Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today, Extra amazing, Ryan,
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Speaker 2: So we got a great show for everybody today. We've
Speaker 2: got Ukraine. We're going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: what's going on Belgo Rod Russia, some crazy stuff cross
Speaker 2: border activity, accusations flying across the border, and then some
Speaker 2: new revelations as to why exactly the Biden administration reversed
Speaker 2: itself on the F sixteen policy.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about the debt ceiling.
Speaker 2: Ryan, You're going to give us your extensive Capitol Hill
Speaker 2: experience and break all this stuff down. You've got a
Speaker 2: great historical knowledge of the last time this all went down.
Speaker 2: I think will be very useful for a lot of
Speaker 2: the listeners, just because it is a crazy situation. We're
Speaker 2: getting closer and closer possibly to doomsday scenario. We're going
Speaker 2: to talk about some new polling about migrants, about how
Speaker 2: Americans are feeling about the border crisis. And then Ryan
Speaker 2: actually flagged some interesting stuff going on in Florida, well
Speaker 2: maybe going on on TikTok says it is going on.
Speaker 2: They say there's a labor striking Florida after e Verify
Speaker 2: was put into place. So we'll take a little bit
Speaker 2: of look that we're going to talk about twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Tim Scott, we're always, of course covering twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Here Tim Scott officially announcing.
Speaker 3: Give you some thoughts.
Speaker 2: Glenn youngin also thinking about throwing his hat there in
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Speaker 2: Uber's head of diversity has been put on leave for
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Speaker 4: And they called her manager, and.
Speaker 3: Then they called her manager. They actually were the Karens.
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Speaker 2: that you keep updated. But let's go ahead and get
Speaker 2: to the show. As I alluded to. With Ukraine, extraordinary
Speaker 2: action happening yesterday, let's go this. Throw this up from
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal. Ukrainian backed troops have staged a
Speaker 2: cross border incursion into Russia. The Ukrainian military intelligence identified
Speaker 2: the fighters as to volunteer groups of Russian citizens, kind
Speaker 2: of like those little green men that walked into CRIMEA
Speaker 2: right Ryan So what they said is that President Putin
Speaker 2: was the first to make the accusation after open source
Speaker 2: intelligence suggested that there was some major cross border activity
Speaker 2: happening in the Belgarad region of Russia. For those who
Speaker 2: aren't familiar, it is a town that's about a half
Speaker 2: hour's drive of the official Ukrainian border, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of been a hotbed of activity since the start of
Speaker 2: the invasion. But actually really going back all the way
Speaker 2: to two thousand and fourteen, Belgarad itself has not been
Speaker 2: unspared in this conflict. Apparently the Russians accidentally dropped a
Speaker 2: bomb in the middle of the city, you know, not
Speaker 2: that long ago. So goes to show you that great
Speaker 2: Russian military and how good it can be sometimes bombing
Speaker 2: accidentally their own citizens. But the reason why this is
Speaker 2: so significant is that there is basically no denying that
Speaker 2: these two groups, who they call themselves Ryan were like
Speaker 2: Free Russia, the Fighter.
Speaker 4: Russia Volunteer cores so the Russian legion.
Speaker 3: Or right the Free Russia legion.
Speaker 2: But that is part of the overall foreign legions that
Speaker 2: are overseen directly by the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate otherwise
Speaker 2: known as hu are for those who don't know, hur
Speaker 2: has been the one behind all of the quote unquote
Speaker 2: covert Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil, and it's why many
Speaker 2: of the assurances by Zelensky and others that, oh, we've
Speaker 2: never attacked Russia, it's ridiculous, you know, ridiculous on its face.
Speaker 3: So what do you make of the attack Ryan?
Speaker 2: Approximately eight people or so were injured, doesn't appear to
Speaker 2: see too many killed. But the reason why it's important
Speaker 2: is that this is the first known incursion, or at
Speaker 2: the very least, this is the first and most brazen
Speaker 2: incursion yet by Ukrainian backed forces and really to facto
Speaker 2: US backed forces onto Russian soil since the beginning of
Speaker 2: the conflict.
Speaker 5: Right, and they're not really trying to hide it now
Speaker 5: because they're doing this funny rationale where they're saying, yes,
Speaker 5: it's true that these are fighters are affiliated with US,
Speaker 5: but when they go into Russia, we have no idea
Speaker 5: they're no longer affiliated with US, and then they're acting independently.
Speaker 5: But they also made clear through the entire operation that
Speaker 5: they had excellent communication lines open with these so they're
Speaker 5: basically saying without saying, because if you say that we
Speaker 5: have now invaded Russian with these troops then diplomatically and militarily.
Speaker 5: That is that is an escalation, even though it's just words,
Speaker 5: which is what's so absurd.
Speaker 2: Are we really going to say that this didn't have
Speaker 2: anything to do with the f sixteens, like the one
Speaker 2: thing that they wanted, which, of course, you know President
Speaker 2: Biden said yesterday, oh we would never.
Speaker 3: He gave me an assurance we won't use it to.
Speaker 2: Attack Rush like the day after you see the most
Speaker 2: brazen and you know, here's the other thing, Like I said,
Speaker 2: they're not even bashful about it. A spokesperson for the
Speaker 2: Ukrainian INTELGENS director it said that the aim of the
Speaker 2: operation was to create a buffer zone to protect Ukrainian civilians.
Speaker 2: We expect that such an accidents will become more frequent,
Speaker 2: and I think this is the time to put in
Speaker 2: the same caveat that I always have for the NEFO folks.
Speaker 2: Everyone's like, how can you blame Ukraine for I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't blame that.
Speaker 4: It's it's judgment.
Speaker 2: There's no judgment happening here at all. This is about
Speaker 2: strategic calculus and blowback for the United States. If I
Speaker 2: was that might be doing the same thing. And guess
Speaker 2: what though, if you experience the risk of you know,
Speaker 2: like some catastrophic retaliation, well that risk it should be
Speaker 2: one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: Born by you.
Speaker 2: And instead we're the ones who are supplying this army.
Speaker 2: We're the ones who are basically running all of their
Speaker 2: ops out of the Pentagon. That was probably the most
Speaker 2: significant thing that came out of those leaked docs, like
Speaker 2: we're literally running battle damage assessments for the Ukrainian military
Speaker 2: the way that we did in the past, for like
Speaker 2: our air strikes on Isis, except you know, we were
Speaker 2: actually trying to kill. We were the ones engaged in
Speaker 2: the fight against Isaac. We don't really have anything to
Speaker 2: do with this. Yet the same level of military operational
Speaker 2: you know, capacity as being used to support them. So overall,
Speaker 2: once again the reason why this is important, put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. The Ukrainian government continues to
Speaker 2: deny any accusations of attacking the Belgarod region. They say
Speaker 2: that it's anti Putin militias, as I've said before, but
Speaker 2: they are slowly and really i mean almost completely at
Speaker 2: this point, eroding any credibility that they have. And again
Speaker 2: people are like, oh, what are you saying you believe
Speaker 2: the Russians. No, I believe video is coming out of
Speaker 2: Belgarod of people getting shot, So I'm like, well, I
Speaker 2: wonder who's doing this.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying the Russians are trustworthy.
Speaker 2: But the real jump the shark moment for I think
Speaker 2: for the Zelenski government Ryan was when they immediately blamed
Speaker 2: the Russians that for those two deaths in Poland after
Speaker 2: their anti aircraft missile anti aircraft missile killed two Polish civilians,
Speaker 2: and they were like, this is Russia, this is why
Speaker 2: we need a no fly zone. And then immediately after
Speaker 2: it comes out, it's like, no, that was actually Ukrainian,
Speaker 2: Ukrainian anti aircraft.
Speaker 3: And here's the other thing. They never even apologized.
Speaker 2: They still deny that it was ever them, and we're
Speaker 2: all supposed to just brush past the fact that we're like, oh, like,
Speaker 2: we literally cannot trust you at all, Like you're a liar,
Speaker 2: and you are a liar specifically because you want to
Speaker 2: draws further into your conflict.
Speaker 3: So how do we know?
Speaker 2: Here's the other question too, how much command and control
Speaker 2: does Zelenski have over this? Because every time I read
Speaker 2: in the New York Times about how some strange men
Speaker 2: who happened to blow up the Nordstream pipeline, who may
Speaker 2: or may not have been connected to Ukraine. They're like,
Speaker 2: but Zelensky had no idea. So either that's false or
Speaker 2: it's true. Both are actually very troubling. Both are a
Speaker 2: big problem.
Speaker 5: Sure, and Zelensky fair fairly new leader, Yes, overseeing a disorganized,
Speaker 5: young kind of military and country. So you could imagine
Speaker 5: that you would have in a country that you know,
Speaker 5: previously had so many different power centers or organized around,
Speaker 5: you know, regional powers and oligarchic powers. You can imagine
Speaker 5: that that is not the kind of thing that's easily
Speaker 5: going to be condensed into the power of just one president.
Speaker 2: Could you kind of explain that, because I think that
Speaker 2: there is often a bias of people who grew up
Speaker 2: only in the West who are used to democratic countries.
Speaker 2: In developing countries and specifically post Soviet republics, power is
Speaker 2: very often not concentrated in the hands of just an executive.
Speaker 3: It's disparate.
Speaker 2: It technically says one thing on paper and actually works
Speaker 2: very differently in practice. And that's actually very typical for
Speaker 2: a post Soviet state like Ukraine and would explain why
Speaker 2: Zelensky really doesn't could run the show.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the West came into all of those to Russia
Speaker 5: and the ones countries outside of it with what they
Speaker 5: called shock therapy, which is they took all of the
Speaker 5: kind of Soviet Union assets public assets, say whether it's
Speaker 5: the gas companies which then hired Hunter Biden later, yes,
Speaker 5: all the rest of the economy, and they held auctions
Speaker 5: and only you know, particular flunkies if you were close
Speaker 5: enough to the right people were able to be in
Speaker 5: on those auctions. And so they were able to buy
Speaker 5: say gas prom you know, for pennies on the dollar,
Speaker 5: and then millionaire overnight they own Manchester United or whatever.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: That's that's where.
Speaker 5: You get Russian oligaux. That's where you get Ukrainian oligarchs.
Speaker 5: They always own some type of gas company or something
Speaker 5: like that, and so from that comes power. Because then
Speaker 5: we tried to just layer on top of this elections
Speaker 5: rather than kind of building the institutions and the culture
Speaker 5: of democracy from bottom up. We just said, okay, we
Speaker 5: don't have a communist party anymore. We don't have public
Speaker 5: ownership of all these assets. We have private ownership of them,
Speaker 5: and on this date you're going to have an election,
Speaker 5: and so the aligous are like, okay, cool, here are
Speaker 5: my candidates.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: The other reason I think, Ryan, that this is all
Speaker 2: important is it's about command and control. It's about whether
Speaker 2: if so a like I said, Zelensky had knowledge and
Speaker 2: ordered the attack, which I think is likely. I think
Speaker 2: he probably did, given the intelligence assessments this week.
Speaker 4: This one privateer, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: And you know why, it doesn't take a genius.
Speaker 2: They just suffered a massive battlefield loss in Bakmode. And
Speaker 2: I actually want to spend some time on this as well,
Speaker 2: because I think it's very important for people to understand.
Speaker 2: Let's go into the next part here and I'll explain
Speaker 2: why I think it's important to put the whatever happened
Speaker 2: in Bakmo and then also tie it to the way
Speaker 2: that the US is continuing to increase its aid. So
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal says, to a Ukraine in a
Speaker 2: fight against Russia, allies are looking to a security model
Speaker 2: like Israel. Now here's the problem, Ryan, I don't think
Speaker 2: a lot of people understand this. Before Ukraine there was
Speaker 2: one country in the world. They got more money from
Speaker 2: the United States than any other do you know what it.
Speaker 3: Was called Israel? And it was also a high tech
Speaker 3: developed democracy.
Speaker 2: It was always a little bit curious why exactly they
Speaker 2: needed that money. So they say NATO membership is not
Speaker 2: on the table for now, oh for now?
Speaker 3: Why not forever? And then?
Speaker 2: And European allies could create key guarantees for weapons and
Speaker 2: advanced technology. Now, the reason why I think that the
Speaker 2: F sixteens are now flowing to Ukraine, that they are
Speaker 2: engaging in these cross border Bolgarad attacks, and why they
Speaker 2: recently attacked Putin and all that is. Look, on the
Speaker 2: one hand, things are going well for them. They killed
Speaker 2: a lot of Russians in Bakhmut. They obviously had massive
Speaker 2: success in their spring counter offensive. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: the Russians also killed a lot of them in Bakmat.
Speaker 3: And guess what.
Speaker 2: The Russians are the ones with a population that can
Speaker 2: easily backfill all of those dead people. They have an
Speaker 2: industrial base, they have an intact economy. Their homeland is
Speaker 2: not ultimately, you know, basically decimated or scorched earth, whereas
Speaker 2: Ukraine has lost twenty percent or so of its entire territory.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have an industrial base, massive refugee crisis. They're
Speaker 2: drafting fifty five year olds. I mean, things are not
Speaker 2: going well over there. I think even Zelensky would admit that,
Speaker 2: which is why he's constantly begging for AMMO and for weapons. Well,
Speaker 2: one of the things that we're trying to do is
Speaker 2: basically pump as much into Ukraine as possible to make
Speaker 2: sure that they can maybe make some more gains.
Speaker 3: In the Spring Offensive.
Speaker 2: From what I've read so far, Spring Offensive looks like
Speaker 2: it's still probably coming. The issue for them right now
Speaker 2: is that the ground remains still muddy. I was reading
Speaker 2: an excellent analysis yesterday about how muddy ground actually can
Speaker 2: persist all the way up until June, and that heavy
Speaker 2: rain is still forecast in the regis could we still
Speaker 2: could be waiting for a week, maybe two weeks, three
Speaker 2: weeks something like that. They're really waiting for the conditions
Speaker 2: on the ground to get better after that period. That's
Speaker 2: kind of the off switch for USA to Ukraine. Maybe,
Speaker 2: So they're trying to pump as much into Ukraine as
Speaker 2: possible to kind of freeze the conflict where it is
Speaker 2: right now with Israel.
