Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 3: But enough with that, Let's get to the show. All right,
Speaker 3: good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
Speaker 4: We're not going to talk about the elections much in
Speaker 4: this show today, so let's get through a couple of
Speaker 4: those real quickly. Friend of the show, Will Stancil.
Speaker 5: You just gave him that title on the spot House.
Speaker 4: Representative race and Minnesota the way that you know that
Speaker 4: you're too online whether or not you got that reference.
Speaker 4: This is a guy who made a career the last
Speaker 4: decade out of annoying people on Twitter and parlayed that
Speaker 4: into a run for Minnesota state House. He lost by
Speaker 4: maybe six hundred votes or so, which is a landslide
Speaker 4: in a Minnesota House race respectable. Also in Minnesota, ilhan
Speaker 4: Omar thumped Don Samuels.
Speaker 5: Not even close. Nothing like what happened to Corey Bush.
Speaker 5: A Pack stayed out of that race basically.
Speaker 4: As well, there was a lot of money that funneled
Speaker 4: through a pack representatives to the campaign, which was reported
Speaker 4: in the last couple of days. It looked actually in
Speaker 4: violation of FEC rules. There are no such thing as
Speaker 4: FEC rules anymore, so it won't get prosecuted. But yes,
Speaker 4: f A Pack itself stayed out. The super Pac stayed out.
Speaker 4: Ilan Omar won comfortably.
Speaker 5: Do you think that's because they like having ilhan Omar
Speaker 5: They they would rather have ilhan Omar as their sort
Speaker 5: of foil than totally. No.
Speaker 3: I think it's they they don't like to lose, and
Speaker 3: they thought that they would.
Speaker 4: And I think in organ a PAC and the NRA
Speaker 4: are similar in the sense that they survive. They survived
Speaker 4: significantly on their reputation of invincibility and of all powerfulness
Speaker 4: that if they come into a race, if you cross them,
Speaker 4: they will finish you. So they pick a jews and
Speaker 4: so therefore they can't come into a raise and lose
Speaker 4: because then other people are like, wait a minute, maybe
Speaker 4: I can challenge APAC and survive. So they really don't
Speaker 4: want to take any l's makes sense. Although they have
Speaker 4: they've been they lost that they've men but that was
Speaker 4: such a weird race. People are like, people didn't even
Speaker 4: know what to make of that, this California Democratic primary
Speaker 4: from where they went after a guy who's totally pro Israel.
Speaker 5: So yeah, interesting and they should hope they don't go
Speaker 5: the way of the NRA because times are not good
Speaker 5: for the NRA. But we're sort of light on twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four content today because it's the eye of the
Speaker 5: storm right now, everyone's preparing for the DNC. We are,
Speaker 5: of course going to cover Tim Walltz right at the
Speaker 5: top of the show. He gave a pretty interesting speech yesterday,
Speaker 5: and there was news on the labor front given what
Speaker 5: Donald Trump said to Elon Musk and Crystal and I
Speaker 5: covered some of that yesterday. We're going to cover developments
Speaker 5: out of Iran. Ryan has an incredible story, and drop
Speaker 5: site has an incredible story about something that happened in
Speaker 5: the West Bank. We are getting inflation numbers as we
Speaker 5: record this right now, bright and early, and then we
Speaker 5: have an interesting media block because some on the left
Speaker 5: are now speculating about the pro Republican mainstream media. So
Speaker 5: we'll have a good conversation about that, I.
Speaker 4: Think right, yes, it reminds me of twenty sixteen, where
Speaker 4: the entire kind of democratic infrastructure was persuaded that the
Speaker 4: mainstream media was basically in the tank for either in
Speaker 4: the tank for Trump against or because they just love
Speaker 4: the ratings.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they just they there's just something about Hillary
Speaker 5: Clinton at the meeting, and also that yeah, that's their contention,
Speaker 5: right at least. So let's start with Tim Walls. We
Speaker 5: will be at the DNC. Of course, the whole Breaking
Speaker 5: Points team you're probably where we'll be at the DNC
Speaker 5: next week, broadcasting every single day. Tim Walls will be
Speaker 5: giving a speech to the DNC. Obviously, Biden is on Monday.
Speaker 5: We just learned that Pete Bitta Judge is getting a
Speaker 5: primetime slot. I think he's going to be speaking on Wednesday.
Speaker 5: All of the Democratic celebrities will be there and we'll
Speaker 5: be there.
Speaker 4: To cover it all Wednesday's And that's a setup that
Speaker 4: Barack Obama's position in two thousand.
Speaker 5: And four and he's speaking.
Speaker 3: She used to launch Buddha.
Speaker 4: Judge is a very strong Obama impression, So we'll see.
Speaker 5: He'll be Obama will be speaking as well, obviously, Chicago,
Speaker 5: so it's sort of his home turf, so we will
Speaker 5: be there covering it with Crystal and Sager and the
Speaker 5: whole gang. Make sure to stay tuned for that. But
Speaker 5: while Washington, d C. Really awaits convention season and then
Speaker 5: Labor Day and after that it is just the last stretch,
Speaker 5: the home stretch of this race. Tim Waltz gave a
Speaker 5: speech yesterday and let's start Ryan. First of all, could
Speaker 5: you tell us maybe about the significance of Walds talking
Speaker 5: to this union.
Speaker 4: So making one of his first big campaign events, where
Speaker 4: his first solo campaign event with a union is sending
Speaker 4: a signal that we love to see. He's speaking at
Speaker 4: the ask ME conference, which is the federation of what county,
Speaker 4: state municipal employees, A lot of government workers. These are
Speaker 4: It's huge though, right national Labor Union makes up a
Speaker 4: significant part of the backbone of organized labor.
Speaker 3: Teachers.
Speaker 4: I saw some stat that teachers gave more money than
Speaker 4: basically any other profession to the Harris Walls ticket after Walls,
Speaker 4: who was in a teacher's union himself, was named to
Speaker 4: the ticket. Very reliable democratic voting base. And when it
Speaker 4: comes to you know, intra union politics, government employees who
Speaker 4: are in a union are about the most reliable Democratic
Speaker 4: votes that you're going to get. But to see him
Speaker 4: broadly making the case for labor unions generally in such
Speaker 4: a full throated way is different than we're used to
Speaker 4: getting from Democrats, even at campaign time, and.
Speaker 5: He kind of made a point about that. Let's start
Speaker 5: with this first clip of Tim Waltz yesterday.
Speaker 6: I happened to be the first union member on a
Speaker 6: presidential tikket it since Ronald Reagan, but rest assured I
Speaker 6: won't lose my way. Probably should be a few more
Speaker 6: union members in elected office. President sonders, we might want
Speaker 6: to work at that. I think I'm looking at some
Speaker 6: So you heard the story. You knew Vice President Harrips
Speaker 6: grew up in a middle class family, picked up shifts
Speaker 6: at that McDonald's as a student. I keep asking this
Speaker 6: to make a contrast here. Can you simply picture Donald
Speaker 6: Trump working at a McDonald's trying to make a mcflurry
Speaker 6: or something. It's oh, he knows, he knows, as he
Speaker 6: knows us. He couldn't run that damn mcflurry machine if
Speaker 6: it touched him anything. So Vice President Harris and I
Speaker 6: have both had the privilege of joint workers on the
Speaker 6: picket line.
Speaker 3: And it's why as governor I signed one.
Speaker 6: Of the biggest packages of pro worker policies in his
Speaker 6: into law.
Speaker 3: In Minnesota.
Speaker 6: We made it easier for workers to form unions, We
Speaker 6: strengthened workers protections, and yes, we banned those damn captive
Speaker 6: audience meetings for good in Minnesota. Last time I said
Speaker 6: that at a union meeting, they sued me over. It
Speaker 6: was the best thing to get sued over I ever
Speaker 6: sat and.
Speaker 4: So Labor Twitter was losing his mind over that, just
Speaker 4: absolutely loving it.
Speaker 3: The captive meetings.
Speaker 4: If you've ever been in one's, your boss sits you
Speaker 4: and your co workers down and they tell you, hey,
Speaker 4: you may have heard something about this union drive going
Speaker 4: on in the company.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you why. It's such a terrible idea.
Speaker 4: And they are incredibly effective. It's a way to dish
Speaker 4: out a whole bunch of threats to workers. It's a
Speaker 4: way to spew a whole bunch of lives. Over the years,
Speaker 4: we've done a ton of reporting where we've just workers
Speaker 4: often record them and then send them to the press,
Speaker 4: and it's just absolute, absolute fear mongering and a pack
Speaker 4: of lies to try to get them to vote down
Speaker 4: the unions and so for Walls would be so familiar
Speaker 4: with them to have I don't know the back story
Speaker 4: of him getting sued for talking about it. Labor law
Speaker 4: is wild. You can get sued all over the place
Speaker 4: for violating it. Oh yeah, which Donald Trump and Elon
Speaker 4: Musk are finding out.
Speaker 3: We can talk about in a second.
Speaker 4: But for him to be that kind of familiar with
Speaker 4: it and also angry about it is.
Speaker 3: Super exciting to people.
Speaker 4: But what was your what was your reaction to seeing
Speaker 4: him tell so much about labor story.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, I think he's
Speaker 5: really really good at that. There's no denying it. He's
Speaker 5: a talented politician. I think he's a good surrogate for
Speaker 5: her to be able to go to the conference in
Speaker 5: Los Angeles and speak the language of workers directly to them.
Speaker 5: He has a lot of energy right now. Also, he
Speaker 5: feels like, similar to Kamala Harris, he's got that, he's
Speaker 5: got the vibes right now. You know, he's he's feeling good.
Speaker 5: They're feeling like they have the momentum, and it shows
Speaker 5: in the way that they're speaking. So I think it's
Speaker 5: a really bad split screen. We're going to get to
Speaker 5: this in a moment with the Trump elon Musk conversation.
Speaker 5: I don't know that I agree with the mcfluurry point,
Speaker 5: because I think it's probably hard for everyone to make
Speaker 5: it mcflurry.
Speaker 3: That's not the one.
Speaker 4: Those machines are breaking constantly too. It's not the worker's fault.
Speaker 5: Clearly, clearly we all would have problems making mcflurry. Is
Speaker 5: there's something going on with.
Speaker 4: The mix as smart workers like break those machines on
Speaker 4: purpose so that you don't have to deal with them anymore.
Speaker 4: But so I also wanted to get your take on
Speaker 4: this next clip where he tries to thread together his
Speaker 4: cultural politics, social politics, and imperial material and labor politics.
Speaker 4: Uh not well, I'm not even gonna like buy us
Speaker 4: it ahead of time.
Speaker 3: Let's just roll.
Speaker 6: Why would you think I need your advice to tell
Speaker 6: me what books I ken and cannot read, or when
Speaker 6: to have a family or how to have a family,
Speaker 6: or what religion to worship or how to organize.
Speaker 3: You stay in your lane and I'll stay in mind.
Speaker 6: That's not that difficult.
Speaker 4: So he's taking the freedom and the mind your own
Speaker 4: business line theme and applying it to labor protections, like
Speaker 4: don't let don't have the government go in and side
Speaker 4: with the bosses to squash a union.
Speaker 3: I love the effort.
Speaker 5: Well, I was gonna say, I have a lot of
Speaker 5: substantive rebuttals to that, but I guess those are well.
Speaker 5: I would say, for example, I mean his COVID policies
Speaker 5: are a huge, huge, they hugely undermind his you know.
