Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 4: All right, Good morning, Welcome to Breaking Points staggers out today.
Speaker 3: I'm here, Krystal.
Speaker 5: How you doing doing well so far? How about you, Emily?
Speaker 5: I'm great to have you here.
Speaker 4: Doing just about as well as John Bolton un CNN
Speaker 4: last night, who was proudly announcing that he is going
Speaker 4: to vote for Dick Cheney in twenty twenty four. He
Speaker 4: did it in twenty twenty. That's made with principles.
Speaker 1: A little too on the nose. Honestly, to be voting
Speaker 1: for Dick Cheney in twenty twenty four is really wild.
Speaker 3: At least vote for Liz Cheney if you're going to
Speaker 3: do it. Yeah, maybe even.
Speaker 1: Work upgraded figure resistance model of warmongering. Yes, yes, yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: important things to get to. In addition to John Bolton's
Speaker 1: voting preferences, we have some inflation numbers that just came
Speaker 1: in yesterday.
Speaker 5: Hotter than expected.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about what that means for you, and obviously
Speaker 1: what it may mean for the political landscape as well.
Speaker 1: There's also another really fascinating story with regard to inflation data.
Speaker 1: A government agency was caught feeding secret inflation information to
Speaker 1: you guessed it, Wall Street, who can benefit to the
Speaker 1: tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars from such inside information.
Speaker 1: Break that down for you as well. We've got some
Speaker 1: new abortion comments from Trump trying to contain the fallout
Speaker 1: over that new Arizona decision, and we also have some
Speaker 1: question marks about what exactly is going on.
Speaker 5: In his campaign.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a sort of tale of two campaigns going
Speaker 1: on here, so we'll break that down for you. Also,
Speaker 1: turns out lunchables are even worse for your kids than
Speaker 1: you may have imagined, which is the problem for me personally,
Speaker 1: because yes, I do feed my kids lunchable, though probably
Speaker 1: not anymore.
Speaker 5: So we'll break that down for you.
Speaker 1: Very excited to be joined, honestly honored to be joined
Speaker 1: by ISRAELIJOURNALI is Gideon Levy today with Haretz. He's going
Speaker 1: to break down the very latest that is going on
Speaker 1: in Gaza, including an Israeli airstrike that killed the sons
Speaker 1: and grandchildren of a Hamas's political leader. Tucker kicked a
Speaker 1: hornet's nest over Palestinian Christians. Will bring you those comments
Speaker 1: and the fallout.
Speaker 5: Emily and I, of course will react.
Speaker 1: John Stewart with a great monologue calling out Biden's hypocrisy
Speaker 1: on Israel versus Russia and human rights. And I'm taking
Speaker 1: a look at Jonathan Chate's latest piece, which may be
Speaker 1: his worst yet, which is really saying something. So breaking
Speaker 1: down this piece where he's you know, he's going after protesters,
Speaker 1: saying that they're illiberal and authoritarian. There's a lot to
Speaker 1: say about that one. So let's to get to this morning.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, absolutely, yes, all.
Speaker 5: Right, So let's start with that inflation data.
Speaker 1: Let's put the numbers up on the screen so you
Speaker 1: guys can see coming in higher than expected. This is
Speaker 1: per Heather Long from the Washington Post. She's got some
Speaker 1: charts there on the screen you can see as well.
Speaker 1: So she says inflation in March came in at zero
Speaker 1: point four percent for the month. That is an annual
Speaker 1: rate of three point five percent.
Speaker 5: In the past year.
Speaker 1: The forecast was four point three percent and three point
Speaker 1: four percent, respectively, so you can see higher on both
Speaker 1: of those metrics. She goes on to say that gas
Speaker 1: and rent accounted for over half of the March increase.
Speaker 1: Higher gas price and high rent are keeping inflation above
Speaker 1: three percent. She had another tweet where she broke down
Speaker 1: the specific increases in a variety of categories that were
Speaker 1: really noteworthy, and some of these are just extraordinary. So
Speaker 1: car insurance up twenty two percent in the past year.
Speaker 1: I really have no idea what the hell is going
Speaker 1: on there, Car repair up twelve percent, baby formula up
Speaker 1: ten percent, veterinarian bills up ten percent, Rent up five
Speaker 1: point nine percent.
Speaker 5: Obviously that really hurts.
Speaker 1: Electricity up five percent, restaurants up four point two percent,
Speaker 1: gas up one point three percent, and home health care
Speaker 1: for the elderly stored fourteen point two percent in the
Speaker 1: past year, the largest increase that we have ever seen
Speaker 1: in that category. So you clearly have a number of areas,
Speaker 1: in particular, some that are most near and dear to
Speaker 1: Americans in terms of their pocketbooks that continue to spike emily.
Speaker 1: There's you know, a lot of fallout from this, obviously
Speaker 1: the political fallout, we'll get to that in a minute,
Speaker 1: but it also raises a lot of questions about what
Speaker 1: the Fed is going to do next. There was, you know,
Speaker 1: the feed is stopped increasing interest rates. There was a thought, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe next time they meet they may actually cut interest rates.
Speaker 1: That's something that people who especially are looking to buy
Speaker 1: homes are really hoping for because the mortgage interest rates
Speaker 1: make home buying even more unaffordable than it would otherwise be.
Speaker 1: But that is effectively off the table now with this
Speaker 1: hotter than expected inflation report.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a really good, good point. And I
Speaker 4: think another thing to look at here is that as
Speaker 4: the Biden administration, I know we're going to get to
Speaker 4: Biden's comments in just a second, they say inflation is
Speaker 4: coming down. The juxtaposition of these numbers with that, The
Speaker 4: important metric to look at is in some of those
Speaker 4: numbers that Crystal just pointed out, it's not even that
Speaker 4: the rate of inflation is slowing. And that's what we
Speaker 4: saw in the top line numbers too, And that's what
Speaker 4: the Biden administration has pointed to in some respects saying
Speaker 4: the rate of inflation has slowed year every year, month
Speaker 4: over month, and that's what's really been able to they've
Speaker 4: been able to use it as somewhat of a tool.
Speaker 4: That's not what we're looking at here, and that's basically
Speaker 4: all they have. Whenever they get a number like that,
Speaker 4: it's basically all they have. But when you're looking at
Speaker 4: fourteen percent increases in rent or five point nine percent
Speaker 4: increases in rent, yeah, I mean that is devastating. It's devastating,
Speaker 4: and people feel it, and there's no way you can
Speaker 4: talk around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we know at this point, you know, at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the inflationary cycle, h the idea that
Speaker 1: corporate profits and basically profiteering was contributing to this was
Speaker 1: really dismissed as this fringe idea the further we got along,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't the only thing that was going on,
Speaker 1: but that was actually a significant chunk of it was
Speaker 1: corporation seeing and they would admit this on earnings call, Hey,
Speaker 1: we can get away with raising our prices. So of
Speaker 1: course we're going to raise our private prices because we
Speaker 1: want to hire a profit margin. That trend has continued.
Speaker 1: There have been increased reports about how that is at
Speaker 1: this point contributing actually a majority of the inflation across
Speaker 1: a variety of categories. And we've also covered here specifically
Speaker 1: with regard to rent, that there is a nationwide epidemic
Speaker 1: of basically rent collusion, where they're using these algorithmic programs
Speaker 1: to squeeze every penny that they possibly can out of
Speaker 1: renters and colluding amongst a lot of large landlords in order.
Speaker 3: To do so.
Speaker 1: There's actually legal action being taken against this in both
Speaker 1: federal and state courts.
Speaker 5: So you know there are supply chain issues.
Speaker 1: Each of these categories has their own specific story, but
Speaker 1: corporate profiteering is a big part of this, which was
Speaker 1: basically put off the table to talk about for a
Speaker 1: long time. Joe Biden has started to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the corporate part of this, but has done
Speaker 1: basically nothing about it. As you mentioned, he was asked
Speaker 1: yesterday about these inflation numbers.
Speaker 5: Let's take a listen to his response.
Speaker 6: Thank you, mister president. Last month, you predicted the Federal
Speaker 6: Reserve would cut interest rates thanks to falling inflation, but
Speaker 6: today data showed that inflation rose more than expected. For
Speaker 6: the third straight month. So how concerned are you about
Speaker 6: the fight against inflation stalling and do you stand by
Speaker 6: your prediction for a ray cut.
Speaker 7: Well, I do stand by my prediction that before the
Speaker 7: year is out to be a rake cut, there's may
Speaker 7: delayed a month or so. I'm not sure that we
Speaker 7: don't know what the Fed is going to do for certain,
Speaker 7: but look, we have dramatically reduced inflation from nine percent
Speaker 7: now so close to three percent. We're in a situation
Speaker 7: where we're better situated than we were when we took office,
Speaker 7: where we're inflation with skyrocketing and we have a plan.
Speaker 8: To deal with it.
Speaker 7: Whereas the opposition, my opposition talks about two things. They
Speaker 7: just want to cut taxes for the wealthy and raise
Speaker 7: taxes on other people. And so I think they're they
Speaker 7: have no plan. Our plan is one I think is
Speaker 7: still sustainable.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is obviously one of the biggest political
Speaker 1: risks for the Biden campaign. He's got a number of
Speaker 1: political problems ahead of him. Don't get me wrong, his
Speaker 1: age being one of them, his unconditional support for Israel
Speaker 1: being another one of them. But consistently voter say the economy,
Speaker 1: inflation even as consumer sentiment has improved a little bit
Speaker 1: and people's sense of the economy has improved a little bit,
Speaker 1: and we did get a really good jobs report last week,
Speaker 1: and unemployment is low. I mean, there are some things
Speaker 1: that they can point to, but this is just a
Speaker 1: major source spot. I saw numbers last week, Emily, the
Speaker 1: same groceries, for the same basket of groceries this year
Speaker 1: over last year, you have to spend four hundred and
Speaker 1: forty five dollars more a month.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's astronomical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the amount of money that represents for ordinary people
Speaker 1: is huge.
Speaker 5: That is huge.
Speaker 3: It's huge.
Speaker 4: And I continue to think the strategy of acting as
Speaker 4: though you know your eyes are lying to your your
Speaker 4: bank account is lying to I think that is a really,
Speaker 4: really big error for the Biden campaign. And it doesn't
Speaker 4: mean that like from a political strategy perspective, where you're
Speaker 4: spinning and you know you're doing the usual bs. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying Biden should walk out and take credit for it,
Speaker 4: though I would give him a lot of the blame,
Speaker 4: But I'm not saying that's what he has to do.
Speaker 4: He should, though, empathize with people because people are really
Speaker 4: hurting and it has happened, It has transpired under his watch.
Speaker 4: And there's a whole lot more to this than people
Speaker 4: just not remembering how good they have it under Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: Are not understanding? Yeah, And that continues to be the
Speaker 4: line from the White House. Why aren't you reading Paul Krugman?
Speaker 4: Why aren't you accepting what Paul Krugman says about the economy.
Speaker 4: It's like, actually, why aren't you accepting what's happening to
Speaker 4: normal people when they go to get their groceries.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And that was really underscored by a noteworthy moment from
Speaker 1: a top Biden surrogate, an ally, Jim Clyverd. He was
Speaker 1: on MSNBC, and his whole argument was very similar to
Speaker 1: what you're saying. It's like people just don't understand how
Speaker 1: great things are. And he's going on and on all
Speaker 1: that we brought inflation down and MSNBC lear has to
Speaker 1: break into his comments with a CNBC reporter with these
Speaker 1: numbers on inflation being hotter than expected just coming across
Speaker 1: at that moment.
Speaker 5: So let's take a look at that awkward exchange.
Speaker 8: It's an inflation today, it's about forty percent of what
Speaker 8: it was when Joe Biden took office, and so the
Speaker 8: inflation rates are down and people's incomes are up, not
Speaker 8: what they may here on social media. One of the
Speaker 8: focused group people talked about social media and the misrepresentation, disinformation.
Speaker 8: All of those things are out there, and that's the
Speaker 8: battle that we have to fight, and we've got to
Speaker 8: do a better job of fighting it more effectively.
Speaker 3: So I'll validate that.
Speaker 9: I think the disinformation out there is distorting the entire process.
Speaker 9: I think social media doesn't help, but there's also a
Speaker 9: lack of validation that these voters feel. And I'm going
Speaker 9: to bring in Ander Ross Sorkin right now because we've
Speaker 9: just got breaking news. The consumer price index increased at
Speaker 9: a faster than expected pace last month, a signal that
Speaker 9: inflation remains stubborn ley high.
Speaker 1: And this has been their line, blaming disinformation for what
Speaker 1: people are able to experience in their own lives. I mean,
Speaker 1: four hundred and forty five dollars more per month for
Speaker 1: your groceries we had. Now we have actually in some
Speaker 1: instances wages surpassing the inflation rate, but you may have
Speaker 1: already been behind from previous inflation in the past. That
Speaker 1: your wages didn't catch up to not to mention, the
Speaker 1: course of the Biden administration, we've seen the social safety
Speaker 1: net that was erected during the COVID era, all of
Speaker 1: that being stripped away, So the previous supports you had,
Speaker 1: and not only in terms of direct checks, also in
Speaker 1: terms of child tax credit other programs that's gone. Inflation
Speaker 1: remains high, and they're blaming disinformation for people not understanding
Speaker 1: what they're experiencing in their own lives.
Speaker 3: And this seems to be the strategy that they're sticking with.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're like a couple of months into the
Speaker 4: strategy now, and it's I mean you can see it
Speaker 4: in real time fail for Clyburn on Mourning Joe on
Speaker 4: Morning Joe of all places, where inflation to them basically
Speaker 4: means nothing. It means like maybe their intern gets them,
Speaker 4: you know, a medium coffee instead of a large coffee,
Speaker 4: but not even that, yeah, you know, when they go
Speaker 4: run out to get their coffee. So I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just ridiculous and the problem is going to be Also,
Speaker 4: they continue to deflect to like different Trump culture wars things.
Speaker 4: I don't mean culture were in terms of abortion, but
Speaker 4: like these questions of like Donald Trump is just you
Speaker 4: guys forget how bad he is, Like the Trump amnesia line.
Speaker 4: They try to build into this inflation thing. You don't
Speaker 4: remember how bad the economy was under Donald Trump, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera, don't remember how bad it was with COVID.
Speaker 4: The View was talking a couple of weeks ago about
Speaker 4: how Anna Navarro just she felt like she couldn't even
Speaker 4: play words with friends. She was constantly so stressed out
Speaker 4: during the Trump administration. She really sad that she's back
Speaker 4: to playing words with friends now, so that's good news.
Speaker 1: But they keep Americans and a Navarro can play for
Speaker 1: words with friends, but.
Speaker 3: It's like it's their crutch.
Speaker 4: It's their crutches, like Donald Trump was horrible, so they
Speaker 4: don't have to talk in substantive terms about the economy.
Speaker 4: They don't understand that it's actually probably less risky for
Speaker 4: them to empathize with people.
Speaker 3: It's a struggling right now.
Speaker 5: That's right, And there's a way you could approach this.
