Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.
Speaker 3: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 3: we have prisol.
Speaker 4: Indeed we do.
Speaker 1: We have the very latest on that search for the
Speaker 1: missing Titan submersible, So we will break all of that
Speaker 1: down for you, the story that has truly captivated the nation,
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 5: We also have some updates with.
Speaker 1: Regards to our relationship with China, their plans to operate
Speaker 1: in Cuba, President Biden calling she dictator after what seemed
Speaker 1: to be a fairly successful visit between Tony Blincoln and
Speaker 1: his counterpart in China's will break all of that down
Speaker 1: for you. Also, pretty bombshell and weird situation with Justice Alito.
Speaker 1: So ProPublica published some information about him flying on private
Speaker 1: jet of a billionaire who ended up having business before
Speaker 1: the court. He preempted their report with his.
Speaker 5: Own Wall Street journal.
Speaker 1: I'll ed very odd situation, very troubling situation, a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, So we'll break that down for you. We
Speaker 1: also have another very troubling situation with test scores for
Speaker 1: teenagers falling off a cliff during the pandemic, still suffering
Speaker 1: from learning loss, still taking account of what exactly happened
Speaker 1: with all of that. Also new elon Musk fight now
Speaker 1: he's saying that people who use the terms CIS or
Speaker 1: CIS gender as a slur could be banned from the platform,
Speaker 1: mister free speech.
Speaker 4: Interesting direction from him.
Speaker 1: Also excited to talk to you, Matt Steller today about
Speaker 1: the FTC sewing Amazon over some deceptive technique that they
Speaker 1: use to try to get and keep customers in their
Speaker 1: prime service, which is sort of key to their whole.
Speaker 4: Monopoly grip on power.
Speaker 1: Before we get to any of that, though, we are
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Speaker 2: Stop the count for now?
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Speaker 1: As of eight oh five am on Thursday, June twenty second.
Speaker 1: And as you guys know, as we mentioned before, Sager
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Speaker 3: Why don't we get to the show?
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, so we wanted to start with the very
Speaker 1: latest on the search for the titan submersible. As you guys,
Speaker 1: I'm sure no. At this point, five individuals who were
Speaker 1: basically tourists going down to view the Titanic wreckage, they
Speaker 1: lost contact with the mothership. We have no idea exactly
Speaker 1: what happened, and so the very latest we have this
Speaker 1: morning is search teams deployed remote controlled vehicles deep into
Speaker 1: the North Atlantic. Experts are saying today is going to
Speaker 1: be a critical day in the search and rescue mission,
Speaker 1: as the subs life support supplies are starting to run low.
Speaker 1: And the reason today is so critical is because when
Speaker 1: the company lost contact with this submersible, they said they
Speaker 1: would have, you know, a limited supply of oxygen, and
Speaker 1: basically today is the day that that oxygen is expected
Speaker 1: to run out. And when you consider, you know, assuming
Speaker 1: this thing is still intact, assuming that people are still alive,
Speaker 1: which I think is a big question.
Speaker 5: Mark to start with.
Speaker 1: Even if you located them now, of course, it would
Speaker 1: take time to bring them back up to the surface.
Speaker 1: So these are really critical moments. And producer Griffin just
Speaker 1: tells us that the Coastguard is now saying they expect
Speaker 1: everyone aboard to be deceased.
Speaker 2: Well, they say they believe you have been run out
Speaker 2: of oxygen. Unfortunately that was just breaking this morning. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very sad. There's been a lot nation has truly
Speaker 2: been captured Crystal by this submersible, and you know, there's
Speaker 2: actually quite we were thinking, like we cover this, you
Speaker 2: know outside of just like the I guess tawdry details,
Speaker 2: I suppose, Yeah, but the truth is is that there's
Speaker 2: actually a lot to say around regulation, around the way
Speaker 2: that these companies operate. It also applies to people like
Speaker 2: Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, the Virgin Atlantic who you know,
Speaker 2: you know, to star Starlink or sorry, to a SpaceX's credit.
Speaker 2: Like they're focusing on NASA and the space program, like
Speaker 2: Blue Origin, Virgin Atlantic and many of these other services,
Speaker 2: their entire mission is just shooting rich people out into space.
Speaker 2: This is effectively the same thing except going deep underground.
Speaker 2: And well, you know, whenever it comes to these international
Speaker 2: coveents around submersibles and the way that this technology, you know,
Speaker 2: that is governed, we've actually learned quite a bit and
Speaker 2: it's not great unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I mean, apparently it's basically the wild wild Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: the SpaceX thing is is an interesting point because they
Speaker 1: did just have kind of a catastrophe in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, they used a launch pad that wasn't ready
Speaker 1: in time the way that Elon wanted.
Speaker 5: It to be, but he went forward with it.
Speaker 1: There was massive there was clouds of ash and soot
Speaker 1: and whatever. So I think there's a lot of questions
Speaker 1: there about some coziness between regulators and between the billionaires
Speaker 1: and company executives. But to be specific to this one,
Speaker 1: some of the details that have come out about the
Speaker 1: way that this submersible was constructed. Are really shocking, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of warnings in advance that this
Speaker 1: was not remotely prepared to go as deep to the
Speaker 1: depths of the bottom of the ocean where the Titanic
Speaker 1: is located. So there was a news report I think
Speaker 1: it was about a year ago where journalists for CBS
Speaker 1: actually went on one of these trips. And so you
Speaker 1: get a glimpse inside of this submersible and how it's
Speaker 1: really cobbled together with low budget, off the shelf components.
Speaker 1: Just take a look at a little bit of that report.
Speaker 6: An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or
Speaker 6: certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability,
Speaker 6: emotional trauma, or death.
Speaker 3: Where do I sign?
Speaker 7: Oh, take your shoes off, that's customary.
Speaker 6: Okay, Wow, Inside the sub has about as much room
Speaker 6: as a minivan.
Speaker 8: So this is not your grandfather's submersible.
Speaker 2: We only have one button.
Speaker 9: That's it.
Speaker 8: It should be like an elevator, you know, it shouldn't
Speaker 8: take a lot of skill.
Speaker 6: The titan is the only five person sub in the
Speaker 6: world that can reach Titanic depths two point four miles
Speaker 6: below the scene. It's also the only one with a
Speaker 6: toilet sort of. And yet I couldn't help noticing how
Speaker 6: many pieces of this sub seemed improvised.
Speaker 8: We can use these off the shelf components. I got
Speaker 8: these from Camper World. We run the whole thing with
Speaker 8: this game controller.
Speaker 4: Come on.
Speaker 1: So the individual that he is interviewing there, that the
Speaker 1: journalist is interviewing there is the CEO of the company
Speaker 1: that built the submersible. And I mean, and it's a
Speaker 1: classic story of human hubris. He thought he didn't need
Speaker 1: to get this thing classed, He didn't need to get
Speaker 1: evaluated and actually like certified to the depths that they.
Speaker 5: Wanted to take.
Speaker 1: People thought he could cut corners in all these ways
Speaker 1: and save on costs to make.
Speaker 4: The trip quote unquote more affordable.
Speaker 1: I suppose tickets were still two hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Why would you want to cut corners on safety when
Speaker 1: this is such an incredibly dangerous activity, And you know,
Speaker 1: you get a sense of his thinking also in this
Speaker 1: same report, Let's take a listen to how he justified
Speaker 1: some of the decision making.
Speaker 6: It seems like this submersible has some elements of mcgivory.
Speaker 4: Jerry rignus.
Speaker 6: I mean, you're putting construction pipes as ballasts.
Speaker 7: I don't know if i'd use that description of it,
Speaker 7: but there's certain things that you want to be buttoned down.
Speaker 7: So the pressure vessel is not mcgivert at all, because
Speaker 7: that's where we work with Boeing in NASA and the
Speaker 7: University of Washington. Everything else can fail, your thrust can go,
Speaker 7: your lights can go, You're still going to be safe.
Speaker 2: I'm the king of the surface vessile.
Speaker 5: There's a limit, you know.
Speaker 9: At some point safety just is pure waste.
Speaker 8: I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't
Speaker 8: get out of bed, don't get in your car, don't
Speaker 8: do anything.
Speaker 9: At some point you're going to take some risk.
Speaker 3: And it really is a risk reward question.
Speaker 8: I said, I think I can do this just as
Speaker 8: safely by breaking the rules.
Speaker 1: I think I could do this just as safely by
Speaker 1: breaking the rules. And basically the justification, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's expected that the CEO was also a board and
Speaker 1: has likely lost his life on this submersible as well,
Speaker 1: But basically the justification Zager was like, Oh, these regulators
Speaker 1: they're too slow, we're too innovative.
Speaker 5: They can't keep up with what we're doing.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just the like bureaucratic suits who might
Speaker 1: have raised some questions here. There was at least one
Speaker 1: employee who was a whistleblower. There was a slew of
Speaker 1: experts who unanimously said this is dangerous, this is a
Speaker 1: terrible idea, but he pushed for it anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let' put that up there on the screen where
Speaker 2: you're referencing, which is that twenty eighteen, there was actually
Speaker 2: a lawsuit, a safety lawsuit, saying that there was a quote,
Speaker 2: a potential danger to passengers, and ocean Gate, you know,
Speaker 2: actually vociferously fought back against it because they fired an employee,
Speaker 2: David Lockridge, after he expressed concern about the safety. They
Speaker 2: actually sued him saying he had breached his employment contract
Speaker 2: by disclosing confidential information with the Occupational Safety and Health
Speaker 2: Administration aka OSHA. What they said is that Lockridge said
Speaker 2: that he had been wrongfully terminated and his actions were
Speaker 2: aimed and ensuring the safety of passengers on the submersible
Speaker 2: called the Titan, which is now currently missing. I mean,
Speaker 2: my major takeaway throughout this entire thing, Crystal, is that
Speaker 2: your use of the word Hubris is perfect. There's also
Speaker 2: a fundamental mismatch in terms of this guy's ideology because
Speaker 2: the problem is he's trying to drive down costs, and
Speaker 2: that is actually fine whenever we're talking about normal consumer products,
Speaker 2: which you are competing with a vast swat to people.
Speaker 2: The majority of the people who were on this and
Speaker 2: were customers are extraordinarily wealthy. Bringing costs down from half
Speaker 2: a mil to two point fifty means nothing to them.
Speaker 2: They you know, they don't even think twice about spending
Speaker 2: one million dollars on tickets versus two million dollars versus
Speaker 2: three million. For them, it's about the experience. If you know,
Speaker 2: we were talking with our producer, I ironically he could
Speaker 2: have made it a safer and a more luxurious experience,
Speaker 2: and he probably would have made the exact same amount
Speaker 2: of money because the current environment that they look if
Speaker 2: these people are still alive or were alive, you know,
Speaker 2: at any point for some time, it was hell on
Speaker 2: earth down there. I mean, we're talking about the size
Speaker 2: of what's it been described of the minivan.
Speaker 5: Which from the pictures that I feel like.
Speaker 2: That's a very generous minivan that's like a compact suv.
Speaker 2: I think, if you ask me, it's like one.
Speaker 4: Of those European minivans.
Speaker 2: Like this big European minivan. We are also talking about
Speaker 2: no toilet. We're talking about one guy who had actually
Speaker 2: written on this side marine had said previously that you
Speaker 2: have to be able to sit cross legged for ten
Speaker 2: hours and bear extreme discomfort and listen, I get it,
Speaker 2: you know. I'm I'm the type of person where if
Speaker 2: I had this type of money, I would absolutely do
Speaker 2: something like this. I think the Titanic's cool. I like exploration.
Speaker 2: I think the IEM. You know, I don't think the
Speaker 2: idea necessarily is bad. I've seen some people like why
Speaker 2: would anyone want to do this? Listen, I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2: And one of the guys on there had done a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 2: as somebody who also has often you know, dreamed or
Speaker 2: thought about doing things like this, you have to do
Speaker 2: a tremendous amount of research for safety, and you also
Speaker 2: have to make sure that you're going with a reputable person.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, it really seems like Oceangate the company invested
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot more in marketing around the
Speaker 2: titan than it did around the actual safety on this.
Speaker 2: So it's a good metas story too to look at,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, sometimes things are too good to
Speaker 2: be true sometimes. Look, you know, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of regulation is dumb as annoying. We run a business here.
Speaker 2: It can be an absolute massive pain. However, we're not
Speaker 2: taking people down to the bottom of the ocean, and
Speaker 2: when you are, I do actually think there's quite a
Speaker 2: few things.
Speaker 4: Like checking out something to exist boxes.
Speaker 2: There's a reason only nation states usually are the ones
Speaker 2: who are capable of doing something like this. And as
Speaker 2: we are all finding, you know, whenever the titan goes missing,
Speaker 2: there's what like two craft I believe on planet Earth
Speaker 2: that are even capable of going to go get them right,
Speaker 2: one of them is French and the other is part
Speaker 2: of the US Navy. But then getting them there in
Speaker 2: time is you know, is such a massive pain.
