Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 1: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. I'm Ryan Graham here
Speaker 1: with Emily Jhanskamiley.
Speaker 4: How you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm good. It's good to have you here.
Speaker 4: Good to be here. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: Let's just get right into the biggest news on the
Speaker 1: economy and in our politics today, which is I think
Speaker 1: this deal between UPS and the teamsters yes to avert
Speaker 1: an upcoming strike. But more importantly, I think if we
Speaker 1: can put up a one here, an extraordinary contract which
Speaker 1: the teamsters are saying puts thirty billion dollars on the
Speaker 1: table in gains what they're and they're saying with no
Speaker 1: concessions at all from the workers, the only concession being
Speaker 1: we're not going to strike and blow up the economy
Speaker 1: at this moment, so you.
Speaker 5: Can see the NA two from David Dayan. He tweeted
Speaker 5: out the terms of the deal right there. So historic
Speaker 5: wage increases and as he says, thirty billion dollars on
Speaker 5: the table, wage concessions are significant.
Speaker 1: To your point, Yeah, let's run through some of the
Speaker 1: details here, because the part time fight was huge here.
Speaker 1: And what I love about labor unions that have real
Speaker 1: solidarity and real internal organization is that they fight for
Speaker 1: every tier. Through the eighties and nineties and two thousands,
Speaker 1: as labor unions were getting weak and badly, the corporations
Speaker 1: were able to implement these different tiered systems.
Speaker 4: They'd say, Okay, look.
Speaker 1: You've been here for ten years, Fine, we're going to
Speaker 1: take care of you. You're going to keep getting to
Speaker 1: thirty an hour, and in fact, you're going to keep
Speaker 1: getting raises.
Speaker 4: You're going to get access to the pension, you're going
Speaker 4: to get the good healthcare.
Speaker 1: Everybody else we hire minimum wage, it's going to struggle
Speaker 1: and maybe not mini wage, minium wage plus two dollars.
Speaker 1: And recently there's been a huge pushback against that trend
Speaker 1: and unions have been winning. And so the full timers
Speaker 1: here went to the mat and fought for the part timers.
Speaker 1: So now if you're a part timer, you're starting at
Speaker 1: twenty one dollars an hour at UPS, whereas if you're
Speaker 1: a full timer, your average wage is going to be
Speaker 1: forty nine dollars an hour. Plus they can't force you
Speaker 1: to work on weekends. A whole other concessions around just
Speaker 1: the kind of safety of the job. Air conditioning will
Speaker 1: be in all vans. Incredible that that right now they
Speaker 1: don't have that situation, given that oftentimes you're cruising around
Speaker 1: one hundred plus degree heat. It's one hundred nineteen degrees
Speaker 1: in Phoenix. Those customers still want their tweezers delivered on time,
Speaker 1: like there's no grace for anybody in this world. Now,
Speaker 1: umably they're not saying anybody out in one hundred and nineteen
Speaker 1: degrees without air conditioning, but anything's possible, that's right, So
Speaker 1: huge concessions.
Speaker 4: Here's what I want your take on.
Speaker 1: I think that the kind of i'll call it the
Speaker 1: Biden economy, but I think Trump deserves credit to because
Speaker 1: of the huge influx of Cares Act money and his
Speaker 1: browbeating of the Fed throughout his presidential term making sure
Speaker 1: that they kept kind of kept interest rates low and
Speaker 1: kept pushing unemployment lower and lower and lower. But Biden
Speaker 1: is now well under four percent unemployment. And the trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars that he pumped into the economy in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one and twenty twenty two, which Larry Summers and
Speaker 1: Jason Furman and the other economist warned, was going to
Speaker 1: give us runaway inflation. It's going to ruin the economy
Speaker 1: and we need tens of millions of people unemployed for
Speaker 1: years to fight against this inflation. They were wrong, Sorry,
Speaker 1: they were wrong about that. And so the UPS workers
Speaker 1: went into this contray knowing that they're in a situation
Speaker 1: of full full employment, so that if they go on strike,
Speaker 1: they have opportunities. There's gigwork, there's other things that they
Speaker 1: can do. If they get fired, they can go get
Speaker 1: another job somewhere else. And so I think that that
Speaker 1: really helped. I mean, what's your read on how the
Speaker 1: economy played into this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they had all the leverage in the world, an
Speaker 5: unusual amount of leverage, and obviously we should mention it
Speaker 5: still needs.
Speaker 3: To be ratified.
Speaker 5: With a deal like this, it's pretty easy to imagine
Speaker 5: that it will finally be ratified now. CNBC notes in
Speaker 5: their article, quote, some recent labor negotiations haven't yielded new
Speaker 5: contracts despite preliminary deals. On Monday, pilots at UPS rival
Speaker 5: FedEx rejected their tentative labor deals, so they had fifty
Speaker 5: seven percent voting against the agreement.
Speaker 3: I don't expect that to happen here, but I do
Speaker 3: think the.
Speaker 1: Could anything's possible, Anything's possible, feeling good.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 4: They were like thirty dollars, make it forty.
Speaker 5: And that gets back to the point you were making,
Speaker 5: which is they have all leverage in the world right
Speaker 5: now if you are sitting in a c suite at
Speaker 5: UPS and trying to negotiate with your teamsters that represent
Speaker 5: three hundred and forty thousand members, and to your point
Speaker 5: at the beginning of the show about what this means
Speaker 5: to the economy, three hundred and forty thousand UPS employees
Speaker 5: who are members of the Teamsters union with a potential
Speaker 5: strike that would have started next week.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is huge.
Speaker 5: And I think it's absolutely true that you get these
Speaker 5: sweeping conditions because of the state of unemployment. I think
Speaker 5: it's true that that has to do with the fed.
Speaker 5: I do think the Biden administration is struggling to explain
Speaker 5: why when you have the unemployment rate that you have,
Speaker 5: you also have economic pessimism and people feeling and we've
Speaker 5: seen like the likes of Paul Krugman try to explain this.
Speaker 5: You know, why do people when you have low unemployment
Speaker 5: not feel so great. I think it is because there
Speaker 5: is still inflation that's hitting unevenly.
Speaker 3: So for some people you're not feeling it.
Speaker 5: But for instance, if you're trying to buy a used car,
Speaker 5: or if you are trying to buy a house, or
Speaker 5: if you're trying to if your you know, monthly bills
Speaker 5: are really heavy on renting or whatever it is, there's
Speaker 5: still some real problems for you prices when it comes
Speaker 5: to prices, depending.
Speaker 3: On where you are.
Speaker 5: But the unemployment rate is the fundamental thing here because
Speaker 5: UPS knows they cannot find people in the case of
Speaker 5: a strike, there's no way, like a strike is absolutely
Speaker 5: an existential.
Speaker 3: Problem for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I think that there's two things going on.
Speaker 1: So I think that one, people are reporting the way
Speaker 1: they feel about the economy despite the gains it's made,
Speaker 1: because it feels so precarious, like Okay, yes, I'm doing
Speaker 1: well now, wages are up, inflation is back to pretty flat,
Speaker 1: but that could change it any moment. Like I think,
Speaker 1: we're so nervous after having gone through this pandemic and
Speaker 1: also seeing the wild swings of gas prices, like that
Speaker 1: could happen marrow. We could have a crash like in
Speaker 1: our lifetime we had a great financial crisis, like we
Speaker 1: could have another one. We had that epic crash in
Speaker 1: March of twenty twenty. But at the same time, you've
Speaker 1: had this massive run up in rents and housing prices.
Speaker 1: And so even though that's starting to crest and you're
Speaker 1: seeing rents come down even in some places, that doesn't
Speaker 1: help you. If your rent jumped thirty percent over the
Speaker 1: last three years when your wages did not jump thirty percent.
Speaker 1: And so even if your wages are now climbing back up,
Speaker 1: and even you're let's say you're a ups you're now
Speaker 1: getting four hundred dollars extra a month first with these partners.
Speaker 1: So with some of these three dollars an hour increases
Speaker 1: just off the bat and then more throughout the life
Speaker 1: of the contract. If your rent went up eight hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a month, a couple of years ago and.
Speaker 4: Then stayed flat.
Speaker 1: Since then, you're still behind and you're constantly it just
Speaker 1: feels harder to catch.
Speaker 4: Up than it did before.
Speaker 1: And so I think that that's more of a structural problem.
Speaker 1: So you've got the structural rent problem, and then you
Speaker 1: have the precariousness of it. It feels like it could
Speaker 1: collapse at any moment. So and no president I think
Speaker 1: is going to say get is going to hear from voters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: economy is great, Yeah, very long time.
Speaker 3: I think that's true.
Speaker 5: I also think, you know, if you're in California, for instance,
Speaker 5: you haven't really experienced relief and gas prices.
Speaker 3: It's just so.
Speaker 5: Uneven depending on where you are and what your lifestyle
Speaker 5: is that when Paul Kargman sort of tries to explain
Speaker 5: it away or other people try to explain it away,
Speaker 5: we're just looking at this like fake average, like the
Speaker 5: hypothetical person who perfectly fits the basket of goods that
Speaker 5: goes into the real wages calculations. And it just it's
Speaker 5: not the best metric right now because it's so polarized,
Speaker 5: it's so different depending on where you are. In some places,
Speaker 5: it's really good. In some places, depending on what you're buying,
Speaker 5: it's really really bad.
Speaker 3: So it's I.
Speaker 5: Think that's where it comes from. But when you have
Speaker 5: the unemployment rate that you have, there's nothing that really
Speaker 5: up is kind of done in this situation, which is
Speaker 5: great news for these workers who.
Speaker 3: To your point, we're asking for.
Speaker 5: Air conditioning in trucks, right, air conditioning in trucks, and asking.
Speaker 1: For significant wage increases, which they got. And if you
Speaker 1: compare the dis bargaining to the twenty eighteen bargaining, get
Speaker 1: a window into how much of the working class had
Speaker 1: has aggregated power on to its behalf since then, because
Speaker 1: the wage games that they won in this contract are
Speaker 1: roughly double what they want. In twenty eighteen and twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the economy was like, unemployment was low, you know, economy
Speaker 1: was growing, so it's not as if that was into
Speaker 1: the teeth of a recession, which interestingly, like we're seeing
Speaker 1: signs that we maybe headed for a recession very soon.
Speaker 1: We'll see how that unfolds. But you know, the difference
Speaker 1: in five years is it tells you everything about the
Speaker 1: militancy and the strength of workers in this economy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 5: Actually think pointing to the pandemic. I mean, so the
Speaker 5: Trump economy was good on a lot of different fronts.
Speaker 5: But then what happened during the pandemic is it sort
Speaker 5: of accelerated this shift in the economy. It was headed
Speaker 5: in this direction anyway, so you know, more shopping done
Speaker 5: on Amazon, meaning more deliveries, meaning more you know, online
Speaker 5: product advertising, and it accelerated this reorganization of the economy
Speaker 5: that was happening slowly, gradually, you know, pretty quickly in
Speaker 5: the scope of time, but actually it was happening over time.
Speaker 3: And then we're here now and that's happened.
Speaker 5: You know, there was no That's why UPS for instance,
Speaker 5: is so central to the economy right now because if
Speaker 5: that's bigot turns off, you're in big trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and last point on this, it also shows that
Speaker 1: elections matter, and by elections, I mean union elections. After
Speaker 1: the twenty eighteen bargaining or during the twenty eighteen bargaining,
Speaker 1: the UPS workers actually rejected the deal that Jimmy Hoffa's
Speaker 1: crew came up, Jimie Hoffin Junior's crew came up with
Speaker 1: or Offa's kid or whatever it was, and out of
Speaker 1: that sprung this team, this teamsters reform movement really gained
Speaker 1: a lot of traction. There has been for years this
Speaker 1: TDU Teams for a Democratic Union, which has been challenging
Speaker 1: kind of the old Teamsters guard leadership up. But it
Speaker 1: was anger at the way that the negotiating unfolded because
Speaker 1: even after the UPS workers rejected it, they basically forced
Speaker 1: it on them. The Teamster's bosses forced it on them.
Speaker 1: And Sean O'Brien, who had been kicked out kicked off
Speaker 1: the negotiating team basically for trying to bring rank and
Speaker 1: file workers and enemies of HOFA onto the negotiating team
Speaker 1: ran for Teamster's president and won the election and so
Speaker 1: and with the support of TDU, the kind of left
Speaker 1: wing reform movement within TDU and at the bargaining table
Speaker 1: this time they had rank and file workers, not just
Speaker 1: the bosses from the office from this extremely glitzy office
Speaker 1: down here and Washington.
Speaker 3: D C.
Speaker 1: Incredibility for long the most valuable thing that they have
Speaker 1: that they used to have now their militancy and their
Speaker 1: organizing capacity is the most valuable thing they had. So
Speaker 1: they had actual workers part time end full time on
Speaker 1: the bargaining union unit, pushing making sure that the actual workers'
Speaker 1: voices were heard at the table, and I think the
Speaker 1: reform movement, Sean O'Brien in particular, and the workers who
Speaker 1: kind of pressured the bosses to really fight for them
Speaker 1: deserve the credit here.