Speaker 1: I don't know that Joe Biden is personally capable of this,
Speaker 1: but there's plenty of evidence out there. Like I said
Speaker 1: that a significant chunk of this pain and this inflation
Speaker 1: is directly because of price gouging and corporate profiteering. So
Speaker 1: when you get a report like this, don't try to
Speaker 1: dismiss it, don't try to underplay it. Don't try to
Speaker 1: convince people that their lives are different than their lives
Speaker 1: actually are. Come out hot with rage at the corporations
Speaker 1: who are jacking up prices, who are making fat profits
Speaker 1: of many of these companies making the biggest profit margins
Speaker 1: they've ever made before. Come out hot and filled with
Speaker 1: righteous anger at those individuals and at those corporations that
Speaker 1: are causing pain for American consumers. And you know what,
Speaker 1: it's not just theater because the reality of it is
Speaker 1: the presidential bully pulpit does still mean something. When Joe
Speaker 1: Biden did a little bit of conversation about meat packing
Speaker 1: plants and the way that they were price gouging, it
Speaker 1: actually had an impact. You could see the way that
Speaker 1: they altered their behavior in real time because they felt
Speaker 1: that scrutiny from a presidential level. And they know, hey,
Speaker 1: this guy's got a lot of power. He could mess
Speaker 1: with us here, you know, from an anti trust perspective.
Speaker 1: In other ways, yeah, and it's bad publicity and so
Speaker 1: and corporations are very like skittish about that sort of scrutiny,
Speaker 1: and so they actually improved what they were doing and
Speaker 1: it had an impact. But instead you see this, you know,
Speaker 1: instinct constantly to gaslight and insists that the problem is
Speaker 1: actually just the media is not explaining to you or.
Speaker 5: Were too dumb to understand, and what the reality of
Speaker 5: the economy is.
Speaker 1: No, the economy is, you know, it's complex for some people. Sure,
Speaker 1: if you're an older person who has a home and
Speaker 1: a lot of savings, you're probably doing okay, even though
Speaker 1: you know for you inflation is a problem too. If
Speaker 1: you're a younger person, you're trying to get a home
Speaker 1: that is wildly out of reach, You've got student debt
Speaker 1: hanging over your head. You've got some real problems here.
Speaker 1: And it's not imaginary, and it's not because you don't
Speaker 1: understand what's going on. Something Sager and I've been talking
Speaker 1: about here is there's this curious inversion and at least
Speaker 1: some of the polling where older Americans who had been
Speaker 1: more consistently Republican, Joe Biden is actually doing a bit
Speaker 1: better with them, and younger Americans he's falling off with now.
Speaker 1: Part of that I think is Israel Gaza, no doubt,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't explain Trump picking up support there. And
Speaker 1: I do think that the difference in the experience of
Speaker 1: the economy for the young versus the older generations is
Speaker 1: a big part of that story of what's going on
Speaker 1: in some of the polling that's come out.
Speaker 4: And my best guess as to why he's not addressing
Speaker 4: the price gouging as much as he could be just
Speaker 4: from your political standpoint, is that it broaches this issue
Speaker 4: of the legislation.
Speaker 3: He's passed the.
Speaker 4: Super high spending and he can defect. But that's what's interesting,
Speaker 4: because he did that in big ribbon cutting ceremonies with
Speaker 4: these bills.
Speaker 3: He's very proud of these bills.
Speaker 4: It's like this is what he wants to run on,
Speaker 4: but he's afraid to talk about them. It's a total
Speaker 4: catch twenty two and it's an unfortunate situation for him
Speaker 4: because he's afraid to talk about to validate that inflation
Speaker 4: is not going down.
Speaker 3: What did he say, dramatically decreased?
Speaker 4: He's afraid to talk about that instead of just coming
Speaker 4: out and saying I passed necessary spending, which I don't
Speaker 4: agree with but he could certainly agree with that. Say,
Speaker 4: I passed necessary spending and then corporations jumped on the
Speaker 4: bandwagon and are trying to take advantage of us trying
Speaker 4: to repair the country. But they don't even want to
Speaker 4: talk about that because they don't want to validate that
Speaker 4: people are really still feeling inflation.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the fact too, that analysis about corporate profiteering
Speaker 1: came from the left just constant. Like anything that left
Speaker 1: says or argues, the mainstream of the Democratic Party feels.
Speaker 5: The need to be against other way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean really, since like the Clinton era, that
Speaker 1: is their natural instinct. That is certainly Joe Biden's natural instinct.
Speaker 1: And there's more indications now there's an interview I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw this recently with Ron Klain, who
Speaker 1: is Biden's original chief of staff, when you were getting
Speaker 1: some more progressive things out of this administration before he left,
Speaker 1: and one of the things he was saying him is,
Speaker 1: like Jesus Biden loves talking about these frickin' bridges, But
Speaker 1: you know what, people aren't like experiencing a bridge at.
Speaker 3: The grocery store.
Speaker 1: They are experiencing their grocery prices being higher than they
Speaker 1: used to be, so we need to focus a bit
Speaker 1: more on that. And he is absolutely he is absolutely correct,
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's a mistake that since Klaan left,
Speaker 1: not that things were perfect when he was there, but
Speaker 1: there's really no affirmative economic agenda whatsoever. It's more of
Speaker 1: just like a hope and a prayer that things are
Speaker 1: getting better and will continue to get better, which you
Speaker 1: know evidence by this report. Hope is not a strategy.
Speaker 1: Let's put this next piece up on the screen from
Speaker 1: Heather Long. I mentioned this before, but I really need
Speaker 1: to do some more digging or we need to get
Speaker 1: an expert on to explain to me what is going
Speaker 1: on here, because this car insurance and car repair spike
Speaker 1: is really wild. She points out over ninety percent of
Speaker 1: US households own a car. Vehicle insurance is up twenty
Speaker 1: two point two percent in the past year. That's the
Speaker 1: largest jump since nineteen seventy six. Vehicle repair is up eleven.
Speaker 5: Point six percent.
Speaker 1: One theory I saw floated Emily, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is you know, this has backing or not,
Speaker 1: but it sounds kind of logical.
Speaker 5: Is during COVID. People were driving a lot less.
Speaker 1: There was a kind of a bonus on car insurance
Speaker 1: came down because it was, you know, less risky car
Speaker 1: insurance ensures. We're having to put out less money because
Speaker 1: people were just driving less. Presumably there's a similar dynamic
Speaker 1: going on with repairs. Because people were driving less, there
Speaker 1: were less auto repairs.
Speaker 5: So now that you have.
Speaker 1: A spike in driving, a spike in auto repair, perhaps
Speaker 1: that's what's driving this huge jump. But that is a
Speaker 1: massive expense for a lot of American households. Ninety percent
Speaker 1: of him, as she points out, own a car. So
Speaker 1: this is really matters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ninety percent of American households own a car. But
Speaker 4: it's always worth remembering actually that journalists are disproportionately clustered
Speaker 4: in New York City and Washington, d C. And listen,
Speaker 4: I didn't have a car for a really long time here,
Speaker 4: so it used public transit. I walked, And that's similar
Speaker 4: to a lot of journalists. So this is a big
Speaker 4: blind spot for the media. It always has been gas prices.
Speaker 4: Some journalists do have cars. Many journalists do have cars,
Speaker 4: but a lot of them actually just don't. Even these
Speaker 4: are not things that even register for them because they're
Speaker 4: taking the subway or they're walking and they're you know,
Speaker 4: I think I think that's why we're sitting here, Crystal
Speaker 4: looking at these huge spikes and being like, wait what,
Speaker 4: Because if there were more media attention paid to this
Speaker 4: over the course of the last couple of years, I
Speaker 4: think we would all have a better understanding of what
Speaker 4: was going on. But it's always been a blind spot
Speaker 4: for the press.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, many of whom want to help
Speaker 1: the Biden administration and don't want to talk about this
Speaker 1: too much and are subject to this same you know,
Speaker 1: shaming over quote unquote disinformation around the economy. So let's
Speaker 1: put this last piece up on the screen from the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Their headline, inflation was hotter than expected
Speaker 1: in March, unwelcome news for the Fed. They dig into
Speaker 1: this prospect I mentioned earlier. You know, there was there's
Speaker 1: all these indicators of like, oh, what does Wall Street
Speaker 1: think that the Fed is going to do? And Wall
Speaker 1: Street was saying there was a decent chance you were
Speaker 1: going to get a rate cut here coming up.
Speaker 5: That is basically off the table.
Speaker 1: Now, you know, it is most likely that rates will
Speaker 1: hold steady. I saw Larry Summers out there for what
Speaker 1: e's worth saying, you know, we have to now expect
Speaker 1: that it's possible we could even see go back to
Speaker 1: rate increases. This has a lot of political implications, although
Speaker 1: it's kind of you know, it's a dual edged sword.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, when you get rate cuts,
Speaker 1: you get you can have a hotter economy. You also
Speaker 1: have lower mortgage interest rates, which come you know, really
Speaker 1: follow very closely what the Fed is doing. So those
Speaker 1: are good things. On the other hand, it can contribute
Speaker 1: to inflation. So that's the argument in favor of the
Speaker 1: continued you know, trajectory or increasing the rates. So you know,
Speaker 1: and if this comes into the fall and the Fed
Speaker 1: is changing rates, that can have also political implication, something
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump is keenly aware of and it's already
Speaker 1: been discussing. So in any case, the fact that this
Speaker 1: inflation report came in hotter than expected, probably changing the
Speaker 1: Fed's plans and definitely taking a rate cut off the
Speaker 1: table for the for now.
Speaker 4: And puncturing the narrative bubble of a lot of experts
Speaker 4: over the last several months. Not sure that will come
Speaker 4: as a surprise to anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, though there was a lot of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we did it soft.
Speaker 5: Landing, and you know, no.
Speaker 3: Mission that were accomplished.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of mission accomplished going on in
Speaker 1: the mainstream discourse, and I think this is a real
Speaker 1: reality check moment for them. At the same time, there
Speaker 1: is an incredible scandal unfolding at the Bureau of Labor
Speaker 1: and Statistics or here eyes glaze over. It has to
Speaker 1: do with non public secret information being released to a
Speaker 1: group of what they described as super users, who of
Speaker 1: course are all on Wall Street in position to make
Speaker 1: millions of dollars based on this non public information. Let's
Speaker 1: go and put this up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: for the New York Times. A lot of other outlets
Speaker 1: reporting on this as well. They say new questions on
Speaker 1: how a key agency shared inflation data.
Speaker 5: I think that's to put.
Speaker 1: It pretty mildly, a government economists had regular contact with
Speaker 1: quote super users in finance record show at a time
Speaker 1: when such information keenly interests investors, keenly interest them. Let
Speaker 1: me go ahead and read a little bit of this
Speaker 1: report for you. So this all started back in February.
Speaker 1: There was an email that was sent to a group
Speaker 1: of users explaining how a methodological tweet could have contributed
Speaker 1: to an unexpected jump in housing costs in the Consumer
Speaker 1: Price Index, and it was addressed to quote super users
Speaker 1: circulated rapidly around Wall Street. Journalists got their hands on
Speaker 1: this and said, wait a second, what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on here?
Speaker 5: Is there some official list of.
Speaker 1: Super users who are being clued in on all of
Speaker 1: this information? And the bls, No, no, no, it's just
Speaker 1: a one off. This is not normal procedure. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. Well, now, we had a Freedom of Information
Speaker 1: Act request that showed that the agency, or at least
Speaker 1: that economist who sent the original email, was in regular
Speaker 1: contact with users in the finance industry. And what you
Speaker 1: can see here is one of those exchangers exchanges where
Speaker 1: a super user said, Hey, would it be possible to
Speaker 1: be on the super user email list? The employee replies, yes,
Speaker 1: I can actually do the list. Reporters' efforts to reach
Speaker 1: the employees identified the Bureau confirmed were unsuccessful. They described
Speaker 1: this individual as a relatively low ranking but long time
Speaker 1: official within the Bureau of Labor Statistics Standard statistics.
Speaker 5: I'm confusing myself. Statistics dahm, right about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So anyway, the fact that you have people in
Speaker 1: finance emailing this person.
Speaker 5: Like, hey, can I get on that cool list?
Speaker 1: Indicates this was not a one off, and they got
Speaker 1: their hands on additional emails, some of which did, in
Speaker 1: fact contain significant non public information. Now this is like
Speaker 1: some really wonky stuff about oh, we're making this methodological
Speaker 1: change and how we can calculate that housing inflation, et cetera.
Speaker 5: But if this is what you do, and.
Speaker 1: You're trading potentially one hundreds of millions of dollars based
Speaker 1: on this information, and what's going to do to the
Speaker 1: markets which you know, by the way, when this inflation
Speaker 1: data came out yesterday, a huge market crash. So if
Speaker 1: you have a heads up that that's the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that's coming, you can imagine the kind of bank
Speaker 1: that you can make off of that. It is an
Speaker 1: extraordinary scandal. And the last thing I'll say here is,
Speaker 1: you know, let me give you a sense of who
Speaker 1: some of the recipients on this were. Apparently the names
Speaker 1: were redacted, but their employers were not, so you're able
Speaker 1: to get a sense of, all, right, well, who are
Speaker 1: these quote unquotes super users. They say that many of
Speaker 1: the recipients appear to have been in house economists at
Speaker 1: large investment banks like Barclay's, Nomora and BNP Paribas. Others
Speaker 1: work for private research firms which sell their analysis to investors.
Speaker 1: Some recipients appear to have been analysts at large hedge
Speaker 1: funds such as Millennium Capital Partners.
Speaker 5: Revan Howard, I don't know who these.
Speaker 1: People are in Citadel, which trade directly on their research,
Speaker 1: and at least one case, emails to super users appear
Speaker 1: to shared methodological details that were.
Speaker 5: Not yet public. So it's exactly who you expect.
Speaker 1: It's these in house economists, it's people at these firms
Speaker 1: that sell their research so other rich people can benefit
Speaker 1: from this inside information, and it's firms that can directly
Speaker 1: trade on this research as well.
Speaker 5: So it's it's.
Speaker 1: Honestly, it's pretty extraordinary, and frankly, based on the details
Speaker 1: that came out here, you know, the agency is not
Speaker 1: really commenting at this point, but this supposedly low level
Speaker 1: employee seems to have copied, you know, a large distribution
Speaker 1: list within the BLS. So the suggestion is he certainly
Speaker 1: didn't think he was doing anything wrong. And is very
Speaker 1: likely this was sort of you know, accepted or even
Speaker 1: authorized and directed from higher level officials who you know,
Speaker 1: likely knew what was going on. I seriously, I seriously
Speaker 1: doubt it was just one employee freelancing on this thing.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, And a couple of points.
Speaker 4: One The New York Times actually broke a lot of
Speaker 4: the story open because of Foya. They filed Foyer requests.
Speaker 4: I got this like vast scope of what had been
Speaker 4: going on. And all you need to know basically is
Speaker 4: that in the Time story, it says one of the
Speaker 4: BLS employees, and this is the Times rights. The BLS
Speaker 4: had announced the change in a news release in early January,
Speaker 4: but did not publish details about it on its website
Speaker 4: until mid February, two weeks after the email from the employee.
Speaker 4: One of the BLS employees said quote, it wasn't appropriate
Speaker 4: to be sharing information that.
Speaker 3: Wasn't public and hadn't been fully vetted.
Speaker 4: So if the BLS is saying that it wasn't and
Speaker 4: was not appropriate to be sharing that information, just internalize
Speaker 4: that for a moment, because that tells you what you
Speaker 4: need to know. The BLS says this is not appropriate.