Speaker 3: So that was the other they had.
Speaker 2: Obviously they did not have proper safety and contingency around
Speaker 2: this around you know, should a massive event like this occur,
Speaker 2: which again that's what the US Navy actually has, Like
Speaker 2: they don't just send people down to the bottom of
Speaker 2: the sea without plans and redundancies that exist this was
Speaker 2: mcguyverd in the really the worst sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and that was one of the red flags
Speaker 1: that that employee, who was a whistleblower who was fired ensued.
Speaker 1: That was one of the red flags that he raised.
Speaker 1: He expressed concern the company planned for the subtual life
Speaker 1: on an acoustic monitoring system to detect if the hull
Speaker 1: was breaking down or about to fail. That wouldn't provide
Speaker 1: much help in an emergency, he claimed, because the acoustic
Speaker 1: analysis would only alert people about imminent problems milliseconds before
Speaker 1: an implosion.
Speaker 4: I mean, of the.
Speaker 1: Various things that could have gone wrong, you know, they
Speaker 1: could have had an electrical failure, They could have had
Speaker 1: a fire on board. They could have gotten caught up
Speaker 1: in the Titanic wreckage itself and been able to unable
Speaker 1: to go back up to the surface.
Speaker 5: They could have gotten caught up in a fishing net.
Speaker 1: Any number of things could have happened, or the hull
Speaker 1: in the body of the submersible could have failed, and basically,
Speaker 1: you know, instant implosion. Frankly, for the sake of the
Speaker 1: people here, you know, to me, that would be the
Speaker 1: most the least cruel way to go because at least
Speaker 1: it's over in an instant. I think part of why
Speaker 1: people have been so captivated by the story is thinking
Speaker 1: about being trapped in that thing, counting down the hours
Speaker 1: until your oxygen out is I mean, that's just like
Speaker 1: literal nightmare scenario.
Speaker 5: So it's horrific.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 1: The one sign that they had that was giving people
Speaker 1: some hope is there was some sounds that were detected,
Speaker 1: some banging sounds that were detected underwater that repeated. You know,
Speaker 1: a couple on Tuesday, they heard it. I heard it
Speaker 1: again on Wednesday. The theory was that these would be
Speaker 1: the kind of noises that maybe if they were banging
Speaker 1: the ship up against something underneath the water, to help
Speaker 1: rescuers be able to find them, perhaps that's what was
Speaker 1: going on. And maybe that is the case, but at
Speaker 1: this point it's becoming clear they just ran out of time.
Speaker 1: One other story that came out in the New York
Speaker 1: Post that was from it's a first hand account from
Speaker 1: another adventurer who went on a different one of these missions,
Speaker 1: and he called it a suicide mission because of his experience.
Speaker 1: He said, this was a Bavarian entrepreneur. He said it
Speaker 1: was a suicide mission. Back then the first submarine did
Speaker 1: not work. Then I've at sixteen hundred meters, which is
Speaker 1: nowhere close to how deep they were.
Speaker 4: Going for the Titanic had to be abandoned.
Speaker 1: He explained. They ended up launching five hours late due
Speaker 1: to electrical issues. He suspects that's he thinks that's what's
Speaker 1: to blame for the titan cruise issues here. Not only that,
Speaker 1: but right before the voyage, the bracket of the stabilization
Speaker 1: tube which balances the sub seems kind of important, tore
Speaker 1: and had to be reattached.
Speaker 5: With zip ties.
Speaker 1: That was the type of operation they were running here,
Speaker 1: cobbled together, you know, very little, just very little concern
Speaker 1: for safety. There was a slew of experts who who
Speaker 1: wrote a letter raising these concerns.
Speaker 5: But because there was.
Speaker 1: No regulation and he just decided, the CEO here Stockton
Speaker 1: Rush just decided to push forward anyway and not get
Speaker 1: the submersible evaluated, not get it classed. You know, it
Speaker 1: appears to have ended in complete catastrophe for these individuals
Speaker 1: who were on board.
Speaker 2: And just to give everyone an idea of the hubor so,
Speaker 2: this guy listened to the way he talks about his
Speaker 2: high airing decisions let's take a listen.
Speaker 10: When I started business, one of the things you'll find
Speaker 10: there are other suboperators out there, but they typically have
Speaker 10: a gentlemen who are ex military sub mariners, and they
Speaker 10: you'll see a whole bunch of fifty year old white guys.
Speaker 11: I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational,
Speaker 11: and I'm not going to inspire a sixteen year old
Speaker 11: to go pursue marine technology, but a twenty five year old,
Speaker 11: you know, who's a sub pilot or a platform operator
Speaker 11: or one of our texts can be inspirational.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chris, well, why would you want to hire a
Speaker 2: bunch of people who are experienced on submarines to run
Speaker 2: your submarine company? I mean, you know who doesn't want
Speaker 2: somebody just straight out of school with no experience in
Speaker 2: a highly technical environment a board a vessel which imminent
Speaker 2: death is always a possibility, and people who have developed
Speaker 2: redundancies and systems to make sure over the last seventy
Speaker 2: five years that something like this doesn't ever happen.
Speaker 1: And I think we know the real reason why he's
Speaker 1: don't know what he's because he didn't want to pay
Speaker 1: and because he knew they would cause problems for him,
Speaker 1: like the one guy who was a whistleblower who was like,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you thinking here? So he needed young, inexperienced,
Speaker 1: twenty five year olds who he get frames quote unquote inspirational.
Speaker 1: But the real reason was he wanted them cheap, and
Speaker 1: he wanted them easy to manipulate.
Speaker 4: And you know, yeah, here we.
Speaker 5: Are listen a sad story.
Speaker 3: We can hold out hope.
Speaker 2: You know, as the Coastguard says, you can never underestimate
Speaker 2: the will to live. I'm obsessed with survival stories. This
Speaker 2: would be one of the all time greats if they
Speaker 2: do walk out of there. That said, all the decks
Speaker 2: stacked against them. We've got the Coast Guard estimated they
Speaker 2: ran out of oxygen. One of the only ways to
Speaker 2: be able to extend their oxygen is if they were
Speaker 2: starting to breathe slower, they would actually have to regulate
Speaker 2: their breathing. Yeah. The other reason, you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people were thinking about Apollo thirteen for example. Well,
Speaker 2: here's the difference with people on or Apollo thirteen were
Speaker 2: highly trained astronauts who had trained for two years or so.
Speaker 3: Actually more had flight to pilots.
Speaker 2: Who had been through multiple failures were experienced aerospace engineers
Speaker 2: who are capable of you know, maintaining the thought needed
Speaker 2: at that time ex Military and then be able to
Speaker 2: listen and communicate with NASA to finally get themselves back.
Speaker 2: That's the other one that's ruling out of a titan's favor.
Speaker 2: They don't have the ability to communicate and to say
Speaker 2: exactly what is wrong with them. So, like I said,
Speaker 2: the deck is really stacked against from the coast Guard
Speaker 2: currently on estimating that they've run out of oxygen, I'm
Speaker 2: assuming Search and Rescue will maintain operations for the next
Speaker 2: couple of days at the very least.
Speaker 3: You don't want to necessarily just call it.
Speaker 2: But look, there's a very human story here for us
Speaker 2: to all to learn from. Yeah, sometimes if it's too
Speaker 2: good to be true, or sometimes if it is regulated,
Speaker 2: is for a good reason.
Speaker 3: And sometimes if it sounds too good to be true,
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 1: If you're putting your life in the hands of an
Speaker 1: individual who you know, whose technical capacity is required, make
Speaker 1: sure they're like the nerdiest, most boring attention to detail person. Ever,
Speaker 1: this guy read like a sort of like charismatic salesperson.
Speaker 1: That's and clearly you know, did not have that attention
Speaker 1: to details.
Speaker 5: So it is a sad and disastrous story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's get to the big geopolitical news
Speaker 2: breaking here in Washington. Let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. This one about Beijing planning a new training
Speaker 2: facility in Cuba, raising the prospect of Chinese troops on
Speaker 2: America's doorstep. Now, Crystal, it's not like foreign troops on
Speaker 2: Cuban soil has ever caused problems for the United States
Speaker 2: or a global crisis before. Currently, the Chinese and the
Speaker 2: Cubans are negotiating a joint military training facility. What they
Speaker 2: would establish is a quote advanced stage in terms of
Speaker 2: their negotiations. This is according to leaked US intelligence reports
Speaker 2: that the Biden administration is effectively confirming. Now. The Biden
Speaker 2: administration says they have been contacting the Cubans to forestall
Speaker 2: the deal and are seeking to tap into what they
Speaker 2: think could be Cuban concerns about seating their own sovereignty.
Speaker 2: Beijing is selling the training facility on top of a
Speaker 2: potential ties, you know, that they could deepen with the Cubans.
Speaker 2: It also highlights an interesting theoretical question around diplomacy that
Speaker 2: I've seen raised.
Speaker 3: In terms of the experts around this issue.
Speaker 2: It could be that the Cubans are actually more considering
Speaker 2: this Chinese overture as they did during the times of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, because they feel that the US political
Speaker 2: system is so intractable whenever it comes to a Cuban
Speaker 2: embargo and to trade, that this could be a way
Speaker 2: to extend leverage and actually get some better dealings with Washington. Personally,
Speaker 2: I think probably, I think it's probably very entrenched because
Speaker 2: of the way that Florida roles in our politics. That said,
Speaker 2: it does show you though, a complex, possible geopolitical crisis
Speaker 2: that could be ignited over this troops itself is not
Speaker 2: going to cause you know, the same thing as the
Speaker 2: Cuban missile crisis of course that was around missiles.
Speaker 3: That said, you know, it's something that.
Speaker 2: We are probably right to be concerned about, and also
Speaker 2: just highlights like what ratcheting up tensions with China is
Speaker 2: going to look like in our hemisphere, and that this
Speaker 2: is really like the jump off point for something like that.
Speaker 1: Well with regard to you know, potentially Cuba using this
Speaker 1: as leverage to gain better status or reduce sanctions or whatever.
Speaker 1: With regard to the Cubans using this as potential leverage.
Speaker 1: Ryan has been making a good point, which is that
Speaker 1: you know, Floria's not a swing state anymore.
Speaker 4: Florida's a red state.
Speaker 1: And so the reason why you know, we have all
Speaker 1: these corn subsidies is because Iowa and the role it
Speaker 1: plays in the primary process. The reason that we have
Speaker 1: the relations we do with che Cuba is because of
Speaker 1: trying to appease the large and significant Cuban vote in Florida.
Speaker 1: Democrats don't really have to care about that anymore because
Speaker 1: there's no sign that they're going to be winning the
Speaker 1: state back anytime soon. I mean, that goes with regards
Speaker 1: to Cuba, goes with regard to Venezuela too, So in
Speaker 1: terms of the political calculations around this, that has really shifted.
Speaker 1: That's number one, number two, you know, I just think
Speaker 1: it's always important to keep in mind where these reports
Speaker 1: are coming from. This is clearly a leak by uh So.
Speaker 1: There's kind of a divide within the Biden administration between
Speaker 1: people who are more hawkish towards China and people who
Speaker 1: want more engagement, more diplomacy of the type that was
Speaker 1: you know, on display with Tony Blincoln traveling to China recently,
Speaker 1: and this appears to be a leak from the more
Speaker 1: hawkish quarters to try to secure their policy ends and goals.
Speaker 1: So keep that in mind with this as well. But
Speaker 1: the other thing Sagur I think is important to point
Speaker 1: out here is, you know, when it's US in our
Speaker 1: country and you have you know, the possibility of troops
Speaker 1: from China on nearby soil in Cuba, we understand very
Speaker 1: clearly how the empire is going to react and how
Speaker 1: the country is going to.
Speaker 5: Feel about that, et cetera. There seems to.
Speaker 1: Be a blind spot with regards to our own operations
Speaker 1: around the world and how, for example, that may have
Speaker 1: appeared to Russia and raised similar sensitivities. Now I will
Speaker 1: say for the million time Russia's invasion of Ukraine was
Speaker 1: illegal and.
Speaker 4: Wrong and no one is justifying it.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you have it close to home,
Speaker 1: suddenly it's like, oh, this is a problem. We see
Speaker 1: how this is an issue, but we have far more
Speaker 1: I mean, think of this. So this was actually from
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal piece. They said, listen, the way
Speaker 1: China views this is they look at Taiwan. We have
Speaker 1: the US deploying more than a hundred troops to Taiwan
Speaker 1: to train their defense forces.
Speaker 5: We heavily arm and.
Speaker 1: Train that self governing island sits right off of mainland China.
Speaker 1: Beijing sees it as its own. That's about the same
Speaker 1: distance that Cuba is from Florida. Also, they point out,
Speaker 1: China has no combat forces in Latin America. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: US has dozens of military bases throughout the Pacific, where
Speaker 1: its station's more than three hundred and fifty thousand troops.