Speaker 3: Freedom agenda was not a full display during COVID.
Speaker 5: Yes, his respect for civil liberty is freedom, like many
Speaker 5: people's respect for civil liberties. I had a momentary lapse,
Speaker 5: and understandably at first, you know, given the level of
Speaker 5: the emergency and what we didn't know, but then continued
Speaker 5: on into the future. So I think that's you know,
Speaker 5: that would be one big subsant of her bottle. Another
Speaker 5: one would be tim nobody's telling you that you can't
Speaker 5: read these weird porn books. They're just saying, like, please
Speaker 5: keep them out of my child's library, meaning you stay
Speaker 5: in your lane and stop putting these like weird books
Speaker 5: in these libraries. Is K through twelve K through twelve libraries,
Speaker 5: And we've talked about this a lot before, but those
Speaker 5: are just like two off the top of my head
Speaker 5: that I would say. What I was going to mention though,
Speaker 5: is I think my substance of her bottles are sort
Speaker 5: of less important in the context of the question you asked,
Speaker 5: because politically, I think it's really smart. I think in America,
Speaker 5: anytime you can successfully make the sort of get off
Speaker 5: my or get out of my lane, stay in your lane,
Speaker 5: mind your own damn business, anytime you can successfully energetically
Speaker 5: and sharply make that argument as a politician, it's really
Speaker 5: powerful because that's kind of the American spirit.
Speaker 3: There you go, stay in your lane.
Speaker 5: There you go, not you you can swear.
Speaker 3: I'll stay in my lane.
Speaker 4: I love, but I do love the effort to at
Speaker 4: least talk about organized labor and workers in the same
Speaker 4: context as the culture war, because the culture wars has
Speaker 4: for so many years been used to distract away from it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and to try to connect those two things to say, Look,
Speaker 4: these same people that are coming after your books and
Speaker 4: coming after you in the doctor's office are also going
Speaker 4: to come at you in the workplace and are going
Speaker 4: to make it impossible for you to freely organize together
Speaker 4: and demand more dignity and protection and higher wages.
Speaker 5: Which are so interesting because again on the right, there's
Speaker 5: the sense that the wealthy class, the sort of billionaire,
Speaker 5: multi multimillionaire class that donates to political campaigns, the senses
Speaker 5: they have no interest in the culture war. It's not
Speaker 5: true of every billionaire, of course. And what Wats is
Speaker 5: using is those sort of powerful interests who are very
Speaker 5: much into the red meat of the culture war and
Speaker 5: tying them together politically because they also happen to be
Speaker 5: the same people that are anti union. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: it's the it is that that is correct that some
Speaker 5: of those wealthy, powerful interests really are. You know, I
Speaker 5: think there aren't many of them that really want to
Speaker 5: lean hard into the culture war, but some of them do.
Speaker 5: And if you can tie that together, I do think
Speaker 5: it's powerful. And another thing I just wanted to mention,
Speaker 5: real there's something there. And another thing I want to
Speaker 5: mention is that him speaking the language of organized labor
Speaker 5: so fluently and I think personally reminds me a lot
Speaker 5: of how conservatives feel about JD. Vance, and that he
Speaker 5: speaks the language of the new right, the kind of
Speaker 5: the conservative movement, not the old conservative movement, but new
Speaker 5: people like you can he uses the same words he's
Speaker 5: reading singing from the same hymn book is probably the
Speaker 5: best way to put it. And it's kind of interesting
Speaker 5: that both VP picks have that connection with such a
Speaker 5: part of a big part of their bases.
Speaker 4: It comes right after this massive own goal I think
Speaker 4: what I would call a massive own goal from Donald
Speaker 4: Trump during Elon Musk's interview. Let's let's roll this clip
Speaker 4: that this is the one I've seen circulating the most.
Speaker 4: But that might just be my own ecosystem. But Democrats were,
Speaker 4: I think, over the moon when they heard this from
Speaker 4: from these two billionaires, and we're among the first to
Speaker 4: start pushing it around. So here's here's Elon Musk and
Speaker 4: Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: I mean, I look at what you do.
Speaker 3: You walk in, you want to do it.
Speaker 5: They go on strike.
Speaker 6: I won't mention the name of the company, but they
Speaker 6: go on strike and use it.
Speaker 5: That's okay.
Speaker 3: You're all gone.
Speaker 4: You're all gone.
Speaker 5: So every one of you is gone, and you are
Speaker 5: the greatest.
Speaker 3: You would be very good.
Speaker 5: Oh you would love it. Speaking of Ronald Reagan, that
Speaker 5: was a sort of Trump admiring the Reagan and Elon.
Speaker 3: Musk uh huh.
Speaker 4: And And interesting again because Trump has a significant base
Speaker 4: of support from members of organized labor like Reagan. Like Reagan,
Speaker 4: I mentioned on the show earlier that in the nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty campaign against Jimmy Carter, the Air Traffic Controllers union
Speaker 4: endorsed Ronald Reagan and then he'd destroyed, like literally destroyed them.
Speaker 4: And so organized labor has a long memory, and the
Speaker 4: air traffic Controllers were a reactionary union of mostly like
Speaker 4: white guys in their forties and fifties. And if so,
Speaker 4: if you can imagine that in like the nineteen eighty,
Speaker 4: like that's that's a pretty right.
Speaker 3: Wing like cultural block of voters.
Speaker 4: And so that's why they voted against their kind of
Speaker 4: more obvious material interests in supporting, you know, Jimmy Carter,
Speaker 4: who would become one vote short of like a labor
Speaker 4: a union reform bill that it was the most sweeping
Speaker 4: thing we would have ever had passed in the country.
Speaker 4: Every thought, oh, we'll get that, we'll get that next cycle,
Speaker 4: and it never happened, and instead the wave kind of
Speaker 4: washed the unions back to see. But yeah, so they
Speaker 4: felt like, you know, Reagan speaking our language culturally, go
Speaker 4: with him. And so, but Reagan was smart enough to
Speaker 4: never say before the election that he was going to
Speaker 4: fire everybody.
Speaker 3: He did it after he won.
Speaker 4: Trump and Trump has also now drawn labor complaint from
Speaker 4: the UAW.
Speaker 5: And this, by the way, is a huge not by
Speaker 5: the way, and Brian, you're like the best person to
Speaker 5: talk to you about this. This is I feel like
Speaker 5: this is a pretty huge moment in the campaign. And
Speaker 5: it felt during that rambling two plus our Twitter conversation
Speaker 5: or space conversation on X that of a lot of
Speaker 5: it just was going to fade into the ether and
Speaker 5: we were never going to remember some of these moments again.
Speaker 5: And it didn't break a ton of news, even though
Speaker 5: they had some interesting tangents that they went down or
Speaker 5: roads that they went down. But this one actually might
Speaker 5: really stick because the one thing I said, so I'll
Speaker 5: get under Democrat skin this election so far, maybe the
Speaker 5: biggest thing was Sean O'Brien speaking at the RNC. I
Speaker 5: mean that was brutal. And Sean O'Brien has now said
Speaker 5: that doing what Trump lauded in response to his comments,
Speaker 5: what he lauded Etlon Musk for doing is quote economic terrorism, right,
Speaker 5: so basically called Trump and economic terrorists.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So to fire is first of all, it's illegal
Speaker 4: to fire workers who are out on strike. It is
Speaker 4: also a violation of labor law to threaten to fire
Speaker 4: workers for going on strike, which is why the UAW,
Speaker 4: which is trying to unionize some you know, elon musk plants,
Speaker 4: is filing a labor complaint saying basically, what you have
Speaker 4: done is you have you have quite rather explicitly, even
Speaker 4: if you even if Trump said I'm not going to
Speaker 4: mention the company, like we're all morons here, even if
Speaker 4: you don't mention the company, it's quite explicit that he's
Speaker 4: saying that he's willing to fire workers who try to
Speaker 4: organize a union at a tesla, And so EUEW files
Speaker 4: a complaint, and it makes makes Sean O'Brien and the
Speaker 4: teamsir's president look like a fool for having given Republicans
Speaker 4: that that olive branch. And it was such an unnecessary
Speaker 4: thing to say, like right, he's he's riffing, just riffing,
Speaker 4: like who does who? Who did that line appeal to?
Speaker 4: That was already not one hundred percent in both of
Speaker 4: their camps, But.
Speaker 5: He was just riffling. They were literally just having a conversation,
Speaker 5: which is such.
Speaker 4: An unusual thing to have a conversation, I know, but
Speaker 4: it must credit. It was he said, like a conversation
Speaker 4: is going to be more revealing.
Speaker 5: And sure enough they're both clearly people who are more
Speaker 5: interested in having these like literal conversations than reading off
Speaker 5: of script. To their credit, that sometimes is not great
Speaker 5: for their campaigns or their businesses or whatever, but it
Speaker 5: does give us as the public good insights psychologically into
Speaker 5: how they are approaching these issues, which Trump it's again
Speaker 5: it's about strength, right, like, just you're done with them.
Speaker 5: You're the you're the boss, and you're gonna act like
Speaker 5: the boss. But uh, the Sean O'Brien thing. I wonder
Speaker 5: Bryan if this antagonizes him because he took so much
Speaker 5: heat for speaking at the RNC and now he gets, uh,
Speaker 5: this comment from Trump looks like it makes him look
Speaker 5: like a fool. To your point, so does he I mean,
Speaker 5: does he come out even harder? Does he start pushing
Speaker 5: against Republicans and against Trump? Because now he's in this position,
Speaker 5: he's probably extremely mad about it.
Speaker 4: I think what he'll do is he'll read the tea
Speaker 4: leaves because he was making us several plays here, you know,
Speaker 4: one is there was a there was a there's an understanding,
Speaker 4: whether it's actor or not, among a labor unions that
Speaker 4: if the Trump, if a Trumpet, the second Trump administration
Speaker 4: comes into office, that there will be an effort to
Speaker 4: take on organized labor, to dismantle you know, organized labor
Speaker 4: power in a significant way. And so O'Brien was trying
Speaker 4: to get ahead of that and say, okay, you can
Speaker 4: go after everybody else, but don't go after the team stirs,
Speaker 4: because look, you love the teams, we had hard hats,
Speaker 4: we're good for you. And look we didn't even support
Speaker 4: the Democrats in the election, So you know, please don't
Speaker 4: put up us up against the wall with everybody else.
Speaker 4: That was the one path, separate path was his own
Speaker 4: internal politics within the Teamsters Union.
Speaker 3: He's up for reelection. There are a lot of Trump
Speaker 3: supporters in.
Speaker 4: The Teamsters Union and there still will be, of course,
Speaker 4: definitely still will be. And so he wants to be
Speaker 4: able to say to them, look, I'm not a partisan,
Speaker 4: you know, well, SJW.
Speaker 3: Democrat.
Speaker 4: I'm Teamsters first. If Trump is our guy, I'm with him.
Speaker 4: If Democrats are the better path for us to go
Speaker 4: for our workers, That's where I'm going to go, so
Speaker 4: therefore you should re elect me. In some ways, this
Speaker 4: is a gift to him because now when he goes
Speaker 4: back to support supporting Democrats if he does in this election,
Speaker 4: which he'll do if he thinks they're going to win,
Speaker 4: is my guess, he can tell the Trump supporters in
Speaker 4: the union, I tried and then they threatened to fire
Speaker 4: striking work. What do you want me to do? Like
Speaker 4: I he crossed the red line. That's economic terrorism. I
Speaker 4: can't support that. So I think he actually, while it's
Speaker 4: humiliating for him politically, it makes his situation less less
Speaker 4: tenuous then and less difficult than it was because I
Speaker 4: think a lot of people in labor recognize that he
Speaker 4: is in that tricky spot because of the because of
Speaker 4: the significant support for Trump within the Teamsters union.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: And that's a really interesting point because that's not going anywhere.