Speaker 4: There you go right, it's a high stakes not I
Speaker 4: shouldn't say error because it doesn't sound like it was
Speaker 4: an error. It sounds like it was systematic, so not
Speaker 4: appropriate and on that scale. And those are the two
Speaker 4: big takeaways I think from the story that I would
Speaker 4: hope continues to reverberate, because there's a lot more to
Speaker 4: know about exactly who was benefiting.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised this isn't a bigger story, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, because it also raises a lot of questions
Speaker 1: about like, Okay, well, if this was just what they
Speaker 1: were doing at BLAT, what other kind of non public
Speaker 1: information is Wall Street and their wealthy clients?
Speaker 5: What are they benefiting from?
Speaker 1: You know, it contributes obviously to not only the sense
Speaker 1: but the reality that there's one game being played among
Speaker 1: the wealthy and another one being played among everyone else.
Speaker 1: Just to give you a sense of the tone of
Speaker 1: these emails, that one that I mentioned and that you
Speaker 1: know definitely contain non public information, they say. On January
Speaker 1: thirty one, this employee send an email to his super
Speaker 1: users describing coming changes to the way the agency calculates
Speaker 1: use car prices. At the time, a crucial issue for
Speaker 1: inflation watchers The email included a three page document providing
Speaker 1: detailed answers to questions about the change and a spreadsheet
Speaker 1: showing how they would affect calculations. Quote, thank you all
Speaker 1: for your very difficult, challenging, and thoughtful questions, the email said,
Speaker 1: it is your questions that help us flesh out all
Speaker 1: the potential problems. So do you really think this employee
Speaker 1: was just on his own or her own freelancing? And
Speaker 1: compiling this three page document with the you know frequently
Speaker 1: asked questions and a spreadsheet showing how they affect calculations
Speaker 1: and telling these super users, Hey, thank you. We're taking
Speaker 1: in your input. We really appreciate it. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You really think this person was just freelancing? It's going
Speaker 1: to be interesting to see how this agency handles this situation.
Speaker 1: If they just escape this scapegoat this one employees, Ah,
Speaker 1: he was just he or she was just freelancing, We
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. Or if there are
Speaker 1: larger recriminations and we really come to understand how widespread
Speaker 1: this communication was and whether this was the only instance,
Speaker 1: you know, this particular list of super users in this
Speaker 1: type of information, or if there's way more sharing of
Speaker 1: inside information than we have an understanding of at this point.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely.
Speaker 4: And the other thing at the end of the story
Speaker 4: that is noted is they say, you know, the after
Speaker 4: years of remaining loan stable, inflation started to take off
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one and it has remained a major
Speaker 4: newstry ever since because it influences federal reserve policy. Is
Speaker 4: a major driver of market training. Well, yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 4: And on top of that, I think you put it
Speaker 4: really well in the beginning of this segment, Crystal, where
Speaker 4: you talked about the potential scale of this. It's not
Speaker 4: just one person talking to you know, ten different people
Speaker 4: sharing a document with ten different people. It is then
Speaker 4: the decision that those ten different people make at all
Speaker 4: of their places, and it just can have a ripple
Speaker 4: effect throughout literally the entire economy. As that paragraph highlights,
Speaker 4: it is a major driver of market trading. So you
Speaker 4: have this employee engaging in long back and forth one
Speaker 4: on one. He says, I can't share some of this data.
Speaker 4: But that's not a benefit that everyone gets obviously, So
Speaker 4: it's a I agree with you, this should be a
Speaker 4: much bigger story.
Speaker 1: So the economy a big problem for Joe Biden. But
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has some problems of his own.
Speaker 4: Emily, Donald Trump, you will be shocked to learn, has
Speaker 4: some problems of his own. Now, Donald Trump was in
Speaker 4: Atlanta yesterday. He bought some thirty milk chicks for people
Speaker 4: at a Chick fil A?
Speaker 3: Did you see that?
Speaker 5: I did see that. Do we know flavors? Do we
Speaker 5: have any any intel there?
Speaker 4: Not that I'm aware of, but will certainly update everyone.
Speaker 1: The obvious choice, go to choice at Chick fil A.
Speaker 3: The frosted lemonade Chick fil A is incredible.
Speaker 5: Die I'm a fan of the diet frosted lemonade.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes it is.
Speaker 5: Do you people still get canceled on the left for
Speaker 5: going to Chick fil A?
Speaker 3: By the way, I was gonna sy I think you might.
Speaker 5: Die. Frost the lemonade is amazing.
Speaker 3: There you go, cancel Crystal hashtay. Let's get it trending.
Speaker 4: But dontap was in Atlanta yesterday and he was doing
Speaker 4: some back and forth with reporters actually after he had
Speaker 4: touched down in Atlanta, And so let's actually just roll
Speaker 4: this clip of Donald Trump talking about the Arizona Supreme
Speaker 4: Court abortion ruling that thrust their abortion law basically an
Speaker 4: entire state of Arizona back to eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 3: And I covered this yesterday, but you didn't mishear me.
Speaker 4: Eighteen sixty four is where the Arizona Supreme Court said
Speaker 4: the law now stands with the abortion basically the abortion
Speaker 4: policy that when Arizona was a territory passed in eighteen
Speaker 4: sixty four. Everyone's pretty familiar with the story by now.
Speaker 4: But likely that'll be overturned in November. Not overturned, I
Speaker 4: shouldn't say that sounds like a legal term, but the
Speaker 4: people of Arizona will likely overturn that November. There's a
Speaker 4: bale initiative underway right now to enshrine abortion rights into
Speaker 4: the constitution. So Trump was asked about it. Here's what
Speaker 4: he had to say.
Speaker 6: Arizona go too hard.
Speaker 10: And Arizona go too more.
Speaker 11: Yeah, they did, and that'll be straightened out.
Speaker 10: And as you know, it's all about the states rights.
Speaker 10: I'll be straightened out.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure that the governor and everybody else are
Speaker 3: going to bring it back into.
Speaker 11: Reason and that'll be taking care of I think very quickly.
Speaker 10: What do you think about Florida? Fort Hard is probably
Speaker 10: maybe going to change. Also, see it's all of what
Speaker 10: it's the will of the people. This is what I've
Speaker 10: been saying. It's a perfect system.
Speaker 4: So for fifty two years people have wanted to end
Speaker 4: road me a way to get it back to the states.
Speaker 10: We did that.
Speaker 3: It was an incredible thing, an incredible achievement.
Speaker 4: We did that, and now the states have it, and
Speaker 4: the states are putting out what they want.
Speaker 10: It's the will of the people.
Speaker 12: So Florida is probably going to change, Arizona's going to
Speaker 12: definitely change.
Speaker 10: Everybody wants that to happen.
Speaker 3: And you're getting the will.
Speaker 13: Of the people.
Speaker 10: It's been pretty amazing.
Speaker 5: It's pretty amazing, he said, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 4: He said it's the perfect system, which I think some
Speaker 4: people in California would disagree with because they're basically ruled
Speaker 4: by referendum. If the people has some interesting effects in California.
Speaker 4: But that's his line and he's sticking with it. It's
Speaker 4: actually funny because he said on Monday, you put out
Speaker 4: a big statement that had a huge ripple effect throughout
Speaker 4: the conservative movement into abortion movement, saying this all needs
Speaker 4: to be left to the states. Essentially after the fall
Speaker 4: of Row, you know, Trump basically is like, I gave
Speaker 4: you guys the end of row, so we're just going
Speaker 4: to kick it back to the states now. And so
Speaker 4: he actually this Arizona ruling gave him an opportunity to
Speaker 4: try out that campaign strategy, that messaging strategy, and he's
Speaker 4: sticking with it.
Speaker 3: Crystal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean this was very inconvenient for him
Speaker 1: and for all Republicans, frankly, but especially for him because,
Speaker 1: like you said, he just did this whole thing of like,
Speaker 1: all is this beautiful democracy, will the people's states rights?
Speaker 1: And then Arizona's like, how about in our state we
Speaker 1: ban it completely in a way that would be acceptable
Speaker 1: to about five percent of the population who hold this position.
Speaker 5: So his whole leave it up.
Speaker 1: To the states thing kind of immediately undermined by the
Speaker 1: reality of this decision in Arizona. You know, I also
Speaker 1: think listen, he's he realizes abortion is a big problem. Yes,
Speaker 1: very clearly. Absolutely. I don't think there's really anything he
Speaker 1: can do about it, though, no matter where he tries
Speaker 1: to message himself, for what words he put, whatever he does,
Speaker 1: because the bottom line is he's responsible for Roe versus
Speaker 1: Wad being overturned. That's the bottom line, he's celebrated. Even
Speaker 1: in those comments, he was celebrating that, so you know
Speaker 1: his latest effort here can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: From CNN, he was asked, I think in that shame exchange,
Speaker 1: would he sign a federal abortion ban?
Speaker 5: He said, no, we don't have any more details about.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, what if it was fifteen weeks, whatever, it
Speaker 1: was six weeks or is it just if it's.
Speaker 5: A blanket abortion ban, would he not sign it?
Speaker 1: There's also other questions, Emily, as you know, probably better
Speaker 1: than I do, some of the people who would potentially
Speaker 1: be involved in this administration, they're looking at the Compstack
Speaker 1: Act and enforcing that, which would be a de facto
Speaker 1: abortion ban without actually having anything having to be signed
Speaker 1: or passed through Congress.
Speaker 5: So what about that? So it doesn't really answer.
Speaker 1: A lot of questions about the sort of these sort
Speaker 1: of like nuanced in details, but it does show you
Speaker 1: politically he's trying to run as far away from this
Speaker 1: as he possibly can. But again, I mean, the Biden
Speaker 1: administration has already the Biden campaign has already put out
Speaker 1: a very powerful and emotional ad that Zager and I
Speaker 1: played on Tuesday on this issue. Trump has continued to
Speaker 1: you know, celebrate the fact that he was the guy
Speaker 1: that got Roe versus Wade overturned and frankly, you know,
Speaker 1: his whole leave it up to the states thing. It
Speaker 1: really smacks of political opportunism and pandering because it's not
Speaker 1: a moral position. Like if you actually are pro life,
Speaker 1: and you you genuinely are, and you think abortion is murder,
Speaker 1: you're not going to be like, oh, but it's cool
Speaker 1: if it happens in California.
Speaker 4: Like Californians decide, right, Yeah, No, it doesn't make a
Speaker 4: lot of sense. Although so I heard Nancy Mace I
Speaker 4: talked about this yesterday on NPR kind of going with
Speaker 4: the strategy in these conversations with MPR and talking about
Speaker 4: how most Americans find themselves at this point of agreement
Speaker 4: in the second trimester.
Speaker 3: So most Americans are.
Speaker 4: Not on board with the full Democratic policy prescription, which
Speaker 4: is basically like row allowed for states to make their
Speaker 4: own decisions about what happened in the third trimester. And
Speaker 4: Nancy Mace and a lot of Republicans have said the
Speaker 4: best way for the GOPED a message the abortion issue
Speaker 4: is to talk about that and then talk about you know,
Speaker 4: sort of kicking it to the states after we find
Speaker 4: that point of consensus. People have tried the fifteen week
Speaker 4: strategy that was Lindsay Graham's big idea. People have tried
Speaker 4: all of these different ways of talking about it since Roe,
Speaker 4: and nothing is working.
Speaker 3: Nothing is working.
Speaker 4: So that's where Trump came out and tried to going
Speaker 4: into the summer, neutralize the question of abortion by saying,
Speaker 4: this is my position, it's now up to the people.
Speaker 4: Interestingly enough, the Arizona Supreme Court had a similar point.
Speaker 4: They said this should be decided not by the court,
Speaker 4: but by the legislature and the people of Arizona, which
Speaker 4: is why they allowed the eighteen sixty fourth thing to
Speaker 4: go into effect. And the people of Arizona are going
Speaker 4: to make a decision. And it's not necessarily ironic, but
Speaker 4: that being on the ballot in November. Good luck to
Speaker 4: carry Lake and Donald Trump in November.
Speaker 3: If that's on the.
Speaker 4: Ballot in Arizona, it could be on the ballot in
Speaker 4: a lot of other states too, and some of which
Speaker 4: are swing states.
Speaker 5: It's all about in Florida as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder what you make of that, because listen,
Speaker 1: on the one handed, Florida's trend to the right seems
Speaker 1: pretty clear.
Speaker 5: How much does Santus want to buy, like sixteen points
Speaker 5: or something.
Speaker 1: I think Trump wanted by four if memory serves thereabouts,
Speaker 1: which is not like a crazy margin. It's not a
Speaker 1: massive mart And especially if you believe the polling, which
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I do or not, but if
Speaker 1: you believe the polling that shows Joe Biden actually doing
Speaker 1: pretty well among older residents. Florida famously in Arizona two
Speaker 1: has a lot of older residents. It's I'm not saying
Speaker 1: Florida will be in play, but it's.
Speaker 5: Not crazy to me at this point.
Speaker 1: Since you have the abortion ballat initiative, you have a
Speaker 1: weed ballad initiative, you have you know, this older population
Speaker 1: which seems to be more friendly to Joe Biden than
Speaker 1: any other, you know, age demographic group that Florida could
Speaker 1: possibly be put back in play really kind of solely.
Speaker 5: Based on this one issue. It's also wild.
Speaker 1: I know you and Ryan did a great job covering
Speaker 1: this yesterday, but watching Republicans like Kerry Lake, who previously
Speaker 1: all is a great, great law that's on the books.
Speaker 1: We already got a great law in the books talking
Speaker 1: about this eighteen sixty four thing. And then when the
Speaker 1: court actually rules the way she claimed she wanted them
Speaker 1: to rule, she's running away as far and as fast
Speaker 1: as she possibly can. And you know, it was one
Speaker 1: thing when this was all hypothetical, Yeah, exactly. It was
Speaker 1: one thing when you could talk about fetal personhood and
Speaker 1: heartbeat bills and whatever, when you weren't having court saying okay, well,
Speaker 1: if that's the law, then there's no IVF anymore. It
Speaker 1: was one thing when it was theoretical. Now that it's
Speaker 1: very real, and public opinion has really shifted. And we
Speaker 1: covered this together that since Roe versus Weight was overturned,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like there was one shift and that was it.
Speaker 1: People have continued to move to the pro choice position,
Speaker 1: breaking what has been a multi decades long fifty to fifty.
Speaker 5: Split on the issue.
Speaker 1: And I just don't think that there is really any
Speaker 1: messaging fixed for this because there's a big.
Speaker 5: Reality problem right now.
Speaker 1: And I know that the advice that the RNC gives
Speaker 1: and Nancy Mace was talking about, Donald Trump has tried
Speaker 1: to use as well as like, okay, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the third trimester, because that's where Democrats are on the
Speaker 1: shakiest ground. That made a lot of sense when Roe
Speaker 1: was in place, because all of the battleground over abortion
Speaker 1: legislation was about the third trimester, because that was you know,
Speaker 1: that was effectively what Roe determined.
Speaker 5: Well, that's not the battleground anymore.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 1: The battleground is over these near complete bands. It's over
Speaker 1: things like IVF even stem cells, things like that being
Speaker 1: put back on the table in this real flashback to
Speaker 1: the early two thousands kind of debate. And I think
Speaker 1: the best Republicans can hope for is that this kind
Speaker 1: of you know, fades into the background that people are
Speaker 1: talking about it as much. But as long as you
Speaker 1: have these ballot initiatives and you have continued court decisions
Speaker 1: like what just happened in Arizona, good luck with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's going to have to be a massive
Speaker 4: shift in public opinion and the cultural sort of position
Speaker 4: on abortion if Republicans want to push the issue forward
Speaker 4: without losing and suffering massive losses.