Speaker 1: Chinese officials appointed this count when they push back on
Speaker 1: American efforts to counter their military expansion outside of the
Speaker 1: Indo Pacific. So I just want to put out there,
Speaker 1: take yourself out of the American context, and think of
Speaker 1: how China views our actions, think of how Russia views
Speaker 1: our actions, and I feel like we can garner some
Speaker 1: more potential like understanding of the way they may view
Speaker 1: what we're doing from this particular propace.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's an important point specifically with what you said
Speaker 2: visa v Russia will say. You know, sometimes I get
Speaker 2: very annoyed whenever they're like, well, you have troops in Japan.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, the Japanese want us there. They literally
Speaker 2: are the ones who are asking us to stay. And
Speaker 2: you know, for all the people who are gonna try
Speaker 2: to Okinawa in my face, that's not the only one
Speaker 2: that I'm talking about. Same with the South Korean. So
Speaker 2: it's not like these aren't deep and entrenched allied governments.
Speaker 2: So fort so the Cuban Cuban, but no, no, no, And
Speaker 2: I think that is why it is an important point.
Speaker 2: And actually this is very specifically, most likely in response
Speaker 2: to the special military advisors which were sent to Taiwan
Speaker 2: after the Ukraine invasion. I also would say that one
Speaker 2: of the things that I have always tried to say
Speaker 2: here is with regard to a to Ukraine, whenever it
Speaker 2: comes to the way that we are sapping so much
Speaker 2: of our military strength and so much of our geopolitical attention.
Speaker 2: I just saw this morning, you sent it to me
Speaker 2: the Financial Times reporting Jake Sullivan is traveling to somewhat
Speaker 2: Denmark or some thing like that in order to try
Speaker 2: and pressure brazil, Indian and Brazilian officials who are also
Speaker 2: traveling there. The full force of the US government now
Speaker 2: is focused almost entirely on Ukraine and on Russia, two
Speaker 2: countries which their GDP combined don't even make up a
Speaker 2: single Chinese province. So we have to focus all of
Speaker 2: our energy specifically on this issue, on navigating and going
Speaker 2: through this so that we don't end up in a
Speaker 2: catastrophic situation. And unfortunately we are obviously being stretched thin.
Speaker 2: And this is just even more evidence that what was
Speaker 2: going on in Ukraine is distracting us from any potential
Speaker 2: even attention at the way that we should be paying,
Speaker 2: which we be paying towards China. Second, you can see
Speaker 2: here Secretary blink and seems a bit blindsided by the issue.
Speaker 2: Is specifically after he left Beijing for his visit.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 12: Made very clear that.
Speaker 13: We would have deep concerns about PRC intelligence or military activities.
Speaker 9: Both countries see.
Speaker 12: The importance of trying to bring more stability to the relationship.
Speaker 2: So he says, both the countries see more stability to
Speaker 2: the relationship, I mean the Chinese and stupid they know
Speaker 2: exactly whether this will provoke here in the United States,
Speaker 2: and they are also trying to get their own policy concession.
Speaker 2: So we're stretched very thin all over the world, and
Speaker 2: it's a problem. The other problem, you know that we
Speaker 2: have Crystal is a doddering president who seems to just
Speaker 2: say whatever is at the top of his mind. Now, look,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that what he said isn't true, which
Speaker 2: is obvious. Put this up there on the screen. China
Speaker 2: is freaking out after Joe Biden called Chi Shingping quote
Speaker 2: a dictator. They say that the president's quote absurd comments
Speaker 2: threatened to undermine efforts to improve Sino US relations. It
Speaker 2: actually happened at a campaign fundraiser on Tuesday, at the
Speaker 2: very moment, so before a bunch of rich donors, at
Speaker 2: the very moment that his own secretary of State is
Speaker 2: in China says, quote, what a great embarrassment for dictators
Speaker 2: when they didn't know what was happening. He was talking
Speaker 2: at a private home in California. After the comments were leaked,
Speaker 2: the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that they were quote extremely absurd, irresponsible,
Speaker 2: seriously violate basic fact, diplomatic protocols, and China's political dignity.
Speaker 2: Now listen, obviously, Shishinping is a dictator, Okay, but this
Speaker 2: kind of gets back or Putin is a war criminal.
Speaker 3: We've gotten this before.
Speaker 2: The thing is that when you're the president of the
Speaker 2: United States. Your comments should be calibrated to actual policy.
Speaker 2: Just talking off the cuff, you know, without any plan specifically,
Speaker 2: when your Secretary of State is in the core, at
Speaker 2: least in the airspace of the country, you just look
Speaker 2: like a fool. And you know, it's like, what is
Speaker 2: your policy here? What are we actually talking about? This
Speaker 2: is the thing I can't stand with the Biden administration.
Speaker 2: President Biden's like, yeah, we're going to defend Taiwan. I'm like,
Speaker 2: do you understand where you're saying? Like you do you
Speaker 2: actually understand what you're saying? Look at our the deployment
Speaker 2: of our military resource. So that was just reading two
Speaker 2: days ago. The CEO of Raytheon says, listen, we're never
Speaker 2: going to be able to get our supply chains out
Speaker 2: of China. So you're like, wait, hold on a sex,
Speaker 2: So if we go to war with China, then you're
Speaker 2: saying that you actually can't produce any weapons here in
Speaker 2: the United States. Are we understanding this? So what is
Speaker 2: the policy? And then the President of Secretary State on
Speaker 2: Chinese soil says, we don't support Taiwan independence. That's not
Speaker 2: a policy change per se, but it's a rhetorical gift
Speaker 2: to the Chinese.
Speaker 3: But then Biden is like, oh, but he's a dictator.
Speaker 2: It's like, what are we doing completely yeah, yeah, It's like, look,
Speaker 2: if we want to take a hotk ash approach, that's fine.
Speaker 2: Let's let then let's debate that, let's actually plan for it.
Speaker 2: Let's have a whole of government approach towards it. That
Speaker 2: may be serious. But this like what seesaw come back
Speaker 2: and forth, like i want to appear tough on my
Speaker 2: own soil, but I'm also going to try and get
Speaker 2: climate concessions or whatever crap that the bid people like
Speaker 2: John Carey want to get out of them. It's incoherent
Speaker 2: and actually it creates uncertainty such that the Chinese themselves.
Speaker 2: We've talked about this in our last show. There are
Speaker 2: many different factions in the Chinese government. One faction Mashishingping,
Speaker 2: mostly a part of them thinks that the US wants
Speaker 2: to destroy their entire country and they want they think
Speaker 2: it's existential and.
Speaker 3: They want to fight back.
Speaker 2: Accordingly, things like this only give them more fuel than
Speaker 2: the diplomatic side, which Blinken was just engaging with while
Speaker 2: he was over there. They're like, no, see we can
Speaker 2: work with them, we can avoid this. Let's just all
Speaker 2: you know, we're all making a lot of money. Let's
Speaker 2: just keep it that way. And so we are sending
Speaker 2: so many mixed signals that they have no idea what
Speaker 2: the actual policy of government is, and each side can
Speaker 2: basically point to whatever else is going on as incoherence,
Speaker 2: and that causes a lot of uncertainty and damage potentially
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you are Chinese officials looking at
Speaker 1: the statements of Lincoln on the same day basically as
Speaker 1: these statements from Biden, you know, they don't know if
Speaker 1: this is just a gaff and a bumble and him
Speaker 1: like just having verbal diarrhea. They don't know if this
Speaker 1: is an intentional statement of provocation to directly undermine the
Speaker 1: comments that were made, you know, publicly by Blincoln.
Speaker 4: They don't know.
Speaker 5: Neither do we.
Speaker 1: By the way, we don't know either. We don't know
Speaker 1: what the official policy is, what the official view is.
Speaker 1: I continue to the reporting suggests there's a real tug
Speaker 1: of war within the administration, and you have Biden now
Speaker 1: multiple times undermining what seems to be the more carefully
Speaker 1: crafted strategic tactical direction of the State Department as headed
Speaker 1: by Tony Blincoln, and he'll just go off and you know,
Speaker 1: shoot off at the mouth whatever he feels like saying
Speaker 1: in this very you know, in this very improvement is
Speaker 1: very I was thinking.
Speaker 4: The same thing.
Speaker 1: And you know that was something that we said before
Speaker 1: Biden even came into office, that actually Trump and Biden
Speaker 1: on foreign policy they have some similarities because there's no.
Speaker 5: Real overarching view.
Speaker 1: It's all about how they feel and their personal relationship
Speaker 1: with this or that leader and their like narcissistic belief
Speaker 1: in their own ability to navigate and like cut a deal,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so it is a very Trumpian feeling moment.
Speaker 1: And that is just like the grotesque nature of when
Speaker 1: he gives his most unvarnished views is behind closed doors
Speaker 1: with a bunch of like the super rich funding the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. That is grotesque as well. But you see
Speaker 1: from this why it is that his aids keep him
Speaker 1: under wrap. It's not only because they're worried about political
Speaker 1: damage and the country really being able to assess the
Speaker 1: nature and extent of his potential mental decline, but also because.
Speaker 5: I'm worried about stuff like this.
Speaker 1: With massive global implications for our nation and for foreign affairs.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of President Biden when he said that
Speaker 2: the prospect of armageddon is the highest since Cuban missile crisis,
Speaker 2: which he said to whom rich Democratic donors in New
Speaker 2: York City outside, And I remember, I.
Speaker 3: Think I tweeted this at the time.
Speaker 2: I said, if the President of the United States believes
Speaker 2: that the risk of nuclear war is higher than the
Speaker 2: Quban missile crisis, we need an Oval Office address now, yesterday, immediately.
Speaker 2: You need to lay out your policy in Ukraine how
Speaker 2: you are going to get this away. But no, they're
Speaker 2: not doing that. They know behind closed doors. So I
Speaker 2: read an interview once with President Obama. I am I'm
Speaker 2: no fan of Obama. A lot of people here know that,
Speaker 2: but I did respect that he understood the gravity of
Speaker 2: his words, and he said, every time I open my mouth,
Speaker 2: I have to understand that what I say has implications
Speaker 2: around the world, to the stock market, to you know,
Speaker 2: normal everyday people, to my opponents and to my supporters.
Speaker 2: And thus I always think before I open my mouth.
Speaker 2: That's not something that we got from Trump. Obviously, some
Speaker 2: people find that refreshing, and in a you know, political context.
Speaker 2: I can understand that, but we still have to understand
Speaker 2: the gravity of the office that these people hold. So
Speaker 2: just like the war criminal comment with Putin, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what are you saying, man, Are you saying you will
Speaker 2: never have normal relations with Russia again? Because that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: You need to understand what we're saying Here's right, you know,
Speaker 2: same here with China. I'm like, well, okay, you can
Speaker 2: say that, you can piss them off, and we can
Speaker 2: all get into a pissing contest. But what about like trade?
Speaker 2: What are we here?
Speaker 5: Do we go from here?
Speaker 2: What are our bilateral relations around economics? Because last I checked,
Speaker 2: we're actually importing more from China than at any time
Speaker 2: ever before. So is that the policy? Are we decoupling?
Speaker 2: Are we de risking? Like you know, all of these
Speaker 2: nonsense terms that just get thrown out and the lack
Speaker 2: of seriousness it will leave us tremendously vulnerable. It's not
Speaker 2: a joke because the incoherence opens up, you know, as
Speaker 2: I said, the danger that the Chinese can take any
Speaker 2: action and think that it's justified. You know, we learned
Speaker 2: this also during the Pelosi Taiwan visit. The Chinese were like,
Speaker 2: we don't understand how she can just go and defy you.
Speaker 2: They're like, we don't believe you, right, like we think
Speaker 2: that you're sending her. He's like, He's like, we're separate,
Speaker 2: you know, And they're like, yeah, we just don't buy it.
Speaker 4: I don't really buy it either, to be yeah, buy it.
Speaker 2: But I'm saying like they have no understanding of separate
Speaker 2: but equal branches of government, like literally at all. So
Speaker 2: you always have to think, like, what about the eye
Speaker 2: of the beholder?
Speaker 3: What does that look like?
Speaker 2: What are the consequences because and are we willing to
Speaker 2: pay them?
Speaker 3: These are all very very.
Speaker 1: Important well, and lastly, adding to the goal of what
Speaker 1: is revealed to wealthy donors versus what is revealed to
Speaker 1: the American people, we also got at least his most
Speaker 1: extensive comments about the intelligence around the whole spy balloon situation.
Speaker 1: That was the context in which he was taught talking about,
Speaker 1: where he described she is a dictator. He said that
Speaker 1: that's what's a great embarrassment for dictators when they didn't
Speaker 1: know what happened, claiming that she had no idea what
Speaker 1: was going on with this balloon, and so he said
Speaker 1: the balloon was blown.