Speaker 5: Well, one question for you on that, what is it
Speaker 5: that changed in your mind as you watched all of
Speaker 5: as you've watched labor in general have this resurgence and
Speaker 5: become more robust pretty quickly in a pretty short time span. Obviously,
Speaker 5: it's the problems that workers are facing that has motivated
Speaker 5: a lot of organizing, But then what is there something
Speaker 5: post pandemic that clicks that makes organizing suddenly come together.
Speaker 1: I mean, the main significant thing that happened in the
Speaker 1: middle of the twenty eighteen now is all of these
Speaker 1: UPS workers being told that they're essential workers fighting through
Speaker 1: this pandemic, making sure that while everybody was staying at home,
Speaker 1: that these packages continue to get delivered, some of them
Speaker 1: for convenience and making people's lives more comfortable, others life
Speaker 1: saving moving, moving medicine, moving medical supplies, moving ppe. Combine
Speaker 1: that with full economy and a continuously falling unemployment rate,
Speaker 1: UPS doing great, UPS doing great, and you and then
Speaker 1: and then with frustration at the old leadership, then you
Speaker 1: finally get the pieces that come together to say that
Speaker 1: the work work, that enough workers are going to line
Speaker 1: up with the reform and the democratic wing of the
Speaker 1: of the Teamsters to take power.
Speaker 4: And then and then once.
Speaker 1: Ups saw that, that's a sign that these workers are organized,
Speaker 1: they're militant, they're ready to strike, like they're not bluffing,
Speaker 1: like we're not going to win this.
Speaker 4: So what do you guys need?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: And that's where you get the huge wage hikes in
Speaker 5: addition to the air conditioning in the cars. You get
Speaker 5: the full package. All right, well, we'll keep following that story.
Speaker 5: But we should note that Hunter Biden.
Speaker 1: End of August is they have until end of August
Speaker 1: still prove it. August twenty second, it's looking good.
Speaker 3: It's looking good.
Speaker 5: Well, we should note that Hunter Biden's plea deal hearing
Speaker 5: is today.
Speaker 3: There was a whirlwind, strange.
Speaker 5: Legal drama on the eve of that trial or of
Speaker 5: that hearing in Delaware. But also Kevin McCarthy in this
Speaker 5: context has floated the idea of impeachment.
Speaker 3: A little bit. We have a first element.
Speaker 5: We can roll this SOT so you can see that's
Speaker 5: the political political headline. He said that the Biden probes
Speaker 5: quote rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry, something
Speaker 5: he said this week. He also said just yesterday that well,
Speaker 5: why don't we just let him say it and then
Speaker 5: we'll react. Here's the soot of Kevin McCarthy be too, what.
Speaker 7: You'll say to the moderates in your party who say
Speaker 7: you to continue to side and if he's the right wing.
Speaker 2: On many issues, including them such as what on talking
Speaker 2: about an impeachment quire President Biden on appropriations.
Speaker 8: On the long list of things, Well, I don't know,
Speaker 8: because you haven't quoted anybody who just says you say
Speaker 8: you frame some brand or something.
Speaker 6: But let me answer your question.
Speaker 3: Okay, So you had that reporter a little flat footage.
Speaker 3: She just said a long list of things basically.
Speaker 5: But impeachment was one of those questions. And another thing
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy said yesterday is that his red line for
Speaker 5: when impeachment will be on the table is when people
Speaker 5: stop cooperating with information, when he feels like the probes
Speaker 5: are hitting a dead end to the point where he
Speaker 5: needs to rise to an impeachment inquiry in order to
Speaker 5: keep getting information which is somewhat of an interesting red
Speaker 5: line to draw. But again this is all as Hunter
Speaker 5: Biden's plea deal is set to kick off today. The
Speaker 5: hearing is set to kick off today, we can put
Speaker 5: b three up on the screen. New information also came
Speaker 5: out this week about his art sales, which is.
Speaker 3: You know, always amusing.
Speaker 5: But this is from the New York Post reporting on
Speaker 5: what Business Insider scooped here. First, Son Hunter Biden's Novice
Speaker 5: Our artwork has raked in at least one point three
Speaker 5: million dollars with buyers including a Democratic donor quote friend
Speaker 5: whom his dad named to a prestigious commission. And that's
Speaker 5: from Business Insider. Now, the Washington Free Beacon checked the
Speaker 5: White House visitor logs. This is be four and they
Speaker 5: found that that person Elizabeth herschnef Taly has visited the
Speaker 5: White House at least thirteen times since December twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: and has attended, as they say, several large events at
Speaker 5: the White House, but has also had several more intimate visits,
Speaker 5: including with Nearra Tandon on March twenty first.
Speaker 3: And they have an important note here.
Speaker 5: All of her White House visits occurred after Hunter Biden's
Speaker 5: first art show open to New York City in November of.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5: Finally, I want to put this up from Sarah Bedford
Speaker 5: over at the Washington Examiner.
Speaker 3: This is B five, okay.
Speaker 5: So she's also reporting that a very close personal friend
Speaker 5: and aide to the Biden family appears to have worked
Speaker 5: for years in the Delaware US Attorney's office under wescluding Weiss,
Speaker 5: including when the Hunter Biden probe began. That is important
Speaker 5: because it gets to the whistleblower saga that was out
Speaker 5: in Congress last week, where you have irs whistleblowers saying
Speaker 5: we were impeded, or you have, for instance, the Department
Speaker 5: of Justice appearing to impede the investigation per That gets
Speaker 5: to the FD ten twenty three form that has been circulating.
Speaker 3: We still don't know who the confidential human.
Speaker 5: Sources in that case, but reporting that they were being
Speaker 5: impeded as they were probing Hunter Biden's alleged wrongdoings. So Ryan,
Speaker 5: a lot of people on the right now feel like
Speaker 5: this is hitting critical mass and becoming a real albatross politically.
Speaker 3: For Joe Biden.
Speaker 5: I don't know about that at all, but it's obvious
Speaker 5: that Hunter Biden's problems the more. As Kevin McCarthy said
Speaker 5: just yesterday, he was like, well, we wouldn't know any
Speaker 5: of this if Republicans hadn't taken back the House and
Speaker 5: opened up all of these investigations, we may have known
Speaker 5: some of it.
Speaker 3: But basically he's saying.
Speaker 5: We used our investigative power to start exposing a lot
Speaker 5: of this. That's thing that he's trumpeting and feels like
Speaker 5: is a feather in his cap. But I just don't
Speaker 5: know that this matters to Biden politically.
Speaker 1: I think you would need so much more than this,
Speaker 1: Like the epistemic closure around both parties is so tight
Speaker 1: that in order to break through, you need something way
Speaker 1: more damning than what they've got so far, Like the
Speaker 1: ten twenty three is not going to do it.
Speaker 4: It's that's it's a.
Speaker 1: Ukrainian oligarch saying that, saying that Hunter said things. The
Speaker 1: it's all dirty, it's all messy, it's all scandalous, it's corrupt,
Speaker 1: like a Hunter Biden friend working for the prosecutor.
Speaker 4: Like it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Like the levels of kind of privilege that are wrapped
Speaker 1: up in all of this are are something that should
Speaker 1: drive everybody across the political spectrum, Matt. At the same time,
Speaker 1: Democrats A don't care A and B or like what
Speaker 1: about Jared Koshner?
Speaker 4: What about Trump?
Speaker 1: Like you, the party that's supporting Donald Trump for presidents,
Speaker 1: are going to accuse our guy of being corrupt. Like,
Speaker 1: let's go take a look at how much money the
Speaker 1: Saudis have run through mar A Lago over the last
Speaker 1: like two years, like absolutely pales in comparison to the
Speaker 1: to the amount of money that this donor gave to
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden for his masterpieces.
Speaker 3: His masterpieces.
Speaker 5: Well, here's where I think there is a difference in
Speaker 5: that Joe Biden touted himself and actually campaigned on this
Speaker 5: idea that he was going to return to trum never.
Speaker 4: Claim to be clean.
Speaker 3: In fact, he's claimed the opposite.
Speaker 5: He's basically said I alone can fix it. I know
Speaker 5: the system, and iolone can.
Speaker 1: He's going to drain the swamp and put it all
Speaker 1: in his own bank account, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's baked into the Trump cake. And with
Speaker 5: Hunter Biden, I actually think this is where Republicans might
Speaker 5: be hitting a brick walls. It is also kind of
Speaker 5: baked into the Joe Biden cake. I mean, people knew
Speaker 5: this about Joe Biden. Well, they knew this about Hunter Biden,
Speaker 5: and that's why republic are trying really hard to tie
Speaker 5: this directly to Joe Biden. And I think the Miranda
Speaker 5: Divine report this week that showed or alleged you had
Speaker 5: people serious people alleging, including Devin Archer, who's set to
Speaker 5: testify as postponed three times, still says he's going to
Speaker 5: test the most.
Speaker 4: Business partner of Hunter Biden.
Speaker 1: So this is not a kind of Republican ack who's
Speaker 1: a Chinese spy you can smear in all of these
Speaker 1: different ways. Well, I'm sure he'll be smeared. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was a legit business partner of Hunter Biden and.
Speaker 3: Facing serious charges separately.
Speaker 1: Which then undermines his claims like that's what that's what
Speaker 1: Democrats will say.
Speaker 4: Well, he's just saying this to get out of right.
Speaker 5: Although underminds his claims, but gives him some motivation to speak.
Speaker 3: I'm sure. So on that note, he is set to.
Speaker 5: Allege, according to Marian Divine at the New York Post,
Speaker 5: basically that Joe Biden was openly interacting with Hunter Biden's clients,
Speaker 5: which again we already know and that has still not
Speaker 5: fully penetrated the news cycle that we have pictures of
Speaker 5: Joe Biden on the golf course with Ukrainian clients of
Speaker 5: Hunter Biden. We know that he was at those Cafe
Speaker 5: Milano meetings with people from everyone Whereinski exactly, and so
Speaker 5: we actually certainly know.
Speaker 1: Hunter went on Air Force two to China and met
Speaker 1: a business associate over there.
Speaker 5: Well, his father was the Vice President of the United States.
Speaker 5: He was doing business and using Air Force two to
Speaker 5: do it. We've known that for years now.
Speaker 1: We haven't let Harry and Megan on Air Force one
Speaker 1: yet Lucker Biden just on Air Force two.
Speaker 4: And justice in this world.
Speaker 5: If Devin Archer testifies and says Joe Biden was telling
Speaker 5: you know so that the allegation is that Hunter Biden
Speaker 5: put him on speakerphone with Barisma executives and then Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: as the media claimed, this was a debunked narrative, right
Speaker 5: that there's nothing to see here. When Joe Biden's at
Speaker 5: the Council on Foreign Relations bragging about using AID money
Speaker 5: as the sort of stick to get Ukraine to comply
Speaker 5: with firing a corrupt prosecutor, I'm sure the prosecutor was
Speaker 5: fully corrupt, but it also happened to help Barisma.
Speaker 3: So again, like all of this.
Speaker 5: Has been out there and so on the political question,
Speaker 5: I don't know. I think the more you can tie
Speaker 5: it to Joe Biden, the better for Republicans and their
Speaker 5: goal to oust Joe Biden. I think it is really corrupt.
Speaker 5: I think we're learning more about Joe Biden's involvement in
Speaker 5: that corruption. I still don't know that it's it's going
Speaker 5: to make a whole difference in the election.
Speaker 1: And that's the other problem with forty five percent of
Speaker 1: voters being with one party and forty five percent of
Speaker 1: the other and just being with them in a tribal
Speaker 1: kind of cultural way, is that in the media and
Speaker 1: the media and you're immune then to negative things about
Speaker 1: your side because and you know, herschel Walker and John
Speaker 1: Fetterman are good examples on alternative sides. Like Republicans looked
Speaker 1: at herschel Walker's record and we're like, and you could
Speaker 1: not have listed kind of a person who was You
Speaker 1: couldn't have a list of characteristics of somebody less qualified
Speaker 1: and less supportable for County commissioner, let alone the United
Speaker 1: States Senates. You know, weapons, violence, domestic abuse, like the
Speaker 1: allegations just across the board and coming from his own campaign,
Speaker 1: but Republican like, well, he's a Republican, he's going to
Speaker 1: vote with Republicans.
Speaker 4: I'm going with him.
Speaker 1: Fetterman in Pennsylvania, a lot of Democrats had real questions
Speaker 1: after his stroke over whether it was going to be
Speaker 1: able to perform the duties. They're like, you know what
Speaker 1: better than doctor Oz.
Speaker 4: Don't care?
Speaker 1: Right, And so that makes kind of that when you
Speaker 1: have people off into their different camps, it makes journalism
Speaker 1: and a kind of general accountability just land with much,
Speaker 1: much less impact.
Speaker 3: Fetterman is such.
Speaker 5: A good example because that also created this media bubble.
Speaker 5: And I'm not saying this doesn't happen in conservative media,
Speaker 5: but it created this media bubble where nobody it was
Speaker 5: taboo to talk about what was happening with John Fetterman
Speaker 5: and potential cognitive impairment because a there was an issue
Speaker 5: of political correctness, but b this was a binary between
Speaker 5: doctor Oz and John Fetterman, and the vast majority of
Speaker 5: people who were covering that race they had an opinion
Speaker 5: on whether it should be John Vetterman or doctor Oz.