Speaker 5: The significant support among teamsters for Trump, the rank and
Speaker 5: file is not going anywhere because.
Speaker 4: They'll be mad at that comment, but they'll be like,
Speaker 4: it's Trump, it's Trump.
Speaker 5: Because for the reason that so many rank and file teamsters,
Speaker 5: other union members, blue collar workers, Obama Trump voters in
Speaker 5: the rest belt decided to vote for Donald Trump a
Speaker 5: some of them in the Republican primary, but b in
Speaker 5: the general election over Hillary Clinton. Really to your point
Speaker 5: about like the idiate material interests, that's part of it,
Speaker 5: but it's also this this sense that he understands them
Speaker 5: and you know, here's the needs of people outside of
Speaker 5: the Beltway, and you know, we could have a full
Speaker 5: shift debating that.
Speaker 3: But that's a that it's a broader the broader support.
Speaker 4: And right when I say that, I mean the Trump diehards, right,
Speaker 4: like if you're already a Trump diehard, like he said
Speaker 4: he can shoot somebody in Fifth Avenue, Yeah, you can
Speaker 4: fire them, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: We're like, you know what he had to do.
Speaker 5: This is not the persuadable demographic. Right at this point,
Speaker 5: Ryan Iran, obviously we can put this next tear sheet
Speaker 5: up on the screen. This is from the Times of Israel.
Speaker 5: Biden has said that Iran is expected to push off
Speaker 5: attacking Israel if the Gaza cease fire deal is clinched.
Speaker 5: This is a big development that was unfolding yesterday. President
Speaker 5: Biden said that yesterday, wouldn't you make of that as
Speaker 5: a kind of was unfolding in the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: So the politics of this and the geopolitics of it
Speaker 4: are fascinating.
Speaker 3: As we're watching this unfold or not unfold.
Speaker 4: You've got, again, you've got domestic Iranian domestic politics. You've
Speaker 4: got the kind of bilateral politics between Iran and Israel.
Speaker 4: You've got the relationship between the US and Iran. You've
Speaker 4: got Iran in Russia. All of this coming into play.
Speaker 4: Iran figuring out how best to balance this while they
Speaker 4: weigh how and whether to respond to Israel killing Ismael
Speaker 4: Hania in the suburbs of Tehran, which they have vowed
Speaker 4: that they are going to respond to. A couple of
Speaker 4: days ago, there were some some threats made that they
Speaker 4: were going to kind of do all out attacks on
Speaker 4: US forces in bases in Iraq and Syria, which again
Speaker 4: raised the question of why on Earth are their US
Speaker 4: forces in bases in Iraq and Syria. Fortunately for them,
Speaker 4: that did not come to pass, and now we're getting
Speaker 4: this reporting that the cease fire negotiation track is playing
Speaker 4: a role into Iran's consideration of how to respond. Iran
Speaker 4: recently had a presidential election. An elected a moderate who
Speaker 4: ran on strengthening ties with the United States. Immediately after that,
Speaker 4: Israel did his attack in Tehran, and people understood that
Speaker 4: to be a way of forcing the new president into
Speaker 4: a kind of armed confrontation with Israel in the United States.
Speaker 4: And just as Hamas's attack on October seventh was a
Speaker 4: provocation intended to get Israel to overreact and then undermine
Speaker 4: the global standing of Israel, and they succeeded in doing
Speaker 4: that because Israel took debate. Like if you remember, at
Speaker 4: the time, we're saying, like Hamas once to do everything
Speaker 4: you're doing right now.
Speaker 3: They didn't.
Speaker 4: I don't think they quite guessed that it would be
Speaker 4: as over the top as it was, but they wanted
Speaker 4: it an overreaction, like they didn't think that they were
Speaker 4: going to go into Tel Aviv and conquer it, like
Speaker 4: it was an attack that was intended to upset the
Speaker 4: apple cart, bringing a massive attack and then bring global
Speaker 4: isolation to Israel. Israel did exactly what Hamas wanted them
Speaker 4: to do. And so there are factions within the Iranian leadership,
Speaker 4: including apparently the president who was saying, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: Israel wants us to do some kind of overwhelming direct
Speaker 4: attack on both inside Israel and you know, hitting US
Speaker 4: bases in Iraq and Syria, so that then Iran is
Speaker 4: further isolated and Israel can lay waste to like huge
Speaker 4: portions of Iran, and then the productive capacity that Iran
Speaker 4: has in delivering missiles and drones for Russia is degraded.
Speaker 4: There's all sorts of things that kind of work out
Speaker 4: and in the United States benefited for Ron overreacts. So
Speaker 4: there's a faction within the Ryan leadership to saying, what
Speaker 4: if we just don't do that, like like we're not
Speaker 4: actually required to do what our adversaries want us to do.
Speaker 4: At the same time, there's a hard right in Iran
Speaker 4: that is saying, no, you are required too, because you're weak.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 4: You know, they're picking off IRGC leaders are picking off Hesbola,
Speaker 4: mid to high level people constantly. They killed Hania right
Speaker 4: there in Tehran. Your your weak little response back in
Speaker 4: April clearly didn't do any deterrence. So you need deterrence.
Speaker 4: That's the hard right argument. Then comes in the Hamas
Speaker 4: sees fire negotiations. They say, and that I think gives
Speaker 4: a way for this debate to be resolved. Inside Iran,
Speaker 4: they say, Okay, you know what the hardliners say, Look,
Speaker 4: we don't even think that Nenyahu's serious about these talks,
Speaker 4: So go ahead. If you can reach a cease fire deal,
Speaker 4: then go ahead.
Speaker 5: And so Biden was in New Orleans and he replied
Speaker 5: to a comment from reporters about whether he expected a
Speaker 5: retaliatory strike would be pushed off if there were or
Speaker 5: entirely prevented if there was a ceasefire deal that was reached.
Speaker 5: When talks zoom later this week, he said, quote, that's
Speaker 5: my expectation. Quote, We'll see what Iran does and we'll
Speaker 5: see what happens if there is any attack. Yes, we will.
Speaker 5: And then he said quote, but I'm not giving up.
Speaker 5: Now we can put the next tairsheet up on the screen,
Speaker 5: and this is from the.
Speaker 3: One other point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, before we go go to that one. Hamas is
Speaker 4: sort of not showing up for these talks that are
Speaker 4: supposed to start in Doha tomorrow or in Cairo.
Speaker 3: But they all of their people are.
Speaker 4: In Doha and are right near the negotiators that they
Speaker 4: would need to be talking to. What Hamas has said
Speaker 4: is that they're willing to accept the deal that the
Speaker 4: US and Israel put forward in July.
Speaker 3: They'll take the deal, just implement the deal.
Speaker 4: They don't want to go back to ground zero, start over,
Speaker 4: to go back to square one, because they said net Yah,
Speaker 4: who's not serious? Like if netyah, who's serious, here's his deal,
Speaker 4: we accept it. And so that's the kind of contours
Speaker 4: of this of these negotiations.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's helpful because Biden can say that all he
Speaker 5: wants and who knows what actually plays out. So the
Speaker 5: next headline, this is from the Associated Press. US approves
Speaker 5: twenty billion dollars in weapons sales to Israel amid threats
Speaker 5: of a wider Middle East war. So, according to the
Speaker 5: Associated Press, this is news from yesterday. The US has
Speaker 5: approved twenty billions in arms sales to Israel, including scores
Speaker 5: of fighter jets and advanced air to air missiles, as
Speaker 5: the State Department announced on Tuesday. So Congress was notified
Speaker 5: of the impending sale, which includes more than fifty f
Speaker 5: fifteen fighter jets, advanced medium range air to air missiles,
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty millimeters tank ammunition, and high explosive
Speaker 5: mortars and tactical vehicles. According to the Associated Press, So
Speaker 5: again happening in the context of peace negotiations or shease
Speaker 5: fire negotiations resuming later this week.
Speaker 4: Wonderful news for property values in northern Virginia and suburban Maryland.
Speaker 4: Always is DMV, stays, stays undefeated.
Speaker 3: We're doing great.
Speaker 4: Another twenty billion for us, which whether that's twenty billion
Speaker 4: that we're just printing and then sending the Israel and
Speaker 4: Israel sends it back to us in order to pump
Speaker 4: up those real estate values northern Virginia, who knows.
Speaker 3: But that's the that's the game we're playing here.
Speaker 5: Twenty twenty six time frame on these es.
Speaker 4: Yes, twenty twenty six is generous, like this is long
Speaker 4: term stuff, and so.
Speaker 5: The Jets comprise the biggest portion of the twenty billion
Speaker 5: in sales, with the first delivers expected in twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 4: Right exactly. These are not these are not for the
Speaker 4: immediate war effort. These are this is an expression of
Speaker 4: our long term commitment to Israel's quote unquote security, and
Speaker 4: these are weapons that will be there to replenish whatever
Speaker 4: weapons they use between between now and Yeah. It's and
Speaker 4: one more signal of how tight the relationship, you know, remains.
Speaker 5: And Ryan, maybe you can walk us through these next elements.
Speaker 5: This is a tweet from Ryan B. Three we can
Speaker 5: put up on the screen some of the some examples
Speaker 5: of the ongoing human rights situation in the Middle East.
Speaker 5: Right now, what are we looking at?
Speaker 4: I just wanted to share a couple of these, couple
Speaker 4: of these developments. So a doctor Jumana frid Abu al Comsan,
Speaker 4: had twins on I guess you know, not not long ago,
Speaker 4: last last week.
Speaker 3: There's she's.
Speaker 4: As as is very typical. She received a ton of
Speaker 4: messages like what a miracle. And you can imagine what
Speaker 4: an absolute miracle it must be to be to be
Speaker 4: able to take twins to term in Gaza at this
Speaker 4: moment and deliver them successfully. We have twins, and it's
Speaker 4: like the amount of nutrition you need to you know,
Speaker 4: successfully give birth to twins, even if even if they
Speaker 4: if if it's.
Speaker 3: Thirty weeks, thirty four weeks, thirty.
Speaker 4: Six weeks, the photos of them, they look beautiful, they
Speaker 4: look healthy. The father and goes out to go pick
Speaker 4: up the birth certificates and while he's out, there's a
Speaker 4: precision strike on their room and the mother and the
Speaker 4: and the twins both both killed. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 4: more that people can find if they want to go
Speaker 4: look about this particular incident, and it's and it's just
Speaker 4: it's it's it's one incident. It is it's three lives
Speaker 4: in among the tens of thousands that have been killed
Speaker 4: by the IDEF in the in this war.
Speaker 3: But it's just it just hit that much harder because
Speaker 3: it's such.
Speaker 4: A at once relatable experience, but then you know, such
Speaker 4: an absolutely kind of otherworldly experience, just just utter utter devastation.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: At the at the U n yes Un yesterday, the
Speaker 4: the the there was an emergency session called to basically
Speaker 4: to debate and condemn Israel for the massive attack on
Speaker 4: a school recently, which included a a speech by the
Speaker 4: Israel's representative to the United Nations which people can find
Speaker 4: as well. That is one of the most bizarre things
Speaker 4: you've ever seen, where he he starts screaming at the
Speaker 4: other representatives of the United Nations saying that Israel is
Speaker 4: the most moral country in the world, which is the
Speaker 4: most moral He just keeps repeating it, most moral country
Speaker 4: in the world, most moral country in the world, which
Speaker 4: if they were not carrying out this genocide, would even
Speaker 4: be an odd thing to say to other countries.