Speaker 3: Biden knows this.
Speaker 4: So Biden was also asked about the Arizona ruling yesterday
Speaker 4: at the White House.
Speaker 3: Let's rule this, this is B three on.
Speaker 10: The issue of abortion service factory. What do you say
Speaker 10: to the people of Arizona.
Speaker 6: Right now, we're witnessing a law going place that dates
Speaker 6: back to the Civil warrior.
Speaker 7: Elect me, I'm in the twenty twentieth century, twenty first century.
Speaker 7: Not back then you weren't even a state. I find
Speaker 7: thank you all very much.
Speaker 10: So.
Speaker 4: The senns you're hearing, the dulcet tones of White House
Speaker 4: reporters shouting at the top of their lungs is at
Speaker 4: Joe Biden as he leaves the podium and.
Speaker 5: Beautifully slowly shuffles away.
Speaker 4: We may have an entry for best bidens, questionably of
Speaker 4: all time there when he said, elect me, I'm in
Speaker 4: the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: I guess that's incredible.
Speaker 1: Better than the nineteenth century, which is but the Republicans
Speaker 1: are in that is the kind of choice that we're
Speaker 1: faced with in this election. But didn't exactly stick the
Speaker 1: landing there. But obviously I mean the fact that it's
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four law.
Speaker 5: Yes, it is very it is very potent.
Speaker 1: And I'm reminded very much of the ad that was
Speaker 1: run in the Kentucky governor's race a young woman who
Speaker 1: was raped to saying, listen, Daniel Cameron, the Republican if
Speaker 1: he's governor, I'd be forced to carry my I think
Speaker 1: it was her stepfather who raped hers baby to term.
Speaker 1: This was incredibly potent in that race, which you know,
Speaker 1: really shifted towards Andy Basheer, the Democrat it was able
Speaker 1: to get reelected, wasn't really even close at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, and Kentucky much more conservative on this
Speaker 1: issue than the majority of the country. You know, it
Speaker 1: was wild for me, having lived in Kentucky previously and
Speaker 1: being like a little bit obsessed with their politics to
Speaker 1: see because Democrats have been getting killed in Kentucky for
Speaker 1: years now on abortion. You know, this used to be
Speaker 1: a solid Democratic state for years and years and years.
Speaker 1: Was one of the last to sort of realign with
Speaker 1: the Southern realignment. Appalachia, West Virginia, Kentucky where like the
Speaker 1: last two states to really realign there and still at
Speaker 1: the state level elect Democrats, as you can see with
Speaker 1: with Andy Basheer, But it was cultural issues that killed
Speaker 1: Democrats in that state. So to see like this the
Speaker 1: way the script flipped and suddenly it was Democrats who
Speaker 1: were wanting to talk about abortion. Previously, Republicans were running
Speaker 1: all their ads on abortion this was the thing they
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the most, and to have that
Speaker 1: flip on a dime. The Republicans are trying to avoid
Speaker 1: the issue as much as possible, Democrats are trying to
Speaker 1: run on the issue as much as possible and winning on.
Speaker 5: Abortion in the state of Kentucky. That was wild to me.
Speaker 1: And obviously, you know, there are tons of extremely just
Speaker 1: heart wrenching, emotional stories out there that are all the
Speaker 1: result of Row versus Way being overturned. And you can
Speaker 1: bet you know Joe Biden's got a lot of other issues,
Speaker 1: this is the.
Speaker 5: One area where the more.
Speaker 1: This is being talked about, no matter how Republicans try
Speaker 1: to message, the stronger the Biden campaign's hand is here.
Speaker 1: I mean, I sort of feel like it's sort of
Speaker 1: the reverse of immigration. Is that issue for Republicans, which
Speaker 1: no matter what Joe Biden says, as much as he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just like them, I'm just as you know, crol
Speaker 1: and hardlism.
Speaker 5: I want to do what Trump wants to do.
Speaker 1: It's a bad issue for them and there's really nothing
Speaker 1: they can do about it at this point without really
Speaker 1: shifting the cultural narrative about it, and the media narrative
Speaker 1: about it in all of those things in ways that
Speaker 1: I personally support. But the more you're talking about that issue,
Speaker 1: the more you're basically in quicksand for the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: at this point, it's the same for Republicans. The best
Speaker 1: they can do is just hope that it's not a
Speaker 1: big topic a conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, there's really nothing they can do. I agree
Speaker 3: with that completely.
Speaker 4: And there's been a flurry of stories just in the
Speaker 4: last couple of days about both the Trump campaign and
Speaker 4: the Biden campaign, because again, we're heading into summer now,
Speaker 4: we're heading into convention season. The parties are both I know,
Speaker 4: it's insane, both very busy planning for a summer of campaigning.
Speaker 4: And I'm actually really excited to put this next element
Speaker 4: up on the screen. This is before it really is hilarious, Crystal.
Speaker 3: There's a two different stories here.
Speaker 4: One is an Associated Press report on the Trump campaign
Speaker 4: and the Biden campaign, and some people were looking at
Speaker 4: it and saying, these are huge takeaways. Less than five
Speaker 4: staffers in each battleground state for Trump, they can't afford
Speaker 4: to hire staff until the summer, and GP staffers are
Speaker 4: trashing the twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, over at.
Speaker 4: Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman tweeted his own story out where
Speaker 4: he said, for the May issue, I report on Trump's
Speaker 4: weirdly competent and savvy twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and inside the terrifyingly competent Trump twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 4: So it's unclear as to whether Trump is just extremely
Speaker 4: competent or so competent he's incompetent.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just don't know what to make of it.
Speaker 1: Actually, do you have any insights into what is reality here?
Speaker 1: Because as I was reading the piece that said, okay,
Speaker 1: they only have, it is kind of wild that you're
Speaker 1: this close to the conventions and everything ramping up, you
Speaker 1: only have like five staffers in battleground states. Meanwhile, they
Speaker 1: contrast the Biden ministry, the Biden campaign is doing a
Speaker 1: much more you know, traditional Okay.
Speaker 5: We've got our offices open, we've.
Speaker 1: Got our big staff on the ground, We're ready to
Speaker 1: do our mail and balloting push and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, when they ran in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign spent way too much money early and
Speaker 1: then they were screwed down the stretch.
Speaker 5: I think in Georgia.
Speaker 1: They only they spent a tiny amount of money on
Speaker 1: advertising because they just didn't have it. What's his name,
Speaker 1: Brad Parscal's not his name. He was really sort of
Speaker 1: thrown under the bus for spending wildly and you know,
Speaker 1: putting the campaign in really dire streets from a funding perspective,
Speaker 1: on the way, you know, on the way down the
Speaker 1: stretch post labor days. So I'm wondering if there wasn't
Speaker 1: a lesson learned from that of like, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna harbor our resources, make sure that we've got everything
Speaker 1: we can. And then there is a reality of a
Speaker 1: lot of his money has gone to legal bills. You know,
Speaker 1: it's also hampered some of his ability to campaign because
Speaker 1: he's got all these trial dates and court appearances that
Speaker 1: he has to make as well. So strangely and surprisingly,
Speaker 1: Biden is actually out campaigning more than Donald Trump, which
Speaker 1: is certainly not something that I would have predicted.
Speaker 5: So I'm not one hundred percent what to sure what
Speaker 5: to make of this.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, I also think field programs, sorry,
Speaker 1: field people out there, are overrated. They don't do all that,
Speaker 1: especially in a presidential campaign where everybody already knows who
Speaker 1: the candidates are, they've got their opinions formed, etc.
Speaker 5: On the other hand, I do.
Speaker 1: Think that the mail in ballot initiatives and early voting
Speaker 1: initiatives that Democrats used in twenty twenty were so significant
Speaker 1: as compared to the non existent Republican efforts, and like
Speaker 1: anti Republican efforts, like the fact that they were opposed to.
Speaker 5: Mail in balloting.
Speaker 1: I actually think that factor alone was the game changer.
Speaker 1: So it kind of depends for me on how I
Speaker 1: look at this, whether this is actually consequential or not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I misspoked this as an NBC story. There's another
Speaker 4: AP story we're about to talk about. But in this
Speaker 4: NBC news story, there's a source quoted saying this is
Speaker 4: like comparing a Maserati to a Honda twenty twenty head
Speaker 4: staff and the bodies in place to turn out the vote.
Speaker 4: This current iteration is starting from ground zero and we're
Speaker 4: seven months out from the election. Meanwhile, the Gabriel Sherman
Speaker 4: piece in Vanity Fair is talking about how Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is surrounding himself with ultra loyalists. Now he's sort of
Speaker 4: learned the lesson of twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. By
Speaker 4: the way, twenty sixteen is a great example of your
Speaker 4: point about field operations. Asked Hillary Clinton, how that sort
Speaker 4: of traditional competence stump for her?
Speaker 3: I guess she's won the popular vote, but that's you know,
Speaker 3: you're see one president.
Speaker 4: Well, you know she's the rightful president if it weren't
Speaker 4: from leadmir Putiny. So anyway, all that is to say,
Speaker 4: this is a jexposition of a couple different things. On
Speaker 4: the one hand, you have a campaign that may be
Speaker 4: struggling to a wreck to that kind of infrastructure.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, you have.
Speaker 4: A campaign that is at least getting Gabe Sherman to
Speaker 4: believe it's so competent, because shockingly competent in fact, because
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is, it's not leaking. So like they would
Speaker 4: point to the crazies, like I shouldn't even say crazy
Speaker 4: so much as like the eccentric people that.
Speaker 3: Were in his first campaigns.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and just said they leaked all the time, and
Speaker 4: Trump would pit them against each other in ways that
Speaker 4: intentionally sewed chaos, and that in and of itself was
Speaker 4: a huge distraction. But now he's just laser focused on
Speaker 4: the job at hand. Doesn't matter though to your point, Crystal,
Speaker 4: if you also have to pay huge legal bills that
Speaker 4: are going to take away, no matter what, from his
Speaker 4: ability to campaign on the ground. That's why he's not
Speaker 4: doing so many rallies because they're stupid expensive.
Speaker 3: So there are real challenges for him.
Speaker 4: Being around the country in different courtrooms is going to
Speaker 4: be a real challenge for him.
Speaker 3: So it's a couple of different things.
Speaker 4: On the one hand, I do think he learned his
Speaker 4: lesson of you know, you really need to have He
Speaker 4: installed loyalists at the RNC, for example, like ousted Ron
Speaker 4: and McDaniel.
Speaker 3: Here's the AP story. This is the next element.
Speaker 4: As Biden tours the country and visits Swing states, their
Speaker 4: headline says Trump is fundraising and playing golf. You know,
Speaker 4: it's still Biden is really out there in a way
Speaker 4: that I find surprising. They're doing these really carefully, really
Speaker 4: carefully stage managed.
Speaker 3: Events, and.
Speaker 4: It's based what they can do at this point. But
Speaker 4: I'm sure Trump would be doing that if he could.
Speaker 1: I think they feel like they have to to try
Speaker 1: to combat the you know, Biden's too old sense and Trump, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I think, probably feels like my people are with me,
Speaker 1: like and I got other stuff going on, and I
Speaker 1: need to be raised of money because they are significantly behind.
Speaker 1: Even with this huge fifty million dollar fundraising event that
Speaker 1: they just had, they're still significantly behind where the Democrats are.
Speaker 1: And as mentioned before, some of that is bled out
Speaker 1: through legal bills as well.
Speaker 5: So the problems for him are real.
Speaker 1: You know, the two dueling narratives there, Both of them
Speaker 1: serve a sort of like useful liberal narrative. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, the Gabe Sherman one, the terrifyingly competent, Like
Speaker 1: even that language that's like the biggest Democratic or left
Speaker 1: of center or anti Trump fear is oh shit, last
Speaker 1: time we got lucky because he was incompetent. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the worst of what he wanted to do, like stop
Speaker 1: the steal. I mean, it is true, he wanted to
Speaker 1: steal the election, and he was basically too incompetent to
Speaker 1: actually get it done.
Speaker 3: And he wasn't surrounded by yes men.
Speaker 1: And that's right, he didn't have all his loyalists in place.
Speaker 1: So now this time around, he's got his ducks in
Speaker 1: a row, he's got all his loyalists in place, he's
Speaker 1: got a plan. It's going to be different, and the
Speaker 1: most terrifying version of Trump is going to occupy the
Speaker 1: White House. So that narrative is served by the Gabe
Speaker 1: Sherman piece, you know, the other piece of just like haha,
Speaker 1: will laugh at how this is like bumbling and or
Speaker 1: they don't even have staffers. They're on money, like he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's on the ropes, et cetera. Obviously serves
Speaker 1: a different, useful liberal narrative where the truth lies. It's
Speaker 1: very hard for me to discern from the outside, but
Speaker 1: you know, I think we have enough data points at
Speaker 1: this at this juncture to say it does look like
Speaker 1: Trump is taking on a little bit of water and
Speaker 1: that he isn't doing as well as he once was
Speaker 1: in the polls.
Speaker 5: One indication of this, for what.
Speaker 1: It's worth, is the predicted odds now actually have Joe
Speaker 1: Biden favored over Trump. We can put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen, So Biden is at just looking this morning,
Speaker 1: fifty two cents.
Speaker 5: Trump is at forty six cents.
Speaker 1: So, you know, for again, for what it's worth, the
Speaker 1: people who are trying to bet based on the outcome
Speaker 1: of this election, now there's slightly favoring Joe Biden. We've
Speaker 1: had a number of polls that have shifted in his direction,
Speaker 1: though it's still very much is a jump ball. And
Speaker 1: part of why maybe Trump is maybe taking on a
Speaker 1: little bit of water he can put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen is his legal troubles. You know, this is
Speaker 1: the latest headline. His former close executive Alan Weislerberg, who
Speaker 1: really was like his right hand man in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, was just sentenced to five months in jail
Speaker 1: for lying basically lying on behalf of Donald Trump right,
Speaker 1: which is no one should go to Rikers. That's a
Speaker 1: whole other story. But part of what he was I
Speaker 1: think he pled guilty to here and took this deal,
Speaker 1: was lying about the size of Trump's the pet condo,
Speaker 1: the penthouse, which is central to Letitia James civil fraud
Speaker 1: suit against Trump in New York. So the fact that
Speaker 1: all these stories Trump's criminal trial on the Stormy Daniels
Speaker 1: hush money thing, I think is set to start next week.
Speaker 5: It's happening.
Speaker 1: They're still trying to delay it, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: but that looks like it's going to start imminently. All
Speaker 1: of these stories are in the headlines more and more
Speaker 1: as legal action ramps up, and maybe that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why possibly he is taking on a little
Speaker 1: bit of water here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Michael Cohene claims Weisselberg has a lot of knowledge
Speaker 4: of what happened in the hush money case, and jury's
Speaker 4: selection for that is set to start next week. I
Speaker 4: think it's yet to be determined what a fact these
Speaker 4: legal battles have on Donald Trump as we get closer
Speaker 4: and closer to the election, how voters react to it.
Speaker 3: But you know, we were talking about this earlier in
Speaker 3: the show, Crystal.
Speaker 4: I know for sure one thing that likely won't be
Speaker 4: the most effective for the Biden campaign is just leaning
Speaker 4: on the Trump is insane crutch over and over again
Speaker 4: when inflation is where it is.