Speaker 5: And so you end up with like that tribalism seeping
Speaker 5: into media in a way that's not helpful.
Speaker 3: And I think that happens all the time. With Hunter Biden.
Speaker 5: You'll get coverage from the New York Times, You'll get
Speaker 5: coverage from CNN here and there. It doesn't become a
Speaker 5: priority in the sort of punditry space, and it doesn't
Speaker 5: get the treatment in terms of like front pages and
Speaker 5: breaking news headlines, et cetera, et cetera that Trump Russia got.
Speaker 5: So it's not a priority because in the binary people
Speaker 5: have an opinion on what's important and what's not, and
Speaker 5: it's not great.
Speaker 1: And also I think the media, I think some of
Speaker 1: that bias is very real. But I also think that
Speaker 1: they feel bitten by a lot of these Republican scandal
Speaker 1: because if you are at the top echelon of CBS
Speaker 1: News now you remember like Whitewater, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you were born, then this is like the this like
Speaker 1: fake scandal that they ginned up about Bill and Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton and some some real estate deals or something like
Speaker 1: this that then they open it up, they end up
Speaker 1: finding nothing. There's some cattle future weirdness going on that's
Speaker 1: but ended up that corruption may like at best they
Speaker 1: at best there's some soft corruption. I mean the Clinton's
Speaker 1: you know, became I think even less softly corrupt throughout
Speaker 1: there throughout their lives.
Speaker 4: But yeah, just.
Speaker 1: Which then evolves into Monica le Winsky is the only
Speaker 1: thing can start and get the which started with Whitewater,
Speaker 1: and then you've got like, uh, you've got Fast and Furious,
Speaker 1: You've got Cylinder, You've got ben Ghazi, like all of
Speaker 1: these scandals that the right just kind of doesn't let
Speaker 1: go of, and the mainstream media just gets bored of eventually,
Speaker 1: Like I very sorry that four people were killed in Benghazi.
Speaker 1: Was a huge tragedy. It happened in what was it,
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. We were talking about that in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Like Hiller, Clinton lied about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's like what still, it's like four years we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Benghazi. It's like, you end up
Speaker 1: losing people that way.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I think there's a I think what you're
Speaker 5: saying is true about media, because there's it's absolutely accurate
Speaker 5: that a lot of people on the right will get
Speaker 5: fixated on certain things down to these like minute details,
Speaker 5: and it reminds me a lot of how the mainstream
Speaker 5: press covered Trump Russia for a long time.
Speaker 1: They end up looking crazy because they're with the with
Speaker 1: the board Charlie Kelly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, either.
Speaker 4: Redoing Benghazi or fast and furious or right right.
Speaker 5: No, I think that's true, and I think it's when
Speaker 5: you see that coming from the right. A lot of
Speaker 5: what motivates people on the right to go that deep
Speaker 5: on these scandals is that they feel like nobody else
Speaker 5: is paying attention and nobody else cares, And I.
Speaker 4: Mean it's like eventually they're not wrong.
Speaker 5: To legitimate things like Benghazi was a great example where
Speaker 5: I don't like, I think there were serious wrongs on
Speaker 5: behalf of our government. I think what Susan Rice and
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton did in that situation was despicable. But was it,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of being used for political purposes?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely? Who admitted that was it? Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 5: It was someone like on TV, Yes it was Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy that it was.
Speaker 4: It was seen as he was like, look at their numbers.
Speaker 3: It's a big political win.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, look look at the Clinton's numbers. Because we keep
Speaker 1: hammering on Benghazi. Yeah, people like it was it was
Speaker 1: that in the alleged affairs that blew up his first speakership, and.
Speaker 5: Part of what motivated Republicans to go to the mat
Speaker 5: on that is they felt like nobody was, like the
Speaker 5: so called mainstream media wasn't paying it due attention, and
Speaker 5: so do I think that was a political mistake to
Speaker 5: think they had a real like winner and to treat
Speaker 5: it so as like a partisan football.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, last question on this one for you, does he
Speaker 1: have the votes to impeach Biden? I don't think he does,
Speaker 1: and I think Democrats would relish putting that on the
Speaker 1: House floor. And I think there's eighteen Republicans who serve
Speaker 1: in districts at Biden one. I think they'd love to say,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'd vote to impeach Biden.
Speaker 4: We'll see you in November.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think the Moorishing question right now is what they
Speaker 5: do with Mayorcus. And I remember when I talked to
Speaker 5: McCarthy last September, that was what he said. I asked
Speaker 5: him because Marjorie Taylor Green already had an impeachment bill,
Speaker 5: and he said, I think you don't start with impeachment.
Speaker 5: And there's the question of whether he has the votes
Speaker 5: to impeach Mayorcus I feel like is a good barometer
Speaker 5: of what would happen should an impeachment and career of
Speaker 5: Biden come to the table, because you'll see where some
Speaker 5: establishment Republicans who would be comfortable in peaching Mayorcus but
Speaker 5: not Biden.
Speaker 3: What do they do.
Speaker 5: Do they actually go for Mayorcus if that vote comes,
Speaker 5: and like they get that sort of ball rolling. I'm
Speaker 5: curious about that as a sort of gauge to what
Speaker 5: they would do with the president himself, because I tend
Speaker 5: to agree with you, I don't think they have the
Speaker 5: votes too impeach.
Speaker 1: Biden right now, Well, let's let's talk about this unfolding
Speaker 1: scandal in Florida. A couple couple of days in now,
Speaker 1: a lot of back and forth over this new African
Speaker 1: American history curriculum put up.
Speaker 4: I think c one here in.
Speaker 1: Florida that the debate has really centered on on one
Speaker 1: kind of clarification that is included in this new curriculum,
Speaker 1: which where they say that some slaves developed skills that
Speaker 1: they could use later for their quote personal benefit. That
Speaker 1: has ricocheted around kind of both democratic and Republican pous
Speaker 1: There's actually a lot more to the curriculum that we're
Speaker 1: going to get into soon. But if you can put
Speaker 1: up C two, I think you've got Chris Christie jumping
Speaker 1: in on this because Ron de Santras's response to this was.
Speaker 4: The quote was really bad.
Speaker 6: What was it?
Speaker 5: I didn't Yeah, I didn't do it, and I'm not
Speaker 5: involved in it.
Speaker 1: Okay, And the buck stops with some other person. And
Speaker 1: so Chris Chrissy of course, is gonna eat him up
Speaker 1: for that, like, look own.
Speaker 3: It, christs He's gonna eat him up.
Speaker 4: We got putting fingers on the one hand, and we
Speaker 4: got Chris Christy.
Speaker 1: Yes, Christy is you know, loves to say he's he's
Speaker 1: the guy who's gonna, you know, the buck's gonna stop
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 4: He's he's he's a leader.
Speaker 5: He's gonna stand up if people close down a bridge
Speaker 5: on his watch.
Speaker 3: He's gonna take responsibility.
Speaker 1: That's right, and it's also it also is an easy
Speaker 1: hit because then he doesn't then he's not debating the
Speaker 1: merits of the curriculum. Yeah, he's like the Sanders doesn't
Speaker 1: force people to debate him on it. Instead they can say,
Speaker 1: you ran your whole thing on what's wrong with Florida
Speaker 1: public schools and wocism and how they're teaching about race,
Speaker 1: and then something comes out that's unpopular and you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't Maybe we'll find the guy and fire him,
Speaker 1: like they fired the staffer who like tweeted the like weird.
Speaker 4: He's a simple thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe he'll hunt down and cancel like whatever
Speaker 1: per administrator does. But then we have the thing that
Speaker 1: really set it off was Kamala Harris's response, Right, so
Speaker 1: let's play.
Speaker 4: Let's play Vice President Harris.
Speaker 10: They decided middle school students will be taught that enslaves
Speaker 10: people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt
Speaker 10: to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.
Speaker 11: Join us now, the host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, President
Speaker 11: of the National Action Network, Reverend Al Sharp, and Rev.
Speaker 4: Good Morning.
Speaker 11: I had to dig in and read this because the
Speaker 11: headline I thought couldn't be true.
Speaker 3: But here it is.
Speaker 11: A two hundred and sixteen page document from the Florida
Speaker 11: State Board of Education. One section that reads, slaves developed
Speaker 11: skills which in some instances could be applied for their
Speaker 11: personal benefits.
Speaker 4: I never thought i'd.
Speaker 11: See both sides ism of slavery taught in public schools.
Speaker 12: Well, it is not only insulting, it is humiliating, and
Speaker 12: it really is dangerous because it will instruct young people
Speaker 12: if it is allowed to go forward, not only a
Speaker 12: distorted version of American history, but it robs us from
Speaker 12: seeing where we are.
Speaker 3: Well, I have good news for Willie Geist.
Speaker 5: I don't think the headline is quite perfect on that,
Speaker 5: but I do want to play in fact. Actually, this
Speaker 5: is our next sot. This is a clip from one
Speaker 5: of the men who drafted the curriculum who says it's
Speaker 5: the controversy has taken what he wrote on this line.
Speaker 5: This is a two hundred and sixteen page curriculum. He
Speaker 5: says that it has been taken out of context. He's
Speaker 5: a black man who was involved in the drafting of
Speaker 5: the curriculum that was created post stop woke.
Speaker 3: That's the name of the legislation. It's like all caps.
Speaker 3: There's some acronym in there. But let's take a listen
Speaker 3: to what he has to say.
Speaker 13: There's been there's been a little bit of backlash to
Speaker 13: do these standards that you know, we're put out and
Speaker 13: you know, like you said that, you know these these
Speaker 13: were done in open, open sessions, so the public could
Speaker 13: you know, listen or watch along.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 13: What would you say to critics who say these standards
Speaker 13: have set education back?
Speaker 9: Well, I can't answer critics whom I haven't seen or heard.
Speaker 9: The only criticism I've encountered so far as a single
Speaker 9: one that was articulated by the Vice President and which
Speaker 9: was an error. As I stated my response to the
Speaker 9: Vice President, it was categorically false. It was never said
Speaker 9: that slavery was beneficial to Africans. What was said, and
Speaker 9: anyone who reads this will see this with clarity. It
Speaker 9: is the case that Africans proved resourceful, resilient, and adaptive,
Speaker 9: and were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served
Speaker 9: to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslavement.
Speaker 3: Ryan, what do you make of all that?
Speaker 1: Right, you can't judge it based on just one little
Speaker 1: kind of snippet taken out of context. But there is
Speaker 1: some other disturbing stuff in the curriculum that suggests the
Speaker 1: direction that it was trying to go. And it reminded
Speaker 1: me of being in a dorm room in college and
Speaker 1: arguing with people about slavery. And you saw this a
Speaker 1: lot of those same arguments that you'd hear then kind
Speaker 1: of gussied up into kind of curriculum language in here,
Speaker 1: one of them being.
Speaker 4: That while serfs and.
Speaker 1: Slaves are kind of really similar, so it's actually, you
Speaker 1: can't blame the US because like, there's always been surf,
Speaker 1: there were serfs before we had capitalism of feudalism. Then
Speaker 1: you'd also hear often, well, actually a lot of the
Speaker 1: slave traders were Africans, and Africans have had you know,
Speaker 1: elements of slavery through war fighting culture for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: So actually it's more it's you can't blame the United
Speaker 1: States for that because it's an African thing. And then
Speaker 1: you'd hear, well, it was a lot worse in the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: The Caribbean slavery. Boy, with that, let me tell you
Speaker 1: about how bad that was. And then you'd and then
Speaker 1: you would hear that, right, some people gain skills and
Speaker 1: so like, So it all kind of flows into this
Speaker 1: idea that, yes, slavery was an abomination. However, relatively it's
Speaker 1: not as bad as you might think, because it's actually
Speaker 1: they're doing it for thousands of years. It happened, it
Speaker 1: happened in Africa. It was worse than the Caribbean. And
Speaker 1: then The question you have to ask is, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: stipulate that all of those things are true. They mentioned
Speaker 1: that the word slave comes from slav which so the
Speaker 1: Slavs were enslaved in like the ninth century.
Speaker 4: It's like, okay, let's say that's true.
Speaker 1: What's the point of telling people that, like you, What
Speaker 1: are you trying to get people to take from that?
Speaker 3: That?
Speaker 1: Why why make an argument that's that slavery was relatively
Speaker 1: better than you might have thought it was.
Speaker 4: I just and I think the it's it's to get
Speaker 4: you to a place.
Speaker 1: It says that doesn't undermine the kind of American exceptionalism
Speaker 1: that we're trying to kind of push through through a
Speaker 1: purely patriotic education. And I think that very quickly then
Speaker 1: becomes false in a sense that even if it's true
Speaker 1: on all of the various points, it becomes false overall,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really.
Speaker 4: Doesn't really serve the students.
