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: let's get to the show everything. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of news breaking this morning. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're excited to be joined by congresson Rocanna give us
Speaker 1: an update on what the heck is going on with
Speaker 1: Speaker McCarthy. Maybe maybe Speaker for only one more day.
Speaker 1: We will see whether Democrats feel like bailing him. We'll
Speaker 1: give you all of the latest on that. We also
Speaker 1: have Sam Bankman freed, the one time golden boy of
Speaker 1: crypto and of Washington is trial starts today, so we'll
Speaker 1: write that down for you. Also, some eyebrow raising revelations
Speaker 1: from a new Michael Lewis bug about and I will
Speaker 1: see how believable any of that is. We've also got
Speaker 1: some new details coming out of China about their property
Speaker 1: bust and how widespread the implications of that could be.
Speaker 1: Some updates with her card to Ukraine and Nazi revisionism.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we just keep going in this direction, so.
Speaker 4: We'll cover that too.
Speaker 1: We've also got some updates for you on that UAW strike,
Speaker 1: including a worker who is not a big fan of
Speaker 1: Jim Kramer and had some things to say.
Speaker 2: There's a good stuff in there. I just want to
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Speaker 2: can sign up for that. But let's get to the
Speaker 2: actual speakership fight. There's some crazy stuff happening here in Washington.
Speaker 2: Matt Gates. There was a will he won't he all
Speaker 2: day speculation yesterday. At one point we originally the story
Speaker 2: appeared to be he was backing down Cristill. He was like,
Speaker 2: maybe I don't have the votes. We'll see, and then
Speaker 2: late last night our I guess late for me. Around
Speaker 2: seven pm, he goes ahead and he officially introduces the
Speaker 2: resolution to vacate this speakership for Kevin McCarthy, also then
Speaker 2: drawing tremendous laughter from the Democrats in the chamber.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: Claring the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives
Speaker 5: to be vacant. Resolved that the office of Speaker of
Speaker 5: the House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant.
Speaker 3: For what purpose does a gentleman from New Jersey seek recognition?
Speaker 6: You'll have to wait.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that laughter you could hear as Af Gates
Speaker 2: was exiting the chamber. Democrats obviously giddy because it just
Speaker 2: means more drama and chaos on the Republican side, so
Speaker 2: it'll be fun. And Matt Gates actually gave a press
Speaker 2: conference immediately after introducing this resolution.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to what he said.
Speaker 5: If there's a deal made with Democrats, the only deal
Speaker 5: is to make one with McCarthy because I'm not offering
Speaker 5: anything and won't offer anything. And by the way, if
Speaker 5: the Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy, they can have it.
Speaker 5: Because one thing I'm at peace with is when we
Speaker 5: stand here a week from now, I won't own Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy anymore. You won't belong to me. So if the
Speaker 5: Democrats want to adopt him, they can adopt it. I mean,
Speaker 5: the Speaker did not just fail to remet he ate
Speaker 5: the breach of the agreement with it he made with
Speaker 5: us in January. He accelerated the instances of breach, Like
Speaker 5: after I laid out the breach, he went and violated
Speaker 5: the seventy two hour rule. After I laid out the breach,
Speaker 5: he violated the one hundred million no Amendment suspension rule.
Speaker 5: So he seems to be reverting to the very unfortunate
Speaker 5: muscle memory of Washington, DC that has put our nation
Speaker 5: atop a thirty three trillion dollar debt that has led
Speaker 5: to you know, two trillion dollar annual deficits in our
Speaker 5: near future and the rapid global dedollarization of the economy.
Speaker 5: When you look at the bricks system, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China,
Speaker 5: South Africa, they're moving away from the dollar. And just
Speaker 5: in August they added six new countries, including G twenty
Speaker 5: country economies in the Western Hemisphere and golf monarchies. Moreover,
Speaker 5: you've seen you saw US News say that the number
Speaker 5: one economic trend of twenty twenty three is d dollarization globally.
Speaker 5: This worries me. You all get all worked up that
Speaker 5: there's going to be some uncomfortable, chaotic moment that I'll
Speaker 5: feel pressure from conservatives or Democrats or whomever. I feel
Speaker 5: the judgment of history, I feel the weight of that.
Speaker 5: I worry that when the history books are written about
Speaker 5: this country going down, that my name is going to
Speaker 5: be on the board of directors here. And if this
Speaker 5: country's going down, and if we're losing the dollar. I
Speaker 5: am going down fighting.
Speaker 2: Okay, so big words there from Matt Gates. If the
Speaker 2: Democrats want to own him, they can have it. But
Speaker 2: then the question is Crystal, will the Democrats.
Speaker 3: Vote for him.
Speaker 4: I don't think they really want to own him.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows right now.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing too is McCarthy as of yesterday, ahead
Speaker 2: of the vote and before it all became official, he
Speaker 2: did not even say that he would negotiate with Democrats somehow,
Speaker 2: saying it's like not good for the institution.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say. This is his reaction.
Speaker 3: I think this is about the institution.
Speaker 7: I think it's true important.
Speaker 3: So any time that somebody has an ethics complain and
Speaker 3: they can't get.
Speaker 2: The way they want about it, they want to roll
Speaker 2: up the.
Speaker 4: Inside's going part the fight.
Speaker 3: Pea can decide that, and I don't think that's good
Speaker 3: for the House.
Speaker 8: I believe Nancy Glosser from the last two spets going
Speaker 8: and he.
Speaker 2: Said McCarthy saying that this isn't good for the House. He said,
Speaker 2: he's not good for the institution to try and bargain
Speaker 2: with Democrats. News late last night actually late by the
Speaker 2: way around midnight calling Hakeem Jefferies, who knows what happened
Speaker 2: on that conversation. So the Democrats have a meeting sometime today,
Speaker 2: a caucus meeting where they're going to try and decide
Speaker 2: what to do. But you know, in terms of the
Speaker 2: whip count, nobody seems to know. Gates appears to have
Speaker 2: somewhere between four and five votes on his side on
Speaker 2: the Republican side against the speakership. They only have a
Speaker 2: three vote margin, so that appears to be enough to
Speaker 2: deny McCarthy the speakership. But that also means Crystal, they
Speaker 2: only need four to five Democratic votes in order.
Speaker 3: To keep Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 2: I know that there are people, you know, the whole
Speaker 2: problem Solvers Caucus, the Blue Dog Caucus, all those people
Speaker 2: very likely candidates. However, the leader of the Blue Dog
Speaker 2: Caucus yesterday was asked, would you help bail out Kevin
Speaker 2: McCarthy said, why would I bail out somebody who's never
Speaker 2: asked me anything? So if he is to survive, a
Speaker 2: deal has to be made of some kind. We don't
Speaker 2: know what the contours have said deal would be. We
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what it was look like. I do
Speaker 2: think I mean, I'm curious what you think it appeared.
Speaker 2: It would appear to be the worst headline on earth
Speaker 2: for Kevin McCarthy to say Kevin McCarthy needs Democratic votes
Speaker 2: in order to survive this vote. There also there is
Speaker 2: a prospect of you know, people say things all the time.
Speaker 2: Right now, it's Gates and like four or five others,
Speaker 2: and when I say or because some people are maybe's
Speaker 2: all he needs is what two three of those people?
Speaker 3: Cut a deal with those and be like, all right,
Speaker 3: which committees do you want?
Speaker 4: Right now?
Speaker 2: Tell me what you want, guys, And those two or
Speaker 2: three who are right on the fence, they cut a deal,
Speaker 2: and then Gates and one other person votes against him
Speaker 2: against the speakers if he survives, and then Gates actually
Speaker 2: looks like a fool even though they get no Democratic votes.
Speaker 2: All of these are prospects right now, of which we
Speaker 2: don't know. It is going to be dizzey in forty
Speaker 2: eight hours because the vote has to occur within four
Speaker 2: y eight hours according to House parliamentary rules.
Speaker 1: So far, it seems that Democrats are very disinclined to
Speaker 1: see Kevin McCarthy's asks. I don't think he has done
Speaker 1: a lot to build, you know, positive working relationships. That
Speaker 1: saw that we played, that sound we played of him
Speaker 1: talking about all the institution whatever. I think there was
Speaker 1: a lot of eye rolling from the Timocratic caucus because
Speaker 1: they feel like, you know, oh, you care so much
Speaker 1: about the institution, Sure, buddy. I think one thing that
Speaker 1: would definitely be important to Democrats is you got to
Speaker 1: end this impeachment inquiry and these other sort of things
Speaker 1: that you've given to the right wing of your caucus
Speaker 1: and I don't. And that's an untenable position for him
Speaker 1: because remember, it's not just about him keeping the bulk
Speaker 1: of his caucus behind him, but this guy is the
Speaker 1: chief fundraiser for the Republican Party as well. So how's
Speaker 1: he going to go out and make the case to
Speaker 1: Republican donors about like, oh, you got to back me
Speaker 1: and you got to back the Republican Party If he's
Speaker 1: in some sort of a weird coalition government with Democrats, right,
Speaker 1: and then you you know, not to mention the eyre
Speaker 1: of the base and the grassroots and what's Trump.
Speaker 4: Going to say about all of this. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just it's.
Speaker 1: A pretty impossible situation for Kevin McCarthy at the moment,
Speaker 1: and I do think Democrats are happy to let him twist.
Speaker 4: In the wind. You mentioned you know one person who.
Speaker 1: Was like with the problem solver's caucus, who was like,
Speaker 1: he's never asked me for anything, why would I help it.
Speaker 1: I also noted Jerry Connelly, who's kind of a very
Speaker 1: established man. Wouldn't necessarily call him like a moderate in
Speaker 1: that way, but he's kind of more towards the center
Speaker 1: of the caucus. He says that Democrats should let McCarthy fall.
Speaker 1: I will not enable the speakership. I'm a hard No.
Speaker 1: Democrats should think long and hard about this. There's absolutely
Speaker 1: no upside to preserving Kevin McCarthy in the speakership.
Speaker 4: It's an unstable speakership.
Speaker 1: I saw other Democrats who were saying, listen, we're going
Speaker 1: to do whatever leadership tells us to do, and we're
Speaker 1: going to unify behind them.
Speaker 4: Now, that could all fall apart.
Speaker 1: Perhaps McCarthy gives them something that's worth them backing him
Speaker 1: and keeping him in the speakership. But at the moment,
Speaker 1: you know, not knowing the contents of that conversation from
Speaker 1: last night, doesn't seem like Democrats are inclined to bail
Speaker 1: him out, and this vote could come as soon as today.
Speaker 4: By the way, yes, he can delay it up to
Speaker 4: two days.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the window and the time limit that
Speaker 1: he has, so it will be at the latest two
Speaker 1: days from now, but there's also rumblings that it could
Speaker 1: very well be today as early as noon, So this
Speaker 1: could all be coming down really quickly. In terms of
Speaker 1: the whipcount for McCarthy, you're already alluding to this sacer.
Speaker 4: This is from punch Bowl News.
Speaker 1: It's like DC Insider Republication, and they've already got four
Speaker 1: on the record is saying they want to dump McCarthy.
Speaker 1: They've got another three who are inclined in that direction,
Speaker 1: and then you've got another group that's sort of publicly undecided,
Speaker 1: Mike Cloud, Andy Ogeles, Keith Self, Ken Buck, and Ralph Norman.
Speaker 1: So that's another five who are like on the fence.
Speaker 1: And again he can only lose four. It's three vote margin.
Speaker 1: He can only lose four, and you've already got four
Speaker 1: on the record saying they want to dump them. So
Speaker 1: maybe there's something that he can offer these individuals. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's something they really want that they can bargain for,
Speaker 1: because he only needs to move a couple based on
Speaker 1: where the whipcount is today. But this is I genuinely
Speaker 1: don't know how this ends up getting resolved, and it
Speaker 1: will get resolved in some fashion. I just have no
Speaker 1: idea how it's all going to shake out exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's yeah, we want to be transparent. Nobody knows
Speaker 2: right now. It's a complete chaos factor. The other thing
Speaker 2: is one of the reasons I'm inclined to believe that
Speaker 2: McCarthy will survive is levels.
Speaker 3: Would replace him.
Speaker 4: Well, that's always been the question, right.
Speaker 3: The thing is, when Bayner left Ryan Paul, Ryan never
Speaker 3: wanted to be speaker.
Speaker 2: Allegedly, I don't know if that's true, but you know,
Speaker 2: all the reporting and all that stuff at the time
Speaker 2: was that he didn't want to be speaker, but he
Speaker 2: had enough credibility because he's a former vice presidential nominee.
Speaker 2: He was like good on camera by their standards, and
Speaker 2: he was somebody who could play ball with the Freedom
Speaker 2: Caucus and he could still get the centrist Republicans together.
Speaker 2: So even though he hated the job, you know, people
Speaker 2: were willing to effectively draft him. There's no such figure.
Speaker 2: The only figure would be Steve Scalise. But you know,
Speaker 2: I look, Steve Scalise, he's had a tough go of things,
Speaker 2: obviously survived that shooting a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 2: now he's got you know, I think he believed he
Speaker 2: has cancers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the horrible illness.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's yeah, he's undergoing treatment. He's not in
Speaker 2: a position where he can be speaker. You know, he's
Speaker 2: got he's got health problems of his own. He's he's
Speaker 2: the only other person who really has that level of credibility.
