Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: But enough with that, Let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: All right, Welcome to Counterpoints, Happy Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Emily Drishinski, joined by my co host Ryan Graham, who
Speaker 4: is once again giving us a little bit of a
Speaker 4: French dispatch.
Speaker 3: Ryan, it seems like you're enjoying the sun.
Speaker 1: I really am. It's pretty lovely over here. I recommend
Speaker 1: it to people.
Speaker 3: Well in DC.
Speaker 4: August is known as a very slow news month. That
Speaker 4: is increasingly not the case as the years go by,
Speaker 4: but especially not this year. We're going to start with
Speaker 4: the big news out of Ohio last night, where a
Speaker 4: referendum gives us some insight, first of all, into how
Speaker 4: the issue of abortion is playing politically and to where
Speaker 4: the political fortunes of a major, major, major abortion amendment
Speaker 4: to the Constitution in the state of Ohio could stand
Speaker 4: going forward later this year.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about a huge shakeup, very significant.
Speaker 4: Ron DeSantis has fired his campaign manager two months into
Speaker 4: his campaign. There's all kinds of stuff to talk about there.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about Davis Bacon. I'm sure Ryan
Speaker 4: has all kinds of thoughts on that we are going
Speaker 4: to talk about. We're going to do a little bit
Speaker 4: of an update on the economy and some really I
Speaker 4: think troubling numbers when it comes to personal debt and
Speaker 4: where that standing, credit card debt and the like. What
Speaker 4: that says about the future of the economy, the immediate
Speaker 4: future of the economy.
Speaker 3: We're going to dive into.
Speaker 4: That Montgomery brawl on the riverfront down to Alabama. There's
Speaker 4: some stuff to break down there, and we'll have the
Speaker 4: video for you as well. And I'm going to talk
Speaker 4: about actually the political fortunes of porn Hub, which aim
Speaker 4: to be waning. Ryan has a big update for us
Speaker 4: too that'll be posted later because it's breaking news. But
Speaker 4: other than that, Ryan, anything to add here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I mean, first of all, looking forward to
Speaker 1: talking about the Battle of Montgomery.
Speaker 5: This is watching those videos.
Speaker 1: It brought me back to the drunken mayhem of the
Speaker 1: kind of rock hall boat docking contest. If you've ever
Speaker 1: been to that on the Eastern Shore, you know how
Speaker 1: wild it can get. Spending all day on the boat
Speaker 1: drinking can can lead to you to make some pretty
Speaker 1: bad decisions. And these that group of white dudes made
Speaker 1: some decisions that managed to get the entire country united
Speaker 1: behind them. So it's really glorious to see, you know,
Speaker 1: American unity, everybody agreeing that those guys got probably not.
Speaker 5: Everything that they deserved.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the legal repercussions for them
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 1: But as you guys remember from last week, we were
Speaker 1: talking about the biggest, biggest election that was going to
Speaker 1: happen over the next couple of months was going to
Speaker 1: be in Ohio. You know, where Republicans had tried to
Speaker 1: use the sleepy August vacation time where everybody's out at
Speaker 1: the French riviera relaxing, not back.
Speaker 5: The people, all the people the French rivi era, and.
Speaker 1: So they're not back in Ohio to vote for to
Speaker 1: support abortion rights, that was the thinking of Republicans. Instead,
Speaker 1: you had turnout like you, like I was going to say,
Speaker 1: like that you could never expect, but we already saw
Speaker 1: it in Kansas. You know, Republicans went for the same
Speaker 1: thing in Kansas, thinking that in the summer they'd get
Speaker 1: a you know, a sleepy off your election and their
Speaker 1: core supporters would be energized to come out and the
Speaker 1: Democrats and an abortion right supporter wouldn't.
Speaker 5: Instead.
Speaker 1: I don't have the exact numbers in front of me,
Speaker 1: but the last I saw it was something like you
Speaker 1: had a few were the two million people vote in
Speaker 1: the primary in twenty twenty two that had US senators, governors,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, high level officials on the ballot for.
Speaker 3: This seven double that. Yeah, the turnout in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two was seven point nine percent straight wide.
Speaker 5: They almost doubled that.
Speaker 1: It feels like maybe eighty percent increase over that more
Speaker 1: than two million people pushing three perhaps almost a million
Speaker 1: absentee votes and a resounding victory. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: this was not this It was not specifically on abortion rights.
Speaker 1: The question was in November and going forward, should you
Speaker 1: need sixty percent to amend the Ohio Constitution. There will
Speaker 1: be an abortion rights measure on the ballot in November
Speaker 1: that is pulling at around fifty eight or fifty nine percent,
Speaker 1: and so this was understood to be a proxy for
Speaker 1: that coming referendum, and the latest numbers have it up
Speaker 1: about fifty seven forty three. You know, pretty landslide victory.
Speaker 1: You know what, what did you make of the results
Speaker 1: last night?
Speaker 4: So this is sort of tentatively what we predicted last week.
Speaker 4: We said it was really hard to tell with some
Speaker 4: of these elections, especially a smaller referendum, because you actually
Speaker 4: never know where turnout is going to fall when we're
Speaker 4: talking about elections. Was seven point nine percent turnout as
Speaker 4: was the case last year, you just don't know. The
Speaker 4: money was pretty evenly divided in this race, but it
Speaker 4: was overwhelmingly from out of state each group. So if
Speaker 4: you were yes, yes was the conservative side, No? Was
Speaker 4: the liberal side?
Speaker 3: Yes was?
Speaker 4: I think it was like fourteen percent versus thirteen percent
Speaker 4: in Ohio the contributions in total according to some analyzes,
Speaker 4: early analyzes. And what's interesting about that, it was essentially
Speaker 4: the focus of both sides. Both sides were claiming that
Speaker 4: they were the bulwark against out of state special interests
Speaker 4: that were trying to dramatically change Ohio, and actually it
Speaker 4: was dueling out of stage special interests, and as we
Speaker 4: discussed last week, the conservatives in this case, we're in
Speaker 4: the unusual position of wanting to change the constitution instead
Speaker 4: of defending the status quo as conservatives often do. They
Speaker 4: were actually trying to change the constitution of the state
Speaker 4: of Ohio. And you know, I'm not saying the motives
Speaker 4: were pure. I'm saying I think sixty percent is a
Speaker 4: reasonable threshold, more reasonable threshold than fifty percent to change
Speaker 4: a constitution, although we probably disagree on that, but clearly,
Speaker 4: clearly the intention here was not about preserve or you know,
Speaker 4: shoring up the Ohio Constitution. Otherwise they could have had
Speaker 4: this vote any other time. It was very specifically, you know,
Speaker 4: tied to the abortion vote, which is also being We
Speaker 4: have some video of this that we should we should
Speaker 4: run as we get into this here, but it was
Speaker 4: very specifically tied to the question of parents' rights. So
Speaker 4: it's being broadened, and even the Washington Post has admitted
Speaker 4: sort of the language of the the that folks are
Speaker 4: voting on in November could be interpreted in a way
Speaker 4: that gets into what's taught in classrooms and what teachers
Speaker 4: are able to do, and what doctors are able to
Speaker 4: do et cetera. But that was another really interesting aspect
Speaker 4: of all of this. We can throw a one up
Speaker 4: on the screen here. Yeah, so that's what Ryan said.
Speaker 4: Forty three fifty seven. Those are the latest numbers. Just
Speaker 4: a resounding, resounding victory for the No's and then if
Speaker 4: we get to a one B there's some more.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So this was Dave Washerman again called it pretty early.
Speaker 4: People are always refreshing Dave Washerman's Twitter feed on election nights.
Speaker 4: It didn't take long for this one to get called.
Speaker 4: I also want to just highlight some of Dave Weigel's analysis.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at it here in front of me. Some
Speaker 4: states that some counties where the referendum here actually was
Speaker 4: running way ahead of Biden, some Trump counties where the
Speaker 4: referendum successful. He's talking about Athens County. So this is
Speaker 4: the home to owe you, as Dave points out, is
Speaker 4: a good example of how Issue one went down. Biden
Speaker 4: won at fifty seven to forty two. Last year, Tim
Speaker 4: Ryan and Tim Ryan won at sixty forty with most
Speaker 4: of the vote in No. One by fifty.
Speaker 3: Points seventy five to twenty five.
Speaker 4: And so echoes of Kansas are certainly playing in people's
Speaker 4: minds in Ohio. A lot of this was inspired by
Speaker 4: what happened to Michigan recently, and people saw that they
Speaker 4: passed with like fifty six percent. So the Ohio folks said,
Speaker 4: let's get that threshold up to sixty percent.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And before we get to how the debate over this
Speaker 1: played out, I'm curious what you think about what this
Speaker 1: means for twenty twenty four and Shared Brown. Shared Brown
Speaker 1: the kind of Democratic senator who is a holdover from
Speaker 1: when Democrats had real strength in the Ross belt areas
Speaker 1: of the United States in particular or Ohio. He held
Speaker 1: on in twenty eighteen, which is a kind of a
Speaker 1: Democratic wave year. He's up again in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: And I've seen people speculating that, you know, if this
Speaker 1: port if this portends anything, it's it's good for Shared
Speaker 1: Brown in the sense that it's getting people to kind of,
Speaker 1: I guess, rethink their relationship with the Republican Party in Ohio,
Speaker 1: which has been utterly dominant for the last ten plus years.
Speaker 5: But I'm curious if you think that it will.
Speaker 1: Translate, because well, the good news for Share Brown is
Speaker 1: that you know there will still be you know, incredible
Speaker 1: turnout in twenty twenty four because of the abortion rights
Speaker 1: amendment that will be on the November ballots, So you'll
Speaker 1: have just as Carl Roave put a ban on Game
Speaker 1: thousand and four on the Ohio ballot, Democrats will probably
Speaker 1: now benefit from having abortion rights amendments, so their supporters
Speaker 1: are more likely.
Speaker 5: To come out, and then they'll likely vote for Share Brown.
