Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing show for everybody today where we have Chrystal. Indeed,
Speaker 1: we do all kinds of interesting things to get into
Speaker 1: this morning. So we may have the return of former
Speaker 1: President Trump to Twitter and possibly also to Facebook or
Speaker 1: Meta or whatever we're calling it now. We'll get into that.
Speaker 1: He's also calling out Ron DeSantis in new commentary. We'll
Speaker 1: have to dig into that. We got also some elon
Speaker 1: news both at Twitter and Tesla and engineer revealing that
Speaker 1: the initial Tesla's self driving video was completely staged and
Speaker 1: that was not advertised at all. And of course there's
Speaker 1: been a number of crashes, some of them fatal, and
Speaker 1: lawsuits that their facings will get into that, and also
Speaker 1: big interest payment due over at Twitter, how will they
Speaker 1: be able to pay those bills? Also on the tech sector,
Speaker 1: new layoffs at Microsoft, ten thousand workers being laid off
Speaker 1: over there, as a trend of just total bloodbath continues
Speaker 1: over in the tech sector. We also have some new
Speaker 1: comments from Davos, both from Senator Chris Coons, who's one
Speaker 1: of Joe Biden's top allies closest allies in the Senate,
Speaker 1: revealing comments there, and also Vladimir Zelinski making comments that
Speaker 1: are quite interesting too in context of what we are
Speaker 1: preparing to do with regards to Ukraine. We also have
Speaker 1: a moment on CNN where they are now allowing questioning
Speaker 1: of the COVID detal and whether or not those debts
Speaker 1: are overcounted and who it is coming from is also
Speaker 1: very intriguing. Sager is looking at the Chinese birth rate.
Speaker 1: I am looking at a very interesting moment over on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News. They're very upset about some proposals to tax
Speaker 1: the rich, and we have Ken Roth on I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys followed this story. So he ran
Speaker 1: Human Rights Watch and he looked like he was in
Speaker 1: line to get a fellowship over at Harvard. That fellowship
Speaker 1: was blocked apparently because of his criticism of the state
Speaker 1: of Israel. So he's going to join us and tell
Speaker 1: us what he knows about that. But let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and start with the former president Donald Trump, looking to
Speaker 1: get back on Twitter and back on Meta as he
Speaker 1: ramps up his presidential campaign. Let's go and throw this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. This is reporting from NBC News.
Speaker 1: The headline here is Donald Trump prepares for his return
Speaker 1: to Facebook and Twitter. Trump's presidential campaign formally petitioned Facebook's
Speaker 1: parent company Tuesday to unblock his account, according to a
Speaker 1: letter reviewed by NBC News. Go ahead and put this
Speaker 1: next piece up on the screen because this has some
Speaker 1: of the key scoops that are in this NBC News reporting.
Speaker 1: So first of all, you've got Trump campaign advisors workshopping
Speaker 1: ideas for his first tweet. Of course, once Elon took
Speaker 1: over Twitter, eventually he allowed Trump back on the platform.
Speaker 1: But Trump has stuck to true social thus far, claiming
Speaker 1: he's going to stay there, that he's not interested in
Speaker 1: coming back in Twitter. I think we all knew that
Speaker 1: was going to be short lived. Now that he's getting
Speaker 1: back into campaign mode. Apparently he is workshopping ideas for
Speaker 1: the grand return to Twitter. The next piece was campaign
Speaker 1: is formally petitioning Facebook to unblock his account. So there
Speaker 1: had been some speculation that they might actually sue Meta
Speaker 1: slash Facebook in order to enable his return. Instead, they
Speaker 1: have just written a letter saying, hey, this is really
Speaker 1: screwing up our political process here, which I think is
Speaker 1: frankly a very fair point. And they also say the
Speaker 1: campaign is prepared to engage with the House GOP to
Speaker 1: advocate on his behalf with metas the fact that you've
Speaker 1: got the Republicans in control of the House now they
Speaker 1: also seen as a sort of feather in their cap
Speaker 1: or a point in their favor in order to try
Speaker 1: to get his account reinstated on Facebook. Because remember, we
Speaker 1: have two different dynamics here. Twitter, he's allowed back on,
Speaker 1: but just hasn't chosen to return Meta. He still is
Speaker 1: technically banned and is pushing to be allowed back on.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would guess that they're going to let
Speaker 1: him back on, and it's kind of hard to keep
Speaker 1: yeah when you've got I mean, he's running for president again.
Speaker 1: He is very much likely to be the Republican nominee.
Speaker 1: You can't just keep this guy off of Facebook forever.
Speaker 1: And they also serve two very different purposes Soga. I mean,
Speaker 1: Twitter is very much the elite conversation. This is what
Speaker 1: he would always use to needle the news media and
Speaker 1: be able to sort of dominate and drive news cycles.
Speaker 1: And he was very effective at that. Fantastic poster of
Speaker 1: like morality and everything else aside. Meta is actually very
Speaker 1: important for him for fundraising, especially since there are a
Speaker 1: number of big donors who have said they're staying out
Speaker 1: this time. We'll see also if that holds. But Facebook
Speaker 1: has always been key for him in terms of fundraising
Speaker 1: and also like get out the vote kind of effort. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is a very important thing, which is that
Speaker 1: the Facebook case itself probably highlighted, maybe even more so,
Speaker 1: the capricious nature through all of this and how it
Speaker 1: is done. Facebook's initial reason for banning Trump was that
Speaker 1: Trump was quote inciting violence. Now they kept and had
Speaker 1: a six month suspension that they then upheld. During that period,
Speaker 1: Facebook had his entire fake oversight board process, right, this
Speaker 1: supposedly independent Supreme Court. Well, the Supreme Court looked at
Speaker 1: it and they were like, yeah, I guess we uphold it,
Speaker 1: but it's your company, Mark Zuckerberg, and you don't seem
Speaker 1: to have any real processes in place. So then right now,
Speaker 1: in terms of what Facebook is saying, they say quote
Speaker 1: at the end of this period, we will look to
Speaker 1: the experts to assess whether the risk to public safety
Speaker 1: has receded. First of all, come on, this is the
Speaker 1: freedom of speech issue, cut and dry, even on January sixth,
Speaker 1: whether you didn't like it or not. But second, two
Speaker 1: years later, the idea that there's a quote unquote risk
Speaker 1: to public safety by allowing an active candidate for president
Speaker 1: to be on your platform is outrageous and it actually
Speaker 1: highlights exactly what the original oversight board told them, which
Speaker 1: is that you have an indeterminate and standardless penalty with
Speaker 1: an open ended nature of suspension, with no real processes
Speaker 1: in place, and to actually make a proper decision. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they're going to light it back on
Speaker 1: or not, But if you had a situation where Joe
Speaker 1: Biden was the nominee and he is allowed on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump is and he's not allowed, that's just
Speaker 1: that can't stand. It's not possible, or the other way
Speaker 1: I've seen some speculation that the way they may get
Speaker 1: around this is Facebook may actually just stop having political
Speaker 1: advertising entirely on the platform. That's something that was the
Speaker 1: original policy on the Twitter platform before Elon took over.
Speaker 1: He's reversed that policy. Facebook never went so far to
Speaker 1: have that. But they might just say they're like, look,
Speaker 1: the money's not worth it, these are too many headaches
Speaker 1: and let it just be a free fra all. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a bad decision. Actually, that would be losing
Speaker 1: a big chunk of shape, right, But that's the problem.
Speaker 1: Advertising I think on Facebook is fairly significant, don't know
Speaker 1: the numbers off the top of my head. And something
Speaker 1: that Ryan Granma always pointing out is like these social
Speaker 1: media platforms and the advertising you can do that there
Speaker 1: are disproportionately important for upstart, grassroots candidates. So when you
Speaker 1: talk about blanket bans on political advertising on these platforms,
Speaker 1: I think that's a bad direction to go in. But
Speaker 1: I mean the free speech case, listen. I have enjoyed,
Speaker 1: as I've said many times, Trump not being on Twitter.
Speaker 1: It was nice when we had a little break from him.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to deny that, but I have always
Speaker 1: said this is This is outrageous when you consider the
Speaker 1: people who were allowed to continue to be on these platforms,
Speaker 1: when you consider the fact that we had years of
Speaker 1: news cycles about some frickin' Russian memes on Facebook or
Speaker 1: whatever like that was determining the twenty sixteen election results.
Speaker 1: Of course, we just just got the study reported by
Speaker 1: the news media. Turns out that didn't matter whatsoever. But
Speaker 1: to ban one of the most prominent candidates and the
Speaker 1: most likely GOP nominee for the twenty twenty four election,
Speaker 1: to ban him entirely continuing to ban him entirely for Facebook,
Speaker 1: I just think that that is not a sustainable position.
Speaker 1: But we will see what they ultimately decide to do.
Speaker 1: I have no particular insight into their decision making there
Speaker 1: and what they're likely to no ultimately come down on.
Speaker 1: I mean, there is no question also because the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign could prove, if you're thinking about this from an
Speaker 1: election interference perspective, twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, they raised
Speaker 1: an outrageous amount of money on Facebook, like ungodly, especially
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. It was one of the major places
Speaker 1: actually that they sold the original red Maga hat. Now
Speaker 1: nobody's experiencing the same amount of enthusiasm they had that
Speaker 1: time around. But if you're cut off from such a
Speaker 1: critical financial lifeline where you were raising hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in twenty sixteen, just due to the private
Speaker 1: nature of a company, and they're so fake content policies,
Speaker 1: that's a big problem. And actually what they point to
Speaker 1: also in the memo is they're like, if you don't
Speaker 1: let us back on the house, GOP is now in
Speaker 1: charge and we are going to go full bore in
Speaker 1: terms of influencing our allies in Congress to investigate you.
Speaker 1: And you may hate Trump, may Trump a lot, but
Speaker 1: they look from a standards perspective in terms of how
Speaker 1: our society has to run, like this is clearly not
Speaker 1: fair in any way and would just set a terrible
Speaker 1: precedent going forward. Let me also say, even if you
Speaker 1: don't care about the free speech concerns, I did a
Speaker 1: little bit of reading yesterday into the research around what
Speaker 1: happens when you deplatform people and listen, I mean, in
Speaker 1: some ways, cancelation works on one level, like even if
Speaker 1: you are Donald Trump or Alex Jones or one of
Speaker 1: these other larger than life figures when you lose your
Speaker 1: place on the most central social media platforms. It does,
Speaker 1: you do take a hit in terms of your followers,
Speaker 1: in terms of your reach and those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: But there's a downside, which is that the people who
Speaker 1: follow you over to wherever your new platform is, they're
Speaker 1: more likely to actually become more radical, more hardened in
Speaker 1: their views. So even if you don't give a shit
Speaker 1: about free speech and you're just concerned about like public
Speaker 1: safety and what's going to happen here, it's not clear
Speaker 1: that this is the right direction to go in. And
Speaker 1: you can even see this on a micro level with
Speaker 1: Trump himself, where since he has been pushed over to
Speaker 1: the truth Social platform instead of being on Twitter where
Speaker 1: there are a lot of range of different voices, when
Speaker 1: he's just on truth Social and you just have this
Speaker 1: sort of like one ideological contingent that is there on
Speaker 1: the platform with him, he has become more sort of
Speaker 1: fringe and isolated and more obsessed with like conspiracies and
Speaker 1: QAnon and these sorts of things. I mean, he wasn't
Speaker 1: reposting q drops before the pushover to truth Social, So
Speaker 1: you can see how it has just with him in
Speaker 1: his own like focus and person the way that this
Speaker 1: move has impacted him and sort of pushed him even
Speaker 1: more to the fringe and even more kind of to
Speaker 1: these radical conspiracy theory notions. I think it's fantastic point. No,
Speaker 1: none of us should be in silos. It's always better,
Speaker 1: you know. I've always been against quote unquote alternative platforms
Speaker 1: that are against those that are at scale, solely for
Speaker 1: this reason, like I want to just talk to an
Speaker 1: echo chamber. I want to talk to people, see people
Speaker 1: who I disagree with. Part of the reason Twitter is
Speaker 1: actually so valuable to me and I think to our
Speaker 1: job and elsewhere is to see many of the viewpoints
Speaker 1: which people who we vehemently disagree and probably would never
Speaker 1: come across in real life, but have real disproportionate influence
Speaker 1: over society and group think. Those things are valuable for
Speaker 1: all of us, is yeah. Part of the reason also
Speaker 1: why we cover it on the show, and I think
Speaker 1: it's important for everyone to be involved in that, even
Speaker 1: if it is someone you don't like, and especially if
Speaker 1: that person is the president or the former president of
Speaker 1: the United States. Indeed, all right, at the same time,
Speaker 1: the former president Trump had sat for an interview with
Speaker 1: David Brodie, who actually covered a piece of this earlier
Speaker 1: in the week. But there was another noteworthy moment where
Speaker 1: he got asked about potential contender Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: Trump's comments here kind of noteworthy. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 1: I got him elected, pure and simple. He would have
Speaker 1: never if I said I wasn't going to endorse you,
Speaker 1: and I was. You know, there was no reason to
Speaker 1: go wild about the endorsing him. You know, he was
Speaker 1: one of about one hundred congressmen who bought for me,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I felt, I felt I might
Speaker 1: as well endorse him because I didn't know Adam Buttnam,
Speaker 1: but he was the three. He was ready to drop
Speaker 1: out of the race. It was all done. Adam Putnam
Speaker 1: had that nomination locked up, you know, the Republican nomination,
Speaker 1: Piover of Florida. He had it locked up. It was done.
