market altogether,
Speaker 1: leaving taxpayers as the insurer of last resort. In Colorado,
Speaker 1: desperate homeowners and would be homeowners have been begging legislators
Speaker 1: to intervene in order to establish one of those state
Speaker 1: insurance funds. Up until now they didn't need one, but
Speaker 1: wildfire risk has made areas close to forests in particular
Speaker 1: difficult or impossible to ensure. California's state insurance plan has
Speaker 1: a massive three hundred and thirty to million dollar deficit
Speaker 1: thanks to an influx of new policyholders due in part
Speaker 1: to an increase in wildfires. Now every year that state
Speaker 1: seems to set a new record for the expense and
Speaker 1: the damage of those wildfires. Overall, state sponsored plans across
Speaker 1: the country have seen a twenty nine percent increase in
Speaker 1: policies in just a three year period. It is an
Speaker 1: unsustainable situation and something has got a gif. And to
Speaker 1: bring it back around to Florida, the Sunshine State might
Speaker 1: be the best cautionary tale of what it looks like
Speaker 1: when the whole thing starts to give. According to Washington
Speaker 1: Post investigation, Florida's insurance market began its descent into chaos
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, when devastating storms caused several
Speaker 1: large insurers like State Farm to flee the state. This
Speaker 1: left smaller, less financially stable firms to come in to
Speaker 1: try to fill the gap. The next big blow came
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, one of the most expensive storm seasons
Speaker 1: in history, most recently the destruction and cleanup of Hurricane Ian,
Speaker 1: which I mentioned before, tipped that system from crisis to catastrophe.
Speaker 1: Left in the wreckage, of course, have been home owners
Speaker 1: desperately trying to rebuild their lives after intense storm damage.
Speaker 1: Insurers have been caught engaging have been caught engaging in
Speaker 1: outright fraud, denying legitimate claims or paying out a tiny
Speaker 1: fraction of the actual incurred damages. The Washington Post uncovered
Speaker 1: a scheme among insurers to systematically delay and underpay policyholders
Speaker 1: in the state. Meanwhile, insurance lobbyists ran to the Republican
Speaker 1: led state legislature to demand additional protections and the bailoutfit.
Speaker 1: Trump referenced in his attack on DeSantis, and you know
Speaker 1: the man does actually have a point. Florida legislature decided
Speaker 1: to create a taxpayer funded one billion dollar bailout fund
Speaker 1: for the insurers to tap if their losses were too great.
Speaker 1: They also made it more difficult for stiffed and frauded
Speaker 1: homeowners to soothe scam insurers who are ripping them off
Speaker 1: on mass and the legislature limited who can get policies
Speaker 1: through the state run insurer, forcing more customers into the
Speaker 1: hands of these price gouging criminals. Hurricane Ian made landfall
Speaker 1: in September of last year. As of March of this year,
Speaker 1: thirty three three thousand Flora homeowners still have open claims
Speaker 1: linked to Ian that have received no payment. Another one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five thousand were closed without ever receiving
Speaker 1: any payment. The unmitigated March of climate crisis has forced
Speaker 1: a series of terrible choices on state governments and on taxpayers.
Speaker 1: You could have taxpayers subsidized the cost of insuring homes
Speaker 1: and disaster prone areas. You could continue trying to muddle
Speaker 1: through with a mix of private insurers, rising premiums for everyone,
Speaker 1: and occasional industry balance and rampant fraud. Or you can
Speaker 1: basically abandon the large and growing regions which are uninsurable
Speaker 1: due to extreme weather risk without dealing with the underlying crisis,
Speaker 1: our options are only set to become more painful. This
Speaker 1: is a huge deal in Florida, it's a huge deal
Speaker 1: in Texas.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 3: All right, Sager, what are you looking at?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 2: While it's certainly downside to live in interesting times, one
Speaker 2: of the more exciting things about the last few years
Speaker 2: is the feeling that just anything is possible. I especially
Speaker 2: felt that way when Trump was elected in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: against all odds. I felt that way as I watched
Speaker 2: millions of people pick up and move in the middle
Speaker 2: of the pandemic.
Speaker 4: I feel it now.