Speaker 2: I think in the House they even tried to do
Speaker 2: a whole draft Scalise thing before it was revealed that
Speaker 2: he had his illness, and he was like, look, I
Speaker 2: don't want the job. And it appears, especially now, like
Speaker 2: there's no way he could be in the running.
Speaker 3: There's simply no other figure.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it's possible Jim Jordan could be
Speaker 2: someone like that, but there's also no indication that Jim
Speaker 2: Jordan wants the job. You know, last time, I believe
Speaker 2: one or two people made to vote for him, or
Speaker 2: there was some sort of element to try and you know,
Speaker 2: cast thirteen fourteen votes or whatever in his direction. During
Speaker 2: the big speakership fight, but there's no indication that this
Speaker 2: is something that he even desires. McCarthy really is, you know,
Speaker 2: that candidate, because he's just been around for a long time.
Speaker 2: He's been playing the game. But unfortunately for him, he
Speaker 2: just doesn't have a lot of the votes. And then
Speaker 2: of course the democratic chaos element of are they going
Speaker 2: to back McCarthy. One thing that I actually think could
Speaker 2: play a huge role in this is Ukraine. Let's go
Speaker 2: and put this up there on the screen. Matt Gates
Speaker 2: has been accusing Kevin McCarthy of making a side deal
Speaker 2: on Ukraine funding with the White House and with the Democrats.
Speaker 2: We don't yet know if that is true. McCarthy denies
Speaker 2: that it's true. But right now GOP senators and what
Speaker 2: I think a lot of Democrats are thinking is, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we will vote for him, but you have to
Speaker 2: put a hundred billion dollars or something like that on
Speaker 2: the floor of the House of Representatives for Ukraine, which
Speaker 2: would probably pass as of today, although I'm still not sure.
Speaker 2: I guess you don't need that many Republican votes if
Speaker 2: you get all the Democrats to vote for it, and
Speaker 2: then there's obviously no question that all the GOP senators
Speaker 2: would vote for it. They probably have more than eighty
Speaker 2: votes or something like that in the House. So again
Speaker 2: it's very possible that that's what they do. That could
Speaker 2: be some sort of deal that is struck. They also
Speaker 2: may crystal strike deals about procedure in the future, about
Speaker 2: their ability to bring stuff to the floor without the
Speaker 2: ascension of the speaker. But it does remind me of
Speaker 2: something I said I think at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: months and months ago, when this was all happening, I
Speaker 2: was like, man, if I'm Kevin McCarthy, like, why do
Speaker 2: you even want this? Kind of like you are the
Speaker 2: biggest speaker in over a century. It has literally been
Speaker 2: over a century since we saw a since we saw
Speaker 2: not only the motion to VK but the multiple ballots
Speaker 2: to be able to elect someone. Yeah, I believe it
Speaker 2: was more than any times. It's like the eighteen hundreds. Also,
Speaker 2: one of the things on the motion of VAK nobody
Speaker 2: knows how the motion of a kate is supposed to work,
Speaker 2: because the last time it was done was like nineteen
Speaker 2: oh nine, and there's no parliamentary procedure. There's this entire
Speaker 2: thing called the Congressional Research Service where they're supposed to
Speaker 2: provide like research and be like, here's how it works.
Speaker 2: Whenever X and Y happens, usually it's easy. On this one,
Speaker 2: they had nothing. They're like, we don't know. They were
Speaker 2: totally on charted territory. Wow, how that is supposed to
Speaker 2: go down? So that introduces even more chaos into the system.
Speaker 2: We truly are in uncharted waters. I gotta be honest
Speaker 2: in a way, it's fun, you know, it's fun to
Speaker 2: be able to cover these things, and it's just it's
Speaker 2: totally uncertain.
Speaker 3: It's a lot like the cr We just have no clue.
Speaker 2: We don't know who is going to be third in
Speaker 2: line for the presidency of the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in two days from now.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean one thing I will say that I think
Speaker 1: came out in the initial McCarthy's initial fight to become
Speaker 1: speaker is he is a survivor and he is willing
Speaker 1: to endure effectively endless humiliation in service of his goals.
Speaker 1: And you know what, like, if you are willing to
Speaker 1: just get embarrassed and be shamed and capitulate and bend
Speaker 1: to the whims of whoever is demanding whatever, that can
Speaker 1: be a useful trait in terms of holding on to
Speaker 1: whatever scrap of power Speaker of the House even represents
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 4: So I wouldn't bet against him.
Speaker 1: As you said, Sagara, the glaring question has always been okay,
Speaker 1: but if it's not him, who, And I saw Gates
Speaker 1: got asked about this yesterday and he still has he
Speaker 1: has no answer, and he's like, yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll figure that out basically down the road. It was like,
Speaker 1: you can't beat someone with nothing, so you know, I
Speaker 1: think we'll probably It may be kind of reminiscent of
Speaker 1: the speaker fight, where there's a bunch of ballots, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of these motions of ak they keep going
Speaker 1: at it, they keep going at it until he's able
Speaker 1: to give away even more of the store to the
Speaker 1: people who are dead set against him. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I keep thinking about, too, is part of what
Speaker 1: has made this very complicated to understand and part of
Speaker 1: what has further exacerbated the rift, is the contours of
Speaker 1: that initial deal to bring him into the speakership were
Speaker 1: never made public. That's right, So it's always been this
Speaker 1: sort of like he said, he said, about what was
Speaker 1: actually agreed to and whether or not McCarthy is in
Speaker 1: violation of this secret deal or not, Like none of
Speaker 1: us has any way to judge, and I don't even
Speaker 1: think the full Republican Caucus has any way to judge
Speaker 1: what was actually agreed to in that deal. So Gates
Speaker 1: claims he's in violation.
Speaker 4: There may be.
Speaker 1: Pieces where it's more clear cut, where it was more public,
Speaker 1: but overall the fact that this was so secretive has
Speaker 1: made it so that you really can't assess whether he
Speaker 1: has held up his end of the bargain or not.
Speaker 2: Look, we have no clue. Just here's the takeaway. Nobody
Speaker 2: knows what the hell is going on.
Speaker 3: We'll be tracking in it's interesting. Counterpoints will be on tomorrow.
Speaker 2: And obviously we'll be here back on Thursday, so maybe
Speaker 2: maybe we'll know, maybe we'll be able to do that.
Speaker 3: I need to post this.
Speaker 2: One early and we'll get it out to everybody just
Speaker 2: because things are moving quickly. We've got Congressman real conin
Speaker 2: coming into the studio very soon. We'll ask him his
Speaker 2: reaction as well. I believe it'll be before the Democratic meeting,
Speaker 2: so I'm very curious to hear what he has to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And congressman kinda randomly has ended up
Speaker 1: reallyd So being from California, yeah, that's right, and being
Speaker 1: in the house means that, you know, he's at the
Speaker 1: center of the Newsome Feinstein stuff. But he is also
Speaker 1: the center of what's going on with Kevin McCarthy, so
Speaker 1: to be interesting to hear his perspective over whether he
Speaker 1: and his colleagues are inclined to bail Kevin McCarthy out.
Speaker 1: All right, but there is another really big thing that
Speaker 1: is happening starting today, which is the trial of Sam
Speaker 1: Bankman Freed, one time crypto golden Boy and darling.
Speaker 4: Of Washington, now indicted.
Speaker 1: For many counts of fraud for basically allegedly stealing a
Speaker 1: bunch of customer funds and using them inappropriately, including to
Speaker 1: buy his own giant mansion. He also was implicated all
Speaker 1: sorts of like straw donations and chicanery here in Washington
Speaker 1: as well. So with this trial starting today, Michael Lewis,
Speaker 1: who was following Sam Bankman Freed around for.
Speaker 4: A new biography.
Speaker 1: His book is I think not coincidentally coming out at
Speaker 1: the very same time. He gave a sixty minutes interview
Speaker 1: and revealed something that is very interesting. Not sure if
Speaker 1: I buy it or or not, but let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to what he had to say.
Speaker 6: One of the most shocking passages in this book, I thought,
Speaker 6: came with this revelation that Sam had looked into paying
Speaker 6: Donald Trump not to run.
Speaker 8: That only shocks you if you don't know Sam. Sam's thing,
Speaker 8: we could pay Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Not to run for president?
Speaker 3: Like, how much would it take?
Speaker 6: Did he get an answer?
Speaker 8: So he did get an answer.
Speaker 3: He was floated.
Speaker 8: There was a number that was kicking around, and number
Speaker 8: was kicking around when I was talking to Sam about
Speaker 8: this was five billion dollars. Sam was not sure that
Speaker 8: number came directly from.
Speaker 4: Trump a way.
Speaker 6: So Sam's looking into paying Trump not to run and
Speaker 6: he actually get didn't men come from Trump himself?
Speaker 3: But he actually got a price.
Speaker 8: He got one answer. Yes, The question Sam had was
Speaker 8: not just his five billion dollars enough to pay Trump
Speaker 8: not to run, but was it legal?
Speaker 6: Well, why didn't this happen? Why didn't you fall through?
Speaker 8: Well they were still having these conversations when FTX blew up,
Speaker 8: So why didn't happen?
Speaker 3: He didn't have five million dollars anymore?
Speaker 4: What do you make of that? Saga, are you buying it?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe somewhere someone around Trump said something. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's probably worth explaining to everybody what effective
Speaker 2: altruism is. You know, it's something that people who are
Speaker 2: online and like nerds, people are in Silicon Valley will know.
Speaker 2: It's effectively the principle, correct me if I'm wrong, where
Speaker 2: you become rich as possible and a mass as much
Speaker 2: wealth so that you can strategically deploy your assets in
Speaker 2: the best way to achieve the most optimal social outcome.
Speaker 2: So the thing is with Sam is he you know,
Speaker 2: ostensibly was using his wealth to fund like pandemic preparedness,
Speaker 2: to fund congressman who would align with his agenda. They
Speaker 2: also coincidentally did not believe in cryptoregulation. Shocking.
Speaker 3: It's not always not effectible, it's not.
Speaker 2: The altruistic part is a little bit secondary sometimes, but
Speaker 2: the overall point was in that scenario, that is the
Speaker 2: effect of altruist dream. It's like, okay, well, I'm you know,
Speaker 2: worth at what was he worth at one point, like
Speaker 2: forty fifty billion something out there? He's like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: if I could just take you know, six percent of
Speaker 2: my net worth then achieve a massive outcome, like just
Speaker 2: paying Trump not to run. That would be the ultimate
Speaker 2: effective altruist gamble. This is something that Sam Altman and
Speaker 2: a lot of these other guys believe in. I'm personally
Speaker 2: very dubious of the entire ideology, especially because it's all
Speaker 2: like privatized and doesn't have anything to do with democracy.
Speaker 2: But that's a whole other conversation. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it definitely seems like something he would think,
Speaker 2: like that he would think to try.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in terms of like whether it would work.
Speaker 4: There was an opening there or not, I.
Speaker 3: Don't I personally don't think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems to me like Michael lewis a little
Speaker 1: too credulous in some of these exchanges. You know, the
Speaker 1: book is just coming out I think today, and there's
Speaker 1: an excert of it in the Washington Post that I
Speaker 1: read that. You know, it kind of plays into these
Speaker 1: stereotypes that were created about Sam being like the boy wonder,
Speaker 1: the boy genius. It goes through this whole narrative Abattoh,
Speaker 1: he's on the Zoom call with Anna Win tour, and
Speaker 1: he's also doing you know, eight other different things at
Speaker 1: the same time, and he's playing video games and whatever,
Speaker 1: and so I don't know. I, like you said, Zager,
Speaker 1: I see him having this idea. Do I actually think
Speaker 1: that Trump would really be open to Not really, because
Speaker 1: the other problem for Trump, I mean, part of what
Speaker 1: Trump needs out of a White House run at this
Speaker 1: point is also to get out of his legal trouble. Yes,
Speaker 1: and no amount of five billion dollars or ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars or eighty billion.
Speaker 4: Dollars is going to solve that problem for him.
Speaker 1: The only thing that could even partially solve that problem
Speaker 1: for him is if he ends up back in the
Speaker 1: White House. So I'm skeptical that he really you know,
Speaker 1: that there was a real number, that there was a
Speaker 1: real possibility that this would come to pass. And also
Speaker 1: on the effective altruism piece, I did a whole thing
Speaker 1: on effective altruism that you guys can go back and
Speaker 1: watch that expresses my concerns. One of them you gestured at, Zager,
Speaker 1: which is the fact that you know, oh, these brilliant
Speaker 1: billionaire oligarchs are going to save us and understand precisely
Speaker 1: what the biggest risk to society are. It also can
Speaker 1: end up really ethically troubling because they tend to put
Speaker 1: a higher premium on things that are like long terms
Speaker 1: civilizational risks and allows them to hand wave away a
Speaker 1: lot of current present day manifests suffering.
Speaker 4: Right, So anyway, I've got.
Speaker 1: Issues with that, and I've also always had a lot
Speaker 1: of question marks about whether Sam really bought into this
Speaker 1: philosophy even or whether it was just part of his
Speaker 1: brand and part of his cover. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the other thing you have to consider both when, you know,
Speaker 1: as we watch this trial starting today and watch all
Speaker 1: of that unfolding, and also consider these, you know, excerpts
Speaker 1: from Michael Lewis's book, which I do intend to read.
Speaker 4: I want to read the whole thing.