Speaker 5: Off course up through Alaska down through the US.
Speaker 1: He didn't know about it when it got shot down.
Speaker 1: He was very embarrassed. He denied it was even there.
Speaker 1: So those are also the most extensive comments we've gotten about,
Speaker 1: at least his interpretation of the intelligence report. So again,
Speaker 1: you know, listen, I don't want to beat a dead
Speaker 1: horse here, but this is why you need to have debates.
Speaker 5: This is why you need to have you.
Speaker 1: Know, a president and other politicians who are willing to
Speaker 1: sit for real interviews with real journalists and field hard
Speaker 1: hitting questions and you know, do press conferences and all
Speaker 1: of those.
Speaker 4: Things, because American people deserve to hear these.
Speaker 1: Things from the president and not have to get a
Speaker 1: secondhand from a fundraiser. They deserve to see pushback on Okay,
Speaker 1: what is if saying this and you're saying that, like,
Speaker 1: what is the actual policy? And where do we go
Speaker 1: from here? And increasingly it's not just Biden, it's Trump too.
Speaker 1: It's basically you know a lot of modern politicians who
Speaker 1: feel like we don't have to do that anymore. We
Speaker 1: can just communicate through social media, we can just go
Speaker 1: on friendly channels. Why would we want to subject ourselves
Speaker 1: to the rigors of a debate or the riggers of
Speaker 1: a difficult political interview, as Trump subjected himself to that
Speaker 1: this week with Threadbare, when I could just go on
Speaker 1: and get softballs from you know, some like twenty year
Speaker 1: old TikToker or whatever.
Speaker 3: Pathetic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, indeed, all right, let's break down what's going on
Speaker 1: with Supreme Court Justice Alito. So there was news from
Speaker 1: Pro Publica. Let's start with here about some potential, very
Speaker 1: questionable ethics decisions on the part of Aledo. This really
Speaker 1: rhymes with some of the reporting they did also about
Speaker 1: Justice Thomas accepting gifts and luxury travel from Harlan Crow
Speaker 1: billionaire who's also a major political donor. Put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen from Pro Publica to show their report.
Speaker 1: The headline year is Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury
Speaker 1: fishing vacation with GOP billionaire who later had cases before
Speaker 1: the court.
Speaker 5: Let me read you.
Speaker 1: The opening here, which contains all of the most relevant facts.
Speaker 1: So in early July two thousand and eight, Samuel Ledo
Speaker 1: stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury
Speaker 1: fishing lodge that charged more than one thousand dollars a day,
Speaker 1: and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of
Speaker 1: his leg Alito pose for a picture that you can
Speaker 1: see if you're watching this, guys. To his left, a
Speaker 1: man stood beaming Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who
Speaker 1: has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his
Speaker 1: favor in high stakes business disputes. We're talking multi billion
Speaker 1: dollars at stake in these disputes as well, Guys, Singer
Speaker 1: was more than a fellow angler. He flew Aledo to
Speaker 1: Alaska on a private jet. If the Justice charted the
Speaker 1: plane himself, the cost could have exceeded one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars just one way. In the years that followed, Singer's
Speaker 1: hedge fund came before the Court at least ten times,
Speaker 1: in cases where his role was often covered by the
Speaker 1: legal press and mainstream media. They go on to say,
Speaker 1: Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the Conservative Federalist Society,
Speaker 1: attended and helped organize.
Speaker 5: That fishing vacation.
Speaker 1: Leo invited Singer to join and ask Singer if he
Speaker 1: and Alito could fly on the billionaire's jet. Leo also
Speaker 1: recently played an important role in the justices confirmation to
Speaker 1: the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major
Speaker 1: donors to Leo's political groups. So you guys get the
Speaker 1: outlines here, Supreme Court justice invited on this luxury all
Speaker 1: expenses paid fishing trip organized by Leonard Leo, who himself
Speaker 1: is a real political power player and has a lot
Speaker 1: of interest in the justices themselves and also the rulings
Speaker 1: that they make on the court. He strategically invites Paul Singer,
Speaker 1: who is this hedge fund billionaire who again had multiple
Speaker 1: cases in concluding a big one dispute with the nation
Speaker 1: state of Argentina where again there were billions of dollars
Speaker 1: at stake here. Yeah, Alito doesn't recuse himself from any
Speaker 1: of this, and Singer provides him with space on his
Speaker 1: private jet to fly there again that you know would
Speaker 1: cost one hundred thousand dollars in one direction. None of
Speaker 1: this was disclosed, and as I just mentioned, Alito did
Speaker 1: not recuse himself from any of the cases involving Singer.
Speaker 1: There's another layer to this story, though, which is that
Speaker 1: pro publica as you know, to a typical journalist organization
Speaker 1: news organization would do reach out to Alito for comment.
Speaker 4: He didn't respond to them.
Speaker 1: Instead, he wrote up his response, which was published in
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal before the piece even dropped.
Speaker 5: Now that raises a whole lot of.
Speaker 1: Questions about the Wall Street Journal just willing to be
Speaker 1: like his pr allied, because how could you fact check
Speaker 1: what he was saying when the piece hasn't even come
Speaker 1: out yet from Pro Publica. But put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. This was the justification from Aledo, and the
Speaker 1: headline here too is wild justice Samuel Alito. Pro Publica
Speaker 1: misleads its readers the public case levels false charges about
Speaker 1: Supreme Court recusal, financial disclosures, and a two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight fishing trip.
Speaker 4: Again, Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Churnama published this piece with that headline before the Pro
Speaker 1: public piece even dropped. Basically, if you read through this,
Speaker 1: what you see is a lot of cope about, like, well,
Speaker 1: the loatch wasn't really all that fancy, and you know,
Speaker 1: I interpreted lots of other people have interpreted that private
Speaker 1: jet flights don't technically meet the definition of needing disclosure.
Speaker 1: Now they just adjusted the ethics rules to make it
Speaker 1: quite clear that private jet rides do require disclosure, and
Speaker 1: a lot of experts say that the plane face reading,
Speaker 1: you know, has always indicated that it needed to be disclosed.
Speaker 1: And he went on to say that he didn't think
Speaker 1: any reasonable person would think that these cozy relationships with
Speaker 1: Paul Singer would lead them to question his impartiality, and
Speaker 1: so that's why he didn't recuse. But there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on with this story here.
Speaker 2: I've spoken with a lot of friends who are, you know,
Speaker 2: big defenders of justice Alito here and listen the question
Speaker 2: Thereone was like, well did it work? Like did Singer
Speaker 2: get his way? It doesn't matter. It's about the appearance
Speaker 2: of corruption. And guess what. Why do we all understand
Speaker 2: that whenever it comes to congressional stock trades, But then
Speaker 2: it starts to get fuzzy whenever we're talking about our
Speaker 2: favorite presidential candidate or maybe the guy who authored a
Speaker 2: decision that we really really like before the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: like Row versus Wade. And I just think that if
Speaker 2: any reasonable person could see this is outrageous as one
Speaker 2: of the most powerful people in the United States is
Speaker 2: flying in a lavish luxury vacation. Personally, I want to
Speaker 2: know why we're not indulging in this, Crystal? Why why
Speaker 2: do we have better at you know, Krystal and I
Speaker 2: we've been invited on some weird stuff. You know, every
Speaker 2: once in a while, some are very powerful want to
Speaker 2: say whatever, hang out with you, interview view, like oh,
Speaker 2: all expenses paid, you know, and every time we're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I just think it'll look bad. You know. It's like
Speaker 2: one of those where you know, and we're not even
Speaker 2: government officials, We're just we're just doing people bringing the news.
Speaker 2: Like we're under no oub We get we're small business
Speaker 2: owners and you know, as private citizens, we could do
Speaker 2: it if we wanted to.
Speaker 3: There's nothing stopping it.
Speaker 2: But everyone understands there ain't no such thing as a
Speaker 2: free lunch.
Speaker 4: Nope.
Speaker 3: And and specifically here here's what I want to know.
Speaker 2: What they were A served wine that was costing one thousand.
Speaker 3: Dollars a bottle.
Speaker 2: First of all, I like wine every once in a while,
Speaker 2: you know, on the rare occasions that I do drink.
Speaker 2: I have never had a bottle of wine more than
Speaker 2: like a hundred bucks or something like that. What is
Speaker 2: a one thousand dollars bottle of wine?
Speaker 3: It must be nice you know.
Speaker 4: To me, honestly, it doesn't even keep it.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, it's just like, I bet it's
Speaker 2: just the flex. I bet it's all about like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is nineteen sixty eight, you know, Chateau whatever. Drink it,
Speaker 2: you drink exactly, drink it because you can. It's it's
Speaker 2: the flex on the part of the guy who's able
Speaker 2: to serve it. Maybe not necessarily about the taste the question.
Speaker 1: I typically drink eight dollar bottles of wine from Walmart,
Speaker 1: not my area of expertise.
Speaker 2: On a broader level, I mean, this is so obvious,
Speaker 2: like in an era where we have bad institutional trusts
Speaker 2: and we see constant corruption and cavorting of the elite
Speaker 2: and the policymakers, if you want to appear unimpeachable, then
Speaker 2: you have no right to be going on vacations like
Speaker 2: this or what Clarence Thomas was doing as well. All
Speaker 2: of us understand that nobody gives you a private jet
Speaker 2: for free right, and that nobody has hanging out with
Speaker 2: you getting invited on luxury vacations. And my response to
Speaker 2: them always is like, what do you expect them to
Speaker 2: just have no lives? No, you can leave, dude, resign.
Speaker 2: You can live a very comfortable, big private retirement, and
Speaker 2: none of those who care.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're getting paid like paupers either, like
Speaker 1: they make a hefty salary. Go on your own damn
Speaker 1: vacation and don't fly around on some hedge fund billionaire's
Speaker 1: private jet secretly by the way, or you.
Speaker 4: Don't even disclose it.
Speaker 1: Who has business frequently like routinely before the court?
Speaker 4: What do you think people are going to think about that?
Speaker 1: What I may be my favorite justification he gave here
Speaker 1: Sager and his little Wall Street journal piece was he said,
Speaker 1: As for the flight, mister Singer and others had already
Speaker 1: made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited
Speaker 1: shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I
Speaker 1: would like to fly there in a seat that, as
Speaker 1: far as I'm aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It
Speaker 1: was my understanding this would not impose any extra cost
Speaker 1: on mister Singer.
Speaker 3: All right, let's put it this way.
Speaker 2: I had somebody who used that excuse to me, and
Speaker 2: I go, hey, man, you know I'm flying to India
Speaker 2: in two weeks.
Speaker 3: The jets going there anyway, they still charge you for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, set, who is it. That's not how business works.
Speaker 2: They still charge you for it, man, And you know
Speaker 2: I just looked it up justin justice. Alito has a
Speaker 2: net worth of two point nine million to seven point
Speaker 2: four million. So listen, man, you can afford it, like
Speaker 2: you could.
Speaker 1: You You don't have to fly by private jet to Alestase.
Speaker 2: I can get to Alaska. There's a direct flight here
Speaker 2: from Washington to San Francisco. You could be in Alaska
Speaker 2: in seven hours. When you're two point nine to seven
Speaker 2: point four million net worth, you can buy yourself a
Speaker 2: nice first class ticket. You could buy yourself a seat
Speaker 2: at this quote comfortable and rustic lodge. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's so obvious that this is problematic, and you know
Speaker 2: a lot of court defenders are very upset, like, oh,
Speaker 2: Clarence Thomas did nothing wrong. I'm like he obviously did.
Speaker 2: Like going on these crazy yacht vacations, having some dude
Speaker 2: buy his mom's house was right, right, You're this guy
Speaker 2: going on a luxury fishing vacation. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: like to fish, then pay for it yourself. Man.
Speaker 3: That's what a lot of normal people do in this country.
Speaker 2: You just can't be going out here saying that there
Speaker 2: was absolutely nothing that was exchanged. Nobody on Earth, no
Speaker 2: normal person on Earth, none gets to go on a
Speaker 2: trip like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think They're just doing this sound
Speaker 1: of the goodness of their heart because they really like you,
Speaker 1: because you're just.
Speaker 4: A nice guy.
Speaker 1: You think that's that's why they had they had to
Speaker 1: fly on the private jet to the luxury fishing vacation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: are getting that opportunity when there isn't some kind of
Speaker 1: a quid pro quo, and just the appearance is a problem.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'll say about this is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's insane and disgraceful that there is no Supreme Court
Speaker 1: standard of ethics. Yes, every other federal Court judge has
Speaker 1: to abide by a code of ethics.
Speaker 4: Random low level government.
Speaker 1: Employees have to abide by a code of ethics that
Speaker 1: prevents them from taking even small dollar gifts from anyone
Speaker 1: because they're worried about actual and the appearance of corruption.