Speaker 1: And when I, as Adam Putnam said to me when
Speaker 1: I met him a year later, I didn't know him
Speaker 1: at all, but I saw him. He said, it was
Speaker 1: like a nuclear bomb went off. A nuclear weapon went
Speaker 1: off when you endorsed him and the race was over.
Speaker 1: He said, he didn't even spend his money there was
Speaker 1: no way he could have beaten him after I endorsed him.
Speaker 1: So you know, now I hear he might want to
Speaker 1: run against me, So we'll handle that the way I
Speaker 1: handle things. Well, handle that the way I handled that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: think that. Oh I thought it was a great answer.
Speaker 1: I mean that's exactly what I've said. You know, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Trump the day after the midterm, maybe like two days
Speaker 1: after the midterm something, he was really angry. And one
Speaker 1: of the first he was like, look at this guy,
Speaker 1: Ronda sand Is. He was nobody down thirty three. I
Speaker 1: endorsed him. He shot up to number one. So he's
Speaker 1: had this in his head for a long Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he hates the amount of press that DeSantis is getting.
Speaker 1: The whole run dysanctimonious thing, and it just look this
Speaker 1: also highlight even if you are not going to run
Speaker 1: against Trump, even if you're not actively doing it, if
Speaker 1: the media even annoints you, he'll just start attacking you.
Speaker 1: And we covered that poll just yesterday or sorry on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: where we looked at the fact that Trump continues to
Speaker 1: have forty six percent support amongst likely GOP primary voters.
Speaker 1: I also think that the longer time moves on from
Speaker 1: the mid terms, it's always going to be stronger in
Speaker 1: his favor. And then, of course, the only real scenario
Speaker 1: where this would probably work is if it was a
Speaker 1: true head to head matchup, and who the hell thinks
Speaker 1: that's actually going to happen. It's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: You've got too many people with too many egos who
Speaker 1: think that this is their moment, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I covered on Tuesday, like Glenn Youngkin looks very much
Speaker 1: like he's going to run, even though he's sitting at
Speaker 1: like zero percent in the polls. He's convinced himself that
Speaker 1: since he won in Virginia at a time when Republican
Speaker 1: fortunes were at their greatest and he happened to sort
Speaker 1: of stumble into the right moment at the right time,
Speaker 1: but he's persuaded himself that that means he's like some
Speaker 1: great political talent and genius. So he's probably gonna run.
Speaker 1: You got Nicky Haley who wants to run. You've got
Speaker 1: friggin John Bolton who wants to run, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence,
Speaker 1: all of these people, and individually they may not garner
Speaker 1: that much support, but it doesn't take that much support
Speaker 1: for them to eat into the like maybe we're not
Speaker 1: with Trump contingent of the GOP base before it just
Speaker 1: becomes impossible for anyone to ultimately take him down. But listen,
Speaker 1: we got a long way to go between now and then.
Speaker 1: Anything can happen. So who knows, I will say on
Speaker 1: he's fixated on this particular line of attack against DeSantis,
Speaker 1: basically like I made you and you're being disloyal. I
Speaker 1: genuinely don't know how that lands with the GOP, like
Speaker 1: do they care? Do they care about that loyalty test
Speaker 1: or not? I think there's a contingent of them that do.
Speaker 1: But there might be other stronger points to make against Rondosantas.
Speaker 1: I really have no idea. It's certainly possible. The other one,
Speaker 1: I think really what it is is that instead of disloyalty,
Speaker 1: it's I'm the supreme, like I'm the you know, I'm
Speaker 1: the alpha, Yeah, exactly, I'm the one, the alpha at
Speaker 1: the top, Like I annoyed to you. You're the next generation.
Speaker 1: You're just like a copycam. You can follow after me.
Speaker 1: When I'm done, then sure you can go ahead and
Speaker 1: take the mantle, But for now, like when it's my
Speaker 1: time on the stage, don't you dare? And I think
Speaker 1: that's just always going to be the case, honestly, even
Speaker 1: while he's alive, even if he's not an active candidate
Speaker 1: for president, You're always going to have to go and
Speaker 1: kiss the ring if you want to do that. All
Speaker 1: the thing is Santa's is a prideful man. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got a very very popular governor of Florida. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to do that. So you've got a
Speaker 1: contest of wills right now. Yeah. Another little interesting note
Speaker 1: is there's this one advisor to Trump. Now, what's her name,
Speaker 1: Christy Wiles. Yes, Christy Wiles, who was a top advisor
Speaker 1: to DeSantis and now is basically running Trump's campaign. He
Speaker 1: had run his campaign in Florida before. And she seems
Speaker 1: to be a pretty key piece here because this is
Speaker 1: someone who had kind of a following falling out with
Speaker 1: the Susan Wiles. Okay, Susan Wiles, so had kind of
Speaker 1: a falling out with sis And the thought is, you know,
Speaker 1: she would know better than anyone how to get under
Speaker 1: his skin, what his vulnerabilities are, et cetera. So that's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to just kind of keep your eye
Speaker 1: on in terms of the inside baseball here. Moving on
Speaker 1: to the next piece. So Trump has been shockingly quiet
Speaker 1: since he announced his presidential campaign. He did the infamous
Speaker 1: lunch with Nick Fuentes Kanye West, but we really haven't
Speaker 1: heard much from him other than that. Well, it looks
Speaker 1: like they in the new year, are now beginning to
Speaker 1: ramp up somewhat. Let's go and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. From Politico, we've got some first details about
Speaker 1: what he plans to do. They say Trump prepares to
Speaker 1: open next phase of twenty twenty four campaign in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: The former president will hold a more intimate event than
Speaker 1: his typical rallies in the key state later this month.
Speaker 1: And of course South Carolina in the Republican primary process
Speaker 1: is one of the early states, so it's important here.
Speaker 1: They say he slated to make an appearance in late
Speaker 1: January in Columbia, South Carolina. It's not going to be
Speaker 1: a rally, but as I said before, this more intimate
Speaker 1: event with sort of you know, key players, leaders, donors,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. They're casting the plans as part
Speaker 1: of a gradual buildout of the former president's campaign following
Speaker 1: a relatively private month and a half since a November
Speaker 1: launch that coincided with the holiday season. I mean a
Speaker 1: couple things. First of all, the choice of South Carolina.
Speaker 1: As I just said, it's early in the Republican primary process,
Speaker 1: so it matters from that perspective. You also have two
Speaker 1: potential candidates who hail from the state in Senator Tim
Speaker 1: Scott and also his former UN Ambassador Nikki Hayley, so
Speaker 1: could be something you know, going on there as well.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing to note is we were
Speaker 1: talking about Susan Wilds's advisor before. She seems to be
Speaker 1: taking a very different approach to this his campaign rollout
Speaker 1: than they did last time around in twenty twenty. In
Speaker 1: these unsuccessful effort, you know, we covered they were blowing
Speaker 1: through cash like crazy, tons of staff, had like a
Speaker 1: you know, gleaming headquarters in Northern Virginia. This time they're
Speaker 1: keeping it more bare bones, much smaller in terms of staff.
Speaker 1: The camp office has like you know, used furniture and
Speaker 1: is in a strip mall or something like that. So
Speaker 1: it's a much lower key kind of affair, and she
Speaker 1: seems to be approaching the roll out in a lower
Speaker 1: key direction as well. Instead of jumping out of the
Speaker 1: gates with these big rallies which generate media coverage and
Speaker 1: generate enthusiasm, but also are quite expensive. So that's the
Speaker 1: trade off there, and we shouldn't forget, you know, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Things were a little bit on the edge. He loses
Speaker 1: in Iowa, he does win in New Hampshire, but South
Speaker 1: Carolina was his second primary. I just looked it up.
Speaker 1: He won by thirty two percent of the votes, so
Speaker 1: it's an important state there. And also you can also
Speaker 1: work your way back up the calendar thinking about Iowa,
Speaker 1: Caucasus and New Hampshire and cementing your role in both.
Speaker 1: I had seen, and I know we covered before a
Speaker 1: poll which showed DeSantis neck and neck with Trump in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, so very likely that Trump also will try
Speaker 1: to make inroads there. It's actually a smart move, which
Speaker 1: is if you think that there is any sort of
Speaker 1: threat to you, you want to lock down those early
Speaker 1: states that that the medium momentum going into Super two
Speaker 1: says that you don't have a chance in hell if
Speaker 1: you're coming up against Trump. So I look at this, actually,
Speaker 1: I think it's a smart move. You're also getting the
Speaker 1: Republican political establishment, people like Lindsey Graham becoming his South
Speaker 1: Carolina co chair and part of the leadership team. You
Speaker 1: want to lock that down. You want to get the
Speaker 1: political machine in process. So they're making moves even though
Speaker 1: it is very sleepy down in mar Lago right now. Yes, indeed, okay,
Speaker 1: let's go into the next one. Some big news with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. Things feels like things have been quiet over
Speaker 1: at Twitter, and maybe we have an explanation as to
Speaker 1: why financial bomb going off in the Elon Musk Twitter saga.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there on the screen. The Financial
Speaker 1: Times has very important reporting here. There is a major
Speaker 1: Twitter interest payment that is Elon has to make in
Speaker 1: the coming days because he financed over thirteen billion dollars
Speaker 1: in debt. Now, you would also notice by the way
Speaker 1: that Elon has been tweeting a lot about federal reserve rates.
Speaker 1: And this is why because Twitter said that the first
Speaker 1: installment of these interest payments related to that debt will
Speaker 1: be due at the end of January. That debt means
Speaker 1: that Elon must personally pay one point five billion in
Speaker 1: annual interest payments. Considering also that he financed a major
Speaker 1: portion of this deal through Banks, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays,
Speaker 1: and Mitsubishi. He's got various interest payments that he has
Speaker 1: to make there at the same time that the company
Speaker 1: itself is losing a ton of money. Now remember before
Speaker 1: he even took it over, Twitter lost one hundred and
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty one million dollars in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: He's got some things going for him. He fired ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the staff and the platform continues to be working,
Speaker 1: so that's probably a benefit. You've got those people off.
Speaker 1: At the same time, he had like three month severance
Speaker 1: payments which he had to make out to all of them,
Speaker 1: so the financial runway isn't there just yet and the
Speaker 1: payment is still due. Also reporting in the same piece
Speaker 1: as well as Reuters and New York Magazine that you've
Speaker 1: seen a forty percent drop internally in Twitter. Overall advertising
Speaker 1: revenue everybody that was approximately five billion dollars in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, which wasn't even enough to cover all their expenses.
Speaker 1: So that maybe brings you to around two point five billion.
Speaker 1: Why does that matter because that means that their entire
Speaker 1: revenue is barely enough to cover the interest payment that
Speaker 1: they now have to make on the debt, let alone
Speaker 1: the debt itself, so it's a big financial problem overall.
Speaker 1: Also has big impact on Tesla stock if Elon has
Speaker 1: to continue selling Tesla stock, which right now is at
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial low as to where it was over
Speaker 1: the last two years, and company problems over there itself.
Speaker 1: So this is all becoming a little bit of financial
Speaker 1: financial problem for Elon Musk having put downward pressure on Tessa,
Speaker 1: his major source of wealth, he lost one hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars in wealth in twenty twenty two, and at the
Speaker 1: same time has the biggest problem of all for any billionaire,
Speaker 1: which is you actually have to liquidate your assets a
Speaker 1: straight up cash, which is something that none of them
Speaker 1: ever wants. Well, they don't want to do it. Then
Speaker 1: you have to pay taxes, and none of them want
Speaker 1: will to pay taxes. So yeah, so he has kind
Speaker 1: of a couple of bad options. One of them would
Speaker 1: be to liquidate some assets and have to take the
Speaker 1: tax hit. Another one would be to collateralize Tesla shares,
Speaker 1: which he's done before, but that becomes really difficult when
Speaker 1: his the valuation of Tesla has plummeted so dramatically their
Speaker 1: stock has fallen sixty five percent last year, Musk sold heavily.
Speaker 1: The value of a stake in the company has plunged
Speaker 1: about fifty billion from one hundred and seventy billion when
Speaker 1: he offered to buy Twitter in April of last year. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, Elon Musk is still an insanely wealthy man.