Speaker 3: I think I'll read.
Speaker 1: But he also is clearly a liar, I mean, caught
Speaker 1: in numerous brazen lies.
Speaker 4: Because in this.
Speaker 1: Again, you know, maybe it can come back to the
Speaker 1: fact of altruism thing too, if he really thinks, like, oh,
Speaker 1: if I lie, it's going to be better for civilization
Speaker 1: a thousand years from now or whatever, like those are
Speaker 1: the sort of justifications that he could have been making
Speaker 1: for some of his just like blatantly illegal, immoral, wildly
Speaker 1: unethical lies, stealing manipulation, etc. So with all that being said,
Speaker 1: we've got the trial starting today. Jury selection starts today.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: Their headline is the star witness at Sam Bankman Freed's
Speaker 1: trial is his top deputy and ex girlfriend, Caroline Ellison's
Speaker 1: testimony has the potential to.
Speaker 4: Be particularly personal and raw.
Speaker 1: She has pleaded guilty to seven criminal accounts, and she's
Speaker 1: also agreed to cooperate with the government. Prosecutors have said
Speaker 1: that she not only was involved in criminal activity ranging
Speaker 1: from bribery in China to defrauding FTX customers of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars, but also acted at Bankman Freed's direction. Her
Speaker 1: lawyer declined to comment. Bankman Freed himself has pleaded not guilty.
Speaker 1: His lawyers say prosecutors have not adequately established that Ellison
Speaker 1: acted at his direction. His spokesman declined to comment.
Speaker 4: And just if you.
Speaker 1: Guys have forgotten some of the details here, there were
Speaker 1: two entities, the girlfriend Caroline Allison was in charge of
Speaker 1: one of them, and then the actual crypto exchange where
Speaker 1: people are supposed to be just like parking their funds
Speaker 1: and then doing with them whatever they they want. Not
Speaker 1: what Sam Bankman Free One's what they want FTX. Sam
Speaker 1: was in charge of that one. And so the allegation,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty clear at this point, is
Speaker 1: that they were using funds from customer accounts, basically stealing
Speaker 1: that money to fund bets over on the Caroline Ellison
Speaker 1: run piece of this, and that there was whole secret.
Speaker 4: Code, etc.
Speaker 1: That was going on in order to try to as
Speaker 1: crypto went down and they were suffering losses, they were
Speaker 1: trying to use customer funds to fill that whole. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's theft, Obviously that's illegal, those allegations, and so the
Speaker 1: idea here is that Caroline, having been both the girlfriend
Speaker 1: living with Sam Bankman Freed being in charge of this
Speaker 1: other entity, will be the best position to say exactly
Speaker 1: what was going on. I thought they had a good
Speaker 1: quote here Cyber. They said, at bottom, every fraud case
Speaker 1: is just a human drama, and Caroline is the likely
Speaker 1: vehicle for getting a lot.
Speaker 4: Of that out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's just all about accounting.
Speaker 2: It's like, we don't have the money over here, we
Speaker 2: need to be able to place bets, so we're going
Speaker 2: to take the money from over here.
Speaker 3: Who authorized that transaction? Who made the order.
Speaker 2: Now, given the multiple guilty please by FTX executives, I.
Speaker 3: Don't think it's that complicated.
Speaker 2: Also, given the emails and immense documentary record and as
Speaker 2: well as interviews and on the record statements by Sam
Speaker 2: Bankman Freed and multiple interviews, now, I also don't think
Speaker 2: it's that complicated. He doesn't really have a particularly good
Speaker 2: explanation for all of for how all of this went down.
Speaker 2: It revealed not only the unregulated nature of this like
Speaker 2: international crypto exchange, it also led to the collapse of
Speaker 2: multiple other companies that were embroiled with FTX, places like Binance,
Speaker 2: places like Blockfi, where I personally lost money as I
Speaker 2: did my whole thing about at that time. My problem,
Speaker 2: I think with all of this is that it wasn't
Speaker 2: even sophisticated, Like the guy who eventually took over FTX
Speaker 2: in the bankruptcy was like, look I did Enron. Enron
Speaker 2: was shell corporations, inflation of stock, a true like financial
Speaker 2: scheme that required a lot of complex understanding. This is
Speaker 2: just straight up fraud, like a Ponzi scheme of you
Speaker 2: put money in, I take it out, and then the
Speaker 2: more that comes in as long as it's all backed
Speaker 2: by some fake asset.
Speaker 3: It's all just going to keep going.
Speaker 2: And then the moment one thing got called out, it's
Speaker 2: like a rug pull from the entire company and half
Speaker 2: of the industry just collapses overnight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like stunning.
Speaker 4: It really is.
Speaker 1: It's so hard to put yourself into their heads, like
Speaker 1: what were you thinking? And there was this very wild
Speaker 1: West gold Rush kind of mentality. He was hiring people,
Speaker 1: including Caroline. I mean she she had no idea what
Speaker 1: she was doing.
Speaker 4: She had no.
Speaker 1: Background in, you know, making these complex trades, and she
Speaker 1: finds herself the head of this multi billion dollar organization.
Speaker 1: In the Michael Lewis excerpt that I referred to before
Speaker 1: he interviews this other woman who ends up being head
Speaker 1: of PR and pandle all of the scheduling and incoming
Speaker 1: and whatever for Sam, which ended up being immense who
Speaker 1: also had zero experience and just sort of like happened
Speaker 1: into this position. They're all living together. There's no corporate controls.
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere. Sam couldn't even name the people who
Speaker 1: were supposedly on their board because it all just came
Speaker 1: back to him and his whims, whatever he felt like
Speaker 1: doing and whatever he could justify to himself, feeling like
Speaker 1: there was never going to be any scrutiny, like there
Speaker 1: was never going to be like any accountability, Like he
Speaker 1: was such a genius that he'd be able to keep
Speaker 1: all of these thousands of balls in the air and
Speaker 1: never get caught for the wildly illegal theft and criminal
Speaker 1: behavior that he was engaged in. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be part of why this trial
Speaker 1: is important too, is because SBF and FTX, like they
Speaker 1: were the biggest, they were the wildest in terms of
Speaker 1: the allegations here. But this was an industry that is
Speaker 1: nascent and is in a lot of ways unregulated, where
Speaker 1: a lot of times the regulators and certainly the politicians
Speaker 1: like can't really wrap their head around it and haven't
Speaker 1: really figured out how to deal with it. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of intentional skirting and flouting of international regulations
Speaker 1: at Finance in particular, they were intentionally not headquartered anywhere
Speaker 1: to try to keep themselves from being subject to any jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: So I think it also pulls back the curtain on
Speaker 1: not just SBF and what was going on at FTX,
Speaker 1: but this particular moment in Cryptoi history, when things seemed
Speaker 1: like they were, you know, flying high, and it was
Speaker 1: just going to be up and up and up forever.
Speaker 1: And underneath the breaface, there were a lot of unscrupulous actors.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of fraud. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of just like fly by night, seat to your pants
Speaker 1: type of activity. So it's going to be it's gonna
Speaker 1: be fascinating to watch it unfold. To watch this guy
Speaker 1: who was once a darling in this town in particular,
Speaker 1: but in the news media they loved him, they loved
Speaker 1: the idea of this boyish, wonder genius, wonder kind, etc.
Speaker 1: And to watch, you know, how he attempts to defend
Speaker 1: himself from allegations that seem wildly indefensible.
Speaker 2: One thing I'm really happy about this case going to
Speaker 2: trial and no plead is I want all this stuff
Speaker 2: to come out.
Speaker 3: I want to open court.
Speaker 2: I want the cameras, want the files. I especially want
Speaker 2: the federal election charges to come to light about who
Speaker 2: is donating to the schemes. Want people to take the
Speaker 2: stand under oath. Too many times these things get wrapped
Speaker 2: up with a little bow, and he never actually know
Speaker 2: anything about what was going on deep below the surface.
Speaker 2: So I hope and pray that nobody takes a deal.
Speaker 2: It's very possible though, that it could happen. He's facing
Speaker 2: a long time in prison and it's not just him,
Speaker 2: and it broils as a whole family. There are multiple
Speaker 2: crazy things that have come out in discovery, like his
Speaker 2: father being like, if you don't give me two million dollars,
Speaker 2: I'm going to see your mother on this chain. I'm like,
Speaker 2: and this is you know. I actually have friends back
Speaker 2: who have taken this man's class at Stanford and they're like,
Speaker 2: he's one of the world's renowned tax lawyers, Like is
Speaker 2: one of the most respected people in his field. And
Speaker 2: they're like, I don't recognize this person.
Speaker 3: I think that to me.
Speaker 2: Really, what comes away is I think this amount of
Speaker 2: wealth is a poison. It's just poisons your head. Things
Speaker 2: start to feel crazy because at a certain point he
Speaker 2: could manifest things of anything he wanted. Bought himself forty
Speaker 2: million dollar apartment, he bought himself multiple senators and congressman.
Speaker 2: He's buying himself dinner with the very days and diet
Speaker 2: he's supposed to have dinner with Mitch McConnell. It's like these, yeah,
Speaker 2: the life all just becomes so surreal that it becomes reality.
Speaker 2: And I think unfortunately it poisoned every single person who
Speaker 2: is involved in this. And that's what every great f
Speaker 2: odd story is. Like they said, it's just a human story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's all it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: And to go back to the Trump thing where we started,
Speaker 1: I can imagine him in that state, like fantasizing about
Speaker 1: spending billions to save democracy and get Trump out of
Speaker 1: the presidential race, etc. That doesn't seem far fetched that
Speaker 1: Trump was like really legitimately entertaining it and it off
Speaker 1: told him a number or whatever. That piece I find
Speaker 1: far fetched, But you know, on the human piece of it,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a small detail, but just to me, it
Speaker 1: shows you what a pos this dude is. Caroline, who
Speaker 1: was his girlfriend and you know, his partner in business
Speaker 1: and they're living together and whatever. When Sam is under
Speaker 1: fire and after she is now cooperating with the government,
Speaker 1: he leaked all of her personal journals, remember, to journalists,
Speaker 1: to try to make himself look better.
Speaker 4: And he's such an.
Speaker 1: Idiot in this certain way that he didn't realize that
Speaker 1: actually the contents of those journals and the very fact
Speaker 1: that he would be so slimy and underhanded as to
Speaker 1: do that to a person.
Speaker 4: It actually really.
Speaker 1: Backfired in terms of people's perception of him, and it's
Speaker 1: what ended up landing him. He was under you know
Speaker 1: what do they call it supervised whatever, how supervision, he
Speaker 1: was able to stay at his parents' mansion while he
Speaker 1: was awaiting trial, and once that happened, the Gudger's like, no,
Speaker 1: your ass is going to do so. Sometimes the smartest
Speaker 1: people can also be the absolute dumbest, and I think
Speaker 1: you have seen that with Zanbangman Free absolutely.
Speaker 2: At the same time, there's some really interesting stuff going
Speaker 2: on right now in China. A friend of the show,
Speaker 2: Peter Zihan, had an interesting update about his prediction of
Speaker 2: a come and collapse.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 9: The problem with this pattern and this type of growth
Speaker 9: is if you do it enough, you start to distort
Speaker 9: the economy and you absorb more and more capital, and
Speaker 9: more and more labor, and more and more resources, and
Speaker 9: eventually you get to the point where there's diminishing returns
Speaker 9: because you only need so many roads, you only need
Speaker 9: so many factories. So first building bridges to nowhere. The
Speaker 9: Chinese absolutely reached that level probably back in the early
Speaker 9: twenty tens, and most of the construction we've seen across
Speaker 9: China is of questionable economic use, and the debt has
Speaker 9: been building up. Corporate debt has basically doubled since twenty ten.
Speaker 9: They tried to follow the Korean model as well, but
Speaker 9: what they discovered is that their workforce was already fairly unproductive.
Speaker 9: And while overall productivity for the Chinese labor forces have
Speaker 9: gone up by fifty to one hundred percent in the
Speaker 9: last ten to fifteen years, the debt load has gone
Speaker 9: up by a factor of five. So from a cost
Speaker 9: benefit point of view, Chinese labor has actually decreased in
Speaker 9: terms of its overall productivity. Capital flight is strictly regulated,
Speaker 9: in many cases forbidden, and every time that the people
Speaker 9: find a new way to get money out, the Chinese
Speaker 9: government changes the law and so it all gets bottled
Speaker 9: up at home. Now, for the Chinese development model, this
Speaker 9: has proven successful at keeping the Chinese citizens' money as
Speaker 9: part of the process that then funds all of that investment.
Speaker 9: This is going to hit them from every possible angle
Speaker 9: when it breaks, and it's going to do so by
Speaker 9: ripping the heart out of public support for the entire
Speaker 9: system and the CCP and the government particular.
Speaker 2: So to backup what Peter is saying, that we can
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen from the Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal, really interesting analysis about a forthcoming property bubble.