Speaker 3: What what what?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 3: What are you even talking about? The most moral country
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 4: And then he just and he says, you hear that
Speaker 4: Palestinian representative and this guy represents terrorists. Meanwhile, all of
Speaker 4: this is unfolding, plus a nationwide debate about whether you
Speaker 4: can rape detainees. It's it's like utterly divorced from reality.
Speaker 4: There and there was, there was, there was one other
Speaker 4: and I didn't want to let pass. But I have
Speaker 4: to put my glasses on for this and we can
Speaker 4: put the last one. But this absolutely harrowing piece that
Speaker 4: uh that units to Rawei, who's actually written for us
Speaker 4: over at a drop site as a Palestinian reporter. He
Speaker 4: he just takes this, uh, this post and translated it
Speaker 4: and he reads, I came to search for the remains
Speaker 4: of my son, who had gone ahead to the dawn prayer.
Speaker 4: Some one gave me a bag of twenty three kilograms
Speaker 4: and said, this is your son.
Speaker 3: Bury him.
Speaker 4: As I carried him, I remembered a day when I
Speaker 4: was coming back with him from the market carrying a
Speaker 4: heavy bag. He in complete filial piety, asked to carry
Speaker 4: it for me. He went to his mother happily boasting
Speaker 4: of his manhood, singing in front of his siblings and
Speaker 4: teasing them that he carried all his weight alone for
Speaker 4: his father. His siblings embraced him, and his mother prayed
Speaker 4: for his long life and goodness. Now once again you
Speaker 4: precede me with the bag to the house, my son,
Speaker 4: But how do I convince them that you are the
Speaker 4: one inside it? That your laughter which used to fill
Speaker 4: the house, your thin arms that used to use to
Speaker 4: spar with your siblings, your head that used to rest
Speaker 4: on your grandmother's lap, and your feet that tirelessly searched
Speaker 4: for water, all.
Speaker 3: Have become one in this bag.
Speaker 4: When your mother asks me in a bitter gosen tone,
Speaker 4: do you know if there is any electricity?
Speaker 3: Abu salah?
Speaker 4: Where will I store all this, all the goodness we
Speaker 4: give to the neighbors? How will I tell her, my son,
Speaker 4: that what's in this bag is not suitable for charity,
Speaker 4: and that twenty three kilograms of.
Speaker 3: Remains is our share of death this week?
Speaker 4: A lot of the casualties of that strike on the
Speaker 4: school were children, and one of the more harrowing images
Speaker 4: that came out of it was so many parents, because
Speaker 4: the children had been so dismembered and destroyed by the strike,
Speaker 4: just picking up their children in bags and this so
Speaker 4: this is this father's remembrance of it?
Speaker 5: Brin. Actually, you're going to keep sharing right now in
Speaker 5: our next block here some awful and tragic details.
Speaker 4: What's unfolding while everybody is well, Actually, while the focus
Speaker 4: is actually waning, I think on Gaza and the entire region,
Speaker 4: even as it gets closer to a regional war. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: in the West Bank, the crucible of the conflict, the
Speaker 4: property property annexation, continues.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that next.
Speaker 4: A few weeks ago, I asked Breaking Points and Counterpoints
Speaker 4: viewers to help support the launch of the new independent,
Speaker 4: nonprofit news outlet I was launching with my old colleague
Speaker 4: Jeremy Scahill, and a humbling number of you did.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: The launch has gone so well that I can now
Speaker 4: announce the hiring of another former colleague, Martaza Hussein, who
Speaker 4: you've seen here on the show. We've also hired The
Speaker 4: Intercept's former deputy editor, Osca Renter, and it plans to
Speaker 4: continue growing as long as as the support keeps growing.
Speaker 4: So if you still want to subscribe with the Counterpoints discount,
Speaker 4: go to drop sitenews dot com slash Counterpoints, where you
Speaker 4: can find the link down below. Now yesterday we published
Speaker 4: a new report by Martaza looking at a single conflict
Speaker 4: over a West Bank home just outside of Bethlehem. With
Speaker 4: all of the focus on Gaza Iran and the software
Speaker 4: in the North with Hesbola, it's easy to lose sight
Speaker 4: of what's happening in the West Bank. A creeping de
Speaker 4: facto annexation property property. The fight over the family home
Speaker 4: of Alice Caisia has been heating up the past week.
Speaker 4: So the family property once hosted not just their home,
Speaker 4: but a restaurant they had built. That was before settlers
Speaker 4: vandalized and demolished it. Now it is home to a
Speaker 4: makeshift campground the family guards fiercely while Israeli settlers, with
Speaker 4: the active help of the IDF, have managed to squat
Speaker 4: on a portion of it. The family isn't leaving without
Speaker 4: a fight, and their stand has drawn the support of
Speaker 4: some Israelis and Western activists who are hoping their presence
Speaker 4: will slow down the process. So the family has gone
Speaker 4: to court numerous times to try and assert legal protection
Speaker 4: over the property, only to see those claims ignored on
Speaker 4: the ground by settler activists.
Speaker 3: Guarded by Israeli soldiers.
Speaker 4: So the poster on the right here in this photo
Speaker 4: was a blown up version of the property record showing
Speaker 4: that they are the proper owners.
Speaker 3: So a number of representatives.
Speaker 4: From the group of Combatants for Peace, which is a
Speaker 4: mixed group of former Israelian Palestadian combatants turned solidarity activists,
Speaker 4: have attempted to physically blocked settlers from displacing the Kaisia
Speaker 4: family from their property. In recent days, armed soldiers have
Speaker 4: arrested demonstrators or physically driven them off the site. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: more settlers have arrived to have vandalized the Caissia's remaining property,
Speaker 4: including a statue of the Virgin Mary owned by the
Speaker 4: family that was found smashed at the site. Not that
Speaker 4: it should matter, by the way, that these are Christian Palestinians.
Speaker 4: In video from the property shared with drop site, groups
Speaker 4: of settlers guarded by IDF soldiers can be seen mocking
Speaker 4: the family and activists who have come to defend them,
Speaker 4: while trying to break into a gate surrounding their land.
Speaker 4: So last Friday, Amato Sisson, an activist from New Jersey
Speaker 4: with the solidarity group Fazzia, joined fellow demonstrators near the
Speaker 4: West Bank village of Beta, not far from the Kaisia home.
Speaker 4: In an interview with Martaza after being discharged from the hospital,
Speaker 4: Sissone said he was taking part in a quote protective
Speaker 4: presence exercise aimed at defending Palestinian citizens living in the
Speaker 4: West Bank from settler and military violence. The IDF began
Speaker 4: firing live rounds at them and they ran into a
Speaker 4: nearby olive grove. It was then that he felt what
Speaker 4: he said was a quote, blunt impact in the back
Speaker 4: of his leg. He initially thought hit him hit by
Speaker 4: a tear gas canister. It turned out to have been
Speaker 4: a live bullet which entered his thigh and exited from
Speaker 4: the front of his leg. And video of the incident
Speaker 4: provided to drop site you can see his friends and
Speaker 4: fellow activists carrying him here away from the olive grove
Speaker 4: and toured a pickup truck which would then take him
Speaker 4: to a hospital in Nablis. We asked the State Department
Speaker 4: for comment on Sassan's shooting and got the following statement quote,
Speaker 4: We are aware of these reports involving a US citizen
Speaker 4: in the West Bank and are in contact with local
Speaker 4: authorities to gather more information. We are greatly concerned when
Speaker 4: any US citizen is harmed overseas. And work to provide
Speaker 4: consular assistance. We re it I can't even say this one.
Speaker 4: We reiterate our advice to US citizens to reconsider to
Speaker 4: the West Bank. Over the past few months, there has
Speaker 4: been an increase in extremist violence and military activity. Due
Speaker 4: to privacy considerations, we have no further comment unquote. So
Speaker 4: after being shot, Saesone was treated and discharged from the
Speaker 4: hospital in Nablis. He was lucky the bullet that struck
Speaker 4: his thigh did not hit any major arteries or bone,
Speaker 4: and he's expected to recover now. While the shooting has
Speaker 4: gotten zero attention in the US, it did get some
Speaker 4: coverage in the local Israeli Pressed, where a spokesperson for
Speaker 4: the IDF said troops had quote used riot dispersal means
Speaker 4: and fired live rounds in the air to disperse a
Speaker 4: quote gathering in the area near the settlement outpost. The
Speaker 4: statement added that quote a report was received regarding a
Speaker 4: foreign national who was accidentally injured by the riot dispersal
Speaker 4: means and was evacuated to the hospital unquote. A number
Speaker 4: of Americans have been killed or wounded by the IDF
Speaker 4: in recent years, including both Palestinian citizens living in or
Speaker 4: visiting the West Bank and US activists like Sason. Earlier
Speaker 4: this month, the US government announced that it would not
Speaker 4: pursue Leahy Act sanctions against an Israeli military unit, the
Speaker 4: Netsa Yehuda Battalion, implicated in the death of an elderly
Speaker 4: Palestinian American man Omar Asad, who died after being bound
Speaker 4: and left exposed to the elements by soldiers from the unit.
Speaker 4: Two Palestinian American teenagers have also been killed in separate
Speaker 4: shooting incidents by the IDF in the West Bank since
Speaker 4: the start of this year. The US government has taken
Speaker 4: halting steps in recent months the sanction particularly violent settler leaders.
Speaker 4: The sanctions stop some individuals and groups associated with the
Speaker 4: most extreme fringe of the settler movement from access in
Speaker 4: the US financial system, while also targeting selected outposts in
Speaker 4: the West Bank for blacklisting by banks. The Biden administration,
Speaker 4: which is being sued over the sanctions by pro settler
Speaker 4: groups in the US, has hinted that these limited sanctions
Speaker 4: measures could theoretically expand in the future to target more
Speaker 4: of the settlement enterprise. Now, while President Biden has promised
Speaker 4: US retaliation for violent attacks targeting Americans elsewhere in the region,
Speaker 4: there has been near radio silence over a steady drumbeat
Speaker 4: of violent incidents that have affected US citizens in the
Speaker 4: West Bank at the hands of the Israeli military or
Speaker 4: settler groups that selective interest and concerned by the US
Speaker 4: government over violence targeting its own citizens has frustrated his own.
Speaker 4: He told Martaza, Biden has said that if any US
Speaker 4: citizen is attacked, we will respond. Yet there have been
Speaker 4: multiple times now this hasn't been the case, unquote. So
Speaker 4: I guess his own thought that Biden was going to
Speaker 4: respond to violence against him, he was guilty of a
Speaker 4: little bit of wishful thinking, but I think he probably
Speaker 4: knew better, Like I think that he understood going in
Speaker 4: that if our partners, as the State Department calls him
Speaker 4: every day at the briefing, if our partners are the
Speaker 4: ones that do the shooting, you're not really going to
Speaker 4: hear much about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm sure that's true for me personally. One of
Speaker 5: the incidents, fairly recent one relative to the scope of
Speaker 5: this tragedy that started to well, I don't know. I
Speaker 5: think the US response to it was so pathetic that
Speaker 5: it started I don't even know what the right way
Speaker 5: to put it is. But the Shri n Abu Akla killing,
Speaker 5: the way our government responded to it, Austinian, American, Christian journalists,
Speaker 5: all of these different categories. The Americans obviously purport and
Speaker 5: Israeli is obviously purport on the world stage to care
Speaker 5: about the responses were just disappointing would be putting it mildly.