Speaker 1: And there is also to its credit, the curriculum talks
Speaker 1: about slave resistance and slave slave rebellions and talks about
Speaker 1: the slaves who escaped underground railroad and then served in
Speaker 1: the Union Army, fighting, you know, for not just their
Speaker 1: own freedom, but for the freedom, for the emancipation of
Speaker 1: the four million slaves throughout the South, which is which
Speaker 1: has to be understood, we're trying for like four million
Speaker 1: enslaved people. Puts it in a category that just is
Speaker 1: substantially removed from these other things that they try to say, Well,
Speaker 1: it's not as bad as it was over here, right so,
Speaker 1: uh so that's where that's where I come down this
Speaker 1: that it's just it is clearly trying to move in
Speaker 1: any direction that is unnecessary. Now Harris, uh seems have
Speaker 1: just gone off that one little clip, And it's interesting.
Speaker 1: We were able to find the place where she's able
Speaker 1: to make a direct, firm and passionate case. Yes, and
Speaker 1: it's against slavery, right Like, so we found the line.
Speaker 5: That was yeah, that was like animated Kamala Harris that
Speaker 5: ever more thought was going to do so well in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty and you see that so rarely. Now, I
Speaker 5: thought I had the same reaction.
Speaker 3: To that clip. What you just made is a really
Speaker 3: interesting substance of critique. I have seen so little of that.
Speaker 3: What I have.
Speaker 5: Seen is this despicable smear by Kamala Harris elevated by
Speaker 5: the corporate press saying her like one black voice is
Speaker 5: more important than other black voices, or one black voice
Speaker 5: is more inherently legitimate than the black voice is defending
Speaker 5: the crecum that they drafted actual academics, and that would
Speaker 5: be a much more interesting conversation about why are you
Speaker 5: trying to sort of put slavery American slavery in this
Speaker 5: like historical perspective to the point where it seems as
Speaker 5: though you're trying to absolve I haven't read the full curriculum.
Speaker 5: I think that's an interesting critique. From what I've heard
Speaker 5: of the curriculum, it's pretty balanced. To the point you
Speaker 5: made about even including rebellions in it. I think there's
Speaker 5: absolutely nothing wrong with the two sentences that were taken
Speaker 5: dramatically out of context, and we're saying, actually that people
Speaker 5: who found themselves in these incredibly trying circumstances of their
Speaker 5: own agency made the best of it in ways that
Speaker 5: speak to remarkable resilience.
Speaker 3: And I don't think there's.
Speaker 5: One factual point, factual problem with that claim. I think
Speaker 5: your point is interesting, why is this being you know,
Speaker 5: this is this being tied into a problematic narrative. That's
Speaker 5: always a worthwhile question, But This has been such a
Speaker 5: useless conversation because there's just been a debate against the
Speaker 5: straw man, the straw man of Ronda Santis. It's like,
Speaker 5: it's basically that don't say gay controversy again. Were there
Speaker 5: substance of problems in that bill? I actually think there
Speaker 5: were are there, But are they what anybody is saying
Speaker 5: they are? No, And it created a completely false caricature
Speaker 5: of Ronda Santis of Florida Republicans in the press that
Speaker 5: is still like indelible in the public's imagine imagination today,
Speaker 5: and that's not helpful to fighting what could be very
Speaker 5: real problems in the curriculum, to correcting what could be
Speaker 5: very real problems in the curriculum. When you have the
Speaker 5: vice president taking this highly publicized trip to Florida to
Speaker 5: push back on an abject smear, it's not just that
Speaker 5: she's disagreeing with the substance of the curriculum. It's that
Speaker 5: she's actually accusing people of despicable racism. And I think
Speaker 5: that's despicable in and of itself. It's not like we're
Speaker 5: disagreeing over marginal tax rates. She's accusing black academics and
Speaker 5: Ronda Santis of facilitating white supremacy essentially, and on what
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 3: Is a lie.
Speaker 5: And I just I find that completely despicable. I think
Speaker 5: Chris Christy has an interesting point in his response. I
Speaker 5: think Rondo Santis His response was weird. I didn't do
Speaker 5: it and I wasn't involved in it. For Rondo Santis,
Speaker 5: you would think he would be leaning into it, saying
Speaker 5: it's a meet the guys. Yeah, he's clearly lost his mojo,
Speaker 5: I think a little bit. And this gets to C six.
Speaker 5: We can put that up on the screen. Losing a
Speaker 5: third of his campaign staff. He's sending out talking points
Speaker 5: to his key supporters. Yeah, and yeah, we have a
Speaker 5: You can go to the next element here talking points
Speaker 5: being sent around where Ryan mentions they actually spelled break
Speaker 5: wrong breaks. Oh yeah, you can see that in the
Speaker 5: first bullet point of the second section.
Speaker 4: They spelled it break. We can go to our laid
Speaker 4: off the copy editor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they actually very well may have.
Speaker 5: But you can see in the next one the point
Speaker 5: about layoffs about a third of his staff. And the
Speaker 5: next element, if we go to that, just announced another
Speaker 5: round of layoffs last night, So more than a third
Speaker 5: of twenty twenty four campaign staff now Ryan.
Speaker 3: Another thing I think is interesting that.
Speaker 5: Chris Christy says is he goes on to say, we're
Speaker 5: arguing about these issues, these smaller issues, when we've got
Speaker 5: big issues in our country, like runaway inflation that continues
Speaker 5: to hurt families, like an education system blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: And I actually he's making a point that's half right
Speaker 5: and half wrong, half right, and that do I think
Speaker 5: DeSantis has over emphasized the culture war in his campaign, Yes,
Speaker 5: half wrong in that actually some of these culture war issues,
Speaker 5: like kids are being taught in school, does matter to parents?
Speaker 3: Ask Glenn Youngkin.
Speaker 5: These are kitchen table issues in the same way that
Speaker 5: inflation is a kitchen table issue. Parents really care about
Speaker 5: what they're paying for in public schools and their kids
Speaker 5: are hearing on a daily basis.
Speaker 3: You have to talk about it.
Speaker 5: In the right way, though, and the dasantas like meme
Speaker 5: campaign has not necessarily.
Speaker 1: Been the right way right, and DeSantis has pushed his
Speaker 1: meme campaign way off. If we could put go back
Speaker 1: to was at C six B here, which is the
Speaker 1: it's the Ben Jacobs tweet of the Yeah, so if
Speaker 1: you look right in the middle there says the central
Speaker 1: themes of the.
Speaker 4: Great America comeback.
Speaker 1: These are the talking points of the campaign set out
Speaker 1: to reporters number one, economy, number two, border, number three, China,
Speaker 1: all the way down at number four culture walk ideology
Speaker 1: has infiltrated our schools and our military. We need a
Speaker 1: leader who is unafraid to restore our nation's society. It
Speaker 1: looks a little afraid because it's all the way down
Speaker 1: at number four, Like this was kind of number one
Speaker 1: up until he was doing his reset, which I think
Speaker 1: doesn't bode well for that point. That like the like,
Speaker 1: if you can't even win a Republican primary all this stuff,
Speaker 1: what's what good is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It's not the best.
Speaker 5: I mean, it would be a really interesting test case
Speaker 5: if Trump wasn't in the race, because Trump sort of
Speaker 5: makes it hard to engauge what the other Republicans are
Speaker 5: trying out. But the economy bulltpoint has a little culture
Speaker 5: war in it, which I think is well placed on
Speaker 5: Ron DeSantis where he talks about corporate elites, the economy
Speaker 5: of benefiting corporate elites. That's a cultural war messaging on
Speaker 5: the economy that Republicans never used to sort of connect
Speaker 5: the dots to in the same way that Democrats do.
Speaker 5: So I think they're trying to do both at the
Speaker 5: same time, to walk into gum at the same time.
Speaker 5: It's not as easy as it looks. And so I mean,
Speaker 5: that's tough stuff. But this should be Ron de Santis
Speaker 5: in his element, like he shouldn't give Chris Christine opening
Speaker 5: to come after him on.
Speaker 3: This, like this is his this is a gift to him.
Speaker 5: It's a political gift to him, in the same way
Speaker 5: that Don Lemon saying women are past their prime or
Speaker 5: Nicki Haley's pastor prime was a gift to Nicki Haley.
Speaker 5: Like Ron de Santis should just be like rubbing his
Speaker 5: hands together, like eagerly trying to figure out how to
Speaker 5: make the most of this instead of that first response
Speaker 5: was punting. His campaign has like I think, hit the
Speaker 5: ground running with us since But that was.
Speaker 3: Bizarre to me.
Speaker 1: But I think, right, I think he has a messenger
Speaker 1: problem and a confidence problem. And his confidence problem is
Speaker 1: coming from, you know, just getting rinsed by Trump in
Speaker 1: this primary so far, and so I think he's not
Speaker 1: feeling as confident and willing to stand on some of
Speaker 1: this culture war stuff. And the messenger problem is that
Speaker 1: all right, is it true that some enslaved people were
Speaker 1: blacksmiths and were able to use their skills. We've talked
Speaker 1: about Robert Small's on this show a bunch before. One
Speaker 1: of the greatest American heroes ever. He was an enslaved
Speaker 1: ship pilot in Charleston, South Carolina, who stole his slave
Speaker 1: ship and delivered it to the Union Army and then
Speaker 1: ended up fighting on behalf of the Union Army, ended
Speaker 1: up serving in Congress, worked with Harriet Tubman, he was
Speaker 1: doing guerrilla stuff back in there, like just absolute incredible hero.
Speaker 4: Is it true that learning.
Speaker 1: How to pilot the ship as a slave like enabled
Speaker 1: him to steal that ship?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is true, But it gets too close to
Speaker 1: sounding like you're patting the person who taught him how
Speaker 1: to pilot the ship on the head and compare it
Speaker 1: gradually and good, good, good job, you know, good for
Speaker 1: you for teaching these skills to Robert Small's. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: you owned him as property and we're and we're like
Speaker 1: utterly exploiting and degrading him and his family, and he
Speaker 1: then had the resourcefulness enough to scapes. I think it's
Speaker 1: a messenger problem that DeSantis needed to be more careful
Speaker 1: about like, if you're gonna be making this you're central
Speaker 1: to your campaign and saying that the education is too well,
Speaker 1: people are gonna be looking very closely at what you
Speaker 1: come up with instead. And so I think it you know,
Speaker 1: somebody ought to have seen that and been like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not going to come off well, especially when you're
Speaker 1: doing the whole Oh Africans did slavery too thing.
Speaker 5: It's weird because when I looked at that sense, I know,
Speaker 5: we have to move on. But when I looked at
Speaker 5: the context that it was in, I got completely with it.
Speaker 5: Like they were saying in I thought in the context
Speaker 5: it was look at how resilient and look at how
Speaker 5: like look at how the lot of that in there. Yeah,
Speaker 5: to me, it just it was like all about putting
Speaker 5: the agency on people who were under like incredibly difficult circumstances.
Speaker 4: Phrase personal benefit.
Speaker 1: That may be extremely grading to people. How that that's
Speaker 1: a how dare you kind of line whenever you're using
Speaker 1: personal benefit in relation to anything right to do with slavery.
Speaker 5: Although I also think the media was disingenuous and acting
Speaker 5: as so this was something that like Rondasantus and not
Speaker 5: Black academics.
Speaker 1: Right, if they cared, they could have to do an
Speaker 1: actual segment on what's in there? Yeah, and talk about
Speaker 1: talk about it the way we did.
Speaker 3: Let's move on to X.
Speaker 5: You just see the letter X at the bottom of
Speaker 5: your screen if you're watching it.
Speaker 4: We're going to fill in the blanket.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what are we going to talk about? We're going
Speaker 5: to do some algebra today excess of course, as Sager
Speaker 5: Cristal talked about yesterday. Now Twitter, it's sort of like
Speaker 5: when Facebook changed to meta. You don't quite know when
Speaker 5: you've hit the point of critical mass that people know
Speaker 5: what you're talking about, so you can actually just start.
Speaker 3: Referring to Facebook asn't matter or Twitter as X.
Speaker 5: But this is actually a pretty interesting story because Elon
Speaker 5: Musk has basically come out and said X was all
Speaker 5: along the goal of buying Twitter. The goal of buying
Speaker 5: Twitter was sort of the free speech question was secondary
Speaker 5: to what you can do make make Twitter sort of
Speaker 5: like webo make it this one stop shop, this huge
Speaker 5: financial hub where people are doing social life, they're doing news,
Speaker 5: they're doing.
Speaker 3: Finance, all on X.
Speaker 5: This goes back years for Elon Musk. People have been
Speaker 5: digging up press quotes and clips of him.
Speaker 3: This is from CNN. We have a stot we want
Speaker 3: to start off.
Speaker 1: And I can say that real musk heads who are
Speaker 1: in my dms have been telling me that like this
Speaker 1: was his goal from the very like people have like
Speaker 1: if you I'm not a muskhead, but the real musk
Speaker 1: heads that have been talking about X for a very
Speaker 1: long time been like, whenever I'd criticized, must be like,
Speaker 1: wait till you see X.
Speaker 3: Let's roll the tape. Like literally, let's roll the tape.
Speaker 3: But this is an ATM.
Speaker 1: What we're going to do is transform the traditional banking industry.
Speaker 4: I do not fit the picture of a banker.
Speaker 12: X dot com.
Speaker 6: This is too much.