Speaker 1: Maybe, although it worked pretty well them in the midterms,
Speaker 1: I would have said that too true. But it did
Speaker 1: work pretty well for them in the midterms, and you
Speaker 1: know the.
Speaker 3: But with the whole country, I mean in a presidential.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. I genuinely I really don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, I think abortion is way more potent than
Speaker 1: I expected it to be. People didn't vote on the
Speaker 1: economy in the way that I expected them to in
Speaker 1: the midterms, where Democrats really outperformed. We've had all of
Speaker 1: these special elections that have gone to Democrats, and it
Speaker 1: could be the case that when you have a general
Speaker 1: election and you have a much wider electorate, that some
Speaker 1: of those trends are less significant. But I genuinely don't
Speaker 1: know at this point, which is why oftentimes I feel
Speaker 1: like when we cover politics and the show, we'll do
Speaker 1: one block that's like inflation is really bad for biding,
Speaker 1: and the next one's like an abortion and really good drum,
Speaker 1: and I really bad for Trumps.
Speaker 5: So I don't know. That's where I am. I just
Speaker 5: genuinely don't know.
Speaker 1: One thing I do know, though, is I am not
Speaker 1: gonna be sending lunchibules in my kids lunchboxes anymore. So
Speaker 1: consumer reports out with some new information about lunchables, the
Speaker 1: popular item packed in many school lunchboxes, including plenty of
Speaker 1: times in my kids school lunchboxes.
Speaker 5: Now I feel like a terrible mother.
Speaker 1: But also, and this is very notable, was recently approved
Speaker 1: to be included in cafeteria lunches. So kids are also
Speaker 1: you know, getting these as school lunch and their schools
Speaker 1: in many schools across the nation. Let's put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen with the details. So the headline here
Speaker 1: is should you pack lunchables for your kids' school lunch?
Speaker 1: The answer effectively is a resounding no. CRS tests found
Speaker 1: the lunch kits and some similar ones from Armor, oscar
Speaker 1: Meyer and others contained lead and other contaminants and were
Speaker 1: high in sodium. Let me read you a little bit
Speaker 1: of this report. So here are the findings.
Speaker 5: They say.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to be concerned about in these kids,
Speaker 1: says Amykating, a registered dietitian at Consumer Reports. They're highly
Speaker 1: processed and regularly eating process meat I mean ingredient many
Speaker 1: of these products has been linked to increased risk of
Speaker 1: some cancers. We also found that some kids had potentially
Speaker 1: concerning heavy metal and how do you say this?
Speaker 5: They late theay late levels.
Speaker 1: And they're too high in sodium, especially for kids. Do
Speaker 1: you think the school lunch versions might be better? Sorry,
Speaker 1: they have even more sodium than the store pot versions.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, we don't think anybody should regularly eat these products,
Speaker 1: and they definitely shouldn't be considered a healthy school lunch,
Speaker 1: says Eric Boring, PhD, a Consumer Reports chemist who led
Speaker 1: CRS testing. Let me just read you a little bit
Speaker 1: more here about the lead and cadmium piece, which to
Speaker 1: me was in some ways the most concerning. They say,
Speaker 1: Our experts found lead cadmium are both in all of
Speaker 1: the kits that they tested, even in small amounts. Obviously,
Speaker 1: these heavy metals can cause developmental problems in children. None
Speaker 1: of the kids we looked at exceeded any legal or
Speaker 1: regulatory limits. Still, five of the twelve tested products would
Speaker 1: expose someone to fifty percent or more of California's max
Speaker 1: allowable dose level for lead or cadmium. Our experts use
Speaker 1: those values because there are no federal limits for heavy
Speaker 1: metals in most foods. That is a relatively high dose
Speaker 1: of heavy metals given these small serving sizes of the products,
Speaker 1: which range from just two to four ounces. Their analyst says,
Speaker 1: for example, the kids provide only about fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundred daily calories that a typical eight year
Speaker 1: old requires, but that small amount of food puts them
Speaker 1: fairly close to the daily maximum limit for lead. Even
Speaker 1: if one meal kit doesn't push a kid over the limit,
Speaker 1: it puts them in the danger zone because there will
Speaker 1: likely be exposure from other sources. So if a child
Speaker 1: gets more than half of the daily limit for lead
Speaker 1: from so few calories, there is little room for potential
Speaker 1: exposure from other foods, drinking water, or the environment.
Speaker 4: Emily, it's really I mean, I shouldn't say it's a
Speaker 4: shocking report, but it's shocking in the respect that we
Speaker 4: our food safety standards are so completely distorted. And one
Speaker 4: of the reasons for that is just actually even in
Speaker 4: the company that oversees launchroples in their name, which is
Speaker 4: Craft High Craft Hines. These are very powerful companies in Washington,
Speaker 4: d C. Obviously, Hines is the family that John carry
Speaker 4: married into and Hunter Biden, the Bidens actually have used
Speaker 4: to at least have relationships with people in that family.
Speaker 4: And it's not just that specific. I mean, it's just
Speaker 4: years and years of completely turning the regulations into Swiss
Speaker 4: cheese based on who has access, and that's how you
Speaker 4: end up getting things like this approved for school lunches,
Speaker 4: and that makes more money for the company because that
Speaker 4: means it's more sales around the country. So it's just
Speaker 4: a special interest carving out or car at chipping away
Speaker 4: at which should be obvious standards that we understand, but
Speaker 4: we can't trust the regulatory agencies to do that on
Speaker 4: a consistent and principal basis.
Speaker 1: So way back in twenty ten, I out of nowhere
Speaker 1: decided to run for Congress. I was a new mom,
Speaker 1: And maybe this sounds silly, or maybe it sounds really
Speaker 1: I don't know how it sounds. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that really drove me to take such what at
Speaker 1: that point in my life was a really drastic step
Speaker 1: was I was shopping for baby bottles for my infant
Speaker 1: and realized I had to be really educated to make
Speaker 1: sure there weren't toxins in the baby bottles. And you
Speaker 1: just start to think, You're like, this is insane. How
Speaker 1: could we expose these little, vulnerable beings to such a
Speaker 1: perilous system. And when you really start to pull on
Speaker 1: that thread, it connects to everything, because, like you just said,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why lunchables are allowed in school lunches.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why lunchables are allowed to have potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous amounts of lead. And it is all about money
Speaker 1: and politics and corrupt capture of these regulatory agencies and
Speaker 1: the assault on these regulatory agencies in the neoliberal era,
Speaker 1: where the budgets are cut and they're staffing stripped, and
Speaker 1: they are undermined to the extent that even if they
Speaker 1: had the standards, they don't have the capability to enforce
Speaker 1: the standards. I did a piece back in the Rising
Speaker 1: Days about similar things being found in baby formula, and
Speaker 1: you just ask you, like, as someone who's trying to
Speaker 1: do their best for their kids, how do you even
Speaker 1: know what that is?
Speaker 5: Because listen, I was under no illusions lunchibles were like the.
Speaker 1: Greatest options for my kids, but I didn't think they
Speaker 1: were the worst.
Speaker 5: Am No big deal?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 1: If they have these occasionally, that's fine, right, No, apparently
Speaker 1: it's not.
Speaker 5: And specifically you put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Watch them posted a report a while back about how
Speaker 1: lunchibles ended up on school lunch trees and the sub
Speaker 1: had your weak rules in industry power have allowed ultra
Speaker 1: processed products onto the menu. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things going on here. So first of all, you've got
Speaker 1: school funding, you know, being undermined, which means both that
Speaker 1: you have fewer cafeteria workers will guess what, lunchables super easy.
Speaker 5: You just stack them up.
Speaker 1: Kids can grab them for themselves, and they are familiar
Speaker 1: with them and they're likely to eat them. Number Two,
Speaker 1: the group that makes these recommendations has a ton of
Speaker 1: received industry and has industry ties. So of course if
Speaker 1: you're craft times, they say, this is a twenty five
Speaker 1: billion dollar growth opportunity in the school lunch market. And
Speaker 1: in order to meet these little bit of standards that
Speaker 1: we have for quote unquote healthy school lunches, which are
Speaker 1: utterly pathetic, ketchup is still considered a vegetable by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, they could tweak it a little bit, and
Speaker 1: actually in those tweaks to up, for example, the protein content,
Speaker 1: they just pump it full of even more sodium, so
Speaker 1: they're actually in certain ways worse for your kids. The
Speaker 1: quote unquote healthy school lunch is actually worse for your kids.
Speaker 1: And it gets to not only this corruption, but also
Speaker 1: it gets to like, what are our values in this country?
Speaker 5: Yes, what are val Like? We're feeding kids.
Speaker 1: Poison at schools. We're a wealthy country. We can't afford
Speaker 1: to have at least some decent, nutritious stuff that our
Speaker 1: kids are eating when they're trying to learn and their
Speaker 1: brains are developing and they're in this critical time period.
Speaker 1: And look at the health fallout, look at the obesity rates,
Speaker 1: look at the chronic health problems that we have in
Speaker 1: this country, some of which is, you know, due to
Speaker 1: the fact we don't have universal healthcare, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it is due to the fact of the influence
Speaker 1: of big food and how cheap and easy this stuff
Speaker 1: is and how much we pump kids full of it
Speaker 1: from a very early age.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of this happened really quickly, and we
Speaker 4: were like the frogs in the boiling pot and didn't
Speaker 4: realize that we were guinea pigs in this mass experiment
Speaker 4: that had some really damaging consequences. One of the interesting
Speaker 4: things we can put the next element up on the
Speaker 4: screen about lunchables in particular. This was a San Francisco
Speaker 4: Gate story. There's some actually some good books that have
Speaker 4: been written or that touch on this topic of actually
Speaker 4: lunchibles in particular. The subheading of this story is a
Speaker 4: cigarette giant turned the middling product into a lunchtime juggernaut. Well,
Speaker 4: what that means is actually, as cigarette sales started to plummet,
Speaker 4: Philip Morris, Philip Morris made lunchabules. They popularized lunchibles. Essentially
Speaker 4: bought lunchabules and found a way to market them with
Speaker 4: great success, market them to parents and find a way
Speaker 4: to make them super, super tasty for kids.
Speaker 3: Here's a great quote from the San Francisco Gate piece.
Speaker 4: They say, if your impression is that the lack of
Speaker 4: nutrition in lunchibles is a byproduct of cost saving measures,
Speaker 4: Lunchible's history belies that perhaps the strangest thing about Lunchible's
Speaker 4: legacy is that its manufacturers repeatedly try to pivot toward
Speaker 4: healthier ingredients, only to fail every time. They just continued
Speaker 4: the lunchibles with fruit line. People actually might even remember
Speaker 4: that it's just their business. This is their business, and
Speaker 4: it's really I think perfect that Philip Morris is who
Speaker 4: popularized the Lunchi bowl.
Speaker 10: It just speaks to.
Speaker 4: Exactly how backwards are approach to food food safety is.
Speaker 4: And I think we're starting to catch up and starting
Speaker 4: to understand the way that these foods are intentionally designed
Speaker 4: to maximize their addictive quality, is to maximize their non
Speaker 4: perishability or their slow perishability and all of that. It's
Speaker 4: really sad, but we've all been experiments in this for
Speaker 4: you know, decades. My mom's rule was I only got
Speaker 4: lunchables on field trips, and that was like the best,
Speaker 4: because I love pizza, lunchibles.
Speaker 3: They're really good. They're really good.
Speaker 1: Kyle loves people Pizza lunchable that is that is not
Speaker 1: surprising at all, so disgusting because they're not even heated. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just like this cold bread. Yes it's great and
Speaker 1: it's like gross tomato sauce.
Speaker 3: But you get to make it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's but that was the thing.
Speaker 1: So apparently the origin story is oscar Meyer had like
Speaker 1: balooney was not really popular anymore, and they had all this.
Speaker 5: Extra bologny and they're like, what are we going to
Speaker 5: do with all this boloney?
Speaker 1: And so this is what they came up with was, Aha,
Speaker 1: we'll market it to these kids and be like, oh.
Speaker 5: You're in control.
Speaker 1: You're empowered in your lunch because you, you know, put
Speaker 1: the cracker in the cheese and the meat together, so you're.
Speaker 5: In control of the lunchible. You the kid, You the kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to and obviously listen as a parent, you know,
Speaker 1: I can relate to this. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: hate making school lunches like I hate making lunches. There's
Speaker 1: something about that. It's like the bane of my parental existence.
Speaker 1: And so if you've got this thing, you can just
Speaker 1: pull off the shelve and stick in the lunch box.
Speaker 1: It's pretty nice, right, So it appealed to the kids,
Speaker 1: appealed to the parents, and they started selling like hotcakes.
Speaker 1: But the problem was, to begin with, it actually wasn't
Speaker 1: profitable because the trays cost too much money. And so
Speaker 1: that was the Philip Morris when they bought I guess
Speaker 1: they bought Craft. Yeah, so it was Oscar mind and
Speaker 1: then they merged with Craft and morris By's Craft anyway, whatever.
Speaker 5: Already there's a monopoly story here too.
Speaker 1: By the way, they're like, well, no, if you're selling them,
Speaker 1: we're going to figure out how to make them profitable,
Speaker 1: and so they crack the code of how to make
Speaker 1: them profitable and then the rest of his history. But
Speaker 1: you know, I also think it's the fact that the
Speaker 1: fruit ones and the more healthy ones failed also says
Speaker 1: something too, because it's not like, obviously, if you just
Speaker 1: get the lunch abowles out of the food system, then
Speaker 1: it's all going to be fixed. It's that you have
Speaker 1: a whole systemic problem. And so yeah, kids are like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the I'm used to eating all the time,
Speaker 1: So no, I don't want this like healthier version I
Speaker 1: want the crap. That's what I'm used to, right, That's
Speaker 1: what my body is like raised on and expects, and
Speaker 1: we obviously see disasterus health consequences down the line.
Speaker 5: So anyway, the reason.
Speaker 4: We're so attraction to these foods, at least you know,
Speaker 4: in the moment, short term, is because they're not There's
Speaker 4: these are combinations that are not found in nature, right,
Speaker 4: and it's made to be as palatable as possible. Like
Speaker 4: think about like skittles, like taste great immediately and then
Speaker 4: you're like, oh, I just ate plastic, all right, but
Speaker 4: I just feel like right, yeah, but it's that's again,
Speaker 4: these are it's it's preying on I think a real
Speaker 4: problem of moms needing convenient, Like moms are overworked, moms
Speaker 4: are doing so much and parents in general are doing
Speaker 4: so much, and this is just like praying on the
Speaker 4: need for something really easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's kind of a two income trap story here,
Speaker 1: yes as well, you know, as you need to income
Speaker 1: earners in the household time to you know, carefully prepare
Speaker 1: a healthy and neutrient.
Speaker 5: Just lunch is less available.
Speaker 4: And I don't know the story about lunch bols in particular,
Speaker 4: but a lot of these foods have been given the
Speaker 4: rubber stamp of healthy because they have corporate capture the
Speaker 4: at the regulatory agencies that allow you to put that
Speaker 4: you're healthy on the box of cereal, that you're a
Speaker 4: good source of whatever in the box of cereal, and
Speaker 4: it's just it's not really true in the big pictures.