Speaker 5: They were absurd. The responses to what happened, they were absurd.
Speaker 5: So that these incidents are when you look at how
Speaker 5: the various governments respond to them, I think tells you
Speaker 5: a lot about what we put up with in our
Speaker 5: foreign policy. Right, And that's just a really basic way.
Speaker 5: I mean, like that's a thirty thousand foot view, but
Speaker 5: I mean it's.
Speaker 4: Just that that's the view. That's the view that will
Speaker 4: give you the correct vantage point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's crazy. And it's the same
Speaker 5: thing when you talk about how the Biden administration sites
Speaker 5: the ICC and relation to Putin and it doesn't have
Speaker 5: any use to the ICC in relationship is real in
Speaker 5: talking about the rules based international order when it suits
Speaker 5: you and not when it doesn't. It's just turning a
Speaker 5: blind eye willfully intentionally. Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And in interviews with my colleague Jeremy, who helped me launch
Speaker 4: drop site, Hamas officials have said that what's going on
Speaker 4: in the West Bank was a significant driver of their
Speaker 4: decision to launch the attacks on October seventh, because the
Speaker 4: deck is being rearranged, and every time that another large
Speaker 4: piece of property is taken, there's not a lot of
Speaker 4: property left to be taken. Then it becomes that much
Speaker 4: more difficult than to get to a political resolution, especially
Speaker 4: when Israel continues to say that the key stumbling block
Speaker 4: for any agreement is this Palestinian demand of right of
Speaker 4: return that they get some of the land back.
Speaker 3: And so as they continue.
Speaker 4: To lose land and continue to be told that there
Speaker 4: will be no land that comes back in an eventual
Speaker 4: political process, it makes the political process seem untenable. And
Speaker 4: there's that old famous saying that like those who make
Speaker 4: peaceful resolutions tenable make violent resolutions inevitable. Yeah, that's a paraphrase,
Speaker 4: but it's something like that, But that is what you
Speaker 4: see going on here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, that's a really well applied phrase here. And
Speaker 5: I think what I was trying to say earlier, iss
Speaker 5: just like Israel is not Israel Palestin has never been
Speaker 5: one of my top issues. I'm not far from an
Speaker 5: expert in it. But the propaganda surrounding because we were
Speaker 5: doing the show actually together and we were covering what
Speaker 5: happened to shrin Abu Bakla, and normally, because it's not
Speaker 5: one of my top issues, I just you sort of like,
Speaker 5: don't dig into you know what's happening.
Speaker 4: If I don't have to, people I trust are saying
Speaker 4: things I'm gonna or just like, you know, don't.
Speaker 5: It's not one of my top issues, so I'm not
Speaker 5: thinking about it all of the time. And because we
Speaker 5: had to think about it when we were covering it,
Speaker 5: you're peeling back the layers of the propaganda and it's
Speaker 5: you know, to me and I know a lot of
Speaker 5: viewers it's going to sound naive who've been this has
Speaker 5: been one of their top issues for years and years.
Speaker 5: But when I was sort of forced to reckon with
Speaker 5: the propaganda. It's not to say that there's there isn't
Speaker 5: crazy propaganda on the other side, because there is. But
Speaker 5: when I was reckoning with the propaganda from the US
Speaker 5: and Israel in that case study, it was shocking. It's
Speaker 5: shockingly bad, which again says naive to people who have
Speaker 5: been following this for a really long time. But it's
Speaker 5: never been one of my top issues. And when you're
Speaker 5: forced to peel back the layers of the Israeli propaganda
Speaker 5: is insane.
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody should ever feel guilty about not
Speaker 4: knowing something, because nobody is born knowing everything.
Speaker 3: Like everybody, everybody our issue area, and everybody comes to things.
Speaker 4: You know, it's either either they come to you sometimes
Speaker 4: or or or you come to them. But for you,
Speaker 4: it was it was Sharene that really kind of broke through.
Speaker 5: Or yeah it was and I think you would probably
Speaker 5: say this too. The propaganda in that case when you
Speaker 5: have so many, I mean it was insane. You had
Speaker 5: the bullet patterns on the trees, you had all of
Speaker 5: the audio and video analysis, you had all of these
Speaker 5: categories that both countries claimed to be protective of and
Speaker 5: revere in one case study. I mean, it was all
Speaker 5: everything was wrapped up in that case study. So I think,
Speaker 5: you know, there have been various incidents over the years
Speaker 5: and like, oh, yeah, this propaganda's crazy, but that one
Speaker 5: was just unreal, is all? It was all tied together
Speaker 5: in such a tragically perfect kind of situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's well said, you know, and it takes flexibility
Speaker 4: and courage to like think things through in a in
Speaker 4: a plastic way.
Speaker 5: So well, your reporting is always so helpful, and I'm
Speaker 5: loving everything on drop site, incredibly good reporting.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, very very very much, appreciate it, and
Speaker 4: thank you to everybody else who's supported. It's been really
Speaker 4: gratifying and encouraging. So it'll be there'll be more of
Speaker 4: this to come, for sure.
Speaker 5: You'll love to see it. Well, not really, but you'll
Speaker 5: love to see the good reporting.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 5: So we actually have the inflation numbers out right now.
Speaker 5: Just as we were talking, these numbers were released. Ran,
Speaker 5: should we start with the Republicans been because I know
Speaker 5: we have an element of that. It's Rick Santali of course,
Speaker 5: that was already clipped and posted by the official Republican
Speaker 5: Party x account. Let's row this clip.
Speaker 7: Right now for the July consumer price and that headline
Speaker 7: number coming in as expected, up two tenths of a percent,
Speaker 7: up two tenths percent on headline number follows yet unrevised
Speaker 7: down one tent So we went from basically the weakest
Speaker 7: the biggest negative month over month change, a positive in
Speaker 7: CPI since COVID for twenty for twenty twenty, and now
Speaker 7: we're at the level that we haven't seen really since April.
Speaker 7: We're up at three tens if you look at ex
Speaker 7: food energy exactly is expected as well, up two tents.
Speaker 7: The issue is, of course, it's following one ten, which,
Speaker 7: just like the last number was comping towards the first
Speaker 7: several months of COVID.
Speaker 5: Okay, so that's the Republican's been immediately upon the numbers
Speaker 5: being released. But Ryan, let's get into some of these
Speaker 5: numbers and actually what they are, because it's the first
Speaker 5: year over year being less than three percent of an
Speaker 5: inflation increase? Is the CPI here first year over year
Speaker 5: since March of twenty twenty one, So year over year
Speaker 5: the first time that it hasn't been over three percent
Speaker 5: two percent or higher since March of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: right in the heat of the pandemic. How do you
Speaker 5: think Wall Street's going to react to this because they were,
Speaker 5: as The New York Times put it, quote on edge
Speaker 5: ahead of the CPI being at least which is always
Speaker 5: the case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they were this is it beats expectations by
Speaker 4: a little bit. Last month also beat expectations by a
Speaker 4: little bit, so that's two months in a row. The
Speaker 4: big question that Wall Street is going to have, and
Speaker 4: that all of us are also going to have because
Speaker 4: it matters to us as well, is whether whether there
Speaker 4: will be a rate cut next month from the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 4: But this number seems to move that question to what
Speaker 4: kind of rate cut.
Speaker 3: We're going to have.
Speaker 4: Is it going to be a quarter point which is
Speaker 4: the kind of normal state of affairs for the Fed
Speaker 4: to cut, or is it going to be a half
Speaker 4: point cut? And this pushes the possibility of a half
Speaker 4: point rate cut closer to closer to happening. I think
Speaker 4: rates are the Fed sets its current rate, I think
Speaker 4: five three percent, but a half a half point cut
Speaker 4: would dramatically would send a dramatic signal that there's going
Speaker 4: to be more money flowing into the economy, that loans
Speaker 4: are going to be easier to get, and then you
Speaker 4: and then you will start to see you know, long
Speaker 4: you're already seeing interest rates coming down interestingly over the
Speaker 4: last several months, like thirty year mortgage rates coming down.
Speaker 4: This would send mortgage rates significantly down, which means, you know,
Speaker 4: five hundred to one thousand bucks or more off of
Speaker 4: a mortgage payment for people who either refinance or purchase
Speaker 4: at the exact same price.
Speaker 5: Do you think that potential do you think the potential
Speaker 5: rate cuts going to depend on the jobs report September
Speaker 5: early September, six September.
Speaker 4: So that'll play a role, and that'll probably be soft,
Speaker 4: which means that it probably will not They will probably
Speaker 4: not have added as many jobs, you knows, as they
Speaker 4: had in previous months, and that then will further induce
Speaker 4: the Fed to cut rates. Now, the politics of this
Speaker 4: are such that Trump is probably going to spend the
Speaker 4: next several weeks browbeating the Fed not to cut rates.
Speaker 4: You know, he has said that he wants he wanted
Speaker 4: a market crash, and he wants no Fed FED rate
Speaker 4: cuts like in order to help.
Speaker 3: His his re election campaign.
Speaker 4: And it's delightful for us as political reporters that he
Speaker 4: just says the stuff out but really that's what that's
Speaker 4: what all candidates who are opposing the incumbent want.
Speaker 3: But he just says it out loud.
Speaker 5: You don't need any truth serum, like we never needed
Speaker 5: mk Ultra, We just needed Trump.
Speaker 3: He just says it.
Speaker 5: It's all he ever needed.
Speaker 3: Tweets it out.
Speaker 4: He got his market crash, but then immediately kind of
Speaker 4: rebounded over the next several days, and so that and
Speaker 4: that market crash also probably also woke up the FED
Speaker 4: a little bit. The reporting around Pale's thinking on this
Speaker 4: the FED share.
Speaker 3: Is that he doesn't want the FED.
Speaker 4: To appear political by coming in, and it would be
Speaker 4: Trump will accuse him of being political and accuse him
Speaker 4: of kind of biasing the.
Speaker 3: Electoral results towards Democrats.
Speaker 4: If Powell thinks that Democrats are going to win anyway,
Speaker 4: you know, that kind of gives him more reason because
Speaker 4: obviously everybody is political. So if he thought when it
Speaker 4: was Trump versus Biden, and it looked like Trump was
Speaker 4: going to win like New Mexico and Minnesota and your pal,
Speaker 4: then you're like, you know what, I'm not going to
Speaker 4: tick this guy off. But if it looks like Trump's
Speaker 4: going to lose anyway and you are at you are
Speaker 4: risking this soft landing that you've been going for, which
Speaker 4: is which would be your legacy. Like if he if
Speaker 4: he can, if he can oversee this spike in inflation
Speaker 4: around the around the pandemic and then bring the and
Speaker 4: then bring inflation back down to the two percent range
Speaker 4: while keeping unemployment at the three to four percent range
Speaker 4: and not going into recession. That would that would be
Speaker 4: a legacy for a fed share that you that he
Speaker 4: would go around and give speeches about and people would
Speaker 4: write books about.
Speaker 5: Him and get some money for those speeches too.