Speaker 1: I'm raising fifty million dollars as a matter of making
Speaker 1: a series of phone calls.
Speaker 4: And the money is there. I've sunk the great majority.
Speaker 1: Of my networth into X dot com, which is the
Speaker 1: new banking and mutual funds company on the Internet that
Speaker 1: I've started.
Speaker 4: Big exactly X dot Com.
Speaker 1: I think X dot com could absolutely be a multi
Speaker 1: billion dollar bonanza.
Speaker 5: Okay, so he's twenty eight years old there. That's from
Speaker 5: a scene in Perspective's documentary in nineteen ninety nine and
Speaker 5: he's already talking about X.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, I think in Musks telling there it's a
Speaker 4: little bit backwards.
Speaker 1: He really he's always yes, he's always wanted to do
Speaker 1: this X thing.
Speaker 4: He tried to and turn PayPal into X.
Speaker 1: And this is basically what got him pushed out of there,
Speaker 1: right because they're like, do we're PayPal? We're doing We're
Speaker 1: good okay, Like we're sitting here, people are using our
Speaker 1: platform to exchange money and we're taking.
Speaker 4: A piece of it.
Speaker 1: We're all going to be multi billionaires, right, Like, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to have multi generational will. Like what we're
Speaker 1: not doing anything right, just putting buckets out and taking
Speaker 1: people's money.
Speaker 4: He's like, let's call it X and do why?
Speaker 3: I mean, you can see it.
Speaker 4: Just get out of here.
Speaker 5: It's actually kind of interesting because I never thought of
Speaker 5: PayPal as what it became. And you can see that
Speaker 5: PayPal became I think, you know, bigger then, and it
Speaker 5: has potential still to keep getting bigger as crypto grows
Speaker 5: and et cetera. Actually, speaking of crypto, Jack Dorsey Wade
Speaker 5: in this is our next element.
Speaker 3: We can put it up on the screen.
Speaker 5: Jack Dorsey obviously long time head of Twitter just he tweeted,
Speaker 5: keep calm and just X through it another amusing uh
Speaker 5: sort of subplot in this whole story. We can put
Speaker 5: the next element up on the screen. What you're going
Speaker 5: to be seeing, uh, is the Twitter sign, the famous
Speaker 5: Twitter sign in San Francisco getting taken down by a
Speaker 5: guy in a bucket truck. What actually happened, though, is
Speaker 5: security and police also stop them from taking down the famous,
Speaker 5: the iconic Twitter sign because there was a miscommunication as
Speaker 5: to whether or not they were supposed to be doing that.
Speaker 5: So while they're taking the Twitter sign down, the bird down,
Speaker 5: which Elon Musk reportedly hates has always been fixated on
Speaker 5: getting rid of the birds. That was that was actually
Speaker 5: interrupted And some more interesting stuff in axios from Walter Isaacson,
Speaker 5: who's apparently has this like huge biography of Musk coming
Speaker 5: out on September twelfth. He says that the X rebranding
Speaker 5: has been in the works for more than nine months,
Speaker 5: right since Musk decided to buy Twitter. Quote he said,
Speaker 5: it can be a trillion dollar company easily. This is
Speaker 5: an idea he thought about for twenty five years. A
Speaker 5: financial platform that helps anyone profit from creating content. He
Speaker 5: feels it can transform journalism by offering an alternative to
Speaker 5: subscription models, where people can make easy payments for whatever
Speaker 5: strikes their fancy. When he first walked in, it was
Speaker 5: like a hard scrabble cowboy walking into a Starbucks.
Speaker 3: He said, there are too many birds here.
Speaker 5: He pulled all the woke t shirts out of the
Speaker 5: cabinets and scoffed at the notion of psychologically safe workplaces.
Speaker 5: It was like watching a movie on fast forward. I
Speaker 5: could see him getting more and more frustrated with the culture,
Speaker 5: and Musk himself said, we have to replace this with
Speaker 5: a maniacal sense of urgency. We can put the last
Speaker 5: element up on the screen here, which is from Elon
Speaker 5: Musk himself. I think the most interesting point here is
Speaker 5: he says Twitter was acquired by ex Coort both to
Speaker 5: insure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X,
Speaker 5: the everything app. The Twitter name made sense when it
Speaker 5: was just one hundred and forty character messages going back
Speaker 5: and forth.
Speaker 3: Like birds tweeting.
Speaker 5: But now you can post almost anything, including several hours
Speaker 5: of video.
Speaker 3: And then he adds a timeframe.
Speaker 5: He says, in the months to come, we will add
Speaker 5: comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world.
Speaker 5: So we must bid ado to the bird, your entire
Speaker 5: financial world. I always figured this was.
Speaker 3: Goal because he kept name checking Webo.
Speaker 5: Early on in the Twitter days, which is a Chinese
Speaker 5: equivalent of Twitter that's more of a hub than Twitter
Speaker 5: is right now. And then he's added subscription on Twitter.
Speaker 5: He's added long, long long form video to Twitter, and
Speaker 5: has been working with big content creators like Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 5: Says he wants to transform journalism. Ryan, what do you
Speaker 5: make of that. I'm sure you have some thoughts on that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the number one thing you want in a
Speaker 1: financial institution is safety and security.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: You want to believe that the money that you have
Speaker 1: sitting there is going to be sitting there the next
Speaker 1: time you come. You want to believe that when you
Speaker 1: press the transfer button and you send it to the
Speaker 1: person that you're trying to send it to, it gets
Speaker 1: to them. Yeah, and that you can confirm that all
Speaker 1: of that happens. That takes an enormous amount of infrastructure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it takes social confidence in the out in
Speaker 1: the institution to manage that. It shocks me that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk would have handled Twitter the last nine months the
Speaker 1: way he has and then expect us to turn over us,
Speaker 1: to turn over money to it.
Speaker 5: And to do something much vaster in scope when you've
Speaker 5: narrowed the company.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, okay, you said you're gonna take care
Speaker 4: of the bots. The bots are worse. The scam. There's
Speaker 4: scams everywhere. You know, Dave Dane is constantly.
Speaker 1: Getting hacked and selling laptops to people fake laptops. Don't
Speaker 1: buy laptops from Dave Dane, like, don't, don't do it.
Speaker 1: And then he's gonna instead of fixing that stuff, he's
Speaker 1: gonna come and be like, no, no, it's totally fine.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: I think the idea is if he pumps billions more
Speaker 1: of his own money into it. The idea is an
Speaker 1: interesting one, like if you can like I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's not that original.
Speaker 4: It's like PayPal.
Speaker 1: It's like try to be a place where people move
Speaker 1: money around and take some of it while they do that.
Speaker 1: Like that's basically what he wants to do. But he's
Speaker 1: gonna have to, you know, put up money to make
Speaker 1: it safe to do that. The reason that it's become
Speaker 1: less safe is because he pulled so much money out
Speaker 1: of it because he levered so much debt on top
Speaker 1: of it shape and when you hear him complain about it,
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, we lost fifty percent of our advertisers
Speaker 1: and it's just so deeply in debt. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: the advertisers fled from you, bro, and you put the
Speaker 1: debt on it, like literally, like that's that's your debt
Speaker 1: so that you could buy it. So the things that
Speaker 1: you're complaining about you caused and then that and then
Speaker 1: that made it much more rickety. And is something rickety
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you want to give access
Speaker 1: to your bank account?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean there's potentially, Yeah, there's potentially an argument that
Speaker 5: we're in the middle of.
Speaker 3: You know, he can go five years from now.
Speaker 5: Let's say hypothetically Elon Musk's vision is realized for X
Speaker 5: and we're looking back on now. It looks like his
Speaker 5: critics were, you know, nitpicking at something that was in
Speaker 5: the process of becoming much bigger and it was in
Speaker 5: the middle of a transformation. But the question right now,
Speaker 5: I think is whether that transformation looks plausible. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I think it's been a really rough go for Twitter.
Speaker 5: It's not that he inherited inherited a perfectly great situation
Speaker 5: that was like all rosy, that is true, but yeah,
Speaker 5: the confidence in creating and building something much bigger in
Speaker 5: Twitter when the version of Twitter right now.
Speaker 3: So yesterday I got.
Speaker 5: A notification saying the violation you reported has been reviewed,
Speaker 5: and I clicked on it was something like very obvious
Speaker 5: that someone's personal information had been posted to Twitter and
Speaker 5: I reported it a few weeks ago with somebody's address,
Speaker 5: and it was like a very obvious thing to take down.
Speaker 5: When before musk Hat taken over Twitter, Twitter, to its credit,
Speaker 5: had a much bigger workforce, and it was I still think,
Speaker 5: a terrible app, but they would take that down like
Speaker 5: much faster. And that's the basic question of security that
Speaker 5: you're raising. And so if he's if he's trying to
Speaker 5: get new cash influxes by having a bigger vision, that
Speaker 5: allows him to have a better staff, a smarter staff,
Speaker 5: smarter AI whatever that gets stuff.
Speaker 3: Stuff flagged, I guess.
Speaker 5: But you know, he's had Twitter for a while now,
Speaker 5: and I feel like problems like that have only gotten worse,
Speaker 5: which is.
Speaker 3: A pretty big deal. Man.
Speaker 1: You're like, hey, so I had money in my account
Speaker 1: now it's gone.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, we'll get back to you in forty five days.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but I got bills to pay like now.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I think all of this is also the bigger
Speaker 5: pictures that, like Twitter is engineered to addict you and
Speaker 5: disrupt your brain in ways that are very harmful, not
Speaker 5: just to discourse but to people's personal and professional lives.
Speaker 5: And I can't cheer anything, no matter how much I
Speaker 5: like for speech, I can't really cheer anything that ignores
Speaker 5: that much deeper problem in Twitter and tries to add
Speaker 5: our banking to a platform that is made like a
Speaker 5: slot machine.
Speaker 3: Doesn't feel good.
Speaker 1: If this results, though, in hater's money flowing into my
Speaker 1: account because they're engaging with me and trashing me, all right,
Speaker 1: that'd be funny.
Speaker 3: Have you tried the subscription yet?
Speaker 5: I see what he's saying about how it could transform journalism,
Speaker 5: and I get why he was upset about Substack rolling
Speaker 5: out the notes feature, because it does look a lot
Speaker 5: like Twitter, and Subsack is sort of doing the journalism
Speaker 5: thing that I think he wants to do on Twitter.
Speaker 4: So did you do the subscription?
Speaker 3: No? Yeah, I just really don't like Twitter. It doesn't
Speaker 3: matter who's in chargement.
Speaker 1: My tweets are still free for y'all, whether he wants
Speaker 1: you to call them sheets.
Speaker 4: Did you see this?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Literally?
Speaker 3: Okay, well wow, moving on. Stephen A.
Speaker 5: Smith has weighed in on the Jason al Dean controversy.
Speaker 3: Let's start.
Speaker 5: This is from Steven Asmith's podcast on Monday Steven Asmith Show.
Speaker 5: He weighed in on the try That in a Small
Speaker 5: Town controversy, which by the way, has risen to I
Speaker 5: think number two on the Billboard Hot one hundred in
Speaker 5: the wake of that song was released in May. The
Speaker 5: video came out, and then the controversy bubbles to the
Speaker 5: surface and the song started taking effect.
Speaker 3: Yes, total strikes in effect.
Speaker 5: Al Dean is on tour right now too, so I
Speaker 5: think that probably hasn't hurt. But there's a very clear yes,
Speaker 5: that's why he's coming to merry other post I think
Speaker 5: this week. Even so, it's the thing happened really quick.
Speaker 5: The ball started rolling down the hill when the controversy
Speaker 5: bubble to the surface.
Speaker 3: So Stephen A. Smith weighed in and here's what he
Speaker 3: had to say.
Speaker 6: Are you ready for this show?
Speaker 8: I find nothing racist about those lyrics. Surprised you did
Speaker 8: not nothing racist about those lyrics. Only when the video
Speaker 8: gets attached to it, do you see what he's trying
Speaker 8: to say. See, I ain't no damn hypocrite. I see
Speaker 8: the lyrics that are spewed in other genres, whether it's.
Speaker 6: Rock and roll, hip hop, or whatever the case may be, if.
Speaker 7: We don't say anything about them, we shouldn't be saying
Speaker 7: anything about Jason Oldeede's lyrics. The problem is a the
Speaker 7: whole Trump supported thing, him showing up allegedly to some
Speaker 7: party in blackface, trying to look like Lil Wayne. There's
Speaker 7: racial undertones showing Black Lives Matter protests as opposed to
Speaker 7: protests at other places.
Speaker 4: I didn't see the insurrection on.
Speaker 7: January six, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 6: In that video.
Speaker 3: Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see it.
Speaker 8: What does that have to do with Ron DeSantis. It's simple,
Speaker 8: it's a race war taking place in our country.
Speaker 5: So he had previously said some nice things about Ron
Speaker 5: de Santis, and I think that's where this was especially
Speaker 5: interesting to people, because, yeah, he had previously said basically
Speaker 5: he was interested in DeSantis, he didn't want Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: To get the nomination, and that's where.