Speaker 1: John Roberts has basically stonewalled on all of this, refused
Speaker 1: to go testify to Congress about some of the revelations
Speaker 1: with regard to Justice Thomas and the concerns more broadly
Speaker 1: about corruption on the court. They have shown certainly no
Speaker 1: interest in having Congress get involved. In fact, Roberts has
Speaker 1: sort of insinuated he doesn't think that Congress even has
Speaker 1: the power to regulate them, which I think is I mean,
Speaker 1: it just shows like they're arrogance and the way that
Speaker 1: they really don't see themselves as a coequal branch, and
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, they're not treated.
Speaker 5: Like a co equal branch.
Speaker 1: They really are these sort of like unaccountable supremacist branch
Speaker 1: of the United States government. And if you pull the
Speaker 1: American people like should Supreme Court justices have to abide
Speaker 1: by a code of ethics, it's like ninety some percent
Speaker 1: that are like, obviously they should. So it's at the
Speaker 1: very least complete insanity that there are not official guidelines
Speaker 1: for when you recuse and what your expectations are, what
Speaker 1: your moral and ethical expectations are if you are sitting
Speaker 1: on this court, which is one of the most powerful.
Speaker 5: Forces in the entire world, actually not.
Speaker 4: Just in the country.
Speaker 3: So I agree with you completely. Let's move on.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about test scores, about what's
Speaker 2: going on in this country. This is something which look,
Speaker 2: we've been trying to draw attention to now for years,
Speaker 2: specifically around school closures and what the impact of all
Speaker 2: it is. And unfortunately, it's becoming very very clear that
Speaker 2: school closures in the fallout from COVID have been a
Speaker 2: naw national catastrophes. So let's go and put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screens. This is called chalk Beat. It
Speaker 2: is a education specifically trade publication which did a really
Speaker 2: good job of looking at the newest averages of national
Speaker 2: test scores. What you can see here before you is
Speaker 2: that effectively national test scores. And you know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of questions even around whether the test scores themselves
Speaker 2: are good, but they're what we have basically peaked in
Speaker 2: twenty ten. They were starting to decline in terms of
Speaker 2: overall standards up until the pandemic, but after the pandemic
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, they just absolutely fell off a cliff,
Speaker 2: both on national math and on national reading tests. So,
Speaker 2: for example, eighty five percent of thirteen year olds in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve demonstrated skills and basic problem solving in math.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, that number is now just seventy nine
Speaker 2: percent and now has fallen into seventy one percent, so
Speaker 2: we're getting even more of a precipitous drop in the
Speaker 2: last year. This is specifically the worst for students who
Speaker 2: are in the lowest income tront of students, and they
Speaker 2: actually show you that the gap between lowest and highest
Speaker 2: performing students also widened significantly.
Speaker 3: And the reason why for that. Let's go to the next.
Speaker 2: One here, please, guys, because what you can see here
Speaker 2: as I was referencing, is around all students, you can
Speaker 2: see that the average there is at two sixty four. However,
Speaker 2: whenever you drop it and you or sorry, it's at
Speaker 2: two fifty six. Whenever you look at white students, it's
Speaker 2: two sixty four. We look at Latino students, it's two
Speaker 2: forty seven. If you look at black students's actually two
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty seven.
Speaker 3: That's just in reading.
Speaker 2: In math, it's very similar what the gap is, and
Speaker 2: the gap again has widened between.
Speaker 3: Black and white.
Speaker 2: I actually prefer to look at it aggregated in terms
Speaker 2: of wealth.
Speaker 3: We don't have the exact data.
Speaker 2: On it, but it's becoming clear that because of racial
Speaker 2: disparity when it becomes to wealth, is that students who
Speaker 2: are likely at the lower income spectrum, of which we've
Speaker 2: talked about here before. We're basically left at home to
Speaker 2: screw off. Like the parents were very busy, they had
Speaker 2: to work. Unlikely we work from home. What is a
Speaker 2: seven year old going to do? What is any seven
Speaker 2: year old going to do?
Speaker 3: Nothing?
Speaker 2: If unsupervised? Richer students where their parents do? They sat there?
Speaker 2: They were working from home, They're monitoring their homework, monitoring
Speaker 2: lessons and more importantly hiring private tutors, as what happened
Speaker 2: in San Francisco. And thus the gap has become so
Speaker 2: explosive now that by all metrics, we are living through
Speaker 2: one of the most unequal education times in modern history.
Speaker 2: And the higher education is not grappling with this. The
Speaker 2: schools obviously they don't have the tools, governments and all that.
Speaker 2: Everybody's pointing their fingers, but at a raw level, this
Speaker 2: is a catastrophe.
Speaker 3: This is a disaster.
Speaker 5: It truly, truly is.
Speaker 1: And you're absolutely right that the poorest kids, there's no
Speaker 1: doubt about it, got hit the hardest, and it's so
Speaker 1: obvious why because.
Speaker 5: Their parents are working.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of them had to be left
Speaker 1: home with like an older brother or sister, or potentially
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a grandparent who's not particularly technologically savvy.
Speaker 1: I mean as a parent who was navigated all of this,
Speaker 1: by the way, in a household that had very spotty
Speaker 1: Internet access. Even for someone who has, you know, is
Speaker 1: blessed out the resource that I have, this was very,
Speaker 1: very difficult. And the other piece Soccer is that a
Speaker 1: lot of private schools actually stayed in person. So my
Speaker 1: youngest was in preschool at that point at the school
Speaker 1: that actually my mom run ran until she just retired,
Speaker 1: and so thank god she was able to stay in
Speaker 1: person the whole time, because those years are so incredibly
Speaker 1: critical when she's learning, you know, the basic building blocks to.
Speaker 4: Be able to read. Very difficult situation.
Speaker 1: For my son, who was in second grade at that point,
Speaker 1: who's you know, typical little boy and has a lot
Speaker 1: of energy, and to just stay focused on like school
Speaker 1: work on a zoom call is very difficult. My daughter,
Speaker 1: who was in middle.
Speaker 4: School at that time, it was it was really.
Speaker 1: Really challenging, even when you had everything going for you.
Speaker 1: So no one should be surprised that, you know, the
Speaker 1: results have been this catastrophic.
Speaker 5: One other thing that I noted.
Speaker 1: Here is if you look at the charts, and maybe
Speaker 1: we can put this back up on the screen. Guys,
Speaker 1: the very first element that we showed, if you look
Speaker 1: at the charts, you see a sudden drop off effectively.
Speaker 4: In the pandemic years.
Speaker 1: But as you noted Soccer, the peak year was actually
Speaker 1: for these test scores was actually twenty twelve, and listen,
Speaker 1: correlation is not causation, So there's a lot of research
Speaker 1: that would need to be done. That's also the same
Speaker 1: year when you see some of the increases in depression,
Speaker 1: increases in suicide, increases in anxiety. And it's also the
Speaker 1: same year when smartphones became incredibly prevalent. It's the same
Speaker 1: year when social media moved to be more algorithmically based,
Speaker 1: so it's triggering your emotions and manipulating you more and
Speaker 1: keeping you locked in for longer periods of time. Again,
Speaker 1: we would need research to show that there's actual causation here,
Speaker 1: but to me, it seems like not an accident that
Speaker 1: these things are all tied together, that actually the test
Speaker 1: score decline predates the pandemic. Again, it was accelerated as
Speaker 1: so many trends in oursis society work by the pandemic
Speaker 1: but they were actually going in the wrong direction for
Speaker 1: quite a number of years before we even got to
Speaker 1: the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Well data backs this up.
Speaker 2: My friend Brad Wilcox over at the National Marriage Project
Speaker 2: at UVA tweeted this chout yesterday.
Speaker 3: Wanted to bring into all of you.
Speaker 2: What you can see here is the depressive symptoms in
Speaker 2: US eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders, and the increase precipitously
Speaker 2: after twenty twelve is right there.
Speaker 3: You can literally see it in the data.
Speaker 2: In terms of the numbers of eight, tenth and twelfth
Speaker 2: graders who say I can't do anything right. It has
Speaker 2: gone from thirty percent, you know, back in twenty ten
Speaker 2: now to almost fifty percent. In terms of my life
Speaker 2: is not useful forty four percent now. Was hovering somewhere
Speaker 2: around like twenty two percent at that time, and then
Speaker 2: I do not enjoy my life, same thing. It was
Speaker 2: bottomed out, it was near twenty percent and is now
Speaker 2: all the way up to forty eight point nine. We're
Speaker 2: seeing an absolutely disaster in terms of depressive symptoms. So
Speaker 2: it's not a surprise that you see depressive symptoms on
Speaker 2: the rise. You see rise of social media, smartphone use.
Speaker 2: We know the test scores have been dropping now at
Speaker 2: a certain smaller rate up until the pandemic, and then
Speaker 2: everything just was lit on fire afterwards. And unfortunately, it's
Speaker 2: just going to exacerbate all of our existing problems in
Speaker 2: higher education.
Speaker 3: I'll give everyone example.
Speaker 2: I've been doing a lot of monologues here about how
Speaker 2: you know, higher education schools want to preserve affirmative action
Speaker 2: after the court is likely to strike it down. Well, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: they're going to have to nuke all merit based scores
Speaker 2: in order to do that, because as I've said, of
Speaker 2: the gap in between poor and of rich students, well,
Speaker 2: the issue is is that the gap is going to
Speaker 2: get even wider crystal, and it actually validates the whole
Speaker 2: idea that a lot of this is unfair, because then
Speaker 2: you're putting someone in a situation where they're not even
Speaker 2: academically or rigorously prepared for.
Speaker 1: The curriculum n't fix the problem by the time people
Speaker 1: are at college life, exactly.
Speaker 5: It's got to be.
Speaker 4: It's got to start.
Speaker 1: From, you know, with realations like kindergarten, the Universal pre k,
Speaker 1: honestly even before that, because kids who have those foundational
Speaker 1: years in preschool are much more paired for school, they're
Speaker 1: much more likely to succeed academically throughout their careers. But
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking about when we interview Jack Dorsey,
Speaker 1: of course was ahead of Twitter, and I asked him
Speaker 1: about how he thinks about the social media part of
Speaker 1: this and the balance between being in the real world
Speaker 1: and being locked into your screen. And he doesn't have kids,
Speaker 1: but he said, for a lot of his friends who
Speaker 1: are high up in the tech space, they don't let
Speaker 1: their kids on the stuff.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of really rich people who work
Speaker 2: in tech and they don't let their And.
Speaker 1: It's another it's actually another class divide because the technology
Speaker 1: now is more readily available if you're busy. You know,
Speaker 1: I speak as a parent lots of experience, I am
Speaker 1: certainly guilty of this. The easiest thing you can do
Speaker 1: is give the phone, give the device, give the tablet,
Speaker 1: give the gaming said whatever to your kid, and they
Speaker 1: leave you alone so you can accomplish what you need
Speaker 1: to do. It takes time, effort, and often resources to
Speaker 1: provide your kids alternatives to these devices, and so it
Speaker 1: opens up another classify where the wealthy have the time
Speaker 1: and ability. And also, you know, are some of them
Speaker 1: got wealthy in the tech sector and are deeply aware
Speaker 1: of the manipulative techniques and just how bad this is
Speaker 1: for kids' brains. They're able to keep the devices away
Speaker 1: and limit the exposure, and working class people it's much
Speaker 1: much more difficult. So it opens up yet another class difede.
Speaker 1: But you know, I was sort of I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: it was skeptical, but I was kind of ambivalent about
Speaker 1: whether it was really smartphones and social media that was
Speaker 1: driving a lot of the depression and other issues that
Speaker 1: we're seeing among teenagers. But I'm becoming increasingly convinced by
Speaker 1: the research that this is a real problem and it's
Speaker 1: a hard one to put back.
Speaker 4: In the bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, because guess what, you know, you can't get
Speaker 2: three years back, Like nobody's going to go back and
Speaker 2: give children some of the most formative years of their lives.
Speaker 2: And who the hell is going to take away the phone?
Speaker 2: If anything, they get my phones the younger and younger
Speaker 2: and younger ages. See nine year olds out there with smartphones,
Speaker 2: and yeah, look, I don't know, especially as it remains
Speaker 2: probably the easiest way for a lot of parents basically
Speaker 2: to sedate their children of which who can't sympathize with that?
Speaker 2: You know, you see mom flying with three kids on
Speaker 2: a plane, They're all screaming, they whip out the iPads.
Speaker 3: What happens, Everything goes quiet.
Speaker 2: It's nice. It's nice for me, right, But there's a cost.
Speaker 2: There's a cost, I think to all of that. So
Speaker 2: I've got a sixteen hour flight coming up, and uh,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be tough, Right, It's gonna be tough. Like,
Speaker 2: see the kids out there and they're gonna be screaming.
Speaker 2: You're like, just give them the damn I.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just give them the freaking tablet.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, let's get to this one consternation, Crystal.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up there on the screen. I guess
Speaker 2: there's a lot to say about it. So, uh, James Esis,
Speaker 2: who is uh?