Speaker 4: And if but if he holds rates too high for
Speaker 4: too long, he risks sending the economy spiraling into a recession,
Speaker 4: which then undermined which then undermindes his whole legacy. But
Speaker 4: what's interesting about the gopie spin that we played at
Speaker 4: the top is that that's also true in some ways. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a it's a case where what both sides are
Speaker 4: saying is true.
Speaker 3: So you want to run through some of.
Speaker 5: This, Yeah, I was gonna say, let's get into that
Speaker 5: because in this CPI, shelter costs are still going up.
Speaker 5: So it's a half percent, but that's still significant because
Speaker 5: that's one place that is absolutely crushing. People will get
Speaker 5: into that in a moment. New and used cars are
Speaker 5: going down. That has been a hugely significant expense for
Speaker 5: a lot of families. Food prices still going up, in
Speaker 5: the CPI. Now, if we put this almond up on
Speaker 5: the screen, it is a long wall stre journal report
Speaker 5: on basically picking apart where people are still getting hit
Speaker 5: really hard from inflation and these some of these numbers
Speaker 5: are truly insane. Car insurance is still up like forty percent, childcare, water, sewer,
Speaker 5: trash costs, some of these like very essential services still up.
Speaker 5: Rent and electricity up ten percent. So consumer prices overall
Speaker 5: since June of twenty twenty two are up six percent.
Speaker 5: Car insurance, I think I already went that. Said that one.
Speaker 5: Shelter costs are rent, I already mentioned that. But shelter overall,
Speaker 5: it's another metric that they measure separately, still really high.
Speaker 5: There are things that have gone down, cable shampoo, there
Speaker 5: are some kind of random places where people have seen cooling.
Speaker 5: And that's all true. But if you can imagine across
Speaker 5: the board, I mean, some of these depending on how
Speaker 5: people live and where they live, it's a little bit uneven.
Speaker 5: Some of that matters. And if you're in a city,
Speaker 5: like childcare super super high in cities right now not
Speaker 5: going down doesn't show any signs of going down, So
Speaker 5: it's being experienced differently. In different pockets of the country.
Speaker 5: But some of these things, like forty percent increase in
Speaker 5: car insurance prices, almost everybody is feeling I mean just
Speaker 5: almost everybody's feeling that increases in essential services. Those are
Speaker 5: things that everybody is feeling, and they're not showing any
Speaker 5: signs of going down at all. It's not a good
Speaker 5: sign that the shelter costs are still increasing, even if
Speaker 5: it's a slow rate of increase.
Speaker 4: So you look at these numbers and you have the
Speaker 4: answer to the question of why do we have a
Speaker 4: quote unquote good economy which is low unemployment and low inflation,
Speaker 4: good market, and then a booming stock market, yet my
Speaker 4: life is miserable? Like how on earth are all of
Speaker 4: those things true? And the reason that they're true is
Speaker 4: what you what everybody kind of intutally gets rent housing
Speaker 4: is through the roof, since the pandemic, energy costs, your
Speaker 4: power bill are through the roof, and car insurance those
Speaker 4: basically those and you know, food prices have gone up
Speaker 4: and haven't come down, so like even though they're no
Speaker 4: longer going up, you know they're up, and wages have
Speaker 4: kept up with food prices. But if you throw in
Speaker 4: rent and you throw in the car insurance, you throw
Speaker 4: in the electric bill.
Speaker 3: You're way behind what you used to be.
Speaker 4: And so just looking at some of the BLS numbers
Speaker 4: from this month, so transportation services, which includes car insurance,
Speaker 4: ubers and lifts and cabs and all that stuff way up.
Speaker 4: Still still rolling it eight point eight percent, which is
Speaker 4: which is rough. And that that is, you know, partly
Speaker 4: because used cars and trucks and new vehicles were so
Speaker 4: significantly up, like you said, they're now coming down. So
Speaker 4: used cars and trucks are down ten point nine percent
Speaker 4: year over year, but that's because they went up. They
Speaker 4: were massive number. The more expensive new and used cars are,
Speaker 4: the more expensive it is to replace, the more expensive
Speaker 4: your insurance is now. A bunch of people who watch
Speaker 4: this show were mad at me for saying that climate
Speaker 4: change is one of the drivers of why auto insurance
Speaker 4: has gone up so much in the last couple of years.
Speaker 4: And this Wall Street Journal article just confirms that once
Speaker 4: again insurance and maybe the insurance companies are lying and
Speaker 4: their data is completely faked and it's fake news. But
Speaker 4: they say that storms and crazy weather have been a
Speaker 4: significant drivers in recent years of damage to vehicles and
Speaker 4: as a result of higher insurance rates. And you can
Speaker 4: go ahead and say that maybe the storms and all
Speaker 4: the crazy weather has nothing to do with climate change,
Speaker 4: but that's not what climate scientists believe, and the numbers
Speaker 4: are showing what they're showing. I think the rise of
Speaker 4: electric vehicles playing a role here too. Like you get
Speaker 4: in a car accident with an electric vehicle, that's that
Speaker 4: suckers totaled a lot faster. Plus you cannot underrate the
Speaker 4: role of what Kia and Hyundi of selling millions of
Speaker 4: cars that are easy to steal, like this is an
Speaker 4: undertold story.
Speaker 5: Okay, yes, but then also the cities that are wildly
Speaker 5: over permissive of the stealing of those cars.
Speaker 4: That's that's fine, But if you create cars, if you
Speaker 4: produce cars, should that you could just walk into and
Speaker 4: drive away?
Speaker 5: Yes, they should not have done that and refuse.
Speaker 4: To stop doing that after it's called to your attention,
Speaker 4: Like the number of car thefts that are directly connected
Speaker 4: to Kia and Hyundai making cars that are easy to steal.
Speaker 5: But mostly to the people thieving first and foremost connected
Speaker 5: to the people stealing the cars that are easy to steal.
Speaker 3: Right, But if if you make it harder to steal, So.
Speaker 5: To Turment, no question about it.
Speaker 4: Like, you tighten that up and they are going to
Speaker 4: be fewer cars stolen. But it's it's a complete because.
Speaker 4: And so the other spiraling effect here is as car
Speaker 4: insurance gets more expensive, fewer people acquire it, even if
Speaker 4: the loss as you're supposed to have it.
Speaker 3: What does that do?
Speaker 4: That drives up the cost of insurance for people who
Speaker 4: do have the insurance because now if you get into
Speaker 4: a car accident, the chances that you hit somebody that
Speaker 4: doesn't have insurance have gone up. Yeah, And so like
Speaker 4: at some point it feels like we're going to need
Speaker 4: a public option here, like the car insurance public like
Speaker 4: because this is going the wrong direction. Because every percentage
Speaker 4: increase that you have in car insurance costs is going
Speaker 4: to me in a higher percentage of people without car insurance.
Speaker 5: We should do a whole segment, which.
Speaker 3: Which then drives car insurance prices higher.
Speaker 5: It's interesting, we should we should do a whole segment
Speaker 5: on that.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you're paying Yeah, and if you're not going
Speaker 4: to solve climate change, then the public option for car insurance.
Speaker 4: This before we get to property insurance, flood insurance, like
Speaker 4: which I don't think anybody is going to quibble with
Speaker 4: me about that being related to climate.
Speaker 5: Change, not even Trump, who, in this conversation with Elon
Speaker 5: Musk said, listen, I'll maybe it'll create more ocean front property.
Speaker 4: For me, it's not happening, but it'll create more open
Speaker 4: flood property.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But I mean these So it's to your point
Speaker 5: about the kind of duality here that the Republican spin
Speaker 5: I probably shouldn't have even been laughing and mocking the
Speaker 5: Republican spin because it is tackling something really real. There's
Speaker 5: the duality of that and the good news. So it's
Speaker 5: like there's good news, there's bad news, but overall still
Speaker 5: just bad news for everybody because there's no sign like, well,
Speaker 5: it's it's I guess good that we're below three percent
Speaker 5: since for the first time year of a year since
Speaker 5: March of twenty twenty one. Yeah, I guess that's that's
Speaker 5: good news. On the other hand, it's hard to see
Speaker 5: this kind of was the best way to put it,
Speaker 5: the Titanic being turned around here, because even these good things,
Speaker 5: we don't have an answer to the housing costs. And
Speaker 5: there's an interesting quote in the Journal article where a
Speaker 5: guy says, yeah, gas prices are cheaper, but I'm not
Speaker 5: feeling it in my budget because the other things have
Speaker 5: gone up. Basically, you know, yeah, gas prices can go down,
Speaker 5: Cable prices can go down, which I honestly don't even believe.
Speaker 5: I don't know how they're getting that cable number.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's for cable prices went so through the roof
Speaker 4: because of the pandemic.
Speaker 5: That's true. That's true, like cars and yeah.
Speaker 4: Because everybody was at home. But the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 4: article is good and people should read it. And you can,
Speaker 4: by the way, you can just take the journal article
Speaker 4: and go to like Not that I would tell anybody
Speaker 4: to do this because maybe see legal tell them, but
Speaker 4: it is possible to go to like archive dot i
Speaker 4: s and put the Wall Street Journal link in there.
Speaker 3: And you would never I would never suggest such a thing.
Speaker 4: But if you do that, you can find an archived
Speaker 4: version that goes around the paywall.
Speaker 5: But you don't recommend them.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that'd be terrible. Who would ever do such a thing?
Speaker 5: Not our viewers, And don't do it to drop site either.
Speaker 3: Well drop site. Everything's free there.
Speaker 5: That's right, so charitable, man, that's right.
Speaker 4: The only thing you get if you subscribe you can
Speaker 4: comment cool And the goal of that is actually just
Speaker 4: so we don't have to moderate the comment section, because
Speaker 4: we figure if somebody is paying to subscribe that they're
Speaker 4: not going to be a terrible troll in the comments.
Speaker 3: Well, as we learn that'd be a weird way to
Speaker 3: spend your money, but it's.
Speaker 5: A good way to do it because, as we learned
Speaker 5: at the Federalist a few years ago, they will come
Speaker 5: after you if people say crazy things in your comments
Speaker 5: and demonetize you, threaten to demonetize you on Google Ads,
Speaker 5: which basically means you can't run a news business. Do
Speaker 5: not do that to internet business. Yes, so good. That
Speaker 5: is a way to do comments.
Speaker 4: But the good news, if we're going to finish it
Speaker 4: on that is if the Fed does lower interest rates
Speaker 4: and that brings down the price of mortgages, then that
Speaker 4: can help with rent and housing costs like that.
Speaker 3: That is a path out of this.
Speaker 4: And if you can make it easier to borrow money,
Speaker 4: you can build more housing and you have to deal
Speaker 4: with the NIMBI problem.
Speaker 5: But then obviously there's prices elsewhere that get affected by
Speaker 5: that too, which is why the job support is probably pretty.
Speaker 3: Imp right there, right right.
Speaker 4: The concern is that if you lower interest rates, the
Speaker 4: economy is going to grow, Wages will grow, and wages
Speaker 4: will produce inflation. As Powell has said, the connection between
Speaker 4: wage growth and inflation is much more tenuous than it
Speaker 4: used to be in the nineteen sixties, partly because there
Speaker 4: aren't union like back in the sixties had unions who
Speaker 4: had contracts and made up like forty percent of the workforce.
Speaker 4: That if that they would get raises based on the
Speaker 4: cost living increased that the federal government produced through It's
Speaker 4: through these numbers, and so then the federal government would say, well,
Speaker 4: cost living with seven percent, unions would get an eight
Speaker 4: percent raise, and then that would drive eight percent the
Speaker 4: next year, and then unions would get nine percent. So
Speaker 4: it had this like feedback effect, which thanks thanks to
Speaker 4: neoliberalism breaking labor unions, we don't have that feedback effect anymore.