Speaker 4: So it's really sad what we've allowed to happen to
Speaker 4: the thing. And just very briefly from a conservative perspective,
Speaker 4: when there's criticism of regulation, you know, I think there's
Speaker 4: some reasonable criticism of regulation in some sectors, but in
Speaker 4: other sectors when we're talking about literally the thing that
Speaker 4: is the building block of a healthy family.
Speaker 3: How can you have a healthy, happy.
Speaker 4: Family if what we are eating we are told is
Speaker 4: healthy and it's actually terrible for you, Like, that's not
Speaker 4: the pathway to fulfillment, success as a human being, just
Speaker 4: prospering as families. It's just obviously deregulating the industries that
Speaker 4: are our physical health when our physical health is on
Speaker 4: the line is probably not the way to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a real conservative core value of putting actual
Speaker 1: family values, yeah, and protection of children above even like
Speaker 1: corporate profit margins, absolutely so I think that's an important note.
Speaker 5: All right, guys, for the latest sound of Israel and Gaza.
Speaker 1: Are very fortunate, Pete joined by a fantastic guest this morning,
Speaker 1: so let's go ahead and get to that. For the
Speaker 1: latest on developments out of Israel and Gaza, we are
Speaker 1: very fortunate this morning to be joined by an extraordinary
Speaker 1: journalist and Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy. He's also a calumnist
Speaker 1: for Haretz and an author. Welcome, sir, so great to
Speaker 1: have you.
Speaker 10: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put Gideon's latest column here up
Speaker 1: on the screen. The headline here is no victory awaits
Speaker 1: Israel in Rafa, only more death and destruction. We just
Speaker 1: read you a little bit of this for the audience.
Speaker 1: On the eve of the possible quest of Rafa. One
Speaker 1: camp demands Rafa and another camp demands the release of
Speaker 1: the hostages. No one says no to the conquest of Rafa.
Speaker 1: No reservist threatens to refuse to serve in Rafa if
Speaker 1: Israel invades the city. In the face of the lust
Speaker 1: for blood and revenge. There is no opposing camp. Only
Speaker 1: against Benjamin nt Yahoo, the primary culprit, but not the
Speaker 1: only one. Is there a determined camp. What do you
Speaker 1: think is the significance of the Israeli plans to invade Rafa.
Speaker 11: I know their way of thinking, namely that without Rafa
Speaker 11: we will never break Hamas. But they say souls in
Speaker 11: Communis they say soul. So in Gaza city it's always
Speaker 11: like the horizon. The next stop will be the finest one,
Speaker 11: and you'll never reach it. Because meanwhile, in the north
Speaker 11: part of Gaza you see this Kramas is big. We
Speaker 11: have to know a few things about Rafa. Raffa is
Speaker 11: the southstu in the Gaza street, mainly operated by refugees
Speaker 11: from nineteen forty eight, a very poor place.
Speaker 10: I've with them many times.
Speaker 11: But in this war, in the last half year, one
Speaker 11: point two million uprooted people replaced. People were told by
Speaker 11: is to find rescue in Ruffe. Without any kind of
Speaker 11: infrastructure or water, would no place to stay, living in
Speaker 11: kind of tents. And now Israel wants to invade this
Speaker 11: biggest refuge place in the world, maybe the biggest refugee place. Sorry,
Speaker 11: And I asked myself where will those people go and
Speaker 11: who will guarantee their lives? Those are people who went
Speaker 11: through hell in the last half a year. Those people
Speaker 11: lost everything in their lives. Part of them lost their relative,
Speaker 11: their parents, their sons, their children. Part of them lost
Speaker 11: their homes. Also they lost their own What do we
Speaker 11: want them now? So therefore, by my really opinion is Liz,
Speaker 11: give it up, give it up, because nothing would make
Speaker 11: out of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I want to stay on that point of
Speaker 4: what could come out of it, even you know, sort
Speaker 4: of taking the net Yahoo argument at face value about
Speaker 4: how this is essential to the destruction of Hamas. From
Speaker 4: your perspective, if this is if this operation goes ahead,
Speaker 4: what even is the best case scenario for the net
Speaker 4: Yahoo administration, Because one thing we know for sure is
Speaker 4: that it's it's not going to destroy Hamas and an
Speaker 4: operation in Ravas there is just that's that does not
Speaker 4: assure the destruction of Hamas. So what could the outcome
Speaker 4: be even the best case scenario for the net Yahoo administration.
Speaker 10: No, there is no best case scenario. There's nothing good
Speaker 10: in this scenario.
Speaker 11: The best sending case scenario from their point of view
Speaker 11: was really to destroy Hamas. But we both agree that
Speaker 11: this is not achievable because Hamas is of being destroyed,
Speaker 11: and there is story such an organization. There is a
Speaker 11: way to harm the military capabilities, and this is what
Speaker 11: it done enough in the last half the year. There
Speaker 11: is no best case scenario. PONTANIAO. I'm afraid there are
Speaker 11: also different calculations. As long as the goals going on.
Speaker 11: His government is in power, there are no elections, and
Speaker 11: his career is guaranteed. Is it the only consideration? I'm
Speaker 11: sure not. Is it one of his considerations?
Speaker 10: Yes? Is it jitimate one?
Speaker 1: Get in you right in your column. There is no
Speaker 1: opposition to war in Israel, and I wonder why you
Speaker 1: think that is. I mean, at this point we even
Speaker 1: have the US government acknowledging there's a famine at least
Speaker 1: in northern Gaza. We are seeing children who are starving
Speaker 1: to death, babies who are starving to death. We have
Speaker 1: somewhere around forty thousand Palestinians who have been killed, many
Speaker 1: of them the majority of whom are women in children.
Speaker 1: Why is there no significant opposition to this war in Israel?
Speaker 11: Because something very dramatic happened on the seventh of October
Speaker 11: when Israel and israelis stall nose atrocities in the south,
Speaker 11: the killing the kidnapping and other crimes that were conducted there.
Speaker 10: They decided that they are.
Speaker 11: Not interested anymore at all any kind of embassy toward
Speaker 11: the Palestinians, in any kind of dialog with the Palestinians,
Speaker 11: in anything with the Palestian It's a very emotional, primative reaction,
Speaker 11: which I cannot criticize, but that's not the policy.
Speaker 10: And above all the Israelis and Israel.
Speaker 11: Go to the conclusion that after those crimes, has the
Speaker 11: right to do whatever it wants, and this is almost illegal,
Speaker 11: enormous as well as things like any country in the world,
Speaker 11: and it cannot do whatever. Words to this year have
Speaker 11: to add the fact that the Israeli media, free and commercial,
Speaker 11: private owned, had decided voluntarily that they are not going
Speaker 11: to batther the Israelis with scenes from Gaza.
Speaker 10: You will not see the suppware, you will not see
Speaker 10: the starvation, you will not see the destruction.
Speaker 11: Because we know you Israelis, you don't want to see it,
Speaker 11: and we will do this service for you, and we
Speaker 11: will not show it for me.
Speaker 10: And that's that's fatal.
Speaker 11: Because most of the Israelis are not exposed to nothing
Speaker 11: from what is going on in Gaza, and this shapes
Speaker 11: their mind.
Speaker 10: They really believe that Israel.
Speaker 11: Is killing only terrorists who deserve to be killed, and
Speaker 11: Israel is living peace ws in and are quite happy
Speaker 11: about this warm as they are very unhappy with the
Speaker 11: fact that the ostrigers are still missing. They are very
Speaker 11: unhappy with the killings of Israeli soldiers. They are very
Speaker 11: empathetic about the unbelievable human tragedy on the other side.
Speaker 4: Well, and just on that point about the hostages, and
Speaker 4: while we're talking about Rafa, because that is front of
Speaker 4: mine for so many people, and as you were just explaining,
Speaker 4: is really public opinion. What's the potential outcome for the
Speaker 4: remaining hostages if there is a ground.
Speaker 3: Operation in Rafa going forward? What's the potential outcome is there?
Speaker 4: Is it possible that the kind of best case scenario
Speaker 4: of recovering hostages safely and getting families some closure or
Speaker 4: at least some certainty, is an outcome ahead or what
Speaker 4: do you make of that get in You.
Speaker 10: Know, I don't know. I don't know, because nobody knows
Speaker 10: where are the hostages.
Speaker 11: But I know one thing is really striving now for
Speaker 11: six months to release them through military pressure, very messing
Speaker 11: military pressure. Killings and destruction. It didn't work. Why would
Speaker 11: you work?
Speaker 10: Now?
Speaker 11: We have to realize that the hostages will and can
Speaker 11: be released only in one way, through a deal, and
Speaker 11: a deal means Israel paying for their release, paying not
Speaker 11: in money, but in terms of releasing a Palestinian prisoner,
Speaker 11: big quantities and other conditions. If joy is so eager
Speaker 11: to see the hostage frae, it should have gone for
Speaker 11: a deal long time ago.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your reaction getting in if we
Speaker 1: can put guys D one up on the screen. Yesterday
Speaker 1: there was an Israeli military strike that killed three children
Speaker 1: of the Hamas political leader is Mael Honiah and Gaza,
Speaker 1: along with a number something like three of his young
Speaker 1: grandchildren as well. There was a lot of theorizing that
Speaker 1: this could be connected to the ceasefire talks that are ongoing.
Speaker 1: I don't know how likely successful those ceasefire talks are
Speaker 1: going to be, but do you see these two things
Speaker 1: as connected? Because the theory was that now, who doesn't
Speaker 1: really want a ceasefire at the moment, as you pointed
Speaker 1: out and many others appointed out as well, he needs
Speaker 1: this war to continue in order to keep his hold
Speaker 1: on power. Do you think that there's a connection there
Speaker 1: and what do you make of these strikes?
Speaker 11: The Isuelis claim the authorities claim that this operation was
Speaker 11: not approved by high levels. Is it true or not?
Speaker 11: I can't tell, but that's their claim. It was local
Speaker 11: commanders who approved this operation. If so, then something is
Speaker 11: very wrong in the decision making process of the Israeli
Speaker 11: Army because such sensitive operation, feeling six members of the
Speaker 11: family of Israeilanea in such a sensitive time, which goes
Speaker 11: for high ranks and politicians and government, shows that we
Speaker 11: are facing anarchy in the Isuli Army. This cannot be
Speaker 11: accepted that such an operation will not.
Speaker 14: Be approved by the highest drinks until the primaryst so
Speaker 14: other either there is a plucky or they are lying
Speaker 14: and most possibilities I cannot tell you where is the truth?
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's now long been clear that the military
Speaker 1: operation in Gaza has not been some surgical hunt for Hamas. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Nanyahu has his own political considerations of just trying to
Speaker 1: hold onto power as long as possible. But from your perspective,
Speaker 1: getting what is the true goal, what are the true
Speaker 1: motivating reasons for the all out destruction and annihilation that
Speaker 1: we've seen, and starvation used as a weapon of war
Speaker 1: that we've seen in Gaza.
Speaker 11: I truly believe that the main motivation is to punish,
Speaker 11: to take revenge, to show the people of Israel that
Speaker 11: we are doing something too, that we are teaching the
Speaker 11: Palestinians and Hamas lesson.
Speaker 10: Every serious person knows that much more or will not
Speaker 10: come out of this war.
Speaker 11: Nothing of the goals will be achieved, and nothing worth
Speaker 11: achieved than half the year. It's not that I'm speculating now.
Speaker 11: In half the year, one of the longest walls between
Speaker 11: Israel and Palace is the achieved nothing. Why to believe
Speaker 11: that another half the year will be any better? But
Speaker 11: by the end of the day, it's really to punish
Speaker 11: and to take revenge.
Speaker 10: Is it legitimate? I doubt it. Is it justified? I
Speaker 10: don't know. Is it clever? I know that's very much.
Speaker 5: What level of pressure do you feel personally?
Speaker 1: Because I have to say, I really admire your courage
Speaker 1: being and as really journalists runing an Israeli newspaper and
Speaker 1: expressing opinions that, as you yourself will readily admit, are
Speaker 1: basically unheard of throughout most of Israeli society. What sort
Speaker 1: of personal pressure have you come under, especially post October seventh.
Speaker 11: I must be friends with you and tell you that
Speaker 11: if from so many points of view, I went through
Speaker 11: was wars. From my perspective in terms of being exposed
Speaker 11: to pressure, to threats, and two Fotina even had the
Speaker 11: bodyguards because there was no other choice.
Speaker 10: The main.
Speaker 11: Loneliness, the main really challenge, is the fact that many
Speaker 11: of my friends changed their mind in.
Speaker 10: This war and didn't turn back.
Speaker 11: So part of what was called the Beascamp really changed
Speaker 11: its mind dramatically, and I'm more lonely than ever. It's
Speaker 11: not very pleasant, but it's much less pleasant to be
Speaker 11: in now refugure in rough at this I can ensure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we really admire your courage and your principles.
Speaker 1: I've been reading you closely for quite a while now,
Speaker 1: so it's an honor to get to speak with you,
Speaker 1: and I'm so grateful for you taking some time with.
Speaker 5: Us this morning.
Speaker 10: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 5: It's our pleasure.
Speaker 3: Stay safe.
Speaker 4: Tucker Carlson over at the Tucker Carlson Network did an
Speaker 4: interview with a pastor in the West Bank, a Palestinian
Speaker 4: pastor in the West Bank that made huge waves sort
Speaker 4: of across.
Speaker 3: The online right this week.
Speaker 4: I would just want to start with a clip from
Speaker 4: the interview and then we can get into why exactly
Speaker 4: people are so upset about it. So here's a Tucker
Speaker 4: Carlson with Isaac Munther, a Lutheran pastor again in the
Speaker 4: West Bank.
Speaker 12: If you wake up in the morning and decide that
Speaker 12: your Christian faith requires you to support a foreign government
Speaker 12: blowing up churches and killing Christians, I think you've lost
Speaker 12: the thread. Just to end on this, if you had
Speaker 12: a message for Christian leaders in the United States, whether
Speaker 12: in government or in churches, or just citizens who care
Speaker 12: about the religion their fellow Christians, what would it be.
Speaker 13: It would be to remind them that when the state
Speaker 13: of Israel was created, it was not created on an
Speaker 13: empty land. It was created on a land that had
Speaker 13: many a self indigenous Potestinians, including Palestinian Christians, and that
Speaker 13: that state they support, that state they celebrated as a
Speaker 13: fulfillment of prophecy and the sign of God's state to
Speaker 13: the Jewish people. For it to become a state, hundreds
Speaker 13: of thousands of Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians were forced to
Speaker 13: leave and have never returned. There is a very very
Speaker 13: brutal war taking place, and a war that I've described
Speaker 13: using the word genocide because it's a war that has
Speaker 13: used if it's starvation as a me and fellow Christians
Speaker 13: are suffering because of that war.
Speaker 12: Father, thank you for your thoroughly decent and sensible analysis,
Speaker 12: and I hope it's heard by Christians.
Speaker 10: Ruth the West.
Speaker 3: Okay, so again the key Tucker Carlson quote.