Speaker 1: No one is saying that he isn't. But in terms
Speaker 1: of the business picture for Twitter, it's pretty bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was bad before he took it over. As you're
Speaker 1: pointing out, they were already kind of in a hole.
Speaker 1: Then you have this huge advertiser exodus. Go and put
Speaker 1: this next piece up on the screen from the Guardian,
Speaker 1: they say, as Sagert has mentioned that Twitter's been hit
Speaker 1: by a forty percent revenue drop as more than five
Speaker 1: hundred clients have paused their spending. And you know, whatever
Speaker 1: Elon is doing us and around with like Twitter Blue
Speaker 1: and the eight dollars a month, it ain't coming close
Speaker 1: to filling in that gap ultimately. So yeah, he's in
Speaker 1: a difficult position. He's also floated maybe taking Twitter into bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't expect them to actually do that, but it
Speaker 1: could be a way of putting pressure on the existing
Speaker 1: investors who don't want to get screwed and be last
Speaker 1: in line in terms of some bankruptcy proceedings to pony
Speaker 1: up more cash to ultimately keep this thing going. But
Speaker 1: given the fact that he wildly overpaid for Twitter to
Speaker 1: start with, he's also not in a great position visa
Speaker 1: vi these investors. And you know, the type of additional
Speaker 1: funds that they would put in at what rate. It's
Speaker 1: all a big question. I mean, right now they're trying
Speaker 1: to squeeze revenue out. And in terms of Elon, I mean,
Speaker 1: things have been relatively quiet in terms of like major news.
Speaker 1: They have some platform deals that they have struck that
Speaker 1: I was looking at just today. So they signed a deal.
Speaker 1: And then, by the way, it is a little bit suspect,
Speaker 1: they signed a bunch of twenty twenty three content deals
Speaker 1: with media companies. They don't appear to be really focused
Speaker 1: on the news per se. It's more like sports races,
Speaker 1: things like The Bachelor for Disney ABC, Paramount MTV in
Speaker 1: order to promote their shows like the Masks saying more
Speaker 1: like mass media entertainment, so media companies per se. So
Speaker 1: obviously some of these companies are keeping their advertising on Twitter.
Speaker 1: But remember also, you know, Twitter was a very small
Speaker 1: part of the overall advertising budget writ large and corded
Speaker 1: to all the social media companies, and even if they
Speaker 1: scale back slightly, you know, all of that is adding
Speaker 1: up to a major impact on the bottom line over
Speaker 1: at Twitter. So it's a it's a big problem right
Speaker 1: now for him financially, and it can have cascading effects
Speaker 1: on Tesla stock, on you know, even SpaceX possibly, and
Speaker 1: I shouldn't forget, you know, like SpaceX is also a private,
Speaker 1: really run company. These these can have major impacts in
Speaker 1: terms of his ability to finance all of his businesses,
Speaker 1: just because so much of his intertwined with him personally.
Speaker 1: So it's a problem. Yeah. Also, wasn't he going to
Speaker 1: step down as CEO? He said he would set down.
Speaker 1: We all voted, We all voted to say he set down,
Speaker 1: But who knows. He said he would only run what
Speaker 1: he said, he'd only run the engin teams and he
Speaker 1: would step down to find a general successor will he
Speaker 1: actually do so, We'll see, you know, we really I
Speaker 1: love how these things get floated in and it's like
Speaker 1: a big deal that everyone just like instantly forgets that
Speaker 1: it happened, because this is a while ago, two months ago.
Speaker 1: I think it happened in December he said he would
Speaker 1: step down. Nothing yet seems to have come out. Some
Speaker 1: of the Twitter files remain and continue to come out,
Speaker 1: but things even that on that stage, you know, really dwindling.
Speaker 1: I'm still waiting to see some big Twitter files. So again,
Speaker 1: that's kind of where things stand right now for the company,
Speaker 1: after all of the initial chaos. All right, second part here,
Speaker 1: let's go to this again. This is a problem, and
Speaker 1: this is actually causing problems for Tesla, the company the
Speaker 1: major source of Elon's wealth. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen. An engineer who worked
Speaker 1: for Tesla says that the company's twenty and sixteen videos
Speaker 1: showing quote full autopilot was actually staged. Now, this was
Speaker 1: a senior engineer at the company, after it was shared
Speaker 1: in a twenty sixteen blog post saying full self driving
Speaker 1: hardware on all Tesla's The four minute video, which we
Speaker 1: will show you in a little bit, purports to say
Speaker 1: that a person in the driver's seat is only there
Speaker 1: for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car
Speaker 1: is driving itself. Let's go ahead and play some of
Speaker 1: that video, which will narrate for all of you who
Speaker 1: are just watching. As I said, it begins, the person
Speaker 1: in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons.
Speaker 1: He's not doing anything. The car is driving itself. The
Speaker 1: car is pulling itself out. The driver is getting in here,
Speaker 1: he's engaging the Tesla autopilot system. The car begins to
Speaker 1: move forward. It's moving on a street. There are cars
Speaker 1: around there. It's making the coveted left turn, the Holy
Speaker 1: Grail or AI self driving because it's an incredibly shaky
Speaker 1: and tough thing to do. Another left turn there that
Speaker 1: you can see, says that it shows you also some
Speaker 1: of the right rear camera angles, and we can go
Speaker 1: ahead and turn it off because I think people get
Speaker 1: the picture. The car is driving itself. Okay, that's what
Speaker 1: they claimed in twenty sixteen, however, and also the CEO
Speaker 1: actually said that the demonstration at the time was Tesla
Speaker 1: drives itself, no human input at all. Well, they are
Speaker 1: now claiming Crystal that this engineer says, actually that was
Speaker 1: entirely staged, and that's actually leading to some lawsuits from
Speaker 1: Tesla owners around the purported viability of full self driving
Speaker 1: and the claims that the company made itself. Now, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: is this unprecedented? No, we should all remember what I
Speaker 1: think it was either the original Macintosh or Mac ninety
Speaker 1: eight where Steve Jobs basically was like, had them program
Speaker 1: a display something and they're like, well, we'll get to
Speaker 1: it eventually to lead consumers stuper and you know he
Speaker 1: did pull it off to be fair, so not necessarily
Speaker 1: without precedent, but not a good look, especially because it
Speaker 1: could open the company up to lawsuits which are already
Speaker 1: being filed after this report came out. There's long been
Speaker 1: a real fake it till you make it culture in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, and the ones who make it end up
Speaker 1: as you know, world beating billionaire supposed geniuses like Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: and the ones that don't make it end up like
Speaker 1: a Holmes in prisoners. And you know what you have
Speaker 1: here is listen. It would be one thing if there
Speaker 1: was some sort of disclosure, but they insisted that this
Speaker 1: was one hundred percent done. Tesla drives itself, no human
Speaker 1: input at all. That's what the video says. There is
Speaker 1: no fine print, there is nothing whatsoever. And this becomes
Speaker 1: incredibly relevant from a couple perspectives. I mean, number one,
Speaker 1: Elon has said himself that if the self driving feature
Speaker 1: doesn't work, Tesla is basically worth nothing, So he sees
Speaker 1: this as a key clearly saw this as a key
Speaker 1: part of the financial prospects of this company. But then
Speaker 1: word to the point, as you're pointing out here, that
Speaker 1: this came out as part of a deposition in a
Speaker 1: lawsuit over the death of someone who really actually trusted
Speaker 1: these representations that the auto drive feature fully functioned and
Speaker 1: was safe. This man who ultimately died in an accident,
Speaker 1: he believed it was safer than human control because he
Speaker 1: thought that the AI was that good. So it was
Speaker 1: the death of Walter Kwang, a thirty eight year old
Speaker 1: Apple engineer, died in twenty eighteen his Tesla crashed into
Speaker 1: a highway median on California's Highway one oh one. The lawsuit,
Speaker 1: which was filed by his widow, alleges that Tesla promoted
Speaker 1: its self driving systems as safer than they truly were,
Speaker 1: So you can see why this video becomes a key
Speaker 1: part of this lawsuit. According to the family's lawyer, they
Speaker 1: said Tesla is beta testing its autopilot software on live drivers,
Speaker 1: and there have been other accidents attributed to the self
Speaker 1: driving software as well. So not a good development in
Speaker 1: terms of the credibility of Tesla, in terms of their
Speaker 1: prospects with these lawsuits, and also potentially in terms of
Speaker 1: the financial future of the company. Yeah, I will say
Speaker 1: this is something that's beginning to annoy me. People are
Speaker 1: pointing to self driving crashes and all that. Yeah, listen,
Speaker 1: none of this technology is anywhere even close to one.
Speaker 1: And frankly, if you trust AI to I view, I
Speaker 1: really don't know what to tell you, Like if you're
Speaker 1: not putting your hands on the wheel, they make it
Speaker 1: pretty explicit, and all of these you know, look, it's
Speaker 1: not to a Tesla thing because everybody focuses on Tesla
Speaker 1: self driving. That's because which really has the most advanced technology,
Speaker 1: So of course they're gonna have the most crashes that
Speaker 1: are involved. But almost every car on the market at
Speaker 1: this point, like Honda's, Honda, Acura, I believe, even Toyota.
Speaker 1: They they all have lane assists, they all have automatic
Speaker 1: cruise control. What's the number one thing they tell you
Speaker 1: on the screen, don't trust it, put your hands on
Speaker 1: the wheel. Be prepared, keep your foot on the brake.
Speaker 1: So if you're not doing any of those things, that's
Speaker 1: straight up just driver error. I mean you have even cases,
Speaker 1: I believe also of people like watching movies. The Lily
Speaker 1: Caught of guy he was like watching a movie on
Speaker 1: his phone while he was on Tesla's self driving. He's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a Tesla's fault. Really, it's a testas fault. They
Speaker 1: literally tell you don't do that. So I have some
Speaker 1: I get very skeptical on all this. I think it
Speaker 1: should be treated in the way that you should treat
Speaker 1: any nascent technology. It's interesting, you should try it. You
Speaker 1: should always keep your hands on the wheel, you should
Speaker 1: always keep your eyes going forward. We're more I think
Speaker 1: we're probably two decades away from self driving cars. It
Speaker 1: actually might be one of the most hyped technologies that
Speaker 1: has not yet made very complex. It's very complex to
Speaker 1: be able to pull this off. I mean I have
Speaker 1: like the lane assists on my car, and the thing
Speaker 1: that it does the most is when there's like a
Speaker 1: turn lane and so the line on the pavement goes away.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the cars like I want to go over the
Speaker 1: exactly like whoa, or if it's raining, right, if it's
Speaker 1: raining and you can't see it, or if it's at
Speaker 1: it once again, just drive. I don't know, it's that difficult. Definitely,
Speaker 1: don't rely on this tech. Yeah, I think then don't
Speaker 1: rely on Elon's representations about the tech either, because apparently
Speaker 1: those are station fake. I think you shouldn't rely on
Speaker 1: any of these companies and for this stuff, even on
Speaker 1: automatic cruise control. Like you know, people break and are
Speaker 1: crazy all the time. I was driving here this morning
Speaker 1: and some person just cut somebody off, which leads another
Speaker 1: person to cut somebody off. Like the idea that we
Speaker 1: are yet at the point where you can do that
Speaker 1: safely and that's going to perfectly react especially you know.
Speaker 1: Part of the problem I think for AI cars is
Speaker 1: the real case for it is when every car is AI,
Speaker 1: so they can talk to each other and they like
Speaker 1: have fully sync. They were a long way if we have.
Speaker 1: If we have you know, some guy driving a nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five car and then somebody else in a Tesla,
Speaker 1: like the tesla is going to you know hardstop on
Speaker 1: its breaks and then it's going to get rear ended
Speaker 1: or something in the back. Anyway, My my main contention
Speaker 1: is Look, if you trust a car to drive you,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to tell you. I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: But elon point, I will say, like he does have
Speaker 1: a track record of making like grandiose technological flames that
Speaker 1: definitely that don't ultimately come to fruition, and this seems
Speaker 1: very much to fit into that. And then I mean,
Speaker 1: just the it is an extra step to put out
Speaker 1: this video and directly a test, no human imput this
Speaker 1: is all the car and have no fine print, no disclosure,
Speaker 1: no nothing, and put that out to the public. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. Silicon Valley engages in this kind
Speaker 1: of shady crap all the time. That doesn't make it
Speaker 1: okay or acceptable. I also, to be fair, this is
Speaker 1: just engineer said it like we haven't gotten confirmation yet
Speaker 1: that's what he claims. So here we'll see. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it'll come out in litigation. Yes, indeed. Okay, more tech
Speaker 1: news for you. This is something that we have been
Speaker 1: tracking really closely. The trend of mass layoffs across the
Speaker 1: tech sector continues. The latest company to shed thousands of
Speaker 1: jobs is Microsoft. Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: They are cutting ten thousand jobs adding as writers puts
Speaker 1: it to the glut of tech layoffs. In a note
Speaker 1: to staff that was shared with Reuter's, Microsoft CEO said
Speaker 1: customers wanted to quote optimize their digital spend, to do
Speaker 1: more with less and exercise caution as some parts of
Speaker 1: the world are in a recession and other parts are
Speaker 1: anticipating one. Microsoft also grappling with a slump in the
Speaker 1: personal computer market after a pandemic boom fizzled out, leaving
Speaker 1: little demand for its Windows and accompanying software. And that
Speaker 1: really is the story of all of these tech layoffs,
Speaker 1: more or less, is during the pandemic, you had a
Speaker 1: massive boom in the sector. Of course, you had the
Speaker 1: stock market blowing up and going up and up and up.