Speaker 1: How are Republicans about Brown at this point on the
Speaker 1: list of people that they think they might be able
Speaker 1: to take out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 4: I think that is a big blow for a sort
Speaker 4: of Rovian analysis that you just added, because what we
Speaker 4: find time and again since Dobbs was decided by the
Speaker 4: court is that it's not just that voters have a
Speaker 4: different opinion than people like me. Of course they do,
Speaker 4: It's not just that is that this is very, very animating,
Speaker 4: and so that's why the turnout numbers that you pointed
Speaker 4: to are essential, and that's why Republicans who are hoping
Speaker 4: to take down Shared Brown were just struck a blow
Speaker 4: last night. I think as you're getting it here, because
Speaker 4: when you have an issue that it's not just that
Speaker 4: people agree with you, but it actually means they're going
Speaker 4: to be in a college town, as Wigeo is pointing
Speaker 4: out around Athens, when you have people that are flocking
Speaker 4: to the polls to the point where you're out running
Speaker 4: Biden by like twenty five points in the middle of August,
Speaker 4: that should tell you that you're going to have a real, real,
Speaker 4: real energy turnout problem. And again, especially in those college
Speaker 4: towns you're looking at states, Republicans in states like Wisconsin,
Speaker 4: certainly in states like Ohio, are in worried about the
Speaker 4: concentration of liberal voters that is so so heavy in
Speaker 4: those college towns that makes it difficult to take an
Speaker 4: otherwise red state and actually have a clean red state
Speaker 4: as they would see it. So that's a huge problem
Speaker 4: I think for any Republican efforts to tackle shared brown
Speaker 4: The Susan b Anthony List, which poured their their pack,
Speaker 4: put a lot of money into supporting the Yes side,
Speaker 4: so the conservative side here. Their statement last night said
Speaker 4: it's a sad day for Ohio and a warning for
Speaker 4: pro life states across the nation. Millions of dollars in
Speaker 4: liberal dark money flooded Ohio to ensure they have a
Speaker 4: path to buy their extreme policies in a pro life state. Tragically,
Speaker 4: some sat on the sideline while while outsider liberal groups
Speaker 4: poured millions into Ohio and they go on here and
Speaker 4: talk about parental rights and going on and on the
Speaker 4: silence of the establishment and business community, and Ohio left
Speaker 4: the vacuum too large to overcome. That's a really interesting
Speaker 4: point they're saying. They're they're blaming conservatives for sitting on
Speaker 4: the sideline of the issue. And Ryan, to the point
Speaker 4: you just made about shared Brown, this is a huge,
Speaker 4: huge issue for anti abortion conservatives again like myself, who say,
Speaker 4: who look at this and you sort of know that politically,
Speaker 4: you know, this is not the most palatable, energizing, appealing position,
Speaker 4: and that's why you have business leaders sitting out. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, groups like Susan B. Anthony say, listen,
Speaker 4: if we just were able to muster, you know, the
Speaker 4: the enthusiasm on this issue, it would be a lot closer.
Speaker 4: And the reason you can't muster the enthusiasm is because
Speaker 4: I'm I would argue public opinions not there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so what they've done instead is fascinating.
Speaker 1: So let's take let's take a look at you know
Speaker 1: how the kind of yes side tried to get around
Speaker 1: the idea that this was about abortion rates, because I
Speaker 1: think to your point, they're like, they did the polling.
Speaker 1: They're like, if this, if photeros go into the ballot
Speaker 1: box and decide that this is a referendumnt abortion rights,
Speaker 1: we're losing it.
Speaker 5: So let's see where we can move it.
Speaker 1: And they moved it over to trans rights, and so
Speaker 1: play first Mike Pence, and then we can play one
Speaker 1: of the ads from the Yes campaign. So Mike Pence
Speaker 1: jumped in former Ohio, former Indiana governor, close enough, right,
Speaker 1: and here's that's right. Here's here's how he framed his
Speaker 1: message for why you should vote yes.
Speaker 7: Hi. This is Mike Pence reminding everyone in the Buckeye
Speaker 7: State to be sure and get out and vote this
Speaker 7: Tuesday four. The Ohio Constitution Protection Amendment. You know, for years,
Speaker 7: left wing interests have abused the constitutional amendment process in
Speaker 7: Ohio to get their extreme agenda into law. But the
Speaker 7: Ohio Constitution Protection Amendment will put an end to that.
Speaker 5: When it passes.
Speaker 7: You'll need sixty percent of the vote in order to
Speaker 7: amend the state constitution, or you'll have to get signatures
Speaker 7: from more people in all eighty eight counties. Now Democrats
Speaker 7: want to keep the threshold as low as possible so
Speaker 7: they can pass abortion on demand, so they can advance
Speaker 7: their extreme gender ideology agenda and take away parents' rights education.
Speaker 7: Don't let that happen, Ohio. Stop the radical left. Get
Speaker 7: out and vote for the Ohio Constitution Protection Amendment this Tuesday.
Speaker 7: Let's save Ohio and after that, we'll save America. In
Speaker 7: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: I thought he was going to do like a Howard Dean,
Speaker 3: like whoo.
Speaker 1: There you go, and so yeah, let's roll one of
Speaker 1: the one of the ads. It's pretty typical of the
Speaker 1: Yes campaign, which picked up on some of those themes.
Speaker 5: Let's play that here.
Speaker 8: You promised you keep the bad guys away protect her.
Speaker 8: Now's your chance. Out of state. Special interests that put
Speaker 8: trans ideology in classrooms and encourage sex changes for kids
Speaker 8: are hiding behind slick ads.
Speaker 1: Don't be fooled.
Speaker 8: You can keep this madness out of Ohio classrooms and
Speaker 8: protect your rights as a parent by voting yes on
Speaker 8: August eighth. Keep your promise to her. Vote yes on
Speaker 8: August eighth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a didn't work, right, It didn't work at all.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're in again, like just important emphasize we're
Speaker 4: in early August, and that was forty what was up
Speaker 4: fifty three to I'm sorry, forty three to fifty seven
Speaker 4: on the side of the on the side of the
Speaker 4: left here, I mean, that is just a resounding failure
Speaker 4: of this argument, especially when the money was fairly evenly
Speaker 4: matched in some of the analyzes I've seen.
Speaker 3: We actually have this. I'll go to A two first.
Speaker 3: The early voting.
Speaker 4: That's another thing that Republicans are really concerned about in
Speaker 4: states like Ohio.
Speaker 3: So if we put a two up on the.
Speaker 4: Screen, the early voting was really up, which is again
Speaker 4: like Republicans are super concerned about bat harvesting, early turnout,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. They seem to not have made
Speaker 4: much of an impact in this particular election. That's sort
Speaker 4: of changing that and making that more favorable to conservative
Speaker 4: issues conservative candidates. You can see the actual language here
Speaker 4: up on your screen. This is I want to read
Speaker 4: it. It says the proposed amendment would require that any proposed
Speaker 4: amendment to the Constitution of the State of Ohio receives
Speaker 4: the approval of at least sixty percent of eligible voters
Speaker 4: voting on the proposed amendment, so much clearer, I would say,
Speaker 4: Ryan than the Kansas referendum. Language that was like actually
Speaker 4: the subject of some yeah right, and some people on
Speaker 4: the right blamed it, you know, and said, this was
Speaker 4: incredibly confusing. The wording here is why we lost, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of blaming the referees. And there may have been
Speaker 4: some truth so that it was genuinely very conservative confusing,
Speaker 4: but I don't think you have that here.
Speaker 3: And then let's throw a three up on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is the analysis, that's the early voting one, but
Speaker 4: a three is the analysis of where the money was
Speaker 4: coming the out of state money was coming from, which
Speaker 4: was some some really interesting places. Dicky Line on the
Speaker 4: side of he's from Illinois.
Speaker 3: He was on the side of Yes.
Speaker 4: Big conservative supporter, big conservative donor who funds a lot
Speaker 4: of this stuff, gave four million of one of the
Speaker 4: biggest packs four point eight million, so four million of that,
Speaker 4: basically the entire budget came from one conservative Ills Illinois billionaire.
Speaker 3: And then on the other hand.
Speaker 4: The pack for the No side was funded by a
Speaker 4: lot of people from Silicon Valley and d C eighty
Speaker 4: five percent of its money from one person. One vote
Speaker 4: came from out of state, So just a flavor of
Speaker 4: how you know, both sides trying to cast this as
Speaker 4: they're the bulwark against out of state special interest. Once again,
Speaker 4: there was just a this was a nationalized referendum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think if Democrats can convincingly tell the
Speaker 1: public that they will actually codify Roe v. Wade into law,
Speaker 1: if given a majority, I think that this could be
Speaker 1: a huge vote, you know, voter draw for them in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four for Shared Brown and for the rest
Speaker 1: of the party. We'll see if they if they can
Speaker 1: actually convince that and then turn the election into that reference.
Speaker 5: That's what they've wanted to do. That's what they've tried
Speaker 5: to do in the past.
Speaker 1: You'll run on the fear that would be overturned, that
Speaker 1: that never really worked. But now they can actually promise
Speaker 1: to recodify it. So we'll see. The Republican primary continues
Speaker 1: to be kind of boring in some interesting ways. It's
Speaker 1: like just Trump sitting up there at the top, despite
Speaker 1: you know, one indictment after the other landing on top
Speaker 1: of his head. But then underneath him, you've got DeSantis
Speaker 1: really plummeting.
Speaker 5: What do we have going on now in the GOP primary.
Speaker 4: Yes, So yesterday it was announced that Ron DeSantis campaign
Speaker 4: manager genera pak who ran his his last cubernatorial campaign
Speaker 4: that everyone sort of heralded as a massive success, I
Speaker 4: think rightfully. So he increased his numbers from a razor
Speaker 4: thin margin when he defeated Andrew Gillum to just a
Speaker 4: resounding level of support in a purple state for a
Speaker 4: very republican governor, a very sort of you know, unashamed,
Speaker 4: unabashed conservative governor who was seen as someone being innovative
Speaker 4: and novel with policy. She is two months into this
Speaker 4: campaign that had a lot of hype and a ton
Speaker 4: of money, and she's already.
Speaker 3: Out the door.
Speaker 4: So that was announced yesterday, and as The New York
Speaker 4: Times describes, they say, for the third time in less
Speaker 4: than a month, Santa's campaign, Desanta's campaign announced a major
Speaker 4: restock structuring.
Speaker 3: She was under fire.
Speaker 4: Basically, she'd never run a presidential campaign, she'd never actually
Speaker 4: even worked on a presidential campaign. But she was also,
Speaker 4: as The New York Times goes on to say, quote
Speaker 4: widely seen as miscast in the campaign manager role, even
Speaker 4: by those who liked her. She'd come under fire, in
Speaker 4: particular for building a campaign team so quickly that mister
Speaker 4: DeSantis was forced to lay off roughly forty percent of
Speaker 4: his aids only two months into his candidacy. This is
Speaker 4: a mistake that a lot of really hyped campaigns make.