Speaker 3: But here's one of the dangers that I think that
Speaker 3: comes from that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like we didn't suffer the consequences
Speaker 2: for sixty odd years of our policy towards Israel in
Speaker 2: the Middle East that has caused not only about consternation there,
Speaker 2: it caused real issues. I mean, go back and read
Speaker 2: some of the original justification for why Osama bin Laden
Speaker 2: and all of them wanted to attack the United States
Speaker 2: or Chechens, you know. And there's the point I'm making
Speaker 2: is it wasn't a costless decision, right, not only in
Speaker 2: terms of money, but also geopolitically. So are we signing
Speaker 2: up for basically a guarantee of Ukraine security forever? And
Speaker 2: if that's true, then you're basically, you know, giving them
Speaker 2: de facto NATO membership almost at that.
Speaker 5: Point, because Israel has sort of de facto NATO membership
Speaker 5: in a way. Yeah, I mean, we basically have so
Speaker 5: many different interlocking gant security guarantees. And then you want
Speaker 5: to what do you wonder who are the Palestinians in
Speaker 5: the Ukrainian question? Is is it Russian speaking Ukrainians? Who
Speaker 5: are then? Because before the invasion, the Russian speakers in
Speaker 5: Ukraine were treated in a way that here in the.
Speaker 4: United States we would find appalling.
Speaker 5: Just like if we ever see anybody saying like, no Spanish,
Speaker 5: you can't seek Spanish here, We're like get out of here,
Speaker 5: like this.
Speaker 4: Is a melting pot.
Speaker 5: If they won't speak Spanish, they can speak Spanish, So,
Speaker 5: you know, attempts to ban the Russian language and things
Speaker 5: like that. So is that what they mean by you know,
Speaker 5: or does that flow from that that model if you
Speaker 5: actually put up this last element here, let's.
Speaker 3: Go to the next one, guys, please, Yeah, this is like.
Speaker 5: The vision that some war policymakers here in the United
Speaker 5: States have for and have for how this war could end.
Speaker 5: And it's not crazy, like it's no, this is actually
Speaker 5: this is actually by the most likely ending. They call
Speaker 5: it a freeze. So if you think about, well, actually
Speaker 5: Israel Palestine a decent one.
Speaker 3: Or South Korea, that's really what they.
Speaker 5: Point is South South Korea, where they basically have never
Speaker 5: signed a peace treaty, but Israel Palestine too. There are
Speaker 5: just sort of lines that people recognize, not as legal
Speaker 5: lines that that demarket different countries, but lines over which
Speaker 5: we're not going to shoot at each other. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: and so then that Russia keeps territory. But doesn't quote
Speaker 5: unquote keep territory.
Speaker 2: Yes, but there's a lot of perils to that. I mean,
Speaker 2: first of all, North Korea. You know, it didn't work
Speaker 2: out so well for us. We were like, ah, we'll
Speaker 2: contain it hermit Kingdom, it'll collapse on itself. Well, turns
Speaker 2: out they actually not only survived, they also created nuclear weapons,
Speaker 2: and now they can bomb and destroy Los Angeles if
Speaker 2: they want to. And we have this basically mad men,
Speaker 2: not even they're pretty rational, but they're also crazy, and
Speaker 2: they have nukes. And it's forty five minutes away from Seoul,
Speaker 2: which is one of the most dynamic and incredible cities
Speaker 2: literally on planet Earth, with massive amounts of GDP and
Speaker 2: companies you know, making awesome cell phones like maybe somebody
Speaker 2: one just got and and those are all in danger.
Speaker 2: And also people forget this, we have spent billion, hundreds
Speaker 2: of billions of dollars. We have bases all over South Korea.
Speaker 2: We have thousands of US troops who are stationed on
Speaker 2: the peninsula at all times, specifically in case there's ever
Speaker 2: a jump off between North and South Korea. So once
Speaker 2: again it's costless, but I think we've spent more in
Speaker 2: South Korea than anywhere else in the world might be.
Speaker 4: Right after World War.
Speaker 5: Two, and when you're at a state of perpetual war
Speaker 5: because you've never declared peace, it also erodes whatever democratic
Speaker 5: institutions you have inside there. South Korea, for that reason,
Speaker 5: was a series of military dictatorships in.
Speaker 3: The coups until seven.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely brutal, horrific place to live for anybody who
Speaker 5: was remotely critical of the government, because they would use well, look.
Speaker 4: These North Koreans are right across the border.
Speaker 5: They're going to come marching into Seoul, so therefore we
Speaker 5: need to crush the scent. You could see Ukraine developing
Speaker 5: that type of authoritarian culture if.
Speaker 4: They're constantly under threats.
Speaker 5: Because it makes sense, like Abraham Lincoln was not the
Speaker 5: greatest democrat at the height.
Speaker 2: Of Civil War, Well, let me flip it to where
Speaker 2: I would actually say it was probably worth it in
Speaker 2: South Korea.
Speaker 3: Ain't know why.
Speaker 2: It's like I just said, because they got cool companies
Speaker 2: like Samsung and a lot of its driest a lot
Speaker 2: of strive Korean cars. They have incredible technology. They are
Speaker 2: a great because they spend a ton of their money
Speaker 2: on defense. They're not moochers in any way, they draft
Speaker 2: their their their own men have mandatory military service.
Speaker 5: Like this is not what Ukraine will do too, will
Speaker 5: be one more place where we can dump all of
Speaker 5: our excess military capacity.
Speaker 3: They're certainly that.
Speaker 2: But there's what I would posit is, I don't see
Speaker 2: the next Samsung no offense coming out of Ukraine, Like
Speaker 2: I'm sorry in terms.
Speaker 5: Of like a well, maybe they'll get wiped out, but
Speaker 5: for ten fifteen years, I mean wiped out by AI
Speaker 5: or whatever. But for ten to fifteen years, Ukrainian engineers
Speaker 5: and software developers were the thing that was powering.
Speaker 4: So you're right back.
Speaker 3: But a lot of them left. They don't live in
Speaker 3: Ukraine anymore.
Speaker 2: Actually, so those from what I've read, are the very
Speaker 2: first people who actually left.
Speaker 4: They had connections already.
Speaker 2: Here, or they went to the West, they already had
Speaker 2: dual citizenship or any of that. So look this again,
Speaker 2: it's not a slight I'm just saying out of one
Speaker 2: of the most corrupt countries on earth, like I'm doubtful
Speaker 2: that we're going to see it. And also, frankly, you
Speaker 2: know at this point, like this is a down market
Speaker 2: region of Europe which is already down market. GDP relative
Speaker 2: to all of Asia. Sorry, you're opeans, I.
Speaker 5: Mean South Korea is massively corrupt to South Korea was
Speaker 5: massively corrupt to us and just milking the I think this.
Speaker 2: Is a good point, So I guess people can turn
Speaker 2: it around. But I would just point general trends and
Speaker 2: directions and just be like, well, which way am I
Speaker 2: betting my money on. I'm betting on Asia, and I'm
Speaker 2: looking at so what some of the things that are
Speaker 2: happening here and the Israeli and the South Korean model.
Speaker 2: I think the two things that you and I can't
Speaker 2: agree on where they cost us a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot of money in the long run. And not only that,
Speaker 2: we signed up for security situations which have definitely imperiled us.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, and again that can be worth it.
Speaker 2: I think it absolutely is worth it in terms of
Speaker 2: South Korea, but we should not We should acknowledge that,
Speaker 2: you know, one of our major cities, Los Angeles or
Speaker 2: Hawaii for example, one of our states is literally at
Speaker 2: risk of annihilation because of our relationship with that country.
Speaker 2: I think that's a balance and a trade that is
Speaker 2: probably worth it in the long run, given the amount
Speaker 2: of economic activity and cross cultural connection and all that
Speaker 2: we have. But that needs to be a conscious choice
Speaker 2: by the American people. And I don't think that is
Speaker 2: a conscious choice right now for Ukraine. And if they
Speaker 2: want it to be that way, well you got to
Speaker 2: sell it to us. Then you've got to come out
Speaker 2: and say, like, all right, guys, we're signing up for
Speaker 2: one hundred year commitment here and that we're going to
Speaker 2: we're going to turn Ukraine in the next South Korea.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, well, are we all ready for you know,
Speaker 2: a billion or not a trillion dollars or so to
Speaker 2: be spent in terms of economic development there. That seems
Speaker 2: like a big, big lift and not something necessarily that
Speaker 2: has a democratic support.
Speaker 3: So they have to sell it to us first.
Speaker 5: Right, None of these wars were like declared and voted on, right, NGO,
Speaker 5: And so Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden met in the
Speaker 5: White House yesterday. Here's Kevin McCarthy House Speaker. After that
Speaker 5: meeting the President, he said that he's willing to cut spending,
Speaker 5: but he also wants to raise revenue as well.
Speaker 6: Are you willing to talk about that?
Speaker 7: No, Just to be clear, why when you talk about
Speaker 7: raising revenue. If you look at the fifty year average
Speaker 7: of America, how much money have we brought in by revenue?
Speaker 7: That would be roughly about seventeen percent of GDP. Right
Speaker 7: now we're bringing almost twenty percent of GDP in revenue. Now,
Speaker 7: how many times does that happen in modern history? Only
Speaker 7: twice in nineteen forty four and in two thousand. So
Speaker 7: you're bringing in more money at a higher percentage than
Speaker 7: any other time.
Speaker 3: Can you explain?
Speaker 2: First of all, that was his reaction right outside of
Speaker 2: the White House. But we have a thread, Ryan, could
Speaker 2: you break this down, I think for the audience, let's
Speaker 2: put it up there on the screen. These are just
Speaker 2: about what exactly the GOP wants and can you put
Speaker 2: it in plain English for everybody.
Speaker 5: So basically, what the what Republicans are saying is that
Speaker 5: spending increased significantly under the Biden administration. So therefore it's
Speaker 5: unfair to say that we're going to do the normal
Speaker 5: cost of living inflation adjustments because we did such significant
Speaker 5: bumps over the last couple of years. So therefore we
Speaker 5: need to spend less and that that's the thing that
Speaker 5: might get Republicans hung up completely is that and you
Speaker 5: can move to the next one.
Speaker 4: So people, if they want to read this while we're talking.
Speaker 5: They're saying Republicans are saying, we want to spend absolutely less,
Speaker 5: like not just as a percentage, not just a slower
Speaker 5: rate of growth, but less than the year before nominal right,
Speaker 5: and they want to spend that. They want to spend
Speaker 5: more on the Pentagon. So if you want to give
Speaker 5: more to the military and you want to give less overall,
Speaker 5: then you have to give a huge amount less. And
Speaker 5: if you have already agreed accidentally in a state of
Speaker 5: the Union not to touch medicare and soil security, that
Speaker 5: limits you to discretionary spending, which is like the EPA.
Speaker 4: The Bureau of Indian Affairs, it's veterans.
Speaker 5: A lot of that is veterans, which is what is
Speaker 5: also getting Republicans hung up because they're like, oh, no, no,
Speaker 5: of course we're not going after veterans, Like okay, So
Speaker 5: you keep saying that all these things you're not going after,
Speaker 5: and that leaves them with rights app and then they
Speaker 5: want to go after some of the some of the
Speaker 5: climate tax credits in IRA and for Biden, that's a
Speaker 5: red line he's and he wouldn't have the votes for
Speaker 5: that in the House, House or Senate anyway.
Speaker 4: And so then they're stuck.
Speaker 5: Now they're back to then, well, okay, what can we
Speaker 5: do about food stamps again? And then they're going to say, well,
Speaker 5: and we're only going to do work requirements for able
Speaker 5: bodied people without dependence. Okay, the number of people getting
Speaker 5: food stamps in that situation is very slim, really and there,
Speaker 5: and the amount they get is like nineteen dollars or something, okay,
Speaker 5: twenty dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is this is where he's talking about
Speaker 2: if we can go to the talking about both are
Speaker 2: agreeing on permitting reform. This is one where I'm pretty
Speaker 2: pro permitting reform.
Speaker 3: Ryan. Can you steal mean?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 4: Can?
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, can you at least steal man?
Speaker 2: Or where else I am on this for because I
Speaker 2: don't think people understand this.
Speaker 3: It has to do with it.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's framed by its detractors as just about oil,
Speaker 2: but it's not just about It has to do with
Speaker 2: all clean energy. And so as somebody who is very
Speaker 2: anti the current regulatory regime around wind, solar, and nuclear,
Speaker 2: especially nuclear, permitting reform to me actually does look like
Speaker 2: an incredibly good idea, but maybe explain it to why
Speaker 2: people are opposed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm a kind of a heretic on this right.
Speaker 5: But to make the argument against permitting reform, what people
Speaker 5: say is like, look, they're already telling us we have
Speaker 5: five or ten years to cap emissions at what are
Speaker 5: already catastrophic levels that are putting humanity at risk, like
Speaker 5: existent of an existential crisis like that.
Speaker 4: That's the that's the argument.
Speaker 5: And there's a lot of climate sciences that says, yeah,
Speaker 5: actually that could be right, and that if you do
Speaker 5: permitting reform that is geared toward fossil the fossil fuel industry,
Speaker 5: and the fact that API of the American Petrolium Institute
Speaker 5: left its watermark on Joe Mansions, permitting reform really poisoned it. Well,
Speaker 5: So to explain that, so to speak, So oftentimes legislation
Speaker 5: is written on K Street by lobbyists, and Newt Gingrich
Speaker 5: helped bring this about in nineteen ninety four by when
Speaker 5: he took over, he gutted the amount of staff that
Speaker 5: the public has, so the public gets what it pays for,
Speaker 5: and so members of Congress outsource a lot of their
Speaker 5: legislative writing to k streets. So the American Petroleum Institute
Speaker 5: wrote Joe Manchin's permitting reform legislation, put their watermark on it,
Speaker 5: and forgot to take it off when they circulate it.
Speaker 3: So what is your pro case for permitting?
Speaker 5: So the pro case is that we have learned from
Speaker 5: recent in inflation politics and also from the yellow vest
Speaker 5: protests in France that turning around climate politics by forcing
Speaker 5: working class people to pay more for energy is just
Speaker 5: maybe in an ideal world where you're an authoritarian and
Speaker 5: you can just crush all dissent.
Speaker 4: Can do it, but it's not going to work.