Speaker 1: You also had people who were at home, so they
Speaker 1: were on Zoom, they were on Netflix, they were apparently
Speaker 1: on their personal computers and buying new personal computers to
Speaker 1: be able to work from home. Now that that phase
Speaker 1: has ended, you have companies that dramatically over hired during
Speaker 1: that period, were radically overly optimistic, and now they're having
Speaker 1: shed tens of thousands of jobs. As I said before,
Speaker 1: let's put some of the context here. Amazon put the
Speaker 1: next piece up on the screen. They are now beginning
Speaker 1: a new round of layoffs. This we reported before. The
Speaker 1: number of people that they planned to layoff is around
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand. This is one of the largest of the
Speaker 1: whole sector, and these are largely white collar workers. So
Speaker 1: this is incredibly significant and you have actually a wonderful
Speaker 1: resource to track all of this. This is an independent
Speaker 1: person layoffs dot what is it? Layoff? FYI, go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this up on the screen. You've got some
Speaker 1: indications of where the largest layoffs are coming from. You
Speaker 1: have Meta here, you have Amazon, You've got Uberbooking dot Com, Cisco,
Speaker 1: Twitterbetter dot Com, Peloton Group on Carvana. I can't read
Speaker 1: that one, Bijew's I've never even heard of that. Kata anyway,
Speaker 1: those were the top layoffs as of December twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: The numbers have actually grown since then because you see
Speaker 1: Amazon on this chart with only ten thousand cuts. Now
Speaker 1: we know it's up to eighteen thousand cuts and there's
Speaker 1: some it's like up to one hundred and seventy thousand
Speaker 1: jobs in the sector across the entire industry that have
Speaker 1: been cut in the past two years. So you know
Speaker 1: this has a potential. Listen, First of all, it's terrible
Speaker 1: when people lose their jobs, even people who have been
Speaker 1: earning a decent salary, even people who probably have some
Speaker 1: decent job prospects in the future. Losing your job is painful,
Speaker 1: it's traumatic, it's very difficult. It can put people in
Speaker 1: a really harriz situation. So that's one piece of that.
Speaker 1: The other piece of this is, you know, it really
Speaker 1: does sort of change the dynamics within the workforce, where
Speaker 1: a lot of the growth in the upper middle class
Speaker 1: has been because of these tech jobs. So when you
Speaker 1: have such a pullback on a part of society that
Speaker 1: has been so important in terms of culture and also
Speaker 1: in terms of their spend, I mean, our whole society
Speaker 1: has practically been geared to this income class group, that's
Speaker 1: going to have big impacts. And then at the other
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum, while wages have been getting destroyed
Speaker 1: by inflation, you have massive demand for people to fill
Speaker 1: service sector pink collar jobs, blue collar jobs. Even so,
Speaker 1: it's a real reversal of previous trends where you know,
Speaker 1: those workers in the service sector pink collar blue collar
Speaker 1: jobs were treated as almost like disposable, like there were
Speaker 1: so many of them, we can just do whatever we
Speaker 1: want with them, and now you have a different dynamic
Speaker 1: where it's actually the tech worker who are getting squeezed
Speaker 1: here and struggling. Yeah, And actually a big part of it,
Speaker 1: and what I always try to focus on is why
Speaker 1: it even matters, is a huge amount of our growth
Speaker 1: has been disproportionately concentrated in tech, our economic growth specifically.
Speaker 1: So for example, the S and P five hundred is
Speaker 1: weighted to tech, I believe at somewhere around twenty five
Speaker 1: to thirty percent. So with so many people's retirement savings
Speaker 1: and really just a bet on America in general, you're
Speaker 1: kind of betting on the technology industry and have been first.
Speaker 1: So let's say twenty five odd years now, that has
Speaker 1: been actually quite a good bet now if you're looking
Speaker 1: at long enough time horizon, But in the short term,
Speaker 1: if you're going to have concentration or if you're going
Speaker 1: to have contractions in that industry, you're going to have
Speaker 1: all signs of spillover. So you're going to have to
Speaker 1: see a depression in the stocks, you're going to see
Speaker 1: reduction of people's retirement overall portfolios. But we're also going
Speaker 1: to see a lot of the subcontracting firms and other
Speaker 1: things that rely on tech and tech money to actually
Speaker 1: do well. It's a complicated problem. You're also going to see.
Speaker 1: These are really the most leading indicators, the biggest and
Speaker 1: the biggest of the tech alliance. But from what I've heard,
Speaker 1: you know, people who work in early stage startup capital,
Speaker 1: it is a savage and a brutal time to try
Speaker 1: and raise money. I saw a CEO of one financial
Speaker 1: company who's talking about how he's talking to one of
Speaker 1: his investors. One of investors said, you're one of my
Speaker 1: top five percent companies, and he was like, that's great,
Speaker 1: So are you going to give me more money. He's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, I'm not going to get you any more money.
Speaker 1: And so he said he can't even you know, he's
Speaker 1: literally in the top five percent of somebody's investment portfolio
Speaker 1: and he is unable to even raise money from these people.
Speaker 1: So a lot of venture capital firms are they're just
Speaker 1: not writing big checks in the way that they used to.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, so much of industry and
Speaker 1: growth and just money that bleeds all over not only
Speaker 1: San Francisco but Austin. You know, any of these companies
Speaker 1: any these cities which have really benefited from all this,
Speaker 1: it's a big problem. Yeah. San Francisco's housing market has
Speaker 1: seen the biggest drops of any market in the entire country. Now,
Speaker 1: things are still wildly unaffordable, but you see the largest
Speaker 1: percentage drop there of any metro area in the entire country.
Speaker 1: And you know, the other piece of this is that
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of bloat and a lot of
Speaker 1: sort of zombie companies in the tech space. I mean, frankly,
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of like fakery in the tech space,
Speaker 1: where because money was so cheap, and because you could
Speaker 1: get those infusions so easily and everybody had so much
Speaker 1: cash to play with, there was this attitude of like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, just start your thing, doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be profitable, and you'll be able to keep it going
Speaker 1: by basically taking in more and more and more cash. Right,
Speaker 1: that cycle seems to have ended, And that's not it.
Speaker 1: I Again, I don't want to seem heartless because of
Speaker 1: the real human beings involved, but having an entire segment
Speaker 1: of your economy that's really central, that's partly built on
Speaker 1: basically like zombie companies and fakery, is not ultimately a
Speaker 1: really healthy thing for the economy. So that's part of
Speaker 1: the cycle that we're seeing playing out here as well,
Speaker 1: which is significant, important to track. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: a I think it's an important story, and it's one
Speaker 1: on which has big implications for what the future of
Speaker 1: the US economy really looks like. I would hope some
Speaker 1: of this money goes to hard industry, but I doubt
Speaker 1: that we will ever learn. Yes, indeed. Okay. At the
Speaker 1: same time, as you all may know, the global elites
Speaker 1: have gathered once again the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Speaker 1: This is the first time post pandemic where they're back
Speaker 1: to the full schedule and the full timing and the
Speaker 1: whole thing. According to McKinsey, it's the biggest Davos ever
Speaker 1: in history, saga, and there's been a big shift in
Speaker 1: focus at the event. At this global confab, the Russian oligarchs,
Speaker 1: who used to be plentiful have been pushed to the side. Also,
Speaker 1: you have a lot fewer Chinese billionaires because of the
Speaker 1: hit the China's economy has taken. Instead, you have a
Speaker 1: lot more Gulf billionaires apparently in attendance this year, and
Speaker 1: the discussion has been dominated significantly by the Russia's war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, including an appearance by video zoo or whatever
Speaker 1: by Ukrainian President Voladimir Zelenski. Let's take a listen to
Speaker 1: a little bit of what he had to say. Strages
Speaker 1: our outpacing life. The deteriary is outpacing the demothers. Russia
Speaker 1: needed less than one second to start the war. The
Speaker 1: rule needed it this to react with the horses sanctions.
Speaker 1: The time the free rule uses to sing is used
Speaker 1: by the terrorist state to kill the Ukraine. And these
Speaker 1: allies have been resistingly if for almost a year. These
Speaker 1: furious proved all our prompt actions grow a positive results
Speaker 1: the opening of European motives who brandished the Grain deal.
Speaker 1: So basically his point there is we don't have time
Speaker 1: to wait. Russia is acting. You all can't just sit
Speaker 1: on your hands. We need more, we need more, we
Speaker 1: need Yeah, but I think it's a dangerous message to
Speaker 1: say the time that you have to think, as in
Speaker 1: basically saying like you should stop think, don't consider, just do.
Speaker 1: This is always a difficulty in talking about Ukraine. You know, look,
Speaker 1: they're doing what's best for them. They don't want us
Speaker 1: to think because they don't want us to think about
Speaker 1: the downside risk I will never forget personally. You know,
Speaker 1: we have that fake report Russian missiles fall in Poland.
Speaker 1: The first thing this guy does is say that or
Speaker 1: they're Russian, it's not our missiles. We need to no
Speaker 1: fly zone. NATO needs to intervene him and his government.
Speaker 1: They lied to us. Let's be real here. They straight
Speaker 1: up lied and then didn't ever really take it back
Speaker 1: and didn't never really apologize to Poland either, right after
Speaker 1: all that happened. Now, you know, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you could say, Okay, you know, that's reasonable. He's doing
Speaker 1: what's best for his country. He's doing what's best because
Speaker 1: ultimately that's going to be the best chance that Ukraine
Speaker 1: has in this war. But you know, the term ally
Speaker 1: presumes that you get something out of it too, And
Speaker 1: the question is is like, what would we possibly get
Speaker 1: out of being with somebody who desperately wants us to
Speaker 1: drag us into a broader war, even if their cause
Speaker 1: is just it's a nuance and it's a complex situation.
Speaker 1: I just wish more and more people were able to
Speaker 1: square those two things. You can hope that things work
Speaker 1: out well for Ukraine, and you can also be skeptical
Speaker 1: of some of the things that you're saying. Let's go
Speaker 1: to the next one up here, and this is exactly
Speaker 1: why why skepticism and thinking is actually quite warranted. This
Speaker 1: is a headline from the New York Times, which is
Speaker 1: why it's the most important because you almost certainly know
Speaker 1: that it is true whenever it's hawkish news quote US
Speaker 1: warms to helping Ukraine target Crimea. The Biden administration is
Speaker 1: considering the argument that Kiev needs the power to strike
Speaker 1: at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in twenty fourteen. Now,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, what the Ukrainians are saying, I
Speaker 1: want to be fair here, it's not crazy. Why Because Crimea,
Speaker 1: if you look at it purely militarily, is a major
Speaker 1: supply line for the Russian effort going on in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: And if you were to look at it purely and
Speaker 1: on a military basis, this would be one which you
Speaker 1: could totally consider as to why it matters. Because it's
Speaker 1: a major supply base. It's where tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: Russian troops enter and exit. They also have a lot
Speaker 1: of military bases and critical supplies that they keep there,
Speaker 1: specifically because they don't believe that it will be struck
Speaker 1: by the Ukrainians. And outside of the bridge bombing that
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians were behind, we haven't seen any major action there.