Speaker 4: People probably remember, there have been a lot of comparisons
Speaker 4: with Ron DeSantis and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. There's a
Speaker 4: real problem in the Walker campaign is that they grew
Speaker 4: basically too quickly, had to make big cuts, and ended
Speaker 4: up kind of imploding because of that. But in this case,
Speaker 4: Rond de Santis has now brought in somebody from his
Speaker 4: governor's office who also doesn't have presidential election campaign experience,
Speaker 4: but is seen as a loyalist confidant. That matters a
Speaker 4: lot to Ronda Santis, obviously, the fact that he brought
Speaker 4: genera peck in somebody who didn't have presidential experience experience
Speaker 4: to begin with, and then went with again someone as
Speaker 4: he's getting rid of someone without a lot of experience
Speaker 4: and bringing someone in uh with more with not a
Speaker 4: lot of experience to clean up the mess that the
Speaker 4: other in experienced person left. You can see there very clearly.
Speaker 4: And now maybe this explains what we're seeing with b one. Uh,
Speaker 4: this is really interesting that already Vivek Ramaswami has overtaken
Speaker 4: Rond De Santis as Better's second choice to win the
Speaker 4: Republican nomination. So that is from media, and it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: Betting odds, they say, which some say provide more accurate
Speaker 4: predictions and polls, have a new GOP candidate behind former
Speaker 4: President Donald Trump, according to Election Betting Odds. That's a
Speaker 4: site run by John Stossel and Maxim Lott. They aggregate
Speaker 4: betting odds from oversea bookmakers and other prediction markets media.
Speaker 4: It says Trump is the runaway favorite, and the site
Speaker 4: calculates that he has a seventy percent chance to take
Speaker 4: the GOP nomination in twenty twenty four, but trailing behind
Speaker 4: him at nine point six percent is not DeSantis, but
Speaker 4: Vivek Ramsimami, who leads to Santas at nine point five percent,
Speaker 4: So again a very very tiny margin. But Ryan, what
Speaker 4: do you make of all of this as you're watching
Speaker 4: sort of from the other side, maybe enjoying this schadenfreude
Speaker 4: a little bit on your end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, there's a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: or like Twitter is in real life. But Vivek seems
Speaker 1: to be a little bit of a Twitter candidate and
Speaker 1: yet is having some huge success, you know, to be
Speaker 1: number two with all of these candidates, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: against Rond de Santas, who back what in the fall was,
Speaker 1: at least according to the people who were doing the gambling,
Speaker 1: ahead of Donald Trump in those numbers, like he was
Speaker 1: the he was the he was literally the odds on
Speaker 1: favorite at one point. So now to be behind Vivak
Speaker 1: who most people hadn't heard of Ramaswami but at that point.
Speaker 5: How serious do you think it is?
Speaker 1: Do you think that if it becomes head to head
Speaker 1: with Trump, like he becomes the kind of viable alternative,
Speaker 1: that he just gets completely destroyed like a you know,
Speaker 1: the asteroid coming through the atmosphere. Or do you think
Speaker 1: that there's some there's some there there that he has
Speaker 1: successfully been able to hold on to, you know, build
Speaker 1: support within kind of pro Trump folks while also winning
Speaker 1: over the other smaller factions that that seems to be
Speaker 1: his real skill.
Speaker 4: Well, I was gonna say, I think that's exactly right,
Speaker 4: because I think Vveck has handled the Trump question much
Speaker 4: better than Rond de Santis has and that's been you know,
Speaker 4: from the right, a lot of people look at the
Speaker 4: Dessantas campaign and say, what is going on. They feel
Speaker 4: as though he's sort of in this tug of war.
Speaker 4: And this is includes myself between the sort of elite
Speaker 4: GOP consultant class and you know, some people who are
Speaker 4: like New Right that he brought into the campaign. And
Speaker 4: when you're in that tug of war, it seems like
Speaker 4: the elite GEOP consultant class has one out time and
Speaker 4: time and again on this, especially the question of Trump,
Speaker 4: and he just hasn't. It seems to people like he's
Speaker 4: really botched that the answers about Trump questions, answers on
Speaker 4: Trump questions time and time and again, and that he
Speaker 4: is sort of undermining Trump's appeal. Rather than saying I
Speaker 4: understand Trump's appeal or conveying that he really understands Trump's appeal,
Speaker 4: he just is going to you know, he thinks he's
Speaker 4: right for this particular moment. There have been way more
Speaker 4: attacks on Trump, his character, etcetera, etcetera than a lot
Speaker 4: of people on the right have felt comfortable with because
Speaker 4: they don't think that's the way to win over that
Speaker 4: persuadable thirty seven percent, as the New York Times we
Speaker 4: talked about last week puts it, of people who are
Speaker 4: neither hardcore Trump or hardcore anti Trump. The way to
Speaker 4: win over those thirty seven is not to just sort
Speaker 4: of be like straight Nikki Hayley or straight Mike Pence,
Speaker 4: but to be sort of more of a middle ground.
Speaker 4: And the thing I was going to turn back around
Speaker 4: to you is just say, this reminds me so much
Speaker 4: of twenty twelve potential for a twenty twelve Remember when
Speaker 4: you would get a surge in polling for Michelle Bachman,
Speaker 4: Herman Kine and some of these sort of what's the
Speaker 4: right word for it, not fringe, but like long shot candidates,
Speaker 4: people who are not traditional eccentric or even people who
Speaker 4: are not traditional presidential candidates. So Michelle Bachman are representative
Speaker 4: at the time. And then Herman Kain a businessman.
Speaker 3: At the time. Maybe that was prescient. Yes, what did
Speaker 3: he say?
Speaker 4: It was Becky Becky, Becky Stanstan. That's another Herman Kain classic.
Speaker 4: But they would have these like sugar highs in polling
Speaker 4: because they had a really good answer to a question
Speaker 4: or a really good Fox hit. It gave a really
Speaker 4: good speech, and it would just it was a carousel.
Speaker 3: They would trade off.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if that's what's going to happen
Speaker 4: with Vivek and Tim Scott and who's had some decent
Speaker 4: polling numbers. But if Trump is staying dominant up at
Speaker 4: the top, maybe you get a carousel of sugar highs
Speaker 4: from other candidates like twenty twelve, and just ultimately nobody's
Speaker 4: over able to overtake him.
Speaker 1: Right. The difference between the difference between twenty twelve and
Speaker 1: the day being that this time they're all competing just
Speaker 1: for second place, whereas that time you had Herman Kane
Speaker 1: actually surging to the very top for a little while.
Speaker 1: I'm curious for your take on what's going to happen
Speaker 1: with these Republican elites. And one thing I love about
Speaker 1: the show is I really have no idea what the answer.
Speaker 5: Is this question.
Speaker 1: But like I remember, back in twenty sixteen, when Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders was challenging the Clinton machine, he couldn't hire anybody
Speaker 1: like basically nobody you know who wanted a job in
Speaker 1: democratic politics in the future would work against the Clintons,
Speaker 1: and that actually helped him a lot, because then it
Speaker 1: ended up bringing in lots of people from outside of
Speaker 1: kind of Washington politics and gave him a kind of
Speaker 1: livelier campaign as a result.
Speaker 5: But watching the DeSantis.
Speaker 1: World people just go to all out war with the
Speaker 1: Trump world people like I haven't followed it that closely,
Speaker 1: but it's just such a hot war you just can't,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't avoid seeing it. And now that
Speaker 1: they seem to have been routed so badly, like, are
Speaker 1: there going to be consequences for them the same way
Speaker 1: there would have been consequences for the Democratic staffers who
Speaker 1: worked against the Clinton machine, like or is the Republican
Speaker 1: kind of miliuse so kind of my kind of money
Speaker 1: at this point that you can kind of move around
Speaker 1: different worlds without running into problems. What's what's your sense
Speaker 1: of how damaged some of these DESSANTUS operatives are.
Speaker 4: That's a really good question, because Donald Trump is sort
Speaker 4: of notoriously fickle, and so are his loyal on these issues,
Speaker 4: and then sometimes not so like for really high profile
Speaker 4: people if you can it's he's shown that you can
Speaker 4: get back on his good side if you sort of
Speaker 4: say the right things. But then for the lower profile people,
Speaker 4: they were, you know, during his administration actually scanning people's
Speaker 4: Twitter feeds back like three years to see if they
Speaker 4: had ever liked something that was negative against Donald Trump
Speaker 4: when they were vetting people for jobs in his administration.
Speaker 4: So I think it's going to be a mixed bag,
Speaker 4: but it's a really interesting question for the Also another reason,
Speaker 4: which is we talked about DeSantis' economic campaign last week
Speaker 4: that had some populist rhetoric in it, And one thing
Speaker 4: I keep thinking about was the twenty twenty Democratic primary,
Speaker 4: when you had just about every candidate, no matter how
Speaker 4: much of corporate shills, they were swearing off corporate pack money.
Speaker 4: So obviously it was sort of a gesture. But Bernie
Speaker 4: really benefited because those elite Democratic consultants that were chirping
Speaker 4: in his ear were not coming from large dollar donors
Speaker 4: like they didn't They weren't conveying the messages that they
Speaker 4: were hearing from large dollar donors, and that there are
Speaker 4: all kinds of dysantist donors that have been talking to
Speaker 4: the press about how disappointed in his campaign they are,
Speaker 4: and in some ways, for instance, because he's been very
Speaker 4: conservative on the issue of abortion, because of you know,
Speaker 4: what one billionaire said was concerning to him with quote
Speaker 4: book bands, which I would argue as a false narrative.
Speaker 4: But either way, they're criticizing him essentially from the center
Speaker 4: or closer to the center.
Speaker 3: Left than from the right.
Speaker 4: And if you were relying more on small dollar donors
Speaker 4: in the way that Donald Trump has, in the way
Speaker 4: that Bernie Sanders has, and if you swear off corporate
Speaker 4: pack money, you're really able, I think, to be free
Speaker 4: not just from the consultants, but from the bosses of
Speaker 4: the consultants and the friends of the consultants who are
Speaker 4: are constantly tripping in your ear and I think giving
Speaker 4: you bad advice, and whether there will be consequences is
Speaker 4: a huge like, there are huge implications if there's a
Speaker 4: Republican in the White House going forward as to how
Speaker 4: that plays out. At the same time, Donald Trump had
Speaker 4: a horribly difficult time staffing his administration because they were
Speaker 4: so picky in some cases. I don't know if there's
Speaker 4: a learning curve if there's a second administration on that,
Speaker 4: it's a good question.