Speaker 2: So what they write there is basically, does China's property
Speaker 2: bust make a financial crisis inevitable? And the chart that
Speaker 2: you can see is the total amount of real estate
Speaker 2: in the Chinese market, the individual residential mortgages and then
Speaker 2: overall development loans. Really, what they say is that a
Speaker 2: forthcoming property bust there is almost certain at this point
Speaker 2: because you have seen massive amounts of vacancy, the inability
Speaker 2: in order to deliver property on time, and then the
Speaker 2: tie ins of massive shadow banks like trust firms, which
Speaker 2: are increasingly trying to shed property exposure.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: Total loans to property developers and home buyers peaked at
Speaker 2: nearly thirty percent in twenty nineteen. They've fall into twenty
Speaker 2: three percent by mid twenty twenty three. But the biggest
Speaker 2: chunk individual home mortgages, while they may be relatively safe
Speaker 2: for now, the down payments and all of that are
Speaker 2: moving towards a direction of a huge amount of indirect
Speaker 2: exposure for the entire Chinese economy, to the commercial banking
Speaker 2: sector and to property. Property, it appears, has been the
Speaker 2: single biggest driver of the Chinese middle class and of
Speaker 2: Chinese wealth. It was one of the ways that the
Speaker 2: Chinese commune a party can sell the so called Chinese dream.
Speaker 2: You accept authoritarianism, we make you relatively more well off
Speaker 2: than your parents ever have before in the history of China,
Speaker 2: and it's like we're good to go. The problem is
Speaker 2: is that increasingly hasn't been the case. We've had multiple
Speaker 2: blow ups like the whole Evergrand thing and more. But
Speaker 2: Roady points to about the structural problems on top of
Speaker 2: an overall dissatisfaction at a very individual level about the
Speaker 2: economy faces big issues for them right now, crystal huge.
Speaker 1: And I mean anyone who's lived through two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: even though it's not exactly analogous because our system is
Speaker 1: different than their system, can understand the way that real
Speaker 1: estate shocks can reverberate throughout the entire economy can potentially
Speaker 1: trigger bank failures. At the very least, even if banks
Speaker 1: remain solvent, what are they going to do. They're going
Speaker 1: to hoard cash, They're not going to lend us much money.
Speaker 1: That causes problems downstream for businesses. So and if you
Speaker 1: have huge loss of value in terms of these homes
Speaker 1: that Chinese citizen has been using and build their own wealth,
Speaker 1: that's obviously an issue for the home ownership class. So
Speaker 1: it's a huge question mark. And the expectation was that
Speaker 1: China would come out of COVID and their COVID zero
Speaker 1: policies and their pandemic era lockdowns and they would really
Speaker 1: go sort of like hule Hog and they'd be growing
Speaker 1: like crazy. That has not come to pass whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: it's because of these issues in the real estate market predominantly,
Speaker 1: which by the way, property drives about a quarter of
Speaker 1: total economic activity in China. To wildly oversimplify part of
Speaker 1: what Peter Zihan is saying here is effectively, you know,
Speaker 1: in the early stages of their rapid growth, it was
Speaker 1: all about industrialization. It was about building, it was about
Speaker 1: building factories, it was about driving exports. That was the
Speaker 1: big focus. That's what you have all this like overbuilding.
Speaker 1: You know, too many airports, too many bridges, too many roads,
Speaker 1: because they just sort of like exhausted that avenue of growth.
Speaker 1: And then the next avenue of growth that they pushed
Speaker 1: was really around property, real estate development and home ownership.
Speaker 1: So the fact that we're coming to the end of that,
Speaker 1: and that's something that they were aware of. They've been
Speaker 1: trying to delicately pop this bubble without it being a
Speaker 1: complete catastrophe, and they may be able to pull it off.
Speaker 1: They've taken some steps to reduce their risk. You have
Speaker 1: a very active involved to government that could potentially soften
Speaker 1: the blow, So it's not inevitable that you have some
Speaker 1: sort of a massive collapse, but there are a lot
Speaker 1: of really big risk factors, which I think is evidenced
Speaker 1: by those charts that we showed of how things have
Speaker 1: fallen off of already.
Speaker 2: And the problem is this is infecting the entire Asian market,
Speaker 2: which is deeply tied into China. Let's put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen right now, the World Bank is
Speaker 2: saying that Asia faces one of the worst economic outlooks
Speaker 2: in half a century, and almost all of it just
Speaker 2: comes back to China. It's because China's economic output their
Speaker 2: initial target right now is only five percent, and the
Speaker 2: World Bank actually says that it will probably only grow
Speaker 2: at four point four percent, which is down from four
Speaker 2: point eight expected. That's a lot for us, but that's
Speaker 2: not how it works in a developing economy. They got
Speaker 2: addicted to eight ten percent economic growth. They even downgroded
Speaker 2: the downgrade of the twenty twenty four forecasts for GDP
Speaker 2: growth all across the East Asia Pacific, largely because of
Speaker 2: intra trade with China. And what they say is that
Speaker 2: Chinese retail sales right now have plunged to pre pandemic
Speaker 2: below pre pandemic levels, house prices are not working, increased
Speaker 2: amount of household debt, lagging private sector investment. A lot
Speaker 2: of this also comes to the actual stranglehold that the
Speaker 2: CCP has on the economy, and there's no real private
Speaker 2: investment in China. Everything is controlled and manipulated by the government.
Speaker 2: One thing is too As I've been reading a lot
Speaker 2: about Shishingping has effectively decided that he will not choose
Speaker 2: the easy way out.
Speaker 3: The easy way out we particularly put the.
Speaker 2: Hand off, let the market go wild, allow you know,
Speaker 2: less control from the government, but allow the economy to
Speaker 2: be rescued. He so values the ability to control the
Speaker 2: total tight grip of the CCP and authoritarianism on the
Speaker 2: Chinese way of life that he is not willing to
Speaker 2: go down that road. He believes in the long run
Speaker 2: is just will you know, you should just suck it up,
Speaker 2: take the losses wherever you can, even potentially a crisis,
Speaker 2: but as long as the regime remains intact, that's the
Speaker 2: most important thing. It's a major departure from some of
Speaker 2: his predecessors, and especially the Deng Zhouping like school of
Speaker 2: economic thought and how the way the China should be governed.
Speaker 2: So it's a fascinating like ideological collision happening in China.
Speaker 2: And ultimately, I mean, I think that is what will
Speaker 2: be the end if ding zouping Ism. I guess if
Speaker 2: you could say was the type of governance that would
Speaker 2: be in place today, they wouldn't. They wouldn't be in
Speaker 2: this type of problem. But with where they are ideologically
Speaker 2: and with their obsession about power, they simply can't get
Speaker 2: their way out of this, even with throwing as much
Speaker 2: money as they possibly can, you know, into the economy,
Speaker 2: even with their rigged statistics. Don't forget you know this
Speaker 2: four point four Who the hell knows if it's true,
Speaker 2: it could be two percent. I mean, I remember reading
Speaker 2: in the past about the manipulation of economic data that
Speaker 2: goes all the way down to like the factory level
Speaker 2: on up. These are all legacies of Mao Zadon communism.
Speaker 2: But the point is that, I mean, Peter has got
Speaker 2: a very aggressive timeline. But I always think it's just
Speaker 2: fun to play as clip because I mean, look, he
Speaker 2: called the Ukraine invasion right basically to the year twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, and structurally it was a counter intuitive take
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, and at this point it's
Speaker 2: just not counterintuitive anymore. So I have no choice but
Speaker 2: to at least take it seriously and be like, look,
Speaker 2: maybe not ten years. I don't know if you know
Speaker 2: if his prediction is correct, but who knows.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's certainly possible.
Speaker 2: Like as you said in two thousand and eight, that's
Speaker 2: a huge portion of why we are in our politics today.
Speaker 2: To me, it's just a rack and oaight, that's it.
Speaker 2: Those are the two chief things for why we are today.
Speaker 2: It's very possible China could find himself in a similar situation.
Speaker 2: And as I always warn, just because you're on the
Speaker 2: way down doesn't mean that.
Speaker 3: You won't be more aggressive.
Speaker 2: In many ways, you become more aggressive whenever you get desperate,
Speaker 2: so things could actually become more dangerous in terms of
Speaker 2: the global geopolitical situation.
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth saying because China has in
Speaker 1: many ways bucked the idea of like the neoliberal model
Speaker 1: of growth. There have been a lot of naysayers about China.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of like doom forecasting or doom
Speaker 1: wishing on the Chinese economy that hasn't come to pass before.
Speaker 1: And so as we you know, consider these numbers and
Speaker 1: look at what's going on, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: bear in mind that there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: people have been really wrong about China in the past.
Speaker 4: And I also think it's.
Speaker 1: Important that you know, while we abhor the authoritarianism that
Speaker 1: has been involved the growth model, it is responsible for
Speaker 1: lifting more people out of poverty than anything else in
Speaker 1: modern The fact that you've had global poverty go down
Speaker 1: is basically all because of what has happened in China
Speaker 1: and somewhat of what's going on in India as well,
Speaker 1: which is also a bit of a different model. So
Speaker 1: I think those things are important to bear in mind.
Speaker 1: The other thing you were pointing to, the ideology, Sager,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things Western economists or neoliberal
Speaker 1: economis would say was like, Okay, now you're at this
Speaker 1: stage of growth and development. What you should do is
Speaker 1: start selling a bunch of crap to your own people
Speaker 1: and like move into this like service sector and consumer
Speaker 1: dominated economy like what we have here in the good
Speaker 1: old US of A. And that would be one solution
Speaker 1: to this problem. It happens to be a solution they
Speaker 1: do not want to pursue, and so that makes it
Speaker 1: you know, on the one hand, I understand that because
Speaker 1: it does I think, get to some of the like
Speaker 1: you know, the rot of what's going on here morally, ethically,
Speaker 1: ideologically in America. But on the other hand, it also
Speaker 1: constrains your choices of how you get out of this
Speaker 1: particular pickle that they are in. And the last thing
Speaker 1: it I'll throw here in here to the mix as
Speaker 1: another stumbling block and challenge for them is they grew,
Speaker 1: especially you know, in the early two thousands, so rapidly
Speaker 1: because of PNTR, because of opening up, because of you know,
Speaker 1: being able to feed our domestic markets. And now you
Speaker 1: have a very rapidly changing global policy landscape, in particular
Speaker 1: with regards to the United States through Chips Act and
Speaker 1: through the Inflation Reduction Act, and that has already hit
Speaker 1: exports coming out of China, but coming out of the
Speaker 1: entire region, and so on top of everything else that's
Speaker 1: going on, increasingly protectionist policies, which I support by the
Speaker 1: way from a US perspective, but those protections policies are
Speaker 1: also making things more challenging for China and for some
Speaker 1: of the region.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny because as you were talking about
Speaker 2: with China, we don't know. It's one of those where
Speaker 2: in a certain way, I almost like sympathize, I guess
Speaker 2: because they're like, yeah, we don't want your degenerate like
Speaker 2: Western values like we're now. We don't want our kids
Speaker 2: addicted to video games, to drugs and doing all this
Speaker 2: stuff that we want people to be hard working. So
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, okay, but like the way they accomplish
Speaker 2: that is like complete ideological control and straight.
Speaker 4: Up don't support that part.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's the part at all. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's possible.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I mean I in some ways I'm sympathetic,
Speaker 2: like we don't want to become a consumer based economy,
Speaker 2: But at the same time, it's like you built your
Speaker 2: entire system to basically serve the consumer whims of the West.
Speaker 2: That's not particularly sustainable model either. And I would also
Speaker 2: say I think PNTR is more single handedly responsible than
Speaker 2: any Chinese domestic policy that they pursued intentionally. And actually,
Speaker 2: if anything, their genius was basicallyling the West into thinking, hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll sign all these things and we'll liberalize, Like, don't
Speaker 2: worry about it, it's all good.
Speaker 4: Well, we wanted to hear that.
Speaker 3: Ye believe that it was a great deal, you know,
Speaker 3: I think for everybody.
Speaker 2: And Dengzhaoping there's a great biography of him where I
Speaker 2: forget the exact quote and I can't find it right now,
Speaker 2: but it effectively comes down to he's like, we will
Speaker 2: fool the West into thinking that we will liberalize by
Speaker 2: signing these deals at the time, and at the same time,
Speaker 2: we'll rob them blind and we'll steal everything that makes
Speaker 2: them great, and then we will beat them in the
Speaker 2: long run. I mean, I think in many ways, you know,
Speaker 2: he's up there with like Lee Kwan Yu in terms
Speaker 2: of like the great genius statement statesman of all time.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it like an endorsement.
Speaker 2: It's just that I don't think it's a deniable fact
Speaker 2: that he put them on this path. But look, regardless,
Speaker 2: always interesting, we always got to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be huge, reverberating impacts. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a gigantic economy, so what happens there. It's not
Speaker 1: like we are isolated or insulated from it.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's move on to the next one.
Speaker 2: We brought you about the news last week of Canada
Speaker 2: celebrating a literal Nazi in the parliament.
Speaker 3: This led to the resignation of the Canadian speaker.
Speaker 2: Prime Minister Trudeau had to apologize to the Canadian people
Speaker 2: for the background. It was when Zelenski was appearing before
Speaker 2: parliament and they honored a quote unquote Ukrainian freedom fighter
Speaker 2: who is in his late nineties. They failed to mention
Speaker 2: that the so called freedom fighter was a member of
Speaker 2: the Waffen SS who volunteered and whose unit was implicated
Speaker 2: in multiple war crimes that had been verified. We don't
Speaker 2: know if he has The Polish government has since actually
Speaker 2: indicated they may seek to extradite him. Just to give
Speaker 2: you a little bit of an idea. This, though, has
Speaker 2: set off a really fun discourse about well, can't we
Speaker 2: sympathize with these Ukrainians. They were stuck in an awful
Speaker 2: position because they've been conquered by the Soviets and then
Speaker 2: the Nazis came in and the whole enemy in my
Speaker 2: enemy is my friend at a conceptual level, maybe, but
Speaker 2: we're not talking about a waremach soldier. We're talking about
Speaker 2: a straight up volunteer for the waften SS sworn Guard
Speaker 2: of Hitlerism.