Speaker 1: But of course, what's the overall strategic reason why you
Speaker 1: may want to think about this, Well, the Russians think
Speaker 1: it's theirs, and whether you agree with that or not,
Speaker 1: they think very hard that it is Russia. Yes, and
Speaker 1: if they think that, well, then the risk of escalation
Speaker 1: and have specifically of using our weapons and provided weapons
Speaker 1: to strike actual Russian territory, Well, you're entering kind of
Speaker 1: a new ballgame. We have no idea how the Russians
Speaker 1: will react. Part of the calculus by the Biden administration
Speaker 1: as well. Every time we up the ante, the Russians
Speaker 1: don't actionly do anything. And it's not true. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it is true. You haven't seen any major escalation all
Speaker 1: dispute that I mean the attacks, the massive attacks on infrastructure,
Speaker 1: trying to turn the lights off in Ukraine. Well, I
Speaker 1: meant against US, I mean, not against the Ukrainians. Sure,
Speaker 1: anytime they're like, well we're gonna bomb NATO, it's like,
Speaker 1: well you haven't done yet, so you know, and it's
Speaker 1: obviously consideration, but this would be unknown territory. It's one
Speaker 1: that we considered non grata six months ago. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I don't see any reason why you shouldn't consider it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to say here. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: I just on the Davos thing. To me, the Zelensky
Speaker 1: appearance and all of their posturing around human rights is
Speaker 1: more a story of their own hypocrisy, where at the
Speaker 1: same time they're like, of course we're on the side
Speaker 1: of human rights and we're on the side of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: They're welcoming in the Gulf billionaires who are profiting off
Speaker 1: of this war through massive oil price increases, and also
Speaker 1: you know, affiliated with like the most repressive regimes in
Speaker 1: the entire world, human rights abusing, etc. That's fine. So
Speaker 1: the massive hypocrisy that's on display there, I think is
Speaker 1: probably the most noteworthy part of his appearance, because yeah,
Speaker 1: he's going to do and say what he needs to
Speaker 1: do to try to win this war and defend his
Speaker 1: own people, and I can't fault him from that. However,
Speaker 1: on the crimea piece, this is insane. The idea, the
Speaker 1: logic that's laid out in this article of like, well,
Speaker 1: Russia hasn't pulled down the nukes yet, so we think
Speaker 1: they're just not going to is so foolish and so
Speaker 1: terrifying that they're taking such a casual approach to this
Speaker 1: that I just don't even know what to say about it.
Speaker 1: And this isn't just you know, us talking about There
Speaker 1: have been a lot of experts who have said, if
Speaker 1: you did have a horrific situation where Russia reached for
Speaker 1: the nukes, it would likely involve their red line with
Speaker 1: regard to Crime Bea. Anatol Levin of Quincy Institute spoke
Speaker 1: to Bronco Marctic about exactly this thing said. The thing is,
Speaker 1: we don't know when or if Putin actually would use
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. My senses, it would be only in the
Speaker 1: very very very last resort, because the damage to Russia's
Speaker 1: image in the world, the damage to Russian troops and
Speaker 1: territory occupied by Russia would be colossal. Talking to Russian experts,
Speaker 1: the only scenario in which they find it plausible, though
Speaker 1: they could be wrong too, but they say it would
Speaker 1: be if CRIMEA itself would be in danger. We've drawn
Speaker 1: certain red lines for the Russians, and we need to
Speaker 1: draw red lines for the Ukrainians. So there are many experts,
Speaker 1: not just this one, who say, if there is a
Speaker 1: real hard red line for the Russians, this would be it.
Speaker 1: And the fact that we have so casually escalated and
Speaker 1: escalated and escalated in terms of our willingness in terms
Speaker 1: of our direct involvement, in terms of what we were
Speaker 1: sending over there, in terms of the territory that we're
Speaker 1: willing to assist Ukrainians in striking. You know, it reminds me,
Speaker 1: frankly of the build up to this war. Bronco also
Speaker 1: reported on those WikiLeaks cables where it was like you
Speaker 1: had experts, you had NATO allies, you had the US
Speaker 1: ambassador to Russia all warning, No, they're serious about these
Speaker 1: red lines. They're serious about this makes them feel like
Speaker 1: they're encircled. They're serious about this is really called causing
Speaker 1: a problem for them, and that you know, it's not
Speaker 1: going to go unchecked. Now. Again, always say they are
Speaker 1: responsible for their own actions, But ultimately, there were many
Speaker 1: people who predicted exactly the outcome that we have seen
Speaker 1: based on the actions that we were taking with regards
Speaker 1: to expanding NATO, and some of the people who dismissed
Speaker 1: that at the time said very similar to this logic here,
Speaker 1: they always say that and they never do anything. They
Speaker 1: always say that and they never do anything. So maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it's just all a bluff. Maybe it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter to them, Maybe they won't really respond in the
Speaker 1: most terrifying or horrific way. But to so casually dismiss
Speaker 1: it and dismiss the red lines that they have laid
Speaker 1: out very clearly, we just never learned from history, you know,
Speaker 1: another side of it actually, so actually you're reading an
Speaker 1: analyst and what they said made a good point. It's like, look,
Speaker 1: even if they don't nuke it, a lot of Russians
Speaker 1: they think that Crimea like they may not agree with
Speaker 1: the Ukraine invasion, but they're like, Crimea is Russia. According
Speaker 1: to them, it could actually increase domestic political support for
Speaker 1: Putin inside of Russia and in the war. And if
Speaker 1: he used it as a pretext to do let's say,
Speaker 1: a call up of another three hundred thousand or some
Speaker 1: thing troops, he would actually probably not face the same
Speaker 1: level of domestic political pushback that they did. And look,
Speaker 1: I mean I also think it just highlights the overall
Speaker 1: conflict itself. When the Ukrainians say they want to take
Speaker 1: Crimea is because they're like, as long as Crimea remains
Speaker 1: in Russian hands, this is going to be a stalemated
Speaker 1: conflict that we will just continue to get pounded by.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, they're not wrong, and that's why
Speaker 1: diplomatic solution is probably the only way it's going to end.
Speaker 1: They're like, but we want to have the upper handed
Speaker 1: and negotiating table, so we want to try and sever
Speaker 1: some of the supply lines going into Rush. Of the
Speaker 1: problem is, you don't know how exactly that could all end. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think it's a very important discussion overall. What they
Speaker 1: say is that President Biden remains unswayed by the arguments.
Speaker 1: You can look at this article as clearly being leaked
Speaker 1: by hawks in the administration to test the waters and
Speaker 1: see where people can there's another major decision point. Actually
Speaker 1: it just broke this morning. So our remember I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys, remember we about the tanks going
Speaker 1: from Britain. Germany is now saying they're like, we're not
Speaker 1: going to give those tanks. We're not going to let
Speaker 1: Poland give our tanks to Ukraine unless you give tanks
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. Because they're like, we don't want this on
Speaker 1: us at the United States. So they pointed apparently they've
Speaker 1: been calling the White House and they're like, we're not
Speaker 1: sending a damn thing in terms of tanks unless you
Speaker 1: do it, because it needs to appear joint because if
Speaker 1: there's a problem, then we're the ones who are going
Speaker 1: to face the brunt and we'll get the blame, and
Speaker 1: we don't want that. It needs to be a US
Speaker 1: based effort. And America never wanted to actually send the
Speaker 1: tanks as part of the reason why Britain and Germany
Speaker 1: were doing it because they wanted to be a European
Speaker 1: led thing. But the Europeans are like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not having any of that. We'll see how that
Speaker 1: does ye point. I mean, the latest reporting is that
Speaker 1: we're preparing another two point five billion dollar aid package,
Speaker 1: including you know, additional weapons shipments, including some things we
Speaker 1: have never said before, but that they are still ruling
Speaker 1: out sending tanks. I mean what they say is like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: these are hard, logistically difficult, and they're very heavy, and
Speaker 1: it's not even clear they'd be useful in the conflict.
Speaker 1: But I think the real concerns are more about you know,
Speaker 1: the continued concerns about escalations. Well, that's just that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, once you have a tank, you can move
Speaker 1: pretty quick if you know what you're doing, and next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you could be one hundred miles inside
Speaker 1: of Crimea And now we're in a whole other situation.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason why the Bidendminstration doesn't want to
Speaker 1: give it to them. Yes, indeed, all right, there was
Speaker 1: another Davos moment that really caught our attention, This one
Speaker 1: flagged by Front of the show Ken Clippenstein. So Senator
Speaker 1: Chris Coons is probably Joe Biden's closest ally in the Senate,
Speaker 1: so when he speaks, it's really important to listen to
Speaker 1: what he had to say. Now we've been covering here
Speaker 1: the fact that there is some angst on the European
Speaker 1: side about the Inflation Production Act. They're concerned about the
Speaker 1: incentives contained therein that some of their industry around green
Speaker 1: energy may come to our shores. So there's been some
Speaker 1: friction in the relationship. So in that context, Cenaer Chris
Speaker 1: Coons gets asked about near shoring and friendshoring and where
Speaker 1: does this terrifying protectionism all end, let's take a listen
Speaker 1: to what he has to say. Whole far will go
Speaker 1: in front shoring, making short that things goes to Mexico
Speaker 1: and countries that you're allied with. Did you see the
Speaker 1: point often IMF Managing director and who will the US
Speaker 1: balance this to make sure that deals will have growth
Speaker 1: in the years to come? And this will be a
Speaker 1: very shallow recession of a recession. Avol. Look, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for your comments and the opportunity. I do
Speaker 1: think that American leaders and business leaders in particular recognize
Speaker 1: that the severe disruptions of the pandemic and some of
Speaker 1: the challenges of the reach and the scope of globalization
Speaker 1: that have caused a backlash in many of our countries,
Speaker 1: a populist backlash certainly in the United States, need to
Speaker 1: be addressed. One of the ways to deal with some
Speaker 1: of our challenges in terms of the hemisphere and migration
Speaker 1: also is to do some near shoring to improve the
Speaker 1: job opportunities in Central America, for example. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it will be as robust as potentially projected. I
Speaker 1: do think that we will continue to have an open economy,
Speaker 1: to be committed to free trade and to see the
Speaker 1: robust value that globalization has brought to the world as
Speaker 1: well as to many of our people. So when they
Speaker 1: say fre each what they're talking about is the Transpecific
Speaker 1: Partnership NAFTA, which was devastating to a whole swath of
Speaker 1: the country. They're talking about things like PNTR with China,
Speaker 1: opening up normalized trade relations with China, which has been
Speaker 1: devastating for blue collar workers. It's been devastating for our
Speaker 1: industrial base. It has made it so our supply chains,
Speaker 1: which was manifested incredibly clearly during COVID and continuing to
Speaker 1: this day, are incredibly fragile and dependent on a lot
Speaker 1: of other countries, but China in particular and effectively. What
Speaker 1: Coons is saying here is like, we had to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of this to sort of placate the people,
Speaker 1: but we're still really committed to the old way of
Speaker 1: doing things that lines the pockets of billionaires and a
Speaker 1: sort of global elite class at the expensive blue collar workers.
Speaker 1: The irony of it is is that Europe has one
Speaker 1: of the most protectionist economies in the world. They just
Speaker 1: have the European Union. They're pissed that they don't get
Speaker 1: to have protectionism, and that they don't get to ship
Speaker 1: their car parts here and that we don't put a
Speaker 1: tariff on them, or that we require our stuff to
Speaker 1: be American made while their stuff is European made and
Speaker 1: European owned, especially financially. The whole thing is a total
Speaker 1: farce and I cannot stand. Germany's entire economy is a
Speaker 1: protectionist hellhole for anybody who wants to do business outside
Speaker 1: of the world. That's why they are one of the largest,
Speaker 1: I believe, the largest economy in all of Europe because
Speaker 1: they have all of these rules and regulations that pile
Speaker 1: up with the hand of Brussels. This is part of
Speaker 1: the reason why Britain wanted to leave the EU in
Speaker 1: the first place. The whole point is that when you
Speaker 1: look at it, they want protectionism for themselves and free
Speaker 1: trade for us. And that has been the case with China,
Speaker 1: with the European Union, with Japan, with India, with Brazil.
Speaker 1: I mean, almost every other major trader partner that we
Speaker 1: have has an incredibly closed off, homogenous system and then
Speaker 1: they come here and they're like, no, they expect to
Speaker 1: be able to just do business completely the way that
Speaker 1: they want and then ship all the profits back home
Speaker 1: while making sure that people here lose their jobs. It's
Speaker 1: this completely ridiculous, and it's an ideology you know that
Speaker 1: the Chris Coons and all of them have set from
Speaker 1: the top. I hope it gets rejected. I wish stuff
Speaker 1: like this was more at the political conversation like it
Speaker 1: was a couple of years ago. I feel like we've
Speaker 1: almost forgotten about it. Yeah, I mean this was really
Speaker 1: core to the rise of Trump. I mean this was
Speaker 1: one of the things. You know, there was an over
Speaker 1: attempt by the media to like say, Trump and Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders are the same but on some of these issues.
Speaker 1: At that time, they were singing a lot of the
Speaker 1: same tune, and they were right, yes, And they have
Speaker 1: never been more vindicated in that messaging than right now. Again,
Speaker 1: we just lived through the terrifying experience of Oh, we're
Speaker 1: facing a pandemic and we literally don't make any of
Speaker 1: our own ppe. Oh where are all of our pharmaceuticals manufactured? Oh,
Speaker 1: we can't even get baby formula on the shelves. I mean,
Speaker 1: the amount of fragility and vulnerability that we discovered exists
Speaker 1: in our supply chain because exactly this thinking not to mention.
Speaker 1: I mean, guys, we continue to have increases in overdoses
Speaker 1: and deaths of despair, continued fallout from the way that
Speaker 1: we decimated the industrial base and the working class of
Speaker 1: this country in favor of growth, well growth for who
Speaker 1: to benefit who? That's the question they never ever answered.