Speaker 1: Well, the White House, meanwhile, is trying to do something
Speaker 1: actually decent for the working class. So let's give some
Speaker 1: credit where it's due and talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 5: If we can put up.
Speaker 1: This great piece from Lee Harris over in the Prospect,
Speaker 1: people can go read.
Speaker 5: That for all of all the details. And that's one,
Speaker 5: she writes.
Speaker 1: President Joe Biden is set to restore a New Deal
Speaker 1: labor rule in what could be the most significant change
Speaker 1: the construction worker pay since the rule was gutted in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. The Department of Labor is preparing to
Speaker 1: issue a final rule tomorrow on the Davis Bacon Act,
Speaker 1: which sets a wage floor for construction workers on public
Speaker 1: works projects. Davis Bacon is often known as a quote
Speaker 1: prevailing wage as it refers to the going rate for
Speaker 1: labors in a given area.
Speaker 5: Era. And so this is a New Deal era.
Speaker 1: This is you know, this is an FDR implemented law
Speaker 1: that says that, look, if the public is going to
Speaker 1: be financing this infrastructure project, then the public one.
Speaker 5: Workers to be paid a fair wage.
Speaker 1: And there and there have then been fights over the
Speaker 1: definition of fair, over the definition of prevailing ever since then.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, at the height of the kind
Speaker 1: of neoliberal pushback against the New Deal era, they redefined
Speaker 1: what it meant to be a prevailing wage. We can
Speaker 1: get you can You can get wonky with the details,
Speaker 1: but the details aren't what matters. The side of the
Speaker 1: construction companies wants the prevailing wage to be defined as
Speaker 1: something that's lower. The side of the unions and the
Speaker 1: side of the workers wants prevailing wage to be calculated
Speaker 1: in a way that makes the wages higher. And so
Speaker 1: the White House is putting forward a rule that would
Speaker 1: make those wages higher. Already, the Alliance of Construction Companies
Speaker 1: is saying that they're going to sue immediately to try
Speaker 1: to stop this law. What do you make of the
Speaker 1: Biden administration's willingness to kind of run up against the
Speaker 1: construction companies here and try to pick this fight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I was going to ask you, because Biden
Speaker 4: has a really mixed record on labor. On the one hand,
Speaker 4: his Department of Labor is taking steps like this, and
Speaker 4: on the other hand, he botches the railway negotiations, and
Speaker 4: you know, it isn't it doesn't seem serious about you know,
Speaker 4: some really big questions at places like Amazon, or hasn't
Speaker 4: taken the steps that I think a lot of people
Speaker 4: would expect him to.
Speaker 3: So is this a sign that in the this.
Speaker 4: Type of labor market where there has been this huge
Speaker 4: surge in organizing that you think going forward, Biden has
Speaker 4: sort of decided he has to come down more firmly
Speaker 4: on the side of labor or is it just again
Speaker 4: part of a mixed bag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a push and pull going on
Speaker 1: inside the administration. The Democratic Party is not by any
Speaker 1: stretch monolithically in support of workers, but there is a
Speaker 1: strong union coaled you know, union force that gets behind
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and pushes them on these issues. And
Speaker 1: you also have you know a lot of White House
Speaker 1: economic advisors today who came up kind of through labor
Speaker 1: funded economic think tanks and have always been associated with
Speaker 1: kind of pro worker policies. And so the economists who
Speaker 1: work for him now are just kind of fundamentally different
Speaker 1: than the economists like Larry Summers who were hired during
Speaker 1: the tim geiten Larry Summers who were hired during the
Speaker 1: Obama era. So in that sense, you do have are
Speaker 1: more of a pro labor event. At least labor has
Speaker 1: a voice in the room. RAMA Manual, for instance, when
Speaker 1: they were debating whether or not to kind of bail
Speaker 1: out Detroit. If you remember after the financial crisis, Rama
Speaker 1: Manuel said, f the uaw like that that was his
Speaker 1: contribution in that meeting.
Speaker 5: Just screw them, you know.
Speaker 1: Fortunately for Obama and for Detroit, they didn't take raw
Speaker 1: manuals advice that time. And I actually think side note
Speaker 1: that that's why Obama did so well in the Midwest
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, because he got a lot of credit
Speaker 1: for bailing out Detroit, whereas Romney had published that that
Speaker 1: kind of infamous op ed in the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: that said, let Detroit go bankrupt twenty sixteen, you didn't
Speaker 1: have that, and so Hillary Clinton gets beaten in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: But that's that's sort of a side note, but not
Speaker 1: really because it is kind of, I think fundamental to
Speaker 1: how Democrats kind of see themselves.
Speaker 5: You know, Biden keeps saying that he wants to be the.
Speaker 1: Most pro labor, you know, the most pro union president
Speaker 1: in American history. That wouldn't be very hard at all,
Speaker 1: Like we basically haven't had one ever. So if you're
Speaker 1: even neutral on labor, that kind of makes you the
Speaker 1: best in American history. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: his advisors who are pro labor can use that rhetoric
Speaker 1: to say, look, you know, we need to do this,
Speaker 1: and there's so much money, you know, coming down the pipe.
Speaker 1: Now where today is the one year anniversary of the
Speaker 1: CHIPS Act. We've got obviously that big infrastructure Built Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act has enormous amounts of tax credits and public
Speaker 1: spending going toward infrastructure development. I think the fact spending
Speaker 1: on factory development is something like doubled in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years.
Speaker 5: It's huge now, doubled from pretty low rate.
Speaker 1: But that means that there's a lot of room to
Speaker 1: force work, to force companies to pay more to workers,
Speaker 1: and so I think, you know they're going to go
Speaker 1: for it, but you know, we'll see if it gets
Speaker 1: tied up in court the entire time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it certainly will.
Speaker 4: But it has landed with a thud, I think on
Speaker 4: the right, which is also very interesting. I can imagine
Speaker 4: just about ten fifteen years ago, in fact, that I'm
Speaker 4: reading right here from a Kevin Brady, a Joint Economic
Speaker 4: Committee report on Davis Bacon that is just headlined highway
Speaker 4: robbery from twenty eleven. This would have had Republicans up
Speaker 4: in arms, taking to the media and talking about the
Speaker 4: Biden administration's extremism and cozy relationship with labor, because labor
Speaker 4: was not seen in the same light back then that
Speaker 4: it is now, and especially on the right, this is
Speaker 4: something that Republicans consistently say, Like if you look at
Speaker 4: the conservative criticism of Davis Bacon, it's typically that it
Speaker 4: increases costs for companies, and then Kevin Brady actually in
Speaker 4: this report said it looks like a pretty weak argument too,
Speaker 4: by the way, as I'm looking back on it, that
Speaker 4: it does decrease employment. So by repealing Davis Bacon and
Speaker 4: getting rid of prevailing wage, you increase jobs, which obviously
Speaker 4: if costs are decreased, which I'm sure that they are
Speaker 4: when that happens, I don't think anyone is going to
Speaker 4: dispute that the costs are going up when you have
Speaker 4: to pay people more. That's essentially the obvious math there.
Speaker 4: But when you have that, he's saying it actually decreases,
Speaker 4: and conservatives will say it decreases the level of people
Speaker 4: that are actually employed. But this is a really tight
Speaker 4: labor market, So I don't know how seriously that argument
Speaker 4: is going to be taken by people on the right,
Speaker 4: especially as their attitudes towards organized labor are shifting. So
Speaker 4: I also found it pretty interesting that this got very
Speaker 4: little pick despite it being a fairly consequential decision from
Speaker 4: the Biden administration. It didn't really have people running to Twitter,
Speaker 4: running to people on the right, Republicans running to Twitter.
Speaker 4: But industry does fund some of those pro business think tanks,
Speaker 4: and industry is pretty upset about this, as you can imagine,
Speaker 4: and that's where it will be tied up in court.
Speaker 4: So maybe that will be amplified in the future, but
Speaker 4: as of now, I just sort of found that interesting,
Speaker 4: and it will be interesting going forward, as this issue,
Speaker 4: again is very consequential, as you do have the pressure
Speaker 4: coming from industry, on think tanks, on special interest groups
Speaker 4: to fight this where Republican politicians will land.
Speaker 1: And you made a great point that these building trades members,
Speaker 1: these union members, those are mostly Trump voters at this point. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so in some ways it's good for workers when
Speaker 1: they have both parties who are kind of now looking
Speaker 1: out for their interests, because, like you said, in the past,
Speaker 1: Democrats would do this and Republicans would go to war
Speaker 1: against it. Now Democrats do it and Republicans are like, H,
Speaker 1: don't like this because all of our donors say it's
Speaker 1: not good, but all of our voters say it is good.
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll just step back and see it, you know,
Speaker 1: see how this plays out in the courts.
Speaker 5: And that's kind of what makes.
Speaker 1: Me nervous about this Republican coalition is that they leave
Speaker 1: a lot of the dirty work to the courts. And
Speaker 1: whereas the Republican politicians say say, you know, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: for you.
Speaker 5: Know, higher prevailing wages for folks.
Speaker 1: I remember I spoke to a bunch of building trades
Speaker 1: union leaders back in twenty nineteen at a conference, and
Speaker 1: I was asking them afterwards where how their members were
Speaker 1: feeling about Trump and the upcoming election, And every single
Speaker 1: one of them, no matter what, no matter what the
Speaker 1: building trade was specifically, they're like, oh, heavily Trump, like,
Speaker 1: you know, sixty seventy, even upwards of.
Speaker 5: Eighty percent Trump.
Speaker 1: They all, they all had seen wage increases over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, and a lot of them were
Speaker 1: crediting kind of Trump's rhetoric around wayes and around the
Speaker 1: FED and also around immigration, which I think is incorrect,
Speaker 1: but I understand like why they're you know, they're seeing him,
Speaker 1: you know, hammer on about immigration. Then they're seeing their
Speaker 1: wages go up, and like, oh, maybe this is going
Speaker 1: on here. But if Biden can't find the megaphone that
Speaker 1: Trump had and let people know that the reason that
Speaker 1: a reason they're getting increases in their wages is because
Speaker 1: of what Democrats are doing for them, then they're not
Speaker 1: gonna They're not gonna end up getting credit for that.