Speaker 4: There, if you wake up in the morning and decide
Speaker 4: your Christian faith requires you to support a foreign government
Speaker 4: blowing up churches and killing Christians, I think you've lost
Speaker 4: the thread. That could also obviously be applied to the
Speaker 4: United States in the Cold War era. We talk about
Speaker 4: Al Salvador and all of that. But just sticking here
Speaker 4: for now, it's worth noting there's so much to kind
Speaker 4: of break down from this, but it's worth noting that
Speaker 4: so I grew up missourition and Lutherans in the United
Speaker 4: States a more conservative denomination of Lutheranism than Evangelical Lutheranism
Speaker 4: alka the Evangelical luther in Church of America. This denomination
Speaker 4: of Lutheranism in the Holy Land. Is it's worth again
Speaker 4: saying more liberal this particular. So the person that Tucker
Speaker 4: Carlson interviewed actually was sort of championing the ordination of women,
Speaker 4: like kind of a progressive denomination, progressive version of Lutheranism,
Speaker 4: which is an interesting kind of crossover with Tucker Carlson
Speaker 4: finding common cause on that question of Christian persecution. There
Speaker 4: are about three thousand of his denomination Lutherans in Gaza.
Speaker 4: There are forty seven thousand Christians. At least that was
Speaker 4: as of twenty seventeen. I'm sure that number has gone down.
Speaker 4: So he also went viral last year, which some people
Speaker 4: may remember. Chris, so I think you remember this. He
Speaker 4: had this viral sermon Christmas sermon where he said if
Speaker 4: Jesus were to be born today, he would be born
Speaker 4: under the rubble in Gaza. He gave a sort of
Speaker 4: homily around Christmas where he said Christ and the rebbel
Speaker 4: a liturgy of lament. That was the title of the service.
Speaker 4: Here's another quote from him. People keep leaving because of
Speaker 4: the political reality life under a very harsh Israel Israeli
Speaker 4: military occupation is difficult to bearn As a result, many
Speaker 4: young Palestinian Christians continue to leave, for example, Bethlehem, that's
Speaker 4: where one of his churches is one of the churches
Speaker 4: he leaves leeds choosing to find a better and easier
Speaker 4: life elsewhere. Now in the best the sort, I'm trying
Speaker 4: to put the best faith approach to Tucker's critics here,
Speaker 4: and I don't think this was I think this is
Speaker 4: probably a strange and it probably not the best.
Speaker 3: Interview for Tucker.
Speaker 4: But his critics of him just having this conversation with
Speaker 4: this Lutheran pastor. You know, they said this particular pastor
Speaker 4: was championing Hamas because they pulled this clip of him
Speaker 4: in an address on October ninth saying, you know, one
Speaker 4: of the scenes that left an impression on my mind yesterday,
Speaker 4: and there are many scenes, is the scene of Israeli
Speaker 4: youth who were celebrating a concert in the open air
Speaker 4: just outside the borders of Gaza, and how they escaped.
Speaker 4: What a great contradiction between the besieged poor on the
Speaker 4: one hand and the wealthy people celebrating as if there
Speaker 4: was nothing behind the wall. What is happening is an
Speaker 4: embodiment of the injustice that has befallen us as Palestinians
Speaker 4: since the Knakba until now. He also said in that address,
Speaker 4: we do not justify or support the killing of civilians
Speaker 4: or the abuse of corpses or prisoners. War is always ugly,
Speaker 4: but the hypocrisy of the world is something truly harmful.
Speaker 4: Today we are called first to pray, pray for the
Speaker 4: word to stop, pray for protection for the innocent. Every
Speaker 4: human being who dies is a human being created in
Speaker 4: the image of God. God does not rejoice in death,
Speaker 4: and we do not rejoice in death. But because he
Speaker 4: says things like Israeli occupation, I think he referred to
Speaker 4: the siege at one point, it's obvious that he's coming
Speaker 4: from what we in the United States would category as
Speaker 4: a leftist position on this particular question. It's obvious, but
Speaker 4: to say that Tucker Carlson should not interview and should
Speaker 4: not have expressed any sympathies for someone coming from that
Speaker 4: perspective who lives it every day in Bethlehem, which is
Speaker 4: a very contested territory. To say that his perspective is
Speaker 4: not worth hearing out in the United States and there's
Speaker 4: no reason for somebody to express sympathy with that position,
Speaker 4: I think is actually really unfortunate and speaks to the
Speaker 4: way that we have, just even on the right, created
Speaker 4: these blocks and these bubbles that it's just you cannot
Speaker 4: even ask questions without being categorized by some people. There's
Speaker 4: some really good faith disagreement on this, and I would
Speaker 4: disagree with some of what Tucker Carlson said in that
Speaker 4: interview myself. We have to be able to talk about
Speaker 4: some of these things, though, because there are more than
Speaker 4: forty thousand Christians in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is a very uncomfortable fact. I think
Speaker 1: for people who are just lockstep, anything Israel does is fine.
Speaker 1: There's also obviously religious view. I mean, the religious group
Speaker 1: that has the most favorable view of the net Yahoo
Speaker 1: government is not Jewish Americans, It's white Evangelical Christians. So
Speaker 1: Michael Tracy actually tweeted this out, and I thought this
Speaker 1: was well said. He said, Palestinian Christians are the most
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance inducing demographic for the pro Israel GOP consensus.
Speaker 1: Many GOP voters literally do not even know.
Speaker 5: That they exist. That's why the pro war cheerleaders.
Speaker 1: Are reacting so angrily to Tucker simply interviewing one of them.
Speaker 1: With regard to this pastory right I was familiar with.
Speaker 1: I saw his Christmas sermon which was beautiful and went viral,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, spoke to humanity. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it was left wing. I would say it was
Speaker 1: pro humanity. In fact, some of the messaging and it
Speaker 1: was rather conservative, talking about the commercialization of Christmas and
Speaker 1: how Christmas is not about Sannah and a tree and gifts,
Speaker 1: It's about the message of Jesus. I saw another sermon
Speaker 1: of his that went viral as well. So he's been
Speaker 1: a very powerful voice. He lives in Bethlehem under Israeli occupation,
Speaker 1: surrounded by settlements and having to deal with all that
Speaker 1: that entails and the Christian population of Bethlehem, and this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that was really I think
Speaker 1: contested in some of the reaction has significantly diminished, and
Speaker 1: the reason is quite clear. There's a lot of polling
Speaker 1: on this. Seventy eight percent of Christian residents of Bethlehem
Speaker 1: cited Israel's occupation as the main reason why they moved away.
Speaker 1: Only three percent blamed the rise of islam movements like Hamas.
Speaker 1: Because this was some of the pushback, It's like, oh well,
Speaker 1: Bethlehem used to be predominantly Christian and it's not anymore.
Speaker 1: And it's because of this these Muslim fundamentalists. Well, according
Speaker 1: to the Christians who moved out of Bethlo, that's not
Speaker 1: the case. They moved away because they were living under
Speaker 1: occupation and all of the indignities and humanities that that entails.
Speaker 1: This was written up by Electronic Intofada, but it was
Speaker 1: a you know, a nonpartisan organization that did the polling here.
Speaker 3: That's exactly yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Bethline surveys show support for town of Christ's birth and
Speaker 1: confusion over its location. They also interviewed Americans who were
Speaker 1: pretty confused over what exactly was going on in Bethlehem,
Speaker 1: but that key data about seventy eight percent saying it
Speaker 1: was Israel's occupation is the reason that they left. And
Speaker 1: in addition, you know, obviously you have had churches under
Speaker 1: assault in the Gaza Strip. In fact, you had two
Speaker 1: Christian women, a mother and daughter, who were sniped and
Speaker 1: killed in the early days of this conflict.
Speaker 5: We covered it here. I don't know if you all
Speaker 5: recall that or not.
Speaker 4: But Idea have disputes it, which has also became an
Speaker 4: issue in this whole viral conflict Trinac.
Speaker 1: By the way, I personally believe the eyewitness eyewitnesses who
Speaker 1: were on the ground versus the idea of who lies
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 4: But one of the oldest churches, maybe the oldest church
Speaker 4: actually in Gaza was bombed and lots of Christian died
Speaker 4: there earlier in the war. Sharin Abu Akle was Christian,
Speaker 4: was Christian Al Jazeera journalist. Obviously, the IDF story changed
Speaker 4: on her.
Speaker 1: Well, they admitted they killed her though, yes, ultimately they
Speaker 1: admitted and again that she was a Christian Postinian Christian, and.
Speaker 5: The attacks American too.
Speaker 1: They attacked mourners at her funeral as well, if people
Speaker 1: recall but.
Speaker 3: And so if we can't even talk about this, that's
Speaker 3: a little ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even the you know, the pushback, oh this
Speaker 1: you know this pastor he said, X y Z listen.
Speaker 1: I don't know every word that this man has uttered
Speaker 1: and whether I co signed them or not. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't really rebut what he's saying, what Tucker's arguing here,
Speaker 1: and the comments I saw that he made about October seventh,
Speaker 1: you know, I tried to gingerly and very carefully make
Speaker 1: some similar remarks about the festival goers.
Speaker 5: This is not in any way.
Speaker 1: To sanction their murder, which was horrifying, which was an outrageous,
Speaker 1: indefensible atrocity. I'm not denying that, I would never deny that.
Speaker 1: But there was something that was worth commenting on about
Speaker 1: the fact that's so close to the Gaza strip, this
Speaker 1: open air prison. You had people who were going about
Speaker 1: their lives as if that was completely invisible, and that
Speaker 1: was the overall reality of Israeli society prior to October seventh.
Speaker 5: Was this idea that.
Speaker 1: We can just keep these people out of sight, out
Speaker 1: of mind. We can go ahead with normalization with Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: with other Gulf Arab states. We can just pretend they
Speaker 1: don't exist. And net Yahuo would say things like, you know,
Speaker 1: I can control the height of the flame. They would
Speaker 1: go in for these boeing of the lawn operations every
Speaker 1: now and again, but for your average Israeli they never
Speaker 1: really had to come into contact with Palestinians.
Speaker 5: So that seemed to me more what he was commenting on.
Speaker 1: But again, even if he said something about October seventh
Speaker 1: that I genuinely objected to, that does not undercut the
Speaker 1: argument that's being made now. Now, the other thing I
Speaker 1: would say is that you know, with regard to and
Speaker 1: choosing this particular issue to push on and focusing only
Speaker 1: on Christians as opposed to the many, many more tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of Muslims who've been slaughtered in Gaza. You know,
Speaker 1: the most charitable interpretation is kind of the Michael Tracy
Speaker 1: one of like he knows this is the one that's
Speaker 1: the most difficult for the right to deal with. But
Speaker 1: you know, the uncharitable interpretation is like, well, you only
Speaker 1: care about the Christians. You don't care about all of
Speaker 1: humanity that is suffering in Gaza right now, the little
Speaker 1: you know, Muslim babies who were being starved to death,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But I'll give it to Tucker. He sure
Speaker 1: knows how to stir the pot, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: Speaking of which, yeah, we can just quickly give everyone
Speaker 4: a flavor of the backlash.
Speaker 3: Put you two up on the screen.
Speaker 4: One critic of Tucker who said, quote, there is no
Speaker 4: one in America, American life who thinks less of Christians
Speaker 4: than Tucker. He doesn't like Jews, but he at least
Speaker 4: doesn't think we're stupid. Even Trump's Bible selling is transparently transactional.
Speaker 4: Tucker's entire stick relies on his belief that Christians are dullible,
Speaker 4: gullible SAPs. That's from a senior editor over at Commentary Magazine.
Speaker 4: By the way, I mean, Tucker has very openly in
Speaker 4: the last couple of years talked about going much deeper
Speaker 4: into his own faith personally, which I've heard him do
Speaker 4: it at events. It's a very compelling story, and it's
Speaker 4: actually a very honest story. So I sort of take
Speaker 4: issue with that point that there's no one in American
Speaker 4: life that thinks less of Christians than Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 3: Here's a tweet from David M. Friedman. This is the
Speaker 3: next element we can put up.
Speaker 1: This was in Trump's Ambassador Israel, so particularly noteworthy that
Speaker 1: he made this commentary.
Speaker 4: Yes, he said, Tucker my friend. Before the Palestinians took
Speaker 4: over Bethlehem pursued into the Oslo Cords of the mid
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties, Bethlehem was under Israeli control in his population
Speaker 4: was eighty percent Christian.
Speaker 3: It was one of the centers of the Christian world.
Speaker 4: Since Oslo and the resulting Palestinian rule, Bethlehem became eighty
Speaker 4: percent Muslim and Christians are afraid, but they don't speak
Speaker 4: out against Palstini authority because you just can't survive.
Speaker 3: You know, this is an interesting.
Speaker 4: Point because you talk about the Azads, you could talk
Speaker 4: about I mean, you could go into a lot from
Speaker 4: that point. But it's also just this idea that because
Speaker 4: Tucker interviewed this pastor, he doesn't believe that there are
Speaker 4: also Muslim persecutions of Christians like that happens too, Like
Speaker 4: he's not saying it doesn't. And so it's just this
Speaker 4: this is what I meant earlier about the boxes and
Speaker 4: the bubbles that like, if he asked questions, he's immediately
Speaker 4: categorized with this full suite of opinions that he may
Speaker 4: or may not hold. But in this case, it's very
Speaker 4: likely that he would never dispute that in a million years.
Speaker 4: You would never dispute that, because he talks about it frequently,
Speaker 4: you know, the sort of like what's happened in Paris
Speaker 4: and different places in Europe. So I just it's very frustrating,
Speaker 4: but that's also I guess the nature of Twitter. We
Speaker 4: can put this next sweet up on the screen from
Speaker 4: Dan Crenshaw, Sager's best friend, Dan Dan Crenshaw. He took
Speaker 4: the opportunity to say, this is who Tucker is, a
Speaker 4: click chaser. Tucker's mo is simple, defend America's enemies and
Speaker 4: attack America's allies again just immediately prescribing to him this
Speaker 4: full suite of opinions. Because and Crenshaw then mocks the
Speaker 4: idea that you're just asking questions. I would really prefer
Speaker 4: that people did just ask questions as opposed to people
Speaker 4: just swallowing the line that Dan Crenshaw feeds them.
Speaker 1: Look, I don't have a high opinion of Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 1: but you have to deal with like what he's actually
Speaker 1: laying out here and not just below always just chasing clicks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, that's just cheap and easy.
Speaker 1: To go back to the Freedman comments about oh, Bethlehem
Speaker 1: was under Israeli controlled its populous to eighty percent Christian.
Speaker 1: He says that resulting Palestinian rule is why Bethlehem became
Speaker 1: eighty percent Muslim and Christians are afraid. This goes back
Speaker 1: to the polling that I had before. Yeah, that's just
Speaker 1: not true if you ask the people that left, that's
Speaker 1: not the Muslim rule was what did I say three
Speaker 1: percent said that the rise of Islamic movements like Humas
Speaker 1: were the reason that they left. Seventy eight percent said
Speaker 1: it's because of Israeli occupation. And even if you put
Speaker 1: the West Bank aside, you look at what's happening in Gaza,
Speaker 1: like Christians are being killed, their churches are being attacked.
Speaker 5: These things are undeniable.
Speaker 1: So you know a lot of and you hear this
Speaker 1: not just with regard to Christians, but you hear this
Speaker 1: with regards to other minority groups within Israel outside of.
Speaker 5: The occupied territories.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, if you're a Muslim in Israel,
Speaker 1: you'd rather be a You have more rights there than
Speaker 1: in many other countries in the Middle East. But they
Speaker 1: never want to talk about people who are living under
Speaker 1: occupation under this apartheid system. Yes, if you are a
Speaker 1: small minority group that does not threaten the demographic majority,
Speaker 1: they'll you be okay. But then if you say okay,
Speaker 1: well just extend those rights to the palestinane thrower living
Speaker 1: in the West Bank and in Gaza.