Speaker 3: What is he?
Speaker 2: I would call him like somebody who tweets a lot
Speaker 2: about trans issues.
Speaker 3: Let's put it kind all right.
Speaker 4: I don't know who this individual is.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, okay, gotcha, he says quote. Yesterday, after
Speaker 2: posting a tweet saying that I reject the word CYS
Speaker 2: and don't wish to be called it, I receive a
Speaker 2: slew of messages from transactivists who called me a sissy
Speaker 2: with the c telling me I am, whether I like
Speaker 2: it or not. Just imagine if the roles were reversed.
Speaker 2: Elon replied and said, quote repeated and targeted harassment against
Speaker 2: any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive at
Speaker 2: a minimum of temporary suspensions. The words CIS or cis
Speaker 2: gender are now considered slurs on the platform.
Speaker 3: So I guess there's actually a lot to say about this.
Speaker 3: At the very least.
Speaker 2: Number one is this is bad because the previous policy
Speaker 2: that existed over at Twitter, of which I opposed I
Speaker 2: thought was very stupid, was that you were liable to
Speaker 2: be banned if you were to quote unquote dead name
Speaker 2: somebody aka used their previous name pre transition. You know,
Speaker 2: I think it's mean, but I also don't think it
Speaker 2: should be who you should be banned for doing so.
Speaker 2: Same in terms of using the wrong gender pronoun like currently,
Speaker 2: the Daily Wires having a big host of problems.
Speaker 3: A lot of their.
Speaker 2: Videos have been taken off YouTube because they've been using
Speaker 2: different pronouns and the preferred pronouns of some of the
Speaker 2: people that they're talking about. Again, you know, you can
Speaker 2: think it's unkind, I wouldn't do that in a personal
Speaker 2: situation that said, you know, they're taking a broader strands whatever.
Speaker 2: I think that's right free as an American citizen. But
Speaker 2: then you shouldn't be turning around and applying the same
Speaker 2: policy because the problem that he can we throw that
Speaker 2: up there back, please up on the screen. I want
Speaker 2: to read again the exact quote that he said. He
Speaker 2: specifically said repeated targeted harassment. And you know why am
Speaker 2: I The hair on the back of my neck goes
Speaker 2: from that. That is the same exact policy that was
Speaker 2: used from some of the transactivists to get their opponents banned.
Speaker 2: And it comes down to the question like what does
Speaker 2: that mean? You tweets this three times? Is that enough
Speaker 2: to get banned?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 2: In my Yeah? I mean the trans people who are
Speaker 2: calling the guy ASSISSI I mean again, I think.
Speaker 3: It's probably mean.
Speaker 2: I don't really know why anybody would do that, but
Speaker 2: a lot of people are mean, it's the Internet, you know,
Speaker 2: deal with it.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I mean, and.
Speaker 1: It's really not that mean, like every going to be
Speaker 1: that hurt by it?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. I also don't think that
Speaker 2: somebody who's been quote unquote dead named, is like the
Speaker 2: worst thing that's ever happened to them in their life.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, shut up, you know, deal with it.
Speaker 2: You're the one putting yourself out there for attention on
Speaker 2: the internet, and then you're upset that somebody is responding
Speaker 2: and being unkind. We get a lot of unkind comments
Speaker 2: about here, about my beard, about the hair, about.
Speaker 4: The list of people to be big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I have a whole list. Listen, come to me,
Speaker 2: elon I can give you. But I would never do it,
Speaker 2: even even the worst critics. I'd be like, you know what, man,
Speaker 2: it's a free contrast. Say what you want we put.
Speaker 2: We put our words out there, other people can put there.
Speaker 2: So I think it's very much the wrong policy, and
Speaker 2: unfortunately it just really is the ad hoc nature of
Speaker 2: which he is going about it at his own whims,
Speaker 2: which is just look, you can think it's funny, I
Speaker 2: certainly do, but that does not mean that it is
Speaker 2: the right thing. And in fact, whenever you do kind
Speaker 2: of you know, smile anything, ah, they're getting a taste
Speaker 2: of their own medicine. That's exactly what you want to
Speaker 2: be able to prevent because that is the same way
Speaker 2: that the previous people who used to ran Twitter used
Speaker 2: to act whenever they got their ideological opponents band So,
Speaker 2: no matter who it is, I will speak out for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you are truly this free speech warrior, which
Speaker 1: we already have one hundred examples where it's falling short
Speaker 1: of that stated goal, But that's really your thing. It
Speaker 1: matters the most when it's like politically inconvenient for whatever
Speaker 1: your views are. So even if this is just mostly
Speaker 1: a troll, the fact that he just erradically makes these
Speaker 1: decisions and they go very much contrary to that stated
Speaker 1: free speech commitment, it's just very revealing and everybody needs
Speaker 1: to stop being so freaking fragile. Listen, if your feelings
Speaker 1: are really going to be so hurt by you know,
Speaker 1: whatever name you're called online.
Speaker 5: Don't read it.
Speaker 2: Or don't go on Twitter, don't tweet that much waish reasoner. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason I don't read my replies
Speaker 1: and I'm barely on Twitter because I don't like, I
Speaker 1: don't enjoy it. Right, people are made to each other
Speaker 1: and it's not really nice place to hang out and live.
Speaker 1: And as we just discussed with the previous segment. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of clear evidence that none of
Speaker 1: this is really good for any of our mental health.
Speaker 1: So if your feelings are getting hurt online, you owe
Speaker 1: it to yourself to take a step back, go touch
Speaker 1: some grass.
Speaker 4: And let it be. If you don't see it, it's
Speaker 4: not a hard feeling.
Speaker 2: And I agree, And unfortunately that's you know, people seem
Speaker 2: to live their entire lives and they make so many
Speaker 2: This is really a boat sides thing, and I actually
Speaker 2: find it the most in the trans issue. The amount
Speaker 2: of people I know who live their entire lives about
Speaker 2: what's happening online with respect to this discourse is insane
Speaker 2: to me. I don't understand, and I've even said this,
Speaker 2: I said in my previous monologue it transgender ideology drives
Speaker 2: me nuts.
Speaker 3: I find it abhorrent.
Speaker 2: I personally see it as a threat to a lot
Speaker 2: of children. I do not, though, live my entire life
Speaker 2: or spend all of my public platform time talking drawing
Speaker 2: attention to it and acting as if the most important
Speaker 2: thing in the country for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 3: A Because I don't think so.
Speaker 2: B Also, we have a responsibility to our audience to
Speaker 2: meet them where they are, and what we have found,
Speaker 2: predominantly crystal, is that there is a massive proliferation how
Speaker 2: many YouTube videos and creators and people out there have
Speaker 2: built entire brands and spent hours, you know, analyzing the
Speaker 2: term cisgender, transgender, whatever, queer, whatever drag show is happening,
Speaker 2: and then didn't talk about what we just did with
Speaker 2: the test scores. We just spent some time on that,
Speaker 2: or Samuel Alito and corruption, or China and the Cuba base.
Speaker 2: We have found and understood that for the vast majority
Speaker 2: of people, they want to hear more about much more
Speaker 2: important issues. Sure they will talk. We could talk about
Speaker 2: trans of which we're doing some stuff here, but that's.
Speaker 3: Not all they want to hear about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's.
Speaker 3: Where I object to a lot of the discourse looks.
Speaker 1: I have felt it important in the current climate where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of legislation being passed. Arkansas law just
Speaker 1: got struck down by a court there to stand up
Speaker 1: for trans people's rights to just live and make their
Speaker 1: own decisions. And I think that that is really critical.
Speaker 1: But I also think like you're not really doing a
Speaker 1: lot of that when you're just engaging in this very insular,
Speaker 1: you know, discourse on Twitter that's just about getting retweets
Speaker 1: and being me into each other. And there's no like,
Speaker 1: there's no attempt at a good faith debate that's going
Speaker 1: on here with any of this. But you know, going
Speaker 1: back to Elon, it's just another example of the whole
Speaker 1: free speech idea and let's take Elon out of it.
Speaker 1: Any billionaire is not going to solve your free speech issues.
Speaker 1: Like they're just not going to, even if they're well intentioned,
Speaker 1: even if they have the right commitments. That was another
Speaker 1: thing Dorsy really pointed out, is like the level of
Speaker 1: pressure that you're under from advertisers, in particular when the
Speaker 1: overwhelming bulk of your revenue is still driven by ad dollars.
Speaker 1: When you have countries that are coming to you and
Speaker 1: pressuring you and like we're going to shut your whole
Speaker 1: thing down if you don't do what we want you
Speaker 1: to do. You can't just leave it to the whims
Speaker 1: of any one person, whether you like them or hate them,
Speaker 1: or think they're good or bad or indifferent.
Speaker 5: It is not going to work out.
Speaker 3: I'm with you. I'm with you one hundred percent, Crystal.
Speaker 3: What do you take a look at.
Speaker 1: Well, devoid of much tangible political progress and stripped of
Speaker 1: hope that anything could really change. Our politics has mostly
Speaker 1: collapsed into a competition of vibes. Crafty politicians, recognizing the
Speaker 1: angry populist moment, they've seized on the anti establishment esthetic,
Speaker 1: offering appealing contrarian vibes that substitute for an actual platform
Speaker 1: that really challenges economic elites, where if you can mutter
Speaker 1: a few magic mantras and get the right people to
Speaker 1: hate you, then you too can have your moment in
Speaker 1: the political sun. These fraudulists are seizing on a market opening.
Speaker 1: A large group of voters are disgusted rightly so with
Speaker 1: the two major parties and angry with an economy that
Speaker 1: has failed them for their whole lives. But actually delivering
Speaker 1: for those voters and standing up to the economic royalists
Speaker 1: that is so hard. Embracing catchphrases is so easy. So,
Speaker 1: after having absorbed the political lessons of Trump and burning
Speaker 1: the itch that both of them scratched, this election season
Speaker 1: has seen an explosion of candidates who know how to
Speaker 1: talk the populist talk without actually really walking the walk.
Speaker 1: I got three examples for you today of politicians left
Speaker 1: right and center.
Speaker 5: That this description fits.
Speaker 1: First, let's start with the least successful and most clownish
Speaker 1: fraudulalist effort comes courtesy of the folks at No Labels.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: This is a billionaire back group that is planning a
Speaker 1: third party run and seeking ballot access in all fifty states.
Speaker 1: Their website uses all the language of anti establishment third
Speaker 1: party efforts. They talk about the duopoly, They speak in
Speaker 1: vague terms about the common sense majority. As we found
Speaker 1: out though in an interview earlier this week, they're very
Speaker 1: skittish when you actually ask them about their specific policy views.
Speaker 5: Just take a listen.
Speaker 14: Can you get specific about what your complaints, specifically what
Speaker 14: Joe Biden are, and how your theoretical candidate would reflect
Speaker 14: a different policy valance than with the Biden administration, which
Speaker 14: I view is very centrist and very moderate, which is
Speaker 14: you guys's brand what they've put forward.
Speaker 15: So this is something that we've been very clear about
Speaker 15: since the beginning, which is we are not doing this
Speaker 15: because of subjective judgment about how good or bad Biden
Speaker 15: is or a judgment about Trump. What we're doing is
Speaker 15: something that nobody else in the political system seems to
Speaker 15: be doing, which is actually just responding to what the
Speaker 15: public clearly wants.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 15: They have obviously different reasons for not liking Trump right
Speaker 15: now or not liking Biden, but the one thing we
Speaker 15: can anchor in is that they want a better choice
Speaker 15: and in our view, having the ballot and in July
Speaker 15: we're actually going to be putting out some ideas. What
Speaker 15: that's going to finally do for the first time in
Speaker 15: a long time is there's this huge common sense majority
Speaker 15: in this country that gets ignored that both parties don't
Speaker 15: feel like they have to be accountable to.
Speaker 1: It's no accident that No Labels actively avoid specific critiques
Speaker 1: of Biden or of Trump, preferring to live in the
Speaker 1: mushy language of common sense and unity because the billionaire
Speaker 1: backed agenda that they actually support is wildly unpopular. We
Speaker 1: know that because we can see from their allies and
Speaker 1: from their track record where their commitments truly lie. No
Speaker 1: Label's favorite centerra kureson Cinema. She went to the mat
Speaker 1: to protect the private equity Bonanza carried interest loophole. Another
Speaker 1: No Labels darling, Joe Manchin, he blocked tax hikes on
Speaker 1: the rich. Josh gottheimer of the No Labels allied problem
Speaker 1: Solver's caucus. He was ready to blow everything up to
Speaker 1: reinstate the salt tax deduction for the rich. Their allies
Speaker 1: have been among the most slavishly devoted to protecting corporate
Speaker 1: interests and low taxes for the wealthy. Telling Lee No
Speaker 1: Labels complains about Repotublicans and Democrats being behold into special interests,
Speaker 1: but then they refuse to disclose their own donors, And
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I'm kind of confused about
Speaker 1: their twenty twenty four tactics, but their goals are really clear.