Speaker 5: So we'll, you know, we'll see how that shakes out.
Speaker 1: But whoever gets credit, it's a good thing when workers
Speaker 1: are getting paid more for the.
Speaker 5: Work they're doing well.
Speaker 4: And to your point about special interests versus politicians, a
Speaker 4: lot of those same people who are supporting Trump also
Speaker 4: probably ended up being Ron Johnson voters ended up being
Speaker 4: JD Vance voters. So it does put a different for
Speaker 4: different reasons, but it does put a different kind of
Speaker 4: pressure on the Republican Party versus the special interest apparatus.
Speaker 4: And one huge thing for the conservative movement to reckon
Speaker 4: with is how pro industry, how pro business. A lot
Speaker 4: of those judges are who have been on benches and
Speaker 4: celebrated by the conservative movement for being installed on benches
Speaker 4: because they had, you know, at the time, were what
Speaker 4: seemed like the favorable sort of approach towards free markets,
Speaker 4: towards for instance, abortion whatever it is, and are now
Speaker 4: going to be inclined to rule in certain antitrust cases,
Speaker 4: tech cases, or different cases in ways that may not
Speaker 4: be favorable to those voters. Let's move on to another
Speaker 4: economic topic, which is the sort of troubling levels of
Speaker 4: personal debt that we're seeing. We can go ahead and
Speaker 4: throw d one up on the screen. This is from
Speaker 4: CNN Business. More Americans are tapping their four oh one
Speaker 4: K accounts because of financial distress, according to Bank of
Speaker 4: America data released Tuesday. So Americans, as the CNN headline says,
Speaker 4: are pulling money out of their K plans at an
Speaker 4: alarming rate. Here are the specifics. The number of people
Speaker 4: who made a hardship withdrawal during the second quarter surge
Speaker 4: from the first three months of the year to fifteen
Speaker 4: nine hundred and fifty, which is an increase of thirty
Speaker 4: six percent from the second quarter of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: according to Bank of America's analysis of clients employee benefit programs,
Speaker 4: which are comprised of more than four million planned participants
Speaker 4: and expert that CNN quotes cause that quote pretty troubling.
Speaker 4: You understand why people do that in the heat of
Speaker 4: the moment, but the opportunity costs on that are really
Speaker 4: really high over time. I would also point out numbers
Speaker 4: that show people's auto mortgages are going from debt to
Speaker 4: delinquency at a really surprising rate that has spiked over
Speaker 4: the last quarter and just seems to keep going up.
Speaker 4: It's actually different than what we're seeing debt to delinquency
Speaker 4: on mortgages.
Speaker 3: But I think when you.
Speaker 4: Put this all together, you're looking at the picture of
Speaker 4: a lot of people having borrowed a good chunk of
Speaker 4: money in the last couple of years. And it's one
Speaker 4: thing if people are borrowing that money and like with
Speaker 4: the mortgage numbers, are are not, you know, then tipping
Speaker 4: into delinquency. But if they are, especially in something like
Speaker 4: auto loans, which is a lower level, that is that
Speaker 4: is pretty concerning. I do agree, Ryan, that is a
Speaker 4: little troubling.
Speaker 5: It's very troubling.
Speaker 1: And to put to put it in perspective, if in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, interest rates, you know, collapse down to for
Speaker 1: home for mortgages under four percent and for a lot
Speaker 1: of people under three percent, and you saw record numbers
Speaker 1: of refinances and so Refinancing often does two things.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: It on the one hand, it lowers your It lowers
Speaker 1: your payment that you have every every month and so
Speaker 1: that you have, you know, as long as your pay
Speaker 1: stays the same, you're taking a little bit more home
Speaker 1: every every month after you've paid your mortgage. But a
Speaker 1: lot of people then take a little bit out also
Speaker 1: say like the bank will tell you, hey, look, if
Speaker 1: you can add you know, twenty five thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: your principle over the next thirty years, it will just
Speaker 1: give you the check for twenty five thousand, and you're
Speaker 1: still paying less a month because your interest rate was
Speaker 1: at you know, five percent now it's at two point
Speaker 1: seventy five percent, and millions of people around the country
Speaker 1: you know, refinanced and took that money out. Then you
Speaker 1: had the Cares Act in March twenty twenty, which was
Speaker 1: kicked what six hundred dollars checks to everybody. Then you
Speaker 1: had the note, well, you had twelve hundred dollars checks,
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars check, fourteen hundred dollars checks.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, you know, you had in January twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: people getting a family for got a fifty four hundred
Speaker 1: dollars check if they had, you know, two dependents. That's fine,
Speaker 1: that's a that's an enormous amount of money to just
Speaker 1: land in your bank account. And the combination of I
Speaker 1: think all of those refinancings plus all of those direct checks,
Speaker 1: plus you know, the unemployment benefits that you're getting extra
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars a month, the amount of savings that
Speaker 1: people had had never been higher.
Speaker 5: Some of this article notes that the number of.
Speaker 1: People who I don't know, if we have this one,
Speaker 1: I think it might be our second element. Number of
Speaker 1: people who can afford a four hundred dollars hit is
Speaker 1: back down to about sixty two percent at this point.
Speaker 5: In twenty twenty one, Yeah, d three, it was it
Speaker 5: was sixty eight percent.
Speaker 1: Could swing a you know, you want it to be
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, Like you want everyone to be able
Speaker 1: to swing a four hundred dollars hit that they get.
Speaker 1: But in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, that number was
Speaker 1: going up, so at least it's going in the right direction.
Speaker 1: That number is coming down now, and so we've exhausted
Speaker 1: the refinancing, We've done all the checks, and so now
Speaker 1: people are dipping into their four oh one k's. They're
Speaker 1: borrowing from their workers. I mean they're borrowing from their workplaces.
Speaker 1: Now you still you still did see according to this reporting,
Speaker 1: just as many people adding money adding more money to
Speaker 1: their four to one case than we're reducing the contributions
Speaker 1: to their four o one case.
Speaker 5: So it's not like everybody is in this situation.
Speaker 1: But I do think that there's a strain on the
Speaker 1: system that if it hits a shock, there just isn't
Speaker 1: the cushioning, and you're going to have enormous number of
Speaker 1: people who need this music to keep playing before they're
Speaker 1: going to lose this game.
Speaker 3: So this is a really interesting point.
Speaker 4: Even if we just go back to that simple question
Speaker 4: of mortgages, mortgage delinquency versus autodelinquency. Who's more likely to
Speaker 4: have a mortgage versus who's more likely to have an
Speaker 4: auto loan. If you have a mortgage, you're probably in
Speaker 4: a different socioeconomic strata on average than the average person
Speaker 4: with car loans. That would be my guess, And I
Speaker 4: think that speaks to what you're talking about, which is
Speaker 4: our economy just going into completely different directions.
Speaker 3: We see this with the stock market.
Speaker 4: We saw it with the stock market during COVID and
Speaker 4: right now, if we put a D two up on
Speaker 4: the screen, this is credit card debt. So this is
Speaker 4: CNN's credit card Sannan's report on credit card debt. They're
Speaker 4: saying since twenty nineteen, household debt balances have increased by
Speaker 4: nearly three trillion, according to the New York Fed from
Speaker 4: the first quarter of twenty twenty three, and a lot
Speaker 4: of that is coming from credit card debt of the
Speaker 4: first time. On Tuesday, the New York Fed reported that
Speaker 4: US households credit card debt quote surpassed the one trillion
Speaker 4: mark for the first time ever. That's a forty five
Speaker 4: billion dollar increase in credit card debt. It's driving overall
Speaker 4: household debt to levels levels to seventeen point six trillion
Speaker 4: at the end of the second quarter. And then you
Speaker 4: add on top of that that federal student loan payments
Speaker 4: are resuming in October.
Speaker 3: So if this is bad now.
Speaker 4: Imagine how much how much worse it's going to get
Speaker 4: in October. And again, an expert CNND quote says, there's
Speaker 4: only so much hard debt that people can handle before
Speaker 4: delinquencies really strike. Ultimately, just have a lot of people
Speaker 4: who are doing okay now, but it wouldn't take a
Speaker 4: whole lot for them to find themselves in a pretty
Speaker 4: sticky situation financially, whether that is a medical emergency, job loss,
Speaker 4: or even just student loan payments. Restarting and the student
Speaker 4: loan payment pause is another example of how it may
Speaker 4: feel like the pandemic for us is in the rearview mirror,
Speaker 4: but economically, that pandemic era policy is very much still
Speaker 4: with us in the economy, and the pandemic era economy
Speaker 4: you've seen tightening, for instance, in media in Hollywood in
Speaker 4: those space is from the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Again, we talked about a sugar high.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of that, There was a lot
Speaker 4: of growth, and right now some of that. You know,
Speaker 4: the FED is really eager that they to say that
Speaker 4: looks like we're going to have the soft landing.
Speaker 3: But indications like this.
Speaker 4: That are sort of below the surface, the beneath that
Speaker 4: you see the tip of the iceberg and then it's
Speaker 4: the giant thing underneath the water, I think that is
Speaker 4: a lot more concerning than they will admit. Ryan that
Speaker 4: then Janet Yellen or Jamie Diamond will admit.
Speaker 1: Because car loan delinquencies are considered by economists and people
Speaker 1: with common sense to be a huge uh you know,
Speaker 1: red siren blaring because if you think about it, you're
Speaker 1: in the number of as as it becomes harder for
Speaker 1: you to pay your bills. Uh, the car is the
Speaker 1: main thing that you know that you continue to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're paying because you need your car for everything.
Speaker 1: You need your car to get to work most importantly,
Speaker 1: and so if you don't have that, uh, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're set back. And so studies show, and like I said,
Speaker 1: common sense shows that when people have to decide, you know,
Speaker 1: what to pay and what not to pay, uh, they're there.
Speaker 1: They always want to pay that car, that car loan
Speaker 1: off because they do not want that car repossessed. And
Speaker 1: so that if they're not paying those loans, and if
Speaker 1: delinquencies are rising, that means they've already exhausted all the
Speaker 1: other things that they can move around and couldn't and
Speaker 1: couldn't pay for the time being. And so they're you know,
Speaker 1: once you're not paying, Once you're not paying your car loan,
Speaker 1: unless you've got two or three cars, Uh, then you
Speaker 1: know you're you're you're really facing a significant trouble.