Speaker 5: DeSantis comes into play, and his interest in Dessantis comes
Speaker 5: into play. Coleman hughes in Barry Weiss's publication The Free Press.
Speaker 5: He wrote an essay using lyrics from and Coleman is
Speaker 5: a rapper himself, lyrics from twenty one Savage and comparing
Speaker 5: it to like lyrics from Little Baby. I am not
Speaker 5: going to do the Benchapia thing where I read rap lyrics.
Speaker 3: You got to learn from other people's.
Speaker 4: Mistakes, but right, we had other mistakes in that clip.
Speaker 3: Yes, so a few people more entertaining than stephen A.
Speaker 4: Smith.
Speaker 3: What did you make of his take here?
Speaker 1: I love stephen A. So he's so good at what
Speaker 1: he does, one of the best out there. I think
Speaker 1: that he makes a really fair point that you have
Speaker 1: to understand in the context that it's presented. And it
Speaker 1: is a choice that if you're trying to talk about
Speaker 1: just general unrest and problems that you've got in the community,
Speaker 1: but you're not going to have them in a small town,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of choices that you can make
Speaker 1: when it comes to footage. And if you choose Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter protests rather than January sixth protests, then okay,
Speaker 1: that's a choice you made, and that's the context are setting.
Speaker 3: He did show white people protesting, and like a lot of.
Speaker 1: The Black Lives Matter protesters were white people.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, when I was covering those protests, watched
Speaker 5: like a white liberal woman scream in the face of
Speaker 5: a working class black cop for hours on end, basically
Speaker 5: in the middle of a day on like a Tuesday
Speaker 5: in the summer of twenty twenty, calling her despicable names.
Speaker 3: And so I mean, like it saying, I get what
Speaker 3: he's saying.
Speaker 5: So what he's saying is interesting because the conversation we
Speaker 5: had last week about how actually a lot of small towns,
Speaker 5: a lot of people usaw on January six, have been
Speaker 5: hit with economic circumstances. People in their situations used to
Speaker 5: look at, you know, urban areas and minorities Black Americans
Speaker 5: and have this like smug sense of superiority to people
Speaker 5: who were rioting protesting like riots, and then things hit
Speaker 5: their small towns and their small towns aren't so great anymore.
Speaker 3: You know that these places have actually been.
Speaker 5: Ravaged and there are serious problems with crime and drugs
Speaker 5: in those small towns.
Speaker 3: So al Dean's.
Speaker 5: Narrative, they try that in a small town isn't so clean.
Speaker 5: There are is, like again, like where I grew up,
Speaker 5: that's a small town that's still thriving.
Speaker 3: But that's not everywhere, and it's certainly.
Speaker 5: Not a lot of the places where al Dean is
Speaker 5: maybe talking about, where they're Trump supporters like him who
Speaker 5: have faced like people on January sixth, for instance, that
Speaker 5: we have like actually dealt with. It's not to excuse
Speaker 5: anything whatsoever.
Speaker 3: It was horrible on every.
Speaker 5: Level, but people were motivated by economic disenfranchisement, there's no
Speaker 5: question about it. And that has created crime, and that
Speaker 5: has created less cohesive small town communities, and so I
Speaker 5: think that's the real problem with this narrative. I still
Speaker 5: don't think that it's racism.
Speaker 3: I get what Stephen A.
Speaker 5: Smith is saying, but a lot of people died in
Speaker 5: those riots, a lot of people, a lot of Black Americans,
Speaker 5: have been victimized by the crime surge in the last
Speaker 5: couple of years. So I still don't see the racist
Speaker 5: question being answered me.
Speaker 1: The title try that in a small town is extraordinarily
Speaker 1: clear allusion to vigilante justice, and in this country, vigilante
Speaker 1: justice almost exclusively has meant mob lynch mobs like that.
Speaker 1: The two things are very much linked, and he his
Speaker 1: unfortunate choice to, uh, you know, film it outside of
Speaker 1: a courthouse where black men have been lynched, only furthered
Speaker 1: that now I think they're probably just dumb and just
Speaker 1: didn't know that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Coleman, he was pointing out there was like a
Speaker 5: Hannah Montana music video filmed at that same courthouse.
Speaker 1: Sure, but it was that's the Sun about vigilant Hannah
Speaker 1: Montana wasn't singing about vigilante justice.
Speaker 5: The sad really is that there are a lot of
Speaker 5: places in this country where there's a history of lynch
Speaker 5: in the South, Yes, and so I think it's extraordinary
Speaker 5: likely that was Quincton's.
Speaker 4: It is a sad reality.
Speaker 1: But at the same time he is talking about it
Speaker 1: with some nostalgia or talking about the idea of or
Speaker 1: you could see why people would think, why Stephen Aide
Speaker 1: would think combined with Black Lives Matter footage that you're
Speaker 1: making a nod to that.
Speaker 5: I think you had an interesting point last week where
Speaker 5: you're talking about how that used to be in cities too,
Speaker 5: Like people used to take pride and taking care of
Speaker 5: their own in their cities, and like it doesn't still
Speaker 5: a lot of cities, now, yeah, totally in certain neighborhoods.
Speaker 3: And again, I think that's another thing people miss.
Speaker 4: Is that you can have Mayberry inside a big city.
Speaker 3: Right. There are pockets. Although Muriel Bowser actually just this.
Speaker 5: Week said this isn't Mayberry and like basically blamed valets
Speaker 5: for losing people's keys that were stolen in DC.
Speaker 3: Did you not see that?
Speaker 5: No, don't, don't valet your car downtown there were a
Speaker 5: bunch of keys stolen a Valet Kiosks, and Mariel Bowser
Speaker 5: came out and was like, this is any Mary, This
Speaker 5: is not.
Speaker 1: On us, basically, but yeah, fanned your keys to random people.
Speaker 5: There are pockets of big cities or pockets of the
Speaker 5: country that really still are great, and people do take
Speaker 5: pride in taking care of their own. And I think
Speaker 5: that's the vigilante justice thing. Is interesting because I still
Speaker 5: see this as taking pride in your small town, taking
Speaker 5: care of other people and taking care of your neighbors,
Speaker 5: even though I don't think that's the reality.
Speaker 3: And a whole lot of small.
Speaker 5: Towns, especially where it used to be, because people had
Speaker 5: jobs and families and in tact marriages and mental health,
Speaker 5: et cetera that has been like plundered. I get that,
Speaker 5: but I still, I mean, I just don't see that
Speaker 5: as being necessarily racist, because there's truth in that in
Speaker 5: different like that still exists whether you're in a city
Speaker 5: or a town. And I guess it's true that Jason
Speaker 5: Elden was probably talking about like rural America. He probably
Speaker 5: didn't have like big he's in mind. But when Stephen
Speaker 5: Nasmith says the lyrics are not racially motivated, I mean
Speaker 5: he's saying because there's not January sixth protest video, even
Speaker 5: though there are videos of white protesters acting out in
Speaker 5: the video.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I still struggle to see.
Speaker 1: How that's racist to put him in his full contact.
Speaker 1: At the end, he says it's a race war, but
Speaker 1: it's not started by black people.
Speaker 4: Like he's making the point.
Speaker 1: That that the aggressors in it, the ones that are
Speaker 1: instigating it are people like Alt Dean who are making
Speaker 1: a big deal of the like they're the ones, like
Speaker 1: they're the ones that are kicking it off. Because I
Speaker 1: just realized we cut that video off right before he
Speaker 1: said that.
Speaker 5: And that's actually an interesting point, Like why does it
Speaker 5: matter to jasonal Dean who doesn't live in a big city,
Speaker 5: like why is the focus of a song? I mean,
Speaker 5: I think people have good reasons for that. But I
Speaker 5: guess the other thing I should say is that this
Speaker 5: does I do think it's true that people, especially white Americans,
Speaker 5: sometimes stumble into things they should know better that are
Speaker 5: like racially insensitive, that for good reasons, are interpreted as
Speaker 5: having racial under or overtones to people, especially to their
Speaker 5: black neighbors, in a way that they don't intend, or
Speaker 5: maybe they subconsciously intend and they don't realize that. But
Speaker 5: I think that that's actually a fairly good point that
Speaker 5: Stephen Asmith is making when it's like where is the
Speaker 5: January six footage?
Speaker 3: Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's any like racial animus behind what
Speaker 5: Jason Elden did. I don't think his label would be
Speaker 5: dumb enough to deal with that. I don't think he
Speaker 5: would be dumb enough to intentionally do that. But I
Speaker 5: do think there's absolutely still the case that people stumble
Speaker 5: into things that are interpreted, for a good reason because
Speaker 5: of the country's history, as racism when it's not intended
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 1: You also wouldn't carry off in an insurrection in a
Speaker 1: small town because the Congress isn't there.
Speaker 4: That's true. You would do it in Harper's fairy there.
Speaker 5: That's a good point, all right, Ryan, And what is
Speaker 5: your point today?
Speaker 1: So by the time we get to the presidential election
Speaker 1: of twenty thirty six, that's just four quick cycles from
Speaker 1: now three if you don't count this one, gen z
Speaker 1: will make up a full thirty five percent of the
Speaker 1: electorate in every election between now and then. Their numbers
Speaker 1: are going to grow, and the number of boomers making
Speaker 1: it out to the polls will get smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1: And one of the most common misconceptions in American politics
Speaker 1: is that young people are always liberal. And part of
Speaker 1: that misconception is the boomer's fault, because the kids in
Speaker 1: the sixties who were actually leftists were so loud about it,
Speaker 1: with their tight eyes and their huge marches and their
Speaker 1: campus citizens that you couldn't miss it. Yet, in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, the first year eighteen year olds were allowed
Speaker 1: to vote, Nixon actually.
Speaker 4: Won voters under thirty two.
Speaker 1: If that pattern had held in twenty twenty, Trump would
Speaker 1: have been re elected in a landslide instead. Historic youth
Speaker 1: turnout gave Democrats the House in twenty eighteen, put Biden
Speaker 1: over the top in twenty two twenty, and in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, the kids saved Democrats from a red wave.
Speaker 1: In Michigan, youth voter turnout was the highest in the country,
Speaker 1: which is bad news for Republicans because that election was
Speaker 1: fought heavily along culture lines, with abortion on the ballot
Speaker 1: and fights over schools and trans writes dominating headlines.
Speaker 4: The Republican response.
Speaker 1: To this generational shift has been truly confounding, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm glad we have Emily here to help explain
Speaker 1: one on earth they're thinking. But first, let's take a
Speaker 1: look at a few numbers from the Harvard youth.
Speaker 4: Poll that are just out.
Speaker 1: They were plucked out by Greg's sargeant over at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. He zeros in on what one polster calls
Speaker 1: the Big four, and those are gun laws, action on climate,
Speaker 1: same sex relationships, and the question of whether quote food
Speaker 1: and shelter are a right unquote. Now, back when I
Speaker 1: was a youngster, all four of these issues were underwater
Speaker 1: for the left. Now, looking at the chart, you can
Speaker 1: see a few obvious things happened, the most obvious of
Speaker 1: which we Trump as emily, as you can see in
Speaker 1: this chart here, like once Trump is elected, support for
Speaker 1: all of these things just skyrockets, and people can pause
Speaker 1: that and study that if they want. But you also
Speaker 1: see in twenty eighteen after the Parkland shooting, the number
Speaker 1: almost just straight up when it comes to strong gun.
Speaker 4: What's your point today?
Speaker 5: Well, yesterday, as CNN reports, and you can see this
Speaker 5: up on your screen here, a federal judge blocked President
Speaker 5: Joe Biden's controversial asylum policy, delivering a major blow to
Speaker 5: the administration, which has leaned on the measure to drive
Speaker 5: down border crossings. The judge put the ruling on hold
Speaker 5: for fourteen days for a possible appeal. So we see
Speaker 5: this happening time and again with the border it getting
Speaker 5: litigated in the courts. Fourteen day appeal, there was a
Speaker 5: judge in Florida recently blocked another important aspect of what
Speaker 5: the administration sees an important aspect of its policy. And
Speaker 5: of course there are real human life in the balance.
Speaker 5: Many of those human lives currently making their way up
Speaker 5: through Central South and Central America and Mexico. Many of
Speaker 5: those human lives waiting on the other side of the
Speaker 5: border right now for any word of what might work
Speaker 5: for them, how you get in. Here's more from Fox
Speaker 5: News on that particular decision, which, again keeping in mind
Speaker 5: the context that there are people who are literally waiting
Speaker 5: on word for how this is all working out. In
Speaker 5: the courts, Judge John Tiger of the U. S. District
Speaker 5: Court for the Northern District of California blocked the Circumvention
Speaker 5: of Lawful Pathways so that's capital clp circumvention of Lawful
Speaker 5: Pathway's rule in response to a lawsuit from a coalition
Speaker 5: of left wing immigration groups that's including the ACLU, by
Speaker 5: the way, which claimed the rule was actually similar to
Speaker 5: the Trump era transit ban that was similarly blocked. He
Speaker 5: found the rule is both this is quote, substantively and
Speaker 5: procedurally invalid and has delayed his ruling from taking effect
Speaker 5: from fourteen days. That gives administration time to appeal, which
Speaker 5: they certainly will, because, as Fox continues to say, the
Speaker 5: rule formed the centerpiece of the administration strategy to deal
Speaker 5: with the expiration of Title forty two that expired, as
Speaker 5: you may remember a few weeks back, more than a
Speaker 5: few weeks now, that expired actually in May, but it
Speaker 5: was one of those things that presumed migrants you've probably
Speaker 5: heard this, to be ineligible for asylum if they entered
Speaker 5: the US illegally and have failed to claim an acclaim
Speaker 5: asylum in a country through which they have already traveled,
Speaker 5: Mexico being sort of the.