Speaker 4: So now it actually seems like interest rates play a
Speaker 4: more significant role. High interest rates play a more significant
Speaker 4: role in driving prices up and costing people more than
Speaker 4: they do in slowing or slowing or growing the economy.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, we'll.
Speaker 5: See, Yeah, we'll see. The Journal article is worth your
Speaker 5: time if you're able to read it. Moving on hilarious
Speaker 5: moment unintentionally on Colbert. The only funny moments that happen
Speaker 5: on Stephen Colbert Show are unintentional these days. But Caitlin
Speaker 5: Collins at CNN stopped by Colbert's Late night show, and
Speaker 5: this exchange was really beautiful. It's really clip.
Speaker 1: Trump has kind of been thrown on his heels by this,
Speaker 1: and he's not really sure how to go after Vice
Speaker 1: President Harris.
Speaker 5: He knew his attack lines on President Biden.
Speaker 1: He really has struggled with how to go after someone
Speaker 1: who's twenty years younger than him, who is.
Speaker 5: A different gender, a different race.
Speaker 1: It's kind of been this moment where he has not
Speaker 1: been able to coalesce around a single attack line.
Speaker 2: I know you guys are objective over there, that you
Speaker 2: just report the.
Speaker 3: News as it is. Oh, I know a CNN makes.
Speaker 8: It, and I know that's supposed to be a lab
Speaker 8: like I wasn't supposed.
Speaker 3: To be, but I guess it is.
Speaker 5: It's just brutal. It's so brutal. His audience thinks that
Speaker 5: he's making a joke, but he was being serious, which
Speaker 5: reflects so poorly on him in so many different ways,
Speaker 5: not just on CNN. Obviously it reflects on CNN, but
Speaker 5: also just on Stephen Colbert's ability to a liver a
Speaker 5: joke at these days.
Speaker 4: Well, maybe he's just such a funny guy that everything
Speaker 4: he says is funny.
Speaker 5: It's always funny.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it shows kind of how partisan Colbert has gotten.
Speaker 4: I know, he didn't understand how that that would land.
Speaker 4: Zero self aware with his own audience, right, Like.
Speaker 5: He's in such a bubble that he that's such a
Speaker 5: good point. He's in such a thick bubble that his
Speaker 5: awareness of what's funny and what's not is like shot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and his connection to the way that people are
Speaker 4: viewing places like CNN. Caitlyn Collins seems to be more
Speaker 4: in touch, actually, because she seemed to genuinely think that.
Speaker 3: He was making fun of her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she was like wait a minute, Yeah, but it's
Speaker 4: almost more embarrassing the other direction. But she is interesting herself, right,
Speaker 4: I mean she's she came from conservative media, yeah, in
Speaker 4: a journey to CNN, which is not It's more common
Speaker 4: to come from like the New Republic or something, But
Speaker 4: to become a star, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's not too common. Is it to come from conservative.
Speaker 5: She's the only person that's done it.
Speaker 3: Basically, she Daily Caller she was Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't know if Sagers mentioned this before, but yeah,
Speaker 5: they were colleagues at The Caller. I knew Caitlin like Caitlin,
Speaker 5: so she's had a very interesting.
Speaker 3: Path talking about her like she's dead. Yeah, well.
Speaker 5: The Daily Caller Caitlyn is definitely not no longer with us.
Speaker 5: But it's almost unheard of. I can't think of anybody
Speaker 5: who's gone from such a like she was a kind
Speaker 5: of rank and file caller blogger to such a high
Speaker 5: level of superstartum at CNN where she's like anchoring primetime
Speaker 5: shows and going on Colbert. Very much unheard of.
Speaker 4: But Robert Costa started the National Review, but he was
Speaker 4: but he was always a reporter first at National Review,
Speaker 4: and actually when I was at Tubing Post, we always
Speaker 4: had like one or two conservatives that would cover conservatives.
Speaker 4: We tried to hire with John Ward, we tried to
Speaker 4: hire Costa at one point. He ended up going to
Speaker 4: the Post instead and since become like a star reporter
Speaker 4: and he's on TV a lot. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 4: but not like Kaylen Collins.
Speaker 5: Oh, he got a Biden interview the other day, Costa did,
Speaker 5: but he's yeah, similar, A lot of people in conservative
Speaker 5: media would would grumble heavily about both of them, saying
Speaker 5: the only way, really, it's actually an advantage to come
Speaker 5: into liberal media as someone who was at conservative media
Speaker 5: and was a conservative, because it kind of allows you
Speaker 5: to bring in all of those sources. And also that's
Speaker 5: why we would hire them, right, yeah, exactly, and then
Speaker 5: also sort of with added credibility, trash the right. So
Speaker 5: that's the kind of pattern that a lot of people
Speaker 5: on the right would grumble about. And speaking of the
Speaker 5: Republican Party and the conservative movements relationship with the so
Speaker 5: called mainstream media, let's rule this next because I think
Speaker 5: it'll drive this conversation in an even more interesting direction.
Speaker 8: What's your overall advice about like how democrats can sort
Speaker 8: of what's your take on how democrats can sort of
Speaker 8: balance the field?
Speaker 9: I think the most important thing is not to confer
Speaker 9: of our all the legitimacy onto the mainstream media as
Speaker 9: if they're advocating for us. I mean, they are so
Speaker 9: not on our team that they bend over backwards to
Speaker 9: show deference to Republicans. I mean, there were I think
Speaker 9: something like sixty nine Hillary's email stories and the lead
Speaker 9: up to the twenty sixteen election, and so like, these
Speaker 9: are people who are not only not on our team,
Speaker 9: but they're broadcasting that they're not on our team. And
Speaker 9: yet we have independent progressive media like Crooked Media, like
Speaker 9: what I do, and like so many others in this space,
Speaker 9: who are showing that we are willing and able to
Speaker 9: pick up the mantle for where the media is dropping
Speaker 9: the ball. And we have to be able to be
Speaker 9: able to combat what the right has done. I mean
Speaker 9: from the days of Rush Limbaugh all the way to
Speaker 9: today with Fox News and Oan and Newsmax and Daily
Speaker 9: Wire and just the the vast ecosystem of the right.
Speaker 5: We have to be able to push back.
Speaker 9: And by relying solely or only legitimizing mainstream media sources,
Speaker 9: we're not going to get there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I don't even think that they should be on our
Speaker 8: team because.
Speaker 3: They're like that.
Speaker 8: Look, it's their their job is to report the news.
Speaker 8: Their job is not to help Democrats want elections.
Speaker 5: No kidding, right, no kidding?
Speaker 3: He yeah, and John Favreau there is is right.
Speaker 4: I think they shouldn't be, but it is interesting that
Speaker 4: that is a that counts as an insight right in
Speaker 4: that world.
Speaker 3: Because.
Speaker 4: It shows that there is this real dynamic.
Speaker 5: And you were listening to Brian Tyler Cohen, by the way,
Speaker 5: if you weren't with guy without the shirt, yeah, hit button.
Speaker 5: You're damn sure he was down like three buttons deep
Speaker 5: like it was we were seeing.
Speaker 3: Might have been four buttons even. Yeah, yeah, maybe that's
Speaker 3: a new.
Speaker 5: Thing, Sager. This is probably what made Soger sick. This
Speaker 5: is what sent him to sick bad.
Speaker 4: But yeah, there's this there's this unspoken view among a
Speaker 4: lot of liberals that because the media is a liberal
Speaker 4: institution in the kind of mill sense like that it
Speaker 4: is without a without a democratic, democratic, small d government,
Speaker 4: not an open In an open society, and a liberal society,
Speaker 4: you need a free press. The free press cannot operate
Speaker 4: under an authoritarian regime, you know. Therefore, in this contest
Speaker 4: that they see between authoritarians and liberals, non authoritarians liberals
Speaker 4: in the old school sense, the media ought to be
Speaker 4: partisans on their behalf because it is it should be
Speaker 4: in their self interest, yes, to maintain an open, democratic
Speaker 4: society that allows for the free press to continue to
Speaker 4: exist like that.
Speaker 5: That.
Speaker 4: Plus then there's this cultural allegiance where you can it
Speaker 4: doesn't seem weird that one brother is a an anchor
Speaker 4: and the other brothers the governor of New York. That
Speaker 4: that's like that, that the politics of that kind of overlap.
Speaker 5: And it didn't seem weird to anyone, by the way,
Speaker 5: like that was happening at CNN for a long time.
Speaker 5: He was covering his brother and it just didn't really
Speaker 5: upset anyone until COVID.
Speaker 4: But Democrats should also understand that, yes, while while there
Speaker 4: are all these like cultural overlaps and political overlaps, and
Speaker 4: while they're like going gaga over Kamala the last couple
Speaker 4: of weeks in ways that must be infuriating to you
Speaker 4: and or actually probably not because you're used to it.
Speaker 5: It's on another level.
Speaker 3: Though it is kind of on another level. But you
Speaker 3: also can't rely on.
Speaker 4: Them like you know, they're they're they're in their own interest.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is their own estate.
Speaker 3: I think this is.
Speaker 5: Interesting that jexpose these two clips, by the way, where
Speaker 5: you have Colbert's audience laughing at the idea that CNN
Speaker 5: is just the facts, totally objective, because they assumed that
Speaker 5: was a joke and the pod I guess Favreau is right,
Speaker 5: so I shouldn't I shouldn't, you know, But he probably
Speaker 5: makes the same argument about the Clinton email stories, whining
Speaker 5: about media being anti left. It's so laughable. It's so laughable.
Speaker 5: There are moments of sanity in the media or clarity
Speaker 5: in the media where the sort of old if it bleeds,
Speaker 5: it leads profit motive or certain journalists like Ken Vogel
Speaker 5: is just a fantastic journalist and he is going to
Speaker 5: report out any scoop that comes his way.
Speaker 3: He's at the New York Time. Guys broke the Hunter
Speaker 3: Biden story last night.
Speaker 5: He's so good. He's so good. And that still happens
Speaker 5: in corporate press, like there are still flashes of excellent
Speaker 5: journalism and corporate press. But every time there are people
Speaker 5: like Brian Tyler Cohen have this, they want it. They
Speaker 5: demand the authoritarianism of the press. Not reporting on Hillary
Speaker 5: Clinton's email scandal would have been an authoritarian collusion between
Speaker 5: the media and powerful interests. That's what he's demanding for
Speaker 5: The New York Times. And they don't see it as authoritarian.
Speaker 5: They see it as fair because their idea of what's
Speaker 5: newsworthy and what's not. And that's why this collusion, whether
Speaker 5: it's between Republicans on issues like Israel or Ukraine and
Speaker 5: the press and the Pentagon, that's why these relationships should
Speaker 5: absolutely terrify people. Or it's Democrats on partisan questions like
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris being drawn, as Trump said,
Speaker 5: like Milania on the cover of Time, that is terrifying.
Speaker 5: And to be to see it through the lens that
Speaker 5: Brian Tyler Cohene is very common among Like the other
Speaker 5: funny thing he said was that he's saying they're broadcasting
Speaker 5: that they're not on our team. Yeah, first of all,
Speaker 5: I mean they aren't really doing that. If you saw
Speaker 5: the Time magazine cover, they're not really doing that at all.