Speaker 1: They want to use majoritarian rhetoric to Trojan Horse in
Speaker 1: an agenda that is even more pro corporate than what
Speaker 1: Biden or Trump would actually enact, the polar opposite of
Speaker 1: what the American people truly want. Next up, we've got
Speaker 1: the right wing mode of fraudulism, which has been embraced
Speaker 1: by quite a few prominent figures, but is articulated in
Speaker 1: its most pristine form by the vech Framaswami of a
Speaker 1: veck in DeSantis, among others. They've used the cloak of
Speaker 1: wokeness to posture as anti corporate while boosting what is
Speaker 1: truly a thoroughly corporate friendly ideology.
Speaker 4: Just take a listen.
Speaker 12: So, in a nutshell, here's how it worked. Wall Street
Speaker 12: got in bed with a bunch of woke millennials. Together
Speaker 12: they birth woke capitalism, and of course they put Occupy
Speaker 12: Wall Street up for adoption. You don't even know what
Speaker 12: that is anymore.
Speaker 3: That's the Wall Street edition.
Speaker 12: As it turns out, there's a really similar backroom deal
Speaker 12: playing out in the other coast, in Silicon Valley as well.
Speaker 3: And here's the way it works over there.
Speaker 12: Woke activists demand that big Tech censors political views that
Speaker 12: they don't like, and in return, the left degrees to
Speaker 12: leave big Tech's monopoly power in tact. And again it
Speaker 12: is working masterfully for both sides. That is how this
Speaker 12: new arranged marriage works. This is not a marriage of love.
Speaker 12: This is more like mutual prostitution. And it is working.
Speaker 12: And the net result is the rise of America's newest leviathan,
Speaker 12: the woke industrial complex. It is no longer just Wall Street,
Speaker 12: it is no longer just Silicon Valley. It is the
Speaker 12: entirety of corporate America as we know it.
Speaker 1: This is actually pretty clever trick, which I talked about
Speaker 1: a greater length than an earlier monologue breaking down Vivek's
Speaker 1: interview with Jordan Peterson. Basically, embrace anti corporate language, but
Speaker 1: instead of looking to address their power group on the
Speaker 1: nation through antitrust, getting money out of politics, boosting unions
Speaker 1: and the like, you hit them on nothing more than
Speaker 1: their fake diversity and environmental virtue signaling. You can see
Speaker 1: this playing out right now with outrage over targets, meaningless
Speaker 1: pride displays or bud lights use of a trans influencer.
Speaker 4: Do you think these companies actually care.
Speaker 1: One bit about LGBTQ allyship, of course they don't. They
Speaker 1: just stopped marketing to the queer community was a good
Speaker 1: money making strategy. You're not putting even a tiny dent
Speaker 1: in their social and political power by fixating on their
Speaker 1: meaningless gestures, but it is a brilliant way to keep
Speaker 1: your big donors and still maintain your populist aesthetic. Now
Speaker 1: Viveck has actually made a whole career on a opposing
Speaker 1: so called ESG, even launched his own fund pressure companies
Speaker 1: into strictly pursuing short term profit maximization without the fake
Speaker 1: liberal values. But if it needs to be spelled out,
Speaker 1: forcing companies to only maximize profit is not exactly the
Speaker 1: revolutionary stance they might want us to think it is,
Speaker 1: But Vecan has held posture like their opposing capital, when
Speaker 1: in reality they're just demanding capital be as psychopathically committed
Speaker 1: to the bottom line as possible. Now, if your biggest
Speaker 1: beef with Corporate America is a Pride Month display, your
Speaker 1: biggest problem with Wall Street is some diversity hires, and
Speaker 1: your biggest complaint about the military industrial complex is some
Speaker 1: inclusion training, you have completely missed the point, and your
Speaker 1: phony critique challenges absolutely nothing. And that brings me to
Speaker 1: the weird world of the online left mode of faux
Speaker 1: populism as represented by RFK Junior.
Speaker 4: Now listen, on a personal.
Speaker 1: Level, I actually really like Bobby, and for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: he strikes me as truly sincere. But it has become increasingly
Speaker 1: clear we share very little in terms of a commitment
Speaker 1: to checking corporate power and restoring power to the working class.
Speaker 1: His approach, though, has been the most successful by far
Speaker 1: in finding appeal. I think because of his sincerity and
Speaker 1: because it contains a few truly anti establishment positions, namely
Speaker 1: his stated desire to end military aid to Ukraine, to
Speaker 1: combat online censorship and to challenge big pharma. But if
Speaker 1: you ask him any questions on economics, he will probably
Speaker 1: tell you he is a quote radical free marketeer, and
Speaker 1: that is music to the ears of every Wall.
Speaker 5: Street goual and corporate profiteer.
Speaker 1: He is not sure what the minimum wage should be,
Speaker 1: won't fight for Medicare for all, doesn't know what he
Speaker 1: thinks about UBI and a federal jobs guarantee, and he
Speaker 1: will signal verbal support for unions, but hasn't laid out
Speaker 1: an actual plan to reverse decades of union density decline.
Speaker 1: No wonder his it is received backing from a number
Speaker 1: of prominent billionaires. When Brianna Joy Gray recently asked about
Speaker 1: his support from those billionaires and whether he would accept
Speaker 1: corporate pack money, r F. K. Junior ended up sounding
Speaker 1: exactly like Nancy Pelosi, declaring that he's got to raise
Speaker 1: as much as possible, no matter the potential corruption.
Speaker 9: I'm going to tell you this.
Speaker 16: I'm not allowed to coordinate with our superbacks, but it's
Speaker 16: I think, you know, and Bernie was able to do,
Speaker 16: as you said, raise a lot of money, and I
Speaker 16: think Obama raised a lot of money. And that's what
Speaker 16: I'm going to focus on from small donors about you know,
Speaker 16: if you're a superback, I you know, the law is
Speaker 16: just wrong in our country, but it's hard to you know,
Speaker 16: We're at some point you have to say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 16: going to play by the rules as they are given
Speaker 16: to us. I'm not going to you know, I'm not
Speaker 16: going to bring a knife to a gunfight.
Speaker 1: Even on RFK Junior's supposedly core anti establishment positions, Bobby's
Speaker 1: opposition to the Ukraine War is not matched by similar
Speaker 1: critique of US Empire. He's made some pretty eyebrow raising
Speaker 1: comments about China and notably upholds the pro Israel line
Speaker 1: of every American present from both parties.
Speaker 5: And if he thinks that.
Speaker 1: Cutting the defense budget in any meaningful way will be
Speaker 1: any easier than say, passing Medicare for all, is really
Speaker 1: got another thing coming on r of K Junior's life's work,
Speaker 1: which is raging against big pharma, correctly pointing out their
Speaker 1: corruption but incorrectly pushing fat free claims that vaccines cause autism.
Speaker 4: Even on this.
Speaker 1: Core issue, he would keep the current discussing system intact.
Speaker 1: When I asked about checking pharma through nationalizing the industry
Speaker 1: at least creating a public pharma option. He immediately rejected
Speaker 1: those solutions as contrary to his free market commitment on censorship,
Speaker 1: Bobby seems to embrace the right wing concept of fighting
Speaker 1: censorship by finding the correct billionaires to control platforms, and
Speaker 1: that strategy has utterly failed under Elon, rather than advocating
Speaker 1: for a more fundamental solution that would devolve content moderation
Speaker 1: to the people. So to sum up, based on what
Speaker 1: we've heard so far, under RFK Junior, billionaires keep their
Speaker 1: social media playthings, big Pharma continues to pillage and at
Speaker 1: least some of the most damaging and hypocritical aspects of
Speaker 1: the American war regime march on.
Speaker 4: Like Trump.
Speaker 1: However, the right people hate RFK, and so that's enough
Speaker 1: for many to love them without troubling themselves too much
Speaker 1: with the details. Although to be honest, a lot of
Speaker 1: his online support is from the libertarian and nationalists right,
Speaker 1: so RFK Junior's comfort with billionaires and corporate power won't
Speaker 1: necessarily be a problem for them. As for the normy
Speaker 1: Democrats who are disgusted with Biden and enthused by the
Speaker 1: Kennedy name, too early to say how they're going to
Speaker 1: respond once they actually tune in to his pitch.
Speaker 5: So there you have it.
Speaker 1: Lots of billionaire backed anti estabtion vibes the cycle. And
Speaker 1: my advice for you for what it's worth is to
Speaker 1: know what you believe in, make sure you demand specifics,
Speaker 1: don't get distracted by surface level critiques, and as always,
Speaker 1: follow the money. Any candidate or cause billionaires are lining
Speaker 1: up to support should be a pretty large red flag.
Speaker 1: Don't fall for the cheap and easy mental shortcut of
Speaker 1: just looking for who most triggers the Libs and I
Speaker 1: guess in the way it's like a vict And if.
Speaker 2: You want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become
Speaker 2: a premum subscriber today at breakingpoints dot.
Speaker 4: Com, all right, Sager were looking at it well.
Speaker 2: As everyone knows. I absolutely love all the emerging data
Speaker 2: on mobility of workers during the pandemic. There's something very
Speaker 2: inspiring to me about picking up and trying something else.
Speaker 2: It's basically the essence of the American story. Before COVID,
Speaker 2: things were getting very stagnant. For my taste, the ability
Speaker 2: to vote with your feet and with your dollars as
Speaker 2: to where you call home is and remains a luxury
Speaker 2: not available to everyone, but it does also tell us
Speaker 2: a lot about what the future of America looks like
Speaker 2: and the impacts on our elections. The work from home
Speaker 2: revolution for the white collar sector has fundamentally transformed geographic
Speaker 2: distribution across the United States. Has also changed the reason
Speaker 2: for why people even move in the first place. Look
Speaker 2: at this chart before twenty twenty, in person workers far
Speaker 2: outpaced remote workers in moving in prior year. In other words,
Speaker 2: the primary reason for relocation pre COVID was proximity to
Speaker 2: a job, not necessarily somewhere you wanted to live. But
Speaker 2: during COVID and after that it has changed completely. Remote
Speaker 2: workers are now far more likely to move. But that's
Speaker 2: not the only story. It is that not just are
Speaker 2: likely to move, it's from where and where to. It's
Speaker 2: a meme at this point to talk about Austin and Nashville.
Speaker 2: But some of the cities that people have left and
Speaker 2: have chosen to move to may surprise you. Let's dive
Speaker 2: in as you can see here as a familiar story.
Speaker 2: San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. They
Speaker 2: got destroyed by work from home, rising crime, cost of living,
Speaker 2: loss of amenities cause a lot of people to say,
Speaker 2: screw it, not worth it. Of course, Austin is high
Speaker 2: up on the list, so is Nashville, But it may
Speaker 2: surprise you to see Denver, Colorado is actually much higher
Speaker 2: up than Nashville. Other cities Raleigh, Portland, Richmond, Dallas, Sacramento, Boston,
Speaker 2: Minneapolis all had positive population.
Speaker 3: Growth from remote workers.
Speaker 2: Now let me insert the caveat to this I always
Speaker 2: give right now, it is not available to most people.
Speaker 2: In fact, remote work data shows that those who can
Speaker 2: work remotely have much higher incomes than average, and thus
Speaker 2: what looks like a deal to them would also price
Speaker 2: much higher than normal in a non major metro area,
Speaker 2: and prices out residents who have lived there for a
Speaker 2: long time up rents dramatically. Thus remote work is not
Speaker 2: just a white collar phenomenon. It's really the highest earners even.
Speaker 3: Of white collar jobs.
Speaker 2: Now though, the next analysis where things get equally interesting.
Speaker 2: When people pick up and move, do they move states
Speaker 2: or do they just move slightly away from where they
Speaker 2: already do? This entirely depends on job condition. Fully, remote workers,
Speaker 2: of course, are able to pick up and to move
Speaker 2: wherever they felt the cost of living. Most aligned with
Speaker 2: their ideal space. In other words, more like true freedom.
Speaker 2: Other workers, though more akin to hybrid workers, are very different.
Speaker 2: They are more likely to accept now a longer commute
Speaker 2: than before because they are now required to only go
Speaker 2: into the office, possibly a few times a month. Similarly,
Speaker 2: remote work has really changed space needs. When I was
Speaker 2: younger and I was living in DC, at one point
Speaker 2: I lived in a house with nine other guys. We
Speaker 2: all had our own bedrooms and a single common area.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, though, it wasn't that bad. We all
Speaker 2: worked like crazy at any given time, only when four
Speaker 2: people were actually there. It was mostly a crash pad
Speaker 2: for career driven young professionals. That model, though, is increasingly dying,
Speaker 2: because if I was twenty five and in a job today,
Speaker 2: the odds are i'd probably be working from home at
Speaker 2: least a little bit. And if I was, I can't
Speaker 2: just have a tiny bedroom which leaks when it rains.