Speaker 5: It's going to produce popular revolt, and your policies are
Speaker 5: going to be repealed. So what's the point of trying
Speaker 5: to force through a policy that's just going to get
Speaker 5: repealed amid anger. The only way you're going to get
Speaker 5: there is if renewables and clean energy can compete and
Speaker 5: are cheap cheaper than fossil fuels, and so you're not
Speaker 5: going to be able to keep everything in the ground
Speaker 5: by force. The way you're going to keep things in
Speaker 5: the ground is the way you're keeping coal in the
Speaker 5: ground now in the United States, which is companies look
Speaker 5: at it, and they're like, it's not worth the money
Speaker 5: it takes to dig that out of the ground keep to.
Speaker 3: Burn natural gas, and so we'll do. No one is
Speaker 3: saying natural gas is great, but it's a hell of
Speaker 3: a lot better than coal.
Speaker 5: And so the argument for permitting reform is you can't
Speaker 5: you can't get enough wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewables
Speaker 5: online at scale in order to drive the price down.
Speaker 5: If every single neighborhood can look at a transmission line
Speaker 5: and say, you know what, we prefer actually not to
Speaker 5: have a transmission line. Oh really, that's that's interesting. That's surprising.
Speaker 5: We've never met anybody who would you rather not have
Speaker 5: construction in your backyard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what. That's our choice. Yeah, it's And if.
Speaker 5: We want to have nine billion people on the planet
Speaker 5: who are using this much energy, we're going to have
Speaker 5: to get the energy from somewhere.
Speaker 2: This is important for people to get because this is
Speaker 2: like one of the biggest wars in Washington right now.
Speaker 2: And that's another reason why I was pretty annoyed with
Speaker 2: Biden whenever he phrased it as like some massive giveaway
Speaker 2: to the oil industry. Sometimes two things can be true.
Speaker 2: Industry can want something, it can also still be good,
Speaker 2: you know, whenever it comes to cost, and like what
Speaker 2: you're laying out here, the way our regulatory regime. I've
Speaker 2: talked about this before in terms of like nuclear reactors,
Speaker 2: Like we haven't had a new nuclear reactor built in
Speaker 2: the United States or at least has come online in
Speaker 2: the United States as the nineteen seventies. There's one currently
Speaker 2: in the works. It takes it way too long to build,
Speaker 2: and it costs way too much money. Now, some of
Speaker 2: that is definitely on the companies itself. A lot of it, though,
Speaker 2: is also on the government. And there's some crazy breakthrough
Speaker 2: technology happening right now in the world of nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2: They're looking at him that are so small they can
Speaker 2: fit literally inside of a truck, I mean nuclear fission technology.
Speaker 2: And most of it is happening the research not in
Speaker 2: the US, and it's specifically because they don't think they
Speaker 2: can do business here. Unfortunately, the Europeans, while they sometimes
Speaker 2: have a better permitting regime, they also are anti nuclear ideologically,
Speaker 2: and so we're really not seeing the uptake on this
Speaker 2: in the world's most developed economies. The Asians are the
Speaker 2: ones instead who are like, hey, come over here except Japan.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: Now Japan is.
Speaker 4: Out also because they had a little bit of a situation.
Speaker 2: Well it was their fault, Okay, I'll maintain that, but
Speaker 2: that was one percent on them. The problem though, also Ryan,
Speaker 2: is that the way that this all fits is, as
Speaker 2: I understand it, this is a major Republican priority, but
Speaker 2: they are also not willing to trade on some revenue raisers.
Speaker 2: And this is where let me call out the Republicans
Speaker 2: here because this stuff drives me absolutely crazy. They specifically
Speaker 2: shot down closing the carried interest loophole, which is literally
Speaker 2: only beneficial for people who work in private equity and
Speaker 2: venture capital who.
Speaker 3: Are multi multi multimillion.
Speaker 2: Just so they don't have to pay a tax which
Speaker 2: is equivalent to income tax like you or I or
Speaker 2: anybody else would and can pay dramatically lower on their
Speaker 2: millions of profits.
Speaker 3: So, like, let's be clear, that's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two where they're talking about here is wonky, But
Speaker 2: it's about pharmacy benefit managements.
Speaker 3: Can you explain that one? So the people and these these.
Speaker 5: Are the new folks who are really in the cross
Speaker 5: hairs of everybody in Washington because like some of the
Speaker 5: Earth Insurance companies and drug makers, who are some of
Speaker 5: the two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, were.
Speaker 4: Like, who can we take out?
Speaker 5: Right, it's like a pharmacy benefic managers And these are
Speaker 5: the folks who are basically middlemen and are negotiating.
Speaker 2: All they do is at cost, right, Like that is
Speaker 2: literally all they do is at cost of prescription drug.
Speaker 4: And it's true.
Speaker 5: And yes, sure, you know, nuke the pharmacy benefit manag
Speaker 5: It's not going to save everything, but it'll it'll do something, right,
Speaker 5: uh And and it's it's hilarious because the public is
Speaker 5: clamoring for something, and the insurance industry, in the pharma
Speaker 5: school industry like here's something you can do.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And finally Congress is like, yes, sir, yes.
Speaker 2: And there was a really funny part of Ryan here
Speaker 2: that we were talking about yesterday. Let's put it up
Speaker 2: there on the screen about how there is a growing
Speaker 2: sense of regret within Democratic ranks that the party missed
Speaker 2: an opportunity to neutralize the debt limit when they fully
Speaker 2: controlled Congress and White House for two years.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you think what a stupid you know.
Speaker 2: My favorite part, Ryan is that the best it's been
Speaker 2: explained to me. The reason why they didn't do it
Speaker 2: is because they would have had to put a number
Speaker 2: on it, and by putting a number on it, they
Speaker 2: would have thought they thought that would be a bad headline.
Speaker 2: So they were not willing to sacrifice one bad headline
Speaker 2: for having to now cut all the programs that the
Speaker 2: past while they were in office. And look, the ball
Speaker 2: is in the Republican's court, there's no question. I mean,
Speaker 2: they are completely controlling the playbook here. You know, Biden
Speaker 2: and all them bent the knee almost in every way.
Speaker 2: Speaker McCarthy also spoke at the Capitol yesterday after he
Speaker 2: returned from the White House.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to what he said.
Speaker 8: So what we would like to do is, sit down.
Speaker 8: We have to spend less than we spent last year.
Speaker 8: And you got to know why the Democrats spent six
Speaker 8: trillion dollars. They brought us inflation more dependent on China.
Speaker 8: We've had three of the biggest four banks failures just
Speaker 8: in the last couple of months. So what we want
Speaker 8: to do is a limit of the amount of spending
Speaker 8: that we could do in the future, about one percent.
Speaker 8: That is an idea by Joe Manchin. Get our supply
Speaker 8: chain working again, so work requirements for only able body
Speaker 8: people with no dependence.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what do you get from that, Ryan is
Speaker 2: that he's drawing it out when he said able body people.
Speaker 2: But the problem is, I just don't see how you
Speaker 2: reach the overall top line numbers here. So I think
Speaker 2: that the TLDR is we're trying to explain to everybody
Speaker 2: here like what exactly they want, Well, the White House
Speaker 2: doesn't want. And the consequences, I mean, we've talked about
Speaker 2: ad nauseum at this point, but are very grave from
Speaker 2: what I have seen. One current estimates as one point
Speaker 2: five million people could lose their job within just the
Speaker 2: first forty hours that we would have Medicare and Social
Speaker 2: Security payments that would stop on June eighth if they
Speaker 2: let the crisis drag on, not to market, not to
Speaker 2: mention a very likely market drop of some twenty percent
Speaker 2: or so on the S and P five hundred. But
Speaker 2: here's the other thing. Nobody knows it could know. Absolutely
Speaker 2: nobody knows how it would go. Even the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 2: now and all the consideration on that stuff, it's up
Speaker 2: in the air. Because Biden decided that he wouldn't do it,
Speaker 2: and now it's maybe on the table. So overall it's
Speaker 2: a very chaotic situation and it's not good. Where do
Speaker 2: you think things will progress from now?
Speaker 5: I think it depends on what Republicans are willing to
Speaker 5: say yes to, because I think that Democrats, if Biden
Speaker 5: agrees to something, there will be enough Democrats to that.
Speaker 5: You know, you get a hundred you maybe get a
Speaker 5: hundred Democrats in the House right to go with it.
Speaker 5: So what's your sense on how many Republicans there are
Speaker 5: who would take a deal that is good for them.
Speaker 5: Let's say your freezing spending and you've got two years
Speaker 5: worth of caps and that you can fight it out
Speaker 5: in the next election against you know what the status
Speaker 5: quote was. It's a huge win, but it's not everything
Speaker 5: they wanted. Do you think that there will be a revolt?
Speaker 5: That seems to be the big question.
Speaker 3: I don't know. There's no quote. You know.
Speaker 2: The other idea that I heard floated to me by
Speaker 2: somebody was, hey, man, I don't think we'll DeVault. They'll
Speaker 2: probably just do some one month extension or something like
Speaker 2: that to September, which I mean it's possible.
Speaker 3: I'm not so sure.
Speaker 2: Though that the the you know, far right people when
Speaker 2: like the freedom caucused type people in the House would
Speaker 2: go for that. So I genuinely don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: know what they would be willing to agree to.
Speaker 4: It could get an extension, like Democrats vote for an extent.
Speaker 2: Dems would definitely vote for an extension, and it's possible
Speaker 2: they could say.
Speaker 4: Look.
Speaker 2: The other thing is that I kind of said this
Speaker 2: to Crystal yesterday, is I really think that nobody's gonna
Speaker 2: budge until the markets crash.
Speaker 3: I think something's going to really crash.
Speaker 2: That was by the way, I kept wondering, why do
Speaker 2: they keep holding these meetings at four thirty pm or five?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Somebody looked at me like it was an idiot, and
Speaker 2: I was like, does they don't want the markets to crash?
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, that's so obvious. That actually
Speaker 3: makes ten.
Speaker 2: So the reason why everyone, if you're wondering, why these
Speaker 2: are taking a place later in the day, is because
Speaker 2: they have to wait until markets closed so that there's
Speaker 2: no reaction to what they do.
Speaker 4: For Biden, he's like four o'clock, man, I'm done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. The guy never works passed forth there.
Speaker 2: That's why I was shocked sin since one is Biden
Speaker 2: have a five thirty pm meeting on his calendar. But yeah,
Speaker 2: this apparently is the answer. Let's go to the next
Speaker 2: one here. These are some interesting polling Ryan around the
Speaker 2: border crisis and probably one of the more vulnerable areas
Speaker 2: for Democrats right now.
Speaker 3: Let's put it up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: CBS poll asks directly, do you think the Biden administration
Speaker 2: should be tougher or easier on migrants who are trying
Speaker 2: to cross at the US Mexico border? Fifty eight percent
Speaker 2: actually plus four from April say tougher easier, only twenty percent.
Speaker 2: You know what's fascinating is that even amongst Democrats, you've
Speaker 2: got forty one percent saying tougher, twenty percent easier. GOP
Speaker 2: is eighty four eleven, Indy is fifty four to twenty five.
Speaker 2: And then you've got the racial breakdown. Ironically, Hispanic as well,
Speaker 2: which is often held up as some monolith, you know, community,
Speaker 2: is also at forty one percent tougher, just so everybody knows.
Speaker 2: I think it's an interesting breakdown, Ryan, in terms of
Speaker 2: broader and how much people are thinking about it. Put
Speaker 2: the next one up there on the screen, because people's
Speaker 2: feelings on this are more nuanced than you would think.
Speaker 2: So for example, if you ask people, would you favor
Speaker 2: housing migrants or think there are facilities to do so,
Speaker 2: there at fifty two to thirty seven. If you say
Speaker 2: housing migrants willingness versus space concern, most people are very
Speaker 2: much in favor of housing them. However, in terms of
Speaker 2: some of the bigger breakdown, like do you think that
Speaker 2: you should be tougher, well, then yeah, the vast majority
Speaker 2: actually say yes. For example, you know Ron DeSantis got
Speaker 2: a lot of heat for sending migrants to Martha's Vineyard.
Speaker 2: They say, do you approve of migrants to sending northern states?
Speaker 2: They say, yes, you think we should involve parts of
Speaker 2: the country those places have more space and resources. People
Speaker 2: don't like it whenever it sends a political statement, but
Speaker 2: on his face they're very much okay. Kind of what's
Speaker 2: spreading migrants to places which don't have to bear the brunt?
Speaker 2: For example, I know it was a big thing with
Speaker 2: Martha's Vineyard, and they're like, yeah, you're dealing in you
Speaker 2: know with what we deal with literally in like thirty
Speaker 2: minutes in l Pass or in Ego Pass or any
Speaker 2: of these other places.
Speaker 3: They say, in.
Speaker 2: General, what you find is a more nuanced view of
Speaker 2: the migrant immigration situation than I think is genuinely presented
Speaker 2: by the media.
Speaker 3: So what do you make of it?
Speaker 5: I mean, one of the big concerns that the left
Speaker 5: has been forecasting over the last decade is what they
Speaker 5: call eco fascism, that there's going to be so much
Speaker 5: popular resentment toward migrants driven by climate collapse around the
Speaker 5: World war in climate collapse, that you're going to have
Speaker 5: countries in the developed world, you know, the haves are
Speaker 5: going to keep out the have nots, and that you're
Speaker 5: not going to just see demagogues pushing for walls in
Speaker 5: the United States. You're going to see that, you know,
Speaker 5: all over the western and developed world outside of the
Speaker 5: Western world. And so I think that this is a
Speaker 5: step in that direction. I think you're going to see this.
Speaker 5: I think this is going to be where popular opinion is.
Speaker 5: At the same time, we're facing labor shortages and we're
Speaker 5: facing you know, birthright issues that are going to make
Speaker 5: it so that ironically, the countries that are able to
Speaker 5: bring in the most young people who are able to
Speaker 5: work are going to be the ones that are going
Speaker 5: to grow in the twenty first century.
Speaker 3: So yeah, this is where I'm not so sure.