Speaker 1: They never wanted to answer, because of course it's their
Speaker 1: political donors who benefited from this quote unquote free trade
Speaker 1: regime for so many years. So, you know, this is
Speaker 1: why it's always important to pay close attention to what
Speaker 1: elites at Davos are saying to each other, because they
Speaker 1: sort of forget that the rest of the world can
Speaker 1: hear them, and it's a little bit of a mask
Speaker 1: off moment. So this is why I always track these
Speaker 1: things really closely and really appreciate Ken also watching this
Speaker 1: and paying attention to it, because there was a thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, what, things might really be changing. There may
Speaker 1: really be a new consensus emerging in why Washington and
Speaker 1: a different approach to you know, supply chains and rebuilding
Speaker 1: our industrial base and getting some of this fragility on
Speaker 1: of our system, and the Inflation Reduction Act seem like okay,
Speaker 1: and we had the chip sacked right, maybe this is
Speaker 1: a new era of industrial policy and at least according
Speaker 1: to the Center in Chris Coons, so again is the
Speaker 1: top ally of Joe Biden in the Senate. This was
Speaker 1: all just you know, a little bit of a ruse,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a sop to the populace, and
Speaker 1: we're going to go back to doing exactly what we
Speaker 1: were doing before. Yeah, very unfortunate. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: to the next part here. COVID Leanna, when doctor Leanna,
Speaker 1: when you know, having one of the most interesting turns
Speaker 1: in politics to really Arc, right, real character. Arc started
Speaker 1: out as one of the most like wear masks all
Speaker 1: this and then became one of the really only people
Speaker 1: on CNN. I guess whenever it was safe to begin
Speaker 1: the acknowledging things, saying like masks don't work unless you're
Speaker 1: wearing an N ninety five, now saying actually we're over
Speaker 1: counting COVID debts, kind of stunning people on CNN itself,
Speaker 1: and then also drawing a major reaction afterwards. Let's take
Speaker 1: a listen to exactly what she said. As you know,
Speaker 1: I heard this closely being in the Trump White House
Speaker 1: when this happened. I talked to a lot of health
Speaker 1: officials about this who are actually kind of skeptical of
Speaker 1: this claim that you're making. And I think one big
Speaker 1: thing has been what is the evidence that these COVID
Speaker 1: deaths are actually being overcounted? Well, this is the reason
Speaker 1: why this kind of transparent reporting is going to be
Speaker 1: so important. There is a way for us to look
Speaker 1: at death certificates and also to look at the medical
Speaker 1: records of individuals prior to their death. And I think
Speaker 1: this needs to be separated into three categories. One is
Speaker 1: the COVID as a direct contributor, the primary cause of death.
Speaker 1: The second is could it be a secondary contributing cause. So,
Speaker 1: for example, somebody with kidney disease, COVID then pushes them
Speaker 1: over the edge deep kidney failure. That's COVID as a
Speaker 1: contributing cause. And then the third is COVID as an
Speaker 1: incidental finding, So somebody coming in with a gunshot wound
Speaker 1: or a heart attack and a happy to test positive.
Speaker 1: I think that we need to separate out and look
Speaker 1: at the percentages of each That percentage would have shifted
Speaker 1: over time as well. In the beginning, probably a lot
Speaker 1: more people were dying with the primary cause of COVID
Speaker 1: that probably has shifted. She's not wrong. That's been the
Speaker 1: case now for a long time. And actually this is
Speaker 1: part of why it's so difficult. I don't know if
Speaker 1: everybody remembers, but the CDC put out a statement, what
Speaker 1: was it about a year ago or so where they
Speaker 1: were talking about how the average person who's dying of
Speaker 1: COVID post mass vaccination campaign was like over eighty years
Speaker 1: old and had up to four comorbidities. And people lost
Speaker 1: it because what they are attempting to do is a
Speaker 1: lot of people want you to still believe that COVID
Speaker 1: is a major threat to your life. Now, with variance
Speaker 1: with vaccination, natural immunity, therapeutics, and so much of the
Speaker 1: evolution of where we are right now, it's just simply
Speaker 1: not true unless you have some pretty major underlying health conditions,
Speaker 1: and that's where it genuinely could be a major threat
Speaker 1: to your life, something that she actually even argues in
Speaker 1: this Washington Post op ed. Again, I don't exactly know
Speaker 1: why she's coming forward. The major kind of crux of
Speaker 1: her argument here is that it's important to actually keep
Speaker 1: accurate data as to what this is and to actually
Speaker 1: make sure that what the COVID death rate, purportedly is
Speaker 1: is not something that is unacceptably high or so way
Speaker 1: that we can actually track the virulence and the progress
Speaker 1: of the disease. But this has also been the case
Speaker 1: now for quite a long time for a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were even looking at you know, age tables
Speaker 1: and others regarding COVID, many many like I would say,
Speaker 1: almost two years ago, almost at this point. Now. The
Speaker 1: thing is, though, is that this is effectively conventional wisdom
Speaker 1: for most people. I think they understand it when an
Speaker 1: eighty five year old who's got like heart disease and
Speaker 1: diabetes dies because they have COVID, Like, is it really
Speaker 1: COVID that what's responsible for their death. That being said,
Speaker 1: this clip itself of benign conventional wisdom, now at this point,
Speaker 1: received a tremendous amount of pushback in kind of the
Speaker 1: liberal intelligensia. Let's go ahead and put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen, actually echoing some exactly of what Caitlin
Speaker 1: Collins was pushing back there with quote unquote health professionals,
Speaker 1: please doctor when we don't have time to wonder speculate,
Speaker 1: the data is public. We know exactly how many COVID
Speaker 1: debts were primary at first contributing versus incidental. It's actually
Speaker 1: not true. More debts are now contributing, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they are overcounted. Go to the next one there,
Speaker 1: please on the screen Meddie Hassen saying right wingers are
Speaker 1: loving the latest nonsense from Leanna, when who has gone
Speaker 1: from COVID hawk to COVID to minimize to now aid
Speaker 1: in a better of COVID denialis her latest conspiratorial claims
Speaker 1: have been debunked by a number of actual experts. And
Speaker 1: then the next one there please also important similar doctor
Speaker 1: Lucky trand the cycle of disinformation. The White House is
Speaker 1: seeding talking points with handpicked minimizer Twitter docs like Leanna.
Speaker 1: When minimizer docs spread disinformation via priority access to the media,
Speaker 1: anti vaxxers amplify minimizer op ed pending, the White House
Speaker 1: is using dissent as an excuse to loosen its policies.
Speaker 1: So these are all people again who really do seem
Speaker 1: to believe that we Crystal are like in May of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty or something and want to freeze the conversation there.
Speaker 1: That's the part I just don't get. How can you
Speaker 1: possibly push back against that. Actually, that last person had
Speaker 1: one part of their thing had a point, which is
Speaker 1: that I think when you look at her character arc
Speaker 1: and you ask, like, why has she shifted so dramatically, Well,
Speaker 1: originally the claim she was making, the way she was
Speaker 1: positioning herself was beneficial to Democrats, And now you know,
Speaker 1: while you have a lot of liberals who don't want
Speaker 1: to engage with with what she's saying and are just
Speaker 1: like panicked at the very suggestion of it, the Biden
Speaker 1: White House is very interested in people moving the pandemic
Speaker 1: and feeling like things are okay and like moving forward. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, it does just so happen that her commentary
Speaker 1: has sort of tracked what is most useful for the
Speaker 1: Biden White House, which that last commentary, who had a
Speaker 1: lot of other things to say about it as well,
Speaker 1: did point that out, and I think that that is
Speaker 1: a worthwhile point. Listen, I don't claim to be an
Speaker 1: expert on whether the debts are overcounted or undercounted or
Speaker 1: just yet just write or whatever. I have not dug
Speaker 1: into it deeply. Let me just put that ultimately on
Speaker 1: the table. But what has bothered me this whole time
Speaker 1: is the level of panic about even having a discussion
Speaker 1: around it and providing a quote unquote talking point to
Speaker 1: someone who might be your ideological adversary, and the shifting
Speaker 1: nature of what you're allowed to wonder about. Question dig
Speaker 1: into the way public health officials have actively admitted to
Speaker 1: trying to shape public opinion and behavior rather than just
Speaker 1: present us with evidence and facts and social media and
Speaker 1: we've talked about that as well. Like has also played
Speaker 1: into this, is serving as these sort of like gatekeepers
Speaker 1: or what you can say, what you can't say, and
Speaker 1: what counts us fact and what counts as fiction. That
Speaker 1: has been the piece that has always really bothered me,
Speaker 1: And so I think that's sort of exemplified by the
Speaker 1: treatment of the comments here from Leon just so insane.
Speaker 1: I still can't It's January twenty twenty three. I can't
Speaker 1: even believe they were having a discussion. I thought people
Speaker 1: knew this a long time ago. And then the fact
Speaker 1: that people who have ded sway over at least public
Speaker 1: health opinion and public health authority in this country disagree
Speaker 1: with what she's saying is even more disturbing to me.
Speaker 1: But it is what it is, all right, Tager, what
Speaker 1: you're looking at well, when we first had Peter's ihon
Speaker 1: on the show, I gotta admit I was kind of skeptical.
Speaker 1: Peter is just an extraordinarily confident person, and he's obviously brilliant,
Speaker 1: but he would declaratively say China's going to collapse in
Speaker 1: exactly ten years. I couldn't help but recoil. Take it
Speaker 1: from the guy who said publicly he didn't think Russia
Speaker 1: would invade Ukraine. You can look pretty dumb when things
Speaker 1: go wrong, making grand pronouncements about major events in the
Speaker 1: heat of the moment. It can come back to bite you.
Speaker 1: But what if Peter is smarter than me. What if
Speaker 1: he's right? What if the way that we are thinking
Speaker 1: about China is completely wrong. What if it is not
Speaker 1: a jugg ornaut but it's actually an illusion the entire time,
Speaker 1: and it's crumbling right before our eyes. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: I agree, but let's go through some recent data that
Speaker 1: actually makes the case. First was major demographic data of
Speaker 1: China that just came out yesterday. The CCP, for the
Speaker 1: first time has admitted that its population has fallen for
Speaker 1: the first time in over sixty years. There are several
Speaker 1: things to note here. First of all, this is the
Speaker 1: official number. Assume the real number is much worse. Second,
Speaker 1: even if you go by their official numbers, that means
Speaker 1: that new births in China have fallen a full forty
Speaker 1: five percent in the last five years, a full blown
Speaker 1: demographic crisis that started well befare COVID, and it is
Speaker 1: now accelerating. China now has a birth rate behind India,
Speaker 1: the United States, the United Kingdom, making it one of
Speaker 1: the worst on the largest economies on Earth. To put
Speaker 1: things in perspective, the last thing time that things were
Speaker 1: this bad demographically in China it was because of a
Speaker 1: famine caused by Mao Zadong. Worse, it does not seem
Speaker 1: like they have any easy way out. For all the
Speaker 1: talk of the legacy of the one child policy and
Speaker 1: the culture problems that it foretold, today's problems have a
Speaker 1: lot to do with economics as well. While yes, China
Speaker 1: is an economic juggernaut in the aggregate, on the individual level,
Speaker 1: things are not set up there for the flourishing of
Speaker 1: family life. Much of this centers around couples who simply
Speaker 1: don't believe that it is econom possible to have more
Speaker 1: than one child right now, and a total lack of
Speaker 1: faith that the government may not reverse itself in the
Speaker 1: future and say, actually, only one child is now desirable.
Speaker 1: Michael Beckley, he's a US based professor who wrote a
Speaker 1: book on China. He lays this out in future quote,
Speaker 1: China will lose five to ten million working age adults
Speaker 1: and gain five to ten million senior citizens every year
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. There is no way out of that.
Speaker 1: Worse they are they are not on the backside of
Speaker 1: COVID right now. In fact, they are having their twenty
Speaker 1: twenty moment right now after abandoning their idiotic COVID zero policy.
Speaker 1: By their own admission, tens of thousands of people are
Speaker 1: dying of COVID per day. The virus is ripping like
Speaker 1: wildfire through its population. This too, is causing mass consternation
Speaker 1: across the population because it is a clear sign that
Speaker 1: they stayed locked up for two years for absolutely no reason.
Speaker 1: The rest of the world barely thinks about COVID, but
Speaker 1: for them, it's a full blown crisis, and of course
Speaker 1: it will ownly further weaken their population problems, and it
Speaker 1: highlights their economic ones. China's economy grew just three percent
Speaker 1: last year after a target set by the government for
Speaker 1: five point five percent, and again three is the official numbers.
Speaker 1: Who knows what the real one is. Some Western analysts
Speaker 1: have put their real growth as low as point five percent.