Speaker 2: You need a little bit of space, and what new
Speaker 2: housing demand is showing us is exactly that. While two
Speaker 2: people may have lived together previously as roommates, increasingly remote
Speaker 2: workers are spending more on rent and on mortgages because
Speaker 2: they need more space. This poses a couple of challenges,
Speaker 2: but conceivably you could have had a married couple previously
Speaker 2: which only has a two bedroom house now though may
Speaker 2: need four simply because they need two workspaces. This further
Speaker 2: increases the premium on land and development and on existing
Speaker 2: housing stock, pushing prices further up. It actually would explain
Speaker 2: precisely why, despite astronomical increases and mortgage rates, housing prices
Speaker 2: have not fallen and are in fact still continuing to rise.
Speaker 2: The demand for housing so far outstrips supply, especially at
Speaker 2: the higher end of the price sector. It is still
Speaker 2: a good buy right now. It is something that you
Speaker 2: really need. So what do we do with all this
Speaker 2: few things? We could have just let it continue it is,
Speaker 2: But as I said before, I think it's a bad idea.
Speaker 3: It's not really fair to.
Speaker 2: People in desirable remote work cities like Boise, Idaho, or
Speaker 2: Nashville or Tampa. The real estate costs are going so
Speaker 2: sky high with a little planned I really do anything
Speaker 2: about it. Furthermore, it's not fair to people who work
Speaker 2: in the trades who would probably love to move they
Speaker 2: could but can't because there of course tethered to the land.
Speaker 2: It's also not fair to everyone in between, those who
Speaker 2: will now be competing for the same housing stock and
Speaker 2: likely pushed down in price. Overall, I think we need
Speaker 2: a major federal program to make things less las a
Speaker 2: fair and more targeted right now. For example, the sun
Speaker 2: Belt is blown up, which is great, It's where I
Speaker 2: grew up after all. But the industrial Midwest it's still hemorrhaging.
Speaker 2: With the right ideas investment, maybe we could make those
Speaker 2: cities just as desirable. We could spread the population around
Speaker 2: areas that were once thriving. The original promise of the
Speaker 2: American West was anyone could pick up and take a
Speaker 2: chance out there. We need to get back to that
Speaker 2: spirit if we wish to recapture the feeling of possibility
Speaker 2: that pervaded this country at that time, and to reclaim
Speaker 2: any real chance that we have at a revival. I
Speaker 2: think it's really interesting looking at all this, and.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. So
Speaker 1: the FTC is upping the anti against Amazon. Let's put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen from the New York Times.
Speaker 1: Their headline here is FTC sues Amazon for tricking users
Speaker 1: into subscribing to Prime. The lawsuit is the first time
Speaker 1: that the Federal Trade Commission, under its chair Lena Khan,
Speaker 1: has taken Amazon to court. We have the perfect person
Speaker 1: to break down what exactly this action means. We've got
Speaker 1: Matt Stoller's the director of research at the American Economic
Speaker 1: Liwerties Project and also author of The Big Substack. So
Speaker 1: just give us a sense of what this is all
Speaker 1: about in some of the details that we're contained in
Speaker 1: this lawsuit.
Speaker 13: Basically, this is a lawsuit about how it's almost impossible
Speaker 13: to cancel your Prime subscription because Amazon has all sorts
Speaker 13: of tricks and traps to keep you keep you subscribed.
Speaker 13: And it was when you read the complaint, it's kind
Speaker 13: of it's kind of amazing that Amazon has an internal
Speaker 13: name for the process of canceling Prime called Project Iliad,
Speaker 13: which is the long it's a stort, the Greek story
Speaker 13: about the.
Speaker 9: Long you know, the Trojan War and how long and
Speaker 9: difficult it was.
Speaker 13: And so it's it's a consumer deception claim about Amazon
Speaker 13: trying to you know, they also trick people into signing
Speaker 13: up in certain ways, but it's it's essentially it's like
Speaker 13: the user interface deceptive claim, but behind it is this
Speaker 13: recognition that Prime is a really core part of how
Speaker 13: Amazon runs its business and also controls pricing almost throughout
Speaker 13: the entire economy. And that is what I find really
Speaker 13: interesting about the problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's You've done a very popular segment here
Speaker 2: for us before on Prime. Can you explain some of
Speaker 2: the issues with Prime from an anti competitive perspective?
Speaker 3: From so much more just telling get into it with us?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 13: So Prime is about one hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 13: million members and Amazon gets about twenty five billion dollars
Speaker 13: a year in subscription revenue from Prime. But that's not
Speaker 13: really that money is not what Prime is about. Prime
Speaker 13: is a market allocation mechanism. So Amazon, when you sign
Speaker 13: up for Prime, you start ordering a lot more stuff
Speaker 13: through Amazon, and then that gives Amazon power over entities
Speaker 13: that want to sell you stuff. So if you have
Speaker 13: one hundred and fifty million Prime members, Amazon can then
Speaker 13: go to every consumer package good company, every sneaker company,
Speaker 13: every third party seller and say, hey, if you want
Speaker 13: access to these Prime members, what are If you want
Speaker 13: your product to be what's called Prime eligible, then you
Speaker 13: have to pay these fees. You have to use our
Speaker 13: logistics business. You have to advertise on Amazon advertising, and
Speaker 13: that raises prices on Amazon and is like a one
Speaker 13: hundred one hundred and one hundred and fifty billion dollars
Speaker 13: of free cash flow that's coming to Amazon. Then Amazon
Speaker 13: forces those producers, those package good producers, those third party sellers,
Speaker 13: to sign a deal called the price parenting agreement, a
Speaker 13: price parity agreement where they agree not to sell for
Speaker 13: lower prices off of Amazon. So even if I could
Speaker 13: sell save my Sneakers for cheaper through my own website
Speaker 13: because I don't have to pay the forty percent fee
Speaker 13: that I would ordinarily have to pay through Amazon, I'm
Speaker 13: not allowed to or Amazon will strip my ability to
Speaker 13: sell from an Amazon. And since to reach those one
Speaker 13: hundred and fifty two hundred million people I have to
Speaker 13: sell through Amazon, I can't afford to lower my price elsewhere.
Speaker 13: So that is the dynamic, and that actually pushes prices up.
Speaker 9: Everywhere in the economy.
Speaker 13: Will think when they go onto Amazon, I'm getting the
Speaker 13: lowest prices, and they are, but that's only because Amazon
Speaker 13: forces everywhere. They have so much power that they force
Speaker 13: everyone to raise prices off of them.
Speaker 1: Matt obviously I'm very sympathetic to your views here. In fact,
Speaker 1: I completely agree with you. But let me play a
Speaker 1: devil's advocate and say, hey, a lot of people like Prime,
Speaker 1: a lot of people like Amazon. A lot of people
Speaker 1: think it's great that they can push a button on
Speaker 1: their phone and you know, their socks or whatever they
Speaker 1: just ordered shows up at their house like literally a
Speaker 1: day later, and for a reasonable price.
Speaker 5: What do you say to them?
Speaker 1: Because when you do look at surveys, Amazon has very
Speaker 1: highs or like favorability rating among the American public who
Speaker 1: do appreciate the ease of the service.
Speaker 13: Amazon's great. I mean, I use Amazon, and there's there's
Speaker 13: no reason. I mean, there are a lot of problems
Speaker 13: that I could nitpick, but like, yeah, the basic premise
Speaker 13: is it's you know, people use it because it's convenient.
Speaker 13: And the point is is that, like, even though they're
Speaker 13: it's convenient and they're powerful, they shouldn't be able to
Speaker 13: keep prices for goods and services higher than they otherwise
Speaker 13: would be. Like, why is it okay for Amazon to
Speaker 13: force sneakers to be forty percent more expensive than they
Speaker 13: should like just by using these techniques and tactics. There's
Speaker 13: nothing inherent to the service that forces that. So if
Speaker 13: you just got rid of their ability to say, keep
Speaker 13: prices higher than they otherwise would be, Amazon would still exist.
Speaker 13: People would still be able to, you know, get the
Speaker 13: convenience from Amazon. It's just that then they would have
Speaker 13: to compete with companies that could then sell stuff for
Speaker 13: a better pricing.
Speaker 9: So I guess that's how I respond.
Speaker 13: It's like, there's nothing inherent to It's like a baggage
Speaker 13: fee on an airline, Like you don't necessarily need a
Speaker 13: baggage Like there's nothing inherent to the technology of flight
Speaker 13: that requires a baggage fee.
Speaker 9: There's just some business practices we can change.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's really well said. And what does
Speaker 2: a happy medium look like? For what like e commerce
Speaker 2: and all that should should be And what is Lena
Speaker 2: Khan trying to get to?
Speaker 13: The happy medium is where you know, Amazon is this
Speaker 13: wonderful infrastructure and people and firms can use it to
Speaker 13: transact in as a marketplace, but without being manipulated, right,
Speaker 13: and so they use it in a kind of a
Speaker 13: neutral way, a little bit like the post office.
Speaker 9: You know, Amazon will make its money. They'll charge there.
Speaker 13: You know, they'll charge their fees for using their service,
Speaker 13: but they won't actually be able to pick and choose winners.
Speaker 13: They will have to compete on better service and better
Speaker 13: pricing like everybody else. And then you know, you'll have other,
Speaker 13: you know, marketplaces that come on that are that are differentiated,
Speaker 13: that maybe offer different service levels or different pricing terms,
Speaker 13: and right now we don't have that. We don't have
Speaker 13: like you know, companies coming in saying like buy through
Speaker 13: me instead of buying through Amazon, and you get like
Speaker 13: thirty percent off, like you've never seen that kind of offer,
Speaker 13: and you should see that kind of offer because that
Speaker 13: is economically possible. It's just that that extra money is
Speaker 13: now going to Amazon and you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, smart Matt, One last question for you, and I
Speaker 1: know you've got to run. You have been tracking closely
Speaker 1: how the Wall Street Journal has had a real vendetta
Speaker 1: against Lena Khan. Can you talk about that and why
Speaker 1: they in particular have taken such great interest in what
Speaker 1: she's up to?
Speaker 13: Well, so I guess I should say one other thing.
Speaker 13: You will be able to cancel your Prime subscription if
Speaker 13: you don't want it, and you won't be tricked into
Speaker 13: like signing up for things you don't mean, you don't
Speaker 13: mean to sign up for not just an Amazon, but
Speaker 13: kind of across the board, because lots of companies are
Speaker 13: watching this case. So there's there's also the basic like
Speaker 13: dynamic here of like we shouldn't be tricked into things
Speaker 13: and we shouldn't make it impossible to cancel stuff, and
Speaker 13: right now it is. So that's another big, big part
Speaker 13: of this case. So the yeah, the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 13: we set up a website called Wall Street Grumble. They've
Speaker 13: they've editorialized against Lena Kon sixty eight times sixty at times.
Speaker 9: Right, they are like just obsessed.
Speaker 13: And the reason is because, like you know, I deal
Speaker 13: with anti trust, and people think it's like the nerdy
Speaker 13: type of like nerdy type of thing. It's like kind
Speaker 13: of niche that actually it's not. It's about how we
Speaker 13: interact with each other through the marketplace, how we buy
Speaker 13: and sell from one another, our good services, ideas, labor, whatnot.
Speaker 9: It's like a really core part of the human experience.
Speaker 13: And for a long time people have said, Okay, that's
Speaker 13: that's not something that we can talk about politically. That's
Speaker 13: what economists and scientists that like they have to hand,
Speaker 13: and it's like debated on places like the Wall Street
Speaker 13: Journal editorial page and what Lena Khan and Jonathan Canter
Speaker 13: and some of the other officials in the Biden administrations.
Speaker 13: Not everyone, but it's one faction the Bide administration are
Speaker 13: saying is no, we should debate these things publicly, and
Speaker 13: monopoly shouldn't be controlling everything. We should be having free
Speaker 13: and fair commerce among one another. And that is a
Speaker 13: real threat to the people at the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 13: editorial page and the antatress bar and the bank who
Speaker 13: believe in a society based on rank and order and
Speaker 13: deference and hierarchy. And that's really what this is about.
Speaker 13: That's why they're very very angry at Lenicon. She's a
Speaker 13: kind of a symbol of this. She's also like taking
Speaker 13: on consolidated corporate power and areas from defense contracting to
Speaker 13: pharmaceuticals to you know, to to you know, retailing, to
Speaker 13: the cloud computing. But like, on a gut level, what's
Speaker 13: really going on is the Wall Street Journal editorial guys
Speaker 13: are like, we should run things, not the like, not
Speaker 13: the rabble.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's fundamentally elitist argument, an anti populist argument. Matt,
Speaker 1: great to have you Thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to break this down for us.
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Speaker 9: Thanks Matt, thanks for having me.
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Speaker 4: See y'all on Monday.