Speaker 2: I always this is this is a quasi libertarian argument
Speaker 2: that I hear sometimes and it's like, well, what's wrong
Speaker 2: with higher wages? I think higher wages are great. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's no real you know, labor shortage has frankly been
Speaker 2: one of the best thing that's ever happened for the
Speaker 2: American working class. There's a lot of dispute on this,
Speaker 2: but there is some evidence, some evidence, is what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: And again it is in dispute. I should be honest
Speaker 2: that part of the Trump administrations at least reduction in
Speaker 2: overall migration had an impact on the overall wage inflator
Speaker 2: had an impact on overall wage increase from twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: till twenty twenty. Obviously, twenty twenty things got a little
Speaker 2: bit wonky posts that I don't think you can say
Speaker 2: that the current wage conditions really had anything to do
Speaker 2: with immigration or not, just because of the madness of
Speaker 2: what happened with COVID and everything. But from before that period, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think there's good evidence on the birth rate question
Speaker 2: that one is where and look, I think all of
Speaker 2: this presumes that this is almost puts like immigration on
Speaker 2: the same footing as legal versus illegal, and I think
Speaker 2: that that is where some people like me and I
Speaker 2: have the most objection. It's like, look, I think it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily the best position, but I think it's a
Speaker 2: defensible one to say, oh, we need more immigrants in
Speaker 2: order to take jobs, et cetera. It's like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: then you need to come here in an orderly process,
Speaker 2: like it can't be. For example, you know, we had
Speaker 2: thirty thousand slots for asylum that people are allowed to
Speaker 2: apply for. We had one point five million people apply
Speaker 2: for that. That's insane, you know. And then here's the
Speaker 2: other thing. It's not fair to them either. These are
Speaker 2: people don't even speak any English, paying some coyote to
Speaker 2: drag them across Mexico, many of them being raped and
Speaker 2: killed in the process.
Speaker 3: Then they get.
Speaker 2: Here because they think they can just like waltz across
Speaker 2: and go to work, and it's like, oh, it turns
Speaker 2: out you're living in a shantytown in Mexico for the
Speaker 2: next two years. So I mean, that's not a good
Speaker 2: situation for them. For child, for a single mom or
Speaker 2: single adult male either. I mean these none of these
Speaker 2: things are good I think right now for.
Speaker 5: Anyone, right right, we say you got to go through
Speaker 5: an orderly process, but our system is incapable, it's insane
Speaker 5: or uninterested in producing an orderly process for them to
Speaker 5: go through. And so so you're seeing states start to
Speaker 5: respond to. Governor Ron DeSantis earlier in May sign into
Speaker 5: law in new immigration bill which by July is going
Speaker 5: to require all companies to use Everify, which is basically
Speaker 5: requires you to run your employees through the federal system.
Speaker 5: If you don't, the fines are extraordinarily largely I think
Speaker 5: ten thousand dollars a pop or something like that.
Speaker 4: Also requires hospitals to take kind of the.
Speaker 5: Immigration information from patients who come in, and other ways
Speaker 5: to tighten the screws around the immigrant population. Here's how
Speaker 5: some of the local reporting has been unfolding even before
Speaker 5: it has gone into actual official effect.
Speaker 9: But a new immigration crackdown by the Florida legislature and
Speaker 9: Governor Ronda Santis is.
Speaker 10: Now making it harder for them to live and work
Speaker 10: in the States.
Speaker 11: And even though the policy is not yet an effect,
Speaker 11: CBS do's Miami's Garberto Arzola shows us how it has
Speaker 11: already shaken the undocumented community along with employers they work for.
Speaker 9: Our recent survey from the Migration Policy Institute says they're
Speaker 9: around eight hundred thousand undocumented immigrants right here in the
Speaker 9: state of Florida, many taking jobs like construction and agriculture,
Speaker 9: but that may not be for long. Around South Florida,
Speaker 9: labor workers are becoming more and more scarce by the day.
Speaker 3: According to some employees.
Speaker 12: People aren't showing up to work because they're scared of
Speaker 12: being deported.
Speaker 9: And critics say Senate Bill seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 4: Is to blame none of the desk, mister speaker.
Speaker 9: According to the bill, businesses could face up to a
Speaker 9: ten thousand dollars fine per undocumented employee, and the state
Speaker 9: could revoke their license For construction workers like Jose, he says,
Speaker 9: half of the workers are already gone.
Speaker 5: Many workers are leaving thinking they're going to be deported,
Speaker 5: so they're going to other states.
Speaker 4: And if you notice, that was TikTok, So this is
Speaker 4: a this is a big thing on top. It's a
Speaker 4: local news.
Speaker 5: Report that went on a TikTok and these types of
Speaker 5: reports have been going viral and it's creating an impression.
Speaker 4: That might not quite yet be justified by the numbers.
Speaker 5: But I wanted to play one more just so people
Speaker 5: have a sense of what's going around.
Speaker 4: TikTok.
Speaker 5: Here's here's one more that's really been making the rounds
Speaker 5: roll this side.
Speaker 12: Hello everyone, this is an update. Today is Tuesday, May
Speaker 12: the sixteenth. It's not Sunday. There is my truck with
Speaker 12: grass and this is a construction site here in Davenport, Florida,
Speaker 12: twenty miles from Orlando.
Speaker 4: And this is all you see.
Speaker 12: It's nine am. Usually at this time. There's a lot
Speaker 12: of people here working, all kinds of contractors doing their job.
Speaker 12: Roofs of course, a lot of noise and loud Mexican music.
Speaker 12: This is what you hear today. So it is happening.
Speaker 12: It is not fake. It is not a joke. You
Speaker 12: see one contractor there. This is all thanks to run the.
Speaker 2: Santas anecdotal obviously, but we don't know if it's fully there.
Speaker 2: That said, it's probably not a surprise, I mean, because
Speaker 2: this was long predicted. I mean, looking here at Tampa
Speaker 2: Bay Business Journal, they have a headline that just came
Speaker 2: out literally yesterday saying immigration law could significantly impact Florida's
Speaker 2: construction and agriculture industries. Here Again, though, I'm just like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's true. It is true that enforcing the law will
Speaker 2: have consequences. That doesn't mean that it's a bad idea.
Speaker 2: It just means like, okay, well, then we need a
Speaker 2: process through which we can rectify this mismatch in the
Speaker 2: way that apparently all construction and agriculture operates with under
Speaker 2: the table illegal labor and we're all just supposed to
Speaker 2: be cool with that. That does just doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: a good status quo. And look, I'm not saying it
Speaker 2: doesn't have consequences, but you know, maybe consequences are worth it.
Speaker 5: Well, we have a Yeah, people have a couple significant
Speaker 5: complaints about life in America right now. One is that
Speaker 5: housing is too expensive, very true. Two is that food
Speaker 5: is too expensive.
Speaker 3: All true.
Speaker 4: This policy, we'll.
Speaker 5: Drive up the prices of all of those things substantially.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 5: I think the big mistake we made came actually ironically,
Speaker 5: when we hardened the border and made it much more
Speaker 5: difficult for seasonal laborers to go back and forth between
Speaker 5: Mexico and Central America and the United States. Because we
Speaker 5: had this incorrect sense that people who were coming here
Speaker 5: to work the fields, to work construction jobs and sending
Speaker 5: money home didn't want to live in Mexico or El
Speaker 5: Salvador in Honduras.
Speaker 4: They really really wanted to live in the United States.
Speaker 5: And it's kind of a chauvinistic, almost quaint cute like
Speaker 5: the idea that really, our country is so awesome that
Speaker 5: everybody wants to move here. No, in fact, they wanted
Speaker 5: to come here, work really really hard for four months,
Speaker 5: send money back home, relaxed back at home with their families,
Speaker 5: you know, do work back there, and then come back
Speaker 5: make American money again, you know, send money back home
Speaker 5: and keep that going. We did that. That worked for
Speaker 5: like one hundred years or something like that, and then
Speaker 5: we said, no, not doing that anymore. So now all
Speaker 5: of a sudden you had all of these migrant labors
Speaker 5: who are now trapped north of the wall, north of
Speaker 5: this hard, hard border. So then they send their they
Speaker 5: send for their families to come up with them too,
Speaker 5: and you start then then they start building roots here
Speaker 5: in the country. And so we've always had a system where,
Speaker 5: you know, we don't pay fifteen to thirty dollars an
Speaker 5: hour for fruit pickers like.
Speaker 2: That, but I think we should and I look if
Speaker 2: strawberries cost more, like they cost more, and I think
Speaker 2: that's kind of where I'm getting at. It's like, I
Speaker 2: just feel like some of this is almost reverse chauvinism,
Speaker 2: as in the idea is that strawberries can only be
Speaker 2: picked by people who don't aren't from here.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, wait, why not. I mean people will
Speaker 3: do anything for the right wage. It's just that the
Speaker 3: wage is.
Speaker 5: Low and the second, but we have a system that
Speaker 5: the second that wages start to rise, our system, our
Speaker 5: our fed chair whoever it is, and whatever party is
Speaker 5: going to watch it. Like, you know what, we have
Speaker 5: too many people working. We need to push wages back down.
Speaker 5: So we have built a system in which wages can't
Speaker 5: go up. And so the only thing you can do
Speaker 5: is then allow people to do labor arbitrage, where you know,
Speaker 5: the amount of money that they're making in the field
Speaker 5: isn't a lot if they're going to live full time
Speaker 5: in Florida, but would also but it would allow them
Speaker 5: to actually have a nice life and send enough money
Speaker 5: back to Guatemala.
Speaker 2: No defense here of the Federal Reserve or I'm more
Speaker 2: saying like you have got look, something has got to give.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, i'd rather the FED give and not you.
Speaker 2: Know, US immigration law, where you actually effectively have a
Speaker 2: complete lawless system and we have no idea how many
Speaker 2: people are even here in the US illegally literally none,
Speaker 2: because it's no proper census. And then yet somehow we
Speaker 2: do have a census, and yet they also count. Whenever
Speaker 2: it comes to the electoral college. Some would go and
Speaker 2: riddle me even though they can't vote, Riddle me that one.
Speaker 2: I still have never exactly gotten in my head around that,
Speaker 2: and I think that generally comes. And look, you know,
Speaker 2: I hate bringing personal stuff into this, but you know,
Speaker 2: it costs my parents thousands of dollars to become citizens
Speaker 2: of this country. It's a pain in the ass to
Speaker 2: go through the green car process. You can't just waltz
Speaker 2: into any other country on Earth and just say, you
Speaker 2: know what, I'm staying here, I want to go to work,
Speaker 2: and you know, and you can't do anything to me.
Speaker 2: Try doing that in literally anywhere else, and they will,
Speaker 2: they will laugh at you and throw you out almost immediately.
Speaker 3: Do I think we should be above that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, But that doesn't mean that we have to have
Speaker 2: such a permissive system as.
Speaker 3: What we have right now.
Speaker 2: I have nothing but empathy and compassion for people who
Speaker 2: want to come here. Obviously everybody on earth, a lot
Speaker 2: of people on Earth at least want to come to
Speaker 2: the United States. But that also doesn't mean you have
Speaker 2: a right to do it based on your terms. It's
Speaker 2: supposed to be a mutually beneficial transaction, not something where
Speaker 2: it's just up to one person. And you know, I
Speaker 2: guess you know of what populous itself doesn't get a
Speaker 2: real vote, And I think that's where some of the
Speaker 2: what you referenced earlier, that is where the tougher mindset
Speaker 2: comes from. You're like, hey, hold on, They're like, this
Speaker 2: is not fair. And I think that's that's what's reflected
Speaker 2: I think in the polling line.
Speaker 5: And I guess who's going to do who's going to
Speaker 5: do these jobs?
Speaker 4: I mean, I just see no.
Speaker 2: Reason why Americans got I mean, listen, I mean if
Speaker 2: they were paying, if I was younger and I came
Speaker 2: from a different background, and if it was eighteen dollars
Speaker 2: an hour, like maybe I would do it, you know,
Speaker 2: or maybe a lot a lot of Americans would do it,
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of there's no reason why American
Speaker 2: citizens can't do these jobs.
Speaker 3: It's just a lot of them don't want to because
Speaker 3: then we're cheap.
Speaker 5: Then strawberries and orange juice just become luxury items for
Speaker 5: the super rich.
Speaker 2: And I agree that that doesn't necessarily mean. I mean, listen, eggs,
Speaker 2: for example, have not gone up in priced since nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: You want to know why, and it's because of an
Speaker 2: aggressive government subsidy program.
Speaker 3: Well, I see no reason why.
Speaker 2: Recently when we had to kill a build, well we had,
Speaker 2: we had crazy egg inflation.
Speaker 3: We're actually below overall inflation.
Speaker 2: Fun update for everybody, but overall, in the aggregate, egg
Speaker 2: prices have not risen for a long period. Why because
Speaker 2: we just decided to society. We're like, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 2: we're just not going to So I don't know why
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily can't do the same thing for other products.
Speaker 2: Although you know that's the big government part of me.
Speaker 5: Now you're talking if you want massive government subsidies to
Speaker 5: lift low income people up into a middle class.
Speaker 3: I've always wanted that. That's all I've ever advocated for
Speaker 3: on the show.
Speaker 2: Works for me, Let's go to the next one. Here
Speaker 2: Tim Scott throwing his hand in the ring. We put
Speaker 2: together a compilation of his pitch. While he thinks he
Speaker 2: can be the guess the new Reagan in this race
Speaker 2: against Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say, Oh.
Speaker 13: Nor Charleston, And for those of you who wonder if
Speaker 13: it's possible for a broken kid and a broken home
Speaker 13: to rise beyond their circumstances, the answer is yes. And
Speaker 13: our nation our standing at a time.
Speaker 14: For choosing victimhood or victory. Victimhood or victory victimhood or victory,
Speaker 14: grievance or greatness.
Speaker 13: I choose freedom and hope and opportunity.
Speaker 6: Will you choose it with me?
Speaker 15: Will you join me as messengers of hope, as missionaries
Speaker 15: to believe that the strength of our ideas can change
Speaker 15: our nation again?
Speaker 14: I will.
Speaker 15: Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 4: Certainly something is he running for vice president?
Speaker 6: There?
Speaker 4: What's your read?
Speaker 2: I think he's genuinely running for president. So I don't
Speaker 2: know if a lot of people understand this, But people
Speaker 2: who are in the Senate love Tim Scott. They love
Speaker 2: this guy personally.