Speaker 1: In reality dig deeper. The overall number is still stunning
Speaker 1: compared to the previous periods. Just a decade ago, it
Speaker 1: was growing in a rapacious seven point seven percent per year.
Speaker 1: Its economy now looks on par of that with the West,
Speaker 1: except the West doesn't need speedy economic growth to fund
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of people and propel enough of our
Speaker 1: population into the middle class to maintain social stability and
Speaker 1: preserve an authoritarian dictatorship. There are other signs of impending
Speaker 1: problems lurking beneath the surface. We all took notice of
Speaker 1: the Evergrand bubble earlier this year, but the overall debt
Speaker 1: problem right now for China is immense. Right now, their
Speaker 1: overall level of total debt in China is fifty one
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. That's three times the size of their entire economy.
Speaker 1: It's the highest level in Beijing since they even started
Speaker 1: track it in twenty seven years. And they don't have
Speaker 1: the American luxury of being the world's reserve currency. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: with their mounting demographic problems, they're having a hell of
Speaker 1: a time paying even for major social benefits they need
Speaker 1: to care for their increasingly elderly population. They have barely
Speaker 1: any new workers to replace them. Current trends say soon
Speaker 1: they will have one worker trying to support three elderly,
Speaker 1: leading to even more borrowing and debt, not enough taxes
Speaker 1: or spending. I could go on further. I could point
Speaker 1: to their record high inflation, the fact they import almost
Speaker 1: all the energy that they actually need, they have very
Speaker 1: little reserve. But all of this makes actually a compelling
Speaker 1: case for the Zihon thesis. How are they supposed to
Speaker 1: be tough abroad when they have to sow their entire
Speaker 1: society back together in such a short period of time. Worse,
Speaker 1: they don't have the democratic release valve that we do.
Speaker 1: When our people are pissed, they can vote. There it
Speaker 1: just boils, and it boils every once in a while
Speaker 1: it comes up to the surface. So we can take
Speaker 1: a little bit of notice. Maybe a decade is too
Speaker 1: short of a time horizon. I've come away in the
Speaker 1: last year and with a very basic normy point. Authoritarian
Speaker 1: societies are just bad in the long run. They really
Speaker 1: just don't work that well. They're actually not equal to
Speaker 1: us really at all, nor can they replace us. Look
Speaker 1: at Russia and China. COVID zero is humiliating and clearly
Speaker 1: their society is falling apart. At Russia, they claim they
Speaker 1: could have an alternative system to the West, it turns
Speaker 1: out they have basically no friends on the international stage
Speaker 1: and their economy only runs because of petrochemicals. Look, maybe
Speaker 1: all of this is way too optimistic. I could do
Speaker 1: a whole monologue on America's failures. I think I've done
Speaker 1: many here on the show. But looking from the outside
Speaker 1: in the view of the Chinese century just does not
Speaker 1: look the same as it did a decade ago. Maybe
Speaker 1: Peter's ion is completely right after all. Look, Chris, and
Speaker 1: if you want to hear my reaction to Sagre's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Christl
Speaker 1: what do you take a look at? Well? Guys, Today,
Speaker 1: in an unusual nationwide coordinated action, in seven different states
Speaker 1: are introducing a raft of legislation that is aimed at
Speaker 1: taxing the rich. The Washington Post has the story. The
Speaker 1: headline is billionaires in blue states face coordinated wealth tax bills.
Speaker 1: Some measures are based on Center Elizabeth Warren's proposals to
Speaker 1: make the super rich pay more, and the article details
Speaker 1: a range of ideas, from a wealth tax in California
Speaker 1: and should levy a one point five percent tax on
Speaker 1: assets over a billion dollars, pretty modest proposal, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: to proposals in Connecticut, Hawaiian, Maryland, and York that would
Speaker 1: increase capital gains taxes. They've also documented here efforts that
Speaker 1: would expand the state tax in order to curb the
Speaker 1: extraordinary transfers of intergenerational wealth which have increasingly locked us
Speaker 1: into a rigid class system. Now, each of these ideas
Speaker 1: has its own pluses and minuses, but all are wildly
Speaker 1: popular with the American people. An article a couple of
Speaker 1: years back summed up the research on this matter quite well. Quote,
Speaker 1: most Americans want the rich to pay higher taxes, according
Speaker 1: to every poll everywhere. They cite polls showing a Warren
Speaker 1: style wealth tax proposal with seventy seven percent support among
Speaker 1: Democrats and a majority fifty three percent support even among Republicans.
Speaker 1: One specific idea to tax wealth over fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: at two percent, much more than what's being proposed in
Speaker 1: California that clocked in at seventy four percent support. Overall,
Speaker 1: even more aggressive proposals, things like lifting the top tax
Speaker 1: rate to seventy percent, enjoys about sixty percent support. Overall.
Speaker 1: Taxing the rich is so popular that even a majority
Speaker 1: of millionaires supported taxing millionaires more. But we did manage
Speaker 1: to identify one demographic which was adamantly opposed no matter
Speaker 1: which proposal was tested, wealthy, bespectacled, bow tie wearing business anchors.
Speaker 1: This really comes from the Senator Elizabeth Warren. This comes
Speaker 1: from her playbook that you don't just tax income, you
Speaker 1: go after people's assets and wealth. And maybe it doesn't
Speaker 1: have legs, but this is something that is going to
Speaker 1: resonate with many members of the public. The demonstrable reality
Speaker 1: is Greg Vailier said, get out the moving vans. Here
Speaker 1: come the moving vans. Is what he says, verbatim. I
Speaker 1: mean this has been proven to Florida and other states
Speaker 1: as well, Florida, Arizona. There has been you see an
Speaker 1: exodus at times of people from these very high tax cities.
Speaker 1: Think about those living in New York City, you pay federal,
Speaker 1: you pay state, or you pay city tax. You have
Speaker 1: incredibly high rents, and then with an elation on top
Speaker 1: of that, and you compound that with the fact that
Speaker 1: you can for most people start to work more remotely
Speaker 1: at home. We obviously saw that exodus to Florida, and
Speaker 1: potentially there's a wealth tax. It'll continue. I know you're laughing. Oh,
Speaker 1: I saw. I walked by Pharaoh's desks the other day.
Speaker 1: We never talked. I walked by his desk once a year.
Speaker 1: He's got a map of Texas out of the desk.
Speaker 1: Tatis story to everyone. I rememberhen I was moving over
Speaker 1: here seven eight years ago and the accountant said, they
Speaker 1: give me a call. Bloomberg offs great service to relocate.
Speaker 1: So I take this call with the account I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna paying lower taxes in America. This will be great.
Speaker 1: Gets on the phone and says federal income tax will
Speaker 1: be excell I'm thinking fantastics. That's down from where I
Speaker 1: was in the UK. And they said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not done. And then they start going state Citty.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what are you talking of? This is this
Speaker 1: is so important and I'll let you go back to
Speaker 1: Amrie Here, John, the summation of the meny taxes is
Speaker 1: and then they've got pretty taxes on top of that.
Speaker 1: Question I keep asking me is how on s do
Speaker 1: you retire it? Personally? Love here how the segment just
Speaker 1: evolves into a big pity party about how unbearably high
Speaker 1: their taxes are and how low taxes for the rich
Speaker 1: in the US are A quote Canard, here's a little
Speaker 1: reality check. Thanks to Trump's tax cut, the wealthiest Americans,
Speaker 1: once all taxes are considered local, state, and federal, pay
Speaker 1: less in taxes than any other income group. Take a
Speaker 1: look at these graphics. On one side, you can see
Speaker 1: what a reasonable tax system looks like, where the wealthier
Speaker 1: actually pay more. Back in nineteen fifty, that is the
Speaker 1: way our system worked. But with the end of the
Speaker 1: New Deal era and the rise of market fundamentalism and
Speaker 1: trickle down and the onslaught of unfettered money in politics,
Speaker 1: we've now got the relationship completely upside down again. After
Speaker 1: those Trump tax cuts, for the first time in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the richest Americans paid a lower tax rate than every
Speaker 1: single other group. Think about how discussing that is. They
Speaker 1: have rigged the system so much that a waitress earning
Speaker 1: a tipped minimum wage of let's say, three dollars an
Speaker 1: hour has to pay more in tax than literal billionaires.
Speaker 1: And yet these fools are out here on TV crying
Speaker 1: about how unfair it all is to the wealthy. Let
Speaker 1: me give you a couple more stats in our little
Speaker 1: reality check moment here, the pandemic has ushered in an
Speaker 1: even warshocking era of wealth hoarding. Two thirds of all
Speaker 1: new wealth created globally since the start of COVID went
Speaker 1: to the top one percent, So sixty six percent of
Speaker 1: all new wealth went to just one percent of people. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: right here in the US, the number of people putting
Speaker 1: off medical care because they can't afford it reached a
Speaker 1: record all time high in twenty twenty two. It spiked
Speaker 1: twelve percentage points in a single year. Thirty eight percent
Speaker 1: of Americans are putting off basic medical care because of cost,
Speaker 1: and a majority of these said that the care that
Speaker 1: they needed was for at least a somewhat serious condition.
Speaker 1: We wonder why we're all sicker and dying earlier, But
Speaker 1: go ahead, cry more about some incredibly modest proposals to
Speaker 1: tax the rich just a little bit more cry and
Speaker 1: threaten to move to another state where they'll allow the
Speaker 1: plutocrat class to fully run the show exactly as you
Speaker 1: want it. Although I do have to say much as
Speaker 1: I find these people's world you discussing and greedy, the
Speaker 1: rich really do have a track record of relocating their
Speaker 1: well from state to state for tax avoids purposes. So
Speaker 1: their cry baby threats to take their money and go
Speaker 1: elsewhere they're not idle California and New York Illinois comparatively
Speaker 1: higher tax locales. They've all been losing population of places
Speaker 1: like Florida, Arizona, and Texas. Plenty of wealthy New Yorkers
Speaker 1: spend just enough days in Florida to technically reside in
Speaker 1: that state. Now, that's not to say these statewide efforts
Speaker 1: are not a worthy endeavor, but they're no substitute for
Speaker 1: better tax policy at the federal level. Insanely, Republicans right
Speaker 1: now are pushing in the complete opposite direction with a
Speaker 1: so called fair tax proposal that would guarantee a regressive
Speaker 1: tax system, with the wealthiest paying the least and the
Speaker 1: poorest paying the most. A vote on this monstrosity was
Speaker 1: one of the demands of the McCarthy t Party two
Speaker 1: point zero holdouts. The bill proposed to eliminate the income
Speaker 1: tax in favor of a national sales tax, and it
Speaker 1: would dramatically hike the price of everything from groceries to
Speaker 1: prescription drugs. Sounds awesome, right? You know how expensive everything
Speaker 1: is right now? How'd you like to pay like twenty
Speaker 1: percent more on everything? What's more, since the poorest must
Speaker 1: spend a much higher percentage of their income on things
Speaker 1: like groceries, the tax is inherently regressive, codifying into place
Speaker 1: a thoroughly backward system whereby the rich are guaranteed to
Speaker 1: pay next to nothing in comparison to their income, and
Speaker 1: the poor take it on the chin. As to the Democrats,
Speaker 1: they failed miserably while they were in control. They let
Speaker 1: the Trump tax cut stand. They did nothing on capital gains,
Speaker 1: or wealth taxes or estate taxes, just as Joe Biden
Speaker 1: famously promised, nothing fundamentally changed. And now two of the
Speaker 1: primary villains and guaranteeing the disgusting status quo remains, kirston
Speaker 1: Cinema and Joe Manchin are literally high fiving in Davos.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, our boat friends over at Bloomberg can probably
Speaker 1: rest easy. The politicians they bought still have their back.
Speaker 1: Love these little moments, and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today
Speaker 1: at breakingpoints dot com, we've been tracking an important story
Speaker 1: of potential academic censorship. We're very excited to welcome to
Speaker 1: Kenneth Roth to speak about this. He was the executive
Speaker 1: director of Human Rights Watch from ninety three to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. He's currently writing a book. And let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this recent i'p ed from mister Roth
Speaker 1: on the screen. Here. He says, I once ran Human
Speaker 1: Rights Watch, Harvard blocked my fellowship over Israel. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show, sir, glad to have you, Thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: my pleasure to be here. Yeah, of course, so just
Speaker 1: tell us what happened here. Well. When I announced that
Speaker 1: I would be leaving Human Rights Watch last April, I
Speaker 1: was planning to leave as at the end of August.
Speaker 1: I very quickly received a call from the car Center
Speaker 1: for Human Rights Policy, which is part of the Harvard
Speaker 1: Kennedy School, and they asked would I'd be interested in
Speaker 1: being a senior fellow there during the current academic year.
Speaker 1: So I could work on my book there, and we
Speaker 1: went back and forth a little bit, and I basically said, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, that sounds like a good idea, and we
Speaker 1: thought that that was pretty much a done deal. There
Speaker 1: was one technical step that still needed to be taken.