Speaker 3: Let's put this out.
Speaker 2: There on the screen, just give you a little bit
Speaker 2: of a taste of what some of this apology.
Speaker 3: It looks like.
Speaker 2: This is from Politico quote A lie can make it
Speaker 2: halfway around the world before the truth is got its
Speaker 2: boots on. The ongoing turmoil over the parliament recognizing the
Speaker 2: former trooper highlights one of the most important reasons why,
Speaker 2: and the headline is fighting against the USSR didn't necessarily make.
Speaker 3: You a Nazi.
Speaker 2: And yet, as they actually quote here from the Nuremberg
Speaker 2: Tribunal quote, the Tribunal declares to be criminal within the
Speaker 2: meaning of the Charter those persons who had been officially
Speaker 2: accepted as members of the SS and again, this person
Speaker 2: was explicitly implicated in massacres, this unit that occurred in.
Speaker 3: Either Ukraine Poland.
Speaker 2: I forget the borders moved since all this has happened,
Speaker 2: and I think, you know, I was talking to Yego
Speaker 2: about this. There are there's I don't understand this, like
Speaker 2: Nazi revisionism. There are heroic Ukrainian fighters who fought on
Speaker 2: the side of the Soviet Union against the tide of
Speaker 2: Nazism and who still were not like.
Speaker 3: Sworn allies of Stalin.
Speaker 2: They were still they were still Ukrainian nationalists who fought
Speaker 2: valiantly and bravely. Some of the worst battles on the
Speaker 2: Eastern Front occurred on current Ukrainian soils.
Speaker 3: Horrific slaughter.
Speaker 2: I mean hundreds of millions of people who were killed there,
Speaker 2: and many of them were Ukrainian soldiers, yes, who were
Speaker 2: caught in a tough spot. But don't forget this, you know,
Speaker 2: after this whole like fairy tale idea of like, oh,
Speaker 2: we only fought for the Nazis because they were fighting
Speaker 2: against Stalin. In many cases, you know, the Nazis would
Speaker 2: come in and they would hang half the people in
Speaker 2: the streets, right and.
Speaker 3: Then they would also be like, hey, tell us where
Speaker 3: all the Jews are.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, a lot of people you know, did were complicit
Speaker 2: within that, and it has led to this really bizarre
Speaker 2: moment where we're trying to like whitewash history and make
Speaker 2: it so that actually the Soviets were.
Speaker 3: The real enemy.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm not going to glorify the freaking Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: and did a whole mologue about Stalin's murderous invasion of
Speaker 2: Finland yesterday, but just to give people a taste, this
Speaker 2: is the highest levels of government. This is from Secretary
Speaker 2: Anthony Blincoln, our Secretary of State.
Speaker 3: Here's what he tweets.
Speaker 2: He tweets eighty two years ago, Nazis murdered thirty four
Speaker 2: thousand Jews at Bobignor. Soviets buried the history which today
Speaker 2: Putin's government manipulates to cover for Russian's abuses in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: The US is committed to justice for Holocaust survivors and accountability.
Speaker 2: And as a very basic fact check that is added
Speaker 2: to there, it's Soviet prisoners of war who were among
Speaker 2: the people who.
Speaker 3: Were massacred at Bobynor.
Speaker 2: The Soviets actually liberated Babynor and Kiev in nineteen forty three.
Speaker 3: Quote, the Soviets held a trial in.
Speaker 2: Nineteen forty six in Kiev for fifteen German policemen who
Speaker 2: were involved in said massacre. This is not Soviet glorification.
Speaker 2: They did plenty of horrible things in many respects. They
Speaker 2: are responsible for just as many, if not more, debts,
Speaker 2: and we can talk about that all day long. But
Speaker 2: why do we have to do this like jiu jitsu
Speaker 2: of the mind to be like, no, they were actually
Speaker 2: the enemy at that time. We're going to outright, you know,
Speaker 2: blame the Soviets for something that they didn't even do
Speaker 2: at the time, and then tie it to Putinism. The
Speaker 2: invasion of Ukraine is enough. The current invasion it's horrible.
Speaker 2: It's like, why are we doing this revisionism? And honestly,
Speaker 2: like it is the most it is the strangest, you
Speaker 2: know tie that I have seen in recent days. And
Speaker 2: I think all of it comes back to if we
Speaker 2: have to talk about Nazism in Ukraine, you just seem
Speaker 2: like you're a putin ally And it doesn't make you
Speaker 2: a putin ally to say, yeah, there's a neo Nazi
Speaker 2: problem inside of Ukraine. Does it evalidate all of the
Speaker 2: Russian criticisms of Ukraine. No doesn't mean now Ukraine is
Speaker 2: are Nazi, Absolutely not, But yeah, it exists. It's an issue.
Speaker 2: It just means that the conflict is a gray zone,
Speaker 2: like it is in almost every conflict that's ever happened
Speaker 2: in all of human history.
Speaker 4: The Secretary blink in one.
Speaker 1: First of all, I I genuinely don't understand why people
Speaker 1: are feeling they need to do this, like the Politico
Speaker 1: Europe piece, that's like, well, it is not necessarily a Nazi.
Speaker 4: It's like, this thing is already over.
Speaker 1: The Prime Minister already apologized, like the speaker of the
Speaker 1: Parliament already stepped down.
Speaker 4: Like Jewish groups were Ingrad. Why are you going back
Speaker 4: to this? You lost this one.
Speaker 1: Why why are you doing this? You don't have to
Speaker 1: do this, It's over, okay. The Secretary blink and one
Speaker 1: it doesn't even on its face makes sense because he's like,
Speaker 1: on the one hand he says, Soviets buried this history,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand he says, Putin's government is
Speaker 1: manipulating this history to bride cover for Russia's abuses in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Which is it did they bury it? Are they using it?
Speaker 4: Are they manipulating it?
Speaker 1: Is it probably like what it doesn't even literally make
Speaker 1: sense on its face, And so it goes back to
Speaker 1: this very disnified, black and white view of the world
Speaker 1: view of this conflict, where they're the bad guys, and
Speaker 1: now we got to rewrite all of history to make
Speaker 1: sure that they were always the bad guys, and they're
Speaker 1: always going to be the bad guys. And if Putin's
Speaker 1: trying to use World War II history to glorify them
Speaker 1: justify as evation, well we're going to change our minds
Speaker 1: about what happened with the Nazis that we're going to
Speaker 1: be completely different and we're going to try to revive
Speaker 1: these historic Ukrainian nationalist freedom fighters who signed up to
Speaker 1: be Nazis. I mean, let's be clear about this. If
Speaker 1: you were in the WAFT and SS you had to
Speaker 1: swear allegiance to Hitler in the Nazi Party, you were
Speaker 1: a Nazi. Like, it is not complicated. You don't need
Speaker 1: to go back and be like, well, really, maybe they
Speaker 1: weren't necessary.
Speaker 4: No, they were literally a Nazi. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now there may be gradations of the atrocities they commit
Speaker 1: or whatever. We don't know what this man did in
Speaker 1: his life, but you don't need to glorify him in parliament,
Speaker 1: and you don't mean to justify glorifying him in parliament.
Speaker 2: And that's the problem is they tried to make it conceptual.
Speaker 2: They're actually not wrong. And so I will say it.
Speaker 2: There are some people who were in the Waffan asset.
Speaker 2: I'm not justifying or excusing their behavior, but who did
Speaker 2: not participate in atrocities. They're probably more akin to like
Speaker 2: Elite where mock troops, and in many respects, you know,
Speaker 2: did fight very bravely on the Eastern Front, but that
Speaker 2: doesn't erase the reason that they joined.
Speaker 3: And just because they were deployed in that way.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean that they couldn't have easily been deployed to
Speaker 2: a death camp, and in many cases they actually did both.
Speaker 2: So it's just again, history does not smile kindly on this,
Speaker 2: considering especially what happened with Nuremberg.
Speaker 1: Can I also just say, and maybe you can help
Speaker 1: me understand illuminate the history on this, Sagar, Did they
Speaker 1: really delude themselves into thinking Hitler was going to give
Speaker 1: them their freedom and their independent state?
Speaker 4: I mean that seems that seems really wild to me.
Speaker 2: Well, in the initial months, it wasn't a crazy idea.
Speaker 2: So in the initial months there and may you know
Speaker 2: a lot of Ukrainians don't want to talk about this,
Speaker 2: but like in Kiev and in some of the places
Speaker 2: that Hitler rolled through, they had signs being like welcome,
Speaker 2: we glorify Hitler, like they had actual swastikas that were up.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's actually Hitler's stupidity and the German armies
Speaker 2: idiocy where they didn't cast themselves as an army of
Speaker 2: liberation and instead they embraced like full scale slaughter their
Speaker 2: popular Their their plan in.
Speaker 3: The East was depopulation.
Speaker 2: They had this I forget what the name of it
Speaker 2: was called, but it was effectively what they gave an
Speaker 2: order where they're like all food is for German troops.
Speaker 2: They're like food is not a priority for Soviet prisoners
Speaker 2: of war and for Soviet residents. Effectively famine, starve them
Speaker 2: out and to kill them. The best book I've ever
Speaker 2: read on this subject is called Stalin's War. It's actually
Speaker 2: a recent book quote a new history of World War
Speaker 2: Two by a guy named Sean mckeekon is a very
Speaker 2: very provocative book. It is still the best book I've
Speaker 2: ever read on the subject. It's what I did the
Speaker 2: monologu yesterday about the Winter War. That's where I learned
Speaker 2: a lot of the you know, colored in details. I mean,
Speaker 2: even yesterday I talked about the Winter War. Here's you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't have the time to go into a lot
Speaker 2: of it. I mean, even the Finnish history is complicated
Speaker 2: because after that peace deal I talked about, well, they
Speaker 2: started to deal with the Nazis, and they actually worked
Speaker 2: with the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: It's called the Continuation War.
Speaker 2: And you know, they basically were like, look, we're willing
Speaker 2: to fight with whomever they want. But the part of
Speaker 2: their history that they glorify is not that they glorify.
Speaker 2: We fought always for Finnish independence. That was like the
Speaker 2: point that I was trying to make right in that monologue.
Speaker 2: It's just interesting though, because you know, with on all
Speaker 2: of this and all of this historical revisionism, it's really
Speaker 2: like nineteen eighty four esque of like Oceania has always
Speaker 2: been at war with East Asia. We're like, no, like
Speaker 2: Russia is bad now, which means it's been bad for
Speaker 2: all time.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, we were actually allies at the time.
Speaker 2: We were you know, who do you think was fun
Speaker 2: than the Soviet military?
Speaker 3: It was us.
Speaker 2: This is the only reason that they were able to
Speaker 2: succeed in first place. They would never have won staling
Speaker 2: Rod or any of their major battles if it wasn't
Speaker 2: for lend lease and a tremendous amount of military and
Speaker 2: economic aid that we were able to provide for them. So,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I think all of this is very bizarre.
Speaker 2: I think it comes back to exactly what you said,
Speaker 2: is we just love the Disney version.
Speaker 3: Is just easier.
Speaker 2: We invaded on D Day, Yeah, that was it, and
Speaker 2: it's like ninety percent of the casualties were on the
Speaker 2: Eastern Front. We just we had no idea what happened
Speaker 2: over there. It also leads to this rev vism too
Speaker 2: about corruption. Just to give you an idea too, of like, okay,
Speaker 2: if we're finally allowed to talk about Nazis and Ukraine,
Speaker 2: put this up there. Just yesterday Politico got its hands
Speaker 2: on quote leaked to you s strategy that sees Ukraine
Speaker 2: as a massive corruption, as a massive threat inside. But
Speaker 2: really what troubled me obviously, you know, it's no joke
Speaker 2: that corruption is a problem. It's that Biden decided not
Speaker 2: to raise it for the first year of the war
Speaker 2: when they were getting the vast majority of the support,
Speaker 2: because he thought it would validate critics of the war
Speaker 2: in Ukraine. And honestly, what's even creepier is inside of
Speaker 2: this twenty one page memo is a straight up Afghan
Speaker 2: era like an Afghan Ara nation building plan. They're like,
Speaker 2: here's our recommendation for how you need to redo your military.
Speaker 2: Here's our recommendation for how you to redo your banking
Speaker 2: sector and your energy sector. I'm like, when did we
Speaker 2: sign up for this? I thought we were shipping them weapons.
Speaker 2: But as I did my monologue about no man, we're
Speaker 2: paying their small businesses, we're paying their emergency responders, we're
Speaker 2: bankrolling their entire civil societ. This is Afghanistan two point zero.
Speaker 2: The US military does not know how to do war
Speaker 2: without nation building, and that's what we're signing up for
Speaker 2: in Ukraine right now.
Speaker 1: Not only that, I mean there were some real red
Speaker 1: flags here in terms of their view of how you
Speaker 1: eliminate corruption is basically like market radical neolib.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: I mean everything was like oh, the problem in the
Speaker 1: banking sector. Better make it privatized, because lord knows, there's
Speaker 1: no corruption in our banking sector with it being privatized.