Speaker 3: I don't get it.
Speaker 2: But John Thune the number two Republican in the GOP caucus.
Speaker 2: He spoke at the introduction for Tim Scott, endorsed him.
Speaker 2: A lot of others fellow senators really want him to run.
Speaker 2: On a personal level. He's built up a lot of
Speaker 2: relationships with them. But honestly, I think he believes it.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing. It only takes maybe one billionaire,
Speaker 2: maybe named Larry Allison to underrate your entire campaign. For
Speaker 2: where the guy who's worth like what is he worth today?
Speaker 2: Like ninety billion or something like that, the founder of Oracle.
Speaker 2: Here's the other thing. Trump himself is welcoming Tim Scott
Speaker 2: into the race. Put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Trump says, good luck to Senator Tim Scott entering the
Speaker 2: Republican presidential race. It is rapidly loading up with lots
Speaker 2: of people. Tim is a big step up from Ron
Speaker 2: to sanctimonious, who is totally unelectable. I got opportunity zones
Speaker 2: done with Tim, a big deal that has been highly successful.
Speaker 3: Good luck Tim.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing everyone was trying to understand, like, why
Speaker 2: is Trump not attacking Tim Scotty attacks Roun DeSantis. It's
Speaker 2: obvious Ryan, because he knows Tim Scott is not a
Speaker 2: threat to him, and DeSantis actually is. Thus, the more
Speaker 2: people who jump in the race, the better off he is.
Speaker 2: He even alludes to it. It is rapidly loading up
Speaker 2: with lots of people. He's not an idiot.
Speaker 3: He knows that. That's why he won in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: And guess what they're proving him right, Tim Scott's in
Speaker 2: the race, Chris Christie's want to throw his hat in
Speaker 2: the ring. Chris Sinunu, the governor of North Dakota, will
Speaker 2: save you the next one. Glenn youngin plot twist, will
Speaker 2: do a whole block on that in a second, also
Speaker 2: thinks that he wants to throw his hat there in
Speaker 2: the ring. And you know, look, I gotta be honest here,
Speaker 2: this down market Reagan pitch from the nineteen eighties, It's like,
Speaker 2: who is this for?
Speaker 3: I get why stan At.
Speaker 2: GOP voters wanted, but how can you look at the
Speaker 2: politics of Donald Trump and his popularity with the GOP
Speaker 2: base and think that's what people want right now?
Speaker 3: Even DeSantis, what do we just do.
Speaker 2: A whole block on immigrates one of the strictest immigration
Speaker 2: laws in the country.
Speaker 3: Why Because he knows that's what GOP voters want.
Speaker 2: This comes from a place of being on the back foot,
Speaker 2: of feeling like we got to take something like that's
Speaker 2: not the forward message that that people are want.
Speaker 3: I mean, it didn't win in twenty sixteen, and.
Speaker 2: It's not nineteen, you know, nineteen seventy nine right now,
Speaker 2: It's a very different time.
Speaker 5: And I think Tim Scott there is doing a bit
Speaker 5: of a kind of racial politics bank shot. So what
Speaker 5: I what I hear from that is he's telling Republican
Speaker 5: voters that a you are none of you are racist
Speaker 5: or bigoted because you're all supporting me. And you know,
Speaker 5: you saw Herman Caine rising in what twenty twelve, nine
Speaker 5: ninety nine, like yeah, in ways that were very explicit
Speaker 5: where people are very explicit in their in their support
Speaker 5: from But then secondly, look at the rhetoric.
Speaker 4: That he used, vic versus victory, victimhood and then grievance.
Speaker 2: See I read that as a shot is Trump. I'm
Speaker 2: surprised you read that as a shot at the left.
Speaker 2: I read I mean, it can be both, but I
Speaker 2: do think that Trump is locked into that.
Speaker 5: I read it as as playing into the kind of
Speaker 5: Trump supporter or Republican mindset that look, yes, slavery was bad,
Speaker 5: Yes redlining was bad, but we had the civil rights
Speaker 5: movement and everyone is equal now in the United States.
Speaker 5: Stop playing victim and stop just leading with your grievances.
Speaker 5: Let's be more optimistic, let's look, let's look for opportunities.
Speaker 3: I guess when you put it that way, I thought that.
Speaker 5: That was kind of how he was coding himself. But
Speaker 5: I feel like it's a much more of a twenty
Speaker 5: twelve message.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that's than a twenty twenty four right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm totally with you. I think that I will
Speaker 2: I would say it said. I read it as a
Speaker 2: shot at Trump. At least that's how I saw the initial.
Speaker 4: Report and I could see that.
Speaker 5: But because the grievances, maybe it's double Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a double entendre. Let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. It's important. As I noted before, some of
Speaker 2: the people who were spotted at the VIP section, one
Speaker 2: of them Mark Sanford, uh, which is a yeah appellation trail,
Speaker 2: Mark John Thune, as I alluded to, and billionaire Larry Ellison,
Speaker 2: the multi billionaire Republican donor who loves Tim Scott. Scott
Speaker 2: is like made in a lab to appeal to some
Speaker 2: of these Republican voters who are like, we just want,
Speaker 2: you know, a really nice guy, like somebody who's not
Speaker 2: like Trump. And the problem is is that that's not
Speaker 2: what the voters want. And you know, even if you
Speaker 2: saw the energy, I mean, there was not a whole
Speaker 2: lot of at least to me, you could Yeah, my
Speaker 2: personal observation, I was not seeing a lot of organic
Speaker 2: enthusiasm there. And he really kind of had to go
Speaker 2: the crowd into cheering, whereas Ryan. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: you've been, but if you ever been to a Trump event,
Speaker 2: you don't have to go.
Speaker 3: Those people been doing anything all right, Like.
Speaker 5: They're like, yeah, they've been tailgated, Yeah, they've.
Speaker 2: Been tail And it's so hard to explain to people
Speaker 2: who haven't been to various different political events, but Trump
Speaker 2: events are something like literally it's like being at a concert,
Speaker 2: it's like being at a football game. You if you've
Speaker 2: covered politics professionally as you and I have, there is
Speaker 2: nothing else in all of politics like it. Some Bernie
Speaker 2: rallies came close, I will give him that.
Speaker 3: Bert.
Speaker 2: Bernie also kind of became a bit of a lifestyle thing.
Speaker 2: But Trump and Bert like they are in another league
Speaker 2: compared to what I'm seeing at right.
Speaker 5: And the concert and analogy is a good one because
Speaker 5: you have a lot of people in the crowd who
Speaker 5: are hoping he'll play certain stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, play the hits me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got his You know, you can't always get
Speaker 2: what you want. That he walks out or what walks
Speaker 2: away from.
Speaker 3: They love it.
Speaker 5: Then some of them then go to all of them,
Speaker 5: but then some of his rifts they want to hear
Speaker 5: those two.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh, is he is he going to do
Speaker 4: the toilet riffs? Right? That's a good point.
Speaker 2: Snake that one. I used to know the snake by heart.
Speaker 2: I can't say it anymore for those who don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a great old Trump is. Let's go to the
Speaker 2: next part here that you flagged Force Ryan and put
Speaker 2: it up there on the screen of Virginia Governor Glenny
Speaker 2: Younkin is reconsidering his twenty two twenty four bid.
Speaker 16: Now.
Speaker 2: The reason why this is interesting is he had already
Speaker 2: ruled it out in April. Whenever he was asked whether
Speaker 2: he was going to run for president, he said, quote, listen,
Speaker 2: I didn't write a book. I'm not in Iowa, on
Speaker 2: New Hampshire or South Carolina. I am wholly focused on
Speaker 2: the Commonwealth of Virginia. However, apparently that has changed in
Speaker 2: the last few months. Why well, it's exactly what we
Speaker 2: covered yesterday. It's because DeSantis, apparently to youngin in too
Speaker 2: many others, is looking rockier, and Youngkin is thinking, Hey,
Speaker 2: why not me?
Speaker 3: He says.
Speaker 2: Quote one of his top advisors told Axios he's reconsidering.
Speaker 3: He'd be in his own lane.
Speaker 2: He's not never Trump and he's not Trump lt a
Speaker 2: top Virginia GOP strategist, told Axios there are quote serious
Speaker 2: discussions happening on re engaging in the presidential race.
Speaker 3: I did take.
Speaker 2: Notice, and that definitely Ryan after he dropped this like
Speaker 2: Morning in America type video on Twitter two days ago,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what are we doing here? You
Speaker 2: know this ain't about Virginia, and can you also explain
Speaker 2: the convoluted gubernatorial process in Virginia?
Speaker 3: Right, this is why you kind of would want to
Speaker 3: run for president.
Speaker 5: Right, you can be governor again, but not consecutively exactly.
Speaker 5: So he's out after this one term and so yeah,
Speaker 5: he's got to find something.
Speaker 4: Else to do or go back to Carlisle.
Speaker 5: And yeah, so I think that if you think about
Speaker 5: Ron De Santis as sort of like a quirk that
Speaker 5: was keeping the kind of Champagne of the Republican primary.
Speaker 4: In the bottle.
Speaker 5: Without this, without his strength anymore, it's uncorked and everybody,
Speaker 5: everybody's coming out because now, like, we're not going to
Speaker 5: hold back for DeSantis anymore, because DeSantis seems kind of
Speaker 5: blood in the water, which is a real quite a
Speaker 5: reflection because that if you think back to when he
Speaker 5: was saying he wasn't going to challenge Trump or De
Speaker 5: santas DeSantis was, he was doing better, doing much.
Speaker 3: Better, I mean, and look, a lot can change.
Speaker 2: De Santa is literally not even in the race, and
Speaker 2: apparently we're writing his obituary, which you know, we have
Speaker 2: to be careful of, right, be like, look, he is
Speaker 2: certainly entering at a disadvantage, but you know, we've never
Speaker 2: seen him go up against Trump. At the same time, though,
Speaker 2: I view it in the same way that I look
Speaker 2: at the Tim Scott decision, which is, at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, Tim Scott entering the race is it's
Speaker 2: a zero sum game. He thinks I'm better than Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 2: I'm the guy who can go up against Nikki Haley
Speaker 2: doing the same thing. I Vivike Ramaswami doing the same thing,
Speaker 2: Asa Hutchinson doing the same thing. And what do we
Speaker 2: learn from all of those people? At an individual level,
Speaker 2: all of them are doing the right thing. But on
Speaker 2: a macro level, if you really believe that Trump is
Speaker 2: such so awful, then you're actually drawing votes away from
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis. There's no question about it. You're just splitting
Speaker 2: the field and Younkin. Look, I don't think Youngkin would
Speaker 2: ever place that high in a Republican primary, but four percent,
Speaker 2: five percent?
Speaker 3: Why not?
Speaker 2: Also, I don't know people remember this, Virginia is a
Speaker 2: very important Super Tuesday state and of which Marco Rubio
Speaker 2: won last time. I believe it was the only state
Speaker 2: that even won in twenty sixteen. Well, they've got a
Speaker 2: decent amount of delegates. So now you just robbed Desanta's
Speaker 2: of a headline probably or maybe reduced his headline that
Speaker 2: he would have gotten otherwise in a sweeping victory. So
Speaker 2: again pointed this out yesterday. Obama is the reason that
Speaker 2: the Klobachar and Budaj edge dropped out in twenty twenty. Right,
Speaker 2: But the GOP does not have that same forcing function
Speaker 2: for somebody to come in and be like, hey man,
Speaker 2: you had your chance, it's time to go.
Speaker 3: Nobody's doing that. No, RNC has no credibility.
Speaker 2: And Trump himself he wants as many people in there
Speaker 2: as possible, and it looks like he's getting his wish right.
Speaker 5: And one thing that was keeping people out was the
Speaker 5: nervousness that Trump was going to turn them toxic, right
Speaker 5: like he did the Rubio Yes, or to Christie it's
Speaker 5: to some degree.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And so for him to welcome Tim Scott and tells
Speaker 5: other candidates come on in and.
Speaker 4: I bask in my love, that's right. I only hate
Speaker 4: Ron de sanctimonious, not you. You're fine.
Speaker 3: Yes, And look, I think it's a problem for Ron.
Speaker 2: I think it's a big The biggest loser in all
Speaker 2: of this is Ron DeSantis, especially if Young Cain comes in,
Speaker 2: because what do we just point out? Young Kin not
Speaker 2: only could draw from him politically more important, he could
Speaker 2: draw him from the money like he has. You know,
Speaker 2: not only is he personally wealthy, but he knows a
Speaker 2: lot of these traditional GOP donors. Northern Virginia is like
Speaker 2: the hotbed of you know GOP consultants number one too,
Speaker 2: literally used to work for the Carlisle Group of private
Speaker 2: equity defense contractors and all that. So he would have
Speaker 2: money well enough to draw stay in the race, and
Speaker 2: he would have enough money to stay throughout the time
Speaker 2: period and also draw money away that would otherwise go
Speaker 2: to Ron DeSantis for donors who otherwise would not want
Speaker 2: Trump to run. So overall this would be a huge
Speaker 2: blow to DeSantis.
Speaker 3: For Youngkin himself, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what he has to lose by running, actually,
Speaker 2: since he can't be governor anyways, so he's in a
Speaker 2: tougher spot than most.
Speaker 3: Let's go, oh if you want.
Speaker 4: We got a new dispatch from the de I Chronicles.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, we have our favorite dispatch from the
Speaker 2: DEI Chronicles. And what's happening here? I just I love this.
Speaker 2: It's everything to me. Put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Uber has now put its Asian diversity chief on leave
Speaker 2: after employees, mostly led by some black employee groups, complained
Speaker 2: about sessions called Don't Call Me Karen that were intended
Speaker 2: to explore the American white woman experience. So she was
Speaker 2: put on leave after black employee or I should not
Speaker 2: say black employees. Some black employee groups, which maybe represent
Speaker 2: some portion of black employees at Uber, complained to management
Speaker 2: that they felt like they were being lectured about the
Speaker 2: American white woman experience and that it was inappropriate for
Speaker 2: that to be included because they did not view Karen
Speaker 2: as a slur. Now, I would not put that in
Speaker 2: a racial slur category. But if the overall, if the
Speaker 2: overall ethos of Uber is we don't judge people by
Speaker 2: the color of their skin, and we want all employees
Speaker 2: to be aware of the personal, individual struggles that each
Speaker 2: individual human being is outside of their race, then don't
Speaker 2: call me Karen Session seems perfectly appropriate and fine, now,
Speaker 2: especially given you the amount of sixteen nineteen nonsenses most
Speaker 2: of these companies force upon their employees on a weekly basis.