Speaker 5: Can't do that.
Speaker 1: And you know, to your point Emily about the about
Speaker 1: more universalist values, like I have no interest in and
Speaker 1: am opposed to Muslim fundamentalist governments, and I opposed to
Speaker 1: Jewish fundamentalist governments and Christian fundamentalist governments. And you know
Speaker 1: that's I believe in the pluralism and secularism that we
Speaker 1: have at our best here in America, and that is
Speaker 1: across the board and not subject to, you know, my
Speaker 1: feeling about one religion or another religion.
Speaker 4: By the way, a lot of the Chinese nationals coming
Speaker 4: over the border right now say they're Christians who are
Speaker 4: seeking asylum here because of religious persecution in China, and
Speaker 4: so I think it's just another great illustration of how
Speaker 4: sometimes our reflexive categorization. And you know, we have different
Speaker 4: opinions on what's happening at the border, but we so
Speaker 4: many like human stories get lost in that categorization that's
Speaker 4: fueled by places like Twitter. It's sad, well, Christal, I
Speaker 4: got a preview of your monologue a little bit earlier,
Speaker 4: and there's some real deep cuts in it.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to hear it. What have you got for us?
Speaker 1: There are countless Washington who've made an entire career out
Speaker 1: of being perpetually wrong, but in all the right ways.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how you can excel in this down simply
Speaker 1: by adopting all of the DC approved wrong takes, some
Speaker 1: by the way, with utterly disastrous consequences. One of the
Speaker 1: individuals who has successfully charted such a career path is
Speaker 1: New York Magazines Jonathan Chate, and now he has added
Speaker 1: another doozy to his list of extraordinarily bad takes. Ready
Speaker 1: for this one at a time when our country is
Speaker 1: blocking aid to people who are starving by defunding UNRA
Speaker 1: and shipping two thousand pound bombs to be dropped on
Speaker 1: babies in refugee camps. Jonathan Chate has identified the real
Speaker 1: villain in the situation the activists who disrupt democratic elite
Speaker 1: political events calling for a ceasefire and an end to genocide.
Speaker 1: Here is that piece. The headline is the left wing
Speaker 1: authoritarians shutting down the Democratic Party. In it, Chate invites
Speaker 1: us to imagine a world in which trump aline protesters
Speaker 1: are able to disrupt and drown out a Jamie Raskin's
Speaker 1: speech on democracy the horror. He then posits that it
Speaker 1: would be obvious that such a tactic was unacceptable in principle,
Speaker 1: but since its pro Palestine, protesters using this method criticism
Speaker 1: has been muted on a fear that to aggressively disagree
Speaker 1: with such protesters would risk permanently alienating them from the
Speaker 1: Biden coalition. Chit writes, quote, this pattern of behavior is
Speaker 1: illiberal and dangerous. Drowning out speakers and disrupting exercises in politics,
Speaker 1: regardless of its cause or the target, is wrong on principle. Now,
Speaker 1: before I engage with the details of his willfully bankrupt arguments,
Speaker 1: let's start with the most obvious and frankly most important point.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Chait is a well paid, well connected calmnis for
Speaker 1: New York Magazine who can apparently write and publish pretty
Speaker 1: much whatever the hell he wants, And his choice right
Speaker 1: now is to tone police the protesters desperately trying to
Speaker 1: feed starving babies, block an ethnic cleansing, and stop a genocide.
Speaker 1: Imagine tutting the abolitionist for their unseemly tactics. You know,
Speaker 1: harboring fugitive slaves is wrong on principle. You can imagine
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century Chait opining, or imagine scolding civil rights
Speaker 1: activists for disrupting ordinary americans lunch counter experience. Sure, I
Speaker 1: may have some quibbles with Jim Crow, But these lefty
Speaker 1: Marxist are out of control.
Speaker 5: Or had he lived in Germany during.
Speaker 1: World War II, excoriating those secretly plotting Hitler's overthrow, these
Speaker 1: are illiberal tactics, Chait may have declared. Now, not a
Speaker 1: single reasonable person would look back upon such a person
Speaker 1: in making these arguments and see righteousness, justice or liberalism. Instead,
Speaker 1: it is atrocity apologia. Or more to the point, if
Speaker 1: disrupting a Joe Biden's speech is illiberal, how shall we
Speaker 1: describe secretly expediting over one hundred shipments of weapons to
Speaker 1: massacre children who are simultaneously helping to starve to death.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan Chate is a man determined to place himself
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of history at every chance he
Speaker 1: possibly can. During the Iraq War, you could find him
Speaker 1: in the pages of the Washington Post castigating liberals not
Speaker 1: to go along with those crazy lefties who were doubting
Speaker 1: the ironclad evidence of Saddam WMDs.
Speaker 5: He wrote, and I quote.
Speaker 1: The notion that Bush made up the whole thing about
Speaker 1: weapons of mass destruction has taken root on the left
Speaker 1: and is creeping ever closer to the liberal mainstream. My
Speaker 1: fellow liberals who have taken up this line are once
Speaker 1: again making a disastrous misjudgment.
Speaker 5: He argued in twenty.
Speaker 1: Sixteen that liberals should quote earnestly and patriotically support a
Speaker 1: Trump nomination because Chate was so confident that Trump would
Speaker 1: lose to Hillary. Now after getting his Trump nomination, which wish,
Speaker 1: he then wrote this column, which Age, like sour Milk headlined,
Speaker 1: Trump won't win Michigan. In general, Chate's beat is to
Speaker 1: serve as an anti left reactionary. Where we find the
Speaker 1: left taking out some position on an issue, whether it
Speaker 1: is opposing the Iraq War correctly, criticizing Obama correctly, supporting
Speaker 1: Bernie over Hillary correctly, or opposing genocide correctly, you'll find
Speaker 1: Jonathan Chate working feverishly on a column explaining why these
Speaker 1: positions are an affront to decency and not the stuff
Speaker 1: of serious fellows such as himself. And so it is
Speaker 1: with this particular column let's go ahead and dive in,
Speaker 1: shall we first. Chake claims in his initial setup that
Speaker 1: these activists, the pro Palestine activists, have been handled with
Speaker 1: kid gloves by those who should be trashing them, writing quote,
Speaker 1: because Democrats perceive some of the protesters as potential Biden voters.
Speaker 1: They have soft peddled their criticism of their tactics. Oh really,
Speaker 1: tell that to Nancy Pelosi, who just reiterated her suggestion
Speaker 1: that Ceesfire protesters were effectively traders doing.
Speaker 5: The bidding of Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, Pro Palestine activists have been relentlessly smeared, doxed,
Speaker 1: and subjected to abuse since the outset of this conflict
Speaker 1: and before.
Speaker 5: By the way, you may.
Speaker 1: Recall an entire multi day news cycle around the activities
Speaker 1: of protesters on college campuses. This smear campaign was then
Speaker 1: supercharged by billionaire Bill Ackman, who sought to blacklist pro
Speaker 1: Palestine activists from ever getting hired by anyone. You might
Speaker 1: recall Rashida t Lee being officially censured by Congress, backed
Speaker 1: by the votes of dozens of Democrats, for retweeting a
Speaker 1: protest call for equal rights for all over to the Sea.
Speaker 1: Similar censures for those Republicans calling for Gaza to be
Speaker 1: nuked or for all Palestinians to be slaughtered have not
Speaker 1: been forthcoming. You might also recall Karreean Jean Pierre standing
Speaker 1: at the White House podium and saying that sees fire
Speaker 1: calls were quote repugnant and is not even remarkable at
Speaker 1: this point when protesters are branded anti Semitic for criticizing
Speaker 1: a genocide in the ideology that lies behind it. But
Speaker 1: if these relentless attacks were not enough for you, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Chait is on the case now. He argues his
Speaker 1: qualm is not with all protesters, just with those who
Speaker 1: use what he deems to be illiberal tactics.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 1: I'm not referring to tactics like holding protest march's speeches,
Speaker 1: social media posts, organizing uncommitted votes in the democratic primary,
Speaker 1: or other exercises of First Amendment rights. I'm specifically referring
Speaker 1: to a campaign to shut down speakers who oppose or
Speaker 1: even in many cases, simply decline to endorse the movement's agenda.
Speaker 1: He argues that he is simply looking to protect the
Speaker 1: speech of those like the President, who is just doing
Speaker 1: his earnest best to participate in this glorious democracy of ours.
Speaker 5: First of all, with.
Speaker 1: Regard to the president, specifically, if Joe Biden would like
Speaker 1: to avail himself of more opportunities to speak to the
Speaker 1: American people, I know I for one, would really welcome
Speaker 1: that perhaps he could sit for more news interviews, since
Speaker 1: he has done vastly fewer than any other president in
Speaker 1: modern history. Perhaps he could agree to debate as opponents,
Speaker 1: as he refused to do in the Democratic primary and
Speaker 1: has as of yet not committed to do in the
Speaker 1: general election. Speaking though more broadly, of the speech rights
Speaker 1: of Democratic Party congress people, let's compare, shall we, the
Speaker 1: amount of speech permitted by the pro zionis side versus
Speaker 1: the antidenticide side. Last week I interviewed Motaz Salem. He's
Speaker 1: a Palestinian American activist. He's seen more than one hundred
Speaker 1: of his family members killed in Gaza. I cannot even
Speaker 1: begin to comprehend this level of loss, or what it
Speaker 1: might do to me, or what actions it might lead
Speaker 1: me to take. Frankly, but Motas has channeled his grief
Speaker 1: and rage righteously. He spends his days stocking the halls
Speaker 1: of Congress, confronting members wherever he can find them, hoping
Speaker 1: that some waste, somehow their humanity and shame will catch
Speaker 1: up with them as they realize what they have done.
Speaker 1: Hoping that perhaps if they can see him as a real,
Speaker 1: full human being, they might also see those children starving
Speaker 1: to death, or those parents slaughtered seeking aid his own
Speaker 1: family members, maybe they will see them as real, full
Speaker 1: human beings too. Yesterday, Motaz was part of a group
Speaker 1: in which some members were arrested for shutting down the
Speaker 1: Senate cafeteria. In other words, he is engaging the sort
Speaker 1: of confrontational tactics that Chaite deems quote unquote illiberal. Now
Speaker 1: Motaz is doing everything he can to non violently make
Speaker 1: his speech heard, but in American politics, all of the
Speaker 1: odds are stacked up against him because not only is
Speaker 1: speech speech, money is also speech, and one of the
Speaker 1: best funded political organizations in the entire country is dedicated
Speaker 1: to making sure that Motaz's speech is never heard. That
Speaker 1: be a pack, of course, which has pleasure to spend
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars to block any candidate with even
Speaker 1: the potential to criticize the Israeli government and to punish
Speaker 1: those who already have the long standing bipartisan commitment to
Speaker 1: unconditional Israeli governments. Is a testament to the strength of
Speaker 1: APEC's extremely well funded speech. What's more, Biden and the
Speaker 1: Democrats will have literally billions of dollars in this election
Speaker 1: cycle to back up their de facto progenocide speech. So
Speaker 1: while Motaz and his fellow activists, God bless them, are
Speaker 1: undoubtedly a constant source of irritation for Joe Biden and
Speaker 1: Kareem Jean Pierre and Tony Blinken and many others, it's
Speaker 1: not because it seriously impacts those people's free speech. It's
Speaker 1: an insult to all of our intelligence to pretend that
Speaker 1: is actually the case. How can the speech of Motaz
Speaker 1: compete against the billions of dollars in presidential bully pulpit
Speaker 1: a arrayed against it. It's an irritation because these powerful
Speaker 1: people must be confronted on a daily basis with what
Speaker 1: frauds they really are, how they use the language of
Speaker 1: humanitarian values in international law right up to the moment
Speaker 1: that it became uncomfortable for them, And now they have
Speaker 1: Greenland armed and assisted one of the worst atrocities in
Speaker 1: recent history. Adding insult to injurious stupidity, Chade has a
Speaker 1: suggestion for how these protests should properly go about making
Speaker 1: their views heard in our great democracy. He writes, the
Speaker 1: pro Poalestinitian movement is barely even attempting democratic participation. The
Speaker 1: movement could have run an anti Israel candidate against Biden,
Speaker 1: but never bothered, no doubt, anticipating they would lose. Okay,
Speaker 1: First of all, both Cornell West and Jill Stein do
Speaker 1: exist and are running. And in case you were wondering
Speaker 1: about Chate's enthusiasm for allowing such candidates to participate in
Speaker 1: our democratic process, he's also the type that will definitely
Speaker 1: smear third party candidates as being secret Trump lovers. But
Speaker 1: I also wonder if Jonathan Chait is aware Joe Biden
Speaker 1: had primary opponents and they were completely shut out by
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and the corporate press. How's that for illiberal?
Speaker 1: And I am not talking about figuratively speaking here. The
Speaker 1: DNC ordered the primary states to best benefit Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: They refuse to host any debates, and as if that
Speaker 1: wasn't enough, key state Democratic parties just blocked Biden opponents
Speaker 1: from being placed on the ballot and canceled their primaries
Speaker 1: all together. There literally was not an electoral process to
Speaker 1: participate in the party effectively canceled it. As David start
Speaker 1: to point it out, quote, when a political party makes
Speaker 1: it impossible to express dissent inside a normal process, it
Speaker 1: should probably expect that people will then try to express
Speaker 1: descent outside the normal process. If you want activists to
Speaker 1: use more polite tactics, maybe get outraged about these genuinely
Speaker 1: illiberal and authoritarian tactics that have left so many feelings
Speaker 1: like their democratic free speech rights are effectively meaningless. Or
Speaker 1: if you're looking to be outraged, maybe just maybe get
Speaker 1: outraged at the powerful politicians who are responsible for this annihilation,
Speaker 1: providing diplomatic cover, shipping weapons that make such destruction possible
Speaker 1: and inevitable, Those who are responsible for starving these children
Speaker 1: through their inaction, and through actively defunding the primary aid
Speaker 1: organization that could serve them. I might suggest this could
Speaker 1: be a more worthy use of your.
Speaker 5: Time and of ours.
Speaker 1: By the way, Jonathan Chate closes out his piece with
Speaker 1: this line quote, If your movement's goal is to prevent
Speaker 1: those who disagree from expressing themselves, and you delight in
Speaker 1: meeting out abuse and humiliation to your targets, you're showing
Speaker 1: the world you cannot be trusted with power.
Speaker 5: Yes, let's allow.
Speaker 1: The serious people to hold power, the ones who are
Speaker 1: serious about supporting the slaughter of more than fifteen thousand children,
Speaker 1: As the world watches in horror. These are the types
Speaker 1: in whom Jonathan Chate places his trust. And if you
Speaker 1: don't like it, then you can send a strongly worded letter,
Speaker 1: so long as that it is in the proper cordial
Speaker 1: tone and doesn't have a prayer of changing a goddamn thing.
Speaker 1: And Emily, I also think this calm.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: All Right, guys, thank you so much for watching today. Emily,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for sitting in with Sager for Sager,
Speaker 1: thanks for having Sager in spirit.
Speaker 4: Scaga was here in spirit, not in the chair, but
Speaker 4: he was here in spirit.
Speaker 1: Zaga or we'll be back next week and we'll be
Speaker 1: back with our regular scheduled program.
Speaker 5: And so guys, enjoy the weekend. We'll see you soon.