Speaker 1: So one of their envision milestones, they say, is that
Speaker 1: Alpha Bank is transparently returned to private ownership because it
Speaker 1: was an institution now known as Sansabank. It was previously
Speaker 1: Russian known now nationalized by Ukraine. Got to privatize everything
Speaker 1: to root out the corruption, because that's certainly been the
Speaker 1: secret solution to all of our problems here. So there
Speaker 1: were some major red flags here. There's number one the
Speaker 1: fact this was hidden. There was a public version of
Speaker 1: the report that was much more sort of like high
Speaker 1: level and sanitized. This was the private version that Politico
Speaker 1: was able to get their hands on. The number of
Speaker 1: industries that we had a lot of opinions about was
Speaker 1: quite extraordinary. And then the suggestions themselves also were you know,
Speaker 1: fit a playbook that we've been rolling out around the
Speaker 1: world for quite a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ask Afghanistan how it worked out. We try to
Speaker 2: take one of the most corrupt nations on earth, of
Speaker 2: which Ukraine was before the war. This is not this
Speaker 2: is an indisputable fact, And how it worked out for
Speaker 2: US taxpayer dollars, our effort, and even for the Afghan people.
Speaker 2: For all of those so called efforts, it didn't work
Speaker 2: out so well.
Speaker 3: But we don't.
Speaker 2: Simply we simply do not know how to operate without
Speaker 2: running that playbook anyway. Just wanted to get people to
Speaker 2: know it's insane really to see this level of revisionism,
Speaker 2: but honestly, it is a good view into the elite
Speaker 2: mind of like, Okay, Russia bad. That means Russia always
Speaker 2: been bad, and that means we have to go retroactively,
Speaker 2: you know, basically lie about stuff from what's eighty years
Speaker 2: seventy five years ago. It's just craziness. It's absolute madness.
Speaker 2: But that is the absolute state of where we are
Speaker 2: with Ukraine discourse today.
Speaker 4: It is pretty wild, all right.
Speaker 1: We wanted to bring to you some updates on what's
Speaker 1: going on with United Auto Workers strike, which has expanded significantly.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But first have to show you Jordan Sheridan, who's doing
Speaker 1: great work on the ground for US and for his
Speaker 1: network status coup. He was talking to a worker and
Speaker 1: this worker brought up on his own his thoughts and
Speaker 1: feelings about CNBC anchor Jim Kramer.
Speaker 4: Take a listen.
Speaker 11: What's that guy called Jim Kramer?
Speaker 12: Is at his name?
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, let lose feel for he needs to bring.
Speaker 11: His factor to Lancing and getting one of these plants
Speaker 11: over here and see how it feels.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 11: It's those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, right,
Speaker 11: And I feel like people who don't do what we
Speaker 11: do don't know how it is.
Speaker 2: I think there's a nuclear option on the table.
Speaker 3: If he's not careful.
Speaker 12: That nuclear option is a country called Mexico. Say listen
Speaker 12: all the new you want to know where the new
Speaker 12: ones are going to be made. We're going to continue
Speaker 12: to make the old ones.
Speaker 3: But Pepa's got a.
Speaker 12: Fifty five thousand person factory for VW and they good
Speaker 12: educational workforce is five dollars an hour, no real push
Speaker 12: and control rules that's not to be mentioned. Have free healthcare,
Speaker 12: so you know what you would have played ball? You
Speaker 12: want to keep doing this, Mexico.
Speaker 8: Glad to see you're standing up for the American worker here, Jim,
Speaker 8: Thanks for that.
Speaker 11: See how many people buy GM cars? See how many
Speaker 11: people buy Big three cars?
Speaker 2: Period?
Speaker 11: You know, if they want to shut down and go
Speaker 11: someplace else like that. That's fine, go ahead, do it.
Speaker 11: I've been I've owned GM cars my whole life. They
Speaker 11: do that, I will never buy a GM car.
Speaker 10: Game.
Speaker 1: Bring his fat behind here and see what it's like.
Speaker 4: Waka day in my shoes.
Speaker 1: I mean, Kramer has been cartoonishly evil with regard. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not just those comments that where it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: just ship all the jobs to Mexico, which is the
Speaker 1: idea you would suggest that. I mean, you're talking about
Speaker 1: ruining people's lives, which are ruining towns. Yea, like destroying
Speaker 1: entire cities and ruining people's lives. Just casually throwing that
Speaker 1: out there is unbelievable. But he's I mean, there's been
Speaker 1: so many clips we've played here of him just being
Speaker 1: brazenly on the side of bosses and trashing the auto workers, etc.
Speaker 1: That it's nice to see this is obviously breaking through
Speaker 1: and actually helping to strengthen the resolve of the workers
Speaker 1: who are there striking on the picket line.
Speaker 2: No, that actually think is the most interesting part is
Speaker 2: that clearly they are paying attention right now, they can
Speaker 2: see how this is all being covered in the media,
Speaker 2: and as that happens. I think people are really starting
Speaker 2: to pay attention because the union has garnered a lot
Speaker 2: of public attention as to how the people who are
Speaker 2: in charge are reacting to this Crystal. You found this
Speaker 2: clip of this billionaire if you want to set that up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this dude, some CEO billionaire guy goes on
Speaker 1: and blames the unions for driving up inflation. We've got
Speaker 1: that clip for you, and we also have a little
Speaker 1: reminder of what his economic views have been historically, where
Speaker 1: he called for a nice little recession to force workers to.
Speaker 4: Get back in the offices.
Speaker 7: Let's take as the UAW is on strike, you're asking
Speaker 7: for forty percent of wage increases the unions. Is funnycause
Speaker 7: the Democrats. What's wrong with the Biden administration wise? He's
Speaker 7: so impopular. It's inflation, that's what people say. It's the economy.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's economy. People have less than their pocket.
Speaker 7: But now he's backing the unions who are forcing wages up,
Speaker 7: which is creating the inflation. He has to kill some
Speaker 7: of those cities that have issues on commuting, like New
Speaker 7: York or La Downtown, La Downtown, San Francisco, the CBD
Speaker 7: that are difficult to commute to. That's where the pressure
Speaker 7: is so hard from workers saying I don't want to
Speaker 7: drive into the city an hour and a half and
Speaker 7: drive home an hour and a half every day. But
Speaker 7: I also think a nice little recession will clear this
Speaker 7: and you'll see people come back to the opposite.
Speaker 4: Nice ression, Nice little recession. Saga, great guy.
Speaker 3: This sumpture makes me so crazy.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like there's it's been proven because every
Speaker 2: increase in the unemployment rate is directly tied to suicide.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and eight killed tens of thousands of people,
Speaker 2: and not to mention when you lose your healthcare. Also,
Speaker 2: money is the number one cause of divorce. It caused
Speaker 2: a huge amount of relational problems. People lost their houses.
Speaker 2: It's horrible, I mean, ruined millions of people's lives and
Speaker 2: left a lot of trauma for a lot of families.
Speaker 2: And so when you're just casually talking about recession, you
Speaker 2: should never wish that on anyone. It leads to literally
Speaker 2: immediate death and to a tremendous amount of suffering, you know,
Speaker 2: throughout the entire economy and really on a personal level.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing that's so callous. About the Jim
Speaker 2: Kramer like, oh, just ship it to Mexico. I'm like,
Speaker 2: let's also just think about what we're saying there. We're like,
Speaker 2: we're going to get these poor Mexicans to work with
Speaker 2: no work or protections, that's right, and with lower wages
Speaker 2: and exploit them in their country so that we can
Speaker 2: buy a car, which let's all be honest, it ain't
Speaker 2: gonna be cheaper. They current price of a car is
Speaker 2: like fifty thousand dollars, so they'll still keep the price
Speaker 2: the same. They're just going to take the money that
Speaker 2: they would have saved supposedly in wages. They're not going
Speaker 2: to pass it on to you. That's going to take
Speaker 2: it right back to the shareholder. All of this is
Speaker 2: just a very convluted and discussing way to look at
Speaker 2: the overall economy. But I think that you know, the
Speaker 2: more that we highlight these things, the more attention that
Speaker 2: people can understand about what the people in charge really
Speaker 2: do think of them. Like whenever you try and make
Speaker 2: it a binary choice, if things start to get real revealing,
Speaker 2: this is we're at.
Speaker 1: This is a psychopathic mentality, It genuinely is, and just
Speaker 1: so everyone is totally clear, the stuff he said about
Speaker 1: inflation and worker's wages causing it is complete garbage, complete garbage,
Speaker 1: especially if you look specifically at the auto industry, where
Speaker 1: workers have actually taken a pay cut when you account
Speaker 1: for inflation. Okay, their pay has gone backwards at the
Speaker 1: same time that new car prices have skyrocketed. And you
Speaker 1: know what, the automakers have found that it is more
Speaker 1: profitable for them to sell fewer cars but have them
Speaker 1: be astronomically expensive. And by the way, like many other industries,
Speaker 1: use the excuse.
Speaker 4: Of inflation to jack up prices.
Speaker 1: And not to say say they didn't have issues with
Speaker 1: supply chains, issues with semiconductors. There are some genuine things,
Speaker 1: and none of them had anything to do with the
Speaker 1: wages that these workers are being paid, which accounts for
Speaker 1: somewhere between four and five percent of the costs of
Speaker 1: the new car. So these supposedly brilliant minds, I don't
Speaker 1: know if he's just an idiot, I don't know if
Speaker 1: he hasn't looked at the numbers, or I don't know
Speaker 1: if he's just happy to shamelessly lie in service of
Speaker 1: his own twisted, ugly, psychopathic economic ideology.
Speaker 4: But whatever, it is.
Speaker 1: What he's saying there is dead wrong and there is
Speaker 1: no there are no numbers that can back up what
Speaker 1: he is spouting. There the nonsense that he's spouting also
Speaker 1: on CNBC.
Speaker 2: I always think he's funny. Whenever people are talking about
Speaker 2: car they're like, oh, these wages all this. I'm like, what,
Speaker 2: you don't want to talk about dealers, let's probably like
Speaker 2: the number one source of markup. Like you don't want
Speaker 2: to talk about the financing model and the way that
Speaker 2: a lot of these people even keep themselves afloat. You
Speaker 2: don't want to talk about industry, like you said semiconductors,
Speaker 2: that's actually an area where national policy could get involved.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Big three have nobody put themselves to
Speaker 2: blame in a lot of ways. I mean, they have
Speaker 2: not designed good cars for a long time, and in
Speaker 2: many respects it's not because of the union. It's because
Speaker 2: they got fat and happy, and their shareholders were basically
Speaker 2: printing money by giving them self stock buybacks as well
Speaker 2: as the CEO is making a ton for themselves, and
Speaker 2: that's why Toyota, Tesla and all these other people clean
Speaker 2: them up. So anyway, I think there's a lot more like.
Speaker 4: The Machi and I love them both.
Speaker 3: Well, listen, Chris, those are the two premier models.
Speaker 2: Go ask somebody driving a Chevy Equinox how it compares
Speaker 2: to like a Honda CRV.
Speaker 3: You'd be a fool.
Speaker 2: In my look, this is not any advice. In my opinion,
Speaker 2: you would be an idiot to buy an Equinox over
Speaker 2: like a CRV or a RAB four or any of
Speaker 2: these other ones.
Speaker 3: And I think that, honestly, that is a tragedy.
Speaker 2: Like if I think cars are cool, I wish American
Speaker 2: cars were awesome, but if they are not at the
Speaker 2: higher end of the spectrum, and we're talking about middle class,
Speaker 2: you should buy Asian every single time. I'm only talking
Speaker 2: from a consumer level, replacement parts, you know, mechanics, reliability, weather,
Speaker 2: like on every metric it wins. The only American car
Speaker 2: that can even come close on that is Tesla, and
Speaker 2: that's in the electric sector.
Speaker 3: So that would be my union.
Speaker 4: Personally.
Speaker 1: I love my American main cars.
Speaker 3: You got actually the good ones, but the majority of
Speaker 3: people aren't buying those.
Speaker 1: But what he's spouting consense. I do want to give
Speaker 1: people a quick update on what is going on with
Speaker 1: the strike. Go ahead and put this up on the
Speaker 1: screen about there was an announcement of an expansion of
Speaker 1: the strike, but they're only hitting Ford or I guess
Speaker 1: expanding with Ford and GM. It looks like they are
Speaker 1: making some progress with Stalantis, which is interesting. Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal has a look here at some of the dynamics
Speaker 1: and what's going on. It looks like the big thing
Speaker 1: that Stalantis gave ground on was cost of living issues
Speaker 1: and the right to strike over plant closures, which is
Speaker 1: a really he asked here. Fain says that they're making progress,
Speaker 1: but gap still remain. So this just continues to pace
Speaker 1: a lot of pain for the people that are involved,
Speaker 1: and certainly a lot of pain for these companies that
Speaker 1: are involved. That part I don't mind so much, and
Speaker 1: we'll see where we go from here. Fain has been
Speaker 1: making these announcements usually Friday morning, of when and how
Speaker 1: they're going to expand the strike. Remember this is part
Speaker 1: of that stand up strategy, which is we're not going
Speaker 1: to go out all at once to help preserve the
Speaker 1: strike fund and also to keep these companies on their
Speaker 1: toes about what's going to happen next. Seems like they're
Speaker 1: making a lot of progress at the negotiating table, even
Speaker 1: as they have not yet achieved their goals and don't
Speaker 1: have a contract with any of the Big three. So
Speaker 1: we will continue to watch it very closely because obviously
Speaker 1: it's a huge deal, not just for autoworkers, but for
Speaker 1: the economy overall. That's right, all right, Sacher, are you
Speaker 1: looking at well?