Speaker 2: So one, you know, don't call me Karen Session though,
Speaker 2: was apparently though enough Ryan to trigger some of these
Speaker 2: groups and has now led to the capitulation by the
Speaker 2: CEO of Uber, who has put this lady on leave
Speaker 2: and is now ignited a crisis within the company and
Speaker 2: is causing lots of consternation. It is also humorous to
Speaker 2: me because it shows you that the DEI in practicality
Speaker 2: really means basically like whatever white fragility Robin diallonjello nonsense
Speaker 2: that it is, it doesn't actually mean real diversity, equity inclusion.
Speaker 2: And that's why I reject the term and the entire practice,
Speaker 2: and I think it's a complete grift in a farce.
Speaker 3: What did you make of this?
Speaker 5: The kind of funniest part of it was the way
Speaker 5: that the language was the same, going in both directions,
Speaker 5: just with the shoes on the other foot.
Speaker 4: You have this.
Speaker 5: So the DEI boss responded to the complaints by quote
Speaker 5: telling the women that while the conversation may have been uncomfortable,
Speaker 5: sometimes being pushed out of your own strategic ignorance is
Speaker 5: the right thing to do. That is exactly what DEI
Speaker 5: bosses say to white people who go through these sessions
Speaker 5: and come out and say it's you made me feel
Speaker 5: bad about being why And they say, look too bad.
Speaker 4: Got to be uncomforted. You have to be.
Speaker 5: Uncomfort because in that discomfort is where you find your insights.
Speaker 2: Instead, all evidence says that in the discomfort you become
Speaker 2: more racist, right right.
Speaker 5: Right, So I mean forget the actual evidence, but what
Speaker 5: they say is that the discomfort is a good thing.
Speaker 5: So she used that same line back to these women
Speaker 5: who are protesting, saying, sometimes being pushed out of your
Speaker 5: own strategic ignorance is the right thing to.
Speaker 4: Do, okay, And that didn't work for her. That blew
Speaker 4: upright in her face.
Speaker 3: So they're not allowed.
Speaker 2: To be uncomfortable, but you have to be uncomfortable, got it,
Speaker 2: So it seems like discomfort.
Speaker 5: And then to go later one later, as they're applauding
Speaker 5: the fact that they got her suspended, one of the
Speaker 5: women is like, this sounds a little bit too much
Speaker 5: like what police do. Oh so there there was a
Speaker 5: little bit of maybe the kind of regret at their victory. Yes,
Speaker 5: that it might have creeped into the carceral territory, because
Speaker 5: then you're reproducing the same abolition anti abolitionist tendencies that you.
Speaker 4: Are fighting against.
Speaker 6: Got it.
Speaker 5: But separately, can we step back for a second and
Speaker 5: note that all of these managers and workers at uber
Speaker 5: are getting paid by the exploited labor.
Speaker 4: I was a mouse, Sadie Black and Brown. I was
Speaker 4: about to say that which.
Speaker 5: Is their job is to figure out how to extract
Speaker 5: as much money from struggling gig workers as possible so
Speaker 5: that they can then pay to have these sessions where
Speaker 5: they accuse each other.
Speaker 3: That's the great irony of it all, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Is that all of that is built upon ten nine
Speaker 2: to nine contract labor of which they have spent and
Speaker 2: built a multi billion dollar business exploiting. Now maybe you're
Speaker 2: okay with that, but I would just say that when
Speaker 2: you look at the at the very basics on the
Speaker 2: both on the consumer level and on the worker level,
Speaker 2: we have gotten to a very bad place Because has
Speaker 2: anyone taken an Uber lately? They're actually really expensive. They're
Speaker 2: just as expensive as cabs. So now ubers are just
Speaker 2: as expensive as cabs, except now the driver doesn't have
Speaker 2: any benefits. And it's like, yeah, I mean, look, I
Speaker 2: like the technology. It's nice and it's convenient. But somewhere
Speaker 2: in the happy middle, we disaggregated driver from benefits and
Speaker 2: we basically rolled up that benefit into a company stock
Speaker 2: called Uber, and that is what is paying for all
Speaker 2: of this nonsense happening when they're supposed to be doing work.
Speaker 2: So it's this is a good view into what's real
Speaker 2: exploitation being you know, a highly paid black executive at
Speaker 2: Uber having to sit through it. Don't call me Karen
Speaker 2: or somebody who loses their job has no opportunities except
Speaker 2: but to drive for Uber, and you know, just burns
Speaker 2: their car into the ground in terms of its depreciating
Speaker 2: value while driving from two am to you know, the
Speaker 2: two am to six am shift for drunk people.
Speaker 3: Right, sounds pretty miserable.
Speaker 4: And absorbing all the risks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like right that the people who are executives at
Speaker 5: Uber are not the ones who are going to get
Speaker 5: vomit in the back of the.
Speaker 2: Car and then be like, no, they only vomitated on
Speaker 2: half the car, so here's half the reimbursement or something
Speaker 2: like that. And look, yeah, sure there's some benefit or
Speaker 2: whatever to some people who want to drive Uber and
Speaker 2: all that, but you know, we have to still get
Speaker 2: to a better medium as a society about making sure
Speaker 2: that people who are not people are not taken advantage
Speaker 2: of and don't have access to the very basics of
Speaker 2: benefits and are protected, you know, even from you know,
Speaker 2: they're the ones who have to buy the cars, maintain
Speaker 2: the cars and all that, and it can be it's
Speaker 2: a real issue, you know that I've seen for a
Speaker 2: lot of people and what is Uber.
Speaker 5: It's Google Maps with PayPal on it. The actual innovation
Speaker 5: of Uber is exploitation. They're just figuring out ways to
Speaker 5: take all of the risk involved in the actual work
Speaker 5: right and put it put on them the work or
Speaker 5: the contract or they don't want to call them an employee,
Speaker 5: and on a more metal and extract all the profits.
Speaker 3: One of the.
Speaker 2: Reasons why you know a session like don't call Me
Speaker 2: Karen may be valuable for people.
Speaker 3: Is what did we all just go through? Put this
Speaker 3: up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: This lady in New York City who was accused in
Speaker 2: a viral video of like stealing a city bike from
Speaker 2: a couple of black teenagers or young men who had
Speaker 2: surrounded her, was ridiculed and defamed really online called the
Speaker 2: New York City. Well, it turns out that records provided
Speaker 2: to media outlets and to others show that she genuinely
Speaker 2: did pay for the city bike in question at the
Speaker 2: center of this viral fight, and now is looking to
Speaker 2: actually sue some of the people who defamed her online
Speaker 2: as some sort of racist, which is leading to ryan
Speaker 2: a bunch of deleted tweets across the Internet from people
Speaker 2: like no, I never said that, and from media outlets
Speaker 2: adding to substantial and large corrections as to what happened here.
Speaker 2: And you know this, every time I see one of
Speaker 2: these things, I think the same thing. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, not a great look for either party. But
Speaker 2: I wasn't there. I have no idea what preceded it
Speaker 2: or came after. I'm gonna withhold judgment. And it turns out, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's exactly the right move. And so jumping on some
Speaker 2: viral venue and immediately, you know, Karen, and all of
Speaker 2: that doesn't genuinely lead to the best results. You know,
Speaker 2: if anything, what have you underscored? For a lot of people,
Speaker 2: There probably are scenarios where people are not Probably they're
Speaker 2: definitely our scenarios where people falsely accused black youths of
Speaker 2: committing crimes. And now though you have set up a
Speaker 2: situation where people who always want to disbelieve that are
Speaker 2: because like, no, this is just like the NYC cam
Speaker 2: or vice versa, where every single time that you see
Speaker 2: somebody in this scenario, you're like, oh, well that person
Speaker 2: is lying or you know, we want to try. And
Speaker 2: we've gotten to the point now where the default whenever
Speaker 2: you see these videos is I'm gonna withhold judgment and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to jump to conclusions because we've been
Speaker 2: burned so many times on fakes, which was the exact
Speaker 2: point of the Don't call Me Karen session.
Speaker 5: And it reminds I think everybody a little bit of
Speaker 5: the Nicholas Sandman case, the little kid with the maga hat.
Speaker 4: Yes who and the drums is one of the richest
Speaker 4: people in the country.
Speaker 3: Now because yeah, he's good for him.
Speaker 5: But one thing they both had in common, and I
Speaker 5: don't say this in a diffamatory way. You watch the
Speaker 5: video and they both they both look like.
Speaker 4: Punks in the video, right, what's happening here? Yeah? Like
Speaker 4: none of them, neither, neither of them looked good in
Speaker 4: the end.
Speaker 3: To me, I was just like, what are your odd situation? Yeah,
Speaker 3: to find yourself?
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, and the nurse the crying, and they're like,
Speaker 4: she seems all yeah, seems.
Speaker 3: To me it seemed a bit historyonic, although apparently she's pregnant.
Speaker 3: You know, she's willing to.
Speaker 5: Pregnant and just finished a twelve hour shift, Like, that's
Speaker 5: more more work than I've done in twenty years.
Speaker 4: Rre including never been pregnant. Yes, it's not doing it.
Speaker 5: Pregnant, so but so, and just to explain to people
Speaker 5: how how this all unfolded. So the way that these
Speaker 5: city bikes work, you know, you you use them, everybody's
Speaker 5: used them.
Speaker 4: Probably you put your phone in there, you pay for
Speaker 4: it, it's yours, you unlock it.
Speaker 5: Apparently the kids like grabbed her bike or and kind
Speaker 5: of like nudged her until it locked again. She then
Speaker 5: like unlocked it a second time, pulled it out.
Speaker 4: And if she would have lost it to that.
Speaker 5: Kids, if she would have said, you know what, fine,
Speaker 5: you take it, she's liable for like twelve hundred dollars
Speaker 5: if the kids don't return that bike.
Speaker 4: And if you're the kids and you didn't sign one,
Speaker 4: just keep it at that point.
Speaker 5: And so what she was able to show through her
Speaker 5: lawyer was a receipt that she had it for two
Speaker 5: minutes and then ended the trip, and then a receipt
Speaker 5: again that she got it and took it home.
Speaker 6: Got it.
Speaker 5: And so that really fits with the story that it
Speaker 5: was hers, because that changes everything because now now these
Speaker 5: are this is these are people in an urban environment
Speaker 5: who are competing for scarce resources. She had it first,
Speaker 5: like those are the rules, Like she had at first,
Speaker 5: go get your go, get your own scooter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look, I think it's sad. I hope that
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: I think public confrontations of any kind a make me
Speaker 2: deeply uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: And b I do my absolute best to avoid them
Speaker 3: at all costs.
Speaker 2: And right as that was going to say, that would
Speaker 2: be my advice is and I would just walk away.
Speaker 3: You know, you really don't want it sucks, but it sucks.
Speaker 3: It sucks.
Speaker 2: I've been there, you know where you're just all you
Speaker 2: want to do is say something or whatever, and you're like,
Speaker 2: you know what this is. You know, all this is
Speaker 2: going to lead to is trouble. That's not a justification
Speaker 2: for the behavior. It's more on an individual love. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And uh, the meta takeaway is that the don't call
Speaker 2: me Karen session seems.
Speaker 4: Perfectly via people. People needed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it turns out people did need it because.
Speaker 4: Strategy ignorance backfired here.
Speaker 3: There's major strategy.
Speaker 2: It turns out all of us do need to be
Speaker 2: or instead of being uncomfortable and having this, we can
Speaker 2: have more helpful societal wide lessons, which is, hey, why
Speaker 2: are we all talking about diversity, equity inclusion at UBER
Speaker 2: when we have a black workforce.
Speaker 3: Which is struggling.
Speaker 2: Maybe we if we flip things on that end, it
Speaker 2: would be a little bit better.
Speaker 5: We could also be like, look, imagine if this is
Speaker 5: your mama, and like when you're on a train, you
Speaker 5: see a pregnant woman, you stand up, you give them
Speaker 5: a seat.
Speaker 3: Why you would hope So even if unfortunately people even
Speaker 3: if it.
Speaker 5: Is your scooter, Yeah, the pregnant nurse coming out, you
Speaker 5: know what, damn and thank you.
Speaker 4: For your service.
Speaker 3: I'm with you one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: Hi Stager, what are you looking at?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of media lying about Ukraine over
Speaker 2: the last few days, somehow trying to spin their defeat
Speaker 2: in Bachmann as some sort of real victory, trying to
Speaker 2: say giving them F sixteen's.
Speaker 3: No risks to the United States.
Speaker 2: But perhaps the most insane story that has received basically
Speaker 2: no scrutiny is a dishonest trick pulled by the Biden
Speaker 2: administration to send them even more weapons and illegally usurp
Speaker 2: the power of Congress. Let's dive in the news broke
Speaker 2: over the weekend. The Pentagon is claiming, with a straight face,
Speaker 2: it has suddenly discovered it accidentally overvalued the amount of
Speaker 2: aid sent to Ukraine. This miraculous discovery means that they
Speaker 2: can actually send three billion dollars more to Ukraine than
Speaker 2: previously thought. The way they achieved this was an illegal
Speaker 2: accounting gimmick by claiming that they had accidentally priced weaponry
Speaker 2: sent from US stocks to Ukraine at too high a value. Now,
Speaker 2: how exactly did they accomplish that? According to their methods,
Speaker 2: they originally price all Ukraine aid based on the dollar
Speaker 2: value it would cost US taxpayers to replace it, which
Speaker 2: you know, seems like the right definition when you pay
Speaker 2: for something and then you give it to somebody else.
Speaker 2: But the new definition instead price is the weapons not
Speaker 2: at the original price, but then depreciates those assets over time,
Speaker 2: as if this is some real estate or heavy equipment
Speaker 2: that you can sell in the future, and not literal guns,
Speaker 2: bullets and bombs. A more simple way of describing this
Speaker 2: is bs. Of course, they have given themselves plenty of
Speaker 2: breathing room. The Pentagon now says that three billion is
Speaker 2: just what they found so far. They told reporters in Congress,
Speaker 2: if they go back and depreciate all the weapons, they
Speaker 2: can probably find even more.