Speaker 5: The different coverage of like the tax on tips. I
Speaker 5: don't know if you've seen any of the split screen
Speaker 5: coverage of how the media covered Trump's no tax versus
Speaker 5: how they cover Kamala Harris is like it's just so obvious.
Speaker 5: But he's also saying now that independent quote progressive media
Speaker 5: like Crooked is picking up the mantle of the New
Speaker 5: York Times. That's the That is what he just said,
Speaker 5: that independent media like independent progressive media like Crooked is
Speaker 5: picking up the mantle of the New York Times. That
Speaker 5: is insane. They're not doing anything like what the Daily
Speaker 5: Wire or conservative media is doing. They're just talking on
Speaker 5: a podcast.
Speaker 3: They're not reporting right that that is true.
Speaker 4: And Ken Vogel's beat over at the Times has always
Speaker 4: been big money influence, and he he did a lot
Speaker 4: of great reporting on the Coke Coke Network back in
Speaker 4: the day and other kind of right wing billionaires well
Speaker 4: also Soros and others on the left. Back when he
Speaker 4: was doing a lot of that Coke reporting. If you noticed,
Speaker 4: he was on cable news all the time. Since he
Speaker 4: started doing the Hunter Biden reporting, I don't think I've
Speaker 4: seen him on cable like.
Speaker 3: A single time.
Speaker 4: And so his story last night, I think is going
Speaker 4: is going to infuriate Republicans again in this but not
Speaker 4: his fault. So basically what he reported is that the
Speaker 4: Times he through the time has been suing the State
Speaker 4: Department for public records related to Hunter Biden's potential influence
Speaker 4: peddling with the State Department. And the way that the
Speaker 4: Freedom of Information Act works now is you need to
Speaker 4: sue like if you don't have a lawyer and that's
Speaker 4: why it's costly to do investigative reporting. Nowadays, you can't
Speaker 4: basically no longer file a foya and get it returned
Speaker 4: to you like that.
Speaker 3: Those days are just gone.
Speaker 4: So you file a foyer, they basically reject or don't
Speaker 4: really fulfill your foya.
Speaker 3: Then you take them to court.
Speaker 4: After you take them the court, they start dribbling out
Speaker 4: bits of information to satisfy the angry judge who's like,
Speaker 4: you're not following the law. And so that's what the
Speaker 4: State Department was doing with this foyer request that The
Speaker 4: Times through Vogel had put in, dribbling out bits of information,
Speaker 4: and then they moved. They said, we've given you everything
Speaker 4: we have. This case is closed. Times suit again said no,
Speaker 4: you have not. We know that you haven't given us
Speaker 4: everything you have because we have the laptop and here
Speaker 4: are these things that are in the laptop that would
Speaker 4: be responsive to our foya that you haven't given us yet.
Speaker 4: So we know that, So what else have you not
Speaker 4: given us? So judge is like, all right, keep giving
Speaker 4: him stuff. Then Biden analys he's stepping down. And one
Speaker 4: week later they give the handover a new trunch of
Speaker 4: documents and in that tranch. Vogel had been looking for
Speaker 4: something that this State Department official and who had worked
Speaker 4: in Romania had done. But before he was in Romania,
Speaker 4: he'd worked in Italy and happened to find a letter
Speaker 4: from basically from Hunter Biden to the Attack ambassador saying,
Speaker 4: can you set up a meeting? Help me set up
Speaker 4: a meeting with the Bearisman executives and this Tuscany dude
Speaker 4: because they want to do geothermal. Apparently Tuscany is like
Speaker 4: the place to do geothermal, and the Commerce Department guy
Speaker 4: inside the embassy is like a little bit nervous, like
Speaker 4: we want to be polite here, but like you got
Speaker 4: to love these bureaucrats. They get that and they're like, no,
Speaker 4: this is not how this is. They know it's not
Speaker 4: supposed to work like this. The letter was completely redacted,
Speaker 4: so we don't know precisely how Hunter phrased and what
Speaker 4: he asked for, but we do know from other emails
Speaker 4: inside the laptop that that they were that Bearisman was
Speaker 4: leaning on Biden Hunter Biden to get them a meeting
Speaker 4: to get this deal going in dusk Tuscany.
Speaker 3: The deal never happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but like that, like that's what you that's what
Speaker 4: you pay somebody like Hunter Biden for like make this
Speaker 4: meeting happen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Crooked Media is not going to report on that,
Speaker 5: like give me a break. They're not going to do
Speaker 5: the Ken Vogel legwork. And I obviously I kind of
Speaker 5: we are very supportive of independent media. I think podcasting
Speaker 5: is an important part of journalism now, no question about it.
Speaker 5: But to say that Crioket Media is the progressive, independent
Speaker 5: outlet that is helping pick up the mantle, that's the
Speaker 5: word that he used there, that The New York Times
Speaker 5: is not that The New York Times is like somehow
Speaker 5: abandoning the mantle of quote being on the team. It's
Speaker 5: just such a bizarre They're not even progressive. They're just
Speaker 5: corporate hacks. And it's again, it's not like I don't
Speaker 5: think conservative media is perfect. I think conservative media has
Speaker 5: all kinds of problems. But the Cricket guys are just
Speaker 5: they're just partisan. They won't even say it's.
Speaker 4: An interesting point. They're independent in the sense that they
Speaker 4: have their own independent source of revenue from their basically
Speaker 4: ads that they run in there, from the users who
Speaker 4: pay for their product. And so that gives them an
Speaker 4: independence from the party structure, and they used that during
Speaker 4: the Kamala Harris Joe Biden they should should Biden's point
Speaker 4: to really go hard and calling on Biden to step
Speaker 4: down now and then, and they came under like fierce
Speaker 4: attacks from the party establishment wing, the wing of the
Speaker 4: party established that wanted Biden to stay in. They toned
Speaker 4: it down for a day or two, but then they
Speaker 4: came roaring back, and I think that way they came
Speaker 4: roaring back probably because they got word that like other
Speaker 4: elements of the establishment like Nancy Pelosi and Obama were
Speaker 4: actually which you know, they come from Obama world, were
Speaker 4: supportive of where they're going. So they and they took
Speaker 4: a lot of flag from their own listenership because their
Speaker 4: listeners were these like Rider die Biden people now who
Speaker 4: are who never would admit it for a second that
Speaker 4: they were rid or die Biden.
Speaker 3: But they only flipped.
Speaker 5: To be fair, they only flipped on Biden as soon
Speaker 5: as presumably their boss ideologically Obama flipped on Biden. It
Speaker 5: wasn't before, it was after the debate. And it's true
Speaker 5: that they were bucking what Biden himself said, but they
Speaker 5: only flipped after it became okay, and they made it
Speaker 5: even more okay. But presumably they were they flipped after
Speaker 5: they were hearing from other people. The highest echelance of
Speaker 5: the Democrats don't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know how in touch they are with
Speaker 4: Obama on a regular basis that world, but yeah, Obama's
Speaker 4: going to still call those shots. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: And they're also not entirely independent.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: The George Soros Management Fund has a minority stake in Kirktmedia,
Speaker 5: which is kind of interesting, Like they got a big investment.
Speaker 3: From his Oh that's right, that's right, the for profit wing.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: But last point on the on the Times thing, the
Speaker 4: so anybody who has common sense is going to look
Speaker 4: at this and like, oh, the State Department held this
Speaker 4: until Biden dropped out, and then once Biden dropped out,
Speaker 4: they agreed to release it. Vogel reports that his understanding
Speaker 4: is that they had actually already signed off on releasing
Speaker 4: this a couple of weeks before Biden dropped out, and
Speaker 4: that the State Department moves so ridiculously slowly that they
Speaker 4: would not be capable of pulling off a conspiracy of
Speaker 4: that level of like, oh, Biden's gone Okay, now you.
Speaker 3: Get Vogel with documents.
Speaker 4: But and so I say that, and so everybody can
Speaker 4: know that have that information. But I also don't think
Speaker 4: they deserve any benefit of doubt because it was their
Speaker 4: own slow walking that got them in the position to
Speaker 4: get accused of this malevolent behavior. So I don't actually
Speaker 4: think it was specifically malicious around this precise conspiracy, but
Speaker 4: I think it was definitely driven by them slow walking
Speaker 4: public information that would be damaging to the administration in general.
Speaker 4: And so so you don't get a get out of
Speaker 4: scandal free card because your malevolence was only on a
Speaker 4: gneral basis and not in a specific basis. You're still
Speaker 4: acting in a malevolent fashion against the public interest and
Speaker 4: against the clear statute that says that you need to
Speaker 4: turn this information over and stop making us take you
Speaker 4: to court all the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the vocals reporting is fantastic on all of this stuff.
Speaker 5: Highly recommend and it was.
Speaker 4: Nice to see them The Times actually down this. I
Speaker 4: think you can criticize the Times for The Times sent
Speaker 4: out an alert on your iPhone, sent out an email
Speaker 4: breaking news like really spiking the football and celebrating Vogel
Speaker 4: scoop which I do not think they would have done
Speaker 4: if Biden were still running, and I think anybody and
Speaker 4: I think that's a reasonable suspicion. Yeah, that's an interesting
Speaker 4: like all of a sudden, now you're celebrating vocals reporting again, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and burying the guy for years.
Speaker 5: Seriously, seriously, Well that does it for us. On today's
Speaker 5: edition of Counterpoints, Brian's going to be back here tomorrow.
Speaker 5: That's the plan.
Speaker 3: That's the plan. Yes, you because you've got on hard
Speaker 3: stuff to do.
Speaker 4: We're not we're not trying to do a left wing
Speaker 4: take over the show, but when we can, we're going
Speaker 4: to see see the moment like the Bolsheviks that we are.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, it's actually just such a good time
Speaker 5: for that too. I said, the last time you and
Speaker 5: Crystal did show together, what wasn't the last time, but
Speaker 5: you did it one together a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 5: after buying stepped off the ticket, And it was also
Speaker 5: because I couldn't do it, and it was perfect timing that.
Speaker 5: But this is too, because it's going to be the
Speaker 5: last show before the DNC and.
Speaker 3: We'll all be at the DNC, so we planned it
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 4: I was, that's what I was going to say just
Speaker 4: a republics no conservatives.
Speaker 5: Today, but I will be with O our lib team
Speaker 5: at the d n C, so hopefully we'll have all
Speaker 5: kinds of fun conversations there. You guys are staying in
Speaker 5: like a frat house basically, so you know Sager, Ryan
Speaker 5: and producers Mac and Griffin will be well rested.
Speaker 4: Well, that's why the show is going to start later,
Speaker 4: several hours later than normal, So don't expect in your
Speaker 4: inbox at eleven. All the more reason to go to
Speaker 4: Breakingpoints dot com and get a premium subscription because you're
Speaker 4: going to want to get it an hour earlier because
Speaker 4: it's going to be pretty late when we're out at
Speaker 4: the DNC.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the reason for that is basically, at those conventions,
Speaker 5: the heart of this stuff starts happening in the afternoon
Speaker 5: and especially in the evening.
Speaker 3: So that's the actual reason.
Speaker 5: That's the actual reason. But we'll go with your reason,
Speaker 5: all right, So make sure to stay tuned for Ryan
Speaker 5: and Crystal previewing the DNC a little bit tomorrow, and
Speaker 5: then we will be on the ground in Chicago all
Speaker 5: of next week and are excited to share some really
Speaker 5: fun and important coverage with you guys then all right,
Speaker 5: see you later.