Speaker 5: If you have two or three cars, you know, you're
Speaker 5: just gonna you're.
Speaker 1: Gonna sell them and you're not gonna You're not gonna
Speaker 1: let them get repossessed. So that's why people economists really
Speaker 1: worry when they see car delinquencies starting to starting to
Speaker 1: tick up.
Speaker 3: Last question, Ryan is if you were Janet Yellen.
Speaker 4: Put put yourself in Danny Yellen's shoes, Ryan, and you're
Speaker 4: looking at these numbers, how does that influence your decisions
Speaker 4: on interest rates?
Speaker 1: Well, well, I mean I think you well, you mean
Speaker 1: you mean the FED chair that she used to be
Speaker 1: the FED chair.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, she did a good job of I.
Speaker 1: Think of keeping rates really low for very a very
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I think Trump even could have kept her on and
Speaker 1: she would have would have kept doing it. He can
Speaker 1: steady replaced her with Pale, who then kept rates really low.
Speaker 1: But I think if your pal you do have to
Speaker 1: be and I think if you're yelling, because I think
Speaker 1: you do have a good question. Because she is still
Speaker 1: responsible for the economy, she should be browbeating Palell to
Speaker 1: say okay, enough, like good job. You know, you squeezed
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. You know, a bunch of those clowns lost
Speaker 1: their shirts, which they should have because they were just
Speaker 1: wasting money.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, now we need to focus on making sure
Speaker 1: that people uh don't get hit with the kind of shock,
Speaker 1: especially given the fact that student loan payments are are
Speaker 1: are are coming back in October that it sends us
Speaker 1: into a tailspin, like do not over do not overcorrect here,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, slowed down, and you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe if you need to ease, do something a
Speaker 1: little more targeted rather than just opening up the spigot
Speaker 1: and sending the money straight to Silicon Valley next time.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, And Yellen, to your point, Ryan had a
Speaker 4: sort of different I guess approach than Jerome Powell. And
Speaker 4: if Yellen had been in a position rather than Jerome
Speaker 4: Powell might have been a different question. But in terms
Speaker 4: of how Powell as is seen in the administration, is
Speaker 4: treated by the administration, as directed by the administration, it's
Speaker 4: just I'm very curious to see because these indications have
Speaker 4: been lingering, but as they are sort of heightened.
Speaker 3: I mean, these are to your point, like red signs.
Speaker 4: These are those are like glaring, glaring problems that are
Speaker 4: demanding I think probably a little bit more honesty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he wanted to see the number of job
Speaker 1: openings reduced. He wanted to see wages going down. He
Speaker 1: was very clear in public about that. And you know,
Speaker 1: you you are seeing the number of jobs added to
Speaker 1: the economy rising at a lower rate.
Speaker 5: So you should just declare victory and.
Speaker 1: You know, stop trying to strangle the economy, is what
Speaker 1: I would tell him.
Speaker 4: So before we started filming today, Ryan revealed some personal
Speaker 4: knowledge of boating brawls. And we're going to talk now
Speaker 4: about the one out of Montgomery, Alabama. I think probably
Speaker 4: the best thing to do is just start by playing
Speaker 4: some of these clips.
Speaker 3: Let's throw you one up on the screen.
Speaker 6: Here they long crossing.
Speaker 3: That's what swimming his hands?
Speaker 6: O yah, some boy could have left that one. You
Speaker 6: look that your boy?
Speaker 3: Get up down, y'all buck, Get off down, y'all buck.
Speaker 1: No girl.
Speaker 6: S they what's up?
Speaker 3: I was all miserable.
Speaker 5: YOA whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa?
Speaker 6: They did? Look out they did, whoa they did? Whoa?
Speaker 6: Oh ha, whoa.
Speaker 1: That was the game.
Speaker 4: It's a real spectator sport, and we can I think
Speaker 4: it's pretty easy for everyone to understand why those videos
Speaker 4: have gone massively viral. As the Montgomery Advertiser put it,
Speaker 4: they have captivated the attention of the nation. The latest
Speaker 4: news on this is that three men are facing charges.
Speaker 4: So that we have a forty eight year old white male,
Speaker 4: Richard Roberts, who's facing two warrants for assault in the
Speaker 4: third degree, twenty three year old white male Alan Todd
Speaker 4: one warrant for assaults in the third degree, and Zachary Shipman,
Speaker 4: a twenty five year old white male, facing one warrant
Speaker 4: for assaults in the third degree.
Speaker 3: More context here.
Speaker 4: This is from Saturday evening, so last Saturday, when, as
Speaker 4: the Montgomery Advertiser puts it, Damian Pickett, the co captain
Speaker 4: of the Harriet two, asked the operators of a private
Speaker 4: boat that was docked in its space to move, getting
Speaker 4: only a quote obscene gestures and quote taunting in response.
Speaker 4: Dozens of cell phone videos posted to social media were
Speaker 4: recorded by the passengers aboard the Harriet two riverboat, which
Speaker 4: was waiting to dock with two hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 4: people on board for more than forty minutes, as well
Speaker 4: as people.
Speaker 3: On the shore.
Speaker 4: So after a long Saturday spent you know, on the river, drinking,
Speaker 4: having fun. It sounds like Ryan this escalated very quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the ship is named after Harriet Tubman,
Speaker 1: which is right, which is which is pretty great. These guys, yes,
Speaker 1: they clearly were wasted, sunburnt, rednecks who just felt like
Speaker 1: because they had the numbers on one guy, that they
Speaker 1: were just gonna kind of, you know.
Speaker 5: Show them how tough they were.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if we saw it in that footage,
Speaker 1: but the kid and he turned to a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old kid who was swimming over to the dock.
Speaker 5: Yes, just brings a tear to your eye.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just the most glorious symbol of solidarity
Speaker 1: that you can ever see.
Speaker 5: Like he sees that somebody needs help, he dives into
Speaker 5: the water. That's those are the heroes that we need
Speaker 5: today now. And there you go.
Speaker 1: In in Phil in Phil Lewis's tweet there he mentioned
Speaker 1: that Reggie Gray, who is the man willing to share,
Speaker 1: uh you know, is being asked to contact police. I'm
Speaker 1: not defending you know, wielding shares at people, but I
Speaker 1: would advise Regie Gray he does not have to contact
Speaker 1: the police. You know, you're not You're not required to
Speaker 1: turn your turn yourself in if his name is even
Speaker 1: Reggie Gray. So it has been you know, TikTok has really,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of gloriously covered this because you're getting,
Speaker 1: you know, just absolutely everybody's got their take that they're
Speaker 1: putting out there, and everybody seems to agree, and how
Speaker 1: could they not? Like these these these dudes bullied this
Speaker 1: one guy who was just doing his job and then
Speaker 1: they got.
Speaker 5: Whooped and what you know, what what more can you
Speaker 5: ask for?
Speaker 1: And the irony, of course, is that we we've gone
Speaker 1: through this whole kind of contra versy over that Jason
Speaker 1: al Dean song, and these dudes did try that in
Speaker 1: a small town, all that small, and you know they
Speaker 1: found out what what did you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, the debate over what constitutes a small town has
Speaker 4: been actually really interesting too, because Montgomery is certain probably
Speaker 4: probably seen by a lot of people who look at,
Speaker 4: you know, Atlanta as the antithesis, as it's sort of
Speaker 4: opposite rather than you know, maybe the three hundred person
Speaker 4: town an hour outside of it or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's.
Speaker 4: It's certainly seen as like different than Atlanta. And I'm
Speaker 4: sure it is to some extent, but I think it's
Speaker 4: a really interesting point. The other thing I would say
Speaker 4: is just that there's a lot to think about in
Speaker 4: terms of how social media can condition us to I think,
Speaker 4: make jump conclusions. So like, for instance, Nicole Hannah Jones,
Speaker 4: who's at the New York Times, pretty powerful person. She tweeted,
Speaker 4: if you understand her ext she said, if you understand
Speaker 4: the history of Montgomery, one of the most prolific slave
Speaker 4: trading cities in the US and brutally repressive apartheid regime
Speaker 4: after a majority black but just got its first black mayor,
Speaker 4: it gives so much perspective.
Speaker 3: To this video. I don't know about that.
Speaker 4: I feel like when we when when stuff like this
Speaker 4: goes viral, the incentives to sort of shoehorn it immediately
Speaker 4: into a broader sort of political narrative can be really
Speaker 4: dangerous and unnecessarily divisive. And actually I say that as
Speaker 4: someone who doesn't rule out the fact that we may
Speaker 4: learn as this investigation goes on, uh that there were
Speaker 4: racial implications or motivations. I don't rule that out at all.
Speaker 4: I think it's perfectly plausible. I think to tweet that
Speaker 4: within a couple of days or even hours of it
Speaker 4: going viral, and to turn something that was local and
Speaker 4: that we would typically all sort of deal with, litigate
Speaker 4: literally on a local level before and then sort of
Speaker 4: rocket it into the political stratosphere.
Speaker 3: I never find that to be helpful.
Speaker 4: I think it's really unfortunate when people do that before
Speaker 4: we know, you know, whether this is actually tied to
Speaker 4: racial animus.
Speaker 3: And again I don't rule out that that's possible.
Speaker 4: I just I have seen some of that in this case,
Speaker 4: not just from Nicole Hanna Jones, but from other spots,
Speaker 4: and it may be possible. I just I don't like
Speaker 4: doing it before we know whether or not there's real
Speaker 4: evidence of that.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, you do have the evidence of the clear
Speaker 1: racial lines, and you know, so people who people who
Speaker 1: were watching, you know, from away from the fight could
Speaker 1: see that that was a bunch of you call them white,
Speaker 1: they were red. You could see this a bunch of
Speaker 1: white people and the person getting beaten was a black person.
Speaker 1: You could very clearly see that, and I think, certainly
Speaker 1: in Alabama that you understand it through that prism. I
Speaker 1: think a mistake that Hannah Jones might be making in
Speaker 1: that analysis there is to suggest that you know that
Speaker 1: black people in the South either in an organized fashion
Speaker 1: or spontaneously operating in self defense is.
Speaker 5: A is a new phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there has been resistance to oppression, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, dating back to the very beginning of the oppression,
Speaker 1: not just not just when it comes to slave revolts,
Speaker 1: but then you know, organized organized, organized slavery volts. Then
Speaker 1: then then escapes that kind of so panicked the South
Speaker 1: that it uh you know, it caused them to overreact,
Speaker 1: which ended up trigging in the Civil War, the futuive
Speaker 1: slave backed et cetera.