Speaker 2: People are asking questions, making decisions they never would have
Speaker 2: dreamed of before, out of fear of not doing quote,
Speaker 2: what you're supposed to do. College attendance has for years
Speaker 2: now been in the category of what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: Millions of Americans a generation ago, who never would have
Speaker 2: considered college decided to go even if they didn't have
Speaker 2: the money, or even if they didn't have a clear
Speaker 2: idea of what they wanted to do. They spent tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of dollars, They went into debt on average,
Speaker 2: and in many cases they did not see the once
Speaker 2: promised wage premium. By and large, despite decades of the
Speaker 2: same behavior and an entire generation of people who were
Speaker 2: going broke, this trend still continued right up until COVID,
Speaker 2: when suddenly a few things became very clear. One, schools
Speaker 2: really were not charging you for the quote unquote college experience.
Speaker 2: They not only did not cut tuition but actually raised
Speaker 2: it during literal zoom school from home, showing that the
Speaker 2: only thing you're paying for is that credential. Two, despite
Speaker 2: the fact that demand remained relatively stable, an entire generation
Speaker 2: of young men just decided, you know what, screw this.
Speaker 4: The number of new young.
Speaker 2: Males entering college drop dramatically in twenty twenty one, even
Speaker 2: as campus is reopened, and they put us on track
Speaker 2: for a troubling trend. Sometime in the near future, women
Speaker 2: will outnumber men on college campus, and not only that,
Speaker 2: but outnumber them two to one. Given the way that
Speaker 2: our current higher elite is largely composed of the college educated.
Speaker 2: It will mean a dramatic misalignment of women and men,
Speaker 2: and will have profound social effects on.
Speaker 4: Our dating culture and future marriage rates.
Speaker 2: Despite all this data on collapsing male interest in college,
Speaker 2: elites have refused to stop their tune. They still insist
Speaker 2: student debt cancelation is the only answer, not holding the
Speaker 2: colleges criminally liable for lying to people. They still insest
Speaker 2: our broader culture doesn't have a bias against men, especially
Speaker 2: at the higher elite circles, and they continue to insist
Speaker 2: a college degree is the only way to get ahead
Speaker 2: in this country. Unfortunately for them, men are just not
Speaker 2: listening to them anymore. College enrollment rates for high school
Speaker 2: graduates between the ages of sixteen and twenty four dropped
Speaker 2: a stunning four percent overall in the last four years.
Speaker 4: New Labor Department data reveals.
Speaker 2: Unsurprisingly, this coincided with the lowest teenage unemployment rate in
Speaker 2: seventy years on record, a massive increase in wages paid
Speaker 2: in the hospitality sector and across the lower skilled economy.
Speaker 2: The tight labor market has made college a worse trade
Speaker 2: than ever for millions of people, especially men. This puts
Speaker 2: the current college enrollment rate at a place it has
Speaker 2: not been at for more than two decades. The vast
Speaker 2: majority of this decline is distributed to is attributed to
Speaker 2: male matriculation. Female college matriculation remains at sixty six percent,
Speaker 2: the male college rate is ten percent lower. It is
Speaker 2: not like these guys are just sitting on the couch either.
Speaker 2: Many of them have taken up apprenticeships, which are up
Speaker 2: fifty percent or more year over year. They're filling the
Speaker 2: huge shortage of roles that we have in trades and
Speaker 2: skilled labor positions.
Speaker 4: Across the economy.
Speaker 2: Now, across the board, the entire US population is losing
Speaker 2: faith in college too. Only fifty two percent of respondents
Speaker 2: in a recent Wall Street Journal poll said college was
Speaker 2: worth the cost, and a record fifty six percent said
Speaker 2: it's not. Again, the male female differential here is worth noting.
Speaker 2: Men are much much more likely than women to say
Speaker 2: college is not worth it and express a delight at
Speaker 2: the ability to make a better wage than before whether
Speaker 2: having to go to the trouble of going to college.
Speaker 4: Make no mistake.
Speaker 2: On a long enough timeline, this is going to dramatically
Speaker 2: reshape the face of America. College is not just about
Speaker 2: education more and more, it's really about ideology and lifestyle.
Speaker 4: Whether you have a four year college.