Speaker 2: In our Ama questions for this week, one of our
Speaker 2: viewers asked from Canada, can we bring more attention to
Speaker 2: the country. I explain that to the extent that we
Speaker 2: cover it, it's when it intersects with our politics.
Speaker 3: Or to a broader theme that we care a lot about.
Speaker 2: In this particular case, it's because Canada has long been
Speaker 2: a leader in North America for piloting censorship programs, eager
Speaker 2: to abuse their lack of First Amendment protections to stomp
Speaker 2: on Western traditions of free speech free expression with Orwellian
Speaker 2: government control. The latest example is one that was flagged
Speaker 2: by friend Glenn Greenwald, and it bears really investigating. The
Speaker 2: Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission announced a new policy
Speaker 2: requiring online streaming services to provide the government with information
Speaker 2: about their activities in Canada. These streaming services include podcasts
Speaker 2: which must register with the government to quote permit regulatory controls.
Speaker 2: So what are these regulatory controls? What are we talking
Speaker 2: about here. The current registration requirement is driven by the
Speaker 2: so called Online Streaming Act, which passed last year. It
Speaker 2: will require these newly registered platforms to quote need to
Speaker 2: make support Canadian and Indigenous content. Will include provisions that
Speaker 2: will require these platforms to quote create a broadcasting system
Speaker 2: that is reflective of Canadian society and quote strengthens indigenous
Speaker 2: broadcasts and supports the vitality of Indigenous languages. So basically,
Speaker 2: regislation and compliance is required under the law that will
Speaker 2: then direct racial and cultural quotas to those who wish
Speaker 2: to broadcast in Canada, giving the government broad authority over
Speaker 2: who you can hire, what you can broadcast, and even
Speaker 2: including languages. Now, listen, I understand Canada is a completely
Speaker 2: different country than ours. It has a very different legal
Speaker 2: framework that doesn't actually make this all that unusual, and
Speaker 2: the perusal of the law itself is still a dedication
Speaker 2: to quote though equity and broadcasts, racial quota demands, and
Speaker 2: it all just looks very familiar to anyone in the
Speaker 2: United States. Maybe it is a preview of what they
Speaker 2: would wish they could do without First Amendment protections. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: it actually really calls into question shows like ours that
Speaker 2: actually have and are US based with a sizeable Canadian audience.
Speaker 2: Will YouTube or Spotify be forced to enforce these regulations
Speaker 2: in the future onto us or face bans of our
Speaker 2: program if the government requires it. There These are not
Speaker 2: simply rhetorical questions. One of the most stunning censorship episodes
Speaker 2: that I have ever seen occur in the entire West was
Speaker 2: just two years ago with respect to the Canadian truckers. Recall,
Speaker 2: before the Russian of invasion of Ukraine. The Canadian response
Speaker 2: to the trucker protest was the biggest story in the world.
Speaker 2: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the never before used Emergencies
Speaker 2: Act in Canada, the outlawed Freedom of Association authorized a
Speaker 2: full blown police crackdown on a lot of these protesters.
Speaker 2: The Canadian government after action report on protests concluded that
Speaker 2: social media itself was the nexus of organizing and would
Speaker 2: merit extreme.
Speaker 3: Censorship in the future.
Speaker 2: Updated recommendations to the Canadian government where the Institute disinformation
Speaker 2: guidelines that would allow authorities in the future to even
Speaker 2: thwart organization efforts at the most basic level for any
Speaker 2: movement that they deemed threatening. Of course, has followed even
Speaker 2: other unprecedented actions. The Emergency Act allowed the government to
Speaker 2: even freeze the bank accounts of anyone involved in the protests,
Speaker 2: including seizing incoming donations from organizations like GoFundMe, extended to
Speaker 2: cryptocurrency exchanges for anonymousizations sent in by a bitcoin in
Speaker 2: other currencies. It remains to this day probably one of
Speaker 2: the most Orwellian actions, as I said, by a Western
Speaker 2: government in modern memory. It's right up there with Australia's
Speaker 2: government's response to COVID, and of course, to head off
Speaker 2: the criticism, I know it's not happening here. I hope
Speaker 2: it never does, but it is a preview of how
Speaker 2: Orwellian censorship can come to be justified explicitly under the
Speaker 2: guise of anti disinformation regimes in the West. Remember that
Speaker 2: here in the US there have already been similar demands
Speaker 2: on podcasting for decades, I mean, largely as a result
Speaker 2: of the COVID pandemic. Especially recently, quote unquote, misinformation is
Speaker 2: apparently rife on podcasting. That was, according to anti disinformation researchers.
Speaker 2: They faced a real conundrum because podcast is one of
Speaker 2: those last open protocols that exist in wide consumption. We
Speaker 2: simply just published to an RSS feed and it is
Speaker 2: picked up by whichever podcast player you choose. But as
Speaker 2: we all know, the vast majority of people are on
Speaker 2: Apple podcasts and on Spotify. So what do these people
Speaker 2: do and target the companies they won out? Remember during
Speaker 2: that whole Joe Rogan debacle, they slapped all those ridiculous
Speaker 2: COVID warnings on any episode that has to do with
Speaker 2: the topic.
Speaker 3: I guess we'll have it on this one.
Speaker 2: At least they didn't outright ban it, but they certainly
Speaker 2: tried and they barely succeeded. So here in the US,
Speaker 2: the censorship resim will never look as blatant as it
Speaker 2: does in Canada, but it may just come in honestly
Speaker 2: a worse form. It's by leveraging private monopolies to enforce
Speaker 2: ideological ends. If you think that the financial censorship that
Speaker 2: happened in Canada can't happen here, I mean there are
Speaker 2: dozens of left and right wing figures in this country
Speaker 2: that have found themselves cut off from the likes of
Speaker 2: Visa and MasterCard found themselves kicked off platforms like GoFundMe
Speaker 2: or PayPal, Ask Kiwi farms, how it asked out for them?
Speaker 2: How worked out for them? When cloud Fair cut them off,
Speaker 2: they cease to exist on the internet. Try using parlor
Speaker 2: after Amazon Web Services nuked them post January sixth.
Speaker 3: It could all easily happen here. In some cases it
Speaker 3: already has.
Speaker 2: We have to pay attention because the moment of action
Speaker 2: actually may come much sooner than you think. It was
Speaker 2: interesting to go down this rabbit hole about this crystal,
Speaker 2: what do you take a look at?
Speaker 1: Well, guys, this time the walls actually did close in.
Speaker 1: Trump spent yesterday in the courtroom fighting for his New
Speaker 1: York business life, after already having been found guilty of
Speaker 1: business fraud in a civil case. Because of that ruling,
Speaker 1: the only question now really for Trump is how severe
Speaker 1: the punishment will ultimately be and making a mistake.
Speaker 4: He is really fighting hard.
Speaker 1: His defense team announced yesterday that the former president does
Speaker 1: intend to take the stand to testify in his own defense.
Speaker 1: That's going to be wild. At stake is control of
Speaker 1: some of his most iconic properties, including Trump Tower itself,
Speaker 1: in a case that cuts the heart of the myth
Speaker 1: of celebrity billionaire Donald J.
Speaker 2: Trump.
Speaker 1: It all started back in twenty nineteen, when Trump fixer
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen testified to Congress that Trump routinely lied about
Speaker 1: the values.
Speaker 4: Of his properties and other assets.
Speaker 1: When he's trying to look good for save Forbes magazine,
Speaker 1: or more critically, to prove he had enough collateral to
Speaker 1: scare another loan from a bank, his assets would magically
Speaker 1: skyrocket in value. When he was trying to minimize a
Speaker 1: tax bill, they would instantly deflate. These comments sparked an
Speaker 1: investigation from New York's Attorney General, Letitia James, under a
Speaker 1: broad statue that gives her the power to investigate business fraud.
Speaker 1: Some of what she found was quite something, even for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Trump had claimed that his own personal residence
Speaker 1: was thirty thousand square feet. In reality, it is less
Speaker 1: than eleven thousand square feet. This led to an overvaluation
Speaker 1: of roughly two hundred million dollars. One would think that
Speaker 1: a real estate developer would know the rough square footage
Speaker 1: of his own home. In another instance, Trump pretended that
Speaker 1: apartments which were in fact rent stabilized by law, were
Speaker 1: not in fact rent stabilized by law, leading to their
Speaker 1: value being overstated by roughly seven hundred percent. Another Westchester
Speaker 1: County property was valued by Trump at two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty one million dollars in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: it had been appraised four different times at a value
Speaker 1: of thirty million dollars or less. Over ten year period
Speaker 1: from twenty eleven to twenty twenty one, prosecutors found some
Speaker 1: twenty three instances of fraud in reporting asset valuations, each
Speaker 1: more or less as brazen as the examples that I
Speaker 1: have just cited.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Trump defenders and Trump himself have pointed out that in
Speaker 1: the judge's initial finding a fraud, he ruled the mar
Speaker 1: Lagos should have been valued at only eighteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: That amount does seem extremely low, point Trump himself picked
Speaker 1: up on in comments yesterday.
Speaker 4: Just take a listen.
Speaker 11: They have one.
Speaker 13: Property that's worth anywhere from fifty to one hundred times
Speaker 13: what does judge put down is a value? Put down
Speaker 13: a value eighteen million dollars, and the property is probably
Speaker 13: worth could be anywhere from fifty to one hundred times
Speaker 13: more than then, and a lot of those numbers could
Speaker 13: even be low. We have other properties the same things,
Speaker 13: so he devalued everything.
Speaker 1: What he and his defenders failed to mention, however, is
Speaker 1: that that eighteen million number that actually came from the
Speaker 1: Palm Beach County assessor when determining how much taxes would
Speaker 1: be owed on the estate. So which is it the
Speaker 1: low amount that was used for taxes or the more
Speaker 1: than one billion dollars that Trump is now claiming the
Speaker 1: property is worth. As recently as twenty twenty, Trump's own
Speaker 1: company said that they actually agreed with the Palm Beach
Speaker 1: County assessment, So he was either lying then or he's
Speaker 1: lying now. As is the case with all of these instances,
Speaker 1: he picks whatever suits his interest in that present moment.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: The defenses from Trump's team in the first phase of
Speaker 1: this trial were a bit of a shit show. They
Speaker 1: tried to argue that none of the banks involved were
Speaker 1: hurt point, which is irrelevant to the case. They also
Speaker 1: tried to argue that a blanket disclaimer rendered all of
Speaker 1: the financial statements worthless and that they should have been
Speaker 1: seen as such by any lenders. These arguments were so
Speaker 1: baseless the judge actually financially sanctioned Trump's lawyers directly for
Speaker 1: continuing to offer them after they had already unequivocally been
Speaker 1: swatted aside. In aside of the quality of his representation,
Speaker 1: the Trump legal team apparently forgot to check the box
Speaker 1: requesting a jury trial. So Trump is now stuck with
Speaker 1: his fate resting in the hands of a judge who
Speaker 1: he apparently absolutely hates. But however bad the legal team's
Speaker 1: arguments were, Trump's own arguments were way worse. He outrageously
Speaker 1: sought to justify the property valuations by claiming he could
Speaker 1: get a Saudi buyer to pay whatever he wanted for
Speaker 1: these properties, so they couldn't possibly have their values inflated,
Speaker 1: a shocking admission from a former president who already appears
Speaker 1: to be thoroughly compromised by Saudi money. So none of
Speaker 1: that worked out for Trump in the first phase of
Speaker 1: this trial. Now the question is just how big the
Speaker 1: sanctions on Trump are going to be. Letitia James is
Speaker 1: seeking two hundred and fifty million dollars to reflect her
Speaker 1: estimate of the gain he achieved through this fraud, and
Speaker 1: amount large enough to cause real financial hardship and potentially
Speaker 1: force even the sale of some assets. Already, Trump and
Speaker 1: his sons have had their new York business licenses revoked,
Speaker 1: which will make it difficult, if not impossible, to continue
Speaker 1: running the New York real estate empire, a dagger to
Speaker 1: the heart of Trump's whole business identity. Now, Trump says
Speaker 1: this is all political, and to be honest with Younes
Speaker 1: Sensi's right, before he ran for president, he was basically
Speaker 1: granted the blanket immunity that elites typically receive an American society.
Speaker 1: They can brazenly lie, cheat, and steal with few, if
Speaker 1: any consequences as long as they're part of the club.