Speaker 5: We get that.
Speaker 1: Then you have uh, many of those freedmen then join
Speaker 1: the Union fight back there, and you have people you know,
Speaker 1: organizing militias fighting against the fighting against the Klan, and
Speaker 1: that you know, up through the civil civil rights movement
Speaker 1: like you have always had uh you know black Americans, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pushing back violently and non violently but also
Speaker 1: you know, violently then and that has that has been
Speaker 1: kind of suppressed in the history. But a lot of it,
Speaker 1: you know, was you know, thoroughly justified and in self defense,
Speaker 1: like like you saw in this situation. So for her
Speaker 1: to kind of, you know, suggest that it's something new,
Speaker 1: I think almost as a disservice and a discredit to
Speaker 1: the prouder history of resistance.
Speaker 3: That's a great point, and maybe maybe she.
Speaker 1: Wasn't suggesting that it was there was brand new, just
Speaker 1: saying look at it through that prison. But I just
Speaker 1: want to be clear that that that that that proud
Speaker 1: history is there, and that's a more.
Speaker 4: I think, precise way to put it, because obviously, I know,
Speaker 4: you know, Nicole Hanna Jones and other people reasonably would
Speaker 4: say the evidence is right in front of you, like
Speaker 4: you see the racial breakdown, you have a city as
Speaker 4: historically charged as Montgomery involved.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 4: I guess the point I was trying to make is
Speaker 4: that it's the question of whether there was this very
Speaker 4: specific if there was like an actual someone's used a
Speaker 4: racial slur. Someone was like that question to me something
Speaker 4: that is when you sort of apply that to a
Speaker 4: really specific local situation and elevate it on the national level,
Speaker 4: I think that's always unhelpful to getting justice served and
Speaker 4: to understanding the truth of what happened, and the kind
Speaker 4: of rush to to sort of put this into the
Speaker 4: national racial I understand it, I understand why it happened.
Speaker 4: I guess I just think putting that into that context
Speaker 4: without litigating it. And like, I don't mean litigating in
Speaker 4: that sense like going through the courts. I just mean
Speaker 4: before we have information, this stuff goes viral on social
Speaker 4: media and you end up with the Covington Catholic situation.
Speaker 4: That was also people were looking at a racial breakdown
Speaker 4: and it led them to a conclusion that ended up
Speaker 4: was seen and settling for millions and millions of dollars.
Speaker 4: Because the snap picture it doesn't always tell the full story,
Speaker 4: even though it goes viral on social media and it's
Speaker 4: a video and people feel.
Speaker 3: Like they know what happened.
Speaker 1: So that's I guess that's all I meant to say, right,
Speaker 1: And that's when we did get a bigger story, fuller
Speaker 1: story lots, you know, everybody's got a phone at this point.
Speaker 1: But also I think some of the I think some
Speaker 1: of the racial undertones come through in just in an
Speaker 1: unspoken way, in the sense that like, who do these
Speaker 1: guys think they are? You know, like, and it's it's
Speaker 1: where you start to have to give credit to terms
Speaker 1: like white privileges, like dude, Okay, you were out drinking
Speaker 1: on your boat all day. You've been sitting there for
Speaker 1: forty forty five minutes on the dock with one hundred
Speaker 1: plus people waiting to get off their ferry, waiting to
Speaker 1: get off this Harriet two and you just won't move,
Speaker 1: and then the co captain comes and asks you to move,
Speaker 1: and you beat him up.
Speaker 5: That is a very like privileged, who.
Speaker 1: On earth do you think you are that you can
Speaker 1: do that, and very difficult to imagine the racial dynamics
Speaker 1: being different that. You know, a boat of a handful
Speaker 1: of black guys who are holding up hundreds of people
Speaker 1: on a ferry then beating up a white co cap
Speaker 1: and on the dock.
Speaker 5: It's very hard to see that because the kind.
Speaker 1: Of power structure and the power dynamics just just don't
Speaker 1: allow you kind of to imagine that unfolding. Although it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to imagine what on earth these dudes were thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, that they would do this in front of
Speaker 1: a very large black rap like there was a I
Speaker 1: think a it was a college or a high school
Speaker 1: reunion party going on. You know, several hundred people who
Speaker 1: were obviously not gonna, uh, you know, stand for that,
Speaker 1: or maybe they thought they would stand for that, but
Speaker 1: they they found out that they would not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you know, they probably want to blame
Speaker 4: the alcohol in this case, and I'm sure that that
Speaker 4: amplified tensions, especially at the end of the Saturday.
Speaker 3: But the the.
Speaker 4: Scenario is just laid out or you're the one causing
Speaker 4: problems and then you're the one that's beating people up. Uh,
Speaker 4: that's that's that's not just alcohol, that's you having some
Speaker 4: serious character problems, and that absolutely being inclined to act
Speaker 4: like a jerk no matter what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've done a lot of drinking and boating, and
Speaker 1: I have never beaten anybody.
Speaker 5: Up for no reason or even for no reason, for
Speaker 5: no reason, but you have, or even or even for.
Speaker 1: Any reason really in the boating situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think you know we were talking about the rock
Speaker 1: called boat talking contest. I just realized that on my
Speaker 1: Twitter profile people want to see it that the like
Speaker 1: the top image is from like a late nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: boat docking. You probably find me in that crowd somewhere.
Speaker 1: I haven't gone in years. I'm too old for that now.
Speaker 1: But nothing more fun than that. But no fighting, Come on,
Speaker 1: no fighting.
Speaker 3: It takes all the fun away.
Speaker 5: So Emily, what's your point today?
Speaker 4: Well, now seven states have required pornography websites to have
Speaker 4: age verification, allowing users to access them within their states.
Speaker 4: So there's been heavy focused on Mississippi Virginia. Those are
Speaker 4: two earlier this summer. You can see that on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is a Gizmoto headline. You can't access pornhub in
Speaker 4: Mississippior Virginia anymore.
Speaker 3: Why is that?
Speaker 4: Because their age verification laws Pornhub felt they could not
Speaker 4: comply with, and so people who go there in those
Speaker 4: states see an explanation basically for why they're not operating
Speaker 4: in those states anymore. Louisiana was the first state to
Speaker 4: do this, so there's been a huge amount of focus
Speaker 4: on that. But as Political Magazine, which had a great
Speaker 4: story examining some of these bills, how they came to pass,
Speaker 4: and then what's been happening to Pornhub explains now identical
Speaker 4: bills to that Louisiana one have passed in six other states, Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia,
Speaker 4: and Texas. So not just super deep red states. Montana's
Speaker 4: a Democratic senator, obviously. Virginia I would argue it was blue,
Speaker 4: even though it has a Republican governor right now. And
Speaker 4: you know others are pretty conservative there. But these are
Speaker 4: bills that are passing with pretty big margins despite being
Speaker 4: fought bitterly by the pornography industry, which is a huge
Speaker 4: industry right now. The online pornography industry absolutely massive, big,
Speaker 4: big business at this point. And they're being signed by
Speaker 4: as political notes, democratic Republican governors. And this is a
Speaker 4: quote from the story. In just over a year, age
Speaker 4: verification laws have become perhaps the most bipartisan policy in
Speaker 4: the country, and they are creating havoc in a porn
Speaker 4: industry that many had considered all but impossible to actually regulate.
Speaker 3: I think that's really important. And Political Magazine.
Speaker 4: Goes on to explain why they say quote, they're having
Speaker 4: real effects on how the massive online porn industry does business. Pornhub,
Speaker 4: the YouTube of pornography, gets more global users than Amazon
Speaker 4: or Netflix. In twenty nineteen, the last year Pornhub released
Speaker 4: at data, the site was visited forty two billion times,
Speaker 4: or one hundred and fifteen million times each day. But
Speaker 4: according to Ethical Capital Partners, the private equity company that
Speaker 4: owns Pornhub, let's just look at Louisiana they say their
Speaker 4: traffic has dropped eighty Their traffic has obviously dropped one
Speaker 4: hundred percent in the states that it's simply not operating
Speaker 4: in anymore, including I believe Virginia and Mississippi. So that's
Speaker 4: incredibly big news across the board for millions of people's
Speaker 4: daily lives in those states and for a massive industry
Speaker 4: as well. It's also reverberated. This political magazine story was
Speaker 4: shared everywhere on the right yesterday. It's reverberated in Washington
Speaker 4: because of this idea that online online pornography was too
Speaker 4: big to fail. Maybe it's the best way to put it,
Speaker 4: that it was too hard to do anything. It would
Speaker 4: be like sort of trying to clean the beach, right,
Speaker 4: trying to sweep up the beach with a broom and
Speaker 4: get that stand off the beach, as sort of how
Speaker 4: people viewed online pornography. And the lesson is not just
Speaker 4: about online pornography for people in Washington, but it is
Speaker 4: that reasonable laws can have massive consequences, that some problems
Speaker 4: aren't too big for legislation. And maybe you disagree with
Speaker 4: these particular state laws, but it should be a lesson
Speaker 4: for all politicians that when you have a problem you
Speaker 4: consider serious, there are ways, even if it's even if
Speaker 4: it seems overwhelming and impossible, reasonable legislation that is not
Speaker 4: overly intrusive. So the porn industry in this case is
Speaker 4: their trade association. A lot of people probably know this
Speaker 4: is called the Free Speech Coalition, and I don't think
Speaker 4: it's unreasonable, of course to say that there's free speech
Speaker 4: implications and regulation of pornography. But we have plenty of registration,
Speaker 4: we have plenty of regulation around the Second Amendment, and
Speaker 4: I argue, of course for minimal regulation around the First Amendment.
Speaker 4: But age verification laws are hardly an undue burden on
Speaker 4: the online pornography industry. This is very specifically tailored to
Speaker 4: online pornography and very specifically about age verification. And so
Speaker 4: if you want to peddle something that we are learning
Speaker 4: is as powerful as online pornography, there's mounting evidence. Of course,
Speaker 4: the Free Speech Coalition would dispute this evidence and say
Speaker 4: it's not conclusive, it's not serious, but there's evidence that
Speaker 4: this affects people's dopamine reactions and their brain, especially as
Speaker 4: they're younger, so they have minds that are still being
Speaker 4: formed in those stages of brain development, that online pornography
Speaker 4: can be very addictive. It can create issues like or
Speaker 4: can lead to issues. It can influence issues like a
Speaker 4: rectile dysfunction. There's some evidence suggesting that there's some evidence
Speaker 4: suggesting it actually has harmful effects in your dopamine pathways.