Speaker 1: We needed the sign off of Dean Douglas Almendorff, the
Speaker 1: head of the Kennedy School. But we assumed that that
Speaker 1: would be just a mere formality, and so I actually
Speaker 1: over the summer contacted Almondorff and said, look, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be there in September. Let's get to know each other.
Speaker 1: And we arranged a zoom conversation and had a very
Speaker 1: pleasant half hour chat until the end, and then he
Speaker 1: asked me this weird question. He said, do you have
Speaker 1: any enemies? Now this is odd for me, because you know,
Speaker 1: I've got a gazillion enemies. I mean, I've headed Human
Speaker 1: Rights Slatch for three decades. You know, we document governments
Speaker 1: human rights violations, criticized them for it. They hate that,
Speaker 1: so many of them me and I ran through that
Speaker 1: with Almandorf. I said, well, you know, the Chinese government
Speaker 1: and the Russian government have personally imposed sanctions on me.
Speaker 1: I mentioned the Saudi government and the Rwandan government particularly
Speaker 1: to test me. But you know, I had an idea
Speaker 1: what he was driving at, so I said, And also
Speaker 1: the Israeli government doesn't like me. And that turned out
Speaker 1: to be the kiss of death because two weeks later
Speaker 1: I got a phone call from my friends at the
Speaker 1: car center who had to sheepishly admit that Dean Almendorf
Speaker 1: had vetoed my fellowship because of my and Human Rights
Speaker 1: Watches criticism of Israel. Wow. I mean, it's outraged, and
Speaker 1: this is something I want to focus on with you specifically,
Speaker 1: because you named a number of other governments. One of
Speaker 1: the accusations I believe that was leveled against you is
Speaker 1: that you disproportionately spend time criticizing Israel, whereas those appeared
Speaker 1: to be ones where it might be more controversial. But
Speaker 1: you know, layout your other track record, not just Israel,
Speaker 1: but everything that you covered while you were there for
Speaker 1: three decades, right, Yeah, I mean that's an odd accusation
Speaker 1: because I mean, first of all, if you just look
Speaker 1: at the facts, Israel is one of one hundred governments
Speaker 1: that Human Rights Quash regularly reports on, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's like one maybe two percent of our work. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a tiny, tiny percentage of our work, So to
Speaker 1: say that we're disproportionately focused on Israel is just you know, ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But the other thing is that the people who make
Speaker 1: that allegation. There there's this sort of cottage industry of
Speaker 1: little groups of partisan defenders of the Israeli government, and they,
Speaker 1: in their view, you know, the Israeli government is never
Speaker 1: in the history of the world committed to human rights violation.
Speaker 1: They devote themselves to attacking anybody who criticizes Israel, and
Speaker 1: then you know, that epitome of bias. They have the
Speaker 1: audacity to claim that we're biased because we impartially apply
Speaker 1: the same factual and legal standards to Israel as we
Speaker 1: do to everybody else. It's just absurd. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any doubt when you apply that same
Speaker 1: criticism to one of the you know, adversaries of the
Speaker 1: United States government, let's say, in Iran or Syria or
Speaker 1: another nation, there isn't nearly the same level of pushback.
Speaker 1: I'd love to delve into some of the facts in
Speaker 1: reality here at Human Rights Watch. You all authored a
Speaker 1: report that I followed very closely titled This was April
Speaker 1: twenty seven to twenty twenty one, a threshold crossed Israeli
Speaker 1: authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution. What is
Speaker 1: the critique that you level there, and obviously the word
Speaker 1: apartheid very strong, What is the evidence that you use
Speaker 1: to bolster that claim. I think you're right for bringing
Speaker 1: that up, because I think that that is you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of what's behind this veto of my fellowship.
Speaker 1: But what we did we were not making very explicitly,
Speaker 1: not making an historical analogy to South Africa. Rather, we
Speaker 1: were applying international law. And there are two relevant treaties here.
Speaker 1: There's the UN Convention against Apartheid and then there's the
Speaker 1: Roman Statute of the International Criminal Court, and this that's
Speaker 1: worth really clearly. You know, these are the legal stats.
Speaker 1: And then in a two hundred page report which is
Speaker 1: incredibly detailed, we outlined, you know, why there was this
Speaker 1: suppressive discrimination against Palestinians. And you know, if you spend
Speaker 1: time in the West Bank, it actually is pretty obvious.
Speaker 1: You know, you have these you know, well developed, beautiful
Speaker 1: Israeli settlements where you know, Israelis get to live under
Speaker 1: civil law with the full freedoms of an Israeli citizen.
Speaker 1: And then you know right next door in area Sea
Speaker 1: of the West Bank, you'll have these Palestinian villages where
Speaker 1: they can't even add a bedroom without getting it demolished.
Speaker 1: You know, they have to travel on separate roads, they
Speaker 1: need passes to get through checkpoints. I mean, it has
Speaker 1: all the hallmarks of apartheid. And the real question, I
Speaker 1: mean we've been asked, why didn't you call it apartheid earlier?
Speaker 1: And I think that's you know, that's a fair question.
Speaker 1: But for many years when we would point out this
Speaker 1: suppressive discrimination, people would say, oh, yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: don't worry, there's the peace process. Once we have peace,
Speaker 1: all this will be taken care of. And that defense
Speaker 1: just stop being credible because there is no peace process
Speaker 1: right now. It's completely moribund. The current government is going
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction from any conceivable two state solution.
Speaker 1: And so we just you know, looked at the reality today.
Speaker 1: We're not going to assess the future. We just said
Speaker 1: what's it today? And there's just no question that it's
Speaker 1: a part time. This is what Human Rights Watch found,
Speaker 1: This is what Betsellum, the leading Israeli group, found, This
Speaker 1: is what Amnesty International found and you know, a plethora
Speaker 1: of other groups as well. So, I mean that's just
Speaker 1: the ugly reality. I wish it wasn't so, but it
Speaker 1: is what it is. Yeah, And you know, look, even
Speaker 1: if you disagree, I don't think that's grounds for I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that Harvard is supposed to be
Speaker 1: like endorsing all of the like the opinions of its fellows,
Speaker 1: I mean, that seems pretty ridiculous in an academic point
Speaker 1: of view. My question also is do you have any
Speaker 1: idea who the why where did the pressure on the
Speaker 1: dean come from? So was it you know, above his
Speaker 1: pay grade? Is it donor based like what's happening? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: first let me just pick up in your earlier point
Speaker 1: when you just say, you know, this is the school.
Speaker 1: So the Chemty School was supposed to be the nation's
Speaker 1: you know, foremost policy institute where they teach, you know,
Speaker 1: tomorrow's the next generation of leaders how to deal with
Speaker 1: domestic policy and how to deal with foreign policy. You know,
Speaker 1: how you address the Israeli government, you know, given its
Speaker 1: right word dangerous trend is the classic thing that Kennedy
Speaker 1: School students should learn about. But Evidently Dan Elmendorf doesn't
Speaker 1: want them to hear, you know, an impartial perspective, as
Speaker 1: Human Rights Watch would present. He invites literally ten Israeli
Speaker 1: officials to the Kennedy School every single year. But they're
Speaker 1: all partial. That's fine, But an impartial observer like me,
Speaker 1: like Human Rights Watch, No, apparently that's not okay. Now,
Speaker 1: what was going on behind the scenes? We know that
Speaker 1: it was because of my criticism of Israel. Elmandorf has
Speaker 1: said that to Catherine Sikink, a very respective professor at
Speaker 1: Kennedy School, and he also told Matthias Reese, the faculty
Speaker 1: director of the Car Center, that people who mattered to
Speaker 1: him objected to my fellowship. Now we don't know what
Speaker 1: that means. You know, he doesn't seem to have a
Speaker 1: personal strong view on Israel. But who these people who
Speaker 1: mattered to him were, you know, were they donors The Nation?
Speaker 1: Michael Massing's article in The Nation outlined a number of
Speaker 1: very big donors to the Kennedy School who are big
Speaker 1: supporters of Israel. Did he consult with them? Did he
Speaker 1: surmise what they would think? Was it some other influence
Speaker 1: that undermined academic freedom? We don't know, but the bottom
Speaker 1: line is the message that Harvard is sending is disastrous.
Speaker 1: It's suggesting that, you know, if you criticize Israel, that's
Speaker 1: the third rail that will compromise your academic career. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we actually have that Nation article. We can put that
Speaker 1: tear sheet up on the screen that tracks some of
Speaker 1: the significant contributors and donors to Harvard and their pro
Speaker 1: Israeli stances and asks whether this is you know, the reason,
Speaker 1: whether these were the people that mattered to the dean
Speaker 1: that ultimately asked your fellowship there. And part of what
Speaker 1: I hate about this is, frankly, the dean, by taking
Speaker 1: these sort of actions, plays into some of the anti
Speaker 1: Semitic tropes about you know, a couple behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: well moneyed, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean that's
Speaker 1: one of the angles of this that I find disturbing
Speaker 1: and problematic. But you know, listen, you're writing a book,
Speaker 1: You're you're well established in your career, You're going to
Speaker 1: be just fine. You didn't necessarily need this fellowship. So
Speaker 1: what do you think is the bigger, broader lesson here?
Speaker 1: Why did you feel it was important to take your
Speaker 1: personal story public? Well, You're absolutely right. This is not
Speaker 1: compromising my future. I'm fine. I have plenty of options
Speaker 1: because I you know, I've been leading him Rights Uch
Speaker 1: for three decades, so I will go someplace else. I
Speaker 1: am already someplace else, and I'll continue finding other opportunities.
Speaker 1: But as I said, I really worry about, you know,
Speaker 1: the younger academic, the junior scholar, even the student who
Speaker 1: you know, when they look at the situation, might honestly
Speaker 1: want to criticize this reel. But now all says, well,
Speaker 1: I better or not, this may really cost me my future.
Speaker 1: And you know, Dean Elmendorf for the Kenny School seems
Speaker 1: at this point paralyzed. I mean, it's just hard to
Speaker 1: know what he's going to do. So we've appealed to
Speaker 1: Laurence Backau, the president of Harvard, to step in because
Speaker 1: this is really, you know, Harvard's reputation that is at stake.
Speaker 1: And you know, if anybody can stand up to donor pressure,
Speaker 1: if anybody can offer a principles defense of academic freedom,
Speaker 1: it's Harvard, the richest university in the world. You know,
Speaker 1: when I ran Human Rights Watch, you know, if somebody
Speaker 1: came to me and said, you know, here's some money,
Speaker 1: but we want you to exempt our favorite country. I
Speaker 1: would say, no, we're not the organization for you. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to, like you know, apply equal standards to everybody.
Speaker 1: And that's just the cost of being principled. Harvard can
Speaker 1: afford to do the same thing. It can announce that
Speaker 1: regardless of donor pressure, regardless of external pressure, they are
Speaker 1: not going to compromise academic freedom. They are going to
Speaker 1: uphold intellectual independence. Harvard can't do that. Who can? Yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: such a great point. I'm eighty two billion dollar indowmen, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they lose a few donations, they're going
Speaker 1: to be just fine. Thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time. Good luck in the next endeavor. Let us
Speaker 1: know when the book comes out so we can talk
Speaker 1: to you about that as well. Really grateful to get
Speaker 1: to talk to you today. I'm enjoyed talking to you, sir.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That'd be great. Thanks for having me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Maybe that'll piss some people off, don't
Speaker 1: particularly care, but listen, we care a lot about censorship
Speaker 1: and all realms of our society here and this is
Speaker 1: one which you're probably not going to hear about in
Speaker 1: some of the conservative press that often talks about it.
Speaker 1: So it's important to give people a fullsome picture of
Speaker 1: everything that's going on in our society. This is a
Speaker 1: major one too, which look as an American, the idea
Speaker 1: that you can't criticize anybody and you know, not face
Speaker 1: pressure like this and supposedly the nation's premier academic institution,
Speaker 1: that really pisses me off. When I went to Georgetown
Speaker 1: for my graduate degree, I walked past the sign every
Speaker 1: single day saying this building was go donated by the
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And I don't remember anybody baton
Speaker 1: and I over that, or any Georgetown faculty getting in
Speaker 1: trouble for saying it. Well, it's not like any of them, Actress.
Speaker 1: It's the point about how they welcome ten Israeli officials.
Speaker 1: That's no problem, right, they're considered impartial. But the head
Speaker 1: for three decades of Human Rights Watch that soundabouts like,
Speaker 1: come on, all right, insanity anyway, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your support to the show so we can highlight
Speaker 1: stories like this one, and in general, live show tickets
Speaker 1: don't go ahead and buy them if you haven't already,
Speaker 1: and get the last couple there, but otherwise, we've got
Speaker 1: great content for you guys all over the weekend. We're
Speaker 1: back here on Monday for an amazing show and we
Speaker 1: love you all, love y'all. See you Monday,