Speaker 3: It's just a coincidence.
Speaker 2: That because of the current political makeup of Congress that
Speaker 2: no more aid can pass to Ukraine legally, and the
Speaker 2: Ukraine itself says that they're running out of bullets and AMMO. Further,
Speaker 2: it just so happened to come in May, just months
Speaker 2: before the projected expenditure of all USAID was likely to
Speaker 2: run out for Ukraine. So what is so disgusting about
Speaker 2: this is not just the pen goan's accounting trick, is
Speaker 2: that this is illegal. Congress decides the power of the purse.
Speaker 2: They have given the administration a lot of leeway, zero
Speaker 2: restrictions really on the type of eight. But even on this,
Speaker 2: the White House cannot stop listen to their ridiculous explanation
Speaker 2: when they are asked about it.
Speaker 17: There was this very bizarre admission from the Pentagon this
Speaker 17: week of an accounting error that suggested that the US
Speaker 17: has at least three billion dollars that it didn't know
Speaker 17: it had that it can use for Ukraine aid. That's
Speaker 17: a hell of an accounting error and it provides a
Speaker 17: lot of.
Speaker 4: Fodder to critics of.
Speaker 17: Usaids the Ukraine and critics who say there's not enough
Speaker 17: oversight going on. Are you concerned about this accounting error.
Speaker 4: Well, one thing I just.
Speaker 18: Want to make clear that is not money that went
Speaker 18: out the door and disappeared. That is not a waste
Speaker 18: of that three billion dollars.
Speaker 4: It is simply a.
Speaker 18: Tallly of how much military equipment we have given them.
Speaker 18: And the way that the Pentagon was counting it was
Speaker 18: what's the replacement cost for the equipment we provide rather
Speaker 18: than just the actual cost of that equipment. Once you
Speaker 18: make that adjustment, it turns out we have and ational
Speaker 18: three billion dollars that we can spend to provide even
Speaker 18: more weapons.
Speaker 2: Yup, turns out that's all you gotta do. They're not
Speaker 2: even lying about it. They're so brazen about their illegal
Speaker 2: costerer convention. The reason this is nuts is because three
Speaker 2: billion out of the forty billion dollars in appropriate funds
Speaker 2: from military aid. Do the math, that's seven point five percent.
Speaker 2: So are we really saying the entire military budget is
Speaker 2: so fudgy that you can make it look basically however
Speaker 2: you want plus or minus eight percent. If that's the case,
Speaker 2: why do we keep giving them so much damn money
Speaker 2: just make them inflate their own books?
Speaker 3: Also, how much should we.
Speaker 2: Really even trust the Pentagon's accounting team. Seven months ago,
Speaker 2: they failed their fifth audit in a row where they
Speaker 2: weren't only able to account for thirty nine percent of
Speaker 2: three point five trillion dollars in assets under management. Not
Speaker 2: only that, after failing their fourth audit in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: they promised that they would do better, and it turns
Speaker 2: out they made zero progress in that audit at all.
Speaker 2: In one year, the same number of areas that they
Speaker 2: were unable to account for did not change whatsoever.
Speaker 3: And in one year period's a.
Speaker 2: Pentagon grules account for this you already know they pretend
Speaker 2: it literally doesn't exist. Let's just relive one of my
Speaker 2: favorite clips from John Stewart's confrontation with a number two
Speaker 2: official at the Pentagon.
Speaker 16: Doing like there is a lot of waste, fraud and
Speaker 16: abuse within assistance audits.
Speaker 10: Waste broad abuse are not the same thing, So let's
Speaker 10: decompose these.
Speaker 16: Please educate me on all.
Speaker 10: Sorry, So an audit is exactly what you just described,
Speaker 10: which is, do I know what was delivered to which place?
Speaker 10: The ability to pass an audit or in the fact
Speaker 10: that the det has not passed on it is not
Speaker 10: suggestive of waste frauden abuse. That is completely false right
Speaker 10: there now is a question of it's suggestive that we
Speaker 10: can't we don't have an accurate inventory that we can
Speaker 10: pull up of what we have where That is not
Speaker 10: the same as saying we can't do that because waste,
Speaker 10: frauden abuse has occurred.
Speaker 16: So in my world, yeah, that's waste.
Speaker 3: How is that waste?
Speaker 16: If I give you a billion dollars and you can't
Speaker 16: tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful.
Speaker 16: That that means you are not necessarily responsible. But if
Speaker 16: you can't tell me where it went, then what am
Speaker 16: I supposed to say? And when there has been reporting,
Speaker 16: I mean, this is not Look I'm not saying this
Speaker 16: is on you and that you cause this. But I
Speaker 16: think it's a tough argument to make that gos it
Speaker 16: an eight hundred and fifty billion dollar budget to an
Speaker 16: organization that can't pass an audit and tell you where
Speaker 16: that money went. Like I think most people would consider
Speaker 16: that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud or abuse
Speaker 16: because they would wonder why that money isn't well accounted for.
Speaker 2: Stewart goes on to blast her to her face for
Speaker 2: justifying corruption, but you get the point you really believe
Speaker 2: they're just doing their due diligence or are they cooking
Speaker 2: the books for Ukraine? Maybe you're okay with that in
Speaker 2: this case if you're one of those NAFO people, But
Speaker 2: ask yourself this, what about the next conflict or the
Speaker 2: one after that?
Speaker 3: What if you oppose that one?
Speaker 2: You want to set the continued global war on terror
Speaker 2: precedent where the office of the President can just do
Speaker 2: whatever they want whenever it comes to fighting wars in
Speaker 2: places that you did not even vote for. That is
Speaker 2: basically where we are right now with Ukraine, and given
Speaker 2: what we have covered this morning in terms of Ukraine's
Speaker 2: cross border activities, it's new F sixteens will soon make
Speaker 2: their way there their recent loss of Bachmun, you can
Speaker 2: rest assured this is only the latest last ditch effort
Speaker 2: to ship everything that is not nailed down to the
Speaker 2: floor over there.
Speaker 3: For those who are.
Speaker 2: Silent on this, I hope and I pray you live
Speaker 2: to see this same authority used by a president that
Speaker 2: you hate to prop up a conflict that you don't support,
Speaker 2: because that is how principles are supposed to work, and
Speaker 2: why you didn't violate them in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just so obvious, Ryan, you know, it's basically there.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints, dot com.
Speaker 3: Ran what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 5: From the moment Joe Biden announces candidacy for president, the
Speaker 5: biggest risk the country faced was that he would wind
Speaker 5: up in high stakes negotiations with Republican congressional leaders and
Speaker 5: those Republicans would fleece him blind. Now, for months, Biden
Speaker 5: insisted that he wouldn't ever be in that room because
Speaker 5: he simply wasn't going to negotiate with Republicans overlifting the debts,
Speaker 5: except he also poured cold water on the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 5: and the Platinum Coin and all the other things which
Speaker 5: handed Republicans all of the leverage. Biden also had the
Speaker 5: chance to lift the debt ceiling when Democrats controlled Congress,
Speaker 5: and he didn't do so. This was a rare opportunity
Speaker 5: for Biden to actually deliver this line and mean.
Speaker 3: It, Senative, you can have my ins and how if
Speaker 3: you mike.
Speaker 4: My offer is dith nothing.
Speaker 5: Instead, Biden went into negotiations and also didn't make a
Speaker 5: serious offer of his own. He's made a few half
Speaker 5: hardened suggestions that a way to cut the deficit that
Speaker 5: would be better is to target hedge fund managers and
Speaker 5: the super rich, but when McCarthy objected, he just dropped it.
Speaker 5: So now he's negotiating the size of the cut and
Speaker 5: Democrats only hope is that Republicans can't get their own
Speaker 5: party together to agree on what they want. And they
Speaker 5: failed to seize the moment the same way they did
Speaker 5: back in twenty eleven. And all of this reminds me
Speaker 5: of the last time Biden as Vice President intervened in
Speaker 5: high stakes Capitol Hill negotiation. Afterwards, Harry Reid ordered the
Speaker 5: White House to never send him down Pennsylvania Avenue again.
Speaker 4: He did such a poor job.
Speaker 5: He got a worse deal out of Mitch McConnell than
Speaker 5: McConnell had already agreed to give Harry Reid. The circumstances
Speaker 5: were similar. I covered this moment in my last book,
Speaker 5: We've Got People, and this came at the end of
Speaker 5: the year twenty twelve, so Obama had just stumped Republican
Speaker 5: Mitt Romney at the polls. If you remember in a
Speaker 5: post Occupy Wall Street campaign that centered on economic inequality.
Speaker 5: Democrats picked up two seats in the Senate, expanded their
Speaker 5: majority to fifty three, adding Elizabeth Warren to their ranks.
Speaker 5: The Democrats won more House folks nationwide and picked up
Speaker 5: a net of eight seats. Republicans still held onto the
Speaker 5: House narrowly. Now, the Bush tax cuts were set to
Speaker 5: expire at the end of twenty twelve, creating what was
Speaker 5: called a fiscal cliff. If Congress did nothing, taxes would
Speaker 5: go up on everybody, but especially on the rich. Harry
Speaker 5: Reid told me in an inner for that book that
Speaker 5: going over the.
Speaker 4: Cliff was precisely his plan.
Speaker 5: Reid said, quote, I thought that would have been the
Speaker 5: best thing to do, because the conversation would not have
Speaker 5: been about raising taxes, which it became. It would have
Speaker 5: been about lowering taxes. In other words, let all the
Speaker 5: rates go up and then bargain with Republicans to reduce
Speaker 5: taxes just for the middle class and the working poor.
Speaker 5: MINORITI leader Mitch McConnell similarly knew that the difficult position
Speaker 5: going over the cliff would put him in, and in
Speaker 5: talks with Reid, he agreed to let rates on people
Speaker 5: making more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per
Speaker 5: year go back up. McConnell had a strong sense that
Speaker 5: Reid intended to go over the cliff and put Republicans
Speaker 5: up against the wall. Reid felt like he had successfully.
Speaker 4: Pushed McConnell to the brink.
Speaker 5: So it was now Sunday, December thirty of twenty twelve,
Speaker 5: and Democrats only had to hold out until that Tuesday
Speaker 5: to find themselves in a dramatically improved political position, as
Speaker 5: the dawning of the new year would mean the tax
Speaker 5: cuts expired and automatically reverted to pre Bush levels. At
Speaker 5: that point, it would be Republicans who would be left
Speaker 5: pleading for those rate cuts. In desperation, Mitch McConnell reached
Speaker 5: out directly to Joe Biden, calling him on the phone
Speaker 5: and explaining that Reid was refusing to be reasonable. Over
Speaker 5: the course of the day, McConnell and Biden struck a deal,
Speaker 5: a form McConnell aide told me, Biden gave Republicans everything
Speaker 5: they wanted in exchange for fixing the fiscal cliff problem.
Speaker 5: But just like today, the fiscal cliff problem was only
Speaker 5: a problem because Biden allowed it to be a problem.
Speaker 5: Harry Reid was happy to drive the car off the
Speaker 5: cliff and then fight it out amid the wreckage. In
Speaker 5: the same way, Biden could just ignore the debt ceiling,
Speaker 5: invoke the fourteenth Amendment, and dare John Roberts to then.
Speaker 4: Blow up the global economy.
Speaker 5: On the morning of New Year's Eve, Reid was still
Speaker 5: feeling good about his position, ignorant of what Biden had
Speaker 5: given away. Then Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor
Speaker 5: and announced that he'd been in talks with the Vice President.
Speaker 5: They were progressing well and he was hopeful that they'd
Speaker 5: have legislation.
Speaker 4: To move by the end of the day.
Speaker 5: As details of the deal began leaking out, Progressive Democratic
Speaker 5: senators were floored. A large group of them, including Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 5: Shared Brown, Jeff Merkley, Sheldon Whitehouse, Al Franken, and Tom
Speaker 5: Harkin of Iowa, stormed over to Harry Reid's office.
Speaker 4: The deal was awful, they told Reed, and it had
Speaker 4: to be stopped.
Speaker 5: Reid told them what had happened, that it was out
Speaker 5: of his hands, and then McConnell had gone around him
Speaker 5: directly to Biden. He said he was working on improving
Speaker 5: it and would be in touch throughout the day. Now,
Speaker 5: none of the senators had any business scheduled. It was
Speaker 5: New Year's Eve, after all, so Bernie Sanders invited them
Speaker 5: back to his office in the Dirkson Building. The Heart
Speaker 5: Building has a popcorn machine, so our Harken asked his
Speaker 5: staff to bring some buy. The crew ended up spending
Speaker 5: several hours together in Sanders's office, thinking through potential strategies
Speaker 5: of opposition, waiting to hear from Reed, and chewing on
Speaker 5: popcorn instead. One senator's phone rang and it was Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: calling to sell the deal that he had cut. In
Speaker 5: classic Biden fashion, he offered up a ten to fifteen
Speaker 5: minutes soliloquy, a meander argument that largely boiled down to
Speaker 5: you can trust me, I'm your friend, this is a
Speaker 5: good deal. The senator could barely get a word in
Speaker 5: before the conversation ended. Moments after he hung up, another
Speaker 5: cell phone rang and it was Biden again. Unaware that
Speaker 5: the group was altogether, Biden proceeded to call each of
Speaker 5: them one after the other, delivering the same spiel. Ultimately,
Speaker 5: it fell to read to drag the progressive senators into line.
Speaker 5: Once it was clear that the White House was on
Speaker 5: board with Biden's deal and McConnell was all in. That
Speaker 5: meant that there would be at least seventy or eighty
Speaker 5: votes for it. The Progressive block could vote no, but
Speaker 5: it would only send a message of discord and have
Speaker 5: no effect on the outcome. Reid told them, coaxing them
Speaker 5: to support the deal he himself loathed. In the end,
Speaker 5: all the Progressive Senators, including Bernie except for Tom Harkin,
Speaker 5: voted for the deal. It passed eighty nine to eight.
Speaker 5: Years later, Reid still regretted how it went down. He
Speaker 5: told me, quote, if we'd have gone over the cliff,
Speaker 5: we'd have had resources to do a lot of good
Speaker 5: things in this country, infrastructure development.