Speaker 2: Degree or not is the best single approximator today for
Speaker 2: how you vote. If you attended college, you are likely
Speaker 2: a Democratic voter, and vice versa. Of course, there are
Speaker 2: many important exceptions, and I am talking about averages, but
Speaker 2: the point remains clear. If you went to college, you
Speaker 2: are much much more likely to have very different cultural
Speaker 2: tastes than if you did not, including but not limited
Speaker 2: to type of music that you like, the TV shows
Speaker 2: you watch, where you go on vacation, where you shop
Speaker 2: for groceries, what you consider a societal problem, whether you
Speaker 2: know anyone in the military, so many things like this.
Speaker 2: If you don't go to college, you will be very
Speaker 2: different in your preferences and your desires in almost every
Speaker 2: single one of those categories. Personally, I don't think there's
Speaker 2: anything wrong with that now, as long as both sides
Speaker 2: are not trying to police the other. But the issue
Speaker 2: is what happens when those separate dramatically by gender and
Speaker 2: class lines. We already have lots of data to show
Speaker 2: that the mismatch between men and women in college is
Speaker 2: having a huge effect already on the potential dating pool
Speaker 2: for college graduate females especially. It is leading to a
Speaker 2: major loneliness crisis for a number of men who are
Speaker 2: having very very hard times finding a female mate. Young
Speaker 2: female depression gets all the headlines, but as I've laid
Speaker 2: out here before, it's really young men who are in crisis.
Speaker 2: Young men commit suicide at four times the rate of
Speaker 2: young women. They make up eighty percent of all suicide
Speaker 2: debts of male versus female. Young Men who remain single
Speaker 2: for prolonged periods of their life suffer worse health outcomes.
Speaker 2: They achieve lower wages, they report lower satisfaction. Generally, they
Speaker 2: are not thriving structurally. You're in a tough place right now.
Speaker 2: Men understand that they are mostly not wanted at college,
Speaker 2: or that it is not a good deal for them,
Speaker 2: But the working class wages that they are seeking are
Speaker 2: not high enough in the long run or show enough
Speaker 2: promise to actually set them up for middle class or
Speaker 2: upper middle class life in the future. Thus they remain
Speaker 2: in this odd middle ground gray area. They're not thriving
Speaker 2: enough to attract many women who are themselves college graduates
Speaker 2: who also find themselves lonely and miserable.
Speaker 4: What you need is a total reset of this whole system.
Speaker 2: The college education expectation needs to drop, Our working class
Speaker 2: wages need to rise even more than they currently have.
Speaker 2: Trades need to be seen in the same level that
Speaker 2: we see a bachelor's of accounting, for example, and the
Speaker 2: entire idea of what you should be doing needs to
Speaker 2: be redefined in every high school in the country until
Speaker 2: that time. Unfortunately, we are in it in for it socially,
Speaker 2: despite how predictable the doom spiral of all of this
Speaker 2: really is.
Speaker 4: We cover a lot of this stuff here and if you.
Speaker 1: Want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a
Speaker 1: premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 4: Great show for everybody. Thank you all so much for
Speaker 4: joining us.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate it and for helping us out become
Speaker 2: premium members and help build out this new set. We're
Speaker 2: really excited to show it to all of you. We're
Speaker 2: going to have fun debuts. Make sure you guys are
Speaker 2: checking your emails. We're going to be sending instructions and
Speaker 2: like outlays in terms of how we're doing it. As
Speaker 2: Chrystal mentioned, we will be remote next week while the
Speaker 2: studio is completely redone here with all the renovations that
Speaker 2: take place.
Speaker 4: You're the ones who are funding it.
Speaker 2: You're the ones who are helping us out breakingpoints dot
Speaker 2: com if you're able otherwise, we'll see you all on Thursday.
Speaker 4: We've got a great counterporn show.
Speaker 3: And actually I'm in for Ryan tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Oh I didn't know though, cool while they're stuck.
Speaker 1: With me, and tomorrow too, it'll be a lady's shown.
Speaker 1: We can talk about men in crisis. Emily, yeah you
Speaker 1: should have it. But yeah, so I'll be in for
Speaker 1: Ryan tomorrow and I'll be here on Thursday. So I'm,
Speaker 1: you know, pulling over to It's just like kind of
Speaker 1: making up for Ryan, filling in for me while I
Speaker 1: was on Honey.
Speaker 2: It's nice for you to do that, but I don't
Speaker 2: think you have to, all right, you guys there, so
Speaker 2: fun ladies show for everyone there.
Speaker 3: You go, see you then,