Speaker 1: Remind me again just how many bankers were jailed for
Speaker 1: destroying the global economy. Now Trump has lost this elite
Speaker 1: protection card, and his facing the sort of scrutiny and yes,
Speaker 1: consequences that you or I might expect to face. In
Speaker 1: other words, the problem here isn't that Trump is being
Speaker 1: sued now, is that he got away with so much
Speaker 1: for so long, just like so many other elites. And
Speaker 1: is that so many other wealthy people get away with
Speaker 1: the same and worse every single day. For all the
Speaker 1: understandable focus on Trump's many criminal indictments, this civil trial
Speaker 1: it really cuts more closely to the heart of Trump's
Speaker 1: public brand and his business. How much of the Trump
Speaker 1: reality show was reality, how much was just a show,
Speaker 1: a wildly successful branding exercise that helped launch him into
Speaker 1: the highest office in the land. It's also the first
Speaker 1: time that any of the attempts to sanction Trump's through
Speaker 1: impeachment or the legal system have really had teeth. The
Speaker 1: first real blow to be teflon Don Vanier, the first indication,
Speaker 1: as I said, that the walls are kind of for real,
Speaker 1: closing in the first sign that his seeming invincibility maybe
Speaker 1: as much of a mirage as his thirty thousand square
Speaker 1: foot Trump Tower apartment. And that's why, really this really
Speaker 1: snuck up on me. So as we tease, we're excited
Speaker 1: to be joined in studio by Congress and Rocanna of
Speaker 1: California and jam packed week here in DC, and also
Speaker 1: a lot going on in your home state.
Speaker 4: So great to have you here.
Speaker 10: So what was good to be on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is your understanding of what is even happening
Speaker 1: today with regards to Kevin McCarthy in his speakership.
Speaker 10: Well, right after this, I go to a caucus meeting
Speaker 10: where we're going to decide. I'll tell you the sentiment
Speaker 10: from the Democrats, at least in the Progressive caucus. Yeah,
Speaker 10: this is a Republican issue, a Republican mess. Let them
Speaker 10: figure it out, don't bail McCarthy out. But we're going
Speaker 10: to discuss it as a caucus and then come through
Speaker 10: a decision.
Speaker 2: What about you personally, is there any scenario where you
Speaker 2: could see yourself voting for Kevin McCarthy, Like, what would
Speaker 2: you have to get from Kevin McCarthy in order to
Speaker 2: vote in order to save his speakership.
Speaker 10: Well, first of all, I don't think anyone's actually going
Speaker 10: to have to vote from the question would you vote
Speaker 10: to table the motion? It would have to be an
Speaker 10: appeal from leadership and the progressive leadership to say, look,
Speaker 10: we've gotten enough concessions. I don't want to speculate on
Speaker 10: what those concessions would have to be, but it would
Speaker 10: probably have to be a very high bar for that
Speaker 10: to happen.
Speaker 1: Okay, And so you said your sense is the Progressive
Speaker 1: Caucus basically has a similar view as you do. Do
Speaker 1: you have a sense of the rest of the ideological
Speaker 1: spectrum of the caucus. Are they feeling more interested in
Speaker 1: a deal, more interested in bailing amount? Do you have
Speaker 1: any sense of that.
Speaker 10: You know, surprisingly, it's been pretty uniform among blue dogs,
Speaker 10: among problem solvers, among progressives that this is a Republican mess.
Speaker 10: Let them figure it out. We'll see how much unanimity
Speaker 10: there is in the caucus. But if the caucus is
Speaker 10: unanimous that we're not going to bail them out, McCarthy's
Speaker 10: really got a challenge it. At the very least, we'll
Speaker 10: have to come to Hakeem and our progressive Qualcus and
Speaker 10: others and make certain concessions.
Speaker 1: Actually, okay, let's move on to California, because there's also
Speaker 1: a lot going on there. Governor Gavin Newsom making his
Speaker 1: announcement of his choice to fill Diane Feinstein's seat put.
Speaker 4: Actually G three up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Here, guys, we have a Lafonda Butler has been chosen.
Speaker 1: She's a former labor leader Seiu. But then following that term,
Speaker 1: she went and advised Uber on their quote unquote labor
Speaker 1: relations as there was a bill or was it a
Speaker 1: bill or a ballot initiative to attempt to make sure
Speaker 1: that Uber drivers were classified as employees and not contractors.
Speaker 1: She also was a lobbyist for Airbnb, so a lot
Speaker 1: of question marks about why she was chosen instead of
Speaker 1: the woman who you are backing, Congressman Barbara Lee.
Speaker 4: What is your reaction to this selection?
Speaker 10: Barbara Lee would have been the better choice. I mean,
Speaker 10: she was out there campaigning, she's been a progressive. Originally
Speaker 10: the governor said, well, we can't pick Barbara Lee because
Speaker 10: she's still running, but now he said the person can run.
Speaker 10: So it was a source of a lot of disappointment
Speaker 10: to progressive Look, I think Senator Designatet Butler as an
Speaker 10: inspiring life story and I don't want to say anything
Speaker 10: negative about her and her work on LGBTQ equality in
Speaker 10: women's rights. But it came as a surprise and a
Speaker 10: blow to a lot of people in the CBC Congressional
Speaker 10: black Hawk is progressive community, who thought, why not Barbara Lee?
Speaker 10: What's wrong with Barbara Lee? Why does Barbara Lee seem
Speaker 10: to keep getting passed over? She was passed over in
Speaker 10: house leadership, She's now been passed over on the Senate seat.
Speaker 10: Something is obviously some people in the party obviously don't
Speaker 10: like her.
Speaker 4: Why do you think that is?
Speaker 10: Probably are progressive politics. I mean, look, she's been someone
Speaker 10: who's stood up against endless war. She was the only
Speaker 10: person to say, don't give George Bush a blank check
Speaker 10: to Afghanistan. She's willing to call out corporations in power,
Speaker 10: she takes progressive positions that upset the donor class. She
Speaker 10: doesn't have a lot of friends amongst the donor class
Speaker 10: around the country. So I don't think it's coincidence.
Speaker 2: And so you know, with Gavin Neuwsman, he's been making
Speaker 2: a lot of headlines. He showed up to the he
Speaker 2: showed up to the Republican debate. He clearly isn't enjoying himself.
Speaker 2: But behind the scenes, we've been covering some of this.
Speaker 2: If we can go and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, in terms of vetoing certain legislation and making
Speaker 2: certain actions you could see here vetoing unemployment, pay for
Speaker 2: striking workers and protections for domestic employees. What do you
Speaker 2: see this as a pattern, you know, in terms of
Speaker 2: both the selection pick, rejecting barbar Lee and also some
Speaker 2: of his more recent actions that have not been in
Speaker 2: front of Sean Hannity on the camera.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm surprised because this is not the nineteen nineties
Speaker 10: Democratic Party. And you look at three key bills on
Speaker 10: economic fairness. One he vetoed giving people who are striking
Speaker 10: unemployment benefits. Now New York and New Jersey have these
Speaker 10: provisions that if you go on strike, you can get
Speaker 10: unemployment benefits. It makes no sense, especially when you have
Speaker 10: the writers' strike in your own state, and this is
Speaker 10: why the bill is being brought. Second, and this one
Speaker 10: was particularly concerning to me. He said that domestic workers
Speaker 10: should not be able to get basic safety protections because
Speaker 10: they work in people's homes as opposed to businesses. Well,
Speaker 10: if you look at the history of the New Deal,
Speaker 10: FDR excluded domestic workers because of race, and many of
Speaker 10: the people who are domestic workers in California are women
Speaker 10: or women of color. Of course they should have basic
Speaker 10: safety Just because they work for a person as a
Speaker 10: nanny or as a homecare worker doesn't mean they shouldn't
Speaker 10: have safety standards. And then he upset all of the
Speaker 10: teamsters by saying that you shouldn't have a human operator
Speaker 10: on a truck over ten thousand pounds. As a Silicon
Speaker 10: Valley guy, I'm saying, have a human operator. You want
Speaker 10: to have a person to make sure in these conditions
Speaker 10: that someone can be safe. So I don't understand why
Speaker 10: in the monon Democratic part where even President Biden is
Speaker 10: moving towards labor. You'd want to hurt labor on three
Speaker 10: seminal issues. And it's not just me. The leader of
Speaker 10: the California Labor Fed has spoken out about this, and
Speaker 10: a lot of the unions are upset.
Speaker 1: I mean to me, sometimes he seems his action seem
Speaker 1: very perplexing because on the one hand, he also just
Speaker 1: signed a great piece of legislation that will make sure
Speaker 1: all fast food workers in the state of California earned
Speaker 1: twenty dollars an hour.
Speaker 4: And so when I.
Speaker 1: Look at the pattern, I can't help but see what
Speaker 1: are the two key donor groups in the state of California,
Speaker 1: and really within the Democratic Party overall, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Well,
Speaker 1: the truck bill, obviously, Silicon Valley didn't like that one.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of unemployment pay for striking workers, Hollywood,
Speaker 1: you've still got actors.
Speaker 4: Out on strike. They very much didn't like that one.
Speaker 1: So it seems to me, as he's positioning himself for
Speaker 1: a presidential run, he doesn't want to get crosswise with
Speaker 1: the donor class in two key industries for the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party and for his aspirations personally.
Speaker 10: Look represents slican reality. I've gotten support from tech leaders,
Speaker 10: but at the end of the day, you have to
Speaker 10: pick whose side you're on, and on this case, yeah,
Speaker 10: I got a lot of calls from tech folks upset,
Speaker 10: why are you supporting AB three sixteen? Why are you
Speaker 10: supporting the teamsters? And the reason is I don't want
Speaker 10: unethical development of AI with no concern for the human costs,
Speaker 10: for safety, for jobs. And so the governor has to
Speaker 10: pick is he on the side of working families or
Speaker 10: is he the side of donors?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so from California obviously is a lot of turmoil.
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, with the politics right now, and
Speaker 2: now we have this new appointment seat, I believe that
Speaker 2: the rules have been made so that she can then
Speaker 2: run for that seat A twenty twenty four. Do you
Speaker 2: still believe that there will be a competitive primary? Do
Speaker 2: you intend in like working with this or is this
Speaker 2: kind of the appointment?
Speaker 4: Is this?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 2: Is this the end of that primary process?
Speaker 10: Now I'm still for Barbara Lee, and Barbara Lee is
Speaker 10: still running. I mean, it's unclear whether Senator dosing that
Speaker 10: Butler will run or not. We're waiting to hear the governor.
Speaker 10: I mean, anyone can run. The government can't restrict of course,
Speaker 10: then for running. Originally he said that would be a condition.
Speaker 10: He removed that condition. Some people suggest that that means
Speaker 10: that she's going to run, but we have no idea.
Speaker 10: We're waiting to hear. But I'm going to be for
Speaker 10: Barbara Lea, I mean because of her values, because of
Speaker 10: her support for Medicare for all, which is another thing,
Speaker 10: by the way, in the state of California, I mean,
Speaker 10: the governor had campaigned on cal Care. We should get
Speaker 10: single pair. We've got super majorities in that state, and
Speaker 10: we didn't get it last time, osh Chlora's bill. I'm
Speaker 10: going to be out there pushing for cal Care single
Speaker 10: pair this time.
Speaker 4: Gotcha?
Speaker 1: And what's your assessment of the last question on this one?
Speaker 1: Because I know you've got to get to that caucus meeting.
Speaker 1: We don't want to hold you up. But with Governor news,
Speaker 1: I mean, his ambitions are quite clear. You know, he
Speaker 1: said he won't run against buy and he won't run
Speaker 1: against Kamala even if something were to happen this time around.
Speaker 4: But clearly this man is angling right.
Speaker 1: Do you think he's even making the right political choices
Speaker 1: in terms of betoying some of these bills, like putting
Speaker 1: our values aside, and how you should stand on the
Speaker 1: side of labor even when it's politically inconvenient. It seems
Speaker 1: to me like on a fundamental level, when you have
Speaker 1: support for unions, support for labor, support for these striking
Speaker 1: workers at historic highs, that he's really misreading the mood
Speaker 1: and the political moment to sign repeatedly veto legislation that
Speaker 1: is on the side of labor and on the side
Speaker 1: of workers.
Speaker 4: What's your view of that.
Speaker 10: It's perplexing. I think he came up in the nineteen
Speaker 10: nineties and so he still has the sort of triangulation,
Speaker 10: not all of politics, and I see the order this
Speaker 10: type of you for governor. I supported him in the recall,
Speaker 10: so I've been an ally of hisits.
Speaker 3: But it's perplexing to.
Speaker 10: Me that he's so good on reproductive rights, he's good
Speaker 10: on LGBDQ issues, but on economic issues of economic fairness,
Speaker 10: of taking the side of working families and calling for
Speaker 10: a tax cut for the rich, we haven't been doing that.
Speaker 10: Making sure you're actually supporting single pair which you ran
Speaker 10: on in team. Has it been able to do that
Speaker 10: making sure you're with the labor unions and labor and
Speaker 10: working class people. This is a Bernie Standers state that
Speaker 10: Sanders carried. It's a progressive state, and it's not a
Speaker 10: state of sort of triangulation nineteen nineties economic policy. So
Speaker 10: that is I would say the same thing to him
Speaker 10: if he called me up. And of course I had
Speaker 10: made the case directly to him for Barbara Leeve very
Speaker 10: strongly and was quite direct. It's just we come from
Speaker 10: a different perspective, and this is the future debate in
Speaker 10: the party. Are we moving more towards the Warren Sanders
Speaker 10: economic populism wing or are we stuck in the nineteen
Speaker 10: nineties economic framework. I actually think President Biden is moving
Speaker 10: more towards the Bernie Warren wing.
Speaker 1: I think in terms of labor, he's taken some extraordinary actions.
Speaker 1: There's just no doubt about it at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to be certainly interesting. I know you
Speaker 2: got to get your vote, so we won't hold you up.
Speaker 2: Appreciate joining you, sir, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 10: It include