Speaker 3: Obvious example that.
Speaker 5: Now, what's important to know that sounds on its face
Speaker 5: like maybe it seems overly draconian. Maybe if you're conservative,
Speaker 5: it sounds reasonable. But one thing it does sound is effective. Right,
Speaker 5: How could anybody get into the United States in large numbers?
Speaker 5: Where would you possibly see an influx of immigrants coming
Speaker 5: into the United States if they are being forced to
Speaker 5: go through legal channels and then come to claim asylum
Speaker 5: in Mexico or in another country that they've passed through,
Speaker 5: especially people who are taking flight.
Speaker 3: It sort of confounding.
Speaker 5: There's no way if you have this rule in place,
Speaker 5: that you could possibly have an influx. Well, there's a
Speaker 5: dueling Republican lawsuit over this particular plank of the Biden
Speaker 5: administration's policy as well, and here's where things get interesting.
Speaker 5: As Fox News writes, the lawsuit is also facing a
Speaker 5: separate challenge from Republican led States, which argued that rule
Speaker 5: is quote a smoke screen to quote define the problem
Speaker 5: away by recharacterizing what would be illegal crossings as lawful pathways.
Speaker 5: And that's where the rubber meets the road. That when
Speaker 5: you're looking at this rule and saying, how do we
Speaker 5: still see big numbers of people coming across the border?
Speaker 5: The Biden administration claims those numbers are down. Either way,
Speaker 5: even if they claim those numbers are down, you can
Speaker 5: see with your own eyes from reporters that are on
Speaker 5: the border that there's overwhelming crossing attempts at different places.
Speaker 3: We know that you can see it with your own eyes.
Speaker 5: And the reason for that is, as Fox News adds
Speaker 5: in their rite up here, the quote controversial CBP one
Speaker 5: app which allows migrants to apply for one of the
Speaker 5: more than fourteen hundred appointments at a point of entry
Speaker 5: each day to be paroled into the US. So when
Speaker 5: you're saying, how could people still be coming in big
Speaker 5: numbers when you have this rule that has now been
Speaker 5: blocked by this judge gives the administration fourteen days to appeal,
Speaker 5: which they certainly will. How are people still coming? Why
Speaker 5: are their shelters still overwhelmed. Why are we still seeing
Speaker 5: coyotes bring people into the water, weigh them into the
Speaker 5: currents and get them to the other side.
Speaker 3: Well, it's because a the.
Speaker 5: Administration has expanded those legal pathways via CVP one, which
Speaker 5: was supposed to have about a thousand appointments a day
Speaker 5: and has now been expanded to fourteen hundred one thousand
Speaker 5: a day. As this is, in the words of the
Speaker 5: Obama administration, is quote a crisis. Now we're talking about
Speaker 5: just one thousand legal appointments, ninety nine percent of which,
Speaker 5: according to reports, are being These are your granting your
Speaker 5: entry into the United States while you await that sort
Speaker 5: of US pending asylum trial, and so that means you
Speaker 5: can go to a sanctuary city. We saw reporting recently
Speaker 5: in the San Francisco Chronicle about why so many migrants
Speaker 5: from Central America that are building literal mansions in Central
Speaker 5: America go to San Francisco. Well, it's because of the
Speaker 5: way law enforcement is able to deal with people who
Speaker 5: have crossed illegally, the way law enforcement is able to
Speaker 5: deal with people who've been have been imprisoned, given jail
Speaker 5: time for drug offenses, et cetera, et cetera, so all
Speaker 5: of these policies really do matter. Lenient immigration policies are inhumane.
Speaker 5: There's a way to have humane immigration policies, especially important
Speaker 5: when people are coming to the United States for good reason.
Speaker 5: I've talked to some of the people who are coming
Speaker 5: to the United States for good reason. Some of it
Speaker 5: doesn't meet in any sense of the word asylum claims.
Speaker 3: Some of them do. Some of them clearly.
Speaker 5: If you hear these stories and talk to people up close,
Speaker 5: you would think we should expand the way that we
Speaker 5: define asylum in the United States to economic asylum. But
Speaker 5: for a whole lot of people, it is purely economic.
Speaker 5: Is why they're willing to wait in the streets of
Speaker 5: a dangerous border city like Reynosa for an indefinite time period,
Speaker 5: waiting to get their CVP one appointment, waiting to pay
Speaker 5: get the right amount of money to pay a coyote
Speaker 5: to cross, you know, doing odd jobs so that you
Speaker 5: have enough money to pay a coyote to cross.
Speaker 3: This is inhumane.
Speaker 5: Uh and the Republican lawsuit referring to this Biden policy
Speaker 5: as a smoke screen is much closer to the truth
Speaker 5: than the acl used claim that this is that they
Speaker 5: also claim By the way, a lot of immigration groups
Speaker 5: claim that CVP one is in and of itself inhumane,
Speaker 5: even though again it's really fast tracking the asylum process
Speaker 5: or the entry process for a whole lot of people
Speaker 5: that are claiming asylum. The administration is not being transparent
Speaker 5: at all about their numbers when it comes to CBP one.
Speaker 5: So all of this is to say, the court process,
Speaker 5: because Congress has kicked the ball to the courts and
Speaker 5: to the executive branch, is janely tragic. There are people
Speaker 5: who are waiting in border cities, desperate, people in grave
Speaker 5: danger because cartels have seized on this business and they
Speaker 5: are forced to stay in these border cities, or they're
Speaker 5: coming up because they hear and this is the important
Speaker 5: thing they hear from so many people via who have
Speaker 5: gotten in via CBP one that you can do it
Speaker 5: that if you pay the coyote to smuggle you up
Speaker 5: through Central America into Mexico and you wait in that
Speaker 5: border city long enough, you will get your appointment through
Speaker 5: CBP one. And even in cases people are being detained, well,
Speaker 5: if you're detained and then released into the United States,
Speaker 5: or if you are detained and then released back into
Speaker 5: Mexico and you still have a chance of getting through again.
Speaker 5: People see that as genuinely being better than where they
Speaker 5: are in Central America, because in so many places, life
Speaker 5: is miserable there, And that doesn't absolve the United States
Speaker 5: of helping to facilitate that level of misery, but it
Speaker 5: does mean that people are so desperate to get out
Speaker 5: of those situations they are traveling up and spending time
Speaker 5: in these inhumane conditions that are being caused by policies
Speaker 5: like this that are ligning the pockets of cartels, and
Speaker 5: it's an incredibly tragic and unfortunate state of affairs.
Speaker 3: Also, people have realized that the.
Speaker 5: Administration is not enforcing what it says entirely that it
Speaker 5: is enforcing, so if people do cross the border illegally,
Speaker 5: they are still being granted entry. In cases we see
Speaker 5: this only anecdotally, because again we don't have numbers on this,
Speaker 5: the administration isn't being especially transparent about it. But border
Speaker 5: reporters who are down there have video talking to migrants
Speaker 5: and are watching this happen, and so as soon as
Speaker 5: that call gets down or that WhatsApp gets down back
Speaker 5: to people in Honduras or Nicaragua, then they will take
Speaker 5: the gamble on coming up. And so again, this is
Speaker 5: not the way to run a border. This is not
Speaker 5: acceptable in any way whatsoever. It's not safe for the
Speaker 5: American people, and it's sure he is not safe for
Speaker 5: the people of Central America and Mexico who lives are
Speaker 5: being even if they don't travel, their lives are being
Speaker 5: turned upside down by the power of cartels, which is
Speaker 5: especially as the government is cracking down on fentanyl, are
Speaker 5: turning more and more to human smuggling as big business.
Speaker 5: It's disgusting and these policies aren't helping it. So what
Speaker 5: we need is a Congress that wants to take action,
Speaker 5: and in the absence of that, what we get is
Speaker 5: people hanging in the balance of our court system and
Speaker 5: being punted around like footballs as these cases make their
Speaker 5: way through the court.
Speaker 3: Ran We've talked about this a lot, and this is
Speaker 3: a pretty big.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot on this show about the nature
Speaker 1: of the family as it relates to economics and to culture,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to talk about We wanted to talk
Speaker 1: today to a philosopher who has been thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about the role of the nuclear family, its relationship to
Speaker 1: the extended family and the way that the left ought
Speaker 1: to be thinking about it.
Speaker 4: You've probably guessed already who that is.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Arami, Ose Frimpong Arami, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks for thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not obvious why liberals hate families and
Speaker 2: why they get their clocks cleaned on family issues pretty consistently,
Speaker 2: both electrically set down just in popular media.
Speaker 1: Set that set that up for us. First, do you
Speaker 1: really think that liberals hate families?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, why do you think that? Why do you say
Speaker 4: liberals hate fat families?
Speaker 1: And I don't I think I know you're being a
Speaker 1: little hyperbolic, but I don't think you're totally wrong on
Speaker 1: the on the history, the intellectual history there.
Speaker 4: So tell tell us what you mean by that.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I don't even think Emily would say I'm hyperbolic,
Speaker 2: like I think. I think it's just conventional wisdom. I
Speaker 2: think there are good reasons and bad reasons to that
Speaker 2: liberals hate families because it used to be the case
Speaker 2: that what you did in function of society was a
Speaker 2: product of your lineage, Like farmers, people with the last
Speaker 2: name Farmer came from farmers. And they were expected to
Speaker 2: be farmers, like Smith's came from Smith's and Coopers came
Speaker 2: from Coopers. And it's not obvious that you should your
Speaker 2: productive activity and society should be determined by your lineage
Speaker 2: and who you came from, and that's that was kind
Speaker 2: of an affront of freedom. So the idea is that
Speaker 2: we level out that that lineage privilege and distribute assets
Speaker 2: and then people can work for their passion and build
Speaker 2: up skills and areas that they're passionate about, and then
Speaker 2: let the market decide what's produced and who produces it
Speaker 2: for society. And that seems to be better until we
Speaker 2: think about who protects like little kids from the market,
Speaker 2: because the market just wants us to be on social
Speaker 2: media and jewel So it's not obvious that I mean.
Speaker 2: So that's a good reason why liberals go at the family,
Speaker 2: and historically have went at the family, because the pre
Speaker 2: modern family used to decide what you did for your life, right,
Speaker 2: and then the same market could be made for the church.
Speaker 2: It's another reason why liberals kind of hate the church.
Speaker 2: The bad thing is that nothing then defends children from
Speaker 2: the predations of the market, And it's not obvious that
Speaker 2: parents shouldn't have aspirations and realize there are aspirations for
Speaker 2: their children. And even like the variety of transphobia that's
Speaker 2: that's in America today. That's like I should be able
Speaker 2: to send my kid to a school, my son to
Speaker 2: a school, and not have them come back and like
Speaker 2: fight with me about wanting to become my daughter. So
Speaker 2: family has so little power that we don't understand like
Speaker 2: the right sort of mediation for family, right. And for example,
Speaker 2: like my nine year old just finished studying a list
Speaker 2: of SAT words, right, So it's not as if when
Speaker 2: she takes that test against in ten years or in
Speaker 2: eight years, once he takes against that test against other kids,
Speaker 2: her family is going to have a lot to say
Speaker 2: about her quality of success. So this idea that you
Speaker 2: can completely evacuate the family responsibility and family right from
Speaker 2: the lives of people is I think a little bit ludicrous.
Speaker 2: But the open determination of family in people's lives up
Speaker 2: until you know the modern era is real and how
Speaker 2: to be mitigated.
Speaker 6: Also, Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: It's that question of freedom.
Speaker 5: You wrote a really interesting medium post on this is
Speaker 5: called Families under Siege, a left defense of the nuclear family,
Speaker 5: And I wanted to ask you about what I found
Speaker 5: one of the most interesting paragraphs you write. Since justice
Speaker 5: is going to be a matter in making sure that
Speaker 5: each person has the opportunity to realize the different varieties
Speaker 5: of freedom if people are restricted from participating in family
Speaker 5: relations and injustice has been done yet the left is
Speaker 5: bad at conceiving the family as an institution of freedom
Speaker 5: that needs to state protection from predatory markets and special
Speaker 5: cultural interests. And then the next line you invoke what
Speaker 5: you were just talking about. You say, the nation's most
Speaker 5: recent bount of transphobia medical procedures is rooted in the
Speaker 5: anxiety that only the GOP cares that families can set
Speaker 5: an agenda for their genetic line.
Speaker 3: Can you flush that point.