Speaker 4: Your ability to experience sexual pleasure in a healthy way
Speaker 4: can be harmed by online pornography. And again, whether or
Speaker 4: not you agree with any of that, the big takeaway
Speaker 4: to a lot of people here in Washington is that
Speaker 4: on this sort of state level, you can take small
Speaker 4: measures that have huge consequences for hugely consequential issues, to
Speaker 4: the point where those issues are feeling overwhelming legislators in
Speaker 4: this new era, and that has big implications. I would
Speaker 4: also say, for AI, how much is that argument trotted
Speaker 4: out that we really can't do anything when it comes
Speaker 4: to AI because it's.
Speaker 3: Already out of our hands.
Speaker 4: And that's probably a big argument people are making right
Speaker 4: now in states like Louisiana. It's like, Okay, well people
Speaker 4: aren't going to pornhub, They're still finding their pornography somewhere.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's truth to that, and I look forward
Speaker 4: to reading the evidence about whether or not that's happening,
Speaker 4: the degree to how it's happening, and what's going on
Speaker 4: with that. But I still think it's incredibly important to
Speaker 4: look at how these laws can shape behavior, even if
Speaker 4: they're small and they're not massively intrusive. This isn't a
Speaker 4: it would be hard to argue even conservatives, and especially
Speaker 4: conservatives in this case, but even sort of pro business
Speaker 4: conservatives look at this and say, well, yeah, that's not
Speaker 4: like the most intrusive step into the free market or
Speaker 4: the economy that you could possibly conceive of. And I
Speaker 4: would argue, again, this is important as political points out.
Speaker 4: We're looking at some democratic governor signing this.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 4: One of the activists started a push for this by
Speaker 4: watching Billie Eilish on Howard Stern, when Billy Eilish said, quote,
Speaker 4: I used to watch a lot of porn. To be honest,
Speaker 4: I started watching porn when I was like eleven. I
Speaker 4: think it really destroyed my brain. And I feel incredibly
Speaker 4: devastated that I was exposed to so much porn. Quote,
Speaker 4: I think it really destroyed my brain. Washington takes a
Speaker 4: long time to catch up, often with younger people, because
Speaker 4: Washington is disproportionately older.
Speaker 3: But as the rate of technological.
Speaker 4: Change increases, makes it more and more important for Washington
Speaker 4: to understand technological change, the effect of technological change on
Speaker 4: younger and younger people who are using that technology much
Speaker 4: differently than your average senator, a representative, or governor or
Speaker 4: state legislature. And that is another hugely important issue of
Speaker 4: all of this. Do people understand in Washington? I mean,
Speaker 4: remember those famous clips of senators trying to understand Facebook.
Speaker 4: We feel like they've caught up on Facebook now, which
Speaker 4: makes sense because it's all boomers anyway. But have they
Speaker 4: caught up on things like online pornography? No, because it's different.
Speaker 4: We look at the levels. We see the average age
Speaker 4: that people are exposed to online pornography, the average age
Speaker 4: of regular use starting of online pornography, when that's happening
Speaker 4: over the course of ten years as your brain is developing,
Speaker 4: so from the ages of like thirteen to let's say,
Speaker 4: happy likely twenty three, whatever that is. This has never
Speaker 4: happened before in human history that people have access to
Speaker 4: this volume of pornography so easily and for such a
Speaker 4: long period of their developing lives. So I think it's
Speaker 4: absurd to dismiss these things out of hand. I'm sure
Speaker 4: some of the evidence on the anti pornography side, like
Speaker 4: it was in the nineties when people were fighting about
Speaker 4: this and you had Android's work in and all those
Speaker 4: folks saying, you know, we need to regulate this, we
Speaker 4: need the feminist position on this has to be anti
Speaker 4: porn I know some of those arguments we're spurious, although
Speaker 4: we were talking about a very different kind of pornography
Speaker 4: back then. Then again, the volume, the difficulty of regulating
Speaker 4: something like porn Hub's content, for whether or not it
Speaker 4: involves things like trafficking, for whether or not it involves
Speaker 4: things that are violent and beyond the pale of what
Speaker 4: people should be able to make money off of them,
Speaker 4: what people should be able to serve up to young children.
Speaker 4: This is a very very different time. Again, I'm sure
Speaker 4: some of these arguments are spurious. I'm not saying they're
Speaker 4: all made in good faith, and they're all from people
Speaker 4: who really do believe in free speech. But there's an
Speaker 4: incredibly reasonable position here, which is that we don't know
Speaker 4: we have some really really negative signs of how this
Speaker 4: has affected developing brains, how this has affected people around
Speaker 4: the world, and we don't know simply the extent of
Speaker 4: how bad that is. There's plenty of evidence to suggest
Speaker 4: how bad it is, and there are reasonable measures that
Speaker 4: can be taken on a small level that don't dramatically
Speaker 4: curb the First Amendment just because they're age laws and
Speaker 4: can have a hugely consequential effect, and can be bipartisan,
Speaker 4: and can be from both the left and the right,
Speaker 4: something that people will agree on.
Speaker 3: So, Ryan, this has been.
Speaker 4: Really interesting to see these seven states, some from different backgrounds,
Speaker 4: past these laws.
Speaker 3: Have you noticed how this is? I know this is.
Speaker 4: It's always been a raging debate on the sort of
Speaker 4: the feminist left between your Andro Dorkins, your Chemopaulias, your
Speaker 4: people who are sort of the sex positive feminism that
Speaker 4: seem to win out over the last twenty years, and
Speaker 4: then even people like Michelle Goldberg taking some steps back
Speaker 4: and saying.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe we do need to rethink some of this.
Speaker 3: How is this landing on the left?
Speaker 1: Other than folks like Michelle Goldberg, who are I think
Speaker 1: admirably willing to kind of run up against the grain,
Speaker 1: you pretty much have hegemony for the kind of sex
Speaker 1: positive side, even if maybe there's some stirrings in the
Speaker 1: younger generation of saying that maybe the pendulum it needs
Speaker 1: to swing back a little bit in the other direction.
Speaker 5: So you don't see much on the left, although you
Speaker 5: know clearly there's not it's it's not a high enough.
Speaker 1: Priority issue that some that is that a blue state
Speaker 1: like Virginia couldn't pass this law that that that has
Speaker 1: porn hub shutting down there. So, you know, I think
Speaker 1: what you see kind of in the culture and and
Speaker 1: on on social media doesn't necessarily translate into into the
Speaker 1: into the halls of power. I'm usually really skeptical of
Speaker 1: companies when they're claiming that regulation is going to destroy
Speaker 1: them and so therefore they have to leave the state.
Speaker 1: It's usually you know that it's very often that these
Speaker 1: companies are are just using their market power as as
Speaker 1: political power and trying to bludgeon them into basically repealing
Speaker 1: the laws or or or to stay to other states. Look,
Speaker 1: if you if you do the same, then then this
Speaker 1: is what's gonna then this is what's going to happen next.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of this to me should be
Speaker 1: up to parents rather than rather than up to Virginia.
Speaker 5: Uh uh.
Speaker 1: And that you know, kids, you know, kids shouldn't have
Speaker 1: devices that are capable of doing this, and then you know,
Speaker 1: so that's the one part where I'm where I'm sympathetic
Speaker 1: to the pornhow argument. Their argument is that the controls
Speaker 1: should be on the device, that the device, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: should have settings that only allowed to reach certain sites,
Speaker 1: and porn sites should be you know, by far the
Speaker 1: first that they don't get to. And then there's lots
Speaker 1: of other stuff like most YouTube videos. Maybe they're not
Speaker 1: even ready.
Speaker 5: For this show, this YouTube video yet, this hugetube video.
Speaker 1: That's right, but there's so much on there that that
Speaker 1: kids just don't need until they're you know, until they're
Speaker 1: much older.
Speaker 4: So you know, my answer that is definitely like why not,
Speaker 4: both because I agree with that completely and a lot
Speaker 4: of the content I think is designed in a way
Speaker 4: that is intentionally addictive and is having real effects. I mean,
Speaker 4: there are plenty of scientific studies on the neurology and
Speaker 4: the neurological effects of social media, and I think we
Speaker 4: will see a push towards regulation. That is, you know,
Speaker 4: we have age laws for buying cigarettes, you have age
Speaker 4: laws for marijuana in some states, and even as a
Speaker 4: generally a limited government person, I'm fine with age laws
Speaker 4: for the consumption of cigarettes. Maybe seatbalts are a different question,
Speaker 4: but age laws in some cases are entirely reasonable. So
Speaker 4: the other thing I'm waiting for, Ryan is the porn
Speaker 4: hub argument then to be used by the sort of
Speaker 4: the small porn business and saying like, it's very easy
Speaker 4: for porn hub to do age verification in Louisiana, but
Speaker 4: us little guys, you know, maybe maybe pornhub flips at
Speaker 4: one point and is like, yes, age verification, because then
Speaker 4: we can shut down all of our little competitors who
Speaker 4: don't have the technological resources to do comprehensive age verification.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but these smaller competitors are so fly by night
Speaker 1: that I would imagine that they'll just, you know, they'll
Speaker 1: just pop up and continue because if you shut them down,
Speaker 1: they just pop up with a different ur l. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's different than you know, a social media company
Speaker 1: like competing with Facebook or Twitter, because they need massive
Speaker 1: scale and network effects to be successful. These little, tiny
Speaker 1: porn companies don't need that. They just need some way
Speaker 1: to get to these users who are you no longer
Speaker 1: have access to the porn hub in Louisiana or Virginia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely wasn't surprised to see that Utah.
Speaker 4: No Uta is the least surprising of the states included
Speaker 4: on that list. This actually does it for us for
Speaker 4: the show at the moment, because again, as we mentioned
Speaker 4: at the top of the show, Ryan is going to
Speaker 4: be out with a breaking news report that we've teased
Speaker 4: a little bit and I'll let Ryan, you know, take
Speaker 4: it from here because it's a pretty big breaking story.
Speaker 4: But we will be back later with a follow up
Speaker 4: to today's show because Ryan has a breaking story to
Speaker 4: share with everyone.