Speaker 4: But it didn't work out that way.
Speaker 5: Letting all the tax rates go back to pre Bush
Speaker 5: levels would have yielded the Treasury around three trillion dollars
Speaker 5: over ten years. Without the deal, taxes on dividend payments
Speaker 5: to the rich would have been set at thirty nine
Speaker 5: point six percent. Under the terms of the deal, they
Speaker 5: would be set at twenty percent instead, meaning that the
Speaker 5: super wealthy would be paying lower taxes on their passive
Speaker 5: dividend income than many working people pay on their wages.
Speaker 5: It helped fuel the inequality that keeps getting worse, and
Speaker 5: it added trillions to the debt at the same time.
Speaker 5: Now Biden has another chance to be in the room,
Speaker 5: and so far he's getting out maneuvered, Sager by Kevin McCarthy.
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. Joining
Speaker 2: us now Lefong, friend of the show, a newly independent
Speaker 2: investigative journalist at leifong dot net.
Speaker 3: I believe that or is it dot dot com?
Speaker 4: Dot com dot com?
Speaker 2: All right, lefong dot com, which we will have a
Speaker 2: link down in the description. I am a a member
Speaker 2: of said lefog dot com, and we are very happy
Speaker 2: to support your work.
Speaker 4: Lee.
Speaker 3: You're here to talk about very important story.
Speaker 2: Let's put it up there on the screen, which is
Speaker 2: FBI surveillance contractors probed anti vaccine mandate activist. Lee, You've
Speaker 2: been on the forefront of exposing a lot of the
Speaker 2: hygiens that the US intelligence community the FBI have been
Speaker 2: doing by infiltrating groups and under the name of national
Speaker 2: security and others. So what did you find in this
Speaker 2: story and what bigger pattern is it part of?
Speaker 6: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 19: This is the story is part of a two part
Speaker 19: series on the threat intelligence industry. This is a subset
Speaker 19: of the cyber security industry. And you know, when you
Speaker 19: hear the term cyber security, you might think authentication or
Speaker 19: passwords or what have you.
Speaker 6: But this is actually a surveillance industry.
Speaker 19: You know, this is a type of firm that goes
Speaker 19: into it specializes in going into the parts of the
Speaker 19: Internet of social media that are private. There are a
Speaker 19: number of firms here, about a dozen prominent firms that.
Speaker 6: Specialize in this.
Speaker 19: What they do is that they go into Reddit, forums,
Speaker 19: WhatsApp groups, signal chats, parts of the dark web. They
Speaker 19: make fake online identities to gain the trust of the
Speaker 19: admins or leaders of online organizations or organizations that have
Speaker 19: an online presence, and they get invites to these private communications.
Speaker 19: They sweep up the messages, the chats, the communications, and
Speaker 19: they monetize them. They sell them back, these communications, They
Speaker 19: sell them to the government and to corporations. They say
Speaker 19: that they're looking for quote unquote threat actors, and you know,
Speaker 19: they're largely saying that, you know, we're looking for hackers
Speaker 19: and other kind of cyber criminals, but a big part
Speaker 19: of what they do is also look at activists. They
Speaker 19: penetrate activist groups, they research their tactics and strategies, and
Speaker 19: alert their potential targets. So, you know, this is a
Speaker 19: very interesting firm. This is one of the many threat
Speaker 19: intelligence firms of Flashpoint, And you know, we obtained their
Speaker 19: marketing materials and some of their other documents. Also, I
Speaker 19: interviewed them at a recent cybersecurity conference, and you know,
Speaker 19: they have a history of going after left wing organizations,
Speaker 19: investigating anti pipeline protesters, anarchists, but also these groups, these
Speaker 19: worker led organizations that were protesting the twenty twenty one
Speaker 19: vaccine mandate. These in this particular instance, these were workers
Speaker 19: in the airline industry, pilots, stewardesses, what have you, who
Speaker 19: were not comfortable with the twenty twenty one vaccine mandate.
Speaker 19: You know, these were essential workers, frontline workers, many of
Speaker 19: whom were the very first people to be infected with
Speaker 19: COVID nineteen and then recover. So you know, they made
Speaker 19: I think the very reasonable argument that the vaccine mandate
Speaker 19: should not apply to them because there's no exemption for
Speaker 19: people who recovered from the virus and had natural immunity.
Speaker 19: They were protesting this that looks like surveillance contractors like
Speaker 19: Flashpoint were investigating them. They were getting into their private
Speaker 19: signal chats, They're looking into their private communications.
Speaker 5: And so in order for the FBI to do some
Speaker 5: of this stuff directly, they would need warrants. They need
Speaker 5: some probable cause some of it, you know, some of
Speaker 5: it they can get away with. Others, like getting into
Speaker 5: private signal chats. I would think they would need some
Speaker 5: type of type of warrant for that, And so they
Speaker 5: end up these kind of surveillance contractors end up creating
Speaker 5: a kind of false distinction to me between the activity
Speaker 5: of the FBI.
Speaker 4: That is prohibited and the activities private contractors which is allowed.
Speaker 5: So what is the FBI's role in relationship with these
Speaker 5: companies and is there an argument to be made that
Speaker 5: they're actually they are just arms of.
Speaker 4: The FBI and ought to be subject to the Saint laws.
Speaker 19: Well, there's you know a little bit of a gray
Speaker 19: area here where we don't know exactly, you know, where
Speaker 19: the line begins and starts with the client relationship. You know,
Speaker 19: a lot of these firms are publicly contracted with the FBI.
Speaker 19: Flashpoint is publicly contracted with the FBI.
Speaker 6: Has worked with them for many years.
Speaker 19: Many of the other firms that I profiled are you know,
Speaker 19: working for other intelligence agencies and the FBI, but they're
Speaker 19: also working for corporate clients here too, And you know,
Speaker 19: I think that's right.
Speaker 6: You know this, For the FBI to.
Speaker 19: Directly monitor the private communications of Americans, you know that
Speaker 19: they require a warrant. You know, it's a Fourth Amendment issue,
Speaker 19: but using a third party to gain access to these
Speaker 19: private communications represents somewhat of a back door, right, So
Speaker 19: like you have a just like the FBI has a
Speaker 19: long history of using confidential and informants, confidential human intelligence
Speaker 19: and informants to monitor and spy on groups where they
Speaker 19: might not have direct access. These private contractors, these private
Speaker 19: spies again represent a way for the agency to gain
Speaker 19: access to materials that they don't normally have any kind
Speaker 19: of insight into. And you know, we're seeing a greater
Speaker 19: demand for this type of surveillance after the Discord leaks.
Speaker 19: These firms publicly advertised Flashpoint. You know this this one
Speaker 19: firm that that monitored the anti mandate activists. They publicly
Speaker 19: advertised that they are looking into discord chats, that they
Speaker 19: can penetrate discord communities. And after the Discord leaks, you know,
Speaker 19: there's just so much demand that we get into these
Speaker 19: private communications because again, these discord leaks appeared on a
Speaker 19: private discord server and you know, allegedly these documents sat
Speaker 19: there for months without the government knowing.
Speaker 6: This was a huge embarrassment.
Speaker 19: So there's more of a demand for these type of
Speaker 19: firms to go in and spy on game I communities,
Speaker 19: you know, activist communities, any type of community where potential.
Speaker 6: Illegal or nefarious activity is happening.
Speaker 2: You know, Lee, one of the things constant I kind
Speaker 2: of see throughout your work is just the exposure of
Speaker 2: the slow creep of the surveillance state, Like it starts
Speaker 2: with the FBI and the DHS and er a specific
Speaker 2: mandate and then you know, you helped with Ken Clippenstein
Speaker 2: expose that new and you know, disinformation complex. And now
Speaker 2: as part of your series, we're talking about anything from
Speaker 2: vegans to anti vaccine mandate. It really just seems like
Speaker 2: they are willing to stick their tentacles into something if
Speaker 2: it goes against any basic established power center in the
Speaker 2: US or am I reading it the wrong way?
Speaker 6: Well, look at it this way.
Speaker 19: We have a massive infrastructure in this country, government infrastructure,
Speaker 19: and you know, government programs that fund an infrastructure that
Speaker 19: is based on surveillance. And there's this evolving mission that
Speaker 19: kind of skyrocketed since September eleventh to find, you know,
Speaker 19: potential terrorists, to find threats that are you know, vaguely
Speaker 19: defined by the national security state. And this is another
Speaker 19: great example of that that kind of fits into this
Speaker 19: rubric flashpoint. This one particular firm started out as a
Speaker 19: small consultancy from a guy named Van Coleman who went
Speaker 19: out and who worked with people who were infiltrating moss
Speaker 19: and Muslim community centers. They were you know, dressing up
Speaker 19: and going in and recording these communities and then taking
Speaker 19: the information back and selling it to the FBI. Evan
Speaker 19: Coleman then spun out his own firm and went online
Speaker 19: and and and found you know, al Qaeda message boards
Speaker 19: and you know isis online social media accounts. He would
Speaker 19: save all the information to these multi terror by databases
Speaker 19: and then go to US law enforcement and say, look,
Speaker 19: you know, I'm an expert. I have all these online
Speaker 19: communications and he's monetized that content.
Speaker 6: You know, he's been accused of.
Speaker 19: Helping wrongfully convict some Muslim Americans, like in the Fort
Speaker 19: Dick's case. But you know this that was fifteen years ago.
Speaker 19: Now today, as the War on terror has wound down, Flashpoint,
Speaker 19: rather than also winding down, has actually grown.
Speaker 6: It's grown exponentially. It's a huge firm.
Speaker 19: They just acquired another threat intelligence company last year. They're
Speaker 19: partnering with Google Cloud. They've they've got AI tools. And
Speaker 19: instead of targeting potential you know, Alcaeda suspects, they're monitoring
Speaker 19: environmental activists, They're monitoring conservatives who are concerned.
Speaker 6: About the mandate.
Speaker 19: You know, all they have is a hammer, So you know,
Speaker 19: everything looks like nails for these surveillance contractors. They need
Speaker 19: a new enemy, a new kind of threat to target,
Speaker 19: to monetize. And it's a lot like these other kind
Speaker 19: of mission creep of the security state that the Department
Speaker 19: of Homeland Security, rather than winding down some of its
Speaker 19: programs now it's kind of expanding. It's outreached and saying, oh,
Speaker 19: we've got to target.
Speaker 6: Misinformation or disinformation online.
Speaker 19: We need to create these new partnerships with Twitter and
Speaker 19: Facebook to censor really ordinary First Amendment protected speech.
Speaker 5: And in your reporting, did you find that it was
Speaker 5: a connection to the misinformation disinformation world that allowed for
Speaker 5: the kind of an anti vaxxer surveillance Because as you
Speaker 5: think about the other groups that were that were targeted,
Speaker 5: all right, anti pipeline group, they're gonna they might blow
Speaker 5: up a pipeline.
Speaker 4: I can see some potential violence there.
Speaker 5: The anti abortion groups that you've that you've that you
Speaker 5: talked about being under surveillance, they've shot abortion doctors. Like,
Speaker 5: so you can step back and you can say, all right,
Speaker 5: I can intellectually see where they're going when it comes
Speaker 5: to like the potential for violence. Doesn't mean that it
Speaker 5: justifies kind of breaking Forth Amendment laws, But I see
Speaker 5: where they're going. When it comes to the vaccine stuff,
Speaker 5: they might might be harmful to themselves, may be isshed,
Speaker 5: but who Like, I don't see the Are they going
Speaker 5: to blow up like the vaccine facility or something, or
Speaker 5: is it really it's it's flowing out of the disinformation complex.
Speaker 19: I think it's likely it's flowing out of the disinformation complex,
Speaker 19: but really it's just like a challenge to power.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 19: You know, you had big corporate centers endorsing these mandates,
Speaker 19: government endorsing these mandates. You know, for these airline workers,
Speaker 19: their own unions and abandoned them. You know, a lot
Speaker 19: I talked with a lot of these workers. You know,
Speaker 19: their union wouldn't even negotiate them, They wouldn't put some
Speaker 19: of these decisions up to a vote, and so they
Speaker 19: had to kind of these workers had to form their
Speaker 19: own organizations to protest for their rights.
Speaker 6: You know, that's what that's their view. I think the
Speaker 6: same applies.
Speaker 19: The same kind of issue applies to some of these
Speaker 19: vegan and animal rights activists.
Speaker 6: These folks, you know, some of.
Speaker 19: The particular groups I've been writing about, they don't have
Speaker 19: a history of any violence whatsoever. But you know, I
Speaker 19: published last week an FBI memo from the Sacramento Field
Speaker 19: Office depicting them as a bio terror threat under the
Speaker 19: weapons of Mass destruction Director of the FBI, you know,
Speaker 19: using just really inflamed and exaggerated rhetoric to justify this
Speaker 19: kind of national security crackdown on groups again just kind
Speaker 19: of exercising their First Amendment rights.
Speaker 6: Got it?
Speaker 2: Well, Lee, you're doing fantastic job over there, Lee Fang
Speaker 2: dot com. As I said, I'm a subscriber. I encourage
Speaker 2: everybody else to become a subscriber. We'll have a link
Speaker 2: down there down the description. We want to be able
Speaker 2: to support Lee's excellent work here. And you're welcome back
Speaker 2: on the show anytime, sir, So thank you for joining us.
Speaker 6: Thanks for your support, yeh got it.
Speaker 4: Great to see you.
Speaker 2: Good to see you, man, And thank you so much
Speaker 2: Ryan for sitting in for Crystal.
Speaker 4: Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Bro shows fun as always, Crystal. Like I said, we'll
Speaker 2: be on with Emily tomorrow. So Ryan, you've got Wednesday off.
Speaker 2: What are you going to do with yourself?
Speaker 4: Sleep?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sleep and take care of your job.
Speaker 4: So there you go.
Speaker 3: That that's what most people should be.
Speaker 2: Doing, all right, So basically watch counterpoints and obviously watching
Speaker 2: counterpoints that's what Actually, that's my morning routine after I
Speaker 2: finally get to sleep in and put my earbuds in
Speaker 2: and I see what you guys are up to. Thank
Speaker 2: you guys so much again for supporting all of our
Speaker 2: work here Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: If you are able otherwise, we'll see you all later