Speaker 5: Out more, especially as you juxtapose it with the conservative
Speaker 5: focus on there's actually a literal conservative group called focus
Speaker 5: on the Family. But what you know when you see
Speaker 5: the left walking away since Betty ord Ferdan calling the
Speaker 5: home a comfortable concentration camp or whatever she said to now,
Speaker 5: that is a stark contrast, and especially in that sort
Speaker 5: of conception of freedom that you're advancing, if the left
Speaker 5: doesn't see a family as a bastion of freedom, of
Speaker 5: something that can protect individuals from markets, from government overreaches.
Speaker 5: That does seem to be a problem for it.
Speaker 2: So that's a structural advantage the right has when it
Speaker 2: talks about families, So because it could say it could
Speaker 2: look at all the good things families have done for
Speaker 2: people and argue from a matter of tradition and say that, like,
Speaker 2: as a matter of tradition, like we should keep the family,
Speaker 2: because without the family, you know, people go, things go
Speaker 2: horribly awry. And you can say, as this is what
Speaker 2: we've done, this is how we've succeed succeeded, and it's
Speaker 2: the same. And there's a similar kind of religious argument
Speaker 2: we could the right could use to support the family.
Speaker 2: The left doesn't have those kinds of resources because tradition
Speaker 2: has licensed all sorts of like awful things, and religion
Speaker 2: has licensed all sorts of awful things. So the left
Speaker 2: has to look into family as a variety of freedom,
Speaker 2: and if it's not a variety of freedom, we get
Speaker 2: rid of it.
Speaker 6: But if it is a variety of freedom, and.
Speaker 2: Our constitution is supposed to protect freedom in all of
Speaker 2: its all of it's you know, manifold colors, then the
Speaker 2: federal government's job to support the peculiar kind of freedom
Speaker 2: that can only come in the family. And so in
Speaker 2: that article I talk about what is the peculiar kind
Speaker 2: of freedom that can only come in the family, and
Speaker 2: that peculiar kind of freedom is the freedom of acting
Speaker 2: with someone who is committed to you without you know
Speaker 2: their immediate choices, having anything in the matter. There's a
Speaker 2: certain kind of freedom that you can only have with
Speaker 2: someone who can't choose their way out. There's a certain
Speaker 2: kind of freedom that you can only have some kind
Speaker 2: of relationships, and certain kind of plans you can make,
Speaker 2: and certain kind of plans you can realize with someone
Speaker 2: only when their exits are tied.
Speaker 6: This is why you know Cortez burn the ships.
Speaker 2: There's a certain kind of self determination you can have,
Speaker 2: and we kind of know this with rules and other
Speaker 2: aspects of our lives. For example, if I were to
Speaker 2: play soccer, Let's say I had to play soccer, except
Speaker 2: my opponent when I play soccer, says like, you know
Speaker 2: what you can't have. You can't keep me from using
Speaker 2: my hands. I really want to use my hands. Who
Speaker 2: are you to tell me that I can't use my hands?
Speaker 2: And there's a way in which the only way any
Speaker 2: of us can be soccer players is if we forswear
Speaker 2: the ability to like.
Speaker 6: Use our hands.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the one of the kinds of
Speaker 2: freedoms get with with family, the immediate.
Speaker 6: Unity where the other person can't just leave.
Speaker 2: You have to figure it out together, and you are
Speaker 2: you get to figure it out together, so you get
Speaker 2: to do It's also something you have to do. And like,
Speaker 2: my kid can't just decide that my neighbor makes better
Speaker 2: cookies and then come to me and say, Dad, I
Speaker 2: want to quit you and live with them because they're better.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in so far as that's a particular kind of freedom,
Speaker 2: it's a particular kind of freedom that needs to be supported,
Speaker 2: and I think it's an important kind of freedom.
Speaker 6: But there are other kind of freedoms that also need
Speaker 6: to be supported.
Speaker 2: So we need to support them, just kind of mediate
Speaker 2: them through each other and moderate them so that they
Speaker 2: can all allow each other to flourish well.
Speaker 1: Arami, you talk about in your piece kind of nannies
Speaker 1: for all A maybe I.
Speaker 4: Came up with that term for it. But you're you
Speaker 4: know you you.
Speaker 1: Write about how you you elevate the nuclear family, but
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of dismissive of the extent family, which
Speaker 1: kind of the capitalism and the way that people have
Speaker 1: moved around so much has has really gutted the extended
Speaker 1: family anyway. So it's not as if it needs any
Speaker 1: extra push. But that leaves us with the situation where
Speaker 1: you have all of the work of child rearing and
Speaker 1: running a house on justice nuclear family. And so one
Speaker 1: of your solutions is kind of basically subsidized you know, Nanni's,
Speaker 1: which gives a new meeting to the nanny state.
Speaker 4: But I one and two.
Speaker 1: Like Arnold Schwarzenegger can get behind, Yeah, And so I
Speaker 1: wanted to get your take on what you make of
Speaker 1: the rising kind of politics of the care economy within
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, like it within Build Back Better, you know,
Speaker 1: the most trans well, the most transformative element of the
Speaker 1: American Rescue Plan was the childcare tax credit, which you know,
Speaker 1: the you know two fifty and three fifty per kid,
Speaker 1: which was which flows out of this kind of movement
Speaker 1: within the Democratic Party of taking families seriously and really
Speaker 1: helping them, you know, make ends meet, to stitch the
Speaker 1: the you know, to economically stitch the family together that
Speaker 1: ran up against climate in the in Build Back better
Speaker 1: and got pushed aside for the climate money, there wasn't
Speaker 1: enough kind of support within.
Speaker 4: The party for it.
Speaker 1: But it is the new thing, like you've seen, you're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of foundations i think, getting behind it,
Speaker 1: and you're seeing kind of the kind of democratic apparatus
Speaker 1: moving into place to say that the next time that
Speaker 1: we get a majority, we are going to implement as
Speaker 1: big of a care economy agenda as we can, which
Speaker 1: is similar to what you're talking about here.
Speaker 4: So where do you think that How did.
Speaker 1: That come out of the ashes of what the Betty
Speaker 1: free Dan kind of movement that you're talking about.
Speaker 5: And I'll tag something quickly onto that, and that Republicans
Speaker 5: would say all of this has to be done with
Speaker 5: a marriage requirement. That's a huge debate on the right
Speaker 5: and so Arami, is that also important? Is there something
Speaker 5: still telling about the fact that Democrats would basically never
Speaker 5: pass cash payments for families without with a marriage requirement.
Speaker 2: Right, So Democrats like children, but they hate families. So
Speaker 2: it's very complicated. So if we can give the money
Speaker 2: directly to the kids, we could, but supporting like you know,
Speaker 2: jobs for the adults and like jobs with unionized benefits
Speaker 2: and free time and all of that and just calling.
Speaker 2: And I'll say this because I don't really get paid
Speaker 2: to do what you guys do. I think the casual
Speaker 2: divorce in America's former child abuse. I think children should
Speaker 2: have access to the two people who like naturally.
Speaker 6: Love them, and.
Speaker 2: Then when you split that access, it gets weird because
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a fifty to fifty divide happening,
Speaker 2: because if you have kids, you might not have three
Speaker 2: kind of a heap. Panting isn't fifty to fifty. It's
Speaker 2: always one hundred one hundred. And if you're not doing
Speaker 2: one hundred one hundred, you're not doing it right. So,
Speaker 2: like I think the casual divorce is.
Speaker 1: No yeah, but the Left is never going backwards on
Speaker 1: legal no cause divorce. Are you talking about social stigma
Speaker 1: around it? I mean it's already way down from what
Speaker 1: it was in the eighties.
Speaker 4: Are you yeah?
Speaker 1: I think are you talking about actual legal restrictions on it.
Speaker 2: I don't want to make no fault divorce or a
Speaker 2: casual divorce illegal, but I do want to put marriage
Speaker 2: training into the culture and as a public curriculum, and
Speaker 2: like we need to decide what marriage is for, and
Speaker 2: I think marriage is for the realization of this peculiar
Speaker 2: kind of freedom you can only have when you're committed
Speaker 2: to working it out with someone.
Speaker 6: Now this isn't sex specific.
Speaker 2: It could be two people committed to working out to men,
Speaker 2: two women committed to working out to non binary committed
Speaker 2: work people working out together like, but it is a
Speaker 2: commitment to work out your household issues that have been
Speaker 2: condealed together. Because once you put things together like that,
Speaker 2: they can't just you can't just split the baby like that,
Speaker 2: like we've casually just assumed we can. So we need
Speaker 2: a cultural revolution and not so much an external legal
Speaker 2: one to like jail or find people for getting divorced.
Speaker 2: I think the wrong people are getting married for the
Speaker 2: wrong reasons. So let's try to address that first and
Speaker 2: get people married for the right reasons to realize this
Speaker 2: peculiar kind of freedom. And they'll look for different things
Speaker 2: in apartment. They'll look for like the you know, the
Speaker 2: creative spark that allow me to solve weird problems when
Speaker 2: they emerge, because that's all like that holds a real
Speaker 2: kind of marriage together, like a little bit of love,
Speaker 2: a little bit of like lust, but also like an
Speaker 2: appreciation of the way that person solves problems with you
Speaker 2: when external shocks come, because kids are nothing but an
Speaker 2: external shock.
Speaker 6: That like causes people to want to solve problems.
Speaker 2: So so that's why I think, that's how I think
Speaker 2: we can hold marriages together. But why I want to
Speaker 2: get rid of the extended family is because, well, I
Speaker 2: mean experientially, I've run.
Speaker 6: Into so many like sixty.
Speaker 2: Year old people who are still taking order from like
Speaker 2: their ninety year old a parent that we need to
Speaker 2: figure out how everyone can realize the freedom of family,
Speaker 2: and that might mean limiting the family to a nuclear
Speaker 2: version because the invention of the intervention of the nuclear
Speaker 2: family as a realization of freedom got you away from
Speaker 2: clan power, that's clan with the c power, where like
Speaker 2: the richest uncle just didn't dictate what everybody else did.
Speaker 2: So we need these nuclear units to be able to
Speaker 2: kind of with their partner within the within the family,
Speaker 2: within that nuclear family, decide how to live their life
Speaker 2: without having to worry about, you know, ticking off the
Speaker 2: inheritance from you know, the richest aunt or alienating themselves
Speaker 2: from the childcare provided by the richest uncle, which means
Speaker 2: the state has to step in and be like the
Speaker 2: childcare of last resort when when the grandparents can't do
Speaker 2: it or don't.
Speaker 1: Uncle Sam, no ants and uncles, but uncle Sam arommie.
Speaker 1: We can fight about the extended family. Last time, this
Speaker 1: has been this has been fun. We have to leave
Speaker 1: it there though, thank thanks as always for joining us.
Speaker 4: Gonna make one more quick point, but a quick one
Speaker 4: because we got a roll.
Speaker 6: Okay, So a lot of people will say like, well,
Speaker 6: you know, you have to.
Speaker 2: Keep marriages and you have to keep families together because
Speaker 2: it's good for the children. And then they list this
Speaker 2: laundry list of empirical data that says that families like
Speaker 2: intact families are good for the children. But that's not
Speaker 2: the right kind of argument, because you could also imagine
Speaker 2: studies that come out and say that it's really good
Speaker 2: for children of poor kids for the bottom twenty percent
Speaker 2: if the top twenty percent of way journers in wealth
Speaker 2: hoarders can just pluck them from their family and raise
Speaker 2: them as their own, so we could have like those.
Speaker 2: The same empirical arguments that tell you to keep the
Speaker 2: family together can license family pillaging. So you need a
Speaker 2: non empirical account of why families are good. It can't
Speaker 2: just be looked. It can't just be looking at the
Speaker 2: outcomes for children. It has to be looking for about
Speaker 2: the rights and access of parents and children to each other,
Speaker 2: and in a more robust way than just looking at
Speaker 2: you know, presupposed outcomes.
Speaker 6: The same can be said for marriage.
Speaker 2: You can have a study that comes out and says
Speaker 2: that like, well, you know, if an eligible marriage partner
Speaker 2: comes to you and they make thirty percent more than
Speaker 2: your current marriage partner, these studies say that you'll be
Speaker 2: happier if you just divorce this partner and go with
Speaker 2: the richer. Richer would be spouse. Right, So these studies
Speaker 2: can't do it. It needs to be a non empirical
Speaker 2: rights based argument about the peculiar kind of freedom that families.
Speaker 6: Realize.
Speaker 2: That's not that's different from market freedom, and that's different
Speaker 2: from political freedom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rommie, thanks thanks again for joining us. So always
Speaker 1: always fun to talk through this stuff with you.
Speaker 2: Oh, no problem, And if anybody likes hearing what I
Speaker 2: have to say, just go to either www dot funk
Speaker 2: academic dot com or you can go to the YouTube
Speaker 2: show I do. I do a show on relationships on Monday,
Speaker 2: but when I do relationships about like oh this is
Speaker 2: get you laid, it's like how to you know, date
Speaker 2: in a way that will not end up in a divorce.
Speaker 2: So I had to think about relationships in a holistic
Speaker 2: manner that means like staving off divorce. And on Thursday,
Speaker 2: I do a political show that's just more straight politics.
Speaker 5: That does it for us on this Wednesday edition of Counterpoints.
Speaker 3: Hope you enjoyed the show.
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Speaker 4: Thanks for tuning in too soon.